New earphones for my iPod

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

The standard Apple iPod earphones are okay… but they are basic. I’m no audiophile (some would say audiophiles wouldn’t listen to MP3s) but I find them uncomfortable, the foam covers fall off and get lost, they fall out of my ears and I have to turn up the volume to the maximum whenever I’m listening to a podcast in a noisy environment (like on the tube). Oh yes, and the bass on my iPod Mini “blew” the right earbud within days of purchase.

As I’m increasingly using my iPod, either on the parts of my commute which don’t allow me to sit on the train and write for this blog or on the stress-busting walks which often take me out into the Buckinghamshire countryside, I figured I’d get some new earphones. My criteria were simple:

  • Inexpensive (i.e. less than £30);
  • White (to match the iPod);
  • Comfortable;
  • Reduce impact of ambient noise (noting that noise-cancelling headphones were unlikely to meet my first criterion – i.e that of being inexpensive).

Some basic research led me to find that there are some excellent ear-canal phones available (like the Shure E4Cs) but they will also cost me many of my hard-earned pounds, so I decided to buy the white Sennheiser CX300 ear-canal phones which were on offer at the Apple Store and also received great reviews.

Sennheiser CX300 (white)They only arrived on Saturday (so haven’t been used much yet) but so far I’m impressed. I’m still working out which of the three supplied ear adapters is the best fit but they are definitely more comfortable and they stay in place, even whilst lying in bed taking a pzizz. I’ve also found that I can turn the volume way down, hopefully reducing the damage that I’d doing to my hearing, and the in-ear placement really does cut out a lot of ambient noise (haven’t tried them on the tube yet though). Of course, they will work with any audio device that uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, not just an iPod.

Now, the more discerning reader will notice that the link above is to Amazon and not Apple. That’s because I’ve found out that, whilst I spent £29.99 on mine (and they are back up to £39.99 now), they are only £17.80 at Amazon (and even less if you plump for black or silver). So, if you want some, please buy yours using this link and earn me some commission (albeit expressed in pence, not pounds) to pay me back for my complete lack of pre-purchase price comparison!

Manually removing entries from Windows’ add/remove programs list

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Earlier today, I was clearing down an old PC in preparation to donate it to a worthy cause. I remembered that installing Windows XP on it had been a long process, so I just removed the data (nothing sensitive, so no need to securely delete anything), uninstalled the applications and hacked the registry to change the registered owner/company (look for RegOwner and RegCompany string values for various products throughout the registry but the main ones I wanted to change were the RegisteredOrganization and RegisteredOwner string values in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion as these are the ones shown in the system properties – the easiest way to find them is to look up the registered to values in the system properties and search the registry for the appropriate string).

Although various installers had left behind subdirectories which needed to be removed manually, there was one application for which the uninstall failed but repeated attempts resulted in an error – leaving behind an entry in the Add or Remove Programs Control Panel applet. I needed to know how to remove this entry and found the answer in Microsoft knowledge base article 247501 – it involved more registry hacking to find the appropriate entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall but it did the trick.

Video conferencing using iChat AV on a Mac and AIM on a Windows PC

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

A few weeks ago, my buddy Alex and I got iChat AV working through our firewall routers (with some caveats) but more recently, he mentioned that he’d been videoconferencing with a PC user via Skype but was not entirely happy with the video quality. I was pretty sure it would be possible to get iChat AV videoconferencing with a PC user via AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and I’m pleased to report that it is… sort of.

The information I needed can all be found in MVL Design’s video conference tutorial for iChat and AIM but it may also be useful to know that Ralph Johns has also republished some information from EZ Jim on Mac video chat with PCs and has contributed to an Apple discussions post about video and audio chats with PCs.

