So, the Apple iPad is here. Yes, that means BHG must live in Europe, Japan or Australia, each of whom commenced sales of the new device this morning. Typically for the launch of an Apple device there was a carnival atmosphere outside most physical stores and plenty of excited customers met their postie at the door this morning, just in case he came bearing gifts in white boxes. In some instances he did not, but those isolated cases aside there are a number of people around the world charging up, plugging in and logging on through these glossy new machines. But what are they for? Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for category Technology
iPad Carnivale
May 28
Paddington Station
Feb 13
I took a trip in to Paddington today to collect my mother-in-law and her friend Tina. They had just arrived from the United States that very morning, although not by train. The vast majority of their journey was conducted under the auspices of North West and took place within a shapely aircraft produced by those wonderful people at Boeing. Specifically a Boeing 767 which, confusingly for many, is considerably smaller than a Boeing 747, a true jumbo jet if ever there was one.
My own travel was almost as easy as being flown. At least it was after I discovered that my mobile phone, a Sony Ericsson C903, includes an efficient route finding programme called, easily enough, Navigator. It was that discovery that brings me to my topic for today. Satellite Navigation systems or Sat Nav’s. Read the rest of this entry »
Photography in London
Jan 30
At a friends daughter’s birthday party I was introduced to Andrei Razumov. For a while I thought he was just another parent but when the usual preliminaries were out of the way he produced one of those nondescript black bags which always contains a gem of a camera or some other technological marvel. I hadn’t realised before, but the practised ease with which a professional handles their camera and equipment is readily apparent. I didn’t need to be told that Andrei was good at his craft. As soon as he started looking for angles and backgrounds I realised that this man clearly had the photographers eye for colour and composition too. Read the rest of this entry »
Microsoft Access 2003
Jan 21
I may have mentioned that my job revolves, in part, around producing queries in Access. There are all sorts of terms that get applied to what I do. Monitoring, Reporting, Data Management, Database Administration, Information Systems, Management Information. Many of these terms mean different things depending on who you are speaking with. So I wouldn’t worry about them. Read the rest of this entry »
I love to ride my bicycle
Jan 18
I cycled to work today. I guess that’s a pretty unremarkable thing really. It’s not so far for me to go, it’s not especially steep anywhere. There are even enough people who cycle along parts of the route to make a little social. For me, today, it felt assertive, manly. It was cold and it was the first time I had ridden to work since New Years. (Yes, that resolution isn’t going so well…) What’s that? You want to see my route? Well what about privacy and things like that? Read the rest of this entry »
Have you ever watched 24?
Jan 11
It’s an experience I can tell you that.
Season one was something else. Within our circle of friends it was remarkable. We got together and watched the episodes in small groups of three or four. I can’t remember if we split the cost of the boxed set or if one of us had already purchased it. Without the regular advertisements episodes are about 43 to 45 minutes long and they are awesome. Pure awesomeness. Read the rest of this entry »
This is just a quickie really. I made this teeny tiny abominable snowman video and wanted to share it with you all. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »
How Long Would It Be?
Jan 7
Warning folks, this post is a little morbid. My wife, an occasional reader of the Evening Standard, noticed an unattributed article about the late Casey Johnson. I’ve never heard of her before. Apparently that says a lot about me. If you think it does say a lot about me then you read gossip magazines and/or blogs and or sites and hold socialites in high and, perhaps, envious regard. I pass no judgement. Read the rest of this entry »
Kodak Zi8
Jan 3
This year my I got my wife a Kodak Zi8 as a combined Christmas and birthday present. As ever I did a fair amount of research before picking anything up and I have not been disappointed! This type of device has been brought into the mainstream by Flip who produced a remarkably cheap and simple video camera for everyday use. These devices are a little larger than a mobile phone. Which is a good thing really as the Iphone 3Gs represents the most serious competition out there. You certainly can’t take a call on a Kodak Zi8! Read the rest of this entry »
My Symptoms: Is this happening to you?
Wired internet and network access becomes very slow.
Wireless internet access remained at normal speed.
Multiple PCs/Mac experience same issues.
When I say slow, I mean ten times slower than dial-up!
The short answer: Replace the modem/router box.
The Ethernet ports in my router had failed. I replaced the router and was back to snappy internet and network performance in ten minutes. If your symptoms match mine, this could well be your problem. Because it might not be I would suggest that you read some more about what happened to me. Oh go on!
Because I run a vista machine at the moment I naturally made mistake number one. I googled for ‘vista very slow internet’. Don’t do that, whatever you do. If you do, and I did, then you will learn all about something called autotuning. Along the way you will learn to do things like run elevated command prompts, use the netsh command. You will read endless pages about TCP/IP protocols and then you will work out that there is in fact nothing wrong with your Vista after all.
Word of the day: truculent
–adjective
1. fierce; cruel; savagely brutal.
2. brutally harsh; vitriolic; scathing: his truculent criticism of her work.
3. aggressively hostile; belligerent.
