Insane Homer's Blog

Google+ > Facebook

2011-09-28T13:11:00.000+01:00

I woke up this morning and as I usually do, I fire up my PC and spend 30-40 minutes online before jumping in the shower and getting ready for work.

While I was in the shower I made the following observations.

I spent less than 10 minutes on Facebook and almost all of the rest on Google+. With a couple of minutes checking new email. I didn't bother with RSS reader.

Google+ is much like an RSS feed. The people I follow have the same interests as me, they comment on and post links to the latest news and it's relevant to me.

Google+ inspires. I see great photos and get the odd inspirational quote which I want to pass on and share. I feel motivated and uplifted. I'm ready to take on the day. I want to take more photos. I want to write and share with like minded people.

Now compare that to Facebook where my friends and family, in the last 24 hours, have mostly...

complained about... the weather.
the kids are sick
someone's having a bad day
someone's bike was stolen and got returned, yay!
It's someone's birthday. Do I post a message, did he/she post a message on my birthday? :p
Someone got their drivers license
Some very ordinary photo's of kids, a wedding and renovations

Thankfully none of them seem to be on the new Facebook so no posts about their listening habits just yet.

My overall observation was that Google+ is very positive and inspirational while Facebook has a more negative feel about it and is certainly just a bit mundane.

I understand that this is my own, possibly unique view and may be a symptom of the friends and my particular situation. I am after all a 'chicken runner' who left South Africa 14 years ago. Some of my friends are still there, most like me, are scattered to all corners of the globe and Facebook is a particularly useful tool that helps us to stay in touch.

I'm guilty of much the same antics when posting to Facebook. I too post mundane and boring stuff and vent when things go wrong. It's good to share and get things off your chest and hope for some rallying support from people half way across the globe to tell you everything is all right and we're all in it together.

Google+ is about my interests and sharing them with like minded people. It's about learning and being inspired. I've not met 99% of the people I follow or are following me.

Facebook is about keeping in touch with family and friends. I have personal relationships with everyone on Facebook.

...and that's why, for me at least, Google+ and Facebook are two different social mediums. Neither has to be declared the winner, they are not mutually exclusive and for me provide two different social services (sic).

If I was forced to show my hand right now, I choose Google+.

Google Chrome > Firefox

2011-09-26T20:10:00.000+01:00

I've been a huge and long running fan of the Firefox browser for quiet some time. Today I finally made the conscious choice to move away from it and make Chrome my default browser of choice. Now I know this is probably a little later than most and I could and should have done it earlier but this is why.

I've always like chrome. As a browser it was fast and slick and clean, but Firefox was more mature at the time and most importantly had the plug-in support that I have come to rely of daily.

The first was password and bookmark syncing via Foxmarks. I have numerous browsing environments, my work PC, my work Laptop and my home PC dual booting Windows and Ubuntu. With this syncing tool I was able to keep my Firefox set-up the same between all of them. A bookmark and password set on one session were available at the next without any fuss. Firefox (Mozilla) then produced their own version which I migrated to and used until I started getting problems with bookmarks randomly changing order and disappearing. As it turns out they stopped developing it and with each new version of Firefox it became unusable. So I moved back to Foxmarks but found out that they'd spun off the password syncing to another plugin - LastPass. This plugin is just ghastly to use, it's only redeeming feature is that it syncs with IE, a nice to have but not a requirement for me.

I persisted with it as long as I could but today i finally gave up. I like to keep it simple and Google do simple the right way. So now rather than having Chrome idling in the background for occasional use (mostly Angry Birds) it has now been promoted to my primary browser of choice.

With Chrome I sync everything securely with my Google account. I can sync as before with the added benefit that it also syncs with the Google browser on my Android 3.1 Tablet (Samsung 10.1).

The Google sync isn't perfect, it's not currently very customisable. I found out after my initial import from Firefox and Sync that I have over 2200+ bookmarks, most of which are multiple duplicate folders and very old. A clean-up does not seem to sync very well and this large amount appears to be breaking the sync of Android. After cleaning it all up on my home setup I deleted the online store and resync'd clean, this however did not sync properly with the Android. It added the new clean setup but failed to remove the old defunct bookmarks and folders, which I have to remove manually. This is turn has thrown up some process errors on the device so I've turned it off for now. Today I'll work getting the home and work bookmarks clean and synced before pushing that to the Android.

It is now the slick and fast browser I always knew but now it does all the cool the plugin stuff that Firefox offered. All those features that I couldn't do without are now right there.

AdBlock Plus - always the first plugin I install.
Bookmark and password syncing
IETab - for those pesky sites that insist on IE
In line spelling to correct all my typos

Not to mention all my Google stuff will work seamlessly - Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Blogger, Google+, Piscasa and Reader (not that they didn't with Firefox).

Then there's the memory usage - with both browsers open on the same page on my home PC (Windows 7 x64 with 4GB ram), Firefox is my second largest running process at 101k, Chrome a good 10k below that and it's spitting the processes for both tabs and plugins, making it much easier to kill a webpage that's not responding without having to kill the entire browsing session and other open tabs.

Firefox was excellent for a very long time but they've been comprehensively overtaken by Chrome which goes from strength to strength at a rapid pace.

Now I'll just wait somewhat impatiently for the 64-bit version to blow me away.

HTC Magic - reverting to Foyo 2.2.1 from CynogenMod

2011-07-12T08:37:00.019+01:00

I've had this phone for a while now but decided to finally revert to the official HTC Magic Vodefone UK release.

It's not a simple flash process as you 1st need to revert back to the 1.6 stock rom.

Before you start any of this backup any information you want off the phone to the SB card. (text messages etc). I did full backup of the rom to SD via Amon RA Recovery 1.7 tools.

The process starts here, the post by NeoBlade. Details are listed below but is not quiet that simple as you need to do a few other bits first.

