All About Anything

Reviews of Wrestling, Movies, TV and much more! Strong language has been censored by me for blog content

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Amazon Kindle ebook download problems?

Are you finding that no matter what you do Amazon won't send you AZW files any more? It's defaulting to the "will be delivered via Whispernet" message?

Well, It seems that I was the very first person to have or report this issue to Amazon UK and it appears that the problem is caused by your "My Kindle" archive being full so there's no space to back-up the book you are buying to.

The archive will hold 500 ebooks and no more.
So if you aer having these problems then you need to delete at least 50-100 titles from your My Kindle archive.

And then you will be able to download AZW files as normal.

Problem solved.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

William And Sly 2 Map



This map shows the locations of all rune stones, frost fairies, ahmni posts and fire posts. I have also marked the location of home and the fox den. It doesn't show all elemental boxes because I'd already found 2 and unlocked them before I started making this map.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

IRC Undernet G-lined Virus

Recently I was having problems connecting on IRC to Undernet, it as reporting that I had a virus and I kept getting g-lined and instantly disconnected.

Did a sweep with Hijackthis, nothing out of the ordinary.
Did a sweep with Spybot S&D, nothing found.
Did a sweep with Ad-aware, also nothing found.

So I assumed it was a false positive, decided I couldn't use Undernet any more & switche d to IRCHiughway.

Then last night before going to bed I decided to run my antivirus software over my main hard drive.

THAT found something. 5 infected files were found.
3 hidden in Documents & Settings/Network Services (A folder that doesn't even exist!)
2 hidden in numbered subfolders inside my Sun/Java area.

I told Avast to put them into the virus chest, then I deleted them from the chest.

Tried to reconnect to Undernet, no more error messages about viri.
Clearly I WAS infected then.

I've written up this post so if anyone else has the same issue, they can look in the same places and find the virus more easily.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

I Don't Like Farmville (with apologies to Bob Geldof & The Boomtown Rats)

I Don't Like Farmville (with apologies to Bob Geldof & The Boomtown Rats)

by Raymond Daley on Thursday, 01 July 2010 at 19:12

The silicon chip inside their head
Gets switched to overload.
And nobody's gonna get to plough today,
Their going to make them go offline.

And daddy doesn't understand it,
He always said it was good as gold.
And he can see no seasons
'Cause there are no seasons
What season do you need to be shown?

Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville.
Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville.
Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville.
I want to shoot
The Zynga staff.

The 'net machine is kept so clean
As it skypes to a waiting world.
And mother feels so shocked,
Father's world is rocked,
And their thoughts turn to
Their own little farm.

Sweet 16 ain't that peachy keen,
No, it ain't so neat to admit defeat.
They can see no seasons
'Cause there are no seasons
What seasons do you need.. ooh-ooh-ooh

Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville.
Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville.
Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville.
I want to shoot
The Zynga staff, staff, staff... shoot all the staff

All the farming's stopped in the farmground now
She wants to farm with her toys a while.
And harvests early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die.
And then the bullhorn crackles,
And the captain tackles,
With the problems and the hows and whys.
And he can see no seasons
'Cause there are no seasons
What season do you need to cry, cry, ooh...ooh?

The silicon chip inside their head
Gets switched to overload.
And nobody's gonna get to plough today,
Their going to make them go offline.

And daddy doesn't understand it,
He always said it was good as gold.
And he can see no seasons
'Cause there are no seasons
What season do you need to be shown?

Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville
Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville
Tell me why?
I don't like, I don't like, I don't like Farmville.
Tell me why?
I don't like, I don't like, I don't like Farmville.
Tell me why?
I don't like Farmville.
I want to shoot
The Zynga staff.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Opening an Agfa Snapscan scanner

I did this with an Agfa Snapscan E50 but by the looks of it all the snapscans will open the same way.

You may well get to a point where you want to clean inside the glass of your snapscan. Its not easy but its possible.
Opening it WILL void your warranty (if you still have one) but if you are beyond that point and are willing to give it a go then here is how its done.

