It's been a good 'geek' week

This week has been good, technologically speaking.

Firstly, I managed to crush a Facebook API error, which had been plaguing Firefox. I say 'crush' because it had been annoying me like one of those persistent little flies, which buzzes past your ear and you constantly have to brush away. Or click on with your mouse.

'Your Facebook status will not be updated' was the error in all and any open Firefox window. EVERY...FIVE...MINUTES.

This had been going on for some time and I had had trouble isolating the issue. Firefox's Error Console told me it was a Facebook error (*sigh*), error 450, which further research told me was an API issue - so I knew it had to be an add-on I was running which updates my Facebook status (natch!).

I eventually tracked it down to 'Fire Status', an Firefox add-on that allows you to send status updates to Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook. It's now disabled for Facebook and the problem has gone.

Secondly, with the help of a fellow geek, I have managed to download and install a nice little application on my trusty old Nokia 6600, which allows me to record conversations and meetings, thus avoiding the expense of a new phone or a dedicated gadget.

It's actually quite exciting to be able to do this and effectively upgrade an old phone. It's no about saving money...no, really, it's about getting to grips with technology.

In fact, in the face of ever-increasingly powerful and functional phones like the Nokia N96, the Blackberry or something called the iPhone, which you may have heard of, I am more determined than ever to get the most out of what is essentially a 'smartphone', albeit quite a simple one.

It has 3G, Bluetooth, a (crappy) camera and (crappy) video, but I have installed a browser, Opera Mini (much more user-friendly and functional than the default offering), Gmail mobile client for email and Gizmo, allowing me to chat to MSN contacts. I am hoping to add MP3 player and video capture, too, by way applications developed for the the Symbian OS.

Lastly, from the 'it's really quite obvious' department, I solved another longstanding issue, namely that of my laptop overheating and a CPU constantly running at 100%.

The simple answer is to clean any fluff out of the heatsink*, which might be blocking the fan... :$

The lack of space in a laptop means that everything is scaled down in terms of size and power (they have to run less powerful CPUs due to the fact the fans and heatsinks are smaller) and the components are more susceptible to wear and tear and have less tolerance than their desktop counterparts.

In my case, air supplied by the fan, which should have been passing through the heatsink, was blocked by dust and fluff. In turn, the heatsink would not have dissipated as much heat as should have done, leading to the processor running at too high a temperature.

Since I cleaned it, the CPU seems happier, my Skype calls are not interrupted every time I open a webpage and I am getting some respectable frame-rates in WoW, to the point where it's no longer jittery moving around Shattrath or Stormwind. Nice.

*so called, because it 'sinks' all the 'heat' into your leg, scalding it in the process.