Qwesto's Corner

Closed...

2008-07-20T07:52:00.002+01:00

I can now be found at MrQwest.co.uk.

Come take a look!

All change...

2007-08-16T11:10:00.000+01:00

So, it's been nearly a month since my last post. There's been a fair bit going on in recent months, what with my holiday to Majorca with H, getting engaged to H, funeral for Kennedy etc, so it's all been a bit hectic.

It was also my birthday last weekend, and I was lucky enough to get several 360 games from H (DiRT & Forza 2 - yeah baby!), and I got a new laptop from my family!

In addition to that, I've also purchased some Hosting, so it'll be all change from here. I'm currently re-modelling this page and it will be migrated over to my new host, along with several other sites which have been hosted elsewhere.

Time to merge everything, and store it in one place.

I'm not sure if many people do read this page, but if you are reading it, I will be back soon, hopefully with some quality content.

Thank you very much, good night.

What happened to Flock!?

2007-07-12T14:18:00.001+01:00

I'm sure I've touched on Flock on my blog before. It's a modern browser built upon Firefox, but includes a ton of 'social' features. You can write blog posts from the GUI, you can view someone's flickr feed, or drag pages / pictures onto 'your shelf' which would save them for later..

I last checked out Flock at version 0.7. Its yet to reach v1 but it looked promising, however, I rely on a few Firefox add-ons to allow me to do my web-design work, and most of these add-ons would not work with flock, so I stuck with firefox until Flock progressed.

So I was naturally interested when I read on the flock blog that version 0.9 had been released. Not seeing 0.8, i was expecting a few major features to be included. I wasn't wrong.

The one thing I immediately noticed was the interface. It honestly looks like something AOL would produce. It looks far to cluttered and messy. It looks like they've tried to fit a button for every feature within the interface.

I liked flock's previous interface. It was clean, it was uncluttered. It just worked. This time though, I was immediately turned off.

However, most of the features were still there. I noticed the flickr feed (or media stream) as it's now known. That also covers YouTube too!

Flock also allows you to create blog posts within the browser.. Neat trick that! But i like Windows Live Writer, even though it takes an age to load!! Grr

Flock also includes an uploader, which uploads images somewhere. Not too sure where though as it says i need a photo account, which i have no need for. Meh!

Im glad the Shelf is there. Although it's now called 'Web Clipboard' (What's with renaming everything flock!?)

Rss Feeds seem to work nicely, but im happy with bloglines. Work's a treat that!

The other big thing with Flock 0.9 is 'My World'. A page which displays a yahoo search bar, some new bits of news from the RSS feeds, and a list of the most recent favourites added... It also shows thumbnails from your favorite media that you've starred. Handy i guess.

All in all, im quite disappointed with the way Flock has turned out. I'm not sure what's gone on with the UI but it seems very very messy and off-putting! I'll still keep an eye on Flock, to see how it progresses but I'll stick with Firefox.

Check out www.flock.com for more info!

Don't tease me like that!

2007-07-12T13:33:00.001+01:00

I logged into my Gmail this morning to find an email titled 'Your Xbox Console'... This is what it said...

Your Xbox Video Game system has been shipped! You can expect to receive it in 2-5 days. Thank you for your patience and get ready to get back into the action!

Oh man, I gotta wait some more? D'oh!

If that's not enough, the E3 coverage is coming thick and fast, and I've learnt that 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (teh original!!?!) is out now on the marketplace (complete with HD & achievements ftw!! I remember standing in my local games shop looking at the box wishing I had a Sega Mega-Drive (Genesis to the stateside readers!). 400MS points ain't too bad either!

I've just gotta wait '2-5' days for the box to turn up, and I hope it still has the faceplate I forgot to remove =\ eeep!

Tidy up your bookmarks toolbar with these tools

2007-07-10T10:26:00.001+01:00

I don't know about you, but when I find a site I want to visit again in Firefox, instead of adding it to my bookmarks (or tagging it on del.icio.us), I simply drag it onto my 'bookmarks toolbar'. I like my links to be on hand. I want to hit a button and go. i don't want to hit a button, wait for the bookmarks toolbar to appear, and then have to hunt through my bookmarks looking for the site I want to visit. It'd be quicker to Google it!

This is all well and good but what happens when your bookmarks toolbar fills up? Well you get those stupid little arrows at the end, which defies the point as you may as well use the bookmarks in the first place!

I Recently ran out of room at work, and then stumbled on a little trick which I'm going to share. Several of my links on my toolbar had long names, for example, the 'French Sports Club - Forum'. I could abbreviate that down to 'FSC' by right-clicking > Properties and renaming the link. OR, because it uses a favicon which is recognisable to me, I could remove the text altogether and just leave the favicon on my toolbar!

Fantastic!

But, I soon realised that not all the links had favicons which transferred to the toolbar. For example. Facebook has a favicon. visit facebook.com and notice the white 'f' on a blue background next to the address in the address bar. That's great, but once you drag it onto your toolbar, the 'f' disappears! All that's left is a standard white rectangle which resembles a page. So what do we do with these links?

We download & Install 'Favicon Picker 2' Which allows you to specify favicons for each link from icons or images on your hard drive!

But how do you get the favicons on your hard drive. Well visit this page, enter the URL in the box, and it will soon display the favicon for the site. Right click & save the image.

Once you've done that, find the link you want to add the favicon to, right-click > properties. You'll now see a new area for the favicon. Browse to the .ico file you saved earlier and click ok! Now you've added the favicon, get rid of the text and free up a bundle of room on your toolbar!

Huzzah!

I hope that helps you! If it does, let us know :)

What a fortnight of highs & lows

2007-07-03T11:51:00.001+01:00

The last 2 or 3 weeks have been so full of highs and lows, it's unbelievable. To start,

14th June (up)

My friend Jimmy & his wife (Alex) had their blessing on the 14th June.

15th June (down)

Helena & I went round to Jimmy & Alex's place to see him. That was incredibly emotional. I hadn't seen Jimmy in ages and nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Cancer really is a horrendous disease. It still couldn't beat his fantastic sense of humour though!

16th June (up)

Helena & I jetted off on our first holiday abroad. We boarded our plane at Gatwick, and flew to Palma airport, Majorca. We hired a car, and drove right across the Island to C'an Picafort, where we stayed for a week. It was nice, very hot! Nice beach, and nice people, especially at the No.1 Bar! on Avda Josep Trias!!

17th June (down)

Jimmy sadly passed away - RIP pal, you'll never be forgotten x

22nd June (up)

At around 8pm in the evening, whilst laying on a sun-lounger on the beach in Majorca, resting in the cool breeze, I got onto one knee, and asked my beautiful girlfriend if she'd give me the honour of being my wife... She said YES! Helena has made me such a happy man over the last 4 and a half years, and things are only going to get better! Thank you angel! Here's to the rest of our lives :)

23rd June (down)

Had to fly home from Majorca. Had 7 beautiful days of sunshine. Got back to Gatwick. It was cold, it was raining and it was dark :(

24th June (up & down)

(up) Went ring shopping with Helena, and found a nice platinum ring with a diamond on top! Will add pictures soon!

(down) Got home, fancied a game of Worms on the 360 and got the Red Ring of Death! (RROD) So unfortunately, the 360 has gone BACK to Microsoft for a second time. Not happy!

25th June (down)

back to work. need I say more?

27th June (down)

Today was Jimmy's funeral. A very sad day :(

30th June (up)

Today was my cousins wedding. Congratulations to Stephen & Amie who had a wonderful wedding. Shame about the weather. It's meant to be the summer, and it spent the whole day raining! Luckily there was a marquee to keep everyone dry :)

So that's a recap of the last 2 weeks! I feel mentally exhausted, and to top it off, I've had a cold for the last couple of days and that's really not made things better!

Pissed off with Microsoft

2007-07-03T11:44:00.001+01:00

So that's another 360 that's been sent back to Microsoft. I'll now be on my third Xbox in 10 months. That's quite poor really.

I originally got my Xbox 360 for my birthday last year, August 2006. It worked perfectly out of the box, and has done up until February time where it started freezing randomly but rarely.

Then in May, enough was enough. I sent the box back to Microsoft as it was just not working properly. 90% of the time, it'd crash within 15 minutes of playing. That was real annoying. So on the 3rd May, I sent my Xbox back to MS for repair under warranty.

On the 15th May, almost 2 weeks later, it returned, and I was ecstatic! I couldn't wait to get home and play... worms! Yeah, I'm hooked.

The little note that was in the box with my Xbox said that the motherboard had been found to be faulty and had been replaced! How nice :)

I had that Xbox for 5 weeks before it went screwy again. On the 24th June, the day after returning from holiday, I powered up Worms (last level!) and within 5 minutes, the Xbox froze. D' oh!

I Reset the Xbox, walked back to my sofa, sat down and stared in disbelief as my screen was black, and my Xbox was flashing it's 'Red Ring of Death' at me! Noooo!

So another phone-call to MS revealed another UPS label & another hunt for a box to send away. I was also informed that I'd be waiting 20(ish) days. I sent it Last Monday, which was the 25th May. It was picked up by UPS. And as far as i'm aware, that should be a quick delivery to 'Havant' Where the broken boxes go.

Alas, on Friday, 5 day's after sending the box, i receive an e-mail saying that they had received it. Maybe it's not in Havant after all.

So now I'm stuck, with no Xbox360. I plugged in my PS2 to try and get some gaming in over the weekend. I went through several games, and all where rubbish! The only one which held my concentration for more than 20 minutes was GTA:San Andreas, and even that got boring (which worries me about GTA IV!). I've got several games on my original xbox which i could play, but it's hassle setting it up! And my desktop PC is nowhere near any good for PC Gaming.

So I figure i need some next-gen gaming. What are my choices? The 360 (obv). The PS3 & the Wii. I've played the Wii, and I can pretty much agree with Matt Brett that the Wii is quite poor. I've got no interest in the PS3 as the games seem rather poor (maybe they'll get better?). Which leaves me with the 360.

Hmm. Many people are reporting an error rate of 30%. So far for me, it's a big fat 100% error rate. Yet, my brothers 360 is a launch box, and that's had no trouble!

How can i stick with a fantastic system (360) but crap hardware? I've kind of lost all faith in the Microsoft hardware. I'm pretty certain that my 360 will be going back to MS a few more times, and I'm certainly not willing to pay £80 to get it fixed each and every time!!

Why aren't Microsoft addressing the problems though? So many people have reported the problems regarding heat. From what I've read (i forget where), the heat ends up warping the motherboard which in-turn, breaks the connections and this creates a fault. There's also stories of MS installing newer more efficient heat-sinks into newly repaired 360's to curb the problem!

Let's hope that this new heat-sink idea works and my 360 doesn't have to return to "Havant" (read: Prague).

Rant over. meh

Need For Speed: Carbon

2007-06-06T11:08:00.001+01:00

So that was easy. In my last post, I mentioned about the shocking price differences between UK supermarkets on this game (between £17 & £40!).

Anywho, the game turned up, and I had great pleasure in playing it for all of 3 days before completing the actual story-line. I was a bit unimpressed with the fact that I could complete the main storyline within 3 days, and only being caught by the cops once and having to purchase 3 cars for the whole game.

But yeah, it was a good game. Pretty similar to Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but not nearly as much fun! The drifting part of the game was really fun! But the other parts of the game, like speed trap & circuit were near identical to NFS:MW which made me feel like instead of releasing a whole new game, EA could of just released a new map-pack!

The graphics were good though, and the choice of motors wasn't bad. Handling was alright, and obviously different with each car. The only gripe i had with the handling was when you put the brakes on, the car seemed to jolt, and the frame rate seemed to shake. I'm not sure if this was intentional, or just my xbox screwing up but this really put me off. It wasn't smooth! Speaking of handling though, I thought it'd be easier to drift during normal races. And as hard as i tried, i really couldn't get it down. I managed to get the Drift King acheivement though so that's all good :)

The other part of the game is the challenges, which im currenlty working through now. Well, i say working through, i've done them all except one or two, and they were pretty easy too!

There is one gripe I have with this game though, and that's your crew. As you progress through the game, you get to recruit other racers into your crew to help you progress, but they really are more of a hinderance than anything! And what's even more annoying is that they tend to get in your way, or cross the finish line for you! Now i can't remember where i read it (probably metacritic) but to me, the computer shouldn't win the game for you. A game doesn't seem fun when the computer is winning for you! You might as well watch a demo!

It also has a photo mode built in, but this is definatly not a patch on PGR3 which has a fantastic photo mode and EA should of looked to PGR3 for proper implementation of photo mode!

It's not a bad game, but it's not a fantastic game either. I much enjoyed NFS:MW faar more than this! I'd still be playing that if my disc wasn't cracked :(

Overall though, this gets a 7/10 from me! It's good. It has it's great bits, but it also has some poor bits. The game is generally quite easy but you do have the odd difficult race which adds a bit of a challenge to the game!

Shocking price difference!

2007-05-24T12:49:00.001+01:00

The other day, i had an evening to myself, H had gone to her dad's for his birthday. I couldn't get the time off work so i was home alone.

I decided to watch The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift, as i hadn't seen it before, and it was something to watch. It wasn't that great, but watching it reminded me sooo much of 'Need for Speed: Carbon'.

So the next day, i went hunting for NFS:Carbon. I didn't want to pay more than £20. I could get it second hand for that. Most places offered it for £35-£45 though. Ebay had a few for £25 but still a tad expensive.

Then i remembered an email i had got from Asda (part of the wal*mart family) saying that they had xbox360 games from £13! So i checked it out, and they had NFS:Carbon for £17! Wicked!

However, it so happened that that night, we were visiting Tesco (a rival) so i thought i'd check their website for the price. £25. hmmm. I thought that whilst i was in there, i might as well get it for £25. Save P+P, get it sooner etc. However, when i got in-store, it was marked up as £40!.. Woah!

So between the 2 stores, they was a price difference of £23! That's no good. So i went home and ordered it! It turned up the other day, but not had a chance to play it yet!

Soooon. :)

All stickered up!

2007-05-24T12:42:00.001+01:00

I made a post 2 weeks ago (here) saying that i'd been given a www.sunrunrally.com window sticker to put in my car window, but the sticker was actually too long.

I wasn't too sure whether to reduce the kerning manually, but placing the letters closer to each other, and risk putting them on bent, or to just drop the www. from the sticker.

I decided to drop the www. bit, and i put the sticker on the window. It looks pretty pretty good!

Thoughts?

Jellybass volume one

2007-05-18T13:08:00.001+01:00

I thought I'd let you know about Jellybass volume one. A fantastic mix of electronic beats & basslines. Think Mr Scruff.

Visit jellybass.co.uk to grab the free 30 minute MP3 download!

I Must say, i really really enjoyed listening to this mix yesterday, and will definatly listen to it again and again!

One year on...

2007-05-16T13:52:00.001+01:00

This time last year, i was going through a strong time testing my willpower, and it was probably one of the most daunting things i've ever done.

You see, I'll be 26 this year. I started smoking when i was 16, and had been smoking roughly 20 a day for 9 years. I didn't particularly like smoking, but it was a nice social tool. It helped when I was at college, it helped when I was at work, and it helped when I was with friends, but it stunk, and generally, i'd wake up with a mouth that felt so dry, it'd resemble the bottom of a bird cage!

