Do you ever get that ‘I want to build something but you know people are going to end up thinking, why?’ moment?

No? just me then ha. Well after browsing the web this morning and coming across wacky things to build on instructables it took me back to when I had the need for an external webcam. it was housed in a plastic container and looked rubbish but the main thing it needed to be was water resistant ‘damn english weather’ which I knew it wasn’t. While hunting round for a suitable alternative I came across a solar powered garden light which i’d brought from the poundshop half knowing it was going to be naff which indeed it was, BUT it must have a certain level of water resistance due to it’s theoretical intended use, SO how about sticking a webcam in the enclosure? Yes I know you thinking i’ve gone mad so i’m giving you the opportunity now to go and view someother site before clicking the ‘Read More’ link below, you have been warned….

For the love of god I swear the next person who asks me why they can’t download at 10 megabytes a second on Virgins 10Mb service is going to get a slap. There for i’m making this post so you can all read it a savour….

First of all they make the numbers look so big, 2Mb might not sound like a lot, but 10Mb, WOW!, and 20Mb but how they should really do it is, 50Mb=5MB, 10Mb=1MB, 2Mb=0.25MB

Notice the difference?

Mb=Megabits
MB=Megabytes

There is 8 bits in a byte
So 2Mb (2 million bits), is the equivalent to 0.25MB (0.25 million bytes)

Now if they were to sell you a package which contained 0.25MBps, would you go ahead with it? No because it seems so little so they just rename it to 2Mb. So dont be confused, 2Mb actually refers to you being able to download at 0.25MBps (250Kbps) But, 2Mb averages out to about 0.9Mb because of Virgin Media traffic shaping.

I hope that’s made things a bit clearer so when they launch a 100Mb service for some rediculous sum of money just remember it’s only 10MB.

Well looking back on my Virginmedia bills I’m currenlty paying £37.68 for L BB(10MB) and XL TV which is quite a lot higher than when I first signed up. So after 3 calls to retentions 0845 454 1111 I managed to negotiate a better deal….

L BB 10MB                                                                                                                    

XL TV

L Phone

£35 per month

I also managed to blag a free wireless router but only becuase I asked for it, I don’t need it as already have wireless but always good to have a spare (or two). I’m relieved I can finally ditch TalkTalk phone line as i’ve only really been paying the line rental each month because we have mobiles.

Every since I got V+ I manage to record a mass amount of tv but never have the time to watch it all. What this mean is that I have to delete unwatched stuff to make way for new programs. Now it has a dvd recorder function but this would mean I have to go out and buy one plus you can't edit the program so you still get the adverts which seems pointless. You can also put onto vhs but don't think I need to say anymore on the cons of that format. So now that I have my upgraded pc running I thing ill go with some sort of capture device for that and see how it goes.

Well after Gemma's laptop got a Vista Bug which meant all it would do was boot up into a black screen with with a moveable cursor I decided to finish building my nas. After some head banging I got samba working properly so we have individual private folders and I public one to share stuff. I managed to get the documents off her old disk and moved them onto the nas. Rebuilt vista on the laptop and set all the windows documents shortcuts to point the relevant folders on the nas rather than on the local drive. So if laptop ever crashes again all have to do is reinstall the os and relink folders without having to worry about data recovery etc.