Make your own 3D passive gaming glasses

If you have a 3D TV with gaming mode, you can set the TV to show 2-player games full-screen.  That is, player one will see only their section full screen, and player 2 the same.  Unfortunately, it means buying extra glasses for ~£30 each.

However, if you have a passive 3D TV, you can make your own glasses.  Simply buy some cheap (around £1 each from the cinema) passive 3D glasses.  You can now remove the LEFT lens from one and the RIGHT lens from the other, and put the lenses back in the other pair, so you have one air with two LEFT and one pair with two RIGHT lenses,

Now when you initiate the 2-player gaming mode, player one wears the glasses with the two LEFT lenses and player two wears the glasses with TWO right lenses.

Tried on a passive Phlips 47PFL6907T/12 television.  Please let me know in the comments if it works for you and what TV you tried it with.

Chromebook Shortcut

By Simon King

I just find a brilliant shortcut on a Chromebook.  If you go to:

chrome://flags/

in the browser.  look for "enable three finger tap as middle mouse button".  Now when you are browsing a website and want to open a page in another tab, just tap three of your fingers on to the track pad.

Searching PDFs

I just found an easier way to search through multiple PDF files on Windows using Adobe Reader.

This is especially useful when I am doing an End of Module assignment on my Science course where I have to use multiple books to answer questions.

Start by making sure that all of the PDF files that you want to search are in a separate folder/directory.

Now open up one of them.

Go to Edit -> Advanced Search

Now select "All PDF Documents in" then click on "Browse for Location..." and search for the folder where the files are.

Now type the word or phrase that you are looking for and then click "Search".

You will then see a list of results.  Click on the different files (books) and then it wil show you a list of all the instances in that book.  If you click on any of the results, the book is then opened up in that location.

Kindle prices!

I  was just looking at reading the Ladies No.1 Detective agency series on my Kindle but couldn't believe the price.  It costs £4.99 on Kindle or £3.99 for a paperback - with free delivery.

Is it just me, or is this taking the piss?  I know it isn't Amazon's fault, but the publisher's, as they set the price.

Didn't they learn anything from the illegal downloading of music?  People will download illegally if you don't give them an easy and reasonably priced download service.  Music is available through iTunes and Amazon as well as many others and is reasonably priced compared to CDs - and now people use these services to purchase from.

The same thing is happening with movies - although perhaps starting to get better with streaming movie services such as LoveFilm.

Digital books are so much easier to pirate - they are tiny files, much less than 1mb - although I won't download these books illegally myself, you can imagine why people will and do.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Ladies-Detective-Agency/dp/034911675X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324321125&sr=8-1

Email to Sony Playstation.

Hello

To whoever it may concern.  I am no longer going to be a customer of Sony but I wanted to at least let you know why.  I hope this email gets to somebody who actually cares that I will no longer be a customer.

Either way,  I have always been a huge fan of Sony, being one of the first people to not only buy new hardware but also peripherals for my PS 1,2,3, PSP and would have been soon to purchase Vita.

Even after the hacking earlier this year I was beginning to forgive Sony for the downtime and losing my data (even though I believed the "compensation" to be insulting).

What has really disappointed me is the decision to only allow DLC to be used on two devices.  Having a PSP and a PS3 and then was son going to buy Vita, and probably a Xpreia Play I wouldn't be allowed to share content with all of these devices.

You seem to be going after people pirating, which is of course a good thing, but then are making it so darn hard to buy content legally that I am just going to give up with gaming on my PS3 completely.  I am seriously considering buying an X-Box or even not bother gaming anymore.

Of course you've done the calculations and it is probably cheaper to annoy some games, but then be able to sell more content to other people that it is worth it, but I am no longer prepared to be in this ecosystem.

I do not expect a reply.  However, if you do reply please do not send an automated response.  If a person isn't going to reply I would rather you didn't bother replying at all.

Disappointed.

Simon King. (PSN id Mozart321)

Children of Men

I watched Children of Men mainly (just) because I had heard from Wikipedia that it was filmed partly in Woolwich.

For the first twenty minutes or so it was a bit of a struggle but after that it started getting very good.

This is a film set in the near future,18 years since the last woman to carry a baby to term.

I loved some of the action set-pieces which were made to look like they were filmed in one shot, from a single camera.  However, I have since read that it is mainly a camera trick and edited footage.  However, it is still very impressive.

Setting up Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Remix on NC10

I have tried various flavours of Linux in the past including some previous Ubuntu release.  However, I have never been honestly ready to ditch Windows.

This has now changed with Ubuntu 10.10 netbook remix.  It is still not perfect by any means. Fox example, setting up the brightness controls was a bit of a pain, but with a bit of jiggery pokery got it working OK.

There was no problem with the wifi drivers, which I expected to go wrong.

I plugged in my 3G (Huawei E160e) broadband dongle from Orange and it worked 'straight out of the box'.

The next thing I did was think about which programs I use mostly on Windows and decided to see if I can find Linux versions of them.  The following is a list of my findings:

Google Chrome:  Available on Ubuntu, appears to be more or less the same as the Windows version.
Tweet Deck:  Again, no real problems getting it to run
Microsoft Office:  - I decided to go with OpenOffice.Org (which comes as a default anyway).  I have used OpenOffice.Org on Windows before many times - and frankly is easier to use than the Office 2007 I was using with the bizarre lack of menus.
Thunderbird: I just used the installer application to install Thunderbird for my email, and again it is very similiar to the Windows version.

Next I need to try and find myself some decent web editing software.  I currently use Microsoft Expression as I get it free as part of the DreamSpark student deals.  I think Kompozer currently looks like the best bet - unless someone can advise me otherwise?