I am also rather built. Not through muscle you understand, but fat. I weight about 16st, and am generally overweight. Not quite obese, but getting there, however, noone ever thinks i weigh as much as i do! Anywho, another reason i wanted to give up smoking was for my health. I was already putting strain on my heart and stuff through being over-weight, but smoking was just adding to the problems!

And the final problem was the cost. When i gave up smoking, i was paying £4.35 for a pack of 20 fags, and they were the cheaper 'sovereign' variety. But smoking 20 a day at £4.35 would equal about £30 a week, or £120 a month, and obviously, over a year, that'd be £1,587.75! That shocked me!

If i gave up smoking, within a year, the money i would of saved on smoking would of paid off my credit card!

So i mentioned to Helena (my girflriend) that I was thinking of giving up smoking. She said 'Good for you, but you'll never do it'. And being the competitive man I am, I set out to prove her wrong. I said "Right. May 16th is the day i'll give up".

And i did. I remember that May 16th 2006 was a Monday, so the Sunday before was the last day i would be smoking. I remember driving back from Eastbourne with 2 fags left in my box. I had one whilst driving, and then had my final cigerette on my balcony when i got home.

After a week, i felt so proud of myself, and so was Helena. She then said "you'll never keep it up! I bet your smoking within a month".

Again, being the competitive man I am, i thought 'I'll show her!'

A month went by, and again, i gloated at the fact that i'd proven Helena wrong again. So she turned to me and said "I bet you wont keep it up for a year!".

And here we are. One year on, and i've not had a cigarette since I gave up! And thanks to my 'Quitomzilla' extension on Firefox, i can reveal several stats about my giving up, which are:

If i had been smoking, i would of smoked roughly 7,300 cigarettes in the past year.
I've saved £1,590, however this isn't accurate, as the price of cigarettes have since gone up several times, so i've saved more!
I've been smoke free for 1 Year, 13 hours & 50 minutes.

I'm so proud of myself for doing it. I used nicorette gum to help me through the withdrawel symptoms, but after a week or so, i no longer needed the gum!

Looking back on it, when Helena was telling me she didn't think i could give up, i felt a bit bad because i thought she thought i couldn't do it because i wasn't strong enough. However, i know realise that Helena knew about my competitive streak, and the fact that i like proving people wrong, so she was just saying those things to encourage me to give up!

So thank you Helena & everyone for the support!

If you smoke, i'd urge you to give up! It's great! Oh, and it's true what they say, the ex-smokers are the worst for moaning about smokers lol!

Finally finished Gears o' War

2007-05-16T11:12:00.001+01:00

As i mentioned yesterday, I got my 360 back. And a lot sooner than expected after reading stories on xbox.com about people waiting months!

Upon opening the box, my console was all neatly wrapped up along with a letter saying that the motherboard was faulty and had been replaced. There was also another sheet of paper telling me i'd have to re-sync my controllers, and also a customer service survey which i'll be filling out tonight! Also, to my surprise, was a one month voucher for Xbox Live 'Gold'. Wooo! So I'll register that soon and maybe have a bit of multi-player Gears!

Speaking of which, for the last 3 months, i've not played Gears purely because i was stuck at the end. I Just couldn't defeat General Raam. I tried and tried... and then gave up!

So after reading on the net about how you kill him, I tried some more... and still failed.

So I waited for Helena's brother, Colcoo to visit. Last time he visited, he brought his Wii, so we didn't have a chance to co-op on Gears, but he's been down for the last couple o' days, so last night, we fired up the 360 and to my surprise, we defeated him on our second attempt!

Now obviously i couldn't do this on my own! I had trouble staying alive for more than a minute, however, in co-op mode, player 2 can revive your health when your dying which definatly helped last night! And obviously a few well placed sniper shots from Colcoo and a machine gun to the head by myself, and we'd finished the game... 5 months after i got it.

The problem is though, we finished it on... umm... casual. Easiest of the easy. D'oh!

So for a laugh, we started another co-op game on 'insane' and that wasn't as hard as i had expected. We managed the first act before switching games!

But yeah, man, the 360 rocks, and co-op play is. just. awesome!

360 is home... sort of!

2007-05-15T12:51:00.001+01:00

At last, my 360 has just arrived back, via UPS, from Microsoft after i had to send it back for a repair! However, it's not quite home yet. It's sitting here next to me at the office. So it's not quite home, nestled under the TV, but it will be tonight! I Promise!

Shame it didn't turn up yesterday though, as i was home alone last night and would of had some serious fun, but it's here now, and that's the main thing!

I would get in a couple of hours gaming tonight, catch up and all, but we're going out for H's dads birthday! Shall be fun :) However, colcoo should be with us tonight after the meal, so fingers crossed we can squeeze in a bit of co-op Gears of War!

Time to get a new game i suspect, a welcome home present if you will!

Another game i'll miss out on...

2007-05-15T10:54:00.001+01:00

I've just read on the Gamerscore blog that a new xbox arcade game called Aegis Wing, which will be given away for free to xbox LIVE subscribers for this week.

This week, Xbox LIVE Arcade is making Aegis Wing available as a free download for Xbox LIVE subscribers for a limited time.

Hmm.. First off, is this just for gold members or anyone who connects to live, regardless of whether it's a gold or silver membership?

And secondly, it doesn't matter to me because i still don't have my Xbox!

Arrrghh!

edit: Reading X3F, they've mentioned that the game will be unavailable outside North America. D'oh!

...the game is also set to be absolutely free ... in North America. Unfortunately, the game will be unavailable outside of North America at all.

Six 360 games I'll be on the look out for...

2007-05-11T12:13:00.001+01:00

ok... maybe not so awesome for you but I think it's good news.. well, ~~five~~ six bits of good news really. Let's start with number 1.

Simpsons for the 360

Now I've played a couple of Simpsons games in the past. The best one I've played is probably Hit'n'Run for the PS2. The rest were mediocre.

However, the 360 is here (or not in my case), and EA have come up with a new Simpsons game which isn't tied into the movie.

From watching some of the game clips on youtube (couldn't get the clips to work on xbox360fanboy), it looks true to the cartoon, and also looks highly entertaining. Especially for a Simpsons fan like myself!

I shall be watching this one closely!

Forza 2 release date

So Forza Motorsport 2 will be released in the US on the 29th May. I'm assuming the UK launch date should be around the same time! I Hope so! Yah, this bit of news isn't that awesome, but still, I can't wait!

Bomberman coming to XBox Live Marketplace

Now this brings back memories! Played this loads when I was younger, played it a bit on the saturn, and also played it over wi-fi on a DS and it's always a riot! So I'm happy to see that it's coming to the Marketplace.

No reports on when it arrives though!

Project Gotham Racing 4 vid

Gamerscore blog has got a post & video available for download (you can stream it but it's 50+mb in size) displaying the weather in Seattle on Project Gotham Racing 4. Man it looks schweeeeet! Those effects look spot on and the graphics look absolutely gorgeous! I can't wait to see more of this one!

Happy Tree Friends to appear on XBox Live Marketplace

Ahhh, those cute little furry animals which like to slaughter one another. It's coming to the Marketplace, and hilarity will ensue!

X3F are reporting that Sega are publishing a game based on the Happy Tree Friends called 'Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm'.

Specific details aren't given, though the press release mentions a "physics-based reactive environment" and "accidental mayhem."

it's being developed by Stainless Games, and according to X3F, it'll be out in the later part of the year!

edit: make that six!

Saints Row 2 confirmed for 360

THQ, the developers who brought us Saints Row, are currently developing the next in the series. However, it wont be out until 2008.

According to the Aeropause post:

Not much was said, but one thing of mention was that the game would deliver, "an all-new cross-platform gaming experience."

Oooh. Sounds interesting!

zomg! sunrunrally.com too big for windows!

2007-05-10T15:05:00.001+01:00

So you know I've got dealings with sunrunrally.com, right? Well I met up with my mate KeithTrue who's running it last night to work on some designs for the new advert!

During his visit, he handed me a SunRunRally window sticker (which I'd been asking for for ages)! Hurrah I thought, until I opened it up...

It's massive! I wanted a small discreet item that would fit in my rear quarter window to match the PGAC window sticker i already have, but noooo, the window sticker is actually too big for my rear quarter windows!

So what am I to do? My first thought was, instead of applying the whole lot as one sticker, i'd apply each letter individually, de-creasing the kerning and allowing it all to fit, but unfortunately, it's pretty tight as it is!

So my only other option is to chop off the www. and just leave it as sunrunrally.com

Sticking it in my rear window, or along my windscreen is too much for me, so that won't be happening!

Thoughts?

Forza 2 Demo Released?... D'oh

2007-05-10T11:48:00.001+01:00

Microsoft are just taunting me now. They've released the Forza 2 demo onto the marketplace, and my 360 is nowhere to be seen!

Daaamn!

Still, the only saving grace is that it's only available for Gold members at the moment, and I'm still on silver membership!

Wooo, i like to wait an age for my marketplace goodness... not.

360 spring update is available...

2007-05-09T13:08:00.001+01:00

... and I dont have my Xbox! How inconvenient!

It was posted to Microsoft last Friday. I've tracked the parcel via UPS, and it's arrived at it's destination. So fingers crossed, some happy chappy is fettling with the internals, and pretty soon, my 360 will be on the back of another UPS truck happily heading back to me!

I was in the mood for a bit of gaming last night. Maybe a bit of Gears, I thought. Or some target practice on Mercenaries or even a bit of cat & mouse on Need For Speed: Most Wanted... but nooooo, I dont have my xbox any more.

So I sat down and looked at my PS2, remembering all the good times I had playing on it! I Grabbed my CD wallet which holds all my games, and upon flicking through the wallet, I soon realised why I wanted an Xbox360 as opposed to a PS3.

Dont get me wrong, I've got some good games for my PS2, but they're all very samey, and to be honest, I didn't feel like playing any of them. The only game that's held my attention on the PS2 recently is Simpsons: Hit & Run but even that is getting rather boring rather quickly!

Please Mister* Microsoft technician sir. Please fix & return my 360 as fast as humanly possible! Thank you

* I realise that some Microsoft technicians will be female, so for the sake of political correctness, read that as Mister / Ms

28 weeks later

2007-05-09T12:45:00.001+01:00

Maan, I've seen adverts for this on buses around here, but I've only just popped onto the website, and damn it looks good!

I've just recently finished reading 'Cell' by Stephen King, and that is along similar lines to this and it's all still fresh in my mind so I cant wait to see this one!

Problem being, my girlfriend hates zombie flicks, as they give her nightmares (awww bless!) So I'll be waiting for it to arrive on DVD before viewing! haa!

That'll give me a chance to watch the first '28 Days Later' and get that in my head!

Wooo!

Putting the 360 to rest

2007-05-03T12:52:00.001+01:00

Some of you may remember that i posted last week about my Xbox playing silly buggers. Well, I gave it another go on Sunday. H was on the PC, and I was at a loose end so I thought i'd give Saint's Row another bash!.

That failed miserably. Meh!

So last night, i phoned Xbox Customer Support. And to be quite honest, they were really nice. I spoke to a lady called Naomi and she almost gave me a heartattack when she told me my 360 wasn't registered. I thought that'd mean that it was not under warranty but after a quick run through with a couple of questions, i was told that my 360 was still indeed, under warranty and would be repaired, free of charge! Woooo

So we quickly ran through a couple of things from the knowledge base, Naomi kindly informed me that all the facts pointed to a hardware fault and my 360 would need to be sent away for repair!

She said she'd email me the shipping labels (which i've now got), and i could send my Xbox in for repair as soon as i got the labels. So my 360 is all packaged up in some bubble wrap (here and here). However, there's a slight problem. The address on the shipping label isn't what i told them on the phone.

So i've had to phone them up again this morning and told them the address was wrong. Unfortunatly, they'll have to send me a new shipping label with the correct address, but this wont get to me until tomorow, so that means another day's delay when it comes to getting my box back!

Never mind though, as long as i do get it back, that's the main thing! I was even contemplating purchasing another 360 (just a core system) to replace my busted console. I've never thought like that before. I've had plenty of broken consoles (3x Master Systems, 2x Mega Drives, 1x Snes, 1x CD32, 1x Playstation and 1x Playstation2), but i've never thought "right, let's go buy another one" before i've even looked into the problem.

But yeah, that's the sorry state of affairs at the moment. I've plugged my dusty PS2 into my new TV now so at least im getting some gaming in. A few hours of "Simpsons: Hit & Run" last night provided some amusement...

I'm after a Joost or Demonoid invite...

2007-05-01T16:19:00.001+01:00

Can anyone help me out? I'd like an invite to ~~either Joost or~~ Demonoid!

Ta muchly,

hisjunk [at] gmail [dot] com

edit: thanks to some kinds folks over at Lifehacker, im now on Joost!

Get well soon Kennedy!

2007-05-01T15:04:00.001+01:00

I've not mentioned this before on my blog, but last year, one of my good friends, Kennedy was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth.

He's a strong lad, but faar too young at only 23!

He's gone through his course of chemo, which lasted roughly a year! Unfortunatly though, I heard yesterday that the cancer has returned. The last 2 sessions of Chemo that Jimmy (DJ Kennedy) went through wasn't strong enough and the cancer has re-formed which is a crashing blow to his recovery plan.

I've had some fantastic times with Jimmy! He never fails to make anyone laugh! He is one of the nicest guys you could possibly meet and i wish him the best in his recovery!

Speaking of which, my girlfriend Helena will be running the 'Race for Life' charity run in Croydon on 13th May 2007. It's all in aid of Cancer Research, and Helena has stated that she'll be running for Jimmy...

I Race for Life for..Jimmys recovery xx

If you'd like to sponsor Helena in her run and donate to Cancer Research UK, please click here. You can donate via credit card, and it's a one off donation and very secure. Every little helps and remember, you'll be helping so many people!

Dont forget, if you do want to donate and your a UK Taxpayer, please GIFT your tax to Cancer Research. This means that any tax on your donation will go to Cancer Research instead of the taxman!

Thank you for reading, and let's all wish Jimmy a speedy recovery and send our thoughts out to his family & friends!!

Thumbs up from Kennedy Hosted on Zooomr

Oh crap!

2007-05-01T14:48:00.001+01:00

I think my xbox360's about to die.

For the last couple of weeks, it's been crashing on me. I'd be mid-way through a race on PGR3, and it'd freeze. I'll be punching some punks in Saints Row, and it'll freeze. I'd be 'bussin a cap' in someones ass in Mercenaries: playground of destruction, and it'd go pear shaped!

After posting on the Xbox.com forums about my problem, it turns out that this is the start of what is known as the Xbox - Red ring of death.

Basically, the green lights on the front of the box turn red to suggest there's a problem with the box.

I e-mailed Microsoft, and told them about my problem. They suggested reading an article in their knowledge base. I Read that, and followed the instructions and still no luck. I tried playing Saints Row last night. I tried 5 times, and every single time, it'd crash within 5 minutes of turning it on!

I Then posted on the Xbox forum and pretty much everyone said that the 360 is on it's way out! Jord619 mentioned that his 360 done the same thing before seeing the red ring o' death.

You will be getting the 3 red lights of death soon, this is how it started with mine.

I've yet to see the red ring o' death, but im pretty sure it's lurking there. Waiting until i least expect it, and then BAM! I'll be 360-less, and cast back into the previous generation of consoles! I'll have to dust off my Xbox1 or PS2 and bring them out of retirement!

