Not sure where all the time has gone to lately... I have been a little busy, training course in Maidenhead (Microsoft LCS linked to Nortels CS1K phonesystem) which was interesting... I really don't know how the heck you are supposed to debug it if/when i fails, Domain accounts, Customer maintained servers, and switch config!!
On returning from that event, I then covered a 12 hour night shift - I was then totally jet-lagged for a couple of days afterwards!
Then on Tuesday this week, I left work at 17:00 and headed off to Birmingham airport, and was on a customer site in Dublin till 01:30 Wednesday AM, didn't get home from Dublin till 23:00 on Thursday night... Again I am slightly knackered.
Finally managed to get to the Gym again yesterday - I have topped 13st again and *really* need to startgetting some regular exersize again soon.
PC is running rather nicely, just a couple of issues:
It keeps forgetting the time/date
Dreamweaver is not totally Vista compatible, and keeps reporting "Out of Memory" errors, but a new version is due soon.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Friday, March 02, 2007
Vista - "Up and Running" on new PC
OK, so the OS is loaded, along with most of the basic apps that I can't live without. A 'Full Drive' backup has been taken, and e-mail, iTunes, Dreamweaver etc are all configured to work with the 2nd SATA drive (Moved over from the old PC).
The general feel of the machine is superb, in situations where my old PC would freeze for a second or two, or iTunes would stutter playback etc, it has just kept on ...
The 'Windows Experience Index' before and after is as follows
The RAM score is a little disapointing considering both machines have 2G, but the old one is 233 and the new one is 533..!
The general feel of the machine is superb, in situations where my old PC would freeze for a second or two, or iTunes would stutter playback etc, it has just kept on ...
The 'Windows Experience Index' before and after is as follows
| OLD | NEW | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 3.9 | 5.3 |
| RAM | 4.2 | 4.2 |
| 2D | 5.0 | 4.5 |
| 3D | 3.4 | 4.4 |
| HDD | 5.3 | 5.9 |
The RAM score is a little disapointing considering both machines have 2G, but the old one is 233 and the new one is 533..!
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
New Record
The months stats for www.rockbox-themes.org are now in, and show a grand total of 58,252 hits :-0
Wow! This is amazing, the average hits per day is now between 2000 and 2500, next month has more days so lets see if we can;t beat that figure again next month ;-)
Wow! This is amazing, the average hits per day is now between 2000 and 2500, next month has more days so lets see if we can;t beat that figure again next month ;-)
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
1st time this year
Early this morning (before the PC delivery) I actually took a couple of clubs and went to the Golf Range, and hit a bucket of balls.
As expected, I wasn't too great, but on the plus side - not much worse than the last time I went!! I am itching to get back on the Golf Course at Warley - as soon as the weather warms up just a little bit more, and dries out a bit.
As expected, I wasn't too great, but on the plus side - not much worse than the last time I went!! I am itching to get back on the Golf Course at Warley - as soon as the weather warms up just a little bit more, and dries out a bit.
It's Arrived
At approximately 10:45 this morning, the nice man from CityLink arrived with two boxes. By 11:55 I had the new PC booting into it's BIOS screen. I briefly installed XP onto it, just to be able to check that all the hardware was functioning (With Vista loaded, it may have been a driver incompatibility issue) - and everything seems to be fine.
I now need to lay my hands back on the Vista DVD, and find about 15 spare hours to install the new OS and all the required applications, move the 2nd HDD from the old PC to the new one, and finish tweaking it.
Once all that is done, I can get a new monitor and keyboard for Amy's use, and wipe/reload the old PC with a nice clean install of XP ready for her to take ownership. At that point, Alex has been promised use of the laptop when required.
I now need to lay my hands back on the Vista DVD, and find about 15 spare hours to install the new OS and all the required applications, move the 2nd HDD from the old PC to the new one, and finish tweaking it.
Once all that is done, I can get a new monitor and keyboard for Amy's use, and wipe/reload the old PC with a nice clean install of XP ready for her to take ownership. At that point, Alex has been promised use of the laptop when required.
