November 1, 2009 at 13:48 · Filed under tech talk
For some reason the ‘recovery’ disks that came with a friend’s eMachines desktop pc can not actually recover anything! All they do is restore/write the factory settings on there, which is useless!
My friend has many great photos on their hard drive so when their pc wouldn’t boot past the windows loading screen they got pretty annoyed. It seems like explorer wont load up, so i tried all the usuals like:
1. Ctrl+Alt+Del – NOTHING
2. WIN+r to try force run explorer – NOTHING
3. There was mouse movement, but no more
4. Safe mode – same symptoms only at a lower resolution
5. Last known good configuration – NOTHING
6. Checked the BIOS to see if anything weird was up – NOTHING
Very weird and quite frustrating… Almost points to a hardware failure but let’s hope it’s not.
What i’ve done:
1. I’ve taken the hard drive out of the machine and put it into an external hard drive case.
eMachines' Hard Drive in external USB hard drive case (taken apart)
2. I have a secondary external hard drive on which i have created a folder to store the PC’s hard drive contents
3. Then i simply ‘recover’ the PC to factory settings and drag over the relevant data from the external backup
This is the 2nd time that this has happened to this particular machine so i am installing a nice little application called Allway Sync which will monitor folders and automatically back up those folders to the external drive, so if and when this happens again there will be no fiddly taking the machine apart and all that…
I could use system restore but i find machines like this grinding themselves to a halt if you let windows manage their recovery and repairs.
I don’t know if this will help anyone, but if you have any questions i’ll be happy to answer them.
September 13, 2009 at 13:36 · Filed under Uncategorized
I have been looking for free nokia n97 apps and have to say i’m a little disappointed. There’s not a lot to choose from especially when you compare to the iphone 
That said the few that i have are great. Like google maps, facebook, techbuzz… actually that’s all i have… damn… i feel like i have a lot more, maybe because the n97 already caters for a lot of my needs by default… The only software that i really can’t live without on there is my TomTom navigator 6…
Does anyone know of any applications that are a must on this phone, and what’s the future of ovi like? are people developing stuff free apps?
August 18, 2009 at 21:58 · Filed under gadgets, tech talk
I love my new nokia n97… It’s a truly amazing and versatile phone that suits me perfectly. One thing i kind of missed was divx support, which i thought would come in the form of divx mobile, which can be downloaded for free from http://www.divx.com/mobile/ but don’t bother. You will download, install and realise that none of the buttons work and it’s pretty crap. If you do manage to get something to play it will be all jerky and no fun to watch.
Unfortunately, even if smartmovie and divx mobile and all of those work on your phone, you still have to convert you divx movies to mobile format for them to play smoothly. Divx mobile by default is pretty low resolution, and i wouldn’t bother with it if I were you.
So, where does that leave you? No 3rd party software works perfectly because your phone is simply too new. I tackled the problem a different way. I know the phone plays .3gp .3g2 .mp4 etc and i know that the realplayer installed on the phone is very quick and easy to use.
Then i remembered a little program i used to use with my ipod called plato video converter (Download it here). Yeah i know, you still have to convert but this does it nice and quickly, relatively speaking. It’s intuitive and nice to use and of course 100% free… Just queue up the files you want to convert and set your computer working. The program makes great use of all 4 cores on my computer and movies convert in about 15 mins, which is not bad if you’ve every experienced slow video conversion. You can even set the pc to turn off once finished, which makes the process even less painful.
you can see from the image what settings i use. Feel free to play around with them but these work for me.
hook the phone up by USB cable and use the mass storage function (easiest/quickest) and dump your new converted movie into your movies or videos folder. You don’t need to worry about about it anymore after that, realplayer will find it pretty much anywhere you dump it.
Conclusion:
I know you still need to convert, but at least you can play files from your file manager or from your videos folder through a supported and easy to use player.
The n97 is made for video, so don’t hold out for new video players when you have a great one already.
I hope this helps some people who want to make the most of their new hardware.
August 17, 2009 at 17:38 · Filed under tech talk
I added some bits of code to this blog to monitor my stats, and also allow people to use bookmarking sites like digg, stumble, delicious and technorati. I know they work for some people, but will they work for my little blog?
It’s an interesting experiment really, and i hope that in 1 week’s time (from today) i will be posting those results then.
I am very interested in the results… Will i actually get a lot more traffic than usual?
