Found on The Oatmeal.

Thankfully, I upgraded from my first e-mail, which was a Hotmail account back in 2007, to my own domain. Yes, I have been massively computer literate for that long

It wasn’t just my videos that I noticed this. Partner videos, or videos in general that had revenue sharing enabled on them also didn’t have a right-click context menu available to use. I decided to have a look and see what the main issue was, and what it was that was stopping these videos from using the new features.

For this test, I used my Eirtakon 09 Smash Bros. finale video, as I shot that in full HD and uploaded the raw file directly onto YouTube without any editing.

The view for me in IE, logged in:

Since I thought it would be a browser issue, I then tried it in Chrome, logged out obviously:

Just in case it wasn’t a browser issue, I went ahead and tried it again in an InPrivate window in IE:

So what is it that’s stopping us from being able to view this info on our own videos while logged in? I can understand why it wouldn’t work on videos with revenue sharing enabled and that have an ad laid on top of the video, but for your own uploads is just a pain…

To take an example, Friday night I was going to bed and I set my computer (main machine) to go to sleep. Getting up in the morning, I turned it back on again and went through the day not doing much, however I did not notice my feeds updating with new items despite the fact that I know some feeds ALWAYS update during the night. Sure enough none of the feeds had been updated since last night. Now this was perplexing since I have it set so that my feeds update every 15 minutes (I follow a few heavy-duty feeds, mostly involving cats and food porn). Sure enough, with a manual refresh of the feeds they would start updating every 15 minutes again.

So after it happening to me again this morning, I decided to do a bit of investigating. Checking in Scheduled Tasks, I noticed the feed updating task – User_Feed_Synchronization-{whatever} – was there, but was only set to go off once a day, which is odd as I set feeds to update way more often that that. I checked the time associate with it and it was set to trigger off after midnight TONIGHT. Nearly another full day without feed updating.

I edited the task so that after it is triggered it would repeat every hour, and thought all was fine, until I thought that I may need to set the setting in Internet Options to update every hour as well, which I did. However, I then went back to Scheduled Tasks to find that the task had been changed and set to go off in an hour. Going back and changing the update frequency also changed the time the task would trigger at. This I found to be very odd. After a manual refresh of the feeds, I went back to the task again and noticed that it had been changed so that it would trigger again in another 15 minutes. Now it was clear to me what the story was.

Now since this was only really happening with my desktop and not my laptop, since I always put that into Hibernate, rather than sleep, I went and checked it as well. Looking at the task, I can see it still has the same daily trigger as my main machine set to go off at 1am every day, but it also had a one-time trigger set to go off 15 minutes after the last update. Whether it was this one-time trigger that made it go off and update after I turned my computer back on from Hibernate, I’m not sure.

I’m not sure if it’s a fault in the way the sync program sets up the next sync in the scheduled tasks, a fault in the way the task is set to trigger, or just a fault in the fact I put my computer to sleep at night rather than having it run constantly. I do know though, that it’s fucking annoying.

• My main machine runs Windows 7 Professional RTM on 64-bit, with IE8 32-bit, and Windows Live Mail.
• My laptop runs the Windows 7 RC 32-bit, with IE8 and Windows Live Mail.

Hopefully someone in the proper know will read this and provide a better explanation and why it still does this…

So, the overall aim of this is to create a bit of a home media center, consisting mainly of the PC and my 360 (or possibly a new one if I decide not to bother repairing this shit). While it may seem simple though, I have a few plans in mind which make it fairly complex. While I normally like complications, when said complications can dictate what bits I need to buy, then it gets iffy.

So, first off is my build. You can find it on Komplett here. The majority of it is obviously for the computer itself, but the extras are to deal with the fancy bits I’m about to go into excruciating detail over. Because I am that sad, and the fact that I like to go into details. You can kill the tab now if you want, I won’t mind…

…

…

…

Still here? Good.

Some of the main omissions you may be waiting to scold me about would be the keyboard, mouse and monitor – but I’m already sorted for those with my G15, G9, and some crummy 19" widescreen thing with speakers. And I’m good for an OS for the moment since I can get Windows 7 Professional from college via the MSDNAA thingy. Or if all else fails, I still have my USB stick with the RC on it.

