chrisjrob

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Fitting mSATA Drive to the Novatech nFinity n1410

Posted by chrisjrob on 22 March 2013
Posted in: linux, technology. Tagged: msata, novatech. Leave a Comment

Novatech nFinity n1410

As discussed in my earlier The Novatech nFinity n1410 Review, I made a mistake in sticking with the default 128gb SSD. I promised to write up how I carried upgraded my Ultrabook by adding an mSATA drive, but time has passed and I failed to take any notes.

The drive I ordered was a Crucial CT256M4SSD3 256GB m4 mSATA 6Gb/s Internal SSD.

The installation was not difficult, and to the best of my recollection followed these steps: Continue Reading

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Default Applications Launched from Terminal

Posted by chrisjrob on 5 March 2013
Posted in: debian, linux, technology. Tagged: pekwm, terminal. Leave a Comment

For some time it has irritated me that launching URLs from my terminal would always launch Iceweasel/Firefox, rather than my default browser Chromium. If you’re running KDE or Gnome, then I accept that this would be governed from somewhere in the desktop environment’s control panel or settings, but I run PekWM, and assumed that setting the default browser in update-alternatives should be enough:

# update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

Unfortunately of course many of the applications that I am using are native to KDE or Gnome and probably are still respecting their environment’s settings. In the end it was simply a case of editing:

~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list

And adding the following line:

x-scheme-handler/http=chromium.desktop

Now opening links from my terminal is correctly opening a new tab in Chromium, or running Chromium if it isn’t already.

Joy.

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Turnbuckle Boot Cap

Posted by chrisjrob on 5 March 2013
Posted in: personal, reprap, sailing, technology. Tagged: reprap, sailing. Leave a Comment

Turnbuckle Boot Cap

Turnbuckle Boot Cap

I realise that I have made a number of posts on Google+, without posting first on my blog. This is the first of several posts that I will be making to correct that oversight…

Sailing boats typically have plastic or rubber cylindrical covers for the lower part of the shrouds and stays (the wires that hold up the mast). These covers are apparently called “Turnbuckle Boots”.

Turnbuckle boots should be topped off with caps, but it is quite common to see the caps broken or missing entirely.

Turnbuckle Boot Cap is a replacement for those caps. It is fully parametric and printed perfectly without support.

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Buying Microsoft Windows

Posted by chrisjrob on 4 March 2013
Posted in: technology. Tagged: licence, microsoft, oem, vm, windows, windows8. Leave a Comment

Having purchased my Novatech nFinity n1410, I thought that I would install Windows as a virtual machine. Nothing easier, I thought, and trotted off to my local Currys.

On entering Currys there was plenty of evidence of the new Windows 8, but I noticed that all the copies were upgrades from Windows 7 or Windows XP.  Currys explained that they do not stock full copies of Windows, only the upgrades, and stated that this was not a Curry’s issue, but that it was a Microsoft policy to only sell full versions of Windows via their website.

So I found myself searching online for “buy windows 8” and ended up on the Microsoft site, but, as with Currys, the only versions available were upgrades. Continue Reading

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The Novatech nFinity n1410 Review

Posted by chrisjrob on 22 February 2013
Posted in: debian, linux, technology. Tagged: laptop, novatech, review, ubuntu. 7 comments

nfinityn1411After spending much time trying to choose the perfect Ultrabook, I came to the conclusion that it is either not made, or is prohibitively expensive. In the meantime I ordered a Novatech nFinity n1410 (14″ Intel Core i5 3317 Mobile Processor – 8GB DDR3 Memory) for just £450 (plus VAT).

My expectations were fairly low, given the price, but I expected something that would be adequate and I was pleased to be able to buy a laptop without a Microsoft operating system pre-installed.

Purchase and delivery were quick and painless, thanks to Novatech.

My first impressions were very agreeable, it looked much better than expected with a metal top. The dimensions were just as I had expected – it would fit in my briefcase and be light and portable, but still have a decent sized screen. Continue Reading

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Buying Microsoft Office

Posted by chrisjrob on 20 February 2013
Posted in: linux, technology. Tagged: floss, microsoft, office. 1 comment

Whilst my Company is predominantly a Linux user, it has not been without its problems. OpenOffice in particular struggles with some newer Powerpoint presentations and the lack of the Calibri font seems to cause layout issues. More recently, our primary system vendor has introduced “Business Intelligence” as a product and we would like to take the benefit of that. Unfortunately most of those benefits are only available if you are also running Microsoft Excel 2010 and later, whilst we of course use OpenOffice.

Continue Reading

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Surrey Shore-based RYA Training

Posted by chrisjrob on 11 February 2013
Posted in: personal, sailing. Tagged: sailing. Leave a Comment

Surrey Shore-based RYA Training

I was delighted to find this local RYA training centre. Operated from Phil’s back garden, you expect the worst, but actually the facilities are excellent, with a proper classroom with tables, projector, VHFs, tea and coffee etc.

I recently had my Marine VHF training there and I thought the course was excellent and I plan to go on to do my Day Skipper training at a later date.

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