The Apple TV is a so so kind of device. I bought one cheap from the refurb Apple store at a discount. As with most Apple devices it’s locked down and a bit crippled.

However with a bit of hacking it opens up and becomes quite a useful set top device.

The guys at appletvhacks.net have the details plus a Google search brings up lots more useful stuff.

My main motivation for hacking was to be able to dispense with iTunes for adding content; and sure enough the hacked device allows the use of an external drive connected by USB, so it’s easy to add content: put it on the external drive and hook it up then reboot the Apple TV. I can also FTP into the device as well over my network.

NitoTV, Boxee and XBMC are all installed. I was tempted to add Adobe Flash as well but so far have resisted as it may make the Apple TV run hot and probably crash.

I just need to get a keyboard and mouse working and I am totally fixed!

So there’s some footie happening in South Africa at the moment. I am so out of touch with sport that I only realised when all the England flags appeared on the cars.

I don’t get Football, I have no interest in any of this. Which reminds me of a conversation I had with a work colleague in 2002. England were doing quite well in the competition. My colleague was a big football fan. A Crystal Palace supporter whom we all called ‘Palace’ as a nickname.

Palace: “Dave, if England was in the final of the World Cup, would you watch?”
Dave: “No!”
Palace: “What! But it’s ENGAND, in the FINAL of the World Cup!”
Dave: “22 blokes kicking a ball about, I’d be bored stupid within 10 seconds. However it would be a brilliant time to go to the supermarket for shopping.”
Palace: “WTF! You’re weird.”

So there you have it, I’ll be in ASDA if you need me durning the England games.

As previously reported I really like my MiFi from ’3′. However the device is crippled by firmware locked down by ’3′.

But I tracked down some new firmware and thus have unlocked the device. I can now use any SIM, and better still I have a web interface to the device. I have also set it up so that it switches on, turns on the WiFi, connects to the 3G network at the push of a single button. Neat eh?

Quite why ’3′ does not do this as standard is a bit of a mystery.

I would offer instructions on how to do this but when I let my friend Ashley try it on his device he managed to brick it so I am a little reluctant to make the software public.

My Mighty Mouse has finally bitten the dust and died. It clicks no more. I bought it with my Apple Macbook Pro so it is covered by the Apple Care warranty.

I called Apple to check out the options for a warranty claim and I spoke to Adam, a very nice man with a British accent, who was able to assist me.

A new Mighty Mouse arrived by courier the following day, and I have despatched the faulty rodent back in the supplied packaging. All very easy.

So Apple’s service and support is very similar to all the products.
“It just works”

Those nice folk at the Mac Observers Mac Geek Gab have linked to my blog post about changing the keymap on a Mac.

I took a screen grab of the hit counter earlier today, and I’ll check it out again in a day or so.

It could just be that instead of talking to myself on here I might get some actual followers.

WooHoo!

(Don’t get caught!)

So we have a new Government, may I wish David and Nick well, I hope it all works out for them and us, the people of the UK.

Never mind the new Government, what interests me now are future events. Bye-elections and the next general election, scheduled for May 2015.

Will the two coalition parties field separate or single candidates in the bye-elections?
Will they combine for the next general election. If they do it may keep Labour out of office for a very long time.

Interesting time are ahead.

My dislike of Flash is well known, and I am not alone, none other than Apple CEO Steve Jobs dislikes it too. You can read Steve’s open letter all about Flash here.

I hate Flash so much I have it blocked on my MacBook Pro. I would uninstall it but for the fact the internet would be all but useless without it.

Meanwhile the war of words hots up between Apple and Adobe.

So let me offer my opinion as a user of a Mac.

Flash sucks!

Flash makes my Mac crash.
Flash makes my CPU usage go through the roof, it runs the CPU hot and uses more power and increases the noise level as the fans kick in.

The problem is not so much Adobe’s fault for inventing Flash but more the web developers for using it all over the internet in inappropriate places where there are better alternatives to achieve the same results but mostly because they develop for Internet Explorer and IE is fatally flawed as a browser.

Flash is NOT for getting around the poor browser implementation of fonts and colours and all the clever stuff.

Remove Flash from all those silly locations. Once everyone has dumped IE and gone to Firefox, Opera, Safari or Camino Microsoft would have to get it’s act together and fix IE.

But don’t hold your breath, Flash, IE and all the problems will be around for a long time yet.

/rant

May 6 – we all get to go to the polls and vote for the next government of the UK. Usually I don’t bother; I really am not that bothered who runs the country, they are all useless.

However, despite having zero interest in the election and politics I love the election night TV. I’ll be up all night and fascinated by the election results.

Remember Chris Pattern, Shirley Williams or Michael Portillo? They all lost their seats at a general election.
David Owen’s SDP getting less votes than the Monster Raving Looney party!
John Major snatching back the keys to number 10 from Neil Kinnock when Labour looked sure to win?

I thought not; but I do and I am sure this election will bring many more amazing moments as the results are declared.

I can’t wait.

Better yet if we get a hung parliament we may get to do it all again a few months later.

Two election nights in the same year. Geek heaven!

Interesting article on the BBC news website about the change to Digital Radio, or DAB.

The change over to digital TV is well under way, and Wales is now 100% digital, there’s lovely now see. Less than two years to go before analogue TV is obsolete everywhere. The advantage TV has over radio is that a TV can be used with a set top box (which are almost always under the TV, set bottom box anyone?). A radio, however, is not convertible. Once the analogue service is turned off those radios are pretty much useless. In the home there are many ways of getting ‘radio’ and many people use their digital TV but once you are out and about portable or in a car it’s different. The biggest problem is car audio, millions of cars are going to need new radios. (Might be a good time to get into the ICE business?)

I was curious to see if retailers were still selling analogue radios, so I took a look in Currys and Comet.

99% of the radio equipment was DAB in both stores, but there were a few analogue sets on sale. I think those sets should have big red stickers on them:

THIS DEVICE WILL BE OBSOLETE IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

Meanwhile I am considering getting an Apple TV. Streaming audio off the web, all my music and video on my home entertainment system.

Way to go people, be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Digitise now.

I had an interesting job recently. A client wanted their Asus netbook upgraded with a bigger SSD. The existing SSD was 8Gb and he wanted a 64Gb installed and all the data cloned across.

The netbook runs Ubuntu Linux, the dedicated netbook variety. My normal method of drive cloning is to connect both source and target drives up to my MacBook Pro via two USB to SATA adaptors and run the Drive Utility on the Mac. Apart from the Linux disk format and the fact that these dinky SSDs did not fit any of my adaptors it looked easy. NOT!

The netbook does not have an optical drive so I was beginning to think the job was a non-starter. However:

You can boot a netbook from an external CD drive connected via USB, so I used my Freecom external CD/DVD drive.

Clonezilla is an open source live CD that boots the netbook into Linux with dedicated cloning software, once you have your head around the menu system it works well.

I had to do a double clone, the target drive to a SATA external drive on USB, as an image, then fit the new drive and restore the image. Easy!

I was very impressed with the Asus, it has all the features of a larger machine. While the client was with me I got his Skype account working with video, the Asus has a built in web cam and microphone.

If anyone has a use for a mini SSD of 8GB I know where one is up for sale.