Sunday, February 07, 2010
BolloxSo I've been rather frustrated by the inability of my video editing software to render out in widescreen. That's what you get for being a cheapskate and using freebie crippleware, but anyway...
So I'd seen this youtube video by NixiePixel, who demonstrated a very nice looking piece of free video editing software called Kdenlive, which runs on linux.
Now I'm no linux expert, but I've messed about with Ubuntu on a 2nd partition of my main computer, from time to time, so I figured it'd be worth looking into.
So, there've been a couple of dead computers sitting around the house for quite a long time, and I decided it'd be worth trying to take the good bits from each and cobble together one half decent workaday linux machine, to run this editing software. This would be really handy, as rendering final videos takes up all my main machine's cpu time for an hour at a time, leaving me unable to do anything else useful with the thing.
Anyway... I couldn't get the recent Ubunto release to burn properly to a disk, so I went out and got a magazine with Mint 8 (a Ubunti derivative) on the cover, and promptly installed that.
It worked, and the editing software appears to work too... though I do need to learn how to use it, as it's rather different from what I'm used to.
Now, the thing is, I liked Mint 8 so much, I figured I'd use it to replace the old installation of Ubuntu on my main machine. So I promptly installed it, whereupon it warned me that my hard drive was failing and I should back up and replace the thing as soon as possible.
"Yeah right! This thing's just fine." I said to myself.
Bad move.
So I carried on working with the thing, using both Linux and Windoze... and guess what?
Catastrophic hard drive failure.
I lost both Windoze and Mint 8. On booting, it gets to the start of the OS selection screen and then goes "Duh?"
I suppose I could repartition and reformat the thing, but since the warning told me the drive had actual hardware faults on the disk, as opposed to merely corrupted data, whatever I do with the thing, the end result will always be a bodge at best.
It's broken.
Bugger.
Andrea being the wonderful wife that she is promptly went online and ordered me a new drive, so I will be able to get things sorted. Also, I do have almost all of my doccuments, photos, videos etc backed up on an external drive, so pretty much nothing important is lost.
What it amounts to then is a very annoying inconvenience. I have to reinstall XP from scratch, then update it... update it some more... then some more... and then when that's finally done, I have to go find all the software I'd been using, and all the passwords I have stashed away on random pages of my black book.
So... say a week for the drive to arrive, and probably another week to get the whole thing back in a useful configuration.
I can't really complain though... for someone who loves modern technology, that PC is shockingly old. 7 years... give or take. Not only does that make it quite ancient, it also shows how much bullshit the PC manufacturers feed people, telling them how much they need the latest kit.
The only thing it's not really adequate for is gaming... and I have a PS3 for that. Everything else... right up to video editing...7 year old tech is just fine, thank you very much.
Shame about the hard drive though.
Labels: computers
Steve 6:42 PM [+] (1) comments
Thursday, July 16, 2009
I forgot to mention, last week I uploaded my new Retro Gaming Collector website.At present, it's pretty much just a transferral of the retro collection section of this site, over to a new dedicated website. It is more logically organised though, so the content is easier to find. Over time, it'll expand into something much larger and more comprehensive than what was on this site.
As for the retro gaming content on this site... I'll be keeping the collection index page, but the links will be directed to the content on the new site, while the actual content pages currently on this site will automatically redirect to their equivalent pages on the new site.
Steve 11:58 PM [+] (1) comments
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Labels: computers, consoles, games, video
Steve 3:41 PM [+] (3) comments
Friday, March 20, 2009
I have two new videos to share.The first is the updated video of my console and computer collection.
The second is a clip of our two dogs, Max and Bailey, playing in the living room.
Labels: computers, consoles, dogs, video
Steve 11:00 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, January 24, 2009
This is the latest addition to my vintage computer and retro console collection.To say I'm thrilled to bits to get my hands on one of these is a serious understatement.
It's a Jupiter Ace, which probably won't mean anything at all to most people, but to retro gaming collectors, it's *the* holy grail.
Steve 11:11 PM [+] (2) comments
Monday, December 01, 2008
Here's the latest video of my vintage computers, retro games consoles, and classic gaming handhelds collection.Labels: computers, consoles, video
Steve 1:32 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Yet another new and rare addition to my collection.The Enterprise 64.
Steve 8:31 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, October 13, 2008
I've gradually been adding to my computer and console collection over the past couple of months... something like 10 new machines.All of them are quite nice, a few are slightly rare, or even a little exotic, but this latest one... it's a true collectors item. The Sinclair ZX80. Not ZX81.... ZX80!
It's probably the first computer in my collection that really cost me an arm and a leg, but even then, I got a very good deal, as I've seen them sell for even more.
So, rather than post a photo, and write a whole load of technical mumbo-jumbo, and as I don't have any games for it, to record videos of, I've recorded a short video article on it, and uploaded to youbube.
