Please wait....

Re-publishing your blog for the 200th time... please wait. Ever get the feeling you spend too much time farting with little CSS niceties in your template when you should be sleeping? 2 hours to make the comment background to alternate between grey and dark grey! Wahoo. I get the feeling it was not worth it now. Then again - I did it myself!

Hats, Twats and Throatyaches

Christmas greetings to all. But not to the retarded customers at the local supermarket who were all wheeled and bussed in and had special "day out visits from the institution" just to piss me off and get in my way as I tried to gather some basic supplies yesterday. I am normally quite deft at avoiding other "obstacles" when I am crusing the aisles but they just wanted to die! 10 points for a crusty, 15 for demented, dirty slob parented children and 30 bonus points for bashing the shins of the employee who decided to drag out a cage of stock right in front of me! He deserved it. I'm sure it was'nt all that bad. It may have had something to do with the fact that I have been off work all week with another throat infection. In my last post about... the last infection... I used a photo of someones tonsils I found off the net - but those ones above...are really mine! Come to papa! I have also spent the time I was not hallucanating from the effects of a 4-a-day dose of 250mg of Penacillin, making cardboard christmas hats for when we go and spend a few nights at the in-laws over the xmas weekend. Apparently it is a family tradition they have (strangely left out of the ten christmas's I have spent with them) to wear ellaborate hats at the christmas dinner table. We (i) appear to have ended up making 11 hats for the people in attendance this year and I present the current state of play, modelled by some annoyed children (click em' to Big Em' Up in Flickr): In order from left to right: 1. Sister In Laws Hat. She has recently got herself a Moto RAZR V2 phone and is generally one of those people whose phone and mouth never stops, so i modelled one for her! My wife and I did the eyes and mouth together. 2. Ethan's Hat (my youngest). He is mad on trains and Thomas The Tank Engine so I modelled him Thomas running on the tracks across his head. Thats him too BTW. 3. Father In Laws Hat. He owns his own video production company and is also the editor/cameraman. I tried to make this look like a camera. There is a fish jumping on the other side as his area of expertise is in filming and making the best and most popular fishing videos in the UK (and world!!). That hot model is me BTW. 4. Corin's Hat (my eldest). This is finished apart from the spray paint, but is supposed to be Darth Vader. Possibly the most difficult hat to make so far. And when he came down in the morning and saw it, he complained that he wanted a Father Christmas hat instead. Thanks mate... love you too... 5. My Wife's Hat. She is renown for stealing all the gravy at the dinner table. This started off as a hat for Corin but began to look too much like a weird blow-up-doll - so we changed it to my wifes instead. 6. Lily's Hat (my niece). Supposed to be a sort of Cleopatra type hat. What you can't see is the glittery hair at the back but the snake was all modelled by me out of cardboard! 7. Joe's Hat (my nephew) This is supposed to be a "chiselled jawed pretty boy" hat as he is an image conscious teenager. It reminds me of a gladiators mask or something though. 8. Mother In Laws Hat. Obsessed with cleaning and cleanliness, this hat features her rubber gloves and cleaning materials. She made it actually - but we finished it off for her. 9. Luke's Hat (my nephew). He is currently at Bath University studying "commerical music" so we thought a hat with Symbals, a bass drum (he is a Grade 8 level drummer) a mic, and a guitar amp would be appropriate. 10. My Hat. What else? An iPod hat! It sits on my head in it's own "dock" and features real (cast off) headphones glued in. Its yet to be sprayed but will end up gold. I will also stick on an iPod screen too so it looks authentic (and even more geeky). I did toy with the idea of being able to remove it from the dock too and carry it around... but that was just silly! Just one more to go... and I think I might have to make a harmonica! Fecking hell! Don't think I will be doing this again next year! Merry Xmas to all. I'm off to bed to watch the drugs do their work on the 70s light show cinema scape that is the inside of my eyelids! Wahoo!

I'm missing out on something

Advance Wife Warning: When I see a 360... I will buy it! If there are other regular readers of this Blog who have an XBox Live gamertag, let me know and I will add you to my list. Technorati Tags: xbox, xbox360, microsoft, xbox live, live, gamertag, gamer tag

Boom Shake Shake The Room

Engadget reports on the latest iPod rumour doing the rounds on the usual "I Know What Apple Did Next Summer" type sites. Apparently, a new verison of Apple's flagship iPod product is now headed for that dusty shelf in your living room, bedroom or study in the shape of a wireless enabled hard disk'ed up "Boombox". There is already a raft of other (expensive) speaker systems for the iPod so it seems common sense that Apple would provide their own system too. If it wireless connects and syncs to my iTunes too then that would be cool. A basic iPod docking speaker system would be too "low tech" for Apple to make, so expect it to have lots more bells and whistles. No doubt it will be some kind of iPod docking device that allows you to connect to iTunes, and the iTunes Radio stations too over your wifi connection. Add the ability to sync the tunes on your pod' to the internal hard disk too for when your battery is dead and that will probably be something near to the final product. The device may be announced at the Mac Expo early next year. Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, boombox, wireless, itunes, radio

In the *real* world

I just found these links via Slashdot and thought I would share:

• 8 End-User Troubleshooting Tips
• Top 10 System Administrator Truths

I would also like to thank Bill Gates for making this all possible and keeping my salary rolling in. Technorati Tags: windows 95, windows 98, windows 2000, windows xp, microsoft, support, admin, sysadmin, slashdot

Ring a ding ding

After sorting my Bluetooth VS Windows XP VS Crap Software issues the other day I went searching for some Gorillaz MP3 ringtones and came across this site which allows free downloads and also the ability to upload your own MP3 tones too, so others can share in your trimmed remix of "Crazy Frog Versus The Magic Roundabout" - or even worse... Charlotte Church.

