Today, I visited the Roof Terrace at the National Museum of Scotland and took this Panorama showing the Castle at the top of the royal Mile, the Esplanade in front of it, and a little further down the hill, the tall bell-tower of the Hub.
Click the image to see it larger!
Edinburgh Castle and the Hub
Burg Wächter P2E safe
I have recently purchased a free-standing home safe from Burg Wächter (sometimes spelt Burg Waechter). The Pointsafe range comes in four sizes P1, P2, P3 and P4 and is available with an electronic pad lock or a key. I bought the electronic P2E version. The electronic version comes with two ‘override’ keys in case you forget the combination. Remember to store these keys securely, but not in your safe!
The safe is rated for £1000 cash or £10000 jewellery, so is not a high security safe but sounds about right for the things I would store in a home safe (passport and other documents, a small amount of emergency cash and a backup of my photographs on disk). The P2E version has single skinned walls (3.5mm steel) and a double skinned door. There is an internal metal shelf, and the floor is felt-lined. The back and floor each have two holes for fixing the safe to a wall or floor with the supplied bolts, plastic blanking cover the holes at the back. The door seems solid, with two locking bolts which extend 16mm when locked. The door hinge is visible at the bottom of the door – this may be a weakness. The external dimensions of the safe are 255(h)x350(w)x300(d), internally they are 248(h)x343(w)x241(d). The volume is 20.5l and the safe weighs 16.5Kg. The safe is large enough for A4 paper with a little room to spare, but you will have to bend it to fit it through the door.
The keypad is responsive and makes a quiet beep when you press the buttons. The single line LCD display is not backlit so can be difficult to read, but you really don’t need to read it when opening or closing the safe. When not in use, the display shows the current time.
The bolts are driven by an internal motor rather than by turning a handle on the front – this should make the safe less susceptible to opening by ‘bumping’. After entering the correct code, the spring-loaded door swings open automatically.
The batteries (4xAA) are accessible from the outside of the safe, and the emergency keyhole is located behind them. The keys are four-sided cruciform keys which make the lock harder to pick and the keys harder to duplicate than a standard or tubular key.
The safe comes with the batteries, keys and two fixing bolts hidden in the packaging – be careful you don’t throw them out!
The electronic lock has two codes – the user code (1-6 digits) which you would use day to day for opening the safe and a master code (8 digits) which should be stored safely to allow the safe to be opened if the user code is forgotten (again, don’t store this in the safe!) The safe can also be set into ‘hotel mode’ which means a new user code needs to be entered in order to lock the safe if it is left open for more than 5 minutes.
The default user code is 168 and default master code is 12345678 – these should both be changed as soon as possible.
Overall, this seems to be a reasonable home safe which does not have many of the common security problems often seen in cheaper safes.
The user manual(pdf) is available on the Burg-Wächter website.
Union Canal HDR Wallpaper
Last night, I visited the Union Canal at Lochrin Basin in Edinburgh. I took a series of photographs and combined them to make this HDR image.
I have posted it in various sizes which you can use as a desktop wallpaper if you want to.
Widescreen: 1920×1200 | 1920×1800 |1680×1050 | 1440×900 | 1280×800
Fullscreen (4:3): 1600×1200 | 1400×1050 | 1280×960 | 1024×768
Today, I visited the National Museum of Scotland and visited the roof terrace for the first time. The view of the city from there is incredible. Here is a photo in various sizes which you can use as a desktop wallpaper if you want to.
Widescreen (16:10): 1920×1200 | 1920×1080 |1680×1050 | 1440×900 | 1280×800
Fullscreen (4:3): 1600×1200 | 1400×1050 | 1280×960 | 1024×768
My current workstation is a Dell Dimension 9200 and it has served me well for the past 6 years or so, but it is starting to show its age, so I decided to build myself a new one. The most intensive work I do on my workstation is editing large photos from my DSLR, and editing HD video from the same camera. A nice fast processor and lots of RAM will make a huge difference.
I found that amazon.co.uk had very competitive prices and this has the added advantage of only dealing with one supplier – you may be able to find some of the parts cheaper else where, the prices seem to change daily!
The prices below are correct as of 30/09/2011.
CPU: Intel Sandybridge i7-2600 Core i7 Quad-Core Processor (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache, Socket 1155) £230.04
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
Note: When I received this processor, it came with a small heatsink and fan. The heatsink has thermal compound pre-applied. You can probably save yourself some money by not buying the CPU coolerI have specified below.
