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Tech: Invasion of the Netbooks
published Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 15 reads

It wasn't supposed to be like this. PC makers surmised that netbooks would complement bigger PCs. They would appeal to weary business travelers, for example, who wanted to get online and send e-mail from a hotel room. But in many cases, consumers are opting for netbooks in place of laptops, PC manufacturers say.... (read more)

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Tech: lpia x86 debian packages
published Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 24 reads

The new atom chip has an lpia (low-power intel architecture), sounds great except in ubuntu/debian you get an architecture mismatch if you try and install anything compiled for x86. Take Skype for instance - go to the skype site, download the ubuntu version and the debian package installer just complains that you have the wrong architecture. Well here is how to fix it... (read more)

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Tech: Dell mini
published Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 27 reads

Well finally my new dell mini arrived. I bought the ubuntu model which until the 19th has another 20 pounds off, so 249 quid for a rather cute laptop. The only problem I can see is the delivery time. Initially they estimated a 2 week wait and then just before that 2 weeks was up Dell would send an automated email to tell me that it would be another 2 weeks. This happenned a few times...... (read more)

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Tech: Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Released in UK
published Thursday, September 4, 2008, 173 reads

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Released in UK and its not exactly what we were looking for. Full specs and price here.... (read more)

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Tech: Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) subnotebook UK details
published Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 250 reads

I've just had a chat with dell as I need a new laptop. I've heard the rumour mill go a bit crazy about the US release of the Dell Inspiron 910 (mini) subnotebook but I was a little afraid that the UK wouldn't be released until Christmas or something. As it turns out with the UK being a few hours ahead of the US we'll actually get it first (technically!). Here are some details... (read more)

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Tech: Dell Diagnostic Codes During POST
published Monday, September 1, 2008, 267 reads

My laptop is now bricked.  Apparently it is an LCD failure. It took me forever to find out what the flashing lights on my dell laptop meant as the docs seem to be missing from dell's support site. Well here is what they mean... (read more)

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Tech: Linux: Bash Scripting: Search bash history
published Saturday, August 9, 2008, 307 reads

Often when at the linux terminal I need a long command that I recently tapped out so naturally I use the up/down arrow keys to look through my recently typed in commands. But if I'm searching for a command I used days ago then I'll be pressing the up/down arrow keys a lot just to find this one bash command. Well here's a little helper script to help you speed up that process...... (read more)

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Tech: Reduce the "Looking Up" time to speed up your browsing!
published Tuesday, August 5, 2008, 291 reads

For some reason, especially in the evening, when I went to a website the browser would spend a few seconds "looking up" the domain that I wanted to go to (like www.matt-helps.com) before connecting, transferring and showing me the page. The problem was with my ISPs DNS server and I found an excellent solution to speed up my surfing!... (read more)

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Tech: How to keep web addresses on one line of an email
published Thursday, July 3, 2008, 356 reads

Some websites, like Google Maps for instance, have really long web addresses (called a URL). Pasting these long addresses into an email often takes the link over the 80-character boundary so that it is split over more than one line. The problem is that some email software doesn't handle line-breaks inside URLs correctly and you end up sending (or worse, some of your recipients receiving) a broken link. Nightmare, and you look like an idiot! There's a brilliant little tool on the web that works around that very problem... (read more)

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Tech: Google Maps' new Street Level tool shows a house on fire!
published Tuesday, July 1, 2008, 665 reads

Google Maps' new Street Level tool has caught many people unawares, gawking at strange cameras mounted on cars and generally made people feel uneasy about public image rights! Now we have a house on fire... (read more)

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Vehicle: The Miles-Per-Gallon Illusion
published Sunday, June 29, 2008, 1003 reads

Which do you think is the best fuel saving? Moving from a vehicle that does 10 Miles-Per-Gallon (MPG) to 11 MPG, or from 35 MPG to 50 MPG? The answer is not what you think...... (read more)

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Tech: Firefox 3 super speed increase
published Friday, June 27, 2008, 164843 reads

