Category Archives: Technology

Coolness

Two good things: Firstly, Netflix is now happily running under Ubuntu on the living room computer. It’s a workaround of course, with an add-on to Chrome emulating Firefox, but it works a treat.

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Which does mean that I didn’t need to set the computer up with a Windows dual boot option. At least I’d not gotten around to installing Ubuntu on the bedroom computer, so I can just replace Windows when I do.

Secondly, Eels will be playing at the Sage in July. On a Saturday too. And tickets are on sale in the morning.

Happy.

Dishwasher

I learnt something new this evening. My nine year-old dishwasher has little slots for wine glasses. That’s ingenious.

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It’s a bit embarrassing that I didn’t know this before today though.

Rare find

Just over a year ago, I took down my jukebox speakers when replastering the living room. A couple of months ago, I decided I’d delayed putting them back long enough and dug out my drill. Which was quite dead. After a further delay and the acquisition of a new drill, the speakers were returned to the wall.

And, of course, the jukebox wouldn’t work. Before taking down the speakers it’d worked perfectly, so I couldn’t understand its failure. The CDs would attempt to play, then stop. The LED display showed er 61 which wasn’t exactly helpful since I don’t possess a manual.

According to the Internet, I simply needed to clean the CD drive lens. But that didn’t do anything. The next most likely cause of the problem was the CD unit itself. So I set about trying to find one.

At first I wasn’t very successful, although I could send the unit to the US for repair for only $130 plus postage. But after only a few days, a couple appeared on eBay. New units too, cheaper than a repair.

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Now all I have to do is figure out how to fit it.

56

I need to start carrying a usb lead around with me. The number 56 bus now has plug sockets.

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And, completely unrelated, a most delicious mushroom ‘burger’ from Lady Grey’s. Erdinger on draught too. Both were consumed on Saturday.

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Email

I don’t understand how people can get their email address wrong. If they have a messy address, then fair enough, but if it’s a case of just their name with, say, a dot in the middle or a number at the end, then I’d say they have issues. Specially when they repeatedly give out the wrong address. Surely they must realise when no one replies?

For many years, I’ve received emails with holiday photos, appointment details. A few weeks ago I even received another Gary Moore‘s life insurance policy by email. And his wife’s (I’m assuming) physio booking.

In the past I used to attempt to forward mail by trying variations of my own email address; for example:
gary.moore@sameasmine.com
garrymoore@
garymoore1@

There’s a Gary Moore at each of the above, several other variations too. Nowadays, I tend to delete the email, occasionally advising the sender if it looks important.

Today, I received yet another. I might have to start copying them all here.

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Funny enough, I used to have an uncle George.

Linux

For some time now, I’ve tried to avoid using Windows at home (it’s not an option at work). I’m only running it on one computer and that’s just because it has a weird graphics card which really messes with Linux. Actually, Windows struggles to cope with it too.
Today, while still suffering with my cold, I installed Linux on a couple of elderly computers. They were getting a bit creaky running Windows, and were no longer in use, so Linux seemed to be the sensible option.
They’re both now up and running, reasonably quick too when compared to their performance under Windows. One’s around eight years old, while the other’s from maybe a little over a decade ago. There’s no reason why they’d not be used for another couple of years.
And Linux is way prettier.

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Pi

I’m so impressed with my Raspberry Pi.

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It’s a pretty cool thing.

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I’m sure I’ll find lots of things to do with it.

IOS 7

I’ve had great fun with IOS 7 over the past few days. Although I’d made two backups before updating my phone, I hadn’t appreciated a common problem in that iTunes backups tend to get corrupted when a device is pretty full (which mine was).

My last backup did work, however, so I now have a fully restored phone. As it was in February.

After a lot of effort, with a killer hangover yesterday, I found free software to extract stuff from a backup file.

While everything’s not quite fixed … I haven’t attempted to rescue contacts with numbers that changed since February … I now have a working phone again.

I shall not describe events leading to my hangover, but my Friday was excellent. I did take a good picture though.

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