British people dont write reviews
Im not sure why, but Brits dont write reviews. I've recently purchased some components for my parents home theater system, for which I will be writing reviews when we get them! When I buy things in the US, I search for reviews about items before buying them. What I noticed in the UK is that there are very few reviews / it is very hard to find reviews on electronics. The items we purchased are as follows:
TILT & ROTATE ARM BRACKET 32" to 60" (BGL1) from Brackets UK
Pioneer S-V810A-W from digital direct
Panasonic TH-42PX60B-WAL from digital direct
Pioneer VSX-2016AV-S from digital direct
Belkin Silver Series Pureav 16Awg Hi-Performance Speaker Cable, 100' from Amazon
Belkin HDMI to HDMI Audio Video Cable 2m from Savastore
The only thing I was able to easily find information on was the TH-42PX60 which is probably the most purchased plasma HDTV around. The rest of them, Im shooting a little bit in the dark but did the best I could. I will share my experiences on these items when I receive them in order to help others in the future.
If brits wrote more reviews, the consumer would presumably be more educated and there wouldnt be such large discrepancies in pricing between different stores.
Pork Chop Sandwiches
It’s a wonderful life is commie propaganda
Boing Boing has an article about It's a Wonderful Life being classified as commie propaganda in 1947 by the FBI. Hilarious, but probably not at the time... I wonder what we will look back on in 60 years and say was ridiculous about 2006?
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club Blog
I had an interesting meeting tonight over at a family friends house with "The Bagel" from Beef Bagel. He just happened to run a blog that covers the best team in the English Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur. The blog is an opinion site on the spurs news of the day, and "The Bagel" does a fantastic job of capturing the mood of the fan. Good luck Bagel!
Audere est Facere
The Good Shepherd – a review – spoiler warning
Through Katie, I received a freebie ticket to "The Good Shepherd", a new movie about the CIA through the eyes of one character, Edward Wilson played by Matt Damon. The movie spans the 20s, when Wilson sees his father commit suicide, to his days at Yale where he joins the illustrious Skull & Bones secret society, to his entrance into the OSS during world war II, to the formation of the CIA, to the bay of pigs fiasco..... wow I am out of breath. That is a lot to cover in a movie, which is why the movie is about 2 hrs and 30 minutes long. I must warn the reader, that if your favorite movie is "Mean Girls", this is not for you. I am a history buff and am fascinated with life in the United States pre 1970, so this movie was right up my alley. Had it not been, I would be pretty bored, which I suppose the two teeny-bopper girls next to me were when they left after about 35 - 40 minutes.
Strengths
The strengths of the movie lie in the directors ability to bring this history to life and use Damon's character as a vehicle for viewing history. Wilson is a stoic man, who does not say much. In fact, based on the interactions with other characters, you sense that Wilson is well respected by peers, enemies and the like, but either the director wants to purvey that he does not see this in himself, or Damon's performance is unconvincing. You be the judge.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses are certainly the length. There are several, interesting but irrelevant forays into topics that have no bearing on the plot. For example, Wilson is asked to be a "bonesman" while performing dressed in drag in a play at Yale. This is amusing, but irrelevant. We could have had this part left out and just jumped straight into him being in the "Skull & Bones".
Conclusion
Overall, I would rate this as a 7/10. Anything over 5, I think you should go watch. I believe in a true average being 5/10 and this movie is certainly above the average crap that Hollywood seems to love to churn out.
As an afterthought, I would recommend this movie to people who enjoyed the movies "Kinsey", and/or "A Beautiful Mind". These movies all feature the same sorrowful brilliance of the protagonist.
552 Requested mail action aborted: exceeded storage allocation
Here's the latest ridiculous Microsoft bug I've encountered. The way to replicate is as follows.
- Reply to a message from someone in Japan (or other N. Asian countries) that uses Exchange Server 2003
- Format your document with a lot of tables and other things
- Send
For some reason, exchange 2003 panicks when you add tables into an email originally from someone in Japan, Korea or others. The explanation from microsoft is as follows:
The default MIME encoding in Exchange 2003 is 7-bit transfer encoding. The MIME encoding in some Asian languages must be set to an encoding method that is different from 7-bit encoding to wrap lines of text that contain more than 998 characters.
