* Posts by Clive Galway

501 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Feb 2007

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Ten pi-fect projects for your new Raspberry Pi

Clive Galway

Signage system

I just wrote a signage system for my company using RPis.

It checks the timestamp of an openoffice presentation on a network share, and if it changes, reloads the presentation.

Very simple, and a lot cheaper (In initial outlay and running costs) than using a dedicated PC, plus we can just zip tie the RPi to the back of the TV so it effectively takes up no space.

All it took was a simple BASH script.

Infinite loop: the Sinclair ZX Microdrive story

Clive Galway

The microdrive wasn't that bad. I used one for ages and it did me proud.

Combined with the Romantic Robot Multiface One it was a godsend - load up a game, get past the annoying copy protection (ELITE with LensLok I am looking firmly at YOU!) then dump the memory to MD or Floppy and life was all good.

By the time I got my +3 though with 3" disks it got consigned to the bin

Truck-maker CAT flogs smartphone spawn to butter-fingered fondlers

Clive Galway

The S3 has Gorilla Glass II, which is stronger but also thinner than GG1.

I am pretty sure that the net effect is that it is weaker.

Also, the glass on the S3 goes very close to the edge of the phone, especially at the bottom - if you drop it and it lands on one of the bottom corners it WILL break.

Furthermore, Samsung saw fit to bond the LCD to the glass, meaning that if you do crack the outer GG layer, you are basically screwed.

Sammy told me that my warranty is invalid until the glass is replaced - ie if the device died and I sent it for repair, they would not repair it (Or even evaluate it) until the GG was replaced, at a cost of about £170.

Add to that the fact that I have a custom colour ("Amber Brown" from Phones4U) and Sammy say that they do not have that case colour, so in order to replace the glass/LCD assembly, they would also have to replace both covers as the front bezel is bonded to the glass.

Very annoying as there are a bunch of youtube vids that show how to separate the glass and LCD using a heatgun or a playing card, and you can get a replacement glass for £10 - obviously though this would invalidate the warranty.

So to replace a £10 part, I need to pay in excess of £200.

Boffins build elastic wires with liquid metal

Clive Galway
Thumb Up

Retractable headphones

AFAIK, all the major manufacturers stopped making retractable headphones for your phone (The ones that wind up into a little cassette) mainly because the wires and connections inside kept snapping during the strain of winding and unwinding.

If they could use this tech to solve that issue then I would be a very happy bunny as I loved that form-factor.

TomTom for Android with hands-free kit review

Clive Galway

Re: Don't touch!

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2695/made

There in black and white - only illegal to operate a HAND HELD device whilst driving.

However, it is still illegal to text / email / browse the net.

Clive Galway
FAIL

Re: Don't touch!

Wrong.

It is perfectly legal to operate any device whilst driving if it is affixed to the car.

If what you said was correct, operating the stereo whilst driving would be illegal.

Help-desk hell

Clive Galway

My funniest one

A very long time ago, in the days when software come on multiple floppies...

I get a call - "The computer is eating disks - I put in disk one, and it asked for disk 2, which I put in, but it is still asking for disk 2".

So I go through all kinds of stuff, to no avail, and eventually I have to go on site.

I get there and the 3.5" floppy drive has a small gap in the case below it - I open up the case and inside is a stack of like 10 disks.

I guess the user was right after all.

Just bought an Apple product? Need support NOW? Drop an F-BOMB

Clive Galway
Coat

I heard...

... that if you drop the C bomb, you get through to Steve Jobs in the afterlife.

Slideshow: A History of the Smartphone in 20 Handsets

Clive Galway

Re: Non of the early HTC Windows Mobile devices?

Agreed - the HTC TyTn II (AKA Kaiser / O2 XDA Stellar / T-Mobile MDA Vario III) was one of the most amazing devices ever: 4-row QWERTY keyboard with a tilt screen.

Along a similar line was the HTC Touch Pro: A 5-row QWERTY keyboard - Personally I would sell my own left testicle for a 5-row QWERTY android phone.

Mozilla's Persona single sign-on service enters beta

Clive Galway

Like the general idea, but it needs to go further

Personally, I think that passports should also come with a unique id or some other way of linking one and only one of these accounts per person. Sure, have a billion email addresses or facebook accts if you want, but I think we need a way that each person gets one single confirmed identity on the internet.

I am NOT saying that it should be possible for one user to identify who another account actually is, I am just saying we should be able to restrict access to things on a per-person instead of a per-emai-address basis.

For example, if we had single IDs, it would aid commerce because people would be able to offer fully featured trials for things (relatively) safe in the knowledge that people cannot simply sign up for endless trial accounts to avoid paying for the full product.

