Do you upload images to a blog or website?
When you upload to a blog or website, compression is absolute key.
Firstly, always save as JPEG or JPG. JPG is the ideal photo standard for the web; as it is designed for fast transfer to the client PC and for a lower footprint on the web server. It works by taking out information that the human eye does not notice.
All images should be the minimum size that they can be before there is a noticeable difference or problem. For instance on our community shared blog, images for the top slider must be 662 pixels wide by 362 in height. If all images are uploaded this way, image file sizes become much smaller and therefore the web space (limited currently to 5GB) is cut down for this.
Another method of compression that I use is featured in my own software, Painter Pro. It allows you to select how much compression is applied to the image before it is saved. An alternative to Painter Pro that allows this is Paint.NET (another favourite) where when you save the image as a JPG it asks you if you want to compress.
Compression should almost always be applied to images, particularly now that mobile websites are a key part of any site.
I am going to very quickly summarise the next problem I have had with my motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 in this post, because it has got to the point that I can't take much more of it.
Firstly, my previous computer, better known as the Platypus (which I dearly loved, but sold most of it to a fellow computer enthusiast) was a marvelous computer. It had no problems, it was simply because I had read about Intel's Sandy Bridge being so incredibly good for video editing, which I was certainly doing a lot of at the time, that made me want to buy one for myself.
So the Platypus left and the new computer, better known as the Zebra (both are named after animals named after their chipsets: P45 and Z68, although the Zebra is also black and white) took its place. The Zebra was built with an incredibly cheap-to-build system, as most of the components from the Platypus that were expensive were able to be kept and reused. The Zebra cost around £575 (£100 to the motherboard, £50 to the RAM, £250 to the CPU and £175 to the case) which to me seemed great, but it was terribly flawed.
Now I loved it when I first got it, and still love it now, but it's breaking my heart more and more these days (or maybe just really annoying me I suppose). Here's exactly why:
It started off with the motherboard having a device that seemed to be unknown to the computer. So I disconnected everything and noticed it was still there. Next I decided to plug a USB flash drive into each USB port, and there we go, problem solved. One of the rear USB2.0 ports was not working. I complained to Gigabyte, who seemingly did nothing to help apart from say that my chipset was incorrectly installed, which makes no sense anyway. I filled a complaint and tried to get it sorted under warranty. But it was too much effort after assembling the computer, that I decided to leave it, as it was just one USB2.0 port, and Gigabyte themselves even said that they would not pick it up.
It now suffers from another problem: a device that plugs in and then unplugs a second or two later. Listening to the Windows 7 device connected (dum dum) then immediately after the Windows 7 device disconnected (bum bum) was driving me mad. I could not bare it any more. I muted removed the sound from Windows sound manager in Control Panel.
I have decided when I can, I'm going to sell the motherboard and get a new one for my birthday, when Haswell will be well and truly ready. I will probably sell the CPU as well.
Today, someone (you know who you are!) was going on about how my MacBook isn't up to the specifications for the price. This post is going to briefly explain why this is not the case with myself and why I have stood by the use of my Apple computers.
I have known for a long time that FireWire was a part Apple "invention" (well no, it is actually not, but it was Apple who pushed it on to the market). But it had not struck me until now that I have been using FireWire as my favourite choice of connection to my external drive since about 2007 - way before I got my first Apple product. Now I have a MacBook Pro (and it is well worth the money, PCs have generally more issues and I know this because I am definitely still a PC user first and foremost), iPhone 5 and iPod touch. In the house we now have 4 iPhones and 2 Macs (soon to be three, I think).
I did not realise though that whilst I have been a proud fan of FireWire, what I was saying was that I was really a strong supporter of Apple. Nowadays FireWire is not as big as it used to be, and I have Thunderbolt on my MacBook which I intend to use in the future as it becomes more widely available (it is now available on some PCs and motherboards) and used.
However, it seems to be the build quality that makes me choose Apple. I like many PC manufacturers (not HP though - 3 broken machines due to overheating and not fixed under warranty - that's just saying something) such as Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Samsung and a few others, but I never feel that the quality is any good - especially when someone else you know has a MacBook (I'm talking the Air or the Pro here) or just when you generally compare them side-by-side.
The price point puts people off, but it should not. At the end of the day, I'm still a huge Windows user, I write my software for Windows, not Mac OS X, simply because I have always preferred Windows. But if we are not talking about the software but the hardware, I believe that the quality of Apple's products is much higher than any other. Simple thing likes a magnetic (patented) designed power connection (to prevent pulling the computer off the table if you trip on the wire) are the kinds of things you can expect from Apple. PC manufacturers also put in tweaks, but they tend not to be consistent across the vast range of products (remember those little ExpressCard 54 remotes you used to get with your HP Pavilion notebook?). Another one had Windows SideShow where PC manufacturers would put a display on the outside of lid chassis which could display the song you are listening to or whatever and when the system was shutdown, the user could still use the computer using the outer LCD and could enjoy hundreds of hours of battery life by using the laptop battery but with the small footprint of the outer LCD. Where did that go?
My final point to make is that Apple products are just so much better thermally. My MacBook hardly ever gets warm (although when put under strain it will) but a PC I had would need its fans to run every 3 or 4 minutes when performing the exact same tasks. Why are most PC manufacturers so flimsy when manufacturing them? Apple puts a lot of effort into each product, hence why they end up being the way they are.
