jamesclay, Author at Tech Stuff

June 14, 2009July 22, 2019

The EyeHome, it lives…

Back in October last year my EyeHome stopped working. I assumed has had happened before that the transformer had broken again.

What I did back then was ask Elgato and they replaced the transformer for me, however according to their website they can no longer provide replacements.

I was hoping to find a replacement for my EyeHome, but after having a good look around, trying even to use the PS3, in the end I decided that the only possible replacement was a Mac mini and even that was a compromise and not a real replacement.

I did try and find a replacement transformer, but though I thought I had found a potential supplier, it wasn’t clear which transformer I should buy for the EyeHome.

So for most of this year, the EyeHome was sat in the office and I waited paitently for Elgato to make a replacement…

Yesterday I started tidying up the office and I “found” the EyeHome and started to pack it into a box when I looked at the power supply input, noticed it said 5V and started to wonder…

The PSP power supply looked like it could fit…

It does fit…

It does power the EyeHome…

It lives!!!

June 10, 2009

Fifty Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

Fifty ways in which Twitter can be used to enhance and enrich learning in the classroom.

Some examples from the article…

5. Brainstorm. The ability to share ideas as the occur any time and any where creates an excellent opportunity for brainstorming on class topics.

16. Follow mentors. If professors or other key figures in your field of study are on Twitter, follow them to keep up with their research and activities.

So is Twitter just hype?

Research from people (who don’t use Twitter) seem to think so.

Micro-blogging service Twitter remains the preserve of a few, despite the hype surrounding it, according to research.

Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found.

Anyone who reads my e-Learning Stuff blog will know that I believe that Twitter is all about the coffee and the conversation. Yes there is hype, but for my e-learning community of practice it is working really well as a collaboration and conversational tool.

Steve Wheeler over on Learning with E’s has similar thoughts about the Harvard study.

No, I’m not convinced that this study (which is a survey of 300,000 users) is actually saying anything useful or positive. Some people don’t get Twitter and others only get it partially and use it in a limited manner. Potentially, Twitter is one of the most powerful social networking tools ever to have emerged from the so-called Web 2.0 – and I think it will stand the test of time. There is a large and growing body of tools that support Twitter, and already a vast amount of evidence to show that Twitter can be used inventively as a teaching and learning tool. It seems to me that from their tone, the Harvard researchers can be numbered amongst those people who simply ‘don’t get’ Twitter.

Though having suffered recently from some Twitter problems, I hope that Twitter will sort them out so that Twitter can survive the hype and continue to be a useful tool.

June 6, 2009

Slow T-Mobile

One of the “features” of my mobile phone contract with T-Mobile is that I have access to any T-Mobile Wifi Hotspot.

Yesterday at one of the services on the M5 I was taking a break and decided to catch up on e-mail using the T-Mobile Wifi Hotspot.

I was very disappointed with the speed of the connection, which was slow, intermittent and not very good.

If I had to pay as you go for that connection I would be asking for my money back…

Actually I have paid for it, maybe I should complain!

June 1, 2009

Pleased with the turbo.264 HD

So far I am pleased with my purchase of Elgato’s turbo.264 HD that I have been using to speed up H.264 encoding times.

Having edited some EyeTV recordings I was quite pleased by how fast the encoding was (and how it doesn’t impact significantly on the speed of the computer).

May 22, 2009

Elgato Video Capture

Having just purchased the turbo.264 HD from Elgato, checking their website I was interested to see a new product, called Video Capture.

Elgato Video Capture

Transfer video to your Mac from a VCR, DVR, camcorder, or any other analog video device as an iTunes-ready H.264 or MPEG-4 file. Elgato Video Capture’s easy-to-use software assists you through every step, from connecting an analog video source to recording the video on your Mac and choosing how you will watch and share it.

There is no easier way to transfer home video to your Mac to play in QuickTime, to sync with an iPod, iPhone or Apple TV, to edit in iMovie, or to upload to YouTube.

I have been looking for something like this from Elgato for some time. I have a couple of Pinnacle devices for capturing video, however either they capture without a preview which is fine for most things, but not all. Or it is Windows only and this means adding extra conversion time to use the captured footage with iMovie or similar.

I use to be able to do it with my original EyeTV device, however that did not capture at a sufficient quality, but this was a fair few years ago now.

So I am going to get myself one.

May 20, 2009

turbo.264 HD

I am a great fan of Elgato’s EyeTV and have been thinking for some time about buying their turbo.264 USB device to speed up the conversion and encoding of my recordings for use on the iPod touch or iPhone.

As I was near an Apple Store today I decided to pop in and see if they had one. Thought I found it and checked the price, wow, £139.95.

I know that buying retail can sometimes be a little more expensive, but the price seemed ridiculous, I had expected it to be around to £80-£100 mark.

Well, at least with the Apple Store with all their computers and free wifi I thought I would just recheck the Elgato website, and there on their website was the device for £139.95.

At this point I noticed the name, the turbo.264 HD read a little more and realised that this was not the turb0.264 I thought it was, but a new product, one which would also do HD. Released back in March I had missed the release.

turbo.264 HD

Are you frustrated by the amount of time it takes to get the video out of your new HD camcorder and into a watchable format?

Do you want to watch your videos and EyeTV recordings on your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV?

Do you wish it didn’t take so long for your EyeTV recordings to be ready for Wi-Fi Access?

Want to put your videos on YouTube and take advantage of their new HD features?

Do you own a Sony PSP® and need a way to export videos to it?

Are you a video professional and need an efficient and inexpensive way to compress your video for streaming or the web?

Yes?

Turbo.264 HD is right for you.

As well as speeding up my EyeTV recording conversions I can also use it for other video conversion. Shall be interesting to see how much faster it does work.

Initial tests seem to show that it does work faster.

May 18, 2009

So I need a fast graphics card to burn a DVD?

So there I was messing about with Windows 7 when I thought I would give the DVD burning a go. In the past on Windows PCs I have relied on third party applications such as Nero. Even on the Mac I don’t use the in-built burning tools and use Toast.

So I started DVD Maker and got the following error?

So I need a fast graphics card to burn a DVD?

Hmmm.

Not quite sure why I need a fast graphics card to burn a DVD.

I can imagine if the drive was too slow (or I had the wrong kind of disc) or my hard drive was not fast enough, however a graphics card which was too slow…

Why?

May 14, 2009

Can’t connect, won’t connect

Good article from Bill Thompson on wireless issues.

The BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, must be hoping that his neighbours don’t decide to have a larger family.

He recently spent ages setting up a high-speed wireless network (wi-fi) at home, documenting the whole tortuous process on the BBC Technology blog, but all his hard work could apparently be ruined by a single baby listener.

May 12, 2009

Windows 7

I have been running Windows 7 (build 7000) on my HP 2133 for a few weeks now and it has been running very smoothly with very few issues.

I ought to really get a 6 cell battery for the 2133 as the 3 cell battery is really insufficient for most needs, okay for around the house, but rubbish for taking the 2133 out for the day.

At least the camera works, which it didn’t in Suse, and it remembers my wireless network too.

April 20, 2009

BBC iPlayer to go HD

BBC’s iPlayer is to go HD.

The BBC’s iPlayer is to start offering high definition (HD) streams and downloads of some programmes. It will mean improved picture quality on streams to web browsers.