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z68X-UD5-B3 (GA-Z68X-UD5-B3) £261.91
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
This motherboard allows overclocking the CPU, and I have read at least one report of the i7 2600 being overclocked to 4GHz, so I may give this a go. If I was more serious about overclocking, I would have gone for the unlocked 2600k
RAM: M4A1600CCorsair CMZ16GX39B 16GB (4x4GB) 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Blu Memory Four Module Kit £90.18
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GV-R687OC-1GD; 1024 MB; GDDR5-SDRAM; 256 bit; 4200 MHz; ATI Radeon; Radeon HD 6870 (GV-R687OC-1GD) £219.10
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
Power Supply: CiT 750W Power Supply Unit with PSU and Dual 12V Rails – Black Edition £27.99
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
This is a pretty cheap power supply – I’ll see how it holds up and maybe upgrade to something better if necessary.
As expected, this power supply wasn’t up to the job. The motherboard needs a 20+4-pin ATX power connecter and an extra 4+4-pin CPU power connector. Additionally, the Graphics card needs 2×6-pin PCI-E power connectors which were not all available on the cheap power supply. I bought an OCZ TECHNOLOGY OCZ-ZS750W-UK OCZ ZS Series 750W Power Supply from the ever helpful Silicon Edinburgh
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
Hard Drive: Seagate ST31000524AS 3.5 inch Barracuda 1TB GB 7200rpm SATA Drive with 32MB Buffer £44.29
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
DVD/CD: Sony AD-7261S-0B 24x Internal DVDRWRAM SATA Black Lightscribe £18.02
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9900-NT CPU Cooler (PC World £29.97)
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
I’ve heard really good things about this CPU cooler, and it should keep the chip a reasonable temperature if I do decide to overclock – besides, it’s got a green LED fan, so it must be good 
Note: This cooler comes with a tube of thermal grease, so you don’t need to buy any extra unless you have a preferred brand.
Case: Antec Three Hundred Midi Case £49.98
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
A nice plain-looking case with plenty of space for expansion, it comes with a 140mm top fan, a 120mm rear fan and has the option of adding two more 120mm fans on the front if I find it is running hot or noisy.
The courier who was delivering this screwed up and did not deliver at the scheduled time, so I have cancelled the order. I bought an Antec VSK-1000 Tower Case from Silicon Edinburgh – the case has plenty of room for the graphics card, is well made and looks great.
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
Monitor: Samsung 2443BW 24 Inch Monitor – Black (already owned)
Buy one for yourself at Amazon
This means I have spent a total of £971.48, and I suppose I’ll have about another £20 worth of parts to buy where I can’t cannibalize my old PC. So I come in right on my budget of £1000.
The build went really smoothly, nothing complicated when it comes to putting the hardware together – just ensure that you connect the 24-pin and 8-pin power connectors to the motherboard and the two 6-pin power connectors to the graphics card. The cables can all be routed neatly through the cable management system.
I’m happy with the performance too. My Dimension 9200 scored 4889 on a Geekbench test, the new workstation scores 11534 (these are the 32-bit tests done with the free version of Geekbench – I may purchase it and do some more accurate testing.
If you want to build the same system, here are all the parts you need:
For the past few days, I have had intermittent sync problems with my Virgin Media router.
The router is a Netgear VMDG280 as supplied by Virgin Media. From time to time, the router falls out of sync: the sync light flashes quickly and the ready light flashes slowly. Web pages are obviously unavailable while the router is in this state.
Rebooting the router does not resolve the problem.
I also have a connection problem with the ‘on demand’ TV service where all interactive services shown as unavailable and there is a flashing heart light on the front of the set top box which apparently indicates there is no network connection available. When attempting to access any on-demand services (movies, catch-up TV etc.) I get a service currently unavailable message.
The router and TV problems do not always happen at the same time.
Since the router and set-top box are both having problems, it would suggest that the problem is not with either of those boxes as both pieces of hardware are unlikely to fail at the same time. Since they do not always exhibit the problem at the same time, the cable from my external wall to the splitter must be ok, the two cables from the splitter are unlikely to have both failed in the same intermittent manner at the same time.
The Virgin Media status screen shows everything is ok in my area.
The non-demand cable TV has been fine for the duration so that would also suggest the cabling is fine.
