Blog of Shaun McCran - Architecting robust, elegant technical and business solutions - Gadgets

Adventures in Lego: the UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) – post 4 - bags 9-12

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 23:16:00 -0000

This is my ongoing blog series on building the Lego Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon, here's a link to the Lego site: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/millennium-falcon-75192

This is a 7500 piece kit, so its a big build! The biggest Lego set created in fact!

A quick recap of where we are 8 bags in. We've got a complete Technics framework, a couple of of room areas, the front V shapes and the back end. This article will deal with bags 9 through 12.

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Adventures in Lego: the UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) – post 3 - bags 6-8

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 11:45:40 -0000

This is my ongoing blog series on building the Lego Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon, here's a link to the Lego site: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/millennium-falcon-75192

This is a 7500 piece kit, so its a big build! The biggest Lego set created in fact!

A quick recap of where we are, 5 bags in. We've got a good sized Technics framework, and a lot of detail in the four room areas and the back end. This article will deal with bags 6,7 and 8.

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Adventures in Lego: the UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) – post 2 - bags 3-5

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:52:00 -0000

Following on from the last post, where I unboxed and started the build for the UCS Millennium Falcon, I thought I'd outline the next few stages, so you can see how it builds, and what issues you might find in the building process.

The first article was opening the box, looking through the manual and steps 1 and 2. This article will cover 3,4 and 5. Also some minor back tracking due to my inability to count spaces properly!

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Adventures in Lego: the UCS Millennium Falcon - 75192 - unboxing

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 20:45:00 -0000

I had the pleasure of picking up an Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon recently, so I thought I'd write up my findings on opening the set, a stage by stage view on building the set, and generally how the thing translated into Lego. [More]

Sony confuses its customers with product fragmentation

Tue, 10 Jun 2014 06:17:00 -0000

So E3 is here again, along with a flurry of consumer news, games and future predictions on the trends of technology, or at least where the big entertainment companies would like us to think it's going anyway. This is our (the consumers) big window into their (the mega corp entertainment company) plans and products that we are all too excited about buying up for the next year.

Sony released big news about new games, old games being redone in HD, new devices and new online services. The key take home message for me was all about Sony Saturation. I can't quite decide if their Vision is saturate the market in devices that all do the same thing, or whether they just don't have a Vision at all, which has led to product development, where all their devices can do the same thing. Either way what we consumers are looking at is a dizzying array of Sony hardware and software services, much of which does exactly the same as its counterparts.

Sony already have Smart TVs, many of which are getting the ability to play older PlayStation titles. Now we are also hearing about the PlayStation TV, a set top box ($99,USA only at the moment) Which seems to be able to stream PS4 content to another TV (Sony MagicEye anyone?) Then of course you've got the PS4, which cannot play older titles, only high end new ones. On top of that there are numerous rollouts of PS Now and Sony store implementations across PS VITA and Smart TVs. What's PS Now? Well it looks like a cloud based service you access through your TV allowing you access to older games and movies, oh, and you don't need a console, all the grunt work is done at a Sony server somewhere in a datacentre.

So what's the problem with having several different types of device doing the same thing? Well for both Sony and its consumers it brings a couple of interesting pitfalls, both of a technical nature and of a customer nature.

1. The product offering is confusing. As a consumer how do I select products with overlapping capabilities? Do I want a console, or a TV I can use to play similar games?
2. How do I manage my games collection? Are there custom versions of the Sony store per device to stop my buying the wrong product on the wrong device? Account management will become a much more intelligent process.
3. What impact does all this have on existing devices? How difficult are these things becoming to use? All these additional layers of software can't impede the customers too much, otherwise no-one will participate.
4. How does Sony keep them all up-to-date? TVs are notoriously bad at being updated, the big TV manufacturers would rather you buy a new TV every year than produce an upgrade roadmap for you. With more devices come more development, more testing and more releases. None of this comes cheap.

So for now, I'll wait and see how each of these pans out, but it does feel a little like Sony are rather randomly shooting at fish in a lake and seeing which one they hit first.

For further reading you can check out the BBCs article on E3 opening presentations here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27774813

Vodafone Sure Signal review

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:26:00 -0000

A product I'd been vaguely aware of, but have since discovered a lot more about is the Vodafone Sure Signal box. This little white box uses your home broadband to create a 3G bubble in your own home. It is basically a mini, private 3G mast. [More]

A mobile integration case study: Onkyo remote for mobile platforms

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:53:00 -0000

I am a big fan of integration. I really like it when I can see that someone has thought long and hard about what would be useful to users and what platforms best fit that usefulness. The electronics manufacturer Onkyo have produced a mobile application that allows you to control their devices from your chosen mobile platform. [More]

My Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1 review - Part 2

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 14:54:00 -0000

Continuing on from my previous article I have been reviewing the Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1. I've had the tab a month now and I thought I'd document my findings. You can read the previous article here: http://www.mccran.co.uk/index.cfm/2011/10/4/My-Samsung-Galaxy-Tablet-101-review--Part-1 Part 2 deals with the software layer and my summary. [More]

My Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1 review - Part 1

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:06:00 -0000

I've had a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for around a month now so I thought I'd document my findings. This is part one of a two part article. In this part I deal with the Tab out of the box and the Hardware. I'm familiar with the Android OS but all my previous devices have been HTC branded so they have had Sense installed on them, also this was my first tablet device so I expected a learning curve. [More]

Limited Star Wars Xbox 360 revealed

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 07:15:00 -0000

The first ever custom Xbox 360 and Kinect bundle includes an R2-D2 blue-and-white themed console, a custom Xbox 360 Wireless Controller inspired by C-3PO and the first ever white Kinect sensor. The bundle is available now for pre-order through participating retailers. Microsoft have also confirmed that this bundle will also be available in Europe. [More]

Backing up your SMS and MMS to GoogleMail from an Android device

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 06:18:00 -0000

I've been using the same Android phone for over a year now, a HTC Desire. Over the last year I've been sending and receiving texts on a frequent basis. My SMS app seems to struggle with the volume of messages it is now holding, over 5000+, so I thought I'd find a way of backing them up and clearing it all out in an effort to speed things back up.

This article explains how I used the 'Backup to Gmail' application to backup all my SMS and MMS messages.

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Things I saw at the Gadget show live - Long live the QR Code

Mon, 09 May 2011 22:52:00 -0000

I was recently at the Gadget show live exhibition event at the National Exhibition center in Birmingham. One of the first things I noticed was the proliferation of the QR, Quick Response, code.

It is exactly the right sort of environment for it, being a Gadget and Technology based event, and there are undoubtedly a higher percentage of smart phone users in the crowd, but it was great to see a lot of exhibitors using QR codes on their stands. [More]

Things I saw at the Gadget show live - Gaming Exhibition area

Sun, 08 May 2011 20:01:00 -0000

One of the exhibition halls at this year's Gadget show live was set aside for gaming. This included the whole range of gaming from handheld consoles to high end PC and console gaming.

Nintendo had a great display of all of their handheld console throughout the ages, right up to the 3DS, which takes a little getting used to. [More]

Things I saw at the Gadget show live - Cat Genie self flushing cat box

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:48:00 -0000

The Gadget Show live Birmingham exhibition happened a few weeks ago, and amongst the exhibition stands there I spotted a rather intriguing cat gadget.

I've got a family of cats so I'm always interest in cat related gadgetry but I think perhaps an automated litter box might be a bit too much.

That's right, the image above is from this site, http://www.catgenie.co.uk/ where you can watch a video of the self flushing cat litter toilet. This thing is huge, and about as loud as our Dyson vacuum cleaner. I'm dubious as to whether any of my cats would even get near it let alone in it.

OCZ Vertex 2 SE SSD (Solid State Drive) review

Mon, 02 May 2011 22:39:00 -0000

I've heard a lot of differing opinions on Solid State Drives over the past year, and both availability and price have conspired against me to put me off buying one.

Over the Easter weekend though I bit the bullet and ordered an OCZ Vertex 2SE 120gig Solid State Drive. This drive (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb-ocz-technology-vertex-2e-25-sandforce-ssd-mlc-flash-read-285mb-s-write-275mb-s ) has reputed read speeds of 285 MB/s and write speeds of 275 MB/s.

The stats are impressive, but I was also interested in what this translated to in terms of real performance, in a desktop environment.

Installation

Installation of the drive is very simple. It has standard SATA connections for data and power. The only thing to watch out for is that most of these drives are 2.5" form factor, so they may only fit in specific places in your desktop.

The drive was detected in the BIOS immediately, the only setting of note here is that you are running the SATA ports in AHCI mode as this is rumoured to effect the performance of the drive. You can retrospectively enable this mode of operation for the drive after you have installed an OS, but it's a little trickier doing it this way. This article is helpful in getting AHCI working after you have already installed your OS. http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831

Benchmarking

Most hard drive reviews use several different industry standard software suites to benchmark drives, so I used the ATTO benchmark software (http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?sku=Disk_Benchmark) to run read and write test on OCZ Vertex 2 SE.

The images above show that the OCZ SSD reached speeds of just over 200 MB/s write and 250 MB/s read speeds. Not quite the advertised speeds, but I am running an old SATA chipset (nForce 4) and I am unable to use AHCI mode as the motherboard does not support it. So your chipset does matter to some degree.

None the less this shows very high read/write performance that isn't far off the advertised limits.

As a comparison I ran HD Tune against my existing 7200 SATA Hitachi drive, which produced the results below.

Real world

In terms of real world performance I ran a few timed events against the drive, starting with a Windows 7 install. Starting from the License entry screen it only took sixteen minutes to get to a working desktop. Similarly installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 was an eight minute install. Even more impressive was Microsoft Office 2007, where a full install took just over four minutes.

Windows 7 recognises and will accommodate SSD drives very well, but there are several good resources for checking that an SSD drive is running as it should, and that you are treating it properly. The link below are interesting reading when it comes to dealing with using SSD drives with ReadyBoost and disk Defragmenter as they can adversely effect its performance.

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/windows-7/2441-windows-7-ultimate-solid-state-drive-speed-tweaks.html