Chip strip reveals 'handmade' Apple A6

Clive Galway
Trollface

Can't be "Hand Designed" by apple...

... the cores don't have rounded corners.

Fujitsu boffins to help build uni exam-beating bot

Clive Galway
Stop

"...by building a robot capable..."

Robot or software?

If they can build a robot capable of walking into an exam room, sitting in it's allocated chair, picking up a pencil and ticking relevant boxes / handwriting answers then yes I would be impressed.

Otherwise, they are just following in the footsteps of IBM's Watson surely?

Microsoft preparing for diskless Windows 8 PCs

Clive Galway
WTF?

Dangerously hot?

"Such devices, Niehaus said, will have to be certified to run Windows to Go for two reasons, one of which is that in Microsoft's tests external storage ran dangerously hot."

WTF? So if you take a drive that was internal and put it in an external case, suddenly it runs hot?

Anyone care to enlighten me as to how this could be possible? The only thing I can think of is that the external cases they were using had no ventilation or cooling - cause if anything I would think the opposite would be true. Ambient temp inside any (conventionally cooled) computer case is going to be higher than the temperature of the room it is in.

Clive Galway

Re: Still haven't separated OS and Data

"So, does this mean our IT people are lying when they say my "C:\Documents and Settings\myname" folder can't be "H:\Documents and Settings\myname" instead? (where H is the individual network drive allocation)"

Possibly.

You can set up a junction (Symbolic Link) to move your profile to other places, but moving your windows profile to a network disk could be an issue if the file sharing does not initialize before windows needs to load your profile.

Haynes Build Your Own Computer book review

Clive Galway

"who's going to spend £22 when you can find more information with a quick Google search"

Hmm, there are plenty of sites with information, but I think this book is a good idea as it collates all the info you need into one place.

If someone needs to build a computer, chances are they do not already have a computer, or theirs is broken.

What exactly are you going to view this information on while you build your PC? Sure you could print web pages, but you would probably spend more on ink and paper by the time you had all you needed, plus it would not be organised as well and probably would be contradictory in places or have gaps.

No, I think this is a great subject for a book, if done well. IMHO, everyone should build their first computer - I had a mate teach me how to build my first PC and it totally demystified the subject and ultimately started me on my career.

Clive Galway
WTF?

Re: Not really building a computer, is it?

Something tells me this guy is just trolling, but OK, I'll bite.

So what does constitute "Building a computer" in your book?

Designing a motherboard chipset?

Fabricating your own RAM?

There is not a single component in a PC that could be built from base materials by an end user - except maybe the case.

Toothbrush fixes ISS’ stuck bolt

Clive Galway

Re: crappy toolbox....

I prefer "Kinetic Recalibration"

Valve reiterates games hardware gambit

Clive Galway

What is lacking in the controller space

Mouse is pretty irreplaceable at the moment, nothing else comes close when you want a relative input method.

Things that need bringing into the mainstream:

1) A console controller with a trackball in it. If these were common, platform would be irrelevant, and we could maybe start to see console gamers and desktop gamers being able to play on the same servers. As it stands, this can be done technically but there is no point as the console players would be roflstomped.

2) An off-hand (ie left hand for right handed people) controller to compliment the mouse, to replace WSAD.

There are many of these on the market, but they all fail spectacularly on one major point - they do not easily allow analogue movement. What you need is something similar to existing designs such as the logitech G13, but the *whole assembly* is on a base that lets it slide in two axes (Ideally with the option of sprung and unsprung, at least for the y axis).

That way, you can have analogue movement, and use the 3 fingers you would normally have on WSAD for other functions. It would also be a lot easier for players not used to WSAD to pick up keyboard/mouse, as often with the keyboard part, users are looking down at the keyboard when they have to switch between say W and S.

Sony slims down 3D headset, cooks up eye candy

Clive Galway

Re: Nevermind Sony...

I saw some video where Carmack was going on about why previous headsets sucked so much and his major point was that the delay between moving your head and the screen updating was way too long.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but your standard vuzix or whatever glasses are just 3D HDMI and do not cause excessive delays? So the issue is with the head tracking, which is a nut which has already been perfectly solved (TrackIR / FaceTrackNoIR)

For the Oculus, they have gone with gyros, so they have no sensors for translation (only rotation) ie 3DoF instead of full 6DoF. (Carmack said in same video that he may be able to bodge something but there are no sensors that actually detect translation)

IMHO they should have gone with triangulation (ie TrackIR or FaceTrackNoIR style) which would have kept the weight down on the head unit, plus would plug into existing TrackIR / FaceTrackNoIR APIs for instant compatibility with lots of games, while allowing full 6DoF head tracking.

