mrdee

People often talk about Guardian angels, or fate, or Lady Luck, or "Someone up there" looking after us. Call it what you wish (depending on whether you believe or not), but there is definitely such a thing as those described above. Had such a thing not existed, I probably would never have been born. Here is the full story: I am from a family where the men, from father to son, have been fishermen for generaion, which was quite normal, with my family being from Ostend in Flanders, where the fishing industry, next to tourism, were the main sources of income. One day, my dad had to go on a fishing trip to Iceland, a trip which meant being away from home for at least eighteen days. As it happened, mum was about to give birth to the twins, so dad said "There is no way i am going to go on this trip and miss the birth of my children", and my uncle, who was due to sail on the same voyage, and who was supposed to be godfather of one of the twins, felt exactly the same. So, dad and my uncle go to the muster station and hand in their muster books, so the company exempt them and find replacements for them to go on the voyage. What happened? The ship never came back, there was not one survivor. Now, call it what you wish, but there must be something that decides our destiny, and, as I said, if things had turned out differently, I would never have been born.

My home town is Bredene, situated at the Flemish coast, next to Ostend. It is the town where I was born, at home, like all six of us (Mum had none of us at a hospital, all six children were delivered at home by a visiting midwife). The town has three main areas: The part referred to as "The Village", a very rural and formerly agricultural part of town. The seaside part, referred to as "The Dunes", which is the "tourist" part of the town The part which forms the link between Bredene and Ostend, referred to as "The Dock", which was the more "industrial" part of the town. I am from the village part, as said before, a formerly very rural, rustic area where the predominant source of income was agriculture. It used to be a very romantic place when I was a child, you had a car going through the main street once about every 5 to 10 minutes, and everyone knew everyone in the community. I remember my parents telling me how they, just having moved from the bigger city of Ostend, often got annoyed when the inhabitants of Bredene, whom hey obviously did not know yet, all said hello to them when they saw them in the street, something which never happened in bigger cities, so, my parents often thought they were making fun of them. There were also some lovely old little houses in the village, situated around the central village church of St. Richard (where I became the organist later), and lots of shops and pubs (supermarkets were unheard of in those days). Every year in September and May, we used to have a fun fair in the village, great fun for the kids, and there was also the tradition of "fun fair Monday", the first Monday of the fun fair, when the local business people went round the pubs and treated their customers to drinks. There were also two schools in the town, the Catholic School, founded by an order of nuns, and the secular school, ran by the town council. Like I said, everything was quite romantic, there was business going on, but bit by bit, things began to change: Lots of the agricultural land were claimed by the town council and bought of the owners to be used as building land, and whole areas, which used to have grazing cows on them, now made room for whole modern villa areas, and many people from the nearby city of Ostend built their house and moved into Bredene. One after one, the shops began to close, due to the pressure of the, much cheaper, supermarkets in Ostend, which was only a short bus or car ride away (even public transport had been improved and extended a lot. Where you could take about one bus every one and a half or two hours, or face quite a walk to get to a bus stop with more frequent buses, the bus traffic had now become more regular). Also the pubs began to close one after one, partly due to the fact that the lesser financial times began to announce themselves slightly in the 70s and people could not afford to go to the pub as regularly as they used to. I still remember, on hot summer evenings, when all the neighbours were sat outside their doors talking, until one of them got the brilliant idea to say to the neighbours: "real thirsty weather, isn't it?", to which they obviously all agreed, so everyone barged into the pub two doors away and quenched their thirst until the landlord practically cursed them to go home and let him go to bed. It was also the time when there was no full-blown police force as such in the town, only a rural policeman, patrolling on his push bike, who often joined the villagers in the pub during his duty. They say times change, but is it always for the better?? While Bredene has now become a modern town, most of the romantic looks and times I used to know as a child are now gone forever.

