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  <pubDate>Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
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  <item>
    <title>The Dell Mini 1012, and why "Dell customer service" is an oxymoron</title>
    <pubDate>Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=323</link>
    <description><![CDATA[


Okay, so my previous netbook (a Zoostorm model) didn't last long before being shuffled off to someone else. The Mini 1012, current version of the Mini 10, is a relatively slight upgrade over it for my usage &#8212; the Atom N450 is more energy efficient, there are three USB ports, the built-in webcam is a little sharper, the power adapter is small, etc. The appeal was the no-fan design, which since I tend to use a laptop close to my head turns out to be a must-have feature.

No fans isn't something that would suit everyone &#8212; the temperature sensor peaked at over 65 degrees whilst I was setting it up and installing software, which most people wouldn't find very comfortable on their lap (and some mad bastards who want to spawn might be worried about the possible impact on their fertility.) To encourage heat dissipation on cloth-covered surfaces and because I like practical craft projects, I use a slab of 3mm aluminium as a stand.

As a word of general advice, be careful you know what you're getti [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>My review: Zoostorm Freedom XL 10-270 netbook</title>
    <pubDate>Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=322</link>
    <description><![CDATA[

Short version: okay for a bit of light browsing, typing or personal media watching, but terrible for VoIP because of the non-variable-speed fan.

I'm finding myself increasingly less inclined to spend time at a desk in the evenings. Blame preferring to curl up with an ebook, something residual festering in my head that refuses to completely die (apparently my sister has no pneumococcal antibodies and this is often hereditary... it would explain a few things) and not wanting to leave a full system powered just to poll email, surf a bit and Skype with my other half.

However, I also didn't want to dabble with netbooks until newer models appeared; i.e. with Windows 7 and a price-point below £200, which this does courtesy of eBuyer. I considered holding back until they came as standard with a resolution wider than 1024 x 600, but am guessing that'll really take a while. 1024 x 600 itself only seems to exist to artificially segment the market into netbooks and laptops, plus Microsoft place quite harsh res [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>My review: Sony eBook Reader Pocket 300</title>
    <pubDate>Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=321</link>
    <description><![CDATA[I've actually had this for about a month now, I'm just writing about it to distract myself from The Sinus Infection From Hell. It's been a good (and wipe-clean!) companion through that.

The relevant technical specifications are... Model: PRS-300SC, Memory: 512Mb, Display: 5" / 600x800 / 200dpi / 8 grayscale.

The device is about half an inch shorter than a regular paperback and half again as heavy, which is about 220g versus 150g. At times it can feel heavier than books that're heavier than it, since being thin the temptation is to use it with one hand most of the time. Two's more comfortable. Arguably it'd be more comfortable to hold if it were actually as thick as a paperback rather than a CD case.

Other things it's worth being aware of are that more pressure is required from fingers to skip pages than with the wood pulp equivalent, the background is very noticeably grey when the metal frame is at an angle that reflects light or under artificial light, and frankly it'd be nice (and intuitive) to be  [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>Site Update</title>
    <pubDate>Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=320</link>
    <description><![CDATA[Quick book lists for Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers and The Watch Series.]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>How easy is it to make a font of your own handwriting?</title>
    <pubDate>Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=319</link>
    <description><![CDATA[

Easier (and cheaper) than it used to be, thanks to www.fontcapture.com &#8212; a project created by Hakon Bertheussen that works on the principle of printing off a grid, writing onto it and transforming a scan into a TrueType font. This is a free online tool, so it's limited by how long the author wants to keep the site available, but there are a few pay sites working on the same principle for around $10-15 and pricier offline alternatives include Scanahand by High Logic and ScanHand (very original names, these) by FontLab &#8212; but where's the fun in that?

There are a few drawbacks to the grid method. It's very easy to end up with letter sizes that are out of scale with each other, and the tool only converts some of the characters you might need to make a font that'll work reasonably well with, say, Microsoft Word's "Replace text as you type" functionality. However, it's a very good starting point to produce a font that can be edited to fill in the gaps, and FontForge is a nifty free editor that'l [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>Replacing the language bar with a system tray icon in Windows XP</title>
    <pubDate>Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=318</link>
    <description><![CDATA[

Just a quickie... I don't like the Windows XP language bar because it doesn't behave when the taskbar is locked, if the toolbar is on the right and icons get added to the system tray. It also makes the taskbar taller when it's docked, which is noticeable in the Windows Classic theme. 

