Mashup? What ya on about? Well that is a very good question. To put it simply, at the time in my computer reduced state and with the prospect of no longer being able to work on my bigger video productions I had the thought of applying the ethics of ’12seconds’ to my Youtube videos. However the computer is all up and running again but I’m still going ahead with this idea.

It partially came about running through some ’100 of’ videos (a number of them I have showcased on 4tfoi), it’s all well and good for the first couple of minutes but might get a bit tedious if, say, you are not doing something while watching the vid (eating or something like that) or if you are trawling through 99 other clips just to find the clip of the one thing that you so fondly remember. However at the same time I thought it could prove a good creative booster given my computer restriction at the time.

At the end, a video can’t be any longer than 1 minute, beyond that I’m not trying hard enough. The mashups will mostly consist of gaming related material but I do intend on exploring other areas… hence why this is being posted on both 4tfoi and srmurphy.com, gaming related ones on 4tfoi and the others on srmurphy.com. Will start off simple with compilation clips but… well who knows where the creativity will take me.

Let me start this by explaining a few little bits. Computing today is currently present in two main forms, 32 bit and 64 bit. I don’t need to go into the nitty gritty but I do need to explain a couple of differences between the two… well, just one really.

Due to technically restrictions in relation to the way computers work which I don’t need to go into, 32 bit Windows has a limitation on the amount of memory that you can use, 4 gig or more and it will generally only use a little bit above 3 gig, might report that it sees more but ultimately it doesn’t utilise it. Enter 64 bit Windows, allows you to use 4 gig and more (depending on any restrictions imposed within the software).

Now let me present some evidence, only recently 32 bit Windows xp started hanging solid on me, did have some occasional oddities prior but nothing major to threaten operations so to speak. Eager to try Windows 7 during it’s beta period I try installing the 64 bit version however it would display some bad instability which I put down to the test code. When the computer became inoperable I obtain a new motherboard and CPU, in the installation process the memory chips go in reverse order in comparison to how they where in the old board, major instability problem, so much so that even memtest hangs solid!

The verdict in all this is simple, the computer has been operating with a bad memory chip for possibly a long time, you see, I had it installed in the upper most slot so 32 bit Windows didn’t allocate all of it and of course when I tried the beta of 64 bit Windows 7 it was using all of it. The past few months the chip must have degraded to a point that it started effecting 32 bit Windows and when I swapped it into the new board in reverse order, it was the first chip to be used for memory, hence the instability increase.

So why did I not suspect the memory before hand? Well, I was going by prior experience in my judgement, I have experienced both motherboard and memory issues before. Motherboard issue had the symptoms of hard hangs like I had been experiencing and the memory issue produced very very random error messages.

What I have learned in all this, not everything is always as it seems and probably should be a little less quick to judge to which I should probably make an apology to Gigabyte for any bad mouthing that has been roughly aimed in their direction, may have been this memory chip all along and nothing to do with the motherboard.

This is the little bugger

To recap a previous post, computer upgrade, first motherboard bad, replacement, stability issues which turn out to be the PSU, replacement PSU but damage done and motherboard starts failing. At this point I start rethinking things and looking at dismantling the computer for the present.

Well this preented one problem, I would at time play my 360 through the capture card onto the computer to free up the main TV for the lady and suddenly I no longer had this option so I seeked out obtaining a flat screen monitor that I had originally been planing on picking up before the computer went up on me and so I could get back to gaming while having the TV freeded up again.

The lovely Samsung Syncmaster arrived a couple of weeks back…

All 24 inches of it with a resolution of 1920×1200… well once I played the 360 on it for a bit (at 1080p I might add just to make sure I got as much out of it as I presently could) I was wanting my computer back.

Soooooo I set out to get the bits required and keeping in mind I was still needing to rebuild my mother’s computer too, a new motherboard, cpu, keyboard and mouse soon arrived.

However all is not well, as I type this I am still restricted to the laptop, the on board GPU is buggered which normally wouldn’t matter as I don’t use rubbish on board GPUs but even then the motherboard is showing big stability issues… which is a real shame as I was starting to like Windows 7 that I finally managed to get installed. Memtest won’t even run without halting :s

So, still without a computer, the mashups will have to wait… oh, I’m still to make a post about that.

