Talking to Richard yesterday, who was unable to play games in person on Friday and joined us remotely, I remarked that without him with us (with his lovely K750i) there were no photos of the night. It would appear that I spoke too soon though as I’ve just checked my phone and there are plenty. It looks like most of them were taken by me but I have very little recollection of doing so… that’s what happens when Jarrod brings the vodka.
So, plenty of photos and, according to my call list, I phoned Phil, Adina and Fuller several times through the night (or at least someone with my phone did!). Adina tells me that we did have a conversation of sorts which was hugely entertaining for her given my inebriated state.
Having said last time that we’d broken our record for games-night duration, we did it again. I went to bed shortly after dawn, and Teech didn’t go to bed at all (although he did have a sneaky power-nap at around 4am). All hail the Teech for venturing out at about 11am to find eggs, bread, bacon and orange juice the consumption of which made me feel almost human.
The last gamer left at 4pm Saturday, thus setting another BOfH-Games record: the first 24 hour session!
Middle-class Brits don’t really do patriotism, at least not to the same extent that your average American seems to. And as a rule we tend not to set our patriotism to rock-ballad style music complete with cheesy videos showing heart-warming scenes of children playing, or long haired men carrying flags while walking purposefully across beaches.
Like this guy.
If I didn’t know better I’d swear this was a spoof video. The entire thing is unintentionally hilarious. Gotta love the overly literal video too - “I saw the moon….”. Go and watch it and marvel at the idea that anyone could take themselves that seriously.
Oh, and to top it all I find that this Dennis Madalone guy was the stunt co-ordinator for StarTrek the Next Generation! Magic!
Oh, and I’m not knocking the guy’s intent - he appears to be making a truckload of money for his chosen charities - and I respect that. It’s just the lyrics and accidental comedy video I find amusing!
We’ve started pooling our Games Night photos. It’s mainly Richard and I who have added our collection, and we have pictures going back to some of the earliest nights in Basingstoke, the first (and only?) Hyde Close night, and even a Portsmouth evening. We’ve also got evidence of those nights with special Australian guests, and one where we actually had a girl gamer (they do exist!).
I’m getting worried about Beth and her unhealthy interest in toast. I even tried to call an intervention the other day, before getting sucked into the tempting buttery goodness of toast addiction myself. Continue reading ‘Toast is Life!’
As you know in a moment of weakness the other week I ordered the new MacBook Pro. The MacBook will come with iLife ‘06 (with all it’s lovely extra features) pre-installed, but on the same order I added another copy of iLife to upgrade the copy on my existing Mac - the uber powerful G5. As Jobs stated in his keynote the MacBook Pro won’t ship until February - but iLife was available on the day of the launch… so why do I have to wait until my MacBook ships before I get my boxed copy of iLife for my other machine?
Meh.
How old does one have to be before it’s safe to admit that you listen to Burt Bacharach? Not only that you listen to him, but that you actively sought his latest album having heard a track on Jools Holland. The track that brought on my premature aging was Please Explain which is the first track from his latest album At This Time. Continue reading ‘Please Explain’
I’ve spent the last few days building virtual environments to test various combinations of clusters and resiliency software. Most of this was done in VMware because it’s what I’ve always used for virtualisation. But, since I work for Microsoft, it seemed prudent to ensure we could replicate the environment using our own product.
So today I installed Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 Standard Edition. Well, that is I tried to install it, but towards the end of the install I got an Error 1402: “Could not open key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Msxml2.DOMDocument.4.0\CLSID. Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.” Taking a look at the key in question in the registry nothing looked out of place - the values weren’t corrupt, and the permissions were fine.
Since it was bitching about MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0 (a part of MSXML 4.0) I downloaded the latest version of it from Microsoft to see if I could fix the problem by rolling it over the top. It failed to install with exactly the same error as Virtual Server. Joy! What next? The nuclear option! Delete all the bits of the registry that start MSXML2. Did that. Reinstall MSXML 4.0 from the download (success!) and then try installing Virtual Server again. Success!
Horrah.
Of course after figuring all this out, I find that someone has been through it all before anyway. D’uh.
A little while after turning my TV on today it displayed a nag screen. Just like a bit of Microsoft software reminding you that there’s a registration card in the box and you ought to send it back to the manufacturer, or some shareware demanding to be paid for. You can see the message in the image (left). I’m not annoyed by it, I actually found it rather amusing.
I’ve been messing around with the TV and my media device today, trying to get the best possible picture out of it. Behind the TV’s nag message you can see the media device is now running in all its 720p HDTV glory. The picture is unbelievably crisp - especially in the menus - and the picture from HDTV episodes of Lost or Stargate Atlantis is fantastic. The xvid compression means some detail is lost (Lost, hah!) so they don’t look quite as good as the HD Apple trailers, but it’s still mightily impressive.
The HD trailers on the other hand are nothing short of awe inspiring. I have never seen definition like it, on any screen anywhere. Animated films created entirely digitally do best, so Ice Age 2 and Cars both look outstanding, whereas trailers for films like Aeon Flux - HD media sourced from film - look slightly grainy - an artifact of the analogue to digital scan process. I’ve been trying a lot of the Windows Media HD files and there’s some beautiful stuff; Apple Quicktime also have some fantastic clips including a montage of the BBC’s nature/world footage with a great soundtrack.
Next step: build another media device (linked to the first) and stick it somewhere else in the house (probably the kitchen). Not so much because I need media in the kitchen, but because I want to prove it’s possible to do it!
Are you worried about the erosion of our personal privacy? Is there a chance we’ll all become part of the catalogue?
Chris Oakley’s “The Catalogue” is a very well put together vision of one potential future… RFID tags inside everyone giving the authorities the ability to track your every move, and predict everything from your movie purchases, to what you might die of.
Update: Chris has made a higher quality copy of the file available at his new website.
That’s an alarming video to watch - at least this one is alarming and funny.
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