Welcome
Hi and welcome to Ridders7855 blog, dedicated to reporting all things computer related and geeky. Feel free to stay and look around the site.
Latest News: Big TV's are the way forward
I have been recently redecorating my room, and have always wanted to have a large TV with surround sound, so I am able to watch films from my sofa. Additionally I am able to dual screen the pc to it, for gaming and other functions.
I have never really played with any TV related cabling installation before, although so far I have managed to get the PC linked up to it via HDMI. Unfortuently I am not able to actviate the surrond sound if connected to the PC. This format only works for the DVD player and ,Xbox 360. What I would really like to organise, is to be able to have all the sound output, from the PC, DVD player, Xbox, all coming from the surround sound system. I am told that I need to buy an amplifier for that. This is now something I will need to look into. For setting up this system for the very first time I am very pleased with the results so far, and watching films in HD syncronised with surround sound is really impressive.
Buffalo Linkstation LS-CHL file recovery
Back in June 2009, I decided to invest in a "Buffalo Linkstation" NAS box. The thoery behind this, was that all the computers in the household could then be backed up, in order that should, for any reason a system on the network decide to crash and fail, the data was still available to be recovered. This was great! however I got carried away on the idea that I could store my files somewhere else without slowing the computer down, and without the need to create an internal computer backup.
I woke up one morning to find my NAS flashing a lovely shade of red, and not the usual cool and reasuring steady blue LED, clearly indicating all my files are missing! After the intial heart attack I got over the shock, and got on with the process to trying to sort the problem. After surfing the internet, I discovered the problem, a "E22" mount error code. However, no suggestion how to resolve this. After a lengthy discussion with my work colleages, the conclusion was, that the only way to solve this, would be to remove the case and plug the hard drive directly into the computer.
A further issue I had, was that this particular NAS has a file format of XFS, meaning that Windows will not reconise it, and kept prompting to format to NTFS. After searching the net again I was able to find a program called "Recover My Files". This was a Windows compatable program, and would recover formatted or lost files from XFS file systems. The whole process took just over a week to recover 1TB's worth of data, so I was very pleased when all data had been recovered.
The next task is format the drive again using Buffalo's built in interface, and the NAS should be all ready to go again. Should the problem occur again, I am now better prepared as I have additional purchased a 1TB Western Digital external hard drive which can be connected to NAS via usb connection and in so doing creates a secondary storage facility.
I believe in a clean desk policy
As you can see, lately I have been getting carried away with other projects I've been working on. I have started to overclock my computer, setting up RAID 0, and testing the new windows 7 operating system. I have also had to repair my father's laptop, which at the moment seems to be running circles around me. In all the madness, it seems I've left half the screw driver kit and diagnostic disks across my desk. I would show you the rest of the room, however it doesn’t look much better than my desk in its current state.
So remember folks, take a leaf out of my book, and work in a clean and tidy environment whenever doing any computer repairs or adjustments, otherwise you just blame someone else that you can’t find that Philips screw driver.
Bow & Quiver website second update
So we are now five months down the road from when I last looked at the archery forum, and it seems to be doing very well. It now has 57 members and has had 207 posts, so I decided since I had the time, I would design it a new theme for it. As you can see below this is what I came up with:
I seem to be getting several emails from members, about an issue with certain browsers not displaying the text that’s being typed when makin
g a post. This is one of the downsides of having so many browsers on the net these days. They all interpret website code slightly differently, so for the time being, I've had to notify all members to use specific browsers to get round this problem. This will allow me to have the time to code out this problem in the CSS code.
The Skys the limit with Jolicloud
I noticed this was out about a week ago, but had to wait for the invitation before I could download and install the Alpha. I ran an initial test of the OS by installing it in virtual box, and checking out some of the applications along with the overall feel of it. From what I can tell, it currently seems to use Ubuntu as the back end of the OS, and Jolicloud is just like the user interface.
I’m currently running Jolicloud on a HP PCtablet tc1100, which is unfortunately unsupported at this moment in time by Jolicloud. However even with that draw back, internet works straight out the box, and the user interface seems to be really easy to use, which from my experience is always handy. This is especially the case when the whole OS is linux based, and I wouldn't normally recommend Linux to a beginner.
Another nice feature I like, is Jolicloud's equivalent to Synaptic or for windows users "Add & Remove programs". You are presented with a online dashboard, where you choose which applications you wish to install (as shown above).
So far, I've managed to get most applications I require, running, for example I can play movies and music, use Skype, surf the internet, use the facebook, and the twitter application. However I am having problems trying to get a display out of Boxee, and the same problem for trying to run “World Of Warcraft” through the emulator called “Wine”, so Im guessing that’s down to a driver issue perhaps, that I will need to sort out. A further problem which is slightly disappointing, is that the OS appears to run quite sluggishly, and does have some delay switching between the menus, etc. I would like to say, it is because of the hardware, but I've run other Linux distro's like Ubuntu, and OpenSuse on the same device, and had no problems at all, with delay or it being slow. I hope this is just an issue that is part of the alpha and will eventually be sorted out.