I am still though, a Windows user.
I now love Linux and OS X, and I am more of a Mac OS X lover.
Convergence is a funny thing - a great thing at that, however.
Convergence is the concept of "bringing things together" or as put by Marc Benioff:
The world is being reshaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is dramatically transforming the way we live and work.
There is something very powerful about that quote.
It is down to the fact we are changing our lives by having single devices that control and do "everything". It is a great thing, and it has been going on since the first feature phones (where MP3 players and cameras were integrated into the phone, and in turn almost wiping out their entire market).
I love convergence. What do you think?
Some people love the web. I for one do not and here's why:
The web is constantly changing. People who build sites in HTML will soon realise that it's all for nothing as soon as the next standard is released. My website was built without HTML5 which limits it to XHTML Transitional. I wanted HTML5 but I had already written most of it in XHTML Transitional before realising the mistake.
New innovations are constantly being released. My website was originally designed in 2010 with a simple tabbed design. It was acceptable at the time (funny that I was listening to Calvin Harris: Acceptable In The 80s earlier), but nowadays its just not smart looking enough. So I implemented a new menu in January 2013 in the website Major Overhaul of 2013 and guess what, some Internet Explorer applications (although the same version as the next) do not display the correct way. On top of that, the tablet revolution has lead to the release of Windows 8, and now the tablet version of Internet Explorer simply cannot open the menus on my site (strange because it is fine on iOS and Android).
I'm obviously not a web developer, and never will be since I'm actually no good at this and really struggling with it. I think I will leave it once this is redone and move back to C#, VB.NET and Java based programming since this project has been messy!
As some who read this blog know, I like to have a rant about things. But the web is one of the best thing because its just got to stop changing so drastically.
Alan Turing was one of, if not the greatest computer scientists in the history of the world.
He is one of my biggest inspirations and he was an incredibly clever, brave and generally remarkable man.
If you don't know much about Turing this post may be rather less interesting, but the man was an absolute genius who cracked the Enigma code during the Second World War and shortened the war by two to four years and also developed the things we call 'computers'.
Turing Machines are very simple mathematical devices that take in an input and decide what to do with it. Couple loads of these and you have a system like computers of today. That's how transistors work in the CPU of the computer and so on.
Turing committed suicide after being chemically castrated for being gay back in 1954 - an unbelievable loss to the world.
Anyway, in the next few days I'm sure the world will celebrate this man for what he did.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz
8GB DDR2 8500 RAM
1x 120GB SSD, 2x 1TB hard drives, 1x 2TB hard drive
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
XFX ATI Radeon HD5670
Blu-Ray ROM, Blu-Ray RW and DVD-RW drives
Card reader and Floppy disk drive
Lian-Li PC-60B Plus
Corsair HX850W PSU
Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 v2
Labtec Arena 5.1 Surround sound
Dell P2310h 23" 1920 by 1080 LCD monitor DVI
Wacom Bamboo Graphics tablet
Logitech Quickcam Sphere AF
Hauppauge HVR-1100 TV card
40 inch Samsung LE40M87 LCD TV in duplicate setup
Wireless Philips Headphones
Still to this day, 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 letdown for ATI. Perhaps they should spend some more time focused on their software development teams. Still, my 5670 is running beautifully compared with the HD Pro 2400.
I have an idea, perhaps Intel should start to manufacture dedicated graphics cards and AMD should focus on using their acquisition of ATI better.
I finally tried HDMI on a computer graphics card for the first time and I've tried DisplayPort for the very first time. Obviously there is no major difference between them and 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).
I got myself an XFX Radeon 5670 graphics card. It's slimline so it doesn't block any of those important PCI slots, but it's not exactly the most powerful card in the world (although it has thermal design power of 75W which is very low for a dedicated card these days). The card features DisplayPort, DVI and HDMI.
I will be using DisplayPort for my LCD monitor and HDMI with my LCD TV.
I personally back DisplayPort over HDMI because it's royalty free, hence why I chose a monitor with DisplayPort instead of HDMI. Clearly the different target markets are shown here in that HDMI is for the consumer electronics market whilst DisplayPort is designed for the computing industry.
Despite being royalty free, DisplayPort seems to be slow at taking off compared with the more expensive HDMI connector.
I've also noticed that Apple (and their lovely MacBook Pro range) have started adding Mini DisplayPort connectors to their devices. These connectors can be converted to full DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI or VGA. HDMI can only really be converted to DVI but adapters do exist to convert to VGA from what I understand.
On the subject of Apple, I am hating my iPhone more and more day by day and I am thinking about a Windows Phone. Anything but Apple!
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 by 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 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.
The panel is 23 inches and it is exceptionally wide. The aspect ratio of the panel is 16:9 but it also supports 4:3 if necessary. 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.
As previously mentioned, this monitor features the sort of new DisplayPort technology and I am looking forward to testing it out. DisplayPort or DP is an amazing royalty-free technology that can convert to VGA, DVI or HDMI very easily, and in my eyes is by far the best display connector. I'll primarily be using DVI at the moment as my current GPU doesn't have DisplayPort but I am thinking about buying a new GPU and possibly a Mac (and Apple have endorsed DisplayPort for a long time, so of course it will have a way of connecting to the monitor).
It features a TN panel which means that unfortunately, you cannot quite see the screen in its greatest beauty when it is in portrait mode. I would recommend for what I paid for it.
