My view of the world and anything that might interest me.
In my previous post I asked the question whether HD DVD or Blu-ray will win the DVD race in the long run. Adult entertainment is a very big market (at least so I have heard) and will that in the end decide the winner. Here is a snippet of news I just saw.
Digital Playground is the first adult film studio to publicly align itself with one of the next-generation disc formats – and they’ve picked Blu-ray.
For a while now I have considered getting DSTV, I do not even have M-NET at the moment. Now that DSTV also come with their own PVR (Personal Video Recorder) I was considering it. Over the New year long weekend I read an article about a guy that build his own PVR. I then decided that it would be a nice hobby project to also build my own. Here is my idea on what I will use (please comment if you have any other ideas)
Hardware
Software
I will add blog entries as I progress with this hobby project.
Over the last couple on months we heard here in SA how Telkom and other telecoms players in this country wants to increase the broadband penetration. The figure of 2%-15% of Internet User gets bandied around — how pathetic when one looks at the following.
UK broadband usage is up! The latest National Statistics monthly update to the survey of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) has shown that in October of this year, broadband connections formed 58.9 per cent of all Internet connections. This is an increase up from 57.3 per cent in September 2005. Dial-up connections have continued to decline, and now make up 41.1 per cent of all Internet connections.
During last week Telkom eventually come around to install/activate my ADSL installation at home. Now I have 192Kb/s connection to then Internet 24 hours per day. Although I am happy with my ADSL, it is far from a perfect world. It is way overpriced and I have to manage my bandwidth since I only have a 3GB account with an additional 27GB of local South African bandwidth.
Now I need to find South African FTP/Torrent servers to download my Linux distributions from. Hopefully that will not be that difficult since the new version (5.10 – breezy) of Ubuntu is being released on 13 October.
As mentioned in my post of 27 July, I received my order number for my ADSL installation. Since then I have not heard a peep out of Telkom and with all the things that is happening around ADSL prizing from 1 November I am getting second thoughts.
I took the plunge and on Saturday (23 July) I ordered ADSL from my local Telkom office. Expecnot hear from them in ages, what a surprise when a lady phone me yesterday with my order number. Now I have the order number, so I will have to wait and see how long it takes for the Telkom techie to come knocking on my door.
I currently use ISDN for my Internet connection at home and until now my Internet usage was such that I could not justify switching to ADSL.
With the price reductions coming into effect on 1 August I think it is about time I also start experiencing the luxury of permanent Ineternet connection using ADSL.
My plan is to get an DSL192 from Telkom (R270.00) and a 3GB Axxess ISP package (R199.00) which give me a total cost of R469.00 per month. Yes I know I have to add the R85 for a Telkom voice line to this. If this speed and size is not enough then I can always upgrade.
For an ADSL router I am looking at either a Billion 7202G or a 7402G — anybody know of a reseller in Cape Town.
Will post my experience with this. If you have any suggestions or comments then please post it.
If you have followed this blog of mine you would know that I am working for Safmarine which is part of a big global company. As you can imagine in a company that size we depend heavily on electronic communications. Internally communucation is fine but when it comes to accesing the Internet things can be slow at times.
It might be because we leave our internal network somewhere in Europe to access the Internet or there is just so many people that use it that response times can be really slow at times.
I was used to have very good response times accessing any web site in the world but now I have to get used to waiting a bit for some sites. Just show how spoiled we sometimes get.
The network guys were suppose to make some changes last night so lets see if things are a bit better today .. so far so good since I am typing this blog.
I am in the process of moving my websites to a new web hosting company so you might see some weird things … just be patient and I will sort it all out. You are also welcome to let me know if something does not work as it should.
For a couple of months maybe a year now I have been looking for a software program for my Note taking needs. It must just sit hidden somewhere and when I need it, it must just magically appear. Well I have found one and it is free — it is called Shirusupad and you can get it at http://www.shirusupad.tk/
It does my Todo list, I can set alarms that even execute programs and the most important, I can keep notes. It even handles Ctrl C when you hold down the Ctrl C key long enough.
It is one great program and can recommend it.