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Friday 31 May 2013

Windows 8 core apps get an update.

Like most new OS's from MS. It looks to be coming together as we move towards the first large service pack. (8.1)

http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-8-core-apps-updated

Sky Android apps are back on the market after being hacked.

After a short break. They are back, but not like this any more: 
  

Sunday 26 May 2013

Samsung S4 outdoors shots

Took a panoramic shot although it was rather tricky with the cyclists zooming past.  

Saturday 25 May 2013

Holiday preparations - The battery pack.

I'm off to Bodrum ,Turkey this summer. 

So I don't intend on using my data plan much if at all as Vodafone UK leaves Turkey out of its Vodafone passport international roaming. This leans i'd had to take out a small loan in order to use it. My advise to anyone in the same situation. Get a 30 day Three sim and use their roaming service which covers Turkey...Not cheap but you'll likely spend around £60 on average with a good amount of usage. 

Aside from the roaming issues. The next battle is battery. I think I'll end up taking the Lumia 920 (coming back from Nokia for the 2nd time as I've stopped sending it to Phones4u) & the Samsung Galaxy S4. 

Here maps is supposed to be good offline so we'll see vs Google maps.

Because of this I have invested in a battery pack as I was impressed with my old Iphone 4s battery case pack. This one has 12000mAh so should last the distance for a few days.. It also has a flash-light that may be handy at night. 


Link to purchase on Amazon:



HP ProLiant G7 N54L 2.2GHz MicroServer deal on @ eBuyer

eBuyer has their next HP micro server promotion up. Its a slight upgrade over what I think was the N40L (Could be N45L).  The price is currently £209 with a £100 cashback (you'll be waiting a month or so for this).

The specs are pretty basic, but this is ideal for my intended purpose of it being a NAS box to share all my videos and music across multiple devices. I haven't bought any upgrades for it as of yet. I want to experiment with it first as it'll be my first NAS box. The 250GB hard disk should suffice for the mean time until I am ready to use it properly. Its interesting to see what people have done in terms of running the OS off a flash drive on the internal USB port or their set-ups with RAID arrays.

I'll also need some sort of Dynamic DNS service as I'm on a residential Sky broadband line with a dynamic IP. Free ones can be had from www.no-ip.biz, but there is also dyndns.com which is $25 a year. Then again with the O2 purchase, Sky has been hinting at rolling out a static IP address to some customers. My guess is probably at an extra cost which is fair enough as it isn't a business service I guess.

Other concerns are noise. I want it to be dead quiet as its going to sit in the living room. I recently upgraded my Shuttles graphics card (a whole different beast) and it's noticeably louder these days.

http://www.freenas.org/ is looking like the OS of choice from what my colleague suggested.
From what the site says it looks pretty versatile which is what I need running a variety of OS's in my household.

I've not used a Windows server in a long while now, but it might be worth a download of the trail version to have a look. I've heard some good things about Windows Server 2012.

Link to the product is here:
http://www.ebuyer.com/430446-proliant-microserver-turion-2-2-2gb-250gb-nhpl-sata-lff-in-704941-421

Thursday 9 May 2013

OUYA console makers just raised another $15 million


http://hexus.net/gaming/news/industry/55077-ouya-console-makers-just-raised-another-15-million/

Game music redone.

Found this through a Razer promotion. Some of their videos are really good so I thought i'd share!

Guild Wars 2:


Morrowind & Skyrim:

My 10 Miliion plus Simoleon‎ SimCity

Not massively hard when you get the balance of the game leaning in your favour. It's a tricky one though and I don't feel like I have it properly yet in terms of a well run city. Check the recent transactions in the below pictures and you'll see what I mean. I also have a radiation issue due to a er....upgrading the nuclear power plant by demolishing the old... 

I currently run the city on a loss while the processors and TV's I manufacture offset my costs.. I needed the TV's for Arcology at first but once I had enough they were all exported for profit. 

Arcologies take a fair bit of power and water from your surrounding cities as well. As I'm keeping it going with one, it requires a fairly beefy power output! 






New laws are planned for faulty apps

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/22451777

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Sim City update 3.0!

Patch release notes:

Another big update. They are getting nearer to a enjoyable game! I just hope they haven't created more bugs like 2.0 did! (I was getting recurring gifts I had not actually been sent by anyone and I couldn't go bankrupt as my balance stayed at 0 while my expenses magically got paid (if only...)

https://help.ea.com/article/simcity-updates

Chat apps now more popular than SMS worldwide

Certainly find Whatsapp ideal for group chats and a less messy way of knowing the recipient has received the message (1 tick next to the message means it sent, two and they have received).

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57581830-94/chat-apps-now-more-popular-than-sms-worldwide/

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Monday 6 May 2013

Mozilla, Otoy debut high-speed codec for any browser with no plug-ins

Simply using HTML5 and JavaScript (With Otoy's proprietary library):

ORBX.js is the library is question.

Mozilla and Otoy plan to demo the technology at a press roundtable in San Francisco at 10:30am Pacific time on Friday, along with Autodesk, which helped fund development of ORBX.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/03/mozilla_otoy_announce_orbx/

Saturday 4 May 2013

Netflix drops Silverlight, moves to HTML5- The Inquirer

Guessing other services will follow swiftly once the DRM is properly sorted (Now TV, Sky go). Look out for browser updates to support "HTML5 Premium Video Extensions"

Netflix drops Silverlight, moves to HTML5- The Inquirer