I need to sort out so much though. I need to find accommodation for starters, work out my finances, sort out an internet connection at the house and move my sites to a new web host (I won't be hosting them personally any more).
Ooh 'eck!
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In my quest to find myself a new job, I've got myself another interview to go to this morning. It's about 2 1/2 hours drive away so that's going to be fun huh? I'm all ready to go and am nervous as hell! This is the second job interview I've gotta go for since I left Garlands, if I remember correctly. Wish me luck!
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I recently thought that since I'm going to have to send off my Guitar Hero III disc to get it replaced, I won't be able to play it for a few weeks. That, coupled with the fact that a game I really wanted just came out, I thought maybe another title was in order.
That's right... Mario Kart Wii! It came out this time last week and it really is a lot of fun! I'm going round to a friend's tonight, taking my Wii with me, so I think I'll take this along too (Heck, there's gonna be four of us!).
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Everyone who got the Wii version of Guitar Hero 3 learnt that it didn't output sound in Dolby Pro Logic II as promised on the back of the box. Instead they output sound in MONO instead!! This has been a bit of a pain for me, and I thought I could live with it... until I played my friend's PS3 version. The sound quality was vastly superior, most likely down to the sound problem that all Wii copies have.
Still, Activision are offering to replace the discs with newly-written ones to fix the problem. Peeps in the US aren't having a problem at all about this, but I've found on the net that most peeps in the UK don't know they can swap their discs now as well. If you're in the UK or Europe, just follow the related link at the bottom of this post and you can get your disc changed. I've also added this link to the Guitar Hero III Wikipedia page, to help those who haven't visited my site.
Just in case anyone asks... Activision estimate 3-6 weeks for delivery of your new disc, but they did say to me that it can differ depending on demand.
I've also seen on the 'net that RedOctane are sending free faceplates to those who sent in their discs to sorta make up for the trouble caused. However, I just got off the phone with Activision and they say there's currently no similar offer for those in the UK and Europe because RedOctane don't ship overseas
However, they tell me they're working on something to compensate us!I'm waiting until after this weekend to send off my disc, cos I could very well be showing a friend of mine what the Wii version is like this weekend. I'm also a little anxious about the delivery time of the new disc. I've been playing GH3 practically every day and I'm right up to the final guitar battle in Expert against Lou! Not having the game for up to 6 weeks is going to be a pain! It wouldn't be so bad if I knew someone else who had the game on the Wii cos then we'd just play Co-op mode in the meantime.
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I must apologise for the absence of posts on here. It's not that I've forgotten or that I'm too busy, it's entirely the opposite! I've got too much time on my hands and doing almost nothing!
I've been working on re-launching the band's website this last week. I had to change a bunch of stuff behind the scenes to get it to work on my server (and make it run smoother and such). I've done everything except the shop and message boards, both of which can wait. I hope to re-launch the website very soon, so keep your eyes peeled on the related link below.
I've also been converting films that we have on DVD into MP4 format so they would work on my folks' iTouches. I found out though that the videos also work on my phone and my PSP, so there's three birds killed with one stone huh?
I'm still looking for jobs at the moment, but since I'm not spending any more than £20 a week, I'll be financially okay for quite a while.
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My band, The Anythings, have entered a competition to support Feeder at their Newcastle gig! If we are to manage this, we need your help! Please support us by following the link below (or on the banner above), download our music and leave comments on the indiestore page!
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WTF?!
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This morning, Nokia released another firmware update for the trusty N95-1 on the NSU. It's brought it up now to v21.0.016.
;)
The updates in this one include extended battery life, Flash 3 lite built into the browser (so youtube and iplayer will work), support for standalone widgets, more stable bluetooth connections, faster gallery, and faster Java support, to name but a few. I'm just updating my phone now so I'll let you guys know how it goes.
Check the related link for more details.
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I finally got Service Pack 1 installed for Vista last night. It was an absolute nightmare getting it sorted out. If you have a moment, I'll tell you the tall tale...