Bearing in mind that Alex and I already had the required firewall ports open from our previous iChat AV conversations, I installed Windows XP on a spare PC with a webcam and loaded AIM 5.9.3861 (electing not to install AOL Explorer or the AOL Toolbar for Internet Explorer, choosing United Kingdom GB as my location and electing not to make AOL my homepage). After this, I was able to log in using my ICQ ID as my screenname and once I’d told the Windows XP firewall to unblock AIM (when prompted) and edited my preferences to set up the camera in the live video options, Alex and I could successfully video conference. It’s worth noting that, although the frame rate was fine at the default settings, there was a slight issue with a delay between speaking and the communication being received (similar to satellite delay on an international phone call) and if I cranked up the image quality then the result was a much-reduced frame rate.

iChat AV conversation with AIM user

This image looks slightly better as it has been reduced to 50% of the original image size (note cheesy grins as the image Alex took mid-conversation made us look completely gormless).

So that’s the good news – it works. The bad news is that it won’t work soon.

As we were testing this, I received a pop-up which said:

You are currently running the following out-of-date version of AOL Instant Messenger:

5.9.3861

This version will soon be blocked. Please upgrade now to ensure uninterrupted access to AIM.

You will be upgraded to the following version:

Final Release Version 6.0.28.3

I decided to see if this all worked with AIM version 6 and it seems it doesn’t. The first problem was that AIM 6 would not accept my ICQ number as a screen name:

Invalid Screen Name or Password.

After registering for an AOL screen name I could log in but we couldn’t initiate a video chat as my buddy appeared to be offline (even though I could communicate with him using another PC!)… some more digging required I suspect. If anyone has any ideas as to what the problem might be, please leave a comment on this post.

Retain or recycle?

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Recycle nowIn a few months time, I’m hoping that we will be able to convert our loft to a new guest room/my office (den); however that means that I need to do some serious rationalisation of the amount of “stuff” we have accumulated. I did sort out a lot when my second son was born and my wife and I started sharing an office but there are so many things I’ve been keeping “just in case I need them”. For example, old text books from ‘uni – with the rapid pace of development in IT it seems highly unlikely that they will be relevant today but it seems a shame to let them go.

I have started to move in the right direction as, this morning, a whole load of course notes from Microsoft official curriculum courses went into recycling sacks based on the fact that they date back to the mid-late 90s and relate to unsupported technologies:

  • 687C – Supporting Microsoft Windows NT core technologies;
  • 688C – Internetworking with Microsoft TCP/IP in Microsoft Windows NT 4.0;
  • 730C – Fundamentals of Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0;
  • 758C – Supporting Microsoft Internet Information Server 2.0;
  • 973C – Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 series – design and implementation;
  • 1100B – Upgrading to Microsoft Windows NT 5.0;
  • 1267B – Planning and implementing Active Directory;
  • 1560A – Updating support skills from Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 to Microsoft Windows 2000;
  • 1561A – Designing a Microsoft Windows 2000 directory services infrastructure;
  • 1562A – Designing a Windows 2000 networking services infrastructure;
  • 1563A – Designing a change and configuration management infrastructure for Microsoft Windows 2000 professional;
  • 1579A – Accelerated training for updating support skills and designing a directory services infrastructure for Microsoft Windows 2000.

It feels good to have such a clearout but what if I need those notes? Sure, the likelihood of me implementing NT 4.0/Exchange 4.0 or even Windows 2000/Exchange 5.5 these days is pretty slim (and they’ve all been stored in boxes in the loft since 2001), but I just might want to look back at what Microsoft were recommending in those days! I’m in a bit of a dilemma here – am I throwing away a piece of IT history, or just reversing a dangerous tendency to hoard? As there is no-where at work for me to store this stuff, the only other option is to buy a bigger house!

More on cleaning the Apple not-so-Mighty Mouse

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week I wrote about problems with my Apple Mighty Mickey Mouse. Then, a couple of days back, it completely stopped right-clicking and scrolling down. To say that I was not happy would be an understatement (it’s not inexpensive and none of my other rodents have died after just 6 months of use) – the only reason I didn’t actually get to an Apple Store to replace it was scheduling the time it would take me to make the 100+ mile round trip to Birmingham or London (somehow, I didn’t think the staff at the Tesco “Apple Store” 10 miles down the road would be any help).

