Rob – Page 95 – Rob Pomeroy

1 May 2014

How-to: Use custom DocumentRoot when hosting web sites on a Synology NAS

I’ve recently taken the plunge and invested in a Synology NAS – the powerful DS214Play. Some of my colleagues have been raving about Synology’s NASes for a while and I thought it was about time I saw what all the fuss was about. This how-to article is not the place for a detailed review so suffice it to say I have been thoroughly impressed – blown away even – by the DS214Play.

The NAS is taking over duties from my aging IBM xSeries tower server. The server is a noisy, power-hungry beast and I think Mrs Geek will be quite happy to see the back of it. Life with a technofreak, eh. One of the duties to be replaced is hosting a few lightly-loaded web apps and development sites.

The NAS has fairly straightforward web hosting capabilities out of the box. Apache is available and it’s a cinch to set up a new site and provision a MySQL database. Problems arise however when you try to do anything out of the ordinary. Synology improves the NAS’s capabilities with every iteration of DSM (DiskStation Manager, the web interface), but at the time of writing, version 5.0-4482 of DSM doesn’t allow much fine tuning of your web site’s configuration.

A particular issue for anyone who works with web development frameworks (Laravel, CodeIgniter, CakePHP and the like) is that it’s really bad practice to place the framework’s code within the web root. I usually adopt the practice of putting the code in sibling directories. So, in the case of CodeIgniter for example, within a higher-level directory, you’ll have the system, application and public_html directories all in one place. Apache is looking to public_html to load the web site and then typically the index.php file will use PHP code inclusion to bootstrap the framework from directories not visible to the web server. Much better for security.

DSM doesn’t currently provide any way of customising the web root. All web sites are placed in a sub-folder directory under (e.g.) /volume1/web/. That’s it. When typing in the sub-folder field, forward and back slashes are not permitted.

This is my intended folder structure for an example CodeIgniter application:

volume1
|
\----web
     |
     \----test.domain.com
          |
          \-----application
          |
          \-----public_html
          |
          \-----system

Here’s how to do it.

First, use the Control Panel to create your new virtual host. I give all my virtual hosts the same sub-folder name as the domain name. Here, let’s go for test.domain.com:
Very shortly, this new sub-folder should appear within your web share. You can place your framework in this folder. If you’re not yet ready to put the framework there, at least create the folder structure for the public folder that will equate to your Apache DocumentRoot. In my example, this would involve creating public_html within the test.domain.com directory.
Next, log in to your NAS as root, using SSH. We need to edit the httpd-vhost.conf-user file.cd /etc/httpd/sites-enabled-user vi httpd-vhost.conf-user
The VirtualHost directive for your new web site will look something like this:
ServerName test.domain.com DocumentRoot "/var/services/web/test.domain.com" ErrorDocument 403 "/webdefault/sample.php?status=403" ErrorDocument 404 "/webdefault/sample.php?status=404" ErrorDocument 500 "/webdefault/sample.php?status=500"

Change the DocumentRoot line as required:
ServerName test.domain.com DocumentRoot "/var/services/web/test.domain.com/public_html" ErrorDocument 403 "/webdefault/sample.php?status=403" ErrorDocument 404 "/webdefault/sample.php?status=404" ErrorDocument 500 "/webdefault/sample.php?status=500"
Then save the file.
UPDATE: Thanks to commenter oggan below for this suggestion – instead of the following direction, you can just issue the command httpd -k restart at the command line.
There’s not a lot of information out there about causing Apache to reload its configuration files. I found that calling the RC file (/usr/syno/etc.defaults/rc.d/S97apache-sys.sh reload) didn’t actually result in the new config being used. Whatever the reason for this, you can force the new configuration to load by making some other change in the control panel for web services. For example, enable HTTPS and click Apply (you can disable again afterwards).
You will now find that Apache is using the correct web root, so you can continue to develop your web application as required.

NB: There’s a big caveat with this. Every time you make changes using the Virtual Host List in the Synology web interface, it will overwrite any changes you make to the httpd-vhost.conf-user user file. Until Synology makes this part of interface more powerful, you will need to remember to make these changes behind the scenes every time you add or remove a virtual host, for all hosts affected.

19 March 2014

News: Motorola announces new smart watch Moto 360 – and it’s a beauty

One of the most interesting areas of development in the consumer technology industry is wearable tech. The segment is in its infancy and no one quite knows whether it will prove to turn out damp squibs or cash cows (if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphors). Top manufacturers are jostling for space with arguably premature “me too” gadgets that amount to little more than technology previews. There are even technology expos dedicated to this new sector.

