Is there food?

Wordpress 2.0.1 has been released, and dutifully installed here. If anything breaks, let me know :)

When it’s a prequel and sequel. Honestly, I feel as strongly about this as I did the Texas Chainsaw and Dawn remakes. Although I quite enjoyed the Dawn remake, the Chainsaw remake is an absolute crime against horror cinema. It’s one of the few films I’ve ever thought about walking out of. But I digress.

Are remakes more acceptable than something which claims to be a continuation? The idea of a prequel and sequel to something as magnificent as Black Christmas strikes me as insane. The recently released travesty that is Day of the Dead 2 marks another hideous continuation of a classic, made for no other reason than to cash in on the current zombie revival. The Black Christmas continuation is certainly not going to be as theoretically fashionable as zombie movies, given that criminally few people are probably familiar with the original films genius, and I really hope that the motivation for the film makers is a love of the original. I can’t help but get a really bad feeling about this though…

My Media Center PC continues to move slowly towards full capacity.

I’m still not quite there though. Last night I did some more fiddling. I’ve found that setting the s-video output on my newly installed Nvidia card to NTSC actually produces a better picture than using PAL. I’ve also found that using the MCE Config Reset tool I discovered online has put the “toolbars” back to where they should be. Divx video works brilliantly too, producing a perfectly watchable picture on my Sony Wega TV.

The only problem I have now is that the Sweetspot TV card doesn’t pick up digital television terribly well through my aerial. In actual fact, I’ve noticed that certain channels on the Wega’s IDTV aren’t quite right, with distortion and flickering being quite visible. My conclusion: I need to fit a new aerial. Hopefully once that’s done, the Sweetspot and IDTV will function correctly, and I can start to record some programs on the Media PC.

But I’m getting there. I’ve ordered a Media Center remote to make life easier when watching video on there. If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll probably leave the Media Center in place just to stream and copy media to, rather than record on. Hopefully my aerial upgrade will

My verdict on DOA4: Single player: Bobbins. In order to beat the final boss, I simply removed my left hand from the d-pad and spammed kick. More advanced tactics didn’t work. Online play: Bobbins. In order to cope with lag, someone had the bright idea of making the game run at 1/2 speed. Or 1/4 speed. Or slower. This, essentially, makes playing DOA4 online a complete waste of time. I’ve yet to have an online match run at full speed. Graphics: Lovely. Yes, it moves well, and it looks lovely on an HD set. But… Clipping: Bobbins. There’s a terrible amount of clipping. The “realistic” hair does some very odd things at times, and the characters glitch into each other quite a lot. This destroys any illusion of graphical goodness. Overall verdict: Terrible. Good graphics (and bounce) do not a good game make. Quite how this became the best selling game in the UK, I don’t know.

It’s an odd title, but 30 Boxes is one of the neatest web apps I’ve seen for a while. It’s basically just an online calendar, with Ajax up the wazoo, and that oh-so-trendy Apple shade of grey. Play with it for a while though, and you can tell it’s had some thought put into it.

You can add “buddies” to your calendar, and allow them to see items in your calendar that aren’t marked as private. I can already see a use for this, because I can enter all my upcoming gigs (watching, not performing) in there, and all those lucky people who are coming along can see when they are. You can also store private appointments, so those personal little things aren’t broadcast across the web.

Something I’m sure an awful lot of bloggers will use is the “share my calender” type functionality. This allows you to drop a block of html on your site, and it will scrape the next few entries from 30Boxes and display them for the world to see. I just know this is going to be a popular feature.

The site is quick, elegantly designed, and isn’t terribly clunky. It’s actually quite minimalist; it doesn’t throw hundreds of garish buttons at you, and hope you click the right one.

The only thing I think I need to do to make this a perfect solution is to find some way of syncing it with my desktop calendar (which is Outlook at work, and doesn’t exist at home). The ideal would be to enter things either on my phone or 30Boxes, and have the middleman (Outlook) sync them up. Wouldn’t Activesync plugins be nice?

UPDATE: Beta 3 is out!

I read over on the IEBlog that a new version of the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is available. I like to call it the IE DevBar, and you can get it [here](http://www.microsoft.com/down loads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e- 2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en).

Update - I’ve now had a chance to actually play with the thing, and it is good! It’s a significant improvement on the earlier version; everything feels quicker, slicker, and more stable.

I’d been somewhat plagued by slow performance on my Vario over the last few days. The thing started taking forever to respond to key presses, which got very tedious, very quickly. Launching the inbox to send a message locked the device for a few seconds while it caught up with itself.

