It's a mad world....

Tonight, I had to show my Mum how to rip a CD and sync to my Dad's MP4 player. Its a mad, mad world......!

Blown PC Update #4 - Final

Like I said, this was a whole new learning experience for me. I've learned all about SMTP and Port blocking. So, where were we. The new PC was sort of working with the new email account settings, whereas it was working perfectly before. So I decided to put the old hard disk back in my Linux machine to have a look what the settings were. However, Mr Microsoft was having none of it. The activation time for the XP license on the drive had expired so it wouldn't let me log in. Great, the XP Pro trick described earlier doesn't work because this is XP Home. Great. But all was not lost.I rebooted the PC while holding down F5, excellent! Its still boots into Safe Mode! This was enough for me to view the old email account settings. The answer was kind of obvious, but there was no reason for me to know before hand. The old email setting point to wanadoo servers! I did try this from my PC but it would never have worked due to Port 25 blocking by Sky..........!

Google Chrome History

Have you tried Google Chrome yet instead of Internet Explorer? If not, why not? It's so much better, faster, slicker and never crashes or leaves you waiting for the second tab to start. One feature of chrome that was always a bit odd is that there is no history button. Weirdly it seemed the only way you could look back at your history was to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl H or select it from the setup drop down menu. However, today I had a eureka moment! Firstly, either press Ctrl H or pick History from the setup drop down menu, then click the favourites star and History can then be added to the bookmark bar or other bookmarks folder! Easy!!!

Blown PC Update #3

The new PC reared its head again this evening. Not surprising really as I hadn’t managed to configure an email client before it was whisked back up the motorway. So I expected the usual trouble with setting up an email account to work with Windows Live Mail. What I didn’t count on was a whole new learning experience!

The user had downloaded Windows Live Mail and installed it, great. But no email was coming through, no surprise there then. So I enquired for the email address so that I could look up the POP and SMTP settings for their account, easy, or so I thought. The email address was and old user@user.fsnet.co.uk address. Now here’s where things got tricky. I didn’t find out exactly what the order of events was, but fsnet started off as Wanadoo and that started off as Freeserve and whole lot now belongs to Orange. So a quick search around the web provided me with the Orange POP and SMTP addresses, pop.orangehome.co.uk and smtp.orangehome.co.uk. Sorted, or so I thought.

So I walk the user through the account setup process on Windows Live Mail. They hit the sync button and hey presto email arrives in the account and the folders are replicated, hurrah! My joy was short lived, outgoing email fails. Mmmmm tricky, so we go round in circles checking the account information and everything looks fine. So I spend the next hour on the web searching for a solution. Its then you heart sinks as you realise it’s a problem lots of people have, and there’s no sign of solution. With a headache coming on I give up after an hour. However, later on I get an email from the user saying everything was OK. This is followed by a phone call to say it’s not working again now.

This is odd, how can it sort of work? It should either work 100% or not at all. So I do some more research and its then I find out all about ‘Port 25’ blocking of many of the ISP’s we use. This means that if you have Orange as your ISP, you must have an @orange email account or the server will block your email! Apparently this is to stop virus infected computers spewing spam out into the internet through Port 25, all well and good, but you are in trouble if your ISP doesn’t always match your email address like we have here. So here’s the rub, why did it all work OK before the blown PC? The email setup must have been using either a different SMTP server or a different port on the Orangehome server. Neither of which I can find details of on the web. So there’s only one thing for it. I will have to pop (no pun intended) the old hard drive back into my Linux machine and have a look. There are other ways to sort this out but I’ll try this first.

Technical Support

I got home today to find two frantic messages on our answer machine. One was my dear old Dad, the other from my Mum. My Dad spends 12 hours a week hooked up to a dialysis machine so he uses a tape walkman a lot, well he did. The one he has used mostly is Sony and they don't tend to have a high volume output, so he started looking for a new one. They tried several from Argos that either didn't work weren't loud enough. So today they have been to Comet and come home with......wait for it........an MP4 player. God help me, what have they done. Apparently it has a radio that he can use while they learn to put music on it from the PC. Like I said, God help me.

