technology and audio matters

I’ve been searching hard for a good few months now, trying to find a client or two! Ideally trying to locate companies engaged in electronic product development of some form , especially consumer focused. Apart from a few well known names like TomTom and Radioscape, it looks like many companies have left Greater London. I’m not surprised at one level, with lower cost manufacturing being offered in China, India and Eastern Europe there’s a ‘pull’ on the design side too. I’ve some first hand experience working with off shore partners. Whilst it can appear attractive often smaller companies find it easier to develop and produce products first off in the UK. Feel free to comment or contact me for assistance.

I spent some time working at Psion on one of the first consumer DAB radios, namely the Wavefinder. We built 10,000 in Austria and then the consumer business was closed. Sadly the unit stopped working after XP introduced SP2, I would guess this is a result of tightened security around the USB drivers. The Wavefinder loaded it’s program into local RAM via the USB link. Consequently it won’t run, well for me any way!

Today I use a Cambridge Audio DAB3000 courtesy of Richer Sounds. With the supplied in door aerial I get surprisingly good results, the meter reports full signal strength! (Not so with my Digital TV Tuner , but that’s another article. ) I have to say though sound quality isn’t quite as good as an older FM Tuner Denon TU260MkII picked up on ebay for about £30! So much for progress ….

I’ve had one sitting in a draw for a good few years. In fact since leaving Psion in 2001!

With recent articles about Psion e.g. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/26/psion_special/ and the coverage in the press about the Palm Foleo I’ve been enlightened to discover that there’s wifi support for the Netbook. Sadly though having tracked down a compatible PC wifi card I’ve found browsing the web almost a non starter. I guess that current rendering requirements are beyond the capability of the built in browsers circa 2001

If anybody wants details of the supported PC cards , feel free to contact me.

In truth I’m a late adopter of digital cameras in spite of my late father being a professional photographer. Or maybe it ’s because! I bought my first real digital camera back in 2004, an Olympus mju300 . Whilst beautifully built (well until the battery door broke) it’s picture taking was a bit disappointing. I followed this with a Canon Ixus 500, a much better product overall in terms of getting great shots every time. I’ve (sadly) now sold same and replaced with a Lumix TZ1. I’ve got this want now for high optical zoom’s and the Lumix doesn’t disappoint with it’s 10x gain. I’ve also got a Fuji S5600 with similar lens capabilities, possibly takes a better shot but it’s a bit larger to carry.

In between looking for work, I’ve finally got round to trying my hand at a recording some of my Vinyl Record collection. Armed with a small Shuttle PC conveniently linked to my hifi and Groove Mechanic http://www.coyotes.bc.ca/DL_GM.html I’ve had some pleasing first off results. I’ve recorded single side at a time and then (after d clicking) written as audio to CD using Nero. No attempt made to record individual tracks. Results seem more than passable despite the records being some 20 years old. Recently bought a new stylus and belt for my Thorens from http://www.stylusplus.co.uk/ fine service from the latter.

We recently experienced some of the worst flooding in this area for some 20 years , so I would understand. So far we’ve managed to survive with little damage. Some of our neighbours with cellars were not so lucky.

(The picture above taken with my Lumix TZ1 was outside our house !)

More photos here:

http://www.srdw.co.uk/various/2007flooding/

My first attempt at a blog!