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August

Monday, 29th

Passed my 43rd birthday on Saturday. I feel soooo very… Actually, I feel no different at all - I mean another minute passes, another year, the years turning into decades. I know folk that mooch about, avoiding mirrors and reflections because they are 21 inside and feel withered outside. Go figure.

Anyway, here are a few more quotes I've dug up:

After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident it makes you wonder about history
    Bits & Pieces

Nothing in fine print is ever good news
    Andy Rooney

Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble.
    Dennis Fakes

Thursday, 25th

*Mutter*
What you get for leaving it until the last minute, I guess. The rather good Creative Labs Prodikeys DM are officially discontinued, their own site being limited to dregs in european languages.

They are also out of stock of the speaker stands until further notice. Just as well I'm not in a rush until this building work is finally done. *sigh*.

As for my new soundcard, Creative card give an exact date for Europe, but it's looking like the back end of September for us second rate citizens. As Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi press release says, there is a range of products to suit most pockets, going from $129.99 to $399, which on a pound for pound basis, has them looking like a replacement for the Audigy range, or perhaps the audigy being devalued and the older cards laid to rest.

Ho hum, guess I have to wait, through I'm naturally being selfish and trying to jump the queue to have a play with one early.

Sunday, 21st

Extreme Fidelity sounds good to me!
REALLY need to get the IT news section back up to date! The new Sound Blaster X-Fi™ is out soon and I've barely mentioned it there. I have spoke to the guys in Dublin over it and they reckoned 'before September'. As it happens the next announcement is on this coming Friday, so I am hoping it will be an official release date from them. Works for me as I'm 43 on Saturday. That's my birthday present to myself sorted, Woot!

I've settled on the 'Elite Pro' model as soon as it ships. I will, of course, review the beauty. A few trade friends reckon choosing "SoundBlaster" is just snobbery and that the onboard sound cards now are so good it doesn't make any difference. Mind you, these are the same guys that drool over SLI'ing Nvidia 7800's to eke out extra frames in Halo 2. In that respect, accordingly to Creative, it can be up to a 15% faster than onboard solutions, which is hardly a trifle, eh. Plus, I believe, it takes some of the strain off the processor too.

For the general public and kids, essentially they are correct, but given an equal set of speakers I can tell the difference and that's all the reason I need - and that's with existing models. From my reading and understanding the new X-Fi™ products are generations beyond everything else on the (mass) market.


Meds
Revised and updated the medical pages too, with a great look for anyone with unpleasant foot conditions.


Neverwinter Nights
I haven't properly organised my notes yet, but I will be adding my help and solution tips for 'Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undretide' shortly.

I am also, yet again, restarting the Hordes of the Underdark expansion, but I am firmy convinced there is either a bug, or a serious design flaw with this expansion as I see it every time. After killing the drow priestess at the start (for 625 xp) I am getting 48 experience point for everthing. Everything I look at from rats to Dragons is 'effortless' and awards 48 points (with Deekin), slightly more solo, slightly less with another henchman or summoned beast added. Also the sale price is capped at 7,500 gp, even if an item is worth 65,000 on previous expansions. Very, very annoying!

Nevertheless, I will write up a few notes for this too, while I wait for Neverwinter II next year and, expected this November, 'Dungeons & Dragons Online'


Home front
On the home front, we still haven't got a shower installed. I dare say it will be next week, but I'm getting a tad antsy, I'm bored with the whole 'building in progress, put up with it' scheme of things. I tend to sit idly for ages and then decide, Arrgggh, this needs sorting NOW and go manic. Usually it is for trivial things like organising the tinned vegetables cupboard or getting my hair cut, but when I get into my 'must be doing' mood, now means NOW. This instant! Clock's ticking people…
I get like the Bursar in Discworld when he forgets his frog pills, really .
Have you taken your taken meds today?

Monday, 15th

Uploaded the (refreshed) solution to Neverwinter Nights. I'll adds something for the expansions another week.


I was going (along with all the rest of my 'todo') to do a write up of StarTech.com's KVM switch I picked up from Dabs the other week. All the cables included, cheap and cheerful, works out the box. Enough said for now, hmmm.


HDTV
It's rather daft given I watch less than an hour of television a week and we neither have, need, nor even want cable, Sky, or even Freeview, but I was drooling over a 37" LCD HDTV on display at Dixons. The picture was the best I have ever seen, ever, anywhere. A flower looked so real I felt I could reach into the screen and pluck it.

You really have no idea how fussy I am over screens so suffice to say this is high praise indeed. I can't even look at screens with low refresh rates because the flicker makes me ill, and to me a single stray pixel on an LCD monitor is like an angry red zit on the end of your partners nose. You know you shouldn't comment, but you can't help but stare at it in horrid fascination…

Anyway, after a minute drooling I pointed out that, This isn't real, is it! Oh yes, yes, of course it is. Change the channel then… On, we can't, we don't have television channels here. Fine, let me pick a DVD at random to see running. On no, can't do that, it's running a demo.

Suffice out to say it will be a cold day in Hell before I'll advise spending £2,000 on a screen they appear to be hiding something from. Beyond any doubt the HDTV demo was worth the cost, but I suspect it was optimised at the cost of regular viewing and putting on the BBC news would reveal a typically jerky and pixilated image.

For me, at least until HD-DVD's become standard, I'll wait until 2010 when HDTV is actually out and mainstream and prices drop considerably.


Funny quotes
I have a rather dark, often warped sense of humour so I can't share a lot of it on a family web site, but here's a few slogans from t-shirts and car bumpers I've chuckled over:

I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for 20 years.

I'm not weird, I'm gifted.

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely.

