BinaryJam

Well what a Christmas, I actually got some good presents this year and one of them was Halo 3, I held off buying it just in case I got it for xmas.

All ready to go and kids cleared away I turn on my 360 on Dec 26th ready to become master chief for a longer than cursory glance as I did on the 25th.

Guess what ?

3 lights of death.

AGAIN

ON CHRISTMAS, AGAIN

This is the 3rd Xbox 360 to die on me.  THE THIRD !!!!!

I know I will have to suffer the stinkin xbox support line to get it replaced, I was told last time it’s now guaranteed till 2009 as its a recon.  But I don’t want a Recon, ready to blow up again, tell me otherwise and I’ll stick 3 broken xboxes down your throat.  I want a new working, guaranteed not to break down ever again spangly new one.  But just try dealing or telling the support people that,  its “do you want it repaired or not, that’s the choice”, in a tone that is generally take it or bugger off.

So anyone thinking of buying a 360 ?

DON’T.

Xbox Live is cool, the price is right, the games are plentiful.  But how many Christmases do you need ruining by Microsoft and it’s piss poor build and poor component design, two is enough for me, that’s right the last ones died Xmas Day.  I suppose I was lucky for it to last till boxing day.

Get a PS3 or a Wii, at least you can be sure it will last longer than 1 year each.  Unless of course you want to buy my second hand one when it’s replaced with games.

XBOX 360 YOU SUCK, and your little support line too.

** Update :

Before anyone asks, my xbox has lots of space around it, lots and lots of it !!!

I already know one other person who is on his 4th Xbox and I just met another who is on his fifth !!!

**

This is extreme case modding for laptops, need more space on that company laptop ?  Hard drive broken and you want to replace it with something a lot bigger ? 

Then try this case modding tip from Ashleigh.  Get a lovely USB slimline external hard drive and sellotape it and the usb cable onto the surface of the laptop.

No messing about with glue and custom forming plastic one quick and easy application and you have storage to go.

Over the past years its really bugged me the effect of light pollution when small I could see loads of stars, now I see very few.  Last night I went to my friends to look at the remnants of Comet 17P Holmes through the scope.  We were a little late to the party, a large cloud of barely visible dust.

I was looking at the stars trying to find perseus, steve pointing out various things.

“Look over there at that group pleides”.

“What that blurry group of stuff over there”.

“What!!?!?”.

“Hang on, this might help a bit”, puts glasses on.

“Oh my god, its full of stars!!!!”.

I hate wearing my glasses, I’m short-sighted, not a lot, but enough that I need them to drive, just about, some days I pass the test others I don’t. 

Stars being on essentially an infinity focus, I never really thought I needed glasses it’s not like I can see them any better is it ?

Wrong. Again.

All of a sudden Orion consists of more than seven stars, I can see the sword and the other bits clearly.  Pleides now looks like a collection of small stars in the shape of a shopping cart icon, all I saw was, well nowt really.

Many a time I would try and point things out to J and he would get confused, now I know why, he was seeing five times as many stars in the sky as I was.

Duh!

Going to get new glasses.

(see part one of tales of a dufus here ).

Now the tours over and it’s nearing the P.G.P. (primary gifting period).  I though I’d mention that I was lucky enough to be bought tickets to see Bill Bailey (of buzzcocks, black books, etc, fame) for my birthday. 

It was a really good show and well worth the, quite pricey, tickets paid to see him.  But after the show it was quite evident why the ticket price was high for, what I would call a “just below headliner comedian”, no offence, pot/kettle.  The reason must be to pay for the law suits he’s likely to get from, not mentioning any names, a large supermarket chain, (taps backside, chink chink) and auto-rescue company not to mention Swiss bank. 

I’m sure that taking the logo of said rescue company and super imposing the fiery flames of hell constitutes some kind of trademark infringement, albeit a very funny one.

You can’t see the live show now, but the visual set-up was something to be believed, five large screens placed next to each other, polyptych style, reminiscent of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly delights, certainly the hell component appeared later in the show.  This screen arrangement formed a large cinema style aspect that projected Bill and other video elements for the show on the screen and it was used to excellent effect.

The best part of it and what makes Bill a unique comedian is the songs. He has a knack of composing some of the funniest piss-take songs about goths.  The “snowflake on the eye of a deer” song had me rolling in hysterics first time I heard it and I was lucky enough to hear it again live and now the “Emo” song about a self-harming young lad who works in a coffee shop again, excellent. 

I will agree with some others that whilst enjoyable it didn’t have the energy of earlier shows (admittedly I had only seen on TV) but being there made up for a lot.

The worst part of the experience was, and this was nothing to do with Bill, was the dreadful acoustics of the NIA.  The echo of Bill’s voice bounced off the rear wall almost  half a second later so being sat in the middle I copped for equal amounts of live and echo.  It’s because of this I would desperately try to avoid the NIA for anything like this again.  If I have to travel a bit then so be it. 

Still I will probably buy the DVD and I would recommend it to anyone else, when it comes out.  You will be humming the shop song every time you visit I guarantee it.

