Latest diary entries
Ramblings about cats, games and miscellanea.
So, I had a fun little problem yesterday; a Flash SWF wasn't appearing on an HTTPS page on IE. It was fine on HTTP, and fine in other browsers, but HTTPS just wasn't doing it; the flash plugin was just showing the awesomely helpful "Movie not loaded" message. Cue much confusion, investigation.
Turns out that IE takes the caching headers on HTTPS requests a little too seriously. The following headers were set on the SWF:
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Why does this break it? Well, it's down to how IE and plugins work.
First, IE downloads your ...
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Leela and I disappeared off to Barcelona this week, and had much fun doing the usual touristy things.
We went up and down Las Ramblas several times, took the Bus Turistic (or the "Tourist Bus", for those who aren't all that with the Spanish), saw several buildings by Gaudi (like Casa Mila and Sagrada Familia), went into some modern art museums, visited the science museum, walked through the Barri Gotic, didn't get pick-pocketed or mugged once, and had particularly excellent ice creams at Port Vell. Although they forecast rain, the skies were clear and the sun was out ...
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My Dell arrived with McAfee, but it turns out it's a bit of a pain to uninstall. The standard steps leave it listed under Windows Security Center, saying something along the lines of "McAfee VirusScan reports that it is running". This then causes problems when trying to install other anti-virus software.
So, this is a quick and boring entry for the benefit of Google. Here's how to get rid of McAfee:
- Uninstall McAfee under Control Panel -> Uninstall a program and reboot
- Go to service.mcafee.com and follow the instructions for MCRE - download, run and reboot when prompted ...
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Today was a significant day for two reasons. Firstly the Dell engineer came out to fix my laptop, and secondly the game went on sale.
Lets talk about Dell first. The chap who came over was very nice, took my laptop to pieces - literally, unscrewed everything - replaced the speakers, and the motherboard while he was at it. Turned it back on, and everything's working perfectly - I can hear sound! Hurrah!
I'm actually very happy with the laptop now; sure, it runs Vista, but that's nothing a quick reinstall won't fix. Thanks to everyone who has taken ...
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Is it normal to have a nightmare about your computer getting infected with a drive-by browser exploit, and you being unable to stop it or find your OS CD to do a reinstall? Would you be as relieved as I was when you wake up and realise it was all just a dream?
While on the subject of nightmares, I should probably complete the story of the new laptop. We'll pick it up a week last Friday - yes, we're now talking over a week and a half ago; I've been stupidly busy with work, more work and ...
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