The second call from my mum, apologising for the first call and also informing me that my old Toshiba 32" Picture Frame TV (the first one) has switched itself off and wouldn't work most of the day. Strange. Anyway sounds terminal, and old Toshiba CRT TV's all suffer from a common failure of a component that costs around £100 to fix. This one also has a scratch right in the middle of the screen so its not worth saving. So time to buy a new LCD TV, £300 for 32" or £400 for 37" to 42" should do it. Toshiba/LG/Samsung or something similar. Anything but a Tesco special will suffice. I will have to wait and see what the budget is first (and the urgency).

Blown PC Update #2

I'm shocked. Shocked at how easy it was to defeat the Windows XP Pro log on screen. We had a change of plan, the owner of the blown PC managed to blag a couple of old computers from their work IT manager. One was on old 667Mhz Celeron Windows 2000 Machine that didn't look promising. The other was a 2.6 Ghz P4 Dell with a gig of RAM and an 80Gb Hard drive that didn't look too bad.

First problem, the DELL wouldn't boot! That's a blow, the other one is a bit of a dog. So I took the vacuum to the innards and pulled out the 2 RAM modules to re-seat them and tried again, success! Then I was confronted with the XP logon screen and guess what , no passwords. After a quick search in Google I found a couple of people suggesting a scarily easy way to bypass the logon screen and get in as an administrator. Not believing it would work, I tried it. 30 seconds later I was logged in. So I immediately set about removing the password from the old user account. So here's today's lesson kids. Never, ever leave anything on a PC you don't want somebody else to read. It's scarily easy. And, if you ever change your PC, take out the hard disk and hide it, smash it, whatever, under no circumstances leave it in the PC. Better still, invest in a hard drive enclosure that costs about £20 and use it as a back-up drive.

Anyway, I deleted the old account without looking at any files (honest) and set about rebuilding it for home use. Windows downloaded about 50 updates that took a couple of hours to install, I installed Google Chrome over Internet Explorer (try it you'll like it), Google Picasa and Microsoft Security Essentials. I then connected my back-up drive and copied over the pictures from the old PC. The whole setup took maybe 3 1/2 hours on and off.

Well this job is done (yeah right). The Dell has gone to be installed but there is no email program installed as I didn't have the relevant information to hand. This might (will) be the subject of the next Technical Support Call I'm sure!!!

Blown PC - Update

I'm having a re-think on the blown up PC. Maybe I have given up too soon. I've offered to rebuild it with a new MOBO & processor to help save some cash. This will cost about £120 all in. But maybe a search around ebay would find a second hand MOBO that would work with the processor. In theory, all I need to do, is find out what model MOBO is fitted. Then I will know what socket type the processor is. Then a quick hunt round ebay for soemthing similar will do the trick - in theory. This still leaves the problem of XP needing to be reactivated but a call to Microsoft should again in theory sort this out. BUT - there is no guarantee of success, I could be chucking away money if some other random unseen fault it to blame. Hmmm, tricky.

Watch this space.

Technical Support

I also had a digital picture frame boomerang its way back to me today. It was a Christmas present for a family member full of family photos. We had some power cuts in our area the other day that fried the memory card. Luckily the picture frame is OK. I'll just have to reload all the photos onto a new memory card, all 700 of them.......Sigh.

Trouble was, I only had a 128MB card left, the old one I used originally was 1Gb. I used a 1Gb card because I wanted to use large picture files for the frame to keep the quality up. I must say, the Philips 8FF3CDW/05 picture frame we bought is EXCELLENT. The only 'fault' I can find with it is that the 'random' slideshow feature isn't truly random. It show about 6 slides in a row before popping in one out of the numerical list. Nobody seems to have noticed though.

Anyway, I used Google Picasa's export fuction to resize smaller the files for the memory card. I kept them to 1000 pixels and managed to get the 700 files back onto the 128Mb card. Popped the card back into the frame and the quality is..........EXCELLENT!

Technical Support

The new PC power supply came today, shame it wasn't the power supply that was faulty. Turns out the power trip fried The MOBO or something else. The only thing I could do was to rip out the hard drive and install it in my old PC. It booted into Windows XP and is currently copying all the photos over to my external USB drive, all 14Gb of them! So new PC required and a back-up hard disk.

