Watch Freeview channels on your PC!

For anyone that likes the idea of watching Tv on their PC/laptop this website could be the answer for you!  All freeview channels are available, BBC/ITV/Channel 4/5 etc etc!  Perfect if you can get a wireless signal but no decent reception or the thought of mile upon mile of coax cable winding its way around your house is a little depressing.

http://www.tvcatchup.com

Weather Cam Update!

Right... after a number of teething problems with the weather cam, mainly the fact the software kept freezing and not updating the image, I have decided to try a different piece of software to stream my webcam to the internet.  I found another free piece of software called Web Cam XP which so far has done a much more reliable job of streaming pictures to the internet.  Its been running for approx 10 hours now without failure whereas I found Yawcam would stop streaming after about 2 hours, which is a shame because its a really good little program.

I've kept Yawcam for uploading pictures at intervals to my ftp server and for keeping pictures as a record of the weather on my PC.  WebCamXP's support of individual images wasn't as comprehensive or easy to operate as Yawcams.

Weather Cam Update

I started to tweak the resolution/bit rate settings of the video to try and give a better picture.  Although setting MPEG4 and MJPEG resolutions to their highest setting did increase picture quality marginally, it also resulted in two days of faffing about.  The camera kept freezing and apparently dropping out of range. I thought this might be due to the distance between my wireless router and the IP cam, so set about utilising one of my old routers as a wireless access point (yes you can actually do that, I'll explain how another time) but not before moving the router about my office, totally rearranging furniture etc etc etc.. before recalling it all worked perfectly fine before I'd adjusted the resolution settings.  Return the resolution settings to "normal" from "very high" and hey presto.. the IP cam works fine.  2 days wasted.  I'm guessing the problem was down to bandwidth so if you suffer intermittent coverage and repeated failure of your wireless IP camera try your resolution settings before setting off on a pointless 2 day "changing rooms" adventure.

AVG 9 causing shut down problems in XP

You may have read in my previous post that I'd recently installed AVG 9 on some of my computers.  All's gone well except for my girlfriends HP Media Centre M7240.UK.  Shortly after installing AVG 9, XP started to struggle when shutting down, a number of applications would signal failures, namely WUAUCLT.exe, SVCHOST.exe, INETINFO.exe.  With nothing significant apparent on any troubleshooting websites and after numerous problem tracing attempts, removing unnecessary applications, running virus/spyware etc checks, registry cleaning etc.. nothing worked!  I've removed AVG 9 and installed Microsoft Security Essentials instead.  Since then the problem has gone away, the computer shuts down without any errors.  Have you had this problem?  Did you manage to solve the issue and keep AVG 9 installed?

Microsoft Security Essentials... fail.

Having worked with MSE for a couple of days, I have decided to return to AVG.  Although it massively improved Windows start up times it slowed down saving items within a browser.  Downloading anything from a website caused the whole system to stop for 10+ seconds.  Doesn't sound like much but soon became very annoying.  It effected Firefox, Explorer and Chrome in the same way, even switching off the automatic scanning of downloaded files (which isn't recommended) didn't effect the delay.  Having removed MSE and installed AVG, the browsers all react normally to save/download requests.

Shame, I really wanted this to work!

AVG 9, Microsoft Security Essentials and PC Tools Threatfire

You may have heard of Microsofts new free anti virus and spyware software, hearing about it is one thing but actually tracking it down is quite another.  Search for AVG and your first hit in Google is AVG's free download link, search for Microsofts free anti virus and its quite another matter, anyway, for those that are interested in trying it, here's the link http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ You'll need Genuine Advantage on your PC to install it however so for those of you that don't (for whatever reason..) you might want to carry on with AVG for now.

First impressions of MSE are that its pretty good, I've certainly noticed a reduction in boot time.  I haven't suffered with a major viruses (touch wood) for some time now, if that situation changes, I'll let you know and blame MSE!

I've also decided to run PC Tools Threatfire as well, this is supposed to identify suspicious activity on your computer without the need for an up-to-date Malware index.

AVG 9 looks pretty similar to 8.5, just a slightly appleified looking interface.  Upon installation it runs an optimisation scan, the idea behind this is to identify certain "concrete" features of your PC/Laptops harddisk so that it doesn't persistently check it on each virus scan theoretically speeding up scan times.

Upgrading a HDD on a Lenovo T61 and obtaining the XP recovery cd's.

Anyone whose ever owned or used a Thinkpad will probably agree with me that their the best laptops ever made ever!  The only downside with them is their slightly prohibitive cost.  I've had 3 now, unfortunately I've not been in a position to buy a new one so have relied on the generosity of strangers.. or ebay.

I'd been using a T41p for about 4 years when I decided to upgrade to a newer Thinkpad.  I went for the T61.  Apart from the build quality, one of the things I love most about the Thinkpad is the little red nipple (or trackpoint) at the centre of the keyboard.. why don't other laptops have them??  They're so much more accurate to use than a touch pad and much less cumbersome than a mini mouse.

The T61 came with a nifty little finger print recognition device which enables automatic login to windows as well as a number of other security measures that I haven't actually delved too far into yet.  The only thing my T61 doesn't have that my T41 did, is built in bluetooth.  I've ended up using a micro usb bluetooth dongle which isn't too bad but looks a little bit ming mong compared to the rest of the sleek black design.

Having watched a few auctions come and go on ebay I finally went for this one.  Buy it now for £350 or make an offer.  £325 later and I had a nearly new Lenovo T61, not bad considering 12 months earlier it was bought for £1000+. 

It came with a 80gb SATA HDD which I knew I'd need to upgrade.  The only problem was getting the authentic Windows from one hard disk to another.  Lenovo supply a Rescue and Recovery program thats supposed to create recovery disks for occasions such as this.  Upon trying to create the recovery disks I was told "insufficient room in boot sector partition... ".  The laptop didn't come with any recovery disks, a lot of manufactures rely on this small partition on the disk  to hold the Windows installation data as well as all the drivers you'll need.

I prepared for a battle with Lenovo.  Having already checked out obtaining recovery disks online it seemed I'd have to concoct some convoluted story and that it was likely I'd end up paying for them even though the laptop was still in warranty, I gathered all the relevant info I could and phoned Lenovo customer support...

..they were great!  Just explained that I was upgrading the hard disk and that it wouldn't let me make any recovery disks.  Bish bash bosh.. a week later I had the 6 recovery disks in my hand having been delivered by UPS.

So I here I am writing to you from my T61 with a shiny new Windows XP installation and a pack of recovery cd's courtesy of Lenovo.

I guess the moral of this little story is, if you don't ask you don't get!