Megapixels dont matter
Well, thats not entirely true, but they matter less than you think! Whats more important is the quality and size of the lens and CCD on the camera.
Wired has a great article on a subject some of you may already be experiencing!
Ftfa:
When shopping for a digicam, use 3 megapixels as a baseline for Web-friendly shots and up to 5 megapixels for making your own 8 x 10s. Keep in mind that the size of each pixel should trump their overall number. That's largely why digital single-lens-reflex cameras rule: They have comparatively gargantuan image sensors.
$10 Domain Registration – Google Apps excels
I use google apps for all my domains. Google's email and calendaring are superior systems to any other free hosted systems out there for having domain email, calendaring, chat. Now, google has made it even easier by offering $10 domain registration. This makes it simple to register a domain and get up and running with Google's email. Ideally, you'll want to use a host for your website - their current solution is a little weak, but for the most part, its a great price and minimal effort. Nice one google!
Windows Vista on Parallels Desktop review
This review is not a review of Microsoft's Windows Vista OS, nor is it necessarily a review of Parallels Desktop. It is a review of the combination of the two software.
Review Rig
- Macbook Pro / Intel Core Duo 2 ghz / 2gb Ram
- Parallels Desktop for Mac 3038 Beta
- Windows Vista Ultimate RTM
When I started a contest to run Windows XP on the Mac, I was looking for the optimal way to operate in a world where you cant stand to work in Windows but cant afford to work without it.
I purchased Parallels Desktop for Mac when it first was released and have used it as my primary way to run Windows on my Macbook Pro. There have been a multitude of improvements since the first release, and the new features in the current betas are quite exciting.
Download updates and software from Microsoft even without the Windows Genuine Advantage check
Have you been trying to figure out how to keep your Windows up to date so you dont spread viruses, but are concerned that if you update, Windows will stop working?
muBlinder is a piece of software that allows you to bypass Microsoft's Genuine Advantage check and download their software - such as Windows Desktop Search 3.0, Windows Defender, Internet Explorer 7.0 (which breaks Outlook 2003). It's available and update from the p2plife forums (unfortunately you need to register to download it), but the solution works, and is relatively easy to update. Another solution that doesnt allow you to download the extras is WindizUpdate, a plugin for firefox that replicates the way Windows Update works.
installing google desktop under different credentials than the active user is currently not supported
I was recently trying to uninstall Google Desktop from my Windows XP install that I had running in Parallels Desktop for Mac. Every time I would boot up, it would tell me that it could not upgrade the database and begin reindexing all my emails and files from 0%. Thats no good! So, I decided to uninstall it and give Windows Desktop Search 3.0 a try.
Well, when I tried to uninstall google desktop, I would get the error message: "installing google desktop under different credentials than the active user is currently not supported". After some research, and frustration, I found someones recommendation. If you get this error, the steps are as follows.
- Run the google desktop uninstall
- Click OK on the first error message, but leave the second one up
- Start the google desktop uninstaller again
- Click yes to all of the questions!
- Restart.
That should enable you to remove Google Desktop, when Google Desktop doesnt want to be removed!
Helicopter in Iraq
In this video, an American AH-64 Apache Helicopter watches two insurgents from two miles away. They identify them as having weapons (an RPG launcher maybe) and take them out with their M230, 30mm gun. Its amazing how removed from the whole thing the guys in the helicopter are. Even though it seems like a video game, you can hear the heart rate racing in the soldiers as they talk back and forth.
Windows XP 64 is crap and things break and printers dont work and quickbooks doesnt work the list goes on
So, I thought I would do a review of my experience with Windows XP 64. I guess the place to start is:
Why I bought Windows XP 64.