So kids, what's today's lesson. BACKUP YOUR PC BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!!! Yes I am shouting.

Saved another £50

I had a bit of time this afternoon after work, so I decided to liberate the 120Gb hard drive lying idle in my old Sky+ box. It could be better used in my IDE caddy as a back-up drive. The incident with the PC power supply (not arrived yet) has set me thinking about doing a regular backup of our laptop where all of the photo's and music reside. I've already got some CD's scattered about the place but my back-up regime is erratic at best.

I removed the hard disk from the Sky+ box and swapped it for the one in my caddy. The 120gig drive was set at Cable select and the 40gig drive was set as a master in the caddy. So I made the necessary adjustments using the jumpers on the back of the drives and did a swap. The caddy worked first time and a quick format later I've now got a 116Gb USB back-up drive. I've no idea if the drive now in the Sky+ box actually works, they're a bit fussy about which drive work and which don't. I may never know as I don't see me using the the old Sky+ box again any time soon, if ever. Back in the garage for that one then.

Just saved £100

For a brief few minutes today, I decided that I needed a NAS drive to put our CD collection on. How much space do I need? So I did a quick count of the CD's we had sorted out to keep. We have about 100. So each disk will need on average 60Mb stored as MP3 at 128kbs. Ahh, that's about 6Gb on the disk. So, not that much. No need for that 1Tb NAS disk then. I just saved £100!

Gadget Tip

So here’s a good gadget geek tip. Whenever you buy something, keep the box. Be careful when you open something, note how it was packed and keep everything for as long as you can. Then later, when you find something new or you want to upgrade, selling on your old purchase is easier, people like to buy boxed stuff plus you have the advantage that you already have the best shipping container you could get!

Also, buy from the internet (in the UK) and not only will you probably get the best price with a bit of research, if you don’t like it you can just return it as 'change of mind'. You can't do this in the shops unless they have a generous returns policy. But the current UK Distance Selling Regulations provide you with 7 working days in which to cancel your contract with them and return the item in a saleable unused condition. You may have to pay the postage, but that’s all.

A new obsession

Well, a new self imposed task has been brewing in my head these last days. We've got this box of CD's, we've been through them and weeded out the one's we don't want. So what do we do with the one's we do want? We never play them, they might as well be in the boot sale bin with the others.

So here's the thing. So that we might play them I need to get them onto iTunes, or at least ripped to MP3. Trouble is there's like 80 of them. The next problem is where do I store them digitally. If I put them all on iTunes this is gonna take up some serious space on my laptop for CD's we probably won't listen. So, I could rip them to an external hard drive, I already have but its only 40Gb since I used a £15 caddy with an old drive in it. It works fine but 40Gb is not enough to play with. I do have a 120Gb drive in my old Sky+ box, I could rip that at and replace the 40Gb drive in my external caddy. BUT if I'm not going to play the CD's what's the point in all this! They may as well go back in the garage as they are. But wait, what about a Network Access Storage (NAS) drive. That could hold all the CD's we have including those on the laptop already............

Technical Support

I had a call from a family member today. Their oven has blown and it looks like it has taken out their PC with it. I'm guessing Power supply, so seeing as they are so cheap I've ordered a replacement off eBay. It didn't take long to figure out what we needed, the original was a JNP 400P ATX unit. The important part is the ATX bit which tells use which power unit to buy. They're generic so any ATX one will do as long as the watt value is the same or higher. A quick Google confirms the original to be a 400w 20+4 Pin power supply. The replacement cost £12 off eBay so with any luck this should be a cheap and easy fix. I'll let you know by the weekend how it goes.

I am a gadget guy.

So where to start? Here’s a list of things I have bought or acquired (legally!) over the years that I can remember. This is probably going to be embarrassing, but here goes. This list doesn’t include the array of adaptors, cables, software and games I’ve bought, sold and lost along the way!:-

Sky+ HD (current)

Toshiba 40ZF355D LCD TV (current)

Toshiba 22AV616DB White LCD TV (current)

Toshiba 19AV615DB White LCD TV (current)

Panasonic DVD Recorder DMR-ES10 Multi Region (current)

Sony STRDG820 7.1 HDMI Receiver with Onkyo Speaker set (Current)

Samsung Blu Ray Player BDP1500 (current)

EKE Multi Region DVD Player (current)

Microsoft Xbox 360 (current)

Nintendo Wii + Wii Fit (current)

Pentium Dual Core 16” Widescreen Acer Laptop with Vista (current)

AMD Athlon x64 Desktop Tower (self built Media Centre) with Windows 7 (current)

AMD Sempron self built Desktop Tower With Linux Ubuntu 9.10 (current)

iPhone 16Gb 3GS (current but belongs to the wife!)

