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
I watched Muse live at T In The Park (on TV) and I have to say they are as good as they are on the CDs when they are live! What a performance it was!
This is where I will be posting personal responses to some questions that are left. If you have a computer question, feel free to contact me at jamie@jamiebalfour.co.uk and I will check my email inbox and try to answer these questions either on YouTube or via this blog in the Computer questions section. I am also no longer posting on my Blogger account through Google Blogger, so its a bit of a sad transition. You can find my old Blogger posts (which will appear here one day!) here.
This blog system is provided by one.com, my web host and it offers many nice integration features as well as HTML (which I do not know but I will learn soon).
We have finally arrived at a new government! I must say, after 13 years of Labour it is exciting (but the Tory part is not so exciting), but I do not know if it is what I want. The only reason that I can possibly say that I would enjoy having this new government is that the Liberal Democrats will be holding some key places in it hopefully. Nonetheless, I would have preferred having Labour over the Conservatives, but I am going to give this new coalition a chance and see how it goes.
I wish the new government the best of luck!
The First Past The Post system is past its time. The system
Simply does not reflect the hopes of the British people
according to the Liberal Democrats leader. Nick Clegg announced on Friday morning with great sadness that the system is completely useless. The Liberal Democrats obviously lost seats in the election and this resulted in a serious need for reform. First Past The Post is past its time now, we need to reform.
The deeply saddening news that I wish to share is news that all will already know. The Liberal Democrats sadly did not do as well as we had hoped in last night's election. Instead of hanging on to our seats or gaining seats, we actually lost seats.
A particular loss for us was Lepbit Opik, who stood in Montgomeryshire and was previously our Housing Spokesperson.
On the plus side, we did manage to hold our most important seats, Nick Clegg's Sheffield Hallam, Ed Davey's Kingston and Surbiton, Chris Huhne's Eastleigh and Vince Cable's Twickenham, but still, a Liberal coalition could ensure parliamentary reform, and the Liberal Democrats would stand more of a chance in the next election(s).
Below is just a small sample of the election results:
Conservatives: 10,706,647 votes = 306 seats
Labour: 8,604,358 votes = 258 seats
Liberal Democrats: 6,827,938 votes = 57 seats
Here are the share of seats in a graphical format:
And here is another one showing the share of the vote achieved by each party:
We need reform. In my opinion, each vote should count to the country.
For the first time in my life, I will be able to vote! So here we are today, and after all my hard work for the party, we come to election day 2010! Make the vote that counts! Britain needs change. Britain needs the Liberal Democrats to hold back the SNP!
Come on people! This is the final push to the election! Labour have failed in the past few years, the Tories will indefinitely change the country from something that has been created successfully for generations.
All of you undecided voters, the Liberal Democrats are the only party that offers the change this country needs - a step forward, not backward.
So, vote for the Liberal Democrats on the 6th of May 2010 for change that works for you!
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!
