I last built a PC in late 2011. 10 years on, I’ve done it again! I wanted to document some of the advances. In both cases, I’ve gone for reasonably top-of-the-range bits and pieces. The idea is that these will last for a long time – like the last one. This new one cost about […]  Read more »

Let’s start this piece by making it absolutely clear that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m not a cryptographer, a banker, or computer hardware expert. A couple of things have recently piqued my interest in BitCoin: the financial impact following the UK referendum on EU membership, and a Product Tank talk I attended […]  Read more »

When Apple’s iPad was first launched I was openly skeptical about it. What was the point of this device? It wasn’t as mobile as my phone, or as powerful as my trusty laptop. A satirical video spoof of a man out jogging with an iPad strapped to his arm, and of course all the gaffes […]  Read more »

Update 26th April 2011 – 21:00 GMT Sony have released more details on their blog – personal data has indeed been compromised. The important bit: Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state/province, zip or […]  Read more »

Yesterday I took (and passed) the Zend  PHP 5.3 Certified Engineer exam – more information here from Zend and on Wikipedia. Having worked with PHP for about 11 years I had first imagined that this qualification wouldn’t be particularly stressful – that didn’t transpire to be the case! It turned out that I covered about 60% of […]  Read more »

I’ve got a 40GB chunky PS3, and I’ve recently bought GT5 (Gran Turismo 5). It’s a good game, but it spends a lot of time ‘thinking’, especially when loading circuits. To improve matters it has an option to store a lot of this information on the PS3’s HDD, but it apparently needs around 15GB, and […]  Read more »

There has been a fair bit of “concern” in the media now that Facebook have launched their new Places feature in the UK. Some of these concerns relate to privacy, some escalate that to safety. “Facebook has gone too far” they cry, “now everyone knows where you are”. Hmm. I would suggest that Places hasn’t […]  Read more »

It has been an extremely interesting week for not only the British music industry, but also for the internet and social media. The battle for the UK Christmas number one single has been fought on many topics. I won’t hide my point of view here: I thought the X-Factor’s offering was painful at best, and […]  Read more »

England’s soccer fan-base is still rocking from the news that the next competitive match, this Saturday, will not be available to view on the television. Due to the collapse of Setanta, the rights for the match against the Ukraine have been snapped up by a firm called Perform, who will be streaming their live coverage […]  Read more »

We’ve got a 40″ LCD TV made by Humax. We paid about £500 for it in early 2007, and up until recently I’ve been really very pleased with it. My mind has been changed because the remote control was becoming less and less responsive, and now it does nothing at all. I had dismissed issues […]  Read more »