This vid is by no means comprehensive. I remembered loads of details and stuff that I could have, or should have, included, but what the heck. I think it serves its purpose fairly well.
Steve 2:00 AM [+] (3) comments
Monday, September 29, 2008
I've added some new content to my Retro Computers and Consoles section.My collection's been growing quite a bit just lately, with a few more systems either in the post now, or due to be posted very soon. So expect another update to this section of my site fairly soon.
All I need to do now is find the time to record more video clips of the games, and update my video pages, etc, but time seems to be in very short supply these days.
Steve 3:18 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Having a large section of my website dedicated to my retro gaming collection, I get quite a few emails from people, asking me "how much is my old (insert console or computer name here) worth?"Well, to help these people out, and to save myself a lot of emailing, I've done a new page that lists the average prices you could expect to see on ebay, for a lot of old machines.
It's by no means complete, but covers a lot of systems that I don't yet have in my own collection.
There's also a section at the bottom, offering advice for both sellers and buyers, when using ebay. The intention being to help them avoid the common pitfalls, when trading these kinds of machines.
So, if you're interested, check out my Retro computer and console price guide.
Steve 2:45 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
This will be quite a mish-mash of a post, as it covers several topics, spanning the past couple of weeks.So first off... the techie stuff.
The notebook pc.
Over the past few months, I've been watching with some interest, the development of the Asus EeePC.
This is a very small, light, and low cost laptop that's quite taken the market by storm. It has a solid state storage system, as opposed to a hard drive, built in webcam, no optical drive, and runs linux by default, though it's possible to run windoze on them. Later models offer more storage, and windoze as an option.
The idea of the EeePc has always been that they're for those who want a 2nd, low cost machine, to be used mostly for surfing the net, or while on the move.
For me, this sounded perfect. As much of my time on my main pc is spent simply browsing, wouldn't it be nice to be able to do this downstairs, where I could chat with Andrea while I surf?
The downside of the EeePC has always been the rather pathetic storage capacity, as even the later models, with increased capacity, only offer 20gig, much of which is taken up by the OS.
To be honest, this was never going to be enough, so I held off buying one.
Now market forces being what they are, as soon as other manufacturers saw what a success the EeePC was, they started building their own mini-laptops, along similar, but slightly improved lines.
So, not long ago, the MSI Wind hits the market, offering all the advantages of the EeePC, with much improved storage and CPU.
Shortly after that, they license this design to PC World, who produce what is basically the same machine, rebranded as the Advent 4211, and £50 cheaper.
This is the point where I decide "£179.99 for a perfectly usable notebook sounds like a good deal to me."
Now, having a wife who knows a great deal about getting online bargains and discounts, I bought mine at an even lower price, which was nice.
The mobile broadband
Already having mobile internet access on both my MDA Pro, and my mobile phone, I know how useful it can be, and also how fiddly and frustrating it can be when trying to do stuff on such small devices.
Now, the techie media has been making an amount of noise about the latest "mobile broadband" offerings for pcs and laptops, from all the main mobile phone companies. So when 3 started offering Pay As You Go mobile broadband, I decided it would go very nicely with my new notebook, being especially useful for holidays and suchlike.
I duly went and bought one from the local 3 shop, and hey presto.... absolutely rubbish!
It failed to recieve a 3G signal... ever! Then on the very few occasions it was able to get a gprs 2G signal, it was from Orange, and with an amazing bandwidth of 0.02k/sec.
Web page loading time was not a factor. They never loaded.
Needless to say, the 3 mobile modem went back to the shop for a refund.
Next I decided to try offering from Vodafone. This uses exactly the same modem, though it's on contract, instead of pay as you go. £15 gets you 3gig of data per month. Perfectly adequate for someone who only wants to use it when on holiday or whatever.
So when I get it home and install it, guess what? Nothing!
This time however, it's not down to a crap service, but simply that my sim hadn't been activated.
Now I've been using it for a few days, I can tell you that at home, I only receive a 2G, gprs signal, despite what the woman in the shop said I'd get, but even this is not terrible. 50k/sec, which is slightly better than you'd expect on dialup.
While away for the weekend (more on that soon), I got a solid 3G and 3G+ signal, and saw speeds up to 225k/sec, which was really quite impressive.
The Weekend Away
We just spent a long weekend away, staying at The Moore Place hotel, in Aspley Guise, just outside Milton Keynes.
The plan had been to visit my mother, do some shopping in the city centre, and maybe fit in a visit to Bedford.
However...
We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and were both rather shattered, so napped until 8pm, when we had a table booked in the hotel restaurant.
The mushroom soup was both fascinating and impressive, but while the chicken main course that I had was great, the vegetarian offering was definitely not to Andrea's taste.
