Qwesto's Corner

Closed...

2008-07-20T07:52:00.002+01:00

I can now be found at MrQwest.co.uk.

Come take a look!

All change...

2007-08-16T11:10:00.000+01:00

So, it's been nearly a month since my last post. There's been a fair bit going on in recent months, what with my holiday to Majorca with H, getting engaged to H, funeral for Kennedy etc, so it's all been a bit hectic.

It was also my birthday last weekend, and I was lucky enough to get several 360 games from H (DiRT & Forza 2 - yeah baby!), and I got a new laptop from my family!

In addition to that, I've also purchased some Hosting, so it'll be all change from here. I'm currently re-modelling this page and it will be migrated over to my new host, along with several other sites which have been hosted elsewhere.

Time to merge everything, and store it in one place.

I'm not sure if many people do read this page, but if you are reading it, I will be back soon, hopefully with some quality content.

Thank you very much, good night.

What happened to Flock!?

2007-07-12T14:18:00.001+01:00

I'm sure I've touched on Flock on my blog before. It's a modern browser built upon Firefox, but includes a ton of 'social' features. You can write blog posts from the GUI, you can view someone's flickr feed, or drag pages / pictures onto 'your shelf' which would save them for later..

I last checked out Flock at version 0.7. Its yet to reach v1 but it looked promising, however, I rely on a few Firefox add-ons to allow me to do my web-design work, and most of these add-ons would not work with flock, so I stuck with firefox until Flock progressed.

So I was naturally interested when I read on the flock blog that version 0.9 had been released. Not seeing 0.8, i was expecting a few major features to be included. I wasn't wrong.

The one thing I immediately noticed was the interface. It honestly looks like something AOL would produce. It looks far to cluttered and messy. It looks like they've tried to fit a button for every feature within the interface.

I liked flock's previous interface. It was clean, it was uncluttered. It just worked. This time though, I was immediately turned off.

However, most of the features were still there. I noticed the flickr feed (or media stream) as it's now known. That also covers YouTube too!

Flock also allows you to create blog posts within the browser.. Neat trick that! But i like Windows Live Writer, even though it takes an age to load!! Grr

Flock also includes an uploader, which uploads images somewhere. Not too sure where though as it says i need a photo account, which i have no need for. Meh!

Im glad the Shelf is there. Although it's now called 'Web Clipboard' (What's with renaming everything flock!?)

Rss Feeds seem to work nicely, but im happy with bloglines. Work's a treat that!

The other big thing with Flock 0.9 is 'My World'. A page which displays a yahoo search bar, some new bits of news from the RSS feeds, and a list of the most recent favourites added... It also shows thumbnails from your favorite media that you've starred. Handy i guess.

All in all, im quite disappointed with the way Flock has turned out. I'm not sure what's gone on with the UI but it seems very very messy and off-putting! I'll still keep an eye on Flock, to see how it progresses but I'll stick with Firefox.

Check out www.flock.com for more info!

Don't tease me like that!

2007-07-12T13:33:00.001+01:00

I logged into my Gmail this morning to find an email titled 'Your Xbox Console'... This is what it said...

Your Xbox Video Game system has been shipped! You can expect to receive it in 2-5 days. Thank you for your patience and get ready to get back into the action!

Oh man, I gotta wait some more? D'oh!

If that's not enough, the E3 coverage is coming thick and fast, and I've learnt that 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (teh original!!?!) is out now on the marketplace (complete with HD & achievements ftw!! I remember standing in my local games shop looking at the box wishing I had a Sega Mega-Drive (Genesis to the stateside readers!). 400MS points ain't too bad either!

I've just gotta wait '2-5' days for the box to turn up, and I hope it still has the faceplate I forgot to remove =\ eeep!

Tidy up your bookmarks toolbar with these tools

2007-07-10T10:26:00.001+01:00

I don't know about you, but when I find a site I want to visit again in Firefox, instead of adding it to my bookmarks (or tagging it on del.icio.us), I simply drag it onto my 'bookmarks toolbar'. I like my links to be on hand. I want to hit a button and go. i don't want to hit a button, wait for the bookmarks toolbar to appear, and then have to hunt through my bookmarks looking for the site I want to visit. It'd be quicker to Google it!

