Have you tried the put-a-cane-flat-on-the-floor-and-sweep method of searching for things? I'm not sure it'd be much help behind a desk where there would be lots of cables, but if the object is large enough to not just go under it (so no coins or cornflakes), it can be more efficient than just searching the old-fashioned way. This was introduced ot me in the context of things rolling away unpredictably, but in my experience, just about everything I drop goes tumbling in unpredictable ways, whether it'd role or not.

Hi Zakc93.
You don't like the taste of coffee? I don't think I've ever heard that before lol! If you don't like the taste, you can put in a whole lot of creme and sugar to get rid of the taste. That will definitely keep you awake if the coffee is strong enough.

Glad to hear people have been finding lost things, that is always good.
@Zac93, I actually drink coffee for it's taste as much as the caffeinn, though I will say it's remarkable how many people make coffee wrongly. There is a protein on coffee beans that denatures at 98 degreees c. this means if you make coffee with boiling water, or indeed heat up the beans in another way like grinding them with a super fast electric coffee grinder which creates friction, or indeed pumping too much steam from them, you end up with coffee that is far more bitter than it should be. Also bare in mind I drink my coffee pure black, no sugar, no milk, maybe a dash of rum or a good wisky on the side if I'm feeling self indulgent .

@Shotgun manamon is good, but tough, also the online trading is a bit annoying and I do find the grinding a wee bit of a drag. Still I do plan to get back to the game this week and see how my manamon are doing.

I've not read any J A Jance myself, I t@Guitarman hink his stuff tends to be a bit thriller.
My Iron council review is now up over on fantasybookreview.co.uk, and having finished the very disturbing short stories by angela Carter I'm now reading A sudden wild magic by dianna wynne jones, the first one of her books aimed at adults I've ever read, albeit I've enjoyed her kids and ya stuff even as an adult and ironically about the only I'm noticing in her writing for an adult audience is that as well as the amusing characters, lots of magic, running between worlds and social comedy there is also a little bit of rumpy pumpy, albeit fairly sly and amusing and not overly explicit rumpy pumpy at that .

As for me, things have been crazy, hence the absence.

First London and music school was fun if rather hechtic, mostly due to a moderately disasterous journey back involving a very nice taxi driver who dropped us at the wrong station, meaning we needed to phone the right station and get collected .
On the plus side the music school was fun and we're both reminded just how much we enjoy performing, a shame we can't do more of it really.

I then spent a few days at my parents before getting back up here to my flat in the north of England today.
The reason I've been absent from the site is a little involved.

So I currently have a windows 10 desktop and my old xp laptop. Yes, I need to get a windows 10 laptop, but I'd prefer to do that when I'm completely secure, have got a working email program, have learned to make nvda portable profiles etc.
So I decided just for these few days to use my xp laptop, after all I can still run vipmud to play muds on it, get emails and use the forum right? wrong!

Everytime I try to access the forum I get a cloudflare cash of the page instead of the actual page, either that or a bad gate way error.

So, obviously I need that windows 10 laptop a wee bit sooner than planned.
Fortunately my kind parents tell me they have had the nice local computer shop install windows 10 on a spare laptop thus saving me the price of a new one.

Kind and money saving and a good idea, ---- in theory at least other than two miner issues.
First, said spare laptop was actually the one I had to abandon in 2011 due to the laptop's headphone socket going completely, but of course my parents, being my parents never throw anything away.
While it apparently has really good specs in terms of hd speed and hardware generally, the headphone socket is still unfortunately busticus maximus!

Second miner problem. I downlo0ad the Nvda installer and put it on a memory stick, try to get narrator runningin order to access said stick, I hit windows u and guess what happens? A big fat nothing!

So I'm stuck with an xp laptop that cannot access the forum, and an x xp now windows 10 laptop that cannot use headphones or apparently narrator.

It is this point that I threw up my hands at the hole mess and have simply resolved to buy a new, ---- or at least good quality reconditioned, windows 10 machine from said nice local computer firm (I might even ask them nicely to install nvda on it first).

So shenanigans ahoy! However now I am definitely back.

@Philthanks for the advice on narrator.
As regards usb headsets though, I wouldn't consider that for a laptop since firstly the thing only has three usb ports and I tend to use them for external drives, memory sticks etc, and secondly the sound I've heard on usb headsets hasn't been half as good as I'd get with a set of half decent earphones, this is one reason I'm hesitating over getting the IPhone 7 since it seems extremely stupid to me to have an IPhone without a headphone socket.

It's windows key and enter.
I realize my mistake now, I was confusing windows key u which brings up the accessibility settings dialogue, and windows key enter, which just starts narrator speaking.

Btw, amusing fact, ctrl enter is actually the quick shortcut on this board for hitting submit after writing a post, so I have had to go back and edit this after trying .