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Saturday, November 27, 2004
Am on the way home from the Leadmill. A great venue for the first night of their UK tour. I have never seen the Leadmill come alive so much. Also, I have never seen am attempt in hose down a hot audience festival-style, but with a single, oft-filled 500ml bottle of water. Topped off with a dirty burger and my current blue tram home, a great evening!
Much recent legislation has antagonised me. It seems that our politicians really do have too much time on their hands. If things carry on I will probably soon need a permit to breathe (and probably have to pay for it). I'm not going to rant on, but this is another fine example.
Great news! The collective UK male's interest in news and current affairs is certain to be re-awakened following the return of Sophie Raworth to BBC News presenting duties. Read a discussion here. I particulary like fauntleroy's comment in which he manages to get Sophie Raworth and Sarah Beeny into the same post, clearly a man of taste.
See some (not too recent it has to be said) piccies of Sophie here
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Nope nothing's been added for a week - I've been busy.
Jane and I took a quick (freezing) trip to Edinburgh to see Nick and Rachel. An immensely enjoyable time - men went to see Scotland v Australia rugby in Glasgow, ladies went shopping. I had a couple of close shaves with some cheese, but survived. Now looking forward to New Year up there.
In other news, I finally got my Xbox modded. Been meaning to do this since receiving it as a truly excellent Christmas gift from Jane last year. What does modding entail I hear you cry? It's like this; the Xbox is a great games console, however it is capable of much more. A mod-chip allows the Xbox to run software other than that originally supplied on it. It falls into dodgy legal ground, but let's forget about that for the moment. My modded Xbox needed a network cable to link it to the other computers in the house. I forgot to bury one in the wall when I put the other cables in so had to work out how to install a new cable with the minimum of disruption. "No problemo" I thought, "the Sky+ man recently drilled a new hole in my wall, I will use that, run the cable down the outside of the house and into the cellar. Hey Presto, no ruining of interior wall!"
How wrong I was.
The hole was approx 0.000000000001mm too narrow (or so it seemed). Hours were spent with a variety of various tools (powered and manual) trying to get this to work (in true "man"-determined style). Eventually we came to the cellar. This is where it got nasty. I wanted to route the cable in through the (boarded up) coal shute. On removing the boarding I was greeted by an intriguing sight. The 5ft x 4ft x 8ft (approx) cavern was completely filled with books and packages slowly rotting in the damp confines. Closer inspection revealed that the books were all catalogues (Great Univeral, Freemans etc) addressed to people all over Sheffield, all still in their wrappers. The many packages were all things ordered by people all over Sheffield; clothes, bookes, calculators, shoes etc. Curious.
Removing the rotting literature and associated goods was no pleasant task, but two car loads to the tip later and I was able to get in there to thread my cable through.
Hurrah!
My problems did not end there though as I still had to configure my Xbox. This took far too long, but is now nearly complete. I am using the latest version of Xbox Media Center.
Instead of just playing games, my Xbox now does the following:
Automatically connects to the Net and scrolls the latest BBC News headlines on the screen when it is powered up
A couple of button presses gives me a 5 day weather forecast for Sheffield, courtesy of data from the Weather Channel
Allows me to view all my digital photos (and zoom in, do slideshows etc)
Lets me listen to all my music stored on my network (never have to find a CD again for the living room!). It even talks to iTunes and gets all my favourite playlists!
Lets me watch movies and other video content downloaded from the Net
Using a program called Xlink Kai, it lets me play my games against other people in the world, over the internet (I've not quite got this bit fully working yet, just need to do some config on my firewall I think).
Is fully workable by Janey as I splashed out on the remote control for Xbox and all the buttons are quite intuitive.
Without doubt, this is the best thing I have ever done and provides my living room with functionality that would cost a lot more to achieve in any other way. I love it. I am upset with Tim and Christian for not marching me down to the mod-shop sooner and will be having words.
So that's it. That's what I've been doing. Yesterday was mostly spent on the sofa eating snacks and enjoying my new toy. Expect some snack reviews shortly...
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Git He has my name and his website looks nicer than mine. One consolation is that his link to his CV doesn't work. Ha.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Friday, November 05, 2004
If you're reading this, Welcome! If you've come from the old site at http://hotphil.blogspot.com you may be wondering why I moved the site. To hopefully cover this, here's a little FAQ:
Q: Why have you moved your site?
A: Because I wanted to. I've owned the eggsareevil.com domain name for a while, but have had various troubles hosting a site from it. With a significant amount of time/effort/wine/swearing/new hard drives/time/effort/wine I think I've got it licked now. I've learnt a hell of a lot and that is what drove me. Granted, I'm not yet an expert, but I'm getting there!
Q: I have a link to the old site in my website or in my browser's Favourites, will I have to change it?
A: Yes. Bit of a bummer, but hey, life's a bitch
Q: The new website doesn't appear to display correctly, what can I do?
A: I've tested the new site using Internet Explorer 5.0, Internet Explorer 6.0 and Firefox 1.0 at resolutions of 800x600 and above and it seems OK to me. If you think something looks amiss let me know - either use the Comment feature at the bottom of this post or mail me at blog@eggsareevil.com. I fully accept that this site isn't (yet) fully standards compliant and could do with the feedback if something's wrong.
Q: I don't like the new colour scheme, can you change it?
A: At the moment, tough. I quite like it, but am open to suggestions for the future. Send me feedback at blog@eggsareevil.com.
Q: Where's the picture of the turns-your-tongue-blue Monster Munch gone?
A: It was on a hard drive that accidentally got formatted. I need to buy another pack and rescan it (obviously Jane still won't knowingly let them in the house so it'll have to be a sneaky operation)
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Just a little test post to see if everything flows through to eggsareevil.
And it looks like it has, which is good while I continue work on the new layout etc
Monday, November 01, 2004
The following have kept me amused whilst I wait for the [-insert expletive here-] machine next to me to work out which hard drive I want it to boot from:
This would surely be cruel in Sheffield (but amusing to watch on the downhill stretches)
Get BIGGER balls
The kind of thing Homer would invent
