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Getting a proper printed manual with new electronic equipment is very rare these days. Except for the usual “Quick Start” guide, if you want to know anything more advanced, you need to copy the manual from the supplied CD – or even have to download it from the manufacturer’s website – and view it on your PC or laptop or tablet.

That’s probably fine for equipment that’s rooted to the spot, such as a TV or audio system but for portable gear, it’s not really an option if you want to carry the manual with you.

Printing the manual out becomes an increasing non-starter the more pages the manual has. And, certainly when using an inkjet printer, it becomes less and less cost effective; especially when you consider all the things that can (and will) go wrong during the printing process. Even more so if you’re printing one side at a time on A4 paper trying to make a double-sided A5 book!

For times when you really want a printed manual, I’ve found a company that does a very quick and professional job for about the same price as it would cost to buy a similar book with the same number of pages.

Well worth a look: Print My Pdf.com

Although the dSLR is good for taking “proper” photographs, it’s always handy to have a simpler point ‘n’ shoot camera for the quick spur of the moment shot. Granted the camera phone takes decent shots but I always find myself in need of a longer lens, somehow.

I’ve had my little 2 megapixel compact camera since around 2002 but the camera phone and the Nikon dSLR serve as constant reminders of how fast modern cameras are in comparison.

So, I decided to get this Panasonic from Amazon. It was out of stock when I ordered it so I had a few days extra anticipation waiting for it to arrive.

The battery is supplied uncharged so the three hours it took to charge seemed like an age! My first impressions were quite favourable – loads of configuration options that my old compact lacked – but, as soon as I transferred a picture to the PC for closer examination, I was immediately disappointed. 🙁

These two shots are 100% crops from identical fullsize images. One taken with my old 2 megapixel camera and one taken with my new 16 megapixel Panasonic both taken at maximum resolution and minimum compression. If you can’t guess which one is which, the bottom one is the Panasonic!

As you can see from the two crops below, close up with very few colours for the camera to worry about, is no better (click images for slightly larger version):

Amazon were very good in accepting the camera for return – they even arranged for it to be picked up at no charge. Even better, someone selling through Amazon Marketplace, has accepted for return a spare battery I’d bought.

So, why did I buy the Panasonic!? There are plenty of online reviews for it and all of the ones that Google found were very favourable. By chance, I came across this review after I’d ordered it but before it had arrived!

I’ve now bought the Canon SX240 HS and, so far, I’m very pleased with it. Below is a black & white close up (100%) for comparison:

For one reason and another, this is the first opportunity since the New Year I’ve had to spend some time at the computer to write up some odds and ends.

Firstly, the “mystery” object hinted at in my last blog post is a Brake Lights Tester. A little gizmo to help check your vehicle’s brake lights when you’re on your own.

I’ve been busy with another project recently. One problem I’ve encountered with my original PICAXE Weather Station project is that the indoor display unit is tethered to the computer in order to provide the online weather data. Inevitably, this limits where I can locate the display.

So, I’ve built a second, additional, indoor display which receives its data directly from the same PicAxe outdoor transmitter but which I can situate more conveniently in the living room.

More details on my main website HERE.

I’ve just been gathering together the collection of electronic projects I’ve built this year. I didn’t realize that I’d made so many!

The question mark? A small mystery project that, hopefully, will be ready early in the New Year.

Just finished a simple Arduino-based multi-game and put the details up on my site… for anyone interested!

All the games are really old-style 70’s type games – 15 puzzle, Minefield, Lunar Lander and Draughts (just).

Full details on my main site here.

I use a programming environment called ‘Delphi’. My version, Delphi 7, is rather old now but is still widely acclaimed to be the best version that was written. Much like Windows, it reached a peak after which there was only one way it could go.

It was written in the days of Windows XP, so installing it on Windows 7 (with its User Account Control) proved to be a bit of a challenge. One difficulty was Delphi 7’s Help File used a system that Microsoft had replaced in Windows 7. Luckily, Microsoft provided a patch to make the Help File work on Windows 7.

Today, I put Delphi 7 on my Windows 8.1 laptop but Windows 8.1 wouldn’t allow me to use the patch I’d used in Windows 7 for the Help File. Thoughtfully, Microsoft have provided a new version of the patch for Windows 8.1, which I downloaded and tried to install.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t install and, after much searching, it turns out that the patch requires the system’s language to be set to English (US). Another hour wasted downloading and installing the English (US) language pack just to run the Help File patch.

Windows 8.1 really is a hodge podge of barely-tested bits and pieces cobbled together in a hurry by a committee!

(Ref: Microsoft Blog )

Like most people who’ve been dabbling in computer-building and repairs for more years than I care to think about, coupled with my ‘come in handy one day’ mentality meant I’d acquired a fair-sized pile of spare parts. Some are even brand new, in their original boxes.

It’s the sort of stuff that charity shops tend to steer clear of – basically because (a) it’s electrical and (b) they don’t really know what it is.

Now, I could have flogged much of it on ebay and pocketed the cash but I thought my local re-cycling centre may have facilities to sort out the good stuff and be able to make Good Use of it one way or another.

