Sleepypete's Pillow

I’ve finally added something new to the stories blog !

It’s not fiction though I’m afraid … I’m turning it into a Geek Zone. One thing I used to do a lot at work was contribute to a Help Needed folder covering computers. I kinda miss that and the Geek Zone will be one way of indulging that side of me without confusing too many people here 🙂

The link is on the right under “Sleepypete Stories” still – until I upgrade my template here I can’t change that blogroll. Something to do later that is.

Anyway – first couple of new posts are on there, have a peek if you want to know what I really think of my new laptop 🙂 It’s a fairly lengthy review so the one line summary is :

Nice – does the job so I’m keeping it 🙂 It’s a very competent piece of hardware.

If there’s any techie questions people want an answer to, please do drop me a line. I’ll post it up on the other blog and hopefully add an answer if I know anything useful 🙂

Curious 🙂

www.laptopstuff.co.uk could be a good one too. Think in the not too distant future (i.e. when I go hunting for birthday presents for my dad!) I’ll be laptop handbag shopping in the centre of Bristol to see what I can find.

Wonder if Janinekingdesigns has an equivalent in the UK …

janinekingdesigns on etsy

I got my bag from her and then another for my niece

they are padded, waterproof
outside zipper pocket
2 deep pockets on the inside lining

under $100

the only thing I’m not sure of is the array of patterns – for me I bought a black and white chinese design and for my niece a mad mod polka dot thingie

I don’t know if she has designs to compliment you incredible manliness!!

if not her – do check out others on etsy, I love it there

I’m going to be joking with people that I’m shopping for handbags with that laptop bag 🙂

I’m reasonably impressed with Vista so far – it insulates you from all the techie behind the scenes stuff. That’s ok for now but I get the feeling that when a software problem comes along, it’ll lead to much worse headaches than XP and before. We’ll see how resilient it is 🙂

The smoothness could be to do with this probably having the beefiest cpu that I’ve had so far … Hard to believe that it’s probably got more grunt than the desktop machine I use for gaming 🙂

I’m getting more impressed with the Airport Express widget – I’m hearing more detail in the iTunes music than I used to, cos it’s able to send that detail to the decent speakers. Trouble is, looks like iTunes 8 is broken for the Airport Express and I gather iTunes 8 is needed for the iPhone …

Ah, the joys of the Mall at sale time – NOT! I wnet there too and thought it was not worth bothering with on the whole. You might wnat to try John Lewis for laptop bags, though I got a decent one for my wide screen lappy on Ebay 🙂

I notice also that you’ve gone to Vista, take it from someone who has barttled with it for the last 18 months or so. Go back to XP! It’s slow, pondorous and full of bugs and it drives me nuts. So much so that I am considering getting a Mac (also for iPhoto and smoother interface with my iTouch).

BTW – thanks for the offer of tunes for my sojourn in hospital but I have downloaded plenty from my extensive library. I appreciate the offer though 🙂

This time of year, I’m usually doing at least one Mall run to pick up more stuff in the sales. I had another objective tonight, my new laptop is a bit wider than the last one, so I need to get a new bag to put it in.

This is where the ickle flaw becomes apparent …

The cunning plan has worked beautifully, the new lappy is letting me stream music in pretty high quality to my decent speakers. All without yet another wire stretched across the room that I will trip up on. The ickle flaw is finding a decent bag, large enough to put it in. Eva Green’s character in Casino Royale says “There are dinner jackets and there are dinner jackets.” Well – there’s laptop bags and then there’s laptop bags.

My requirement in a laptop bag isn’t too onerous … I just want one that has decent strengthening in the sides to protect the laptop from crushing, plus a place to put the power supply that won’t cause the plug to create scoring on the laptop lid. Having trouble finding one at the moment but I’m sure I’ll figure something out 🙂

Oh – I have more cds to feed the iTunes monster 🙂 I’ll be listening later to :

Goldfraap – Seventh Dream
The Hoosiers & The Trick To Life
Paramore – Riot!

I like sales 🙂

PS I may be doing something constructive with the Stories blog. When I first started working in Bristol, I made a bit of a name for myself as a PC hardware/software guru … by carefully picking the questions on the forums to give an answer to. In other words, keeping quiet when I didn’t have a clue but otherwise helping out where I could. I miss that now, the forums got killed a couple of years ago due to the forum supervisor wanting to have less work to do. So an extremely useful resource got lost to the site. But I may well be doing something with the Stories blog which resurrects that … By putting the odd techie post on there 🙂

PPS It’s darn cold here ! The weather widget I picked up from the UK Metoffice (linked) is saying it’s -5.7 degrees C. Think I may be playing pooter games later, not as something to do but so I can put my tootsies near where the hot air comes out 🙂

Cheers 🙂

Definitely enjoying the improved sound from iTunes 🙂

congrats on the new lappy!

enjoy!

Friday I headed up to the Mall to do some checking out of the sales … and to acquire the replacement for my old laptop that’s done well but put up the “I retire” flag when it lost the ability to talk to the wifi router.

I didn’t actually buy anything on Friday – the main Mall shops didn’t have anything really interesting (although I get the feeling I’ll get a Goldfraap cd sometime soon) and the traffic was so bad that I aborted the run to the computer shops I was going to do. So the main target (new laptop) had to wait for today.

I have a couple of changes to make cos the new lappy is somewhat wider than the old one … So I’ll be heading off to the Mall again for a bigger bag. It’s also a Vista machine, which is an operating system I’ve never used before. Looks like it’s more user orientated but I’ll miss the special keys on my old laptop that I used to open Email, Firefox and Messenger. What I am noticing at the moment is that it is utterly silent, which won’t last long cos in 4 minutes my iTunes library will finish transferring from my old lappy 🙂

If an iTunes library takes over an hour to copy over, then you’ve probably got too much in it. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to preserve the old settings cos I don’t fancy rating over 2200 songs again.

The keyboard is taking some getting used to, as it’s a full size keyboard design. So my usual reference point on the right hand side of the case is being disrupted by there being a number pad there. Looks like I’m getting used to it cos I javem#t mistyped much in this post so far.

Right – 1 minute to go until I dig into iTunes, I’ve been watching old Star Trek Next Generation episodes while it’s been copying. Got a bit more setting up to do – email, Messenger, Firefox and some of the other regular apps I use are done. Others will wait (buying Kaspersky antivirus now would cost £30, waiting until it expires on my desktop will cost £40 for the pair, with AV for my dad’s machine coming free!).

And … a little bit later – I have my iTunes music playing over the wifi network to remote speakers – result :-). Current track – Some Journey off Suzanne Vega’s self titled album. Sounds good 🙂

(Techie bit to finish – iTunes 8 appears to have a critical bug re: Airtunes. There’s periodic breakup occurring every 30s-60s where the sound disappears. Going back to iTunes 7.6 is showing flawless playback so far – extensive research coming after I have some dinner 🙂

Yep – heard all sorts of good things about Inkheart 🙂 There’s about one film critic who seems to like the same films as me (Mark Kermode – Radio 5) and he liked it too.

PS I learned something new about New Years Day yesterday – PCWorld £10 vouchers that start on 1st Jan don’t necessarily mean that you can spend it on 1st Jan … 😉