Having spent the day muxing video, converting it from one format to another and compressing it, I don’t intend to do it again any time soon. There’s just so much you have to take into consideration and even a simple task can become extremely difficult. Because some of the common tasks I had to do were so difficult, I’ll be writing several tutorials to aid anyone else who finds them coerced into the world of video.

My Dell Dimension 9200, I felt, was getting a little too warm. It wasn’t anything particularly dangerous, it’s just I felt it could do with a little more cooling. I occasionally clean it out every few months but the heatsink and its fan are hidden away under heavily screwed down plastic so I can’t get to them and dust was clogging them up. Until a few hours ago, I had never even seen them.

I ordered a new heatsink (Akasa AK-965) and today I attempted to install it. Of course, uninstalling the old one was difficult and there’s always that little niggle that makes you think you’re doing it wrong. I continued, though, and managed to vacuum the incredible amount of dust that had amounted over the 2 years.

I was in the final throes of completion, I only had to place the new heatsink into its place, pop the screws and plug the fan in. Of course, in the final stages, something has to go wrong and for this little endeavour, everything did. First, I found that the heatsink didn’t line up the motherboard’s holes. Secondly, I found that the motherboard didn’t have a connection for the heatsink’s fan (rather, a different connection to what the new heatsink needed). Thirdly, I’d already taken all the old thermal paste off the processor at this point and it looked like I’d need to buy some more. And finally, no matter how hard I tried to be careful, I managed to get thermal paste all over my fingers. Sending back the heatsink will cost £5 - for a £10 product. To finish off, as I’ve had to dismantle half my computer, I’ve now got two screws and I don’t know where they went.

It’s not all bad though: I’ve managed to scrape some of the new thermal paste onto the old heatsink (and temperatures have fallen dramatically), I’ve been able to clean the fan and heatsink and I have a spare heatsink for a computer I hope to be building this autumn.

I’ve always wanted to see the Google Street View car ever since it was spotted first in England but thought it would be a while before it photographed Leeds. Having just got out the shower and drying my hair, the black Vauxhall Astra with it’s cameras cruised passed the house. And because my hair was wet, I didn’t have a shirt on - from the car’s point of view, I look naked. Nice.

At least the Jag was in the drive, though.

Despite being only officially available to the Japanese market, I’ve seen many of these in England. It’s about as aerodynamic as a block of flats and is just devastatingly ugly. I’ve not looked into the specs but something tells me that it’ll have a small engine with hardly any power and be hugely overpriced for what is essentially a box with wheels.

The most positive thing that struck me about this car was what the size of the boot would be. Sadly, looking at it more closely, all that space is taken up by a second row of chairs. Put it like this, no dog of any size would fit in there without an animal charity chasing you down.

Ever bought a hard drive only to find you’ve got a smaller disk space than stated on the box? That’s not because your operating system is taking up that space, it’s because you’re not counting it as the hard drive manufacturers did.

Computers count in base two – that is, binary. In binary, a kilobyte is 1024 bytes (2 to the power of 10). Normal people considered a “kilo” to mean a thousand so a kilobyte, to them, was 1000 bytes. If you sell hard drives, the obvious choice is to use the measurement that sounds like more value – the non-geek 1000 was therefore used (1MB = 1,048,576 bytes in binary or 1,000,000 bytes in metric – less is cheaper to make although less in usable capacity). In 1998, the IEC defined 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes – using the non-geek/manufacturer method. To avoid confusion, they also decided to rename measurements of binary by replacing the last two letters with “bi” to represent “binary” (kibibytes, mebibytes, gibibytes, tebibytes). The thing is, though, these new names sound terrible and they will never be picked up. In reality, everyone uses the original names and ignores the stated capacities on hard drives.

If you’re mathematically inclined, you’ll notice that the difference is 7%; to find out the real capacity of any hard drive, just take off 7%.

Recently, the ATX Group proposed a new TLD: .car for in-car use.

The .mobi TLD was created because browsers and mobile/cell phones were completely different - different screen sizes, different needs and different input methods. A portable web just wouldn’t work so a new one (or a separate version) had to be created.

The screens in cars are more than adequate to be used to navigate the web and whilst the input devices still need a little work, I see no benefit of this proposed TLD. Touch-screen capabilities can easily be fitted and voice activation can make up for a keyboard-like input.

Drivers wouldn’t be allowed to surf the Internet whilst driving anyway; only passengers would be able to and their attention would be drawn to the device like it would at home. Therefore creating a simpler, easier-to-read version just wouldn’t be worth it.

The idea that you would be able to listen to news headlines or even entire web pages whilst on the move uses the technology of text-to-speech - where text is digitally spoken (albeit a little robot-like) so you can hear the text instead of having to read it. This method directs me straight to accessibility. If your site doesn’t make sense in a logical order then text-to-speech engines are useless or extremely annoying. This isn’t just affecting the in-car users but blind users as well. Preventing them from accessing the web page is against the law and, although very unlikely, you could be sued.

All because Vista spent an hour “copying” nothing. Luckily I’ve got my trusty iPod with it 99% of it on but it still frustrates me that it’s able to do something for an hour and yet not tell me that it’s not copied. I realise now that I should have checked but this thing is so simple that you shouldn’t have to check!

I’ve been with Virgin Media ever since the early days, not when it was called NTL, but when it was called Cable&Wireless. Back then, the service was perfect with no complaints - at least, until Virgin kicked in.

Now the costs are through the roof - £60 to £70 a month for 2mbps Internet, a few TV channels we never watch and a phone line that’s not often used.

Internet

I can’t live without the Internet and use it heavily. Online TV is starting to properly come through now with BBC iPlayer and various on-demand services. With 2mbps, I could enjoy these services quite happily but I’m not getting 2mbps. The problem is Virgin Media’s STM - their way of stopping anyone from actually achieving what they paid for. During certain times, if you download over a certain amount, the connection will be limited. STM was introduced because Virgin Media claimed that they found that 5% of their customers were affecting the speeds of the other 95% - to me, that sounds like their infrastructure can’t take the strain. Instead of upgrading the infrastructure, they decided to ruin it for their loyal customers whilst still rolling out ultra-fast broadband and doubling high-end packages.

Want to know these “limits”? I bet you’re expecting something high - because, of course, to have to limit the service, it would have to be high! It is in fact, stupidly low and so insanely low that most packages can reach the limit in 10 to 20 minutes.

TV

The TV service is what you’d expect. There are only about 10 channels worth watching, most of which are available on Freeview.

Virgin Media’s catch-up and on-demand service is still something to be desired; it’s clunky menus and buggy system means that the chance you’ll be able to find and watch something all the way through is slim. Try pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding to see how unstable it is.

The Solution

After my 30 days notice, I’ll be changing ISPs to Be (24mbps), getting Freeview and a BT phone line - all this for half of what I’m paying for now? If you have Virgin Media then I suggest you do the same!

I have been away for two weeks but I really wasn’t expecting all this!

Another Project that I’ll have to start work on is an idea that combines Yahoo! Answers, Google and StumbleUpon. Trust me, it’ll be great!