It kept failing all the time when it got to "Stage 3" of the installation, and I think I know why it was doing that. I had a bootloader called grub on my PC which gives me the choice to boot up into either Vista or Linux (and also XP, when I had it installed). It was this that was causing the service pack to not install properly beause it was expecting the PC to use the standard MBR (Master Boot Record).
Thing is, I don't use Linux on my PC anymore because I've got it on the server, and it doesn't even boot up anyway. Because of this, for ages I was thinking of fixing up the paritions on my drive. My Vista partition was on the secondary drive and Linux was on the back-end of the primary drive. All the rest of the space was used up by my documents and music etc. The drives were messed up because I used to have XP on the beginning of the primary drive and I was "trying out" Vista along side XP before I moved over to it. What I planned to do eventually was move the Vista partition to the primary drive, remove Linux and grub, and setup the secondary drive to be all one partition. Ya know, all neat and tidy, and I thought maybe now would be a good time to do it.
This, however, proved exceedingly difficult. Firstly I couldn't find any way of moving the Vista partition, so I thought I'd at least get rid of Linux and grub. Secondly, when I got rid of them, Vista would fail to boot properly. I'd get to the log in screen, put in my password, and then it'd just show an empty desktop with no picture, icons, start menu, task bar... nothing! Even using the Vista installation DVD to repair the installation failed.
In the end I had to do something I wasn't too happy with... reinstall Vista. So I did that, reinstalled all my applications and the service pack and get it all set up the way I wanted it, then I got rid of the old partition and tidied them up. Everything's the way I wanted it to be now.
What took the most time though was figuring out why my Adobe suite wouldn't install. For about a day and a half I was frustrated at it saying it installed the shared components but not the actual applications themselves (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash etc). I found out eventually that it was because I'd installed the Flash 9 browser plug-in before I installed the suite. In the end, I had to completely rid the computer of anything Adobe-esque before it would install. This included:
* Using the Adobe Suite cleaner to remove the shared components.
* Using the Adobe Flash remover to remove the Flash files.
* Using the Windows Install Clean Up application to remove files left over from the attempted installations.
* Deleting both Adobe folders and their contents from the Program Files and Common Files folders.
* Searching the registry and removing anything with Adobe, Macromedia, Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, Bridge, and Acrobat associated with it.
It was one hell of a battle, but everything is set up the way it should and the computer is a little faster for it. I want to say it's because of the Service Pack, but it could very well be because it's a fresh installation. Also, the two things I'd like to see fixed from the last post do appear to have been resolved for now as well. Again, this could be because of a fresh install.
I know this post is a little longer than usual, but I really went through a lot of trouble to get this to work and I wanted SOME record of my achievement somewhere.
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Microsoft have now released their first Service Pack for Windows Vista to the public. I just did an update for Defender and my sound card drivers, then it showed it as available. I'm downloading it right now.
;)
There are two things that I hope to be fixed in this update:
* Faster file manipulation - Copying files on Vista has been a painfully slow affair. I've often given up because it's taken forever to copy a 500Mb video to my PSP, or to my phone, or even to another HDD on the same PC! Early reports say this has been improved by up to 50%. I'd like to see it for myself.
* Folder Viewing - I like to have My Computer to show the items as Tiles grouped by Type, and everything else to be as Details not grouped showing the size, type and date modified for each file (in that order). However, Vista has taken it upon itself to change random folders to the former view and not keep it on the latter! Also when I change them back, I have to add the extra columns and rearrange them myself for each folder. It's extremely annoying and something which never cropped up in any previous version of Windows!
I'll let you all know how it's gone once I've installed the new service pack.
[ UPDATE ] Just came back on to add the screencap above and to make a note for anyone upgrading to SP1. The installation advises that it may take up to an hour to complete and the computer will be restarted several times during the update. My advice is to perform the update at a time when you're not planning to use your computer for a while.
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