After reading various articles on the ‘net (most notably from Kevin Lim and Shirster), I tried Brendan Fenn’s sticky tape cleaning method, following which the right mouse button jumped back into life (not sure what was going on there). Still left without a working scroll ball (left, right, up, but not down) reading the comments on the Shirster article led me to the realisation that late model Mickey Mice could not be reassembled so I resorted to 70% isopropyl alcohol swabs (£0.10 each from the local pharmacy) and after a few seconds cleaning (with no noticeable dirt removed), I plugged the mouse back in to find that the scroll ball was working again. I’m not sure what the long term effects will be, but not being able to scroll down was extremely annoying and if even I have shortened the life of the mouse then that’s still an improvement on yesterday (when it was just about to head for the trash can).

It still seems to me that the design is fundamentally flawed, but until I can find another mouse that looks good alongside an Apple keyboard I guess I’ll be sticking with it.

Milton Keynes: Roundabout 40

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I live in a small market town on the edge of the “Borough and New City of Milton Keynes“, a source of great ridicule to many but actually not a bad place to live (and there are over 200,000 of us living here).

Most (in)famous for the concrete cows (which are not actually made of concrete) and its highly efficient grid road system linked with roundabouts, the “New City” is celebrating its 40th birthday today.

Milton Keynes - Roundabout 40 logo

Even though the development area has huge swathes of green space (as well as rural countryside to the north and east of the Borough), people who have never visited are led to believe that Milton Keynes is a concrete wasteland (as many new towns are). The truth is rather different – the original towns and villages within the Milton Keynes development area have been expanded with new developments and a commercial centre, linked by a grid of (largely uncongested) national speed limit roads passing through parkland and past giant lakes, lined with 40 million trees (meaning that Milton Keynes is probably the only UK town/city of its size which can be traversed between any two points in just 15 minutes). For those who are still unconvinced about Milton Keynes’ green spaces, just a stone’s throw from the city centre shopping centre and Theatre District is Campbell Park, where sheep can often be found grazing.

As for technology (which is, after all, the purpose of this blog), Milton Keynes has had a number of firsts: one of the first cable TV networks in the UK; the UK’s first multiplex cinema; the UK’s first indoor snow slope; Europe’s first purpose-built body-flying tunnel, and now the largest continuous area of high-speed wireless broadband service in the UK as well as the UK’s first WiMAX deployment. It’s also situated next to the UK’s first long-distance motorway (the M1, opened in 1959) and is half way between two significant technology research centres – Oxford and Cambridge (sadly, these two cities have appalling transport links, with the “express” X5 coach service taking 3 and a half hours to cover just 90 miles and no direct rail link since the 1960s, although proposals to reinstate the railway do exist). Continuing the research theme – the Open University is based in Milton Keynes and the Enigma code was cracked at Bletchley Park (now within Milton Keynes) during the second World War.

Let’s hope the next 40 years bring as much prosperity to the region as the last 40 did – in spite of Milton Keynes Partnership‘s best attempts to wreck it with ill-conceived government-backed expansion plans.

Macworld 2007 – cutting through the hype

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Introducing iPhone. So what?In case you hadn’t noticed, a couple of weeks back it was Macworld – Apple‘s annual expo – and Apple Inc. (no longer Apple Computer Inc.) announced that they are going to make a phone. Whoopy do. It even made news at the huge Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Except that it won’t be available until Summer 2007 (as it has to get regulatory approval).

So why am I so underwhelmed with the iPhone? Firstly, I’m not underwhelmed – I think it sounds like a great device, as long as (when it arrives) it delivers everything that Apple is promising:

“iPhone combines three products – a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching – into one small and lightweight handheld device.”

[source: Apple]

Except that it will cost a small fortune in the US, isn’t yet complete, is likely to be severely restricted in terms of third party application development, doesn’t yet appear on the Apple UK website (so I can assume it won’t be here for a while yet, if at all) and I can already get a device from a number of manufacturers that does most of that today (and for which I can develop my own mobile applications) running the Windows Mobile operating system (other mobile operating systems are available).