I would say with a triangulation style system you would probably want markers / IR LEDs on the sides and top etc, as with normal triangulation systems, you keep eyes on the screen, and motion is amplified (So you can always just about see the front of your head) - however with a VR headset, you probably want 1:1, so allowing the software to track sides and top of head etc should allow this. If FaceTrackNoIR can be made to track a face, I would imagine crash test dummy style symbols should be easy to track.

Plus with they gyros, Carmack admitted that sometimes if you look around a lot they get confused (like inner ear sloshing), and apparently it doesn't handle looking ?up? ?down? very well.

Nah, I think keeping the visual display and head tracking as two systems makes sense. Then you can improve each independently.

Ubisoft: 'Vast majority of PC gamers are PIRATES'

Clive Galway
Thumb Down

Re: Pft.

You are in a hotel room / visiting friends / wherever, and you have access to a PC.

You install steam and download and play any of your games.

Do you carry all your install disks around with you?

Swings and roundabouts, my friend.

Clive Galway
Stop

Re: Pft.

Do you have any experience of steam to form an opinion of that?

I have never really noticed steam get in the way of my gaming, and I like the benefits it brings over physical discs.

Even if you loan your mate your login and approve the adding of a new machine, it doesn't grumble, and will happily let him install and play any of my games.

So if you are bored, swap logins with a friend and you have a nice library to browse and enjoy - maybe even drum up a few sales if you like one of his games enough.

The prices are also great (If you time the purchase right), with multipacks and such for multiplater - honestly, I just don't get people who hate on steam.

As someone else said though, if BF3 wasn't such an awesome game, I would not tolerate Origin - it is shit.

Jury's still out on F2P though, especially pay-to-win.

I joined the Mechwarrior Online founders program though (ie pre-paying into a F2P) but that was mainly because I have been waiting like 10 years for this game and the only way to play right now is to be part of the founders program. I have to say though, I am not regretting it, I feel like I have gotten $30 worth of fun on it already, despite it still being a pretty early beta.

Samsung Galaxy Beam Android projector phone review

Clive Galway
Thumb Up

Re: It's a shame they don't just use networking...

Screen sharing is totally possible via already existing apps.

Both ways (As in using a phone as an extra PC display and using a PC as the phone display).

Hardly a USP

If they missed a trick (And I dunno, maybe it is possible but it wasn't mentioned) it would be to allow HDMI in, so that you could literally use the phone as a projector for your PC or XBOX.

Yes, you could get the image via remote desktop or something, but these things typically aren't capable of a 60FPS image, plus HDMI has audio too and I doubt this thing has a line in jack.

Whatever, as an avid amateur movie maker, I would really like one of these.

Surely most sports fans would like one of these also? Don't Sky allow you to use a web based service? Anytime? That plus one of these phones would surely be highly cool.

Could also be a good laugh in a nightclub or pub - project images onto the ceiling. May also even help your mates find you, if you projected your name or something to the ceiling.

Boffins create 100,000 DPI image

Clive Galway

Surely DPI is a measure of density, not resolution.

Asking "What is the resolution?" clearly means "How many pixels wide by how many tall is the image?"

Fukushima powerplant owner forced to cough teleconference vids

Clive Galway

Surely it kind of backs up lewis' argument.

If basic safety precautions were not taken and still the consequences were minimal, then that means it is even safer than it needs to be surely?

But yeah, claiming "Hard drive full" when the video kept recording is most likely utter BS.

Global warming: It's GOOD for the environment

Clive Galway

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

</popcorn>

The touchscreens that push back, thanks to Brit hi-fi boffinry

Clive Galway
Thumb Up

I hope Google write support in for Android

I hate capacitive touch screens.

They detect clicks when you don't even touch the glass, are unusable if the screen gets rained on and are not as accurate as resistive (Without a special pen, but with resistive you could use your nail / a random bit of plastic / a retracted ball-point).

A pressure sensitive screen with haptic feedback? YES PLEASE !!!

Ten... active camcorders

Clive Galway

Re: Errata - Incorrect terminology usage - 1080i/60 vs 1080i/30

I feel I should maybe quantify this.

If using the format you have, please omit the slash.

eg 1080i60 = 1080i/30

But I stick to my guns in saying 1080i60 meaning 60 fields a second is a stupid system. Probably invented by americans :P

Clive Galway

Re: The other question this spec sheet fails to answer is:

Not if it encodes to Constant Bit Rate and the bit rate is published.

Even if it is VBR, generaly bit-rates are included in the specs to give you a pretty good idea.