August 16, 2009 at 14:28 · Filed under Uncategorized
“Between street fighting and drug seizures, Tralee town is in trouble”
See full article in the Independant
A rather bleak outlook for a town that i’m quite attached to. Yes there are drug problems. I personally feel quite safe here. Ok, i wouldn’t walk home from town at 3am so maybe it’s not that safe here…
I try to avoid the rough areas and don’t really enjoy going out like i used to. I always leave pubs/clubs before the music stops as i think most of the violence happens after that. You’re needlessly putting yourself at risk if you stay out after that.
I can’t remember the last time i saw a fight here in Tralee, possibly because I have learned how to avoid them. I go out in the town maybe once every two weeks, maybe even less.
I think every town has its problems but very few towns have the problems of a city, like tralee is experiencing. Honestly i think Tralee has become safer. The Gardaí here do a hell of a job, between making their presence felt and dealing with issues my hat goes off to them. They don’t have an easy job and of course they can’t do their job 100% correctly or efficiently, as that’s unrealistic…
We need more CCTV in Tralee, so that the incidents can be reported and followed through on. We need a 100% guarantee that these anti-social acts can be punishable. Most people don’t press charges because the accused is instantly made aware of who is accusing them. Becuase Tralee is so small, you are easy to find and there is no ‘anonymity’ so you automatically feel threatened. The guilty parties know this, and expose this flaw in the system to run riot. They know there’s a 90% chance that they’ll get away with it.
I’m still proud of Tralee, seeing improvements around the place over the past 6 years that i’m here. The Gardaí are doing a fine job, and there are many positives to be said about the town.
I’m not going anywhere for a good while…
August 13, 2009 at 10:25 · Filed under gadgets
got my lovely n97 and oh my god is this thing good..
People complain about the keyboard layout but i love it although i wish there was also a function button near my left thumb.
The screen is epic, i have been browsing my favourite web pages effortlessly, and love the way it plays flash content in the browser…
I feel like i have bought a new pc, not a phone.. I love it, and i’m so glad i didn’t get an iphone…
This is so easy…
July 24, 2009 at 14:33 · Filed under tech talk
This is for people who have access to the files for the blog. Simply go into your template folder. In my case it’s wp-content>themes>fjords04-10.
1. Open the file called single.php. (use wordpad or any decent text editor)
2. locate (on line 5):
<div id=”pagina”>
3. insert (on the next line):
<a href=”index.php”> Return to blog list</a>
4. save the file and don’t forget to (re)upload it to your web server.
Hope this helps some of you
July 24, 2009 at 12:19 · Filed under tech talk
I have been working on a very official EU project with multiple countries involved over the past few years. I would just like to acknowledge the amount of time and money i saved because of this website.
It advertises that it converts .doc to .pdf but much to my delight it has had no problems with .xls or .ppt files either. I chose pdf because it’s easy to work with from a read-only point of view (displaying to end user). I felt it was important to relay the official documents rather than transcribe them into web format. At present the site is still under wraps, so i can’t show how i have used www.doc2pdf.net but i can assure you i have used it hundreds of times.
Please support it
July 21, 2009 at 14:05 · Filed under tech talk
So I now have a blog, twitter, facebook, bebo and all of my chat apps.
I use my twitter mainly for my short updates on what i’m doing. This in turn updates my facebook and bebo. Other sites i use may have a twitter badge in my signature. So twitter is really my main social networking tool, and it updates everything else.
Now, although it is my main, and will remain so, i do like the response i’m getting to this blog. I have decided to keep it alive for a while. Now i am face with a dilemna.
I am hosted on wordpress, and not on my own web domain. I have domains that I could use, but I don’t feel the need. However, I really want to update my twitter like Twitme or Tweet Me do, but i can’t upload plugins. What are my options?
I also want a way to synchronise my facebook and my blog posts, preferably without duplication. I’m not too worried about bebo.
July 20, 2009 at 17:45 · Filed under tech talk
So yeah, i’m a self proclaimed computer expert and no i’ve never had a blog before. To be honest, I’m pretty sure this is my first ever blog post. I use forums, twitter, bebo, facebook, msn messenger, gtalk, skype, etc. But i never got into blogging
I have never felt the need, and still don’t feel the need to have a blog. But here it is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this will be the only blog entry.
I’m an avid twitterer, i love it. Quick and to the point. If people are interested in my tweets, would they be interested in my blog? New people follow me all the time, so I said I’d finally dip my foot into blogging.
I think my progression is somewhat against the norm, as many seem to see twitter as a building block on blogging.
Please react to this blog if you find it, as i’m curious about this blogging thing…
