Ask Jim From IT

Right, pictures it is. I'll give you my entire screen so they're all uniform size, even though the quality is terrible. Not really sure how to fix that.

When you copy the code, it should look like THIS in Notepad. 

When you save it (Save As, please...) do this.

When you look for the file, it should look like this. Double click on it.

It should work now.

Ooooh, goody, pranking fun and something to keep me busy for a minute! I know the perfect script. Copypasta the following non-italicised writing into Notepad.

Dim result

Do

Do Until result=vbYes

result=MsgBox("Are you stupid?",4,"Computer")

Loop

WScript.Sleep 10000

Loop 

Make sure there are no double line breaks in the file and no spare lines at the beginning or end of the script - it should just be a few lines without gaps between them. Save it somewhere on your hard-drive as something.vbs (when you save it select "all files" instead of "text files" using the dropdown box). Then go and look for the file and double click on it - it should give you a harmless pop-up. I won't spoil the surprise.

To turn this into a prank, you need to hide the file on your brother's desktop disguised as something else - rename it to a programme he uses a lot (try his browser) and change the icon. When he tries to browse the internet... pop-up! And then he admits to being stupid.

If you'd prefer something a bit more more evil along the lines of "turn off his computer when he's trying to work", let me know.

-Jim

Easy. Go to Start\Accessories\Ease of Access\Windows Speech Recognition and then follow all the prompts. I assume you ARE using Windows - I haven't the foggiest about Macs (or even whether they offer voice control) and with Linux it would depend on whether it was supported by your distribution or not.

Kittens, Molly convinced me that I am a cat person. I particularly love Siamese ones, there's just something so regal, arrogant, extraordinarily intelligent and cunning about them that particularly appeals to me. Their eyes also have a particularly beautiful colour. In fact, I'm somewhat obsessed with the careless elegance and imperiousness of the Siamese breed, it's eerily familiar...

Oh, that's Lowri, the girl I roped into doing all my typing for me. She's not particularly interesting but she is occasionally useful and she knows enough about computers to understand what I dictate to her and enough about Irish to be able to spell "leathceann". She also lives near enough to London to generally assist me when I'm low on resources. She normally keeps her ideas to herself on my blog but on rare occasions becomes outspoken and will add to what I have to say, in which case she'll receive some sort of a minor threat.

You know, if any of you have a problem with me just tell me, if I know what the problem is I can get it fixed...

In other news, tomorrow evening (Tuesday) I shall be departing for Cardiff for a few days on business (really, Jim, I didn't know your grandmother was only "business." - LG) and won't have access to the internet (apparently grandma is immune from my persuasive skills as she hasn't installed broadband yet) for a while. Therefore, if you have any IT questions or just general questions, including advice, personal questions (so long as you're absolutely sure you want an answer), book recommendations, recipes, requests for photographs of LG with a llama (don't you dare, Jim... -LG) et cetera, either visit my inbox before tomorrow evening or be prepared to wait for a few days. In fact, you can put anything you like in my ask box, if it's stupid I can always ignore it. Or have you killed. I might even give you a choice in the method, if I'm feeling particularly lenient.

-Jim

Kuzco. He's fabulous.

In all seriousness, though,

I like this question. A lot. People with evil streaks are so much more interesting than everybody else.

I have several ideas. You could flip his screen upside-down using control+alt+down arrow key (easily righted with control+alt+up) or flip it sideways using the left or right arrow keys instead of down, get one of THESE which will make random mouse movements and randomly type rubbish AND turn caps lock on and off at random, write a VBScript designed to shut the computer down and hide the file on the desktop disguised as their default browser, et cetera.

Alternatively, you could do something like write a keylogging programme to tell you every key he presses and use the information to empty his bank account, or take his computer apart, burn the motherboard out of it and look surprised when it won't boot up.

I hope this helped, and DO have fun.

Doesn't this mean I'm not supposed to shoot? Oh, all right then, I'll let you off wasting my time this once.

I'm his biggest fan. You have no idea how... happy... I was when I discovered how close (if you can say that) he and Molly are. She told me a lot about him (if we hadn't been going out I'd have suspected she was in love with him, the amount she talked about dear Sherlock), he sounded like an absolutely fascinating person and I knew that I had to meet him.

Of course, one day I did and I realised immediately that Molly had been correct, this man was intriguing - obviously brilliant (peering down a microscope, no less), a strikingly bizarre but at the same time oddly compelling appearance, the rather aloof demeanour of any good scientist that just makes you want to know more about a person, and of course he saw through me in a second.

It has to be said, though, I was somewhat disappointed that he didn't call. Oh well, c'est la vie. C'est la guerre.

With keyboards it's really a question of how much you want to pay - in general, the more you pay for a keyboard, the better it is. Personally, I like THIS one, but unless your father's in the House of Lords or you want to work for me in a temporary capacity you're not going to be able to afford it. 

Oh, you're very welcome, love, I'm here to help. Fixing things is my job. :)

Oh, he is. Straight-edge and sharp-edge. I'm glad we understand each other, darling. :)

I've three ideas for your problem.

1. Overheating, like you said. If this is the case you'll almost certainly get the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death. If you DO get BSoD, make sure the cooling system isn't blocked - there will be some holes somewhere on your computer that blow hot air out of them. Make sure they're not blocked or all that hot air can't escape and it'll be stuck conducting out instead of convecting which just isn't good enough - the second law of thermodynamics is bloody good, honey, but it doesn't work THAT well with such a comparatively small thermal gradient.

2. Windows 7 and Vista often take it upon themselves to decide when the best time to do automatic updates is and can cause a lot of grief with that. If anything to do with Windows Update rings any bells you might like to play around in your preferences on that - If you're really lucky you might be able to persuade it to update at more convenient times so you can at least be prepared.

3. Your computer is part of an illegal botnet. Surrender it to the police. (Or to me, Moriarnet could always be bigger and if there's a way in there's usually a way back...)

I think one of the first two is the most likely, though, darling. I hope this has helped! xx

Dim your screen, turn your speakers off and disable wireless connectivity if you're not using it. There's probably an option to use "power-saver" mode if you click on the battery icon in the taskbar which will reduce the quality of everything slightly which will use less power. Even so, you won't get more than about 4-6 hours, depending on your computer in question.

Oh, honey, this isn't really my area but I think I have one solution. How do you feel about the idea of a semtex vest? It would solve all of your problems. ;)

I'm flattered, darling. However, I must inform you that I am unavailable. Please desist, I don't want to have to send Sebastian around. Mind you, I can't predict what he might do of his own accord, he gets very... protective of me, especially after that incident in the pub around the corner with the herpetologist and the auditor.

That sounds like the start of a bad joke: I can assure you it's not. Not one of the involved parties was amused and Seb was even less amused when he found out.

tl;dr - back off, dear.