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#WAWIn1Week – Wild Atlantic Way In 1 Week – The Gear…

October 21, 2017August 10, 2015 by TomBoyNI

So having just recently completed my trip of the West Coast of Ireland in 1 Week, along the longest Coastal Route in the World – The Wild Atlantic Way, taking in over 2,600km it is now time for me to put this trip into some sort of words, and more importantly share my photographs of this stunning area with the rest of world, and hopefully inspire a few more of you to take on this route.

The route itself is no secret, it is brilliantly signposted from start to finish and is easily completed without a sat nav, map of even the slightest clue about the geography of Ireland. There are numerous towns and villages that you will pass through and the options from accommodation range from a bit of wild camping to official campsites, or gorgeous little family run B&Bs right through to Hotel Resorts and Spas. Brilliant. Initially I had planned on completing this trip with my only accommodation being at the side of the road where I stopped. Just prior to my trip I decided on changing this due to the predicted weather, and the constant rain the Met Office told me I would be facing. It turns out on this trip over the one week timescale the change to B&B style accommodation was a good one!

This first post though will cover the gear that I used on my trip, it will touch on my motorcycle, and the gear I used for the daily ride and how it held up with the weather of an Irish ‘Summer.’ Summer in this case needs the ‘ ‘ marks, as at the time of typing I think we are somewhere close to Day 60 of consecutive rain falling somewhere in the country (its a small country) and having just passed the coldest, wettest July since 2003. On saying that as you will see over the up and coming #WAWIn1Week posts I was pretty lucky with the weather. I did get a good, in fact severe soaking, twice – enough to test the gear to the absolute limits, but for most of the time I was only hitting passing showers, or trying to keep them in my mirrors! With this route hugging the West Coast of Ireland and therefore the limits of the Atlantic Ocean it is subject to some pretty extreme weather conditions and one thing to remember if you are over and on the route what looks grim ahead may take a dramatic change around the next corner. The weather is really that changeable and if you just look out over the ocean you will get a very good idea of what the jet stream is bringing across to you over the next couple of hours.

So here we go, the gear I used and how it coped with taking on the world’s longest dedicated coastal route, 2,600km and six days on the coast…

How to Replace / Install PS4 Hard Drive

August 8, 2014 by TomBoyNI

The PS4 is a cracking’ machine. Brilliant in fact. But really, Sony what were you thinking with only giving us a 500GB hard drive. ‘Oh it was to keep costs down,’ you will no doubt reply, but that is a bit of a false economy, as the costs go back up when we have to replace our HDDs ourselves.

It also to be far has been a bit of a slow start for me when it comes to PS4 gaming as at this moment in time I simply have the games that came free with PS+ as well as The Last of Use Remastered, Wolfenstein, Sniper III, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Infamous Second Son, Watch Dogs and Killzone. So a reasonable mediocre collection at this point, so imagine my surprise when I checked my free space and noted I had had 92GB out of my initial 500GB left!

Well all that meant was it was upgrade time.

The story is not that simply however. As in the past, probably January (isn) 2014 I did try to pre empt this situation and took it upon myself to do an early upgrade to limit the hassle of re-downloading all of my games and game data. however back then I was one of the PS4 users who couldn’t upgrade to 2TB. The reasons for that were that at that time Seagate made the only compatible and affordable 2TB drive for PS4. However it came in an enclosure, you had to take it apart…

That wouldn’t put me off however and I did purchase it back then, that’s when the problems arose. It was quickly established that if you cracked open your PS4 and found a HGST drive staring at you chance were that the Seagate drive was going to be incompatible with your system. Basically there was ‘handshake’ issues between the hardware, but I won’t bore you with that as now it is all thankfully ancient history! (Workarounds were present but I like things to work right 100% of the time, so I shifted the drive on to someone who could use it properly.)

So after a bit of reading I established with a degree of certainty that I could live with that the hand shake issues that were previously present were now gone. No matter what drive you had in your PS4 the Seagate 2TB M9T drive was / is now 100% compatible.

That’s all I needed to here, and off to the shops I trekked picking the drive up for £69.99 and back to the house I hurried to try it out.

10 Second Game Review : Infamous 2

February 11, 2014 by TomBoyNI

What the hell you may be asking! And rightly so Infamous 2 was released in 2011 after all!

However I purchased it on release and it sat in its cellophane wrapper until a couple of days ago. I thought with the now imminent release of Infamous : Second Son I needed to catch up before I dove into the newest Next Gen instalment of this huge City Platformer / Action / Shooter / RP (I think it is officially classed as a Third Person Action Game.