This creates a problem though! On Saturday evening (well, midnight!), H & I decided to have a move around of the lounge. We moved the decks, the sofa's and the cabinets to create a more open space in the Lounge. As nice as that is, it just wont work when it comes to the PS2 or Xbox1. Purely because the controllors are wired. It wont reach my sofa! Arrghh! Damned Microsoft & their inferior yet fantastic product!

It's come at such a bad time for me, as on Sunday, H's dad kindly donated his old 28" widescreen TV to us to replace our old standard tv. I was getting excited because i could plug the 360 in via component cables, I could also plug in my headphones so that i could get proper sound and H could read a book or something in silence (as opposed to shooting, screams, and engine noises!)..

But it's all gone pear! So tomorrow evening (when i've got an hour or so), i'm going to phone up the UK Xbox support team and see what they can suggest!

I hope they can replace my box, or fix it for free.. It's only 8 months old goddamnit!

a list apart webdesign survey

2007-04-24T12:27:00.001+01:00

it'd be great if you could do this too! I'd love to see how the results turn out!

yaaaah!.. Back to my playground!

2007-04-20T12:29:00.001+01:00

I Bought Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction for the original Xbox about a year ago now, and I played it alot, and i mean ALOT! It soon became one of my favorite games. I got quite far in the game, but i cant remember much about because i haven't played the game in 8 months.

Why? Because i bought an Xbox360, and Mercenaries wasn't backwards-compatible.

But I've just read on MajorNelson that MS have released a new update to the backward-comparability list which includes... Mercenaries!..

Just in time for the weekend. How convenient! Time to re-acquaint myself with the scenery! heh

Project Gotham Racing 3 (360)

2007-04-18T12:12:00.001+01:00

I recently borrowed this off a collegue at work as I was quite intrigued by it. I wanted to buy a good racing game for the 360, and PGR3 was my best bet, but with Forza 2 just around the corner, did i really want to purchase this?

So i borrowed it, and it's a fantastic looking game! It really is! The graphics are gorgeous, the effects are perfect, and the car's are amazing!

Gameplay is most enjoyable. It's had me picking up my controller as much as possible over the last couple of weeks trying to win me some money so i can purchase some of the more high-end motors!

To be honest though, i found some of the game too be too easy. My first purchase was a Nissan Skyline, and that trounced most others cars in the races. After a few championships, i had enough money to buy a Ruf Turbo. This won me more money and i bought a McLaren F1, which i more or less raced all the way to the end of the game. All in all, i only really needed 3 motors to complete all 23 championships! Speaking of which, the last championship, the Nurburgring Endurance Eliminator. This put the fear of god in me. I thought it'd be an hour long, 6 lap race around the whole of the nurburging circuit! But no, it was a short lap against 3 other motors. I completed it twice (once on medium, once on hardcore), and it was proper easy!

I only bought more car's purely because of the achievements. I had to buy all the lamborghini's & Ferrari's to be part of their respective car clubs which earned me a few points! I also had to purchase a select 7 exotic car's which earned me another achievement (Which i picked up last night!).

After checking my stat's last night, im upto about 60% of the game! Which isn't bad! I've still got bits & peices to do but i've finished the main career mode.

Another thing that annoys me is that games coming out rely on online play for achievements. What if i dont want to spend £30 a year to play online?! Because i dont want to play online, it means i can't get the last few achievements, which means i'll never earn the full pointage on acheivements!

Never mind, it's still a cracking game and it's got me in the mood for Forza2 when it lands next month (i think!).

Unfortunatly, i'll have to give the came back to my work-mate, so i'll have to buy the game pretty soon anywho!.. I've spotted it in my local CEX at the weekend for £17 or so!

By the time i come to buy it in a few months though, it'll be cheaper! I've still got a pile of game's i want to finish! including Gears of War!!

PGR get's my thumbs up!..

Grrr.. i hate internet explorer!

2007-04-17T14:18:00.001+01:00

error Hosted on Zooomr

What a swizz! ~~Im trying to debug this error, and can't for the life of me, figure out why it's failing!~~ It works in Firefox, and also Opera, but not IE7 (and probably IE6 too!).

The page loads, and then this error box appears, and the page then says "page cannot be displayed"... Whhhhy!?

Any ideas, comment me please!

+ Extras

So i've just done some googling and it appears that Internet Explorer doesn't like it when there's javascript wrapped in a <table> element.. Wtf!!

First off, how the hell does half the crap on the net work!? Secondly, SunRunRally.com is completely table-free (as far as im aware?). So what's the problem!?

Never mind, i lodged the javascript from the website, and implemented a php-based count-down script. It does the same, but doesn't produce an error! The only javascript running now is the stats based code...

Spanking!

del.icio.us hotlist not so hot?

2007-04-17T13:54:00.001+01:00

I'm not sure if anyone else is having this trouble? I subscribe to the del.icio.us hot list RSS feed in my bloglines browser.. There's generally 40-50 updates a day! It's very nice and generally mirrors what's on Digg, but i like the fact that there's thumbnails there!

Tis nice!

Anywho, for the last week or 2, all i've seen is markup code!... what haaaassle! So i've just been skipping the feed and marking it as read without even looking at it.

Is anyone else having this problem with bloglines & the del.icio.us hotlist?

Ironically, it work's fine in Google Reader. Is this fate's way of getting me to lodge bloglines, and go with Google?!

Woah, Jon Hicks is proper talented...

2007-04-17T10:51:00.001+01:00

... but you knew that already!... Right?

I've just been reading my feeds and a new item popped up from hicksdesign. He's basically produced a new CSS file for use with the Firefox Stylish extension & Googles feed reader producing a much nicer looking feed reader.

I'm still using Jon's Bloglines style, which is proper nice too... but is this enough to push me over to using the big G's feed reader? I already use their mail, calendar, docs, maps, search, Stats and of course, blogger. (Oh dear, im a Google whore...)

It's definatly worth a look! [link]

Getting Nomad Explorer on my Dock!

2007-04-17T09:17:00.001+01:00

I've got a Creative Zen Touch Mp3 player. I've mentioned it plenty of times before on my blog, and it's a wicked little machine. I've had no real problems with it and it's still going strong!

The Creative Zen Touch (and probably most other Creative DAP's) come with their own software called Nomad Explorer. It enables the Mp3 player & PC to talk, i can add / remove tunes, playlists, ID tags etc. It does an alright job, but I'd love to be able to get faaar more functionality out of it! It does the basic functions, but it could do sooo much more! I mean, there's a third party app called Notmad by Redchair software and that seems far more functional. However, that costs (and i dont like that!). There's also Gnomad if i was using linux, but i'm not... So i'm stuck with Nomad Explorer.

I Also use a program called Rocketdock which provides me with a navigational dock which pops up and dissapears when i need it! I can drag my most used shortcuts onto it and then choose them as and when i need them! It's also unobtrusive, so it appears when i hover over it, and then dissapears when i dont need it! It also hovers over my active windows so it's always on hand when i need it! Saves me navigating back to my desktop to get to my shortcuts!

dock Hosted on Zooomr

Im babbling. I Apologise.

So i wanted to get my shortcut to Nomad onto my Dock! Shouldn't be hard task, except for the fact that everytime i dragged the shortcut onto the dock, it didn't provide a target so it was just an icon that did nothing. Rubbish! After checking the original shortcut, that worked fine! No target, but it still opend Nomad Explorer.. Strange!

So after a bit of goooglnig this morning, i found out that if i entered a path into the iconsettings, it worked perfectly! Hoorah! So if anyone's looking to do the same, here's the path i used. I think this path depends on what MP3 player you have...

C:\Program Files\Creative\Creative NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra\NOMAD Explorer\NOMAD Explorer.lnk

SunRunRally.com

2007-04-16T20:41:00.000+01:00

Before anyone starts thinking that I've started putting ad's on this site for monetary gain, I've not. SunRunRally.com is a venture a friend of mine is embarking on with my help!...

Check it out, and if you fancy a bit of a road trip, visit SunRunRally.com for more information. Registration is now open so get in there as there are only limited spaces available!

Opera presents Speed Dial...

2007-04-16T09:50:00.000+01:00

I'm a Firefox person. I have been for the last 3 years. It started when I was visiting several sites at once using IE6 and my taskbar had more browsers running that work apps! After some discussion with a few friends, Firefox was recommended. I gave it a go, and was amazed. Within a few weeks, my work PC, home PC, laptop & several other systems i had control of now used Firefox as it's default browser.

Then my girlfriends brother told me about Opera. A similar browser. He kept telling me how Opera was better, blah blah! I nearly beleived him, and for a month at the end of last year, Opera was my main browser! But it just didn't feel as good as Firefox. It was slightly quicker, but had less features!

Never-the-less, Opera have just released Opera 9.2 and it comes with a rather nifty feature which I'd love to see on Firefox.

When you open a new tab in Opera, instead of showing a blank page, it'll show 9 boxes which render 9 user-defined websites! Clicking on either of these thumbnails will load the site in the same tab!

I think it'd be perfect for web-developers who run several sites at once. For instance, if they crack open a new tab, and it shows the developer their own websites, which would tell the developer whether they're websites were online or not!

I'm sure it's got plenty more uses, but that's all i can think of at the moment. I will have a play around with Opera at a later date, but until then, Speed Dial is a nice addition to a nice browser.

Check out the screen cast here!

Whaa?!.. PS3 can read RSS feeds?

2007-04-13T10:37:00.001+01:00

I recently checked my feedburner stats, and it showed that someone has subscribed to this very blog on their PS3... How cool is that! I didn't even know the PS3 could read RSS feeds.

You learn something new everyday....

I've been 'Off the Grid'...

2007-04-04T14:13:00.001+01:00

Over the last week, i've realised how much I really use the web and how it's a part of my life. I posted several days ago regarding my 'rant at Virgin Media' And how they're not helpful when it comes to network problems.

Well here's a quick update of what happened with Virgin Media. Wednesday evening, i had trouble connecting to the net. It was too late to do anything, so i left it.

Thursday, I tried my net again, and it failed miserably. I Phoned Virgin, and had no luck what-so-ever.

Friday, I wrote a post about VM. Friday evening though, H & I went to her mum's for the weekend. Now obviously, I didn't get much 'net' time there. I briefly check my emails but that's it.

So Sunday, i came home from Suffolk. Tried my internet, and it still didn't work. So i got back on the phone. Long-story short. I shouted, they apologised and said that as far as they are concerned, there's no problem, even though i didn't have the internet.

So Monday morning, i go to work, looking forward to reading my RSS feeds and checking mail and having a whole web of info at my fingertips... but it wasn't to be. My work computer had failed... It wouldn't start, nor would it do anything!

We had this problem 2 weeks ago, so the computer went back to the shop. Turns out the Power supply had gone bad, and somehow damaged the motherboard too! Now, we told them to replace the parts. But in order to do that, they needed to re-install windows. "As long as you back-up the existing data" i said. I got a lot of waffle in response. Basically, i have filld 150GB of my HDD at work and apparantly it'd take half a day to back it up!. In the end, i told them to install a second 80gb HDD and install windows on that. So that's what they've done!

But it's not until this morning that i've finally got my PC back. And i've over looked something! None of my software is here... D'oh!

I had my work PC set up how i wanted it. All my programs were here, everything i needed to do my job + my other internet-based activities. My firefox was setup perfectly. All my add-ons where there, all my bookmarks, all my greasemonkey scripts... tis all gone now :(

So now im back online at home and at work! I just have to remember to keep some sort of "list" of programs / addons that i've installed because i cant remember for the life of me what i had previously! bugger!

RIP - Dusty :(

2007-04-04T12:30:00.000+01:00

My sister gave me a call yesterday to say that one of my old cats (still living at my parents house) was no longer with us :(

Dusty (she was black all over, with a flash of white under her chin which looked like dust) was quite old, Probably about 16yrs old. Apparantly, she got into a fight with a fox a few gardens down from where my parent's live.

The man whos garden it was phoned my mum who came over and found dusty. She took her to the vets immediatly, but unfortunatly, Dusty had to be put down. The vet mentioned that Dusty had a suspected broken neck caused during the fight.

Dusty was a real nice cat, but she's been ill for the last 2 years or so, with quite a few scares where she wouldn't eat at all for weeks on end. Over the last 6 months though, she's been incredibly thin! She eats though. As soon as her food is in front of her, she'll eat it all, and then start on the other cat's food... but yet she didn't gain any weight. My brother seems to think she had a disease, or a problem with her Kidneys or something.

Dusty, RIP.

+ Additional (4 apr 07)

My sister just phoned to say that jessie, her 18month old kitten has just given birth to 5 kittens! heeeee!

++ Even more additional (10 Apr 07)

I visited my parents place over the easter weekend, and caught some snaps which are now up on my Zooomr.

This is Dusty (1, 2 - RIP), Copper, Prudence, Jessie and finally... Kittens (1, 2).

Rant at Virgin Media

2007-03-30T14:26:00.001+01:00

When I lived with my parents 4yrs ago, we had NTL cable TV + broadband. It was cool. 4yrs Ago, I moved in with my girlfriend and wanted the same service, but Telewest served my new flat so I took out a good TV package, phone & broadband!

It's a nice package, and to be honest, I'd never had a problem. 3 Months ago, we started getting leaflets & post telling us that Telewest was merging with NTL to create Virgin Media, a conglomerate to take on Sky.

2 Months ago, the whole Sky vs Virgin Media thing appeared in the papers.. Neither firm could settle on a pricing scheme. To be fair, from what I've read, Sky are taking the piss a bit, but still, never-the-less, we've now lost Sky One, and a few other channels, but that's not important!

Tuesday night, I was at home, having a game of Worms on my 360 when I had the "disconnected from Xbox Live" message.. How strange. I didn't pay any attention to it though.

Yesterday, I jumped on my PC to download some photo's. I got 10% through the download and then it failed. Turns out my Internet went down. My suspicions immediately went to my 'webstar' modem provided by Telewest.

I pulled the power on it, and turned it back on and the Internet worked.. Hoorah!

10 minutes later, it broke again. A quick reset and i was back online... for another 10 minutes. At this point, i was quite angry. I was trying to download this 70mb file of high quality pictures from my girlies brother's 21st birthday! As you can imagine, every time my modem went to sleep, this download would fail!!!

So I phoned up Virgin Media. And went through the same ol' script support. "Can you switch off your computer and restart it for me please" and "Can we check the network connections please". I had done all this already but you have to go through the motions.

When I first spoke to the man on the phone, i said i think the Modem had packed up as it was disconnecting me after 10 minutes of use. He said it wouldn't be that and carried on umming and aarring about the problem.

Eventually, after 45mins on the phone, he agreed that it was either my Modem that had gone barmy, or my wireless router... But get this. Because I didn't purchase my wireless router from Telewest, they can't help me with the problem at all?

Even though, my wireless router (a netgear one) was from a Telewest promotion where they provided some customers with a free wireless router + setup disc. Unfortunately i wasn't one of these customers, but i did purchase one from eBay.

So even though I've purchased an official Telewest branded netgear router from a 3rd party (second hand), and I've set it up using Telewest setup instructions, they cant help me!..

How ridiculous is that?

So it's been left that it's either the router or the modem. So what i've done is plugged my Webstar Modem straight into the PC (so i cant access the net via my Xbox or my Laptop) and see if that changes... I'm pretty sure i'll have the same problem, but I'm away this weekend so hopefully, any problems would have sorted themselves out by Sunday night...

Here's hoping anyway!