Monday, February 26, 2007
On it's way...
Just had an e-mail from CCL. CityLink have my computer bits, and are due to be delivered tommorow :-)
It is actually delayed by a day, due to stock shortage on the CPU, but it seems that their delivery was earlier than expected, so WOOT! I have a day of again tommorow, so I may well be spending some of it building a new PC!!
It is actually delayed by a day, due to stock shortage on the CPU, but it seems that their delivery was earlier than expected, so WOOT! I have a day of again tommorow, so I may well be spending some of it building a new PC!!
Friday, February 23, 2007
PC Upgrade
I have just placed an order for a PC upgrade from CCL Computing. havn't gone too mad on the specs, but I will at least get back to an 'upgradable' platform. Sometime in the next month or two will be a decent Video Card, and later in the year maybe a faster CPU/RAM combo?
The drive is only 80GB - Seems like only yesterday that 80GB was HUGE, now it's an iPod!! - as it will only have the OS/Apps installed on it. I already have 250 GB 2nd drive with my data on it.
1 x Duke Case £27.79
1 x Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 £204.74
1 x Abit IP-95 Motherboard £38.02
2 x 1GB Corsair Value Select DDR2-533 £88.50
1 x 80GB Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD £29.02
1 x Samsung SH-S182D DVD Writer £17.99
1 x NEWlink PCI USB2.0 4-Port Card £5.58
1 x NEWLink USB2.0 Internal 12 in 1 Card Reader / Writer £8.40
TOTAL (inc VAT) : 428.03 inc VAT
The downside of this, I won't be going to 'Focus' at the NEC next week now, so no home studio gear for me :-(
Mind you, Amanda has offered to make that a birthday present ;-)
The drive is only 80GB - Seems like only yesterday that 80GB was HUGE, now it's an iPod!! - as it will only have the OS/Apps installed on it. I already have 250 GB 2nd drive with my data on it.
1 x Duke Case £27.79
1 x Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 £204.74
1 x Abit IP-95 Motherboard £38.02
2 x 1GB Corsair Value Select DDR2-533 £88.50
1 x 80GB Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD £29.02
1 x Samsung SH-S182D DVD Writer £17.99
1 x NEWlink PCI USB2.0 4-Port Card £5.58
1 x NEWLink USB2.0 Internal 12 in 1 Card Reader / Writer £8.40
TOTAL (inc VAT) : 428.03 inc VAT
The downside of this, I won't be going to 'Focus' at the NEC next week now, so no home studio gear for me :-(
Mind you, Amanda has offered to make that a birthday present ;-)
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Well Pleased
It's only just 1/2 way thro' the month, and the www.rockbox-themes.org site has already had over 28,000 site so far.
In fact it's almost up to the count for the whole of last year already! - OK, so the site was not published till about July, but even so :-)
In fact it's almost up to the count for the whole of last year already! - OK, so the site was not published till about July, but even so :-)
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Words & Music
Just returned from the cinema where I took Amanda to see the new Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore Rom-Com "Words & Music"... It's actually pretty good, HG is not quite so irritating as he normally is, and DB comes over a seriously cute, and very lovable.
oh, and it is very funny
oh, and it is very funny
Rebuilt PC
I now have a fully functional installation of Vista and associated apps. What's more the 'Desktop Sidebar' actually seems like a good idea now I have a wide screen monitor.
It was intended to be a dual boot with my existing XP installation, but an corrupt MBR/FAT put paid to that idea... ! The Ghost image I have of the XP install was of no use either, it seems to have the same incorrect FAT data... :-(
Ah well, at least installing everything wasn't too painful, and the separate data drive principle worked a treat.
One conclusion from the process, I do need to change my PC before too long... a 2.8GHz P4, with 2MB RAM is just a tad too sluggish - when compared to XP running on the same PC. Hmm, better start saving now.
It was intended to be a dual boot with my existing XP installation, but an corrupt MBR/FAT put paid to that idea... ! The Ghost image I have of the XP install was of no use either, it seems to have the same incorrect FAT data... :-(
Ah well, at least installing everything wasn't too painful, and the separate data drive principle worked a treat.
