tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:38:26 +0000Things about computers, and things about the internet.http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/noreply@blogger.com (Steven)Blogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-1245311141621527356Tue, 05 Aug 2008 06:39:00 +00002008-08-05T07:44:01.638+01:00Some versions of the Media Center remote control allow you to learn remote codes for other devices (most usefully for a TV or monitor and amplifier). I've got three Media Center remotes, and only the first one that I got is programmable (labeled "model: 1039"). Deails.http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/08/windows-media-center-remote-learning.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-4723722505334375250Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:41:00 +00002008-08-05T07:36:42.134+01:00I recently did another upgrade install from XP. This time it was from a reasonably clean XP Media Center Edition (plus all of the current offerings from Windows Update). After the update to Vista there was a problem that I hadn't seen before: a 30 second delay during boot up. I opened the "Event Log" and looked in the Windows -> System section and saw that a service called the User Profile Hive http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/08/windows-xp-mce-to-vista-upgrade-30.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-7674222976753877588Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:24:00 +00002008-08-04T14:40:51.105+01:00Here are a set of light-weight tips for increasing Windows Vista performance: Windows Vista Performance and Tuning. It includes "get better hardware" ;-) A tip that I spotted in a related discussion was to clean up the Vista Service Pack 1 installer files, which got me 1 GB of RAM back: finish install windows vista sp1 clean junk fileshttp://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/08/free-extra-1gb-of-disk-space.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-4783756992287210966Sat, 14 Jun 2008 19:37:00 +00002008-06-14T21:42:29.538+01:00 I quite like Windows Vista; it's OK. I use the 64-bit "Ultimate" edition of Vista in preference to XP on my home machine, and it lets me use 6GB of RAM and the 4 CPU cores seem to chug along, and most things work mostly as I expect, which is about as good an experience as I ever hope for when using a computer. Yes, User Access Control boxes pop up, but I click them and get on with my life. Theyhttp://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/06/vista-help-file-annoyance.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-4151531046924959156Mon, 05 May 2008 08:42:00 +00002008-05-11T11:04:26.220+01:00I've been messing around up in my loft putting in a TV aerial to use for a computer that I have with a TV card in. I decided to be fancy and get a log periodic aerial (they look like the Imperial Star Destroyer from the beginning of Star Wars, which is nice, and I thought it might be useful to have a wide-band aerial at some point in the future. Unfortunately when it's in my loft it doesn't seem http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/05/if-i-ever-had-time-to-watch-tv.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-7736377131682674066Fri, 02 May 2008 21:08:00 +00002008-05-02T22:33:50.878+01:00I'm clearing out some old boxes and throwing stuff away instead of putting it in the loft. I'm not sure if I'm unhappy about what I'm throwing away, or what I decided to keep. Lots of old invoices and receipts are in the "burn" box. The earliest dabs.co.uk order that I spotted was from 1999. Lots of old install floppy disks are in the bin, and instructions for X-wing vs Tie Fighter (I never gothttp://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/05/oddly-depressing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-5533016506135952094Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:19:00 +00002008-05-02T08:16:25.011+01:00I've been up in the loft trying to point a TV aerial in the right direction. I assumed that putting a great big (cheap) aerial in the loft would be better than the (cheap) little set top thing I was using. I looked at where the TV installer man had pointed the one that we paid him to put up, and pointed it in the same direction. Disappointingly I still wasn't getting any picture at night time. http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/04/windows-tv-aerial-signal-strength.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-2432711493703897974Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:28:00 +00002008-04-19T23:23:56.275+01:00I want to buy a couple of new monitors. One will be used for a little bit of TV watching and PC work, the other for photo editing and PC work. I was going to get two the same, but it seems that it would be best to spend a bit extra on the one for the picture editing ... Monitors that are designed for video and gaming currently give fast response times (5ms "black to black" and 2ms "grey to grey"http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/04/choosing-monitor-for-photo-editing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-5814725012087742305Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:26:00 +00002008-04-06T18:58:24.888+01:00speaker mountsurround soundblatant advertI want new speakers and I need to be able to mount them on wall brackets (because stands are likely to get knocked over in my house, and speakers don't usually sound as good as then could on shelves). Even a small speaker can get quite heavy and some designs seem to be quite deep so they will lever themselves off the wall or bend a bracket that is too small, but most most of the big brackets lookhttp://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/04/speaker-bracket.