Category: End User

End User

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End User gadgets

Chromecast footnote

I have to say that having bought the Chromecast just 11 or so days ago it is now in regular use in our house and I’ve watched more YouTube in the intervening time than in the previous year. Fwiw I particularly been watching old episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour. Timeless classics though clearly, from the quality, produced for much smaller screens than the 42″ job in our TV room.

Terry Hughes’ first review of the 25th October has replace the “how to bypass Virgin Media filters” as the most popular post on a daily basis.

What next gadgetwise?

Categories
agricultural End User

The Christmas tree season is upon us

As my express speeds trundles at a modest pace in a Southerly direction, laden with the additional passengers of two earlier broken down trains (or simlar) I note a conversation on Twitter turning to Christmas trees and decorations.

At this juncture it would be remiss of me not to draw your attention to a post from one year ago in which the science of growing Christmas trees was explored along with techniques of wrapping kids using a tree bagging machine.

We Davies’ do not consider putting up Christmas decs until around mid December but I do realise that there are some enthusiasts out there who like to get in the swing early. Presumably they don’t use a real tree if they put it up in November as all the needles will have fallen off by the big day.

It is at Christmas that cultural differences do come to the surface in our house. Anne likes outside lights, I don’t. Unfortunately (it’s all about perspective) I think ours are broken. Ah well. We also have the annual hunt for the sets of Christmas tree lights that work. In the old days it was a matter of hunting down and replacing the bulb that was broken – otherwise the whole lot wouldn’t work. And you could only get one type. These days lights are almost disposable – if they don’t work just buy another set. Unfortunately I haven’t quite got that in my mindset yet so we still have to separate the good from the bad, once they have all been untangled, which is another story.

This Christmas will also represent a (quite sad) milestone where all four kids “know”. It makes it easier in some respects as we don’t have to wield threats of instant torture for revealing the truth but it  represents the passing of an era, a great era in the life of any family.

Now that I’m momentarily (we have to remember it is still only November 27th) in a nostalgic Christmassy mood I have to reconfirm that I am a huge fan. Two of our kids are now away from home and it is we the parents who now are the ones that get excited about the holiday.

Also I’m not a Christian but I like the tradition, the constancy of the time of year. We do the same things year after year. This tradition is expanding to include events like the #trefbash which is in it’s fourth year and also the Carol Singing night in the Morning Star pub in Lincoln. We get together around the piano and bash out a couple of hours of carols accompanied by a few pints and some mince pies. This is open to all – if you want to come the details are on Facebook here.

Happy November.

Categories
End User gadgets media Weekend

Sony 4KUltra HD TV KD-55X9005A and XBox1 Console sales

Sony_4k_UltraHD_TV_KD-55X9005A4k_Ultra_HD_TVContinuing with the weekend posts I swung by PC World and Currys. Looking for a speaker system to add a bit of richness of experience to the Chromecast we installed last week. PC World hardly has anything – they are moving back to their computing roots.

Currys is where it is at for thispricing for Sony 4K Ultra HD KD55X9005 kind of stuff. I was unnaturally thrilled to come across this Sony 4K Ultra HD TV (the good old KD-55X9005A). A snip at £3,299. OK it is a nice TV. The picture quality was great. However £3,299 puts it in the more money than sense bracket. Since when has that been a problem for the multi-millionaire looking to impress the bloke in the next mansion.

I imagine that the promo video it was playing on the loop was one of the few bits of content you could get for it. Apparently you get 8 “free” Blu-ray discs to watch when you buy the TV.  I managed to find 10 movies available in 4K format on one site and 11 on another – all Blu-ray. I’m sure there will be more.

It is early days for 4k TVs. Of course prices will come down. However I may be wrong but I can’t imagine that Currys will sell many this Christmas. If you are going to blow the dough you might as well buy the Bose sound bar for three hundred quid. Great offer.

xbox1 console sold outThe XBox1 console on the other hand is a different kettle of anchovies. If you ain’t planned ahead on this one you’re not going to be taking it home from the Lincoln Currys store, nosireebob.

Currys look as if they were caught by surprise with the rush because they have had to scribble a quick sign guaranteed to disappoint the eager gamer looking to upgrade his or her experience for the festive season.

Can’t understand why you’d want it meself but I don’t think I’m representative.

I leave you with a video taken of the TVs in Currys Lincoln. I am easily impressed and thought that the splendid array of colour was very nice.

Ciao beb.

Categories
End User gadgets virtualisation

Update on Chromecast story – chrome literally being cast

Chromecast is now working for my browser. Yesterday I mentioned that I’d found the icon for using Chromecast from my chrome browser but hadn’t had time to test it. I’m working from home today so I’m sat in the TV room having a play testing.chromecast in browser

The pic shows my Google screen on both the Chromebook and the TV – it’s a Doctor Who special Google doodle if you’re interested.