Fortunately, as indicated here you can use the Windows 2000 tray icon instead by extracting internat.exe and indicdll.dll from the older operating system &#8212; you don't need to install anything, just get your CD or ISO and use expand on the command line to uncompress those two files to a system folder;

expand x:\internat.ex_ -r c:\windows\internat.exe
expand x:\indicdll.dl_ -r c:\windows\indicdll.dll

...and then put a shortcut to the executable in your startup folder, or just invoke it when you want to switch languages in applications.

Actually, if you google for INTERNAT.EX_ or INDICDLL.DL_ plus "parent directory" you'll probably find that someone's left a copy of the operating system on an open directory somewhe [...]]]></description>  
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    <title>My reviews: Hot Puppies &#8212; Clarinet Town &amp; The Word On The Street</title>
    <pubDate>Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=317</link>
    <description><![CDATA[



Clarinet Town1. Clarinet Town2. How To Choose A Wife (session)3. The Word On The Street (session)

The Word On The Street1. The Word On The Street (remix)2. The Word On The Street3. The End (session)

The Puppies are hibernating at the moment, although whether they'll actually want to find their way back from cosy domesticity and family additions remains to be seen. (There might be a bit more to that, given the "Its when everyone in your other band cant be arsed and the manager has completely fucked things up." in an interview last year.) The website's currently a bit dead too, not even noting on the discography that "single" The Word On The Street is available from Play.com now along with Clarinet Town. CD-R promos of both were released.

I'm not a fan of buying downloads, but releasing CDs or even vinyl is prohibitively expensive for singles and Play do almost everything right &#8212; this was under £1.50 for the three tracks and they come as 320kbps MP3s. It does take a few minutes for your  [...]]]></description>  
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    <title>How to get a Garmin Nüvi 300 to read street names out loud</title>
    <pubDate>Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=316</link>
    <description><![CDATA[


A while back I bought a fairly cheap Garmin Nüvi 300 from a nice eBay seller who'd taken the trouble to make sure the firmware and map data were up to date, and even pointed me towards somewhere to get free POI and speed camera data. I prefer trying to drive in compliance with speed limits, personally, but the thought was appreciated.

When you Google for information on the 300, and the 3xx range in general, you may find the information out there on it to be a little bit confusing. Some reviews and listings mention that it can handle TTS (text-to-speech) output, which is necessary in order for the unit to speak roads rather than just give confusing left/right directions. In actual fact it appears Garmin intended only the 350 and up to have this capability, and went so far as to backtrack and remove the function from newer 300 units. Say it with me: bastards.

If you're prepared to revert the firmware (and rest assured this is easy, since it's just files stored on normal flash memory) you can dial it [...]]]></description>  
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    <title>My review: Goodmans CD1504USB MP3 CD player w/ multiple inputs</title>
    <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=315</link>
    <description><![CDATA[


What you get in a CD player has changed dramatically since the first one our family got. In the 90s, a hundred quid in-store (I think it was from Goodmans as well) got you a hulking great midi-size unit with a couple of tapedecks, CD player that didn't recognise CD-Rs, turntable on top, and a remote that did nothing more than control power and change the volume. It may have had a radio as well, but I forget. Fifteen years later, fifty quid to Comet gets you a svelte box (delivered) with a quite fully-featured remote and that only incidentally has an analogue radio tuner, which handles MP3 from CD, USB stick or SD card, and has an auxillary line-in socket as well. A line-in used to be particularly rare on entry-level stereos... actually, as far as I can see they're far from always guaranteed to be present even now.

As I've long since transferred my CDs into big book-type folders, it's the MP3 functionality that appeals the most &#8212; aside from when getting new albums, it's as quick to stick a few  [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>Site Update</title>
    <pubDate>Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=314</link>
    <description><![CDATA[Factored site updates into the blog, and added an RSS feed. Started a layout update.
]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>Welcoming Chutzpah! or 'The Wildies are finally back on form!'</title>
    <pubDate>Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=257</link>
    <description><![CDATA[


It's been a rough few years for me as a Wildhearts fan. Quite some time after Endless, Nameless (1997) they returned with The Wildhearts Must Be Destroyed (2003) &#8212; an album that was short, poppy and thoroughly enjoyable. The band were loved up and I remember a fun gig at which we got an acoustic warm-up set (because someone had forgotten to arrange a support band), current material and a load of stuff from the vaults. This was after the hiccup of Danny ending up back on the hard stuff at a JB's gig previous to this, and being bundled off through the crowd after getting his cock out on stage to crowd-surfers, but the future looked promising.

