| VOIP Clients |
[Sep. 25th, 2006|11:23 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
I had always liked the Skype client - its fairly stable, easy to use and has a simple interface - but unfortunately its prices for calling land lines are pretty poor compared with the Gizmo Project. So, would I switch? Well, the Gizmo client software isn't great to use, it tends to crash a lot and, of course, my new Yealink cordless VOIP phone (compatibility) doesn't seem to be Gizmo friendly. The phone works with Voip Buster though and that client looks quite familiar. I'll have to have a look at their prices next.
Do you of you guys use voip clients to make phone calls to land lines or do you just use them computer to computer? |
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| Mac Keyboard Config? |
[Sep. 23rd, 2006|11:32 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  curious | ] |
I realised this morning my Mac Mini could actually pick up the wireless KVM'd Logitech keyboard 'provided' the mouse was unplugged! Thus, after replacing the PS2x2-to-USB adapter with a more expensive brand, my Logitech Cordless Desktop Comfort Duo keyboard and Logitech Cordless Click optical mouse work with all four OS over KVM, so I'm really happy with that.
I then gave in and decided to plug my brand new Logitech G7 mouse (mmm, my favourite yet!) into just my main Windows machine, as it didn't function over KVM yet I still wanted to use it for the majority of my work.
The one issue remaining is the keyboard layout. The Mac seems to have reversed the quotes " and the at @ symbols, amongst other keys. Under Windows I would say this was a UK/US layout issue, but I'm not certain under OS X. Any ideas?
Edit: ( The solution - System Preferences > International ) |
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| Just Enable 'Everything' |
[Sep. 20th, 2006|12:23 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  chipper | ] |
I've never been able to send picture messages before. My VK530 Pink always failed at 99%, so I thought it unusual that my new Samsung ZV40 Pink did the same thing. I had a free minute today and I decided to see what could be done about it.
I gave Vodafone a call and - after thirty minutes of sitting on hold - got through and asked the chap if he could think of any reason why I would be unable to send MMS. He had no idea. I asked if there might be an enable/disable type setting on my account for that. "Sure" he said, "I'll look. .. Oh yes, I'll enable that for you now".
Tomorrow I'll find out if it worked.
Edit: Typical, I had to call them back the next day as the guy had enabled picture messaging on my Account but not on the Network! Its all working now at least. |
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| Wireless VOIP |
[Sep. 18th, 2006|08:31 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| | contemplative | ] |
 Whilst I was looking online for a suitable mouse to use with my KVM switch (possibly the Logitech G7), I saw a cordless VOIP phone (Yealink USB-W1D) for just under £30. As opposed to the usual £50-60.
I really shouldn't keep spending money whilst I don't have a steady income but I couldn't resist. In theory, with the ideal cordless voip phone I could stop using my land line for calls altogether. In theory.
I guess we'll have to see if it's much of an improvement over my current corded one. |
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| KVM to Cordless? |
[Sep. 14th, 2006|01:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  gloomy | ] |
To allow myself to get rid of a few monitors and tidy up a mass of cables, I decided to buy a Belkin 4-Port PS2 KVM switch (F1DJ104PeaB) to use to control my Windows XP, Linux, Mac and Windows 2003 Server machines.
It sounded like a good idea, until I set my heart on using it with my new Logitech Cordless Desktop Comfort Duo combination - the Cordless Desktop Pro (split-key) keyboard and Cordless MouseMan Optical mouse.
For my normal Windows everything works fine over the KVM (including the keyboard shortcut keys), but the Linux Ubuntu, 2003 Server and Mac machines didn't recognise the mouse. This might have caused some problems, or even forced me to use a corded Optical Mouse, but luckily it seems my Logitech Cordless Click optical mouse is recognised in all four OS!
