Muse are an absolutely fantasic band live!

Watched them live at T In The Park and they are as good as they are on the CD! Well done Muse!

Haven't put anything on here for a while so I thought I'd just say that I've uploaded a stack of new videos onto YouTube since my last post.

The new government

We have finally arrived at a new government! I must say, after 13 years of Labour it is exciting (but the Tory part is not so exciting), but I do not know if it is what I want. The only reason that I can possibly say that I would enjoy having this new government is that the Liberal Democrats will be holding some key places in it hopefully. Nonetheless, I would have preferred having Labour over the Conservatives, but I am going to give this new coalition a chance and see how it goes. Best of luck goes to David Cameron and Nick Clegg! Well done Conservatives!

First Past the Post is Past the Time...

The First Past The Post system is past its time. The system "simply does not reflect the hopes of the British people" according to my party leader. Nick Clegg announced on Friday morning with great sadness that the system is completely useless. The Liberal Democrats obviously lost seats in the election and this resulted in a serious need for reform. First Past The Post is past its time now, we need to reform.

Deeply saddening news for the Lib Dems...

The deeply saddening news that I wish to share is news that all will already know. The Liberal Democrats sadly did not do as well as we had hoped in last night's election. Instead of hanging on to our seats or gaining seats, we actually lost seats. A particular loss for us was Lepbit Opik who stood in Montgomeryshire and was previously our Housing Spokesperson. On the plus side, we did manage to hold our most important seats, Nick Clegg's Sheffield Hallam, Ed Davey's Kingston and Surbiton, Chris Huhne's Eastleigh and Vince Cable's Twickenham...still a Liberal coalition could ensure parliamentary reform, and the Liberal Democrats would stand more of a chance in the next election(s). Below is just a small sample of the election results:

Conservatives: 10,706647 votes = 306 seats
Labour: 8,604,358 votes = 258 seats
Liberals: 6,827,938 votes = 57 seats


We need reform. In my opinion, each vote should count to the country.

Election Day 2010!

For the first time in my life, I will be able to vote! So here we are today, and after all my hard work for the party, we come to election day 2010! Make the vote that counts! Britain needs change. Britain needs the Liberal Democrats to hold back the SNP!

The final push!

Come on people! This is the final push to the election! Labour have failed in the past few years, the Tories will indefinitely change the country from something that has been created successfully for generations. All you undecided voters, the Liberal Democrats are the only party that offers the change this country needs - a step forward, not backward. So, vote for the Liberal Democrats on the 6th of May 2010 for change that works for you!

ATI cards are brilliant. ATI's software is terrible...

Still to date, ATI has refused to fix the problems that we all encounter each day with our ATI cards. When you first use the card the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) works fine. After updating the card drivers or the CCC, CCC refuses to work at all. Double-clicking the tray icon does nothing. Right clicking and clicking on ATI Catalyst Control Center does nothing. I cannot think how else you can possibly open this. The CCC is a real let down for ATI cards. Perhaps they should spend some more time focused on their software developing element of their cards. Still my 5670 is running beautifully compared with the HD Pro 2400.

Moving up in the world...

I finally tried HDMI and DisplayPort for the first time. No major difference with DVI and to be honest, I feel that they both have one major let down - no screws to hold the connector in. This quibble may be seen by many as an advantage, but I personally see this as a disadvantage as I move the monitor around a lot (from landscape to portrait). None the less, I will remain with DisplayPort for my LCD monitor and HDMI with my LCD TV. Clearly the contrast is shown here that HDMI is for the consumer electronics market whilst DisplayPort is designed for the computing industry. I personally back DisplayPort over HDMI, hence why I chose a monitor with DisplayPort instead of HDMI.

Campaigning on TV

Yesterday, Michael Crick of Newsnight, interviewed Stuart Ritchie, the Lib Dem candidate for MP in East Lothian. Now, as I feel strongly about change in East Lothian I also offered to come along to do some campaigning that day, and to my shock and surprise, I was on television! I don't know if they'll actually show any of me in the background, but they might, it just depends on whether they cut my part out or not. We shall see tonight.

Dell P2310h

This monitor, which I have now had for just about a month, cost me just £200 and wait until you hear how awesome it is. First of all, its resolution is 1920 * 1080 and it runs at a refresh rate of 60Hz. The monitor features VGA, DVI and DisplayPort, so it makes it ideal for those who need the ultimate in connectivity. The panel is 23 inches and its exceptionally wide. The aspect ratio of the panel is 16:9 but it also supports 4:3 if necessary. The monitor also features a built-in four port USB hub, two on the rear and two on the side for devices such as USB flash drives etc. Finally, the monitor also supports portrait mode, so web browsing and word processing become much easier as more fits on the screen at the one time going vertically. I would recommend this monitor and would rate it 9/10.