Anyway, my main plan is to have the PC and 360 both plugged into the one monitor I have which I can switch between much easier than having to unplug a VGA cable and plug in the other one, which is solved by the video switch. Ironically it seems to be the same type of switch that was used however long ago in the café I used to work in for the one station that had both a PC and the 360 on it… The 360 will go into the monitor’s shitty in-built speakers for the time being, while I can listen to the PC via headphones, or maybe some external speakers. Or something similar.

Here’s where it starts to get a little complicated though. For the purposes of LP’s or gameplay streams, I’d like to be able to send my 360′s output to both my monitor and an input on my computer simultaneously, so that I can play and record at the same time without having to go via the computer per se, and deal with lag and increased response time in-game. For that, I can only assume that I’d need some sort of video/audio splitter, except I have no idea what I’d need to get to sort that out…

With that sorted the mish-mash of VGA and audio cables in the back would look something like this:

• PC VGA cable -> video switch
• 360 VGA cable –> video/audio splitter
• Video/audio splitter video –> video switch
• Video/audio splitter audio –> monitor
• Video/audio splitter video/audio–> PC
• Video switch –> monitor

Also, with the house here in Dunboyne, there are Ethernet ports everywhere to hook into the Magnet fibre line. Except that there is only one port in the room nearby where I want all this stuff to be. Also, I want my PC and 360 to be on the same network so they can sync and do Media Center and all that other shit. As well, I need wireless access for my laptop in the house, y’know, just for the handiness of being able to use it anywhere in the house if needed. Plus the fact my mom likes to keep the wireless key to herself for some unknown reason. Not sure though if a normal router would do, or if I’d need an actual network switch.

All this stuff is confusing me quite a bit, which is why I’m looking for a little clarity and help from people who do know what I’m talking about as to what else I’d need to get to make this dream a reality.

Also, it can’t really be much more expensive than what it already is. I may have a good chunk in the savings account, but I’m not that well off.

Anyone?

My laptop has been upgraded quite a bit from the bog-standard, college-provided, college-locked, college-restricted etc. thing. First big change was the obvious removal of all the college pre-installed tools I’d never use, and all the protocols that were on it, such as Novell login (why on earth would I ever need that). Once I had “liberated” my machine from that, it was onto adding more RAM to make it somewhat usable (from a single pathetic gig to three). And now the latest change is to add a brand-new hard drive to it.

If you are wondering why I’d felt the need to upgrade the hard drive, it’s really because the one that came with it was a paltry 60GB that ran at 5400rpm. And also the way it was partitioned, it had 40GB for the system, programs and everything – and only 20GB for all the Documents and Settings. Which was shite given how much crap I tend to have. At one point I had about 15GB free on the system drive, and was rapidly running out of room on the data drive. De-partitioning wasn’t an option as that would have required a complete wipe…

That’s where my external hard drive came in. I started using it to install space-heavy things such as some games, my HD video source files, and other things I generally didn’t use all that much. It worked fine, except for some reason my computer suddenly stopped utilising USB2.0 speeds for it, making it much slower to use, and more of a pain than a benefit.

Which is where my new internal hard drive comes in. A new WD Scorpio Black Edition 320GB 7200rpm from Komplett to be precise. I now have both plenty of space and speed to enjoy using. Being a brand-new hard drive though, meant that everything I wanted to be on it had to be thrown on from scratch. Enter the Windows 7 RC.

Now getting Win 7 onto the drive was a pain in itself, but to get to the point, I eventually managed to hack a USB stick I had to be bootable, then put the mounted Win 7 iso files onto it and booted into the installer. Plain sailing from there, and now my computer is essentially brand new with a new drive and OS to play with.

What was this (very messy desktop, I know…)

Is now this (still a way to go, a few more programs to re-download!)