Whoops

2007-03-29T15:25:00.001+01:00

So a few weeks (or months, I forget) back, I was reading my favorite RSS feeds when a few of them started mentioning Mr Neighborly's 'Humble Little Ruby Book'. It's a free PDF download of a book covering the basics & more about Ruby.

As a lover of anything free, I downloaded it. I've got no experience in Ruby, nor do I know the first thing about Ruby... but it was free, so it was saved and hidden in my crazy filing system.

So yesterday, I posted about sticking XAMPP on my USB Pen Drive, and then posted a second time about getting Ruby onto my pen drive to create a more flexible working environment, and also to allow me to learn Ruby.

You see, I'm always interested in developing my skills. I've got a fair few books at home regarding HTML, PHP & CSS, but I want to learn more languages. Stupid really, I'd rather master one language, rather than being a 'Jack of all trades, Master of none'.

So anyway, as I was saying. I found the PDF today, whilst at work. And i accidentally (read: on purpose) pressed print, and printed out all 140+ pages before cutting & carving a box for it out of a bigger box, and stashing it in my car!

I don't know about anyone else, but I try and aim for a paperless work-space. I'd sooner read the news online, before picking up a paper. I can read hundreds of RSS feeds a day but when it comes to learning, then i cannot do on-screen doc's. I'd much rather have a paper document in-front of me, something to refer to rather than switching from Adobe to what-ever program I'm using, and then back!

Maybe when i can afford my widescreen monitor / laptop display, i can run 2 programs side by side and not have to switch between the two, but for now...

LOL, I had intended on writing 2 lines on this post... ho hum!

Ruby on... XAMPP?

2007-03-28T15:52:00.001+01:00

Can I put Ruby onto my USB Key with XAMPP installed? Any ideas?! drop a comment if you know how to =]

CV Joint's-a-knackered

2007-03-28T11:33:00.001+01:00

So that's the third one for the pug then!... It's been knocking for a good 6 months or so, but it's starting to worry me! I do do a fair few miles. I drive 10 miles to work and 10miles back everyday, so that's 100 a week on commuting. On top of that, is going out, shopping, driving about etc, not forgetting the 300mile round-trip to Suffolk each month!

The more miles I put on the car, the sooner the CV joint will crack so I needed to get it done sooner rather than later!

There's no real point in this post by the way. It's just here so I've got a record of when it was done. Thank god for Search :). By the looks of it, i had one done in December 05 and one in April 06... Surely they should last longer than that?

+ Outcome (29 mar 07)

Well i got the car back last night. He said it wasn't actually the CV Joint that was knocking. He said it's something to do with the wishbone. But he also mentioned the rear wheel-bearing was knackered so I got that done. He also mentioned that the CV Gaiter was split (which i knew about), So he put a new CV Gaiter on the car too! Total was £155

Portable server environments

2007-03-28T11:13:00.001+01:00

USB Pen drives truly are a god-send! I carry 3 around with me. One I originally bought for my PS2, it's a 'Max Drive' 16MB drive. It's faar too small for anything so it rarely get's used. It does, however, have my CV on it, so I carry that everywhere with me.

My second USB Drive is my 'stuff drive' and is 2GB in size. Colcoo kindly donated it to me, which is very nice of him. I think it's a USB1.1 drive though as it's very slow. Regardless though, 2GB is a hefty amount of data to carry around.

The third drive is now my 'web' drive. All my current projects are stored on here, along with several portable app's via the U3 interface. So I can code anywhere using Notepad++ and upload using my portable FileZilla. As nice as it is, I've always got to upload something to my server to check if everything's ok! Which is no good if your uploading to a live site to check things are ok!

Surely, if your updating a live site, you should have a test-server or somewhere where you can test the data before sending it live?

And it's that reason alone that I've just installed XAMPP on my 1GB 'web' drive. It's got Apache, MySQL, PHP + Perl all bundled into a nice little 100mb install.

True, it takes up a 1/10th of my pen drive, but it shouldn't be a problem. I try and code as lightly as possible, and I don't have that many projects on the go! So I shouldn't fill up 900mb with a bunch of CSS & HTML files...

Preparations

I jumped on Google and searched for "localhost USB" and clicked on the first link I found (here). It told me to go to the XAMPP website, and download XAMPPlite. Now it's a pretty large file weighing in at 44mb (iirc). But that didn't bother me, we've got broadband here, and it was pretty quick to download.

Installation

Once I downloaded XAMPPlite, I had to unzip it. That created an 110mb directory, which I transferred to the root of my Pen Drive. And believe it or not, that was installation done.

Running it

Running XAMPP is easy. Navigate to the directory you copied it to on your pen drive. Look for xampp-control.exe, and double-click it! This will open up a GUI for XAMPP. It will list 4 items (Apache / MySql / FileZilla & Mercury). Hit the start button next to each item to start it and within seconds, you've got a working localhost.

In your browser, navigate to http://localhost and this should take you to the xampp start page, and if does, congrats! You've got your own portable web-server just like me!

Notes

Note: As mentioned, I've just installed this and not really had a chance to give it a go! I will post details at a later date on how to set things up! I'm intrigued and wouldn't mind setting up a portable copy of Textpattern to test stuff! If your running XAMPP or XAMPPlite, let us know about it!

Stuff coming soon...

2007-03-21T15:20:00.001Z

Apologies for nothing new happening here in a long time. I've been uber busy in every aspect and it doesn't look like it'll slow down anytime soon! But I've got plenty of ideas on posts for this here website!

Also, has anyone else noticed the lack of advertising for the PS3? I caught a glimpse of an advert on TV the other day, but that's all I've seen! How strange!

Still, the 360 RoXors!!1!!11! as some people say! :)

I promise i'll be back! Also, Zooomr is almost at Mark III, and Kris has posted a quick note to say that they've removed all limits forever?! Not sure if that's for existing users or new users too, but I'd get in their quick!

Zooomr is like Flickr, only better (imho!)

H! for Hadouken...

2007-02-28T11:29:00.001Z

At work, we have the radio on. Now this is nice as it makes us work better (sure it does!) Alternatively, for some musical delight, I plug in my Sennheisers, switch on my Creative and tune into some beats!

However, some of the time, I just listen to the radio as it's easier. Having to pause and play my MP3 player every time the phone rings is a pain!

Now in the office, we have 6 people. I'm the youngest at 25. Then there's 35, 48, 52, 55 and 61. So as you can imagine, the office's musical tastes vary considerably.

Generally though, the radio stays on "Virgin Radio". It's a good station, mainly rock & indie music. Keeps most happy. Other times, somebody will change it to Magic, but this is pure brain melt. It's ok for the mornings when you wake up, or the evenings when your winding down... but during the day, you'll die!

Yesterday though, we changed stations, and boy I'm glad! We put it onto BBC Radio 1 which plays a mix of rock, pop & dance. A nice mix that has gone something for everyone, but generally "too young" for most people in the office. I Digress. We were listening to Jo Whiley yesterday morning, and she played her record of the week, 'Hadouken - That Boy, That Girl!'...

My my my, what a tune! This has a real upbeat funky, yet dark feel to it! It's a cross between grime & indie, and although I'm not a huge fan of either, when they come together, it's spot on! The beats are tight, and punchy! The bassline is very reminiscent to Wiley and the vocals are a cross between a grime MC & a rock band! I personally think this tune is a cracker and will definitely be looking forward to listening to some future tracks!

Open source Bluetooth?

2007-02-26T14:20:00.001Z

Just over a year ago, I bought myself a USB Bluetooth dongle from eBay. It cost £6 from what I can remember, and it certainly has served me well. The only reason I bought it was because I had my Sony Ericsson K700i, and no way of getting any pictures from it! I didn't have a data cable, or the software (my boss never gave it to me). So I had a decision, pay £10 for a data cable for my phone, or buy a USB bluetooth dongle that should work with my phone and my girlfriend's phone, and my mates phones, and any other bluetooth devices I purchase in the future!

So I opted for the dongle. Bit of an easy decision really.

The Problem

Anywho, the purpose of this post is the software. The dongle come bundled with the IVT Corp, BlueSoleil software. It seems quite slow and looks rather cheap, but it works. It's a bit cumbersome, and tends to be slow at times, but that could very easily be down to the bluetooth system itself. The other problem I get with it is that sometimes, it fails, or the connection drops just long enough to ball's up my phone management software. Or all of a sudden, it decides not to work, not to find any more devices, and generally throws a tantrum!

Recently though, I've noticed that my BlueSoleil window displays 'Evaluation (5MB data only)'. Now that's not good is it? I might want to transmit an MP3 from my computer to my phone. There's several MP3's on my old K700 that I DO want on my new v600. I know i can still transfer phone-2-phone, but what if i wanted to use my PC? For some reason, bluesoleil has gone all donkey on me, and I don't want to use it anymore!

This is where you come in!

This got me thinking. Does a good open-source Bluetooth App exist? Does anyone have any recommendations? Or am I stuck with BlueSoleil? Is that the best the market can offer?

Please help me out! Ta muchly!

'network unlocked'

2007-02-24T21:20:00.000Z

I made this post on Thursday about how my boss gave me his old Sony Ericsson V600i mobile because he had upgraded! I mentioned that I needed to get the phone unlocked before I could use it!

Now in previous years (I haven't bought a new phone since 99?), whenever someone has given me a phone, they never seem to be on my network (o2) so I always have to get them unlocked. Now I'm tired of spending £10 a time getting my phone unlocked. I'll pay it if I have to, but I'd rather not.

So yesterday, I spend a good hour or so browsing the web trying to find out how I unlock this phone. All I found was the keyboard shortcut to get into the 'unlock' menu (it's joystick left (<), *, *, (<) joystick left again!) but nothing about unlocking the phone. Unless I wanted to pay money. Which I didn't.

I then came across a website, in Australia. The author said that he visited the Vodafone (Aus) website and they had a 'self-service' unlock page on there website, so i checked it out, and sure-enough it was there. Not wanting to brick the phone, i was reluctant to try it out. So i checked the UK website, and it had absolutely no info regarding unlocking the phone!

So I phoned vodafone. I found a phone number which was headed "Non-vodafone customers" (im not a vodafone customer, so i dont have account nubmers etc). The first thing i hear is "Thank you for calling Vodafone, please enter your vodafone account number". Meh! I dont have one.

Anywho, i browsed the web again, and couldn't find any other numbers, so i phoned it again, and simply waited. I then pressed some buttons whilst navigating the stupid phone maze, and ended up speaking to a nice chap by the name of Michael. He told me that they can unlock the phones, but it all depends on the handset. Apparantly, Nokia's can take weeks (not according to this website), but most other manufacturers are fine!

So he asked for the handset details and the IMEI number, which I gave him. He then gave me a code which tapped into the phone and was greeted with a lovely "network unlocked" message!

Woot! So not only did I save myself a tenner, I've also got a tasty little phone too!

Remember, if you don't ask, you don't get!

Get fed!

2007-02-23T15:00:00.000Z

So over the last couple of months, I've become increasingly obsessed with statistics. More importantly, how many people are visiting the various sites I control & maintain.

Google Analytics is perfect for this, and gives me more than enough information when it comes to finding out how many people read my sites. What it doesn't provide however, is RSS feed statistics. It doesn't tell me how many subscribers read my pages without visiting the site.

For this reason, I have setup a feedburner feed on this website, and others that i control! This will tell me exactly how many people read my feeds!

So if you read my RSS feed on this here website, please update your feeds with my new feed address, or simply click on the RSS feed on the right! My new feed address is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/mrqwest

Thank you & good night! :)

More freebies

2007-02-22T14:44:00.000Z

So back in September 2005, I posted about a new phone (to me). My boss had given me his old Sony Ericsson K700i, and it's been a great phone it really has! It had a good camera, it also done video! It had bluetooth, it was nifty, small and decent! It has served me well!

But, it's time to move on. My boss has again, upgraded. He now has a Shiny Blackberry Pearl, and I have a shiny Sony Ericsson V600i. It's yet to be unlocked, but that won't be a problem!

It'll be a welcome replacement. It looks better than the K700, it also has a better camera (1.3mp!). I'm not too sure what other features it has as I haven't had a chance to play around with it, but I'm sure it'll be a good'un!. I've just got to unlock it!

Roll on next year, I've got my eyes on that blackberry pearl!

I'm still here...

2007-02-22T11:05:00.000Z

Just thought I'd say that yes, I am still here. It's all been very quiet on this page, but very hectic in life. Work's extremely busy at the moment. On top of that, the SunRunRally has started to take off (check out the site!). And I've also been drinking copious amounts of coffee whilst trying to do a million things at once!

Having said that though, I've tweaked the design a little here. I've changed the fonts & various related bits as I think it looks a little nicer.

I've also discovered TextPattern, a free, PHP-based advanced Content Management System. As hard as it looks, it's rather easy to use once you get used to it! And the host of plug-ins available are quality! It doesn't have the following that WordPress does, but wordpress also needs more resources, and to me, textpattern is just as good! It has it's problems though which I may go into at a later date.

I've re-jigged the ClubTrinity.co.uk website so that now uses TextPattern as opposed to Coranto. I wanted a MySQL backend & the ability to comment. I couldn't really rely on CGI after previous bad experiences. I also put the SunRunRally website onto TextPattern too!

And it's this platform that i'll be using on my new site that i'm currently developing. It'll purely be a portfolio for my works as i have no place to showcase! But I've been working on that for the last 7years!! So it wont come any time soon!

Never mind. Oh, and the car has hit 100k miles and it still works! The CV Joint has gone again though!! D'oheth!

Wii will rock you? NOT JUST YET...

2007-02-21T10:23:00.001Z

So the other week, H's brother, colcoomagnumar e-mailed me to say he'd finally bought himself a Wii.

Now I own an xb0x360. I also own an original Xbox & a Playstation2. I also have a Gameboy advance in a drawer somewhere. I have an original Playstation at my parents house, along with a Sega Master System, Mega- Drive (Genesis), Saturn, SuperNES, N64 amongst other consoles. I Had a fair few.

Whereas colcoomagnumar doesn't really do consoles. He's more of a PC Gamer, but last year, he bought himself a Nintendo DS, and has then turned into a right Nintendo fanboy! Constantly going on about how revolutionary the Wii is (and the DS for that matter), how much fun it is, and how everyone in the world should own a Wii.

So I was quite excited to learn that he was coming to our place last night for an evening of Wii-action! After finally getting home, the Wii was all set up and to be honest, physically, it looked quite nice. Reminiscent of a Mac. Lots of shiny white plastic!

The Wii-mote's are rather nice too! As I mentioned earlier, I've played a lot of games on various different consoles, so I am used to using a gamepad, so I thought it'd feel very strange controlling games with a remote control, but after one or two games, it actually felt quite natural! I really like the way that you control what-ever's happening whilst swinging your arms like a mad-man!

The only downside for me though, is the games. We didn't actually get any serious gaming done (well the Wii isn't really a serious console is it?), but we did have a good go on Wii-Sports. We had a 3-way game of Tennis, that was fun, and rather intuitive! Bowling was fun, and so was the baseball!

We didn't actually manage to squeeze in any more games as he was only round for a few hours, but next time, we'll have a better go!

All in all though, the brief time I had with the Wii didn't really leave a lasting impression. It looks nice, and it would definitely suite a space I've currently got going un-occupied underneath my TV. The Wii is also rather slick in the fact that wii-motes control everything and do it quite well! But for me, as mentioned, the lack of games let it down.

