John Large ⁽¹²⁸⁾

If any of you guys follow me on social media you will be aware that a few weeks back we had a disaster in our household. I brought a cup of tea to my wife while she was working in bed, and as I handed it to her I dripped a few drops on her Apple Macbook pro. We quickly dried it off and thought no more of it. It worked all morning & she closed the Macbook when we went out for lunch. On our return the Macbook refused to startup. On pressing the power button it would make…

I bought my iPad 2 back when it was first released. I bought it on release date back in March 2011. I remember driving a 150 mile round trip from my new home in Cornwall to Exeter to visit the apple store and pick one up. On arrival, the only iPad 2 left in stock was the most expensive 64GB version with GSM cellular built-in. I really wanted a 3G version so I could use it anywhere so I jumped at the chance and paid the hefty £659 price tag. I loved the iPad 2 when it came out. I…

Update 11th August 2017 **If you are having issues with youtube on kodi not showing your subscriptions or videos & loading blank pages, I recommend you download the new YouTube plugin respository from here. Install the repository on Kodi and update the youtube plugin to the latest version, currently YouTube for Kodi 5.4.2. ** Recently Bromix, the developer of the awesome YouTube addon for Kodi decided to quit the project & concentrate on other things. This quickly lead to the addon breaking, days after he announced he was leaving the project. As yet nobody has taken up the reigns on…

I've been considering this for a long time but over recent weeks the ability to repair my own technology has become far more important to me. Only a few weeks back, I was unfortunate enough to splash a few drops of coffee onto the keyboard of our Macbook Pro. We cleaned it off & thought nothing more of it until later in the day, when the machine failed to switch on. This was such a stressful thing to happen. The Macbook is 4 years old but is still in great condition & used constantly. It doesn't warrant an upgrade. I…

It's been a few years since I got my Computer Science Masters degree. In that time I've had less & less free time to concentrate on my own projects. This is mainly due to the fact that I'm running my own business (web-based but not overly technical) and concentrating on making enough money to pay the rent & bills. I've also been clearing off all the student debt which helped me achieve two degrees. In that time I've mostly had my main machine which is an early 2009 iMac. It's a great spec machine & allows me to get all…

You are going to think I'm being a complete dick with this post, but stick with it. I'm not saying that I'm not guilty of any of the points made (I am), just highlighting them in a way that makes you think. I have been planning this post for a long time & researching these issues for many years. Back in 2008/2009 I based my Masters thesis around social media & it's uses in a virtual learning environment. After writing 30,000 words & creating my own Social Media platform I realised the many benefits of Social Media when used within…

Long time readers of my blog will know that I've been on a mission to save money & generally live a more frugal life. For a while life became very extravagant & very expensive. I've only just managed to correct a lot of the financial mistakes made during a foolish & stressful part of my life & I'm always looking at ways to save money. A little over 3 years ago my beloved Land Rover developed a gearbox fault. It cost a lot of money to have repaired & the repair failed, so I ended up selling it for next…

All of my social media followers will now know I've taken a short lease on a converted church in Cornwall & plan to relax & research for the foreseeable future until completing my move to Amsterdam. This downtime is needed to really become an expert in my field again, over the past 24 months of downsizing & paying off debt all of my own personal development went out of the window. This time will put that right. The first stumbling block I had when moving to Cornwall was perhaps the biggest, internet access. We live in between the villages of…

Beats 1 Radio OSX 10.9.3 restriction warning I'm really disappointed that Beats 1 Radio won't work in iTunes on older versions of OSX. On my mountain lion OSX 10.8.5 machine which is an older iMac (and runs awful on Yosemite) I found that when updating to iTunes 12.2 all parts of Apple Music work with the exception of Beats 1 radio. This seems ridiculous as everything else works fine. It's obviously a ploy to get everyone to upgrade to Yosemite & eventually El Capitan. Problem is, older machines don't play well with the latest OSX. I've tried many times to…

I was lucky enough to get everything done early today & by 4PM I was already updating my iPhone 6 to IOS 8.4. - 15 minutes later I was signed up to the 3 month trial of Apple Music & trialing this exciting service. Initially Beats 1 Radio was just a loop of ambient music called Ambient 1 - Music for airports by Brian Eno. We kept getting brief voice over of Zane Lowe chatting to other locations & engineers in the run up to a 5PM GMT launch. And then at 5PM Zane launched with a local Manchester Band named…

Like all tech folk I ate dinner early yesterday & sat down to watch the live stream of the WWDC 2015. This is a big day in the tech calendar & we often learn of new & exciting things coming out of the super secret Apple engineering labs. It wasn't quite as good as 2013 when I was in San Francisco for the WWDC but I can't complain. The three big announcements this year where iOS 9, OSX El Capitan and Watch OS - With a little extra bit at the end for Apple Music & Beats 1 radio. All…

   Our first batch of gift vouchers arrived after buying them on the Zeek iOS app. So far loving this. 

