 |
| 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
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.
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.
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
After 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
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.
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.
I was a bit surprised to be asked if my prop was left or right-handed. Turns out that my boat is unusual in being left-handed, as the prop spins anti-clockwise. This means that the prop-wash will make it easier to moor starboard side-to, which is important when choosing a berth.
Following an earlier post on using GPS under Ubuntu, I have been trying to get PolarNavy working under Ubuntu 12.10. Polar Navy is the only Linux chart navigation software available for Linux. I know people will correct me by quoting OpenCPN, but there are no charts currently legally available for the UK, at least that I could find.
Polar Navy has two components – PolarCOM which communicates with the GPS receiver, and PolarView which displays the actual charts. The two applications can connect together, to show the vessel’s current position.
I had Polar Navy working fine under Ubuntu 12.04 i386, but for some reason I had problems running under Ubuntu 12.10 amd64. The problem was that PolarCOM would simply not display the position, i.e. the Lat and Long. I tried running from the command line, and there were a large number of errors when running PolarCOM, for example:
Continue Reading
This Christmas my wife bought me a Kindle Fire
I am a great fan of the 7 inch form factor. Personally I would be embarrassed to carry around with me a 10″ tablet, but the smaller book-sized 7″ tablet is fine. Without a case, it will even fit into a suit jacket pocket.
My hope for the Fire was that it would be a quality device, being sold cheap as a loss leader for Amazon, but more to the point I hoped that it would still be usable for email and web browsing and that I would be able to find at least some of my favourite Android apps in the Amazon app store.
Continue Reading
Google Reader