For me though, the Wii is more of a party tool rather than a gaming machine! And yes, It'd be very good if your a social person (I'm not). I can imagine it'd be great fun with a whole group of people round, having a few drinks, few games of wii-boxing etc.. But to sit down in an evening and play games, I'd sooner pick up my 360 Controller.

Maybe in the future though, when there's more games available, and i've had more of a go on the Wii, then we may invest (my girlfriend has also expressed the same)... but until then, I'm still loving that ring of light + some serious Gears of War gaming!!

Petition against Travel Tax

2007-02-19T10:12:00.001Z

Some of you may already know that the UK government are looking into tracking AND taxing drivers by the mile! Personally, this is a stupid idea, and as others have already high-lighted, drivers are already subject to a similar (yet sneaky) travel tax.

The more we travel, the more petrol we use! And as some people know, upto 80% of the price of petrol in the UK goes to the government in the form of TAX!

In addition, isn't tracking every driver in the UK a breach of personal privacy?

You may have also seen this on Top Gear last night!

Sign the petition (over 1.5m signed already) The deadline is Tomorrow (20th Feb)!

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/

All your BASE are belong to us

2007-01-29T10:27:00.001Z

Years ago, I was asked to help construct & build a music website which had the potential to be pretty big. The site was called ukgarageworldwide.com and it already had an installed user-base. It started as a mere forum, but as the users grew, the need for real content became apparent.

I was called in after winning a design content to create a new header image for the forum. Looking back, it was horrible, but it gave me experience.

Anyhow, I got to work on the design, with help from one of the co-owners, Jess Jackson. After the initial site design was done, it was then down to me to create the pages, include the content and work out the structure. This proved quite difficult as articles would go into the articles folder, contact details would go in a separate folder too yada yada. Now this seems pretty simple, but at that point in my life, I had no clue about CSS, yet Jess had created a CSS file for the pages. In hindsight, I didn't really know much about web-design and all my work was done in the WYSIWYG view of Dreamweaver. I never really learnt from that.

Now back to my story. When I had done an article, i placed in the article folder. And then when i viewed it, all the styles had gone. This was because the style tag in the meta part of the header was calling the CSS file which was in a different location. This taught me about the "../" that you need to put into a link if you'd like to reference a separate folder on a higher level of the tree.

This still confused the hell outta me, and in the end, i would have images that looked like Morse code.

src="../../../../../../images/header.gif"

So knowing about the BASE tag back then would of been really really handy.

The BASE tag goes into the meta of your header (Between the <head></head> tags, and generally looks like this:

<Base href="http://www.yoursite.com/">

Once that's in between your <head></head> tags, then any link or image you reference on that page can include your BASE tag. As an example, here's the current tree of a site I'm re-developing at the moment.

Home > Events > UK > Event 1

Now I'd like this split into separate folders for clarity, so the folder structure would look like: yoursite.com/events/UK/event-1. My images would be under yoursite.com/i. If I was currently on the 'event-1' page and i wanted to add the header image, I'd have to reference it like "../../../i/header.JPG". But after including the BASE tag into the <head> and referencing the home page URL (in this case, <Base href="http://www.yoursite.com/">), then i could just call images as if I was in the root. I'd call "src=i/header.jpg" and this would read from the BASE URL, and put it together.

"yoursite.com/i/header.jpg"

If i had known about the BASE tag when I was developing ukgarageworldwide.com, then it would of stopped plenty of headaches & late nights trying to figure out what folder i was trying to call from!

The BASE tag is your friend!!!

(note: Don't know what 'all your base are belong to us' means? click here)

Printed Goodness

2007-01-18T14:19:00.001Z

So I may have mentioned the SunRunRally on here before. Basically, it's a venture that a friend of mine is embarking on. Where a few people drive from Dover, UK to Kavos, Corfu. Once in Corfu, there will be a week full of events, parties, and fun!

Where do I come into this? Well, I have designed the website, and I am also doing the adverts for various magazines & printed media.

This isn't my first attempt at printed media, however, it is my first attempt at the end product being any good!

Because this is my first attempt at doing proper printed media, with correct colour palettes, resolutions etc, I've been quite nervous about the outcome, but I've just been sent an image of the finished article, and it looks bloody good!

It also comes as a relief as the deadline for the next advert was last Friday. I based the second advert on the first, so if this one was wrong, then the next one would be too! But fortunately for myself, & the SunRunRally, it turned out good!

So this should look good when I start my portfolio on this very page!

Linkage

2007-01-14T08:59:00.000Z

I Have just added a new section to the right. It's called Linkage, and is basically a few links to site's I work on, site's I have designed & actively maintain!

Feel free to visit them. I will add more soon!

Happy new year!

2007-01-03T11:15:00.000Z

Just a quick post to wish you all a happy new year!.. I shall be back soon with some reviews & posts regarding xmas presents I received. Namely 'Gears of War', 'Lego Star Wars II', 'Eric Meyers on CSS' & some 'Sennheiser CX300' headphones... THEY ROCK!

Oh, and also, Matt Brett has developed & released a new website which let's you see Xbox360 dashboard themes before you buy them! That has been lacking with the 360 Marketplace seeing as there's no refund on themes!.. Check out Dashboard Themes here!

Back in a bit :)

Testing windows live writer

2006-12-18T12:35:00.001Z

~~So this is just a test. I want to see if~~ it works :)

Edit: I decided to download ' Windows Live Writer' after reading about it on Lifehacker. I thought I'd want a decent little app that I could run in the background so I could add posts to the blog without having to navigate (and forget!) my Blogger password.

Anyway, I finally downloaded it today, and installed it, and my first impressions are quite good!

Installation & running for the first time

After I had finally found where to download ' Windows Live Writer' (WLW), the installation was pretty painless.

Running WLW for the first time, it asks you for some details about your blog. As I'm a "blogger beta", I didn't opt for the 'Spaces' sign up (this is for those who don't have a blog, but want one on Windows Live Spaces). After entering my details (wrongly), i finally got into WLW and was confronted by a blue-ish word-like application.

Interface

To be quite honest, i hate the blue appearance of WLW, and would really like to de-clutter the interface. You have the normal "File | Edit..." menu which you get on most apps.

Below that, you have the WLW menu. Create a new post, edit a post, save drafts etc. You also have a "layout button. This is cool, purely because the main editing window reflects what your blog looks like, with all the same styles, fonts & layout! You can change this, just incase you don't like it!

You also get the standard formatting tool bar (bold, italics etc). And then, cluttering up the right hand part of the app, you get 2 boxes. One allows you to open or create posts (identical to the top tool-bar), and the 2nd box allows you to insert links, pictures, tags or maps. But these are pretty much covered in the formatting toolbar, so it duplicates itself. D' oh!

Usage

Using WLW is very easy. Once you've set up your blogs, it's a case of creating a new post. Spell-checking (how handy), and then clicking 'publish'. It really is as simple as that. Obviously, it can get more technical depending on your blog!

Conclusion

Well I've used WLW for about half hour, had a quick flick through the menu's and options, and it does seem like a very handy tool! Especially for setting our your layouts. I really like the way it let's you see how your post will look like as it uses the same styles as your blog.

This is just my first impressions. Ill post a more in-depth look at a later date.

EDIT: I've just realised that WLW doesn't allow for 'Blogger Beta' Labels, so for the time being, i'll stick with the browser based posting. Meh!

Tesco Value ear phones! Cheap-tastic or Cheap-plastic?

2006-12-14T13:49:00.000Z

For months now, I've been after a proper set of earphones for my Creative Zen. I've never been a fan of headphones, the ones with the plastic strap over the head, and the painful bits of plastic on the ears. I much prefer the buds that go IN your ears.

The best pair i ever had were the ones that came with my Mp3 player, but they died a death about 6 months ago. I guess I never treated them properly. I only used them whilst i was at work, and even then, it was just one ear bud, so i had half an idea on what was going on around me.

Anyway, slowly, one deteriorated, and then 3 weeks later, the other bud died. Since then, I've tried several pairs. The best ones i tried were Panasonic, but the cable was only about 12 inches long, which is noooo good.

At the moment, I'm using a Skype ear bud (and microphone) which I was given free at a London train station 9 months ago.

Anywho, I digress, I've been on the market for a good pair of headphones. a month ago now, I was walking around Tesco's with my girlfriend, when I spotted the Tesco Value headphones for 97p! How much?!

So I bought them! I figured that i cant really go wrong for 97p!

Packaging

Well, for 97p, your not going to get much for your money are you!? the packaging was your standard plastic wrapped around a bit of card which housed the headphones.

Feel

Well the ear buds actually feel quite comfortable in my ears. There's no fabric covering to give grip, but they don't really feel loose so it's not needed in my opinion. The cord feels rather cheap, and quite flimsy. So much so that if it got bent or twisted too much, it could easily break the internals.

The Actual bud's look cheap. They're black, with silver touches. I guess this is to boost the look of them, make them look a bit special! Doesn't work really. Oh, and they are branded "Technika" I assume this is a Tesco's brand.

Sound

Well, this is the most important part, and to be honest, they do sound rubbish. The actual sound quality is low, and listening to music with them does sound like your listening to music under-water.

The sound is rather flat & sounds empty. Bass is non-existent, although you do get a few low notes, it's nothing substantial. Treble is existent, but the mid-range is really what let's the sound down.

Conclusion

In all honesty, i was hoping to find a good bargain. Earphones at 97p which had good sound quality. In actual-fact though, the headphones are of poor quality. They look cheap, and feel it too. The sound isn't good at all, and since i bought them, I've used them twice. Once to see what the sound was like, and secondly, to write this review.

These might be good if they are for some younger kids, who are more interested in hearing anything that listening to music. But if your after some good quality sound, then these aren't for you!

Clicky web-stats. Perfect!

2006-12-13T13:15:00.000Z

As I've posted before, I've been getting back into web-development recently, working on my new skills in CSS & (x)html mark-up. One of the things i used to enjoy looking at when I developed websites years ago was the web-stats, hits, stuff like that.

In my recent development however, I've not been able to find a good free web-stat service. Somewhere i can log onto and view the hits, the search terms, the referrers for my sites.

That was until this week when i happened across 'Clicky', the perfect solution.

I Found 'Clicky' to be a decent web-stat app. It shows me what i want to know in a clear & precise way.

Setting up was easy as pie. You register on the website, and it then asks you to set up your website. You enter the URL, and then any other re-directs you have going, other URL's and such forth. Once you've entered this data, and submitted it to Clicky, it gives you the script that you must enter on your website. And it's not much of a script either. It's only 2 lines of javascript, and seems to work a whole host of magic!

I've got Clicky measuring stats for 2 of my websites at the moment, and it's giving me an average hit count (based over a the previous few days), current unique hits for the day, and it also gives you the amount of click's each user has done!

It goes into further detail too! It'll even tell you what browser the user is using, and the operating system they are running. For example, for ClubTrinity.co.uk, the last 20 people to visit were running Windows, 18 of which were running Internet Explorer, and 2 (only 2?!) were running Firefox.

This can be pretty handy when producing websites, but that's another story!

'Clicky' will also tell you what pages have been visited and by whom. Every user has their IP address, and this is how Clicky can tell which pages have been visited by which user. This enables you to see what users are looking for, and obviously allows you to tailor your site to suit. It even tells you how long each user was on the website for!

On the flip side though, as much as i like 'Clicky' (and I've only been using it 3 days), it is missing a couple of features which I'd like to see, screen resolution for example! I'd like to see how many users are running at 800x600 compared to how many are running 1600x1200.

The other problem I found (and i have spoken to the guy's at Clicky about it) is the fact that when you have multiple sites in the Clicky database, it strips all sub-directories from the name.

Now the 2 websites i have on their currently are hosted on the same server, but under different sub directories. So now when i log-in and use the drop down box to choose which site I'd like to see stats for, all i see is the domain name. I'd like to be able to specify and call each site by a certain name. But I've been assured that they are working on this, so it's all good!

I'd definitely recommend Clicky for an on-line, quick & easy web statistics tool. It's helped me out massively, and it will help me tweak my sites further for the better! If you run a website, and your looking for a stat tool, i think this is the one!

Check it out, 'Clicky'

making the switch

2006-12-06T12:39:00.000Z

Well, in a previous post, i mentioned that i had come back to Blogspot, and redesigned the blog, only to realise that it wouldn't work with 'Blogger Beta'... But now i've done it!

That's right, i've fully switched over to 'blogger beta' now, so i can take full advantage of the new features, which include some nifty little hacks and some good layout options!

It also includes for the use of Widgets, which is always handy!

Anywho, there's some good bits to the new blogger, like labels & catagories which i like, and also the widgets down the side of the page is always handy. There's loads of stuff there that can be played with (read: hacked) and i've got a couple of ideas up my sleeve!

Only problem with the new blogger is the actual templates themselves. It's REALLY hard to see what's going on as google have added tons of new custom tag's to the mix and it's really confusing. But saying that, i managed to get the site looking almost identical to it's previous counter-part. The only difference being the date, which is now above the title, rather than below! Gawd know's how you change it! (If you do know, please post a comment!)

Right, Back to the drawing board!

24ways is back! Hoorah!

2006-12-05T09:37:00.000Z

24 Ways is back for another year (or 24 days!) of nifty little web-design tricks to impress! Check it out!

Xmas already?

2006-11-29T13:18:00.000Z

Is it Christmas already? Has the whole annual Xmas holiday been moved and I've missed the breaking news headlines? As far as I'm aware, it's still 25th December..

So why have i been listening to Christmas songs on the radio at work all day for the last week or so?

Is it me, or does it seem like every single year that goes by, people put up their decorations earlier, or shops start selling decorations earlier, or radio / tv stations start playing Christmas songs / adverts earlier?

"... but come-on, it's not even December yet!"

Problem with starting the celebrations early, that by Christmas day, everyone's sick of it! Now I'm no Scrooge, i love Christmas (especially egg-nog latte's from Starbucks!) but come-on, it's not even December yet!

That said, seeing as everyone's already in the mood for Xmas, I'm starting to look forward to it too! See the lights up in my local town (have been up for 2 weeks already!!!), the ad's on the TV, and 'Gears of war' in the local shops, i cant wait for Xmas now!

Convert video for the 360 (Part 2)

2006-11-25T00:27:00.000Z

Sooo.. a couple of weeks ago, i made a post about how to quickly convert video for the 360. Tonight, i decided to try it out.

getting started...

So i downloaded the VLC software & the batch file to help with the encoding. This was pretty easy for me, and should be quite easy for most people. I proceeded onto the next step of the instructions, which told me to drag my selected video file onto the batch file, and then watch it encode.

Right.

So i selected an episode of Top Gear. One of my favourite programs, and will quite happily pay my TV license for it! Each episode of Top Gear is an hour long, so i thought "It shouldn't take too long".

problems...

I Dragged my .avi file over onto the batch file and watched as a command window flashed before my eyes. Surely it couldn't be done? It's not so quick, that it's almost instant, is it? So i spent 5 or so minutes looking for the outputted file. I couldn't find it, so i opened up the .bat batch file in Notepad++ to see what it was actually doing.

It turns out that the file path to the VLC player was wrong. Humm. Maybe i didn't follow the instructions.. Ho hum.

I set the File path and tried again. No luck. Double checked the settings, all fine. So what was the problem? I looked into the .bat file using Notepad++ (excellent tool btw!), and noticed that although the bat file was referring to a folder, it wasn't mentioning a specific program, so after altering the path, i tried it again, and success, it worked! I dragged the avi onto the bat file and then the dos cmd prompt appeared, and a few seconds later, the VLC Player appeared, and it started converting the video!

converted...