Alstec Lansing T612 iPhone Dock (current)

HTC TYTN ii Phone (current)

Edimax wireless N Draft WiFi Extender (Current)

O2 Joggler (current)

HP Photosmart Wifi Printer/Scanner C4580 (current)

Cheapo Portable DVD Player (Current)

SUUNTO X-Lander Wrist Computer (current)

Citizen Skyhawk Eco Drive Watch (current)

Oregon Scientific Projection Alarm Clock (current)

Oregon Scientific Weather Centre with remote Sensor (current)

LCD Weather Centre with remote sensor (Current)

Panasonic Lumix TZ3 Camera (Current)

Casio 4Mp Camera (Current)

Cheapo Robot Vacuum (Current)

Ebuyer 7” LCD Photo Frame (stored)

Tomtom Wireless Bluetooth SIRF Star 3 receiver (stored)

Tomtom Wired GPS Receiver (sold)

Fuji 2Mp Camera (Sold)

Creative 6Gb MP3 Jukebox (sold)

iRiver H320 20Gb Jukebox (sold)

Toshiba 32” Picture Frame CRT TV(Damaged, gave away)

Toshiba 32” Picture Frame CRT TV (Faulty, gave away)

Toshiba 28” Widescreen CRT Dolby Pro Logic (Damaged, Sold)

Toshiba 24” NiCAM CRT (Gave away)

Panasonic 28” Nicam Widescreen CRT (Sold)

Technica Brand Multi Region DVD Player (gave away)

Samsung DVD Player (paid £10 & never used! - stored)

Samsung Freeview box (sold)

Sky+ upgraded to 120Gb (stored)

Olivetti Wireless Printer/Scanner (Faulty, Stored)

Canon i500 Printer (Faulty, retired)

Aiwa Tower Stereo System (Stored, waiting retirement)

Maplin MP3/Cd Player (stored, faulty)

Citizen Digi-Ana Watch (stored)

Pure Siesta Radio DAB Alarm clock (sold)

Matrix Deluxe 4 person Hot Tub (sold)

Philips Streamium Network Music Player (returned)

HDMI Cables

Important tip for the day - DON'T WASTE MONEY ON EXPENSIVE HDMI CABLES.

HDMI carries digital signals, 1's and 0's in electronic terms. Shops that rip people off selling cables that costs £30 for a 1 metre lead should be ashamed of themselves. If you plug a cable in and you get a picture and sound then job done. It will make no difference if it cost £5 or £50!

Hi, my name is Andy chambers, and I thank you for reading my blog.

I have a passion for 'stuff', gadgets, tech, whatever you choose to call it. I like stuff that has a purpose or can provide fun or interest in a novel way; although these tend to only stay interesting for a while. I don’t like all gadgets, novelty rotating bottle openers, flying aliens or small plastic pieces of LED covered crap do not interest me.

So I have decided to write a blog. This may be of no interest to anyone but myself! But it will serve as an online record of things that obsess me for a while and people may benefit from my opinion on the things I have bought and experienced along the way. Feel free to email me with questions and I will do my best to answer them. I can’t comment on things I haven’t bought or used, I’ve never used a MAC for example so I can’t reliably tell you whether it’s better than a ‘PC’ with Windows. Although I will have a personal opinion probably, and if I have, I will happily share it with you.

I am a time served Electronic Instrument Mechanic, this isn’t in the league of your stereotypical boffin electronics engineer. I never understood the theory enough to be able to design electronics myself, but I certainly have enough experience and affinity with electronics and computers in general to see me through most of the situations I come across.

So, come back and see what I am up to, what I am trying to fix or researching to buy. You never know what I will be into next.