This left her with a very nasty case of what we assumed at the time was indigestion, but later events have led us to believe we were both suffering from a stomach bug.
After the meal, we played chess in the lounge, as they just happened to have a set there. I'm guessing not many guests bother with it, as we seemed to attract an amount of attention, just by playing it.
After our game, I took some night shots of the pond and waterfall, outside.
On Sunday, we woke late, watched the grand prix on tv, and then went to a restaurant in Milton Keynes.
£40 for 2 burgers, chips and salad seems pretty extreme to me, though they were seriously good burgers... and we didn't actually pay that much, as most of the bill was paid with Tesco Deals vouchers. Andrea's bargain hunting pays off yet again.
Then the bug struck again. Very soon after leaving the burger place, Andrea was hit with the most extreme indigestion, and only 4! Rennie indigestion tablets stopped her from being sick.
After Andrea's stomach had settled enough, we went and visited my mother, who seems to have settled into her new home very nicely.
When we got back to the hotel, we munched sandwiches for tea and watched tv, till bedtime.
Trouble is, I woke up at 4am, feeling kinda wrong.
At first I couldn't put my finger on it.
"Aha! Indigestion.... I know that feeling. A Rennie will fix it."
Nope. Still felt like shit.
Another Rennie?
Nope... still felt bad,
The next one after that seemed to be doing the trick... right up to the point that I was repeatedly sick.
Next morning, we checked out at 11am, and had planned to go back into Milton Keynes, to do the shopping we hadn't yet found time for, but I was still feeling pretty rough, not to mention drained, so we just came home instead.
Labels: computers, holidays, hotels, phones
Steve 2:42 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, July 04, 2008
I don't need to say anything about this.The video speaks for itself.
Labels: computers, games, video
Steve 8:52 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Regular readers will probably be aware that I collect old computers and consoles. They may not be aware that I regularly recieve emails from people who've seen my collection, either on my website, or on youtube, and ask if I'd like to buy their old (insert console or computer here).Now, while it's nice that they're interested, I always have to decline. It simply isn't safe to be sending money to complete strangers with none of the safeguards in place that you get with ebay, or other online stores. I recently stated this on my website, as it became frustrating, having to field so many of these emails.
So, imagine my surprise when I recieved an email from a very nice guy called Rob, from Shropshire, asking if i would like a handful of old systems and large collection of software, from his own collection.... for free!!!
Rob was making room for his grandaughter, so most of his collection simply had to go. He didn't have time to be messing around with ebay, and so rather than just throw it all into a landfill, decided to give it away to a good home. A search on google found my website.
How could I refuse an offer like that?
A week spent passing emails back and forth saw us meet up at a motorway services, at a halfway point between his home and mine, and transferring numerous boxes from his car to Andreas.
We chatted in the car park for a while and I have to say, what an extremely cool chap Rob is. So, if you're reading this Rob, a very big thank you. You also get a mention in my latest youtube video.
Now to save you all from hunting on youtube, or from hunting round my site, (where I haven't embedded it yet anyway), here is the latest video of my computer and console collection. All 10 minutes of it. (It took 3 attempts to make it fit into the time limit)
Labels: computers, consoles, video
Steve 3:32 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The last week has been rather difficult.My computer died... not sure if it was a hardware issue, a virus, or just generally corrupted system files, but whatever the case, it was mostly non-functional.
Anyone who knows me will know just how much time I spend on my pc, and so will understand just how distressing this was.
So... I bought a nice big 750gig external hard drive, and with the computer in safe mode, backed up all of my doccuments and transferable software.
Next I disconnected all non-vital hardware, ie card readers, webcam and gfx cards, and did a full reinstall of windows.
This worked just fine, right up to the point that I tried to re-fit my gfx cards. I have 2... one rather better than the other, but neither would install for reasons that fail me.
What this meant was that while I could have a perfectly functional workhorse of a computer, games were now out of the question.
Oh well.
On the upside though, now that everything was backed up, and my OS installation was fairly minimal, I could take the risk of repartitioning the hard drive, and setting the whole thing up as a dual-boot system.
So now I have a nice clean installation of Windows XP on one partition, and a very funky, not to mention quirky, copy of Ubuntu Linux on the other.
I'm finding this Linux malarky quite fascinating, having never used it before.
It seems to me that modern Linux OS's have something of a split personality.
On the one hand, they can be quite intuitive and very clever, allowing you to automatically install software from a huge list of compatible programs, without even having to launch a browser to find it.
On the other hand, installing things like drivers, which don't appear to be installed automatically, is like going back in time, to at least MSDOS era computing.
Very very odd.
This external hard drive thing is a cool piece of kit.
I'd been planning to buy one some time soon anyway, so the pc failure just prompted me to get the thing a little sooner.
The thing is... it can be accessed by my PS3.
Why does this matter?