First you need to get the HTC Magic to talk to your computer via USB. to Do this you need to download and install HTC Sync. This will install the correct drivers for the phone to ensure you can run the software package that installs the base 1.6 stock rom.

To get the stock rom you need to google and find a download for 'RUU_Sapphire_Vodafone_UK_1.91.161.1_DRC92_signed_NoDriver.exe' there is one list on 4share.

Run this .exe and follow the instructions. (this all worked for me on Windows 7 x64, I did run it as admin and in XP mode)

Once the phone it back to stock 1.6 you can then start the update process as mentioned above.

For those who still haven't got it, here are the links for the OTA 2.2 ROM. You must be on the Stock VF 1.6 firmware before applying these files...

1. http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/vodafone_vfpioneer/126221163a9c.hboot-1.33.0013.vfpio...

2. http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/vodafone_vfpioneer/735b0bf4f2e4.signed-vfpioneer-FRG8...

NOTE: For those running AmonRA/Clockwork Recovery simply flash file number 1, then file 2 in Recovery.

NOTE 2: For STOCK users who have not rooted or replaced their Recovery, follow the steps below...

Download and copy the first file to your SDCard. Rename the first file as update.zip, then unmount the SDCard. Turn off your phone. Hold the HOME button and press Power to enter Recovery. It should look for the update.zip file. Press Action to "Apply the update".

Once done, do the exact same procedure for file 2.

Reboot and you should be fully updated ^_^

Now that this is all done it should all be good, however we've now lost root access.

I was able to root it using the tool & method mentioned here called SuperOneClick

After a few days it seems that they pushed the OTA update to the market which is nice.

So far the new official build has been very impressive. Battery life is excellent, memory usage is good. Responsiveness of Apps is great. Very happy to find that the Google Car Home is part of the official build. I could never get this to install or work under CyanogenMod builds.

Right now to sort the customer recovery.

Next on the list is to install Amon-RA Recovery 1.7 (RA-sapphire-v1.7.0) found here

How I tried a number of methods to get this done, it would not work via fastboot. However I found that it did work when I installed RomManager from Market and installed the Recovery manager from that. The trick being to use the first option listed and NOT the HTC Magic.

Thereafter I was able to boot into recovery via RomManager and install the updated Market from zip file. with result in an immediate for close after reboot :/

Interesting the next boot to recovery was to the stock recovery, which I suspect is due to the following failsafe mentioned here.

The Vodafone release includes a script that checks for a valid image in the recovery partition and replaces it if it no longer matches the known version. This script is in /etc/install-recovery.sh and this is called from the Android init process. It updates the recovery partition by patching a copy of the boot partition using the binary patch file in /system/recovery-from-boot.p.

First we need to rename /etc/install-recovery.sh

via ADB

adb shell
$ su
# mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
# cd etc
# cp install-recovery.sh install-recovery.sh.old
# ls

you should now see both files, if so then delete the script

# rm install-recovery.sh
#ls

you show see only the install-recovery.sh.old file listed

now to rename /system/recovery-from-boot.p

adb shell
$ su
# mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
# cp recovery-from-boot.p recovery-from-boot.p.old
# ls

you should now see both files, if so then delete the script

# rm recovery-from-boot.p
#ls

you show see only the recovery-from-boot.p.old file listed.

Now that should stop the recovery from being over written.

Next if to install a recovery. I found the best way to do this was to install RomManager from the market. This allow us to flash their recovery and boot to it. The custom recovery is needed before we can flash Amon-RA Recovery via ADB.

You need to allow RomManager SuperUser permissions the first time you run it.

Now the trick with the RomManager Recovery is to NOT choose the HTC Magic (GSM) install but to rather install the Ion/Mytouch 3G (GSM). The HTC Magic one fails and will cause a standard reboot when trying to boot to recovery.

I downloaded and copied the recovery-RA-sapphire-v1.7.0G-cyan.img (the cynogen version of the recovery) to the root of the SD card.

Then use RomManager to boot to the newly installed recovery (The second option on the RomManager menu) or reboot the phone while holding down Home and the Power button.

Connect via USB and fire up ADB.

adb shell
# mount -a
# flash_image recovery /sdcard/recovery-RA-sapphire-v1.7.0G-cyan.img

this should take a few seconds. Reboot and go back into recovery, you should not have proper recovery install and you can now perform full system back/restore recovery and a whole lot more!!!

Good Luck!

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Firefox 5 Fonts Issue

2011-07-02T09:57:00.010+01:00

During the middle of a browsing session 2 days by Firefox 5 decided that my default font needs to change.

Both have exactly the same font settings?

WTF?

Un-installed and re-installed, removed Personas plugin, still doing the same thing?

Firefox have an open ticket here

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Microsoft driving me around the bend!!!

2011-06-27T10:51:00.013+01:00

Microsoft, how are we supposed to Evaluate your Forefront 2012 Beta offering if we can't even get the Pre-Reqs to install?

2 whole days wasted, despite the installers pointing to the the Correct SQL 2008 Express SP1 download and installation and after installing KB977443 the installer for

Brand new 2008 R2 server install.
Clean SQL Express 2008 R1 x64 install. (104 MB download)
Patches - KB977443 roll-up (x64) installed. (234 MB patch download for a 104 MB install?)

ConfigMgr_2012_Beta2_ENU_7561 (1.4 GB download) won't install saying the SQL version is wrong. I can't installed FEP 2012 without ConfigMgr_2012_Beta2_ENU_7561 but I can't do that because the pre-req test are flawed and fucked up!

f$£$%$£

what an utterly fruitless and pointless waste of time.

Ah but despite the installer telling me I need the Cumulative SQL Patch update from KB977443, there's a shitty little clue saying it must be Cumulative Patch #10.

That to is not simple to find, requires an e-mail before being sent the link to another 241 MB download...

Despite that install it still fails with SQL version errors, then there's the BITS errors which appear to be false positives.