I was supposed to arrange for an engineer to come out next week, but as the connection is working at the moment I don’t know if he will find any problem, and getting time off work will be a hassle.
Update: I fixed the problem without resorting to an engineer.
Solution: The signal does not seem to be strong enough to cope with the splitters which were installed – either the signal has got weaker since it was installed, or the splitters are dodgy.
The installation was:
Telewest box on the wall in my bedroom with a single cable running about 10m to the living room where it was connected to an (old!) 2-way splitter. A single wire from the splitter ran about 5m round the walls to a second (newer) 2-way splitter. Two cables came from this splitter, one to the modem/router and the other to the set top box.
I don’t know Virgin Media’s rules on repairing the cabling yourself, so you carry out any of the following at your own risk – if in doubt call your cable company for advice.
I tested the incoming signal by moving the router to the telewest box and connecting it with a short coax cable. The router sync’d fine – so everything looked fine to there. I then connected the router to the spare socket on the first splitter and that worked fine too. I then connected the router to the cable going to the input of the second splitter and that also worked fine. My suspicion at this point was the second splitter was dodgy, but I thought it could also be that the long cable and two splitters was too much. Each splitter causes a drop in signal so there is no point in having one in the line if only one output is used.
I bought a new 2-way F Splitter (£5.99) and an F Plug Coupler (£1.89) from Maplin. Replacing the second splitter did not resolve the problem, so I removed the first splitter and connected the two cables with the F Plug Coupler and the heart light stopped flashing. I suspect all I needed was the coupler.
I hope this saves you a day off work waiting for an engineer!
I have recently finished reading the Scott Berkun book “Confessions of a Public Speaker” and I think it should be compulsory reading for everyone, especially if you speak to groups of people.
People who will find the book especially useful are not just teachers or lecturers, but anyone who gives any type of performance; actors, magicians, storytellers, tour guides. I wish I had read it while I was still leading ghost tours.
Scott Berkun is a professional speaker who has had many articles published in top publications such as Wired Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. In this book, he reveals the secrets of successful public speaking all beautifully illustrated with real life stories and anecdotes. He gives tips on how to properly prepare for a presentation and how to adapt your presentation on-the-fly if the technology fails you, or you don’t get many “bums on seats”.
The final section of the book has confessions from other public speakers about speeches they gave where their preparation failed them and everything went wrong. I could add lots of examples from my own presentations, from trying to explain the inticracies of the National Covenant in Greyfriars Kirkyard while the ‘Three Tenors’ were performing outdoors at the castle above me. Or the time I stepped backwards out of the final tomb at the end of the tour, tripping on my black leather trench-coat and landing arse first in the muddy puddle behind me.
The book is fantastic – great advice about what your audience is likely to be expecting, and how they feel about being part of an audience which will help you see your presentation from a different point of view. If you purchase the book from Amazon through the link below, I get a small cut from Amazon. Thanks.
The Sony PRS-505 has been around for a while now. I bought mine from Waterstones on September 3rd, 2008 – the day it was released in the UK after listening to all the hype on various podcasts. I’d fallen out of the habit of reading books, and having a love of gadgetry of all kinds, I thought this might spur me on to read a bit more. There were no huge queues outside the bookshop on the morning of it’s release – I suppose the £195 price tag was keeping a lot of people away but I feel, after using it for the last 2 and a half years, it has easily paid for itself.
The device itself is extremely well made – it feels solid, and has a reassuring weight to it. The leather-like cover gives it a bit of an olde worlde feel like an antique book. The brushed metal of the device itself is smooth and classy, but neutral enough to not distract you while you are reading a book. The buttons for turning from page to page are positioned nicely and you soon find yourself pressing them instinctively. The display is sharp and, being reflective, is a lot like paper which means you can read lots of pages without straining your eyes.
The software feels a bit unfinished, but does the job of arranging your library so books are easy to find. And most of your time is spent actually reading books not navigating the operating system. The numbered buttons used to select from the menu system and to jump directly to a page by page number are small and fiddly and don’t give much feedback when pressed. This is more of a problem since the e-ink technology means that the screen does not refresh immediately. Sometimes you find yourself pressing buttons twice trying to get it to register only to find it registered the first time but the screen was taking a while to update.