Unfortunately, one side-effect of this means I have to re-subscribe to all the feeds I had before, since I’m using IE8/Windows Live Mail to deal with feeds. I only wish the Windows Live Toolbar could also sync my feed with SkyDrive as well as my favourites… So if it looks as if I haven’t been paying much attention to your site recently, just gimme a little nudge and I’ll get you back into my feeds list

In case there are more than one of you around (which I highly doubt), I’ll need to be a bit specific. The one I’m thanking is the owner of the Netopia router Model no. 2247-02, serial number 130375633424, MAC address 00:1e:5a:fe:4a:10, running software version 7.8.0r2, whose warranty expired on the 26th of August last year, on eircom’s shit 2Mb package. Your inability to have some common sense when it comes to wireless network allowed to to enjoy performing my usual Internet tasks with less stress than the old connection my landlady gave to me.

However, I do need to point out a serious flaw in your setup. One time while randomly browsing, your broadband went down and I was sent to the home page of your router. Usually, people shouldn’t be able to get here without knowing the direct IP of the machine, and even more so they should not be able to gain access without some sort of password. Obviously, you never set one, hence the ease at which I got in.

Now from here I was considering whether to just count my blessings that I was lucky to have the connection at all, or attempt to punish you for your mistake. I decided to be lenient and merely put an admin password on your router and forced a login before you could access the router’s menu. Obviously that didn’t affect you as the uptime of the connection was as solid as before. However, several times while trying to stream web shows, or buffer YouTube videos, the connection speed degraded rather badly, and I was tempted to start adding advanced options to your router, such as password protecting the connection, or restricting connections based on MAC addresses. However, luckily they sorted themselves out before long.

But tonight, while trying to watch the latest showing of Live Time with Jon and Jory, the connection speed was unbearably slow, and the connection to the live web show was severely impacted, so much so that I missed half the show through buffering. At that point I was angry and restricted access to your router to only the MAC address of my computer. But obviously that caused some issues with you, as what was obviously your machine, connecting from the .14 IP of the subnet, was disallowed access and you began to restart the router several times over, impacting my own ability to use the Internet.

As such I relented and removed the MAC restriction on your router, and now everything seems fine again as it appears you have put that problem down to your router or broadband merely acting up. However, impacting my surfing has made me slightly annoyed and unless I find something fun on the Internet (like Total Wipeout on YouTube!) to calm me down, I will completely sabotage your router before I no longer have any more need for your connection.

I may add a connection WPA key, I may enable multiple SSIDs all unprotected, I may restrict access to all computers that don’t have a MAC address I specify, or I may just out and out balls up your router. I think that for the best relations between yourself and myself, that you just disconnect for the next 24 hours or so, and position the router so that it is as close as possible to my machine, so I can get the most out of it until I no longer have any need for it.

Maybe this will teach you to be smart with your broadband and your router in future.

Many thanks,

TheChrisD

The annoying thing about this is that it’s almost impossible to find a solution to this online… I press the power button, the main power light, num lock, scroll lock, caps lock light up for about four seconds before dying. That’s all that happens. No sounds on things trying to initialize, nothiing on the screen, no response from the DVD drive or anything.

Now it doesn’t appear to be the end of the story. I went to the Dell site to try and get some live chat tech support (using the Clubs and Socs computer) and am told to enter my Service Tag…? My wha… Trying to open the “Why do I need my Service Tag” or something like that, and I get a window telling me it doesn’t work in anything other than Internet Explorer (these comps run Firefox on ubuntu). When I eventually do find it, I get told “We do not offer support for your product”. W…T…F…?

So now not only is my computer fucked, but apparently Dell don’t give much of a shit about it. I now have to wait until I get home bbefore I can get some screwdrivers to tear this piece of crap apart and figure out what the problem really is…

Not the best way to be spending Day 4 of RAG week – sitting in a room, typing up this thing on my N810 (excuse any shitty spelling – keyboard is tiny), wondering when I’m going to be back to full operating status again…

Note: I originally had something really good here, but then I went onto a site that caused an infinite loop of tabs opening, so I had to kill IE – and for some fucking reason WP didn’t save a draft in the meantime, meaning I’ve lost nearly the entire post! I’m not rewriting it all, I’m just going to post what it did save.