Galaxy Gear - not great — Galaxy Gear – not great

When Samsung brought out its Galaxy Gear, I thought “we might have something here”. But the price was all wrong. I know the company can’t expect to ship many units at this stage in the game, but the opening price of £300 for a bleeding-edge, partially-formed lifestyle accessory kept all but the most dedicated technophiles firmly at bay. The Gear has failed to capture the public’s imagination and I think I know why. Putting aside the unconvincing claims that the Gear “connects seamlessly with your Samsung smartphone to make life easier on the go“, there’s one very big problem with this, and almost all other smart watches: it’s ugly.

Watches long since ceased to be simply pedestrian tools that tell you the time. They are fashion accessories. They express our individuality. Who wants to walk around toting one of these half-baked forearm carbuncles?

So I noted with interest Motorola’s announcement yesterday that the company is getting ready to launch the new round-faced, Android Wear-powered Moto 360.

Motorola D811 - stylish DECT answerphone — Motorola D811 – stylish DECT answerphone

MOTOACTV - ugly duckling — MOTOACTV – ugly duckling

Somewhat like Apple. Motorola has a reputation for adding its own design twist to everyday technology. I have a DECT cordless answering machine from Motorola, chosen largely on the strength of its looks, in a market where most of these devices have very similar capabilities.

Motorola’s previous attempt at a smart watch, the MOTOACTV, is frankly no supermodel. But if the MOTOACTV is the acne-ridden, orthodontic braces-sporting ugly duckling, the Moto 360 is the fully grown, airbrushed to perfection swan.

Just look at it. Now we’re onto something. Now we’ve got a watch where I wouldn’t have to spend all day persuading myself it’s pretty. Quite the contrary. I’m not that bowled over by the leather strap version, but in metal bracelet guise, I think we’re looking at a genuine designer item.

Pricing is yet to be announced, and no doubt it will be a long time before it’s stocked in UK stores. But this Geek hazards a guess that it will be worth the wait. Until it’s available, the only smart watch that comes close in terms of style in my humble opinion is the Pebble Steel, which is a little hard to come by, this side of the Atlantic.

6 March 2014

How-to: Clean up audio and remove noise with Audacity

As you may know, here at Geek & Dummy, we’re building up a free library of sound effects, which you’re welcome to use in your own projects. For the best results you really need to use decent quality recording equipment – a microphone attached to your computer will just pick up lots of unwanted noise. We’ve achieved really great results with the Tascam DR-05, which for the price (about £80) packs an amazing sound quality into an easily pocketable format. It helps to pair this with a decent SD card – see our recent MicroSD card head-to-head to see what’s the best value for money in that department.

When recording, make sure your audio sample contains about 2 seconds of ambient noise. This enables us to profile the ambient noise before we remove it from the sample.
Run Audacity. If you don’t have this incredible (but dull-looking!) free software, pick it up here.
Open the sample (File –> Open).
Using the selection tool, select your couple of seconds of ambient noise – this “silence” should look virtually flat in the display.
On the menu, choose Effect –> Noise Removal.
Click “Get Noise Profile”.
Press Ctrl-A to select the whole sample.
On the menu, choose Effect –> Noise Removal again.
This time, click OK. The default settings are probably okay, though you can play with them to achieve different results.
Listen to the sound sample. Sometimes noise removal can result in artificial sounding samples. If that’s the case, you can take a noise profile from a different quiet section of the sample and try again, or try with different parameters.
You can now remove silent sections of the audio as required. You can either select the sections and press the delete key, or use the Truncate Silence feature in Audacity (Effect –> Truncate Silence) to do it automatically. Use the zoom tool for precision removal of short sections of silence.
We “normalize” the sample to take it to the maximum volume possible without causing distortion. Before normalizing, you may want to find and delete any unwanted loud sections from the sample, in order to improve the effect of normalization.
To normalize the sample, ensure it is all either selected or deselected. Then choose Effect –> Normalize. Again there are some configurable settings here.
Listen to the sample again to make sure you’re happy with the results. All changes can be undone with Ctrl-Z.

29 January 2014

Review: Giotto’s Rocket-air Super Blower AA 1900

Anyone who’s pulled a computer apart will know how much dust, crud and miniature wildlife can take up residence within your machine’s delicate circuitry. This build-up is bad for your computer. In particular, it makes fans and heat sinks less efficient and causes everything to warm up.

At best, this is a nuisance. Many power-regulating computers will simply slow down to allow the system to cool off. At worst, though, the excess heat in a power supply for example can set your computer – and your house or office – on fire. Clearly this is not A Good Thing.

Periodically then, it’s a good idea to take an “air duster” to your computer’s innards. Air dusters usually consist of cans of compressed air, with a straw-like nozzle to direct the air flow. They’re designed to create enough pressure to remove dirt but not so much as to cause damage.