Nope, as much as it would be good financially to dismantle the computer and sell on the bits and be left fighting over the laptop with the lady, I just can’t do it ultimately and the cost of various bit to take over the general functions the computer performed, well, I might as well just fix up the computer again.

This whole episode has taught me one thing however, I’m currently aiming too high. This basically means I’m still re-thinking operations, more info as and when I am ready to share, don’t worry, should be all good

Been working out some sums, some big things are afoot and some choices are going to have to be made and the choice to dismantle the computer and sell off the parts until as to when I’m back in a position to re-build a brand new machine is the one having to be made.

In meeting my lovely lady I’ve never really thought of life in such a wide scope but I have to be doing that now, we are planning to get married and we are wanting to have a house we can call our own and do what we want with it which means a lot of curbing of spending and a lot of hard saving.

In the mean time I do have access to the laptop so I’m not going to vanish, just things are going to take a bit of a shift until I can get a computer built back up, how long that will take I don’t know yet.

It’s getting a bit tiresome now, new card hasn’t arrived yet so have to go and give the bank a good kicking, however, I’ve got a bit of a backup plan as until I get the new card my computer is effectively useless.

The motherboard story all started back when doing a pretty routine upgrade on my system last year, new motherboard, new CPU and new memory being the main elements. Motherboard was a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 , CPU was a Phenom 9500 although it doesn’t really matter in this case (and I knew about the TLB bug).

The first motherboard I got along with the other bits I built up a mini test system just to make sure all was working correctly… now, normally I don’t go through this step but it was just as well I did. All powered up and set a memtest going to make sure all the memory checked out while in the mean time I sorted out a BIOS update.

Put the relevant files on the thumb drive, plugged it into the new system, pressed the reset button, screen goes blank and the fans stop spinning… ‘ok’ I thought and press the power button to turn the system back on and nothing, not even a flicker. Yup, pushing the reset button to reset the machine somehow killed the motherboard.

Usual routine of returns, new one back, hook it all up, all testes out (keeping well away from the reset button) and before long the new system was all built up and fully reinstalled, first reinstall of Windows XP in something like 3 or so years.

That was not to be the end of it however, random blue screens along with the odd other weirdness was to plague my operation even though memory fully checked out which would be a typical cause. The only thing I could link it to was a hard drive spinning back up… although in hindsight it all makes sense now.

May not have been as bad but it corrupted my install a few times which was quite a worry and sometimes it flipped out at the BIOS screen which was a big worry, all the time pointing the finger at the motherboard.

So it was now at a point where if I wanted to reboot I would have to switch it off for half hour or it wouldn’t boot back up properly getting stuck at post and every now and then the USB port the keyboard and mouse was plugged into would cut out and I was having this particular problem at this particular time, on, off, on, off, on, smell something burning, off.

My first thought was the motherboard had started burning up so I started taking all apart to investigate… the smell was coming from the PSU and boy did it stink. I soon learned that the PSU was not rated at what I thought it was, whether this is my own fault or not I don’t know but a new more powerful PSU sorted out all problems however I think damage had already been done.

So now, still with its quirks it added a new one, hanging hard at a random interval from booting up… even during boot up and now it is just completely unusable and that brings us to my present predicament.

Before I start, this is a subject that is related to my home area so to a lot of your around the world who just happen to be reading this, chances are it may make no sense.

I was introduced to BBC Radio Newcastle back when I was working in a wholesale fruit and veg market place which meant having to get up at 4:30am 6 days a week and later carried it over to where I work now when I was positioned in the plate room.

A typical morning, Mike Parr doing a topical phone in which generally covered current topics as well as anything else that was worth discussing. After Mike came the highlight of the day, Ian Robinson and Paul Wappet.

Typically Paul would be in the studio and Ian would be out on the blue bus about the region travelling around from place to place learning about the history, culture etc. of that area. It was fun, informative and all round helped me though some hectic mornings… especially if I decided to have a rant to myself on some of the topics that Mike had been discussing.

The first nail came when they took the blue bus off them and later after that the big blow came, Ian and Paul were separated… Not sure when during this time it happened but new management was in place and I could only think it had something in relation to everything that was happening. This was that start of the downfall because everyone loved the informative and light humored show, especially me.

