Chris Saul's Blog

Sunday January 20, 2008

iTunes irritations

iTunes is really beginning to irritate me.

Not surprisingly, video takes up a lot of space. To solve this, I've moved my iTunes folder onto a central NAS - a nice little Linksys NSLU2 with two 500GB drives attached to it.

Every so often iTunes resets the default folder from the music folder on my networked Y drive to being on my PC's C drive. This means that after I've encoded a few video files and copied them over to the 'proper' music folder on the NAS, when adding them to iTunes, iTunes promptly wastes hours copying them all back to my C drive.

When resetting iTunes to point back to my Y drive, iTunes then takes about twenty minutes 'updating' the library.

I think I need to untick the option to consolidate my library to stop this happening or mattering. The consolidate library option's quite helpful though, as it does keep everything in on place automatically. What's annoying though is that you have to have everything in one place. I'd like to have my music on one drive and video on another to improve performance and to make space more manageable.

Thursday December 27, 2007

Digital home takes shape

I'm slowly moving forward with defining how our new 'digital home' will look like. After owning the same small hifi for 8 years or so, along with a small TV and only one computer purchase (an Acer laptop a few years ago), I think I deserve an upgrade!

The TV's been identified - a nice 40", 2 Mega pixel Sony LCD. Surround sound will be from a Bose 3-2-1 or Sony DAV-x10 - Bose sound quality is better but it's more expensive, Sony looks good and only one controller is needed to operate both surround sound and the TV. Mrs Saul wants a solution with the minimum number of speakers...

Mrs Saul will have a new laptop to use. The current Acer will trudge along for a year or so more as a general laptop/iTunes controller, streaming to an Airport Express plugged into the sound system. I may upgrade the Acer with an N enabled wifi card.

Central shared and backup storage was supposed to be provided by 'AirDisk', a usb drive attached to my new Apple Extreme router. This really isn't working as it should do. Assuming Apple don't release a firmware upgrade that improves things in the immediate future, I'll use a Linksys NSLU2 to store all our content centrally, wired to the . The disk attached to the Apple router can continue as a general back up disk. Surprisingly, despite trawling the electronics shops of London today, I couldn't find an NSLU2. If I can't get one in Dubai either, I'll order it from Amazon.

A decent way of playing music and downloaded or ripped content (legal content of course) directly on the TV or straight to the sound system is proving difficult. Current media-centres from the likes of D-Link and Netgear get good reviews from the press, but bad reviews from users. They also lack Blu-ray or HD-DVD, Gb ethernet and N wifi. Sony have a nice new media-centre PC out, but it seems like expensive overkill and doesn't have a Blu-ray drive. I think a new, HDMI enabled and Blu-ray equipped laptop may be a good compromise in a few months' time, unless other vendors get their act together and bring out something that works and has up to date networking.

I'm also not sure of the best way of getting music to the bedroom. I see there are several wifi enabled players on the market, but I need something that will read from a shared drive, rather than going through a PC. It should also be able to integrate with playlists created in iTunes.

I'm surprised that no one vendor has quite managed to pull all of this together yet.

Friday December 21, 2007

Wii Boxing fitness miracles

I'm not quite at this chap's level, but recent regular Wii Boxing boughts are really helping me out on the waistline front.

General weight has gone down a bit, but the most amazing things is how trousers that I was previously worried were shrinking around the waist now appear to be expanding. Suit trousers in particular are now hanging off me - the trousers I got married in two and a half years ago are looser round the waist now than they were then, even if the scales show me as being a bit heavier. Unfortunately the jacket's got a bit tighter round the underarms. Still, beat that, all you married travelling types!

I've now bought some weights to put around my wrists while playing. My scores are going down as I'm less nimble, but it makes for an even more thorough workout, that's also great fun. Smashing people's faces in in your own living room, with no danger of getting hurt yourself and getting exercise at the same time is an unbeatable combination.

