Archive for October, 2007

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USB travel adapter kits

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

3 USB adapters and travel pouch

Spotted a while ago on my favourite gadget blog Ãœbergizmo.com the Belkin USB Travel Adapter Kit is a neat little kit featuring three USB adapters.

These take a standard USB A (male)-B (male) cable and allow you to convert the B (male) end to:

  • A (female)
  • 5-pin Mini-b
  • 4-pin Mini b

7-in-1 travel pack

The only thing is … I can’t find anywhere in the UK that sells them! But not to worry, because Belkin UK produce the 7-in-1 Retractable Cable Travel Pack:

Retractable USB cables and travel pouch

This pack includes the following:

  • Retractable USB Cable A Male/A Female 0.8m USB adapter extension cable
  • Retractable CAT5e Cable RJ45/RJ45 1.1m Computer to DSL/cable modem, gateway router, patch panel
  • Retractable Modem Cable RJ11/RJ11 1.3m Computer to phone jack with crossover adapter (ea) or BT adapter (uk)
  • USB Adapter A Male/B Male, MiniB-4-pin and Mini-B 5-pin for Computer to printer, hub, scanner, CD/DVD drive, camcorder, camera etc

At £11.21 on Amazon UK, that’s pretty good value in my book.

Posted in Computer, General, Hardware | No Comments »

Another Potting Shed

Monday, October 29th, 2007

Another Potting Shed

I have Another Potting Shed!

For the last few days I’ve been experimenting with another blog, hosted on WordPress.com, using it much like a “microblog”: short, informal, blether-like posts.

I’ve had that WordPress.com blog for a couple of years now, but not done anything with it. I originally signed-up for it out of curiosity, to see what the hosted accounts were like, so that I could assist friends who had their own blogs there.

This week I thought that it was a shame to waste such a fine space. So I’m now blethering on it. See you there!

Posted in General, Web, WordPress | 4 Comments »

Cube247 have a new website

Monday, October 29th, 2007

Cube 24-7 Award Winning Computers

It’s nice to see Cube247 finally have a new website, and it’s looking great.

More than a few months back they relaunched their site only to discover there were problems with it and it was promptly downgraded to a very simple and static brochure-ware site.

The new design looks great, and I love the customization facility for each PC package. That’s definitely something that I look for when buying a new PC: the ability to customize it to my needs/whims, rather than simply buying an off-the-shelf product.

I particularly like the look of the Taurus ST10 with its ‘basic’ setup of:

  • Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
  • Intel Core 4 Quad Q6600 Processor
  • 8192MB Corsair DDR II 667 Memory
  • 1500GB SATA II Seagate Storage – RAID Stripe
  • NEC 7170 Multi Format DVD/CD ReWriter
  • ATI Radeon 1024MB PCI Express Quad Monitor Graphics
  • 7.1 HD Surround Sound
  • Intel Core 2 Duo Deluxe Motherboard
  • Sony Floppy Disk Drive
  • DVD/CD ROM Drive
  • 3 x 19″ TFT 8MS Flat Panel Screens
  • Microsoft Wireless Multimedia Keyboard
  • Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse
  • Creative Inspire 6100 5.1 Speaker System
  • 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN
  • 12 x USB2 Ports
  • Firewire

I’m most impressed that while it comes by default with Windows Vista Home Premium, for £30 extra you can upgrade it to Windows XP:

Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2

Now that’s the kind of upgrade options that I like.

Posted in Computer, General, Hardware | 4 Comments »

Weeb and Bob playing Portal

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

Weebl and Bob

It looks like Weebl and Bob have been playing Valve Software’s Portal this week.

Portal is now available bundled with The Orange Box, and appeals to me more than the Half Life games. Check out the trailer.

Weebl and Bob are two of my favourite cartoon characters. Ever.

Posted in Computer, Games, General, Humour, Web | 2 Comments »

Those were the droids I was looking for!

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

These are not the droids you're looking for
(Image from Oscar Controls)

Each week b3ta.com run a feature whereby they pose a question and readers write in with their answers.

Last week’s question was: “Have you carried out a successful con? Perhaps you hustled a few quid off a stranger, or defrauded a multi-national company. Or have you been taken for the wide-eyed, naive rube that you are?”

Here’s my favourite answer:

“I was conned by an old man in a cloak. Yeah, it turned out those were the droids I was looking for.” (abefroman)

Posted in General, Humour | No Comments »

Windows XP vs Vista … and XP wins!

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

XP fighting Vista

Oh dear! As reported by Custom PC magazine this week: Vista vs XP: Performance tested, and Vista is slower.

XP vs Vista

The Custom PC / PC Pro teams ran some test on the same kit, one machine running XP, the other running Vista, and the conclusion is that

they don’t do Vista any favours. In all but a few exceptional cases, the new operating system was equalled or bettered by Windows XP …

Our Media Benchmarks 2007 were 6 per cent slower overall with Vista – and again, it was in video encoding that Vista was weakest, being 10% slower than XP when encoding using the H.264 codec. Even file copying was slower with the new OS. (Source)

How can Microsoft mess up something as simple as file copying?!

Windows, Linux or Mac OS?

I know that it’s fashionable to bash Microsoft, but the truth is that Microsoft do release some wonderful software, and I genuinely have an admiration for what they’ve achieved. The new Office 2007 UI is utterly genius, for a start.

I certainly wouldn’t leap ship from Windows to join the Mac OS X (boot)camp for anything (although I would dabble with Linux) as Mac OS X appears to be something akin to a cultic religion for some folks.

Even the Mac OS X Leopard demo didn’t have me running down the motorway to my nearest Apple dealer to buy one. (Is it just me, or is the guy that presents this the love child of Steve Jobs and Richard Gere?!)

Disdain

I prefer to keep at least an element of disdain for my OS of choice! But not quite as much as Microsoft appear to have squeezed into Vista. Sure, it looks beautiful … but do I really need a Cray Supercomputer just to power the graphics needed to run Calculator and Character Map?!

I’ve said it before: I’d rather like a new, faster PC (Intel Core 2 Duo with a nice, fat ATi Radeon graphics card, bucket-loads of RAM and a Creative X-Fi soundcard) but not one with Vista. I just don’t see the point, and these test results certainly haven’t convinced me otherwise.

Posted in Computer, General, Reviews | 5 Comments »

Steve Lawson in the living room

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

Steve Lawson playing bass guitar in our living room

Steve Lawson’s gig in our living room last night was a roaring success.

While only six people turned up, it didn’t detract from the enjoyment of a relaxed evening in the company of friends, with plenty of good wine, fine chocolates, beautiful music and much laughter.

I videoed the entire gig, including Steve’s Q&A at the end, which will no doubt creep onto YouTube in due course.

In the meantime, here’s one video from the gig last night, which I recorded on my Fuji FinePix S5600. This is a video of Steve playing his track called “Scott Peck” from Behind Every Word (2007).

And then, all too soon, Steve had to drive home. (To Steve: it was truly wonderful to see you again, lovely man!)

Shortly after he left I discovered that he’d left his scarf here. Maybe I should auction it on eBay for charity: “Rock star’s Dr Who-style scarf”. Steve would, obviously, have the opportunity to bid for it himself, if it means anything to him!

See more photos of the gig at Flickr: Steve Lawson house concert

Posted in Friends, General, Guitar, Music, Reviews, Web, YouTube | 4 Comments »

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