Half hour later, it finally finished (30 mins to convert an hour program? Not bad!). So now i had my original file (.avi) and my new 360 file (.wmv) Woot!

The only problem i could see was size. The avi was 350mb(ish) in size. The .wmv file was 1.6GB! WOW! Something should be done about that!

So next up was to play it on the 360, and surprisingly, it worked straight away and it played perfectly. No distortion, so sound problems, just an hours worth of solid entertainment! The only problem with it was that i had dragged it onto the 4:3 bat file, but the avi source was actually 16:9, so the perspective was wrong.

Never mind, i doubt i'd keep the new wmv because of the size. It's just a case of finding your 'sweet spot' between file & size and quality i guess.

Conclusion...

However, first impressions on the guide to converting video for your 360 is spot on, after a few teething problems, it worked fine, and it's bloody easy!

Oh, and if i find a decent quality setting with a decent file size, i'll post it!

edit: After playing with the bat file & reading up on the Happybeggar forums, there seems to be a few tricks to try, in order to get the optimum quality vs size. In my original article, i mentioned that a 350mb file was converted to 1.6gb. I tried the same file with different quality settings, and got it down to 700mb. Still twice the size of the original, but not half as bad! And the quality wasn't bad either. Definitely watch-able!

ClubTrinity.co.uk

2006-11-22T11:16:00.000Z

clubtrinity_preview Hosted on Zooomr

I first designed the ClubTrinity website over 4 years ago, so last summer, i thought it was high time it got a bit of a re-design!

I started, concocted, re-invented, scribbled, and played with various different designs until i came up with something i was happy with. After a few more weeks of playing, coding, testing etc, I finally got into XHTML & CSS. So i re-built the new design using my new skills and now it's a hell of a lot cleaner (code-wise). I also had fun using syndication with the forums & galleries at ClubTrinity.

I also managed to get an RSS feed working for it (wooo! - That'll come in handy!)

Anywho, click on over to ClubTrinity.co.uk and let us know your thoughts :)

Quickly convert video for the 360

2006-11-09T13:03:00.000Z

I spotted this link somewhere (i forget where) yesterday, which gives you a quick run-down on how to convert video's to WMV (windows media video) format to play it on your 360.

I've yet to try it, but by looking at the details, it seems pretty good. I spent a good 6 or so hours converting a bunch of home movies to test them out on the 360 using a program called WinAVI. That was slow. If this is as quick as it suggests, then im laughing!

Check it out here

Quick note

2006-11-09T13:02:00.000Z

Just a quick post to say that i'm still messing with the design of the blog. Things wont be staying the same. If you visit one day and it's looking a little broken, dont worry, it's just me playing :)

the 360 is slowly taking over my lounge

2006-11-08T13:22:00.000Z

Just over a week ago, Microsoft announced the 'fall update' to their xbox 36o dashboard. This brought over 70 new features to the dashboard. One of them being the ability to stream & play WMV video from a networked PC to your 360! This opens up a whole world of possibilties!

On top of that, Microsoft recently announced that they will be launching a marketplace for TV & Films. This suggests that you can download movies & TV episodes to your HDD, and then watch them when you want!

This is a great idea (imo), however, this creates a bit of a problem. All those people who have got 360's & the 20gb hdd will need to buy a new hard drive if they want to download more than a couple of films!

And then what happens when your hard drive fills up with movie content that you want to keep? Surely Microsoft wont allow you to transfer films from your 360 to your PC, because that would just be offering pirates a way to share films!

So what will happen? You pay £8 for a film, it takes up 2gb (HD films will likely take up ALOT more space)?. You can fit 6(ish) on a 20gb hard drive. So what happens when you want to download more than 6? I wouldn't want to delete films after i've payed for them!

So, the obvious answer would be get a bigger hdd, which Microsoft haven't announced, but there are plenty of rumours regarding 100gb drives. What happens when that fills up though? Where will it end?

To me, the perfect answer would be to download files via your PC and save them on your computer. And then either stream them over your network to your 360, OR burn them to disc, and put the disc in the 360. This will allow you to create a catalogue without using hard drive space.

However, Microsoft have only just announced the Video Marketplace, and as far as im concerned, there aren't many details about just yet! Let's see how it pans out!

Ain't it always the way...

2006-11-07T20:22:00.000Z

Sooo, as mentioned earlier, i spent a fair bit of time today "updating" the look of this blog, as
well as testing my new-found css skills. True, most of the work was already there, but i've
built on that with what i know. I wanted to re-design the site with my knowledge, what i've
learnt so far, and no searching for help on google. I was happy with what i had created.

I then realised that Blogspot had a "blogger beta". Not one to miss the boat or anything, i immediatly looked into it. And there are a few features that would come in handy, HOWEVER, in order to take advantage of the new layout features, i'd need to rebuild the site as there's no way to import the current design. So i may be working on that over the next few weeks.

I Must admit, i am really enjoying web design at the moment. I first got into it 8 or 9 years ago. I was a big fan of UK Garage music, but had trouble finding any decent websites purely because they didn't exist. So, whilst browsing through the magazines at a local news-agent, i found a magazine with an article called "build your first website". Armed with some demo software (Claris home page to be exact), and the magazine feature, i got started.

At this point in time, it was the summer break between terms at college, i was having great fun designing, and was learning & redesigning my website on a weekly basis. Finally it got to a stage that i was happy with and it started gaining hits.

About a year (and several redesigns) later, my UK Garage website was quite popular. I was getting a couple of thousand hits a month and i was happy with how things were going. On top of that, i had formed a partnership with a friend of mine to run an artist promotion agency.

With this, i also started receiving requests to redesign other peoples websites. It seemed as if i was always behind my computer tapping away at the keyboard in Dreamweaver, knocking out graphics in Fireworks, or perousing the web for inspiration! And i loved it!

Anyway, after a couple of years (2002), i met my wonderful girlfriend and my time spent on websites dwindled. At around the same time, the use of CSS & XHTML started to become popular. More & more websites were popping up with accessability in mind, proper functionality. All of a sudden, webdesign was more than some hefty table layouts & some round corners. As i mentioned though, it was at this time that i stopped designing.

Over the past 2 months (ever since reading an article on devlounge.net, i've become hooked on webdesign again. I've lost count of the amount of hours that i've spent tapping away on this keyboard recently working on table-less layouts, closing tags (grrr) and scouring the web for tutorials.

And the one tool that's REALLY helped me do this is my Kingston U3 Datatraveller pendrive. Due to it's U3 capability, i can carry around my notepad application (EditPad Lite) & my FTP program (FileZilla) wherever i go, and i can design from any internet-enabled PC with a USB drive! I couldn't recommend these things enough!

So, after spending 2 months working on CSS & XHTML, learning, and reading, and reading some more, i can definatly say i am REALLY enjoying myself. So much so, im already working on 2 other websites. I've completly removed all tables, and im excited about launching them! I guess i better get back to it! Wooo!

Check my new threads!

2006-11-07T13:49:00.000Z

Well i'm back! Do i really know what's going on here? Let me explain. Almost 2 years ago now (im sure!), i started this blog. A Simple blog to simply note down details about my car. The problems it had, the cost it incurred, and the progess.

Anywho, i got annoyed with Blogspot's designs, so moved briefly to a friends server. That promptly went down. So i came back to Blogspot for a month or so before shifting the blog over to blogsome.com. Even though it was using Wordpress (i like wordpress), it appeared to be very slow. Too slow for me (im impatient!). So i came back to blogspot for another short stint before dissapearing again to Wordpress.com (so i could use wordpress). However, they have strict design constraints. In order for me to change design elements, i had to pay. That's a no no for me.

Anyway, over the last 2 months or so, ive been learning CSS & XHTML. 2 Languages i've wanted to learn for years. And today, i thought i'd test myself. Here's the new design for my blogspot account, and to be honest, i REALLY like it! Coupled with blogspot's ease of use, i think i'll be staying here for a while! :)

On top of that, whilst over at Wordpress.com, i re-arranged the blog. It's no longer based on just my Pug. It covers a few of my interests. Yes, my 106 is in there. On top of that, i'll be including some articles on gadgets, tech items, games for the 360 (and the up-coming 'console wars'). Music will also feature amongst other tid-bits like reviews, and finally web-design bits.

In the meantime, i must get back to work. I will merge all my posts back here at some point soon!

Enjoy :)

Oh what i'd do for a pair of these

2006-10-10T21:42:00.000+01:00

I Popped round a friend’s house last night. She’s a DJ. (Visit her site). I went round to help her out with her website. And in her office, i noticed she had a set of Pioneer CDJ-1000 units sitting next to her Technics. Now i used to be a DJ (you can see me in action here), i’ve still got a set of slick Technic’s 1200’s (the silver ones baby!) and i’ve always been a lover of vinyl, you just can’t beat the big 12″ discs!

Anywho, Emma showed me how these decks work, and i soooo want a pair now! I thought they may be cheap (lol!!!), so i popped on to ebay, cheapest is £710 EACH, that’s not a typo, and that’s not including delivery!… Wowoweewah! that’s a lot of money for some cd players lol!… I only had a quick 5 min demonstration, but they seemed very very powerful, full of features, and i loved the fact that it had an SD card on the front for those “so hot off the press tunes, they’re not even on CD yet!”.. but £1500 for a pair is a bit steep! I had trouble paying £600 for my 1200’s, and even then, they were second hand!

They would certainly do for me to replace my old Gemini CD deck which is, to be quite honest, poor! I wish i had some!

Renault goes hi-tech

2006-10-05T21:41:00.000+01:00

Just spotted this prototype of the new Renault Twingo ‘concept’. Now i think it looks very very nice, similar to a C2 (which im not such a fan of!), and it looks very high tech! Im still wondering why you’d need (and whether it’s legal) to have a 15″ monitor mounted on your dash! On top of that, according to ‘Motor Authority’, it has a turbo charged 1.2 engine!.. wooo! Click here to read the info and have a gander at some high-res pics! [Motor Authority via Engadget]

Need For Speed: Most wanted (360)

2006-09-25T21:39:00.000+01:00

What a damn good game this was! Man oh man!This was one of the only games i was really excited about when i got my 360, and i have been playing it for the last 6 weeks! I’ve slowly been working my way up the blacklist, and finally, last night, i managed to beat ‘Razor’, the big man!

The story goes like this. You roll into Rockport. There’s a blacklist of 15 Racers. You want to be number one. Sounds easy enough, except, some punk called Razor fiddles with your motor, and you lose it in a race at the beginning. So you then have to buy a car, and improve on it to win races whilst evading police.

It’s the evading of the police chases though that is most fun for me. Point to point race’s are cool, circuits are ok, but trying to evade the cop’s whilst skimming corners, ducking down alley-way’s, and boosting down the freeway’s is where most of the fun for me comes from!

The graphics are very very good on this game, you can see reflections off car’s, you can see sparks up against walls, theres no slowdown and the cut-scenes whilst doing jumps etc are very very nice!

I will write a proper review another time, but my rating for this is: 4/5

Audio via the 360 Controllers

2006-09-25T21:38:00.000+01:00

I noticed at the weekend that the 360 controllers for the xbox have a little plug underneath which is used for plugging in the headset for use with XBL (Xbox Live). Now, this little plug has a headphone socket in the middle. Surely i’d be able to plug headphones in and play games without any disruption to others? I THINK that would be a good idea?.. but apparantly not so. The socket is just for communication! Right then!.

Still, it’s a shame. I’d love to be able to plug my headphones into my controller and play my 360 with out disturbing anyone else in the room!

HI-Def comes to the 360

2006-09-21T21:35:00.001+01:00

360hd Hosted on Zooomr

To be honest, i’ve not been that bothered when it comes to the HD-DVD add-on for the 360. Yes, hi-def does look incredible, and yes, i will purchase myself a HD-Ready TV in time, but at the moment, im happy with my 24″ Mitsubishi Box. Now i could be miles off the mark here, but i’ve been told that standard TV looks awful on HD tv’s, and i wouldn’t be surprised. And seeing as in the UK, there isn’t a great deal of HD shows broadcast, i see it as a waste of money.

Give it a year or so, when i’m in my own place with my girlie, and the price of HD Ready flat screen’s drop to a reasonable level, and the amount of HD programs broadcast over the UK airwaves & cable goes up, then i will move into the HD era.. But until then, it’s a no-no.

But it’s still good to know that, when i do get that TV, HD movies wont be far away because the hd-dvd add-on to the 360 has finally had it’s prices announced. Unfortunatly, only to the japanese market, but the UK prices will be coming with-in a few weeks “apparantly”. Anywho, according to T3, and a little dollar to sterling calculation, the HD addon for the 360 should retail around £90. That’s a bargain if ever i saw one!

Now, of course, im assuming that HD-DVD win’s the current format war between HD-DVD & Blu Ray. A lot of people said that Blu-ray would win because of it’s increased capacity over HD-DVD (50gb over 30gb), however, HD-DVD has been first to the market with their media & players. In Addition, Microsoft have had a good year+ headstart over the PS3, and if it means that 360 owners only have to shell out £90 for the HD-DVD addon in comparison to the £400 player, then that’s going to be a boost for HD-DVD straight off.

Now originaly, i thought, that because blu-ray had the extra space on the disk, and the PS3 come bundled with a blu-ray drive, that it would win over hd-dvd, however, it seems to be changing. Obviously, the big US film studio’s have some sway in the final winner. Most are supporting both formats, however Universal announced today that they will not support blu-ray. Coupled with the high price of the PS3, and the delay in getting blu-ray (and the PS3) onto the market, these could lead to hd-dvd winning the format wars. This would be a serious kick in the teeth for Sony & their PS3, but let’s save that story for another day!

Get Well Soon Hampster

2006-09-21T21:35:00.000+01:00

As most people would of heard by now, Top Gear’s presenter, Richard Hammond was involved in a high speed accident whilst filming a segment for the show. More details can be found here. Hopefully, Richard will make a speedy recovery! Get well soon Hammond!

Kingston U3 Data Traveller (1GB) - (Review)

2006-09-14T21:33:00.000+01:00

I’ve always thought pen drive’s were quite expensive. I Remember i bought one about 2 years ago. Admittedly, it was a rubbish one, and it was bought so i can transfer saves between my PS2 & PC. It was a ‘Max Drive‘ usb pen stick, and it held a whopping 16mb! WOW! Now, i paid £20 for this, and that price is exactly why i thought pen drives were expensive!

Last year, i noticed my boss had one sitting on his desk, which he hadn’t used in a long time, so i nabbed it off him. It was a marked improvement over my 16mb unit as it held a blistering 64mb! However, it took it back off me 2 months ago.

Now at work, i’ve got a few gig’s worth of files that i have accumulated over the years, which i want to ferry back to my home PC. Rather than burn CD’s everyday, i thought i’d look at Pen Drives again to see if the price had dropped!.. I was shocked to say the least.

eBuyer was offering a Kingston U3 Datatraveller 1GB for £13 ish! 1GB for £13 was fantastic. Add on delivery & VAT, and it came to arond £18! I was amazed to say the least! So i quickly ordered one, and 4 day’s later, i had my gig pen drive in my hand, and my, oh my, it’s a dinky little thing.

There’s not much you can really say about pen drives. They plug into the USB socket, and they carry data. Mine has not had any problem’s what-so-ever. It hold’s the data, it does exactly what i wanted it to do!

