“Pegasus” – 15/Jan/08
I crashed poor Lance in a nasty high speed collision. I was driving down a duel-carriageway, came round the corner and saw the road was blocked with cars from a previous accident, couldn’t stop in time, went into a skid, spun 180 and crashed going backwards into a stationary van. There were 8 cars involved […]
Sony Vaio Laptop – 15/Jan/08
I feel sad that I’ve finally replaced my old PC which my dad gave me as a 21st birthday present. It was just too sluggish, even for browsing the web. I bought a widescreen Sony Vaio. It’s interesting to compare the specs because it shows how much technology has advanced in the last 7 years: […]
Freedom Universal Keyboard – Dec/2007 (Christmas present from Grandpa)
One of the reasons for getting my Ameo instead of a normal mobile phone was so I could write my journal whilst on the coach to work. But the keyboard that comes with it turned out to be inadequate. So I got a replacement: The HTC website for the Ameo has a link to a […]
Netgear Aerial extension (Dec/2007)
We bought a Netgear aerial extension on Ebay because upstairs doesn’t get a reliable signal. But… It looks ridiculous: Original Aerial Custom Aerial I measured the wireless signal strength on our two Squeezebox’s, one is in the room next to the router, the other is upstairs: Original Aerial Custom Aerial Downstairs signal strength: 81%-83% […]
Xbox 360 – Oct/2007 (Christmas present from Kix)
Our original Xbox (4 ½ years old now) has become too flaky, games crash and DVDs skip. We needed a DVD player and it’d be a shame to lose all our games so buying a new XBox makes sense. Halo 3 took any doubt out of the decision. I do feel suckered into the slick […]
Two New Bikes – 3/June/2007
Dahon D7 Folding bike My company started a government sponsored scheme called “bike to work” which gives a significant discount on bicycles as long as they are used for getting to work. I chose an entry level folding bike and also a large frame mountain-bike. I have been thinking about how to streamline my commute […]
T-Mobile Ameo – 20/May/2007
Until now, I have never bought a mobile phone because my Criteria for buying one was pretty damn strict. But, finally (after waiting pretty much 5 years) one that meets most of my requirements was on sale and as soon as I had a chance to test it out for real I bagged it (there […]
Pure Legato II – 7/May/2007
Our bedroom needed a Hi-Fi with a nice DAB radio with sleep and alarm functions. This also takes a memory card so it can play mp3’s and record radio. We chose this model because we thought it’d match our Squeezebox nicely.
Nintendo Wii – 18/March/2007 (Birthday present from Kix&Edd)
The Wii is physically very small and quiet and understated which demonstrates it’s philosophy – It isn’t trying to do everything, it is simply trying to be be playful. The controller is natural to use but very clever. It can detect where your pointing it, whether your tilting it and it’s real forte, it can […]
Parsley (22/Feb/07)
Chloe’s company, Panasonic gave away their old PC’s and she managed to bag this machine: CPU: Pentium 4 2Gz RAM: 768MB DDR SDRAM. Inside it is very organised but not very expandable, there isn’t room for more than one harddisk and I could only just fit our TV card into a pci slot riser card. […]
JellyPhish Mood lamp – 25th December 2006 (Christmas present from Grandpa)
The Jellyphish is a tabletop lamp that can be “tuned” to any colour or can gradually scroll though the colour spectrum, blending seamlessly from one to the next. The technology in this lamp has only just hit the market so it’s the first time I’ve seen something like it. It must contain a million LEDs […]
26 inch LCD – 11th Dec 2006 (Panasonic staff shop, £395)
For Christmas Kix and I bought each other half a 26 inch Panasonic Viera LCD TV (TX-26LXD6A). It’s a stylish HD Ready TV with integrated freeview and speakers – perfect for the bedroom. We plugged it into our freshly installed upstairs coaxial socket and switched it on to find that it automatically tuned and ordered […]
Squeezebox3 – 22th Aug 2006 (Ebuyer purchase, £195)
We bought the updated model because we thought Fred would enjoy our current squeezebox as a house-warning present. The new model is almost exactly the same with a few improvements: It can now access internet radio without having your PC on. (Connects to “SqueezeNetwork”). It can now act as a network bridge It now has […]
Netgear DG834G Modem & Wireless Router – 17th August 2006 (Ebay purchase, £36)
Our old ADSL modem was getting a bit unreliable and kept rebooting randomly. It was also messy having a separate wireless router when all-in-one boxes are not expensive anymore. The DG834G is nice and small with a easy web-based admin interface. I particularly like the simple firewall setup. The wireless range is disappointing though (it […]
300GB NAS Hard Drive – 8th July 2006 (Ebay purchase, £120)
Backups are important, my files are worth a lot of money to me so we decided to invest in a piece of hardware to help with backing up our data. Rather than just getting an external hard disk we wanted a networked hard disk (NAS) so Kix and me could share it independent of which […]
