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Daniel Maclean

feat "a loose keyboard" with technology, photography, gaming, music, and complete
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Lenovo Building A Console

August 30, 2010

The kings of plastic are bringing out their first device in the computer games market and in typical Chinese fashion they are looking to rip off Microsoft's Xbox platform with oh so original eBox:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010-08/27/content_11214599.htm

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How To Capture Audio/Video Content From A Console

January 23, 2007

I posted this on my Uni's website and thought it was worth posting here as well. This howto concentrates on doing this with an xbox 360 using a composite connection. It can also be done with a S-Video connection but won't be covered. Composite: S-Video Step 1: You will need to have a video capture card or a graphics card with a built in VIVO (Video-In Video Out) system or a similar system. My graphics card (GeForce 4 4200) has a built in VIVO connection and came with a cable which allows the connection of a composite video connection (The yellow connector in the left picture above) or a S-Video connection (Pictured on the right). I've seen other graphics cards just come with a Composite Video-In connection, this will work just the same. Step 2: The VIVO system does not handle sound and neither will any graphics cards. The other two connectors on the composite connection (red and white connections above) are the left and right audio. You will need a cable which takes two co...

New Monitor - LG 29EA73 29 inch 21:9 UltraWide IPS Monitor

July 19, 2014

I don't normally do reviews on just products themselves, but thought i'd make an exception. I was in the market a few months ago for a new monitor and as the last time I bought one was over 5 years ago much had changed (both how I use a computer and what is available). I mostly multitask between coding, emulators, emails, web and chat which means I need a lot of screen real estate to avoid alt-tabbing every 2 seconds. The monitor I had at the time was a 24" Acer monitor which was fine, but was VGA driven and I have a Macbook Pro Retina which required converting from DisplayPort to VGA. For reference, I have two brands of this converter, the official Apple one and a 3rd Party. Both are terrible and are prone to flickering and general crappiness. This more than anything coupled with not enough screen pushed me to get something different. So, after a few weeks of research I settled on the LG 29EA73 With it's super wide aspect ratio at 21:9 vs my old 16:9, I c...

Upgrading Macbook Pro 13 Inch Mid 2009 - SSD Upgrade

March 17, 2014

Some time ago I bought a new Macbook Pro and gave my old one to my wife. She loves it but it already had a good few years on it. It was a Macbook Pro 13 (Mid 2009) and was in need of a good home. At the time since I had my fancy new machine, so the normal maintenance cycle i'd do on a 2-3 year old system just floated by. My wife isn't a techy so naturally she put up with the bad battery life and the performance issues and just put it down to the "Crapbook" :-) Enough was enough! There being nothing technically wrong with the system, fans were operating as expected, memory wasn't dropping address's and even the HDD, a 500GB Hybrid Momentus XT was working great. The battery I actually replaced about 6 months ago because it was lasting all of 40 minutes, got it off ebay and was easier to install than the HDD upgrade. The only clear reason for bad performance was that after years of OS upgrades from the original version of OS X to the very latest, it was fina...