I've moved to a new site

Elk's blog

Two kickass keyboards

I've been looking at some various keyboards, seeing as my British MS Office keyboard has many buttons I don't use and simply doesn't fit into my desk well, I found two nice up-and-comers.
The first is possibly the best keyboard for any media centre, it is called the "Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition." (Microsoft with their forever catchy names) The second is about the most amazing thing I've seen it is the Optimus keyboard I'm a little skeptical about if this keyboard will ever see the light of day as OLEDs are pretty expensive if I remember correctly, but one can dream.









Oh, in other happenings at Microsoft besides the recent Vista release (which won't load my SATA drivers) is Media Centre Emerald Microsoft digital Photography and their more bizarre Escape from Yesterworld site

Finding the best apps

I've been still playing around with Linux this weekend. Geez it took me about a hour to unlock 1280x1024 as I had to manually edit a file and find out my monitors frequency ranges! But after that I'm trying to find the best mail client. It seems most people use Thunderbird, I was kinda tempted to go with Opera's built in client, and I'd also used evolution in the past but ended up going with kmail, it's just so much faster and really seems to simply work well.
But the great browser debate, firefox, kongueror, opera... Which one to pick.
Browser Speed test this quickly answered my questions, Konqueror for compatibility, else it's Opera all the way

Bye Fedora--Hello Ubuntu!

Well I ditched Fedora yesterday after still not fixing the error I mentioed a few weeks ago, although I hadn't given it a lot of time so I eventually went to Ubuntu.
Eveything turned out pretty well, it's very striped down but it comes with what you need to get the packages you want, it didn't come with KDE, or even a C compiler! But now I've got all that installed, plus SuperKaramba, Opera and Samba and things are clicking along nicely... Finally!

Linuxness

I was actually looking for a "I LOVE WINDOWS!" T-shirt but came across this image instead. I had to laugh and I really know some people that would have their kids wear this. :)



Also I decided to start using Linux again since I have a fairly good spec machine around and a huge desk but after building a Fedora Core 4 box and getting it up and running in no time at all I was reminedd why Linux really frustrates me... Compiling...
Trying to get things to work and the feeling of sucess when it does is the main draw of Linux, but this just gets frustrateing, it seems my success rate with non RPM installs is very low, and with this new machine it's 0%. This new box just won't seem to compile anything without a very strange error....

/usr/lib/qt-3.3/include/private/qucom_p.h:69: warning: ‘struct QUBuffer’ has virtual functions but non-virtual destructor

Maybe I shouldn't be using Linux, or perhaps it's just a new distribution. But I shouldn't bash Linux so hard...
Linux bashing

Openly Linux using people often face extreme prejudice and discrimination from co-workers and IT departments but say that this bigotry must be confronted.

I had to laugh! :D

Spyware, Spyware

 

Wow, it really is getting every ware, this blasted Aurora spy ware seems to be one of the worst of the lot, and is one of the few I've had to really work hard to remove. Even trying some Tricks in
safe mode didn't kill it. It seems the key is to kill 'nail.exe' I'll be trying this tomorrow as I already know a couple of people infected by this. The disclaimer for the Aurora toolbar is crazy!

"You further represent to BetterInternet that BetterInternet may store a cookie, computer file or other unique identifier on your computer to identify you and automatically repair or reinstall the Software if any third party application attempts to delete, disable or modify the Software. BetterInternet may terminate this Agreement or your right to continue to use the Software at any time.

You agree that you will not initiate, permit, authorize or assist any third party or application to remove the Software from your computer, or disrupt its operation or the operation of any other user. You agree that removal of the Software from your computer will only be performed by you pursuant to the instructions set forth herein."

It's a long EULA, such is any. I can't believe companies get away with this, the sooner they make it illegal to create such 'programs' the better, I just hope they can draw a good line of what is malware and what isn't

It all comes from abetterinternet.com but it seems the 'official' removal tool is at mypctuneup.com. You know... rather than doing the
outrageous idea of a uninstall included with the app

In other news!

Get a free copy of Linspire Operating System (a flavor of Linux) for free. Select $49.95 Digital Download, then apply coupon code LycorisWelcome. Although it seems you can only do this at specific times of day. Although why anyone would want to soil their system with such a OS is beyond me. If you want something that runs nearly as good as Windows, buy a
Mac... Or better yet, buy a Mac and install Windows!

Media centre final verdict

I've played with Media Centre over the weekend and have found it's definitely the way to go. The total cost of $160 for a great video card, TV card and a remote control definitely gives you a great experience. I just spent a few hours watching episode III while Family guy was recorded, then I went back and watched Family guy when I was finished. Besides missing the AC3 codec the experience was fast and flawless, I am still missing the remote which isn't required but I've already had way too many times when I have wanted it around. The way the exclusive media centre games work it runs really well, as does the messanger client. If you have a high powered PC in any room that has a coax cable lying by it, do yourself a favor and buy a $60 TV card, you'll be thankful for it in the end.

Media PC

I got my PVR150 yesterday, and fianlly got it working tonight. Eveything didn't quite work out of the box.

1st. installed the old version of media edition, need to get the new version I have activated.

2nd. Took forever to work out what was wrong with my video card drivers, until I read the guide a little more throughly and found I need a DVD codec to watch TV?!? Downloaded the Nvidia DVD codec (Didn't realise they had one) now need to get that registered.

3rd. Finally got TV working.. well audio, it seems I needed to upgrade my old Geforce2 to a 5200 at mimimun to get TV working, after doing that it worked a charm.

4th. Found a real need for a remote contol they are about $20 and is next on my list.

5th. Tried to get a Microsoft Bluetooth Keyboard and mouse to work with a Belkin USB bluetooth adaptor with some very flakey results.
6th. Now I have a working unit but can only get about the 10 channels that come through the cable, I need to take the signal through the PVR decoder, but once I do that I will only be able to view the one channel the PVR is set to... hmm

So for about $200 I got my 1.8ghz spare machine into a media centre, it'd of been $100 cheaper if you alredy have coax cables and a good video card. Honestly my niggles with the OS are pretty minor and most don't relate to media centre, becides the stiff requirements for a video card and the requirement for a DVD decoder, which frankly baffles me. I'd recommend it to anyone that has a PC around that they'd like to find a better use for. I have a feeling I'll be needing more drive space soon now however...

Oh and finally a image for you all M$ bashers out there

AOL!

I forgot how much I despised AOL. I had to look at a machine recently as AOL had told this user

"Your PC won't work online anymore you need to buy a new one"

AOL must have some agreement with CompUSA or something for a statement like that, anyway perhaps the modem was bad but that's a mood point now as the user is going to move to COX and all their port blocking goodness

Mac-ing hell

Okay, it wouldn't be too hard to falsify a picture such as this, but still. It could be real

Media centre

Those that know me will know that I love having PCs attached to a TV. Well I've just got the last peice of the machine I need to start building my media PC, It's a Hauppauge PVR150 MCE. Looks like it should be a lot of fun. Hopefully it should work out the box but when it arrives I'll let you know

Silly prices

Wow, liqdized stock, Cat shaped barcode scanners for 30c each but you have to order 500,000 out of the 2,000,000 they have for sale!
I like cats but not that much! A great link for the 'dellboy' dealers

Liquidation linkage

It begins

My techie blog! Mostly thoughts that I've come up with day to day and things I've seen that intrest me from Gizmodo and Slashdot