Because the PS3 can play mp4 and DIVX video.
So think about it.... PS3 plugged into a 32 inch TV, with a massive hard drive containging my entire DVD (and later, VHS) collection.
No more searching for the right disk or tape... it'll be all right there, available at the touch of a button, not to mention being viewable all round the house (and garden) from my PSP, via wifi streaming.
And there's more....
For Valentines day, Andrea and I bought each other presents.
I gave her a Swarovsky crystal bracelet, which she seems very pleased with.
What she gave me pleased me no end.
It's a watch, but not just any old watch. This watch is also an mp3 player, and better yet... a video player.
It comes with software to convert your typical digital video file into 128x128 SMV video files. These are fairly tiny... 35meg, compared to a 150meg avi, and with the screen being so tiny, you don't notice the lack of quality.
So, I can fit my entire collection of Invader Zim videos into it's 2gig storage capacity, still have room for a load of tunes, and have the whole lot strapped to my wrist wherever I go.
Yay!
Labels: computers, consoles, gadgets, video
Steve 8:11 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Having spent several days playing around with many of my newly retrieved from the loft consoles and computers, yesterday it was the turn of my Amiga 1200 tower system.Now there is a story behind this system, and it's quite a long one.
I originally bought the 1200 in 1993, and over the years, gradually expanded it, until its final configuration was was a tower based system with 68060 CPU, 32meg RAM, 5gig HD, CD re-writer, zorro II bus board, IOBlix comms card, Buddha and Catweasle card for HD and PC floppy compatibility.
You couldn't buy a machine like that in the shops, and compared to the Pentium based PCs that were around at the time, it was a real powerhouse.
I used the machine for graphics, music, word processing, games and the internet, on a daily basis, until 2000, when a catastrophic head crash killed the hard drive, and I discovered my OS backup CDs had been corrupted.
Having a pc sitting in the same room, I found I really couldn't be bothered to re-install the entire system from scratch, as with all the expansions involved, and messing around to make the CD drive work... it was just too much hassle. So it's just collected dust in the loft for the best part of 7 years.
So yesterday, I did what I couldn't be bothered to do 7 years ago, and reinstalled the entire Amiga OS 3.1, and grappled for many hours trying to figure out how to make the CD drive work.
The thing is, Amiga's of that time didn't have native CD support. When they were around, CD rom was still a very new technology, and so running one required additional drivers.
Now, finding the CD drivers wasn't the tricky bit.... what was hard was making the OS see the drive itself. The most common method of attaching a CD drive to an Amiga back then was to use a "SCSI Squirrel"... a pcmia card with a scsi interface. The 2nd most common method was to use an IDE interface. Naturally, I had to be flash and use the most powerful, and entirely uncommon method, and use a scsi interface that attached to my ultra expensive 68060 Blizzard accelerator card.
This was all well and good, back in the day, when I had the luxury of an instruction booklet. Do you think I still have the instructions today? I should coco.
After much googling, I didn't find the information I needed to get the job done, but I did see one or two snippets that jogged my memory.
What it came down to was installing the AmiCDFS CD file system... manually. The installer puts it onto your drive, but doesn't put the files in the places required. Thank god for readme's. Then I had to edit the CD mountfile. By default it thinks the CD drive is connected to "scsi.device"... in the case of my machine, I had to edit this to read "1230scsi.device".
Fingers crossed, one reboot, and it worked. Yay!
On the downside, it isn't just the scsi interface instructions that I'm missing. Turns out I no longer have the instructions to many of my games either. Now while that may not be catastrophic in terms of finding the game controls... it's a disaster when you consider that these instructions also contain the passwords used as copy protection by many of the games.
Bollocks!.
I guess when I get my finances sorted, I'll just buy the good ones again on ebay.
Fortunately though, I do have the manuals for two of my three absolute faves... Geoff Crammond's Formula One Grand Prix, and Knights Of The Sky.
Steve 5:27 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, April 06, 2007
Some video footage of my computer and games console collection.Labels: computers, consoles, video
Steve 1:24 PM [+] (0) comments
Work on the laminate floor was completed a few days ago, and shelf units constructed and promptly filled with consoles and computers.
So, what was once a rather chaotic bedroom is now...
..."The Games Room".
Labels: computers, consoles, photos
Steve 6:11 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, January 12, 2007
I finally got all the photos taken, and have uploaded the index page for my computer and console collection webpage.I never realised quite how many machines I had, till I photographed this little lot.
Steve 2:38 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
So today I was intending to start taking photographs of my retro computer and console collection to put on my website.Unfortunately, I had a little 'help' from two small furry animals.
Cat started helping by climbing up my legs and onto my shoulders... claws all the way. I figured this would be easilly sorted by shutting him in the shower room with some food for a while.
And so it was.