Fuck this for a bloody waste of time. MS Fail big time!

edit: Update 2 and 1/2 full days later I have FEP2012 installed! Completed Successfully, myriad of SQL Express 2008 SP1 problematic hoops have been jumped through.

Now the big question, how do I run it?

Blackberry Playbook 32GB first impressions

2011-06-16T11:13:00.009+01:00

We received our new Blackberry Playbook 32GB, Wifi only, this morning and these are my first impressions on it so far.

Our corporate network requires user authentication to gain internet access. After connecting the Wifi network without a problem I proceeded to run through the set-up. Since the unit could not see the internet I was unable to set the clock to update automatically, not a huge problem, lets carry on.

Next was the bugger, to Accept the EULA it needs to download from the internet the appropriate language/agreement for the country. Unfortunately the drop down box is blank as a result. I could therefore not agree/dis agree.

So the easiest way around this would be to assign the unit a a static IP that does not require authentication. FAIL, you cannot set static IP address.

So I ended up having to ID the unit on the DHCP and reserve and IP that is allowed to see the internet without authentication.

After 10 minutes of setting this up I was then able to accept the EULA.

Next was to set-up a Blackberry ID. fair enough but a bit annoy is you're going to be deploying a number of these units in a corporate environment to users who have already used their work email address to register on their existing blackberry units. Luckily in this case the end user had not already done so but I ended up having to choose a friendly name, password and security question for her...

Next it checks the internet for Software updates, the 1st one is only 323 MB in size and took a good 20 minutes to download. I guess a fair few number of people are doing this today on release day.

Reboot for update, boot time is slow, a good 2-3 minutes so far. So I'll talk about the packaging. Nice and Neat and the unit comes with e neoprene sock/glove.

After reboot it's time to set-up Blackberry Bridge, I assume this is the bit that tethers the Playbook with the Blackberry phone.

The phone needs to download software which is done via having to download it from Blackberry Appworld, the Playbook give a handy bar code to scan with the camera to make this simple.

In this case we are syncing with a 9700 that already has version 6 on the OS and Appworld installed.

First I needed to update Appworld on the phone and reboot it.

Blackberry Bridge using the barcode scanner again to authenticate and pair the devices via bluetooth. This failed on the first attempt wit the devices being about 10 centimetres apart.

Once paired it starts the tutorials.

Virgin media up their Upload speed

2011-05-21T08:40:00.004+01:00

Earlier this week I received an email informing me that my 10MB service upload speed was being doubled from 512kbps to 1024 kbps (1Mb).

Excellent stuff!

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler & AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 555 3.20GHz Black Edition

2011-05-21T08:25:00.005+01:00

I had an aging AMD dual core CPU in my mobo that I bought some 2/3 years ago. Playing games with the new GFX card it was clear the bottle neck was the CPU limiting FPS.

After some digging around I managed to find a AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 555 3.20GHz Black Edition [HDZ555WFGMBOX] at www.overclockers.co.uk for a very reasonable £60.

A great CPU with awesome over-clocking potential and the added bonus of possibly unlocking the additional 2 cores on it.

Once installed it was rather amazing the extra zing my machine had (along with the extra 2 GB ram, pushing it up to 4GB).

I was initially running Windows x64 in performance mode, which keeps the core clock speed at a constant 3200 GHz. This is turn kept the CPU running at a pretty high 52 degrees C with stock cooling.

The additional problem is that the stock cooling fan is rather rubbish and quiet noisy.

So I decided to replace it with the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler

Installation on Asus M2A-VM HDMI for my new CPU took no more than 20 minutes and was simpler than I expected after reading some the reviews on overclockers.

I'd been running Windows 7 x64 in performance mode and been getting 51 degrees C with the stock fan. That dropped to 40-41 degrees with this cooler in place. (@ stock clock speed of 3.2 Ghz). Putting the performance on Win7 back to 'Balanced' results in a drop to 28-30 degrees. So far under load the maximum it has gone to is 50 Degrees.

What a brilliant bargain on both CPU and Cooler, with the additional ram my PC has a new lease of life for under £100.

As I speak to you my Rig is pulling only 115 Watts with Standard Performance settings on Windows 7 x64.

My PC Power Consumption

2011-04-21T08:17:00.011+01:00

Some time ago I bought and posted about buying a PM230 from brennenstuhl.

It's been sitting dormant for bloody ages in a box. But last night I finally decided to put it to good use.

About 2 weeks ago my 2nd hand and trusty Nvidia 8800GT blew up and I replaced it with this beaty - Gainward GTX 460 GLH 1024 MB from Overclockers.

This goes into my aging rig that I bought and put together in Jan of 2008.

Asus M2A-VM HDMI, AMD 690G+SB600, HDMI,Socket-AM2,m-ATX,DDR2,Firewire,PCI-Ex16

Corsair TWIN2X 6400C4 DDR2, 2048MB CL4, Kit w/two 1GB Dimm's, E.P.P Technology

Corsair Powersupply 550W Black, ATX/EPS, 120mm Fan, 4xSATA, SLI, WxHxL

Gigabyte iSolo Black, ATX/mATX

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.5GHz Socket AM2, 1MB, BOXED w/fan

A decent rig at the time for its price and (a tad under £300, delivered) still does reasonably well but the processor is now getting long in the tooth, the CPU fan is also starting to get a bit noisy.

Anyway I started looking at giving the old rig a bit of a boost.

First up I ordered another 2GB ram for ~£30, not too bad considering DDR2 prices at the moment.

Then I started looking at the processor options. Plenty to choose from as listed here. What I soon found out was that getting hold of these processors is another thing altogether. The fasted processor the board could take was the Phenom IIX4 945 (HDX945WFK4DGM), the 95W edition, but as it turns out they are near impossible to find and listing pretty pricey at £130 (usually out of stock). So I started to drop down through the list without any luck on the X4 or X3 processors. The I happened by pure chance to see that www.overclockers.co.uk had this beauty in stock and at a very reasonable ~£65.

The AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 555 3.20GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail [HDZ555WFGMBOX] looks like it will push to 4Ghz very easily and there's potential to unlock the third and forth cores (not with this mobo though, but gives me options later).

This those arriving soon I was a little worried about whether my 550W power supply could handle the new GPU, additional Ram and new 80W processor (the 4800+ is a 65W).

So I plugged the rig into the PM230 from brennenstuhl and set it to show the Wattage used.

The results surprised and pleased me.

At windows desktop doing the usual browsing the rig consumed no more than 130W, not bad considering the GPU and 4 HDDs, USB keyboard, wireless mouse, webcam, printer and charging my iPod.

Next was to put it under load, I downloaded 3D Mark '11 and ran the restricted demo, that pushed the rig up to a max of 280W and hovering around 260W.

The CPU test - physics test ran at about 180W (1-3 fps) clearly showing the shortcomings on my ageing processor.

Next I fired up my WWII themed Day of Defeat : Source, a half-life 2 based first person shooter similar to CS:S. This used DX9 and with AA and AF both at 2X at full res and everything else set to high I was getting a clean and solid 60fps. The gfx card fan does not go past 40% playing this, the load is very low and this is reflected in the power consumption where it never went over 200W while playing for a solid 20 mins on 32 player server, I forget the map, probably Donner (UKCS servers).

The new 80W Phenom II X2 should arrive today. But I probably won't be able to swap it out until Saturday as I'm out tonight and tomorrow. I will report back the new consumption rates at stock speed and also with a bit of over-clocking. The ram should arrive Saturday too.

Update: 29 April. It's been a week or so, had a problem with one of the new ram modules. Getting them replaced, hopefully will arrive tomorrow.

Anyway, the new numbers. As I speak I'm using a steady 116W, That's with Windows 7 x64, 2 GB ram, the Phenom @ 3.2 GHz (Stock speed). Posting this via Firefox 4 x32. Nothing else open. I have the usual tray icons, Antivirus, Nvidia and Steam currently open.

DOD:S - I've manage to get a very good 140fps (up to 299 on some clean sniper maps) with 8x AA and 8x AF. Very impressive. Under that load I'm pushing 223 Watts. (205W with 2x AA and 2x AF but no real improvement in FPS)

Under full load of 3D Mark it goes as high as 281W, with the CPU test pushing 6+ fps it maxed at 154W.

yet to do the numbers for COD4 but was getting extremely good fps.

Windows 7 SP1 Released today

2011-02-22T19:27:00.005Z

So I find a download link that is 1.9GB iso image with all flavours for Windows 7 and Server 2008 32 and 64 bit. Two attempts to download that file has failed and it's a bit of download overkill so I go to MS and do a simple search on their downloads and get this... Seriously.

Windows MDT 2010 and windows 7 deployment

2011-02-16T14:28:00.007Z

6 hours today totally wasted thanks to this 'awesome' software.

I'd read 3 or 4 peoples setup on MDT with the walk-throughs, watches the videos on youtube and thought, yay, that seems simple enough.

How wrong I was.

My first installation of MDT refused to authenticate me via the Win PE disk, so I rebuild the server from scratch.

I got 3 HP Probook 4720s to deploy so thought, no better than that using MDT to image the 1st one and deploy the other 2 with that image.

So I spent 4+ hours getting that machine up to scratch, no problem there. all the applications I wanted installed.

boot win PE and I get errors there's not disk space.

login to PC and run lightouch.vbs instead. that goes pretty well and dumps a 5 GB wim file to the capture folder in the share before stopping with an error that I no longer had permission to write to the share.

No problem I thought, I try it again.

reboot the laptop. post sysprep, it now tries to re-install the drivers, fails and won't boot at all with a shitty error and won't boot in safe mode either.

Boot from windows 7 CD and repair failed saying it can't fix it. Totally FUBAR!

so now I've lost my image PC too.

I bet you the bloody licensing also considers that machines Office license key as used.

FUCK YOU Microsoft, you just wasted my entire day. I could have built all 3 machines from scratch in the time you super dooper MDT server managed to fuck me over.

Vodafone UK's big change the ring length secret

2010-11-20T16:53:00.006Z

I'm sure these f*ckers do this on purpose.

they issue a mobile with an inordinately short time delay between ring and going to voice mail. that way you're forced to the call the person back and incur an outgoing call charge/use up free minutes.

Go to their website search for 'change length of ring' - 2 links, both dead.

next stop their Forums,

Even the post of the Vodafone affiliated 'staff' poster seem unwilling to provide and corroborate what the correct procedure is.

It turns out the procedure is also different between pre-pay and contract.

**61*121*11*30# for a 30 second delay.

Why is that so utterly difficult to make available to customers? Smacks of wilful intent.

I forgot how bad Talktalk could be...

2010-11-16T19:06:00.002Z

I started writing this post on 8 July 2010.

In April 2010 we moved into our new house. Having unfortunately just renewed our talktalk contract for our landline at the old place, I decided to move their service to the new house rather than pay the £70 cancellation fee. God I wish I had paid it.

After notifying them of the dates in advance I was told they would charge £30 admin fee for the move and it would take a few weeks. Not a huge problem. Then I was told we could not keep our existing number despite moving less than 1 mile from our old house. I thought number portability was supposed to be a simple and easy task in these modern times?

Anyway we got the move completed and waited for d-day. The engineer arrived and installed the line and informed us of our new number. All good and simple. A few days later I got a letter in the post welcoming us to the service. A simple few lines and no instructions that we needed to do anything further.

I then got my ebill email from my old address and account informing me they owed me £8, no problem I thought. I'm sure it will be transferred to the new account...

So we soldiered on getting settled into the new house.

