02. 05
Well,I had no internet for 5 days this last couple of weeks, thanks to a huge screwup on BT's part. My ISP is taking part in the new BT 21CN network trial, and my exchange was upgraded last week. Unfortunately for me, BT screwed it up royally and left me with a nonsense IP address for 4 days.
Thankfully everyone at my ISP was helpful and friendly and I have no complaints about them, they kept me informed of progress, and now I'm connected at approx 3mb faster than before, so nothing ot moan about there. I'll get the option to upgrade to 24mb soon, so I wonder what sort of speed I'll be getting then.
So, inpreparation for that, I got myself a new router. I've been looking for an ADSL modem/router with Gigabit LAN ports for a while, as I have bene using a Netgear DG834G and a Netgear Gigabit switch, but I wanted to replace them with one box. Unfortunately, the only gigabit routers around upto now havent had an integrated modem, so I would still be in the same situation with 2 boxes on my desk.
Step forward, Belkin...
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=450535
Bought it from work the other day, and actually even though it's a Belkin product I've been very impressed. WiFi speeds are excellent, and I'm getting faster transfer speeds across my network than I was with the Netgear switch!
Right, gotta go, have more downloading to do
q
My mood:
thirsty
07. 04
Ok, I'm gonna make an "about me" page on the site, and fill it with userbars.
My mood:
geeky
13. 03
Heylo,PC Upgrade is done!
I had a couple of problems initially with the screen going blank whist trying to install Vista, but an upgrade to the latest BIOS fixed that. So here's my new forum sig with my new spec.
All I need now is a newer gfx card, but I'll wait a few months for that. The X1950 is good enough for now.
I spent most of today putting it together and reinstalling all my apps and games. Have got most of it setup back to as it was now (along with the remote desktop multiple sessions hack), but had to stop because I'd arranged to do something in WoW.
Oh yes, we killed Doom Lord Kazzak.
My mood:
thirsty
07. 03
Time for my next project!I'm thinking about building my own NAS box using FreeNAS, or maybe Windows Home Server. My HP MediaVault currently has ~1.25TB of storage space which is starting to fill up rapidly with my TV shows, Music and HD Movies collection, and rather than buy another ready made NAS system I'm going the DIY route.
Case: Chenbro ES34069. Mini-ITX, 4 removable HDD bays.
Mobo: EPIA SN10000EG - 1GHz fanless CPU, 4x SATA ports, gigabit ethernet, CF Slot for installing FreeNAS onto a CF card.
The only issue I've seen so far is from browsing on the FreeNAS forums, the gigabit ethernet might not work at full speed until they release a new version based on FreeBSD 7.0 (current releases are based on 6.2). But there's always some other alternative NAS operating systems I can try out if I have any problems.
Only thing stopping me doing this right now is the cost, but if I wait a little while they should start to drop. Hopefully!
q
My mood:
geeky
02. 03
So I've been playing about with the Vista media centre downstairs for a while, trying to improve my dad's TV and Movie viewing experience. I found a couple of neat addons that I've started using, to help him look through the video collection.First is Sam's Video Browser, a neat plugin that allows you to view your videos and show cover/poster art, and metadata. To get the metadata for TV shows he has a nice little ruby scraper which scans for tv show descriptions and screen captures from thetvdb.com (a great site which I've started to contribute to a little!).
So, that let's you deal with TV shows, but for movies, the other app I found is Salami's movie organiser, which allows you to download the film posters from impawards.com, and actor/summary/genre information from IMDB.
My dad is really loving it, and I must say it does look pretty nice, and is much faster over the network than using Vista's default grid view for videos.
All we need now is a new TV for it and we'll be sorted
My mood:
thirsty
05. 02
So, since I got my iPod Touch and iPhone I've been using Videora to convert some of my videos into MP4 format so I can watch them at work. Works ok, but the interface is terrible and I'd like to be able to just drag n drop files into it for quick converting. I was looking for an alternative and I found this..iPodME
Quick, simple, .net 2.0 app. Superb, just what I wanted.