Trouble is, Milo, who doesn't have that climbing up people tendency, decided he was going to help too. His method was considerably less painful, but no less effective.
Kittens continually swiping at the legs of a camera tripod are quite wonderful if you have a liking for blurred photos, but not so good if you want crystal clear shots to put on a website.
I'll try again tomorrow, but this time, I'll do the shots downstairs in the living room.
It'll mean a lot more toing and froing with assorted consoles and computers, but provided I keep Max out of there, I should suffer from a lot less animal interference.
Labels: animals, cats, computers, consoles, photos
Steve 5:07 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
dRUNKOops.
Havent forgotten I need to blog our holiday, just havent been bothered.. lazy, and all that.
Been playing pong on an authentic 30 year old binatone tv game.
The collection grows. Got a ZX81 too.
The things you can find in small sleepy village fleamarkets in sussex is amazing.
Steve 3:06 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The audio hardware routing on this pc is an absolute bitch, it has to be said.Shared input and output channels just aren't very clever, if you ask me.
It's all very well if you wanna watch dvd movies with surround sound, but when you wanna plug in a stereo sound source other than a mic, it becomes a total nightmare, with all kinds of feedback problems, or software simply refusing to take a feed from the auxilliary inputs.
I discovered what a pain in the arse it is today, coz I picked up a cheap little record deck, with the intention of ripping all the best tracks from my old vinyl collection onto mp3.
For a while it looked like I wasn't gonna be able to do it, and this would've been a disaster, as I bought this pc specifically with the intention of using it to record my own music.
Eventually I managed to get Cubase to accept an input from the stereo line-in at the back, so all is not lost, but it makes something of a mockery of all the other fancy inputs scattered around the thing.
Labels: annoyed, computers, music
Steve 1:11 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, September 17, 2004
I have my new pc at long last :-)Sitting outside a busy shopping centre on a large box worth £800 while waiting for a taxi isn't my favourite way to spend the time, it has to be said. Anxious? You bet.
Anyway, once I'd got it home, moved the old amchine out of the way and got it all set up, I duly went about transferring and installing all the vital software like firewalls and virus checkers before geoing online and installing SP2.
It's a bit of a joke really that you can buy a brand new pc in the shops that simply isn't safe to take online without installing other software first. Ever since the advent of Blaster and other similar virus', you can't even log on without being at risk. Sure there are patches, and SP2 fixes all the (so far) known security risks, but since a brand new machine doesn't have those, they're still vulnerable. I can see a lot of people who aren't net savvy buying new machines, excitedly logging on for the first time, and finding themselves infected within minutes.
Anyway... the process of transferring stuff from my old machine continues.
I'm working my way through my emulator collection at the mo, which takes some time, being limited to moving everyting in no more than 64 meg chunks at a time using this usb storage widget.
As I'd hoped, the extra speed of the machine is really noticeable. A few emulated games that really rather chugged along before now go like a rocket. As for my amiga emulator... well... ever heard of a 670 mhz 68040 based amiga? LOL. The fastest 040 ever fitted in an amiga was only 25 mhz, and you could fry eggs on those.
Labels: computers
Steve 1:25 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, September 13, 2004
I ordered my new pc today.After a bit of umming and ahhing I settled on an Advent T9101. This has a 3.2ghz Pentium 4, 512meg ram, 200gig hard drive, DVD writer and 15" TFT monitor. I suspect the motherboard, onboard sound and gfx aren't gonna be anything great, but as a base machine, it's a very good starting point, and I can add other bits as and when I need more oomph.
Anyway... I pick it up on thursday.
Transferring stuff across from this laptop's gonna be a pain, coz the cd writer on here's died. Guess I'm gonna have to mess around with that 64 meg usb storage thingie. That'll be fun.
In other news... the antibiotics don't seem to have done a whole lot yet. I'd hoped for some improvement by now, but we'll see. I'm trying not to think too much about what the problem might be if it's not epididimytis, but can't help being a little worried.
Steve 9:18 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, August 28, 2004
I got round to installing Windoze Service Pack 2 today.Pleasingly, it didn't kill my laptop, but other than that, I can't say it's a big step forward. I guess it'd be good for people who don't know anything about security issues like firewalls, security updates, virus checking, popup blockers etc... as it has all of those built in or integrated in some way or another.
For someone who already has all of those bases covered (like me), unless there are hidden security patches hidden in there (which there probably are) it's not really that impressive. I'd sooner just download the individual patches and not bother with all the bells and whistles that serve no purpose.
On the plus side, it *has* stopped that annoying search bar from appearing on this blog, which google's popup stopper was unable to block, but I *still* have no java.
The Windoze Update site's changed a bit too, and not for the better in my opinion. For it to work at all, I had to allow a load of processes access to the net that I normally block.