This is all well and good but what happens when your bookmarks toolbar fills up? Well you get those stupid little arrows at the end, which defies the point as you may as well use the bookmarks in the first place!

I Recently ran out of room at work, and then stumbled on a little trick which I'm going to share. Several of my links on my toolbar had long names, for example, the 'French Sports Club - Forum'. I could abbreviate that down to 'FSC' by right-clicking > Properties and renaming the link. OR, because it uses a favicon which is recognisable to me, I could remove the text altogether and just leave the favicon on my toolbar!

Fantastic!

But, I soon realised that not all the links had favicons which transferred to the toolbar. For example. Facebook has a favicon. visit facebook.com and notice the white 'f' on a blue background next to the address in the address bar. That's great, but once you drag it onto your toolbar, the 'f' disappears! All that's left is a standard white rectangle which resembles a page. So what do we do with these links?

We download & Install 'Favicon Picker 2' Which allows you to specify favicons for each link from icons or images on your hard drive!

But how do you get the favicons on your hard drive. Well visit this page, enter the URL in the box, and it will soon display the favicon for the site. Right click & save the image.

Once you've done that, find the link you want to add the favicon to, right-click > properties. You'll now see a new area for the favicon. Browse to the .ico file you saved earlier and click ok! Now you've added the favicon, get rid of the text and free up a bundle of room on your toolbar!

Huzzah!

I hope that helps you! If it does, let us know :)

What a fortnight of highs & lows

2007-07-03T11:51:00.001+01:00

The last 2 or 3 weeks have been so full of highs and lows, it's unbelievable. To start,

14th June (up)

My friend Jimmy & his wife (Alex) had their blessing on the 14th June.

15th June (down)

Helena & I went round to Jimmy & Alex's place to see him. That was incredibly emotional. I hadn't seen Jimmy in ages and nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Cancer really is a horrendous disease. It still couldn't beat his fantastic sense of humour though!

16th June (up)

Helena & I jetted off on our first holiday abroad. We boarded our plane at Gatwick, and flew to Palma airport, Majorca. We hired a car, and drove right across the Island to C'an Picafort, where we stayed for a week. It was nice, very hot! Nice beach, and nice people, especially at the No.1 Bar! on Avda Josep Trias!!

17th June (down)

Jimmy sadly passed away - RIP pal, you'll never be forgotten x

22nd June (up)

At around 8pm in the evening, whilst laying on a sun-lounger on the beach in Majorca, resting in the cool breeze, I got onto one knee, and asked my beautiful girlfriend if she'd give me the honour of being my wife... She said YES! Helena has made me such a happy man over the last 4 and a half years, and things are only going to get better! Thank you angel! Here's to the rest of our lives :)

23rd June (down)

Had to fly home from Majorca. Had 7 beautiful days of sunshine. Got back to Gatwick. It was cold, it was raining and it was dark :(

24th June (up & down)

(up) Went ring shopping with Helena, and found a nice platinum ring with a diamond on top! Will add pictures soon!

(down) Got home, fancied a game of Worms on the 360 and got the Red Ring of Death! (RROD) So unfortunately, the 360 has gone BACK to Microsoft for a second time. Not happy!

25th June (down)

back to work. need I say more?

27th June (down)

Today was Jimmy's funeral. A very sad day :(

30th June (up)

Today was my cousins wedding. Congratulations to Stephen & Amie who had a wonderful wedding. Shame about the weather. It's meant to be the summer, and it spent the whole day raining! Luckily there was a marquee to keep everyone dry :)

So that's a recap of the last 2 weeks! I feel mentally exhausted, and to top it off, I've had a cold for the last couple of days and that's really not made things better!

Pissed off with Microsoft

2007-07-03T11:44:00.001+01:00

So that's another 360 that's been sent back to Microsoft. I'll now be on my third Xbox in 10 months. That's quite poor really.

I originally got my Xbox 360 for my birthday last year, August 2006. It worked perfectly out of the box, and has done up until February time where it started freezing randomly but rarely.

