Kodak ESP 5250 Disappointment

Posted on January 6, 2011 at 4:29 pm by Nicholas Weightman

1608-kodak_esp_5250Just before Christmas my Canon Printer died without any warning, it started to pull the paper in at an angle and ruined all the prints. After that i decided to just shell out and get the printer i wanted in the first place, so i purchased the Kodak 5250 and as soon as i got it home i did all the software upgrades to find the firmware they had issued actually damaged the printer – causing the wireless system to malfunction. I was shocked. I contacted Kodak and they said there is a known problem with the firmware they issued and that it has essentially destroyed the printer and i am to take it back and get a replacement unit. I am completely in shock over this. They have a firmware update that is still being issued on the internet that actually destroys the printer. Why is it still there? Why can’t they just issue another firmware update that fixes the problem. I am now left with a printer that doesn’t do what it says on the box and i have to now lug it to the shops to get it replaced and the company ( Argos ) where i bought it have none left in stock. I am so over printers!

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Happy New Year 2011

Posted on January 1, 2011 at 10:26 pm by Nicholas Weightman

2011-01-01 22 17 07I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope to start getting my life back in o order this year and hopefully get a new job. I think after 5 years i am about ready to get my life sorted out again. I do still have severe depression, i do even get suicidal thoughts on occasion, but i now need to set them aside and start making a real name for myself and not that of a depressed layabout. I do have a lot to learn and i have lots to catch up on, but i am willing to work hard to achieve that.

I’ve also now got my personal website up and running. Its a little slow as I’m on a slow internet link, but i am confident it will be a good conduit to the Freechat IRC network.

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New use for old computer

Posted on September 16, 2010 at 10:23 pm by Nicholas Weightman

I’ve been busy recently turning my PC into something more useful than just a computer that sits online 24/7 for no reason. I’ve turned the PC now into a mail server and have also setup web services on it so it can be used as a web server too. I was prompted to do this purely as an experiment but now its all up and running i pretty like the idea of my own mail server. Working alongside my friend Daniel, we have set up an IRC server also – and we have successfully joined the servers together along with a 3rd person. What prompted us to do it was that we heard our usual haunt of “irc.icq.com” had been bought out by some Russian, and we honestly didn’t know if it would remain up and running much longer – that place has been our virtual home for almost 5 years plus. So we now have our own IRC servers and have a small band of usual followers from ICQ which are moving over with us. For me its been a great experiment and I’ve enjoyed working on this little project. It was at times a little complicated, especially when it came to putting together a web interface for the new network. If anyone wants to come along and join us on our IRC servers, you are more than welcome, just come to http://www.wnsi.co.uk and select Freechat network for more information :)

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A Nice weekend with my brother

Posted on August 16, 2010 at 9:28 am by Nicholas Weightman

This weekend my 12 year old brother came over to stay. We had a good time. We played on the laptops and shared some movies and overall it was really good. I got to introduce him to the classic comedy series “Bottom” that he seems to really enjoy. I sadly couldn’t take him to our sisters as it was raining and he had this really thin wind jacket that would of just got him soaked, so i am sorry to Suzanne for not bringing him over. Whilst he was here I cooked him some nice food including a lovely home made pizza and although he didn’t eat all of it, i certainly ate all mine. Overall it was a quiet but good weekend. :)