I could see that causing nightmares for people who go with the new default setting of the windoze firewall (namely 'on'), coz if it's blocking those ports by default and they dont know how to allow access to those ports, they wont be able to get future updates.
Labels: computers
Steve 2:23 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, August 15, 2004
I'm not too impressed with this Microsoft Service Pack 1 for Windows. In fact, it's downright bloody stupid.I donwloaded it yesterday, and began the installation, but half way through it gave me an error alert saying it could not install because the pc's atapi driver was already in use and I should close down any programs using that driver.
Well duh! The atapi driver is for the hard drive, so unless I shut down windows or turn off the whole bloody computer, it's always gonna be in use.
Stupid.
Oh dear. This blog really is turning into a right old winge-fest.
It's not supposed to be that way.
Steve 2:36 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Argh!Stupid crappy Windows.
My pc had a barny a few hours ago and totally refused to connect to the net. It couldn't find any of my network connections... no dsl, no dialup, no nothing. Whenever I tried to go anywhere near the settings for these it simply locked up.
Drastic measures were called for as everything else I tried failed dismally, so I've just spent 4 or 5 hours doing a full windoze reinstall.
I backed up all the critical stuff I could remember onto my other partition, but god knows how much stuff I'll realise I needed and have lost forever.
Bollox!
Steve 9:16 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
If you're one of those people who doesn't install Microsoft security patches on a regular basis, you absolutely *must* install and run a firewall.There's a new worm virus called Sasser that spreads much like the Blaster virus. It doesnt require you to run any email attachments, or download itself... if you're online and unprotected, it can get you.
I've known there was somthing odd going down for a while coz I was getting scanned an abnormal ammount for a week or two... but my firewall kept them out. This was probably systems infected with Sasser tying to get into my pc to infect me too.
So, if your system starts to crash all of a sudden for no obvious reason, you're probably infected. No doubt there are removal tools out there, though I haven't looked.
Seriously though, if you haven't already, go to your IE tools menu and select windows update, and install all the critical updates (though I wouldnt personally recommend installing SP1, but thats just me), then get yourself a firewall just to be sure.
Labels: computers
Steve 5:18 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Seems like that new pc can't come too soon.The backlight on my laptop has played up once before, and now it's died altogether. The screen still works, but with no backlight, it's impossible to see what's on it, so I've had to hook up the crt monitor from my old pc again, and frankly it looks awful.
I've been checking out the desktop pcs at Dixons and there's some good ones in my price range, but I don't care much for the after sales support there and the staff in my local store are generally a bunch of blithering iadiots, always bickering among themselves, so I don't think I really wanna get one from there.
I'll go take a look in PC World and see what they've got, though to be honest, I've heard bad things about after sale support there too.
There's also the funky little pc shop in wolverton that makes up systems to order from scratch, which sounds like a good option, but it's one of those here today gone tomorrow kinda places and while I trust their ability, I don't trust them to still be there if things go wrong.
Finally there's The PC Shop... an amalgam of Tiny and Time. I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole... their reuptation is so bad.
Decisions decisions.
Oh, and before anyone says get one on mail order or online coz it's cheaper... no way. I want bricks and mortar, and local... so I can walk into the place and look them in the eye.
Labels: computers
Steve 2:10 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Okay... it seems to be working again.I dunno what went wrong, coz I had assorted harware failures left right and centre. Monitor, sound card, adsl modem all refued to work at one point or another.
A system restore seemed to fix things, but I'm still rather jittery about it.
Labels: computers
Steve 10:55 PM [+] (0) comments
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
My laptop's broken... or rather the monitor is. It just stopped working, mid mp3. No glitching, flickering or anything.
So I've hooked up an external monitor from my old pc, which is a pretty poor arrangement, but it's gonna have to do till I can get it fixed... and god I hope I can get it fixed, coz this was a grey import... never officially imported. (Obviously they didnt tell me that when I bought it.)
Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Steve 5:56 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, February 27, 2004
Okay, I thought I'd fixed it with a full reinstall, but was mistaken. What looked like line activity was mic activity, picking up sound from the speakers which were bypassing the line input/ouput.So from pissed off to relieved back to... not actually that pissed off.
I've had an idea.
The most important function of Cubase to me is the ability to mix audio tracks together... to multi layer them. Now, while I cant record these tracks in Cubase with this sound card, I can record them using other software, and then import them into Cubase for mixing and processing.
There'll likely be difficulties with timing when using real instruments, but if I inderstand things correctly, I can play a track from Cubase while recording simultaniously in my other software... so then I just import and sync up manually (I hope).
Labels: computers
Steve 11:00 PM [+] (0) comments
Today I finally picked up the piece of hardware I needed to start recording some new tunes. A Creative Labs USB Soundblaster card.
Nothing fancy... it just adds line in and line out sockets that are lacking on this laptop.
