How troubled Iceland banks affected UK

I'm surprised to learn a lot of county desided to bank in with Iceland bank instead of UK, I can understand partially due to the fact that interest is higher. But it is troubling UK government as Iceland banks have now been nationalize, hence what will happen to the large amount of UK deposit? Individual saver is guarantee to a certain limit, but council deposit is not. In months to come, I'm sure the government will feel the burden, and we might hear another rescue plan...

On 8/10/08 publication report, Bank of England has a ready reserve of £50billion, and I suppose it has deducted the £50b bailout amount on UK Banks. How much more bailout can the government afford in future?

ING Direct has acquired the savings customers of Kaupthing Edge UK

KaupthingEdge is the largest Iceland bank, with £50k deposit guarantee by UK has got their customer saving deposit acquired by ING Direct. KaupthingEdge offered attactive interest as they don't have any branch in UK. I'd withdrawed my saving from this bank as I rather put my money in a UK bank as a cautious move.


The government's decision to take control of Kaupthing, the country's leading bank, which has assets and debts across the continent, means that the Financial Services Authority now has control of all three of the country's major banks. The other two, Landsbanki and Glitnir, are in receivership. - AP

For futher reading, Iceland suspends stock trading, creates new bank

Icesave halt deposit and withdrawal

Icesave, was once the recommended top ISA bank by Moneysavingexpert.com is now facing financial problem. I was considering to open an account with Icesave half year ago. Lucky me.

It has been another tough day for banks elsewhere in Europe, with the government of Iceland taking control of the country's second-biggest bank, Landsbanki. Landsbanki owns the internet bank Icesave, which has stopped allowing customers to withdraw money. Icesave is thought to have 350,000 customers in the UK and Netherlands. If Landsbanki were to fail, savers would be entitled to their first £16,000 from Icelandic authorities and then up to another £34,000 from the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme. - BBC

Share market lowest in decades

Yet again today mark another downfall of the share market, especially Russia lost 17% or more in a single day.

BBC iPlayer 1.5 for Mobile

Just as I'm trying to settle with iPlayer 1.0 yesterday, BBC iPlayer 1.5 Beta is out. The only feature I noticed is BBC radio channels. Give it a try here.

BBC iPlayer 1.0 for Mobile

If you stay in UK, you can't missed the phenomenon succcess of BBC iPlayer. Now you can also have it in mobile. I tested it yesterday using wifi connection on my N95 8GB and it works well.

Officially, it is only available on the Nokia N96, Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch, but working for these model too:

Nokia 5320 XpressMusic Nokia 6220 ClassicNokia 6210 Navigator Nokia N78Nokia N82 Nokia N96 Nokia N95 8GB v21+Nokia N95 v21+Nokia N95 v21+ E90 Communicator (via Software update)Nokia E66 Nokia E71 Nokia N85 Nokia N79 Nokia E51 Samsung SGH-G810 Samsung SGH-i450 Samsung SGH-i550 Samsung SGH-i560LG-KT610

Free movie preview for Ghost Town

SeeFilmFirst bring Ghost Town to Swindon on 19th Oct. Rarely you can get free movie preview in Swindon, but this movie is the first one I will watch for free. Hopefully it is good.

Last Minutes £10 Hotel rooms sale

LastMinute.com has 1000 room up for sale, starting from tomorrow, 2nd Oct.

Canon Cashback at Amazon

It is expected that Canon will slash their price for the current models to make way for the coming one announced at Photokina 2008. If you looking to upgrade your camera, now is the time. You can find the cashback deal at Amazon.

Nikon D90 is out in Cardiff

Went to Cardiff today and saw D90 box! It is finally out.

Update 28/9: The cheapest D90 body I can find is £619 from UKDigital, which I think is reasonable.

Orbit AF Webcam as Remote Home Monitoring Webcam

I've been looking for a decent webcam for my HTPC for almost 6 months but I never committed in getting one. At a point I'm thinking of getting Creative Live Cam, Microsoft webcam, then Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 and finally decided to go for Logitech Quickcam Sphere/Orbit AF. Thanks to Malcolm (Cherlyn's friend), he helped me bought it at Amazon.com for USD91.99 (£53) as compare to £74.9 here in UK. Singapore only has latest pricelist for older model; Sphere MF at about SGD180 (£72).

Not only Sphere AF support Skype High definition streaming, it also comes with motorized Tilt/Pan, auto zoom, auto focus, motion detection and built in microphone. Perhaps the greatest reason for me to buy it is the ability to remote tilt/pan using a 3rd party software such as remotecontroleye, roborealm, eyespyfx and orbsecure.

Moreover, Quickcam team release public API to control the camera if anyone like to take advantage of the webcam for other purposes.

