HD fluffiness and a curious cow

I downloaded some demos on Xbox Live last night, which I tried out today. I played Stuntman Ignition for literally ten seconds before deciding it was shite. Project Gotham Racing 4 was better, but I'm never going to buy it, and it has loads of minute text which is unreadable on a standard TV.

However, Rez HD was released today on Xbox Live Arcade, so I downloaded the trial version. I was one of the few who bought the version of Rez for the PS2 back in 2002. I was intrigued to see how the HD version actually looked, so I connected the 360 to one of my 17" LCD monitors using the VGA cable. The 360 will run it at the native panel resolution of 1280x1024 so it can display the HD resolutions on it. The response time isn't great as they aren't gaming monitors but the image quality is still pretty good.

Oddly enough, Rez HD included a standard mode so it was easy to compare. Basically the HD version has sharper, clearer lines and the odd bit of surround sound and subwoofer rumble. It also has some pointless optional visual effects, most of which make it unplayable. Nice indeed, but I think I'll just get my PS2 version back from Will rather than buy the HD version.

The trial version only has the first level, but I played through it about ten times. I'd forgotten just how much it draws you in, as the music builds and the controller begins to pound in your hands. Interestingly the Trance Vibrator is not compatible with Rez HD but instead you can get all FOUR 360 controllers vibrating at once. Dear God, it was bad enough with that Japanese guy giving his girlfriend orgasms! 'Play through Level 2 again,' she would gasp.

While I had the monitor hooked up, I played through the last levels of Portal with the Developer Commentary turned on. It was quite interesting.

The thing that really appeals to me about an LCD TV is the lack of interlacing. It's the one thing I absolutely detest about playing consoles on a CRT. It's one of the things I'm saving up for. I've seen a Hitachi 37" 1080p for about £499 from Richer Sounds, which would be perfect. Hopefully, by the time I can afford one, prices will have dropped further.

Work was OK today, got a lot of things done and managed to time my support call to a training session just in time for the buffet they had ordered. Mmm, caramel slices...

Today was the first chance I had to take the dog for a walk for the entire route on a weekday for the first time in a while as it's started to get lighter in the evenings now. We did have a rather startling experience. I went past a farm gate and saw something enormous and black on the side of the road. When I shone my torch on it, it had EYES and I had a heck of a fright. Fortunately it turned out to be a cow. I like cows, they are pretty placid creatures but they can be quite inquisitive too. For some reason, cows always seem to be fascinated by The Hound. They seem to think he's an odd looking calf or something, and if they can, they'll come up and sniff at him, which unsurprisingly he finds quite worrying.

It was trying to snow as we got back to the car, and it's pretty cold tonight. Hmm, could be interesting.

This really creeped me out for some reason.

Catastrophe!

Got the house to myself so I fired up my old cranky Carlsbro 100w bass amp, which takes a lot of fiddling with crackling knobs before it will work. I've had it since I was fifteen, and it was a good few years old then.

I was happily playing the 8-string through it and one of the octave strings snapped. Balls. I can only find one source for a set in the UK and I can't afford it right now. Plus it needs the normal gauge strings replacing too, so it's probably going to be £30 or so to replace all 8 strings. Bah.

However I got out the old 1-string and found it was rather fun to play it through the big amp. The sound was surprisingly fat and it actually sounds really good. I had such a good time playing it that I might look into making a 'real' 1-string bass.

One of the TV programs I occasionally watch is Dragon's Den, because of the occasionally insane idea that people try to sell and it can be quite funny.

Strange things

Computers can be so crappy sometimes. They appear to do inexplicable things and you can be there for ages, completely perplexed. And then you realise that it's only because you left out a command argument or something ultra trivial.

Bah.

I don't like this at all. I'd hate to live there and have to cope with this every year.

Morphine

Achieved very little today other than find this great Morphine video. A strange band but they did some really good tracks. This is another good one I think I've mentioned before.

If I had telepathy, I would have told the dick that shot past the dog and I today, that no matter how big an exhaust you put on it, an automatic Volvo estate is NEVER going to be cool in the way you obviously want it to be.

Bloody songs

Literally.

The weather was much improved again today so I took the dog for a walk and washed the car. It looked nice for a while but then the water dried off, leaving the paint with it's usual dull lustre.