One conclusion from the process, I do need to change my PC before too long... a 2.8GHz P4, with 2MB RAM is just a tad too sluggish - when compared to XP running on the same PC. Hmm, better start saving now.
Schools Shakespeare
On Thursday evening, we had to travel (in spite of the snow) to a theatre in Bromsgrove to see Amy perform in her schools adaptation of 12th Night at the Schools Shakespeare festival.
The three performances were:
Macbeth - set in a Girls High school, performed by an all girl cast - very bizarre!!
The Merchant of Venice - played pretty straight, but the jewish accent for Shylock was a bit hard to understand - Very Good
Twelth Night - but a Car crash instead of a ship wreck, and set at Glasonbury! Most excellent, and very funny
The three performances were:
Macbeth - set in a Girls High school, performed by an all girl cast - very bizarre!!
The Merchant of Venice - played pretty straight, but the jewish accent for Shylock was a bit hard to understand - Very Good
Twelth Night - but a Car crash instead of a ship wreck, and set at Glasonbury! Most excellent, and very funny
Bad Weather
As you are probably aware, we have had two days of snow recently. As usual, a big fuss about (almost) nothing... Although I did leave the bike at home, but that was only because our estate is, usually, the last place in the entire midlands to get clear roads!
Anyway, the bus ride into work and back on Thursday was uneventful, and surprisingly swift! Due to all the schools being closed for the day, the traffic was very light, and the roads were nowhere near as bad as was expected.
Friday morning was a little slower, but friday night!! I left work at 17:00, and arrived home at 18:30, having walked the full 6 miles in the snow. In that time I passed 10 busses that I could have caught, saw three BMW's failing to get up (fairly gentle) hills - mainly due to the driver having too heavy a right foot, five abandoned cars and a two lane tailback that measured over 4 miles!!
This morning was warmer (2 degrees) and raining, which has cleared the estate completely. Unfortunately, we also had a power cut at 5:30 - 8:30 AM so it was a little chilly in the house - ah well.
Anyway, the bus ride into work and back on Thursday was uneventful, and surprisingly swift! Due to all the schools being closed for the day, the traffic was very light, and the roads were nowhere near as bad as was expected.
Friday morning was a little slower, but friday night!! I left work at 17:00, and arrived home at 18:30, having walked the full 6 miles in the snow. In that time I passed 10 busses that I could have caught, saw three BMW's failing to get up (fairly gentle) hills - mainly due to the driver having too heavy a right foot, five abandoned cars and a two lane tailback that measured over 4 miles!!
This morning was warmer (2 degrees) and raining, which has cleared the estate completely. Unfortunately, we also had a power cut at 5:30 - 8:30 AM so it was a little chilly in the house - ah well.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
First Steps...
Towards a new PC...
Later this year I intend to replace the faithfull PC under my desk, it's almost 4 years old now (OK, so it's had a memory upgrade [512MB -> 2GB], Graphics card upgrade [Radeon 9600 - £100 4 years ago!], Second HDD fitted, and both DVD ROM and CD Burner replaced), but at it's heart it is still a 2.8 Ghz P4, and as such it's starting to show it's age when running things like Flight Sim X, Photoshop CS2, etc.
One potential problem in moving to a new machine has now been eliminated... I have replace the original 120 GB ATA drive with a 250GB SATA unit (£71 from PCWorld + £20 for a SATA PCI card), and moved all *my* data to that drive.. I have a 100GB Data drive [D:], a 100 GB Music drive [M:] and a 32GB Pictures drive [P:] - Good drive naming or what! The Windows XP OS is now alone on the ATA drive in a 40 GB patrition, and that leaves me plenty of room to install Vista in a second partition on the same drive.
Any new PC, will be fitted with SATA as standard, so this drive can simply be moved to the new machine...