The real bonus though, was the U3 compatability. Now i’ve never heard of this until i read up on it. Basically, it’s a technology which allows you to run programs from your USB pen drive. Fantastic. The Datatraveller comes bundled with 3 trial programs, but visiting u3.com allows you to download more free & trial programs aswell as buying them!

So far, my U3 is running Foxit (PDF Reader), EssentialPIM (tasks, contacts, calender etc.), Editpad Lite (notepad type program) And filezilla (an FTP Client). Now these are really handy if i need to run a program from someone else’s computer. There’s loads of other programs that you can buy, however, i like free stuff, so im not really interested!!!

My only gripe with it is that transfer is quite slow, which is a shame, but i usually tend to start teh transfer between pendrive & PC (or vice versa) and then walk away so speed doesn’t really bother me!

So yeah, that’s my U3 datatraveller, I would certainly recommend one, and for £20, you cant really go wrong can you?

New Earphones

2006-09-14T21:32:00.000+01:00

Im after a new pair of earphones for my Creative Zen. It Shouldn’t be a hard task should it? Apparantly so. I want a decent pair of earbud headphones which sound good, punchy, clear and can go quite loud when needed! The bud’s that came with my Zen were very good. In fact, they’re probably the best I’ve ever owned. However, after a year of abuse, being pulled out of my bag on a daily basis, in a tangled mass, something was bound to go wrong. Unfortunatly, it did. One bud stopped working. 3 weeks later, the other bud stopped working too. I thought i could fix it with a bit of sellotape, but that failed miserably.

Fast forward a week or so, and whilst in the office, i found a pair of headphones on the window-sill! I found out who they belonged to, and was told that they were spare, and were only cheap ones. No matter i thought, earphones are earphones. As long as i can hear the music, they’re cool.

How wrong was I? These no-branded, 99p earphones were terrible. Really quiet, really cheap feel to them. Sound quality was just wrong. It sounded like i was listenin to music underwater.

At this point, i was getting desperate, and was missing listening to my latest downloads at work! So routing around at home, i found a small silver pouch which i had picked up at a london station many moons ago. Inside the pouch was an Skype branded earbud & microphone, obviously intended for Skype use, however, they’re perfect for me at work. I cant sit at work with earbuds in both ears, so i only use the one!

BUT, these skype bud’s are only intended for voice and what not over the internet, so they’re not that good, but they’re better than the 99p jobbies i found! So i’ve been using this skype bud for about 2 months now. They REALLY lack bass, but other than they’re ok!

Ok, so i’ve digressed, the whole point of this post was about a review I read over at T3. It’s about a set of Creative Zen Aurvana earphones. The review was positive, and the tag-line was “Noise-blocking buds that don’t cost the Earth”. ‘They sound good’ i thought. Some decent phones for a decent price. So i went on a price hunt as T3 didn’t offer one.

Creative.com are selling them for £89.99. Wtf?!.. “..buds that don’t cost the Earth”. True, you can’t buy the earthy for £90 (maybe a small bit though), but £90 is alot of money for some ear-phones!!.. £90 is aLOT of money for a set of headphones (you can buy a car for cheaper!). So that’s the end of that idea.

Onwards with my search for some decent bud’s… any recommendations?

THIS is how you do it!

2006-08-31T21:31:00.000+01:00

Just spotted this [via Digg]. THIS is how you do it!.. Electric motoring has always been a bit… well, bland! The Toyota Prius, has probably been one of the most successful electric car’s and even that has a petrol engine!. The Hybrid connection. One of the main problems for electric car’s though is the fact that they’re not very fast, and most dont seem to have much range on them

However, a britiish engineering firm (PML Flightlink) has gone and stuck 4 (FOUR!) electric motor’s capable of 160hp each, and stuck them in a Mini. So This mini is now able to push 640hp (ish) and top out at 150mph with a 0-60 of 4.5 seconds! Now that is pretty impressive for an electric car (in my eyes anywho). They’ve managed this by putting one engine in each wheel, and this is what PML specialise in!.. I think they’ve done a damn good job!

Brakes are done!

2006-08-31T13:19:00.000+01:00

Well i got the brakes done! Which is good. At least i know i can trust them now!

Oh well.. That's nearly £300 quid gone over the last 2 weeks on the car :( !

Meh!

2006-08-17T15:05:00.000+01:00

Been 6 weeks since the last post. Exhaust started blowing & catching on speed bumps..

Then it fell off on saturday. Got it patched up with a new bracket. It failed again on tuesday. Took it to another garage yesterday. The pipe on the end of the cat has rusted away and any clamps going on there are just not working. £200 for a new catalytic converter.

Was also told that the brake pads are quite low on the front. Will get them done at the weekend.

Also have a dodgy O/S/R ? wheel bearing. Surely that should be O/S/F.

All-in-all.. not f'in happy!

On a lighter note, i got an xbox360 for my birthday! That will allow me to take my anger out on something :)

Broken screens suck!

2006-08-15T21:30:00.000+01:00

My Girlie has an iRiver HP120 20gb MP3 player, and she loves it loads.. Even as far as to say “it’s the best gift she’s ever received”… However, a month or so ago, she showed it to me, and there’s a huge crack across the screen where it looks as if someone’s trodden on the player :(.. That’s no good at all! So i’ve been checking eBay for a replacement player. Either cheap, or broken just so i can whip out the screen and replace it on my girlies machine, however, that’s harder than it sounds!

So, we’re talking about getting her a new 20gb player for her birthday… Any suggestions?

CEX.. Heaven or Hell?

2006-08-09T21:29:00.000+01:00

Cex (Computer exchange) is a cool shop. It sells used games, DVD’s, consoles, phones etc.. All things gadget-like. It’s nice as it’s generally quite cheap. Games from a couple of quid, same for DVD’s. Many a weekend i’ve walked out the store with 4/5 DVD / Games in my bag after shelling out a poultry £25!.. It’s generally a bargain shop and i like it.. for that.

Now, in my last post, i mentioned that it was my birthday, and i received a 360 premium console of my mum, dad, brother & sister!.. My Girlfriend also purchased me a 360 Hard drive & game unaware that a hard drive would be included in the premium console (as she thought i was getting the core package).

So i was now left with 2 Hard drives. One of which i had no use for. My girlfriend had picked the Hard drive up from CeX for £55 (OUCH!) which is a lot cheaper than new (£70+). Anywho, last night, i went to return the hard drive, which i hadn’t removed from the box. As far as i was concerned, i had had it for a week (hidden) and then when i was given it, i had no reason to use it, so it was in an identical condition as to when she bought it. It’s not difficult to understand!

However, Mr CeX had implemented some stupid company policy saying that if you want to return something for refund, you can only do it within 48 hours of purchasing it (?)! 48hrs is a bit rubbish. Especially as this Hard drive was over a week old now.

So i went in there last night asking for a refund for the hard drive (and obviously, got stung by the above 48hr rule!).. After standing around for 10 minutes waiting for my refund, the clerk came back to me and told me about their 48hr policy, and all i could do was sell the Hard drive back to CeX for a much lower price! If i wanted cash, i could have £30. Or i could take £40 in vouchers… What the fuck is that all about?

My girlfriend bought me a hard drive for £55. I hadn’t even touched it, removed it from it’s box, or used it, yet because of some stupid rule, i am now down £15, and they’ve now been given a hard drive & £15 for being thick!…

No wonder CeX is the biggest used game retailer in the UK if it can pull off tricks like that! Im certainly not happy, but i will be complaining so we shall see what happens there!

mmm... next gen!

2006-08-08T21:27:00.000+01:00

It was my birthday on Saturday, and having received a huge box from my family, i was quite intrigued as to what was in it. Come saturday morning, i woke up, made some breaky & had a cup o’ tea, then ripped the wrapping off to find a box full of crumpled newspaper. Hmmm..

Inside the box, covered in crumpled up newspapers stood a white & green box with the words ‘xbox360′ written on the side!

After picking my jaw up from the ground, i realised it was actually a 360 premium, with the Hard Drive, wireless controller etc already inside the box (Bonus!). Also inside the box was about 10 or so games that my brother (who also has a 360) had piled in there from his collection to keep me going till i get some of my own games!

Man im loving this next-gen business!!!.. So i shall be back in a couple of days with a proper review of the box & some of the games!

Creative... Innovating or Immitating?

2006-08-01T21:24:00.000+01:00

I’ve just caught sight of the new Creative Zen V Plus over at Creative.com. It’s another MP3 player, and a good looking one at that. Although it has a small storage capacity (1, 2 or 4gb), it does comes in various different flavours (5 trim colours according to creative.com). It also includes a ‘line-in’ recording socket which is useful. It allows you to encode mp3’s from various sources without the need of a PC. Hoorah! It also includes extra features like a calender, clock & task list. These additions, however, are a bit too extra for me. It’s an MP3 player, it play’s MP3s! (more on this later).

However, this is not my point. The Creative Zen V Plus looks a lot like Microsoft’s new offering, the Zune. I Mean, they’re both MP3 Players. They both have colour screens (most do these days) however, it’s the design similiarities that gets me. Both are set out the same way. Screen at the top (like most), but a circular button at the bottom which controls most of the tools, with seperate Play buttons.

Is the circular button too much like the ‘pods though? When i see an MP3 player with a big circle at the bottom, i immediatly think of an iPod. It’s all about branding & being unique. If your product looks similar to other products out there, it wont stick in people’s minds, they’ll say “oh, there’s that player that looks like a Zune”..

When it came to me getting an MP3 player. I could of gone for the iPod, but i didn’t want to follow the trend. For me, an iPod was more of a status symbol than an MP3 player. So i went for a Creative Zen Touch player. A 20gb model from Creative which does it’s job well. It plays MP3’s. It has a black & white screen. It works. This is what im talking about! When i look for something, i want something that is dedicated to what i want it to do! If your going to buy an Mp3 player, do you want it to have a calender on it? Do you want it to have a task manager on it? No, of course not. Your buying it to listen to music, not to see if you need to buy milk when you next go to Tesco’s.

That said, i think technology these day’s is loosing it’s mark. Too many features are trying to be bundled in with too many gadgets. I can see in 5 years time, there will be mobile phones with 10gb flash drives installed. You could sit on the bus and watch the latest episode of eastenders before it’s broadcast over digital tv because iTunes on your mobile has synced with the BBC via the buses wireless hotspot technology. Phones will no longer be phones, MP3 players will no longer be MP3 players…

However, i digress. I’ve covered many gripes (branding / uselessness / copycat / eastenders). In summary, i think the new V plus looks like a Zune (or vice-versa). Both look very similar to an iPod because both companies (Creative & Microsoft) want a slice of Apple’s pie, and in doing so, have turned themselves into sheep. Getting to the top of the pile isn’t about stealing your competitor’s customers, it’s about innovating your products & enticiing your customers. Give them a reason to buy your products.

GTA: Lego City

2006-07-27T21:21:00.000+01:00

I know this is probably old, but i’ve just seen the GTA: Lego City trailer on YouTube. It’s a parody of the GTA: Vice City video game trailer, but made from lego, and i’ve got to say, it’s rather impressive on some sort of scale! A lot of time & patience must of gone into it, and i do like the end article. I found the link on Digg, but pop on over to YouTube to view it, OR www.brickflick.com (the producers) to download the movie!

Forza Motorsport 2... mmmmm (360)

2006-07-26T21:18:00.000+01:00

I’ve just been reading my RSS feeds, and came across a rather tasty looking vid of Forza Motorsport 2 over at XBox360 Fanboy… Now i own & play Forza on the original xbox, and it looks & drives really well, but Forza 2 is lookin mighty fine!

I know the video doesn’t show any in-game footage, but the motor’s look shiny, plus, i do really like the 350z’s :).. Here’s a link to the post over at Xbox360 Fanboy!

Burnout Revenge (Xbox)

2006-07-25T21:15:00.000+01:00

I’ve always been a fan of the Burnout series of games. Ever since seeing pictures of the original Burnout way-back on the playstation2 in 2001, i’ve been hooked on the thought of wrecking car’s for fun! And every single burnout game i’ve owned has been a joy to play!

Now, over the past couple of years, i’ve kinda lost contact with console gaming, and the release of Burnout: Revenge (the 4th game) slipped beneath my radar. It was only when i saw it in my local gamestation for cheap, that i decided to pick it up. The only problem was that the game was on the XBox, and all my previous copies have been for the PS2. Would it be a better gaming experience or worse? I wasn’t holding out much hope to be honest, as i’ve always preferred the PS2 over the XBox, and i only really picked up my XBox for Forza Motorsport, and maybe Halo?

Anyway, i digress, after getting home, and having a blast, the old features that made me fall in love with the burnout series was there, the crashes, the smashes, and the incredible sense of speed you get as you blast down the wrong side of motorways, through alley-ways and down normal streets, scooting between coaches, big rigs & vans before coming across a junction and being that split-second too slow as you soon realise it’s too late to break and you cringe as the fantastic replay show’s your shiny sports car bumping off car and into a lamppost scattering pieces of car all over the road!

The game also brings back the immense fun of Crash Junctions as well as some new play-features which all add to the game-play!

Now after playing the game for a week or so, i soon got bored of it, which always bugged me as i loved all the previous games, and couldn’t put them down for weeks on end. So what was different about this? To be honest, i couldn’t put my finger on it, but for the last week, myself & my girlfriend’s brother have been playing multiplayer on Burnout: Revenge, and loved every single second of it! The multiplayer “Road Rage” game is such immense fun and we’ve had many a laugh & joke about winning (but mostly losing)! The only problem with this appears to be the lack of settings. The ‘Road Rage’ game only allows 10 takedown’s before finishing. I WANT to be able to change that!. I want to play for as many or as little takedowns as possible.. Surely a ‘golden takedown’ game would be fun? The first to take someone down maybe? Why wasn’t this feature included?

Never-the-less, the last week or so of pure Burnout has been immense fun, and im soo glad i had the chance to play multiplayer and have such a great laugh with such a great game! After getting bored (was I insane?) for a while with this game, im not right back into it, and love that thrill of speed & destruction. True, it can be very irritating at times when you come across a level that you can’t get past, but surely that’s the whole point of it? How much fun would a game be if you could complete it in an hour?

Overall XBox score… 8/10

Overall PS2 score… 6/10

Edit:

Well, i’ve not played the game in a while, ever since i got my 360, as this is still not backward compatible with the 360 . Regardless of this though, i had the chance to play burnout Revenge on the Playstation. You’d think they would be more or less identical. To be honest, the playstation one really is inferior compared to the xbox version. The sound does not come anywhere NEAR the quality on the xbox, with missing samples, delayed effects etc. Loading times are horrific, and the gameplay doesn’t feel right. Tis a shame as all the previous burnout games ive’ owned have been on the playstation! Makes me wonder what i’ve been missing!. I’ve lost all faith in Sony!

Gone wireless...

2006-07-12T20:51:00.000+01:00

wooo!… for the past few months, i’ve been hunting for a wireless router for home. I finally narrowed it down to a netgear item, and it looked nice.. But im on a budget, which was set to £40. I Eventually found somewhere selling the netgear router, new, for £39.99 with free delivery!!! That was eBuyer, and it was out of stock.

I waited a month or so, and they were still out of stock. However, saturday night, i checked, and yes, they had 1 (ONE!) in stock… ordered it as soon as i saw it! Woo, i got my router, and on budget.

Next morning, i check my email, and yes, there was one from eBuyer. “Sorry, your item xxx is out of stock” AARRGHHH!!!! So i cancelled the order and visited eBay. So i found one for £25 + £10 postage. So i got my new router, less than budget and it turned up yesterday!