Following on from my previous article, Firefox 3 Easter Eggs, I have discovered that broadband users can get a significant speed increase from Firefox just by changing a couple of settings.... (read more)

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Football: Turkey decimated by injuries and yellow cards
published Tuesday, June 24, 2008, 334 reads

Turkey are decimated through injuries and suspensions, with nine players unavailable for the semi-final. Coach Fatih Terim said he may even need third keeper Tolgan Zengin to play outfield, so short is he of players.... (read more)

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Tech: Firefox 3 Easter Eggs
published Monday, June 23, 2008, 111388 reads

There are some moderately amusing Easter Eggs in Firefox 3. Simply type one of the following into the address bar (no spaces or http) and you'll get a message... (read more)

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Vehicle: UK Motoring: Find your car's Insurance & MOT info
published Monday, June 23, 2008, 327 reads

There are a few UK motoring websites that I find quite useful - they hold a database of every car in the country and can tell you information about your car (or a car you're interested in buying - or even your neighbour's car, but you wouldn't be that nosey would you?)... (read more)

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Football: Euro 2008: Group A - Turkey or Czech may be decided by penalty kicks
published Wednesday, June 11, 2008, 482 reads

On Sunday Turkey and the Czech Republic will play each other for the 2nd qualifying spot in their group - the winner will qualify. But who will go through if the game is a draw after 90 minutes? They will take penalty kicks to decide! For the first time ever in a major tournament finals a group stage qualifying place could be decided by penalty kicks!... (read more)

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Tech: How to execute Javascript (and Google AdSense) in AJAX
published Wednesday, May 21, 2008, 514 reads

A few months ago I was faced with a bit of a problem. A webpage I was writing was AJAX-based - meaning that it sent requests to and from the server asynchronously and would rewrite parts of the page as the server responded. However if the server returns any kind of scripting code (including javascript) then that code would not be executed... (read more)

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Tech: USB & CD Customisation (Windows)
published Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 544 reads

A number of people have asked me how to customise their USB stick so that it does different things depending on the machine into which the stick is inserted. Perhaps when you insert the stick into one PC you need it to synchronise with a folder or make a backup of the stick, but when inserted into any other PC you need it to run an application or do something else... (read more)

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Tech: How to strip iTunes DRM from your music files
published Friday, May 9, 2008, 892 reads

The iTunes shop allows you to purchase and download music legally - it is also cheaper than going out to a music store and buying a CD. But what do you do when you want to listen to your music on a non-Apple device? Perhaps you want to listen to your music purchases on your funky mp3 player or new phone?... (read more)

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Tech: Web: Useful Firefox Extensions
published Thursday, May 8, 2008, 404 reads

Newsfox is a good, free plugin for Firefox that does an good job of handling your RSS feeds with the bonus that it integrates well with firefox's live bookmarks, reads OPML files, and will let you view the web page by default rather than the plain text... (read more)

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Tech: OLPC, Open Source Software and Microsoft
published Thursday, May 8, 2008, 250 reads

Some people in the media haven't really understood what the project is about and think it is a bit odd to spend money on laptops when infrastructure or medicine might be a better way to spend the money in countries that don't even have constant power supplies (forgetting that they can be hand-powered or even solar powered). The OLPC project is actually about education and being poor - or rather the idea being that generally speaking educated people tend not to stay poor... (read more)

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Tech: Moving your Website: check your TTL!
published Thursday, May 8, 2008, 316 reads

Sometimes you just have to move your website. Perhaps you were hosting a website in a subdirectory of another site and it became popular? Perhaps you need to move to another website hosting company? The reasons are many and varied. There are a couple of quirks to watch out for... (read more)

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Vehicle: UK Car Tax - How much Road Duty will I pay?
published Thursday, May 8, 2008, 494 reads

In the coming year the UK Government is introducing new Road Tax Bands which include significantly higher costs bands for big CO2 producing cars. Originally they promised not to place cars older than 2001 in the new bands but this has been abandoned as the UK Government seeks greater profit from the Duty... (read more)

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