Plug it in, install the drivers, windows is happy and making noises... winamp is happy and making noises... everything is happy and making noises....
Except Steinberg Cubase SX.
Fuck! Bastard! Shitbag!
It can see the card. It accepts it as the card to be used for input and output. It does everything it's supposed to except bloody record or play.
Not impressed and not happy.
Steve 7:32 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, December 22, 2003
Ooooohhh!Nasty, nasty, devious virus writers.
Not only do they send shitty little programs to screw up your computer, but they send it attached to emails designed to scare the crap out of unsavvy users.
Check this out... I just recieved it...
"Ladies and Gentlemen,
Downloading of Movies, MP3s and Software is illegal and punishable by law.
We hereby inform you that your computer was scanned under the IP 195.120.34.59 .
The
contents of your computer were confiscated as an evidence, and you will be
indicated.
You get the charge in writing, in the next days.
In the Reference code: #12417, are all files, that we found on your computer.
The sender address of this mail was masked, to protect us against mail bombs.
- You get more detailed information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
- Department for "Illegal Internet Downloads", Room 7350
- 935 Pennsylvania Avenue
- Washington, DC 20535, USA
- (202) 324-3000"
Now with all the crap going around from the RIAA and now the European Union passing laws that will allow the same kinda thing here, some poor people are gonna fall for this.
The giveaways?
Most obvious was a virus attached to it.
The lousy english.
The fact that it refers to the FBI, but comes from an address in germany.
Biggest giveaway of all, and the reason I knew right from the getgo that this was bullshit... that's not and never has been my IP address.
What a bunch of jerks.
Labels: computers
Steve 12:43 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, October 20, 2003
While I'm in the mood to have a bit of a moan, I'm deeply unimpressed with the latest round of Microsoft security patches for Windows XP.Ever since installing said patches, my browser now refuses to find at least 50% of websites without multiple clicks on the refresh button. It would seem that Microsoft's idea of good internet security is to block all traffic, legitimate or otherwise.
Yeah... good one.
Steve 5:59 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Ah, technology... dontcha just love it?Sometimes techie toys go wrong for the most untechie of reasons.
Turns out the problem I was having was down to the cd resonating. Why was it doing that? Duh. The laptop's sat on a fold-up wooden chair, and wasn't entirely horizontal. A stack of coins placed under the feet at the rear of the laptop levelled it off and cds burn just fine now.
So... svcd movies. Are they worth the huge download time when you can get a highly compressed avi file of the same film in a fraction of the time? Hell yes!!! Very very nearly dvd quality... they stomp all over vhs, and as for vcd or avi.... no contest. Watching on a tv via an svcd compatible dvd player instead of pc monitor makes a big difference too, as the low definition screen acts as a great anti-aliaser... no jaggies, pixelation or blockyness anywhere.
I'm a happy chappy again :-)
Steve 3:56 PM [+] (0) comments
I'm deeply frustrated.
After spending all night downloading a multi disk movie file, my cd writer now refuses to burn the second and third disks. I've tried several times with different settings on the software and the error occurs at different points during the burn, so it's not corrupted data.
Just before it throws up the error, the drive starts making a slight clicking noise, as if it's struggling to focus the lazer onto the disk, and since the first disk burned okay... I'm guessing it may be an overheating issue.
I guess I'll just have to shut the thing down for a while to let it cool off and then try again.
It's gonna get expensive at this rate... 5 dead disks already :-(
Labels: computers
Steve 12:21 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, February 13, 2003
I learned an important lesson yesterday morning. Stay well clear of so called "warez" sites.After hunting all over the web for a usable MacOS hardfile, then resorting to KazaaLite, and all to no avail, I decided to try a dedicated warez search engine I know of. I know, it's naughty, but there you go.
Ever wondered where those sites get their files from? Let me tell you, it's not all cracked demos and security disabled copies of original disks. They're also getting their files directly from the pcs of users like you and me. How do I know this? On entering one of the sites, my virus checker went apeshit, screaming an alert at me. The site had uploaded a trojan called Download.Small onto my system. I didn't click on anything, download anything, or do anything other than enter the site, and "Bam!" I'm infected with a trojan that would, if I hadn't removed it immediately, have allowed hackers who're no-doubt attached to that site access to my pc.
Bastards!!!
Steve 3:59 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, January 23, 2003
I have a widget.No, seriously, I do.
Look, stop sniggering like that, just because I tell you I have a widget, your perverted little mind comes up with all kinds of silly ideas. I guess I'll just have to show you.
Look... stop giggling, damnit! It's nothing like that.
Here it is...
This 'thing' that looks rather like a bottle of typing correction fluid is in fact a solid state 64 Meg USB removable data storage... er... thing.
