http://www.bengamblin.com Blog of Ben Gamblin http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/388/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2012-01-22/the-future-of-hmv/ It's no big secret that HMV is a struggling retailer. It's suffering from the double-whammy of a declining high street caused by the economic situation and a declining market for music on physical media. HMV is for many towns, the last place the consume... Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:35:00 +0000 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/386/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2012-01-19/sansui-db-100-dab-radio/ Just after Christmas I decided to buy myself a portable DAB radio. I'd been meaning to buy one for a while and having been browsing in John Lewis, I stumbled across this tiny little radio that was, for such a product, relatively inexpensive. The radio i... Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:47:26 +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/305/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2012-01-11/amazon-mp3-and-64-bit-linux/ Unfortunately it seems this guide may no longer work - at least it didn't when I attempted it in Linux Mint 12 (based on Ubuntu). The guide remains here for posterity, but I accept no liability for anything that may go wrong should you attempt to follow ... Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:26:14 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/383/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-12-31/happy-new-year-2012/ Just time to write my traditional message celebrating the new year, which will arrive in about 55 minutes time. Lucky for me I got the website upgraded in time, otherwise I would have had to have missed it. That would have been a shame since it's someth... Sat, 31 Dec 2011 23:12:26 +0000 http://www.bengamblin.com/entry/382/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-12-31/new-website/ It didn't take too long before I got bored of the appearance of my website. The last version only lasted for 10 months having been launched in February 2011. I decided I wanted something cleaner, with straighter edges and fewer lines. I wanted a site w... Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:00:18 +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/380/ http://www.bengamblin.com/2011-09-18/emusic-cancellation/ It was a tough decision, but after four and a half years with eMusic (since Feb 2007), I've cancelled my subscription. I hovered over the cancel button for some time before I finally clicked it, but I've convinced myself that it's the right thing to do. ... Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:37:33 +0000