Although now the Mac is detecting a wireless mouse over KVM it no longer recognises the keyboard. I guess that's my next challenge. (Edit: Solved) |
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| Which Linux? |
[Aug. 27th, 2006|09:39 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| | contemplative | ] |
I have plenty of Linux installations in Virtual PCs but I might set up a dedicated, stable Linux desktop box again for programming. I have a spare 2.4GHz P4 machine with 768Mb RAM, a 250Gb hard drive and GeForce Ti4800 graphics, so I might as well use it for something.
I tend to lean towards Mandriva as I used to prefer the Madrake GUI to the Red Hat/Fedora style but I can't decide - Debian, Slackware, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Gentoo, Mepis, Xandros, or an other? What does anyone else use? |
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| Intel vs G4 Mac Mini? |
[Aug. 26th, 2006|02:39 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| | contemplative | ] |
If you program C++ software on a G4 Mac is it compatible with the Intel Mac or vica versa? I can't seem to work out whether it is better to buy an older G4 or newer Intel model of Mac Mini in order to wrote applications that would 'ideally' work on both.
Edit: How much should you pay for a second hand 1.42GHz Mac Mini G4? - If an Intel Mac Mini is worth £400 new, is a G4 Mini worth £300 as its very similar in specification or more like £200 as its an older model? |
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| What Graphical Tablet? |
[Aug. 21st, 2006|09:35 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| | achy | ] |
I had been working on a lot of graphics over the weekend and now my first finger on my right hand - the mouse click finger - is aching. I'm not sure if its my new mouse that I haven't got used to yet or if that'll just always happen when you overdo the click-and-drag. Either way, I've been thinking about getting a mouse tablet ever since the last one I bough took my computer offline for two weeks due to faulty software, but I have a few questions before I splash out again:
What is a good size for a tablet? It looks like 12 by 9cm is about the best you can find in the under £50 market, or is it more advisable to spend more? What brands are reliable for this sort of thing? Any particular models recommended? Wacom perhaps?
If I can get used to it then a tablet seems like the way to go... provided its going to be worth the money. I would mostly want onme that would work well with single pixel detail (at a reasonable zoom) and Windows navigation. The Wacom Volito2 I have been looking at is £35.
Edit: Now looking at the Wacom Graphire4 Classic A6 |
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| Nearly August |
[Jul. 25th, 2006|11:27 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  creative | ] |
24 25 26 27 28 29 CCSF
It seems that luck hasn't really been with me recently. Firstly my computer was offline for a tricky upgrade from Wed 28th June to Tue 17th July. Then, as soon as the machine was running again, the UK heatwave hit in full force and we have had two week of temperatures over 30°C (where I'm used to 17°C and can't really manage anything exceeding 21°C max). Currently the weather is still far too boiling but, with the Creatures Community Spirit Festival just a few days away, my primary web host has gone mysteriously offline. So that's a good month lost to bad luck. I just hope it changes ready for Sunday.
On the bright side, when I ordered my new PC hardware online I also took the opportunity to purchase a digital camera (Olympus mju 700) as well which did work out! It is a gorgeous model and I've already taken it on a brilliant day out to the zoo a couple of weeks back, but I'll post more about that later. For now it's back to work. |
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| Online Again |
[Jul. 17th, 2006|10:47 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Main PC | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  accomplished | ] |
Wahoo! Its nearly 11pm but I'm back online again with my main PC, which is now a 2GHz Intel Core Duo with 2Gb RAM :) Yippee! Woot woot woot! :) |
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| Back in Business |
[Jul. 15th, 2006|12:40 pm] |
After two weeks of hard work, I can now boot my old OS as either an AMD FX-55 or an Intel Core Duo 2GHz. Yup, as the P4 to AMD was proving a tricky upgrade I thought the system might be happier if I kept to the same brands and decided to buy alternative hardware along with a second hard drive... and then I managed to get *both* sets working! Slight over-spend there though :/
I think I might keep the machine as an Intel and sell the AMD processor with its motherboard, 2Gb RAM and 250Gb hard drive as either a bundle or with some spare parts as a separate computer. I really need to make my money back somehow and I doubt I can return the goods as 'no longer needed'. Well, I guess I must look on the bright side as my computer should be back in action by tomorrow. Just an evening of checks, updates and fine tuning and then it'll be good to go. Phew!