I have an extremely annoying problem when going on my Facebook page. At first I thought it was a new feature, since Facebook have a bit of a habit of changing things unexpectedly, but since nobody but me seemed to see what I saw, I assume the fault must be somewhere on my machine. What happens is: when I go onto my Facebook page, it is filled with advertisements, I know there are some on there by default, but mine are all over the place, they even appear in between posts. A funny detail: when I posted a message about it on my page, my friends began to ask me if the beer had become to strong for me , since they were assuming I was seeing things. Mind you, they soon changed their tune when I uploaded a screenshot (which I am adding to this post too for reference). I have taken all the measures which I thought would help with the problem: I did a scan and clean with Spybot Search and Destroy I cleared my browser cache I removed all the temporary files with CCleaner I did a Registry clean with CCleaner I did a virus scan with AVG After going through all these things, it looks like the problem is still there.The whole thing is so annoying and nerve wrecking. Can someone please help? Thank you in advance. See the added screenshot below:

The main factor that determines the gender of a baby are the chromosomes. (Chromosome=A circular strand of DNA in bacteria (and also a protein) that contains the hereditary information necessary for cell life). In a wider concept, there are two kinds of chromosomes: an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. The unfertilised egg already contains an X chromosome, which leaves two options at the time of conception: An X chromosome can be added to the already present X chromosome, in which case the baby will be a girl. A Y chromosome can be added to the already present X chromosome, in which case the baby will be a boy. There is also a risk factor: sometimes, on top of the X or Y chromosome, an extra chromosome gets added at the time of conception, in which case the baby is usually born with Down's Syndrome. There are some methods, which claim to help determine the baby's gender, such as calculating the ovulation time, and then having sex at a certain number of days from ovulation time, but that is very theoretical, and difficult to plan properly. Furthermore, there are also lots of old wives tales about when and/or how to have sex in order to make sure your baby is the gender you want it to be. But, coming back to the original question: I understand from your question that you would like to know the gender of your baby, based upon your and your husband's blood groups, well, blood groups do not determine the gender of a baby, but they do influence the blood type your baby will be born with. The best thing to do if you want to know what gender your baby will be is to have an ultrasound (or, a scan, as it is more commonly known). Doctors have been known to get the gender wrong using this type of test, although the chances for that are very minimal, mistakes can happen, of course, when the baby is laying in an awkward position. There is also a home testing gender kit available, which is similar to a home pregnancy test, but this type of test is highly questioned on its reliability by a majority of scientists. So, do not rely on tales you hear or things people write about blood types determining the gender of your baby, just do it the proper way, make an appointment with a gynaecologist and have an ultrasound done, this is still your best bet. Also, if gender were determined by the blood groups of the father and mother, that would mean all your children would be of the same sex, which is clearly not the case in many families. Finally, all the best of luck with the pregnancy, and best wishes for a smooth birth of a happy and healthy baby.

Hello, SeekReadWrite,it seems we have a versatile addition to our family.Welcome to our forum community here at Xisto and I wish you lots of fun here.Hope we will soon see the fruits of your labour appear in our forums, and, as Velma said, any questions you might have yourself, there will always be people around who are specialised in certain fields to answer them.Welcome again, and get ready to have a great time here.

I was wondering why I am getting the following problem:There are 2 PCs and 2 laptops in my home.All 4 machines run Windows 7 Ultimate, and all machines are in the same homegroup.However, when I try to connect to any machine but one from my laptop, I get the message "My credentials are invalid", in other words, it means I have used a wrong username or password.I am 100% sure the "credentials" are all correct, and are also entered correctly.Like I said before, i can connect to the other laptop, it is not even asking me for a username or password, probably because I set it in the past to remember the password.What is even more funny is the fact that the other machines can connect to my laptop without any problem.Like on my laptop, the other machines ask for a username and password, but after entering those, I get connected immediately.As far as I remember, the network is set up correctly, so I am wondering what is happening.I would like to try and take my laptop off the network and run the network wizard again, but the disabling of the network can be a bit fiddly in Windows 7.Has anyone got some advice (someone who recognises the problem or has experienced it him/herself), or someone who can advise me how to disable and re-enable the network with a minimum of fuss.Thank you.

