The downside, the disk drive is only 4 Gb.

Before we bought it 4 Gb seemed small, but after all, it wasn’t that long ago that I paid about $500 for a 120Mb drive for my IBM desktop, and 4Gb still holds a lot of word processing documents. Or so we thought…

When the Asus arrived it included a handsome Xandros operating system. The “Easy” interface was ideal for someone used to MS Windows. The trouble was, it was shipped with a huge number of applications that took up virtually all of the disk space (like 95%) and there is no way to remove unwanted applications. Since we left the auto-update switched on we soon ran into problems of using up absolutely all of the disk space. We could have used an external disk drive to store documents, but in the shipped state the device did not run YouTube videos or Facebook chat. Of course, it might have done if we had been able to update packages but this was impossible because there was not enough free disk space.

Searching the forums it appeared that it was possible to remove applications. Some said this could be done by running in Advanced mode which required manifold changes and tweaks to operating system files (especially for the 900A). Others insisted that you had to mess with the disk partitions to allow changes to be made to the system partition (which contained the backup data and most of the available disk space). I believe you need at least  PhD in computer science to follow these conflicting instructions or at least a lot of patience. As with most advice for Linux, it roughly divided into 40% that conflicts with other advice, 40% written to make the person writing it appear very clever and to obfuscate information for everyone else, and 20% useful. And you never know which is which until you have spent many fruitless hours.

I eventually gave up and turned to http://www.eeebuntu.org/ This site is definitely in the useful domain.

EEE Ubuntu is a subset of Ubuntu that is designed to run on EEE machines ‘out of the box.’ At least that’s what the Web site says.

I followed the install instructions for EEEbuntu Base, which is the smallest of their downloads. I downloaded the ISO and then went to http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ to download a program that runs under Windows XP to create a bootable USB stick.

I adjusted the Asus to boot from the USB stick (by pressing F2 on bootup and changing the order of boot devices).

The real beauty of using the USB is you can boot up in the new operating system and test it out without touching the old. In other words, you can check that everything is working properly before you commit to installing the new operating system on the Asus disk.

After checking that the wireless driver was working properly and that it was possible to watch YouTube (which required downloading Flash, which was easy), I clicked the install link and installed EEEBuntu.

Having installed the operating system, the system recognized my wireless network. I just had to enter the password to connect. I quickly installed OpenOffice Word and Spreadsheet, and also Thunderbird for email.

Connecting to a Windows networked printer was extremely easy.

Overall I wish we had gone down this route months ago.

Asus make good machines but they need to be a little more thoughtful when they fill their computers with unneeded applications without a way to remove them.

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New Operating System for Asus EEE 900A

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I love the Panavision or Cinemascope ratio (2.35 to 1) because this is how we see (i.e. your peripheral vision goes to the right and the left NOT up and down, or at least mine doesn’t!) Many multiplex theaters are designed with widescreen as their optimum presentation format, rather than scope. The reason for this has got to be that it is cheaper to build upwards than sideways because land is expensive, but the viewing experience is not a patch on theater designed for scope.

I was delighted to see that Philips have launched the first 21:9 TV and it looks gorgeous. This link includes a wonderful presentation about the new TV. Not only does it have the same aspect ratio of the best movies of the last 60 years, but it also includes an innovative new technology called Ambilight, that creates a background coloration to the TV that aims to create a more immersive viewing expereince.

I’m not sure waht rice this is being sold at. I would guess a couple of thousand dollars. Hopefully other manufacturers will take th elead and the price of a 21:9 will fall dramatically just like the price of 16:9 flat screen TVs has.

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Cinema proportion TV

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The twist with BudURL is that is includes analytics behind each link that you create. So, for example, you could include a BudURL link in a Twitter Tweet and then see analytics on any clicks on that link.

I will post more when I have examples of the analytics.

BudURL includes free and paid services based on the number of links you create.

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BudURL

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1. Creating a link in a WordPress blog The following video is a very simple demonstration of how...

I am a big fan of OpenOffice, it does everything that I need, everything that MS Office does that is of any importance and sometimes more, for example you have a huge amount of flexibility in which file types it can open and edit. You can also create PDFs directly from OpenOffice.

