The Programme - get with it

Outsourcing offshore - the emporer's new clothes

Jez — 2006-12-14T11:57:06+00:00

Another day as a front-end web architect, another piece of work to check over from India. Honestly, give me strength! Maybe it's just the guys we get, but the general quality of work and understanding of html/xslt/css is absolutely appalling. Just had someone setting a background color by tiling a 1-pixel image. Jeez...
One day soon all this is going to come back and bite these big companies in the ass when they realise their whole architecture has gone to shit and they've no-one left to dig them out of the hole.

Nokia 6131 mini-review

Jez — 2006-11-01T13:33:51+00:00

I've been living with the Nokia 6131 for around three months now, so here's some thoughts if you're looking into buying this model.
This is my first new phone in 3 years, so bear in mind I don't have that much experience with many recent phones. I like to use my phone to talk and text, but I plumped for this one primarily based on its web access (through T-Mobile's Web 'n' Walk) and its combination of MP3 player and expandable memory (using a MicroSD card).
On the whole I love this phone. Its clam-shell design means the keypad is protected most of the time, with reasonably large buttons which respond positively. The clam-shell itself features an external button which springs the phone open. This makes the phone useable with one hand - an absolute must in my opinion - and also makes using it feel a bit like using a Star Trek communicator.
Battery life is fine once you have cycled charging a few times. The camera is pretty good in daylight conditions but goes grainy pretty quickly once light levels begin to fall.
The killer app for me is the web access. The 6131 uses EDGE technology on top of '2.5G' connectivity to deliver quite reasonable download speeds. T-Mobile's Web 'n' Walk charges you 1p per KB up to a maximum of £1 a day, which seems pretty reasonable to me. Bear in mind that the data is pre-processed before it gets to your phone which cuts down a lot on the file sizes. If I'm away from my PC I regularly use the web access to access Gmail, the HTML version of which it copes with admirably (I actually use this in preference to the dedicated mobile Gmail site). The 6131 will run any Java phone apps and even .swf (Flash) files, though I haven't tried any yet.
The on-board music player is simple but sounds good. I purchased a 1GB MicroSD card (those things are tiny!) specifically to hold music. The player will only display a list of every track that is on the card - there is no organisation by playlist or even directory. If you have a lot of tracks on there it can be a pain to scroll through this list to find what you want. My biggest gripe is the proprietary headphone connection. Why couldn't they just stick a 3.5mm socket on there?! The supplied phones are actually very good quality and deliver deep bass and a sparkly top-end, but that connection means you're tied into using them, and limits you if you wanted to plug your phone into a car stereo or whatever. You can get an adaptor gizmo, but it's one more thing to carry around. The phones incorporate a necklace-type loop that works well in supporting the in-ears and helping prevent them drop out, but you just have to look at the thing and it's in a tangled mess. Bank on a few minutes untangling time every time you take them out your pocket. There is an in-line switch for volume up/down and a single button for going to the next track (or radio station in FM radio mode). I have found that if you're wearing this under a heavy jacket it is easy for the button to be pressed accidentally. The radio is very good and has user-definable presets for your favourite stations.
My final 'extra' purchase was a CA-53 data cable for uploading files from my PC. It uses the same connector as the headphones which seems to be very dodgy. I have had numerous problems with 'USB device not recognized' messages when using the freely downloadable Nokia PC Suite, and these seem to be due to bad connections between the cable and the phone. File transfers aren't very quick - about the same speed as with my USB1-equipped Rio Sport MP3 player. You can also stick the microSD card in an adaptor and use a PC card reader which may be quicker, but bear in mind this entails removing the phone back-cover to get the card out.
So, overall I like this phone. It gives me music and internet on the go in addition to the usual phone functions. There are a few more features like video camera / player, games etc. that I rarely use. In my opinion it's much superior to the Motorola Razr V3 which was also on my consider list early on.
I'll give it 9 out of ten - a point lost for the basic music player (maybe I can get a better Java-based one? - might look into that) and the proprietary headphones.

Cheetah Master Series 5V mod wheel problem

Jez — 2006-10-18T13:04:37+00:00

The latest in my series of things I have fixed that I couldn't find anywhere else on the 'net.
I've recently been using East West's Symphonic Choirs with my old Cheetah midi controller keyboard and Cubase SL3. It sounds fantastic, but I had problems with the cross-fading functionality that is controlled using the mod-wheel. Basically whenever I was moving the wheel I was getting break-up of the samples, some might call it 'zipper'-type noise. It was enough to make the mod-wheel unuseable.
The fix: It turns out the mod-wheel on the Cheetah (CC#1) is actually outputting a value of zero between every updated value. All you need to do is in Cubase set-up a midi input transformer which filters out any event which is CC#1 and of value 0. Works a treat - crossfades are now smooth and lovely.
That input transformer is also handy for my Casio Privia piano (excellent but cheap weighted keyboard by the way) which only outputs midi velocity up to a maximum of 100 instead of 127. Set up a transform to multiply the input velocity by 1.27 and Bob's your uncle.

Firefox not caching?

Jez — 2006-09-19T17:26:45+00:00

Recently my Firefox browser stopped caching. I'm not sure exactly when, but it was around the time of my ADSL upgrade, so at first I thought my connection was just a bit screwy. It soon became evident that this wasn't the problem though. The symptoms were sloooow loading of pages, most evident on things like forums where lots of little identical icons were loaded incredibly tediously, one after the other. The back button would take an age too.
I discovered the fix yesterday. I then found that my mate Tommy had the exact same problem, so I thought it would be useful to publish the fix:
Type about:config into the address bar. You'll get a list of settings, with the ones that have been changed from default values highlighted in bold. I found two entries relating to caching that were set to false - browser.cache.disk.enable and browser.cache.memory.enable. Right-click the entry and select 'reset'.
That's it - full speed should be restored.
I've no idea how this happened in the first place. It may have been induced by a 1.5.x upgrade. Who knows...