It seems to me that Apple is learning (as Microsoft has been for a few years now) that mobile telecommunications is a cut-throat business. Apple has gone through the pain of negotiating with record labels (and more recently with movie studios) and has made a name in digital media – Microsoft is just learning how hard that is. Now it’s Apple’s turn for hard lessons – to find out that telcos don’t want what consumers want – instead, they want to control the platform, lock down functionality, introduce their own unique selling points, and encourage customers to upgrade to the next greatest device, in the process locking themselves into another lucrative airtime contract, as soon as the current one ends.

Apple also launched a wireless access point/hub/NAS device/print server/NAT firewall – that sounds great except it uses a wireless standard that’s not ratified yet (IEEE 802.11n) and which my 6-month old Intel Core Duo Mac cannot use at full speed (only the Core 2 Duo models can be upgraded via a firmware flash).

They also launched a set top box for streaming media. Except that it works by synchronising with an iTunes library and it only has a 40GB hard disk (my audio collection alone is 40GB and that’s before I download any video content – a feature not yet available from the iTunes Store in the UK). It’s also limited to the formats that Apple offers, so doesn’t support other widely used formats such as DivX (or, of course, any of the competing Windows Media formats). Finally, streaming high definition video needs high bandwidth and the wired Ethernet ports are limited to 100Mbps whilst wireless throughput is likely to be even lower (even with 802.11n)

Cut through the hype and Macworld 2007 was a huge disappointment to me. I would have bought a new 80GB (120GB would be nice) iPod with a wide format touch screen but I don’t want the rest of the iPhone features. I would also have paid for a replacement iSight (as the old one was withdrawn from sale in Europe last summer due to new regulations on the restriction of hazardous substances and has now disappeared from sale in the US too) and if anyone doubts that there is a market for iSights as new MacBooks and iMacs have them built in, Mac Mini and Mac Pro users still want a webcam that works with iChat AV and dedicating a DV camcorder to the task is a huge waste, whilst the original iSights are changing hands on eBay for more than they cost new (I just bought one this evening – so there’s bound to be a new one announced soon…).

Even the Apple fanboys at Mac Break Weekly are talking of “the Steve Jobs reality distortion field” and referring to Macworld 2007 as “This Week in Vapourware”.

My Mighty Mouse is not so mighty

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Mighty MouseMy Apple keyboard looks nice but it shows the dirt and is not the best keyboard in the world (the keys stick a bit). I’ve also got mixed feelings about the buttons on my Apple Mighty Mouse (wired version) although the 360º clickable scroll ball (scrolly nipple thing) is particularly useful as it can be used to scroll left, right, up or down.

Except that my scrolly nipple thing frequently refuses to scroll down – and it seems I’m not alone (a quick google turned up “Shall I kill this damn mouse?“, “Mighty Mouse reviewed: Garbage” and “I hate my Mighty Mouse” – if you’re still not convinced then look at the comments on the Apple Store page for the product). Previously, some frantic scrolling has restored action but tonight I rebooted, plugged it into another PC and was just about ready to accept that I need to make a trip to an Apple Store to replace it when I spotted the tiniest piece of detritus on the edge of the case close to the mouse ball. After dislodging what I assume was just a few flakes of dead skin (unpleasant yes, but a simple fact of life), it jumped into life, but I’m a little disappointed as the whole point about optical mice is that they are not supposed to need cleaning – it seems that Apple’s design looks great on the surface but merely replaces a dirty ball on the bottom of the mouse with a similar one on the top.

It gets worse as anecdotal reports suggest that scroll ball issues (even after just a few months) are not covered under warranty as they classified as “wear and tear”. Hmmm. Apple have published advice on how to clean your Mighty Mouse though.

Relaxing naps with pzizz

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

If you ask my wife what’s my biggest problem and she’ll probably tell you that I don’t know how to relax. Well, actually I do, but I don’t do it very often and when I finally do stop, I usually find that my body thanks me by catching a cold or something similarly unpleasant.

The trouble is that there is so much to do… digital photos to edit and print for the family album… half a dozen unfinished blog posts… a dozen never-even-started blog posts… website(s) to update/redevelop… office to tidy up find under a mountain of paperwork… analogue music collection to rip… learn to play the guitar (again)… catch up my reading… get my motorbike running again… sell a pile of stuff on eBay (iPAQ, SDLT drive, motorbike)… get rid of the old computers in the garage… you get the picture – and that’s not considering the important stuff like making time for my wife and children, going out to work for a living and catching up with friends.

