Archive for May, 2006
Numbing
Installing Windows is really like a little party in your computer, the excitement, the anticipation… or in the real world, the mind-numbing tediousness of the whole process. There is at least some comedy to be had from reading the marketing messages it comes up with during the install, of how it’s going to change your computer experience etc. Although since the machine had no operating system and then had one once the process was finished, I guess the experience would be quite different.
I had to do the whole thing twice, due to a whole h: drive debacle the first time that I won’t go into, but it was remarkably quick, only 20 minutes or so each time. And now it’s done, the resulting system is far faster than it ever was before, with, ironically, Alertbear being the only software not quite working correctly.
Elsewhere, I’m still an asshole.
Bugger
I’m sad.
I think I’ve just made a huge mistake. Bugger.
Spout
I have spoken about my flooding problems before (or flodding, as I always seem to type it first time around), but today I think I solved it. It’s simply a tap that isn’t being turned off properly.
The spout on the bathroom sink heads upwards at an angle, meaning that when the tap isn’t completely switched off (and I mean the tiniest, smallest amount here, so much so it’s hard to notice it’s even happening) the water actually runs back down the underside of the spout, rather than downwards into the sink. This causes water to pool on top of the sink, before slipping down onto the top at the back and ultimately onto the floor. Soaking, as it did again tonight, a good section of the floor and the bath mat.
It’s nice to finally find the culprit. But I don’t half feel a twat for not noticing earlier.
Years
Chatbear is six years old today, birthday wishes are being collected here.
It seems almost ridiculous to me that it’s been going for so long, I don’t quite understand where all that time has gone. It’s quite a difficult thing to quantify, the sheer idea that I started all this back in 2000. This blog has been running since 2003, and even with all the written evidence, all the things that have happened since then are hard enough to deal with, yet Chatbear is almost a full three years older than that.
The original hope was of course to have Chatbear v3 finished and ready to go by now, but alas I’m not quite there, which is more than a little disappointing. My mood is improved slightly by the fact that had progress has definitely been made in the past month, and much of it is starting to look quite special. Not quite as much progress as I would like, but then there’s no decent TV for the next four months, so what else is there to do.
Six years folks. Could anyone have predicted that.
Broken
I’m playing a movie on the computer and it crashes. It happens quite a lot, the video just freezes up and it’s followed by a number of weird errors, including the inability to even open Task Manager to properly kill the program. In an attempt to solve this, I downloaded a new graphics card driver, uninstalled the old one and rebooted.
Blue screen. Unmountable Boot Volume.
Oh crap.
The XP CD, recovery console and eight hours of chkdsk later, I got “unrecoverable errors” after 62% complete. Perhaps not the best Saturday afternoon I’ve ever had. Thankfully I was able to reboot and have it load up this time, giving me a chance to copy everything onto another drive before I lost it all. Real men, as you know, never backup.
Ultimately this has resulted in me having to buy a new drive, ruining my plans of being profitable by month end. And it also means that mid-week I’m going to have to reinstall everything from scratch, destroying in one fell swoop four years of setting things up exactly how I like them.
I hate computers.
Clock
Let’s just clock this day up to experience and move on. A whole load of nothing going on. At least nothing I can remember.
Statue
*WARNING, LOST SEASON 2 SPOILERS FOLLOW*
If you’re a follower of Lost, it’s difficult to watch the season finale and not find it crammed to the brim with new information, answers and interesting new twists. Not a single scene is wasted in either of the two episodes, as it tells the story of Desmond and how he came to be on the island, Locke and his wish to stop pressing the button, Michael and his unrelenting goal to get his son back, and Sayid, Jin and Sun’s trip to help them should trouble arise.
Whitmore Labs! The statue on the beach! “We’ve found it” The rock behind the doors! The empty huts! The boat driving off! The explosion! The little nod and wink!
With an ending that blew the doors off most of the popular theories about what the island is, and took the series in a potentially new direction for next year, it’s fingers crossed that they manage to keep the quality high again, after a year of 50/50 performances.
Whale
I thought I’d post a track which I think nicely sums up what category a good chunk of my musical taste falls into.
It’s called Louise (S
Continued
*WARNING, 24 SEASON 5 SPOILERS FOLLOW*
Five months after it all started, 24 comes to an end in suitably exciting style. It was clear before the finale started that there was no way they could wrap it all up within the last two episodes, and thankfully they didn’t try, instead opting to be the first season where the story will be continued next year. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if next season was set just a week after this one.