Interesting thing is that I can be in one window on the Chromebook whilst another window shows on the TV.

Also interesting is the fact that the cursor that appears on the Chromebook doesn’t appear on the TV and there is understandably a lag between when I type and when it appears on the box. This isn’t a big deal. It’s just interesting (I think I may have mentioned).

The whole experiment with the Google environment does point towards the need for good quality high speed connectivity to make it all work. The photo in this post was taken with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and uploaded to Drive. I used online photo editing service pixlr.com to edit the photo fetched from Drive, subsequently saved to a specific blog images file back in Drive and then uploded to WordPress on my server at Timico (running VMware instance fwiw).

There was a little delay with each process step but not too bad – certainly bearable.

Ciao.

Categories
Apps End User gadgets media

Chromecast – a second review

chromecast setupHaving read Terry Hughes’ Chromecast review I eventually got round to rushing out (metaphorically) and buying one from Amazon. It was forty two quid or so ($35 in the USA) but the cheaper ones involved longer shipping from the States or an additional postage charge so ripped up the budget and clicked.

The Chromecast is now installed and in use. I have some observations:

  1. You have to actually physically switch on the Chromecast dongle – it doesn’t just power up in the “on” state
  2. Installation from Chromebook didn’t work. I don’t know why. I moved on to do it from the S4.
  3. Installation from my Android was very simple. I guess this is it’s core use market/scenario (if that’s the right phrase)chromecast ready
  4. The dongle sits nicely and unobtrusively at the back of the TV and is powered by the USB port of the TV (didn’t realise I had one but now I do – phew – Anne would have complained if there was another dangling cable)
  5. It is very easy to use. In my case I just selected HDMI2 input and hey presto…
  6. It is also easy to “cast” content onto the TV from your phone – there is a small icon to select inside the app view.
  7. Now this is where it starts to get interesting. You can use Chromecast to stream movies, music, YouTube and Netflix. I only use YouTube to store the occasional vid for use in embedding in this blog – as in this post for example. I have no interest whatsoever in Netflix content – though many others must be as it takes up a significant chunk of ISP bandwidth. I have no movies to stream (and rarely watch them anyway – 90mins?!) and all my music is on my phone.
  8. chromecast musicThe latter point is definitely interesting. This is all about driving traffic into the cloud. In moving operations to Google Apps, Chromebook and cloud storage I began the process of shifting my music to Google Music (or whatever it’s called) but I stopped for some reason. I think it might have been because it involved entering my credit card details. Obviously Google wants to make it easy for me to buy more music.
  9. Currently any music I buy is in CD format and I then upload it to my phone. In my new cloudy ecosystem I may have to rethink this. Although I like having a CD in its case to touch and feel this might be because I’ve grown up with that experience. My kids think nothing of buying music from iTunes and never having a “hard copy”.
  10. Chromecast is likely to change my habits here. I had already been thinking of buying a surround sound system for the TV room and this may top the balance in its favour.
  11. I will also say that I was astonished at the quality of HD streaming on our TV. Although the TV is HD “ready” we have never had an input source to supply the HD – no Blueray, no Sky, no Virgin etc. The HD footage I took with my Samsung Galaxy S4 – this ride on Stephenson’s Rocket for example, was really good quality full screen 1080p on our 42″ box (flat panel).
  12. It was also very easy for multiple users to take advantage of the Chromecast. One of the kids came home from a music rehearsal and had downloaded the App and got it working in seconds. The kids are much bigger users of YouTube than I and he was streaming jazz videos in no time, (until his mum wanted to watch the news).

In conclusion – Chromecast – very easy to set up and use, obviously aimed at delivering content from the cloud, and could well move my music listening to streaming from that cloud. It’s all driving bandwidth use. Onwards and upwards.

I note Phil’s comment re waste of space. It does need to support more apps. I didn’t try seeing if I could surf using it but I suspect not – it would have been more in my face. Rewind – just noticed this icon in Chrome – not tested it but looks positive.

Update on casting from Chrome browser here.

chromecast in browser
Update 17th March Google Chromecast to become available in the UK – leading to lots of visitors to reviews on this site

Categories
End User phones

Comparison of Samsung Galaxy S4 with Google Nexus5 phones – speed

nexus5 & galaxys4It’s handy working at Timico because people are always buying new gadgets to have a play with.  Jared from IT has just got himself a Google Nexus5 and we thought it would be a good idea to make some comparisons with my Samsung Galaxy S4.

The first thing I noticed about the Nexus5 was that it has a much nicer feel to it in the hand than the S4. S4 is shiny and slippery. The Nexus5 is more matt and doesn’t feel like it will drop out of your hand too easily which is a good thing when you take a look at the battered nature of my not so old S4.

We did a couple of experiments. This first video shows both Nexus5 and Galaxy S4 being switched on simultaneously. The S4 looks as if it is booting up faster but the Nexus5 comes up with the lock screen several seconds ahead of the Samsung. Not scientific but a good peformance indicator I think. In defence of the S4 it will also have a lot more applications loaded but I’m not sure how much affect that will have on the startup time.

