Tech Things Archives - Page 3 of 4

23/06/2012

Technology Overload

WordPress has just hit version 3.4 it’s called Green. It is named after a jazz guitarist. The site does seem to load faster which is one of the many documented improvements.

I was hoping that this update would fix the issues that I am having with the WordPress iOS application. Still have memory problems when I upgrade. I resolve this by disabling plugins during the upgrade process. The positive side of this is that I am using less plugins.

Still really like WordPress but the little things often make the ride less pleasant.

21/03/201226/03/2012

More Windows 8

More windows 8 testing. I have used the new operating system for a few more hours. The system has not crashed and seems to run well., A cold start seems much slower than a similar start on Windows 7. There is the much publicised lack of the start button! This had me confused as I had set the machine as dual-boot on my laptop, I thought that I had lost the windows 7 install. Anyway a quick Google search and I found a way to create a desktop shortcut and a new tile on the start page.

I still haven’t been marvelled by the new system. I am using IE 10 for this post and that seems ok as well. At the moment I can’t really see a compelling reason to upgrade. However time will tell.

The system called for an optimization utility to run. Now the system is more responsive.

12/03/201212/03/2012

Win 8 Consumer Preview – first impressions

I couldn’t help myself when it came to the consumer preview of Win 8. I had decided to leave it alone and keep using Win 7 and wait. I am writing this on Win 8 CP (64 Bit) and using IE 10. I partitioned the hard drive on my laptop creating a 100GB drive and installed Win 8 there, all default settings. The installation was a breeze, the first windows install that I did was from a pile of floppy disks about 16 as I recall. This time it all done from a USB stick.

Now I have a dual booting system Win7 and 8 both 64bit versions. Win7 is the default system but its was enough to access Win8. There are already several how to guides on the net. I found the on Latopmag’s blog really helpful.

The operating system is harder to assess after only a few hours of use, no crashes. Office 2007 has installed happily, Google Chrome is humming along nicely. Haven’t found where I can set Google as the default search yet in IE10. I didn’t like the absence of a start/shutdown key, but those trusty people in the interwebs already have a work around for that and now I have a shortcut on the desktop and the start page.

This is a nice place to mention the Start page part of the new Metro interface. I am not really sure that I like it or dislike for that matter. It does like many things seem like a good idea but it is different. IT is not unlike the home page in an iPad or the launch pad on OSX Lion, but not exactly the same. I have started deleting tiles that I wouldn’t use. Office 2007 installed a range of tiles including a VBA certificate!

The gestures aren’t really that good as my laptop has a relatively small track pad. I do like pointing to the corners for stuff, top left to switch between apps and top left to access “charms”. The charms allow access to settings, search and start page quickly and easily.

The opinion so far. Vista was awful, Win7 was great, Win 8 not sure. So far I haven’t been overwhelmed, but not disappointed either, only time will tell.

09/04/201109/04/2011

Upgrading WordPress to Version 3.1.1.

I have for the first time since the introduction of the automatic upgrades to WordPress struck a problem I kept getting an error message “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted

Image via Wikipedia

(tried to allocate 3096504 bytes) in /home/stefanra/public_html/blog/wp-includes/class-http.php on line 1426″

First I thought that it was an issue of not having enough memory on my blog, upgraded and no difference same error.

I posted on the official WordPress forum and within a day a helpful past with this link

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/253495#post-1017842

Seems that the error is related to how much memory php assigns to WordPress, I deactivated a small herd of plugins (19 to be exact) and voila successful upgrade.

Thanks to forums !!!!

15/03/201115/03/2011

Internet Explorer version 9

Image via Wikipedia

Well here we go Internet Explorer 9. I must say it’s the prettiest version of this software i have used. It certainly noticeably quicker than the previous version and am almost reluctant to say this but a bit smoother than my current favourite browser chrome version 10. I’m not quite ready to abandon my favourite yet but I’m very happy so far with this new version of Internet Explorer having just installed the RTM version. I dabbled with the beta release and the release candidate version and had not experienced any problems with either.

So it looks good performs well I got the dashboard of my blog open hammering away with Dragon NaturallySpeaking all is good.

15/12/201026/02/2011

More testing of Word Recognition Software

It would almost seem that I’m having a bit of a feast of posting on the blog. It’s not that I’m trying to enter a novel writing competition but rather I am testing Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 11. This is my third post in two days. The two previous posts were both done using the admin pages of my WordPress blog but this one I’m writing within Word 2007 and publishing from within Word. I can add at this point that Dragon NaturallySpeaking correctly added WordPress in its camel case. In fact trying to use the word font made the font dialogue highlight that’s probably because I paused before using the word. But otherwise I must say that the trial is going quite well.

I can certainly pump out quite a few words very quickly using this software. It does seem strange sitting in the study by myself talking to the computer but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to type as fast as I’m writing this. There is always the danger when using this sort of software that you write as you speak. If you are not watching the screen and reading could go a long and get some very strange or misspelt words. And there’s absolutely nothing stopping you having run-on sentences.

Setting up the software didn’t take very long at all, a matter of about 20 min. The program seems to be able to localise to some of the more common versions of English including United Kingdom United States, Australia and New Zealand. I’m not sure whether it would cope will that Irish or Scottish accent but since I don’t have one of those I guess I will never find out. After each use the program takes some time to shut down and this might be to do with the program updating an individual’s profile. The program is certainly built around individual profiles so I imagine several users would be able to access the software on one computer.