I can't wait for the new Wii Fitness board to hit Dubai...

On another Wii note, I keep reading about massive shortages in the UK - Dubai is filled with NTSC and PAL Wiis, so if you need one simply drop me a mail, promise to pay twice the list price and I'll bring you one over when I come back for Christmas.

Fellow blogger ThinGuy is miles ahead of me on the general fitness stakes, but is being much stricter. I have no intention ever of getting up to go to the gym at 0430 every morning, but salute his efforts and results.

Monday December 10, 2007

AirPort Extreme disappointment

I bought an Apple Airport Extreme for the new apartment and so far I'm not particularly impressed.

I bought it for three main reasons -

1. It looks good. Mrs Saul must like the way things look, or they must be hidden in hard to access parts of the living room.

2. You can attach usb disks and use it as a file server.

3. I already have an Apple Airport Express and wanted things to match and work well together when streaming music from iTunes to the stereo over the network, so having two products from the same company would make sense.

Setup was relatively easy. I always use Windows these days, so it wasn't a problem that the client is Windows and Mac only. I'd have been irritated to have had to use Windows a couple of years ago when Linux or Solaris were still my main desktop*.

Disk access seems painfully slow. Following Thin Guy's experiences, I changed the channel I was on after using NetStumbler to see what the networks around me were using. As someone named 'Wolverine' was on the same channel as me, I changed to an unused channel - disk access seems to have improved, but only a little. Frankly it's unusable for anything but iTunes streaming or copying the odd file here and there. The idea was to use it to stream video around, but I can't see that working acceptably.

Using Bittorrent kept causing the router's wireless to stop working. Hunting around via Google I found that people had had the same experience and that switching off 'DHT' (whatever that is) would solve the issue. It seems to have.

Accessing the Sun VPN through my laptop is almost unusable. I have a second ethernet port enabled in the spare room - when using that, access works fine. This could be because I'm downloading a couple of large files on the other connection via the AirPort Extreme, but in theory both of my ports are sharing the same 2Mb link and the wireless network shouldn't be overloaded.

I need to do some testing to see where the bottlenecks lie, particularly with disk access, where slower, older wirleess cards may be the culprit.

That said, things 'just worked' with my old Dlink router, without any fiddling, installing client software, checking on forums and having things stop working randomly. Having one machine use the Sun VPN whilst another downloaded something wasn't an issue. Maybe I'm placing blame unfairly, but I'd have expected Apple to have done a much better job.

Next week I'll have some time to do some testing and may invest in some 'n' wireless cards for my work and home laptop to see if that improves things. If not, I'll have a look at some other NAS devices I can use to do file sharing better - Linksys seem to have a popular one out that might be 'coming in Dubai'.

I think I must be getting old - I used to enjoy putting all this stuff together, but these days I just want it all to work properly, out of the box and get everything from one vendor. I'm tired of fiddling around.

* I do still use Solaris for work stuff, but as my customers use a Windows desktop and as we have to use a Windows desktop at home, I just end up using Windows for 'consumer' stuff.

Wednesday November 07, 2007

The Wii Sports revolution

I'm really enjoying the Nintendo Wii I got for my birthday, regularly working up a sweat with some nice 20 to 30 minute boxing sessions.

This is exactly what I need - easy exercise that's also fun.

People who say 'why don't you just go to the gym/play tennis on a real court/do some press-ups are missing the point. I want exercise to take up as little time as possible and to be easy and fun to do. Tricking me into exercising by making it into a game and mixing in some electronics is the perfect way to do this.

I can't wait to see what Nintendo bring out in the future. Anything that has me enjoying myself leaping around the living room and getting some exercise in to boot is worth every penny.

My next step is to get some weights to put around my wrists to make my workout a wii bit more strenuous.

Monday October 08, 2007

Sony design engineers need to wear shirts occasionally

I have two Sony products with earphones - one a set of noice cancelling headphones and the other a Bluetooth handsfree kit.