Then I can get back to the CCSF! :) |
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| Upgrade Horrors |
[Jul. 6th, 2006|10:16 am] |
Upgrading from a Pentium with an IDE hard drive to an AMD with SATA might have been a bit too much for my poor PC. With it being such an in-depth process, my machine has now been out of action for nine days and I am having to proceed very carefully after my IDE drive (with my original, untouched OS on) suddenly failed, leaving me with just the 300Gb ghosted copy on the SATA drive to work with.
If only I had a backup for safety though. I tried too make a new backup of the data with the Ghost 7.5 floppy disk that I have always used but it refuses to transfer from SATA to IDE; Then I tried using the later Norton Ghost 10 CD but that seems to miss out 2Gb and doesn't produce a bootable drive due to far too many errors; Now I am currently running Acronis True Image, but it is claiming at the moment '2 days remaining' so my hopes aren't too high.
I have things to get on with. I need my computer, and I can't even log into any of the Creatures forums that I usually visit without being able to remember all my passwords. Come on, work PC, work! |
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| iTunes Rules! |
[Feb. 25th, 2006|11:00 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| | chuffed | ] |
Okay, I now extra extra extra love iTunes the bestest of all the multimedia players! ...
As you might know, my car's radio/cassette player has never worked so last weekend I gave in and bought a flashy new in-car radio/audio CD/MP3-CD player with an input for MP3 players/iPods to listen to on my two hour commute to work each day. The idea of using my 4Gb iPod mini was very appealing! Unfortunately, whilst having the player fitted the engineer discovered the car's electrics had obviously been DIY'd by a previous owner; Some cables were disconnected and one of the two power leads was totally (unreversible) dead. Thus the old radio would have worked fine if it had been connected properly... Not much I could do about that as he'd just finished installing the new one, but at least with the wiring corrected I now have the standard warning beep if I open a car door with the headlights still on (something I thought my car just didn't have as it had never worked before).
So, with the car all ready for the week ahead I set to work sorting through my MP3s in iTunes. I unchecked the songs I didn't want to download to my iPod mini, used the iTunes convert-to-MP3 feature to ensure all my songs were compatible and then connected the iPod and watched all the music auto synchronise. I was so pleased on Monday when I was able to listen to a random shuffle of all my music whilst driving, far more relaxing than listening to the sound of the motorway; that was until one very loud song made me jump suddenly and have to turn down the volume at the first available opportunity. I feared this meant I would have the tedious job of going through my music, one song at a time, adjusting the playback volume to ensure I didn't get another scare... but luckily iTunes had thought of that too. After ticking the 'Check Sound" option the program ran through my music library and sorted the volume levels for me! Perfect!
It is so much better to have a piece of software to manage and maintain all you music instead of having to do it manually.
iTunes rules! |
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| iTunes 6 |
[Oct. 20th, 2005|11:01 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| | content | ] |
You have to admit iTunes is cool. I'm sorting out the music I don't like from my collection atm, then I'll re-download it to my iPod mini and play it back on the intempo speakers. Not a bad setup. The Podcasts of TV series (such as Lost) that you can download to the iPod is also a pretty nifty gimmick. Anyways, back to sorting through. |
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| Lost Series 2 and Macs |
[Oct. 18th, 2005|11:40 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| | bored | ] |
It looks like there's a Lost series two (of two) which I'll be eager to see after this one. You can download them fairly cheaply on iTunes as well. It's a cool idea but I won't be buying them as they're on TV each week (and with the whole not having any money thing ;)
I've been playing with Mac emulators recently. I've got Creatures 1 installed on Basilisk II OS 7.5.5, but I can't seem to find a PowerPC boot disk image that SheepShaver will accept, which I can then use to install an OS. Maybe I'll work it out tomorrow.
