Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

The Doctor Who Christmas Special is only 2 days away. The Christmas countdown calendar is running out of features. If you are all excited by this there is some bad news , some good news, and some more bad news and some more good news.

The bad news is The Next Doctor will only be televised in England, the Good news is that the BBC usually puts up the video at the Doctor who web site to watch, the other bad news is that video is only viewable if your PC is in the UK. The good news is you can always use a proxy server.

A proxy server is basically a computer that stands between a machine and where it is going, for example if you are in a large business you likely have all your net traffic going through a proxy to try to block both virus and sites that your work doesn’t want you go to.

In this case you want to use one of the free proxy sites out there to find a server in the UK. When you set proxy values basically your machine will go out to the computer in question, and that computer will make the request. The BBC then see it as a UK machine and you can watch it.

There are several companies that offer proxy use to shield your IP from the net, that way the fact that you are surfing from your machine is hidden from the world. That is the advantage of an anonymous proxy server. The disadvantage is that speed will of course be decreased as every request has to pass through a particular machine at an unknown location. The pay sites will be faster than the free ones.

Just remember the machine you are passing through will now have a record of where you are going, so think and act accordingly.

A quick how to on how to setup a proxy in IE Connection tab under Lan Settings is here. You can set it in Firefox under Tools, Options, advanced, settings. The placing of the values are basically the same, but details are here.

If you want a quick preview of it now well your wish is my command, at least in this case;

And don’t forget to send the charity a fiver.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that for some of the calendar things also need the proxy server to play.

Update #2 My review of the Next Doctor is here.