The second vid shows a photo being transferred from the Nexus5 to the Galaxy S4. Android to Android but from different models/manufacturers. It is impressive. The file is 3.5MB.

For those of you who are interested here is a side by side picture taken with each camera:

galaxys4shoes nexus5shoes
And finally a video out take – click here (fwi really is w).

Categories
End User fun stuff

Food for thought

Got a question for you. Is it cheaper to eat lots of carrots so that you can sit at home on a dark winter’s night without having to switch the lights on or is it cheaper to pay for the electricity?

I think for the purposes of this debate one has to assume that the consumption of an adequate amount of carrots really does allow you to see in the dark.

Obviously the amount of carrots that need eating for it to work will be different for different people so you will have to make some assumptions. The best answer wins a pair of tickets to the sold out trefor.net xmas bash in London on 12th December.

As Confucious said “It is better to eat one small carrot than to sit alone in the darkness”.

It’s true…

PS read another carrot post here or perform a search on this blog.

Categories
End User gadgets

Google Chromecast has arrived at the Davies household in the UK

google chromecastI was so impressed with Terry Hughes’ review of the Google Chromecast that I decided I should get one meself. It arrived yesterday and I’ll be plugging it in later today.

I’m not much of a TV watcher but we’ll see how we get on. Let’s hope there are no cookery, DIY, self build etc programmes on to compete with the TV slot – we only have one TV which I know will seem strange to many of you.

Stay tuned 🙂

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End User online safety security

Eventbrite security really on the ball – Adobe hack

Had an email from Eventbrite yesterday with the subject “Keeping your account protected”. Fair play to them. Eventbrite have looked at the 3 million user name email addresses recently hacked at Adobe and cross referred them to any in use on the Eventbrite platform.

They have then let the Eventbrite users with these identical email addresses subs. I was one of them.

Most of my passwords are different and far too complicated to remember even. I didn’t even know I had an Adobe account. I checked. I did. I changed the password.

I also checked for any other account with the same email/password combo. There were two. They had not been used for some time (years maybe) but I changed each password.

One of the sites was Kodak. It took me some time to find out how to login on the Kodak website and I found I was locked out of that account!! Had someone tried to login a few times and locked the account? (could have been me – I dunno).

I also got a message saying “NOTE: Your MySupport account is different from your KODAK Store, KODAK Gallery, KODAK Pulse Digital Frame, Tips & Projects Exchange, and Google Cloud Print™ accounts.”

Goodness knows how I’m supposed to figure out/remember which is the right one to log into. Why can’t they have one login for everything?

Anyway well done to Eventbrite – this is great customer service. I looked but saw no email from Adobe letting me know my details had been compromised. Might have been caught in a spam filter I guess.

Tata.

Categories
Apps End User mobile apps mobile connectivity phones Weekend

Lost phone phound

I normally keep my phone overnight on my bedside table – muted for obvious social reasons. It stems back to the days when I was at the top of the escalation ladder for network issues. Nowadays it’s there for a bit of surreptitious tweeting before Mrs Davies wakes up.

Well I woke up this morning and my phone it wasn’t there, oh no (sung to a blues tune). Yes I woke up this morning and like I said my phone it wasn’t there, oh no. I went downstairs and looked all around the house but still I couldn’t find that darned Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. Oh no.

At this point my imagination started to take hold. Did I leave it at the jazz gig last night? In the taxi? I rang it several times but no joy.

Fortunately technology comes to the rescue these days. I  logged on to my Samsung account and clicked “find my phone”. It was somewhere in our house. Hmm. Location info could be wrong though. I looked at the phone logs. Nobody had pinched it and was using it to call Senegal (random exotic destination that is probably expensive to call).

Then I rang the phone from the Samsung account. This overrides any volume settings on the phone. Wandering around the house I began to hear the faint strains of a Samsung Galaxy S4. It was calling to me. I’m here Tref, here I am.

I found my phone under my pillow, oh yea (followed by a riff on a Fender Stratocaster and a nifty bit of drumming to finish off.

Fat lady sings.

THE END

Categories
chromebook End User phones

Footnote to Samsung Chromebook free Galaxy phone offer

samsung chromebookYou may have read my Samsung Chromebook special offer not very customer friendly post. Well the free phone arrived yesterday. It was a Samsung Galaxy Mini. I’ve not seen it other than a quick glimpse as I got in from London at around 9pm. I bought the Samsung Chromebook on 30th September and the phone arrived on 14th November – six weeks later.

My 13year old lad took me by surprise by calling me whilst I was on the tube. Must have been an overground bit. The tone of the sporadic conversation was “is that phone for me?”. “Yes”.

