An 1835 book inspired by Alexander Selkirk's life

Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) was born in Largo, Scotland. He became a seaman under Capt. William Dampier. In 1704 objecting to the condition of the ship he was on , Selkirk asked to be put ashore on Mas a Tierra, a tiny deserted island in the Pacific Ocean off of S. America.

He lived completely alone on this island for four years, and four months before being returned to England. A free-lance writer Daniel Dafoe read about him, and may have met him, and in 1719 published a book based on Selkirk entitled The Life And Strange Surprising Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner.

Around 2000 an expedition led by the Japanese Daisuke Takahashi, searching for Selkirk's camp on the island, found an early 18th (or late 17th) century nautical instrument that almost certainly belonged to Selkirk.

For further reading please see Alexander Selkirk wiki entry.

What is Exterminate It! ? That was the question I was asking myself earlier this past afternoon. Call me silly or use this statement to assist in determing my age, but whenever I hear the word exterminate..I think EX-TER-MIN-ATE, and thoughts of Daleks go swimming through my head.....

If you are not a fan of Doctor Who never mind, and just read on as this is not a Doctor Who post, it is a review of a website, which brings me back to the question what exactly is Exterminate It! ?

Exterminate It! is a spyware removal tool that works much like the Doctor's arch nemesis, and remove all that should not be on your computer from spyware, to malware, to viruses.

If you have ever had a mysterious slow down on your PC that turned out to be a computer virus than you will definitely see the value in this product. I have had a problem just this past year with a Trojan that got past my security settings, and it wreaked havoc on my system, which needed three full days worth of repair. Perhaps had I had Exterminate It! at that point in time I would have saved myself days worth of downtime, and much aggravation.

If this sounds like something that might interest you, you may have a look at the site I was checking out earlier by clicking on the link within this entry. The site is easy to use, and can give you a lot more info via their FAQ, and purchasing pages.

Thank you to the sponsor.

Spam is THIRTY YEARS OLD!!!

Hard to believe that Spam as we all know, and loathe today actually originated 30 years ago on May 2 1978, and was sent to 393 users of ARPANET by someone from computing pioneers DEC.

Reading the archived "first spam" message and it's responses is actually very interesting...

Read more:

Slashdot

New Scientist