The headphones have the left ear piece attached to the main cable, with the right earpiece on a longer cord eminating from the left ear piece cable. The right ear piece cable is designed to be strung around the back of the neck. The handsfree has string that's placed over the head like a necklace, with the ear pieces hanging off the sides, ready to be inserted earwards when a call comes through.

Each of them works nicely if I'm wearing a t-shirt, but both are a pain if I'm wearing something with a collar. The left cable tends to get caught on the collar, which means grating sounds coming through on the headphones or catching the earpiece on the handsfree kit when I try to put it in my ear. Even if it gets in, the mic is usally buried under the collar anyway and noone can hear what I'm saying.

My Apple iPod headphones use a normal headphone 'y' design, with the cables neatly sitting between my collar, never getting caught or causing any issues.

I can just imagine the groovy t-shirt wearing Sony design engineers getting excited at how they'd come up with something cooler and apparently more innovative than Apple for a change, without ever testing whether their design was actually practical for anyone who doesn't work at a design consultancy and can't wear groovy t-shirts to work.

Tuesday June 26, 2007

The history of Psion

The Register has a fascinating article on Psion - well worth a read.

Tragic that a British company didn't make it to stardom under its own name, even if its legacy continues in manufacturing and through the products it spawned. Is this a symptom of some British condition, bad luck, or a simple lack of proximity to the US?

My father still uses his 3a to this day. Its reminder alarm always tends to go off during dinner - hearing it when I'm back home always makes me feel that I'm back where I belong, safe and comfortable at my parents' house.

Friday June 22, 2007

iPod Video finally reaches its potential

I've finally got around to using my iPod Video to actually watch videos with. What's confusing though is the number of tools and formats out there.

I want to be able to copy DVDs that I own onto my laptop - the file sizes shouldn't be huge. I also want those DVDs viewable on my iPod.

It's my understanding that I'll need two files in the end - something like a DivX for laptop viewing, and an H.264 or MP4 file for iPod viewing.

There are so many tools out there, some paid for and some for free. It looks like I'll have to start ploughing through what's out there to see what works best...

Sunday June 17, 2007

Phone envy

A few months ago, when I was considering upgrading my phone, Mrs Saul asked me why I simply didn't 'buy the phone that has everything you need'. My answer at the time was that I couldn't, because that phone didn't exist.

Now there are two models vying for my attention that really do seem to include everything I need - the soon to be released Sony Ericsson P1 and the new Nokia E61i. The only thing missing on each is HSDPA, but everything else is there - WLAN, decent keyboard, large screen, general bits and pieces and a camera. Travelling so much, I like having a camera to hand to snap things on the hop, so that's an essential for me, even if most 'business users' consider it superfluous.

I'm leaning towards the Sony P1, simply because I've already invested so much in Sony peripherals.

All I need to do now is persuade Mrs Saul that this is an essential purchase...

Wednesday May 23, 2007

Useless phones

This article on what handset vendors are doing wrong is excellent.

I'm enjoying using my Sony Ericsson 610i - Sony managed to realise that their useless joysticks weren't very good, so this model has a keypad instead for navigation. I have trouble sending mails unless I've done a 'send and receive' and battery life is a bit disappointing, but other than that I'm pretty pleased with it. Some people have commented that the red case is girly. My personal feeling is that it's incredibly manly - the sort of phone a rugged, toughl, no-nonsense man's man would own.

That said, it's the first phone I've had for a while that comes close to the classic Nokia 6310i I first got in 2001. It's a bit pathetic that a 7 year old model is what most customers still whistfully think of, despite all the bells and whistles on the new models.

Providing battery life makes it practical, I'd love to have a GPS in my next phone. There are two reasons for this. Firstly it'd be very useful when travelling, obviously. Secondly, the populariy of these new GPS phones are introducing a bit more competition into the market, which means Garmin ought to lower the exorbitant cost of their maps. I have no intention of getting rid of my super rugged Garmin eTrex as it's perfect for driving and hiking. I just wish it weren't so ridiculously expensive to buy additional maps for it.