Hmm, if only there was food in the house to eat... Might go watch some TV now if anything is on. |
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| VK 530 and Ooo |
[Aug. 26th, 2005|01:41 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| | cheerful | ] |
I received a letter from my mobile phone company the other day to say I was entitled to sign up for a special offer whereby I would only had to pay(/use contract minutes) for the first three minutes of a call, evening and weekends, and then the next 57 minutes would be free. When I gave them a ring I was told that since I'd had my contract (and my Nokia 8310) for around three years now they would advise me to take a free phone upgrade at the same time. Their mistake was in sending me off to look at the website to choose a nice model.
When you sign up for your first 12/18 month contract you get a free mobile phone and then at the end of that period you can extend your contract and choose another free phone. So why hadn't I done so before? Well, the complete lack of decent mobiles in the market meant I was never really bothered. Yet thinking about it now I could have two extra free mobiles sat on my sideboard if I had claimed!! Two top of the line phones that I inadvertently turned down! I wasn't going to miss out any longer.
My new phone criteria was for it to be rectangular (not circular or any other shape the designers could think up at 5am), smaller than my current model (obviously), with a decent button layout (no spirals), simple vertical menus, and no twisting or swiveling required to open the thing. So, after much looking through the website I finally decided on the VK 530 Pink. A cute miniature flip-phone with a colour screen, low-end camera and fairly low battery life, but small enough to fit into any bag. Yup, size matters if your clothes never have pockets!
Whilst picking out the mobile I also happened to notice the limited time Online Exclusive contract offers for new customers. It turned out that for considerably less than I was currently paying per month I could have 200% of my cross-network minutes and 250% of my texts! Naturally I wanted that offer. As if "new customers only" was an acceptable line, bah!
It only took three days of phone calls (and being told that it wasn't physically possible) before I finally persuaded someone there to save me the hassle of converting my contract to a pay-as-you-go with 30 days notice and then signing up for the new-customers contract by just switching my contract to the new one, with the special offer *and* new free VK 530, of course.
My contract was updated that midnight and my phone arrived the next day. Wahoo! It sure pays to be persistent. I was sooooo happy! :)
Now I just need to find a PC kit to connect my phone to the computer, and the money to buy it with... |
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| Beware the iPod |
[Jun. 29th, 2005|11:59 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  amused | ] |
Today I set up my new four port Belkin Wireless router, a sweet and tiny replacement for the old wireless that give up recently, and... well... okay so my new free iPod mini sucked up the rest of the day!
I began by importing all my music on the computer into iTunes and was then forced to enter the correct song names for each album instead of the default Track 1, Track 2 etc. I had going. After those many many hours searching on Google, it got me tidying up all the band names to match each other, removing duplicate tracks, deleting useless comments, converting music videos to mp3s, and listening through my collection a few times to remove any unwanted songs. In fact it was around 7pm before I even transferred the approved collection to the iPod mini and began listening to it...
Then the next marketing ploy becomes apparent - Wouldn't it be good to buy: the adapter to charge the iPod at the mains instead of via USB, the speakers to avoid using the white headphones and create a mini but loud hifi, a case to protect the little device from harm, a remote control, and all the other things that could triple the price of the initial box set in under a minute! You crafty crafty marketing people... supplying what looks like a lot but actually in such a cunning way that none of the accessories are particularly apt for their jobs, which in turn causes people to consider shopping for more hardware at the first available chance. I won't fall for your wily ways, well, not until after I've bought some a protective carry case and checked out the price of speakers anyway. ;) |
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| Its Here! -ipod |
[Jun. 18th, 2005|06:59 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  jubilant | ] |
My free iPod mini has arrived and its silver! :)
Edit: I thought I should add a photo since it is ever so cool, and fun:
I'll have to upload some of my mp3s to it later and listen to them outside ;) |
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| Worse still... |
[May. 1st, 2005|11:56 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | gadgets | ] |
| [ | Current mood is |
| |  annoyed | ] |
Installed the heatsink for my graphics card. Fan spinning too fast: Computer too loud to use. Buying fan speed control cable tomorrow. Work overdue and mounting up. Soo not good. |
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