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-3278822058584607171Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:56:00 +00002008-02-16T11:19:35.347ZScrewfix have 4 types of TV coax in their catelogue (not counting the same cable with black, brown or white sheath). The PF100 is the best one and is CAI-approved, it's not quite the most expensive, and the second best is not the cheapest! Even though they are sold as satellite cable, they are fine for TV. A simple graph shows differences between cable types, and more informed comment here.http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/02/which-tv-satellite-cable-to-buy-from.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-2243760942041990775Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:06:00 +00002008-01-30T09:24:27.846ZxpsvistapdfXPS (XML Paper Specification) files are a bit like PDF files, except not as popular or well supported, even in Microsoft's latest and greatest OS Vista for x64. I was just forced to create an XPS file as a "print out" of a web page (because I hadn't had a chance to install a PDF print driver yet). That was easy enough, but viewing XPS seemed far harder than it needed to be. By default the viewerhttp://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/01/view-xps-files-in-vista.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-3014784136682887318Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:19:00 +00002008-12-31T13:38:26.946ZvistaAHCIAdvanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) mode is a BIOS option in my computer for the SATA hard disk controller. It lets the OS use Native Command Queuing (NCQ/aka SATA mode) to reorder disk read or write requests to make the reading and writing more efficient, particularly if the disk is very busy. My BIOS has options IDE, RAID, or AHCI mode. RAID includes all of the ACHI features and Intel http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/01/enable-ahci-mode-after-installing.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-7232875562249059503Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:31:00 +00002008-01-29T08:56:44.646Z Why? (I've already decided I want some consumer version of Microsoft Windows on this computer!) Like installing any version of Vista (rather than XP or Windows Server), the reasons are mainly "worthy" items that include Even better security, although this includes the limitation of only allowing signed drivers to be installed, which might become painful. Much more memory can be used by both http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2008/01/windows-vista-x64-what-for.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-2796857503135128241Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:05:00 +00002008-01-29T08:53:58.098ZknoppixhushI've spent (wasted) a lot of time with a disappearing network connection this holiday. I have a (suprisingly expensive) computer from Hush Technologies that has been quietly reliable for most of the time that I've owned it. In the last few months I've collected a lot of gadgets that connect to my LAN and stream music or video. With perfectly bad timing the network on my PC suddenly started being http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/12/disappearing-yukon-marvell.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-8745345130267805235Thu, 20 Dec 2007 16:36:00 +00002007-12-21T10:04:45.489ZI'm always on the look out for gadgets that will help me justify to myself the time it took to pull Cat5e cable under my floor boards. These might help as it seems that Cat5e is good for more than just Ethernet data: All sorts of AV over Cat5 gadgets that use the cable like an enourmous SCART lead. TV aerial RF over Cat5e: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, and Spec Sheet. Video over Cat5e http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/12/everything-over-cat5.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-174178690249301765Sun, 25 Nov 2007 09:11:00 +00002007-11-29T08:33:11.355ZI have Windows Vista installed on a desktop machine which is connected to the internet via my ADSL router. I have also configured some dial-up connections on the machine, for testing and as a backup connection for my network. I don't want my machine to try to make a dialup connection by itself though, the default network route is the LAN, but recently I was being prompted by a dial-up network http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/11/avoid-annoying-dial-up-connection.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-5656636341431023080Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:38:00 +00002007-09-23T21:04:25.772+01:00I just realized that I had deleted a couple of photos from my telephone that I should have kept. In the days before the recycle bin, DOS provided the undelete command, but that doesn't seem to be part of Windows XP or Vista. It would have been quite tedious restoring all of the 100 or so other files so that I could look at them to find the one photo that I wanted to restore, but obviously there http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/09/whoops-memory-card-file-recovery.