// Battles with Technology
Hang on…
Is it just me or is there something a little bit odd about getting blog comment spam warning you of the dangers of blog comment spam?
Because I’ve just had some and it really confused me.
Posted on January 25, 2008 | Filed Under Battles with Technology, The World we Live In | 0 Comments
Vision On
Following our move to wireless broadband, the latest technological leap-forward at the Lemon and Panda Free House (otherwise known as Chris and Mine) has occurred. BT Vision has been ordered and we now have a widescreen HD-ready flatscreen television.
The latter, it has to be said, was particularly important since our old CRT box was somewhat precariously balanced in the only available space and was thus in constant danger of going all “Curse of Peladon” on our asses.
So… the new telly arrived on Saturday and - as with the previous setup - I let Chris plumb it all in. He activated its internal Freeview receiver, tuned it in and gave it a whirl… only to find that ITV, Channel 4 (and all their offspring) and BBC3 and BBC4 weren’t receivable. Or if they were they were only so for about thirty seconds a time.
This wasn’t good news. For me the whole point of having Freeview is for BBC3 and BBC4, plus we wanted digital Channel 4 because our analogue reception was lousy and interfered with Hollyoaks. Without these our plans for having BT Vision were in jeopardy since it doesn’t actually pipe any freeview services through the hub, just its own channels.
We may, we realised with horror, have to get cable. Which would mean a separate supplier and everything.
As it turns out however, it’s just that I shouldn’t let Chris do anything technical. On a quick visit to B&Q I picked up a new co-ax lead just in case the existing frayed one was exacerbating the problem. And, whilst Chris lurked in his bedroom (on either World of War or DudesNude - it’s hard to tell), I examined the aerial point.
It seems our existing aerial lead was plugged into a socket marked “FM”. This was presumably because the one marked “TV” had an obviously different connector, but I had an inkling that I knew what the problem was, and so I slammed the new lead into the TV slot with a gender-changer attached.
Suddenly both analogue and Freeview sprang to perfect glorious - not to mention stable - life, and I felt a mixture of insufferable smugness and relief that actually everything could go ahead with BT as planned.
Naturally I then wandered (with my usual caution) into Chris’ bedroom and told him the good news, although I will confess that this was an announcement mixed with a certain amount of ribbing. After all, the whole cause of our reception issues over the last month was his inability to cope with an opposite gender.
Quell Surprise.
Posted on August 22, 2007 | Filed Under Battles with Technology, My So-Called Life | 3 Comments
Internet Enabled?
Well… sort of.
It’s been a long process getting the internet enabled in our new flat. Battles with AOL (getting them to relinquish control over the broadband on our phone line), BT (getting them to put their own flag on their own line) and then getting the Broadband Hub and Phone and everything in and working.
Still, it’s all there now.
Chris and I have, this time, decided to go wireless. This is mainly because the size of the flat means we’d need an entire IT department’s output of cabling and besides, the technology’s matured a bit now and I feel confident about setting it up and securing it etc.
First task: wireless adaptors for the PCs. My new all-singing all-dancing Dual Core 64 bit Vista powerhouse hasa warranty forbidding me opening it up so I thought “external will be fine” and Chris and I went and got some adaptors to plug into USB ports.
Only of course, the ones we got didn’t work with Vista so only Chris could use it. More interstingly the ones we got didn’t exist according to the Philips website so updated drivers for Vista seemed a bit unlikely somehow. Twenty quid down the drain but hey.
So after much research and cross-checking I finally realised that actually the only truly 100% natively Vista compatible way to get wireless networking was to buy an internal card and screw the warranty (another twenty-five quid down the drain, but hey). I duly got one which all documentation says works with Vista 64-bit editions and yesterday morning opened up the PC to slot it in a PCI expansion slot.
Only to discover there weren’t any left. The PC people had given me a motherboard with two slots. And promptly filled them with sound-card and additional USB-port card. Admittedly I had asked for these items, but it was galling to find that there was no room to add anything else.
So I spent some time yesterday morning researching the possibilities and found that Amazon could provie me with a compatible motherboard for my chipset with four slots instead (leaving me one more if I need it later) and that is on its way now (hopefully I should get it in the next forty-five minutes).
But of course all this means that I have, effectively, now got to build the PC again with all the components. Now, since I wanted a custom PC that someone else had to go through the trouble of putting together, that means I’m currently a bit irked.
I suppose it proves that if you want something doing, you should always do it yourself.
But in any case… bugger. (And it’s at least another £70 down the drain. But hey.)
Posted on July 20, 2007 | Filed Under Battles with Technology, My So-Called Life | 0 Comments