I’d read a while back that there was a way of stopping Activesync from randomly launching itself, but hadn’t really paid it much attention; Activesync wasn’t hurting me, so why should I get all medieval on it? With this in mind, when my Vario started to come over all sluggish, I’d try killing Activesync and see if that helped performance. Funnily enough, it did.

Next step, find the solution I’d come across before, and make it so. The process is basically: Go into Activesync on the Vario, create an exchange sync with a dummy server (so 127.0.0.1 then) and once that’s done set both options to “manual” in the schedule dialog. In order to be able to access schedule, you need to have an exchange server configured - once you’ve set the two options to manual, you can remove the exchange server again. I did this about a week ago and so far haven’t had anything like the slowdown I had before. Which, in my book, is a good thing.

Activesync still launches when I connect the phone to my PC, although it does hang around again afterwards, which is quite annoying. I’ve installed the very handy vBar so I can kill it swiftly and with minimum effort, which I highly recommend (vBar, not killing things swiftly and with minimum effort).

This is very, very cool. An MMOS - massively multiplayer online screensaver!

I managed to watch the second episode of this four part series last night, and was even more impressed than I was after the first. Patrick Stewart plays the role of Ian Hood perfectly. It’s actually very refreshing to see him playing a character who’s far more human than the two roles he’s most famous for. Ashely Jensen is also utterly superb, and it’s thanks to both of these actors that the series manages to be as affecting as it is. I really warmed to Jensen after seeing her in Extras; I had high hopes for her future career, but you never know how it’s going to turn out. Based on her performance in this, she has a very bright future ahead of her. It’s also refreshing to see a female body-guard character, rather than the stereotypical knuckleheads :) It’s genuinely one of the most unsettling, thought-provoking and yet humorous series I’ve come across in a while. It’s a shame there are only the four episodes in this run, but I’d hope that Jensen and Stewart had enough fun making it to do some more. Stephen Gallagher’s writing is also particularly strong here - I’m familiar with his particular brand of bio-horror from dramatisations like Chimera, but have never really read any of his novels. I initially thought that Ian Hood might have been a character he’d written about before, but I can’t find any mention of him in his previous books. So Eleventh Hour gets a big thumbs up from me. The state of British television is a beautiful thing to see at the moment. This, Hotel Babylon, Life on Mars, and things like Hustle and Spooks are all proving that we can produce excellent, character driven drama of at least equivalent quality to the US, and sometimes more.

It appears that, over the last few days, there have been a few posts that have somehow become trimmed. I have no idea how this happened - I can only think that Wordpress or my server was playing silly buggers - but I’ll try to fix any that aren’t complete (if I can remember what I said originally) and promise to try to make sure I check for completeness next time I

Just kidding :) Next time I post I’ll make sure it’s all there.

Dead Rising is a funny thing. The more I see of it, the more I look forward to it. And yet the more I see of it, the more I fear it might be crap.

I’ll be buying it regardless. Even if I [this video](http://www.gametrailers.c om/player.php?id=9419&pl=game&type=mov) is the last one I see of it, I’ll be buying it. Why? Here’s a brief list of highlights from that video:

• Hordes of Romero-style zombies

• Zombie + Shower pushed through head = blood shower!

• Hordes of zombies with cones/dustbins/etc on their heads

• Braindead style splatter on the main character

• Shaun of the Dead style plate throwing (record throwing too? I hope so)

There are several other cool things in the video too. I highly recommend you download it and see for yourself.

I can write this now. It’s taken far longer than I thought it would, but I’ve finally got digital television in every room of the house. After two weekends worth of leaping about in my loft (thanks Dad), drilling, cabling, connecting, disconnecting, swearing, exchanging, and fiddling, it’s all working. Having my wife run up the stairs to excitedly proclaim that “there’s no interference when I use the microwave” (curse those wireless video-senders) makes it all worthwhile!

My main problem was the damned Philex SLxM (or SLx4M or somesuch) masthead amp I bought from Maplin. To cut a long story short, the third one works ;) Attempt one provided us with an amp but no instructions (there’s some special jumper voodoo required to get the thing working), attempt two yielded a faulty box (as we eventually found out, after much fiddling of jumpers), but attempt 3 rewarded us with a crispy digital picture in every room.

Lessons learned:

• Never say “we should be done in 5/15/24/30 minutes/hours”.

• Never say “this bit should be easy”.