Where I work, we used to get through a ton of these cans of air. The problem was, just when you really needed the air duster, you’d look on the shelf and there’d just be an empty can. Harrumph. How inconsiderate.

So looking around for a better solution to the problem, I came across this fellow, the “Rocket-air Super Blower” by the Chinese/Taiwanese Company, Giotto’s Industrial Inc. (Beware of the annoying noisy Flash animation that plays whenever you visit the site.)

The Rocket-air has a thick flexible rubber body and a solid plastic nozzle. Squeeze firmly and you get a blast of air not dissimilar to that from a can of compressed air. It’s not hard work to operate and of course the best part is that you have an unlimited supply of air at your disposal (at least until some thieving, envious toe-rag runs off with it).

It’s theoretically available in a few different colours. I’ve only seen it in the UK in the red/black regalia, not that it matters: I didn’t buy it for its looks. Mind you, as looks go, it’s a fairly funky tool and was surprisingly quite a conversation piece when it first arrived.

Speaking of design, you have to love the attention to detail here. Giotto’s makes camera equipment, so the Rocket-air’s primary function is to blow dust from delicate camera lenses (the fact that we can bend it to other uses is a big bonus). On the opposite side to the nozzle, there’s a fast air inlet valve. This means that when you release the blower, rather than sucking dust back in through its nozzle, it pulls in (hopefully) clean air from the other side.

Oh, and the “rocket fins” on the base of the blower enable it to stand up stably. Not massively important, just a nice bit of design. On two of these fins there are holes punched so that you can thread a lanyard through. Great for hanging it from your neck should you be so inclined. People will give you funny looks though.

So it’s well made, durable, moderately attractive, great at its job – there’s got to be a catch, right? The price. Amazon has it on sale for £8.99 at the moment. I don’t know about you, but my first thought was, “That’s a bit expensive for a glorified executive stress toy.” But then if you think about it, you can’t really buy a can of compressed air for less than £3 or £4. So the Rocket-air pays for itself pretty quickly – I would expect it to last as long as a hundred cans of compressed air. When you put it that way, it’s a bit of a bargain.

Fits easily in the palm of your hand

Pleasing lines!

Giotto’s Rocket-air Super Blower AA 1900

[easyreview title=”Geek rating” icon=”geek” cat1title=”Ease of use” cat1detail=”Short of poking it in your own eye, I’m not sure you can get this wrong.” cat1rating=”5″ cat2title=”Features” cat2detail=”Does everything you expect of it. I suspect it could be made slightly more powerful, but otherwise, there’s little to criticise.” cat2rating=”4.5″ cat3title=”Value for money” cat3detail=”When you compare it with the alternatives, it’s pretty near the cheapest solution to our dusty problems.” cat3rating=”4.5″ cat4title=”Build Quality” cat4detail=”Great attention to detail. Some slightly annoying slivers of rubber haven’t quite been removed after it came out of its mould. But otherwise, really well made. Feels like it will last forever – or at least until I retire (which is much the same thing).” cat4rating=”4.5″ summary=”Great solution to the problem of safely cleaning dust and dirt out of computers and fans. As a bonus, you can use it on your camera too. Can’t really recommend it any more highly.”]

28 January 2014

16GB Class 10 MicroSD card head-to-head shootout: SanDisk vs Kingston vs Transcend vs Samsung vs Toshiba

There’s a lot of information and misinformation concerning SD technology, on the Internet. I’ve read a few conflicting theories about how many different companies actually manufacture SD cards and how many re-badge other companies’ kit. For your average consumer (and by this, I mean Dummy) though, this is all a bit of a red herring. Dummy wants to know (a) which card is fastest and (b) which card is best value for money. End of.

In order to separate the wheat from the chaff, we’ve picked 16GB Class 10 MicroSD cards (with full size adapters) from the top five brands out there: SanDisk, Transcend, Kingston, Toshiba and Samsung. We’re not too concerned with who made ’em; we just want to see which is the best package overall. To that end, we’ve benchmarked the cards in two different environments: firstly using a MicroSD card USB reader on a Windows PC and secondly on an Android mobile device. This gives us a really good idea of how these five cards perform in real-world scenarios.

MicroSD cards - the contenders — MicroSD cards – the contenders

If you can’t be bothered with all the stats and just want the summary (and we can’t blame you!), click here.

Test rig

eSecure All-in-1 USB card reader connected to HP Probook

Our Windows 7-based test rig consisted of an eSecure All-in-1 card reader connected to an excellent HP ProBook 6560b. The 6560b isn’t available any more by the way, but the 6570b is a worthy successor. Our test software was the venerable and well-respected CrystalDiskMark.

