Gkaruk's Technological Blog

Friday, 29.09.06

Vista RC1 Hardware Compatibility

Whilst playing with the windows operating system, Vista coming in 2007 and decided to check in my Media Center PC could handle me dual booting with Vista.

I first needed to confirm my latest hardware really would work under Vista and the drivers which it comes with. This proved to be alot easier than I thought due to WIKI, the online encyclopaedia has a URL with just this information.

The link to the Vista RC1 Hardware Compatibility List is here.

This has saved me alot of time and now I just monitor the manufacturer sites for the hardware in my MCE which is not on the list, like my new Hauppauge Nova-T-500-MCE dual Freeview Tuner card (argh!).

Gkaruk -

10:06:05 - Technology - pencil

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Friday, 18.08.06

My Creative Zen Vision:M Search & Buy

After around 18 months of holding off buying an MP3 player I decided it time to invest in one. Like most people today I looked at the iPod but have heard from friends and colleagues ownership time of various problems with them. I particulary didnt like the restrictions Apple impose on the owner, such as iTunes.

I started looking at other options and found an excellent site called AnyThingButIPod.com which covers news and reviews on most other MP3 players on the market. I was initially looking for a memory based player for mountain biking, which I narrowed down to either a Sandisk Sensa E270, Samsung YP-Z5 or Creative Zen V Plus. This is where I began reading a number of reviews for common down falls and issues in the players which lead me to another great site, dapreview.net. After reading these reviews and checking of pricing I became to realise it could be worth extending my search to hard drive based players. Based on the price of £183 from Comet.co.uk and the amount of features I bought a Creative Zen Vision:M player which I am very happy with.

Gkaruk -

13:16:06 - Technology - pencil

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Thursday, 01.12.05

Samsung Shows Bendy Screen

Samsung recently showed the largest flexible screen to date. The screen used two films of non-brital plastic to sandwich the liquid crystal between. This sounds similar to the screens by Sharp due out in 2007.

check the article here at PC Pro.

Gkaruk -

09:26:34 - Technology - pencil

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Friday, 01.07.05

Human Brain Simulator Cometh

I found an interesting article on the BBC.co.uk website yesterday, talking about the use of IBM new supercomputer to created a 3D simulation of the brains neocortex.

How complex is this to accomplish, well here a quote from Henry Markram, the EPFL professor leading the project:

"Modelling the brain at the cellular level is a massive undertaking because of the hundreds of thousands of parameters that need to be taken into account,"

Head to the BBC site for the full article.

Gkaruk -

09:53:40 - Technology - pencil

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Thursday, 12.05.05

Robots Can Now Self-Replicate

We have all seen it happen in such programs as Stargate with the Replicators and beings such as the Borg in Star Trek:TNG, but now its real.

The United States researchers have made a small robot which can self-replicate based using spare parts. These robots however, are not what most of us would class as a robot, they are made from small cubes which work together, self repair, build and replicate using more cubes.

These cubes come with a piece of small computer code carrying a blueprint for the layout of the robot, electrical contacts to let it communicate with its neighbours, and magnets to let them stick together.

For the complete story on this amazing recent successful experiement head over the the BBC Technology article.

Gkaruk -

09:57:20 - Technology - pencil

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