There was a real sense of satisfaction as the president went down, and the smile from the first lady, and especially from Mike, was classic stuff. What came after that was just as you expected, and really had been waiting on all season. But so much was left hanging, and zombie Tony never returned to save the day, leaving it not quite as perfect as it could have been.
As the clock counted it’s final seconds back towards the hour mark at which we started, the fact it’d be almost eight months before it started up again didn’t exactly fill me with joy.
Radio
According to a report published by an independent think-tank, the BBC should sell off Radio 1 and 2 as soon as possible.
Ignoring for a second the obvious joke about what think-tank rhymes with, their argument seems to rest squarely on the fact that both stations are too good for the commercial alternatives to compete with and that when sold off, both would do fine in the commercial sector.
But if they had to rely on advertising, wouldn’t they just end up with all the same problems as the rest of the industry, except with a smaller budget to fight with? Gone would be the documentaries and current affairs shows they currently offer, replaced instead with whatever was going to bring in the advertising money. Which, as all the other stations will tell you, is an ever dwindling amount.
So again, what’s the point? It seems the only result would be to ruin the favourite station of 60% of the audience, while doing nothing to attack the root of the problem, which is simply that less people are listening to the radio. Spoiled as they are by the sheer number of other entertainment mediums now available to the average consumer.
Running
For some reason I was at an Aberdeen football game. I ran down the hill towards the stadium before the game, watched what seemed like an incredibly quick game, then ran back up the hill again to my car. Then I realised my car was actually at the bottom, and ran back down it again. Each time I ran down, I passed the tram line on the right hand side, and constantly had to pass through glass sided stops at incremental points along the way. The second time I ran down, gates at each of these stops had been closed, slowing me down.
Ultimately, this was all nothing but a dream, but a very real and vivid one. I awoke with my heart pounding, slightly panting, and with a sweat indiciative of a great run having taken place. I rolled over and looked at the clock, 1:20am, not much more than an hour after I went to bed. Twenty minutes later, after much effort in calming down, I was asleep again.
With suitable control, is running in your sleep a valid form of exercise?
Invaders
When I was at school, BBC Micro computers were what we got to use, and it was on that hardware that I played the best version of Space Invaders I’ve ever come across.
I’m not exactly sure what reminded me of this tonight, but a quick hunt across the internet and I not only managed to find a nice BBC emulator, but the very Invaders game in question.
Load up the emulator, choose yourself a decent screen size from the menu, load the SSD file as disk 0 and then hit Shift+F12 to launch it. Fast, wicked difficult, high scores in the comments.
Sheep
I’m not normally one for screensavers, but I’ve noticed a bit of screen burn on one of my LCDs, and since I’m getting bored of that XP logo bouncing around the screen I decided to pay more attention to them. The best one I’ve found is Electric Sheep, which I can run on both the Mac and the PC and therefore get the benefit of watching it on all three screens.
I get the impression this thing has been around for years, so I’m probably the last to hear about it, but if you’ve got a broadband connection, your computer is regularly idle (like you leave it on all night) and you like watching colourful, swirly patterns - then this might just be your day.
Common
Here are the top ten passwords chosen by Bearkey users…
1. password = 265
2. 123456 = 214
3. 12345 = 139
4. qwerty = 106
5. halflife = 72
6. 12345678 = 65
7. monkey = 61
8. letmein = 57
9. hello = 48
10. killer = 40
No real big surprises. The number one position is held by exactly what you’d think it would be held by. But number 7? Or number 10? What kind of users do we have? Simian loving murderers apparently.
If your password is one of these, perhaps you should consider changing it.
Declared
I seem to be having problem with sleep again, not so much getting enough at night, as I do seem to be making it through the dark hours without waking up too much. But come mid-afternoon (I’m on holiday this week) holding my head up just becomes impossible and an hour on the couch must beckon.
I was at the doctors yesterday and I’ve to continue with the medication for at least another six months, and since I’ve been declared medically healthy in every tested area, it seems like it’s simply the medication that’s doing this to me.
So it’s fatigue over headaches until Novemeber at least then.
Licking
At what point did society decide they were fed up licking things? As I sent a letter today I peeled the stamp off a sheet, and the envelope was pre-glued and simply needed folding over. Gone are the days of licking both in order to make them sticky.
