Tag: USB

bookmark_borderCurrently…

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Out for a jog again last night, and the difference in pace within the group is starting to tell. A few of us ended up quite far out in front and ended up turning back… only to end up way out in front again. My new shoes are definitely making a difference though, not a niggle or tweak to be felt. It’s like running on, um, gel-filled trainers I guess.

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Home to some paperwork as it’s re-mortgage time again. We are hoping to use the raised value of our house (it’s gone up by over £20k since we bought it) to get rid of a higher interest loan. Thanks to the Motley Fool website I can now understand people speaking mortgage-ese, and the lovely people at London and Country have been very helpful and very prompt. I spoke to Katie yesterday and received a thick envelope from them this morning, very impressive.

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Tonight we will be visiting my father-in-law as he flies back to Spain tomorrow. Three weeks he lasted, one more than we thought he would, and all told I think Louise will be happier once he’s home. I’ll just be glad that we get our spare Sky box back as the footie season has started and, as we use it for the spare TV upstairs in the bedroom, it means Louise will be able to watch telly when I kick her off the sofa.

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That aside there ain’t much going on. We’re trying to save some cash as we are away for a couple of days at the end of the month, and I’m always wary that the change of mortgage will incur more fees than I expect, so we’re having a quiet, cheap, weekend.

Oh wait, it’s only Thursday. Damn.

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Almost forgot. Netgear Wireless Router (WGT624) installed and working. Yay! I had to switch my cable modem (Webstar 100) from being a USB connection to a CAT (network cable) connection (BlueYonder installation gave me USB, not my choice). It was pretty simple actually, although I’m not completely sure what goes on behind the scenes, here’s what worked for me:

First up you need to release your IP address, go to a command prompt and type “ipconfig /release” (without the quotes).

Next you need to uninstall the USB driver software from your PC, usually from Add/Remove Programs.. in the Control Panel.

Then turn off the cable modem, and remove the USB cable completely.

You need to leave the cable modem off for three or four minutes – apparently they need this so they can ‘forget’ the details passed to it by your ISP.

Then you can turn on your cable modem, and let it start up before doing anything else. My cable modem has flashing lights on the front so just wait until they settle down and you should be OK. Shouldn’t take more than a minute.

Next up, connect the wireless router to the cable modem using a CAT cable and turn on the wireless router. It’ll run through it’s own diagnostics and again mine has lights on the front that indicate what it’s doing (to a point) but shouldn’t take long either, let’s say another minute to be safe.

Then you can connect the wireless router to your PC, CAT cable again, and then step through the setup instructions that came with your wireless router – usually you’ll go to a web address. I didn’t need to specify a domain or system ID for my router.

So I now have the wireless router in my network and can connect through it (via cable) to the internet. Next step is to connect to it wirelessly. And that’s the bit I’m having problems with. My laptop is at work, but I have my Airport Express here. But for some reason I can’t find ANY Wireless connections. It’s almost like Windows has forgotten about them… I’ve got no icon in the system tray, and nothing in Network Connections. Had a quick Google last night but to no avail, I’ll try again over the weekend. Bloody annoying though, especially considering the hassles I had getting the Airport Express to work in the first place!

bookmark_borderHow now purple cow?

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If, like me, you have a USB drive (or two), you’ll no doubt have it filled with wonderful applications, sync’d with a directory or three on your hard drive, you’ll be using it to store some personal details in a nice secure little application, and maybe even booting from it and other fancy schmancy things.

I’m not going to talk about any of that though, instead I’d like to introduce you to Moo.

Say “hello Moo” (she’s the one of the left in the silver/purple getup).

her ladyship

And here is what Moo looks like when I plug her into my PC.

exploring her ladyship

Moo is no ordinary USB drive though, in fact Moo has a couple of special features that give me a lovely warm glow and make her my favourite USB drive… at least until I can a newer model. Yes, as you can see from the above picture, Moo has her own name and her own icon. Cute, right?

I’ll leave the why for another time but, in case you are interested (and if you’re not, why are you still reading?), here’s the how.

Giving Moo her own icon
To get an icon to display when you plugin in your USB drive:

  1. Copy your favourite icon to your USB drive, don’t bother putting it in a folder though.
  2. Create a text file and add the following lines to it:
    [autorun]
    icon=moo.ico
  3. Save the file to your USB drive, and name it AUTORUN.INF.

Done. Now, when you plug in your USB drive, it’ll show up with the icon of your choice. Ain’t that pretty.

Changing the name of your USB drive is pretty easy. Just open up My Computer, right-click your USB drive and select Rename.

For the more technically minded, you can also set the drive letter permanently.

The really clever bit
There is one other reason I love Moo so dearly and that’s because, unlike other removable media, Moo doesn’t ask me “what do you want to do” when I plugin her in (this is beginning to sound slightly dodgy, like some weird USB porn movie… I digress) … no no, Moo just opens an Explorer window straight away. She’s so considerate. I love you Moo.

So how does Moo achieve this? Simple really.

Open up My Computer, right-click on your USB drive and select Properties. On the Autoplay tab, select the content type (mixed files for most people), and in the Actions list, select to “Open folder to view files using Windows Explorer”. Click Apply, then click OK.

One caveat to this: If the letter assigned to your USB drive changes (which can happen if you plugin another USB device), then the default Autoplay settings will be reset.

And that’s it.

You now have a nice name and a pretty picture (icon) that will be displayed when you plug in your USB drive, and the computer is now smart enough to know that you just want to explore the contents of the drive straight away.

Now, anyone know where I can get some cow-hide fur? I want to make Moo a jacket for the winter.

