March 2007

I know what I will be doing at lunchtimes in my car soon…

Ok.  I admit it.  After bitching about Vista the other day, I have installed it tonight.

The main reason was that as people around me are getting it and asking me for help, I thought I had better get it too.

The version that I bought was the Vista Home Premium edition, but it came with that annoying UAC turned off by default, but also came without most of the desktop wallpapers, sounds and games.  Who ever made the ISO obviously stripped it down to fit on a single CD.  So I will be looking for another version somewhere else and maybe using that now that I know it works.
Seems ok at the moment.  Certainly fast enough on my p4 2.8 with gb of RAM and an on-board Intel graphics card.  It failed to get the drivers for the onboard network card which is a bog standard Intel one, the onboard soundcard and my Belkin PCI Wireless Card.  I used an XP driver for the wireless card and then updated the rest direct off the internet.

One good freakin excellent thing is that my Samsung TV now works in widescreen mode!  I spent a few hours the other night trying to force XP from 1024×768 to 1366×768 but it would not play.  But Vista seems to allow the screen to work at 1280×768!  Odd.

So, at the moment I am happier than I was the other day with Vista.  The interface still seems very odd and feels a little like the bastard son of OS X and Linux but I am getting used to it already.  Plus, as my MacBook is my primary machine, its not so much of an issue.

I popped to Toys-R-us today to buy yet more Pokemon cards to add to my Sons collection of over 500 (most were donated though… I’m not that stupid (or rich!)). We still don’t know how to play the game yet though.

Whilst I was there I got my eyeballs on the Playstation3 demo cablnet! A large Sony (40 inch+) screen was running Hi-Def demos of the PS3’s capabilities such as Blu-Ray, movie trailers, photos and games too. Some of the games looked amazing and smooth, such as Motorstorm - but others like “Metal Gear Solid 9 - Trouser Snake gets zipped” looked a bit PS1 for my liking.

I was immediately thinking..

Wow! This really is better than my Xbox 360! I might get one. Hmm.. £450 for the console.. how could I afford one… Sell the 360, and my Nintendo DS Lite…

Then I leant over to take a look at the console itself only to read, printed on the top in plain white capital letters “EXAMPLE CONSOLE ONLY”. Not only was the shiny black beastie not a real PS3, it meant that everything I was seeing on the video was also fake!

I then realised that all of the employees at Toys-R-Us were looking at me and they had little radio receivers in their ears like the FBI use - and they were all talking about me! Even the CCTV cameras were watching my every move. I tried hiding in the Hot Wheels isle, but some of the customers were also obviously “in on it” too and were casualy watching me whilst pretending to look at boxes of Yahtzee Texas Hold-Em Edition. One of them was even pretending to be texting on his mobile phone - but was obviously taking video surveilance footage to send back to the scientists at Area 51 who have been after me ever since I accidently hacked into their mainframe whilst looking for crackz and serialz for my BBC Micro.

I had to ditch the kids in the Scoobiez section and pull over a display of new TMNT action figures in order to escape the shop and then call my mate Jesus to come and place a protective “Faith Bubble” around me so the police and social services could not track me using that anal alien implant they gave me.

I’m invisible. You can’t see me. By the power of Jesu.. oh.. hello officer..

You just can’t trust anyone! Its all lies!

Today I had my first hands on experience with Windows Vista - and it left me with rather a bad taste in my mouth.

I was installing a nice new 2.8ghz Core Duo Dell PC with 1gb or RAM which came shipped with Windows Vista Home Premium installed. The persons old PC was a gnarly, 1990s pentium brick running Windows 2000 which had developed a hard disk fault. Luckily it would still boot and the person managed to get all her critical stuff off it before I arrived.

My first impressions of Vista were quite good but I soon got bogged down with the much slated User Account Control (UAC) interrupting my every move with a “did you really want to go into that control panel item?” type message that you have to click through every time you go anywhere near something configurable. I can see why people are saying that although this is “good security” it is the weakest point as people will just turn it off!

Even though the machine was brand new and pre-loaded with the typical stuff you get on an OEM PC, it soon gave a few error messages and application crashes along with nice new “fwips and dings” instead of the old windows “gnnnnn!” error. Its all just glitz really. Not much appears to have changed from XP. Even when using Vista you notice that although the folder icons in explorer look different and no longer have the + and - next to them, and instead show you a little arrow in the bottom corner of the expanded folder, other parts of the OS still have the XP and Windows 2000 style icons. To me it looks like the retarded bastard son of Linux and XP running some sort of shell replacement like WindowBlinds.

