By Euan Cowieson [BE77Y]: posted February 8th, 2010 - 2:57pm
An operating system that’s able to be run from a pen drive? Yes, please! Ok, so right out of the gate it already sounds like I’m trying to ’sell’ the idea of Linux to you. Scratch that. I do, however, think it is a very interesting concept, and the Operating Systems that are developed using the open-source Linux kernel are in themselves very intriguing, and altogether worthwhile.
Now then, to give you a brief overview, we have to go back to the 80’s. It’s not been long since the founders of Apple Inc. and Microsoft went their separate ways, and home computing is still in it’s infancy. In 1983, Richard Stallman creates the GNU Project, with the vision of creating a free, open-source, UNIX-like operating system. However, even after years of development and an almost-complete operating system, the GNU kernel failed to get the required attention from developers to be completed. Enter Linus Torvalds (c1991). Linus took what was previously done under the GNU Project and created another project, that eventually became the Linux kernel. It’s that kernel that is still under development and iteration today, and that all Linux ‘flavours‘ must build upon.
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By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted February 7th, 2010 - 3:20pm
Project Natal, due to be released at the end of this year, is Microsoft’s answer to the Nintendo Wii. Two cameras, a microphone and many hours put in by people writing very clever software has enabled the device to add advanced gesture, facial and voice recognition to the 360. All the consumer has to do is get one and plug it in to upgrade their console This give developers many more tools when creating games etc for the Xbox, certainly an exciting prospect.
Using it for games isn’t something that I particularly look forward to; I imagine that it won’t be particularly responsive, very inaccurate and a bit of a novelty which will wear thin extremely quickly, remind you of any Japanese hardware? Ooooh burn! (Just so you know I think the Wii’s a fantastic innovation, just not a games console… more like an alternative to family board games like Pictionary and Tiddly-Winks).
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360,
microsoft,
motion capture,
project natal,
xbox Posted under
Games,
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By Euan Cowieson [BE77Y]: posted February 6th, 2010 - 8:30pm
As many of you will already know , the Xbox360 is the best games console on the market. Alright, alright – calm down! I jest. It is, of course, entirely opinion whether you prefer the Xbox360 or the PS3 (or even the Wii!). But one thing is certain – the media streaming experience on the Xbox360 is fantastic.
If you’re like me, you’d much rather experience your pictures, music and most importantly, videos on your TV and decent sound system than on your PC/laptop – but you’re probably not a fan of having to move your machine over to the TV and fiddle around with cables and such. The easiest way for most people to get their content onto their TV/sound system (and by most people, I of course mean most people likely to read this kind of blog, ie. Xbox owners!), is to stream your digital content to your existing system (TV, 5.1, etc) – via the Xbox. This is handy, because it’s already in place, supports 5.1 audio and, of course, High Definition.
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media streaming,
windows media centre,
xbox360 Posted under
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By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted February 5th, 2010 - 12:30am
Just a quick update to let you know we’re still here but have been very busy deciding on a new look for the site, hence the lack of posts. Hopefully you’ll agree that its a vast improvement (the old design is the included picture). Any suggestions for tweaks, additions, etc would be greatly appreciated. Let me know in the comments below!
Ben (self titled web extraordinaire for Gizunk)
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redesign Posted under
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By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted February 2nd, 2010 - 11:45pm
Wireless Networks are fantastic but what do you do when they just won’t cut it? Maybe you live in an old house with thick walls, suffer from drop outs, you’re along way away from your router or (and maybe most importantly!) its causing a lag when you game. There are many reasons why you may wish that your had an Ethernet port to plug into. Unfortunately most people (especially significant others), aren’t very pro wires trailing all over the house so many people think they have to live with the problems Wi-Fi can bring. Thanksfully there is an alternative! Its possible (and has been for a surprisingly long time) to send information through already installed power sockets via an adapter. It works by sending the data through the power lines of your house at a very high frequency so its not affected by the actual electricity.
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drop outs,
ethernet network adapters,
latency,
networking,
wireless Posted under
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By Euan Cowieson [BE77Y]: posted February 1st, 2010 - 8:01pm
Nowadays, most people will have heard the term ‘cloud computing‘ being bandied around like some generic technological buzzword, and won’t give it a second thought. What they don’t realise, is the potential that the concept of ‘cloud computing’ actually has. Today, I’ll be talking about one relatively simple (but important) extrusion of this concept into our everyday lives, and how we organise them. It’s called Google Sync.
