Three years ago, I bought my first digital music player: The Sony NW-70D (a.k.a “The novelty lighter”) had a whopping 256Mb of memory, didn’t play MP3s, and set me back a mere £225. Not long before, I’d bought my first digital camera: The Digital Dreams Epsilon 2.1 Megapixel camera set me back just under £100. At the time, I was using the wonderful Ericsson T39 mobile phone (green screen and a huge fat aerial, but awesome all-round). Naturally, this last one was free, given that it is largely unnecessary to ever pay for a mobile phone handset in the UK.

So. Three devices, three functions, each proficient in its field. Except the camera, which was fairly crappy, it should be pointed out. Total cost: £325.

On Tuesday, I took delivery of a shiny (and slightly chavvy-white, but I’m coming to terms with that) Sony Ericsson W800i. This single device that has more memory than the NW-70D, takes better pictures than the Epsilon, and has a far better technical spec as a phone than the T39. Oh, and it was free. Ok, technically since it’s a mobile phone, and I’m on a monthly contract I am paying for it, but not only did I get a new phone, but I’ve negotiated my monthly cost down to £14 for all the minutes and messages I need, so I still feel like I’m ahead…)

If I converge any further, I might just implode…

Read more…

February 6th, 2006, posted by Neil in General and Tech! · 10 Comments

Fed up with having to sift through a seemingly ever-shrinking VHS collection to find just the right amount of space to squeeze a long-play recording of QI between two unwatched episodes of a program I’d probably cropped the start and end off, I spent an inordinate and unhealthy amount of time in December trying to find a more elegant and workable solution to the problem of wanting to watch TV, but never being in front of the tellybox at quite the right time.

My not unworldly requirements were as follows:

• Freeview
• A hard drive to store recordings
• Some sort of EPG, or at the least a simple way of recording and labelling so I know what I’ve got recorded with the minimum of effort.

Optional nicenesses would be the ability to transfer from hard drive to some other medium for long-term storage, and that’s about it.

My first thought was to get a DVD Recorder, but can you buy a DVD-R with freeview and a hard drive for a reasonable price? Can you heck. At the high end there might be a few lurking, but replacing a VHS just so I can record a few programmes off the telly should not cost the earth. So, onto the current crop of PVRs. Right now, in the UK we’re pretty starved of really good PVRs, unfortunately, with offerings from Topfield, Humax, and Digifusion at the top of the pile, and a few cheapos offering competition at the bottom end of the market.

Read more…

January 31st, 2006, posted by Neil in Tech! and Vague rants · No comments

Oh dear.

January 28th, 2006, posted by Neil in Tech! · 4 Comments

The hand converter nears its first public outing, I think.

I’ve managed to include some security and validation, so I’d feel a bit more comfortable about making it available now. Not that I expect a bunch of attacks straight away or anything, but judging by the level of spam comments that have started finding their way past Spam Karma and onto my blog, I feel I ought to take some precautions. Plus, all the stuff I’ve been reading about PHP security has scared the whatsits out of me.

As for the hand converter itself, I’ve added a couple more sites, although there’s still plenty to go, and No Limit games are handled right now, as far as I know. Also, I’ve spent some time tweaking the handling of all-ins. And it all works very nicely, although at the moment I won’t be able to cope with more than one player going all in during a hand. I’ve not tested on that eventuality, but I suspect the pot-sizes would become inaccurate for one thing. I should be able to easily sort it with an array, though, which is my usual lazy fallback…

Should be available to all and sundry by the beginning of next week.

December 2nd, 2005, posted by Neil in Tech! and Poker · 2 Comments

Over at the Internet Texas Holdem forum we have a Limit Hand Examples forum where players can post hands they’ve played for comment. To make hands more readable than they come in when you request them from poker sites, there are a couple of hand converters floating around the web that will parse the history and output something more legible.

While I’ve been playing at Holdempoker for the past month or so, I’ve found that none of the converters I’ve used in the past could work with the hand histories from holdempoker, so I decided to set about writing my own.

Read more…

November 20th, 2005, posted by Neil in Tech! and Poker · 1 Comment

If you’re the sort of person who mostly uses their mobile phone for reading books on, or just the sort that wishes they could, here’s something for you.

Developed by a good friend of mine, BookReader allows you to read books, stored as text files, on your mobile phone. What’s intriguing about it, for me, is that it displays the text one word at a time on the screen, so you just stare at the same spot, rather than having to move your eyes to scan the words. What’s doubly intriguing about it is that you can download any of the books from somewhere like The Gutenberg Project and read them whenever you want, or any time when a book is just too bulky a thing to be holding in front of you.

Like when you’re on the train to work, there’s nowhere to sit, you have a coffee in one hand, and a rucksack over one shoulder. Most mornings, in other words.

July 28th, 2005, posted by Neil in Tech! · No comments