Web Searching and Private Parking Tickets.

A Google search, depending on the terms that are typed into the search box, can return many results or just a few.

We have to then make sure that the information provided is up to date.

Within the last 12 months I was lucky enough to receive a Parking Charge Notice, which is not to be confused with Penalty Charge Notice.

A Parking Charge Notice is issued by a Private parking company and Penalty Charge notice is issued by a traffic warden for the council or police.  They do, however, both look similar.

The car park concerned was not a council run site but a privately run site.  It was pay and display.  I had parked in the car park some time previously but no parking restrictions were in place, at that time. 

I parked up, like we all do, checked how much for how long and paid the tariff.  I paid little attention to the rest of the notice.  I returned to my car at about the right time, but for very good reason I was delayed actually leaving the car park.

Had I spent this time actually reading the extremely small print on the parking signs, I would have been aware that the car park was monitored by cameras. 

I Didn’t.

About a week later I received a notice that I owed a rather large sum of money to a private parking company.  In my opinion, my reasons for not leaving the car park were entirely justified and I decided to appeal the ticket.

My quest to find information about the appeal to this obviously started with a Google Search.  (Sorry, went a bit Ronnie Corbett there!)

The results from the search provided me with varying advice, including 

• Pay up
• ignore
•  write a strongly worded appeal but don’t ignore

How did I know which information to follow?  

A Google search provides information based on advertising and how popular the site is.  I wanted to find the most up to date information about appealing a parking ticket.

Firstly, I changed the parameters of the search

Click on search tools and click on Any Time and select a period of time, Past 12 months, Past Month or even enter a custom range.  You can then sort by relevance of the information to the search term or you can sort by date.  You can also filter sites by country.

This will limit the results to the most recent information.  In the case of parking tickets issued before   2012 the advice, at the time, was to ignore them.  But this is no longer the case. 

I used a fantastic site that gave well informed advice and I was able to appeal the ticket and get it cancelled.

If you are interested, it was a MoneySavingExpert forum.  I do still drop in there from time to time, as the information and recommendations do change. Here’s a link to their “Newbies” information.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=4816822

which is a good place to start should you ever be in the same position.

More Pi Anyone ? More Raspberry Pi 2 Adventures

The new case and upgraded power turned up, so I was able to get on with putting the Raspberry Pi 2 together.

Had a bit of a RTFM moment!

Up to now we have used Kodi and RasBMC installer

I tried to put the card from the existing Pi in to the Pi 2.  All I got was the rainbow screen.  I did the SD card install on my laptop so that it could reinstall the complete system.  Still got the rainbow screen.

I was beginning to think that the new Pi 2 was faulty.

I decided to try a different distro.  OpenElec was my chosen option.

On the OpenElec site it had two different installs for Pi B and Pi 2...

Oh!

The installer for the Pi 2 is no longer done with the RaspBMC installer.

I tried the OSMC installer.  Works fine now. Kodi runs, and most of all No More Rainbow Screen!

https://osmc.tv/

Nexus 7 and Lollipop

The Lamas Nexus was seriously lagging just before the update to 5 came out so I was waiting quite impatiently for the release.

I think I was among the last of the Nexus users to get the update, or so it seemed,  which when it arrived was 5.0.2. 

I set the upgrade off and waited quite excitedly for it to finish.

When it did, I thought my Nexus was done for!!

It was even slower than before the upgrade.  I tried all the tricks I could find to sort it out but to no avail.

In the end, I backed it up and restored it to factory settings.  It restarted with the new OS – not the original OS from when it was first delivered.

I put in my details and it downloaded all my apps.

 

It was much better, although it still has its moments I can work around that (terminating a certain social media app helps).

It seems that installing the apps on to the new operating system works better than putting the operating system over the existing apps.

Raspberry PI 2 - The Next Generation - Startup issues.

Read an article on the new Raspberry Pi 2 recently.  The Pi we have is an original B layout.

I ordered one for research purposes, of course!!

What I did not realise, was the comparisons made in the article were to the B+ layout.

There are 2 differences between the original Pi B and the Pi 2 (well there are obviously more but these 2 are quite important and have put a stop to my research temporarily.)

The Pi 2 requires a minimum 4GB micro SD Card where as the previous one I had worked with a 2GB quite well.

Another difference that I was already aware of is the B works with an normal sized SD card but the Pi 2 works with a Micro SD card as does the B+.

The Pi 2 also requires a power supply that delivers 2A.  The power supply for the Pi B works well with a 1.5A.

Another difference between the original B and the B+ and the Pi 2 is the actual layout of the board. The B+ and the 2 are a similar layout and the B is quite different.  New case has been ordered as well today!

I will have to put off my research for a couple of days.  Delivery on the power cable was 2 days!

Technical Preview Windows 10

I took one of the little Lamas to the ballet yesterday.  It was her introduction the ballet.  The Nutcracker by the Russian State Ballet.  It was good and she enjoyed it. 