It was rather easy to set-up and after a bit of hair-pulling on my part (turned on WEP, but ignored it on the laptop), i finally got the internet on the laptop, so i can now browse the t’interweb on the sofa, rather than huddled up in the corner!

Plus it looks good!… haa!

what the...?

2006-07-04T10:17:00.000+01:00

These turned up in my inbox this morning from one of my work-mates who used to live in South Africa.. These are SA Police hummer's that have been spotted on the road!

Beep Beep!

Oh fudge...

2006-06-02T10:27:00.000+01:00

Just had a call from the local garage. My car has failed it's MOT. It failed on 2 minor problems and another problem which i was unaware of.

1) Door Mirror Glass - This is slightly cracked (still). Didn't think it'd fail on this.
2) Passanger side window washer - Again, didn't think it'd fail on this!
3) Rear brakes are below the limit - Never even knew about this problem. Brakes are fine!!!

Sooo, they are looking into the brakes and will let us know how much it's gonna cost to fix!!!

:(

volkswagon bora's

2006-05-24T16:11:00.000+01:00

Recently, i've been noticing a few VW Bora's on the roads. Now i know these have been around for ages, but in my eyes, they look rather nice. And after a few hours on various VW forums & websites, i've found some very nice looking Bora's.

Check these badboys out!

Certainly something worth thinking about in the future :)

Surprise Surprise!

2006-05-04T11:31:00.000+01:00

Well, yet again, the car has a problem!

I posted last week to say that the car had been into the garage to get the hose fixed and all that!... Well that's all done. Last Friday, we decided to go to Suffolk to see "H"'s parents. I thought it'd be a good test for the car, to see how it goes now after the work. Anyway, it got there & back in one peice which was good :)

But Tuesday morning, i got in the car, started her up, put it in reverse and looked out the back window to find a load of blue(ish) smoke coming from the exhaust. Jumped out to have a look, but the smoke had dissapeared, and nothing was coming from the exhaust so thought nothing of it.

Got to work & posted what i saw on the PGAC, to which the ever-helpful members told me it's probably due to worn valve stem seals which *should* ideally be re-placed when doing the head gasket. But obviously it hasn't been done.

So now, basically, when the engine is off, a small amount of oil seaps into the cyclinder. Upon starting the car, this oil get's burnt off, hence the blue smoke. It shouldn't create too much hassle if it get's left, which it probably will do... Well for a few weeks or so until i can get enough money together to get it done again. You see, when the valve seals go, you need to take off the head to replace them. Doing this, might damage the head gasket and depending on how you take the head off, it may need skimming again too!... So in theory, i'd need to get the head gasket done AGAIN in order to do the stem seals. What a bitch!

Soo, "H" & i have been talking recently about really saving. We're gonna look into getting a mortgage & get our own place together... But obviously we need a car too, so we're gonna try and save a bit of cash for a new motor!

Will this ever end?

FOR SALE: 2 x Technics 1210's

2006-04-26T15:00:00.000+01:00

I have, for sale, a set of Technics 1210 turntables in very good condition.

These were purchased 3 years ago brand new, and have rarely been used over the last 2 years. They come complete with lid's & ortofon cartridges as shown in the pictures below.

[more pictures here]

Looking for £450 ovno for these.

Based in Croydon, Surrey. e-mail me if your interested!

It goes from bad to worse!

2006-04-26T11:01:00.000+01:00

Sooo, on friday, i picked the car up. Seemed ok!.. Saturday, we helped my girlies dad move from Croydon to Eastbourne. Car behaved well,although i wasn't racing it or anything. I did notice however, that when i pulled away, sometimes the clutch would judder. But i thought nothing more of it, and didn't want to scare the passangers into thinking that there was a problem.

Forgot about it on Sunday, but the problem kinda re-appeared on Monday. So monday night, i got home from work and decided to inspect the driveshaft gaiter which the mechanic had done. Looked fine to me. So stood up, locked the car and walked away. A quick glance back to the car to make sure the indicators had gone off, and i realised a big puddle under the car, and it was getting bigger by the second!... Doh!

Went back and opened the bonnet to be met with a radiator pipe with a huge spray of water coming from it!... Nice! Now if you have read my blog, you should know that i had a similar problem almost a year ago now with a different pipe!

Never-the-less, the pipe needed replacing. Now seeing as the mechanic had done a decent job on the head gasket, i gave him a call. Bearing in mind it was at 6pm on monday, and the car was booked in on Tuesday morning at 9! Not bad i thought.

So Tuesday comes, i drop the keys off, and head towards the train station (again). At 11am, i phoned the mechanic to find out what the progress is. he said he couldn't find a problem!.. So i told him where it was coming from and to go have another look.

I Phoned him up at 2 to find out what was happening with the car. He said he had fuond the leak, and ordered the new part. He'd be picking it up at 4, and then i could have the car at 6! I was told to phone back around half 4, 5pm to find out how much it'd cost!

So 4.30 comes, i was about to leave to get the train and thought i'd better make sure it was done. Phoned hte mechanic, and he told me he didn't have a chance to pick up the part, and the car wouldn't be ready until today!... AARGHH!

So in the last 2 weeks(ish), i've had the car 3 days... That aint good at all!

Oh, and the other problem. Saturday night, "H" went out to meet some old school friends. 1am, she phoned up to be picked up. I got halfway to the club when i got a flat tyre.. So had to lock the car (and leave it at the side of the road) and walk to where she was as i didn't want her standing around alone waiting for me.

The car's gone from bad to worse. Im hoping this is the last of the problems, but i've got half an idea that it wont be! im mean't to be going to suffolk this weekend. I hope the car behaves itself!

I've got the car back!..Wooo

2006-04-24T10:39:00.000+01:00

Well, as my last post mentioned, with a bit of luck, i'd be picking up the car on Friday, and indeed i did! Damn it feels good to be driving again! And since friday, i've done around 150miles which has been quite fun!.. But still had a few problems though!

Saturday, my girlie & i helped her dad move to Eastbourne, which is around 50 miles from where we live. So we loaded up the van and drove down there. i followed behind the van and drove sensibly so as to run the engine in so i dont wreck it with the new bits on it. Had no trouble getting down there, but i was always looking under the car for leaks. I must of been imagining it (or unlucky) but whereever i parked, there always seemed to be a few drops under the car until i got home from Eastbourne. I will have a proper look at the engine today though!

Also, Saturday night, "H" went out with her old school pals. She phoned me at 1am asking to be picked up, so i jumped in the car, and drove into town to pick her up. It's about 5 mins away, if that. Anyway, got halfway there, and i could feel the car pulling to the right. Now it had not done this earlier whilst driving to eastbourne, so it meant only one thing, a flat tyre! D'oh!. Being 1am, and not an entirely safe neighbour hood, i thought i'd drive to the club, pick "H" up, and drive back, and then change the tyre in the morning as it didn't 'feel' that flat. But after turning a corner, i realised the tyre was completly flat, DAMN!

So pulled over to the side of the road, and called "H" telling her that i had a flat tyre. Now i wasn't going to leave her waiting, or standing alone for too long in town, so i locked the car, and ran down to where she was. We walked back to the car so i could change the tyre.

It's all done now (obviously), but this is the 3rd flat tyre i've had in as many weeks, and it always seems to be the same corner of the car that's going down, however, it's not the same tyre. My first thought was that someone was sabotaging(sp?) the car. But thinking about it, my first flat was in Suffolk, the second one was driving home on the A12, and the last one was at Home. So it's not that. I doubt anything is catching inside the wheel to flatten it, but i'll definatly have a look later on when i get the flat tyre replaced!...

Since ive got the car back though, i've realised i do love the car, i love the way it drives, the way it handles, and the way it feels on the roads, and it'd certainly be a shame to get rid of the car. It's a difficult decision, but maybe one that will have to be made sooner or later :(

Nearly done...

2006-04-21T09:54:00.000+01:00

Well i have constantly been on the phone to the mechanic, and if all goes to plan, im picking up the car tonight!!!..

The Mechanic first off, set about looking into a water leak i never knew i had. This turned out to be coming from the inlet manifold and he sorted that out. he said he looked into this as it could be causing the head gasket problems, but once it was done, the problems were still there. So they set about changing the head gasket. Upon removal of the head, they noticed that the gasket was indeed knackered, and had a breach between the water ways & the cylinder. Not good! So the gasket was replaced and the head was sent off to be skimmed.

When i phoned them yesterday afternoon (hoping the car would be ready), he said the head was back and all was well. But the car wouldn't be ready until friday morning (today), because obviously, it all needs to be put back together, and then driven round the houses to sort it all out!!!..

So i shall be leaving work early and head back into Croydon to get the car.. Wooo.. I cant wait!

I've also got the guy to fix my leaking CV gaiter, so in theory, the car should be pretty much sorted now!.. I told him i had the MOT coming up and was there any problem's he's spotted that i should be aware of, and he said no, the car looked pretty good now that the work has been done!

I Cant wait!!!

The Car's gone...

2006-04-18T11:30:00.000+01:00

... to the garage this morning! Hopefully it'll be ready soon! I phoned up a load of places last week to see if there was a garage close by to where i live which could do the head gasket as soon as possible, and this garage said they could take it in today and hopefully be ready by thursday morning!.. Fingers crossed! Let's hope it's not too expensive!

I know it may sound stupid, but im missing the car already, and REALLY cant wait to get it back! Getting the train to work this morning was a nightmare, and took me well over an hour! Had to go from East Croydon Station upto London bridge, and then back out to where i work! Was hassle considering i can do the drive in 20 mins on a good day!

Roll on thursday!... Oh, and the mechanic will also look at my leaking CV Joint!

Will post more news when i get it!

Oooh, it's mucky!

2006-04-13T10:04:00.000+01:00

Last night, i went round to my dad's again to try and flush the water system, to try and pre-long the engine till next tuesday when the head gasket get's fixed.

I took some pictures of the gunk coming outta the engine.. it doesn't look nice! Here's the pictures

The water filler cap.

The crap coming outta the radiator.

The basin under the car full of the sludge!

Hopefully the engine will hold out till tuesday!.. Finger's crossed!

Double whammy!

2006-04-12T12:56:00.000+01:00

I Took the car into the garage today to get some welding done which has been pending for over 6 months! an hour or so after taking it in, the mechanic phoned up and told me he had done the welding and also fixed my exhaust as it was blowing loudly and annoying him!.. Wooo... So for £40, i got 2 problems fixed! Back of the net!

I did have some quotes from various garages about the exhaust. They told me that the catalytic converter was worn and needed replacing... one garage wanted over £300 for it. Turn's out it was just a loose connection, and needed to be tightened up!

Also, i've booked my car in to a local garage to get the head gasket done. It's going in next tuesday so fingers crossed, it shouldn't take too long and once it's out, most of the bad problem's would have been rectified, and it'll only be smaller problems which will need attention!

Shall post back with any new news!

And... to top it off...

2006-04-11T10:02:00.000+01:00

Just got my tyre, and whilst there, i asked the fella why there would be oil/grease around the inside of the rim. He had a look and told me that the driver's side CV joint has worn, and is leaking grease!

F'in fantastic! :(

Woah, it's been a long time!

2006-04-11T08:55:00.000+01:00

Yup, its been a very long time since i last posted here, but to tell you the truth, there's not much going on!

I've still got the 106, it's still got problems. Here's the story from the last 5 day's...

THURSDAY
I notice i've run out of ciggarettes, so i decide to drive down to the local shop and get some. we were in suffolk at the time, and the local shop was a mile away. So i drove down there, got my ciggies, and drove back. Whilst driving back, i notice that the car's pulling to the right. Thought this was slightly strange, so when i got home, i checked the tyres, and sure enough, one was flat! D'oh!

Oh, and i also noticed that my right hand indicator isn't working!!!

FRIDAY
Friday morning consisted of me changing the flat tyre for the spare. The spare appeared to be mildly flat too! Damnit! So i pumped it up and drove down to the local "Rapid-fit" garage to get it replaced. 3 Hours later (3 damn hours!!!) they had managed to fix the flat tyre, put a brand new tyre on the passanger side, and ignore the mildly flat drivers side tyre! After a brief conversation with the bloke, he went off, and checked the drivers side tyre before telling me it was fine and it had no holes or leaks!... Fair enough, so i drove away £40 lighter.

SATURDAY
We were going to drive back to London today, so i decided to do the usual checks. Looked at the tyres, the looked fine. Checked the engine, it was ok. Oil was a little low, but it was alright. Brake fluid was fine. Last check was the water. Now you may recall i had trouble with the radiator a few months back! The water level on saturday was fine, but it had a brown oily water substance congealed around the cap!. Nice. This would indicate a head gasket on it's way out! Cost to fix would be around £400! OUCH!

So anyway, decided to drive home. It was me, my girlie, and her sister in the car. Driving down the motorway, i was in the fast lane overtaking a car when i felt the steering wheel start juddering. I thought "this aint right", and sure enough, 30 seconds later, my front drivers side tyre (AGAIN!!!) was flat, and i was still doing 70mph down the fast lane.. So after battling to get onto the hard shoulder, i had to change the tyre which isn't much fun when there are huge trucks racing by my ear at 70!!

SUNDAY
Decided to leave the car today! too much trouble!

MONDAY
Driving home from work, i pull into my driveway to hear a funny whirring noise coming from the engine. After closer inspection, it turns out my alternator could be knackered!... Not MORE problems!

So, to sum it all up, the past 5 days have produced:

1) flat tyre
2) Indicator
3) Worn Head Gasket
4) ANOTHER flat tyre
5) Dodgy alternator

Oh the fun of running a Peugeot!!! So now, im off to get another tyre for the car. Tomorrow, the car's booked in to a local garage to get the hand brake pivot welded. They will also inspect the passanger side front suspension as it's creaking like a be-atch!...

Oh, and i know where the exhaust is blowing from now :D!

Onwards, and downwards?!

News?!

2006-01-25T13:33:00.000Z

Well to be honest, nowt's been going on! The car's been fine, with just the niggly problem of the small peice of welding which needs doing to the handbrake pivot (really should get that done) and the blowing exhaust which also needs looking at.

I've been thinking about the sounds in my car, and im half tempted to upgrade the rear speakers to a set of 6x9's which would of course, require a stronger rear shelf. The only reason i want to replace the rear speakers is whilst sat in traffic last week, i decided to play with the settings on my stereo. I adjusted the sound to the rear of the car, and to be honest, it sounded awful. This (i think) is because the speakers are too deep, and are not moving correctly.

Also, whilst on the note of ICE, i've been hunting for a pioneer CD-RB20. I spotted one on ebay on saturday, which i started bidding on, but got outbid with 5 seconds to go. Done another search which produced a second one which ended sunday morning. I placed my max bid, and went out. When i got home, i checked it only to find i had been outbid again!... arrgh!.. So, the search continues. I actually spotted one on eBay this morning with a "Buy It Now" price of £10. Sooold!.. Bought it straight-away. So hopefully it will turn up soon and it'll work fine! Although im a bit dubious because of the price. Oh well. We shall see!

Lastly, with some kind help from 'Longun', a mate of mine from the PGAC, he has leant me some server space. ONce it's all up & running, i shall be moving my blog over to that space which will allow me more creative freedom with the site, which is nice! And i promise i'll set up a new domain name so that the website is memorable.

Ho hum, back to work i guess!