Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

One thing you don’t often think of for home use is a rackmount computer system.

However, that’s really what you should be looking at if you’re into something like serious gaming. Usually for gaming you’ll be sold the top end home computers but you can get a lot more for the money if you look at rackmount systems which basically start where the high end home PCs leave off so you’ve a lot more scope for heavy duty computing power.

Your only additional upfront cost is the rack itself but that’s something that doesn’t need to replace when you’re upgrading the components of your system.

One of the big hassles with the ipod touch is that it’s very much a closed system. But it doesn’t need to be. So for those who’d like to run it without needing to bother with iTunes, here’s how…

1.  Enable USB tethering:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:pmcenery/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ipheth-utils

2. Enable mobile device support:

Go to System>Administration>Software Sources, click on Add and select

ppa:pmcenery/ppa

Click on Reload then Close.

Go to System>Administration>Synaptic package manager, search for libimobiledevice0 then install it.

At this point you are able to drag and drop MP3 files onto your iPod.

3. Enable Rhythmbox sychronisation:

sudo apt-get install amarok

If this doesn’t work, then:

rm -r ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok
rm -r ~/.kde/share/config/amarok*

Which should have you all set for an open iPod.

Aside from technology men are pretty much useless in the shopping stakes but they’re at their lowest point when buying stuff for their significant other to wear.

To begin with it’s lingerie purchases that are almost always an unmitigated disaster. There’s just no way that they are going to get the sizing right as it’s far more complex than anything that they’d buy for themselves. Not only that, but, of course, they’re generally choosing something that is thoroughly impractical, aren’t they?

Even in other clothing though they’re none too good at selecting something that their wife or girlfriend would like to wear or would find all that practical. Even here the basic style choice that they’re generally aiming for is “sexy” whilst the wife/girlfriend is looking for things like “warm”, “comfortable” and “practical”.

To be fair the wife/girlfriend is just as bad at choosing a techy product for their man too 🙂

or, rather, the same perfume but at a lower price.

As always, the way to get this is via an online retailer like discountfragrance-online.co.uk who strip away all the expensive demonstrators and fancy chairs and provide you with the same perfume that you could buy in the fancy shops but at a considerably more sensible price.

Of course, in reality you don’t save that much money on such things but what you end up with is a much higher quality of perfume for your money. The only downside is that you can’t make it a last minute thing as you need to allow for a few days in the post.

If you’re a young driver then insurance companies are basically going to assume that you’re a bad driver simply because of the statistics.

However, clearly not all young drivers are bad drivers. But if you’re one of the good ones, your problem up to now has been proving it. That’s where technology has finally come in for young drivers car insurance in the form of what’s essentially a consumer version of the device installed in trucks to keep track of the driving habits of the professional drivers.

What this does is to record your driving so it’ll keep track of the length of your journies, your speed, how fast you accelerate and brake, etc. From this the insurance company doesn’t need to assume anything about your driving as they can see exactly how you drive which, hopefully, will lead to lower insurance rates for those young drivers who are good drivers.