luckykaa

Being quite hands-on, I like to fix things if they're not working well. Something that has been bugging mefor a while is radio reception in the car. It's awful!

My assumption was the radio cable had been dislodged. This should have been a simple process:

1. remove radio.
2. diagnose problem
3. fix problem
4. test.
5. replace radio

It's never quite that simple.

Stage 1 required that I get the radio removal tools. Easy enough. I can get them from ebay. I'd also stuck my FM transmitter over the radio so had to pull that off, but that was easy enough.
Stage 2 - Well, I found the aerial was not plugged in. But there didn't seem to be a spare socket for it. Fortunately manuals for everything are available online. Turns out that the numpty who installed the radio plugged the remote cable into the aerial socket.
Stage 3 - swapped the plugs. Not sure what the remote cable is the remote to, but it doesn't matter.
Stage 4 - reception was suddenly really good!
So onto stage 5. I pushed the radio into the slot and... it stopped working! Dammit!

Obviously a blown fuse. A bit of a pain because the fuse box is really fiddly to get to. And I had no idea which fuse. Fortunately the manual for a Mk3 Mondeo fuse box is also available online. So, F69 operates the radio. Pulled it out, Swapped it with a random alternative. Still broken! Dammit! Time to attack it with a multimeter. Fuse is fine. I found another fuse in the radio. That too was fine.

So, back to the fuse box diagram. There is another radio fuse. Pulled that out. Tested it. Seemed fine. And we seemed to have power going to the radio, which is odd. So after ages prodding various components, I finally had a revelation!

I picked the wrong fuse!

Turns out that fuse I tested was the one for the electric sun roof. The radio was next to it. Now, we don't have an electric sun roof. I pulled out the correct fuse and could tell by looking it was broken. Swapped them round, and the radio worked! Electric sunroof presumably doesn't, but I don't have one of them.

I still have no idea how there was power going to the radio. I guess I was just testing the battery input rather than the switched input. Still, I feel a great sense of accomplishment having fixed my own cock-up!

My PC came with a free Windows 10 upgrade. I thought the best feature of this was that I could wipe the entire OS and remove any junk that HP felt I absolutely needed. This did mean I had to reinstall the Cyberlink stuff which is actually useful and it took a bit of time to find it, (and work out which of the half dozen applications with names like Cyberlink_HHQTB2 is which). To be fair to HP it seems that there's actually very little shovelware.

So, Windows 10... Feels fairly similar to all other versions of Windows to be honest. Disk drives are still represented by a single letter. Starting with C: for reasons that now seem very quant. Microsoft have put back the start menu - which I never really felt was perfect, but people seemed to like it. Oddly, it no longer says "start", which I thought was the original point. I seem to be in the minority who actually liked the metro interface, at least conceptually. I like the idea of having apps always available. The problem for me was that it wasn't fully integrated enough. I want to be able to put a twitter feed or news ticker at the side of the screen and "full screen" for the app I'm interacting with to be considered the rest of the screen. The legacy desktop should have been just another tile.

There are a couple of features I like. Fingerprint login is pretty cool. Windows has supported this for a while now but this is the first PC I've have that had a scanner. Also the file copy dialog has been improved. It gives a nice chart showing transfer speed. And if there are multiple copies in progress they can be paused. Would be nice if they could be queued instead.

Something thats strange is that there are two settings apps (settings and Control Panel), with overlapping functionality. Actually there's a lot of this. Functionality is spread all over the place. I can never remember whether I want wireless settings, properties, network settings, or adaptor settings to set up the various bits of internet. Apps can be started from the start menu, all apps, the taskbar, or the desktop. Application config is in the registry and advanced system settings.

On the whole it seems quite okay. That's all I really want from an OS. Okayness.

My poor computer (Quorra) is feeling a bit crufty. Seems to inexplicably freeze for a few minutes shorty after waking up. And I have about 5GB left on my C: drive.

Normally I'd reinstall the OS at this point. But I have other things to do with my time. Also that small C: drive means I'd need to repartition, which means the tedious process of backing up my old disk.  Or, of course, I could simply upgrade the disk.

But at 3-and-a-bit Quorra is getting a little old, and more to the point, I want something a bit better. Intel graphics are fine to an extent, but I'd prefer something a bit more meaty. And that 1366x768 screen has never really satisfied my urge for resolution. I really want 1920x1200. And that's the main factor that's been stopping me from getting a new one.

For some reason, resolution isn't seen as important to the PC buying public. Most PCs don't specify, and it's not something that's listed in mostonline search options. Adding "1080P" to an amazon search lists all the laptops with "1080P" in the description, even if they're just telling me they can output to a 1080P display. Asus have a laptop that offers "up to 1920x1080", and doesn't seem to consider the distintion to deserve a different product number. So that leaves a handful of manufacturers.

