Category: Technology

Home Cinema Experience – Full HD!

I almost surprise myself when I think for how long I went without a decent home cinema setup.  A year or two back I bought a reasonably cheap surround sound system.  Last month I suddenly realised my TV in the living room was only 32″.  It didn’t bother me until I realised it was actually about the smallest TV I could have!  This had to be changed, so off I went to the internet.  I wanted full HD (1080p) and DLNA so I could stream content direct to the TV from my home network and it seemed John Lewis had an amazing deal on a Samsung 50″ Plasma, but I would have to wait as it wasn’t in stock.

Continue reading Home Cinema Experience – Full HD!

Categories:Technology

Android Explosion

So I’ve had an Android device for around 18 months now.  Starting with a HTC Hero, moving on to the Nexus One, dabbling with the HTC Desire and Dell Streak before moving on to the Samsung Galaxy S and no on to the HTC Desire HD.  I’ve been very happy with each one and the Android OS is moving from strength to strength. In that time the OS was on 1.5 and it’s moved to 1.6, briefly 2.0 then 2.1 and now FroYo 2.2, with Gingerbread 2.3 on the horizon.

Two weeks ago, my Orange contract finally came to and end.  I had already bought my Desire HD SIM free, but I was able to upgrade to another free DHD and lower my monthly payments!  This extra DHD was then sold covering all by £30 of my costs.  It was funny to think Orange thought I was still on a HTC Touch HD, an old Windows 6.1 device…

Continue reading Android Explosion

Categories:Technology

HTC London

As part of my duties for hemorrdroids.net, I went along with some collegues to the HTC London event being held in Farringdon last night.  Partly encouraged by the promise of some free phones, partly just really looking forward to playing with the new HTC Desire HD and Zed, we got their nice and early at 3pm.  Not surprisingly, we weren’t the first there…

The Facebook event had around 1,000 confirmed attendees, so we half expected there to be 100 there already but in fact there were only 4 or 5 people there before us though. Luckily there were two seats, of which I took one of so no knee and back aches for me!

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Categories:Technology

Great Multi-player Gaming

In the past half year, we’ve possibly been graced with two of the greatest multi-player games ever.  Both are sequels to previously great games, but both take things to a whole new level.

Modern Warfare 2Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released back in November and broke records as the fastest selling game of all time.  Popular on both consoles and PC’s it became an instant hit. PC gamers moaned as it came without dedicated servers, using gamers themselves to host as listen servers sometimes causing laggy matches. Luckily it was a good enough game to overcome such negatives, with many great game types, my favourites being demolition, domination and the more objective based games.   Continue reading Great Multi-player Gaming
Categories:Lanarchy, Technology

Nexus One

I resisted for so long… but last week I caved and order myself a Nexus One, direct from Google.  I’ve been very happy with my HTC Hero for the past 7 or 8 months, but the lure of a super fast processor and a nice big AMOLED screen was too much for me.  On Wednesday I place the order, I got an e-mail around 11pm saying it was being shipped, it landed around 9pm on Thursday and went to collect it from DHL Friday morning.

Google's Nexus One

I’ve now had it for 6 days and I’m thoroughly loving it!  There are few things missing from the Hero, I’m in the camp that SenseUI is a good thing and of course that’s not incorporated in the Nexus One.  The jazzy bits and peices like rolling the numbers when selecting a date or time are not there.  The contacts widget on the home screen, which I used to use quite a lot, is not there.  That’s pretty much where the negatives finish though. Continue reading Nexus One

Categories:Technology

My New Lens

For well over a year I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a new lens for my Canon 400D. I’d been keeping an eye on the Canon 70-300mm IS lens, the same as I’d borrowed from my dad to go to Brans Hatch last April, but they were up over £350 and didn’t seem to be coming down in any way. A couple of days ago I noticed Canon did a 55-250mm IS (Image Stabilized) lens, which I found for only £169 from a place near Bloomsbury Square, so this afternoon I headed in a bought one.

It’s about twice the size of the original lens (18-55mm) with a smooth zooming and auto focus motion.  I’m not sure how often I’ll get to use it.  Many places these days wont let you take a camera in if it has changable lenses.  So, if I go back to Wembley to see the Saints play the Chargers for example, I wont be able to take my 400D with me.

While I was testing the lens, next doors dogs came out, so I put it to test.  I was able to zoom right in on the dogs faces, and had to zoom out slightly to take the picture you see on the right.

Categories:Technology