So I thought I would video how Windows Vista reacted after being shut down through lack of electricity!
Here’s the results!
Archive for May, 2007
MS Surface is unveiled
31
May
Microsoft announced yesterday a new form of computing. Microsoft Surface is a revolutionary new technology that brings touch capable computing to the home. I say home at first it is only to be released to casinos, hotels and large firms. Each unit will cost between $5000 and $10000 depending on how many are purchased.
The website is pretty impressive to say the least and if it can deliver what is proposed to then it really could be as revolutionary as Microsoft make out. Supposedly in the future you will be able to place a digital camera on the surface and it will pull off and layout the picture right in front of you. This seems to stem from another post I wrote a while back regarding the touch desk that was demoed by MS a few weeks ago! Personally if I had the cash I think I would go and get one now! They look incredible!
Check the site out you won’t be disappointed.
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Acronis True Image Vs. Norton Ghost
31
May
I commented a while back on Symantec and how they had not released a new version of Norton Ghost that was Vista compatible and how I had installed Acronis True Image. Well I am now back with Norton Ghost (the new version that is Vista compatible). Version 12 was released recently by Symantec and to be honest I would not have gone back to them if it had not been for Acronis doing such a piss poor job at incremental backups.
Once I had installed Acronis I made the base backup image of the whole windows drive. This totalled about 70 odd gigabytes. Then set up the software to do an incremental backup (only saving the files that had been changed since the last backup) to occur everynight at midnight. I got up the next morning and checked the status of the backup. It had completed successfully and I was happy. Then about 5 or 6 days later I got a warning message from Acronis saying that the backup drive was full, this was not something I had expected. The drive is a 160GB USB external HD that is used SOLEY for backing up data. Now with the 70GB base image that left around 85GB’s free space to use, more than enough (or so I thought). The incremental backups though, were coming it at between 8 and 12Gbs each. Now these were supposedly just the files that had changed since the last backup job ran. Now my hard drive is definitely not filling up by 8gb a day and to be honest my windows drive rarely changes at all! So to have an incremental backup of 8–12Gbs a day was not on and not manageable.
That’s when I noticed Norton Ghost 12 was available. I bought and installed it and up until last night it was going ok. The base image is 40GB (high compression) and the incrementals were coming in at around 50–400mbs which is a much more manageable size. Then last night it took an 18GB incremental for no reason at all 
and on the 27th and 30th the backups were 2GB. So I need to investigate why it has done that a bit more. So far Norton Ghost is working better than Acronis but it’s still not perfect!
More on this matter as I have it!
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No blogs because of a powercut
31
May
So the 2 hours I planned to devote to blogging were sadly taken away from me with a Pain in the ass powercut! It was not just my flat or even my building, it was an area of somwhere in the region of 3 miles sq! I did manage to get a video of it though!
More Blogging to come
31
May
Sorry guys I know I have been a bit quite the last few days (ok 9 days). I have had a few very hectic days including getting ready to move back down to London this weekend! I have a nice list of blogging material to use though, so I plan to devote a couple of hours to blogging this afternoon/evening. So be prepared for a deluge of articles to come!
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The end of the Palm OS
22
May
So I read today that the Palm 755p will be the LAST Palm OS device to be produced. All future devices will be Windows Mobile or Linux. 
I, for a long time was a Palm OS user, my 1st device was a Palm VIII. It was a good device it worked well and did exactly what is should. I then moved on to a selection of different Palm devices culminating in the M515 (another fantastic device). Then one day in 2003 I spotted a Ipaq 1940 on sale in my Local staples. I had been investigating the Pocket PC OS for a while and decided that It was time to take a look at it. If I did not like it there was always ebay to sell the device on! So I bought it and well, until November last year I was using that device. It wasn’t that the device was any better than my old Palm or that I found any software that was better under Pocket PC. It was all on a par to be honest. Both could sync with my PIM and both could hold the data I wanted to hold on the device. The Pocket PC did look a bit better (a sharper screen quality) but that was more down to hardware than software. All in all the only reason I stayed is because I had spent the money on the device and I liked using it (As I did the M515). Then in November 2006 I made the switch to having a PDA and Phone in one with my WM5 powered Treo 750, a Palm device with Windows on! I guess it’s kinda the best of both worlds!
I am sad to see the end of the Palm OS but I suppose that’s progress for you 
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This has to be seen
22
May
So I was using Soapbox today (I was uploading some videos I had made) and spotted this video
Alexander Richter aka the TrainRider died of Leukemia in 2006. He was head of a German gang of Train surfers and most noteably, he Surfed the 200mph German InterCity Express. Now I am not condoning Train surfing it’s a very dangerous thing to do. I am though, showing respect though to a man who knew he was not going to win the battle he was fighting and spent what time he did have doing what HE wanted to do, even if that was doing something highly dangerous and illegal.
RIP Alex
There is another video showing the whole 200mph ride here
http://stage6.divx.com/user/jrac/video/1173767/The-Trainrider
Popfly video
22
May
Chris Pirillo has done a good introductory video to Popfly. He has an invite to the Alpha and has been showing us all how it works. Just watching this makes me want an invite even more! If anyone has an ability to obtain me one PLEASE get in touch!
Here’s the link
Download YouTube
21
May
I must acknowledge Chris Pirillo for this, his blog entry lead me to discover this software! a group calling themselves Biennesoft (I’m not entirely sure if they are a company or not) have developed some software that allows you to download videos from YouTube. I downloaded and installed the software to my Vista machine and followed the on screen instructions. It was simple. It downloads the raw file and then all you have to do is select the format you want it encoded in! It does it all in about 2 mins (Internet connection dependent)! Certainly worth downloading this great bit of software!
Here’s the link
http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/
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The world is going Popfly Crazy
21
May
Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications. Popfly consists of two parts:
So I was in the http://live.pirillo.com chatroom last night and had my Vista sidebar gadget running as well. It seems that Chris had seen something very exciting indeed. He was raving away at his computer. He then promptly wrote on his blog
I can’t believe Microsoft did this. No, seriously – I knew they were doing this for a while, since they’re taking advantage of the bLaugh API. This is unreal. I’m so beyond impressed with Popfly, it’s not even funny – and I haven’t yet begun to explore everything it’s going to be able to do, and where I’ll be able to take it.
Popfly seems to be the next big thing in application / gadget / web design and the buzz about it on the internet is quite impressive! I have certainly signed up to be an alpha tester (yes the service is still in Alpha so some way off being released to the general public 
)
I’ll keep you posted on more developments!
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