Then out of the blue some 2 months later our phone stops working all together. It's a Saturday and the automated response on the line tells us that we've been cut off for not paying the bill and it proceeds to put me through to their payment department which only works Mon-Fri.

On the Monday I phone and I'm told I owe them £101 and they will not reconnect the line until I pay. I dispute this as it's their fuckup but the CSA is adamant. So I ask to be transferred to their cancellation department.

Now at this stage my account should simple have been transferred to the new number, I already paid by direct debit, has a few other services on the number and was setup for paperless e-billing.

I'm told none of the services have been transferred and I should have received a paper bill. I never got it.

Further they want to charge me £1.45 for the paper bill (x2 for the bill I never got and to send me another copy). They also want to charge me £3.50 for not paying by direct debit.

So having failed to do anything correctly why have they charge me £30 admin fee?

After 42 mins of arguing I'm told it will be sorted, all fees, including the admin charge will be refunded and new paper bill sent out.

I receive the bill 3 days later, subtract the agreed charges I'm not paying for and try to pay the bill via my online banking. You can't they do not provide any information to make an online banking payment. I phone up and pay approx £61 of the bill.

No problem, now I need to sort out the ebilling. I login with my details but it's still showing the old account details.Can't do that!

Finally I get hold a person by phone and we start conversing via e-mail, she after nearly a month of trying to help is unable to sort out all of these problems. She did manage to sort out the direct debit. But I can't register my online account. 11 e-mails to and fro with her and I give up, It's now July 26.

Then after some googling I discovered dear Charles Dunston's e-mail address. I took the chance and e-mail it with a right royal rant at their incompetence.

I got a response!

Things started moving along, I got credits for the stuff I shouldn't have been charged for.

But paper billing and registering my existing e-mail account was still a problem. So I got monthly credits put against my paper billing to cover the cost of being charged for paper billing.

I got 2 very pleasant and helpful women from Charle's 'office' who kept me informed by phone and e-mail of the progress and updates along the way.

Today, Tuesday, 17 November 2010, 26 emails later, the issue is finally resolved to my satisfaction and I can now get e-mail billing as per normal. Not bad since this all Started in April and escalated in July.

The scary bit is that the inability to transfer e-mail addresses during a house move was a fundamental problem with their back office software and it took some 6 months to get it sorted. I can't imagine how many of their customers might have moved house up to now, but it's frightening to think how many others would have experienced worse than me and probably given up, thrown in the towel, since it seems the only way to get simple basic customer services it complain directly to the man sitting at the top. I can't see how his empire is going to carry on if us minions continue to be treated so poorly.

My first HDR Attempts

2010-09-30T14:21:00.003+01:00

I upgraded my Canon 350D to a 550D last month.

Been reading up about HDR photography and got some software downloaded.

this morning was wonderfully misty, so I bundled the camera and tri-pod into the car and left 10 mins earlier, stopping jst around the corner at the local Wizard Symposium building.

Took a few snaps and did a bit of testing.

after a bit more tweaking, came out with this...

Nokia Software - wonderful stuff

2010-08-18T09:13:00.006+01:00

I have Windows 7 64-installed with Sp1 (Beta).

My wife has a Nokia 5800 Xpress Music. It's been a bit flaky of late so I thought it might be time for a software update.

PC Suite, says use OVI.

OVI crashes when the phone is connected via bluetooth.

Install Software updater, it can't see the phone, but PC Suite and OVI can.

Great stuff.

PC Suite auto update fails to download. Download PC Suite and OVI updates manually, reboot. Still the same problem.

Nokia FAIL!

HTC Magic, Vodafone UK, CynogenMod & Android

2010-05-26T10:13:00.009+01:00

I've paid the price for being an early adopter. Over a year ago I was very excited to get an HTC Magic with Google Android. Since then it's be a frustrating endeavour getting the best out of what this phone and other operating system have to offer.

First off, this device is the limited 32B model of the handset, with small Ram and is also the 'with Google'. The problem with this is that the OS rom is thus controlled by Google and not HTC. The HTC released roms with SenseUI are not compatible and won't be pushed to this device. Nor can you download it from HTC as it requires serial authentication.

The phone initially was released with Android version 1.5. Vodafone and Google eventually, and frustrating late, finally released 1.6. It took well over a week of waiting by which time my frustration got the better of me and I decided to download and upgrade the ROM manually rather than wait any longer for the over the air release which seemed to be very slow to get out to some phones, despite using numerous tricks to get the unit to try and phone home for the update.

Rumour about Android 2.x started a few month later. Excited anticipation was met with the same frustrations as before. The standard Vodafone response being that it was up to Google to release the updates, they did know when and we just had to keep waiting. 14 months into an 18 month contract and my HTC Magic was still suffering on Android 1.6 with poor performance and very poor battery life. Weekly visits to the Vodafone forums showed many others venting the same frustrations at being sold what was essentially a crippled handset, how crippled I wasn't too sure since I had no benchmark to compare it too.

Then there were the post mentioning CynogenMod. It tweaked my interest and I started reading up on it. It looked a little daunting and the continual warning from Vodafone on their forum that any Rom upgrades would invalidate the warranty (utter bollocks, but that's another story).

So eventually I decided to bite the bullet and go for CynogenMod.

I'm not going to go into the process here but give a little background.

1st I installed the recovery Rom via Fastboot (the hardest bit, that went very smoothly).

Thereafter it was the CynogenMod 4.2.15.1 a tweaked version of Android 1.6. The improvements were staggering. It was like I had been given a new phone. I could hardly believe it was the same phone at all.

Never the less after some more ready and now filled with a bit of confidence about how to go about flashing the new Roms I took the dive towards the CynogenMod 5.0.7 test builds which were Android 2.1 builds.

Once again a staggering improvement in usability my phone was a puppy again. Battery life was vastly improved. a few tweaks here and there and the performance is staggering.

