* Posts by Mr_Blister

21 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2012

Sainsbury's IT glitch spoils bank holiday food orders

Mr_Blister

Re: Waitrose?

Miles away in Otley and every time I have been in there it was horrible. I'd rather go out of my way to Ilkley and shop at Booths, where the experience is pleasant, with subdued lighting which is better for your eyes and the food, feels more relaxed and the products are better. However despite all of this where do I actually prefer to shop? Aldi! Both on price and experience, as you can be in and out of there with a full shop in thirty minutes or so.

UK cops trial £250k drone squadron

Mr_Blister
Black Helicopters

Re: Lewes?

Now then, now then what 'ave we 'ere? A comedian are we sir? Makng lewd remarks about Lewes? Tut tut, it its not Jacksie it is Banksy! Now where is my wall cleaner! :D

Sound and battery: 20 portable Bluetooth speakers

Mr_Blister

Err its Bluetooth and that means....

The subject of audio quality with anything Bluetooth is a moot point, because it will inevitably be compressed audio and that means horrible....well to anyone who values good audio that is. So I await the day when Bluetooth can handle lossless audio codecs smoothly and reliably, and through reasonable sized speakers. For now though I use my small Bluetooth stereo speaker box for BBC Radio 4 speech based programmes and YouTube content; this red Sony clone (sort of) does very nicely and cost a mere £20 from my local Aldi store! It's very similar to the one here but mine is red and branded differently https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BaoSAvbCIAAALUH.jpg:large

Peugeot 208 GTi: The original hot hatch makes a comeback

Mr_Blister

Thanks but no thanks....I will stick with my stock Peugeot 306 2.0 GTi, which has not been hit to death with the ugly tacky bling stick like the current Pug GTi has. The 306 XSi / GTi and 406 Coupé were the last great cars Peugeot made, and both were styled by Pininfarina.

Pirate Party wins seats in Icelandic election

Mr_Blister
Coat

So the Pirate Party has gone to Iceland and had its assets frozen. Maybe their Magnet files were attracted to the pole as well!

Yelling at mobes while driving just as bad as texting

Mr_Blister

Re: context

You have not factored women into this because they refuse to stop talking at you, even when you repeatedly demand they STFU! So like a phone conversation, women in the car also do not stop or pause when appropriate. Cars are not really the best place to have a conversation, because driving these days is too demanding and at times hair raising or complicated due to other drivers and pedestrians actions.

Windows XP support ends a year from … now!

Mr_Blister
Thumb Down

Re: Not Win8, not now or ever

Depending on your work area, using the mouse can cause a lot of pain and discomfort in your hand. However using the keyboard more helps to keep the pain away, plus I like keyboards as I am an old school kind of guy (still use my Atari ST/E and Falcon 030 etc). I find the Windows Start menu useful from time to time and I also find it far quicker to navigate through a drive directory with keystrokes, especially often used ones. One of my three laptops lacks the Windows key, which forces my hands away from the keys to use the red track point (no touchpad on this particular laptop).

1 in 7 WinXP-using biz bods DON'T KNOW Microsoft is pulling the plug

Mr_Blister
Thumb Down

Re: fools

There are those like myself who will continue to use Win XP Pro for tasks NOT requiring the internet. I have a few IBM Thinkpad laptops that work extremely well with XP and each laptop performs a separate role to the others; one is a retro gaming machine; one is a music studio sequencing machine; one is a notebook that is taken on holiday or to diagnose my car with and more. However I have a desktop machine that runs Win 7 64-bit and that can download whatever I need, and then be passed to the other laptops.

Win XP will continue to be used my myself for a good many years to come! However Win 8 can take a running jump!

Happy birthday, LP: Can you believe it's only 65?

Mr_Blister
Thumb Up

Re: Flash won? No, CDs overpriced.

I agree and that is a whole other discussion! However well produced and recorded music (extremely rare I know) can sound amazing at 24-bit 96kHz; my audio interface can go as high as 192kHz but not sure I would be able to tell the difference!

Aw grandad, I asked for an iPad and you got me an iPod

Mr_Blister
FAIL

Money to burn and no sense of what really matters

Last week a news story local to where I live, ran an article of an unfortunate couple who were burgled twice in days and had their entire haul of presents stolen, The most shocking part of this story is not that they were sadly burgled, but the sheer disgusting amount of money they wasted on what looked like three four or five year old children; the value came to something approaching THREE THOUSAND POUNDS!!! When I was that age in the mid 1970s, I got things like a teddy bear and a few simple low value presents. I appreciate that the world was much less technology driven then, but I have an uncle who is a genuine scientific electronics and computing boffin, and was always at the cutting edge of technology and brought many interesting things for himself and later for me, but even then I still never had hundreds or thousands lavished on me. This has never bothered me though, because what I did get was interesting and taught me a lot, plus I had many years of pleasure from them. During my teens I saved up and paid for just about everything I ever owned, including computers and HiFi etc.

People these days are too busy leading self indulgent lives, chasing ever larger houses, cars, holidays and so on. To pay for all of this they have to work every hour of the day, often with miles of commuting and meanwhile their poor neglected children suffer lives lacking real love and devotion. I'm glad my mother was of the previous generations, where staying home to properly raise the family mattered the most. Good on ya mum!

UK cops: How we sniffed out convicted AnonOps admin 'Nerdo'

Mr_Blister
Facepalm

Re: NIC?