The Baby Bear Wall

I did tell you I was going to get pictures of people with Baby Bear. And I didn’t lie to you (the Rick O’Shea one is from a while before, but I’m adding it anyway!). See who got caught with Baby Bear!

1326|2801280|2801332|2801287|2801338|2801305|2801299|2801293|2801335|2801302|2801290|2801308|2801320|2801329|2801296|2801311|2801323|2801317|2801314|2801284|280

The Links

The cuts at Dublin Bus have started… Well now I most definitely cannot miss the 2320 back home weekdays…

RTÉ.ie has a Web Slice! It’s a pity it’s just for the Lotto resutls, but in all fairness it’s the first mainstream website I’ve seen to offer one! Before you start asking “WTF?”, it’s an IE8 only thing

Big Liam from Games Soc has set up an Irish traditional gaming podcast with a couple of other guys – The Adventuring Party. Oisín sounds very familiar to me though… Was he the guy running the Little Wars game at Gaelcon last year?

The Pics

I think a cartain Johnathan Paula and Jory Caron would like this case mod!

Sinéad found the perfect house for a first time buyer!

The Vids

Am I sadistic in finding this funny?

The Guild – Season 2 – Episode 10: Socializing Sucks

The Links

Komplett finally take Laser! Provided you’re picking it up from them…

Remember the days when .tk domains were all the rage? Well, John wants them all to go away…

Woo, IE8 is now into the release candidate stage! Although, it’s not as fun as I found out on the BBC News site…

John says his word on the whole Shorty Awards debacle with, what I consider, the worthless stupid blonde cow that is AlohaArleen.

The Pics

…weird.

The Vids

Stephen Fry talks about Twitter and his insane follower base.

The Guild Season 2 – Episode 9: Grouping Up
My favourite bit has to be Vork yelling Bladezz

Codex (Felicia Day) from the Guild helps some American celebrity n00b make a World of Warcraft character. Thus making him even more n00by.

If the season pre-finale is anything to go by, the season finale will be boring

So, what exactly is the problem? Well, the sound records fine, thanks to a very convenient male to male cable that goes from my DS’ headphone port to my computer’s microphone port. Both Windows Movie Maker and Audacity record the audio perfectly fine (although WMM at least allows the DS to play full blast, Audacity only likes half volume…).

The video, as always, is recorded fine with my very delicate setup of camera on bits of LEGO designed to hold it in the right place for recording. Everything imports and saves fine. Everything plays perfectly fine. The only big issue is that nothing seems to want to be in sync…

I add both the movie clip and the audio track to Movie Maker, sync up the start of them, and then play through to check it out. Seems fine, but eventually a noticeable delay builds up between the video and the audio. By the end of the 6 minute video, the audio is off by about two seconds at most. I tried this process twice, once recording using Movie Maker’s Narration function, and once using Audacity. Both were out of sync, with the Audacity recording going out of sync quicker!

That’s exactly what I don’t get. How can the audio and the video be out of sync, when both were recorded simultaneously as they were being played out on my DS? Why is there a very noticeable delay between them? Am I destined to have shitty audio quality, and possibly have to remain a patient person until an emulator comes out that can support sound, behave properly with transparency, and be able to self-record itself?

I have both sets of files on me, as well as the completed fail video of the first set, if anyone wants to try it out for themselves… I’m not uploading them for public downloading, as they’re around half a gig each… I might upload the fail vid to YouTube so you can see/hear for yourselves, if it will ever stop saying there’s an unknown issue with the file…

Case – Thermaltake Black Armour

It’s a case, it really doesn’t make much of a difference what it’s like. I originally set my eyes on this particular one, and haven’t changed since.

Komplett: €138.57
Dabs: €121.27 

Power Supply – Something…

A monster machine that has a case that dosn’t have an in-built power supply means I need to get one. The more wattage the better! Unfortunately, proved to be a case of the uncompareable

Komplett: €143.01 (850W)
Dabs: €163.19 (1000W)

Motherboard – Asus P6T Deluxe+OC Palm

Now, this one did change quickly. Previously I was going for the Asus Striker II NSE, but with the advent of LGA Socket 1366, that changed things a bit. For about half an hour. Then I decided cheap is still good. The other problem was that dabs didn’t have the NSE, only the Extreme, which doesn’t take quad-core. So, had to go find a new one… Which meant going back to the 1366 stuff.

