Matt’s Journal

LOST on the 360

Posted by Matt under Gaming, Tech

The programme that is

I was playing the other day and reading up on how people were using their 360’s to stream music and videos from their PC, I thought I would try and setup the same on mine. Booting it up, I was asked to install the new Windows Media Player 11 and then enable sharing. The little app brought up a request from my 360 and a clickable “Enable”. I just had to specify what folders I wanted to share, move back onto the 360 and then get it to pair with the Xbox.

It has indexed them alright, just only the WMV files. Turns out that M$ only added support for WMV files and not the popular DIVX format, meaning that I have to convert all my programmes before viewing them. It’s not a massive beef, it still means I get all my downloaded TV programmes in 32 inch LCD glory

It shouldnt be too long until the Xbox will support IPTV, that should bring in some good content.

Going to see 300 tonight!

Posted by Matt under General

I have been tracking the release of this film for about 5 months now, I have watched the trailer over and over, cried out “This is Sparta!!” until my throat is coarse, but now the day is upon us. I shall be donning my Spartan army gear and going in costume to see this film*, I hope to be blown away.

*May not be 100% factual.

Using Foxit Reader to view PDF’s in Firefox

Posted by Matt under Tech

PDF’s, they tend to be both useful and annoying. I am sure I am not alone when I get annoyed with the instability and the load times of Adobe Reader, I did to the point that I uninstalled it completely and installed Foxit Reader (which is free). This software ran more of a standalone, I would download the PDF and then read it, it would not view in the browser window…….until now.

Thanks to Denis Remondini you can now view all PDF’s in your browser window using a few simple steps. I will post the steps here but they are originally posted on the authors website.

• Install Foxit Reader.
• Head over to www.pdfdownload.org and install the plugin. Once installed, download the files needed to incorporate the functionality into your browser from here. It is not completely necessary to install the plugin, I just like a notification when I goto open a PDF so I can choose how to deal with it.
• Follow the instructions written in the file “foxitpdfreaderctrl.txt” inside that zip file.
• You are all done

I’m a happy man, hopefully you can use the wonderful Foxit Reader in your browser too

Making my own Sports Drink - Part One

Posted by Matt under Sport

I play a fair bit of sport, I typically play football 4-5 times a week, my blood pressure is a 120/70 and my pulse rate averages out about 46 at rest. When playing football, I always forget to take a drink for fluid top-up after the exercise. So thinking, instead of taking a flask of water, why not make my own Isotonic Drink from ordinary household items?

There are a few resources on this, many look a little shady and some look to hold more credibility than others. So, giving them all a benefit of the doubt, I will try three recipes and chart how each one makes me feel.

Obviously I dont have the equipment to properly chart how it makes me feel but I will factor in a few of my own symptoms after exercise. I play mostly evenings during the week and early morning on a Sunday. I will chart the following:

• How thirsty I feel before I get into bed after drinking a pint and a half of said sports drink (a rating of 1 to 5).
• How my body feels in the morning after sleeping and digesting said sports drink (a rating of 1 to 5).
• Taste of said sports drink.
• Cost of ingredients for said sports drink.

The three recipes will be as follows:

Recipe One

• 1/4 a carton orange juice
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon of lime juice
• 3/4 teaspoon of salt (Used to aid recovery for heavy or long workouts)
• Water

Recipe Two

• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 teaspoon lite salt
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• Water

Recipe Three

• 1 cup of Orange Juice
• 1 cup of Water
• A pinch of Salt.

The first step will be getting the ingredients, once made, each drink will be consumed in full after the exercise.

Im a geek ey?!

The Lunar Eclipse

Posted by Matt under General

I dont know if you saw it on Saturday night, I sure did. Sitting out in the cold waiting for the moon to be enveloped by the Earth’s shadow was pretty cool.

Lots of Flickr users captured it also:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/loony/pool/

I got cold and didnt see much of when the moon turned red

How to Save Money When Buying Online

Posted by Matt under Spendage

Internet commerce has boomed in the last decade with UK online retail sales estimated to be above £8.2bn. Many people are familiar with the online entities; Amazon and Play.com and their high street counterparts like John Lewis, HMV and even Tesco.

With the boom in internet commerce, many opportunities have opened to the consumer. Here are some of these opportunities that might help you when buying online.

• Use price comparison websites. Online portals such as Kelkoo, Froogle and PriceRunner index thousands - if not millions - of products, sorting them by relevance, price and ratings, they are able to guide you to a cheaper retailer of your wanted item, allowing you to save some more of your hard earned cash or even buy a few more products!
• Use shopping forums to find great deals you were not even aware existed. Using these sort of sites, you are able to sign up to their updates and alert yourself of any product that is either going cheap, has just come on the market or even just to grab yourself a freebie. The sites I use are HotUKDeals and MoneySavingExpert. The latter allows you to save money not only on your purchases but gives great advice on all manner of financial matters.
• The online voucher code. Many retailers prefer consumers to shop online, this is because it saves them from having to employ customer facing staff, renting of premises etc. So to reward the online buyer, many sites offer discount coupon codes that will knock off a certain amount of money from your purchase. Buy entering these codes, you can save yourself a packet each time you shop online.

  The site I use for the discount codes is again, HotUKDeals. They have a vouchers section which lists all the codes by retailer, so you just find the code and copy it into your checkout!

They are just a few ways to save money online.

You must also be aware of the dangers that online transactions propose. Here are a few pointers to help you from being a victim of internet fraud:

• To gain a helping hand with your browsing, download Mozilla Firefox. Firefox comes with a built in Phishing Filter that will flag any potential hazardous sites that could pose a threat to your online transactions.

  N.B - There is also a button on the right hand side of the page which can will direct you and help you setup your Firefox installation.

• If a deal is too good to be true, it normally is. Most people who have used Ebay will either know somebody who has been duped or have been duped themselves. As with buying on the high-street, common sense prevails.
• Try and stick to the more reputable online retailers. Using the Amazons and Play.com’s of this world, you are less likely to be scammed and these sites tend to have very favourable consumer policies.
• If you cant find something online, phone the company in question and see if a) they have a shop you can reserve an item from or b) to physically check their stock and alert you if they do indeed have any.
• Use strong passwords for your sites. I would say it doesnt overly matter if you use the same password of many sites, just make sure that they are strong. This normally means having an 8-digit password with at least two numbers in them. For my Ebay and Paypal accounts, I used this website to generate a strong pass for my use.

  It is recommended to have different passwords for all your accounts, this will stop attackers from using all your details on all your favourite sites if your password becomes compromised.

I hope that these tips help you save a few shillings here and there, if it does, drop us a comment and show us what you bought and how much you saved