Thumbs up
q
My mood:
cheerful
15. 01
Well, I finally got around to upgrading my Mitac laptop to Leopard, and I must say it's running extremely well so far, a little faster than Tiger I think.I used the iATKOS 10.5.1 DVD. All my hardware was detected and worked correctly except for my Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card. Using the information in this thread on insanelymac I managed to get everything working and at the native res of my TFT (1440x900).
Sound, WiFi, CPU Speed Throttling are all working great, and I've had a quick play with WoW and I've not noticed any issues.
Just as a place to put this in case I ever lose it, here's the EDID of my monitor. (This will be pretty pointless to anyone except me!)
00FF FFFF FFFF FF00 06AF 8734 0000 0000 010F 0103 8025 1778 0A6D F29C 594C 8F23 2352 5400 0000 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 9E25 A040 5184 0C30 4020 3300 6FE6 1000 0018 0000 000F 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0020 0000 00FE 0041 554F 0A20 2020 2020 2020 2020 0000 00FE 0042 3137 3050 5730 3320 5634 200A 0063
My mood:
tired
excited
13. 09
Ah, it seems Apple have put the new PC World Apple Shops on their site.http://www.apple.com/uk/buy/shop/
"Visit an Apple shop at a PC World near you and discover why your next computer should be a Mac."
Also found a press release on the DSGi website about it, but there's not much mention of Apple in there.
So far only 6 stores (Out of over 150) have it. More to follow?
q
My mood:
okay
12. 09
Well, there's no mention of it on the Apple UK retail site, but certain PC World stores throughout the UK (Including the one I work at) now have a special little section right in the middle, dedicated to Apple.This section of the store is run by an Apple employee which will work in the store full time, and he will be giving in-store demonstrations on iLife and iWork.
It seems strange to me that Apple would go this route, especially as there is an Apple store in Birmingham about 15 minutes away. I thought Apple were trying to rely less on retail partners and trying to sell more through their own stores, that's certainly been the situation with us in the past, normally it takes us a few weeks for us to get the new range in, so maybe this will now change? I guess they want to try to increase their market penetration, and as we are the biggest PC retailer in the country it makes sense for them to go with us.
Hope that means we get the new iPod touch sooner than expected
Here's some pics. Sorry about the quality, my camera phone isn't the best. Will try to get some better ones later.
Edit: Mo took some pics. Here they are.
Edit 2: Ok, they're "Apple Shops" not stores!
My mood:
lazy
08. 09
So,I've been using iTunes to manage my music on my Vista PC, mainly because I have an iPod. Recently I've moved all my music onto my HP Mediavault server, but whenever I add/remove/move albums it's a pain to get iTunes to realise things have changed. I found a little app which will scan your iTunes library, and any folders you choose, to make sure it's all up to date.
iTunes Library Updater.
Should sort me out for my iPod Touch when I get it
My mood:
indescribable
15. 08
Right so,I have OSX running on my Mitac laptop. And I have to say it's brilliant. Beats Vista hands down. I've been messing with with iLife and iWork apps and am seriously impressed. I feel I can do much much more with them on this machine than I could with my old iBook (G4, no DVD burner etc..).
So, here's a few links to some useful apps I've been using on my "Hackintosh"
Filezilla - FTP client, Version 3 Beta works on OSX
Adium - Multi protocol chat client
Uno - Unifies the look and feel of the OS
Marco Polo - context based location manager (great for laptops on the move!)
Tinkertool - Tinker with some hidden OSX settings
MainMenu - Easy access to system maintenance tasks.
All I need now is an app to change the keyboard layout...
q
My mood:
geeky
10. 07
Hey hey.British Grand Prix pictures are online now.
http://gallery.qbie.com/v/F1/British+Grand+Prix+2007/
Enjoy
q
My mood:
chipper