Posts

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Now why isn’t it working…

I have been tidying up my office at home, and moving the desk around.

I took the opportunity to unplug everything from the iMac in order to clean the power cables of all the external drives I have – it’s incredible how dusty they get stuck behind the Mac and the desk.

Having moved everything off the desk and moved the desk I put everything back.

Problem, the (somewhat irritating) blue light on my external LaCie DVD burner wasn’t on. Checked  the powerstrip (I knew I had plugged it in), checked that the power supply was attached, even checked the firewire cables.

Hmmm.

Okay lets unplug all the other firewire devices; I have three firewire devices daisy-chained together, the DVD burner, an EyeTV 410 and a LaCie external hard drive.

So with just the burner attached, still no luck, wouldn’t even appear in System Profiler.

Had I broken it?

Was there a secret on off switch?

Annoyed, you bet!

Okay maybe it’s a duff socket on the powerstrip, lets change that over…

What’s that…

Ah!

The plug was in the socket, but was not all the way in.

Plug it in, okay so now it works!

Doh.

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Olympus E-3 Review

Digital Photography Review has posted a review of the Olympus E-3 EVOLT and the reviewer was very positive about the camera, but was less sure if people would switch.

To start with there’s no doubt that the E-3 is, without a shadow of a doubt the best Four-Thirds camera ever made and a more than worthy (if a little tardy) successor to the original E-1. It offers users of Olympus ‘mid range’ SLRs an affordable way to upgrade to a faster, even more customizable camera with a pro-grade weatherproof body and a significantly bigger, brighter viewfinder. But does it offer enough to tempt users of other systems over to the Four-Thirds camp? The answer to that question is far less clear-cut.

I really like the Digital Photography Reviews as they are so thorough including sample and comparative shots, if you want to get a camera, I would check the review on Digital Photography Review first before anywhere else.

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Airport Expressions

So there was me thinking my Airport woes were over having installed an Airport Express which had been working fine.

Today having spent the day out, found despite a strong green light the Airport network was nowhere to be seen.

I could see the Airport Express in the Airport Utility, that’s because it’s connected to my network via cable and I was using my 802.11n network, so I through the Utility rebooted the Airport Express, however though this did not seem to solve the problem.

In the end I power cycled the Airport Express.

I am hoping that this is not going to go the way of my Airport Extreme, reliability of my wireless network is essential I don’t want to be constantly rebooting it.

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BBC on iTunes

Eventually we can now get BBC shows on iTunes.

The BBC reports

BBC shows including Life on Mars and Little Britain have been made available to download from digital store iTunes.

Some see this as unfair as we have to pay for these programmes and we have already paid for them in one way via our licence fee.

I don’t agree with this, I see BBC shows on iTunes in the same way that you can purchase BBC shows on DVD from Amazon.

Those who complain or are unhappy about BBC shows on iTunes ought to also complain about BBC shows on DVD been sold by Amazon or WHSmith!

Personally I am pleased to see that if I want to I can purchase BBC shows for my iPod, particularly hoping that Hustle season one is available or will be available soon.

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Make mine an Americano…

Imagine going to Starbucks having already ordered your drink from your iPhone?

Cafe

Engadget reports on an application for the iPhone which allows you to place an order for a drink so it’s ready when you get there.

Quickorder, as you can probably imagine, would enable iPod touch users to swing by their local Starbucks, order up their favorite drink and avoid a good deal of that always questionable human interaction.

Just demonstrates how useful/useless an application for a mobile device can be.

Photo source.

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MacBook Pro Airport issue resolved, possibly…

I think I may have resolved my MacBook Pro Airport re-connection issues.

I ensured that Airport is at the top of the network configurations and this seems to have solved my re-connection issue when running a pure 802.11n wireless network.

I find it strange that something as simple as moving a network configuration to the top should solve this issue with an 802.11n network. However it is not an issue when running in b/g compatible mode!

Well it’s working for me now.