• Motomail Free MP3 ringtones
• Motomail Uploaded Ringtones List

Technorati Tags: mp3, ringtones, ringtone, bluetooth, crazy frog

Fucktard Can't Read

The Register reports how an innocent eBay'er was duped into buying a picture of an Xbox 360 for £470. As BigFootCookie knows, stating the correct details of the item in the auction is very important - as is reading the auction before you part with your cash! Here is a link to the eBay auction, complete with a full description of the XBox probably copied from the Official Microsoft Site - but with the added quip:

This auction is not for a Xbox 360 game system, but instead a picture of one. I hope you enjoy this high-quality item. The 360 is the hottest thing on the market.

I bet PayPal are working through their lunch break to sort this one out. If they can stop laughing that is.

And what does the purchaser have to say on this matter when leaving feedback?

Lying theif, stay away from this ebay member !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jesus. He can't even spell either!

Hells Blue Teeth

Since I got hold of my Motorola V600 phone I have been trying to use Bluetooth to upload stuff to it. I bought a Blue-USB Bluetooth adapter from eBay and have paired the phone, using the crappy Bluesoleil software to my PC, but can only download pics from the phone - not upload ringtones or anything else. After reading the tutorial over at Jonsguides for getting any USB Bluetooth Adapter to work with XP using the Widcomm software, I went in search of the required files that had been deleted (as requested by Widcomm) and found them! All done via this search string on the mighty Tyoogle. I have'nt tried this yet, but will tonight. Enjoy! Update: Installed the drivers and patches to my laptop. Followed the complete instructions here as Jon's is missing a bit. Tested, works brilliantly! Now, off to find a copy of Crazy Frog.mp3!

Auto Patcher

I came across this little program last night after searching for ways to get my USB Bluetooth Dongle working in XP properly. Head - bashing - desk - not - working! Anyway, I digress. For those people who have a "non-pukka" version of XP that fails the usual Windows Update verification thingies... heres a program that contains all of the latest updates and fixes all together. It also contains extras like the new XP Royale Theme that I blogged about earlier and the latest Google Toolbar. There is also a "lite" version that only contains the main fixes though. The full download weighs in at over 100mb - so definitely not for those luddite modem people. Get it over at the Autopatcher site. There is also a hacked DLL doing the rounds that you have to patch your PC with in safe mode that will allow the verification tests to pass - but I have not tested it. Update: Tested the DLL crack - works a treat! Happy Xmas!

Time for a change?

A new broom sweeps clean: Blue Triangle Blues

Snikitt!

Lock up my wife, Logan's back. Get the trailer over at Quicktime.com

Lunchtime Kudos

As promised, my pal Dodgy Trev, took me back to his gaff for an early lunch of cheese on toast and to play PGR3 on his nice new spanky Xbox 360. He plays it on some dodgy "no-name, no-brand" 28 inch widescreen TV, so the game was not running at it's HDTV best (or anywhere near it) but I have to say, I was impressed. Driving games are not really my forte but this game just looks so good! The detail in the cars, buildings and surroundings is so realistic and flows perfectly with no pop-up at all. I get the impression that this is a game where you could easily get lost in the "realism" of it all. As I was racing "downtown" in New York, a portion of the track takes you onto a bridge which just looked real as it whizzed past me! I was really really impressed. Mum.... I know what I want for christmas.... I also tried to break it by pressing the Xbox button on the wireless controller when the game was loading a new track but it quite happily showed me part of the dashboard where I could see what my (Trev's) mates were up to on XBox Live and I could change my music prefs. We tried to get the 360 hooked up to some MP3s on his PC using the Media Connect software but this did not seem to work. The PC could see the 360, but not the other way round. Odd. But I have seen some posts over at XBox-Scene where other people have had this issue too. We then fired up Halo2 which looked crisper and more detailed than ever. The backwards compatibility worked a treat! Come on Halo3, bring it on!

Seen one!

I saw an Xbox360 "in the flesh" this weekend! Yay! Whilst trying to navigate the immense dimensions of our new local ADSA Walmart store I came across the small Xbox360 demo booth where a spotty faced employee was trying to get rid of an error on screen that said "no signal". I went and looked at the toys with the kids and returned a little later to find the console working and a man playing FIFA2006 who had ditched his wheelchair bound mother to get at the new hardware. She sat with her back to him, cuddling her lap-blanket looking folornly at the nearby counter of cheap DVD Players, whilst her son pitted his skills of England against Germany. As predicted, the game looked freakin amazing! The players facial textures and the detail on the clothing rippling in the wind was really cool. As the camera zoomed out to the usual view of the field during play it did not look quite as impressive. But as the bloke guided Paul Scholes to make a poorly judged tackle from behind (not that he would do that in real life.....) the cut scene was really well rendered! My matey Dodgy Trev has managed to get an Xbox and I am off to play Project Gotham 3 at lunchtime tomorrow - so expect me to give an update after I return - unless I am too busy ringing round trying to find out where I can buy one!