Played some Half-Life 2 but got really angry with it and stopped after a while.

Then went to see the new Sweeney Todd movie with Will and Vicky. I didn't expect to like it, what with it being a musical, but I really quite enjoyed it. It has some screwed up stuff in it. Johnny Depp gave a good performance, unsurprisingly as it was his kind of role. I was less convinced by Alan Rickman, but perhaps it was just the character he was playing.

Afterwards, we were planning to go to Pizza Hut but there was a ridiculous queue. So we drove around Llandudno and Colwyn Bay looking for something to eat. Eventually I pulled over after aimlessly driving through Colwyn Bay and said we had to make a decision, and as it happened, we'd stopped right outside a Chinese. So we got a load of stuff and drove away, only to realise that there was nothing to eat it with. So Will went and got some plastic forks from a chippy.

After that, we parked on the promenade under a streetlight and stuffed our faces. It was pretty good too. A rather random meal, it must be said, but it had a certain charm because of that. So a great evening all round.

Another decent day

Work wasn't too bad. Encountered an Asus Eee today for the first time. What a cute little machine. It felt quite sturdy for something so small and low-priced. The screen and keyboard were better than I expected, although you wouldn't want to use it all day. The best thing is that it can be hacked to run all sorts of useful things. It's like an updated version of my little Toshiba Libretto, and even has the same 800x480 screen as some of the slightly later Libretto models.

Badminton was great. Had some really good games and I think I've started to get the hang of moving around more, and trying to anticipate where the shuttle is going to go. Got so into it in the last game that I crashed to the floor and slid under the net on my arse. Funny.

A decent day

It wasn't a bad day in work, got loads done and the 8 mile drive from one site to another was really nice due to the cloudless, sunny day.

Badminton was OK this evening although it was astonishingly cold. The Woman of Evil was her typical self, both Rob and I had had enough by the end of the evening. The drive home was great, really bright moonlight, although I nearly had a head on collision with somone in a Peugeot. They came round the corner on the wrong side of the road with full beams and just didn't seem to even see I was there until the last second.

So yeah, all good (for once).

The dog is asleep on my bed and looks so content I don't want to disturb him, but I suppose I should.

It is done

Crap picture, but you get the idea.

My head feels so much better. My hair sucks. It's curly in a way that looks stupid and impossible to style in any significant way. I've always hated it, some of my earliest memories are from when I was insanely jealous of my best friend for having straight hair.

I would shave it off completely but then when I met up with Rob we'd look like some weird skinhead cult or something.

Thingsy

1) Completed Portal.
2) Started Half-Life 2 and remembered how aggravating the first bit is.
3) Heath Ledger is dead at 28.
4) There's a HD version of the Star Trek teaser.

Fun with teleportation

The Orange Box arrived. I've spent the evening playing through Portal and it's the most fun I've had since Mario Galaxy. It's creative, entertaining and it has a screwy sense of humour. It's also surprisingly believable as the physics with the portals are so well done.

And I haven't even tried any of the other games, though I'm looking forward to Half-Life 2 which I started on the original Xbox but gave up on when I found I couldn't transfer the save to the 360. Hopefully there should be enough on this disk to keep me going for a while and I still haven't finished Mario Galaxy either.

Uncertain about hair. Half tempted to just shave it all off, but might see what the hairdresser can do with it. I wanted to go today but they didn't answer the phone for some reason.

Untitled

My Dad and my cousin came round this morning, which was good. Chatted about various things and I answered some questions my cousin had about her new laptop (a widescreen Compaq, actually quite nice). They didn't want to risk the car on the track and were intending to walk up but because the weather was so crappy I picked them up in the Discovery. Also took the dog out for a run in the field, and he got so worked up and hysterical he actually nipped my cousin. He's done that before to me on very rare occasions but only when he gets too over excited. Also played some Wii Sports which was good fun.

Although when I was playing by myself later on, I lost my Pro status in bowling - gutted. Also realised that playing Wii Sports by yourself can be very depressing.

Didn't do much after they left. I was all set to take the dog for a walk, and then it rained again, typically.

It's not been a good weekend for healthy eating, lots of cheesy pasta yesterday and cakes today. Hate it when my willpower breaks down, especially if I haven't been able to walk the dog. I can almost feel my belly swelling and becoming huge and flabby.