[EDIT:] It's amazing how much quieter the new drive is!! I can hardly tell if the PC is actually switched on any more, and it does seem to be quite a bit 'snappier' when loading data. Not sure if it's the drive itself, or if just transferring the data across has made a better job of defrag'ing than Diskeeper
Later this year I intend to replace the faithfull PC under my desk, it's almost 4 years old now (OK, so it's had a memory upgrade [512MB -> 2GB], Graphics card upgrade [Radeon 9600 - £100 4 years ago!], Second HDD fitted, and both DVD ROM and CD Burner replaced), but at it's heart it is still a 2.8 Ghz P4, and as such it's starting to show it's age when running things like Flight Sim X, Photoshop CS2, etc.
One potential problem in moving to a new machine has now been eliminated... I have replace the original 120 GB ATA drive with a 250GB SATA unit (£71 from PCWorld + £20 for a SATA PCI card), and moved all *my* data to that drive.. I have a 100GB Data drive [D:], a 100 GB Music drive [M:] and a 32GB Pictures drive [P:] - Good drive naming or what! The Windows XP OS is now alone on the ATA drive in a 40 GB patrition, and that leaves me plenty of room to install Vista in a second partition on the same drive.
Any new PC, will be fitted with SATA as standard, so this drive can simply be moved to the new machine...
[EDIT:] It's amazing how much quieter the new drive is!! I can hardly tell if the PC is actually switched on any more, and it does seem to be quite a bit 'snappier' when loading data. Not sure if it's the drive itself, or if just transferring the data across has made a better job of defrag'ing than Diskeeper
Thursday, February 01, 2007
New Music
OK, not exactly 'new' as her back catalogue goes back at least 12 years, but I have never heard Jewel before...
When she appeared as a guest judge on American Idol recently, I was quite impressed with the short clip of her that was used as an introduction. I downloaded a copy of her latest album "Goodbye, Alice in Wonderland" and it's really good! I have since acquired several other of her albums, and have yet to find any truly bad tracks.
A slight country feel, but very listenable to... Recommended for all of you who like solo female artists ;-)
When she appeared as a guest judge on American Idol recently, I was quite impressed with the short clip of her that was used as an introduction. I downloaded a copy of her latest album "Goodbye, Alice in Wonderland" and it's really good! I have since acquired several other of her albums, and have yet to find any truly bad tracks.
A slight country feel, but very listenable to... Recommended for all of you who like solo female artists ;-)
Rowling unveils last Potter date
From BBC News
The last installment of the Harry Potter saga will be published on 21 July 2007, author JK Rowling has announced.
The latest film based on the books, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released in the UK on 13 July 2007.
She confirmed the date fans will be able to get their hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on her website.
The puplishers said it would release a children's hardback edition, an adult hardback, a special gift edition and an audio book on the same day.
The last installment of the Harry Potter saga will be published on 21 July 2007, author JK Rowling has announced.
The latest film based on the books, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released in the UK on 13 July 2007.
She confirmed the date fans will be able to get their hands on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on her website.
The puplishers said it would release a children's hardback edition, an adult hardback, a special gift edition and an audio book on the same day.
A Money Saving Tip
From Windows Secrets Newsletter (subscribe Here)
Use Vista's 'upgrade' version to clean-install
The secret is that the setup program in Vista's upgrade version will accept an installed copy of XP, W2K, or an unactivated copy of Vista itself as evidence of a previous installation.
This enables you to "clean install" an upgrade version of Vista to any formatted or unformatted hard drive, which is usually the preferred method when installing any new operating system. You must, in essence, install Vista twice to take advantage of this trick. But Vista installs much faster than XP, so it's quicker than installing XP followed by Vista to get the upgrade price.
To give you some idea of the potential saving:
Windows Home Premium "Clean Install version" Approx £190
Windows Home Premium "Upgrade version" Approx £130
Saving = £60 !
Windows Ultimate "Clean Install version" Approx £320
Windows Ultimate "Upgrade version" Approx £210
Saving = £110 !!
Use Vista's 'upgrade' version to clean-install
The secret is that the setup program in Vista's upgrade version will accept an installed copy of XP, W2K, or an unactivated copy of Vista itself as evidence of a previous installation.
