Highlights of 2014

1. Bobby Zamora and THAT goal at Wembley
2. Monty Python at the O2
3. Aidan in Les Miserables
4. Whale watching in Cape Cod
5. Visiting Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure locations
6. Alcatraz
7. The reception Kate Bush received at Hammersmith
8. Away at Ipswich with Ewan - the first Nico / Charlie chant, some minor scuffling and three goals
9. Aidan in Sound of Music
10. Aidan reaching final round at Blackpool
11. Lads and Dads day
12. Ghost Stories
13. Ewan playing Jurassic Park on cornet
14. QPR v Wigan play off semi

Home Hub 4 to Home Hub 5

Having recently re-contracted with BT, a side effect was being sent a new Home Hub 5.

This meant a couple of changes when setting up.

1. Use new cable supplied by BT to connect from phone socket directly to HH (no need for modem any more)

2. Remove red ethernet cable between HH and modem

3. Connect laptop by ethernet to HH

4. Change laptop router address to 192.168.1.254 (the default on BT HH)

5. Change laptop IP address to one in the 192.168.1.xxx range

6. Access HH admin screen (192.168.1.254)

7. Change the default BT wireless network addresses to those used with previous HH 

8. Change the password to the previous too (this avoids having to go to every single device and change them all manually)

9. Change router IP address to that used on the old HH 4

10. Change DHCP accordingly.

11. Reboot HH

12. On laptop, change back to old router and IP address settings

Success!

Adding a file to multiple folders in Google Drive

Tick on item, press Shift + Z to get  “Add to Folder” pop-up. Select the folder where you wish to place the selected files and click OK.

Chrome Remote Desktop not connecting - cure

Found here - http://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/245tym/chrome_remote_desktop_stuck_in_the_connecting/

Answer is:

Go to chrome://plugins
Find Chrome Remote Desktop Viewer
Check [X] Always allowed

Success!

Cannot restore file from Time Machine

Seems like it's a bug to do with having a second monitor live! Turn that off, and then it works:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/23779022#23779022

Parrot MKI9200 Poor connectivity with remote

This has continually been an issue, very slow to respond, then only working intermittently.

But it *seems* like the solution could have been quite simple all along! In the battery compartment, there is a small piece of metal that makes the connection with the battery. By pushing this slightly further into the centre of the device (i.e closer to the battery) the connection seems better and the unit is responding really well.

....... for now at least!

Adding Geo tags to photos

Good as my Sony NEX-7 camera is, it doesn't have GPS so my photos are not geotagged like they are on my Nexus 5 phone.

However, through a number of steps, and also referring to articles such as this one, it's relatively straightforward to add geo tagging to photos.

Firstly, install My Tracks from Play Store on phone. Then activate it while taking photos. Set the tracks files to be automatically saved to Google Drive.

Then take these steps to tag photos

1. Download My Tracks files from Google Drive as .kmz format

2. Go to http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/

3. Upload a GPS file - use the file just downloaded

4. Output is GPX

5. In Adobe Lightroom, import photos to be tagged.

5. Then, also in Lightroom, Choose Map > Tracklog

6. Import the GPX file. Note that some of them may have more than one track (it will say so in Lightroom) so you need to go through all of these.

7. Choose the photos to tag

8. Adjust time zone if necessary - even though the phone is on local time when anyway, it still seems to use UK!

9. Auto tag selected photos - there will be varying degrees of success here!

10. Select photos on tracklog

11. Export

12. In Metadata, ensure Remove Location Info is unticked

13. Replace original photos with these new, then remove from Lightroom.

Other links:

http://www.gpsies.com/upload.do?uploadMode=convert

http://gpx2kml.com/?results

Raspberry Pi setup

Having bought the boys Raspberry Pi's for Christmas, we decided to try our first project. This is what we discovered:

1. It's important to get a Wifi dongle before you start - you'll need connectivity! These ones work very nicely - Edimax EW-7811UN 150Mbps Wireless Nano USB Adapter - and were only just over £7 each.

2. Also worth buying a powered USB hub - Amazon have the Raspberry Pi compatable (sic) Mains powered 7 Port USB Hub 2Amp(2000mA) with power cable for raspberry Pi Again, cheap at only £16

3. We referred frequently to Raspberry Pi for Kids

4. The actual Pi's we got were Model B's with a pre-loaded SD card.

5. Start up, install Raspbian

6. On reboot, attach the Wifi dongle

7. Choose Wifi Config, scan for network, and select (dynamic IP at present, may change later)

8. apt-get update

9. Install Chromium

10. Try Chromium and confirm connection to internet works!

11. Install Synaptic

12. Install tightvncserver

13. Attach the camera - we bought this one - Raspberry Pi Camera Module for just under £19

14. Try a sample shot - raspistill -o image.jpg

15. Try a sample video - raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000

Both of these save in ~/home (not desktop)

16. How to play the video? Open with omxplayer and make this default

17. Next aim - to set up a remote record facility in line with this tutorial

18. We did have a problem though. We had two Pi's, both of which were working, and then suddenly one stopped. Well, it stopped in the sense of sending no signal to TV via HDMI. Trying various RCA cables brought no success, then - more to investigate possibilities than anything else, we swapped the SD card over. Vision restored. So the SD card was the issue.

19. We tried formatting the card using the details here but it kept insisting the card was locked (even when not).

20. Fortunately we had a spare SD card and were able to install NOOBS on it. Then repeated the steps above and now both are working fine.

Turning off annoying sounds in Mac

The pop pop pop sound when turning volume up or down:
System Preferences > Sound > Play feedback when volume is changed

The scrunch noise when emptying trash:
System Preferences > Sound > Play user interface sound effects