Clive Galway

Errata - Incorrect terminology usage - 1080i/60 vs 1080i/30

Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080i

When using the format XXXi/30 XXXi/60 (At least in Europe) the last figure means FRAMES a second not FIELDS per second.

I seriously doubt that the Panasonic HX-WA20 does 1080i/60 as this would be 120 FIELDS per second (Which could be turned into 1080p/120 using a bob+weave deinterlace) and is data-rate wise comparable to 1080p/60, which the camera does not do.

Doubling the last number in case of interlaced is only confusing the issue - even if manufacturers quote it in literature, please do not follow suit.

Clive Galway

Vegas can do a Bob and Weave deinterlace to produce double framerate footage.

Agreed though, anything 25 based needs to be shot. Let us move on from differing framerates, nonsquare pixels, PAL and NTSC as quickly as humanly possible. It was a horrible nightmare best left in the past and made things confusing for non-savvy consumers.

Ten... Sata 3 SSDs

Clive Galway

Kingston HyperX 3K price incorrect.

It isn't £200 - Kingston sells it for £277 and Scan charge £227.

Samsung's projector phone beamed up to Blighty

Clive Galway

Re: A 50 inch beam, you say?

I dunno, I think it is quite intuitive.

I take it to mean that you can achieve a 50 inch viewing area - beyond that it is too dim or not focused.

Clive Galway
Thumb Up

Interesting use?

If you coupled this with screenslider (App that lets you use android device as an extra monitor for your PC) it would make a decent sized second screen for gaming (Voice comms window, maps etc)

Graphics shocker: Nvidia virtualizes Kepler GPUs

Clive Galway
WTF?

I call bullshit

WTF? That slide basically make the claim that most games suffer from 150ms input lag.

Seriously? Between making an input and seeing the result on the screen is 150ms? I find that very hard to believe.

Any game coders care to comment?

Also, the "display" segment of the graph is confusing. Surely it isn't time to render - do they mean display lag? Seems pretty irrelevant though - they have included the same amount of time for all rows.

Also the "Network" component seems bullshit. Are they comparing GPU or network infrastucture? How "Cloud Gen I" have a 75ms latency but Galkai only 30ms?

Surely that isn't a fair comparison? If they mean that there is less network latency because other bits are done faster, then that is not network, that is "Game Pipeline" surely. The 30 vs 75ms figure for network implies that Microsoft's network is shit, not that nVidia's GPUs are better. Or does the statement "Nvidia and its online gaming partners think they have the latency issue licked when the GeForce Grid software is running on data centers that are not too far from players" mean that basically they are comparing Galkai running on a local data center vs OnLive running on a datacenter in a different continent? Hardly a fair comparison??

Sorry, but this just reeks of twisting the truth. Fact of the matter is that for multiplayer games I would never ever use a cloud gaming service - it just isn't possible to compete with players on standalone machines (Unless possibly if the cloud service also hosted the game server, but then you would be limited to BF3 matches only on certain servers).

Ten... freeware gems for new PCs

Clive Galway

I ditched 7-Zip...

... as it does not play well with shell integration and windows 7 it seems.

Also, it's algo to name the folder if you uncompress a zip to a folder.like.this was not good.

I now use IZArc http://www.izarc.org/

For windows 7 peeps, I also always install 7 taskbar tweaker ( http://rammichael.com/ )

VCs back P2P game booster

Clive Galway

It's not the bandwidth that I have a problem with, it is the security.

We haven't even managed to solve the problem of hacked clients in games - cheating still happens. So this company thinks they have solved that problem 100% as well?

Cause if they haven't, effectively turning the clients into servers is asking for trouble IMHO.

Web super-TV turns EXTREME sports fans into sofa-dwellers

Clive Galway
Stop

Hmm, I am both a creator and consumer of extreme sports videos, but I do not think I would pay 6.90 Euros a month for ONE channel :/

Printers SMASHED to bits in Office Space copycat revenge vid

Clive Galway

Meh

I came across a rather an amusing homage to the Office Space printer scene in one of Birgirpall's excellent BF3 videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O1ynhiv4Bk&list=UU7dlaP4GdMn7kBnsEDKupuQ&index=21&feature=plcp about a minute in.

For those not in the know, the tripod thingie is a SOFLAM (Laser Designator).

Shuttle Discovery to buzz Washington DC at 1,500 feet

Clive Galway

A bit pointless?

Surely even at 1,500ft, under the flight path you won't be able to see dick all of the space shuttle, just the underside of the airliner it is sitting atop?

Unless of course it banks quite seriously, but I doubt it would be doing much of that at such a low altitude.

