Snow Sign!
It's snowing! It's also dark, so no chance to take a picture but if it's still there in the morning I'll see what I can do. According to the thermometer thingy on the garage it hasn't been above freezing today. That's more like it.
I shuffle you not
I'd hope by now that those who know me would say that I'll give an honest opinion on something when asked (and when not asked too (sorry)) and not to say something is fantastic just because I have one, so I have this to say on the iPod (stupid), the designer of the iPod (stupid) and, therefore, by extension, people who buy the iPod (stupid / unlucky). Why? Well, perhaps I was a bit harsh back when I said those things, but consider this:
You've got several thousand music tracks and only a certain amount of time to listen to them, you've got your favourites but you don't want to hear the same track over and over again, you want to listen to something new, but at the same time you want to select from a particular range of music (genre, for example) a list to be played, a playlist if you will. You want to play a random track from a playlist. Sorry, iPods can't do that. You tell me; Stupid, or not? Bear in mind that I'm talking about (I think) the sixth iPod variant here.
In my defence and that of other unsupecting iPod owners out there, who knew? I mean, who'd have thought that any sort of music player wouldn't have a half decent shuffle mode? I should say at this point that it is possible to play a random track from the entire library of those available but want kind of mood would you have to be in to want Handel -> Snoop Dogg -> Shola Ama?!
I realise that I'm in danger of generalising from my specific case; Believing that everyone listens to their iPod in the same way I do. The thing is, the only built-in way I can see of avoiding starting from scratch every time is to have no play lists and just have the whole collection laid out before you. Secondly, when you start looking around, lots of people (more than three, anyway) are having this problem.
The question now is, would I have changed my purchasing decision if I'd known about this sooner? Probably not, but that's only because the competition is so very weak:
Someone make a portable media player with a four inch screen that can play wma, mp3, aac, flac and ogg, that has an interface that doesn't need four thumbs and a degree in quantuum physics and that has a dock connector for connecting to a car / hi-fi / PC, stick wi-fi in there too, what the hell, it's Christmas and a 80GB hard drive. Oh, and that can be left charging without being a fire risk as Creatives Xen Xtra is (the instructions say not to leave it charging because there's a danger of over charging. Eh? Say what now?)
That turned into a bit of a rant didn't it? Still, right now my iPod is playing All Saints (begins with an 'A', you see) through my seperates stack while being controlled by the remote I got for Christmas (thanks Scott) and there's no other player that can do that.
There are supposedly work-arounds for the random playlist 'feature' so I'm going to take a look at those and I'll report back for posterity if I find anything that works.
I'm not paranoid
Last months
PC Plus magazine ran a letter from someone who was using Microsoft on-screen keyboard to avoid being monitored by key loggers, he reasoned that if he didn't use any keys there'd be no keys to log. I wrote an email to PC Plus saying that since Windows operates by moving messages around and the on-screen keyboard is trying to be a straight replacement for the real keyboard, not a security device, then it will create the same messages as the real thing, which, guess what, will be picked-up by the key logger. Doh!
Well, this months PC Plus dropped onto the doormat and I've had my letter published! Woohoo!
See, all that time with subclassing has finally paid off!
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas
Kiss My Ass
Kiss His Ass
Happy Honica
(Name the film)
Hmmm... Upgrades
I've been having trouble with my mouse lately, with it not correctly tracking as I move it. So I decided it was either the mouse, a Logitech MX700, or the mouse mat, an Everglide Giganta, which I have warn smooth in places. To try to identify the problem I put a peice of white paper on the mouse mat and used that as my mousing surface for a few days. That improved things so I decided to try sanding the surface of the mat (it's plastic) with rough sand paper to see if that made things any better (it's not working, so what's the worst that could happen?) Well, that improved things a bit not good enough. It was about this time that the mouse started flashing red, well, the LED on top did at least and that indicated that the batteries were getting low. Now, considering that the mouse in on its charger all night and should go seveeral days without a charge that suggested that the batteries weren't holding a charge. Great. So, I decided that it was time for a change: I've always liked the
Logitech MX1000 and ebuyer had a shiny black version in stock (normally they only come in a sort of satin blue). I should mention at this point that another nail in the MX700s coffin was that the satin silver finish was coming off both from where my fingers rest on the buttons and where the charging cradle rubs the back of the mouse while it's charging. So I was (am) hoping that the shiny finish will be longer wearing. What's so good about the MX1000 over the MX700? It's got a frickin' laser, it's got sideways scrolling, the application switch button (think one-button Alt-Tab) is by your thumb rather than under your palm like it is on the '700 (Logitech engineers must have weird hands; no palm, all fingers), it's got a frickin' laser (I like that), it's really fast and accurate and it wakes-up instantly from standby. It's also got a three-bar LED power meter which is good, but not essential (laser). Oh yea, and unlike the latest Logitech mice, it still has forward and back navigation buttons whereas the newer ones only have one button, an I like having forward and back easy to get to like that.
Right, that's the mouse, now for the mouse mat. A bit of research revealed... that there's no real concensus. So I looked for something hard wearing and came up with
this, an Icemat 2nd Edition in black. It's made of glass! It's big and smooth and hopefully will last for a long time. It also comes with a set of pre-cut 'skates' that attach to the pads on the bottom of the mouse to help it glide better. The MX1000 tracks perfectly on it.
Okay, I've got more stuff to cover, like iPod cases, speakers, lightscribe and Sky's new delivery system but that'll do for now.
Quiet PCs (Update)
Not everything went as planned with the quiet part upgrade:
I noticed that there was a high-pitched noise coming from somewhere in the PC which I tracked down, at six o'clock Friday evening, to one of the new fans. These things happen; a dodgy ball-bearing is all it takes and spinning at a couple of thousand RPM will soon show any flaws.