I dug out my AA battery charger today. It originally came with four NiMH batteries but I lost one pair and somehow slipped back into the habit of using disposables again. However I've ordered a new set of 4 rechargables. Sick of disposables and also if I can use the rechargables it all helps with the thriftiness. I have a lot of things which take AA batteries (Wiimotes, Psion Series 3, Psion Series 5mx, Tandy 200, Camera) so I might get another pack next payday.

Still carrying on with the Arthur Ransome reread fest. Just finished Missee Lee and The Picts and the Martyrs.

Currently listening to Stadium Arcadium by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. This was preceded by a load of Rammstein and Offspring tracks while I fecked around with backup software on my other Linux machine, for two reasons - first to have an actual working backup solution for my various machines, and second because I'm learning about the backup system in work.

What I'd really like is a free equivalent of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. There are a few things like Bacula, but they are insanely complicated to set up.

Sick of my stupid hair. Tempted to just cut it all off again. It's totally unmanageable, can't be made to look good, and enough has gone to make it look stupid.

Unproductive

Didn't really get anything done today except taking silly pictures. However the weather was good enough for the first time in ages to take the dog for a walk, which was good.

Just remembered I forgot to check the oil in the Discovery. Oh well.

Listless. Even The Great Southern Trendkill is failing to engage me, whereas usually the unholy screaming guitars will perk me up.

Ah. Head like a Hole. That's more like it.

Wow, even forgot to publish this last night...

Some random pictures of things

A 200mhz Pentium Pro (1 of 4) out of the scrapped Proliant server. It is absolutely enormous because the L2 cache is separate from the CPU but integrated into the die.


A plectrum. I don't use these very often.


Headstock and tuners of my 8-string bass. Sounds good but is quite hard to play and a pain to intonate and keep in tune. It also needs new strings but I can't find a source for the octave strings in the UK.


My Touch after being upgraded with the new apps and firmware. Google Maps works pretty well on it and the others are nice to have, although the Stocks one is basically useless for me. I still like this device.


The logo on my main bass, a mildly upgraded Squier Precision Bass.

Big hair

Oh dear, it's getting out of hand again.

Badminton, stuff and suicidal chavs

Got the car back yesterday. Handbrake now works perfectly and didn't need any parts, just a damn good clean and grease. It held the car on a 1 in 4 hill on three clicks this evening, which was brilliant.

Work has been meh.

What do you do with 1500 hard drives?

Finally managed to get my 360 back online with a 10m cable. Had a look at Xbox Live and downloaded some game demos for the first time in a while. The Simpsons game actually looked really good, capturing the cartoon style very well. But it played like arse. The Sonic the Hedgehog demo again looked very pretty but the controls were horrendous, making it unplayable. Also got the latest GTA IV trailer, can't wait for that. Also I ordered The Orange Box because it is basically just insanely good value.

Badminton was good. Played reasonably well, better than last week. Had a really good energetic time but there was the occasional disturbance from some feral teenagers who kept trying to break in through the fire exits.

On the way to the pub afterwards, a group of chavs ran across the road right in front of me, causing me to slam on and stall the engine. I must have missed the last one by inches. Then the little shits had the cheek to laugh and jeer along with a load of others at the bus stop as I restarted the engine and drove away. I hate driving through town at that time of night, all the idiots are out.

I hate cars. I repeat: I hate cars.

The Discovery went in today for the track rod end. The steering started clonking last week so it clearly needed doing. While they were at it, they centred the steering wheel, checked underneath for any major rust (none) and adjusted the handbrake. All good. In fact, I had been expecting them to tell me the underside was a festering mass of rusty holes as I never got around to undersealing it. Also it's apparently worth about £1200-1400 should I want to sell it. I really don't want to, but I'm getting worried about diesel prices...

So for once, I was feeling quite cheerful about the whole thing. I drove around in work, I took a printer to a site, etc, etc. Then while getting some food before coming home, it started shaking down a road as I slowed down and I realised the handbrake had seized on. It wasn't seized on completely but enough to make it significantly difficult to move.

So I took it back to the place, and have probably destroyed the handbrake shoes, but I didn't really have any choice. I didn't have any tools, any light and my mechanical ability is pretty crap. Land Rover handbrakes don't use the rear brakes like most cars, they have a separate brake which locks around the propshaft to the rear axle.