Our mobile device test rig consisted of the brilliant Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (replaced by the even more incredible Note 3). Using this phone we ran the handy app A1 SD Bench. It’s less comprehensive than CrystalDiskMark, but gives you a good feel for how the card performs in one of its most likely use cases – plugged into a smartphone or tablet.

The Tests

For our tests, we ran five passes of the benchmarks on each card. When a test run contained anomalous results (which could be down to processor blips or other irrelevant causes), we discarded the test and ran again. We then averaged the scores from the five clean passes. We think this gives us a pretty bulletproof set of scores.

We ran three distinct batteries of tests:

5 passes of CrystalDiskMark with the file size set to 1000MB
5 passes of CrystalDiskMark with the file size set to 50MB
5 passes of A1 SD Bench

The results are summarised in this image (click to enlarge):

This is worthy of some explanation! The bottom row of the table shows the “standard deviation”. You don’t need to understand statistics to get the point: if there’s not a lot of difference between the cards, you’ll see a small figure on this row. So for example in the sequential read tests, there’s very little difference between the cards (standard deviations of 0.12 and 0.18). In the case of a 50MB file written randomly in 512k chunks, there’s a huge variation – 5.97. If you look more closely at the column, you’ll see that the Samsung card clocked in at 15.2MB/s in this test, which is very good, while the Toshiba managed a paltry 1.3MB/s.

The bar chart overlays are fairly easy to follow, we hope. For each column, the card that has the biggest bar achieved the best speeds. This is most noticeable on columns with the largest deviation (512K random writes).

The price column is colour-coded going from red to green; expensive to cheap. “Expensive” is a relative term – there’s only £3.50 difference between the most expensive and least expensive cards here. Mind you, that means that the pricy SanDisk is over 40% more expensive than the modest Toshiba.

SanDisk MicroSD card - overpriced and over here — SanDisk MicroSD card – overpriced and over here

Let’s look at the SanDisk card for a moment. It’s considerably more expensive than the cheaper cards on test, so what do you get for your money? Well it actually performs worst on one of the tests (1000MB sequential write). If you’re working with video, that is going to be noticeable. The story’s better with random writes, but that seems to us to be a fairly “edge” scenario. It also does worst when being written to in an Android environment. All in all, not good. It certainly hasn’t justified its high price ticket. We were expecting a lot better from such a well known and respected manufacturer.

With generally narrow deviations, it’s hard to pick out an outstanding card, but if you can managed to stare at the figures a bit without your eyes glazing over, we do think a hero emerges.

Look at that Samsung card. Best at the 1000M sequential read. Best at the 1000MB sequential write. Second best at the 1000MB/512K random write and leading the pack for the 50MB/512K random write. In almost every test, it achieves consistently good results. It’s top dog when it comes to writing data and no slouch at reading it. All this and it’s the second cheapest.

Conclusion

Samsung MicroSD card - the winner — Samsung MicroSD card – the winner

If you’d like to mine the data we collected, you can download it here as a zipped Excel spreadsheet – this contains the raw data from all our tests – no less than 450 data points! Whatever you do, we think you’ll agree with us that in this class, the best value MicroSD card by far is the Samsung 16GB Class 10 MicroSD. There isn’t even a runner up in this contest; the remaining contenders are either too slow or too expensive.

21 January 2014

How-to: Using WhatsApp on a Windows PC

UPDATE 2: WhatsApp has finally bowed to pressure and created a web interface for desktop usage.

UPDATE: We’ve been blown away recently by new-instant-messenger-on-the-block, Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp, it’s free forever. It’s more secure than WhatsApp, it has desktop apps, chats are synchronised across all devices (at least the normal chats not marked as “secret” anyway) and best of all, it’s not owned by Facebook. Find out more here.

Wow, so this is a popular search on Google! And sadly, most of the results you find are riddled with either viruses, bad advice or broken English.

As you almost certainly know if you’ve found this page, WhatsApp is a massively popular (over 7 million downloads on Android alone) app for instant messaging. Its distinguishing feature is that it relies on a user’s mobile phone number, rather than any dedicated username/password combination. The idea is that you use it as a drop-in replacement for SMS and MMS messaging. You can also use it instead of your favourite instant messaging client, on the basis that almost everyone has a mobile phone number these days.

