15 February, 2006

Hard(ware) changes

I've been playing around a bit with the webcam (the Logitech QuickCam Express), and I managed to get this picture out of it, which made me quite happy. The colours are all (relatively) natural, and everything except the picture size is exactly how I want it. I've also been playing around with my own blogging software (Wordpress), and so far I've been doing okay. I don't find it too heavy (yet). This post is actually a clone (almost) of a posting I made in WordPress, but I thought I'd let you lot know about it too. I got a present today. It was a box from Canada, and it contained (before I emptied it) a DVD-writer, a 256 MB stick of memory, some blanks, Mandriva 2006.0 (x86_64 version, so no good to me), Slackware 10.0, and Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger), which I'll use to upgrade zoombuggy's machine. The owner even sent me a DVD-RAM pre-blanked, along with a few blank CD-R, a CD-RW, and a few DVD-R media. The memory stick replaced one of my existing 128MB sticks, taking my machine up to 512MB, and, once I got the order of sticks sorted, almost eliminating the memory errors I had. I have also stuck the spare 128MB memory stick from my machine (brick) into zoom, bringing it up to 256MB. Seems to work, along with putting the old 32 speed CDROM into there too. The new drive is interesting, it’s a LG GMA 4020B DVD writer, and is reviewed here, and also here at CDRLabs.com. Both reviews say that the drive is slow, but that it also supports all major single-layer media formats: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and even DVD-RAM. Now I rather wish I had the CD that came with the drive. Now I'm going to try and watch a DVD. (Later) - hrm, after fighting with the machine, I've come to the conclusion that my machine isn't actually fast enough to play a DVD properly without actually jumping. That's a pity, as I wanted to watch Laurence Olivier featuring in the famous Shakespeare play Richard III. Never mind. At least I was able to burn a CD without creating more than one coaster in the process. I.E. two burns, one CD successful. I can only go up from here.

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