Then in May, enough was enough. I sent the box back to Microsoft as it was just not working properly. 90% of the time, it'd crash within 15 minutes of playing. That was real annoying. So on the 3rd May, I sent my Xbox back to MS for repair under warranty.

On the 15th May, almost 2 weeks later, it returned, and I was ecstatic! I couldn't wait to get home and play... worms! Yeah, I'm hooked.

The little note that was in the box with my Xbox said that the motherboard had been found to be faulty and had been replaced! How nice :)

I had that Xbox for 5 weeks before it went screwy again. On the 24th June, the day after returning from holiday, I powered up Worms (last level!) and within 5 minutes, the Xbox froze. D' oh!

I Reset the Xbox, walked back to my sofa, sat down and stared in disbelief as my screen was black, and my Xbox was flashing it's 'Red Ring of Death' at me! Noooo!

So another phone-call to MS revealed another UPS label & another hunt for a box to send away. I was also informed that I'd be waiting 20(ish) days. I sent it Last Monday, which was the 25th May. It was picked up by UPS. And as far as i'm aware, that should be a quick delivery to 'Havant' Where the broken boxes go.

Alas, on Friday, 5 day's after sending the box, i receive an e-mail saying that they had received it. Maybe it's not in Havant after all.

So now I'm stuck, with no Xbox360. I plugged in my PS2 to try and get some gaming in over the weekend. I went through several games, and all where rubbish! The only one which held my concentration for more than 20 minutes was GTA:San Andreas, and even that got boring (which worries me about GTA IV!). I've got several games on my original xbox which i could play, but it's hassle setting it up! And my desktop PC is nowhere near any good for PC Gaming.

So I figure i need some next-gen gaming. What are my choices? The 360 (obv). The PS3 & the Wii. I've played the Wii, and I can pretty much agree with Matt Brett that the Wii is quite poor. I've got no interest in the PS3 as the games seem rather poor (maybe they'll get better?). Which leaves me with the 360.

Hmm. Many people are reporting an error rate of 30%. So far for me, it's a big fat 100% error rate. Yet, my brothers 360 is a launch box, and that's had no trouble!

How can i stick with a fantastic system (360) but crap hardware? I've kind of lost all faith in the Microsoft hardware. I'm pretty certain that my 360 will be going back to MS a few more times, and I'm certainly not willing to pay £80 to get it fixed each and every time!!

Why aren't Microsoft addressing the problems though? So many people have reported the problems regarding heat. From what I've read (i forget where), the heat ends up warping the motherboard which in-turn, breaks the connections and this creates a fault. There's also stories of MS installing newer more efficient heat-sinks into newly repaired 360's to curb the problem!

Let's hope that this new heat-sink idea works and my 360 doesn't have to return to "Havant" (read: Prague).

Rant over. meh

Need For Speed: Carbon

2007-06-06T11:08:00.001+01:00

So that was easy. In my last post, I mentioned about the shocking price differences between UK supermarkets on this game (between £17 & £40!).

Anywho, the game turned up, and I had great pleasure in playing it for all of 3 days before completing the actual story-line. I was a bit unimpressed with the fact that I could complete the main storyline within 3 days, and only being caught by the cops once and having to purchase 3 cars for the whole game.

But yeah, it was a good game. Pretty similar to Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but not nearly as much fun! The drifting part of the game was really fun! But the other parts of the game, like speed trap & circuit were near identical to NFS:MW which made me feel like instead of releasing a whole new game, EA could of just released a new map-pack!

The graphics were good though, and the choice of motors wasn't bad. Handling was alright, and obviously different with each car. The only gripe i had with the handling was when you put the brakes on, the car seemed to jolt, and the frame rate seemed to shake. I'm not sure if this was intentional, or just my xbox screwing up but this really put me off. It wasn't smooth! Speaking of handling though, I thought it'd be easier to drift during normal races. And as hard as i tried, i really couldn't get it down. I managed to get the Drift King acheivement though so that's all good :)

The other part of the game is the challenges, which im currenlty working through now. Well, i say working through, i've done them all except one or two, and they were pretty easy too!