Komplett: €406.00
Dabs: €298.90

Processor – Intel Core i7 Quad Processor i7-920

Well, given I’m moving into Socket-1366, the old Q6600 is useless. Which means I’m now going for the i7-920 – the cheapest of all of them! At 2.66Ghz, it beats the Q6600

Komplett: €282.00
Dabs: €271.29

RAM – OCZ Platinum XTC DDR3 1333MHz 6GB

The i7 processor, means I now need some triple-channel memory, which actually severely limits my options. I can either get Corsair CL9, or OCZ CL7. Which wins? CL7, duh…

Komplett: €165.00
Dabs: €186.39

Hard Drives – Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black 7200rpm 32MB

It’s a hard drive, duh. Although finding one that both places stocked and nearly agreed on the product number was hard…

Komplett: €125.00
Dabs: €107.38

Graphics Card – nVidia GTX 260 of some sort

The main problem with graphics cards are the amount of manufacturers out there making them. As such finding a match was hard. So here’s a comparison of the Gigabyte version (GV-N26OC-896H-B)

Komplett: €264.51
Dabs: €252.36

Monitor – Samsung 24″ Wide SM2443BW

I originally had my eyes on a 22″ version, but decided to go for a 24″ one anyway. This particularone has both VGA and DVI, whereas a cheaper version has only VGA. That’s it really.

Komplett: €289.00
Dabs: €241.16

Optical Drive – LG Electronics 22X DVD-RW/RAM IDE Lightscribe

It’s a DVD writer drive… woo…

Komplett: €29.12
Dabs: €19.44

OS – Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit OEM

It’s Windows. Big surprise there…

Komplett: €194.00
Dabs: €168.98

Delivery

Komplett quotes €60.22
Dabs quotes €34.95

Grand Total

Komplett: €2221.43
Dabs: €1972.21

Dabs works out around €250 cheaper for an ever so slightly more powerful build than Komplett. Some items, such as the graphics card, were very similar in price, while others such as the motherboard had a huge price difference (and yes I did make sure they were the same thing!).

As for delivery, well I can’t say much about either. They’ll both come eventually. Komplett have the niche in that I can get it delivered to near Blanchardstown for €7.50 to be picked up, but in this case that might not be as helpful.

In conclusion, I think we can safely assume that my original bookmark for Komplett has been replaced with one for Dabs.

PS: I hate you, Daniel…

• Wireless router, or failing that, just a router.
• Monster gaming PC rig, with as powerful an nVidia based graphics card as I can get for it.
• Huge (around 24″ or 1920×1200 resolution) widescreen monitor for said gaming rig.
• A smaller widescreen monitor for Xbox 360. Bought 15/1

A 19″ (1440×900 – WSXGA) widescreen monitor with some fairly crappy in-built speakers for my 360. It was €180 in PC World, and although I may have got a better deal online, I wasn’t bothered. :/

• One of those fancy Xbox headsets that play both the console sound and the Xbox Live chat.
• VGA-enabled capture card device for recording 360 using PC.
• Gerwehr-3 AEG Airsoft Rifle, with ACOG scope, suppresor, extra mags and all the other general gun mods
• P228/Desert Eagle Airsoft side arm and etc. etc.
• Companion phone with mobile broadband contract for my N810 Internet tablet.

I suppose that’s all I can think of for now… I may add to this list later on, or even throughout the year, but I highly doubt it

So, what exactly happened? Well, after the intro (and Alan‘s failure at getting his Mac to speak stuff) we were treated to some lovely talks from Tommy, Klara, David, and me; before we started a round of introductions on stage, with your Twitter/blog showing on the projector screen for all to click and follow

Pizza was next – it’s just not a meeting of teens and just past teens, and so nowhere near teens without pizza

More intros, a talk with Darragh and Stephen with everyone about why they blog, what do the blog about etc. – and to cap it all off, what has to be the most legendary talk from Ben (video below!).

