Place of Stuff

The PC is becoming ever more ubiquitous - as well as games, you can receive radio channels, listen to various types of music, watch DVDs or other movie files, upload, download, share and do all sorts of other things. Television, though, has always seemed a little trickier - at the very least you need a TV card of some description.

We have a main TV in the house, but with 4 people and differing requirements, scheduling time to watch can be difficult. Especially when one half of the household only want to watch at particular times. Watching on the PC or laptop is, of course, possible. But because I don’t watch more than one or two hours per week, even the relatively low cost of TV tuners for the PC is more than I want to pay. The BBC iPlayer goes some way to resolving the problem, but maybe I want to watch the programme when it’s on rather than after it’s finished.

Zattoo solves that problem - for me. It’s a free to download program which uses peer to peer sharing to stream channels over the internet. Sign up, give far fewer details than most other services, download the program and install it and you’re good to go. It uses Adobe Flash to handle the viewing, but otherwise is pretty self contained. There are a number of channels available for it - in the UK this means the 5 terrestrial channels and a number of satellite/cable only channels, effectively all the Freeview ones.
Continue reading ‘Zattoo - Real TV On Your PC’ »

I enjoy reading a good detective novel. I prefer the more “hard boiled” detective, but once in a while I like to read about a more cerebral detective. The most famous of these is, of course, Sherlock Holmes.

Erast Fandorin could well be described as a “Russian Holmes”. He applies logic to his dealings with the criminal mind and always, at least, unmasks his prey. Though, like Holmes, he doesn’t always keep hold of them. Written by Boris Akunin, the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, the Fandorin mysteries have sold more than 18 million copies in Russia alone. The translations are, I believe, faithful - though I have to take that on faith as I don’t read Russian!

Despite being set before the turn of the Twentieth Century, these tales are always thrilling. They show us a Europe before the various wars and revolutions that have helped create the world as we now know it. At that time monarchies were the norm and it was accepted that the monarch’s word was absolute law - all served at their pleasure. It also shows that the world wasn’t very much different: poverty was everywhere, travel around Europe was the norm (despite various border controls it appeared to be easier than now), art, politics, intrigue and international politics were as much in everyone’s minds as they are now.
Continue reading ‘The Erast Fandorin Mysteries’ »