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The Graphics Card Saga

Posted on August 2, 2010 at 11:40 am by Nicholas Weightman

1000uF_6 Well i thought i would write about my graphics card saga on my computer. On Saturday i went to move the mouse on my PC to wake it up to check my messages and nothing came up on screen. I thought the PC had simply crashed. So i rebooted the PC and nothing came up on screen. This was a little worrying. I went through the usual diagnostics of removing all onboard cards and stuff and narrowed the problem down to my PCI-E graphics card. This card was fairly new and i bought it on eBay over a year ago. I managed to plug the LCD screen to the onboard graphics card and i was surprised to see that was also damaged. The screen was jumping all over the place and their were tons of lines all over the place. I knew this wasn’t at all good. I looked closely at the motherboard to find there was 1 tiny 6.3v 1000Uf capacitor that had blown. Basically the top of the capacitor was rounded and should be nice and flat. This wasn’t the most ideal of things to find on a computer. I took the motherboard out of the chassis and placed it down. I fetched my soldering equipment and looked through my stock of spare capacitors and found i had an exact match which was great. I set about removing the old capacitor and replacing it with the new one. After about 5 minutes repairing it i hooked it back up and powered it back on and success it was working. I also tried the PCI-E card but alas this wasn’t working still which is pretty annoying. After further inspection i believe the graphics card was made of sub-standard quality as the solder points were oxidised and had turned slight green. This is sure sign of shoddy workmanship when it comes to soldering. There could be many reasons for it from acid from fingers touching the soldering points before they were soldered to substandard working practices.

After checking all the BIOS and making sure things were still working normally, i put the motherboard back into the chassis and powered it all up and success the onboard graphics were once again working – but sadly only to a point. Once windows booted up it decided it wanted to repeatedly reboot itself – i eventually narrows that down to the drivers that were installed. I removed the drivers for the ATI card and also the onboard card because for some reason it doesn’t like its own drivers. The system is now thankfully fully working again but with the windows inbuilt graphics driver – which is not too bad – it still runs at 32bit at 1024×768 without any problems.

The idea of just repairing the motherboard instead of throwing it out and getting a new one is the fact i have no money to do that and i have to basically use what i can to fix problems at this current time. If it does go again though i will have to save about £100 for a new computer as i still need one even though I use my laptop daily.

Well that is my little Graphics card saga :)

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Growl for Windows Live Messenger

Posted on June 27, 2010 at 7:55 pm by Nicholas Weightman

Finding scripts to work with Growl or Snarl is not the easiest thing in the world. I re-wrote a simple script to show most of the variables of msn messenger for use with Growl.

Two ways to install

1: Complete Growl Script Here

2: Or do the following.

Get Growl Notify here: http://www.growlforwindows.com/gfw/help/growlnotify.aspx and you’ll also need an icon, i took a generic msn icon and just placed it in the windows folder. Using Msn plus just add a new script and paste this code in and it should basically work.

 

var shell = new ActiveXObject("wscript.shell");
var Growlexe = ‘"’ + MsgPlus.ScriptFilesPath + ‘\\growlnotify.exe"’;
var GrowlIcon = ‘"’ + MsgPlus.ScriptFilesPath + ‘\\icon.png"’;

function OnEvent_ContactSignin(Email){
var cmd = Growlexe + Email + ‘" signed in " /t:"Windows Live Messenger" /i:’+GrowlIcon+”; 
shell.Run(cmd);
}

function OnEvent_ContactSignout(Email){
var cmd = Growlexe + Email + ‘" signed out " /t:"Windows Live Messenger" /i:’+GrowlIcon+”;
shell.Run(cmd);
}

function OnEvent_ContactBlocked(Email){
var cmd =  Growlexe + Email + ‘" has been blocked " /t:"Windows Live Messenger" /i:’+GrowlIcon+”;
shell.Run(cmd);
}

function OnEvent_ContactUnblocked(Email){
var cmd = Growlexe + Email + ‘" has been unblocked " /t:"Windows Live Messenger" /i:’+GrowlIcon+”; 
shell.Run(cmd);
}

function OnEvent_ContactPsmChange(Email){
var cmd = Growlexe + Email + ‘" has changed PSM " /t:"Windows Live Messenger" /i:’+GrowlIcon+”; 
shell.Run(cmd);
}

function OnEvent_ContactNameChange(Email){
var cmd = Growlexe + Email + ‘" has changed Nick name " /t:"Windows Live Messenger" /i:’+GrowlIcon+”; 
shell.Run(cmd);
}

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