Thursday, 3 May 2012

Local election 2012: Vote wisely


I am sure some people stopped caring about voting, because the government stopped caring them.   Ideally these parties should be advertised well in advance for people to get time to research and vote.  I feel they are too silently available.

Start caring by making your vote count, and for future elections.  Or you may end up having a messy government.

Local Elections 2012 
Some steps to help with researching.
  1. Find your local election website details for your county
    http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Dl1/Directories/Localcouncils/index.htm
  2. Visit the found council website
  3. Search for a link like "Elections and Voting"
  4. Then search for "Election 2012" area
  5. Hopefully within "Election 2012" you will find some kind of document that you can download
    Statement of Persons Nominated, Notice of Poll and Situation of Polling Stations
     
  6. Search through the document for your living local district area
  7. Find out each of the parties views and choose your ideal party.
Hopefully you managed through the steps ok and feel more happy with your final decision.

Monday, 23 April 2012

Anti virus

Since moving back into my parents for a little while, my dad has been nagging me to make sure I installed antivirus on all my machines before I even try to connect to the family network, even if it's opensource or  an Apple iMac.

iMac
I read recently there was a trojan virus that spread through the Apple iMacs and affected over 600,000 machines.   I felt lucky to reading up that Sophos was able to remove trojans (Not sure if could remove this "Flash Back" one though),  it has a nice easy graphical user interface too and blends into the iMac well.  Still glad Apple released a security patch which I installed straight away.

Ubuntu
Not sure if this is true, I had a ago at Avast's Linux version and was not impressed that it crashes whilst trying to put in the license code.  I am very impressed with AVG's efforts, where the have made a DAEMON to run in the background and is just a couple of commands to get it updating and scanning.

Future Possibilities
What I have found interesting recently is ClamAV has on access scanning (passive mode) feature for OS X, so I may research this as another solution for Apple iMac.  I have used ClamAV before and I am also impressed with this one.

Further Reading

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Android: Anoying shutdown with 50% plus charge

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As of this post, I am still a happy Android user with the late dated smart phone, the Sony Ericsson X10i.

Bare in mind that the Android operating system was designed with battery power in mind, and hopefully still is and it is just something I need to tweak or change.

I solved my problem by buying a new battery!"Sony Ericsson battery model : BST-41"

Yet I felt it be worth sharing how I investigated my findings.

Annoying Android Shutdown (or AAS? :p )
Past 2 weeks, I have been experiencing the odd bizzare shutdown even though my battery charge on the phone is around 50%.  The first week I put myself down to thinking I didn't charge enough, then the 2nd week I put down to annoying as hell.

I found it shut down mainly due to use of browsing the Internet and nothing else.

So I did a little research here and there to see what I can do, so here are my findings.

Nearing the end of the 2 weeks, I found the mobile was shutting down more quickly and I had to keep the phone on constant charge.

Initial Investigation
 All these investigations came from googling the common keywords and trying them.  I left buying the new battery to the very last option.

Lookout Check 
At first I thought it was this recent app "Lookout" app that exceeded the process possibly.   I uninstalled promptly originally, as it was a week ago I installed it(Since the anoying week was a week ago, it made me wonder).  

Thought due to it's constant checking that it may of wanted eager internet requests.  My dad has said in the past the odd few times, that it doesn't take much processing power.

Then not too long ago after uninstalling the app, it happened :/
App is fine, worthy keep or my dad may not be amused if I introduced a virus on his home network.
Mobile shutdown even when Lookout was uninstalled

Uninstall Apps / Free up space and Processes
I started to uninstall some apps that I didn't use so much as I felt, they may of just kept pinging the internet for changes.

I also used this app "SystemPanel" to see what was being used in the processes.  I am suspecting it may be due to this.
Half promising

Doesn't make any difference

Try Captive Keep Alive app
Some users suggested to install this app "Captive Keep Alive", to prevent the phone from sleeping.  The is really designed for Samsung.  You set the "Keep alive" bar to the amount of charge left in your battery before it shuts down.  I set mine to 25%.  

At first I felt confident in that this was the best solution, yet just recently, I found it shutdown when my battery charge was at 40%.



The first time you use it, it didn't report the battery charge correctly, I started to suspect it was a Samsung thing.  Then eventually adjusted my shutdown request to 11% and it eventually reported a charge of 24% so in theory it works. of this stage.

Looked promising at first, shows the battery consumptions.

Failed, seems to shutdown ahead of the battery charge, may (delayed reaction of the status?)

A new battery
Read somewhere that maybe I should try and change the battery, so I have bought a third party battery for now.  Them ones that can't tell the charge.

Third Party Battery Model : (Bought for £10 quid, from a local mobile repair shop)
I was told it will charge, yet you will never see it is actually charging.  If you have a loose miniUSB slot that you have to carefully position the cable, you won't know if it is or isn't charging.  HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED.

Official Battery model : (Bought for £15 formymobile.co.uk)
Worked great with Sony Ericsson battery BST-41

Finally
The BST-41 battery warranty is 1 year.  Mine lasted 1year and 7 months.  Bare that in mind :)

Oh ya and don't over charge your battery, doesn't take long for these new batteries to charge, makes it last longer.

Sunday, 12 February 2012

Xperia Camera crash

Xperia x10i camera crashes
with Android gingerbread 2.3.3

Try reseting phone to factory defaults without formatting sdcard.

Settings->Privacy->Factory data reset

If it still crashes, take out the SD card and try the camera.   If it fails then, then its probably a software glitch.   Not sure if and when Sony will release a patch.  Makes me start thinking a may flash and use community roms.

You may need format as card to fix.  Yet the problem may come again.

Further info
hpanswers blog

Tuesday, 17 January 2012

Tracking in new Google Docs

As of this date and sad short answer.... They stopped Google Analytics support in the new version Google Docs.

How we track our published Google Documents now!?
Believe they are developing another form of statistic viewing system for our Google Documents.

Really?
Yes really, I was researching my Google Analytics and found out my default website is no longer getting tracked.  Thought I'd best investigate, eventually stumbled upon Google staff reporting, that they are phasing out Google Analytics support in the new Google Docs version

Teresa C. of Google reported on 30/11/2011
Hi everyone - thanks for taking the time to post. We're phasing out Google Analytics support in our new editors, but we'll be working on alternatives to provide admins with more information about their doc's viewers. 
From this post!

Further note, at one you used to be able to edit the HTML and CSS.  You no longer can't in this current version of Google Docs.  Yet I truly believe they are working some form new alternative.

PS: I still like Google Docs :P

Monday, 9 January 2012

Social People Power in Politics

There are a few petition sites that help fight some of corrupt political agendas.  Normally you just sign and leave it up to the site to show how many email siginatures has been signed for a petition to stop something.

Here is something a little different

Since the SOPA bill has come into huge debate of it's OVERLY heavy weight bill of rushed ideas to stop piracy that can harm the way of the Internet and potentially destroy such popular sites such as reddit.com.

reddit.com started to find ways to help tackle this issue head on and debate tactics to stop candidates that support SOPA act.

The IAMA Request

One particular redditor requested Rob Zerban for an interview with reddit.com and ask what his thoughts are on the  SOPA bill.

12 days later

Since http://www.robzerban.com/ done an IAMA interview on reddit.com.  he has raised far press buzz and money than he could possibly imagine to out beat his challenger Paul Ryan.  Paul Ryan dropped support for SOPA (further verification of this story here and Google News search 'Paul Ryan Sopa' ).

Up for another challenge

reddit.com accepted the challenge to show they can be political force to be reckon with. 


Social people power at it's best :)