The basic plot is WITHOUT SPOILERS is that you take on the role of Cole McGrath, Empire City has been destroyed in a huge blast, you and Zeke have moved to New Marais, however the Beast is coming and he is ripping up the entire Eastern Seaboard. You must stop him!

This game is huge, there is a good 12 hours in playing through the story and much much more in playing the side missions. You make decisions whether Cole becomes a hero to humanity or a Villian to rival the worst of them is entirely in your hands. People will worship or fear you, and it is your actions or even lack of actions that will determine which way the crowd sways.

Visually New Marais is stunning, all the visuals are, the textures in the electricity and buildings will leave you wondering what we are going to get in the PS4 game. The story is compelling and interesting, made even more so as it is you who is steering the action in a particular direction.

The only question that now remains is are you good or evil?

Play it, enjoy it and salivate at the thought of the impending Infamous : Second Son!

Plugable USB 3.0 Powered Hub : The Good News is it Seems to like an iMac

October 21, 2017October 22, 2013 by TomBoyNI

I recently posted up a thread in which I explained how my previous USB 2.0 Powered hub didn’t seem to like my new 2013 iMac and it was subsequently returned, and that I was on the look out for a replacement…

https://tbni.blog/2013/10/18/d-link-usb-2-0-7-port-hub-unboxing-important-mac-related-notes/

Well after a little searching I felt I may have found that replacement, and at this early stage it does indeed seem that I have.

So if you are a late 2012 or late 2013 iMac owner who has had issues with USB hubs not being able to cope then one worth trying for you is the ‘Plugable’ Powered USB 3.0 HUB. I picked it up on Amazon.co.uk for about £30.

For reference I currently have a 500Gb Portable USB 3.0 drive, a 1TB Portable USB 3.0 drive, and a powered 3TB USB 3.0 plugged into the rear of my iMac along with this 7 Port Powered Hub. In the HUB I have had running without any issues whatsoever a 320Gb Powered Drive and a further 1TB Powered drive (These are both USB 2.0). I have also had at the same time my iPhone 5s and iPad (3rd Generation) syncing and iPhoto pulling photos off my Panasonic TZ30 digital camera as well as my GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition.

Now admittedly there is a lot going on here on here and much more than I usually would be doing at one one time, but it was a good way to test the hub. The results were ‘two thumbs up’ everything worked away doing its thing, without any drive drop outs or apparently power problems. (My previous HUB failed on simply having the 2 external drives plugged into it).

So all in all after over a weeks use the HUB is yet to experience any issues or give me any problems. A firmware update is available however it must be done from a Windows machine. I have not at this stage completed this firmware upgrade as things are working well, and as the man says, ‘If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.’

One little superstition I did carry out was before I plugged in any USB 2.0 devices into the HUB was I allowed each port to mount a USB 3.0 drive. I don’t know if this is a requirement, and to be honest I doubt very much it is, however it is something I and my colleagues always do with USB 3.0 ports – mount a USB 3.0 device first. The legend goes it lets the port know it is a 3.0 rather than getting locked in at 2.0 speeds.

So there you have it, if you are experiencing iMac related USB HUB issues this may well be the HUB worth trying, (one final thought is that the blue LEDs can be rather bright at night, so make sure you have some black electrical tape to cover them up).

Plugable USB 3.0 Powered HUB Unboxing Gallery :

Happy Call of Duty : Black Ops 2 Day 13/11/2012

November 12, 2012 by TomBoyNI

Every November now, we are teased and eventually treated with the latest Call of Duty episode.

And as a result of this everyone has their own feelings about its release, some will see it as the pinnacle shooter of our generation, and some will see it as the biggest pile of n00b infected glitch ridden trash ever to be released.

Although the latter is no doubt exceptionally unfair and more than likely the comments of someone who has found their favourite glitch has since been ironed out, or at their first attempt of 0wning the battlefield became subsequently Pwned!

iFace 2 iPhone Case – Thoughts and Photos…

August 23, 2012 by TomBoyNI

As quickly as you have read and learn about the iFace cover for the iPhone, here now is the iFace 2. This allegedly has been produced to eradicate the problems of the iFace cover which unfortunately plagued the original case ( )

You will quickly see from the photos below that a lot has changed, the sleek contoured curves are gone, the little Apple logo is gone, and it has now went from being sexy hour glass shaped to a bit of a fat boy! The nice right colours are still present and the big fix is meant to be the camera doesn’t wash out when the flash is used, well guess what mine does, now depending on what case I choose I can have a yellow or red wash out.

Disclosure :