After breaking a foot on my Saitek Eclipse II I thought i’d try to fix it
with a bit of glue, needless to say this didn’t hold up to well, so, I emailed
the Saitek’s UK HQ and asked if they sell replacement feet, someone
emailed me back and said that they would send me one out.. For free!

The foot arrived today, first class and fitted perfect!

Thanks to Saitek for being a nice company

The inner-geek in me found this highly amusing:

<sterano> Whats the difference between Raid_0 and Raid_1?
<Steve> In Raid_0 the zero stands for how many files you are going to get back if something goes wrong.

Thats right! Flickr’s much rumored addition of video has come to fruition, rules apply, and rightly so. Flickr Pro members (me!) can now post a 90 second video in a wide range of formats to the site. The rules are pretty strict, again, they should be. Lots of cameras (Including my new one) can do time-lapse videos which are rarely above 90 seconds anyway.

I know there have been people saying that Flickr will just try to be another YouTube clone, as far as I am concerned, this is in a complete different league than the likes of YouTube, for a start, the rules that only Pro members can upload videos should stay forever, this will keep videos strictly for the intended purpose, time-lapse, long “photos” and also people testing video from new cameras and making small reviews on how the camera performs with video, also a fact that it is Pro only will keep quality control pretty strict.

Even though it is not intended to be a YouTube rival, Flickr Video could still fold under the pressure from these sites, we’ll soon see as this all pans out and spreads around the internet, afterall, Google owns YouTube and their biggest rival is Yahoo who incidentally, own Flickr.

TechCrunch got the news early and got a post on their site shortly after Flickr announced the news. TechCrunch have also uploaded a video to Flickr which I have embedded in this post via a new button that Flickr has provided for members to generate a piece of HTML, like YouTube, for your own site. The quality, as you can see is a good few rungs above YouTube.

We shall see.

After having a go of the Powershot G9 at my local Jessops, I fell in love, I ordered it 2 hours later. Hopefully it should be here before the week is through so I can have a play with it on the weekend and get a few shots.

I have bought a few things that have been recommended by others, paricularly a custom grip, thumb rest and hot shoe cover. These are custom CNC made by a guy in America, here, in total, I spent $43, this is barely anything in GBP and from the reviews of these products, I will see the benefit straight away, I will be using the camera originally without these goodies as they will have to be made and shipped (first class from USA for only $4!) from America and will take a few days so I will know the camera with and without.

Knowing that the 3″ LCD will want to be scratched as soon as I use it, I bought another Invisible Shield, $11.95 from ShieldZone. These are great and I had one for my phone and they are fantastic. It will still protecting my phone after being taken out of my pocket a good few times a day but had started to come off slightly at the cornors which ended up in me pulling it off (which I regret!), can probably reapply it but it needs cleaning etc

As for a bag, I am unsure, I found a nice one but upon reading review, may be a little bit big for the camera, giving that a pass for the moment and will read up more on the net for what other people use.

As per recommendations, I will be taking all my photos in RAW so they can be edited better, good thing I have a 4GB card as RAW files are usually over 8MB!

Image courtesy of MyCanonG7

3 things, big prices, little money, not much need.

Thats how I stand at the moment. I want a new camera (Post below), a Macbook and a new monitor. All three I have no need for yet I desire them anyway. I don’t earn much but I have actually started to save money and will be going down to the Britannia to upgrade my savings account and start putting money into it.

I want at least one of them but need none. I want a Macbook but would probably never use it as I have a rather fast PC (see systems) that is down at the monent but should be working again soon that is always on and faster than a Macbook, I work and couldn’t really use it there, I work 11 miles from home and travel by bus which means it takes me a while to get home so I have to catch  up with emails etc. on the weekend. I usually go out as well so I can’t use it then. A camera would be nice but again, I don’t have that much of a use for one. A monitor would be nice, a 24″ would be perfect as I watch a lot of HD on my PC and 24″ monitors use the right resolution to play 1080P. 24″ would be nice without going over the top in monitor size, this is also a problem as I game and don’t have the graphics card to play at the native resolution with high graphics and lowering it makes everything blurry. A 22″ would be perfect for gaming but is the wrong resolution for 1080P HD!

So, I ask, what would you do!?

PS: First post on Wordpress 2.5!

Finally, I am free of the constraints that I experienced whilst being hosted under GoDaddy, they are great for a low maintenance, basic website but if you try to do more advanced things, you are restricted in terms of up to date packages and easy access to such things as PHPMyAdmin.

