Category Archives: Technology

Science, Technology

Is high octane fuel worth the extra cost?

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Question came up when talking to my Dad, who uses premium petrol in his cars.

For the varietals available in KL (and in the UK), almost certainly no. Most of the guidance I found in various forums online indicate that you should use the grade recommended for your car (Quora, Yahoo Answers and beyond).

For my Dad’s car, a 4 year old Merc, the manual recommends “high” octane fuel – i.e. 91 grade or above. The ‘low’ octane fuel available here is 95, the high 97 (at a 25% additional cost premium), so the 95 should be fine for him. I think its a similar situation in the UK.

As I understand it the octane number indicates the fuel’s combustibility, with higher octane fuels being less ‘explosive.’ Net issue, if you use a lower octane number in an engine tuned for high octane fuel, you can throw the timing off as presumably the combustion takes place faster than it should. The reverse doesn’t sound like its as much of an issue, so it doesn’t hurt to use the high octane fuel – but it isn’t necessarily worth the money.

In short, use what’s recommended for your car!

Technology

Family technical support

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I’ve had a few tasks since being here, including:

1. Rebuilding an old PC (I love the speed of a fresh XP install in the morning)
2. Retrieving data off a failed hard drive
3. Sorting out the wireless networking on the new FiOS net connection they have here
4. Sorting out a networking solution for my Dad’s Skype enabled Panasonic Viera TV
5. Setting up the new Logitech HD camera and Vid we got my Dad for his birthday (they’re a client but I paid full – well, Amazon – price for a matched pair) so they can talk to their grandchild in HD when we’re back in the UK. I’d use Skype but their HD certification is not very well entrenched with the manufacturers yet.
6. Setting up for remote access etc., so I can help them when things go wrong when I’m not here
7. Patching the hell out of all their software (thank you FileHippo)

It’s all gone fairly smoothly. Two points to note – first, PC Expos absolutely SUCK in Malaysia. Rammed full of people, the one way system forces you to plough your way through a massive crowd for limited satisfaction. Incredibly badly designed thoroughfare that I’m sure violated every fire and health and safety regulation there is – if such things were enforced in Malaysia.

Second, Powerlink networking really is the absolute simplest way of getting a big house online! I actually bought the kit to connect the Viera TV, which didn’t come with built in wireless and requires a Netgear wireless adapter that no-one here stocks, but it could just as easily have been used as a range extender on a Wifi network (with a second AP) etc. Impressively simple stuff from the nice people at TP-Link, who I’d not heard of a few weeks ago but now seem well entrenched, both in the UK and here, as the budget networking solution of choice. With Linksys going Cisco-upmarket and 3Com doing the HP thing, I guess a few people had to take advantage at this end of the market.

Anyway, hopefully I’m done with fixing things (just need to figure out how to configure Viera-Skype), and can continue to focus on baby, family, my lovely wife and get started with the writing. And the fitness training. Crikey, I’m trying to fit a lot in!

Observational, Technology

Windows 7–ready for touch screen interface?

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In a word, no. I tried HP’s all-in-one touchscreen HD machine briefly today and whilst it is a stunningly put together piece of hardware – almost of Apple-esque proportions – the Windows7 UI is absolutely hopelessly adapted to touch. There’s little Touch specific UI, no friendly icon driven interface like the iPhone has, and doing anything with touch alone (with the exception of zooming into and out of stuff) is hopelessly fiddly.

HP & others – Apple has been slower on this stuff, but when they come in (and now that they have the AppStore on OSX it’s only a matter of time), they will be good. Don’t believe Microsoft’s bullshit marketing (‘To the cloud’ my ass, you’d be lucky to hit the browser bar with a finger), Windows 7 can’t do this by itself. Do what HTC did, skin the OS to a point of usefulness, and THEN you might find you have a sleeper success story on the cards.

But I doubt it. There’s a lot to do…

More of my thoughts on the future of human/machine interaction soon.

Technology

iPad 2–I’ll give it a miss

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I’m really hoping I stick to that. Even though it sounds like they’ve made some design (thinner, lighter!) and performance (dual core!) improvements, and it has cameras and HDMI, there’s not enough there to make me want to switch. Besides, I am unlikely to get more than £400 for my existing iPad on eBay (I did check…) which makes the upgrade officially unaffordable!

I’d rather have a (sigh) Macbook Pro/Macbook Air. Using my (otherwise very good) Dell Studio XPS’s mediocre touchpad has me missing the multitouch gestures of the Macbook I experienced on Tom and Chris’ machines.

Software, Technology

App request for Google

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Can Google please upgrade the Google Translate iPhone app to include OCR so it can do this, but just for plain text on images? I don’t need a video feature or AR capability, or the clever editing that provides the illusion the translated text is on the billboard, sign or whatever, but it’d be awesome if it OCR’ed the text, translated it, and spat out a plain text English (or whatever-language) version of the sign, bit of paper, etc.

I’ve mentioned the coolness of the OCR video translation app (at least as far as the demos go) before, but if you haven’t seen it, check it out. A step towards Star Trek’s universal translators!