Oh, and Phil won a 360, so now he has no excuse to not be doing anything when he’s bored of the Internet

I also picked up my N810 as my prize from Damien’s comp a while back, still need to get it to connect to my laptop somehow to get it online…

My supposed presentation

Yea, my computer sort of crashed onced I plugged it into the VGA cable connected to the projector (almost like it does when I connect it to my monitor), so the presentation I gave wasn’t quite what it was supposed to be…

Teencamp – Gaming Presentation

Obligatory List of New (to me) Blogs

(This is all based on those new feeds that are now in my feed reader and haven’t yet been sorted into the “Blogs” folder)

• Eli – 8/yo, recently started blogging
• Joe Johnson
• John Hickey – aka The Angry Hedgehog
• Liam Burke
• Matt Finucane
• Peter Tanham
• Popple3 – aka… I have no idea.
• Robert Hawkes
• Stephen Smith

Someone please remind me at some point in the future to add all those to the Links page…

Ben Kenealy’s Talk

Epic. Damien recorded it

The Plain Old Boring Default Blog Software Feed

About 80% of people have it set up this way. To quote… someone: “Don’t mess with that is already perfect”. And rightly so. This sort of feed means I can read the full story (or at least the full original story when it was downloaded) from my reader, both on and offline.

The only real disadvantage is the lack of formatting, or if I’m offline, pictures – but then again every feed has that and it can’t be helped.

The Excerpt Style Feed

This particular style come in two flavours – the automatic excerpt based on size, and the author-created excerpt. The auto-generated one is very annoying, especially if the first x characters don’t get the point across. But ones with author-created excerpts can be intuitive and very helpful. The Formula 1 feed tends to use the author-created excerpt option and works quite well. Although very few places rely on the softwatre automatically making a feed item by making an excerpt, those that do fail epically.

The Ambiguous One-Line Feed

These feeds are generally the most annoying type of feeds, since it’s very hard to understand the concept of the item from the single line they provide you, usually meaning that you HAVE to click through to get a gist of the story.

Some one liners are worse than others. Ones that aren’t necessarily too bad include the A1GP feed, and the BBC News feed. But one that is just plain nasty is the Bungie.net Blog feed. Usually 3 words are all they post in the feed, making it impossible to tell what it’s going to be about just from looking at the title! (Since usually the Bungie Blog is full of shit)

…

So, in short (or long) – summarizing your feed is not good for your feed readers. It’s no excuse if you’re a big game company, a news site, or otherwise – you obviously have no idea how best to bring the news to those people who care.

Well, really it’s about the person playing the ROM hack that makes the difference. If you don’t already watch raocow’s Mario ROM hack videos on YouTube, you really need to start.

You don’t watch them for the gameplay, well kinda. You really watch them for his insane commentary that comes as he is playing the games! Watch this one and you’ll see what I mean. Plus, this level is really cool!

For more craziness, visit raocow’s channel.

So before the upgrade, as you all know, the main page of the blog was located at /blog. And all posts under it started with /blog. That was all fine, everything worked well together and peace was abounds

Now, it’s a different story. First thing after upgrading, everything would work, except the blog home page. /blog would cause IE to say it can’t display it, and Chrome would complain about a redirect loop. All posts, archives, categories, tags etc. were completely fine, just not the main page. Changing the permalink to /rants, as it is now fixes the solution, but now going to /blog leads you to that post I made about the joke K8 and Maxi had about being sent letters by the “Blogging Commission of Ireland”, since it’s permalink starts with blog.

The underlying point is this, and this is the big thing – on my server, I don’t have WP in the root directory, but rather in the /blog directory. Up until half an hour ago (or so), everything worked fine and dandy. Accessing a file that actually existed in the directory brought me to it, and anything else was treated as a permalink and processed. Now, it’s just fecked.

I’d say the simple solution must be to just change the folder in which WP resides, so that I don’t have to change the permalinks to everything and have Googlebot try and re-archive everything all over again (as it was when I originally made the blog a “sub-section” of my site). But I still want to know why on earth I’m having this issue in the first place!

