Category: technology

Startup Analyser – Improve your boot times

Ever wondered what is making your boot times so slow?

Why so slow?

When you start up there’s a number of programs that run in the background.

Depending on how much junk you download and install on your machine, there may be a few of these or there may be many.

Maybe it’s a recent program you may have installed that you suspect is slowing your machine down…

Speeding up your start-up

Either way, I found this handy software which can list the programs and their respective contributions to the start-up time of your machine.

Start-up Manager
Improve your boot-times

This hasn’t cut a lot of time of my machine, but it is quite handy and well designed.

If you want to reduce the time you spend waiting for your machine and potentially improve it’s operating speeds and lesson it’s carbon footprint, then this might be a fun software for you.

Open Office 4.0 is BLOAT

YUP.

Not using this version…

Put it on over the weekend, when there was nobody around to use the internet connection. It’s total bloat.

Left 300+ entries in the startup directory after I’d got rid of it.

God knows how many there were when it was fully installed.

upshot

Increasing startup times by over 200%, the new 4.0 version of Open Office is nothing to get excited about. Quite the opposite, reach for your slippers and put the kettle on whilst you wait for the ‘puter to boot up.

Avoid.

Open Office 4
Open Office 4

Ipod 3g Free Games

anodiaAfter some exhaustive searching, I’ve turned up several free games for my iPod 3g.
I don’t want to feel that the Chinese are the only people that can spend their spare time poking touchscreen devices. I can join in too.

It’s an older version, with an older operating system. Most of the new apps don’t work so well.

Here’s a list of free apps that work on the iPod 3g.

Games

  • Mahjong Elements: Natty little game where you have to match the multi-coloured squares. Has some nice additions like achievements and timed games with prizes for quick thinking. Free iPod Game
  • Flight Control Rocket: Steer your rocket to it’s home on the intergalaticon space base. Each rocket needs to be steered to the appropriate coloured base. No crashing! Nice touches. Easy to play and fun. Free iPod Game
  • Castle Kingdom: Build a little castle and make it your own. Conquer the other castles and make them your own too. Free iPod Game
  • Anodia: Another free game for the older ios 4.2.1. Like breakout. It’s kind of an old concept. If you remember that Atari that is. This game has had more re-births than the Dalai Lama. You should try.

Utilities

  • Battery Magic Probe
  • Wifi
  • FAAD (FreeAppADay)
  • Pandora
  • TuneIn Radio Pro
  • Appzilla
  • Skype
  • TextFree (with Voice)
  • Speedtest.net
  • Recorder Pro
  • Atomic Web Browser
  • Download+
  • Bump

I’ll be adding to this list more in the future. I plan to get a new phone or some such when the time comes.

For the moment, I’m going to stick with the iPod, and keep playing these free games.

Camera shopping – Tsim Sha Tsui

Samsung ST67

The camera I have, a Samsung, has issues…

It’s like a epileptic, with Alzheimers. It just goes into spasm and forgets everything when I turn it on.

Canon A2600

Samsung have expanded too quickly and this product has done nothing but tarnish the image of it’s brand. It’s over-complicated. It takes crap pictures. The viewfinder is crap. But it looks good, and it does fancy things.

Did a little bit of searching round in Tsim Sha Tsui and found nothing that would give me an exchange on this useless compact.

Canon A2600

Opted to buy a Cannon A2600. It was cheap at $1,180 which is just short of £100.

I like Canon. They don’t blow up like the Samsung which I will be throwing into the Yangtze very soon.

 

Canon A2600

World of Warcraft char, Fatweh

Here’s a picture of my ‘main’ World of Warcraft char, Fatweh.

Now support a Facebook app updating the status of your chosen chars.

Tried it this morning and it didn’t work.

This does work. It’s a flash ani of my main an Allaince Warlock called Fatweh.

Flash and XML

This is done using XML.
Flash allows you to complete the loop providing specified data on the fly updated directly from the XML feed based on my character. So, for example if the image relating to my cloak changed, the XML Namespace containing the image data and dependancies for that particular piece of kit would be changed dynamically through Flash. All done throught the XML publishing platform.

Wild.