Linking the product to a mobile phone number is also one of this product’s weaknesses – you may want to use WhatsApp from your desktop PC or laptop, but WhatsApp doesn’t provide PC (or Mac) software. The good news is that it can be done! The bad news is this process depends on you having a Google account – sorry, Apple/iOS users. The REALLY bad news is that you can’t link a single mobile phone number on two different devices. Because WhatsApp associates to a mobile phone number, this means that you can’t synchronise your chats across more than one device. If you try to link two different devices to the same mobile number, one of the devices will disconnect and you’ll be greeted with the following message:

I don't want to reverify! — I don’t want to reverify!

So this piece of information can’t be stressed enough: you can’t run WhatsApp in two places simultaneously using the same mobile phone number. If you want the convenience of being able to input messages via your computer, you need to look at some form of remote control program for your mobile device (VNC, for example). That’s beyond the scope of this How-to.

The remainder of this guide assumes you’re going to be associating your mobile phone number to WhatsApp and using it only on your PC. If that’s what you want to do – good news! It’s entirely possible.

BlueStacks Android Emulator

The easiest way to get started is to install the BlueStacks Android emulator. BlueStacks is in beta at the moment and free to use. We imagine this will change at some point in the future. There will still be other possibilities, but one of the beauties of BlueStacks is its simplicity.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that whenever you’re going to emulate one operating system on another, you’re well advised to ensure your computer is up to the job. I’m using an Acer Veriton M6610G which is more than up to the job. (It has since been replaced with the M6630G series – very competent and expandable PCs.)

Visit the BlueStacks web site and download and install the emulator. We’re doing this on a Windows PC, but I suspect it would also work on a Mac. (Any Mac users out there that have an Android phone? I suppose it could happen…)

During the installation, you’ll be presented with a set of three options – App store access, App Notifications, and Spotlight. I’d suggest you only select the first of these. The installation can take a fair few minutes.

If you’re prompted to update your graphics drivers, you’ll need to allow this, for BlueStacks to run. As always, make sure System Restore is working, in case something goes wrong when installing the drivers.

Set up BlueStacks

When you first load BlueStacks, you’ll be taken though a setup wizard. Click “Continue”:

You need to connect BlueStacks to a Google Account for two reasons: first, to download the app from the Google Play Store. Secondly, so you have access to your address book. It’s best to link BlueStacks to an existing Google account, so you have the benefit of your Google address book. Choose “Existing”:

Enter your Google credentials and click “Sign in”:

If, like me, you use Google’s two-factor authentication, you’ll now be taken through a web-based login process (still within the BlueStacks emulator). Click “Next”:

Re-enter your credentials and click “Sign in”:

Again, this is only if you’ve enabled two-factor authentication (which you should, by the way). A code will be sent to your mobile phone number. Enter it here and click “Verify”:

The “Back up and restore” section – what you choose here is up to you. Click “Next”:

You’ll be taken back to the BlueStacks wizard. Click “Continue”:

Re-enter your Google account details (yawn):

Do you want your password to be remembered? Your choice:

Again, leap through the two-step verification hoop if it applies to you:

The Google Play store will now be available. Click “Let’s go!”:

Finally, accept the Terms of Service. I suggest leaving the “opt-in” unchecked:

Installing WhatsApp

Immediately after setting up BlueStacks, you’ll be taken to the Play Store:

From there, search for WhatsApp:

Click “Install”:

Accept the permissions:

WhatsApp will now install:

Once installed, click “Open”:

Agree to the WhatsApp terms:

Enter the mobile number that you’re going to link to this installation of WhatsApp (remember, one mobile phone number per device) and click “OK”:

Double-check and click “OK”:

WhatsApp tries to send and detect an SMS. The SMS message will go to your phone of course, not BlueStacks, so this detection will fail (you’ll need to wait for this):

Instead, click “Call me” and be ready to enter the verification code:

An automated message will tell you the code you need to enter into WhatsApp on BlueStacks:

Verify your profile:

WhatsApp will spend some time initialising:

Once it’s done, the “Continue” button appears. Click it:

That’s it; you’re in. From now on, you can run WhatsApp from the Home screen:

You should see your list of contacts from your Google address book:

If you have any chat history from using WhatsApp on a different device, this will not be pulled across to BlueStacks – history is not saved on WhatsApps’ servers.

So there we are; it has its limitations, but if you’re happy to use WhatsApp on your computer instead of your phone or tablet, this is probably the easiest way to do it. Having said that, I will personally carry on using WhatsApp on my Galaxy Note phone or tablet, both of which I’m more likely to have with me than my computer!

5 December 2013

Review: Geek’s top 5 Christmas tech gifts for 2013

As you know, Dummy and I are constantly on the lookout for good-value, great gadgets. Are you stuck for gift ideas for the tech-lover in your life? Look no further. Dummy has already offered you his “top five” list; here’s mine.

