As well all know – the egg came first; long before there was ever a bird that might even be considered an early ancestor of a chicken, things laid eggs.  The question of “Which came first, the Chicken or the Chicken Egg?” is more tricky – I’ll leave that one for the philosophers.

The question for me though, is which came first – the content or the readership?

Let’s face it – if I set up a site and advertise it, but there’s nothing there, people aren’t going to stay.  It’s one of the mysteries (to me, at least) of sites like FaceBook; how on earth did they get their first 1,000 users?  Obviously, there comes a point when a site has enough momentum to expand on its own, but those first few readers, visitors or members… how do you get them to sign up?

So clearly, content must come first.  Somehow, I’ve got to put together enough Angry Rants, General Musings and useful technical information that someone visiting this site will feel that their time has been well spent – and not only will they come back and check for more content, but they’ll tell their friends to do the same…

On the other hand… Right now, I have a grand total of 2 readers – and one of them is me.  When writing for such a limited audience, it is tricky to get motivated – and even when I am motivated, it feels like the worst kind of shameless egotism.

Maybe – just maybe – a Blog is the wrong way to start a site… or is that heresy against the principals of Web 2.0?

Last November, my cheapo USB mouse I use to replace the stupid nubbin on my work laptop started playing up. For some reason, it would stop registering normal mouse clicks every now and then. Fortunately, this could usually be resolved by good old percussive maintenance (i.e. smack it against the desk a few times) – but around December I realised that my mouse clicking finger was beginning to feel the (repetitive) strain, and it was time to buy a new mouse.

The trouble is, I wanted the new mouse fairly soon – while I had indeed gone  for two months without replacing it, once I’d made up my mind to buy the thing, I didn’t want to wait 3 days for the delivery service.  So, I decided to brave the PC World sale.  PC World – at least, around here – is an odd beast.  They can’t seem to decide if they’re going to sell computers or “Home Entertainment”, so we end up with a poor selection of TVs, computers and peripherals – but no real depth in any department.

Nowhere in the store is this more apparent than in the input accessories area.  The shelves are all nicely marked up – Laptop Mice, Wireless Mice, Wired Mice – but instead, all we have is half a dozen Microsoft models, a few Logitech ones and a generic wired optical.  Sadly, it seems that the main target is laptop users, so the spit is about 50/50 between tiny little laptop mice, and “cutting edge” (i.e. really expensive) desktop ones.  I don’t want to spend a huge amount of money – after all, it’s going to get battered enough in my laptop bag – but I can’t get on with “mini” laptop mice; my hands aren’t huge, but I’ve got so use to the massive Logitech MX Revolution that even a normal mouse feels puny in my hands.

In the end, I settle on a fairly cheap Logitech with a laser diode.  Unfortunately, it’s wireless – but it promises 6 months battery life on standard AAs.  I’d rather have a wire – simply because then I can’t lose the dongle in my laptop bag – but the only options available were either a cheap and nasty un-branded one (which, from experience, won’t track well on my office desk), or a garish “Gamers” mouse that would just look plain ridiculous.

Having shelled out £40 to replace my mouse at work… the one at home starts going crazy!  Instead of tracking smoothly across the screen, it’s bouncing in fits and starts.

There’s three possible causes for this one – I’ve seen it before:

1. The battery on the wireless mouse is going flat
2. The surface it’s on is too shiny to track well
3. Some conflict between the USB device and a busy hard-drive
4. Some other device on the same wireless frequency is interfering with my mouse

Option one is quickly discounted – the “charge” indicator shows 3 of 4 bars, which is normally fine.  Trying different surfaces eliminates option 2, so we’re looking at either a hardware conflict (or just a performance problem on my PC).  Normally, I’d just plug in a spare mouse to eliminate the performance – if the spare mouse works, it’s clearly a problem with just the wireless one – but now, I suddenly discover that I don’t have any normal, wired mice!

In the end, the only option was to test using my other wireless – which worked fine.  The problem? A cat hair on the optical lens!