I probably yanked it too hard. I've done this on pretty much every car I've ever had. I pull the handbrake up hard enough to eventually mean it needs adjusting. The only one that didn't suffer from this was the Pimpmobile which had the handbrake on the dash, on the right side of the wheel. Sounds weird, but I liked it. Then again, absolutely nothing phased that car, except wet roundabouts (rear wheel drive and nasty tyres) and long hills (fuel supply issue)...

This is a cheesy but entertaining German video about the Mercedes W123.

The thought of replacing the Discovery with something like a Suzuki Jimny makes my blood run cold. If such a thing were to happen though, I would certainly have to jack up the suspension and put better wheels and bumpers on it, like the one above. Ironically, despite it's appearance, the Jimny is built more like the Discovery than most soft-roaders, with a separate chassis and low ratio gears and actually has some decent off-road ability. Unlike the cretinous fake 4x4s like the BMW X5, etc, etc.

What does Jupiter sound like? Now you can find out.

Things

Tape libraries are fun things until they break.

MacBook Air: Expensive and impractical, sealed unit like iPod, no RAM or HD upgrades and non-replaceable battery. Shite, for posers only. In six years time, they'll be selling for pennies on Ebay, with dead batteries and failed hard drives, needing skill to repair them. Nothing's impossible, even the iPod Touch is openable with some care, patience, and a spudger.

iPod Touch apps: Cool, but why should I have to pay £13 for them considering they come on the iPhone (which is binary compatible) and new Touches?

Tom Cruise spouting nonsense. If this is Scientology, you can stuff it. I find it hard to watch films with him now because this is what I see.

An eye opening Flickr set. No matter how crappy you think your life may be, there's always someone else worse off.

If this guy becomes president, the United States is completely screwed. It needs someone who can begin to repair the damage Bush has done, not a complete religious nutbag.

Rain is causing problems, and isn't going away. Bah.

Got an old laptop running the OLPC GUI and it's quite interesting, and the word processor is the best thing for writing I've come across recently.

One of those days...

...where I grew more and more frustrated and angry and began to question me, my job, my choice of car, my very existence.

Urgh.

Cheered up a bit when I came home and listened to music and things, even though the weather was too shit to take the dog for a walk. Did some exercise inside though which made me feel better.

In fact, I'm in such a bad mood that I'm listening to Slipknot.

Wow.

Interesting weekend

Epic post coming up...

Friday night was the first badminton night of this year. And it really highlighted how I let myself go over Christmas. After the first game, I was destroyed. It was fun, especially the games with Will, but it was totally exhausting. At the end, my legs were all stiff and weird. The pub afterwards was good though. Got to get back into the dog walks and exercise again though. I hadn't realised how much good it was doing me until I stopped. While I think it's shallow to solely aim to be aesthetically pleasing, it would be nice to be in better shape.

Saturday morning saw Rob, Em, Vicky, Will, Andy and I piling into cars to go walking in Llanfairfechan, or more specifically, Nant Y Pandy (!). We eventually found the actual walk after some trudging around being lost, and it was good fun other than the occasional disagreement about rivers and stepping stones. We went quite far up a river which flowed down a nature reserve, and got a good view down towards the coast and towards Anglesey. Above is a picture of everyone on the Skipping Bridge, so named because Will felt compelled to skip across it.

After that, it was back to Rob and Em's for Tiger Woods Golf, a couple of episodes of The Mighty Boosh, general chitchat and a couple of pints in the Rugby and Social Club across the road. The Newcastle/Man U game was on, which we successfully ignored, but there was an amusing argument from some people there who wanted to watch rugby and were miffed that football was being showed in a rugby club.

Finally we all met up with Caroline and Rob from badminton for an Indian, which was pretty good. They do excellent food there. I had my traditional Butter Chicken. Will had Chicken Tikka Masala, which may be a British dish, and not really Indian, but it was really good. Despite claims of being stuffed, quite a few people had dessert, and I was the only one that didn't get the kids one with a toy, instead opting for a Bailey's Cheescake - mmmmm.