When I got in I immediately received an IT support request which I promptly bounced back. I’m not going to touch the Galaxy Mini. Should all be self evident. I might see if I can persuade the lad to write a few words describing his experience once he has had time to play with it. Ve shall see…

PS anyone got the HP11 Chromebook – I’m sure we’d all like to hear more about the USB power supply overheating problem.

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Archived End User

Onsies for Children In Need

onesies for children in needYou have to be a hermit to not realise that today is Children In Need day. We have a few things going on in the office to raise cash and as you can see from the pic some of the girls have paid to come in to work in their jim jams.

I dunno what the running total is because it’s changing all the time but if you swing by you can buy home made cookies, muffins chocolate cake etc – all for the cause. I will just have to donate cash – I don’t touch that kind of stuff obvs – body/temple.

If I’d have known I’d have worn a onesie meself. In fact I don’t mind them coming in in their onesies even if it isn’t Children In Need :).

Ciao bebe.

Categories
End User mobile connectivity

Disappointing news re mobile charger power consumption

I woke up this morning with the notion that we had far too many mobile phone chargers constantly plugged in in our house. I have one always plugged in by the bed and there were two in the kitchen and likely a couple more in kids bedrooms.

Goodness me I exclaimed! You can picture it I’m sure. These things consume power even when they are not charging a phone. How could we be so environmentally unfriendly?

I’ve dug into this and although the methodology wouldn’t pass scrutiny for a scientific paper I’ve come up with some conclusions. Disappointing conclusions.

According to an article I found on the Beeb a mobile phone charger plugged into a power socket but without a mobile phone connected to it consumes 0.01KWh a day. That would require a 115 microWatt power source.

Also according to the Beeb (fair play) there were by October 2012 six billion mobile phones in the world. If there was one plugged in charger per mobile phone then assuming they were all disconnected from their phones at the same time they would consume 6,000,000,000 c 115microWatt or around 697KW.

That means that one of the generators we have for our Newark data centre could power the whole world’s mobile chargers in their passive state (if that’s the right terminology). Interesting eh? 🙂

All a bit disappointing mind you. I was hoping to come up with some shock horror revelation that would enable me to quantify the power consumption in terms of numbers of nuclear power stations required, but I can’t.

Nevertheless I’m going to instil a discipline at home of unplugging these chargers when not in use. Except the one by the bed that is  – it’s a bit awkward to get around the back of the bedside table.

Tata.

Categories
End User phones

Google Nexus5 lead times stretching out

Thought it worth mentioning that one of our IT guys, Jared,  has just ordered a Google Nexus5 handset. He’s been given a 4 week lead time. Should just about get it in time for Christmas, by which time, at the rate of new product introductions in this game, it will no longer be the latest and greatest.

I think we need to figure out a crowd sourced way of rating new handsets – as opposed to reading the boring reviews of professional journos who really just compare specs. It’s got to be about personal experience. Why one phone is easier to use than another.

I’ll give it some thought but comments welcome. In the meantime Jared must exercise patience – he currently has a BlackBerry.

Categories
End User fun stuff

A ride on Stephenson’s Rocket at the National Railway Museum

A4 locomotivesI A4 Pacificshad a ride on Stephenson’s Rocket. Ok it’s only a replica but it is pretty authentic. It was a two minute trip and we only went a few hundred yards. In theory the train should be able to do 35mph but they don’t allow it to go that fast. Couldn’t find anyone who could run that fast in front of the train whilst carrying a red flag I suppose. Usain Bolt could have done it but he doesn’t live anywhere near York and I suspect doesn’t like the cold.

The firebox only took a couple of bits of coal for each leg of the journey. I imagine in real life the fireman would have been shovelling coal in almost non stop. The steam pressure LNERlocosonly amounts to 50psi which is roughly what you have in your bicycle tyres – assuming you keep them pumped up properly unlike my kids.

The Rocket btw was at the National Railway Museum in York. I was there to marvel at the 6 remaining A4 Pacifics they have there on temporary display – click on the header pic for a full size version. The world record breaking Mallard is normally there on permanent show.

35 A4 Pacific engines were built in total in two batches. It’s very sad that only 6 remain. The booklet is a little treasure that belongs to my father in law Keith. He was an avid trainspotter in his youth and used to visit engine sheds all around the country. When you see the engines at York you can understand this. Anyway in those days train fans used to carry a book detailing all the engines in service with a specific train company and if they saw a loco they would tick it off in their book. Named locos were more “valuable” than just numbered ones. The book cost 2 shillings in 1948! Flicking through the book it’s astonishing how many engines there actually were. The rail network would have been a very busy one.

You can see from the pic (click to enlarge) how many Keith saw – they are the underlined ones. What is interesting is that there are only 34 A4 listed here whilst I mentioned that 35 were built. One of them suffered a direct hit from a German bomb whilst stood in York railway station during WW2. After the war they renumbered them all so there is no gap in the sequence.