Sheepdog, that should not be the case. From what you write I assume you have been using Windows XP for quite some time, and have been running the same programs for a while too. It depends on what kind of programs you use, but some companies keep updating their programs and provide the updates to their users free of charge, while some charge users for major upgrades. You then also have the companies that go out of business, or stop producing certain programs, so, as a result, they offer no further updates. However, even in the last case, all is not lost. Windows has got a trick called "Compatibility Mode" up its sleeve. When a program does not work with your current version of Windows, and you are, for whatever reason, unable (or unwilling) to get any updates, try the following: Right click on the program icon Select "Properties" In the window that opens, select "Compatibility" Read the instructions by clicking "Help me choose the seettings" or Tick the box next to "Run this program in compatibility mode for" After ticking that box, you will have access to a drop-down menu listing the various OSes.Select the OS you used before upgrading to Windows 7 and try to run the program you just adjusted. If that does not work, go down the list one OS until the program runs. Do the same for all programs which are not running under Windows 7. It might be a bit time consuming (especially if you have a lot of programs that do not work) but the method does work. Good luck.

I was wondering if someone could refresh my memory. I have a film, and I also have an .srt file, containing subtitles for the film. I used to do it in the past, but since it is a long time ago, I cannot remember how it was achieved to either: Burn the film with the subtitles embedded Burn the film with a menu option to use the subtitles As far as I can remember, my version of Nero (version 10) is not able to do what I want to achieve, and I seem to remember I used to have a certain program to burn a film with subtitles, but I cannot, for the life of me, remember what the program was called. Is there anyone who can advise me of a method or a program (preferably freeware) which will let me achieve what I want? Either method described above will do, but it would be nice if I would be able to have a choice between just embedding the subtitles into the movie or letting the viewer choose (from a menu) whether or not to watch the film with subtitles. I will be very grateful for any relevant advice.

I have 3 ISO files, all three of them are more than 7Gigabytes in size.They obviously take up a lo of Hard disk space, and, to use them on various computers, it would obviously best to get them burnt on DVDs.I have both PowerISO and MagicISO, but the problem is, how do I get files of that size on DVDs?I am aware that I am going to have to use multiple DVDs per ISO, but the question is "How?", or rather, "Will either PowerISO or MagicISO know how and where to split them up"?The ISOs contain sets of instrument samples and the installer to install them into their host program, and when I run it from the extracted ISO, the Installer goes looking for the archives of the sets, but, when they are split up, will Windows have the "intelligence" to ask for the proper disc, or prompt me to put the proper disc into the drive?Inexperienced with ISO files as I am (that is why I am not able to give a lot more information), could anyone tell me if either of the ISO programs will tell me how or where to split, as i assume it is important the files get put into the right place (probably meaning "onto the right disc") for the Setup program to recognise them.Any advice will be more than welcome.

I want to help someone set up a Wordpress driven blog. I know that Wordpress exists in a number of languages, and since the blog I am going to set up is supposed to be bilingual, I was wondering if: I can set Wordpress up in two sections, both using a different language I have to install Wordpress twice, the two languages separately I remember that, in a very gray past, I attempted something similar, but then never carried on with the blog, and since it is a long time ago, I do not remember how exactly it was done. I am mainly asking this question for practical reasons, since Wordpress uses a MySQL database, I am not sure whether I will need 1 or 2 databases (tables), ie. one database or table per language or whether I can install both languages using just one database or table. I am also curious whether it is easy to put down the appropriate links down, links which refer to both sections of the language. However, since the blog will be using Xisto's hosting, I might just be able to make a front page, referring to the blog, with a link to the two different language. (As far as I remember, it is possible to 'integrate' a blog into an ordinary web page, so I assume that is possible). If anyone knows more about Wordpress than I do, then I would love to hear from them. Thank you.

