Posted in General, tagged Blizzard on March 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Having pretty much followed Blizzard since the release of Lost Vikings and then onto their other lesser known products, this video they posted looking back over the last 20 years was very interesting. So if you have a chance take a peek. Oh yes, it’s 48 minutes long, but I think it’s worth it.
They hung on in there when times were tough.
Posted in General, tagged A Song Of Fire And Ice, Book Of The Fallen, G.R.R.Martin, Malazan, Robert Jordan, Steven Erikson, The Game Of Thrones, Wheel Of Time on January 24, 2011| 10 Comments »
In a couple of weeks, the last installment of a 10 book epic will come out, it’s called The Crippled God and it’s written by Steven Erikson. The “Malazan Book Of The Fallen” series is good, in fact it’s bloody excellent and in my opinion better than both the Wheel Of Tme (Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson) or the A Song Of Fire And Ice (G.R.R.Martin) series. Also this author has managed to avoid the failings of the other authors, which is the ability to produce a high quality series in a timely manner.
Posted in General, tagged Warhammer Online on September 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Still got some work to do on the house, so a few more days and life should start returning to normal. At the moment I’ve just enough time to check other peoples blogs and keep roughly abreast of whats happening out there. I think I have managed to play once or twice these last 2 weeks, but that’s life and hopefully I will have a fully hardwired house in the not to distance future. The amount of painting I’ve to do, is abit scary though.
It seems to be generally quiet at the moment, though the proposed magus/engineer changes are interesting, the ones related to their turrets/pets.
Posted in General on September 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Just to let you know I’m still alive. Up to my neck in dust, data cables, plaster and flooring and will be for the next 10 days if it all goes well. Wife away with daughter, so pretty much nose to the grindstone at all times. Finished at 9.30pm tonight, so barely enough energy to heat pasta, before crashing down onto the sofa. As with all things in life, it’s running a day behind schedule already, after about 3 days, which is pretty impressive, but doing this all in a house with furniture is always a nightmare. Half the time is spent moving “stuff” around and covering things.
At the end of this mad period, I hope to have about 40 data points around the house, in a combination of 2 / 4 ports, mainly 2, mostly cat 6, but a few runs of cat 5e. Every run is 2 cables, in case of an accident, so a backup in all cases. I’m sure if a cable gets cut it will be one I want the most. The majority of the plastering is done, now that the data cable has been run into the wall, with a metal covering to avoid accidental drilling.
I think all the wife will care about are the small things, like a new clothes line and the garden reseeded in places. This is the last time I will need to skip the summer holiday with the family, while I get work done on the house.
Posted in General on August 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Currently stretched from pillar to post.
Ripping existing 1st floor up to lay network cables to 13 points (26 cables) on the ground and 1st floors, plumber moving 3 radiators, plasterer hopefully going to make good on the damage inflicted on the house. Wife just wants this crap to be finished, so she can live in a house which is finished. She doesn’t get my grand vision, she just thinks I’m nesting.
Posted in General on August 7, 2010| 1 Comment »
So I paid for Saturday morning delivery and it arrived before 9.00am, it was in the PC before 10.00am. I’ll not deny that there was a small but persistent worry that it wasn’t the GFX card, but having lost so many over the years, the main indicators were there. Of course I was also concerned that something else had gone to the great chip shop in the sky.
I think I was justified in spending £14 for a guaranteed Saturday morning delivery for a crisis’ of this scale. I believe money is nearly no object, as long as the wife doesn’t know.
I can now return to happy task of gloss painting, knowing that my baby is back with me and I should be out skanking some poor not so innocent, this evening.
As always, I backed up my .PST as soon I was back up and running.
On the performance side, it’s in the 90’s for FPS, but not really tested it with a lot of people on screen, which is the real money shot.
What is a shame, is that I can’t store my GTX 8800 for backup use, incase the ATI 5850 goes bang. I always like to keep the previous generation as my “In event of RMA gfx card”.
Didn’t have time to install the Warhammer on the wifes laptop, but that’s a job that will be done this weekend. It should run fine, given it’s an i5 450m with a Nvidia GT325M, with 4GB of memory. However the proof is in the pudding, as we would say.
Posted in General on August 5, 2010| 4 Comments »
There I was sitting down to my nth scenario of the evening, when I experienced a dreaded colour shift on my monitor. Now I was reasonably sure that I hadn’t kicked the monitor cable, so this combined with no response from the keyboard, was putting my mind onto only one possible path. The GFX card (Nvidia 8800 GTX) had finally given up the ghost. To be honest there had been a few signs in the past couple of months, but wanting to put of the inevitable, I had ignored it. So I ripped the side of the case, reseated the card, reattached the power supply to card and prayed, in vain.
Yes it had decided to shag me over just before the weekend. Yes it’s late Thursday night, but the situation is still recoverable.
So moving downstairs with a swiftness that belays my age, I commandeered the laptop from the wife. This is a crisis, strong action is needed to stave off disaster. I’m that man, it’s my mandate from heaven. So I head over to my favourite website, which I know does Saturday morning deliveries (For more money) and select a Sapphire ATI 5850, which I’d had my eye for since my upgrade to a I7 920, a good few months back. I just wanted to fit it at the same time as my new case, but no time for that.
Put the little sucker in the basket and head to the checkout. Bugger, what’s my password.. attempt 1,2,3,4 and 5 all blew past. FFS where’s my email, on my gaming PC, where else. So now I’m going to be on the phone to them in the morning, post dropping daughter off at nursery. I just hope to god, that nothing else got fried. Mood = STRESSED.
Update: Thank god, I ordered an overspec’d laptop for the wife a couple of weeks ago. Backup plan Zeta now instigated!
Posted in General, tagged Direct2Drive, Torchlight on December 25, 2009| 3 Comments »
I picked up (Downloaded) Torchlight yesterday from Direct2Drive, for the princely sum of £7.50. Without doubt the best £7.50 I will spend this whole christmas period. It’s been along time since I’be been in the situation where I was going to play for 45 mins and then realised it’s nearly 3 hours later. That’s got to be a good sign. So if you are craving abit of Diablo style action, grab it.
Apart from that, merry christmas to one and all, regardless of faith.
Posted in General, tagged Warhammer Online on November 30, 2009| 8 Comments »
Who would have thought I would ever have made a year. I certainly didn’t. I honestly never had an inkling that there was so much rubbish for me to talk about. But I managed it, much to the bemusement of my wife.
So after 1 year, I have the following statistics:-
1. Posts 193
2. Views 9985
Posted in General, tagged b-rad.cc, Synology, TViXie, WD TV Live, Western Digital on November 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »
It’s been distracting me for the latter part of the week. I picked this up for a friend and needed to understand how it worked so I could provide support in the future. I know, I’m very good to him, but if I don’t do it, it will never be fully utilised and things like that really annoy me. To be honest, its also interesting to see how it shapes up compared to my personal “White Elephant”, my windows 7 media centre.
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