UPDATE @ 16:47 - Right, core directory re-named and blog home re-permalinked. WPG2 gave out a little though, since it’s too stupid to use the siteurl function…

• The Stuff Gallery. If WPG2 doesn’t work with 2.7, then my lovely gallery which works well in tandem will fuck up, causing any posts with gallery embedded pics (Platinum Playthrough posts especially!) to throw errors, as well as the front page.
• The comment form. Apparently, the commenting system has changed drastically in 2.7. And it doesn’t help when the codex doesn’t have any details on how to use the new “simple” function to retain all the bits and bobs from the way it’s setup right now. I like my comment form to be nice and complicated, unlike most people!
• Lots of behind the scenes plugins. It is possible that things like Donncha’s Tweet Tweet, Statpress Reloaded, Twitter Tools etc. might stop working. All three of which would really not help if they stopped working. Without Tweet Tweet, I have no way of getting all those Twitter replies through to my phone – without Statpress I have no way of tracking all your visitors here – and without Twitter Tools I can’t make it a little bit more known that I have posted some utter garbage that I call a rant.

I think the bottom line here is to give it a shot and see what fecks up. I expect a lot of things to go wrong, so if it goes off without a hitch then I’ll be very surprised!

The First Decade 1.03

If you own Command and Conquer: The First Decade on PC, then this semi-official (by that I mean it’s an unofficial patch, but it was recognised by the C&C website and posted on it) patch will be of great use. It makes a few changes to Tiberian Dawn (skirmish, but AI doesn’t have bases – N64 and PS1 missions selectable), and RA1 (I forget…), but the big bonus is that you can now play the games without needing the DVD in the drive!

To me that is brilliant, which means I can now procrastinate even more in college (even more than when all I had was OpenTTD), and all I have to do is plug in my external HDD…

Grand Theft Auto IV

This be a mini-review. It’s alright, but the gameplay seems to advance quite slow, and it will take a lot of gameplay to acquire most of the 1000 Gamerscore that is available from it. I might stick at it, but it’ll take a while to grow enough on me…

Red Alert 3

I’m also playing this as my second 360 game rental (huzzah for Gamesenders’ two games at a time package!). This is the only way I can play RA3, until I buy a decent comp. It’s going pretty well, but it’s nowhere near the same as playing with a keyboard and mouse. Plus, I think the mechanics are changed slightly, as you still build per production building. I’m not sure whether this is the same on the PC version (old school: more building, decreased time – or Generals style: each building has a build queue) since I haven’t played it or seen it being played yet. Right now, methinks Empire is overpowered.

However, they were nice to nerf rushes, by decreasing the speed of the economy (only one ore collector and Refinery can really get money from an ore mine) and availability (all factions’ most basic tank need either a tech advancement, or an expensive building.

Forza Motorsport 2

I am owning
About 60% of the way there towards completing all Gold medals in all race events. Then all I’ll need to do is buy or sell another 7 or 8 cars in the Auction House and then earn 1 million credits from online games to 1k the game (I’m presuming I will be able to buy all the cars as I complete all gold medals)

To the boring details!

6pm – Porter House Central. Eat, drink, chat, drink, drink, failed attempts at flirtation, drink. Circa 9pm – Soundcheck, South William Street. Act as rent a crowd for Rick O’Shea.

And that’s pretty much the details of it. But more to the point, it’s the people that are going to be there that is the most important bit.

People to see again, after first meeting at the Hop House

Alexia, Darragh, Elly, Marie

People to see for the first time, but know on Twitter

Laura Czajkowski, John Williams, Anthony

People to see for the first time, and I have no idea who they are

Alan O’Rourke, Dave Davis, Justin Mason, Niall Kitson, forbairt, prendio2, Dan O’Neill, Neil Ward, starfire

I couldn’t be bothered linking the third list… Read the full details, as well as finding all links on Jason Roe’s site, especially since he’s the one who arranged it

UPDATE (15:54): Apparently Neil Ward’s no longer able to go, because of his other half