CynogenMod 5.0.7 quickly moved from test 4 to test 7 in a few short weeks before being released as stable this week.

Vodafone need to pull their finger out and look after their existing customers. This crap about blaming Google for the release schedules just does not wash with me. I'm not paying Google £30+ per month for 18 months for their services and handset.

I can now say that Vodafone are neglecting HTC Magic users and are more than happy for these customers to soldier on with cripple handsets that are barely fit for purpose. Is it really that hard for them to do such a simple this as to look after their existing customers? This problem is not unique to HTC Magic or Google, other carriers with the exact same model of handset have been able to facilitate these Rom upgrades for their customers.

Google Buzz, no thanks!

2010-02-12T10:57:00.004Z

Well, there was a bit of hype, I was excited but less that 24 hours after getting activated I've de-activated it.

I'm a bit of a Google fanboy but this one is just not on.

What annoyed me?

Firstly Buzz messages appeared in my Google Mail inbox and this seemed to be the default none changeable default. I don't want to download an e-mail of every followed Buzzer :(

Secondly, my Profile has my real name and online identity (Insane_Homer). By default my published Buzz Profile released both full name!!! WTF? NO!!! by default? really? FUCK OFF!!! I don't want people to 'find' me!

Three, auto following of my contacts, why??? what for? piss off!!!

What did I like? Being able to use the Google Maps App on my Android to post a Buzz with Photos and my GPS location.

But Alas my Buzzes have been deleted and Buzz Turned off. Thanks but no thanks, Google has for once hit really wide of the mark, which is a bit unusual for them.

BBC iPlayer quirks and annoyances on the Wii

2010-02-03T13:23:00.005Z

I love the BBC iPlayer. I think it's bloody fantastic but I have a few gripes of late about the way it's implemented on the Wii.

About 2 weeks ago we missed the second episode of this Season's Heros. No problem, I saw it listed on the iPlayer on my PC - We'll watch it on the iPlayer on the Wii I thought.

How wrong. Heros does not form part of the listing on the Wii Version of the iPlayer. I guess there are some issues with the distribution deal they did with the American rights owners.

This weekend I wanted to watch the 2nd episode of the brilliant Physics series on my TV, seeing as they've resorted to broadcasting it on BBC4 at or around midnight. It's a lot more conformable watching it on the couch at a reasonable hour, rather than spending an hour sitting in front of the computer in an uncomfortable chair.

Switch on Wii, launched iPlayer. Find program, press Play. Stutter, Stutter, Stutter it stopped completely 4 times within the 1st 90 seconds of the show starting.

I restarted the Wii, check for console updates (none needed) and proceeded to try again. Same problem... maybe it's the BBC stream or my network? So I sat down at the PC and tried from there. Worked bloody perfectly, over the same wifi connection, via the same broadband connection to the same BBC servers.

BBC iPlayer on Wii = Fail!

Not 2 days after all these frustrations I get a spam promotional e-mail from Nintendo trying to tell me how great BBC iPlayer is on the Wii. I beg to differ.

Compare that to the brilliant implementation of the Sky Player on the Xbox 360 and Nintendo have a lot to learn.

Windows 7 - Microsoft download Lifecam FAIL

2009-12-16T20:08:00.001Z

Windows 7 Slow boot up with long blank screen

2009-10-24T07:24:00.022+01:00

I have a x64 clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium and suffered from a very slow boot time after initial installation.

After seeing the initial Windows Logo there would be some hard drive activity then a long period (40+ seconds) of a blank screen, no disk activity then finally the process continues and the OS loads pretty quickly after that.

A quick Google did not give me any clues and a browse through the Windows event log also proved fruitless.

I have however managed to solve the problem, now it may be one of the 2 things I tried before the next reboot.

First I downloaded and installed the lasted AMD chipset drivers for my motherboard and installed those. I don't however think this was the solution.

The delay seemed to be some sort of time-out, like a network time-out.

I connect my PC (desktop PC) to the internet via Wireless USB, not the Ethernet adapter. I look in the networking control panel showed that the Ethernet adapter was installed and enabled. I disabled it.

Reboot.

No more delay.

Total boot time from to opening a my Firefox homepage 1 min 13 seconds. A vast improvement.

If disabling the Ethernet adapter worked for you, please comment.

edit: seems that the Ethernet is is not the problem, it seemed to work for a while but now I'm faced with a similarly long 30 sec delay. From a a bit of googling it appears this may be an Issue with NVidia drivers alone or a conflict with AMD/ATI motherboard drivers.

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Edit: Update - Finally had some time to have another go at trouble shooting this.

Downloaded and re-installed the latest NVidia x64 drivers (as admin with AV disabled).
Downloaded and installed the latest ASUS drivers for my Mobo.

A usuak Google was to enable boot logging - Type msconfig in the Start Search field | 'Boot' tab | Check 'Boot log', hit OK and reboot. When you arrive at the Desktop, look for the ntbtlog.txt file in the %SystemRoot%\Ntbtlog.txt directory, then check the log for anything related to the slow startup.

After a reboot I had a number of errors in the ntbtlog.txt

Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\vga.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Loaded driver \??\C:\Program Files (x86)\LogMeIn\x64\RaInfo.sys
Loaded driver \??\C:\Windows\system32\drivers\LMIRfsDriver.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\srv.sys

A google of the 1st line led me to here... which seems to indicate a very similar problem to mine.

I do 2 network cards. The built in ethernet (disabled in device manager) and my USB Wireless dongle.

Run the sfc /scannow as admin. 100% completed detected no problems!?

Now looking at the boot log file again I see 2 entries...

Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\vga.sys

then later on

Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\vga.sys

So it looks like it's trying to load it twice and failing?

Same thing for

Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\NDProxy.SYS

using msconfig I disabled the wired autoconfig service but it broke the wireless networking (go figure).