Schneider widescreen fix

Jez — 2006-07-28T13:39:26+00:00

For anyone with a widescreen Schneider television, as sold in Asda a few years ago. Do you have problems with aspect-ratio switching? I used to have to manually switch through the various widescreen options every time I switched on - what a pain. Here's the fix - on the SCART plug that goes into the TV, locate pin 8 (often indicated on the connector or else look it up here) and carefully apply a sliver of sellotape over it to insulate the contact. Plug it back into the TV. Now every time you switch on you should get widescreen-mode - no vertical stretching. You may still be able to show 4:3 images by switching at your set-top box end, as I do with my cheapie (but very good) Pacific Freeview decoder.

Freeview Channel List

Jez — 2006-03-02T22:56:03+00:00

A handy guide to all the Freeview channels, especially for those with older boxes which take 20 seconds to change channel...
Last updated 2nd March 2006. Channels listed are for England only - regional variations may apply.

1 BBC ONE
2 BBC TWO
3 ITV1
4 Channel 4
5 five
6 ITV2
7 BBC THREE
8 Teletext
9 BBC FOUR
10 ITV3
11 Sky 3
12 UKTV History
13 More4
14 E4
15 abc1
16 QVC
17 UKTV Gold*
18 The Hits
19 UKTV Bright Ideas
20 Ftn
21 TMF
22 Ideal World
23 bid tv
24 price-drop tv
25 TCM*
26 UKTV Style*
27 Discovery*
28 Discovery Real Time*
29 UKTV Food*
30 ITV4
31 More4+1
32 E4+1
33 British Eurosport*
34 Setanta Sports*
35 Men and Motors
37 Quiz Call
70 CBBC Channel
71 CBeebies
32 Cartoon Network*
33 Boomerang*
74 Toonami*
75 CITV
80 BBC News 24
82 Sky News
83 Sky Sports News
44 Bloomberg*
85 BBC Parliament
87 Community Channel
88 Teachers' TV
97 TelevisionX
98 Red Hot
100 Teletext
101 Teletext Holidays
102 Teletext Cars
104 Teletext on 4
105 BBCi
106 YooPlay Games
300 4TVinteractive
301 BBCi stream
302 BBCi stream
303 BBCi services
700 BBC Radio 1
701 BBC 1Xtra
702 BBC Radio 2
703 BBC Radio 3
704 BBC Radio 4
705 BBC Radio 5 Live
706 BBC 5 Live Sports Extra
707 BBC 6 Music
708 BBC7
709 BBC Asian Network
710 BBC World Service
711 The Hits Radio
712 Smash Hits!
713 Kiss
714 Heat
715 Magic
716 Q
717 oneword
718 Smooth FM
721 Mojo
722 Kerrang!
723 talkSPORT
724 3C Continuous Cool Country
725 Premier Christian Radio

*not free to air

Doing it right

Jez — 2005-06-11T12:15:05+00:00

Style over content / useability. I hate it! When I'm surfing I want to find the information I need with the minumum of fuss and as quickly as possible. Remember Accessible Odeon? The Odeon is a particularly pitiful attempt at a web site - it won't even open in anything but Explorer!
Anyway, Sound Control isn't quite as bad as that, but it's still a site I do not get along with. If you're looking for a product you have to wade through pages of image-heavy product lists, in no particular sort-order. The code behind it is truly a mess too. Since I quite like to see what deals are on there, I decided to do something about it - introducing Quicksound.
Frequently-updated data, quick to use and W3C compliant. The Sound Control affiliate scheme means I might make a quid or two from it too, which would be most welcome. Let me know what you think.

Video calls for Skype

Jez — 2005-06-01T19:23:15+00:00

The Register tells us of a free plug-in which enables video conferencing within Skype, the rather good free VoIP application. Spontania (not Sponania) is available from www.video4skype.com.
The software is actually an ActiveX control and only a beta version. It also requires DirectX 8.1. There isn't any information on the site about whether the software will expire, or for that matter any other vaguely useful information. I haven't been pursuaded to let it loose on my PC.

Trace Elliot Return

Jez — 2005-05-15T14:29:23+00:00

Trace Elliot, the famous, quality bass amplification company, is back in business. It seems that Peavey have bought up the rights to distribute in the USA, while Trace Elliot UK is re-instated to handle the home market and elsewhere. Production will remain UK-based too.
I have a lot of fondness for Trace equipment. I have a classic MkV AH250 amp head which is still going strong after many years. It is every bit as loud as my 'other' rig's 600 watt power amp; I'm sure watts were bigger back then! My 4x10 cab is still rearranging the front row's internal organs on occasion, but I'm afraid the weight of the brute means it doesn't get a run out so often these days.
And of course no other amp had the waay cool UV light. Welcome back Trace Elliot.

Back to Breckenridge

Jez — 2005-05-14T14:03:39+00:00

I'm heading back to Breckenridge, Colorado at the end of June for a couple of weeks' mountain biking with Rocky Mountain Adventures. I spent the summer of 2003 guiding for them and I have some fantastic memories of that time. I'm not quite sure how much guiding I'll be doing, but I'm hoping to sample a day or two of the new Grand Tour of the Rockies itinerary. By all accounts it is superb. I'm hoping to pick up a new Giant Reign 2 while I'm there too. :)