http://www.bengamblin.com Blog of Ben Gamblin http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/387/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2012-01-21/no-flicks-from-netflix/ With the launch of the on-demand video streaming service Netflix in the UK and the offer of one month's free trial, I decided to give the service a quick test. More than the selection of programmes and films available on the service though, I was curious... Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:59:03 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/385/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2012-01-14/linux-mint-12-kde_initial-impressions/ Yesterday's setup of Linux Mint 12 KDE Edition went very smoothly. From running the system via a live USB boot disk through to complete installation; the problems were few and the impression has been largely positive particularly in comparison to the Gno... Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:20:13 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/384/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2012-01-13/linux-mint_gnome-3-and-kde/ A few months back, the latest release of the popular Linux distro Mint was released. Since then, I've been running it on my two machines - a 64 bit desktop and a 32 bit netbook. Linux Mint 12 was a significant release as it was the first time that the d... Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:45:58 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/381/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-10-07/new-server/ Following some minor but annoying failures and the poor performance of its ageing CPU, last weekend I upgraded my server from a single core 2.4GHz Celeron (circa 2007) with 623MB of RAM to a dual-core Celeron E3600 2.6GHz CPU with 2GB of DDR3 RAM. The ol... Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:32:28 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/373/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-03-29/the-cloud-a-brewing-storm/ I'm sick and tired of hearing about "The Cloud". This latest buzzword is creeping in everywhere, from the technology and computer press; to consumer TV adverts; to workplaces. The Cloud is everywhere and I'm concerned the less technologically ... Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:18:03 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/372/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-03-27/logitech-mk250-keyboard-and-mouse/ More computer hardware today. Being annoyed with my old wired mini keyboard and cheap wired mouse, I bought a Logitech MK250 keyboard and mouse set. Unfounded Opinion I've always refrained from wireless peripherals as I had the opinion that perhaps the... Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:55:20 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/371/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-03-24/firefox-4/ The latest incarnation of Firefox was released this week. After seeminingly endless beta releases, Firefox 4 is now available for download. I'd been using the open source version of Google Chrome, called Chromium, for most of my day-to-day web surfing; ... Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:11:58 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/369/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-03-12/dell-u2311h-ips-monitor/ I picked up my first high resolution widescreen monitor today, a Dell U2311H 23" IPS TFT screen. For what must be roughly 18 months - 2 years, I've been using a 15" 1024x768 TN TFT screen and over the past few months I've been getting increasin... Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:27:52 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/362/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-01-13/data-recovery-on-linux-fat32-bad-superblock-error/ The MicroSD card in my smartphone became corrupted today, and I feared that all data on it was lost. Fortunately, I don't store critical data on the phone, but I did have a number of snaps which, whilst of nothing special, would have been nice to keep.... Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:48:52 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/358/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2010-10-27/samsung-n210-and-ubuntu-10-04lts/ Back in July I bought myself a netbook, and being a fan of the open source operating system I decided to install Ubuntu. All went well at the time, but I needed some extra software to make the wireless connection and brightness keys work. I found what I... Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:11:35 +0000