Sunday, May 18, 2008

Just a quick note

Just wanted to let all my readers know I have (well my son has) a new flash arcade site that is free to play and there are some great games there. He adds new games everyday so be sure to subscribe to the feed at the bottom of the page.

Play free flash games at Throttlegames.com

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Sony HandyCam c31.23 , 31.23 error easy fix

Ok this might be old knowledge but I just found out about it and wanted to share this bit of knowledge with someone that may have had the same problem as me. Here is the scenrio, I was at my son's first Motocross race. I decided it would be cool to video tape his first race, since the way my nerves were that day it might have been his last race. Anyway I proceded to video tape his holeshot with my Sony DCR-TRV250 I have had this camera a while but really only used it a couple of times. All of a sudden I got a small arrow type icon similar to the eject icon, and the error code c31.23. What a crappy thing to have happen while it was a milestone of my sons racing career.

Well I manage to find a quick fix, the technical tap or rather smack. In my frustrations I smacked the camera pretty hard and low and behold it worked. Well it was a big pain to wack my camera all the time, so it pretty much retired to its bag. Where I did not pull it out very often except to see if it by some miracle was working normal again.

Today I decided to throw it on the charger and try to see if I could find a fix, and I found this Thread after alot of reading about how everyone wacks their handycam, I found a post from a user named Meredith. The suggestion was to open the tape deck of the camera and look to the right. Below are the steps to follow.

Open tape deck, make sure there is not a tape in it....

About midway back there is a black rubber roller in the middle of 2 metal guides.

In the center of this black roller you should see a white plastic tube, this is a bushing to allow the roller to move with out wobbling.

If you do not see this white tube yours has fallen out, so the search for a new one begins. Don't freak out a straw for a can of compressed air will work, or from a can of WD-40 will aswell. Simply push the new straw firmly into the center of the black roller.

If you see the straw take a small flat head screwdriver and press down on the top of the bushing firmly, I heard a click but you may not it just depends. Anyway this should fix the problem it did mine, and I am happy one my camera works and two I am smarter than Sony :)

Note if this does not fix the problem your bushing may be cracked find a pair of needle nose pliers and pull out the old bushing and replace it using the straw from a can of compressed air.

I hope this fixed your Sony Handycam 31.23 error code, now you are free to archive your lifes great adventures.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

My thoughts on Ubuntu 8.04

Well I installed 8.04 today, and I thought I would share some of my first impressions with you. First off my hardware, it is a out of the box Compaq Presario v6000 Running Amd Turion 64 processor with 1gb ram (yea I know I need more)

I chose to install 64bit version and since I have always had trouble with the live cd, I downloaded the alternate install disk. I am running a Windows free Laptop so I decided to just install Ubuntu on the whole disk. I popped in the install disk and let it work its magic. Installation was smooth, it took about 20 mins. First booting into Ubuntu I had to run a couple of restricted drivers one for my video card, the other for my Broadcom wireless adapter.

After a quick reboot, I have full wifi and full use of my video card. I tweaked a few settings in Compiz after installing Compizmanager ( I always wondered why that is not installed out of the box). I ran through and installed what was about 60 updates for various software etc.. Then installed my favorite apps like Thunderbird, Deluge, the new Gtwitter, and a few more.

Well everything is great, I have to say I really enjoy Ubuntu and always have. There appears to be less bugs with the display than there was in Gutsy. So I highly recommend that you download Ubuntu 8.04 and install it. Liberate your desktop, run opensource.