There is one gripe I have with this game though, and that's your crew. As you progress through the game, you get to recruit other racers into your crew to help you progress, but they really are more of a hinderance than anything! And what's even more annoying is that they tend to get in your way, or cross the finish line for you! Now i can't remember where i read it (probably metacritic) but to me, the computer shouldn't win the game for you. A game doesn't seem fun when the computer is winning for you! You might as well watch a demo!

It also has a photo mode built in, but this is definatly not a patch on PGR3 which has a fantastic photo mode and EA should of looked to PGR3 for proper implementation of photo mode!

It's not a bad game, but it's not a fantastic game either. I much enjoyed NFS:MW faar more than this! I'd still be playing that if my disc wasn't cracked :(

Overall though, this gets a 7/10 from me! It's good. It has it's great bits, but it also has some poor bits. The game is generally quite easy but you do have the odd difficult race which adds a bit of a challenge to the game!

Shocking price difference!

2007-05-24T12:49:00.001+01:00

The other day, i had an evening to myself, H had gone to her dad's for his birthday. I couldn't get the time off work so i was home alone.

I decided to watch The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift, as i hadn't seen it before, and it was something to watch. It wasn't that great, but watching it reminded me sooo much of 'Need for Speed: Carbon'.

So the next day, i went hunting for NFS:Carbon. I didn't want to pay more than £20. I could get it second hand for that. Most places offered it for £35-£45 though. Ebay had a few for £25 but still a tad expensive.

Then i remembered an email i had got from Asda (part of the wal*mart family) saying that they had xbox360 games from £13! So i checked it out, and they had NFS:Carbon for £17! Wicked!

However, it so happened that that night, we were visiting Tesco (a rival) so i thought i'd check their website for the price. £25. hmmm. I thought that whilst i was in there, i might as well get it for £25. Save P+P, get it sooner etc. However, when i got in-store, it was marked up as £40!.. Woah!

So between the 2 stores, they was a price difference of £23! That's no good. So i went home and ordered it! It turned up the other day, but not had a chance to play it yet!

Soooon. :)

All stickered up!

2007-05-24T12:42:00.001+01:00

I made a post 2 weeks ago (here) saying that i'd been given a www.sunrunrally.com window sticker to put in my car window, but the sticker was actually too long.

I wasn't too sure whether to reduce the kerning manually, but placing the letters closer to each other, and risk putting them on bent, or to just drop the www. from the sticker.

I decided to drop the www. bit, and i put the sticker on the window. It looks pretty pretty good!

Thoughts?

Jellybass volume one

2007-05-18T13:08:00.001+01:00

I thought I'd let you know about Jellybass volume one. A fantastic mix of electronic beats & basslines. Think Mr Scruff.

Visit jellybass.co.uk to grab the free 30 minute MP3 download!

I Must say, i really really enjoyed listening to this mix yesterday, and will definatly listen to it again and again!

One year on...

2007-05-16T13:52:00.001+01:00

This time last year, i was going through a strong time testing my willpower, and it was probably one of the most daunting things i've ever done.

You see, I'll be 26 this year. I started smoking when i was 16, and had been smoking roughly 20 a day for 9 years. I didn't particularly like smoking, but it was a nice social tool. It helped when I was at college, it helped when I was at work, and it helped when I was with friends, but it stunk, and generally, i'd wake up with a mouth that felt so dry, it'd resemble the bottom of a bird cage!

I am also rather built. Not through muscle you understand, but fat. I weight about 16st, and am generally overweight. Not quite obese, but getting there, however, noone ever thinks i weigh as much as i do! Anywho, another reason i wanted to give up smoking was for my health. I was already putting strain on my heart and stuff through being over-weight, but smoking was just adding to the problems!

And the final problem was the cost. When i gave up smoking, i was paying £4.35 for a pack of 20 fags, and they were the cheaper 'sovereign' variety. But smoking 20 a day at £4.35 would equal about £30 a week, or £120 a month, and obviously, over a year, that'd be £1,587.75! That shocked me!

