AndyBlog

Keyboards

I came across this article in The Register today. Seems this company are making a keyboard - “The Avant Steller” - just like the great IBM monsters of old. It's big, it's heavy and the keys make a reassuring “click” when you hit them. Nor will it wear out. Long after that state of the art mini-keyboard with bluetooth has bitten the dust, this one will still be going strong.

That's fair enough, I guess. The downsides are twofold.

1) It is PS2 connector only, and the programmable features only work when connected this way.

2) It costs $189

It seems ironic that thousands of these things were cheerfully slung onto skips in the 90s. Now, the cherished few are being re-manufactured and sold for a King's ransom.

Ah, life.

Speech recognition!

Whilst I did the last entry using the speech recognition program on my Mac, I thought you would be fair to post a least one Blog entry where I speak using the speech recognition program, but don't actually make any corrections, all indeed, even look at the screen as I am writing the entry.

The mean this is the exciting frontier of speech recognition, as I have no idea if it is rising more times saying, or if you have any chance whatsoever of understanding or have written.

I have read busy day today, doing one job after another. The phone was wrong lot and various things have gone wrong. So I have hand computers to mend, music to prepare, with coding to do, and various other little jobs, including a little light delivering.

Well, I don't think I can stand the suspense any longer I'm going to have a look good what has been typed and see have funny it is.

Canon i865, i950 under OSX Tiger - The Solution

I realise that this Blog entry will be a bit boring, because it is technical. My main hope that is that it will help someone else  in a similar position.

I suppose you should know that I have just upgraded to OSX Tiger, in the new Apple operating system.

I was expecting it to be a very simple upgrade, but such was not the case. The biggest problem, by far, was that only one of my printers work to correctly immediately after install.

For someone who does as much printing as me this amounted to near disaster. It turns out  that most problems can be easily fixed by  reinstalling the printer driver and deleting and adding again the printer queue.  All except for my Canon i865.

No help the is offered on the Canon site, and it is taken me three days of foraging on the Internet to find out how to get it to work under OSX Tiger. So here is a tip for anyone in a similar position:

To make a Canon i865 work under OSX Tiger...

1. Open your hard disk.

2. Open the Library folder

3. Open the Printers folder

4. Delete the Canon folder

5. Reinstall  version 232  of the drivers from the Canon site.  (http://www.canon.com)


After your machine has restarted, all should be well.

The only real problem I now have is that CD LabelPrint does not work. I have solved this by switching to Discus.  It's cheap to  purchase and is a much better program for labelling  than Canon's  own.

So then, did this  help you?  I hope so.

As a footnote to all of this, I should point out that I dictated this whole piece of text using the iListen software, which appears to be funky beyond belief.  The only worrying point was when I farted, and it typed “Oh!”. I'm not quite sure what this indicates.

So, Jason, it can be done!

Please ignore this...

This is just a link to one of my client sites, in the hope of getting the web-robots to take some notice.

http://www.northernwriters.co.uk

AD-LIB RADIO

It's been a dream for a long time, and now it is reality - all be it on a very small scale.

So, from Wednesday at 10.30pm, I'll be a bona-fide Dj once more - this time to a tiny audience on the internet, rather than to a room full of roller-skaters at the YMCA in Huddersfield.

Maybe you'd like to join me for an eclectic choice in music and my own particular brand of inane rambling. You'd be very welcome.

The only show planned initially is on a Wednesday night at 10.30pm - LATE. Every week.

Worth looking forward to?  I'll let you decide.

To connect with the stream, you'll need Winamp for Windows or iTunes.

AD-LIB RADIO has its own web site - http://www.adlib.co.uk

...and, of course, its own Blog - http://adlib.blogs.com/radio

Always with the Blog, eh?  :)

The power of Vimto®

It arrived in the post this morning - a gift from a great friend of mine, who knew exactly what was likely to please me - and please me it did.

Not everyone has dreamed of owning a digital clock powered by Vimto, but I guess I am not quite everyone. What follows represents for me, the end of a long and, at times, disheartening quest. Now, my search is over, and I am - for the first time - truly happy.

Savour the moment, folks - magic like this does not happen every day.

Straight out of the box

This is the way we fill the clock, fill the clock...

Vimto at the ready

You may inject the Vimto NOW

All Vimto'd up, and ready to go

The proof is in the pudding

So, all I did was to inject exactly the right quantity of Vimto® (sugar free) into the four cells of the clock. I gave it a good shake, and away it went. I have no real idea how it works - and I like it that way.

The magic is complete.

Thanks for sharing the joy with me.

HOT TOPIC - iPOD Digital Recording

My iPOD, all ready to record.

When I first got my iPOD, it occurred to me that a large portable hard drive device like that should really be able to record at high quality, as well as play back. There I go again, I thought, wanting more than the designers intended.

It's not such an unreasonable demand to make, though, in my view. We have Mini-Disc recorders of a similar size, but these limit us to 80 mins of stereo, and always seem to feature an unacceptable level of unwanted motor noise when recording using those cute little plug-in mics. (as seen above) There has to be a better way, and not many of us can afford a portable DAT recorder.

So, imagine my joy when I head about the Griffin iTrip. Here was a plug-in unit which enabled recording from a built-in mic, but also enabled use of an external mic, plugged in the top. More than that, line level recording was also possible using the same mini-jack input. I was delighted, that for not much money a simple and elegant solution was on offer.

Abbreviations

I have a built-in enjoyment and sympathy for anyone who does something seemingly obsessive and pointless.

This guy has, along with countless other enthusiasts, found genuine organisations and meanings for every possible three letter combination.

http://www.atomiser.demon.co.uk/abbrev/3/index.html

According to the pages I checked, he has now moved on to four letter abbreviations. I plan to get in on the act when it gets up around 12 letters. FFFIWIALFTTW, is what I always say.

I suppose we shouldn't tell him that some of them will now be outated or obselete...