• You need the braided copper bit around the outside of the coaxial cable (this is a source of genuine hilarity among those “in the know” isn’t it Ashleigh/Mark?).

• Ethernet cable = better than wireless.

• You can connect an extension lead (with a us-UK adaptor on the end) into your ADSL microfilter and have it work.

• The correct jumper configuration is every open except the powered output and the input :)

So, in answer to the question I asked myself before I started this whole job, “yes, it can be done”. I’m 22 miles away from my digital transmitter, with clear line of sight, and a Triax Unix 52 aerial in my loft gives me a damn fine digital picture.

So the aerial install is done and my Media PC has existed quite nicely for the last week, recording random crap whenever I asked it to. I had one tense moment when the machine rebooted itself overnight, but a quick check of the event log showed that this was “intended functionality” - thanks Windows Update! (Which makes me wonder, if I’ve got something scheduled to record at 3am, and Windows decides to reboot, will it? Or will it wait?)

I bought a nice, capacious 300gb Seagate drive, and have transferred the contents of my 120gb IDE drive across (currently my Dell has a 160gb SATA and 120gb IDE drive in it) with the intention of harvesting the IDE drive for my Media PC. While 120gb isn’t ideal (a recording of Freebie and the Bean the other night takes up 4.2gb) it’ll do. If all else fails, I’ll stick a USB2.0 card in the Media PC and hang an external drive off the back. My newly installed piece of Ethernet cable lets me do two things: copy content from the Media PC to the Dell in less than a day, and frees up the slot my wireless card was in for the aforementioned USB2.0 card.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to back my iTunes music folder off onto another drive (a 120gb drive I’ve got in a USB2 caddy) which will now be placed in a drawer and never used again.

So what’s next? Stick the 120gb drive in the Media PC, move it back downstairs, and show the wife how to use it, that’s what. I need to start using this thing to replace my SKY+ box now that the aerial work is done. I may well pick up another card for the Dell too.

Oh, and if anyone knows of a decent tool to convert dvr-ms files into something more agreeable, let me know :)

Seeing as I’ve got a draft post called “Brits” I ought to get it posted. I created the draft prior to watching the show (as a reminder to post something, see) so here goes:

KT Tunstall - Yay! A sensible decision amidst a veritable ocean of mediocrity. While she might not be the best thing since sliced bread, Tunstall is living proof that a modicum of sanity still exists. To see an artist who performed at the Cambridge Folk Festival win a Brit is a remarkable thing in itself, to be honest.

James Blunt - WTF? Why does this guy sell so well? He seems like a nice enough bloke, but who would honestly make a conscious decision to listen to this crap?

Coldplay - Oh, how you tease me Chris. “You won’t see us again for a very long time”. Honest? Can I have that in written triplicate and witnessed by a panel of solicitors?

Kaiser Chiefs - Make them go away please.

Chris Evans - Should be commended for the “so Boy George, did you really call the NYPD out while you had several bags of drugs under your bed?” comment.

Madonna - Not really digging the post Ray of Light image, and is it just me, or did her acceptance speech sound like it should have been coming from Buckingham Palace on Christmas Day?

There, did I miss anything? Oh yes - Prince. The jewel in an otherwise terminally wonky crown. It’s like all the last few years of crap never happened :)

I’m not afraid of Sky, I just really don’t like them very much.

[Ashleigh](http://www.nakedcleaner.com/index.php/2006/02/20/a-good-article- about-sky/) brought to my attention an article on The Register called Don’t be scared of Sky. It’s an interesting read, and contains these gems:

“Churn (cancellation) levels are higher than ever, and the cynical majority in the industry reportedly believe the new portfolio of services is a cunning ruse to improve its subscriber statistics as it seems to have reached a difficult commercial plateau in customer acquisition. When you phone Sky to announce your intention to leave, the company’s desperate customer support staff will do virtually anything to keep you (word to the wise: if you want a few months subscription free, or to bump up your package, call them up and tell them you’re getting Freeview or NTL instead). The UK isn’t quite the same dynamic as the US, with its hundreds of millions of households. The reasons for the slow down are simple - it costs too much, the content is getting worse by the day, and you can get better elsewhere.”

“What do I want to watch? Probably less than 10 per cent of what Sky’s dismal, failing waste of a platform has to offer.”

It would appear that I’m really not the only one getting rid of Sky, as I suspected (and hoped, to be honest). I’ve heard tales of digital aerial installers being busier than ever as more and more people decide that chucking £45 away on a raft of channels you’re never going to watch is pretty dumb. The one thing Sky have got that makes their position particularly potent at the present time is Sky+; It’s just so damned convenient. “Punters” love it. It’s really, really easy to use (even my 9 month old son has inadvertently recorded TV programs before), and you don’t even need video cassettes!!!