Network-enabled media streamer: Roku LT

I’ve yet to review this device, but I bought one earlier this year, when Roku discounted them from £50 to £35. They’re not quite that cheap now (up to £45), but they’re still great value, very competent devices.

Roku’s set-top boxes appeal to me, because rather than buying one of those super-expensive “smart TVs” (like Dummy did), instead for a relatively trivial sum, you can upgrade virtually any television with this small, unimposing gizmo. There are a few different media streamers in the series, but this bottom-of-the-range LT was more than sufficient for my needs – to stream media (from a wireless network connection) to a 32 inch television. The LT offers 720p HD video and has a super-low power consumption profile.

The idea is that you add various different “channels” from Roku’s huge library, which includes iPlayer, Demand 5, 4oD, Plex, Netflix and a host of others. The LT’s big brother, the 3, has more tricks up its sleeve, like a wired ethernet port, USB in, headphone socket on the remote (genius!) and games. I needed none of those though and have been absolutely delighted with the LT.

If Roku doesn’t quite float your boat, you might want to consider an Apple TV. More expensive, feature-for-feature, but simple to use and well-appreciated by all its owners.

Low-cost hobby PC: Raspberry Pi

As you might have noticed, we’re real fans of this British innovation. You are more or less limited only by your imagination. People are using Pis to run media centres, provide home surveillance, as a web server, for time-lapse photography, as a custom games console, and on and on. Prices start from about £24 for the model A, but I recommend starting with the B for the best experience.

Great value tablet: Nexus 7

This is a close call. There are more and more tablets on the market these days and the quality is increasing as manufacturers weed out early production problems. You won’t get anything that I’d call “great value” from Apple or Microsoft, so that leaves us with the Android platform. And wow, there’s an awful lot of choice now.

I’m torn on this one. Amazon is pushing out better and better Kindles at keener and keener prices. The Kindle Fire HD is a serious contender for this top 5 list – £120 now; that’s a bargain. But ultimately, the fact that the Nexus 7 doesn’t need to be hacked (“rooted”) to get the best from it means that this tablet is the better choice in my opinion. You can pick one up for under £200 and I don’t think anyone could be disappointed to find one of these in his or her stocking.

Portable Bluetooth speaker: Soundwave SW100

I’ve had more than six months with this speaker that I reviewed back in May this year. I just can’t fault it. Great at what it does and a real steal at £20.

Budget Android phone: Huawei Ascend Y300

In an extremely saturated market, it’s really hard for one phone to stand out from amongst the crowd. If we’re going to continue the theme of great value for money though, I think you can’t go wrong with the Ascend Y300 from rising star Huawei. Under a hundred quid. It’ll do the job. And if you’re buying for someone who’s a little accident prone, better this than a four hundred quid Galaxy S4 (which is a really great phone by the way, but expensive).

27 November 2013

Review: Bluetooth OBDII OBD2 Diagnostic Scanner

DUMMY: I’d been excited about doing this review for quite some time but describing delivery of this item from China as “slow” and “a bit dodgy” is an understatement. Now it has at last arrived though, I can say it massively exceeded my expectations.

GEEK: It was one of those occasions where the seller pretends to have “UK stock”, but quotes a 30 day delivery time… And then the package turns up with a customs declaration, describing the item as a “gift”. Not to mention the hassle associated with returns, should the unit prove to be faulty. So it pretty much goes without saying that we would only advocate buying from abroad for low-cost, low-urgency items like this. All that said, Dummy is right: great piece of kit, for buttons.

DUMMY: Let’s wind this back a stage. Virtually every modern vehicle – even my Land Rover Defender – comes equipped with an OBD-II (On-Board Diagnostics) port. Similarly these vehicles are fitted with an ECU (Electronic Control Unit) and this little computer will be monitoring hundreds, if not thousands of events that are going on in your vehicle every millisecond. The OBD port is like a network cable into that information and the OBD Bluetooth Diagnostic Scanner is the device that can take that information and send it to a program where it can be processed.

GEEK: He almost sounds like he knows what he’s talking about doesn’t he?

DUMMY: [ignores Geek] Sounding complicated? It really isn’t. You find an app that works with the scanner, you plug the scanner in, you start your engine and hey presto, an immediate window to the soul of your car.

GEEK: There are a few apps out there that will translate this information into a variety of user-friendly dials and displays. At the moment, for Bluetooth adapters like the one we’re reviewing, you’re basically restricted to Android or PC devices. Apple is extremely fussy about what it will allow to connect via Bluetooth. Yet another reason to see the light and throw your iDevices in the bin.