The screen refresh time is not an issue when you are reading a book, you will soon find yourself pressing the button when you still have a line of text left to read in the same way that you might slip your finger under the page in preparation to turn it before you finish reading. The page inverts a couple of times as it changes to the next page of text, and I find that this is sometimes distracting when you are reading. Ideally, you want the technology to disappear into the background so you can immerse yourself in the story.
There are thousands of free books available online see Project Gutenberg which has over 33,000 books available or Feedbooks or Manybooks. These books tend to be classics, or old books where the copyright has lapsed and are now Public Domain. More and more new books are also becoming available in ePub format although, disappointingly, they tend to cost as much as a paperback.
The PRS-505 has space for an SD card and a Memory Stick. I have a 2Gb memory stick in mine and this gives me space for around 1500 books, so I can carry my whole library around with me in one hand.
The Sony Reader will also play mp3s while you read, but I do not use that functionality as it drains the battery very quickly. Without playing music, though, the battery lasts about three weeks on a single charge, longer if you turn it off fully when not in use.
One useful tip is that a PSP charger will fit the PRS-505 and charge it much more quickly than the USB charger does.
Overall, I love the PRS-505, but there are some downsides too. Support for PDF files is not fantastic – they are slow to navigate and the formatting is not always correct. The round navigation button in the bottom-left corner can be frustrating to use as it requires a firm push and there is little tactile feedback to let you know it worked.
As I have had the Sony Reader for almost three years, I am considering buying a Kindle to replace it. The build quality of the Sony would be very hard to beat but the Kindle has the advantage of Wi-Fi/3G connectivity, a keyboard and a better screen.
Let me know what your thoughts are on moving to a Kindle.
When I tried to power on my TV this afternoon, pressing the power button did nothing, it felt like the switch inside was not being activated. I decided to void my warranty and take a look inside. My TV is a Toshiba Regza model number 32XV555D, but I imagine the same switch is used on many Toshiba models and the following instructions may be of use to you too.
Opening your TV is dangerous and will void your warranty – there are high voltages inside and the following steps should only be carried out if you are sure you know what you are doing. I’m not a professional TV engineer and I take no responsibility for any damage you do to yourself or your TV if you are foolhardy enough to follow my description!
The first step to repairing the switch is to remove the back of the TV. Unplug the TV from the wall, and remove any HDMI/SCART/Aerial cables. Put the TV screen side down on a soft non-scratch surface.
The back of the TV is held on by 17 screws – you will need a phillips head screwdriver to remove them. The screws are not all the same size, so ensure you remember which screw goes in which hole. The screws to remove are all marked with an arrow, the 17th one took me a while to find – it is located above 2nd SCART connector.
Once the screws are removed, carefully lift off the back panel – it should come off easily. If not, make sure you have removed all the screws.
Switch as I found it
The power switch is at the right side of the TV , you will see that the button you push has a cylinder on the back which needs to somehow activate the switch which does not line up with it.
The button should push a square plastic plate which should be attached to the switch. In my case, the plate had broken and fallen off the switch. This meant that the button did nothing. You can see in the photograph that the plate has fallen off and is lying underneath the button. You have a couple of options at this point; you can either activate the switch manually, put the TV back together again and just use the wall switch to power your TV off an on, or you can repair the switch.
From a search of the Internet, it seems that this is a common problem with Toshiba TVs – if your TV is still in warranty, it is probably best to get an official spare fitted, but I decided to make a stronger repair so it does not happen again.
The plastic piece with broken section
The plastic clip which holds the plate in place seems to be very fragile, and I could not find the small piece of plastic which had broken off. I mixed up some 5-minute epoxy and waited a couple of minutes for it to thicken up a bit. I put a small blob of epoxy onto the clip and put it in place on the switch. You will find this easier if you manually press the switch to put it in the ‘on’ position as this gives a little more space for maneuvering. The plate should be able to stay in position by itself while the epoxy cures (why not go and write a how to fix your TV blog post while you’re waiting!)
Once the epoxy has cured (mine says it is ready to handle in 15 minutes and achieves full strength in 1 hour) you can put the back on the TV by replacing all the screws. Power on your TV and, with a bit of luck, the power switch will work again. You have probably missed the programme you were wanting to watch though!
I hope this helps you if you have the same problem – the whole thing took me about 20 minutes to fix – much faster than waiting for the repair man! Leave a comment if it worked for you. Thanks.
The plastic piece glued back in place
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