Lenovo do seem to care about resolution. Unfortunately they don't care about security. They've installed way too much dangerous shovelware (some that even survives a full reinstall!) for me to trust them at all. "YunSun" seemed to offer a decent range of machines, but there's the added cost of import duty. Also they only seem to come with US style keyboards. I want a european one, with the correctly shaped enter key.

So we're down to Toshiba and Gigabyte (Which may also only have US keyboards). Toshiba seems to have a 1 month wait and I really can't be bothered with planning that far ahead.

To make life even more difficult, I need a DVD Drive. Well, I don't actually need one, but there I do have some stuff on CD-Rom still and will want to rip a Disc from time to time.

So that means I need to work out whether I actually want one of theose Gigabyte PCs.

I guess I'm a bit too fussy.

Amongst my possessions I have an HD-DVD player, a VHS video recorder, a first generation TiVo, an Amiga A500P, a Palm TX and a scanner. Need to decide what to do with these. I do rather like the idea of being past-proof. ("Future proof" is a myth - not possible. Wait for the future to become the present and the technology will be cheaper than the future proof premium)

TiVo. Why do I still have this damn thing? It's obsolete and a total white elephant! Shall throw this one out, I think.

HD-DVD player - I can get cheap HD-DVDs of eBay (which was the entire point). Not sure if I want to. Perhaps I should replace my small collection of HD-DVDs with Blu-ray.

VHS video recorder - well, I have a huge pile of tapes somewhere. Once again I ask myself "Why!?". Because it is and was a good video recorder. But the odds of me remembering I even have all these videos is pretty remote.

Palm TX - Cool gadget, and it was a gift. Obsolete again. I feel very bad about throwing out gifts though.

Amiga A500P - I have an emulator! And this is a museum piece!

Scanner - This one annoys me. It's a perfectly good scanner. Theres nothing inherently wrong with the device. It just doesn't work with Windows 7. I could always just plug it into my netbook, scan from that and transfer. Is this actually worth the effort though? I could just spend £44 on a cheapest scanner I can find (and it will be more than adequate for my needs) and save the effort.

I guess I'm a hoarder. I get far too attched to the gadgets I buy. The end result is I have several boxes full of junk, that should really be taken to the dump, sold on eBay or given to a charity shop. Most of these gizmos, I haven't used in a long long time and still won't. I won't miss them when they're gone. Why is it so hard to part with these things?

Several years ago I bought myself a Sansa Fuze. It was a lovely device with a couple of idiosyncrasies (takes a long time to index and has a non-standard connector). But it was very easy to use and just felt nice.

Yesterday I lost it. My jacket was on a bench in a bar, and it fell out.

I sent a message to the group. Apparently a waiter picked it up when everyone else left, and asked if it belonged to anyone, and everyone said "no". So, full of hope I stopped in hoping that they had a lost property box.

They did have a lost property box. And a book swhere they log everythng that was found. They didn't have the mp3 player. No idea what happened to it.

Am rather upset. I get attached to my gadgets, and I've had this one for a while.I can use my phone as a temporary replacement but I find that deeply unsatisfying. And you can't buy the Sansa Fuze any more. Or its replacement - the fuze+. The Clip+ is sort of cute but the screen looks a litte too small. The Clip sport might be what I want. I'll miss that handly little scroll wheel.

I'm sure I'll enjoy it still. And I've ordered a whopping 32GB SD card for it. It's time for a new era of gadget ownership.

It will be a thrill when it arrives. But until then I'm mourning the loss of one of my favourite toys.

I miss my PDA  The stylus allows for much higher precision tapping.  As a result, the UI takes up less space and that makes having a taskbar a viable option.  Grafitti is a lot better than the onscreen keyboard, and the thing can be connected to a mobile phone via bluetooth. That means that it can be paired with a mobile phone.  Alas, the screen on mine is dodgy, so these days I still use my Palm T|X as an e-reader.

What I rather like about Android is that I have a capacitive screen (plus multitouch), a more modern browser, a faster processor, and lots of sensors.  Also the Google Market. 

Integrating a phone with it is not an advantage.  I prefer the separate devices.  They do different things.  All of the above can be added to a simple PDA.  There's no actual need for an Android device to also make phone calls.  The phone aspect of an android phone is rubbish.  I like buttons.  I like decent sound quality.  I like having a battery life (A typical mobile will last days on standby, an android device barely makes it to 24 hours).  I like having separate devices.  Integration means you end up with nasty compromises.  My mp3 player plays mp3s and does it well.  I want a phone that makes phone calls and a handheld computer that I can hold in my hand .

My choice is horribly limited.  I can have a iPod Touch, a selection of small Android tablets that are way too large, a couple of cheap small android tablets, or a device that is pretty much obsolete.  I could go for the iPod but is that really my only option?  Where are the Android and WP7 PDAs?