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-7235063967501418698Sun, 02 Sep 2007 21:02:00 +00002007-09-02T23:46:43.388+01:00This post leap frogs the two that were supposed to come first, but I want to save these links here instead of bookmarking them. Short summary: some simple software installs to make creating and playing back compressed copies of DVDs easier. Sorry, not all of the software is free. AnyDVD: This program removes annoyances from DVDs and CDs. It can make your computer a nicer way to play DVDs than http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/09/dvd-wherever.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-2388454993963593155Tue, 15 May 2007 06:31:00 +00002007-08-18T21:41:28.412+01:00vistaSomething that has got harder in Windows Vista ... The sound from my computer comes through a receiver (an amplifier with a built-in radio tuner). I've connected the computer to the tape loop of the receiver, and I leave the amplifier set to the radio input with "tape monitor" switched on. That means that the radio is coming in to the computer "line in" input from the amplifier tape output, and http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/05/switch-line-in-on-or-off-in-windows.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-6085580673793494123Sun, 06 May 2007 10:10:00 +00002007-05-06T16:00:34.451+01:00semacoden95There is an application called "Barcode Reader" installed on my new phone. It's in the Menu>Office folder by default. It turns out it can't tell you the price of a can of beans as you browse round the supermarket, but it is useful ... It reads "Semacodes", which are way of encoding little snippets of text, typically web addresses, in to a little block graphic that looks like this: That's great,http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/05/nokia-barcode-reader-useful-for_06.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-6924381146896419746Sat, 21 Apr 2007 10:08:00 +00002007-04-22T19:55:29.390+01:00photoshop elementsMy current obsession: Templates and tools to save me time. One time-sapping problem is importing photos from my cameras on to my PC, and then probably importing and grouping them in the PhotoShop Elements Organizer application. The main problem is that I want the pictures to be tidily organised in to folders on my hard drive, but I'm not organised enough to transfer and delete the files on the http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/04/photoshop-elements-5-photo-import.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-5044541166932035394Sun, 25 Mar 2007 16:21:00 +00002007-03-25T19:01:14.052+01:00I have PC Aquarium Deluxe version 3.0, but I noticed in town today that there is now a PC Aquarium Deluxe 4. I looked on the distributers web site, and although the English language site only offers version 3, the German site has version 4. I paid for and downloaded it. The installer was very broken and I had to randomly click several buttons without any clue what I was asking for! That's http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/03/more-fishy-simulation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-3493812941891506557Sun, 18 Mar 2007 21:21:00 +00002007-03-18T22:06:58.143ZMusicAEWiFi RadioI've had this for a few weeks now - it's an Acoustic Energy "WiFi Radio": Acoustic Energy are an outfit that I previously knew of for making large reasonably expensive loudspeakers. Apparently they also now see a future in small internet gadgets. The software and computer hardware inside is supplied by a company called Reciva, who promote similar gadgets from other manufacturers on their web http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/03/wifi-radio-streamed-audio-in-kitchen.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-7725135762034178722Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:20:00 +00002007-02-01T20:29:04.765ZMaybe you have a fancy media center type of computer, and want to show off the lovely slide show but the photos of your last beach holiday don't quite hold enough attention? Download these desktop sized pics from the Hubble Space telescope, press play, and then say "wow": http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/wallpaper/ It's a real lost opportunity that they haven't at least embedded thehttp://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/02/i-can-see-stars.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16943646.post-3693567925910204163Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:09:00 +00002007-01-09T21:23:50.563Z... or at least start to understand why you're not happy :-) Here is a video of Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor, talking about what sort of things (don't) make people happy. I think I've been cured since I first watched it. I just don't want stuff any more. Maybe that's why there are no cool gadgets here recently? Yeah right. Just no time to type. Whatever; watch the video, it's http://tenuouslink.net/blogs/gadgets/2007/01/this-will-make-you-happy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Steven)0