DUMMY: You just can’t pass up an opportunity can you?!
If I’m honest, my boy racer days are behind me. Although I was mildly interested in seeing live BHP calculations and how many G’s I was pulling, the main attraction of this device to me are the diagnostics. Select the right app and it is simplicity itself to interrogate the ECU to find out how your car is feeling. Not just viewing and interpreting fault codes, but also resetting those codes as required. Yes that’s right, that job for which your dealer or local garage charges you £40 a pop, you can now do for yourself and all your friends and family for £6 – for life.

GEEK: Ha – middle-aged much?! We’ve looked at some interesting devices this year, expensive and cheap. Of them all, without doubt this has to be the simplest and most cost effective purchase of the year.

DUMMY: Ha – skinflint much? It’s a real shame that this is no use for Apple devices, in its cheaper Bluetooth form. Looks like this Apple fanboy is going to have to hand the best bit of equipment we have bought this year straight to Geek.

GEEK: Rest assured, if we can work out an easy way of making it work with iOS, we’ll be all over that. Watch this space! In the meantime, the Android apps we used in our tests were aLapRecorder HD (which unfortunately appears to have been abandoned by its developer), Carista OBD2 (free) and Torque Pro (not free, but excellent).

DUMMY: Anyway, enough chat. Here is a little road test we did together of this brilliant little device. I apologise in advance for Geek’s driving!!

[easyreview title=”Consensus” icon=”collab” cat1title=”Ease of use” cat1detail=”Couldn’t be any easier, no really.” cat1rating=”4.5″ cat2title=”Features” cat2detail=”Its feature is communciating via Bluetooth which is does faultlessly. The clever stuff happens in the software it connects to.” cat2rating=”4″ cat3title=”Value for money” cat3detail=”Can’t be beaten. Full stop.” cat3rating=”5″ cat4title=”Build Quality” cat4detail=”Feels substantial. We certainly don’t pick it up and think it’s cheap.” cat4rating=”4.5″ summary=”We can’t tell you how delighted we are with this purchase – and the price delights most of all!”]

29 October 2013

Review: JOYO JA-03 Guitar Headphone Amplifier

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up an ESP LTD F-155DX 5 string electric bass guitar. It was slightly bashed, but otherwise in great condition – in short, at only £200, a bargain. I love bargains.

There’s one small problem with electric instruments: they need amplification. And amplification can sometimes be a little… antisocial. In order to keep relations with Mrs Geek reasonably harmonious, I started looking around for a solution.

One of the problems was that I didn’t know exactly what I needed. In the past, I’ve come across micro amps, which have a built-in speaker but I wanted something even more compact, that could just drive a pair of headphones.

Eventually I stumbled across the well-reviewed Vox AmPlugs. Plug the device into the guitar, put your headphones into that, simple. At £32 though, I wondered if there might be something a bit cheaper. Since this was just going to be for quick practice sessions, I didn’t need the best that money can buy.

Casting my net slightly wider, I came across the JOYO JA-03 series of headphone amps. They look suspiciously like a clone of the AmPlug, but who knows, perhaps they’re made under licence. Anyway, the important point: they’re just a tenner. Sold!

There are a few different amps in the range, with different sounds – tube, metal and so on (see the full range on JOYO’s website). I plumped for “Acoustic“. I’d read good things about the sound of the ESP bass, so I wanted to hear it as clean as possible – and this better suits the style of music I’m going to be playing, anyway (i.e. not heavy metal).

The amp arrived very quickly, well packaged in its blister pack. Happily this was the type of blister pack that is not sealed shut, so you can open it without having to cut the pack. Fewer blister-pack-related injuries – yay!

The JA-03 is powered by a pair of AAA batteries. Happily, the amp came with fresh batteries in the pack, so you’re good to go straight away.

There’s not a lot to the device. The standard quarter inch jack is built in (no need for a separate lead – you plug it straight into your guitar). It has a 3.5mm socket for headphones and another 3.5mm socket for an auxiliary/line input. In this way, you can feed music through the amp and play along.

You get four controls: gain, tone, volume and power. The volume control affects the level of the input from your instrument. I expected the gain control would alter the volume of the auxiliary input, but not so. It’s hard to describe what this does – it doesn’t change the overall volume of any input; instead it makes it sound more like you’re playing through an amplifier. If you crank the gain control all the way up, you hear that characteristic hiss and the sound from your instrument is more like it is being played through a compressor – a little “thin”. I found I had the cleanest sound with gain turned right down.

The volume of the auxiliary input is not controlled by the JA-03. I plugged in my phone using a 3.5mm cable and then set the volume of the music on my phone. Using my phone’s volume control and the the volume mixer on the amp, I was able to find a perfect balance between the music I was playing and the output of the bass, very easily.