There is another £40 linksys wireless webcam that doesn't required connection to the pc and it does has a good review here.

Got my Nikons gears

I got my AF105mm f2.8 D lens and speedlight sb400 from my sis on Sunday. There are both 2nd hand gears but very well maintain, I got both in Malaysia.

As I was not present, my sister deal on my behalf. when I tried to take some sample shots with it, I got this weird fEE error displayed on my camera. Everything was setting properly, but I just can't take a shot. Apparently I need to get the aperture to the smallest at f32, and lock it.

Upgraded my Asus Nova P20 RAM

Updated on 25/1/2012 - Finally after 3.5 years, I'd upgraded the CPU to C2D E6420 and it is running fine, paid £28 from ebay.

Asus Nova P20 has no upgrade option as the reseller in Singapore told me. In UK, there is no P20 model but PX24, P244 Black and P22. The initial look inside the box was very complicated but not impossible. It took me 5 hours to reach the RAM, but probably 1 hour if I would to redo again. Most of the UK models comes with 2GB ram, the maximum for the board, but if you do like to upgrade the processor or HDD, it is possible.

My unit comes with 120GB SATA hdd and a low end Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 processor. I was thinking of putting a new 320GB SATA2 HDD and any of the higher processor such as E6550 as I already gone thru the hassle of opening the box. In the end, I only replaced the RAM with a new 2GB Kingston DDR2 PC5300 667Mhz ram into it. Processor and HDD will be my next upgrade, perhaps early next year when the price comes down 20%.

It is now performed way better than before, for my WMP, Teamviewer and some graphic tools. This made it a better HTPC.

First look inside the box

HDD and holder bracket, without dvd drive

motherboard without the hdd & dvd drive bracket

Intel E2160 Desktop processor

the other side of the motherboard, and most importantly, the 1GB RAM

Asus Nova P20 Components & Tools I used

Huge Market Rally of the year 2008

Today marked the best market rally ever for FTSE, a massive 8.84%. This comes after investor confidence on Gov't rescue plan and ban on short selling.

20% off at Waterstone Bookstore

Waterstone 20% off on spending above £20, which will be expiring on 21th Sep 08 midnight, using code AA6000 upon checkout.

UK Lloyds TSB takeover HBOS

The UK's biggest mortgage lender Halifax has taken over by Lloyds TSB, and it means upto 40k job losses are expected. However this prevent Halifax from collapse. It is quite obvious why Halifax is not doing well and as the UK biggest mortgage lender, we know Halifax doesn't tighten on lender criteria and required a low deposit of 5%. Also, Halifax has a strong portfolio in buy-to-let market, which is quite volatile.

HD Contents streaming from Tudou

Tudou (黑豆) now streams Chinese HD contents. I can't believe the quality is so good and without any lag for their beta site, and I'm putting high hope on it upon go live. For long run, this will definately save my hdd. The only downside I noticed was slight lag when display under full screen.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, G10 and SX 10 IS

This morning I got shocked by Canon new announcement, the 5D Mark II apparently beat my expectation. It comes with 21MP CMOS sensor, an expanded ISO range of 50-25,600 and a wealth of improvements and new features including full 1080p HD movie recording, live view, 3.0" 920k dot LCD, DIGIC IV processor, increased battery capacity and sensor dust reduction, for US: $ 2,699.

While the consumer range share the joy with G10's spec and design. It comes with wide angle (28mm) and a comfortable grip. SX10 IS offers 20x zoom lenses, DIGIC IV processors, improved image stabilization system and wealth of new features. The SX1 IS is particularly interesting as it is the first PowerShot to feature a Canon CMOS sensor, which allows the camera to offer 4.0 fps (full resolution) continuous shooting and true 1080p HDTV movie capture at 30fps.

I like G10 in particular as it comes with dedicated control for ISO and exposure.

Arctic Buttlerfly SL700 free with magazine subscription

If you have several camera lenses and change them constantly on the dlsr body, you will not escape from having some ducts in your sensor or mirror. If you can't blow them away, you might need to send them back to professional cleaning service. I know VisibleDust 1 year back as it was mentioned in some forum, but have not bought their solution as it is expensive. Arctic Butterfly SL700 cost about £50 retail price, but it is free when subscribe to Pratical Photography for 1 year for £45. What a steal!

Use evoucher "GMags£5off" to further reduce the price (Orders must be over £10, not available with direct debit orders). So effectively you save £2 for 1 off subscription at £43.

Share Market Meltdown

With Lehman Brothers leading today news of bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch sold to Bank of American and AIG in possible restructuring, the market has react with 1 of the biggest drop of the year.