There’s another side to this – my health. I’m 5 stone overweight (4 stone above what I consider to be realistic) and 35 years of age in April – if I don’t do something soon then I really will start to get ill. I need to make time in my busy schedule to get fit – and I need to relax.

pzizzI was talking over some problems with a good friend a few nights back and he suggested meditation. Now I don’t know anything about meditation, but I am becoming quite interested in the whole idea of keeping my mind, body and spirit in balance (I guess it’s another one of those triangulation things – like I find that you can cope with issues in any one of home, work and love-life but if two of the three start to have problems then it gets really bad) – I even went to a Hatha Yoga class on Friday night (the woman on my wife’s Yoga DVDs still makes me cringe though).

pzizzSo what’s this got to do with a technology blog? Well, quite a lot actually, because my friend’s meditation suggestion got me thinking. It’s not meditation, but I did hear Merlin Mann (writer and consultant on personal productivity, “life hacks”, and simple ways to make your life a little better) talking about pzizz on a podcast (probably MacBreak Weekly, or This Week in Tech).

pzizzOriginally available as hardware but now as software for Windows or the Mac, pzizz is a dynamic relaxation system – kind of like a relaxation CD for energising naps or simply getting to sleep; but actually far more than that as you can customise each track and select how long each nap will last. I wasn’t entirely convinced at first, so I downloaded the sample 15 minute naps and was very impressed (particularly when taking an energizer nap at my desk as I started to flag in the middle of the afternoon). Thinking that might have been a fluke (hey, shutting your eyes and chilling out for 15 minutes is bound to be relaxing isn’t it?), I tried it again today – and felt great. So good in fact that I then went out for a brisk walk (another one of my life hacks – albeit one recommended by my doctor) and it’s true – exercise does make you feel good (various gym memberships over the years have just made the each gym’s bank balance look good – to the detriment of my own)!

pzizzRight, so that’s energising naps and regular exercise sorted… now all I need to do is cut down on the Diet Coke with Cherry intake…

Gigabit Ethernet for the home office

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Until now, my home office network has been centred around my NetGear ProSafe DS108 10/100Mbps Ethernet hub attached to various computers, a D-Link DWL2000-AP+ wireless access point, a Solwise SAR 110 ADSL router and a downstream Gigabyte 5-port 10/100Mbps switch (because my Mac refused to place nicely with the hub). The DS108 was a nice bit of kit in its time, with 8 auto-sensing 10/100Mbps ports, but recently I’ve been carrying out some large file transfers and these have been crippling the network – effectively the high number of collisions was causing a denial of service for all the other connected devices (indeed the ADSL router was blocking its LAN connection as it thought it was being attacked, necessitating a reboot to get back onto the ‘net).

I knew the answer was to replace the (layer 1) hub with a (layer 2) switch but I needed at least 8 ports and the 24-port 3Com SuperStack 3300 that I use on the basement network has a very noisy fan. After seeking advice from a former colleague who is the best network guy that I know, it seemed that finding a managed switch (ideally, I would like to implement some VLANs) was going to be expensive, so I set about finding a decent unmanaged and fanless switch. Power over Ethernet (PoE) would have been another nice-to-have but is by no means essential.

NetGear GS108After some shopping around, I found the NetGear ProSafe GS108, which is an 8-port auto-sensing 10/100/1000Mbps full-duplex switch with automatic uplink and most importantly is fanless, so completely silent (if a bit on the warm side!). In common with a lot of my hardware purchases, I got mine from RL Supplies but it appears to be the North American model with the power, link, speed and activity LEDs built into each port, rather than in a separate power, activity, collision and duplex display as shown in the UK product documentation. Alternatively (and for a similar price by the time shipping is factored into the cost) the NetGear GS108 is available from Amazon.

I swapped the old hub out for the new switch in just a few seconds – now my LAN-based file transfers are noticeably faster and, because the collision domain is eliminated on a full-duplex switched connection, the other connected devices are still able to communicate whilst the file transfer takes place.