If you're into using Veroboard or stripboard you may have come across the legacy 1990's program that helped you design circuit layouts - Stripboard Magic by Ambyr. Many people have struggled but it's not as hard as you may think to install it in Windows 7+ as I describe in my Hobby Electronics section here.
Stripboard Magic, veroboard This welcome new and long-overdue service from BT promises to intercept calls from known junk callers and divert them to a junk voicemail box instead. In theory you need never be bothered by nuisance calls again, or at least the mass-produced junk phone calls that bother us all too frequently. Read more about BT's new Call Protect service in my article.
BT Call Protect ;)
Phony speeding ticket sent by email [it's safe to click to see]The latest scam doing the rounds is the phony speeding ticket. Several of these have arrived by email claiming to come from Greater Manchester Police (GMP). They are entirely bogus and if it wasn’t for the fact that they are perpetrated by thieving scumbags, one could almost admire their ingenuity.
DO NOT CLICK the button labelled ‘Examine Fixed Speed Camera Evidence’ as it clicks through to a hijacked website hosting a malicious script. That is how PCs get infected with viruses, ransomware, keyloggers and similar malware.
Just to be clear, the domain names used as the sender / evidence URL are spoofed, so don't blame them for the scam.
Watch out for these arriving in your Inbox and be sure to spread the word!
phony speeding ticket scam If you have elderly family or relatives who struggle to get in or out of a car, this 'Car Cane' may be just the answer. It’s a very strong handle that simply drops into the door latch mounted on the bodyshell to give some leverage, and it provides a very sturdy and reassuring extra grab handle that helps people to get a secure handhold. Read the full details in my article.
car cane, car handle mobility aid 
Panasonic SC-PM250EB [click to see]How hard can it be to buy a mini hi-fi? I was looking for a small Panasonic CD player with DAB radio, as the one that caught my eye had good reviews for sound quality, was very compact and easy to use and I’ve got on well with the Panasonic brand for forty years. Shopping around, the part numbers and spec. were all over the place. Here's some very handy info that will help ensure you get the right model. More details...
I have a Paper Mate Contour ballpoint pen that hails from the 1970s. The problem is that Paper Mate Powerpoint refills are no longer available. A quick search on Ebay unearthed a few old mouldy-looking ones mostly from the USA, selling for £30-£45 each! In this article I pinpoint an excellent UK supplier of pen refills that are compatible with the old Paper Mate Contour. They might need a trivial modification as I explain.
;)
UKPC phishing scam email [click to see]
This Email just arrived and is supposedly a parking violation ticket. How does UKPC know my Email address? Of course, they don't. It's quite well done apart from the very odd English, but I won't help the Eastern European spammers by telling them why their dialect is so strange to a native Englishman. The click-throughs seem to point to a Russian instance of mediagroupmoney.com. Of course, clicking through to any unknown website is potentially lethal as it could try to install ransomware or a nasty virus on your computer, so it should be deleted immediately. Nice try.
UKPC spam, fraudulent parking ticket Some recent news items highlighted the plight of innocent people who have nearly lost their homes or suffered severe financial problems when their credit history was damaged by old County Court Judgments (CCJs) that they knew nothing about - parking ticket penalty notices that are sent to very old addresses, for example. I'll explain a few options to help prevent this and check up on your credit file for free, to ensure you're CCJ-free.
If you have a PURE Internet radio such as the beloved Evoke Flow then you maybe enjoyed the 'Sounds' service which streamed soothing soundtracks over wi-fi to your radio receiver. I particularly enjoyed the metal windchimes (played as background on the patio for summer parties), but most of all I enjoyed the babbling brooks, rainfall or running stream sounds which often helped me to get off to sleep at night. PURE Sounds has been an essential and well-used feature - so imagine my surprise to find that I could suddenly no longer use them - it turns out that PURE has silenced them for ever!
PURE Evoke, PURE Sounds
Updated on Sunday, August 28, 2016 at 12:40PM by
Alan W
Since 1995 my Demon Internet e-mail address has been deeply embedded in everything I’ve ever done for hobby/ amateur electronics and EPE Magazine. I coined the ‘epemag’ moniker when signing for a so-called Tenner-a-month dial-up account in an era when 14.4k modems reigned supreme, and alan@epemag.demon.co.uk was born. Vodafone (Demon's owners) is ditching supposedly 'free' email services, so my new address will be alan@epemag.net