So, I left the new stuff in their original boxes and took it all to be re-cycled. Unfortunately, they’re not allowed to even examine the stuff for potential charity value so the lot went into the skip!

What a waste!

My first desktop computer’s operating system was called DOS 6.2. When you fired it up, once the computer had run though its own system checks (called the BIOS POST – Basic Input/output system, Power On Self-Test), you were shown a prompt on an otherwise black screen:

DOS >

To run a program, say a word processor, load a document and send it to a printer, you’d have to type something like:

DOS > EDIT.COM -MYDOC.TXT > LPT1

To see what folders (directories) were on the Hard Drive, you’d use the DIR command or one of its options:

DIR [drive:][path][filename] [/A[[:]attributes]] [/B] [/C] [/D] [/L] [/N]
[/O[[:]sortorder]] [/P] [/Q] [/R] [/S] [/T[[:]timefield]] [/W] [/X] [/4]

The stuff in square brackets (called switches) are optional parameters used filter out (or in) certain files.

It’s not rocket science but, by today’s standards, it felt like it!

In my opinion, the pinnacle of today’s standards is Windows 7. From there on, it can only go down hill.

I recently bought a new laptop which had Windows 8 part-installed on it. All I had to do whas type my name and where I live and it was up and running. I was right, Windows 7 was the pinnacle and Windows 8 was over the hill on the slope down.

Somehow I think Microsoft has forgotten the huge user-base who sit at a desk in front of a monitor and keyboard. Designed for touch screens, Windows 8 is clunky and unfriendly when it’s used with a mouse.

As soon as Windows 8.1 became available, it promised the return of the old “Start” button and the option to boot to the desktop instead of the stupid touch screen tiles (called Metro for some reason).

I should have known better, but I ‘upgraded’ to Windows 8.1. Big mistake. The problem is that computers no longer have the familiar BIOS – a goodly part of the basic input/output is now stored on part of the Hard Drive itself (called the UEFI) so making a backup becomes a critical first step – particularly as you’re supplied with neither a Windows disc nor even the Product Key. If the Hard Drive should fail without a copy of this UEFI it’s impossible to install a new Drive and get Windows 8 (or 8.1) running again.

Naturally, I’d made a ‘recovery disc’ straight off.

But, in their wisdom, Microsoft don’t update the UIEF when you update to Windows 8.1 so, when you come to make a recovery disc, the system can’t find the recovery file (called INSTALL.WIM) because there isn’t one, so you can’t make a proper system recovery disc. (Actually ‘disc’ is the wrong word because, in 8.1, you’re forced to use a USB device).

Without going into too much detail you have to download a 2GB ISO file from Microsoft (so you’d better have a Microsoft account!) and then you have to mount it as a virtual hard Drive by double-clicking it. Except this operation failed for me so I had to download a 3rd party Virtual Clone Drive and install that to mount the ISO.

You then have to navigate the virtual hard drive for the INSTALL.WIM file and copy it to a new folder on your Hard Drive. Then you open a Command Prompt with elevated Admin privileges and type the location where you’ve just copied the file. Something like:

> REAGENTC /SetOSImage /Path C:\Win81-Recovery\INSTALL.WIM /Index 1

Look familiar? Lost?

The point I’m making is that we’re going backwards if that’s what you have to do to make a backup work after a simple operating system update.

Like I said, Windows 7 was the pinnacle. Downhill from here on!

(ref: Windows 8.1 – Unable to “Copy Recovery Partition” when building Recovery Drive? )

I think this is the second update since iOS7 was released (escaped?) mid-September.

The first one apparently fixed the bug which allowed the lock screen to be by-passed.

There’s quite a long list of changes associated with this latest update (7.0.3). The most notable addition is probably iCloud Keychain. From a quick read of the on-screen notes before the update started, this (when switched ON) links the various iCloudy type Apple accounts with one password. Presumably much like Google do.

The biggest improvement, for me with my humble iPhone 4 is the ability to turn off the screen animation/zoom when switching between screens. Ever since the change from iOS6 to iOS7, this animation has been very jerky. Give Apple their due, they have listened to their customers and made a fix (unlike Google who don’t seem to give a toss when hundreds thousands of people complain about a disliked browser feature).

In the iPhone 4, a new slide switch has appeared under Settings | Accessibility : Reduce Motion. Turning this ON eliminates the jerky zooming between screens and is replaced with a smooth transition/dissolve.

Most of my electronics projects these days use micro-controller chips because they allow quite complicated circuits to be built with relatively few components.

My “favourite” micro-controller is the ATmega328. It has 28 pins, most of which can be used to connect input devices, such as switches, buttons, light sensors, temperature sensors, and so on or output devices, such as LEDs, displays, motors etc.

It’s a very versatile chip but sometimes the 28 pins is a bit “overkill”. The manufacturer of the ATmega328 makes a “family” of similar chips with 8, 14 and 20 pins in addition to the 28-pin ATmega328 but I was unable to program them – until now!

I made a stand alone programmer some time ago which was able to program 28-pin and 14-pin chips but I wanted to program the 8-pin chips as well so I made my “mini programmer”
which connects to the main programmer.