The b-sides compilation that went with Destroyed &#8212; Coupled With &#8212; sadly did little to uphold a tradition that almost every Wildhearts b-side until that point had been a gem. About as many were released in that period as had been released in the band's previous career, and at around the same time Ginger was releasing a lot of solo material as wel [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>My quick review: MediaMonkey and other music collection apps</title>
    <pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=256</link>
    <description><![CDATA[

I'd already gone through the process of fixing up the "whole disc" portion of my music collection into "Album Artist - Album\Track - Artist - Title" and downloading cover art as cover.jpg into the folders (helped by Bulk Rename Utility and some regular expressions) then tagging from the file/folder data with the simply-named Mp3Tag. The latter is a worthy successor to Mp3 Tag Tools; the only thing you need to be aware of is that Album Artist is stored in the Band tag, since there isn't an Album Artist slot in the ID3v2 spec. Winamp, MediaMonkey and many players are quite happy to use this. Album Artist is the best way to deal with compilations, making them easy to locate (under Various) without cluttering a list with hundreds of artist names who only attach to a track or two in your library.

I went through current versions of Winamp, AIMP2, Songbird, and Foobar in quite rapid succession. Bear in mind these are fleeting impressions; there may be ways to do with them what I eventually found I could do  [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>My quick review: Matsui MAT 120MR 2Gb MP3 player</title>
    <pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=255</link>
    <description><![CDATA[



Okay, let's start with the downside. This player doesn't do folder navigation. If you have your MP3s properly tagged it'll let you select an artist or album (or a filename, even without tagging) but that's not really a substitute. The battery life is average. What it does do well is a) remembering the current track when you switch it off, and b) genuinely random shuffle play. These are things that the Philips SA2620, a more expensive player with a far better battery life, doesn't. Despite using an internal database to organise music like the Philips, it also switches on and searches for new tracks quicker. Maybe we could mate the engineers involved in producing these things and the end result would be cheap, capable players that don't omit basic features? Folder navigation aside, it'd be useful if the Matsui saved power by switching the screen off after a few seconds, which it doesn't.

Physically the thing is a fairly standard size, in a shell that looks a bit like a futuristic escape pod. The menu [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>Microsoft painted themselves into a corner a bit, didn't they?</title>
    <pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=254</link>
    <description><![CDATA[


There are millions upon millions of computers running Windows XP in circulation. Pretty much everyone I've spoken to, from laymen to reps of financial software companies to people geekier than myself, considers Vista a dud or at best a waste of resources. The conversion stats are up for question, but W3 estimate about two-thirds of machines they see are running XP &#8212;

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

Although most hardware sellers out there ship Vista on desktops, if you buy a small laptop (i.e. a netbook) right now and don't go the Linux route (most people want applications they recognise, so despite the huge progress Linux has made a lot of netbooks have been returned simply for not having Windows) then you'll have XP. Ergo it's a current operating system, and people who buy it now expect to get a good few years of use out of it. We're also in a global recession, so people want low-cost computers; Microsoft is currently talking about an OEM end date for XP Home on basic machi [...]]]></description>  
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  <item>
    <title>My review: Palm M100 handheld, about a decade on</title>
    <pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:00:01 GMT</pubDate>
    <link>http://virtualdebris.co.uk/weblog/?id=253</link>
    <description><![CDATA[


(This was written ages ago. I haven't used it as much as I intended, but I've certainly used it more than the fresh set of note cards I bought with the intention of making a start on developing my knowledge of Polish with...)

After a friend bought a Palm on hearing an acquaintance sing its praises for calendaring, I thought I'd see what basic models were out there that would handle flash cards for vocabulary learning, and, as is my wont, started looking for models that take alkaline batteries &#8212; which in vintage Palms typically last a month or two versus considerably less for built-in rechargeables.

The Palm M100 was released in 2000 and sold in the UK at one point for £129.99 (according to the sticker on the boxed example I picked up on eBay) but these days you'll be lucky to get a tenner for one. It was regarded as a student toy even when the model came out, providing only 2Mb of non-expandable memory and no SD card slot. Other downsides are that they use a serial connection, so you'll need [...]]]></description>  
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