Additional Info
If you want to create an encrypted USB drive, you can use TrueCrypt and this set of instructions. Personally I just use my Lexar Jumpdrive to hold any information I want to keep secure.

Addendum
Thumb, pen, flash, stick, card and other names are all used to describe these little USB connected memory wotsits. If ever something needed a market leader to set the accepted term it’s the USB drive.

bookmark_borderiPod Nano

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Our current (now “old) iPod is a 3G model. It holds 10GB of music, and is quite large and chunky. It’s not TOO big by any account and it does what it does well enough. The iPod Photo is nice as it has a colour screen but I don’t see me ever wanting to carry around 1000 photos on a gadget… that’s like the worst “wallet” photos ever.

The scene, two travellers sitting at a bar in a hotel, chatting about life and family:
“So, you got pictures of your kids?”
“Yeah, let me just dig out my wallet, here ya go…”
“They’re cute, hang on and I’ll show you a few photos of mine”
Takes out iPod Photo. Bores the other guy to death after the first 274 photos. Is a bit miffed because there were another 561 for him to see.

I digress.

The iPod mini is about a third of the size of our old iPod (the 3G one, do try and keep up) and comes in a lot of nice colours. My sister has one and it’s very nice indeed. However the justification for buying one just wasn’t really strong enough. It was a little smaller but held a lot less music – the discussion about the ideal size for an MP3 player is still open, suffice to say that I only once managed to fill the 10GB iPod and didn’t listen to even a third of the music.

Then along came the Nano. Aside from the weird name it was teeny tiny, you can see it here next to our “old” iPod, had a colour screen so it can handles photos (if that floats your boat) and display CD covers. Sure it was only 4GB but it was soooo much smaller than our “old” iPod that I felt there was some justification into begging and pleading discussing the possibility of purchasing one.

Yes I was aware that my birthday was coming up but I figured we’d have to shuffle some cash first to make a nice “iPod Nano” sized gap in our budget – we’ve got a busy couple of weeks coming up with wedding and birthday presents to buy, not to mention that looming holiday season in December (yes we DO think about that now, rather than have to survive on rice and water in January!).

Anyway, enough of that, what’s it like!? I hear you cry. Well there is little else to say other than it looks very small and fragile. OK, I’m lying, there’s a lot to say, but not much of it is new.

First a couple of photos, one to show you the size difference compared to our “old” iPod and the other to show you the difference between the screens (this photo doesn’t do the Nano screen any justice, it’s very crisp and sharp).

If you ever used ANY iPod the Nano will feel very familiar. As I’ve not used any of the newer varieties, there are a couple of things for me to get used to, not least the lack of buttons as every thing is controlled from whizzing your thumb round the scroll pad – which feels ohhh so very subtley different from the rest of the fascia – and the newer features of the iPod software.

One addition, which I THINK is new, takes its cue from the iPod Shuffle. At the bottom of the main menu is the option to “Shuffle Songs”. Select this the iPod will play through all the tracks in random order. Smart. That means I can have albums as playlists, and listen to them in album order, or just hit “Shuffle Songs” and have my own radio station.

Sound wise it’s as competent as ever, no surprise there, but I would suggest getting better headphones – I have a pair of Sony MDR-ED21s which suit my ears just fine.

Most of all the iPod Nano BEGS to picked up. I still can’t really get over how diminutive it is, and how fragile it seems*. I think, now, Apple has one of the better MP3 players on the market. Previously I’d have agreed that they were trading on the name, the hype, the marketing but now, with improved battery life, ENOUGH space for most people, and a true “put it in your pocket” portability the rest of the market will need to catch up.

One thing to note: no more firewire support. USB only (2.0 preferred). And the only reason I bought a firewire card for my PC was…. for the “old” iPod! Guess I’ll need to get me a USB 2.0 card now.

More info:
* Thankfully Ars Technica have “stress tested” an iPod Nano
iLounge review (was iPodLounge)
AppleXnet – iPod Nano Dissected
Top 10 Reasons why I need an iPod Nano

bookmark_borderToolkit

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*Geek post alert*

Having recently been on a bit of a “get organised” spree (the contents of my bag provides ample evidence), I’ve been slowly creating my own little software toolkit which I’m keeping on a pen drive (thumb drive, USB drive, flash drive… why don’t these things have a common name!). I use all of these applications on both my home PC and at work and can vouch that they are worth the download.

You may, or may not, find some of the following useful and as with most software YMMV:

Ohh and all of the above applications have one thing in common, they are all free (at time of writing at least).

* Recent reports suggest that Microsoft is now leading the way, but it is still recommended that you run at least two or three spyware/adware detection programs as none of them catch everything. You should keep these programs up-to-date with the latest detection packs.

P.S. If this kind of thing is of interest I’d strongly urge you to subscribe to the langalist.

P.P.S. A short list of apps designed to RUN from a USB pen drive thingy.

bookmark_borderBloody edge

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That’s the problem with being an early adopter type, sometimes that bleeding edge bites back. Turns out that the USB connector isn’t accepting data connections, only power. I suggested this last week and it’s taken them a further week to confirm that I am right. Mind you the phone is only out a few weeks, the first time I phoned, they didn’t even have any of them for the support staff to work with!

So I’ll be sending my new phone back tomorrow, and hopefully the replacement will arrive before the weekend. Especially as my wife is now flaunting her just arrived, and rather smart, little Samsung E800.

bookmark_borderOLD PC

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It’s been lying forlornly next to my desk for over a year now, it’s 15″ monitor gathering dust. I keep meaning to re-format it, and do something with it, but what?

It has no USB ports, a PII chip, 128MB of RAM and a whopping 8GB hard disk.

Any suggestions?