Well done Lib Dems!!!

Finally, a change in the politics of this country! The Lib Dems seem to have taken a large majority of Tory and Labour voters for themselves. Essentially, we could become one of the two largest parties again, if however we can keep this going to the election. Nick Clegg did exceptionally well at the First Leaders Debate. This has reinforced Vince Cable's excellence at the Chancellors Debate. We actually have a strong chance this time! Come on Liberal Democrats!

Apple releases new range of MacBook Pros!

Finally, the long awaited MacBook Pros have been released. The new range sports a Core i5 and i7 configuration in the larger 15 and 17 inch models. The standard configuration of the 13 inch however still features the old Core 2 Duo and now 4GB of RAM. Pricing starts at £999.99 for the 4GB Core 2 Duo and the battery life has gone up to 10 hours from 8 on the 13 inch model. I must say that I am getting more impressed by the MacBook Pro range every release now and I'm edging towards actually liking these notebooks. Anyway, the 250GB hard drive is now standard but 500GB comes at £120 more which is actually a rather good deal considering. Solid state options have also increased in capacity and decreased in price here. However, as with all Apple products, you pay such a high premium to get their devices that consider premium goods. They all still feature the same connections (FireWire 800, USB2.0 x2/3, SD card reader, miniDisplayPort, Ethernet and that terrible combi-port that combines a microphone and headphone jack. The resolutions are just the same; 1280 * 800, 1440 *900, 1920 * 1200. Now the really good feature is the graphics card. The nVidia 330M is now included but what makes it really cool is that Apple has developed a smart system which switches graphics cards (only in the i5 and i7 configurations) between the built in graphics included in the 15 or i7 and the 330M which will result in a significantly longer battery life (as the integrated Intel graphics use less power than the 330M). The 13 inch features the 320M with up to 256MB dedicated graphics. Nothing else appears to have changed drastically.

Hauppauge WinTV-Radio HVR 1300

This TV capture card is a very prepared DVB one. It also features composite video and stereo RCA audio connections to allow capture from a camera or other AV device in standard definition. The main reason I chose this one however was the fact that it supports Windows 7 x64 which seems rare in most TV cards these days. Also, this card is just PCI 32 bit, not PCI-e so I can leave them free for more expansion such as SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 when they come along. Still can't wait to test this on my television and LCD monitor simultaneously with my Media Center remote.

CiT FireWire, eSATA and USB external drive enclosure

This enclosure was one I purchased about 2 weeks ago to make the transition of data from my older computer to my new one a smooth ride. I originally only purchased it because it was the only option with FireWire and USB on it without a hard drive included and intended to use it only for this task then get rid of it. However, after discovering its true potential, I have actually discovered possibly the best priced enclosure out there. This enclosure comes free with short USB, FireWire and eSATA cables and the power adapter. More importantly, it comes with a free eSATA backplate for those who don't have eSATA. I discovered, and this to my amazement, that FireWire far outperforms eSATA on this drive gaining around 90MB/S (even though it claims to be capped at 400Mbps) on FireWire and around 55MB/S on eSATA. None the less, this was a significant improvement over my previous drive that had only USB2.0 which can only transfer at 35MB/S. Sorry USB, but I am afraid to say you lack the speed I need. For more information on this enclosure search for the CiT 35M17SEF.

LG GBC-H20L Blu Ray drive

Perhaps the reason I chose this drive was the fact that it was an LG, but it does not mean to say I'm going to bias. This drive is a very good drive for the price margin I found it in, £70 - £90. Other drives however boast the 8x speed but come at a higher price; generally about £80 - £90. 6x is fine for me. I intend to purchase a writer when more features are brought to them and use this only for watching stuff whilst burning etc. So the writer will put this out the window eventually anyway. Well the drive is great, perhaps one of the little problems I experienced was the installation. It took me 15 minutes, which is a great deal more time than any other drive I've installed in my computer. The main problem was that the screws would not sit into the screw holes and then the SATA power lead kept falling out. Other than that, the drive is a charm! Works superbly, and the software that comes with it seems decent as well.

FireWire and the future

Today I had a strange experience with FireWire 400. My external drive was not recognising on Windows 7. I had never experienced this on any OS before, including Vista. So how did I solve this? You must go to the Device Manager and run the driver as a legacy driver. Currently, the OHCI (Open Host Controller Interface) standard that is going around is replacing the legacy drivers (hence why they are referred to as legacy) but it is becoming a bad move in my opinion, lacking backward compatibility that actually works.