Today was much more relaxed, lay in bed reading until midday and then got up to watch a couple of DVDs. First was Borat which I'd never seen before. It's OK, and has genuinely funny moments and some make you curl your toes with embarrassment. I think it lost it's way about half way through and never really got back on track. Then I watched Men in Black, which I haven't seen for ages. It was a decent enough film but the sequel was horrendous. Then I went on a YouTube run, it's amazing how you can get lost in it. Just keep clicking related videos and then it's suddenly hours later. The same can happen with Flickr.

Rediscovered Poison by Alice Cooper, which is a really good track. I just love it when the guitar kicks in at the beginning and when it all kicks in a the end. This is an interesting but slightly sacrilegious cover by Groove Coverage which is somehow oddly compelling. The video is a bit cliched but has some nice imagery and it gets better after a few listens.

Need a haircut, it's getting big and scary again.

It's been a smelly day, lots of aromatic Indian farts. I'm sat here in a pool of stench. Pretty bad.

My iBook's screen is continuing to deteriorate. The only thing it handles now is my photos, but it is excruciatingly slow due to a 600mhz processor and USB 1.1. Need an alternative but since everything is in iPhoto, that could be difficult.

Finally managed to make use of the workspaces in Ubuntu. Normally you'd get four separate ones but I only get two, which each cover the 2850x1024 desktop that both screens combine to create. One has the Internet stuff (Firefox and Thunderbird, etc) and the other has creative things (OpenOffice, GIMP, VMWare Windows XP box, etc).

Machine running warm, fans going insane. I think it's because I've had my heater on so the room has got rather warm and it's running a lot of stuff, including Windows XP in a VMWare session. If you'd told me a couple of years ago that my main computing needs would be being met by a Dell Precision and a Dell Optiplex, I'd have told you to go away in no uncertain terms. How times change.

Fun fun fun. Work tomorrow. Ultra feckity bah.

Rain, rain and more rain. And then floods. Plus random thoughts.

It rained very, very hard last night. When I got up, the fields were pouring with water, the streams were overflowing and the track looked like a river. The drive to work was fun, over the tops of the hills on single track roads with massive puddles. I hit one puddle at an awkward angle and the power steering went solid, making it suddenly very hard to go round the corner. Bah.

Work was reasonably fun, my first Unix day this year. I was entrusted with updating the firmware of the tape library and the drives, and it even worked again afterwards, which can only be a good thing.

Haven't done much this evening except have a long session of spanking the plank of wank, making funky sounds. *

Facebook is one of those things that seems to have suddenly exploded. In the last few weeks, nearly everyone I know has asked me if I'm on it. The thing is, what comes to mind when I think of social networking sites is loads of so-called popular people who have 40,000 friends they will never meet, and take comfort in that instead of having friends in the real world. That may sound odd coming from an introvert who tends to not socialise very much, but I do think the Internet is not always a good thing when it comes to things like this.

I saw a Golf Country when I was out getting lunch. It's basically a Mk2 Golf jacked up with big wheels, like the one in the picture above. They are very rare. The idea though is somewhat appealing as I'm increasingly aware that the Discovery is expensive to run. Diesel is up to £1.07 locally now, and it cost £60 to fill the tank last time (good for about 360 miles or so, depending on how it's driven). Also the MOT is due in May and I'm really worried it'll be expensive like it was last time.

The thing is, I don't need an old-school 4x4. I need something small and economical that also happens to have ground clearance. It needn't even have four wheel drive. The thing is, very few things are out there other than small 4x4s like the Suzuki Jimny, or silly cars like the Rover Streetwise. At least the Jimny has proper off-road credentials, despite it's tiny size.

But then I start to get worried about driving a small car again. Not because of the safety aspect, but because when I had the Cinquecento, I was easily intimidated by larger vehicles which made my driving angry and erratic. I know I drove best when I had my Mercedes W123 and now in the Discovery. I don't know if this highlights some massive failure in my psychological profile (other than the well known ones) or what. So perhaps something really small isn't the answer.

The Square-1 is still not a cube. Feck.

Listening to Life is Killing Me by Type O Negative.

* For the filthy minded, I was actually playing slap bass.

Great Uncle DoubleL

My niece had her baby yesterday evening. Therefore I'm now a great uncle, which feels quite scary and wrong. Also it makes my Dad a great-grandfather, again quite scary.

Overpriced wireless and getting rid of stuff.