Yes, I didn't think it would have made a lot of sense to try and point my domain name at two different places.It is only the explanation they gave confused me a little bit.I could download my own PHPBB package and install it on my website, but the company I host my forum with charge a lot of money for releasing a backup of your files and helping you migrate, so, that is not really an option.Maybe best to leave things as they are.

I was wondering if this is a certain oddity in the Gallery's behaviour or what: Earlier today, nanna created an album of her own and uploaded some pictures of our dogs. Just to clarify (for the people who don't know): nanna and me live in the same house, and hence we ae on the same IP address and Wireless network. I was wondering if that could be causing what we are experiencing now: When I look at the main page of the forum, under "Recent Gallery Images", I still see the ones I uploaded in the first two places, which were, before nanna uploaded her pictures, the two most recent ones. Funny enough, when nanna is on the same page, her uploaded pictures show as the most recent ones, while mine are not to be seen anywhere. Also, when browsing through the galleries, on my laptop, my album is there, showing my pictures, while nanna's are not to be found anywhere, while on nanna's laptop, her album is there while mine seems to be invisible. I am really wondering what the reason behind this could be, whether it is due to using the same IP address or what? Fact of the matter is: other members seem to be able to see both sets of pictures, velma, for example seems to have seen the pictures both of us uploaded to the Gallery. Does anyone have an idea what is going on, and has anyone got any idea how we can (if it is possible at all) put things right? Thank you.

The topic "Cheapest tablet in the world" on this forum inspired me to write this post. This post, in turn, might inspire other people to try something similar to the project I have in mind (or do a bit of "copycatting", which I don't really mind, if my question inspires people to get creative, why not)? Anyway, what I wish to do is the following (by no means unique, but I want to have a go at it myself): I want to build a virtual organ, which also gives me the possibility to combine a number of different organs in one console (a number of church organs, a theatre organ and a Hammond organ). The principle is quite simple: I will build three MIDI keyboards into a case (simple enough, and apart from removing the innards of the keyboard from the case, no further modification needed, as they already have MIDI on board). To that, I also wish to add a MIDI compatible pedal board, or a pedal board which I make MIDI compatible myself (takes a bit of time, but the parts are readily available and the job is not that difficult to do). Then, for the final bit: getting the organ sounds in there. That, in itself, is not such a big deal neither, as there is a lot of software available which allows people to play virtual organs through MIDI. A few examples: Hauptwerk (For church (pipe) organs and Theatre organs). MidiTzer (A typical,great and FREE Theatre organ plug-in). Native instruments' B4 (A virtual Hammond tonewheel organ). All those virtual instruments (and there are also other, very good, sometimes cheaper and even free alternatives) happily run on the Windows Operating System, and some of them (if not all, but of that I am not 100% sure) will run on MacOS and even Linux. Now, obviously, if I want to control those different instruments from my one console (separately, of course), it is obvious that I cannot have any stop tabs or controllers on the console itself, as they would work differently for every single instrument, and it would get to confusing to use. That is why I need a device which uses a touch screen, so that I can reach out and manually change the sounds as you do on a normal organ. Here you can see an example of such a custom built console: As you can see, there is a monitor on both sides (both are touch screens) where the player can control the stops (sounds) of the organ by a touch of the finger. When choosing the right kind of touch screen, I bear the following things in mind: The device has to be able to run Windows software It has to be able to run them comfortably, without disruptions It has to be as compact as possible for portability reasons It also has to be affordable The example as you see in the picture would be off the list for me, as that would mean always having to take a PC tower or laptop and two monitors on the road, along with all the other gear. A laptop with a touch screen would be a lot better, as long as it has got enough memory and a proper processor and sound card to run the software properly, but, I would like to be able to build inside the case, so just the screen is visible. this brings me to the last option, and, the more advice I can get about this, the better: I was wondering if there is some kind of tablet PC, or notebook, or netbook, or whatever compact kind of laptop out there, which has the qualities I need, ie. good enough processor, good enough sound card (or possibility to connect one), powerful enough processor and enough memory (or enough room for expansion). Obviously, the more compact it is, the better, then all I have to do is find a nice space on top of the console, right in front of the player, so the sounds can easily be changed. The other thing that then would go inside the case is a MIDI splitter, so all keyboards and the pedalboard can speak independently through MIDI, and an amplifier, which connects to a speaker system on the outside. All that is needed then is, when everything is plugged in and connected, open the door of your console, start up your computer, select the organ you wish to use and a-playing you go (it would also be a good idea to add a wireless mouse to the setup so you can then, if needed, change instruments if you wish to do so). But the main thing now remains, what shall I choose that has the qualities I mentioned, and that is especially compact and, more important affordable. So, if anyone can offer advice on this one, I would love to hear from you. I also hope that I managed to rouse the interest of aspiring musicians or experienced organists, or, people interested in a similar project to give this a try. If anyone does want to try it too, I am always willing to give further guidelines and advice, and, who knows, we might even be able to start something special in the community where we exchange ideas about a similar project. But, for now, please let me hear about the touch screen options. Thank you.