I got a good fast boot to desktop in undera minute. No deplay at all at ~22 seconds I get a mouse pointer and it all goes very fast from there. Unfortunately it breaks the wireless network and I get no wireless connection.

re-enabling the service failed to get the wireless network working against without having to un-install and re-install the wireless network device driver and reboot thereafter went back to the slow boot on 2+ mins.

My guess so far is that it's trying to find some network or internet connection, the wireless connection does not authenticate until after the user login since the authentication is user specific and requires the encryption key.

oddly disabling the wlan autoconfig service at boot does not affect the boot time but does affect the wireless connectivity.

I downloaded and installed the latest windows 7 drivers for the Ethernet card and re-enabled it. I then re-enabled the wired auto config.

I tried to set the WLan autoconfig service on a delayed start up but was prevented from doing so.

A reboot and I was at desktop in 30 seconds, but the wireless adapter although shown to be working properly in device manager was not seeing any networks and not connecting. it looks like the Ethernet driver install also did something to the USB device driver auto detect since the mouse no longer worked for a good min or 2 and my external USB attached HDD decided to give me the auto-run device plug-in screen. Weird!

A restart of the WLan Autoconfig service got it working again.

Another reboot and the same problem, a quick boot to desktop and then 2 mins of looking at waiting for all the services to enable. No wireless networking again...

Next I un installed and re-installed the Wireless adapter and rebooted. Back to the 2 min black screen but wireless auot connected without a problem.

So at least I now know it's the wireless causing the problem.

Vodafone UK HTC Magic - Android 1.6 (Donut) Release

2009-10-19T11:47:00.026+01:00

I got fed-up with waiting for this update and happened along some interesting details I've set out below.

found this and it worked just fine for me. Took about 10 minutes in total

Beware - you can brick/harm you phone following the manual instructions. Do this at your OWN Risk.

forums xda-developers

I also Found these instructions, which don't work for me so I did the thingy above.

Tap on Dialer - to open the dialer screen.
From the dialer type *#*#checkin#*#* (that is *#*#2432546#*#*)
After a few seconds, you will receive an alert notification, accessible from the homescreen window shade "checkin result success".[i get this]
Return to the homescreen.
Press the Menu key.
Select Settings.
Scroll down, and select About phone.
Select System updates.

*** My Original Story and pointless Anticipation detailed below ***

The release was touted for Monday 19th November 2009.

Quiet a bit of anticipation on the Vodafone Forums

So far nothing for me. I've done 2 hard reboots so far this morning and few manual checks in the System panel of the version number without any luck.

I guess patience will be the order of the day.

Good News

Heya Guys,

Just thought I'd pop on and let you know that it should be released today and the roll out looks like it is being staggered, in theory every one should get the notification over the next 24 - 48 hours.

James
eforum Team

Day #1
Nothing and getting glum, maybe tomorrow...?

Day #2
07:00 - next day. Still nothing :(
08:27 - nothing. but reports on forum that people are starting to get it...
18:15 - still nothing

Day #3
06:15 - Nothing
15:00 - got fed-up, found manual download, took the risk. It worked and now I reap the rewards...

What these large companies continue to fail to realise is that Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction are about managing expectations.

In this case they have clearly failed. With no official word from either as to the actual nature of the release we are relying on Vodafone forum staff to feed us incorrect and contradicting information.

We were initially told 24-48 hours by confident Mr James 2 days about, only to be told yesterday that could actually now take up to 6 days to roll out a 15 Mb download.

That thread now has over 30,000 views. That's a lot of annoyed customers.

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Virgin Media Cable Speed Test

2009-10-18T08:18:00.001+01:00

Above average and working very fast indeed.

It all Starts tomorrow - Bumper release month

2009-10-18T08:01:00.007+01:00

It's going to be a bumper release month.

On Monday, 19th October 2009, Android 1.6 'Donut' will be released for my HTC Magic. It's the UK Vodafone 'with Google' release date. (Previews of 2.0 also being released this week). I Can't wait for those releases. If only I could get the Hero rom for my HTC Magic without having to resort to hacking my phone. But that's another story.

Then next week Thurs it Starts for real.

Thursday, 22nd October, is Windows 7 release. I've already pre-ordered Home Premium. My 1st non OEM purchase of an MS OS and looking forward to it since I've been playing with the 90 day Enterprise preview and love it.

The following day, 23rd October, is the release of Forza 3 on the Xbox. I've pre-ordered the Limited edition. The first time I've spent over £50 on a game...

Then finally on the 29th October is the Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala release date. I've been running the beta officially for about 2 weeks now and as per usual it's been a wonderful improvement on the previous version. They are making great strides with each release and this one is no different.

MP 'refusing to pay back £7,000'

2009-10-18T07:06:00.016+01:00

MP 'refusing to pay back £7,000'

Just read Frank Field's (ex-MP) response about not paying back the some £7000 because of the retrospective change to the rules. He gives a great but flawed example.

The MP added: "Imagine that you have been driving, perfectly legally, through a 30 mile an hour zone at a speed of 25 mph.

"Imagine then your reaction when, five years later, you receive multiple fines as a decision has been taken to change, retrospectively, the speed limit to 20."

Yes, that would be hard to swallow but does not mirror the retrospective change he argues about.

Imagine rather that he's been driving on a road without any indicated speed limit on it (You could also imagine it's a secret road that is for the exclusive use of MPs to cut corners while the rest have to go the long way round)

A reasonable driver would assume by the layout of the road that the speed limit might be 50 mph.

However the local elected politician, not seeing a speed limit sign assumes he can take advantage of this and drive as fast as he likes.

He's caught doing over 100 mph. Well beyond any reasonable and legal obligation (even assuming it may have been 70 mph).

An investigation ensues and it is revealed that he's been driving well over 100 mph down the same (secret) stretch of road for years (Initial attempts by the police and and a public enquiry into the nature of the secret road, it's use and purpose are hindered by the official secrets act).

