The Sony PS3

Its been a while but here is my next post you lucky people you...

 

Well after much deliberations about Media Centres and small media streaming devices I came across a bargain that was too tempting to miss out on. Sainsburys had the PS3 reduced to a whopping £199.  To add to that I made use of Nectar points that have been collected over some time and ended up spending a whole £130 for a brand new  Sony PS3.

 

Not being a massive Sony fan I am actually over the moon with such a device and happy with the purchase. It does a good job of streaming my HD movies  and watching the family photos and video clips. Even better, I saw a TV advert for Gran Turismo 5 and can't wait to get that, especially as its hooked up the Onkyo amp so will sound absolutely amazing, as do my movies.

 

Its not 100% perfect but very good, and I may still go down the route of another device or Media Centre, but at the moment its a cracking device and hasn't cost me the earth. I also set up the Logitech Harmony One with a 'Watch DVD' activity which I have been meaning to setup for months and months now!  I've still to try the PS3 out as a games console but hopefully Father Christmas will look after me on that front!

 

 

Virgin 50MB Broadband

Just to enlighen you all, I had 50MB Broadband installed a few weeks ago. Its completely awesome and worth the few extra quid a month. Any questions welcome.





Even the cable modem is worth the upgrade!
Good night!

D-Link DIR-615 Install

We all know how I like to waste my evenings completing geeky tasks. Well tonight's nonsense was  based around configuring the D-Link DIR-615 that came free with my Virgin Media 50MB broadband! My current wireless N router (cheap Belkin) works absolutely fine but thought I should use the provided hardware. The 615 seems to get half decent reviews too.


It seems to be quite a basic looking product with nothing interesting giong on apart from the 2 arials sticking out of it. Installation was via the CD running through a basic wizard which was fairly helpful. It seemed to take ages to finish my setup with all the settings I required with regards to allowing certain ports in and out and changing the default LAN configuration.
Don't make the mistake I made - I didn't realise that the MAC Address filtering included the wired devices as well as the wireless devices, this threw me for a few moments. Infact I ended up locking myself out of the router and had to do a hard reset which obviously drove me to a strong drink, well, a strong coffee! Anyways, she's plumbed in and as desired and will see how it goes over the next few days.

The links I used for the Touch Pro

http://www.neopeek.com/en/forum/Questions-Guides--HowTos--Tutorials/524-The-Mother-Tutorial---How-tosWheresWhens---All-right-here!?#525
 
http://www.neopeek.com/en/forum/Android-ROMs/1553-Barebone-CyanogenMod61-Minimum-System-10-10-2010
 
http://www.neopeek.com/en/community/groups/viewgroup/27-Neopeeks+SuperFroyoPort
 
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=735975

yans

Battles with the HTC Touch Pro

Whilst the beloved HTC HD2 is being repaired I am having a play with the HTC Touch Pro. Firstly what a heap of junk in all honesty but still like to have a horse around with these things.

I found a half decent Windows Mobile ROM for it that actually isn’t too bad and things do actually work when you click them on the screen. Well, I thought it was half decent. Its this one http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=603041 from my friends at http://forum.xda-developers.com. The nice thing about it is that it has no Sense in it which makes less bloaty and more responsive as an OS. 

The next task is to get Android running on it. A task that would seem slightly more tricky than I first thought.  I did find a helpful tutorial on completing this which included formatting and creating 3 specific partitions on the memory card (FAT32, ext2 and a linuxswap).  Once downloading, unzipping and copying the contents of the Android rom onto the memory I had to run the installer and then run Haret. All very geeky and too boring to go into too much detail.

Needless to say that Android is running but it has its flaws and drawbacks on this particular device and really can’t be bothered to use it. As an example, when I attempted to make a phone call, there was no sound at all, it didn’t make the call and got stuck, then it took 30seconds to end the call. So glad I wasted an hour or so on that! This reminds me, how is my HD2 warrantee repair getting on?

My HTC HD2 (also known as HTC Leo)

My beloved HTC HD2 has sent back to the guru's at HTC for some warantee repair. After random reboots when it gets hot it was time for me to get in touch with the lovely people at HTC headquaters. After a few moments on the phone (someone elses of course!) it turns out the HD2 as well as the HTC Desire has a common fault when a certain element in the phone gets hot, it decides to reboot!

Fantastic news of course, not, just thankful its still under warantee. They happily collected the phone and its being fitted with a new motherboard amongst oneor two other items. Needless to say I am upset and more importantly astounded at the potential 3 week turn around time - my views on this were not kept hidden very well I can asure you! He quickly asured me that the turn around time is normally 7-10 days! Apparently the replacement parts are shipped over from Taiwan! He also informed me that they have a huge backlog of these repairs of some 3000 phones waiting to be completed. Great.

This means I am reverting back to everyones favourite old school business phone... yes, you've guessed it, the Nokia 6310i.

I am amazed how very little phones used to do which has left me feeling a little lost to be quite honest.However, I am about to reserect another old HTC phone though I am not sure how long I will last using it before throwing it against the wall out of frustration!

Of couse, my HD2 was no ordinary HD2 running Windows Mobile, of course not. It was running an Android OS port from the masters at XDA Developers forum. The Android OS runs from the SD card on the HD2 (also known as Leo) and runs far smoother than a factory HTC Desire. Do not forget that your device does need to be rooted and HSPL'd in order to achieve this. There is lots of info on the XDA Developers forum http://forum.xda-developers.com/

Next task is to re-root the HTC Touch Pro and try and find a decent ROM for it while I wait for my little HD2 to come back. Wish me luck!

Welcome to the Geeky World of IT Yans

I always knew I was a Geek but I have now entered new heights of Geekness - my own BLOG! Ridiculous!

I will attempt to enlighten the world about any geeky or technology based projects that I am involved with, whether its work related or stuff at home. Hopefully I can learn a thing or two as can my the audience. I will also probably rant on about certain annoyances as they occur in the hope to let off some steam. Anyway, that's enough for tonight.

Thanks for reading
Good night.
Yans.