This enables you to "clean install" an upgrade version of Vista to any formatted or unformatted hard drive, which is usually the preferred method when installing any new operating system. You must, in essence, install Vista twice to take advantage of this trick. But Vista installs much faster than XP, so it's quicker than installing XP followed by Vista to get the upgrade price.
To give you some idea of the potential saving:
Windows Home Premium "Clean Install version" Approx £190
Windows Home Premium "Upgrade version" Approx £130
Saving = £60 !
Windows Ultimate "Clean Install version" Approx £320
Windows Ultimate "Upgrade version" Approx £210
Saving = £110 !!
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Last Xmas Present
Today I went to the Jessops store in Leicester to take a 'starting with studio/portrait photography' course. This was a christmas present from Amanda...
We left the house at 09:00, arrived at the store for 10:15, and started bang on 10:30. There were two girls (Liz & Lisa from WPS Studio) there to act as our models for the day , and the instructor made a good job of explaining how (and why) everything worked. The morning was mostly lecture, with demo's of different lighting effects from on camera flash units, 1, 2 or ever 3 studio light units and the use of reflectors.
After lunch the classrom was converted into two separate studio sets, and the girls posed happily while we all worked out how to use our cameras!
The results from my exploits can be see here on my photo-albums site, not quite as 'interesting' as their web pages on WPS, but easier to show the wife what you were up to all afternoon!
We finished at about 16:30, and had a nice steady drive back home - arriving just in time for the 2nd half of the Man United FA Cup tie against Portsmouth (United won 2-1 )
All in all - a good day
We left the house at 09:00, arrived at the store for 10:15, and started bang on 10:30. There were two girls (Liz & Lisa from WPS Studio) there to act as our models for the day , and the instructor made a good job of explaining how (and why) everything worked. The morning was mostly lecture, with demo's of different lighting effects from on camera flash units, 1, 2 or ever 3 studio light units and the use of reflectors.
After lunch the classrom was converted into two separate studio sets, and the girls posed happily while we all worked out how to use our cameras!
The results from my exploits can be see here on my photo-albums site, not quite as 'interesting' as their web pages on WPS, but easier to show the wife what you were up to all afternoon!
We finished at about 16:30, and had a nice steady drive back home - arriving just in time for the 2nd half of the Man United FA Cup tie against Portsmouth (United won 2-1 )
All in all - a good day
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Baking a Beatbox Cake
Now I am not really into the whole 'Beatbox' thing, but this video on YouTube is just amazing, and you just have to be impressed by the performance, even if the musical genre is about 30 years too late for you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7GGkKpBR-g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7GGkKpBR-g
Monday, January 15, 2007
Holiday Booked
Nothing to spectacular this year... A midweek (Monday to Friday) at Center Parcs - Whinfell Forest (used to be Oasis) near Penrith in late August.
What will make it a good holiday is that once again, we will be in the company of Jackie & Pete.
What will make it a good holiday is that once again, we will be in the company of Jackie & Pete.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Another Toy - Free!
I have today ordered an upgrade to my mobile phone, and it's not costing me a penny! Now that's the sort of toy I really like to shop for!
[Edit] Seems I cannot actually order the upgrade till the 16th of January, so I will need to call them back next week :-(
My existing phone (for the last 14 months) is a Nokia 6020, basic, simple, does the job, easy to use etc. no real complaints, but I will soon be taking possession of a Motorola RAZR Z3iM in Red.
The 'M' is for Music - It's iTunes compatible, and can have a 512MB Transflash memory stick fitted to increase it's track capacity to about 100 - OhHum, prolly just stick to using the Nano...
I like the form factor of this design, and as it's free, why not?
[Edit] Seems I cannot actually order the upgrade till the 16th of January, so I will need to call them back next week :-(
My existing phone (for the last 14 months) is a Nokia 6020, basic, simple, does the job, easy to use etc. no real complaints, but I will soon be taking possession of a Motorola RAZR Z3iM in Red.
The 'M' is for Music - It's iTunes compatible, and can have a 512MB Transflash memory stick fitted to increase it's track capacity to about 100 - OhHum, prolly just stick to using the Nano...
I like the form factor of this design, and as it's free, why not?
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