After 4 hours of transferring files between the old PC (via USB1.1) and the new one I just found the Vista interface to be confusing and complicated. Too many menu items, too many different images representing slightly different types of folders and little inconsistencies all over the place. I even plugged in a Logitech USB webcam only to be told that Vista could not install the drivers. It kindly suggested that I could go to the Logitech website to get some drivers, which I did, only to be told that the Webcam was not Vista compatible. I went into Device Manager (after again telling the UAC robot that I really did want to do this as I clicked on the freakin icon!) and right clicked the device and updated the drivers. It went off and downloaded some drivers off the internet and worked immediately! What the hell was that all about?

I also ran into issues installing Office 2003 from a CD. UAC asked for my permission to run the setup program which I gave. This is normally followed by a menu application where you can choose what to install (Office pro, Visio etc) but this complained when I clicked on the link to Office Pro that it “needed elevation” to run. I thought I have already done that though? It did’nt stop me going into the folder and running the Office Pro setup.exe direct though.

I was thinking of upgrading to Vista Home Premium on my desktop PC but I think I might hold off for now. Coming back home to my MacBook again was like purging my soul and banishing the demons from my brain.

I have just fallen in love with Apple all over again.

I got an email on Friday from Rapidshare.com in Switzerland asking me to remove my Rapidshare Blogsearch page. Here’s the email:

To whom it may concern,

we have recently become aware of your website

http://megatao.com/rapidshare.php

and your use of our company’s intellectual property on this website.

The trademark “Rapid Share” has been registered both in the European Union (trademark number 004753828) and the United States (trademark number 78717634). By using our company name/logo on your website you are therefore violating our company’s right in the trademark “rapid share” as well as our company’s copyrights.

We demand that you (a) cease and desist using the aforementioned material and (b) remove any content that concerns Rapidshare.com.

We consider your website an attempt to harm our business. If you insist on continuing your illegitimate service, we will take legal actions.

Best regards,

RapidShare AG - Abuse Team
abuse@rapidshare.com
|2695|

RapidShare AG
Gewerbestrasse 6
CH - 6630 Cham
Switzerland

Not being one to laugh in the face of authority or cause a kerfuffle, I contacted them and we agreed that I could change the name of the file to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. They also suggested that I add a disclaimer in case I get in trouble for supplying links to copyrighted material. So thats next on my list too.

So Rapidshare Blogsearch now becomes RSS Link Search. I have set up a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file to allow people to still navigate directly to the page and carry on using it without a hitch.

It kind of came at a good time as I am working on something else a little bigger and better, so I will now concentrate on that rather than re-designing the page as I was going to do. Shame though as I was going to easily get enough from the Adsense earnings to pay for my next year of webhosting. Still, it will still be there “bringing home the e-bacon”.

All I need now is for Index, the catalogue company (now Argos) to email me asking me to remove all my index.html and index.htm files and I will truly be screwed!

I had a long lunch today.  Excellent you might think and picture me swanning off to the local pub with my work chums for “soup in a basket” and a pint of “Old Gnarly” frothy ale and a good slagging off of the managers.

But no.  Today was different.

I went to the funeral of a good school friend who had suddenly died of an (unknown) heart condition.

Jon Warren was the kind of guy that everyone liked.  Happy, funny, clever and really just a jolly nice bloke.  I have to admit that the last time I saw Jon was about 18 years ago after we finished our A-Levels, left sixth form and started to find our way into the “real world” of work and university.  That period is kind of a blank for me really.  I have a real grey area about who went to which University and who did’nt.  I kinda know why that grey area exists - but thats another story.

Needless to say, I never saw him after that point but his love for life, cars and skateboarding has left a stamp on my personality too.  I will always be a “skater” and thats probably down to him!  Tim, Jon and I spent many hours building skate ramps from stolen wood, board sliding the bench round the back of the house and then getting pissed at Tims mum and dads house.  Times I will never forget.
From the stories people read out, it sounds like he had an excellent life and had achieved so much, influenced many and brought happiness to alot of people.  I’m just kicking myself for not staying in touch with him!

It was also a time for me to be able to see some of the other school friends that I have not seen for a very long time.  The good thing was that even though we have been apart for so long and our lives are so different, we were instantly back in character and still great friends.

Best wishes to Jon’s family, partner and friends during this terrible time.
And Jon, this is for you.  It’s kind of apt I guess….

OPM Heaven Is a halfpipe

A recent quote from my 5 year old son:

“Owen in my class… he’s a vegeterian… He speaks English though.”

Just thought I would share that with you all!

If you have got an Xbox360 and have not yet purchased Gears Of War then… I must chainsaw you to death!

Its no wonder that this game has sold several million copies and has practically “sold the console” to those non-believers. As 3rd person shooters go, it’s certainly the best I have played. Evar!

I was chatting to some opponents and team mates the other night about a video I had seen a montage video of kills with the “torque bow” weapon. Well here it is:

Nismojoe - Gears of war torque bow montage

This chap (Nismojoe) is pretty amazing and I would hate to meet him online - not that I am that good anyway though!

Check out his other GoW videos here