So I sent an email to
QuietPC.com asking how I go about returning the faulty fan for replacement and went off to get a coffee, expecting to hear back on Monday or perhaps Saturday if I was lucky with instructions on the returns process, but when I got back to my PC there was a notification of the impending dispatch of a replacement fan and a note advising me to throw out the faulty fan because of the difficulties with the post this time of year.
So the moral is, get quiet parts for your PC, even if you've already done so a few years ago because things improve, and when you do, buy them from QuietPC.com!
The top 10 weirdest USB drives ever
Quiet PCs
I've just upgraded my PCs power supply because my old power supply couldn't cope with the new graphics card I'm getting. So I went to
QuietPC and got myself and Elan Vital Greenerger SSM PSU, a set of the latest quiet fans (I already had quiet fans but thought there was room for improvement and fan technology moves on like anything else) and some vibration absorbing gaskets to mount the fans on. Now, this power supply (PSU) is a bit special because the single 120mm fan only runs when the PC is doing some hard work, otherwise it stays off, in case the benefit of that isn't obvious, I'll spell it out: No fan = No noise. Contrary to a recent review in PC Format, the cables are all wrapped in mesh and colour coded, with a dedicated graphics card power lead and four Serial ATA plugs while the molex (power for the big stuff like CD drives, hard drives) are an easy remove type. The cables aren't modular, which is to say you can't disconnect the ones that aren't needed, but the way the cables are arranged suits my PC just about right.
So, is it quiet? I've never heard anything like it.
Firefox Extension Update
Since I've been using Firefox 1,5 I've been waiting for some of the extensions to catch up with the new version and using the built-in extension updater to do it. Well, that seems to have been the wrong thing to do in the case of Adblock. The 'current' version that the updater gets doesn't work properly with Firefox 1.5, you need to remove it, restart Firefox and go to this page:
Adblock , then restart Firefox and your ad should be blocked just like the old days.
Here's another one in case you missed it,
Scot's Newsletter this month has an item on a new extension for Firefox that mimicks a feature of IE7.
Viamatic foXpose . I'm giving it a go now and I like it so far.
Here's one for the planner
SCIENCE FICTION SERIES: Doctor Who
Channel: BBC 1 West 101
Date: Sunday 25th December 2005
Time: 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM (starting in 16 days)
Duration: 1 hour.
The Christmas Invasion.
Cosmic adventures with the Gallifreyan Timelord, in a Christmas special starring David Tennant as the new Doctor. The Tardis falls to Earth on Christmas Eve, bringing the new Doctor home to Rose's family. But while his regeneration goes wrong, Santa-shaped assassins and deadly Christmas trees herald the approach of a terrible danger from the stars. The Sycorax are coming, and without the Doctor, the human race is helpless.
Starring: David Tennant, Billie Piper, Camille Coduri, Noel Clarke, Penelope Wilton
(Widescreen, Subtitles, Audio Described, 3 Star)
Excerpt taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from
http://www.getdigiguide.comCopyright GipsyMedia Ltd.
My own little world
Okay, so it's been pointed out to me (thanks Owen) that my blog doesn't have an easily accessible RSS feed button. This is true, unless you're using Firefox 1.5 like I am, in which case the RSS indicator lights up in the address bar without a problem. Anyway, like I said before, it's not about me, thanks again Owen for reminding me of that, so now there's an RSS button on the sort of middle right that will let you get the site feed if you aren't using Firefox 1.5 (though why on earth that might be, I can't imagine). ;-)
Oh yeah, and one more insignificant tweak is that I've replaced the button Alt tags with Title tags. Just standing up for the Standards. [Edit] Or not: Replacing the alt tags wasn't the way to go (thanks H) so I've now got Alt and Title tags.
Before anyone asks...
If you're seeing a UK2.net banner at the top of the page, it should be disappearing just as soon as they update the service. If you don't see a banner, disregard this message.
One for all you XP Flickr users
I just found this; it integrates Flickr into the XP picture upload wizard. I like it!
Upload to Flickr via Windows XP Explorer
iPod don't scratch? My ar$e
Well, I've had my iPod video for about... let's see... five days, and the surface already has light scratches on it. It's nothing serious but, I take about as much care with these things as is possible to do while waiting for my iPod gimp suit from Hong Kong so you'll understand that I'm unimpressed.
On the other hand, I can't not use it while I wait for the case to arrive because this iPod is great. Seriously. I've put off getting an iPod since they first came out because they're too (pick one): much of a fashion accessory, common, low quality for music playback quality, expensive, etc. Not to mention, they're Apple, which is too... and so on. Anyway, now I've taken the plunge with the 5G because my music collection is too big for practically any other MP3 player on the market (AFAIK), so I'm getting the universal dock, the dock remote (both for Christmas, isn't it great to give?), the AV cable and a
car adaptor from
ebuyer which makes the iPod appear as a CD changer.
How good is it? Well, my gym has the most useless television/music setup going (it's a hard life, eh?) so let me paint this picture for you of my time there this evening: I started off going through my video podcasts and an Aeon Flux trailer, and then moved on to the audio podcasts with plenty of time to look around, finishing-up before /. review had ended, so I pause the track and go get changed. When I get to the car I plug the iPod in and it picks up where it left off with the /. review, pausing to let the traffic news through.
That's the good part. The process of getting my music library in a fit state for use is another post entirely.
New Direction
I still can't face making my own site (sorry Owen), so I've decided to go down the blog route for now. I've picked one of the standard templates and I'm going to tweak it as I go.
The purpose is still the same; answer questions I get asked a lot and tell people how I get on with stuff. Remember; the answer is on my web site, if it's not here, you must have misunderstood your question...
What do you think so far?