The road should be closed or made available to all. He should be banned, have his license taken away and fined heavily at a minimum, but to allow him to keep his license with a slap on the wrist he is offered a compromise whereby he admits his guilt and pays a nominal fine instead. The road is kept open for his exclusive use but he promised to keep within the newly agreed and now sign posted speed limit and the tax payer will fork out for the extra policing required to ensure that he does indeed stick to the rules.

That's not how the rest of us law abiding citizens would be treated in the same situation.

Sorry Frank, but you get no sympathy from me. Just because you milked the system and got away with it does not make it 'legal'

from his own website...

However, late on Monday I received along with other MPs a letter from Sir Thomas Legg. He recommends I repay just over £7,000: £1,000 housekeeping costs for each year; £1,800 of other household bills, and £230 which I should have claimed from other allowances.

Sir Thomas correctly points out that over the five year period I claimed twice for three bills amounting to £117. The bills shouldn't have been presented twice nor paid. I regret this and have paid the money back.

ZAGG invisibleSHIELD! for HTC Magic

2009-07-15T19:59:00.017+01:00

I'd had my phone for a few days and decided seeing that I need to keep it on my current contract for 2 years that it might be a good idea to look after it.

Over to the trusty Google for suitable solutions. It's a pretty new handset so the choices are a bit limited.

I found invisibleSHIELD! from Zagg and did some reading and a bit more research, found a few youtube videos showing how good it is and how easy it is to install. So after a few more days of not being able to find anything better I decided to order the full body version for my HTC Magic directly from them (from the states). I also ordered the full body kit for my wife's new Nokia 5800.

The kits duly arrived yesterday, about 5 days after the order. Not too bad seeing as it was coming from over the pond.

So after dealing with the kids, I washed my hands and got comfortable at the dining room table under some good light.

I opened the HTC Magic kit first.

Not to be too gungho I decided to get the hang of it by trying a small piece rather than go directly for the screen section.

As directed I sprayed their magic water on my fingers and proceeded to try and peel off the 1st piece. FAIL! The contact sheet split before the film so I had half the film off with half the contact sheet still firmly stuck to it! Eventually I got it off, by this time having mangled the film nicely and put my fingers all over the 'sticky' side of the film. Thus rendering my attempts to keep finger prints off the sticky side pointless (My fingers had dried so despite their best efforts to inform me to keep the fingers and film wet with the magic water I was unable to do so). I managed to spray both sides as directed and proceeded to put the film in place.

I used the provided black cloth to move it into place and mop up the residual liquid. Getting it into place was quiet easy. keeping it in place while trying to smooth out bubbles and water is another. I let it dry a bit so the contact was a bit stickier. I managed to get it into place and started to mould the edges into place. This took at a lot more patience waiting for the film to dry enough for the contact to adhere sufficiently.

Unfortunately my constant attempts to smooth the edges down ended up with tiny bits of black lint sticking to the edges so I now had black lint lines along the edge of the film against the pristine white of the Magic's cover. Completely unacceptable so I removed it. It wasn't a crucial piece and I wouldn't miss it (it was the bit that covered the speaker above the screen).

Next I proceeded with the main bit, the important bit - the screen protection. Having learnt from my previous attempt I made sure I could lift a corner of the film cleanly then sprayed my fingers and both sides of the film. I placed it on the screen of the phone without a problem. it slid about rather a bit while still very wet, so I mopped up the residual water with the cloth and smoothed out the bubbles with the supplied credit card tool. After a short while it was sticking nicely and no longer moving about and was in place. I continued to smooth out the remaining bubbles with the supplied cloth.

To my surprise the cloth managed to scratch the film. I wasn't worried, after all this is invisibleSHIELD. It will sort it self out. So I left it and continued with getting it just right. But the scratch remained. A little more patients maybe...

So next I started to install the film for the back cover. Luckily this time the film came off the contact sheet pretty easily. Nimble fingers got it in place pretty quick. I'm getting good at this I thought! Getting the edges folded over was again a bit of a pain and a game in patients.

However I ended up with the same problem as the 1st piece I tried. The lint from the black cloth managed to get stuck on the edges and I was again left with horrible black marks around the edges.

Another thing that I didn't particularly like was the ridges of the film along the edge of the phone. It was noticeable when holding the phone in the plam of my hand and really took away from the smooth curves of the Magic. So that bit was removed and binned too.

I decided not to continue with the other peripheral bits. The screen protection was really the bit I was after so I left it and made some dinner.

After dinner I switch the phone on. The cloth scratches were still there and irritating me already. There were also 2 other marks near the top edges that I just could not smooth out. They were really only noticeable if you looked for them and angle of the light was right. But I knew they were there and they bugged me.

So after the phone was on I started to navigate my usual way. As you may be well aware, the HTC Magic is a touch screen phone with a smooth glass surface for use with a finger. The invisibleSHIELD film does not have the same smooth gliding surface as the Magic's glass screen. It's a bit stickier so I found my finger was not gliding across the screen as smoothly and easily as I'm used to and expected.

I left it for a bit and them came back for another try. The stickiness was still there and it was really annoying. Typing and selecting was good and accurate without any problems but the friction of the film made dragging and dropping as annoying as the finger gestures ( e.g. while drawing the unlock pattern, swiping to move between home screens or pulling up the application tab).

So unfortunately I decided to remove the screen protection too.

That leaves me searching for another way to keep my phone protected. I guess I need a Wii remote type cover to protect it from the rough and tumbles and trust myself to not scratch the screen with my keys or other sharp instruments.

A Great concept, a good solution for screen protection for non-touch screen devices but not a viable solution for me and my HTC Magic and not as simple and easy to apply as the promotional videos I saw made it out to be.

I've contacted their customer support and they've offered to process a refund. Very good of them.