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MacBook Pro Airport Issues Continue…

Since I upgraded my Airport Extreme network to a pure WPA2 802.11n 5GHz wireless network, my MacBook Pro has consistently failed to re-connect to the network after waking from sleep.

It does this in both 10.4.10 and 11.5.1 and when connected to an Airport Express running 802.11g WPA/WPA2 no problems, will re-connect every time.

My iMac which is connected to the 802.11n network does not have this issue.

If I move back to 802.11n/b/g on the 2.4GHz radio mode the problem disppears.

I have followed the advice given by Apple here and another piece of advice which  said ensure the Airport is at the top of the network configurations, but alas no luck.

Once or twice the MacBook Pro has reconnected, but 99% of the time no re-connection and the only solution is to either join the 802.11g network or re-boot.

Annoying.

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How much!

So I decided I needed a 2GB Micro SD card for my new LG Viewty.

Now I know I can buy one for about £4 from Amazon but I wanted a card for a trip I was going on, so popped to my local shopping mall to get one.

Now I know that there was no way I was going to get one for £4 off the high street, so I was willing to pay up to about £12 for one, thinking I am getting ripped off, but at least I will have the card in time.

Now what I couldn’t believe was how much some high street retailers can get away with charging.

O2 was the “cheapest” place at £19, but generally most places were charging £30 and one store, Zavvi had the cheek to be charging £40!

£40!

How much!

Guess who went without and is now going to go to Amazon.

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It’s arrived…

My new LG Viewty did arrive on Saturday, it was charged, and after charging I checked that I could make calls, access the internet and send texts.

The touch screen is nowhere near as good as the iPod touch (therefore I guess nowhere near as good as the iPhone).

The 5MP images do look good though.

One possible downside is that it only supports  a 2GB Micro SD card, I was hoping to get an 8GB card for it, now I might need to get a few 2GB cards and they’re not easy to swap you have to remove the battery to get to the card slot! No chance of hot-swapping cards on this phone.

Then I put it back in the box and you have to give LG credit, it was beautifully packed together with individual boxes for the earphones, power adapter and USB cable.

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Silver or Black

After my personal mobile phone gave up the ghost I decided it was time to get a new phone. I have a Nokia N73 through work though so haven’t been entirely phoneless. But I need a phone for personal use.

I discounted the iPhone almost immediately, in the main as a) the phone was expensive at £269; b) the phone plans were expensive with the cheapest one at £35 per month; c) you can’t use the iPhone as a Bluetooth modem which means that I couldn’t use it with my laptop; and finally d) it uses EDGE and not 3G which means that even if I could use it as a modem it would be very slow and internet on the phone would be slow.

I quite like the Nokia N73, but I have one of those and I don’t really want two!

I did consider the N95, but with rumours of an N96 and wanting something with a slightly better battery life, I decided to go with a different phone.

After much thought and looking, I decided to go with the LG Viewty. I went with T-Mobile as they are one of the few UK mobile phone service providers which allow you to use the phone as a modem with your laptop and I wanted that over a separate USB 3G Modem.

Alas when I went into the shop they were out of stock. So I ordered online, only to make a mistake with my bank details so when they made the charge to the card it was refused! After phoning and correcting the mistake I found out that the phone was now out of stock, but would be back in stock soon.

Ten days later I get an e-mail saying that the black one would be back in stock soon, but the silver model was available now.

Silver, I didn’t know it was available in silver.

A quick internet search revealed that the silver model was newer, hmm, choices, silver now or black later.

Well after thinking about it for a couple of minutes I decided to go with the silver model. Phoned T-Mobile to let them know, when they told me…

“the black one is back in stock”

Aaarrrgh, silver or black, silver or black.

Decisions.

Choices.

In the end I decided with the silver one, as it was newer.

Hopefully it may arrive today, but it should be here by Monday. Only problem I have is I will need to get another memory card format as it uses Micro SD whereas my other phones have or use Mini SD or Memory Stick Duo.