A few links

I tend to keep a lot of files and links on my desktop until I need them. You know how it is when they vanish deep into the recesses of your hard drive, never to be used again. Duplicated at least 5 times, in a combined rush of searching online for them again, and some terribly thought out filing convention, which you forget, the very moment you want to find them again.

I kept thinking, oo I must put that on the blog, and never did, so without further wibble, here are some of those links. Offloaded from my desktop to your computer.

My Audioscrobble. Now you can see what I listen to!

Another set of celebrity lookalikes. Think of them more as recently going through rehab, or some sort of major surgery and then you will go wow!

Hey Hey 16K
A masterful piece, capturing perfectly the days before computers did sci-fi movie type things.

Lycos Circles, seems to be some sort of portal sharing thing, interesting... or er.. not :)

The Crown Jewels. Warning, this may take a while for you to really grasp the gravity of the whole thing.

The Room of Doom, contains nearly as much technology as resides around my ankles here. This takes quite some work!



Ok now you have read it, click on the links and perhaps leave a comment here. The 5th comment a day wins a car!

Someone got a laptop....

Of all the gifts over the Christmas period, the best one so far has to be a laptop given to a friend of mine. Well done!

In other news, I just launched my Trillian chat program and was told they had updated it. It's been a while so I thought I would get the new version (you don't have to) and it works great! They fixed the ability to go directly to ALL webmail services from the Trillian window, instead of getting notification of the mail, but then having to go through all the bother of, going to a site, signing in, and then finding the email. Now it's just straight to your inbox. The look is quite different, and has a lot more features placed where you need them instead of having to hunt around for simple info, like avatar pictures etc.

Groovy!



She got a laptop! Great going S.

Christmas shopping

I had to venture out sooner or later for a round of present buying. Had done a couple of days of it, but this really was the day to get all those loose ends tied up. Had noticed, that what would presumably be an horrendous, wander round tumbleweed-like shelves devoid of anything approaching a present, actually turned out not so bad after all. I soon gathered I never knew how much I hated mall shopping. For having so many stores, they don't seem to sell anything at all! I cannot imagine what they sell? It's like they are run by the Men in Black with the neuralizers on constantly in the windows, making sure you KNOW you were at the stores, but have no clue why?

Well all this fruitless shopping turned up something pretty good after all.. I discovered something called Stromboli. It's my new best friend and it's going to get a great Christmas present from me! Apparently it's an Italian thing, who knew?

Well after all that, I got some gems. Also sent some email presents, as people always seem to get what they want that way. Merry Christmas chaps.

Wasn't a very interesting post was it??



Not stromboli

Half Life 2

Well, I was a little under the weather, and I did something I had never done before. I tried retail therapy. Seeing as everyone was going on about how you could purchase Half Life 2 over the net, and then it would be some auto installing, and updating thing, I gave it a whirl.

I kept seeing the boxes in Best Buy and telling myself I would get it for an early Christmas present (uuh oh hang on, this is America).. er.. I mean holiday gift. Instead I sat and went all steam powered.

You go to the site, click on the package you want, and then wait for it to be downloaded to the computer you are at. You can apparently use it on any computer, as long as you log into your steam account and press the go button.

Weeeeeeelll it took hours (trust me, do it over night, or when leaving for a long day out) and when it finally DID load in it was indeed heaven. I have only played a small way through, but the physics and wonderfully realistic locations are great. Characters flop from ledges, cowboy saloon brawl style, when shot. You can pick stuff up and throw it around. Which until I realised I should have been doing it, caused me to get stuck at an embarresingly early stage of the game. Sound is wonderful too.

I did how ever have an issue with the game. The rather extensive help section of the website, soon had the solution although it required deleting a half meg file to be redownloaded, and it has happened a LOT, since I did it. Hopefully the fourth time will be the last and I can get back to skulking around city areas, and popping off security chaps.

For $50 you get Half Life 2 and Counter Strike Source.. Source apparently being the name for a graphics and physics overhaul, similar to the one used in Half Life 2.

For $60 you get HL2, CSS, HL1 Source, Day of Deafeat Source, and the back catalog of Valve stuff. Nice, so I got that one.

For $90 you get all the above plus Hats, posters, mouse pads, etc.

I hope the technical issues sort themselves out, as this game is luverrly. So far the story has been great, and just enough sense of "Oh crap oh crap oh crap" as you run stumbling away from fire, and not having the time to admire the bullet holes appearing on the walls in front!