Later Paul left the station, followed with Jullia Hanken who presented the afternoon show at the time, also another popular show. Ian was stuck on the night shift hich to be honest Ithink is just an insult, this is a man who is passionate about local history and knowledge which is what the station was suppose to be about and they stuck him on through the night.

My shifts got a bit funny and and the car radio which ment my listening time had become severely reduced. Only recently in the dawn of the new car I came to learn that poor Ian was no longer on the night shift… in fact he was no longer at the station, caught up in amongst the cut backs and also learn that Mike Parr has only just moved on…to what yet I don’t know.

What has happened? The station I came to know and love was dying and becoming something more… well, generic… Don’t get me wrong, the people who present now have there own ways of goodness but it has lost the spirit I fell in love with, the way it involved the region as a whole.

I guess as my saying goes, “There’s no heart in business”… I’m just quite saddened what has been happening since I started listening to the station if there was a point to this post…

Update 11th August 2009 – So they chuck away and lose grasp of decent presenters and if that wasn’t enough, to add insult to injury, they give Sue Sweeney more air time *shudder*

Ummm, could you do this with other Symbian S60 phones? I have completely rearranged ALL of the icons! Yeah, even the system ones already on your phone you can move about on screen and into other folders. Actually the way it works is further proof that Symbian OS hasn’t just had touch support tacked onto it.

The first thing I did was to create a folder and store off all the useless stuff in there, there’s usually plenty I don’t need that comes with a phone by default and just organised the rest of the stuff a bit better. It’s all rather good, just need support for custom icons for the folders that you create so they don’t look so out of place when navigating the menu system.

Where to go from here? At this present time I am waiting for my new card to arrive from the bank which is looking like I will have to pay a visit and start cracking some heads. While I’m waiting for this I already have an order on the back burner which will go partially towards upgrading my current computer and building up a computer for mother again and then I still need the bits to sort out my computer for once and for all.

Think the things I’ll be doing once the computer is all sorted out will remain pretty much the same, the real difference will be that I am not going to try and pressure myself to do one thing or another which is what would seem to be the thing that gets my head all screwed up.

I enjoy all the things I am doing and most of all, the fiddling about with things as I am doing them but my head is falling into the wrong frame of mind pressuring to do something I’m not currently in the mood for… I do work full time after all so it’s not as if it was literally a matter of life and death. You see, I always have a few things on the go because I tend to get bored of one thing, go onto the next thing and come back to that at a later date.

In the mean time while I’m without a computer and stuck fighting with the lady over the laptop so things will be thin on the ground but I’m gonna ramp up the blogging rather than just saying ‘Here’s x, hope you enjoy’ all the time.

I suppose my real main gripe with the 5800 at this present time is the home screen. They show off the up coming n97 with its fancy widget adored home screen and then there is the 5800 which effectively has 2 modes, contacts or shortcuts. Contacts is nice though, you set up someone from your address book to be a button on the home screen and from there you can tap on it which will give you a set of options, typically to call them or create a new message. On top of that you get a nice little summary of recent interaction with the relevant contact, messages, calls etc.

Haven’t much looked at the shortcut option but I would like to have the home screen as both shortcuts and homescreen because there are a couple of apps I have running while I am at work and quick access to them from the home screen would be nice. The widget home screen will probably be the answer to this and hopefully will come in a future update. The Ovistore is due to open up soon so maybe just maybe a firmware update is due at the same time. Speaking of which, so far i have managed to avoid having to install the Ovi software.

There is something curious with 3rd party java apps. For compatibility purposes the phone has on screen operational buttons much like the directional buttons that you find on every other phone to navigate around menus etc. with. Instead of an app fully supporting or not supporting the touch screen at all the apps can just read input from the ‘buttons’ as if in use like every other phone, however apps that do support the touch screen properly still activate these compatibility buttons.

The Google Mail (or GMail if you like) app is a good example of this, works just fine with the touch screen yet these buttons appear taking up valuable screen space. There is however a way to turn these off on an app per app bases, simply go into ‘Settings->Application mgr.->Installed apps.’, select the appropriate app and hit ‘Options’ then ‘Suite settings’. In here there is an option for ‘On-screen keyboard’ which you can set to ‘Off’… Tada! There are other options here also that could prove useful, particularly in relation to connectivity which probably held the solution to an original issue I had before the firmware update. I’ve further noticed that these options in particular are only available on java apps.