Yesterday in Manchester I managed to get my hands on the brand new Apple Watch. I was as skeptical as most people when Tim Cook introduced these at the Apple Keynote in March 2015 but I must say I was very impressed. It was a bit of a scrum to get hands on with these watches in Manchester. A lot of people showing interest & Apple Employees where doing "fittings" which essentially means opening beautiful wooden drawers below the Apple Watch display & allowing you to try on the various editions. The Apple Watch essentially comes in three distinct editions.

It's been a while since I last did a downsizing post. I think it could be as long as a year since I did any kind of update. So here is a little recap. A little over a year ago I was living with my wife in a 4 bedroom town house with a garage and all the trimmings. I was driving around in a lovely Mercedes-Benz C230 estate. We had more space than we could ever use & a car which felt far too flashy. The events that lead to this point essentially boil down to a major family…

John Large Everyday Carry 1. The North Face e-tip lightweight gloves 2. 2000mAh Battery Bank 3. Mulberry Wallet 4. Oyster Card & Amsterdam OV-Chipkaart 5. Compact umbrella 6. Oakley (4+1)2 Polarized sunglasses 7. Notebook & Parker Jotter pen 8. Nixon - The Sentry watch 9. Multi-tool 10. Huawei E160 3G dongle 11. Sandisk 16GB Flash Drive 12. Apple iPhone 6 13. Apple iPod classic 5th Generation U2 Special Edition Black/Red (30 GB) 14. Keys on Element Lanyard 15. Apple EarBuds 16. Retractable iPod cable 17. Micro USB short lead 18. Apple lighting cable & power adaptor 19. Spare GiffGaff sims…

I finally got a chance to order a Raspberry Pi 2 a few weeks back. I've been meaning to post about it for a while but I've been extra busy. I ended up picking the Pi up from The Pi Hut after really struggling to track one down on the high street. As always the service from The Pi Hut was great & a few days later my new Pi arrived. It's hard to believe that the Raspberry Pi team have managed to squeeze so much power out of the same form factor & price point. The fact that it's…

This week a good friend of mine gave me a pair of Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic. He was sent a replacement iPhone 5S to replace a faulty unit and they sent it retail boxed with another set of EarPods so I was given the new pair. The ones I currently use are the ones that shipped with my iPhone 4. They are now pushing 4 years old & still in perfect working order. In fact since my first iPod in 2006 I've never had a set of Apple Headphones go faulty. They are great quality & pretty much indestructible…

I've had my rev. B+ Raspberry Pi for just over a year since it's release. When i got it I had a few projects on the go, including a sickbeard/sabnzbd/couchpotato server and a few media centres. At the time I had XBMC Frodo running on my Apple TV 1 via Crystalbuntu and on my ATV2 by Jailbreaking & installing. Both solutions worked perfectly so the unstable XBMC on the Pi wasn't really worth pursuing. Also I had issues controlling with a keyboard & a Flirc when the ATV's utilized the ATV remote so well. I first tried with OSMC Alpha 4,…

This week I finally took the plunge and bought a small wireless keyboard for the Raspberry Pi. The Pi in question is a B+ raspberry pi running at 700MHz and sporting 512MB ram. I've got a 32GB Sandisk Class 10 SD card in it and one of the excellent Pibow cases from Pimoroni. Up until a few weeks ago I'd been using an Apple TV 1 as my main media centre (upgraded with a CrystalHD hardware video decoder & running XBMC) and a Jailbroken ATV2 as my backup. The Apple TV one is great, it's fast & snappy but it's…

Just a quick post regarding memory issues and poor performance on iOS 8 when used on an older A5 chipset iPad 2. I upgraded to iOS 8.1.1 tonight and everything seems much improved. It's nowhere near as quick as iOS 7.1.2 was, but it is snappier and less buggy. Also seems to have fixed the copy and paste issue I hacked a workaround for last week. Safari loads faster and multi tasking is improved noticeably. Still having issues with gsm not working so I'm limited to wifi only but I'm glad to have a usable iPad 2 again. Also, a…