No trespassing:
Violators will be shot.
Survivors will be shot again.

The more 'junk' you put up with the more 'junk' you will get

Saturday, 13th August

Technically it is Sunday as it has passed midnight, but there you go. Got to love the joys of school holidays. All my regimes to pot and a few rough days with the kids sending me on a sugar binge for almond slices and a years careless dieting goes pear shaped. Back to carrots and apples for dinner for me. Actually I have apples and carrots and oranges for dinner most days, I just won't be having cakes and steak pies with them!


Movie zone
Took the wife and kids to see Madagascar. Ho hum. Actually, it was hilarious. I haven't laughed so much since Shrek announced Yep, you got them… when Donkey kicked him, aiming for the cat. When it comes out on DVD we are definitely buying it. Seriously, one to watch, if only for the sketches with the monkeys and their comments on flinging poo!

Also watched the Fantastic Four which really is another great movie. Given I grew up on a diet of Marvel and DC comics it's natural I'd like it, but Erin loved it too. Few scientific improbabilities in there, even beyond the nature of the film, but I'm incredibly pedantic like that.

Out of interest, then we got back they reached for the superhero family of 'The Incredibles' …
With the stretching mum (vs Mr Fantastic), the invisible girl with the force fields (vs Sue Storm), the impossibly strong dad (vs The Thing) and the speed freak son (vs the speed freak, Human Torch).


While I remember, because I will forget, I read in my sons 'Marvel Rampage' comic that Nicholas Cage is to star in another comic classic, 'Ghost Rider', expected out next spring sometime.


On a site related note, I've typed up some of my notes for the Neverwinter Nights game. I'll upload it after I fix the menu's and indexes. I've a large number of existing pages to fix and touch up, I know, but I always slow to a halt when the kids are roaming. Plus we are finally getting the building work finished. Well, time I lay me down to sleep.

Saturday 6th

Well, the past few weeks flew by, but I suspect half of it is due to hiding my head in computer games until the kids go back to school. I really don't have the patience of yesteryear. Ho hum, at least the screen grabs and notes I'm making will finish my solution for Neverwinter Nights.


Building work
We have been living pretty much in a pigsty for the last year as we were having building work and it was stalled by repeated delays. We, especially Louise, have ourselves set on a 'Kubex Silhouette Cubicle' and were prepared to wait for the manufacturers. Compared to (literally) singing, dancing showers complete with radios, foot massages and aromotherapic sprays it's nothing fantastic, but it is a solid, all in one unit - virtually leak proof. Anyway, after ordering one from the wholesalers and experiencing delays I called Kubex direct and was told First week in January.

Later it was Early March … June and so forth until Friday when they advised us that the manufacturing difficulties may be 'insurmountable' and to look elsewhere. The following Sunday our old shower died a death. Sod's law really … and we have no bath as that was taken out to make another bedroom. Fortunately the builders we have been using are able to fit us in and we should be sorted in a week or two.


Movie zone
Still working around to catch Madagascar and 'The Fantastic Four' but we did go to see 'War of the Worlds'. As films go, it was rather good, effects wise but, being as pedantic as I am, I have to pick a few holes in it:

Machines buried in the ground untold ages back ready for the big invasion, eh. Why bother as any time back enough to make a difference and just one would be enough to take over the world and besides, why not take over then and have done?

Also, cursed good planning to calculate where the major cities would be hundreds or thousands or years later, eh.

Finally, I thought, OK, I can see an infection taking out the aliens, but why would they affect the force field around the tripods, unless they were symbiotically joined, hmmm?

Tidy up time and summertime blues
Anyway, as we are going to give this place (home) a full makeover when the building is finally done it was time to let go of the hoarded junk, accumulated over years of Well it might come is useful and Awww, but it reminds me…. In my case it was Look, the library is only at the bottom of the street. I have let thousands of books go over the years and I finally gave in and have a really good clear out. I've just kept the two bookshelves of computer and TSR role playing books. Those and the twenty cases of largely fantasy books I've stacked to the ceiling in the extension.

A few boxes are horror and sci-fi novels and series like 'Gor' which I'll read/re-read and get rid off. In many respects Louise is right, we do have a good library at the bottom of the street, but locally and nationally, the chance of ordering long out of print novels from the sixties, and even earlier…


Along with all the other 'junk' I dug out are three older computers which I'm testing and formatting to go, a Wacom digitising tablet which Erin took a shine too and a midi keyboard which Erin also bagged. She did have one of those annoying, tinny midi keyboards which I firmly said was for going and, naturally, she had her faced pulled. Why, I asked, are you kicking off when you have a decent midi keyboard for the computer you've never used?. Ah maybe because it was Ryan's and she was still in a pram at the time, that would do it.

You have to laugh or you'd just straggle the little monsters. She/they now have a decent PC stuffed with wires for the joystick, pen tablet, midi keyboard, wireless networking and even a KVM switch to flick between an older computer for their DOS and Windows games and the proper one for Internet and modern games and what do they do? Whine I'm bored, I've nothing to do!.

Read a book! No!
Watch a DVD! No!
Go play with your friends! No, we're not talking!
Play a game …

I'm ruddy sure there's a million odd parents out there who'll read this, nod and wish their own life away, or at least the few weeks of it when the schools force our own kids back on us. Kids today are just spoilt rotten, in my opinion.


We pay our TV licence why, exactly!?
OK, granted in our house we are all hooked on computers and so we are hardly a 'regular viewing family' but it strikes me there is less and less worth viewing on the box. This week gone I had one single programme circled - Stargate Atlantis - and, much to my annoyance, I forget to watch it anyway. *Mutter* I'll have to buy the series on DVD on watch it on the computer!