Friday May 18, 2007

How to stop Thunderbird downloading attachments

In past posts I've bemoaned the fact that I couldn't stop Thunderbird from downloading large attachments when in online mode.

I've finally found a way to solve the issue - tap the 'escape' key twice whilst the attachment is loading.

I can't believe it took me so long to find a solution to this. Someone at work mentioned it in passing the other day, freeing me from stopping and restarting Thunderbird whenever someone at Sun sent yet another 8MB file as an attachment, instead of posting it on the internal sites we have.

Sunday April 29, 2007

Import your iTunes art

I've been trying out various programmes that let you import album cover art into your iTunes library.

TuneSleeveis by far the best. Very easy to use and works perfectly.

Apparently iTunes 7 lets you do this via the iTunes store if you have an account. Setting up an account would mean having to get my UK credit card out of the bottom of a draw, opening an account when logged onto the web through the Sun VPN with the UK proxy set and then using up Sun's bandwidth to download all the album art. TuneSleeve is probably the best route forward for me for now!

Thursday January 11, 2007

iPhone thoughts

I've been enjoying reading various reviews of Apple's new iPhone. From what I've read it doesn't sound like something I'll be buying for a while to come, although I'm sure it looks gorgeous.

The first question that comes to mind is how scratchproof the screen will be. Considering that I just have to look at my iPod and the screen gets scratched, I wonder what Apple have done to keep a product that will live in pockets looking spick and span?

If they have put a decent scratchproof screen on it, why didn't they put something similar on the iPod in the first place? A cynic might suggest that not doing so means that users are more likely to renew their scratched devices and fewer models would be around on the secondhand market, all of which is good for sales of the latest models.

Apple TV looks interesting too. Neither Mrs Saul nor I watch much TV at all, time being the main factor, with content a close second. I don't see the point in paying $100 a month for mainly US shows that don't really interest me and which I'll only watch occasionally. Having a nice, user friendly way to watch what we want when we want it would be good. Content will be key again, of course and the price would have to be right. If the BBC would let me watch all their programmes whenever I wanted to for the equivalent of the £80 licence fee I'd pay in the UK, I'd be a happy man.

Tuesday October 31, 2006

Technology lets me down

Technology's let me down twice today.

First off the Jeep's battery was completely dead this morning, so I had to get a taxi to work. Car batteries here seem to last for about a year and a half and then die without any warning. Not Jeep's fault though.

Secondly, the joystick on my borrowed K750i has suddenly stopped working. Frequent blog readers of mine are entertained, I know, by my regular postings on the twin themes of electrical plugs and on Sony's shortcomings. This may be the last straw for Sony as far as I'm concerned. Time to return to the Nokia fold, or buy a Motorola to demonstrate my role as a standard bearer for standard cabling across multiple vendors.

I've never really liked Motorola phones - I don't like clamshells and their normal phones come across as a bit girly. A Nokia it will have to be, unless a Sony exec wants to give me a new joystick free phone to placate me. One that uses the same data cables I already have. And will use the Memory Stick Pro cards I already have. And the earphones I already have. And the chargers too.

Looks like I'll be getting a Nokia.

Monday October 23, 2006

Sort your act out, Sony!

Mrs Saul gave me a bluetooth headset as an Eid present.

Being from Sony, I wasn't surprised to notice that it needs a different charger to the one I use with my current phone. It'll be going back to be replaced by something that doesn't force me to carry yet another set of cables with me when I'm travelling.

Sort your act out, Sony. Your customers are sick and tired of being ripped off and inconvenienced by your insistence on ignoring common sense when it comes to the chargers, memory sticks and multiple cables we're forced to buy and fill up our bags with.