Before our web filters are turned back on and I can’t post again, yes this is why posts are so infrequent, and when they appear the text is completely messed up and they appear in blocks of repeated 10 (thanks blogmailr, I use you no more).

I thought I’d bring your attention to this, http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html, I had not seen it till today but thought I had to warn you about the dangers of dhmo.

Hehe.

For those that have not watched this film I can really recommend it, for one it’s a great story and well acted, you really feel for Jude Law, well I did. It is also an interesting insight as to what might come since we decoded the human genome and to what use it may one day be put too.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and here may be the first of those well meaning intentions.   Found here are links to new services (actually after further reading  the writer comes to a similar conclusion).  Personal genetic decoding.

Yep.  That’s right.  Submit a genetic sample or more (some services can relate family inheritance)  for analysis and review the results online.  The primary goal of this being health related, your chances of developing particular diseases etc.

Whilst part of me says this is really cool, and it is, it is really really cool.  The tendency for our species to exploit for personal gain will eventually mean that this is the tip of the iceberg. 

The current decode time can be 2 – 6 weeks depending on the service provider.  As this is a profit making venture the decode time will decrease and decrease as the funds are put into the R&D to bring that time down and decode for cheaper.  This will eventually lead to a decoding process that is fast efficient and cheap.

So what’s the next stage? Are we almost there already?  Well I’d hazard a guess that given the testing process becomes cheap and fast, and it will, that life and health insurance will be first on the bandwagon.  It will be sold to us, the bulk of the population, as a cost saving exercise for the consumer, why should you ? A healthy person who doesn’t smoke and takes exercise have to pay in your premium to cover the risks of those who don’t ?  For a 15% saving on your premiums why not take our DNA profiling test and reduce your costs. 

Purely optional to start with of course.

The author of the original piece makes reference to employers not wanting to fork out for health insurance so sacking high risk employees.  Now being British that’s less of a worry but could our NI contributions be weighted based on genetic information.  We don’t see that currently but how many times have you heard on politics shows and other “talking” shows about making smokers pay a premium for NHS treatment of smoking related illnesses, or the obese, which considering the inaccuracies of the BMI is practically everyone over 25, paying more for healthcare ?  If these measures come in DNA testing would not be far behind. Once you set a precedent the gates open.

Looks like it’s coming so I’ll continue to teach my son about DNA (at the age of five) believe me it’s easier to explain where babies come from in terms like this than any other way.   He might take it up as a profession as I reckon there will be a lot of business in 15 years.

I recently installed microsoft family safety on my home machine. it was a complete pig to install. I have four users setup at home. me my wife and my son and a guest. the usual next next next installation waas fine but then the trouble started. all users of the system need a live account. I had to configure a live account for everyone I have not done the guest account yet. then I had to log in as each user and configure the settings for each user.

now consider me daft but the point of a system like this is so an admin can configure the system for the family. this initial setup is a pig nothing better can be said of it.

once up and running a user logs on windows and the system can be configured to auo logon to family safety handy fconfig for a five year old. but you also need to configure it to NOT timeout and log off. for young users this should be hidden from them.

once on it works fine the ability to control sites and contact lists for messenger works very well. the ability to view internet usage online is good too.

were else it falls down is the ability to add guests and restrict it to moderate usage.

users of family safety are either parents or children.

for a first stab its not bad but that install has got to get better. its got to stop trying to log in when it already is logged in or trying to. its got to hide itself from childdren. not in a secret spying manner but just the complexities of config.

hope it gets better soon.

Well after a long time waiting for insurance companies to cough up an sinsible amount, which they didnt. Trying to find a sensibly priced private sale and trying even harder to find a seller with half a brain.  The last one I turned up at his house to see a lovely car, but he had packed his other car and was moving up north that very night, so I had to have cash there and then, no time for a HPI check or anything like that.  I don’t think so. 

I gave up and went to a dealer.  We now have a nice 04 fiesta zetec.  Yeh yeh I know some of you might be saying nice and ford don’t go together, but cheap repairs and lower chance of insurance write off do go together.  Beside I like them, the wife loves it.

I even felt like I got a deal, not very often I feel like that at a main dealers, normally I count my fingers on the way out, but since they sold nothing for two months due to the weather they are falling over themselves to clear everything, my neighbour got 3k off the list price of a new mondeo and the price he wanted as trade in, it took him two weeks negotiating to do it but he got it and well if your looking consider a main dealer for a change and deal hard.

I am sick to death with the websense web filter. As of this morning wordpress has been added to the list of banned sites, so I can’t see my blog or scobles or any other wordpress.com user.

Just let the tool auto block everything.  Never mind that the tech team might find something useful on blogs.  So what’s next msdn blogs ? Hanselman.com, come on websense block them too. Hell just stop all internet access altogether. It’s not like I need to research what I’m doing. It’s all in the local help isn’t it ? complete with useable examples.

Getting beyond a joke lately.

Remember I posted the view from my window, well now we have a picnic area and flowers. 

Its a big improvement, this camera phone doesn’t do it justice really.

This is only our temporary project site the main office is glorious one of the best offices I have ever worked in.