Daily Archives: Sunday, 25 November, 2007

How to enable video in Skype for the Asus Eeepc.

Posted on Sunday, 25 November, 2007 by Jeremy

By default the Asus Eeepc comes with Skype but unfortuantely the version installed isn’t able to make use of the built in webcam. The first step towards using the webcam is to enable it in the BIOS. Strangely it is disabled from the factory, but it can be enabled by holding down the F2 key whilst the first starting screen appears. Navigate to the panel which lists integrated devices and enable the webcam. Chose save and exit to restart the machine and enter the next step. The next problem encountered is that the current version of Skype for linux doesn’t support video chat, but Skype do have a beta version available. The older 1.4 version will be installed if you try to install or update skype using apt-get, and even if you add the Skype official repository to your sources.list … Continue reading →

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A near miss

Posted on Sunday, 25 November, 2007 by Jeremy

I was impressed by the large number of people in China who despite the cheap local petrol (which was probably still expensive to someone on an average wage) had chosen an electric bicycle in order to encompass their entire transportation needs. It has to be said though that whilst it had pedals for assistance and shop owners had powerboards for people to plug their bikes into whilst they shopped – the machines didn’t seem to keep up with traffic and were used mostly as bicycles that didn’t require pedalling and were used in the bicycle lanes. When I saw my first electric bicycles and scooters I had visions of people adding batteries with higher capacities and output coupled with high efficiency brushless motors so they could tear around the streets on their eco-friendly racing machines, but in reality none of … Continue reading →

Posted in china, motorcycle, travel | Leave a comment