I was shopping online for a new computer for one of our employees and saw that Dell was selling these workstations with Intel Core 2 Duo processors (64 bit chips!) with cheap upgrades ($10 + shipping) to Windows Vista. Well, if you bought Windows XP, you only got an upgrade to 32 bit Windows Vista. At this point, I had a lot of faith in Microsoft Windows Vista, and thought that for sure, within 1 year, no one would be buying and installing the 32 bit Vista... that technology is for the dinosaurs. So, the option I had (for no additional cost) was to buy the 64 bit Windows XP and get the upgrade to 64 bit Windows Vista Business. I didn't think / have time to research potential problems with that decision and thought that I was making a smart choice.
The computer arrived and I booted in to Windows XP 64 and noticed one thing that immediately concerned me... two versions of Internet Explorer. *Gulp*. If they've got two versions of Internet Explorer, then that means that some things don't work correctly on the 64 bit version and you need to use the 32 bit version. This was a sign of problems to come.
Installation and Set up
Well, the next step was to set up office which was pre-installed. Im pretty sure there isn't a 64 bit compiled Office 2003 so there was probably no benefit with running that on a 64 bit system. So, after a few hiccups and some concerns I got the machine up to spec and was ready to send it to our other office. The morning I am going to send it, I had to finish one install before it left. As I am using the computer, I get a BSOD. Uh oh. The computer shouldn't BSOD when it is brand new. Those unfamiliar with BSODs or Blue Screen of Death might want to note that these are usually caused by poorly coded device drivers.
Well, I dismissed that first BSOD to dumb luck, packed the computer up and sent it on its merry way. The next thing to do when it is on site, is to install all the printer drivers... no problem! Well, it wouldn't be a problem on regular windows... but 64 bit, better Windows doesn't have the same support for printers that its weaker smaller brother does. HP attempted to address this by having a unified driver for all of its printers for XP 64. What HP probably didnt do was test it on all their printers. I wasn't able to get it to work on the HP Color Laserjet 2500.
So, I said I would try and fix it later and would look for a solution online. Well, the next step was installing Quickbooks. I was a little nervous by this time, so did a search and found the following disappointing information about compatibility of Quickbooks in Windows XP 64.
Daily Use
Well, as it happens, the computer has started crashing and showing BSODs multiple times per day. Looks like we are going to have to send it back to Dell and get the 32 bit Windows XP.
Morale of the story is - if you are using Microsoft products, stay away from the cutting edge - it sucks pretty bad.
IE7 Breaks Outlook 2003
How ridiculous does that statement look! If you were wondering why your headers stopped printing when you print your outlook email, that is the answer. By installing Internet Explorer 7, you are foregoing your right to consistently print header information in Outlook. Several people in my office were reporting that some of their emails were printing without the header info. Upon doing a search in google for the phrase "email only prints text of the message", I found the following discussion @ lockergnome
I believe this problem started when IE7 was installed as I haven't seen it on machines that still have IE6.
and then another frustrated user:
ts definitely IE7 there are so many people (not just in these forums but also in others across the net) having the same problem - me too.
Microsoft are exceptionally quiet on this front. the only known solution i've seen is to uninstall IE7 & go back to IE6. i hae tried other fixes ie re-editing HTML back into plain & then putting back to HTML - this works sometimes - but sometimes not & is very time consuming.
So, what did I do? I removed IE 7 from all of my users computers and faster than you can say "microsoft needs help", they were all printing Outlook emails with headers again.
Im in the process of reviewing Office 2007 and Windows Vista, and it wont be much different than this review.
Where to buy a nintendo wii for xmas
From me of course! Im selling 4 of them on ebay right now - Get your nintendo wii here!
Kevin rose leaks Apple iPhone information on Diggnation
From Techcrunch:
According to Kevin there are two models, 4 GB and 8 GB, priced at $249 and $449. No word on whether they’ll be shipping an unlocked version of the phone as Om Malik recently reported, but Kevin says Apple is adding both GSM and CDMA radios into the iPhone, making it truly carrier-independent. The device will have a slide out keyboard, a touch screen and two batteries (one for the MP3 player, one for the phone).
