Category: Uncategorized

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Problems with Sky+


I came downstairs on Xmas morning and before I made a brew, ate some chocolate or even opened my presents, I turned on the TV for some background noise/eye candy. On it came with some overly repeated Xmas song…but the inane video never appeared. I flicked over-nothing. MTV Base-nothing. Bravo-nothing. BBC 1-nothing…sound but no picture…maybe it’s the weather messing with the signal, I’ll put on something recorded…but no. Couldn’t play anything back or play Anytime either.

I did the usual checks which for me include:

Are all the cables connected? (That’s Scart leads and also the 2 LNB leads)

Turn it off at the wall, wait 3 minutes and turn it back on again.

If you’ve still got nothing, it’s on to more in-depth activities:

Press the services on the Sky Remote, select option 4 then, in quick succession, press “0”+”1″+”Select”…this will get you the “secret Engineer’s” menu as I’ve heard it called. The first option here is “LNB Setup” and this sorts out a lot of problems. Turn the options off, save settings and press the “Sky” button to return to normal programming…you should see a “no satellite signal is being received” message. Go back to the “Secret” menu and press the red button to “reset the settings”.

Sadly none of this worked in this case and I had to get a new box installed. The guy came out, swapped the boxes and all seemed well. The next day I noticed that most of the recordings I’d set had failed with a “Recording Interrupted-Please wait” message being displayed; however not all recordings-some were fine which was puzzling. I checked that all the cables were properly connected, which they were, and became even more puzzled. It then dawned on me that the successful recordings were all from terrestial stations (BBC 1,2, ITV and C4) but anything off a “Sky” channel failed. I then tried channels such as BBC 4, ITV 2, CBeebies etc and they all recorded without a hitch…so now any and all channels owned by a terrestrial tv company worked fine but none of the others-I found, and still find, this to be really weird (if anyone’s got an answer for why this was the case-please let me know!).

A quick Google search for the error message (which isn’t in the Sky+ Trooubleshooting guide) showed it was down to the viewing card not being correctly paired with the new box. (Thanks to DigitalSpyfor that-a very helpful site). I ranfg Sky on 08442 411 258 (this is the number for Viewing Card related issues, the main number is 08442 410 800) to get the card paired up properly. The first guy told me to wait a few more hours as complete activation can take 24 hours (hmmm) I did and nothing changed so I called again. This 2nd time the guy was very helpful, send out “a signal” and advised me to wait between 2 minutes and 4 hours…I gave it 5 mins and all was working again-whoo hoo!

I hope this helps 🙂

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Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2008


I was a regular watcher of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in years gone by, but have found the last few years to be somewhat lacklustre. I’d still watch them but always feel a little short changed 😦

This year (2008) is much better though, this year’s lectures are all about computers and are being delivered by Prof. Chris Bishop, head of Microsoft Research in Cambridge! I know I’m a couple of days late with this post but my Sky+ has been playing up so today was my first chance to once them, and they’re definitely worth the wait. Today’s (Wednesday) lecture contained a great explanation of Binary counting which I think will be used as a reference base for a lot of people as it was very concise and easy to understand.

The 2nd episode (that was shown on Tuesday night) contains some great demo’s of some of the wonderful technology that MS Research have been/are creating including Surface and the Roundtable. It was great to hear the sounds of wonder and awe as the kids present saw what the Surface table was capable of…and I have to say I was pretty impressed by the Video puzzle as well!

MS Surface Video Puzzle
MS Surface Video Puzzle

 This next picture shows the 360-degree panoramic view of the Roundtable displayed on Microsoft’s spherical display. It looks much cooler in the video as Prof. Bishop scrolls the panorama around the sphere!

Roundtable on a Sphere
Roundtable on a Sphere

 Other posts on the Roundtable can be found here.

For anyone that has missed the lectures and/or simply wants to re-watch them, they are now available an DemandFive completely free.

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine Trailer


The trailer for the upcoming Wolverine film looks freaking awesome! I’m a big fan of Marvel and the X-Men are my favourite section of the universe and Wolverine is my favourite of all the X-Men. Ever since I was little I’ve been a big fan of Logan’s and he’s been well represented in the 3 previous X-Men films, so this should be even better.

The sheer number of other mutants it features is excellent too…both Gambit AND Deadpool are present as well as Emma Frost and Banshee (although I don’t think the latter two will feature particularly heavily) which sets up a great film if anything does!

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Microsoft Internet Explorer Vulnerability fix available


Microsoft will release the patch to fix the widely reported issue with Internet Explorer at 6pm GMT today (Wednesday 17/12/08) via http://update.microsoft.com/.