I am now, happily hosted by MintHost, I had a bit of teething problems getting the Wordpress blog transferred over, intact to Mint, I was doing the right thing but not doing it right! In the end, I got a friend, Fr3d, to sort it out for me, he got it sorted faster than I expected and here I am!

MintHost was recommended to me by a friend (William) who had also moved away from another hosting company that he wasn’t completly happy with. I managed to sign up to the hosting on the pre-release, however, the site is now up and accepting sign ups, they are really quick to respond and I am more than happy so far!

After coming to the conclusion that I need my own camera I have come across a camera made by Canon, the PowerShot G9. This camera is currently available for just shy of £300. This would be a fair price for a DSLR, of which this isn’t. This is a standard, “point and shoot” camera, this means that the price is a small fortune for such a camera that you would expect for under £200. This however, is almost as good as a DSLR.

The PowerShot G9 is what professional photographers use when they don’t want to carry around all their kit to take a decent photo. This camera has 12.1MP which is more than enough for almost anyone, a huge 3″ LCD to view the breathtaking images that this camera will produce, image stabilising (great for me as I don’t have the most steadiest hands), 6x optical zoom and surprisingly, can shoot photos in RAW and change the lens to wide angle lenses etc. The amount of features this camera has are incredible, I just hope I can learn them all.

On the pictures it doesn’t appear to be the best looking camera but it looks well made, strong and looks up to the job, I don’t doubt that it will look better when I actually get my hands on it. Now I just need to find out what each mode and setting does so I can attempt some good looking photos

I would go for a DSLR but the fact that you pay the price for the body and a medium end lens then have to pay for the more advanced lenses and so on. Also I go biking and such where a chunky DSLR isn’t ideal to carry around.

I will be purchasing this once I get paid and find out if my College course has been funded yet or if I have to fork out myself for it!

I envy these guys. I have a rather decent bike but I lack the guts to do this sort of stuff. Love the first person aspect of this.

I went the Staffs Gaming LAN party just this weekend gone and it was really fun, nice organisers and generally nice people attending. I had a few problems with my LAN Party PC and ended up taking my quad core PC which wasn’t ideal but it was my only option.

LAN Parties are a great way to meet new friends aswell which is always nice. As a first timer I thought everyone was helpful on the Staffs Gaming forums and helped me make a little checklist regarding what to bring. It’s not just PC gaming either, most places allow you to take consoles, this is fun as you can have Co-Op Guitar Hero 3, 3 hour long sessions at 3am whilst 7 people are asleep in the same room and having Holiday In Cambodia blasting from the speakers.

I will definatly be attending the next SG LAN’s and if you live around the Staffordshire/Stoke area I would highly recommend coming down and joining in the games!

If you are interested, the Staffs Gaming forums are located here. SG LAN’s can accomodate around 30 people at the moment but their are bigger LAN’s, for instance Central LAN UK. I have never been to a big LAN so I can’t comment on them but I do like the small ones as you get to know everyone who is there.

I bought my Razer and Microsoft collaborative mouse back in October 2006, it’s a nice mouse, comfortable, pretty accurate and the software ain’t to bad.

I have used this mouse daily for about 1 year and 4 months, over this period there has been various problems with the mouse, upgrading the firmware and software was a kick in the teeth, you had to perform some sort of hocus pocus to get the damn thing to update, once it did finally update everything was good and well, after this effort Razer (Who deals with the firmware and software) got their act together with the updates and everyone was happy.

November 2007 came and I bought a new PC, I also purchased a new mouse mat over my old generic one as you may have seen in previous posts, I had erractic behaviour with the mouse and I then went on to buy another mouse mat and it seemed to pretty much resolve the problem completly. I still cannot go in a straight line with the mouse as it glitches and moves around the screen on it’s own.

Yesterday I was playing Call of Duty 4 and I kept hearing the Windows XP USB disconncting and connecting sounds and my mouse would stop working for a few seconds, thought this was just the USB not plugged in all the way, it wasn’t. I dropped a support ticket with Razer and again, like last time I contacted them regarding Habu issues they just ignore the message, regardless of what it says, and pass me onto Microsoft. Support tickets to Microsoft refer me to Razer Support. This is an endless loop and neither company wants anything to do with it.

Luckily I recieved a Razer Diamondback 3G in the post a few weeks ago that came with a magazine subscription, it is not as comfortable as the Habu but it works, as can keep in a straight line. I think I will keep to Razer’s own products and optical sensors from now on.

</rant>