Technology, gadget and radio control related opinions, reviews, tips and tricks.
Turtle Beach Ear Force X41
Surround sound is good. I like my surround sound system. My neighbours, on the other hand, aren’t so fond of it! So, to be neighbourly, I’ve been on the lookout for a decent set of wireless surround sound headphones, and at long last I think I’ve found the ideal solution.
Posted in Gadgets, Technology.
– September 27, 2009
Professor Layton and Pandora's Box
Today’s a great day for Nintendo DS owners – a new Professor Layton game is out! Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box
The games basically involve you solving lots of puzzles whilst investigating a mystery. The actual story itself is pretty much irrelevant, and only serves to move you from puzzle to puzzle, but it’s a nice change to all the frantic action games that seem to make up most of the charts these days! In addition to the puzzles, there are also places to explore and items to collect along the way. The game is presented in a hand-drawn cartoon style, with voice actors playing the various characters, and the occasional animation clip for key scenes.
The puzzles range from the amazingly easy to the mildly difficult, and if you do get stuck there are hints to nudge you in the right direction. As with many Nintendo games, it’s clearly aimed at entertaining all ages. Younger players will still be able to solve many of the puzzles on their own, with or without hints, and older players will get just as much satisfaction from getting them right first time, or without any assistance at all. We had great fun playing three or four puzzles a night for a few weeks, although some of the trickier puzzles can end up in tussles over control of the stylus for “just one more go, I think I’ve got it this time – oh, no, I haven’t, just one more go”…
Amazon currently have the best prices – the first game (Professor Layton and The Curious Village) is around £18, and the new one (Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box) is around £28 – everyone else seems to be doing it for £30+ as of 25 Sept 09 – even Play, which was a surprise.
I thoroughly recommend both these games! Buy them! NOW!
Posted in Games.
– September 25, 2009
There’s been a steady increase in interest around Ebook readers in the UK recently, and since I’ve switched back to reading instead of watching video on the tube to and from work (no, really, I must be growing up or something), I decided it was time to have a proper look and see what’s what.
Posted in Gadgets, Technology.
– September 23, 2009
One problem with having a love of gadgets is that you’re always in need of batteries. I’ve been “upgrading” my stock of rechargeables with better ones from Aldi (high capacity, low price), but all my chargers were old, slow, and designed for lower capacity batteries. So the hunt began for the perfect new charger – and I found it! Continued…
Posted in Gadgets.
– August 3, 2009
I have been trying to figure out how I can stop my iPhone from launching iPhoto every time I connect it. I love that it comes up when I slip in a memory card from my camera, but the extra time it adds on to an iPhone sync bugs me. The only solution I could find previously involved Applescript, but annoyingly it would only work with USB connected cameras – not memory cards in the MacBook Pro’s ExpressCard slot.
Finally, though, there is an answer. Get it here: http://www.flexibits.com/
Cameras, a preferences add-in, does exactly what I, and many, many other Mac users, have wanted. You connect a device (such as a camera, card or iPhone) and it will ask you what you would like it to do with that device in the future. If you want it to do nothing when you plug in your iPhone, but load an app (such as iPhoto or Aperture) or perform an action when you connect another device, then it will handle it for you.The best bit is it will even recognise the ExpressCard34 slot, so if you’re like me and have an SD card reader in there, it’ll work just fine. It can’t tell the difference between different cards (which could be useful if you use SD cards in your camera but MS Duo in your camcorder) but quite frankly I don’t care!
Posted in Apple, Photography.
– July 8, 2009
The Traxxas E-Revo is a pretty flexible truck when it comes to power sources. Out of the box, it can use 7.2v or 8.4v NiMh packs, but I’m fast becoming a LiPo convert, so I wanted to use LiPo with my E-Revo. Here’s how I did it.
Posted in Traxxas E-Revo monster truck (Project Saber).
– July 4, 2009
Previously, I’ve blogged about the issues I’ve had getting 4Gb of RAM to work successfully in my unibody 15″ MacBook Pro. For a while, I ran with 3Gb using an original 1Gb and one of my new 2Gb sticks, but it wasn’t ideal for running Windows under VMWare at the same time as other stuff. In the end, I’ve given in and just bought the 4Gb RAM upgrade from Apple – not cheap, not ideal, but at least now it’s – so far – working. I definitely think that Apple should have taken more ownership of this problem, as it’s been reported and discussed at some length on their support boards, though.
Posted in Apple.
– June 26, 2009
As blogged earlier, I’ve recently decided to give radio-controlled touring cars a try. I’m starting out with the Xray T2R Pro 1/10 Touring Car. I’m classing this as “a beginner’s experience” as I’ve never built one of these before – I’ve built a rock crawler recently, and a Tamiya kit many years ago, but this is in an altogether different league.
In the first of a short series of posts talking about how I built the kit, I’ll go over the stuff you need to buy to be able to build the kit. Continued…
Posted in XRay T2R Pro touring car (Project Nebula).
– June 15, 2009
As expected, Apple recently announced the next iPhone – the unexcitingly-named “iPhone 3GS”, the “S” apparently meaning “Speed”. Of course, the question on everyone’s mind now is… is it worth getting?
In short, I’m going to go with “no” if you already have the 3G, and “yes” if you still have the first iPhone, or indeed don’t have one at all. Read on to find out why… Continued…
Posted in Apple.
– June 15, 2009
Spektrum DX3S transmitter
After unpacking, charging up the batteries and checking everything worked, the first thing I wanted to do with my new E-Revo was replace the radio gear. Don’t get me wrong – the transmitter and receiver that come with the model are fine, and I’ve not read any complaints about them, but since I bought a Spektrum DX3S for my touring car, I’d much rather use that.
The main benefit of using the DX3S is that it’s a 2.4GHz system – so it should have a greater range, and no risk of interference from other transmitters. There are other benefits too – it only needs 4 batteries, not 8, and since has a 10-model memory, I can set it up to work with the E-Revo and the T2R Pro straight away using the two receivers it came with, and by picking up another receiver I can control the AX10 with it as well. I might even use it for the boat – one transmitter for all my non-flying models…
Anyway, the point of this post is to describe how I got everything set up to use the DX3S with the Traxxas E-Revo, so let’s crack on.
Posted in Traxxas E-Revo monster truck (Project Saber).
– June 11, 2009