In that case, thank you for the tip, velma.I must admit I was not aware of the fact that tickets could be submitted via email too.When you get an email from support, confirming that you have submitted a ticket, or an email containing a reply to a ticket you have submitted, the URL to the ticket is in the email so you can go to your ticket directly to read it or amend it if needed, but I never knew Xisto - Support took tickets via email.Anyway, thank you again, and I will bear that in mind for a next time (hopefully not, of course).

Glad you like it, velma. Feeble indeed, I'm afraid that's about the best I can do.

Granted, Velma,but, much as I wanted to raise a ticket, I was unable to do so, since (at the risk of repeating myself) I had no access to the Xisto - Support site.That is why I resorted to posting here and sending you some PM's.And then, the forum itself was down too, for about an hour.I must say, it has been a very long time since that happened last.I have sometimes faced problems with the forum being slow to load, and to switch between topics when I click, but I really can't tell the last time (before yesterday) when it was down completely.So, obviously, when something like that happens, I will put in a ticket, provided I am able to do so.Anyway, things seem to be working properly again now.

The issue seems to be resolved now. The website seems to be back and my FTP works now. I was going to post that I could log in with my dotted (numeric) IP address as host name, but not with a normal host name such as something@Xisto.net, but this site went down for a while too. Anyway, the issue seems to be resolved now. Thank you. One more thing, though, it looks like the BBCodes are not responding to mouse clicks now. There is a small bit in italics in my post, but I had to get that in there by manually entering the BBCode. I know I am a bit of a pain today, but if there are any problems, I think I might as well mention them. Anyway, seems like we are up and running again.

OK, I tried using Internet Explorer ( ), no luck there.Having done a troubleshoot I got "The DNS server is not responding".Cleared the cache and that did not help neither.Anyway, I have PM'ed you the login details.

The Xisto site is not loading at all.My website does load and seems to show all pages, however, FTP is impossible, except through the use of the CPanel File manager.I also filled in a web form on my website and that sent perfectly.

Yes, velma, I too assume the IP address is the same on both occasions. This is the URL that did not work for me, but also the ones without content after the forward slashes. And, yes, I did try from another machine, without any luck however.

It has come to my attention that, for a while this morning, the Xisto website seems to be down.Does anyone of the mods/admins on here know anything more about this?Is there maintenance going on, is there a server fault or is there another reason for the website being offline?If anyone here asks for more information, I am afraid the only information I can give is the message I get from my browser, namely, "The website cannot be found" in Firefox, and "This could be a fault with the DNS" in Google Chrome, but more information I do not have to offer I am afraid.The main problem is, of course, if it does affect everyone, people will not be able to raise any tickets.I, personally wanted to access the site to check my total credit balance.Sorry for using this medium to mention it, but I obviously cannot inform the peole concerned if the website is not working.So, if any mod/admn sees this, please have a look into it.Thank you.