Technology, Television

Micro Men

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I do love the BBC. It gets to make programmes that couldn’t possibly pass the muster, unless of course they were being pitched to Nick Cage (thanks to Kate for that).

Flicking through the channels whilst blogging this evening I came across the amusing Alexander Armstrong and the wonderful Martin Freeman as Clive Sinclair (of Sinclair Computers, the ZX Spectrum people) and Chris Curry (of Acorn Computers) respectively, in a dramatic retelling of the computer boom of the early 80s. Some wikipedia couchsurfing ensued so I could cross reference the history as it was going.

Fantastically British. Wonderfully sweet in its own way. Interesting for the tech geeks amongst us – I learned a bit of basic at primary school in Malaysia, and my brother had, back in the day, a ZX Spectrum complete with cassette tape games.

The epilogue, told in 8 bit green computer text tells the tragic end of the British computing boom, such as it was, with the sale of Sinclair to Olivetti and of Acorn to Amstrad, both for fractions of their peak value. Wonder what the likes of Tranquil PC have to say about that?

Clip below.

Software, Technology

Evernote-tastic

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I’m something of a productivity fiend. If something seems fiddly when I’m working on it, in real life or at a computer, I hunt for a simpler workaround, or hack, or shortcut, or whatever’s the appropriate shorthand for it. Hence being a big fan of the Lifehacker blog and Videojug.

I’m also a massive advocate of the cloud. Most of the day-to-day personal productivity tools I use live on the Internet in some way.

So really it’s a mystery that I’ve gone so long without Evernote, a sort of DropBox-like service for text and audio notes and pictures that syncs across iPhone, iPad and any number of PC or Mac endpoints. It took Chris showing it to me on his Macbook to get me thinking I needed it.

Having been resoundingly and repeatedly convinced of the inadequacy of the iOS WordPress, I’m now writing these blog posts on it using my foldaway bluetooth keyboard on the commute home. The posts will save locally into a text file which will sync to my other devices when I fire up Evernote on there. Wonderful.

Now, unlike Seinfeld, when I wake up with an idea in the middle of the night and scribble it down, I not only won’t have to worry about illegible handwriting and losing the punchline, but it’ll pop up on my desktop later on when I’ve all but forgotten I wrote it down in the first place.won’t have to worry about illegible handwriting and losing the punchline, but it’ll pop up on my desktop later on when I’ve all but forgotten I wrote it down in the first place.

The product, for those interested, is intuitive, designed for touch, and works seamlessly. A joy.

Technology

Curse you, Steve Jobs

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My friend Tom (aka Flashboy) has just bought a very lovely 11″ Macbook air which I am currently ogling (and typing this blog post on).

WANT.

Don’t need, not planning on buying, but seriously, this is one sleek piece of engineering. I still don’t want a Mac as a matter of principle, still like Windows 7, but am teetering on the edge now. This is absolutely beautiful, and the more my operating system moves to the web (and I become a Google/Dropbox head), the less the OS matters.

Damnit damnit damnit.

Technology

That Nokia/Microsoft story

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Yeah, this one. Feels like Schadenfreude in Google’s direction. Given Nokia’s persistence in developing a thousand different mobile form factors, why would you choose an OS that restricted you?

My guess? Nokia’s bitter that Android topped them out for market share last quarter. Two Turkeys make an Eagle. Heh.

Curious to hear what people think of WP7, and whether the addition of Nokia hardware is the thing that’s holding that platform back – I was scarred too badly by previous generations of Windows Phone / Windows Mobile / whatever it was called to go back there, am not sure Android is quite refined enough for me, and so sticking with the Faustian iPhone option for now.

Technology

Features I want to see in iOS5

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Dear Mr Jobs (and also FAO the nice folk at Google).

Five months into my iPhone 4 and a few days ahead of the release of iOS 4.2 (which I don’t imagine will fix any of this), here’s some things I’d like you to do in iOS 5.

1) Fix the on-screen notifications. One notification at a time only? With a multitasking phone with push notifications on dozens of apps? BORKED.
2) Swype. Android and Nokia do it for text input, and its pretty awesome.
3) Proper Gmail client. Y’know, again, like Android. Your threaded conversation is ok, but not great. Google, don’t be petty about the platform. Plenty of loyal Google users use iPhones, get over it!
4) Proper Gmaps client. Y’know, again, like Android… with turn-based Nav and other good features. As above to Google folks.
5) Pre-emptive dialling. This was the only thing I missed from Windows Mobile 6.x (and earlier) – where you typed in a number and it used pre-emptive entry to work out who you wanted from your address book. Much easier than searching for a name in the contacts…
6) A more dynamic home screen. This time its Windows Phone 7 that has stepped up its game.
7) Speed up Appstore browsing. It’s a little slow.

I’m happy for you to leave out Flash. It sucks, and the sooner the world realises that HTML5 is the way to do things, the better.

Well, that’s it from me for now. What do you think needs changing in iOS?