However, the problem with Sky+ is that it’s an antiquated, badly implemented, featureless slab of dung, that is prone to temperamental bouts of sulkily not recording your favourite programs, a sluggish program guide, and buggy software updates. And the customer is expected to pay for the privilege! I loved my Tivo box in a way that was probably not appropriate for a piece of hardware, but with good reason. It was elegant, reliable, and an absolute joy to use. Why did I get rid of it? It didn’t integrate very well, and Tivo’s presence in the UK is non-existent. I feared that they close down their EPG service, and I’d be left with a box that did very little, and was worth even less. Microsoft Media Center is probably the next best thing (if not just as good - time will tell), but it’s just not ready to stick in front of the average “punter” yet. I really hope that one day it is; it’s a fantastic product, and if Microsoft could essentially “bottle” it and provide customers with an affordable, reliable out-of-the-box solution it would be a real winner.

I leave you with this thought from The Register, and it’s one that I’d like you all to take notice of:

“Now isn’t the time to be scared of Sky, it’s the time to attack while it’s vulnerable.”

I posted a list of upcoming UK cinema releases the other week, but I’ve been reliably informed that I missed a few. Here are the titles I missed, with release dates where possible (I missed them is because I used IMDB’s crappy release dates page, and none of these are on there, so I’ve estimated a release date where required):

• Tamara (On general release in the US at the end of February, so we’ll see when we get it)

• Silent Hill (Appears to reach Europe around the end of April, hopefully it will reach us too)

• Hard Candy (Some time after April)

• An American Haunting (7/4/06)

• Young Hannibal (No idea)

• Omen 666 (6/6/06 - how clever! ;) )

• The Visiting (22/09/06)

• Snakes On A Plane (late August, early September)

• Grindhouse (Around the end of October by the looks of it)

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre : The Origin (Appears to be getting an October release in the US, and early November in Australia)

• Pan’s Labyrinth (France are getting it in November, so maybe we will too)

• Skinwalkers (US release in December, I doubt we’ll get this in 2006)

I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. My first night of properly using the Media PC, and I’ve hit a bit of a snag.

I set Wanted to “record series”, and I noticed that the first episode was complaining that there wouldn’t be enough space to record it. There quite clearly is - there’s 100gb of space on the disk. While trying to investigate further, EShell (which is basically Media Center) crashed. “Fair enough”, I thought, “these things happen. I’ll try again”.

I then set Supernatural to “record series”. The same thing happened, and EShell crashed. I restarted Media Center again, and whilst navigating around the scheduled recordings page, EShell crashes. This happened fairly consistently. During all this I was recording the first episode of The Apprentice, and credit to Media Center, it has managed to record the whole program, with (by the looks of it) minimal hiccups.

I’ve also checked the event log, and there are large numbers of “Failure opening database connection” and “Exception opening connection to database” errors. An hours worth, in fact. Funnily enough, exactly the same amount of time that The Apprentice was recording for.

Back in a moment…

…Now that The Apprentice has finished recording, it appears that everything is working fine…how strange…

I will be keeping an eye on this one.

I was just flicking through the screenshots of Dead Rising on C+VG and was quietly entertained by them (the clown with twin chainsaws looks interesting). This particular one is a thing of wonder though:

[Team Xbox](http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/10310/New-Voice-of-Lara-Croft- Revealed/) are reporting that Eidos have made an annoucement regarding Lara’s new vocal chords. British (of course) actress Keeley Hawes (best known, by me at least, for her role in Spooks) will be on talky duties. Not a bad choice, although I still think Alex Kingston should have done it…

I’m seriously thinking about giving the site a new look; I think I’m bored with this one…

I’ve created some potential banners here. If you read this and you have any thoughts on good ones, bad ones, or ideas please post a comment.

1) I give you Shhh cards.

2) I give you “[the granddaddy of all quantum wierdness](http://video.google.c om/videoplay?docid=-4237751840526284618&q=quantum)”.

This is a stunning little video that’s certain to make your head hurt, but is highly recommended viewing. I’ve just watched it twice! I found it via [digg](http://digg.com/science/Amazing_Google_Vid- Quantum_Physics_Double_Slit_Experiment), which I’ve heard an awful lot about but haven’t really paid very much attention to. Until now…