How can Microsoft justify £60 for the official Xbox 360 Wireless Adaptor?! I think I'll just get a new 10 metre Ethernet cable like I had before except the tabs broke off. Since the cable broke in about November, I've not used the 360 online at all.

10m Ethernet cable = £1.99.

Took several things to the recycling centre today. The Proliant went, stripped of useful parts, several scrap laptops and a few other things. I think they were slightly taken aback as I turned up, very farmer-like, in a muddy Discovery, wearing wellies, only to unload a bunch of computer equipment.

On the way home, I picked up a Sweet and Sour Pot Noodle, being in a filthy mood. On the little sachet of sauce inside, it reads 'Did you know: Humans lose more than 4kg of skin cells every year'. What a nice appetizing fact...

The Square-1 is pissing me off. How do you make a Rubik's Cube harder? Make the damn thing change shape when you twist it, that's how. It's hard enough to make it back into a cube shape, let alone get the colours in the right place.

Salad

Salad is fairly dull. Hence why there are dressings. But why do most dressings have to be full of fat, which makes it pointless eating the salad?

Boo.

Day off tomorrow. I was supposed to be looking after the dog for Mum but she didn't actually need to go out in the day. But I've decided to have it anyway. Might actually try to do some tidying and things.

Weird weekend

Yesterday: Washed the car and took the dog for a short walk, before heading down to Andy's for a Chinese and random stuff with Rob, Em, Vicky, Will and also Ed and Kat who we haven't seen for a while. Pictionary certainly seems to bring out the worst in people.

Today was a pointless, wasted day. First I couldn't get out of bed. Then I just watched some DVDs and once again got lost in Flickr. I achieved absolutely nothing today, other than rewatching Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Bah

Didn't go to badminton. Coughing like anything.

The XO laptop seems to have sold quite well when they were doing the pilot of the Buy-one-give-one system. There are even some showing up on Ebay which is probably the only way to get one in the UK. From what I've seen, it looks like a fun little machine and definitely has some interesting features such as the dual-mode mono/colour screen. I downloaded a VMWare image of the OS and it does have some interesting ideas.

The Asus Eee looks quite cool too. The best thing about these is that they are solid state, no stupid hard drives to fail.

But this is the year of thriftiness and if I want a solid-state laptop I guess I'll just have to settle for my good old PowerBook 1400cs/166 booting Mac OS 8 from a Compact Flash card...

Botheration

Nothing to report. Cold. Coughing. Don't want to go to badminton. Weather is horrendous, cold and raining.

On the way home encountered a dick in a new Land Cruiser who wouldn't reverse even though it was clearly my right of way past some parked cars. He just sat there like a cock until I finally realised he wasn't going to move and reversed instead.

Work annoying after holidays. Glad it's the weekend.

Feck.

Time and how it creeps up on you

Oh my God, this is frightening:


It's been 10 years since my character was created on the MOO we wasted so much time on in college.

Scary things indeed.

Last night was an excellent time of food, drink, poker, weird TV, Play-Doh and some interesting home-made gin and a bottle of chilli vodka provided by Caroline and Rob. It must be said that the chilli vodka was vile, yet strangely compelling. I had at least three shots of it that I can remember. Andy's strawberry vodka jelly was a very nice antidote though, and went down very well. Food was shedloads of baps, chilli, nachos with cheese and things and the inevitable tubes of Pringles and dip.

For some odd reason the night absolutely flew by and I remember being shocked that there were only a few minutes of 2007 left. After that vaious people played poker until about 3:00am before retiring to bed.

Much hilarity was caused once again by Will's ridiculous inflatable bed. Ordinarily when the bed is pumped up in the daytime, when not drunk and where there is room for it, it's not so much of an issue. However when the participants are drunk and the bed barely fits into the space for it, it all gets a little silly. I'm glad I had the sofa to be honest.

The morning was quite reasonable, not too many hangovers in evidence and anyone feeling slightly crappy was soon revived by an epic fried breakfast all round, cooked by Rob and Em.

And finally, for your enjoyment, I present Henry the Eighth:

New Year

can't type much will is inflating his bed it is funnyc we've all had a lot to sronk

Can't imagine pepil trying to play poker with this ludicrous noise going on

good evening more info cpmpbh when I have had some sleep not inyerruptedd by Will Himpibg hid bed