Thinking about your writing certainly helps; I’m writing this as I go. This means that I have to halt think and then proceed. However I have now written about 400 words in the space of about 7 or 8 minutes. I think this would take me quite a great deal of time if I were actually typing. My typing is certainly beyond the hunt and peck method of using two fingers, but my typing is certainly does not have any sort of secretarial speed. I think it would be difficult using this software in an open office or even in a shared office. But working alone as I am now it seems to work quite well. There is some background noise I can hear but the microphone obviously isn’t picking this up so there is not any interference. I can report that Dragon NaturallySpeaking didn’t try to type the sad lamenting meow of our cat.

So here I am nearly up to 500 words the accuracy is quite good it does misunderstand some words but if I speak like a radio announcer and I mean a proper radio announcer like those found on public radio there is no problem. I haven’t mastered all the complex commands that come with this program it is possible to change words, delete things, highlight things and even control the computer with this program however my main reason for using it is to speed up my typing. Inevitably this may lead to more blog posts.

15/12/201026/02/2011

Pea Zip a freeware archiving program

I have been using WinRAR some years now and generally find it to be quite a good program. However every now and again I get error messages. Generally speaking whatever I’m un-archiving seems to go okay despite the error messages. Recently I was an un-archiving something that I had downloaded and struck a problem with the an archive that had

: Image via Wikipedia

very long filenames. My usual course of action is to Google for an answer. It turns out that this is a known bug of the WinRAR program. It seems it has a bug with filenames that are more than 260 characters long. Arguably filenames of this length are a little extreme however they do exist as I found out.

I searched around on the net and tried a couple of other archiving programs in trial mode. One was the venerable WinZip, which is now up to version 15, and this didn’t seem to solve the problem. Another program I tried was called Win7 or something like it. The latter program had a quirky interface and I just gave up.

I continued searching via Google and eventually came across a program called Pea Zip which is an open source archiving program. This program has a fairly straightforward interface and after installing it successfully un-archived what I needed without any errors. It did run noticeably slower than WinRaR rather but ultimately it did what I wanted it to. I was then able to use what I downloaded without any trouble.

I’m not sure that I will use it to replace WinRAR completely it does however offer another option for un-archiving files. I notice that there is a WinRAR version 4 in beta so maybe this will solve the problem. however Pea Zip offers a cheap alternative. I’ve installed it on my Windows 7 64-bit system without incident, and there are versions for most current operating systems including Mac and Linux. So go on over and visit their website at http://peazip.org/and give it a whirl.

13/12/201026/02/2011

A Test Post with Dragon Naturally Speaking

This is a test post using dragon NaturallySpeaking. I’ve used dictation software before, but this is the first time I’ve used it within a web browser. I’m using Google Chrome version 8 and everything seems to be going fine. So far Dragon hasn’t made any mistakes. This is actually the very first time I am using the software.

I have used this kind of software with limited success in the past. When writing academic type documents it becomes clear that the way you speak differs markedly from the way you write. Consequently I’ve spent hours editing documents with misspelt words and words that are simply missed. However this version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking seems to be somewhat more accurate. Or perhaps on speaking more slowly and deliberately deny otherwise would. It’s certainly much much faster than typing.

I am using this software on a Windows based computer with a core two Duo processor four gigabytes of RAMand running Windows 7 64-bit. I still consider this a relatively new machine although it had it for quite some years. I am curious to see how this software will run on my new laptop which features a Intel i5 quad core processor and the same operating system is this machine. I am using a Logitech USB headset which is probably the cheapest one on the market at the time of purchase.

Looks like I’ve succeeded in writing a post with voice recognition software.

26/06/201026/02/2011

iOS4 on my 3GS iPhone

Well I waited a few days and then took the plunge and installed the new iOS4. This is the

iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch — Image by DrewVigal via Flickr

latest version of the operating system for the iPhone and of course the over hyped iPad. I have been running it now for about 6 hours the most obvious thing is the wallpaper and the way the icons rush in from the sides when you turn the phone on. Multitasking seems to work so any app that you turn on remains on in the background. Not sure what this means for battery life, if there is an extra drain on the battery I haven’t noticed so far. The camera seems snappier but that might be me. I haven’t tried the folder function yet too much excitement at once isn’t good.
My main fear had been the sporadic reports of sluggish performance and non-responsive screens. So far so good. There doesn’t seem to be an easy was to actually just turn off an app when you are done. So you end up with all the apps running in the background. When the apps are displayed as strip that are running in the background you have to hold an icon until they all display a red circle with a cross in it then clocking on this shuts each app down individually.

Oh and I almost forgot this was written on my iPhone

14/06/201014/06/2010

Adobe Premiere Elements 8 First Impressions

: Image via Wikipedia

This is my foray into Adobe Video editing software. I have been a long time user of Pinnacle Studio (PS) having used this application through several versions. Version 14 I decided to try something different and looked to Adobe Premiere Elements (APE). I only use video editing for home movies so I need an application that is relatively simple to use. APE offers some advantages PS mostly the ability to use multiple video and audio tracks. The interface is not too different but the means of achieving the same is quite different.

Editing is relatively straightforward as is adding audio. The addition of Smartsounds allows the generation of royalty free music to accompany your video. The DVD menu system works well but requires a great deal of manual input. Once all the menu and scene markers are added to the timeline the preconfigured menus pickup all the scenes. My first project in APE was one and half hours long . The program crashed a few times during the editing process. This proved frustrating as the most recent changes hadn’t been saved. I am running Windows 7 64 bit. The rendering of the video files took nearly 2 hours and occupied a 100% of the Core 2 Duo’s attention.

The results were satisfactory but I had to resort using online video tutorials to get the most of the program. I think for a complete novice to video editing the learning curve would be quite steep. On balance Pinnacle Studio is easier for the novice.