Internet TV with Boxee
I came across this a few weeks back, and attempted to install this on a Linux machine I had, without much success. I waited for the release of the windows alpha version, which I now have installed, and have been testing out.
In short Boxee is a freeware social media centre, which allows the user to view and rate the content, and recommend it to their friends, through the social networking aspect of the application. It is a host to many channels like BBC iPlayer, where you can find most of the BBC channels, it also has BBC Live, MTV, CNN, HULU, and a series of other channels which are worth looking at. Boxee also supports the feature to view your own music, and videos, through the application as well. It reduces the number of applications you need to view each form of media.
Like any alpha release, it does have its bugs, but since you get to watch tv content for free through one application, I am more than happy to help report bugs I find etc. From what I understand Boxee looks to release its own dedicated set top box, along with plans to license its Boxee Media Center software, along with its social networking service as a third party software component to other companies, for them to use the Boxee software in their hardware. These include game consoles, DVD players, or embedded computers built-in directly into televisons.
Bow & Quiver website update
Bow & Quiver is now up and running on the internet. I gave myself a choice, I either fully design the website, and then release it at a later date, due to the time it would take me to build the website. Alternatively I could setup a temporary forum through forummotion.com, and start recruiting members to sign up straight away. Well as you can see I went with the latter, which is fine, as I can leave the hosting with forummotion.com, and just re-skin the theme at a later stage. I will also consider buying a domain name for the forum.
Since the site has gone live, we have recruited 34 members, and it is still growing, and it had just reached 173 posts made to it. There are numerous categories for each of the different forms of archery i.e. recurve, longbow, compound, etc. These groups are then broken down into sub groups, such as “accessories”, etc. Also I have a private club area, which I decided to incorporate as an initial test to see if it would work or not, but from what I have seen so far it seems rather popular. It allows any archery club to have their own private club chat area, to share information without the risk of having any non-club member seeing it.
If you wish to join this community then please visit bowandquiver.forummotion.com and go to the “Register” page.
Bow & Quiver website
One of my hobbies is archery and I specialise in the Compound bow. However something that I have learned is that finding out how to setup your equipment properly, in this sport is rather difficult. There seems to be no substantial sources of information on the internet, that really helps, and contacting people that might, is not always possible either. So in reaction to this frustration, I'm going to look at setting up a new website for archers. They will be able to submit their tips, advice, guides, and know how, on all things archery related. I will repost when I have more contents to show.
Hard drive in the fridge
For the past 3 years, I've owned a Freecom 250GB external hard drive, which I use to back up all my music, documents, films, etc. However, in the past year or so, I've become quite careless when it comes to formatting the computer and backing up data. So instead of just keeping the data I need, I just back everything up, which in practice is good, but on a practical side of things, sooner or later I’m going to run out of space because I'm wasting it.
To top it all off, the hard drive could possibly be on its last legs too, as it has no cooling vents. After about 20min, it just crashes and turns off, this is because it has overheated. This is a real issue when I'm trying to transfer the data I need. Also I can’t do this when I have folders with over 80GB of data which take more than 20min to transfer.
So what’s the solution? Well one suggestion that was made to me, was to put the hard drive in the fridge or freezer for about 20min, then plug it in again. It turns out that by doing this, it stops the hard drive from overheating, and the freezing shrinks the platters and head mechanism, a tiny bit that will often break "stiction" free. Surprisingly this works, and I've managed to keep the hard drive going for about an hour or so, before I have to put it back in the fridge again.
Spill those images!
I recently spent some time working with a very good friend of mine, and Linux pro Aidan Marlin aka Rascal999, in updating and redesigning the website www.spill.it . For those of you who have not yet come across this, or those of you who are new to and unfamiliar with the Internet, I will explain to you what this site does.
Spill.it, is an image hosting site, that allows images to be uploaded onto websites that do not have this as an offered facility. Quite simply all you do is upload the image to our spill.it website, via the browse button, this in turn will provide you with a URL link to paste into your comments box for blogging or posting. The process is very simple to understand and operate and is an advantage to new users.
Although the site is currently under construction, its primary function of image hosting is available to use now. Another feature of the site is to be able to view a gallery of all images uploaded to the site by various users. Additionally a search facility allowing searches to be undertaken on specific images, and the ability to manipulate the size of the image will also be available shortly.
Social Networking, blogging,and participation in forums, is part of the fabric of everyday life today, and as such, websites like spill.it are an important and necessary facility. To visit this site, then follow the link to http://www.spill.it or click the image below:
