Hardware

Well I think so! Got one there 2 months ago and forgot to write a blog post about it. I got a ‘01 model for a bargain price I believe; but this theory has yet to be tested (I’ll wait for a year to be up). As I mentioned before in previous posts my parent’s house is now in a remote location with no train/buses anywhere nearby. So transport was essential! At this time also there was a major crack down on learner drivers not being accompanied by a fully licensed driver (of two years). So by the time I’d saved the money for the car; got 10 lessons and convinced anyone I knew with over two years full driving experience to accompany me; even to work - was just to much hassle - hence the moped which has no such onerous requirements. In fact only one it does really have is that you can’t have passengers - I won’t be carrying anyone anyways - so I am not too bothered. Anyhoo take a look at the photos I took when I got it. I have done it up since then: new tyres, resprayed exhaust, full service; new mirrors; repaired exhaust; flushed out radiator and put in proper coolant just to name a few. So it sounds allot better and drives better than ever! ...

Well one month in Summer 2008! Summer has been okay so far; I’ve had nothing much to report hence lack of Tech posts. Sure the iPhone 3G looks good, Google/Yahoo/Microsoft spats interesting but after a while it become a bit circular and repetitive. I’ve recently started working at the UK’s leading retailer for touring/car/bike and accessories; as well as a move to the south east of Ireland; that much further to the capital: Dublin. It’s Ireland’s smallest city and home to Ireland’s very first Parliament about 400 years ago: Kilkenny. It’s steeped in culture and it’s the only city in Ireland to rival Dublin’s culture, nightlife and restaurants and hold it’s own. ...

I last discussed the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet in October; when details were only starting to filter out. It wasn’t expected for Nokia to introduce an upgrade to the N800 Internet Tablet (which I also reviewed here) so soon. I certainly don’t envy the position of a small team getting the hardware and software for a mini-computer right in such a short space of time. But needless to say the N810 feels right; in fact it feels more right than the N770 which I thought had the best design of all (be it functionality not so much style). The N810 has bags of style; in a flashy brand-new-car sort of way; it looks expensive and I believe Nokia plays to this in their pricing. ...

Nokia have announced an upgrade to the N800 Internet tablet, called the N810. I suspect its called that because it is more of an incremental upgrade than a total visual refresh it was going from an Nokia 770 to N800. Here it is: (Picture Courtesy: Internet Tablet Talk) It sports a nice new hardware keyboard; inbuilt GPS (For satellite mapping) and OS 2008 (an upgrade to the operating system it runs). The N800 will also benefit from OS 2008, which will include GoogleTalk, Skype, Mozilla browser, among the usual such as its email client, media player, file manager, control panel, assorted games and an image/PDF viewer. The one feature it will emit is an inbuilt FM Radio, which was axed to make the N810 a smaller tablet. It still retains the best screen size for web browsing, bluetooth connectivity, and of course Wifi which is central to the tablets existance! No word on what easter eggs are included if any; on the N800 it was a radio and the N770 it was the microphone. Engadget has a great writeup on it, choc-a-bloc full of high resolution photos with size comparisons to Apples iPhone. ...

Planning to build a computer can be fun also. Researching parts, making sure they work well together (if they are on Manufacturers QVL). Making a list of all the parts you need is the beginning of the purchasing, assembly and then seeing your machine in action! Lots of guides online help with the planning stage; but nearly all are advice and tips. How do you know which is biased? Are the benchmarks relevant to what you are building your machine for? Probably not most of the time. If you’re not a hardcore gamer like myself, your machine can mid-range and cheaper than a pre-built solution, saving you money. I am using my machine as a long term investment: I plan to have it long into the future and just replace components. I think that could save me at least €3000 over ten years (two €1,500 machines every 5 years, not beyond possibility) if not more. I can also re-use perfectly good parts when my other machines have departed to that big waste recycling plant in the sky. ...

I found a new pastime: dismantling pc’s. It my not sound like great fun, but its a challenge to do it right and make sure you don’t break your pc at the end of it all. Nothing feels of so much relief when you see the BIOS boot up again after ripping everything you can out and cramming it all back in. It stands to you in developing problem solving skills, which of course employers love. It is so much more visual than any theory, plus it is what the majority of people like: physical objects like Lego going together. I am writing this on a computer I stripped everything out of at the moment: a Dell 3100c, a Celeron D machine I bought in August of last year. Today I dismantled a very old Optiplex PIII, and the difference between the machines is marked, even though there are only a few years between them. I have included some photos below to show the inside internals: ...

I just tried Herd 5 of Gutsy Gibbon, a beta release which will be Ubuntu 07.10 released in October. Obviously it is still early stages and a lot of things aren’t working quite as they should, but it looks very promising. Here’s some new stuff which should hit the final release: Compiz Fusion - Pretty Graphics that leave you in awe… Bullet Proof X - Making sure you’ll never see a terminal prompt not of your own choosing, basically the graphics server should be ‘bulletproof’ Appearance Manager - Making it easier to change yourbuntu’s look and feel Better Driver Support - More of those restricted drivers to make sure you can see your screen and use your wifi card Simplified Codecs install - It will now be painless, install ubuntu-restrictedcodecs (or kubuntu-restricted codecs) and you can see Youtube in all its glory, play a dvd, watch that porno WMV file (just kidding but I think thats all WMV is used for) and other such niceties of the propreitry world we have to put up with Firefox Codecs Plugin - Firefox will be hooked up to the package manager and prompt to install Flash/Java if you haven’t got it already, much the same way it prompts to get a codec when you throw a file at it that it cannot play in the movie player. The free software Gnash replacement for Flash will come as standard and can play Youtube Vids. Dual Screen Glory - If your like me you have a nice and small portable laptop, but that screen just won’t do all of the time, thats why I personally have a 19" to plug my 13" MacBook into. With Gutsy I should be able to plug and play over DVI. These are just some of the features that are being worked on for the final release. Probably not all of them on the list will get into Gutsy final, but lets hope they do! Gutsy+1 (slated for release April 2008) has been announced as “Hardy Hereon” and should be a long term release (5 years server and 3 years desktop updates and patches). ...

I just bought a HP Photosmart R927, an 8 Megapixel camera from Hewlett-Packard. While I had seen and briefly used one before, I was excited again upon using my own one (as all tech people are [read: geeks]). First of all don’t confuse me as anyway into photography: I’m not and far from it. I had a criteria in mind when I purchased and this was it: Must work under any OS (Windows [a given], Mac and Linux [latter two I only use]) Every camera I have come across mounts as a disc drive [think looking at files on a cd or your local computer], but there is also PTP or “Picture Transfer Protocol” in other words it doesn’t appear as picture files, rather PTP triggers your computer to open your camera in your photo application. I was unsure if this PTP would work under Mac or Linux, since I had only briefly seen it as an option in digiKam. It turns out on Mac there is Image Capture, and Ubuntu (My Linux distribution of choice) it automatically detects it and asks to import photos intoF-Spot. ...

I recorded a tutorial, showing people how to extract YouTube (and other flash based sites videos’) and get them onto your iPod. It was recorded on my Mac, so unfortunately its Mac specific, but really only iSquint program is, so if anyone can suggest a replacement on Windows or Linux, I will add it to the details of the video. I use Garageband for audio, iMovieHD to edit the video and audio and Copernicus to record my screen. I started by getting everything I needed ready (all the Firefox tabs etc.) and hit record in Copernicus. I imported that .mov into iMovieHD, and then proceeded to open Garageband, watch the video and talk myself through my own recording. I saved the voice part in Garageband, exported it and then imported it into iMovie. I checked to make sure the audio and video lined up perefectly (what I done on screen matched what I was saying) and then exported it as a .mov from iMovieHD. Then I uploaded the result to Youtube, which I think for a first try ain’t bad!! Watch it here: ...

I have one of those new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, as many of you know I was one of the first to buy its predecessor, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. What do I think? Well I have put of writing this for 4 days, as I wanted to really test it out. Before I start, I should say I was part of the Nokia Developer Device program, and I got the Nokia N800 at a big discount, €300 off the €399 retail price in fact. Under headings below I will take about the N800, and compare it to the 770: ...