Skipping over the power control (which I trust requires no further comment!) the remaining control is the tone dial. This is a pretty low grade adjustment. I didn’t like the effect it had on the sound of my bass, so I left it in the neutral centre position.

With the mix right and all the tone adjustment coming from the excellent active pickup set on the ESP bass, I was frankly blown away. Not by my playing, I hasten to add, but by the convenience of the set up and the great sound I achieved through some fairly cheap and nasty in-ear headphones. For practice purposes, this is all you need.

I went one step further though, and connected the output of the JA-03 to my humble home stereo. With tunes coming from my phone, it was a joy to play along in my living room and Mrs Geek didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact the 9 year old twin junior Geeks loved the show (I know, the “hero worship” bubble will burst soon enough – let me have my moment of glory).

If you’re very fussy about the quality of your audio, you might want to look for something built with more expensive circuitry, but honestly at this price, you cannot beat this. Highly recommended. Pick one up from Amazon (or somewhere else if you prefer), today!

At the time of writing, the JA-03 can be yours for just £9.49.

[easyreview title=”Geek rating” icon=”geek” cat1title=”Ease of use” cat1detail=”Very, very straightforward.” cat1rating=”5″ cat2title=”Features” cat2detail=”It’s hard to think of anything else I’d add – maybe a distortion effect? But that’s just me being greedy.” cat2rating=”4.5″ cat3title=”Value for money” cat3detail=”Can’t be beaten. Full stop.” cat3rating=”5″ cat4title=”Build Quality” cat4detail=”Feels like it’s made from slightly brittle plastic. Not sure how well it would survive a serious bash in a soft case. Made from cheap materials as you’d expect at this price point. Otherwise it’s assembled well enough and feels solid.” cat4rating=”3.5″ summary=”I can’t tell you how delighted I am with this purchase – and the price delights most of all!”]

25 October 2013

How-to: Overcome “critical temperature” problem with CloneZilla

In case you don’t know, Clonezilla is an excellent (and free) disk/partition imaging tool. It’s essentially a customised Linux distribution. You boot from a CD and then follow a text-mode wizard to backup or restore images of hard drives or other storage devices. You can see the process in action in my Raspberry Pi SD card backup/restore article.

The process can be quite intensive for hard drives and processors. One of the things Clonezilla does is compresses the image of the drive to save space wherever you’re storing the image. Compressing a 2GB file is a big job for an older processor. I was finding with one of my older laptops that the processor was working so hard, it caused the temperature to rise at a point where it triggered a Linux “panic”. The system immediately halted with an error message about “critical temperature”, half way through making an image. So of course that image is not usable.

What’s supposed to happen in normal usage is that when the temperature rises dangerously, the operating system slows down the processor. This allows the machine to cool down (at the obvious expense of a performance penalty). I’m not sure if this is fixed in later versions of Clonezilla – there’s some talk of it in the mailing lists. I’m indebted to those mailing lists for some parts of workaround that follows.

One thing you can try is using the i486 version of Clonezilla. This assumes older processor hardware and so (I suspect) doesn’t make full use of your processor’s theoretical potential. Just select i486 architecture from the download page for the latest stable version.

As a belt-and-braces approach (and this is the method I’ve adopted), you can also issue commands that tell the Linux kernel to run the processor at a particular frequency. In my case, I’m telling an Intel Core i3-330M to run at 1.6GHz instead of the usual 2.13GHz.

You can do this as follows:

Once you’re in the Clonezilla wizard, press Alt-F2, to access a login shell.
Issue the command cpufreq-info. In my case, I saw the following, as well as some other information:
analyzing CPU 0: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 933 MHz - 2.13 GHz available frequency steps: 2.13 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.87 GHz, 1.73 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.47GHz, 1.33GHz, 1.20 GHz, 1.07 GHz, 933 MHz ...
You may see more than one CPU listed – mine shows just the one (single CPU, dual core). Most importantly, this lists the frequencies to which you can set your processor clock.
Pick a frequency from the list that’s lower than the maximum. E.g., if the list shows that the processor can run at a lower speed of 1.60 GHz, set the clock speed as follows:
sudo cpufreq-set -c 0 -f 1.60GHz
The -c 0 parameter refers to the CPU number, starting from 0. Repeat the command, changing this number, for each CPU.
Press Alt-F1 to return to the Clonezilla wizard and continue with the cloning process.

This approach sets the clock speed just for this particular session, so normal service will be resumed upon reboot.

If this all sounds like too much hard work, you could try one of the good commercial solutions instead, such as Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image.

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Test rig

The Tests

Conclusion

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BlueStacks Android Emulator

Set up BlueStacks

Installing WhatsApp

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