August 19th, 2009
I knew this day would come but it made me sad tonight when I switched on my Xbox360 and was shown the Red Ring Of Death (RROD). I’ve owned for this console for over 2 years so she’s lasted well. I called Microsoft to see what they could do and they informed me that they’d email a pre paid postage label to me to ship the console back for repair, result. Another result is that I call UPS and they’ll collect it from my home.
Repair will take up to 2 weeks but can be returned in 10 days if all goes well. It’s going to be a long 2 weeks I think.
Posted in Gaming, Marks day to day blog | 3 Comments »
August 14th, 2009
I was driving behind a black Peugeot 206 cc yesterday when I clocked the registration plate. SE03 XEY, trying to read SEXY maybe? Where a normal number plate would have had a UK badge she had a Playboy bunny. I said to the wife that the driver must be well fit with a plate like that. On approaching a set of red traffic lights I seized the opportunity to pull up along side. Wish I hadn’t bothered, we both laughed and agreed she was rough as arse holes. Another thing that grated on us was the fact she had the roof up on such a lovely day. Some people don’t deserve convertibles. Ugly people shouldn’t have sexy number plates and NO ONE should have a Playboy bunny on their ride.
Posted in Marks day to day blog | 1 Comment »
August 13th, 2009
Second attempt at photographing water droplets today. Increased aperture from f5.6 to f9 to give a little more depth of field and get more of the actual droplet in focus. Seems to have worked ok. Also replaced a plane white cup with a bright green cup to add more colour to the shot. Will have to have a go with coffee next.
Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »
August 12th, 2009
Being as I’m not working at the moment I thought I’d take 30 minutes out of my busy day to have a go at photographing water droplets. It’s actually easier than I thought it would be. Just needs patience because of the 36 shots I took I kept only 12.
The key to capturing the water droplets in the air is to use the flash. I used aperture priority mode with an aperture size of F5.6 and a focal length of around 200mm to keep the camera away from the water. To activate the shutter I used my infra red remote so I could drop the water with one hand and fire the camera with my other.
Worked pretty well all though the water is very slightly out of focus. I actually placed a box on the centre line of the cup and manually focused on that. I’m thinking if I increase my depth of field I’ll get better results. Time for another go I guess.
Posted in Photography | 2 Comments »
August 11th, 2009
It was nice that Apple released their latest iPhone 3.0.1 update to fix the SMS vulnerability recently exposed in the media. However, since installing it on my device I find it crashes between once and twice a week, that’s not good! Normally when I’m trying to send an SMS actually. I suspect another patch will be just around the corner to fix the problem.
Anyone else having this crashing problem?
Posted in Marks day to day blog | 1 Comment »
August 10th, 2009
Well I finally took the plunge. I’ve retired the 1tb Western Digital My Book back up drive and replaced it with a shiny new 2tb Apple Time Capsule.
First impressions are good, it’s simple to use and so much faster than the old drive. After plugging it in and running through the simple set up process both macs prompted me to use it as a back up location for Apples Time Machine utility. This means both the Mac mini and MacBook are running back ups every hour. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know all my data is safe (assuming the house doesn’t burn down).
A tip for anyone using a Time Capsule for the first time. For the first back up hard wire the computer to be backed up to the Time Capsule using an ethernet cable, it’s far quicker than using the wireless connection. 450gb backed up in under 24 hours which is pretty good in my eyes.
Another huge advantage to using this device is the dual wireless mode. I can run both G and N standards at the same time unlike my BT Home Hub which slows to the speed of the slowest device connected. Sounds trivial but trust me, it’s great.
Posted in Marks day to day blog, Technology | No Comments »
August 8th, 2009
In my recent blog post I described my frustration at losing nearly 600gb of drive space on my 1tb Western Digital My Book World. After speaking with Western Digital for over an hour it turns out this drive isn’t compatable with the Mac operating system. Strange, I’ve been backing up 2 Mac computers to this network drive for a few months now. However, when you want to delete files is when the compatabilty becomes a problem.
The Mac operating system creates an invisible folder called “.Trashes” where it moves all files you want to delete. Think of it as the Trash can on a Mac or the Recyle Bin in Windows. Because this drive is network based I can’t see any invisible folders meaing I have all my deleted files hidden away rather than removed. I belive this is where my missing 600gb of disk space has gone.
Lucky for me I know a man who can use voodoo magic to sort this problem. Thanks J.
Posted in Marks day to day blog, Technology | 4 Comments »
August 7th, 2009
This morning I took my iPhone 3GS off its charger at around 06:30. Listened to this weeks “Trance around the World” podcast on the train for about 40 minutes whilst surfing the net for 20 minutes. I then took 2 phone calls on my walk to the office totalling about 20 minutes. On my arrival the iPhones battery meter showed 85% energy remaining. That’s not bad I guess, it was used quite heavily.
A third phone call came in about 09:30, a short call of around 5 minutes. This last call must have charged the built in power plant as the meter is now showing 94% energy remaining.
Wow! I don’t think my mains charger could juice her up that quick.
Posted in Marks day to day blog, Technology | No Comments »
August 6th, 2009
I’ve recently been playing with region codes on my MacBook’s DVD drive, mainly to “watch” region 1 DVD’s. Imagine my horror when I tried to change back to my native region 2 and was confronted with Error 70001. What the f!!k does that mean I thought? Am I trapped in region 1 world? I hope not!
It turns out that it’s a simple thing to fix. I was trying to change the region code back using a disk that supported 2 codes, region 2 and 5 I believe. Even though I instructed my MacBook to switch to region 2 it didn’t like the disk, giving me the Error 70001 message.
All you need to do to get around this is to find a region 2 only disk and use that to switch region codes. I’m now safely back in region 2 world. The end.
Posted in Marks day to day blog, Technology | 1 Comment »
August 5th, 2009
I own a Western Digital MyBook World external hard drive and up until recently I’ve been impressed with it. OK, it’s a little slow but it’s a good work horse and running via my router means any computer on my home wifi can access it. It’s primary use is a back up drive, backing up both my Mac Mini and MacBook. Recently, it’s been trying my patience.
Last week I wanted to erase all data from the drive and redo my back ups from scratch to cut down on multiple incremental back up files. Seemed like a pretty straight forward task until I noticed after erasing all files it showed only 45% free. Being a Mac user I know that the Trash Can needs emptying after such an event but even after that it still shows 45% available, that’s over 500gb missing.
If I reformat the drive that should fix it. Do you think I can discover how to format a Western Digital MyBook World? Hell no, their own website, forums and various other sites don’t mention a way of formatting this drive. I hope I can figure this out because over 500gb missing is making me sad.
Any one know of a quick fix?
Posted in Marks day to day blog, Technology | No Comments »
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