I started upgrading to WordPress 2.3, then my ftp client went beserk, then it was my birthday celebrations and I had, well, more fun things to do. We’re all back up and running now!
Category Archives: Technology
Highstreet vs. Online: a tale of broken technology
I have always been, and will continue to be an advocate of online shopping. I get most of my stuff from one site or another, love the concept of shopping comparison (t’is the Indian in me), but, yesterday, when my motherboard deep fried itself, I couldn’t wait for replacements to arrive.
So: the walk down Tottenham Court Road, and inspection of a few shops. The prospects didn’t seem good: everything was significantly more expensive than the online prices I was aware of, and none of them filled me with the confidence that they could put the pieces together I needed. Then I got to a shop called Yoyotech: they were friendly, helpful, professional, competent, and actually quite charming. I spent half the day in there for one reason or another (some of the parts in the first build they gave me ended up being faulty but they resolved it for me seamlessly) and I was really rather impressed. You can imagine the stress losing a PC would cause a Technophile like me…
But I’m all back up and running now, and grateful to Serge, Courtney, and even Brian the wandering pro poker player (see you at the Gutshot!). Even Microsoft’s Product Activation helpline was particularly helpful for Vista’s inevitable hissy fit. I’m now I’ve got a shiny, eco-friendly Core2Duo powering the beast…
For the geekily curious, my ‘control station’ is powered by an Intel E6600, 3GB of RAM, Nvidia 7950GT graphics with dual monitors, Audigy2, and about 700GB of delicious storage)
Blog tech update
Just installed and got Akismet working on the blog: spam is down about 90%. Amazing. I never felt the need for it because WordPress’ built-in spam filter was so effective, but its a definite time-saver.
This month has also seen the highest traffic ever on this blog – up to 3.8GB of traffic (about triple what I normally get), despite a bandwidth saving blog reskinning. I hope you’re all enjoying it!
I’ve also climbed up Google’s PageRank and broken the top 200,000 in Technorati.
I’m not sure why any of this matters, but it seems that when you have access to statistics about yourself, you start to find them compelling…
Testing new widget enabled theme
Tell me what you think! I am definitely not sure.
Thanks, Armand
Update: And we’re back. Well, what are experiments for?
I really don’t hate Apple this much…
…but did find the below, and Maddox’s rant (via Fake Steve), amusing:
Sorry, this is more geek humour. Less geeky stuff may follow. But not tonight…
iPhone on Windows Mobile
This is cool. I’m pretty sure that the guy who’s doing it is either Malaysian or Singaporean from the accent, but don’t know for sure as his website doesn’t have an ‘about me’ page (uncharacteristic for us egocentric internet inhabiting folk)… but its a very good piece of work and respect to the dude. What he doesn’t say is how much better the SmartPhone hardware is than the Apple hardware will be (EDGE… I mean, come on!). Really hope Apple doesn’t sue this website off the internet, those litigious b’stards…!
Via the Graun.
I Joost don’t know what to do with myself
So, first impressions of Joost.
It’s pretty. A very slick application, transparent, dissolving menus, simple, intuitive menu overlays and EPG.
The quality is ok. I guess not everyone can have 8-16 meg broadband to support HD content (the UK’s average is around 2 meg at the moment)… suspect this could come in time. On my 22″ monitor, its a little fuzzy. The TV content isn’t all the same size either; they could add VLC’s ‘crop’ function to make all the content as full screen as possible depending on the picture orientation. That’d be nice.
It’s a little jittery. For me, anyway. Despite my ludicrous broadband connection I found a couple of channels (GameStar and Green Day) had a couple of pauses during the segments of the programmes I was watching.
The content, is, erm, lacking. Don’t seem to be too many channels natively, and my limited surfing isn’t unveiling a lot at the moment. But there’s probably a way to access everything on YouTube or something, so I’m clearly missing something. And its a beta, anyway, so good chance more will come before a public launch. The search function is pretty good.
It’s pretty interactive. The ‘My Joost’ button will make watching random TV channels at home alone an oddly kind of social. Not really my thing, but, hey, I see the value. I love the random pop quiz questions that seem to be coming up around the music videos.
I already wish: there was an easier way to channel surf. That I could blog directly from Joost, embedding videos accordingly. That there was a way to ‘favourite’ videos (just found the ratings widget. And all the other widgets. Gosh this is good).
And that’s it for now. More to come if it occurs to me.
I got Joost, babe
My invite to the new net TV system from the Skype folk came through – yay! It’s installed and currently fighting with Vista (although a quick Google indicates there are no fundamental incompatibilities)… When I get it working you can expect reports.
Macbait
For various reasons, I didn’t get around to linking to this article from the Graun: why Charlie Booker hates Macs. I don’t know Charlie Booker, but I have a feeling he and I would get along.
I am now slightly nervous about being slammed by all the Mactards out there, especially having spent some time reading the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. The parody blogger is funny, but some of the commenters… are just scary.
NB: I don’t hate Macs or Apple on principle, just in practice. I just really, really hated using them when I’ve had to (was given a PowerBook G3 by an old employer which I took to OS X.3, and had to use a variety of Macs to publish the various papers/magazines I worked on as a student). They are pretty, though.
Server hacked
My server, 34sp.com, was hacked yesterday. Hopefully didn’t effect anyone. I’m also getting a ludicrous volume of comment spam, so if you leave a comment please be patient whilst I wade through X*nax to approve it.