I first heard mention of these when Batgrl spotted one a few weeks ago and rather raved about it. Sounded like a great idea, and something I could certainly use to transfer a whole load of stuff with from my old tower system to my laptop. The trouble is, there just didn't seem to be any about in this country... at least, not without ordering online, which I never do. So anyway, I spotted this thing in a shop I generally tend to avoid, and decided bugger it... I want it, crappy shop or not, and bought the thing.
It's totally plug and play on XP, though I had to install drivers on Win 98, but it was pretty painless, and has already saved me much grief, transferring two websites, a bot, and some music software all in one go, instead of having to upload and then download via the net to get everything onto this system. The tower doesn't have a CD writer, and using floppies just wasn't viable, so the widget seemd like the best option. Needless to say, I'm a happy geeky chappy.
Steve 9:58 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, January 16, 2003
This is where I get all geeky and start ranting about file management software, so if that's not your thing, you may as well move on.Some of you may know that I'm a big fan of the Amiga computer, a wonderful machine that could've dominated the world of home computing and not left us all stuck with this windoze rubbish. Sadly, mismanagment by one Medhi Ali, a man with his head even further up his own arse than Bill Gates led the company to bankrupcy followed by ill fated buyout after ill fated buyout. Anyway... I'm getting further and further from the point here, so let me get back on track.
The Amiga had this program called Directory Opus, a file magaement utility so versatile you could basicly ignore the whole operating system and use it exclusively. It could read, view and edit pretty much any file you cared to mention, archive and unarchive in pretty much every format going, and copy or move stuff all all around your system without having to open a single window, and that's before we even start talking about its ftp capabilities.
So... a wonderful program, and as far as I was aware, destined to remain little more than a novelty on the Amiga emulator I sometimes run on this laptop. But wait... there's more.
I was in town this morning, and wanting something to read while munching my MacD's 1/4 pounder with cheese, I wandered into the local WH Smiths newsagent and perused the 5 billion or so pc magazines. You know how it goes, you pick them up, one after the other... boring... boring... boring... holy cow! What's this?!!! Staring back at me off the cover of PC Answers (or it would've been if it had eyes) was a cover disk featuring none other than a shiny new and extremely free copy of Directory Opus 6 for windoze. Oh happy day.
So I've been sat here for the last 1/2 hour playing with it, and trying to make it work in the same way my old copy of version 4 did. It's different, that being progress for you, but oh my, I love it.
Oh yeah... there was a copy of Paint Shop Pro 5 on the disk too... but that's boring. Who'd want to hear about that? ;-)
Labels: computers
Steve 3:01 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, October 30, 2002
My routine's somewhat dissrupted at the moment, as with the days being shorter, I visit my mum at her house now, instead of going into town. It's gonna take a couple of weeks to get used to that, and re-arrange my other activities, as I'd normally go to the bank, pay bills and whatever while in town. Still... it's no biggie.This laptop's being a little temperamental just lately. When I start it up, quite often the adsl doesn't seem to kick in... certain icons don't appear in the task bar, and then it crashes. After restarting, and doing an auto scandisk, it reboots and works correctly, but then when I shut down later, it doesn't actually shut down, so much as do a restart. Only after I do the `safely remove` thing on the usb adsl modem does it shut down. It's a fair bet that it's the adsl modem causing the problems, but I'm not at all sure what to do about it, as I can't do without it. It can't be doing the drive much good though. The odd thing is, this only seems to happen when I've had the system up non-stop for a couple of days. *shrugs* Windows sucks.
Labels: computers
Steve 5:15 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Here's a thing that made me laugh while in town today. When will they learn?At the mian bus stop area in the town centre, they have a computerised timetable display with touch screen controls. And guess what? Its Windoze 98... and more... it's crashed ;-)
The main control screen was stuck on the Windoze shutdown screen, while another....
was stuck on the blue screen of death. C Drive error.
Wanna catch a bus? Tough! Bill Gates says you have to walk.
Steve 5:23 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Argh!On the less than positive side, this laptop has become very unstable over the past few weeks.
I tried doing a system resotore, to just before the point when I installed the dsl modem, as this was round about the time things started going screwy For whetever reason though, windows was unable to restore, so stayed as it was. Damnit.
Anyway, I've uninstalled a number of programs that I thought may have been the culprits, to no avail. However... after the crash that just hit me, I'm starting to think the problem may be Trillian. I upgraded this at around the same time as I installed dsl, and apart from the webcam software, it's the only program I run ALL the time. Also, I heard it make the usual beepy noise it makes when someone comes online, just before my system locked up. That and the fact that Yahoo have a tendency to screw around with their messenger system in an attempt to prevent third party software providers from using their chat systems makes me think it may be the problem. We'll see. I'm going to keep it closed down for a couple of days and see if there's an improvement.
Labels: computers
Steve 8:30 PM [+] (0) comments
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