If i gave up smoking, within a year, the money i would of saved on smoking would of paid off my credit card!

So i mentioned to Helena (my girflriend) that I was thinking of giving up smoking. She said 'Good for you, but you'll never do it'. And being the competitive man I am, I set out to prove her wrong. I said "Right. May 16th is the day i'll give up".

And i did. I remember that May 16th 2006 was a Monday, so the Sunday before was the last day i would be smoking. I remember driving back from Eastbourne with 2 fags left in my box. I had one whilst driving, and then had my final cigerette on my balcony when i got home.

After a week, i felt so proud of myself, and so was Helena. She then said "you'll never keep it up! I bet your smoking within a month".

Again, being the competitive man I am, i thought 'I'll show her!'

A month went by, and again, i gloated at the fact that i'd proven Helena wrong again. So she turned to me and said "I bet you wont keep it up for a year!".

And here we are. One year on, and i've not had a cigarette since I gave up! And thanks to my 'Quitomzilla' extension on Firefox, i can reveal several stats about my giving up, which are:

If i had been smoking, i would of smoked roughly 7,300 cigarettes in the past year.
I've saved £1,590, however this isn't accurate, as the price of cigarettes have since gone up several times, so i've saved more!
I've been smoke free for 1 Year, 13 hours & 50 minutes.

I'm so proud of myself for doing it. I used nicorette gum to help me through the withdrawel symptoms, but after a week or so, i no longer needed the gum!

Looking back on it, when Helena was telling me she didn't think i could give up, i felt a bit bad because i thought she thought i couldn't do it because i wasn't strong enough. However, i know realise that Helena knew about my competitive streak, and the fact that i like proving people wrong, so she was just saying those things to encourage me to give up!

So thank you Helena & everyone for the support!

If you smoke, i'd urge you to give up! It's great! Oh, and it's true what they say, the ex-smokers are the worst for moaning about smokers lol!

Finally finished Gears o' War

2007-05-16T11:12:00.001+01:00

As i mentioned yesterday, I got my 360 back. And a lot sooner than expected after reading stories on xbox.com about people waiting months!

Upon opening the box, my console was all neatly wrapped up along with a letter saying that the motherboard was faulty and had been replaced. There was also another sheet of paper telling me i'd have to re-sync my controllers, and also a customer service survey which i'll be filling out tonight! Also, to my surprise, was a one month voucher for Xbox Live 'Gold'. Wooo! So I'll register that soon and maybe have a bit of multi-player Gears!

Speaking of which, for the last 3 months, i've not played Gears purely because i was stuck at the end. I Just couldn't defeat General Raam. I tried and tried... and then gave up!

So after reading on the net about how you kill him, I tried some more... and still failed.

So I waited for Helena's brother, Colcoo to visit. Last time he visited, he brought his Wii, so we didn't have a chance to co-op on Gears, but he's been down for the last couple o' days, so last night, we fired up the 360 and to my surprise, we defeated him on our second attempt!

Now obviously i couldn't do this on my own! I had trouble staying alive for more than a minute, however, in co-op mode, player 2 can revive your health when your dying which definatly helped last night! And obviously a few well placed sniper shots from Colcoo and a machine gun to the head by myself, and we'd finished the game... 5 months after i got it.

The problem is though, we finished it on... umm... casual. Easiest of the easy. D'oh!

So for a laugh, we started another co-op game on 'insane' and that wasn't as hard as i had expected. We managed the first act before switching games!

But yeah, man, the 360 rocks, and co-op play is. just. awesome!

360 is home... sort of!

2007-05-15T12:51:00.001+01:00

At last, my 360 has just arrived back, via UPS, from Microsoft after i had to send it back for a repair! However, it's not quite home yet. It's sitting here next to me at the office. So it's not quite home, nestled under the TV, but it will be tonight! I Promise!

Shame it didn't turn up yesterday though, as i was home alone last night and would of had some serious fun, but it's here now, and that's the main thing!

I would get in a couple of hours gaming tonight, catch up and all, but we're going out for H's dads birthday! Shall be fun :) However, colcoo should be with us tonight after the meal, so fingers crossed we can squeeze in a bit of co-op Gears of War!

