The Fantastic Machine

From mjprice.net

Two years in a loft.
A massive gap at the back where the expansion pane is missing

Boots first time. No fuss. They really do not make them how they used to

Windows 7 Beta

Surprisingly stable!

Phantom City of Pripyat: Chernobyl's Alienation Zone [PICS]

Prypiat is an abandoned city in the Zone of alienation in northern Ukraine, Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. It was home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers. The city was abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster.

read more | digg story

BBC iPlayer on Xbox Media Center

A developing project for the Xbox Media Center is the ability to download selected programmes from BBC iPlayer.

They are downloaded in the MP4 format for iPhones/iPod, but they have the same quality on a large TV as the Flash streams. So not too bad.



The project is a Python script for XBMC and the project is located here

Old optical media

I've just been "sorting" my CD/DVD collection.

The older media I purchased between 2000 and 2005 has begun to degrade badly.

If anyone has any crucial data on any older media, I'd suggest you give it whirl if you haven't for sometime and make sure everything is OK.

If you are UK based avoid Tesco branded CD-Rs. I've had some for under a year and they are already turning transparent! That's 20GB of TechNet downloads!

On the flip side the following older media of mine appears to weathering it's age well:

Orange BulkPaq DVD-Rs (4x speed),
Grey Quazar coroprate branded DVD-Rs (4x speed - bulk bought cheaply after they entered administration),
Datawrite Silver CD-Rs (48x speed),
Bulkpaq Silver CD-Rs (52x speed),
TDK Metallic CD-Rs (52x speed),
Purple BenQ CD-Rs (52x speed)

My current media of choice, which is currently available, and appears to age well are:

Datasafe Silver CD-Rs (52x speed),
Memorex Silver DVD-Rs (16x speed),
Datawrite Blue DVD-RS (16x speed),
AOne White Dual Layer DVD+Rs (8x speed),
Datawrite Titanium DVD-Rs (16x speed)

I recommend the above as age resistant, direct sun resistant, and cat resistant media!

Be* Unlimited - Migration Minefields

More accurately minefields have been averted, totally. This has surprised me, as anything I have changed with my internet service over the past four years, has always finished with a frustrated phone call to my ISP.

I have left Freedom2Surf after four years of loyal service. Sadly after two corporate take overs (first Pipex, then Tiscali) with a third being rumored (Virgin Media), and a steady decrease in the quality of both internet and customer service.

I received my MAC - Migration Code - after a couple of phone calls, as the automated system let me down. Apparently my line was being moved from the BT IPStream package to Tiscali's LLU, which had to be canceled first.

I chose Be* Unlimited, as they offered ADSL2+ (up to 24MBps down and 2.5MBps up) for £6UKP pcm less than my 8Mbps package.

Migration was successful, and to be fair to Freedom2Surf, they tried hard to address my issues, offer me a service with no monthly bandwidth limits and promises of service improvements. Sadly they wanted a new 12 month contract, which I declined as I have the possibility of moving my entire home package of TV, Phone, Mobile and Internet over to cable in July.

Be provided a wireless router, a re-badged SpeedTouch, which according to my Geek Guru is a good device.

I have sync'ed with Be at 15Mbps, which after 15 days of testing I can possibly get up to 20MBps. The package is unlimited bandwidth and most importantly - no traffic shaping. This means I can download (legal Linux ISOs and Creative Commons media) via BitTorrent at 1.2MBps compared to 20KBps.

Be however, do not offer a free email service and charge £2UKP pcm for POP, Webmail and SMTP - although they do offer a free SMTP server. As all my incoming mail is handled through my domain registrar, Gmail and my hosting company, this isn't an issue.

Vista Service Pack 1 - A week on

A week on, and I've re-imaged to RTM Vista.

I have experienced several blue screens a night, initially believing it was Service Pack 1 causing it.

However, after a hunch I ran MemTest86+ last night, and discovered one of the two new 1GB RAM modules I installed a short while back was faulty.

Obviously I shall be going back to Service Pack 1 this weekend, and will post when I start using it daily.