For anyone reading who has no clue (and cannot be bothered to visit the links) this game is a first person shooter. You have gun, you need to put your bullets in the other players, or aliens. If you play online against other REAL people, you can be on teams, or against everyone, but again try to keep your bullets in someone else. You see from the eyes of your character, so knowing where others are is hard. Move yourself with the keyboard, you eyes with the mouse, and thats about it. Like cowboys and indians with blood and explosions. As in the movies, a handgrenade falling gently down a hole to join you, should always be treated with respect, from a LONG way off. Listen for the click of gun, thud of footstep, and rumble of burning barrel. Point weapons AT anything even remotely suspected of independant thought!



Half Life 2, you walk around and commit physics on everything

The Screen Savers

Now the three people that read my posts would probably notice a trend towards the geek. Shocking I know, but there we are. So a couple of years ago I stumbled across a TV show, which was all about the interesting bits of technology, and for the most part computers!

Great stuff, was watching the Screen Savers for ever and a day. Then one day Comcast came along and spent a huge wodge of cash on grabbing the show for themselves. Within a couple of weeks, the show had gone from informative tech news and know-how, to ADD riddled know-nothings with painfully empty heads.

I like a game like the next person, and the entire channel is devoted to it. Not a bad thing on the surface, but try watching any of G4's offerings. There are games on the channel, as well as reviews and other game related segments. The only problem is it is all so... er.. how can I put it... just so unwatchable. Just one long flit from sparkly shiny thing to the next. I am still awaiting the day when I would get any real information at all from any of it!

So as always...back to the point...

The Screen Savers appears to have died.

As Kevin Rose (one of only two presenters to have survived the butchery) recently pointed out...
"...the days of Linux command prompts on TSS are over..."

The show DID have great presenters, and a real enthusiasm for the subject matter. Now it is like watching an endless bad commercial, where the people on screen obviously have no idea what the script actually means. The only time taken seems to be arranging cleavage and making sure they all say how excited they are while not really listening to the conversation!

I am sure a lot of people have not bothered to watch any more. I keep the Tivo attached to the show, but I would not be surprised if the whole thing just winked out of existance in a short while. When the first firing round happened, it was out of the blue, and most of the presenters along with behind the scenes staff, were told to get out that same day. Perhaps normal for the TV industry? I certainly don't know. Could this be the G4 channel buying up competition and eliminating it? I don't know that either, but in this case, they were not catering to the same people. If the idea was to buy the TechTV channel along with all it's shows, and then wipe them away, giving them entire market share, then why do it with a channel that very much, seems to cater to an entirely different audience?

G4 just give me my TV show back ok? Please? Keep your teen can't-wait-for-a-loading-screen-otherwise-it-may-take-some-effort programming, and just give me back some informative people with valid opinions. Watching someone who KNOWS what they are talking about, and just getting on with what the geeks out there want to know, is where it was at. I wonder if SOMEONE might be able to pick up what G4 seems to have so intently messed right up, and make a show for an underserved population. If anything they have handed the original TSS format to anyone else out there that would like to mimic the show. I am sure there are a LOT of people that would tune in. Again I know nothing of televisions inner mysteries, but hopefully someone will read this, who may be able to do something about it. Slim chance I know, but a chance all the same.

Ok here is my take on who should be back... if you don't agree then let me know and it will make SOOOoooo much difference..

So as this is my site and I can say nearly anything I like, here is what would be nice, but ain't gonna happen. Sort of listed in order of preference, but switching the hosts around seems to work, or it did before G4 killed the show.

Alex Albrecht (FIRED) - Wonderful host, really funny, and was great to watch!
Kevin Rose (One of two still with the show) - Knows his stuff, if a little stilted most of the time.
Sara Lane (The other one of two still with the show) - Do I have to spell it out, and while she is reading this... hey give Kev a break ok?
Patrick Norton (Chose not to travel to LA for the new show) - Best served occasionally, in his own segments. Great opinions and always good to watch, until he clams up and then needs rescuing.
Chris Pirrilo (Fired a LONG time ago) - Uber geek and thats what we seem to need.
Dan Huard (FIRED) - I REALLY want to like this chap, and if his new site articles reflect what nobody has been able to see up to now, he could be a great person on my fantasy line up.
Leo Laporte (Fired a while ago) - Keep him on filmed segments, nothing live. The less he can deliberately ruin other people's segments the better.
Morgan Webb (Still presents X-Play) - Knows her stuff and is great to watch.
Adam Sessler (Still presents X-Play) - Odd choice I know, but he has a great style.
Yoshi (FIRED) - Keep him doing INTERESTING mods, none of that frying eggs on a CPU crap!

Current Hosts
Kevin Pereira - Not too bad, and of all the G4 presenters, I would have picked him if, as in this case, I HAD to.

Chi-Lan Lieu - Nothing to say about her but FCUK OFF!!





Dead, and probably soon forgotten :(