Time to get a new game i suspect, a welcome home present if you will!

Another game i'll miss out on...

2007-05-15T10:54:00.001+01:00

I've just read on the Gamerscore blog that a new xbox arcade game called Aegis Wing, which will be given away for free to xbox LIVE subscribers for this week.

This week, Xbox LIVE Arcade is making Aegis Wing available as a free download for Xbox LIVE subscribers for a limited time.

Hmm.. First off, is this just for gold members or anyone who connects to live, regardless of whether it's a gold or silver membership?

And secondly, it doesn't matter to me because i still don't have my Xbox!

Arrrghh!

edit: Reading X3F, they've mentioned that the game will be unavailable outside North America. D'oh!

...the game is also set to be absolutely free ... in North America. Unfortunately, the game will be unavailable outside of North America at all.

Six 360 games I'll be on the look out for...

2007-05-11T12:13:00.001+01:00

ok... maybe not so awesome for you but I think it's good news.. well, ~~five~~ six bits of good news really. Let's start with number 1.

Simpsons for the 360

Now I've played a couple of Simpsons games in the past. The best one I've played is probably Hit'n'Run for the PS2. The rest were mediocre.

However, the 360 is here (or not in my case), and EA have come up with a new Simpsons game which isn't tied into the movie.

From watching some of the game clips on youtube (couldn't get the clips to work on xbox360fanboy), it looks true to the cartoon, and also looks highly entertaining. Especially for a Simpsons fan like myself!

I shall be watching this one closely!

Forza 2 release date

So Forza Motorsport 2 will be released in the US on the 29th May. I'm assuming the UK launch date should be around the same time! I Hope so! Yah, this bit of news isn't that awesome, but still, I can't wait!

Bomberman coming to XBox Live Marketplace

Now this brings back memories! Played this loads when I was younger, played it a bit on the saturn, and also played it over wi-fi on a DS and it's always a riot! So I'm happy to see that it's coming to the Marketplace.

No reports on when it arrives though!

Project Gotham Racing 4 vid

Gamerscore blog has got a post & video available for download (you can stream it but it's 50+mb in size) displaying the weather in Seattle on Project Gotham Racing 4. Man it looks schweeeeet! Those effects look spot on and the graphics look absolutely gorgeous! I can't wait to see more of this one!

Happy Tree Friends to appear on XBox Live Marketplace

Ahhh, those cute little furry animals which like to slaughter one another. It's coming to the Marketplace, and hilarity will ensue!

X3F are reporting that Sega are publishing a game based on the Happy Tree Friends called 'Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm'.

Specific details aren't given, though the press release mentions a "physics-based reactive environment" and "accidental mayhem."

it's being developed by Stainless Games, and according to X3F, it'll be out in the later part of the year!

edit: make that six!

Saints Row 2 confirmed for 360

THQ, the developers who brought us Saints Row, are currently developing the next in the series. However, it wont be out until 2008.

According to the Aeropause post:

Not much was said, but one thing of mention was that the game would deliver, "an all-new cross-platform gaming experience."

Oooh. Sounds interesting!

zomg! sunrunrally.com too big for windows!

2007-05-10T15:05:00.001+01:00

So you know I've got dealings with sunrunrally.com, right? Well I met up with my mate KeithTrue who's running it last night to work on some designs for the new advert!

During his visit, he handed me a SunRunRally window sticker (which I'd been asking for for ages)! Hurrah I thought, until I opened it up...

It's massive! I wanted a small discreet item that would fit in my rear quarter window to match the PGAC window sticker i already have, but noooo, the window sticker is actually too big for my rear quarter windows!

So what am I to do? My first thought was, instead of applying the whole lot as one sticker, i'd apply each letter individually, de-creasing the kerning and allowing it all to fit, but unfortunately, it's pretty tight as it is!

So my only other option is to chop off the www. and just leave it as sunrunrally.com

Sticking it in my rear window, or along my windscreen is too much for me, so that won't be happening!

Thoughts?