I might think twice about getting seats in the upper circle! wow - made me feel a bit wobbly there for a while, because it was so high up.  We got there early so we got some magazines to read while we waited.  

Little Lamas got a Moshi Monsters mag and I got a computer magazine!  The only reason I bought a computer mag was because it had, not surprisingly, quite a bit about Windows 10.

Microsoft have issued a Technical Preview of Windows 10 and I thought it might be a good idea to have a look.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso

I personally don't care what they call it.  I have no issue with them missing out Windows 9 or giving it a name like Windows "I hope we did a bit better this time" it makes no odds to me.

I am going to take a look at the tech preview and see what I think.  

I enjoyed my extra hour this morning and was quite pleased that I slept in and the other little Lamas was not late for Rugby training.

The new laptop is good. I have my favourites back in Firefox and the applications are slowly returning.  My only issue is the track pad and gestures - I can't remember what they all do! 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and Happy Half Term!

New Laptop! Asus P550LAV

Following the sad demise of my faithful and trusty old laptop last week, I had the pleasure of receiving my new one today.

It is very nice with an actual numeric keypad!  HDMI, USB 3, WebCam, Loads of Ram, and a Large HD, i3 processor, DVDRW

I purposely bought a laptop with Windows 8.1 Pro on it.  (If you know me you will know that I am not a fan of Windows 8.)  The Pro in the title means that I can use the same COA to downgrade back to Windows 7.

Its all shiny and new.  The keyboard is nice and springy.  The display is clear and crisp.
The trackpad is going to take a little getting used to.  

I am getting the usual applications installed. AV, firewall, Anti-malware. Belt, Braces... Getting it connected to all the stuff in the house. 

Its quiet.  It's been running for a while and it feels cool to the touch.

The only thing I really miss is how my old one was set up.  The applications that I used all the time were there.  The Favourites, screen saver, the applications that I used very little but were an important part of it all because there was one that managed to retrieve all the photos from our trip, (when they were all accidentally erased from the SD card!)  when the other data retrieval apps that I have on the desktops, which I may add I paid a licence fee for, were not able to get the photos back.  
There is also another one that sorts out partitioning which again I can't remember what it is called.  

That, however is a job for tomorrow.  The old laptop had RAM and motherboard issues.  I did not loose any data. Its all backed up anyway.  

I like my new laptop  and now I am going to use it to order a new Nexus 7 screen (the Network Manager...)

Zombies, Dust, Heatsink, Laptop Cleaning!

In the last week I think that the PCs and Laptops at Lamas HQ have been infested by aliens or zombies or something.

One laptop has died an unrecoverable death.  It is quite sad because that laptop has been with me for a while, been upgraded, OS and hardware, and was working quite well.  

I have ordered myself a new one. 

One of the desktops decided to have an unrecoverable windows error.  Which was solved with a simple system restore and then there is the Lamas Network Managers devices.
His laptop is not very old.  However, it has had some hiccups in its time.  There was the incident of the tea.  Laptops are not very british in their approach to tea - not overly fond of it!

The only real result of this was a permanent failure of some of the keys ie it will only work on certain letters and the backspace is useless.  MSConfig types as MSonfg - which is next to useless when troubleshooting it! Which I do a lot of.

It other issues were that it kept switching itself off and, when it was working, it sounded like a jet engine getting ready to take off within a few minutes of booting.

I have spent quite some time trying to address the issues. To seemingly no avail.
Until today...

It is sitting behind me as I type this and I can actually hear my own PC running. It is running quite silently - no it has not switched off (turns round again to check - yes it it still on!)

This was the problem:








That is a picture of the heatsink from his laptop.  It was thick with dust.  It is no wonder it had to work so hard. That part of the heatsink sits next to the fan. 











The other device was his phone.  It met the floor at high speed and cracked.

Before

Shiny and new again!

So I will wait for my new laptop ....

Trial Software

Back in November last year I blogged about the AV security that had been included in a magazine.
It was a 6 month subscription to the paid for Panda Anti Virus.

I ended up removing this from the PC as the parental control settings on it were not quite right for our family.

The little Lamas are now both 8 and love playing online games, Panda security needed to be set as high as about age 17 to ensure that they had access to the Lego site.  It caused more issues in the family than it was worth so it got uninstalled.

I also had a 12 month Subscription to Bitdefender on my laptop.  My laptop is not the newest on the planet but it works.  I found that on my older system it is too resource heavy.
It makes you set a user password, which in my case I feel is unnecessary but if you have security concerns its a good thing. 
I found that the update, which was attempted every day, never actually worked and therefore, gave an error every day.  It seemed to take an age to do a scan and slowed the laptop down even more.

Since I have uninstalled it I have found that the PC works faster, even with an alternative Antivirus installed.

So for now we are sticking with Avast.
Enjoy your weekend