So I ask again, at what point did we decide that was too much hassle? As if saliva is too much of a precious commodity that we couldn’t bare to waste it any longer.
Clearly there are scientists out there with a slightly warped perception of what the planet needs in order to function correctly. Can you imagine the development money that probably went into these inventions, that allowed envelopes to come pre-sticky like that? I bet the people behind it were really proud of themselves too.
Wrapped
And so, after seven seasons, The West Wing has wrapped up it’s final episode.
It’s been said by many people that the show is best viewed in two eras, seasons one to four, the Sorkin era, and seasons five to seven, the post-Sorkin era. Going back and watching early episodes now, the difference is plain to see. Sorkin shows were lighter, filled with more humour, with sharper dialog, tighter drama, and a family feel to the cast that make it some of the finest television ever to grace our screens. After he left it stumbled through it’s fifth season, before finding focus in the sixth and seventh through Josh’s discovery, campaign running and ultimate election of the new president, culminating in the inauguration protrayed in the final episode.
Last episodes of any show are never going to live up to their expectations, it seems unlikely that they are going to be a shining example of the best the show has to offer. With this in mind, it’s always best to watch these things with a slight sense of dread more than anything else, worried that they’ll taint years of good work with a lacklustre finale. Thankfully TWW managed to hold it’s head up high, with a conclusion that while not perfect, had enough good to outweigh the bad.
I would have liked to see more of Sam, especially some sort of discussion with him and the president. I would have liked to see the new president properly thank Josh for what he did, or at least for Josh to get more recognition than he has done. I would have liked to see the main cast come together somehow, even if it meant a crappy TV cliche, just to see them all in the same room.
What I did like was the Sorkin cameo, getting to see all the assistants, including the president asking his real-life daughter about her mother, the president mentioning riding a bike (a reference to the first episode), Mallory arriving with the napkin, the look on Santos’ assistant face when she looked into the oval, or Donna when she was shown her new office. And best of all, the presidential swapover montage in the White House as family pictures are removed and paintings swapped.
I’ll be sad to see it go, those early seasons lend themselves so well to repeat viewings, and they always helped me when I was down. Let’s hope Sorkin’s Studio 60 can fill the hole.
Ignored
On Google Video there’s a Charlie Rose episode from a few years ago where he interviews Aaron Sorkin and some cast members from the West Wing. Knowing as I do that Charlie’s interviews are often good, I’d like to buy this show, along with many others on there. But I can’t, because Google Video only sells to US customers.
PBS will sell me the show directly, on NTSC VHS tape. But it’ll cost me somewhere in the region of $40. Plus shipping.
I don’t think the Internet is really bringing us together, it’s just giving people outside the US the chance to see how ignored they are.
Watchful
With E3 being over for another year, here’s a list of games I think might just be worth keeping a watchful eye on.
Gears of War looks promising, but it’s going to need to prove itself a bit more than what I’ve seen so far. Ignoring the framerate issues, because I assume those will be fixed, the gameplay at the moment does look a bit repetitive, hide behind item, pop up, shoot, hide, repeat. Dead Rising has looked fun since it’s first appearance, and there’s no change there. Viva Pinata looks original and very non-Microsoft, two things that make me sit up and take notice. Just Cause looks huge and crazy, while Super Mario Galaxy looks just like I’d want a next-gen Mario to be. I also can’t help but be intrigued by Rayman Raving Rabbids.
Supreme Commander looks like it might finally solve one of the biggest problems in all recent strategy games (that being able to zoom in really close is nothing but eye-candy, and a useless position to actually play an RTS from), while Crysis was perhaps the best looking game of the show. And finally, let’s not forget Spore, which is unmatched in it’s ambition, but needs to prove to me that a game is actually in there.
Oxygen
Ken Kutaragi is a crazy, crazy man…
“This is the PS3 price. Expensive, cheap — we don’t want you to think of it in terms of game machines. Because the PS3 is like nothing else.”
Really? That’s not the impression I got from your press conference Ken. Do go on…
“Price setting is always a headache for us. No game machines are comparable to the PS3, which is neither a genuine game console, home electronics [product] nor a personal computer. It is a new kind of product.”
Yea, that’s right Ken, whatever you say. Do you ever get the impression that Sony are so far up their own asses they’ve starved the oxygen from their brains?
Peter Moore from Microsoft actually hits the nail right on the head…
“People are going to buy two. They’re going to buy an Xbox and they’re going to buy a Wii… for the price of one PS3.”