Forza 2 Demo Released?... D'oh

2007-05-10T11:48:00.001+01:00

Microsoft are just taunting me now. They've released the Forza 2 demo onto the marketplace, and my 360 is nowhere to be seen!

Daaamn!

Still, the only saving grace is that it's only available for Gold members at the moment, and I'm still on silver membership!

Wooo, i like to wait an age for my marketplace goodness... not.

360 spring update is available...

2007-05-09T13:08:00.001+01:00

... and I dont have my Xbox! How inconvenient!

It was posted to Microsoft last Friday. I've tracked the parcel via UPS, and it's arrived at it's destination. So fingers crossed, some happy chappy is fettling with the internals, and pretty soon, my 360 will be on the back of another UPS truck happily heading back to me!

I was in the mood for a bit of gaming last night. Maybe a bit of Gears, I thought. Or some target practice on Mercenaries or even a bit of cat & mouse on Need For Speed: Most Wanted... but nooooo, I dont have my xbox any more.

So I sat down and looked at my PS2, remembering all the good times I had playing on it! I Grabbed my CD wallet which holds all my games, and upon flicking through the wallet, I soon realised why I wanted an Xbox360 as opposed to a PS3.

Dont get me wrong, I've got some good games for my PS2, but they're all very samey, and to be honest, I didn't feel like playing any of them. The only game that's held my attention on the PS2 recently is Simpsons: Hit & Run but even that is getting rather boring rather quickly!

Please Mister* Microsoft technician sir. Please fix & return my 360 as fast as humanly possible! Thank you

* I realise that some Microsoft technicians will be female, so for the sake of political correctness, read that as Mister / Ms

28 weeks later

2007-05-09T12:45:00.001+01:00

Maan, I've seen adverts for this on buses around here, but I've only just popped onto the website, and damn it looks good!

I've just recently finished reading 'Cell' by Stephen King, and that is along similar lines to this and it's all still fresh in my mind so I cant wait to see this one!

Problem being, my girlfriend hates zombie flicks, as they give her nightmares (awww bless!) So I'll be waiting for it to arrive on DVD before viewing! haa!

That'll give me a chance to watch the first '28 Days Later' and get that in my head!

Wooo!

Putting the 360 to rest

2007-05-03T12:52:00.001+01:00

Some of you may remember that i posted last week about my Xbox playing silly buggers. Well, I gave it another go on Sunday. H was on the PC, and I was at a loose end so I thought i'd give Saint's Row another bash!.

That failed miserably. Meh!

So last night, i phoned Xbox Customer Support. And to be quite honest, they were really nice. I spoke to a lady called Naomi and she almost gave me a heartattack when she told me my 360 wasn't registered. I thought that'd mean that it was not under warranty but after a quick run through with a couple of questions, i was told that my 360 was still indeed, under warranty and would be repaired, free of charge! Woooo

So we quickly ran through a couple of things from the knowledge base, Naomi kindly informed me that all the facts pointed to a hardware fault and my 360 would need to be sent away for repair!

She said she'd email me the shipping labels (which i've now got), and i could send my Xbox in for repair as soon as i got the labels. So my 360 is all packaged up in some bubble wrap (here and here). However, there's a slight problem. The address on the shipping label isn't what i told them on the phone.

So i've had to phone them up again this morning and told them the address was wrong. Unfortunatly, they'll have to send me a new shipping label with the correct address, but this wont get to me until tomorow, so that means another day's delay when it comes to getting my box back!

Never mind though, as long as i do get it back, that's the main thing! I was even contemplating purchasing another 360 (just a core system) to replace my busted console. I've never thought like that before. I've had plenty of broken consoles (3x Master Systems, 2x Mega Drives, 1x Snes, 1x CD32, 1x Playstation and 1x Playstation2), but i've never thought "right, let's go buy another one" before i've even looked into the problem.

But yeah, that's the sorry state of affairs at the moment. I've plugged my dusty PS2 into my new TV now so at least im getting some gaming in. A few hours of "Simpsons: Hit & Run" last night provided some amusement...

I'm after a Joost or Demonoid invite...