More pics from the trip here. Also the video of the Rocket is below. Enjoy.

Categories
End User phones

Initial review of Google Nexus5

Hugo Pickering has been good enough to let us have his thoughts on the Google Nexus5. He did so in a comment on my unreview of the device but it is very much worth a post of its own so here it is. Thanks for the feedback Hugo:)

Hugo writes:

The N5 finally arrived after the Parcelforce driver failed to read the note on the garden gate telling him to walk through to my office, entailing a trip yesterday to pick it up from the post office in Chipping Norton. Setup and transfer of all apps and data was very easy, once I had taken advice from Adrian Wooster and used the excellent app SMS Backup+, which does exactly as it says on the tin.

The familiar Android interface hasn’t changed dramatically in KitKat, but I might have preferred more icons on screen at once with a bigger screen, rather than bigger icons than before. The screen itself is fantastic, with greater colour depth and clarity – photos look sharper and the detail is stunning. The camera is a huge improvement, with much better low light shooting capability. Auto Awesome looks good, enhancing photos as you go, and then backing them up to Google+.

I’m still not sure about Hangouts hijacking SMS so that all texts have to go through it, which seems a bit draconian, but understandable as it makes everything easier to backup for future migrations. I may experiment with some SMS apps to see if anything else works better, as I guess developers will want to cash in on this.

A few apps seem to struggle with KitKat, notably Movember (yes I am going hirsute for the month –http://mobro.co/hugopickering), which seems to be an issue accessing the camera or gallery – maybe the app needs updating. Those apps that have been updated and optimised for KitKat work really well, such as Ookla’s Speedtest – a hugely improved interface and UX.

Speed is another big overall improvement, with apps loading faster and swapping between them with no lag. Hardware-wise, the phone is taller than the previous model, but the same width and thickness. The change to a rubberised back is very welcome and will help to reduce breakages of the old N4 Gorilla Glass back. The phone quality is excellent and the internal speaker seems louder than most phones which is great.

So overall I’m pretty pleased. Now to sell the old N4 on eBay – anyone?

Categories
Cloud End User fun stuff Weekend

Fireworks in Lincoln for Bonfire Night #GuyFawkes

This is a simple post with a short video showing the fireworks that were on display at the Lindum Sports Club in Lincoln on Sunday night.

Simple as that really:)

PS I’ve categorised this post under cloud though as I recall it was a fairly cloudless night 🙂 Also I know that Sunday night wasn’t actually bonfire night – tonight is. However it is sensible to have it at the weekend and not a school night. Oooooh, aaaaahh.

Categories
End User phones

The Google Nexus5 unreview

social network sharing on the trefor.net blogThe Google Nexus5 took me a bit by surprise. I don’t anally watch the space and nobody mentioned it when I visited Google in London on Wednesday. Maybe it caught them by surprise too.

It’s getting to the point where the devices are coming too thick and fast to review them all, notwithstanding the fact that unless you are a favoured globally read media star who gets a freebie (coming clean here, I’m not) it gets to be an expensive thing to do, changing your phone every few months.

Anyway I don’t need to have a physical Nexus5 device to do a review. I can tell without even looking. It will have a few software and hardware improvements on its predecessor. I happen to know it’s a bit cheaper as well, which is good and a sign of the way forward – the point is coming where it’s difficult to add any new sexy features because they have already all been implemented (the “beam me up Scotty”  teleporter app being the exception here. That one is still at the artist impression stage although it is the ultimate app.

Having said that if anyone has a Nexus5 and wants to  do a review then feel free to drop me a line. Also I just took a look and this month amazingly trefor.net has readers from 147 countries though the majority are in blighty. Check out the whole list here > Readership distribution of blog.

PS the pic is a random image selected from my library of uploads. I’m clearly feeling bullish 🙂

Ciao baby.

Categories
End User piracy

Virgin media filter block post resurgence in popularity

Last year following the court order imposed on the large consumer ISPs requiring them to “block” access to Pirate Bay I wrote a blog post outlining how to bypass the Virgin Media filters and discussing the futility of the court order. I also recently added that the same methods were usable to bypass the BT, Sky and TalkTalk filters.

This week we have seen another twenty or so more domains added to the list of proscribed sites. Yesterday the daily visitor rate doubled to over 1,500 uniques and the trend is continuing today. This blog is one of tens of thousands of sites telling you how to bypass these filters so the total number of people looking for the information must be very large.

I’m not condoning copyright infringement – I’ve written an ebook myself and would be dismayed to think that people would not want to recompense me for my hard work. I am however saying that the blocking order is a waste of time.

Ciao bebe…

Categories
End User travel

Urho ice breaker Helsinki Finland – big boys toys

helsinki sunThere comes a time in a man’s life when he must visit an icebreaker. The cognoscenti amongst you, and I know there are many, will know that an icebreaker is the ultimate boy’s toy.

icebreakerYou may talk about fast cars (0 – 60 in 3.5 seconds) or the latest and greatest (Android) gadget but let me tell you that none of them come close to being as cool as having your own icebreaker. Urho, moored for the summer months in Helsinki, is such a beast. I visited Urho  on Sunday.