My parents have me their old printer, on account of my having a parallel port.  Something that seems to have gone the way of the floppy disk (I have one of them too).  Didn't take that long to get it running.  Printed off a few things quite happily, but then ran out of memory.

aperrotwas kind enough to give me some leftover SIMMs that he found (they've gone to Silicon extinction as well), and ingaborg was kind enough to bring them to Welwyn for me (thanks both of you).  Tried installing them.  Printer stopped working.  Tried only installing only one of them.  That worked.  Yay!  20Megs is plenty of RAM for a printer. It should be able to take 36 megs though.  No idea what's happening there.  It's the right RAM and everything.

Still can't get it to print on manual feed .

I'm really not sure this printer was worth what I paid for it.  So far we're on £0.

Am expecting it to say "PC LOAD LETTER" any day now.

So, TiVo discontinued their service in the UK, and the programme guide information was gradually evaporating.  There is a fan run alternative programme guide but Virgin offer a TiVo box which has a larger hard disk, 3 tuners, and HD capability, so I figured after a decade it was time to upgrade. 

So, here's a mini review for existing TiVo users.

The new box is actually rather nice.  It still needs to be trained, and doesn't seem to be doing any suggestions yet.  Oddly the remote doesn't have the TiVo logo on it.  The TiVo button says "home".  I have no idea why that is.  I've been playing with it a lot.  One improvement is that the 30 minute cache has been extended to 60 minutes.  The three tuners is good since I never have issues with programmes clashing.  It's nice to have HD capability.  It's actually surprisingly clear when I'm watching 720p.  Wonder if I'd see the difference at 1080p.  Perhaps I should have bought a more expensive telly after all:)

The box has "apps" built in.  iPlayer, youTube, twitter, a photo gallery and a couple of others.  youTube is integrated quite nicely.  Programme information will automatically search for related videos.  Slight oddity is that the various means of getting content are a little oddly distributed. Catch-up/on demand is in the catch-up/on demand menu for most channels but the apps menu for iPlayer and recorded shows are in the "my shows" section.  While the interface is very TiVo-ish it feels a little bolted on.

The search has changed.  TiVo provides full episode guides to programmes and tells you when episodes will be broadcast.  I actually find this harder to use than the series 1.  Can't search by name within a category (or haven't worked out how).  The other minor downgrade is the skip button.  Rather than immediately skipping 30 seconds, it fast forwards by 30 seconds.  I suspect there may be some technical reason for this, perhaps Series 1 encoded time index information and this version records a more-or-less raw stream without time indexing.  Who knows?  Final (?) annoyance is frequent demand for PIN to access programmes recorded after 9 if I want to watch them before 9. 

I do like the new box.  It will take some time for us to get used to each other. 

Must acquire an electric monk at some point.

As for my faithful Gen 1 TiVo  - I really must see about hacking it to use AltEPG. This will involve connecting to the serial port.  This in turn requires making a serial port (TiVo has a jack plug serial connection).  Might have a go at that tomorrow.

Still failed to upgrade phobile moan.  Am tempted by the HTC Wildfire.  Despite its issues (low res, cheapish screen), it's compact and affordable and comes on PAYG.  However, after Christmas, they're sold out.  No deliveries ntil tomorrow.  I'm a little busy tomorrow, so shall try on Thursday. 

Today's plan is to make house 10% tidier, do a makeup test for next costume, and posibly try and create a hackintosh if I have time and patience,. 

Today's soup is Stilton and broccoli.

To avoid fear and uncertainty amongst my readers, the resolution of this story is that I bought a USB fax modem of ebay.

As I've mentioned before, the company I work for is an odd one.  While the agency has an online timesheet system, the client seems to insist on using the old fashioned signed/faxed system.  So far I've been using the fax machine at work, but this seems to be not working recently.  I decided it's time to invest in some means to send faxes.

A fax machine is expensive.  I need to send one fax per week at most.  A few shops offer fax services as well, but they're hard to find these days since nobody sends faxes any more.  I have considered an email to fax service.  These are actually quite expensive, at some point I'll have to cancel.  You can never cancel online.  You have to phone up and they'll try and persuade you to stay.  They'll throw offers at you and act sad that you're leaving them.  I'm a sensitive soul.  I don't want to feel I've abandoned them after getting their hopes up.  The feeling of guilt will stick with me for weeks!

What I really needed was a fax modem. 

I have one at home.  I don't have an ISA slot to plug it into. 

Research reveals that mobile phones can't talk to faxes. 

So I went into PC World.  I looked and there was nothing.  I asked the helpful assistant.  He directed me to the right area but did advise me that it was unlikely they still had any.  None were visible.  He went to check with his colleagues, and eventually told me that the last time any of them had seen such a device was back in April.  I was impressed by his efforts though.  PC World seems to have taken to hiring helpful people in recent years.  I'm not used to this treatment.

Alas I came away empty handed.  Nobody wants faxes any more.  And for good reason - when documents are generated on a computer and stored on a computer it is a remarkably inefficient transmission step to not only insert a highly lossy analogue step, but also to add a physical hardcopy.

I decided I'd buy one off eBay.  I may be lucky and receive it by the weekend.  Otherwise I'll just have another yet week before I get paid.