So Google Sync is a very handy service, provided for free by everyone’s favourite world-dominating company, Google. It basically involves a simple, singular, online place to store and interact with your contacts, calendars and email – and then have any combination of these sync with whatever devices you see fit. If you have a Google Account already, great – you can go start using these services right now! If not, you can sign up for one here.
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calender,
contacts,
email,
Google,
iPhone,
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By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted February 1st, 2010 - 8:00pm
Anyone who’s interested in music by definition has a huge collection of CD’s, and when I started university I had to think of a better solution than lugging my entire collection around with me. Unbeknownst to me, when I first did it my solution was to archive my music onto my computer in .flac (free lossless audio codec) format, luck points to me! There’re many ways of doing this, some of which are better than others… here’s how:
Everyone in the world (well at least in the parts of it which I’m interested in) have heard of MP3’s, but not everyone in the world knows that these files are ‘lossy‘. This basically means when you rip your CD to the computer it removes some data that it deems inaudible (as well as some other fancy jiggerypokery to optimise the file size). The thing is, that the loss of information does have quite a noticeable impact on the quality, which is no problem at all when you’re listening to some music on the bus – but say you scratch your CD, it’s not going to sound as good through your Hi-Fi as the CD did. Enter [Stage Right]: (Wow I’ve written less than 5 articles and I’m already repeating myself, this doesn’t bode well!) the flac file which has the advantage of not losing all the nice detail from your music files.
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archive music,
EAC,
Eact Audio Copy,
Flac,
high quality music Posted under
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Internet,
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4 Comments »
By Euan Cowieson [BE77Y]: posted January 31st, 2010 - 6:21pm
Shall we talk about the elephant in the room? Everyone else has! Really, who would say no to another article on the web about… that’s right, the Apple iPad. So… without trying to sound too much like every other Gollum-esque Mac fan-boy out there (“My preciousss…”), I’m going to try and give you guys a brief, impartial overview of the much discussed Apple iPad.
Now then. As you will no doubt know, unless you have of-late been residing on one of the lesser known moons in the backwaters of the Galaxy, Apple last week officially released the iPad. I say ‘officially’, as there has, of course, been much speculation over the last year (or 6) about the possibility of an upcoming ‘Tablet PC‘ release from the ‘Cupertino Massif’. Rumours were occasionally actually quite accurate, for example, Apple Insider published a prediction/rumour last July that it would be a 10”ish device, not entirely unlike a large iPod Touch with optional 3G capability. Which pretty much hit the nail on the head – but whether or not that was just an incredibly lucky guess is not for us to know, I’m afraid. In any case, these masses of rumours served at least one purpose – to fan the flames of anticipation and whet the appetite of every technology lover worth his/her salt.
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Announcement,
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By Ben Norman [n0rman0]: posted January 30th, 2010 - 6:04pm
If you’re watching a film and the director wants to show that the, admittedly not too cool, almost certainly fat, pizza eating, greasy haired bloke is a geek – they tend to make sure the guy is using at least 2 screens (preferably about 10 but there’s been a recession …). This has caused a stigma of sorts about using multiple monitors, labelling doing so as an extremely nerdy and not particularly useful thing to do. In my opinion those people couldn’t be more wrong. Nothing can come close to the productivity increase a relatively heavy computer user can experience when adding a second screen, anybody that does more than just browse the web stands to benefit.
Monitors aren’t as expensive as they used to be either, when I first started Uni I bought an Acer screen from Amazon ( similiar to this one ) as a second monitor for my laptop. It’s not fantastic, but the extra size compared to my laptop screen is really nice. It’s now reached that stage where I struggle to use a computer without the extra screen real estate, especially when I’m coding (I love to have the code up on one screen and the current build or reference site on the other so I know what I’m doing). A lot of households even have a spare monitor from an old computer kicking around the house, even if the oldest CRT in the world it could still be fantastic to try out a secondary monitor and see whether it works for you.
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Dual monitors,
external monitor,
second screen Posted under
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