An icebreaker is something where size really does matter. A few numbers would aid the understanding. Five main diesel generators engine roomwith 22,000 horsepower can generate 17 MegaWatts of power – yes I said 17 MegaWatts!! That’s enough to supply 708 houses with standard 100Amp feeds. Basically a small town. They typically use 40 tonnes of diesel a day but can peak at 100 tonnes.

The diesel generators don’t power the ships four engines, two in the front and two in the back (sorry none of this bow/stern stuff, nosiree Bob :)). These are driven by electric icebreaker engine control roommotors. The stress put on diesel engines would be too great of they were directly driving the propellers. They have to go from full power forwards to full power backwards at the flick of a switch.

There is more. A normal ocean going ship will have “stabilizers” to minimise discomfort to its passengers. Not on an icebreaker. An icebreaker has “destabilisers”. 1,000 tonnes of water can be pumped from side to side of the ship to create a rocking effect. You have to have good sea legs to work on an icebreaker. As the ship’s sides rock against the ice some lubrication is provided by air bubbles released from underneath.

The main method of crushing the ice however is from the sloping bow (oh ok then). The ship “climbs” over the ice and crushes it with its weight. Doing this is obviously quite stressful on the ship itself so as you can imagine it is built from very thick metal plates. There was some debate afterwards about the thickness of these plates. I thought they were 3.5 cms thick but others said 9cms so I’m not sure. Anyway they are thick plates. The median thickness of the ice in the depths of winter is 80cms.

The season is of course the winter. The seas around northern Finland freeze every winter. It’s a tough part of the world to live in – Helsinki is only 60km from St Petersburg. The country still has to function so the icebreaking service is provided free of charge as part of the standard shipping license fees paid by each boat operator.

Each of the four icebreakers assists around 250 ships a year. I say assist but really I mean rescue. The icebreakers come to the aid of ships locked in ice. In fact they only come out when the ships are stuck. Typically they will circle a trapped ship and this usually does the trick. Occasionally they will have to tow the “customer” (struggling to find other suitable nouns so I don’t have to keep using the words ship and boat).

The freed boat will follow the icebreaker, sometimes as close as a few metres behind because the pressure of the ice field soon closes the gap.

The ship’s company of 21 persons includes a captain and four watch officers together with engineers and other ranks. The officers and other ranks eat and live separately. Watches are 6 hours on six hours off. It’s an all consuming lifestyle during the season.

These icebreakers are big. pool signThe accommodation is also fairly extensive and includes a gym including a ping pong table, sauna (two – officers and other ranks) and even a pool. The pool was empty when we were there. Empty of water that is. Note the sign reads “allas tyhja”. That is for the benefit of litigious American readers – in case they are daft enough to dive in and hurt themselves.

So there we go. Icebreakers. Every bloke should visit one at least once in their life. Been there, done that. Tick.

As a footnote I visited Helsinki for Euro-IX 23. On the Sunday morning the sun, low in the northern hemisphere sky, was dazzling. Helsinki looked beautiful.  Later and without warning the mists descended and you began to get a sense of what like would be like in the winter at such latitudes. Stay warm and take care…

🙂

Categories
Apps chromebook End User gadgets

How to do a print screen using Chromebook

error message using east cost wifiThis is dual post really because I was going to write briefly about an error message that came up when using eastcoast.co.uk’s wifi. I couldn’t access Google drive because open DNS is blocking it! Rather than stick the text of the message in I thought I’d just do a screenshot but there was no obvious way of doing it.

A simple Google search came up with the goods and it is quite impressive. You do a ctr shift  []]] (the key above the number 6 – took me a while to find it) and the cursor changes to a + select tool. You can chose which bit of the screen to print – uber impressivo.

This might be old new s to some of you but as you know it sometimes takes me a while to catch up 🙂

Categories
Apps Cloud End User gadgets media

Google #Chromecast in the UK – review 5 days in #YouTube

Terry Hughes has just got himself a Google Chromecast dongle. In Google’s own words “With Chromecast, you can easily enjoy your favorite online entertainment on your HDTV—movies, TV shows, music, and more from Netflix, YouTube, Hulu Plus, Google Play Movies and Music, and Chrome.” Must have been Google’s spiel because I wouldn’t spell favourite like that.

Anyway I spotted on Facebook that Terry had gotten (just pulling your leg) a Chromecast and he agreed to do a review for the blog. Not being much of a TV buff myself it’s the only way it was gonna happen (there I go again) in the near term.