Battling remote-control helicopters

Clive Galway
Stop

Controls? V important for a 3 channel

The controls are all important for me. I was given a 3 channel as a present and it's setup is annoying.

"Normal" layout is pitch and roll on right (like a plane), collective (height) and yaw on left.

The 3 chan I have has no roll (Which I presume is the axis cut in this one) and they moved yaw onto the right stick.

Very confusing, I have trouble getting used to it, and am not sure I want to "unlearn" the instincts I already have.

I would guess that would be a poor setup to learn to fly on also, going to a 4th axis and swapping hands is going to cause problems later on methinks.

Multi-color laser created by UCSB scientists

Clive Galway
Happy

Screw optical communications...

What does this discovery mean for trippy light shows?

Man FLIES with Android-powered homemade bird wings

Clive Galway
WTF?

Exactly. Wiimotes would be the last thing you would use - it would frankly be dangerous - twist your wrist the wrong way or drop the wiimote (even with wrist strap) and you could stall one wing and die.

Clearly anything augmenting muscle power would not use wireless input - old school potentiometers etc would be way more reliable and MUCH lighter.

Geeks seek cubits for Battlestar flight sim

Clive Galway

Re: Nice project, but...

"You'd only need the equipment to roll upside down if you were simulating a flight where gravity is a factor, presumably in the atmosphere of a planet"

Incorrect.

An outside loop (ie nose down not nose up) causes negative G.

Warp drives are PLANET KILLERS, Sydney Uni students find

Clive Galway
Thumb Up

Sounds useful to me

An object that travels FTL, then delivers a big bang.

Sounds like an ideal planet-killing-meteor deflector to me!

Ten... gaming mice

Clive Galway
FAIL

Logitech SetPoint sucks

Anyone calling SetPoint "Superior" instantly loses all cred as a mouse reviewer in my book.

With my MX620, here are a list of failings:

For LBM, RMB, MMB and buttons 4 and 5 (The two thumb buttons), if you program them to some of the available actions, you cannot change these buttons in the per-application mode

For example, the default mapping for buttons 4 and 5 is browser back/forwards. However, this does not trigger mouse4 or mouse5 in many games (eg BF3) so you have to use "Generic Button" for each. If you set a button to "Generic Button" in the normal options, then the option to set a binding for that button in per-application mode is greyed out.

Similarly, if you pick one of the normal settings for one of these buttons, "Generic Button" is missing from the list in per-application mode.

So basically it is not possible to have buttons 4+5 to act as generic mouse buttons in some applications but not others.

Also, there is no way to program mouse wheel up/down (Unlike the razr software).

I find this very annoying, as in many games I do not use the mouse wheel to scroll thru weapons, I use the mouse wheel to directly select them. For example, in BF3, wheel up is rifle, down is pistol, left (it is a tilt wheel) is gadget 1 and right is gadget 2.

Luckily, BF3 lets you bind weapon changes to wheel up/down, and I use setpoint to program left/right to 3+4 - but many other games I wish to play like this I cannot because of SetPoint's suckyness.

You can use the unofficial UberOptions, but that only allows you to use up/down arrow and some other similar equivalents to the mousewheel and introduces it's own issues.

So come on Logitech, sort out this pile of crap! Love your tilting, free spinning wheels but hate your software!

Does anyone else make tiltwheel mice?

Feds unlock suspect's encrypted drive, avoid Constitution meltdown

Clive Galway
Stop

Re: Ignoring the obvious

If the contents of the filing cabinet are written in a code, are there laws to make you hand over that code?

I am guessing not.

Microsoft demos 3D desktop with transparent OLED

Clive Galway
Stop

Not convinced

Surely unless you can touch type perfectly (For all keys, not just regular alphanumerics), there are going to be occasions when the onscreen pixels will block your view of the keyboard - ie fullscreening an app would be a no-no.

Either that or the (active) pixels would have to be translucent, meaning your image quality is pretty poor. Gonna be utterly useless for any kind of artistic work.

I think the transparency and having your hands behind the screen is a bit of a dead end myself. It certainly is never going to take off as the dominant form factor IMHO.

Apple lands slide-to-unlock patent blow on Motorola

Clive Galway

Simply replace it with an apple that you drag to a bin ;)

Man surfs slopes at night in LED suit

Clive Galway

Looks pretty sweet, but I reckon the colour changing snowboards are cooler:

This guy made one with accelerometers etc so that as the angle changes, so does the colour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC0xSV37Afo

Unfortunately I dont see any freestyle footage, something like a rodeo 540 (Backflip with a 180) would look soooo cool as it cycled through the colours.

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