Epic Fail

Today started with me failing to get the media centre set up as I wanted. There’s a plug-in for Vista Media Centre called media browser that allows you to stream HD content from a computer to an xbox. I found it also needs something called transcode 360, so I got that too. Got to the point where the xbox can see all the files I want it to see, but can’t play any of them, not even the stuff that’s not HD.

Next up the PS1 game I ordered from ebay arrived. It was tekken 3. or at least, it was supposed to be. It is actually a one-level playable demo. I have since spent a day arguing with the vendor about how hard they fail for not listing it correctly. the full saga can be found here.

I also got some software which is supposed to convert the video segments of DVDs to avi files. I wanted to be able to put a few episodes of various comedies on my phone for watching whenever I’m bored. The avi > 3GP converter converter works fine, so just need to get the source material. Only it doesn’t work. It shows you what files are on the disc but as it lists all the chapters as individual files, and doesn’t number them in any logical way, or allow you to preview them, you don’t know what files you’re looking at. So I randomly converted on of them and got a hideous, pixellated mess that was not even recognisable.

So I play a bit of Tony Hawk 1, which I have managed to download for the PS1 emulator and am looking forward to reminiscing with. The first level loads up fine, two tapes achieved, you’ve unlocked level two. click X to continue. Only it doesn’t fucking work does it? Try Tony Hawk Two – same thing. get to end of level fine, click X to continue, doesn’t work. Right, let’s try with the PS1 – USB adapter that also arrived today. It’s plug n play. doesn’t work. OK, we’ll try drivers. and a reboot. and setting the config in PSX to every possible variation of controller. Doesn’t work.

This is officially the shittest day off I have had for quite some time.

Spamming Youtube

Haven’t put much on here for a while, though I have been busy. I’ve been working on various things, not least of which is a new band. We haven’t really played much together yet and still kind of finding our feet in terms of style. At the moment it’s more of a generally creative joint venture, rather than the typical band thing. you can find out more over at reformed reality (which is where i’ve been blogging mostly of late).

This, coupled with the fact that i have a new phone with a decent camera, has led me to attempting to document all the songs i’ve written which i feel are fit for human consumption (there are a disappointingly large number of songs which definitely aren’t fit for other people to hear). I don’t have the facility to record them properly (yet) so am just doing simple one-take recordings to get them all down.

As they get recorded and uploaded, they’ll be appearing here:

twitpic

Chrizzles

No new posts cause I’ve been away for the festive season. Had a top time at our kid’s and got some really cool presents, though was a bit disappointed to find that the first season of the original series of Star Trek on DVD doesn’t include the pilot with Captain Pike, so have had to resort to downloading it. Got some really cool CDs including the new album by Amadou & Mariam, “Welcome to Mali”, which is brilliant. Also got “Dreams from my Father” by Barack Obama, which I'm part way through and it’s awesome. Got some cool Star Wars kits, including a Snowspeeder which is very well made and a Republic Cruiser which is about a foot long and very detailed. No idea where they’re going to go though.

haven’t done much in terms of web stuff on account of being away. Mark sent me a new mix that I haven’t had chance to listen to yet, but it’s Christmas-related, so I guess by the time I get round to it, it will be too late to put it on the site. I did help my brother set up a site for his father-in-law, but I didn’t actually have much to do with building the site, Andy had already built it, I just set  up the domain and the DNS and showed him how to upload stuff, corrected a few code errors and so on. Might keep an eye on it though.

Kind of nice to know there’s a site out there built from scratch by my brother. He’s very methodical about learning stuff. He basically decided his father-in-law needed a website, so got a book on html, read up on the various versions, and learnt how to write html. He basically feels that anything which follows a pattern of rules and logical steps, can be learned by oneself with the right study material and the determination to keep going until you’ve achieved what you set out to do. It was following this philosophy which has allowed him to do up his house to a standard that would make most people tremble. And we’re not talking about a small terrace house here, this is a 6-bedroom Victorian town house in Kidderminster, which is slowly being restored to its Victorian splendour by learning the required skills as and when the need arises - he even rewired the house himself. I sometimes wish I had that kind of self-discipline and determination, but as they say, each to his own.

Seem to have gone off on a tangent there. Ah well, that was Christmas, pretty much. Normal service will resume shortly. Thanks for holding, your call is important to us.

Chill Factor skiing taster

went to Chill Factor today with people from work for our Christmas do. I seem to have been absent the day they asked what everyone wanted to do and so I ended up with a "skiing taster". this consisted of ten minutes learning how to attach the skis, which could have been done in ten seconds, then queuing for 40 minutes to have three goes down the very bottom of the very smallest slope. Approximately the length of my living room. For this I spent 13 quid on waterproof gloves I will almost certainly never wear again. I got a taster of what it feels like to wear skis (the taste was "infuriating when you don't actually get to do anything on them") but that was pretty much it, other than a 5 minute sales pitch at the end to come back and do a whole day (apparently they let you ski if you pay for the whole day).

Epic, epic fail

New mix on Suga Suga

MarkB, who I maintain the Suga Suga site for has done a DJ mix set which is free to download. I got it this afternoon and it’s mint. He’s gonna do one every so often so I’ve made a download page and new image for the link on there, plus a flyer, which I’ve linked to the site so you can go get free stuff. Off you go then.

Fringe

Not much going on

Well, other than finally getting up to date with House, I haven’t really been up to much. I went over Nicki’s site today, cleaned up some links that didn’t have targets (I try to have all links to external sites open in a new window), edited the link back to my site in the copyright bit, so it just says “site by” rather than “developed, hosted etc blah blah” which was a bit cumbersome. Still trying to work out what to do with Mark’s site, though I did grab some pics off his facebook today to make a bit of a logo for him as an artist. Not sure yet where it’s going to go. Maybe on the “about” page, once I get Mark’s text, or maybe on an artist biography. Here’s the pic anyway:

Late Shifts

ok, so I’ve been on the late shifts this week and haven’t felt like doing much after work other than watching house. Also I was working 6 days straight and didn’t get a day off till today, which was mostly spent Christmas shopping. After dinner (and an episode of House with a *very* unexpected ending) I decided it was time to update Mark’s site. He released his first single on Friday, so I thought I’d add a link on the site to where you can but it. I decided to do a banner add:

Once I’d added that the rest of the site looked a bit crappy, so I’ve given it a bit of an overhaul: proper graphics for the links, swapped the crappy animated logo for a simple static one (might add another animated one if I can come up with something a bit better). Then I figured while I was at it I might as well create a page on facebook to try and promote it a bit more. I’m quite pleased with the couple of hours’ work and I think Mark will be too. Next step is an “about” page so I’ve asked him to come up with some text to go on there. And that’s about it for today – early start tomorrow.

Geburtstag

It’s my birthday today so I have mostly been building lego. YAY!