Here is what Terry has to say on the device:

Google ChromecastI’ve used various media steaming devices for several years, Apple TV, Android MK802, etc, all with various results. Today, I am a UK owner of a Google Chromecast device, purchased from Amazon.com, as one of a limited number of purchasers who got it for £34 including shipping and handling. This a quick review, considering I have only owned it for 5 days.

This device is a $35 streaming dongle that plugs into your TV’s HDMI port. You can use it to stream online videos from YouTube, Netflix, and Chrome browser, and use your tablet, mobile phone, or computer, as a remote control. (PC or MAC)

If you use your phone to start it off (Samsung Galaxy S4 in my case) it doesn’t stream videos directly to your Chromecast dongle. Instead, it just tells the device which video it should stream from the cloud. That means that you can use your phone for something else, once the stream starts. I even rebooted my phone whilst streaming to test this.

Simple Setup

It really is as simple as plugging in the device into a spare HDMI socket, and connecting power via the supplied adaptor, or from a TV USB port if you have one.

Now Google doesn’t currently allow Chromecast in the UK Play store (October 2013), so I had to get it via other means to setup the initial way in which the Chromecast device know about your router details. I expect this to change quickly during the next Google Event at the end of the month.

Once plugged in, enter the password of your local Wi-Fi network, and you’re all set to run. The device has Wi-Fi built in and doesn’t need Wi-Fi on your TV.

Streaming YouTube

My main use for Chromecast right now is YouTube, and I have now streamed my fair share of videos from that site in the last few days. Overall, streaming worked really well, simply by clicking an icon that appears in the YouTube menu, and choosing where to stream too. Why Choose? Well, you could actually have multiple Chromecast devices in each room. I don’t as yet 😉 I have now successfully got this to work from the above phone, Nexus 7 Tablet, and Asus notebook, all with wireless connection to the same router.

What other Apps work?

In total (so far) I have managed to get working:

Google Play for movies and music

Netflix

Chrome browser (with extension) for desktop and video playback (mp4, m4v, avi and mpeg)

BBC Iplayer via Chrome browser

What do I think?

I love it! After using Miracast, long HDMI cables, small PC under the TV and more, it’s now my main device for streaming YouTube, Netflix and more in High definition, with good sound and obvious lip-sync for movies.

FOR

Streams Android to a big TV

Works with MAC, PC’s, Tablets

Easy to setup and transport

Cheapest media adapter

 

AGAINST

Early days, so limited apps (Pandora, Hulu Plus, and HBO Go are all expected to be next )

Mirroring limited to browser tab

Windows Phone not supported

Chrome is the only supported browser

Can’t store files directly on the device.

THE END

Thanks Terry – I owe you a beer

Footnote – this post is getting quite a bit of interest. Google Chromecast seems to be available to buy in the UK at Amazon.

If this review was useful you should also check out these other Chromecast reviews on this blog here and here.

Update 17th March 2014 – Google Chromecast to become available in the UK – leading to lots of visitors to reviews on this site.

Categories
chromebook End User

Life without a laptop – Samsung Chromebook charger left at home

Samsung chromebooks have no future unless they change to USB micro charger.
I’m on the train to London.  I’ve left my Samsung Chromebook at home and only have 2 hours of battery left. I ran it all morning on the battery thinking I’d plug it in on the train.
It isn’t the end of the world.
I’m using my Samsung galaxy s4 to write this post. However I will say that Samsung’s days as a chromebook manufacturer are numbered unless they change charger connectors. Theirs is a tiny proprietary job.
The new HP chromebook has a microUSB connector for charging. I always carry at least one micro USB cable.
Nuff said.

Categories
chromebook Cloud End User

Chromebook just crashed

samsung chromebookMy Samsung Chromebook just crashed. Just like that. Fortunately the recovery process was like lightning – even restored the browser tabs. Most of the time taken to recover was downloading the web pages. How many times have we all gulped when realising that we are about to have to reboot the old Microsoft PC. It would have been time to stick the kettle on.

Categories
End User social networking

How do I manage Android phone based interruptions from social media alerts?

pink roseI’ve just realized that my Android phone is interrupting me now as often as the toast popup (or whatever it is called) on the laptop that tells me when a new email is in.

I’m getting notifications for new Google+ alerts, Twitter mentions, follows and Direct Messages, Facebook replies & messages, LinkedIn endorsements (lots of those for some reason), profile views, replies, messages, likes, invitations to connect and comments, email alerts from multiple accounts and plain old fashioned text messages. There is another symbol that I regularly get but can’t remember what that is at the moment. I rarely get a notification from Pinterest mind you (fwiw).

Whenever one of these alerts comes in my phone whistles or vibrates. I then look at it and often follow up by looking on my laptop/Chromebook to see the same information.

We are talking social media overload here. I can live with looking at my phone under the sheets during the night so that my wife doesn’t see the glow but daytime alerts are getting a bit out of hand.