2007-05-01T16:19:00.001+01:00

Can anyone help me out? I'd like an invite to ~~either Joost or~~ Demonoid!

Ta muchly,

hisjunk [at] gmail [dot] com

edit: thanks to some kinds folks over at Lifehacker, im now on Joost!

Get well soon Kennedy!

2007-05-01T15:04:00.001+01:00

I've not mentioned this before on my blog, but last year, one of my good friends, Kennedy was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth.

He's a strong lad, but faar too young at only 23!

He's gone through his course of chemo, which lasted roughly a year! Unfortunatly though, I heard yesterday that the cancer has returned. The last 2 sessions of Chemo that Jimmy (DJ Kennedy) went through wasn't strong enough and the cancer has re-formed which is a crashing blow to his recovery plan.

I've had some fantastic times with Jimmy! He never fails to make anyone laugh! He is one of the nicest guys you could possibly meet and i wish him the best in his recovery!

Speaking of which, my girlfriend Helena will be running the 'Race for Life' charity run in Croydon on 13th May 2007. It's all in aid of Cancer Research, and Helena has stated that she'll be running for Jimmy...

I Race for Life for..Jimmys recovery xx

If you'd like to sponsor Helena in her run and donate to Cancer Research UK, please click here. You can donate via credit card, and it's a one off donation and very secure. Every little helps and remember, you'll be helping so many people!

Dont forget, if you do want to donate and your a UK Taxpayer, please GIFT your tax to Cancer Research. This means that any tax on your donation will go to Cancer Research instead of the taxman!

Thank you for reading, and let's all wish Jimmy a speedy recovery and send our thoughts out to his family & friends!!

Thumbs up from Kennedy Hosted on Zooomr

Oh crap!

2007-05-01T14:48:00.001+01:00

I think my xbox360's about to die.

For the last couple of weeks, it's been crashing on me. I'd be mid-way through a race on PGR3, and it'd freeze. I'll be punching some punks in Saints Row, and it'll freeze. I'd be 'bussin a cap' in someones ass in Mercenaries: playground of destruction, and it'd go pear shaped!

After posting on the Xbox.com forums about my problem, it turns out that this is the start of what is known as the Xbox - Red ring of death.

Basically, the green lights on the front of the box turn red to suggest there's a problem with the box.

I e-mailed Microsoft, and told them about my problem. They suggested reading an article in their knowledge base. I Read that, and followed the instructions and still no luck. I tried playing Saints Row last night. I tried 5 times, and every single time, it'd crash within 5 minutes of turning it on!

I Then posted on the Xbox forum and pretty much everyone said that the 360 is on it's way out! Jord619 mentioned that his 360 done the same thing before seeing the red ring o' death.

You will be getting the 3 red lights of death soon, this is how it started with mine.

I've yet to see the red ring o' death, but im pretty sure it's lurking there. Waiting until i least expect it, and then BAM! I'll be 360-less, and cast back into the previous generation of consoles! I'll have to dust off my Xbox1 or PS2 and bring them out of retirement!

This creates a problem though! On Saturday evening (well, midnight!), H & I decided to have a move around of the lounge. We moved the decks, the sofa's and the cabinets to create a more open space in the Lounge. As nice as that is, it just wont work when it comes to the PS2 or Xbox1. Purely because the controllors are wired. It wont reach my sofa! Arrghh! Damned Microsoft & their inferior yet fantastic product!

It's come at such a bad time for me, as on Sunday, H's dad kindly donated his old 28" widescreen TV to us to replace our old standard tv. I was getting excited because i could plug the 360 in via component cables, I could also plug in my headphones so that i could get proper sound and H could read a book or something in silence (as opposed to shooting, screams, and engine noises!)..

But it's all gone pear! So tomorrow evening (when i've got an hour or so), i'm going to phone up the UK Xbox support team and see what they can suggest!

I hope they can replace my box, or fix it for free.. It's only 8 months old goddamnit!

a list apart webdesign survey

2007-04-24T12:27:00.001+01:00

it'd be great if you could do this too! I'd love to see how the results turn out!