One thing that I don’t think is overly easy is creating address labels – especially ones that do not include blank lines (if a field in a database is empty, as is often the case with my Christmas card list)

Anyway after a lot of effort last night I managed to create the labels I wanted, without the empty lines (and without showing the country: USA on the cards destined for the USA).

I have created a tutorial at: Creating mailing labels using OpenOffice – remove blank lines.

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Removing blank lines from OpenOffice labels

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The podcasting presentation can be found here.

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Podcasting tutorial video

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Ikonoskop have just announced a new digital camera the A-cam dII.

The camera records video in RAW format (i.e. uncompressed) on to a solid state 80 GB memory disk, also developed by Ikonoskop. The camera can use standard motion picture lenses and captures video at a high res 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution.

Ikonoskop is taking pre-orders and has set the price at €6,950 (just under $10,000 at today’s exchange rate).

It is fascinating to see the amount of innovation bringing top-notch professional cameras such as this one and the Red line of products) to the market at prices that film makers could previously only have dreamed about.

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Ikonoskop launches new camera

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One thing I really like about Explorer 7 though, is the way you can zoom in and out of Web sites. Press CTRL – and the site gets smaller (all to scale), press CTRL + and you zoom in. Do the same thing with Firefox and the text starts changing size, something that eventually screws up even the most beautifully designed site.

The main reason I like this capability is because it means I can include a greater vertical size of Web sites I am trying to capture for inclusion in written materials or as an image on a Web site. Perhaps there is a Firefox plugin that creates a similar behavior, but for now its easy to fire up Explorer.

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One thing I do like about Explorer 7

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I purchased it from Amazon, opting for the CDs and box version, rather than the download, and it was considerably cheaper than going though Sony.

I decided to go for the CDs because on many occasions I have had computer troubles and have lost software that I had downloaded from the Web. For example, I had an excellent little ico editor which was useful for creating favicons. Unfortunately it was on another machine and is gone forever. I can’t remember its name, so if anyone knows of a good favicon.ico editor, please let me know.

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Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Edition

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This time I used subversion to upgrade. I has already setup my installations to enable subversion upgrades, by following clear and simple instructions on the WordPress site. So when it was time to upgrade it was very easy. Firstly I performed a backup (using a backup plugin). I then logged into my server using Putty, navigated to my WordPress directory, ran one command, which ran seamlessly and then did the usual wp-admin/upgrade.php. Everything worked wonderfully.

I hope your upgrade is so smooth!

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Subversion WordPress upgrade

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At first I was surprised by the size of the microphone. It has a diameter of about 4 inches. The Blue Snowball was extremely easy to set up. I simply plugged it in and it was available for recording. It comes with a sturdy little desktop stand. The instructions suggest using a pop filter, which I have used in the recordings included below.

There are 3 settings on the back of the Snowball:

1. Activates cardoid capsule
2. Activates cardoid capsule with 10dB reduction
3. Activates omni capsule

Option 1 is best for making recording directly in front of the microphone. Option 2 reduces the input signal and option 3 is useful for recording sound more generally. The instruction manual that comes with the microphone also suggest different orientations of the microphone depending on the sort of sound you want to achieve, e.g. tilt the microphone slightly upwards for “more projection and head tone,” straight at the mouth for “maximum brightness and intelligibility” and towards the chest for “robust full lows and smoother highs.”

I thought it would be interesting to record something with each of the microphones I have tested to give an idea of the quality of each microphone as far as podcasting is concerned.

In each case I recorded a poem by Thomas Hardy using Audacity to capture the sound. Capture settings were 44,100Hz at 16bit. Having made a recording I exported the MP3 at a bit rate setting of 64.

Recording made using the Blue Snowball

Recording of Blue Snowball microphone

Recording made using Samson CO1U

Recording made using Logitech USB headset

Recording made using Beyer M58 microphone (the microphone was connected to Presonus TubePre. The Beyer M58 is a professional microphone used by newscasters. It is characterized by its length which is useful for adding TV station logos)

Recording made using Beyer M58 connected to Canon HG10 HD camcorder

The poem is:

In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half-asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by;
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

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Blue Snowball comparison with Samson USB microphone

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