...."'ello 'ello, you're NIC'd!!"

The 30-year-old prank that became the first computer virus

Mr_Blister

Re: Cloner

Perhaps he already had one and it was getting in the way of his keyboard!

Jubcropgate: El Reg in snake-fondling nude nipslip outrage

Mr_Blister
Paris Hilton

The photo reminded me of the infamous cover artwork on the Whitesnake album Lovehunter...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W0Bc4j_iIGY/TZUdOmruBRI/AAAAAAAAANI/udKif1mi86o/s1600/front.ipg.jpg

Comet train set for SMASH, staff can only hope to be in right carriage

Mr_Blister
Thumb Up

Re: I went in yesterday...

I went in yesterday with my mother who was concerned she could lose £50 on a gift refund card. There was very little stock left on the shelves, despite the pitiful 10% off sale. I chose a nice Roberts duologic DAB radio for my mother at 10% off was £62. Earlier in the day we had been at another Comet branch and saw a vented tumble dryer, again reduced to clear etc but after going home and checking online, we saw the normally expensive John Lewis had the same model brand new and delivered, for less than the demo model at Comet with no delivery included.

After speaking with a few members of staff at each branch, I must say that only a handful of customers had shown any respect or sensitivity towards the plight of the staff; the customers were completely self interested in what they could grab. Sad times...

Virgin Media's blighted SuperHub NOW comes with extra squeal (oink)

Mr_Blister

No not at all because I can point out certain sounds and the people around me shrug their shoulders and say they cannot hear it. I can still hear those frequencies above 15K to around 17K I think (need to do another test as last time was a couple of year ago). I also put this down to having better trained ears, due to years of listening very deeply into multitracked mixes of songs. You have to be able to do this to identify sounds or problems, that occur when certain frequencies and sounds overlap. This is both a blessing and a curse because being able to hear everything, means you hear both the very good and the very awful! Most people do not listen that intently or deeply to music to hear everything going on in the mix, plus it depends on the quality and setup of both their audio system and their listening environment.

Mr_Blister

Totally agree with everything you have highlighted as I have exceptional hearing ability too, maybe because I have been more aware of the need to protect my hearing from loss with ear plugs etc. The sounds you mention from those devices often cause serious pain and soreness of your ears, and within seconds from some devices like hard drives. So I have bought plenty of hard drive silencing enclosures and everything else goes in cupboards, or as far away to the back of shelves that I can manage without causing them to overhear and die.

I know what you mean about interference being picked up and fed through your soundcard; as a long time musician and private home studio owner it drives me crazy hearing those sounds. I guess much of today's hardware is not properly grounded and shielded from interference, and computer manufacturers probably do not give a toss about such matters; I also suspect that the majority of the public have smashed their hearing to pieces with nightclub noise; home TV systems at full blast; personal media players pumping high volume dance music direct into their earphones and a whole lot more.

Oh and WiFi devices like my internet radio pickup interference from my PC hardware, which is more of a buzzing scrambled sound rather than a high pitched whine. Not sure what I can do about this if anything, apart from moving the radio well away from my PC gear.

Mr_Blister

It depends on how good your hearing ability is because these power supplies make my ears really sore and painful, even if it seems low in volume level. I always try to spend more on better quality and higher rated supplies to avoid this problem. However the worst offenders for severe ear pain in seconds are mechanical IDE, SATA or SCSI hard drives, followed by CRT TVs and monitors which operate on the same frequency as those teen dispersal mosquito alarms!

Game over for legendary 1980s games designer Mike Singleton

Mr_Blister

Re: Factually Inaccurate.

Was it really Mike commenting in the section below the main article? Maybe if he was part of the article itself being interviewed, then it would be better proof perhaps because many people often use famous names as their online aliases.

Ten digital radios to suit all budgets

Mr_Blister
Happy

WiFi is best for home; FM cheapo for outdoors

I bought a terrific Tevion WiFi Internet Radio from Aldi in 2008 which I use all the time, even when sat in front of my desktop PC. It cost a mere £65 but fell to half that the following year I think, but I am not bothered as it works brilliantly and even has FM radio for when WiFi is not available. The sound quality is amazing for the size of the unit and its speakers; full, rounded non-case vibrating bass with clear but not tinny or shrill treble. It also supports the BBC On Demand service, so you can catch up on programmes you have missed.

The downside is that it does not run on batteries but then that is understandable, considering it has a WiFi receiver which on any battery powered product is a real energy sapper. If I really needed to take it out and about, I could just take a car booster battery with a mains inverter, however I doubt I would do this and instead would buy a cheap radio or ghetto blaster for this purpose.

Why is the iPhone so successful? 'Cause people love 'em

Mr_Blister

Re: but I thought I just read that Samsung sells more phones than Apple.

...for fear of being branded a weirdo / loser / geek / anti-social........you get the point.

Ten... all-in-one inkjet photo printers

Mr_Blister

Re: Would have liked to have seen some 'normal' inkjet all-in-ones as a comparison

Canon Pixma MG2155 for £28 from Costco UK a couple of months back, and they still have them in stock for approx £33. This has everything except the colour pop up screen and WiFi, otherwise it is an amazing machine for the money. I cannot seem to find any reference to the MG2155 on the internet, but you can easily find it if you search for the 100% identical MG2150.