Computers

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13 July 2008: The Pit

Anyone following my microblog updates yesterday may have noticed a certain anger with the trauma centre that is iTunes. I’ve never been a huge fan of iTunes (bloated, slow, klunky), but after yesterday I now hate, loathe and despise it.

17 May 2008: Installing Linux on an elderly laptop

Windows was slow, and whilst I felt that re-installing Windows XP might help, Muffin is only a 900Mhz Celeron with 384meg of RAM and a 20Gb hard drive. And I don’t like Windows (although XP is far better than Vista) - I’m a Linux user and have been for years. And it was time for Muffin to get a conversion.

23 June 2007: Feisty Upgrade

As anyone who has read these pages before, upgrading Linux since the arrival of my new PC last year, hasn’t always been smooth.

18 March 2007: Broadband going slow

Over the last few weeks, my broadband connection has been a bit slow.

31 January 2007: BBC’s iPlayer to go beyond Microsoft XP?

As a GNU/Linux user myself, the thought of the BBC’s iPlayer being Windows XP only, wasn’t one I particularly relished. So I was particularly interested in the reports that the BBC Trust have told the BBC management that iPlayer must take a more platform agnostic approach.

10 January 2007: Wired for Sound

So here’s the story with getting the sound working again on my new Ubuntu Edgy Eft setup.

8 January 2007: It’s been six months. Time to moan and winge about upgrading Linux again

I’ve just been reminded why I tend not to bother upgrading my Linux setup very often. It generally causes more headaches than benefits…

26 June 2006: Sound, Oh Lovely Sound!

Well I finally have persuaded Ubuntu Dapper to give me sound. After delving around in the depths of the Ubuntu forums, I finally found a thread where someone had realised the issue was a faulty sound module in the Ubuntu default kernels. One roll your own kernel later, and here I am with sound! As I type, I’m blasting out some Sigur Rós in celebration!

19 June 2006: Dapper Dodginess

Well since by last post about going to Ubuntu Dapper things have changed.

8 June 2006: Ubuntu Goes Dapper

Last night I left the computer ugrading itself up to the latest version of Ubuntu. Okay I didn’t quite leave it to do everything - actually I had to sort it out a few times in the middle of the night, but that’s only because I was checking it whilst I was struggling to sleep due to the heat.

16 April 2006: User Experience

Earlier in the week, I spent an evening trying to get my Hauppage PVR-150 to work under Linux. It’s no easy task, taking me a couple of hours, and even now it’s not exactly east. For starters, I’m only able to watch TV via Mplayer, whilst using a command line app to change channel.

5 February 2006: RTFM?

Sometimes I just wonder about the quality of documentation from the world of open source. Take this question from the MPlayer FAQ…

4 February 2006: Comedy Editing

Since getting my new PC, I’ve been taking stock and reviewing some of the stuff I’ve got on my hard drive - which is quite a lot actually. Old websites, copies of letters, and a bucket load of WAV files of goodness knows what. But most of all, I’ve been trawling through the several gigs worth of radio comedies that I’ve recorded from BBC7 and BBC Radio 4 over the last few years, and still haven’t managed to listen to yet.

28 January 2006: No Windows CD

What really annoys me about new computers is when they don’t come with a Windows CD. Yes, okay, I use Linux, but having a Windows setup on my machine is occassionally useful, so I’d prefer to have a copy of it just in case anything ever goes wrong with the machine. Merely being able to “repair” from the hard drive is no good if your hard drive gets trashed!

22 January 2006: What’s In A Name?

Well here we are. The new PC is up and running and I’m in the slowish process of migrating stuff off the old one and onto the new. More importantly, as is the *nix way, the new PC has finally been christened.

18 January 2006: Walsh Western Hopelessness (part 2)

I’d like to say I got a coherent excuse for not getting my PC delivered, but whoeever it was that I spoke to at the “delightful” Walsh Western had the worlds worst phone line possible, and about the only coherent thing I got out of the conversation was a question about whether I have a brown door. Quite why, who knows, cos every time I tried to get anything useful, I ended up on hold.

17 January 2006: Non-Delivery

Well it’s 21:42 and still no PC.