There has been a lot of noise & hype about this in the press, particularly from the BBC, saying that everyone should switch browsers etc. I think there’s been a certain amount of scare-mongering and hysteria surrounding this exploit…but I’m not sure why?

Anyway, it should all be fixed this evening so download the patch and away you go 🙂

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Predator and Robocop raps


I think these are amazing-the Predator & Robocop films condensed into 6 and 10 minute raps respectively.

The originality and skill involved in telling the whole story of a film in less than 10% of it’s running time is brilliant, especially the way they’ve worked movie soundbites into the lyrics. These gems are lovingly crafted by DJ Mayhem & MC MouthMaster Murf, from a group called The Anomalies.

Predator:

Robocop:

I hope they come up with some more as I’d love to see these become a new meme on the intertubes, I might even give it a go myself if I get the time!

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Microsoft Thumbtack


Thumbtack is a new release out of the Microsoft Live Labs, “A single place to save or share the stuff you want from all around the web” as MS say.

I’ve had a little play around with it and it’s not bad. They suggest using it to share lists with your friends, lists such as your favourite restaurants but that doesn’t really apply to me as I don’t have that many friends & I don’t like that many restaurants 🙂

They also suggest using it to collect info on purchases etc that you’re researching online (you could use it for other research too I.e dissertations, coursework and the like) but for this, I’d much rather use OneNote. It’s got more features, is more intuitive and feels a lot more robust that Thumbtack. OneNote is one of my favourite MS programs and I think really shows what Microsoft can do and how good software really can make things easier so Thumbtack does have a lot to live up to I suppose!

I can see that for more social people this could come in pretty handy, especially as it’s completely Web based so all your mates will be able to see what you send them…

All in all, a pretty good new release-just not for me…

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Microsoft Softwear


Microsoft Softwear…that’s not a spelling mistake, that’s Microsoft’s newest release. Clothes by Microsoft = Softwear!

There are a number of different t-shirts, some designed by Common (the formerly good rapper) and all harking back to the days of MS-DOS et al…you can see the full ranges here.

I know the vast majority of people are going to find this the most Uber-geekiest they’ve ever seen-but I think they’re awesome! The missus has just informed me that I’m a “massive geek” to confirm that!

My 3 favourite t-shirts are:

These are “in stores December 15th” according to the site but which stores and can I get them in the UK?!

**Update** Two of these bad boys (the Binary Code Tee and the Bill Mugshot Tee) are on UrbanOutfitters.com, but just those two. They cost $28 ($34 inc Tax) and Urban Outifitters will ship to the UK BUT the shipping will cost $56!!! That means for one T-shirt you’re looking at $90, which today is £57.68…they’re cool but that’s a bit too much in my opinion!

I’ve had a look on urbanoutfitters.co.uk but I can’t see any on there, hopefully they, or another retailer, will get them over here quick sharp 🙂

If you’ve got any more info-hit me up and let me know!

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Microsoft release Open Source Content Management System


Microsoft have released an Alpha version of Codename “Oxite”, their new Open Source Content Management Solution. Oxite is available from the CodePlex website here and it is available under the Microsoft Public Licence.

Microsoft say:

“Oxite provides you with a strong foundation you can build upon – pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated commenting (with optional moderation), gravatar support, RSS feeds at any page level, support for MetaWebLog API (think Windows Live Writer integration made easy), web admin panel, support for Open Search format allowing users to search your site using their browser’s search box, and more – so, you can spend time on designing a great experience.”

It’s customizable, Open Source nature means that should customers wish to, they can swap out MS tech such as Live Search & SQL for other, non-MS versions instead.

This release seems a little odd as MOSS (Sharepoint) 2007 can do all this and more, so why bother? For the cynical among us it could be nothing more than an attempt to increase Microsoft’s Open Source credentials to gain favour with users and other industry factions. I agree that is probably part of it, but I also think it’s a genuine attempt to help people in the Open Source community benefit from Microsoft’s experience with MOSS 2007…but then I would 🙂

Let me know what you think of this in the comments…

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A Moonwalking bird


I’ve just seen this on an episode of QI, it’s a bird that can MOONWALK, true comedy genius!

This is very random and unrelated to anything else on my blog-but who cares-it’s brilliant! Just so you know, it’s a Mannikin bird…

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Windows 7 Aero Shake


Windows 7 Aero Shake is a new User Interface (UI) feature that looks pretty cool. It allows you to “shake” the app window that you want to focus on and that will minimize the other windows.

Long Zheng has got a video over at his blog here.

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