WARNING/CAVEAT - Attempt this at your own risk. If you break your scanner trying this its not my fault.

Firstly don't bother looking for screws to unscrew, there aren't any.

Start by removing the lid (unplug the power lead, usb lead and lid power lead and open the lid, tilt the hinges and it should eventually come away from the scanner.

Secondly get yourself a slim flatblade screwdriver or other strongish flat impliment. Turn the scanner upside down and start at the end with all the lead holes.

Insert your blade into the plastic between the white and dark grey parts just below the hinges, you should see a little retaining catch that you can pry loose, theres another where the other hinge is.

On the front the catches are to the right and left of the control panel, be careful when you lever those loose as theres parts that can move inside the scanner so turn the whole thing right side up and remove the white cover that holds the glass.

What you should have is 2 bits, the white bit with the glass on and the dark grey bit with all the electronics on.

Wipe the inside of the glass with a dry cloth (a glasses cleaning cloth is ideal).

Replacing the cover just reverse what you did, lever the front catches in first then the rear. Replace the lid and replug in all you leads. One clean scanner glass.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Building A Better Kindle (or whats wrong with the Kindle 3)

Lets be honest, the Kindle 3 is FUCKING SHIT.
I'm not going to piss about here, I want to say what I mean and fuck Amazon if they can't handle an honest opinion.

I've owned my Kindle 3 (wifi only) now since mid April.
As a device for reading books its pretty darn good. But its got a LOT of faults.

If you look into the history of the Kindle 2 and the original Kindle you can see how good they were.
And what a complete piece of shit the Kindle 3 actually is.

The Kindle 2 had a changeable battery. Thats been removed in the Kindle 3, you can't even access the battery in that. So theres reason 1 to hate the Kindle 3 right there, once the battery won't take a charge any more you've got a device thats no longer functional. You've got to ask WHY Amazon decided they didn't want us users changing the battery in our Kindle 3.

Probably to make us buy another Kindle. Not happening in this lifetime Amazon.

Again if you look at the Kindle 2 it had a numeric keypad. That's gone as well, replaced by a SYM key. It's as annoying as hell to use, especially if you have any long numbers to enter. Bring back the numeric keys.

The Kindle 2 also had bigger keys, I bet they were easier to press. The K3's keys are INSANELY small. And rounded. And real easy to miss and also pretty hard to press in. The K2 had square keys, they look so much nicer & easier to use.

Functionality out of the box. Frankly this is my biggest gripe with Amazon & the K3. There is SO much the K3 won't do unless its been registered via wifi. You can't set the clock, you can't make collections, you can't name the Kindle.

All you are limited to is putting books on, reading them, setting bookmarks & using the dictionary.

Ah, the dictionary. Another gripe. Is there any reason why Amazon think British customers will want an American dictionary? Most British adults will be more than aware how badly Americans manage spellings of certain words yet you can't delete that dictionary. Why not? Surely the K3's drive space is mine to use as I wish?

PDF's. A major bugbear since the original Kindle from what I read. Surely being in its 3rd incarnation the device should be able to do some tinkering with a PDF? Nope, just view it from different positions. You can't even fucking ZOOM in for crying out loud? Even the worst cheapest PDF readers offer that option.

I think all these issues say a lot about Amazon. The fact they don't even give you ANY kind of cover for the device (and trust me it's extremely flimsy & looks very easy to break if it dropped from any kind of height) to offer any kind of splash or water protection or protection for the screen.

Its instructions aren't great (especially not for a Kindle novice) and its not very helpful about charging times, especially for its intial 1st out of the box charge. The information both the paper and electronic instructions give is wrong (it says charge for 3 hours but it is supposed to be charged for 6 hours on its very 1st charge.)

It could do with having a much wider range of fonts and USB internet access (which apparently the K2 had but was removed for the K3).

So there you are. The Kindle 3 has a LOT of faults. Obviously all the people who wrote such glowing reviews of it didn't know any better.