I need help. Help! 🙂

PS inset photo of a rose is purely because when I was looking for a suitable image for this post I came across it and thought it looked nice:)

Categories
Cloud End User gadgets hosting

Bluetooth speakers for your mobile & consumer personal clouds Western Digital

Bose bluetooth speaker

bose_bluetoothIt was chucking it down on Saturday so no golf and there was no rugby on so I wandered down to Currys on Tritton Road in Lincoln for a bit of a browse. I wasn’t after anything in particular but found myself in front of a portable Bose speaker system that allowed you to hook your phone up using bluetooth. So I did.

The sound quality was mind blowing and it was really easy to get set up. I got chatting with a sales assistant and mentioned the fact that at £249 the price was a bit rich. “You’re paying for the label” he said so I asked him whether there were some equally good but cheaper systems where I would be just paying for the quality. He pointed me vaguely at a Sonos system so I went along to look at that one.

Standing in front of the Sonos I did a bluetooth scan and took a guess as to which was the right kit to hook up with. Playing Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust nothing seemed to be happening. Then I realised the sound was coming through a different Sony product a few feet away. Someone was standing in front of it talking to the sales guy so I whipped up the volume:)

samsung bluetoothThe Sonos didn’t work using bluetooth – it’s WiFi apparently. What struck me, apart from the fact that it was so easy to set up and the quality of the sound was the number of devices in the shop with bluetooth connections. The screen shot shows loads of Samsung TVs. I’m a bit of a luddite when it comes to TVs & simlar but was astonished to see how thin they are these days.

Wandering round the shop I also noticed they were pushing your own “Personal Cloud” from Western Digital. This looks like a solid state hard drive with a WiFi connection – no resiliency. It doesn’t matter. It recognises the fact that people need to store data away from their pc or mobile device. I’m still more comfortable with having lots of resiliency in a backup though I guess two WD devices would do the job. The Smart Home app is working brilliantly btw. I made a donation.

The fact that Currys was using the term cloud is pretty significant. It supports the whole move of operations into the cloud. It wouldn’t surprise me to see sales of Chromebooks shooting up this Christmas. It’s the way ahead.

PS might ask Santa for the Bose speaker for Christmas.

 

Categories
chromebook Cloud End User

Touch pad on Samsung Chromebook locks up

In the interest of fairness, whilst I have been raving about the Samsung Chromebook it does occasionally have the odd glitch. I’ve already mentioned the wifi disabling itself. Well the touch pad also sometimes locks up so that you can’t click it. You end up trying to get it back by pressing esc and other keys. You can see where the cursor notionally is by areas of the screen being highlighted but you can’t click. It isn’t a huge problem but is definitely a glitch. It shouldn’t happen.

Categories
End User fun stuff

Rainfall measurement techniques

It’s a rare Saturday morning. I’m on my own in the house and although I have a jobslist they are all outdoors ones such as picking apples which because it is chucking it down will have to wait. It is therefore a lazy Saturday morning and I am going to write what I’ve decided to categorise as a “weekend” blog post.

A weekend blog post is can be about any subject, not just technology. On this occasion because it is raining it is going to be about a rainfall measurement technique invented in the Victoria pub in Lincoln one wet Friday evening. This way of measuring rainfall also doubles up as a bit of entertainment in the pub on a cold winters evening so you get far more added value than the old fashioned way which is to collect the rain in some sort of container and then see how many inches (or mm) you’ve got.

Rainfall measurement techniques #1

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Categories
Apps End User mobile apps

Test dictated blog post

Just using the word press plugins for android to see if I can dictate a blog post . I am not making any manual modifications to this post other than blok delete if the spelling is wildly adrift . It would be quite useful if I could work out how to do a carriage return for a space .  other than that it is quite usable . I am lying on the city watching the news at 10 . !?, not bad I dictated does .  return return should work for a new paragraph but it doesn’t seem too. New line new paragraph return return this is almost poetry but it certainly isn’t doing a carriage return. I find that if I speak clearly it recognises what I’m saying for better. It’s obvious really. Now I’m going to try speaking welsh. 213 boob size. I’m not gonna tell you what that was meant to be. If you speak welsh you might be able to work it out. Of course 1 of the problems with this dictation is the teacher annoyed everybody else in the room. Especially my wife who is trying to listen to the news. Better go. Check out baby.

Categories
chromebook Cloud End User

Chromebooks, backups and crackling open fires

samsung chromebookSat in front of the first roaring open fire of the season tonight. Well it’s more of a nice crackling sound than a roar but you get my drift. I’ve got my Dell laptop back but I’m still using the Chromebook. I’ve been using it all day and still have 1hr 13 mins left on the battery. It’s now ten past seven in the evening.

I’m going to be announcing #trefbash2013 soon and in preparation did some photo editing using the Dell. Only because I had my Western Digital 2TB drive plugged in to restore some of the files onto the repaired  machine and the photos from last year’s bash were on it.

I used pixlr.com instead of irfanview which was

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