8 January 2006: abcde

Every now and then, you come across a computer programme that really makes a difference to your life - that really makes life easier and is worthy of being hailed. So stand up and say hello to abcde - a better CD encoder.

5 December 2005: Tours in BASIC and Python

The other week we went out for a walk with two friends, Jane and Jacko (who aren’t a couple - it’s just impossible to write two names without making it sound like they are) in Kent, and happened to pass by Lullingstone Roman Villa. Now looked after by English Heritage, the villa itself is inside a quite horrible green corrugated iron building. We didn’t go in, but I couldn’t help but spot the sign outside…

13 November 2005: Grr, Computer, Grr

Well that’s it. The answer is clear. I’m buying a new PC.

30 October 2005: Ubuntu Upgrade

I can see it now. In forty years time, little children will be running up to us saying "Daddy, daddy! Tell us again about the old days when to upgrade your computer operating system, you had to wipe the whole thing and start everything all over again". And I’ll laugh and go, "Well little ones, sit down and I’ll tell you all about it…".

18 August 2005: Etc Etc

This post will only mean something if you know anything about *nix operating systems. If you’re not that person, this will be meaningless.

11 July 2005: Grr Mandriva 2

I gave up on Red Hat some time after because I’d updated my copy and everything went wrong. Nothing worked properly - it was a mess. I went onto Mandrake. And it was great.

5 July 2005: Grr Mandriva

It has just taken me thirty five minutes to log into my PC this evening. For those thirty five minutes, the X server just refused to boot up. Why, I am at a loss to know. The graphical login page just returned me to itself.

23 June 2005: Mandriva

Funny isn’t it that you spend more time preparing to upgrade your operating system, then you do actually upgrading your operating system.

16 June 2005: Defrag

There was a time when I used to rifle through my Windows looking for redundant .ini files, or unnecessary log files. Anything to give my hard drive some more space. And I’d diligently defrag it once a month to get that perfomance boost.

24 January 2005: Crucial

My PC’s been getting a little slow in it’s old age so I thought I’d treble its RAM to 384Mb. I’ve never used Crucial before, but they are often raved about, so thought I’d give them ago. And it was a very pleasing experience.

5 January 2005: File Under Pointless Reminiscing

Had to use a floppy disk this evening.

8 November 2004: End Of A Cable

Computers have played a big part in my life - even giving me a career. And over those years I’ve had my fair share of computer equipment. And a lot of it still remains. In a box. A big box. Until tonight.

1 October 2004: Flu, Chicken Soup and ADSL

Well I guess Chicken Soup can’t solve every problem which is why I spent most of yesterday and part of today, in bed with flu.

19 May 2004: Sasser Where Art Thou?

Okay, I’m confused now. Certainly it looked like I had the Sasser virus on Muffin the Wonder Laptop…

18 May 2004: Sasser and Comet

How depressing. I connect the Windows XP laptop to the internet for the first time in 6 months and bamm. Sasser virus.

23 December 2003: Computerised Mayhem.

Computers are wonderful things. Until they go wrong.

16 December 2003: Always Backup Regularly.

A tale of woe.

24 November 2003: The Day The Network Died.

I hate feeling unproductive at work, and yet for seemingly the third working day running, that’s exactly how I feel.

5 November 2003: Visio Dizzero.

I feel sometimes that my entire working career has been leading up to the day that I can sit at my computer and do flow charts and process diagrams.

2 October 2003: The Death of the Technical

Today I struggled with some HTML. Does this set a worrying path to technical oblivion?

27 August 2003: Ogg Streaming

Ogg streaming came to Virgin, The Groove and Liquid in June which is fantastic news!

8 July 2003: Software development is like a game of Kerplunk.

Why building and developing software is like a game of Kerplunk.

26 February 2003: The Wonderful World of Upgrading Your PC.

Upgrading your PC is fun. Oh yes. Especially when it only all starts to work at a random point in time for no apparent reason.

4 February 2003: Email Filtering for Beginners

100 emails in 3 days from a pesky virus means a trip to email filtering hell. Oh how I love computers…

13 October 2002: Computers. Grr.

The trials and torments of installing an operating system which doesn’t do what you want it to.

20 August 2002: Transport Tycoon

Will someone save me from this wonderfully addictive computer game?

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