What I'm expecting from Surface Pro 2

Since the release of Microsoft Surface (Pro), I've been waiting for the release of Surface 2 mainly because I felt that there were a number of a features and specifications that I felt that Surface Pro really should have had at the introduction. However, since the first Surface didn't include these features I had abstained from purchasing it - so here is the list of things that I'm hoping for in the Surface Pro 2 due to be announced on the 23rd of September.  CPU One of the fundamental reasons that I had abstained from purchasing the...

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Using old Smartphones as a Media Centres

Smartphones these days are getting more and more powerful. So what happens to your smartphone when you finish your contract and get a brand new smartphone ? Well one option that I thought was to turn it into a media centre client for my XBMC HTPC. I primarily wanted to have the ability to watch the movies, view youtube clips, catch up tv etc... via my bedroom tv. After looking at all my options, I was going to have to spend at least $100 to get...

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Merging AVI together

I sometimes find in my video collection of multiple AVI files, in windows I had to use complex software to try and get the videos into a single file. However, in linux there's a terminal friendly method. Download and install transcode package using sudo apt-get install transcode The transcode package contains a utility called avimerge, use this to merge the two files together: avimerge -o outputfilename.avi -i firstFile.avi secondFile.avi thirdFile.avi  Make sure you check the output file to make sure that it has joined everything...

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Reset MySQL root password Ubuntu/Debian / Linux mint

I wanted to get my portfolio up and running and saw this great plugin for Wordpress which I thought was kook to showcase tool. The only problem was that it needed Wordpress to operate, and I thought sure not a problem and used apt-get install to download install it on my Mint. After installing the wrong version I struggled installing Wordpress, only to realize that I had to pull down the tar.gz and upgrade Wordpress manually. Well here is where all the trouble started, for some reason I had forgotten my MySQL root password and I had forgotten...

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Samsung Galaxy SIV (S4)

It's not too long now before the Samsung Galaxy S4 is announced with all the new features and bells and whistles. I unfortunately didn't take up the opportunity of getting the S3, why? because was I was tossing and turning over whether to switch over the Windows Phone and to give that a go. Plus, I wasn't a fan of the Touchwiz interface from Samsung, I felt it was abit bloated and the stock android was pretty snappy and looked great. So to kill the time I had purchased the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, loaded with Android 4 - this has to be one of the...

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XBMC: Remove Music from Library

I was playing around with my XBMC home theatre setup and decided to add in some music and pictures to the library. The wanted to first do a trial with a small amount and then see how it works before trying to load the full library. The CD that I loaded failed miserably, when I had ripped the CD I forgot to include the ID3 tag information using the CD database. That was a huge fail, and I don't know to what extent this has affected my mp3s. So after the first attempt, I tried to look for an option to remove the files from the library. My first...

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Antiguan Government to offer Warez to the World

In a world of ridikulouse announcements, I came across the following article at a tech site. Essentially it states that due to failing Gambling economy in Antigua caused by the United States of America, the Antiguan government is looking to be reimbursed by offering copyright materials online - I'm assuming that this is similar to how warez sites operate. This has all started when the multi-billion gambling industry was stopped by the United States...

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Unlocked Phones with a Plan - A transparent business model

As you may already be aware, the 26th of January 2012 is the day that ends the "free carrier unlocks" in the USA. So from here on, you could serve time if you attempt to unlock your phone yourself. This marks the end of the 90 day period provided by the Library of Congress, who oversees matters related Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Personally, whenever I purchase a phone I ensure that the phone is unlocked from the carrier, and if it is locked to a carrier I request that for the phone to be unlocked. In my case, I generally purchase...

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Keen to build my new computer

Now that I have my monitors sorted out, I'm really keen to get my new computer built. The last time I had upgraded my computer was in 2006, and I've pretty much used the same specs (apart from adding 16 gigs of additional ram and the usual harddrive upgrade), and the PSU upgrade. However, it just shows that unless there's a dying need to a dual core CPU with adequate amount of ram can still hold it's own after 6 years. In the early 2000, computers...

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LG IPS277L : Fantastic Display with limited Inclusions

I was recently working on a number of images and noticed that the color reproduction on my existing 21" Dell monitor, that was purchased over 6 years ago, had started to deteriorate. After looking through a number of monitors I decided to go for a set of 27" monitors, to keep in line with my dual 21" monitor setup. From the wide array of the available monitors, the non-korean based monitors, I started paying a close attention to the LG IPS277L...

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