As far as I know, the "/usr/" bit should be a reference to the one you hid (usr=short for "user"), so maybe that is actually trying to refer to your account name. You say the Logic plan ($1.95) does not support Cron Jobs? Are you quite sure? It did when I was on it (although I am on Logic pro now), but it definitely DID support Cron Jobs in the past. In that case, the best thing to do is to raise a ticket here, and first of all check whether or not the Logic Plan (I assume that is the one you are on) does support Cron Jobs, and then explain the rest of your problem. You will definitely get further help from the staff at Xisto, but it might be a good idea to quote the text of your PHP script that controls the Cron Job too. Just out of interest, could you be so kind, after you get a reply to your support ticket, whether or not the Logic plan supports Cron Jobs? I am really curious now, as, like I mentioned before, they worked perfectly when I was on the Logic Plan.

OK,this looks right to me, and, yes, where you have blanked the bit out should be your account name.Anyway, now, regarding the script:See if it makes any difference removing the "-q" after php, so just "php /home/***/public_html/etc.".Also, the cron scripts you run, did you write them yourself or did you get them from somewhere.Make sure they work properly too.If you still have no joy, just get back to me.

OK then, rpgsearcherz, let's see if we can help you sot this out. First of all, do you get an email to tell you a Cron Job has been executed (or even, to tell you a Cron Job has failed)? (Although it is possible to let the Cron Job being executed without any notification). However, the way you try to go about it, you are almost on the right track, you said: So, you are almost right there, namely: Go into your Control panel Under Advanced, click "Cron Jobs" On the screen that then opens you will see a window "Add new Cron Job" In "Common Settings", set how often you want the Cron job to be executed Underneath that, you can set, using the drop-downs, at which time you want the Cron Job to run Then, in the field next to "Command", you enter your "/home/(AccountName)/public_html/CronScript.php" (without the quotations, and preceded by "php -q", again without the quotations. The whole thing would then look like "php -q /home/(AccountName)/public_html/CronScript.php", and the you click "Add new Cron Job". Then, below, your Cron Job should appear with all the chosen parameters. It would be a good thing to select the option to be notified via e-mail when your Cron Job runs, you will then also be notified in case your Cron Job causes errors, which is helpful too. You select that option just by entering the email address you want to receive the notifications in in the field above where you enter the settings for your Cron Job. Give it a try, and if you get errors, just report back so you can receive further help if needed. Good luck. Hope that helps.

Well, novic_1223, I must admit I was a bit weary at first, since I had (and often still have) my reservations against programs like those (I am not going to name any names of similar ones for that reason). The reason why I was always careful with programs like driver updaters and registry cleaners and the likes (especially the ones that were rammed down your throat in unwanted emails) were: Many of them were full of advertising As a result of the above, there was a big chance they contained spyware Quite often they kept nagging you to install toolbars and other add-ons What they failed to mention was that, after scanning, you had to buy the program if you wanted a full service from it The last one was a tough one: In case of a driver update program, you would do a scan, and when the scan finished you would be told something like "3 drivers are out of date, 2 drivers are not working properly, 4 driver files are of the wrong type", or something similar, and then: "You can update 1 of the drivers, if you want to do a complete update, buy our program". The same with registry cleaners, you would be told there were 1235 errors in your registry, and when you clicked "Clean now", you would be told that only the first 50 faults could be corrected, if you wanted to clean up your registry up completely, you had to buy their program. To my (very pleasant) surprise, this was not the case with this program. When I started it, it did a scan, and then gave me a list of drivers that needed updating, and I managed to updated every single one of them. Furthermore, a thorough hardware check shows me there are no faults, incompatibilities, install errors or whatever anywhere. So, I would say, thank you for the tip, and if people ever ask me for a program like this I will definitely recommend it.