Ed’s on Holiday
Posted on August 12th, 2008 by Ed
No posts for 2 weeks, I’m off on holiday in Spain!
So, see you all in two weeks, with hopefully some more posts on the way.
Optmising Linux
Posted on August 11th, 2008 by Ed
Quick tip for you to try out. As you all know, I want to get the best out of my system, so I want to tell you about a script I have found which optimises certain application in Linux. Its called Desktop Optimisation. What it does is it re-formats certain applications so it uses XML files. XML is fast and can increase performance.
The file contains scripts to optimise Rhythmbox, Evolution, Gnome, OpenOffice, Docs and Gconf.
Hope this speeds up your system, it did for me, especially Rhythmbox!
What to do if you PC completly dies!
Posted on August 9th, 2008 by Ed
A few days ago, I thought my Ubuntu-box had died. I was using Ubuntu, all of sudden, it locks up. Nothing works; crtl, alt, backspace did not work. So I switched off my PC and rebooted. However, nothing was loading. It would switch on, but that was it. Not even the BIOS would load.
I hadn’t a clue what to do. So i decided to open up my PC and just clear out all the dust. Plugged my PC back in, worked as normal.
So if you PC dies, just give a quick spring clean.
Don’t Press the Emergency Button!!!
Posted on July 31st, 2008 by Ed
Have you ever been tempted to press the Emergency button??? If you are ever tempted, DON’T, something bad could happen. Like in this case, below:
Remember, Don’t Press the Emergency Button!
Where can I download my music now???
Posted on July 25th, 2008 by Ed
Many of you would have seen the news about UK Internet providers having more powers over illegal file downloading, such as downloading illegal music. Internet providers in the UK will now sending letters to households who download illegal content. If they carry downloading this content, they will slow down their internet or block these websites off.
If you have decided to take notice of this new law, you will be after some legal music. Well, the best online music store I have found is at Play.com. It has a very selection of music for everyone, although it doesn’t have all the big labels. It is already a popular website for buying DVDs, CDs and Games, but now it sells MP3 Downloads. The great thing about Play.com, is that all the music is in MP3 format at a very high bit rate of 320kb/s and is DRM free! Singles are about 65-70p and albums are about £5. Also, you don’t need to download any software, so you can download music on to Windows, Mac or Linux PCs! Also, if you lose a song, you can go back onto the website and re-download it for free.
So, music lovers have no excusses for download illegal music 
E3 2008
Posted on July 19th, 2008 by Ed
E3 2008 is now over. I was planning to do a day-by-day summary of all the news from E3, but hey, there is always next year! Instead, I will give you a quick round up off all the news from E3.
The Press Conferences
Microsoft
- Revamp of Xbox dashboard, as well as Xbox live which now has avatars (copy off Wii)
- Netflicks partnered with Live to add more movies to the store.
- Lips, new karaoke game (again, another copy, off PS3 this time)
- Final Fantasy XIII announced for Xbox 360
- Fallout 3 gameplay footage
- Gears of War 2 dated, 7 November 2008
- Resident Evil 5 dated, 13 March 2009
- Fable II dated, October 2008
- Also announced, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Rock Band 2, Viva Pinata 2, Portal 2 and Geometry Wars 2
Sony
- New Bundles - PS2 with Lego Batman including DC New Frontier DVD announced for $149 and Silver PSP, Ratchet & Clank - Size Matters, National Treasure 2 UMD, 1 GB Memory Stick and a voucher for Encochrome for $199.
- PS3 80GB Core Model for $399
- 130 PS2 titles announced for 2008
- New PSN games, Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty, Siren, Eden and Fat Princess. $14.99 each.
- Gran Turismo TV announced
- New footage of Resistance 2
- Resistance Retribution announced for PSP
- More footage of Home
- Also, Infamous, Valkyria Chronicles, DC Universe Online, Patapon 2, LocoRoco 2 and God of War 3 announced!
- The biggest title of the whole of E3 has to be Sony’s exclusive title. MAG (Massive Action Game), is a new FPS which is very similar to Battlefield, however the online battles can have up to 256 players! The 128 players on each side are broken up into 8 player squads. There is no other game like this. On PC the biggest online match you can have is 64 players, on Xbox 360 it is 16.
- Movies & TV Shows can now be bought from PS Store.
Nintendo
- Animal Crossing: City Folks annoucned which will use the new Wii Speak feature.
- Wii Motion Plus announced
- Pokemon Ranger and GTA: Chinatown Wars announced for DS
- Wii Sports Resort and Wii Music announced
Game Highlights
- Halo Wars
- Socom: US Navy Seals Confrontation
- Motor Storm: Pacific Rift
- Far Cry 2
- Left 4 Dead
- Lord of the Rings Conquest
- Gears of War 2
- MAG (Massive Action Game)
- Resistance 2
- Resistance Retribution
- Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty
- Fallout 3
- Prince of Persia
- Killzone 2
- Little Big Planet
- Tom Clancy End War
- Crysis Warhead
- Fable 2
- Resident Evil 5
E3 2008 has been great for Sony, excellent titles announced and Resistence 2 and MAG look great! Microsoft & Nintendo have had a poor showing, even GameSpot UK have said about how poor Microsoft was. Personally, I looking forward to seeing more of Killzone 2, Resistence 2, Gears 2, Crysis Warhead, Ressitance Retribution, SOCOM and Lord of the Rings.
