When I’m typing, occasionally my cursor will skip to a different line of text.  So I’m happily writing away, only to realise that half of my paragraph has been added to my signature line or to the paragraph above. It happens a couple of times a day, and is the result of a sensitive touch pad on my laptop, which my sausage fingers seem to keep brushing while I type.

I’ve been unable to disable this, and most of the tech support or forum content on the web direct you to the mythical touchpad tab on the mouse properties settings in control panel. Other advice given is to update the drivers (mine were shown as the latest drivers), to uninstall and re-install your touchpad driver, disable the touchpad in BIOS, or check that the Touchpad driver (Alps or Synaptics) is flagged ON (via Start > Run > msconfig).

The solution that worked for me, thanks to Joel Mansford was to install the Hewlett Packard touchpad driver, which gives you a full control panel for your touchpad – enabling you to customise settings, tailor tap sensitivity and most importantly disable your touchpad and stick when you have a mouse attached.

* loud sigh of relief *

Thanks to Simon for distracting me at work with this fantastic video from The Onion:

I actually have one of these at home, I bought it from a bloke on ebay…

We’re having an event at my brothers new Art and Framing gallery to launch it on Saturday 22nd November in Marple.

I’ll be there helping out, and we’ll have :

• face painting & balloons
• lots of original paintings
• hand made greetings cards by Jane Forster & Margaret Steeden
• 20% off everything in store & all framing orders on the day (Except on original art)
• a free prize draw for £100 to be spent in the Gallery (drawn at 4pm sharp)

The framing will be done at the Hazel Grove Lazy Daisies Gallery where my sister, Christy, who is a specialist in framing & computerised mount cutting, manages the workshop.

Christy entered 2 frames into The North West Fine Art Guild framing competition & her entries came first & third… Did I mention I was proud?!

Anyway, if you’re in the area, please pop by.

The new gallery is here:
Lazy Daisies III
38 Stockport Road, Marple, Stockport
SK6 6AB
0161 449 9229

Here’s the link to his instructions.

Who says ‘beauty’ and ‘geek’ can’t go hand in hand?

Heaven Spa (one of our clients at work) are launching a Beauty & the Geeks event for those interested in beauty and blogging. A number of the leading bloggers in the Greater Manchester area are expected to be there (boys and girls!) and the company is launching an exclusive mouse finger treatment at the event.

Hang on… mouse finger?

OK, it’s a bit of a gimmick, but what other signature geek treatment can you think of?

Apparently, this new treatment will massage your fingers and keep them feeling fresh all day every day.

I will of course be there, taking full advantage of this new mousey treatment. The event is on November the 26th and starts at 6.30pm. Drinks and food will be on offer, and it’s at Heaven Spa’s salon in Didsbury. There should be some interesting conversations with all those bloggers and beauty experts about.

You can click the event image to add it to your calendar.

(Image courtesy of Geek Pr0n)

My sister is a picture framer, and she entered a framing competition with the Fine Art Trade Guild at the end of April.

I’m so proud that she won First and Third place for the two projects she put forward in the North West category. She’s now in the national competition, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for her!

This is not my normal choice of topic, but I can crow-bar some technology related things in here though:

• For her first place entry, she scanned the image she was framing and printed an enlarged copy in muted shades. She dry mounted this image to mount card*, and used this for an outer mount.
• And for both projects, she used a computerised mount cutter that she programmed with the shapes and sizes of card she needed.

Here she is with her winning project… she’ll hate me for publishing this!!

*Just a quick translation – in the UK framers use “mount board”, this is known as “mat board” in the US.