OBDII, Check Engine lights and fun with car diagnostics

Ever felt that you were once a pretty good home car mechanic until all this computery stuff came out? Ever got a check engine light come on and felt you had no choice but to take your car down the local dealership and prepare to be fleeced? Ever wanted one of those gadgets you see the mechanics using which tell you instantly what the fault on your car is? ...or maybe you just fancy a cool gizmo that draws graphs of your 0-60 times, horsepower, fuel consumption, speed, rpm, etc.? Personally they all sound useful to me...

(Updated: 10:53, Sun 13th Jul 2008)
Posted by Daniel: 22:32, Sat 29th Dec 2007

Removing Windows Mobile 6 Branding

Just recently I obtained on contract a Samsung SGH-I640V (sometimes referred to as a version of the Blackjack Slider). Its a great little Windows Mobile 6 based smartphone which had unfortunately like many phones fallen victim to Vodafones branding butchery. One of the things I personally found particularly painful was the horrific background images and red colouring which appeared all over the place. In my quest to remove this obnoxiousness I discovered a few little tips and tricks which may be useful to anyone else in a similar dilemma.

Posted by Daniel: 21:56, Thu 13th Dec 2007

Syncronising the Parrot CK3100 and Windows Mobile 6

I've owned a Parrot CK3100 for many years now and I can honestly say its a great Bluetooth car kit, one of the best in fact. No matter what weird and wonderful phones I have thrown at it in the past (and trust me I've had some wierd phones over the years) with a bit of persuasion its always worked.

This time around I had to do a bit more persuasion than normal so I thought I'd let you guys know how to get it working and hopefully save someone a lot of effort.

Posted by Daniel: 16:07, Fri 7th Dec 2007

Matching Multiple Monitors - The GretagMacBeth way

When running a multi-headed setup on a budget its not always possible to have identical monitors; this introduces the really irritating problem that across your screens the colours dont match. If like me you spent hours and hours playing with colour controls and pieces of software which supposedly help you set your gamma, etc and still never quite managed to get it right - then you probably need to invest in a colour profiling tool.

Posted by Daniel: 12:34, Wed 5th Dec 2007