British F1 GP
Posted on July 7th, 2008 by Ed
Hello All,
Just got back from a brilliant weekend down in Silverstone, to watch the 9th Round of the F1 2008 season. It was my first GP I went to see, and it was great weekend. It rained alot, but it made it the race much more exciting. I got some great seats by Abbey corner, where most of the action was happening!
Lewis Hamlition rightfully won the British GP, but I was supporting Mark Webber (clearly best driver of the the season!)
Image from BBC Sport
6 months with Linux (Ubuntu)!
Posted on June 25th, 2008 by Ed
This week’s Linux Wednesday is a very important. Last Sunday, 22nd June marked for me 6 months with Linux! 6 months with an entirely new operating system. This article will be about my experiences with Linux over the back 6 months!
Switching from Windows to Ubuntu was a huge step. New operating system, knew very little about it when I made the switch. I was concerned that it wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t be able to use it, I wouldn’t be able to do the things I could do in Windows. However, my worries were mostly gone as soon as I spent the first few hours with Ubuntu. Most of my hardware worked. The user interface was very easy to understand. There were great applications which I started to enjoy using as well as familiar applications which I have used in the past. I was happy with my move from Windows 98 to a modern operating system. However, my switch to Ubuntu was not as easy I wanted it to be.
My first issue was hardware. Like most new users, hardware can be huge hurdle. My first major issue was my printer. It was not working with Ubuntu, after searching through the Internet I did find the drivers I was looking for. I have already explained in a pervious post how to do it. My next hardware issue was my graphics card. I have an ATi card, which worked fine on boot up, but later I discovered it had no 3D support enabled. So again, after searching the internet I found the tutorial I needed to get 3D support to work. Again, I have posted about this in pervious post. These issues I had was thanks to a great thing in Linux, the Community!!! The Linux community, but especially the Ubuntu community is fantastic. The forums are great place to get help and talk about Ubuntu, in my case. At the start I relied heavily on the support of the Ubuntu forums for any help I need. I could easily post a thread and get a reply in a matter of minutes. Even the IRC is a great place to talk to people from your country if you have a problem. Now, 6 months later, I am helping the community by posting replies to users thread helping them out. Even on my blog, I am offering tips to help you out.
I am very happy with the Ubuntu user interface and the whole experience of Ubuntu. During my 6 months, I have changed to a Xubuntu, so my PC is even faster. The features on Ubuntu which make me so happy that I switched are as small as built-in compression and changing the tags on music files. The software support has been great. Before on Windows 98, I had no update support, but now with Ubuntu there is a new release every 6 months and many updates each week. The software for Linux is brilliant. I was already a user of OpenOffice.org and Firefox. Now I am enjoying using Rhythmbox, VLC, Thunderbird, FileZilla. Synaptic Manager is a brilliant piece of software, making really easy for me to install and uninstall software. Not having to waste RAM by having security software in the background has been great. Not needing to defrag has been great. Basically the whole Linux experience I am really enjoying. It has turned out that I am doing more than I could with Windows!
Finally. The learning curve. It is hard to use a new operating system, especially Linux. However, the UI is so simple and enjoyable to use it has not been much of a challenge. The terminal has been very hard though. Over the past 6 months I have learnt many commands, which I have saved in a text document. I have just recently learnt how to install from source code. Now I am happy to use the terminal, sometimes prefer to over UI. I have even now start tweaking Ubuntu using the terminal to make even faster!
My first 6 months have been brilliant with Ubuntu. It has been very enjoyable using Ubuntu as well as being part of the community. Talking, asking for help and giving help out. I have reported bugs and I also have my own open source project! I want to thank friends, such as luxus, for helping me when I having problems, the Ubuntu community and Ubuntu-Uk community for making my first 6 months easier than it would have been. Hopefully I will be using Ubuntu for another 6 months!
Firefox 3 set a New World Record!
Posted on June 18th, 2008 by Ed
Its been 24 hours, Download Day is over! Firefox 3 has set a new world record! Firefox 3 has been downloaded 8.3 million times in 24 hours, beating the number of downloads of Firefox 2 by 6.7 million.
Everyone who downloaded Firefox 3 get a nice certificate for taking part in this world record.
So by now you should have tried Firefox 3. Please post your comments and tell me what you think to Firefox 3? Do you think it is faster than IE, Safari or Firefox 2? Do you love the Awsome bar? Is it now your default browser???
Firefox 3 starts Now
Posted on June 17th, 2008 by Ed
Its 6pm GMT, Firefox 3 is now launched. You can now download Firefox 3 at firefox.com. Servers are slow, so you may have to be patient.
You have 24 hours to download Firefox 3, Lets hope Mozilla will reach the 1.6 million downloads!
