This is just an short update while I work on my main post (which should be out over the next couple of days), but there’s an article over on ZDNet which  essentially states that the 3D TV “revolution” is a waste of time!  I could have said that ages ago, but yeah… 3D TV is totally pointless.  I’m actually even wondering if the 3DS might be a bit giimmicky, but I’m gonna let it slide for now.  3D TV itself is rather pointless as a technology, but then the companies seem to expect (or rather hope) that we’ll spend money on a technology that at present is nothing more than a gimmick, especially when we’re barely taking advantage of HD at present!  Yes, I’m all for innovation and all that, but honestly, 3D TV is pretty much just a fad at present and I don’t see it becoming any more than that considering we’re still trying to get used to HD, which as of yet still isn’t a standard technology.  The ZDNet article implied that instead of adding a new gimmick to TVs, they should focus on making HD TVs more affordable and available to the masses.  And given in the UK there’s a Digital Switchover planned over the next couple years, I do think this is more important.  Admittedly though, where I live has no digital coverage at all, and only poor analogue coverage… I wish that were sorted out.  So, instead of fixing present tech, people seem more focused on “The Next Big Thing”, even though in this case, what’s being touted as such is just a gimmick.

Okay, maybe I should go back to the 3DS; I had a chance to play one for a little while, both at the airport before flying to the States and also in a local Walmart, so I am at least reasonably well informed about the 3DS.  I have also glanced at the 3DS Wikipedia article, and while I’m intrigued by the majority of the 3DS’s specs, I’m still not 100% sure about the 3D aspect.  Even more amusing is the fact that the cameras haven’t even been upgraded from the 0.3MP!  It’s not like I’m expecting something like 16MP with the cameras, but the least they could do is increase the sensors to 1 or 2MP; those are cheap enough to at least provide decent resolution on a larger monitor; consider the fact that the SD Card can be used elsewhere, like for printing pictures to paper… also consider that a picture resolution that is over 3-6 times larger than the camera of the DSi, which means sharper pictures.  There has already been comments (based on what has been said in the article) that 3D versions of movies look worse than their 2D counterparts, but then again that is to be expected given the way the films were initially filmed.  I suppose though, to give Nintendo its due, it did at least stick 2 camera sensors on the front so the 3D effect would probably look better than what you see in the movies.  Ironically, I was actually thinking Anaglyph 3D was cool (and still do to an extent), but I really don’t know how 3D adds to movies… sure, it looks good with a still image, but when it’s done with an entire movie, it starts to lose its appeal.

The reason why a still image in 3D is more appealing is because it’s just a still image and you can view it at multiple angles and it still can impress you.  Okay, maybe I’m easily amused, but that’s what I think; you’re free to disagree.  Ironically, I haven’t actually seen any 3D movies, but from the way it sounds, it’s probably best that I haven’t.  I’m also not entirely sure if it’s the sort of pop-out 3D (which is the more impressive kind) or the hologram type 3D where the background appears to have depth, although my point still remains that the tech is presently gimmicky.  However, what Jonny Chung Lee has done with 3D on the Wii strikes me as one of the most impressive uses of 3D.  Granted, this is moving into the realms of games (like I haven’t already gone there talking about the 3DS), but using 3D in games seems just a little less gimmicky than using it in movies, which just seems like an excuse to push 3DTV (and movies) in a world that’s still not fully gotten the hang of  HD yet.  At least in the case of games, there’s a better case for using 3D, although at the present stage of things it’s still not much above 3DTV.  That said however, if a game were made to properly take advantage of the 3D tech, instead of just it being an optional thing, then it may start to become worth it… but honestly, we’re looking at a few years down the line before a proper company goes down that route; you’ll find that it’s the indie and homebrew developers that embrace it first; again, look at Johnny Chung Lee’s efforts with the Wii, a system not even designed for 3D, and not only that, it’s a pretty cheap form of immersive 3D!

All that said though, Nintendo do have a better grip on 3D compared to most companies, when you consider the existence of the Virtual Boy, which was their first foray into 3D gaming.  Granted, it didn’t sell well, but Nintendo certainly learnt from their mistakes in releasing the 3DS (except for maybe still having really low resolution cameras!).  The technology is still in its infancy though, but at least the 3Ds isn’t entirely reliant on its 3D capabilities; it does have the vast DSi and DS library, in addition to the Virtual Console and other downloadable stuff to keep it going, in addition to the gradually increasing library of 3DS games.  The lesson Nintendo clearly learnt here is don’t solely rely on a gimmick to shift consoles.  The enhanced 3DS specs also mean that the system has a fair bit of untapped potential as well, so even if we don’t have games that use the 3D mode, we should at least have games that make use of the enhanced hardware of the 3DS, which will be a great prospect in itself… maybe we might finally see Final Fantasy 7 on on the DS?  That said though, I don’t quite know if the game could be fit onto a single 3DS cart, although after stealing a quick glance at some of the search results in Google (this is going to do wonders for my search results!), the cartridges apparently can store up to 8GB of data, which is more than enough for FF7, hell FF7 could fit on a UMD… though I amn’t confident to fully assert this, given I don’t know how many CDs FF7 takes up off the top of my head, so if anyone happens to know, I would appreciate being told.  Still though, even if it may just barely fit on a UMD, it should be able to fit on a 3DS cart at the very least, and even then the full 8GB capacity won”t even be needed!

I just hope they don’t make it 3D as it really doesn’t need it; what it could probably do with though is a graphical overhaul, but I’d be happy with being able to play the game as it was back in the day, or even similar to what it is like in FF3 or FF4; the fact both those games (which are pretty large, though maybe not as large as FF7) could be done in a similar style to FF7 shows that it should be possible to put FF7 on the 3DS at the very least… I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it could work on the DS with one cartridge though, especially because the DS carts hold 1 Gigabit of data, which roughly equates to about 128MB; I’ve seen the size of DS ROMs, so I know by default that it wouldn’t even store a CD’s worth of data!  Still though, FF7 appearing on the 3DS, or indeed any console is just a fanboy dream; I’m not expecting it to appear to be honest, but it’s nice to dream… it would be nice to see a remade version on the PS3 though.

Speaking of the PS3 and potential, I bet people are surprised to hear me not comment on the recent PSN outage.  Truth be told, that given I’m not home at present, there’s been less of a push for me to comment on issues that would normally affect me.  However, given that the PS3 is also related to the 3DTV gimmick, both through BluRay and also through 3D gaming (indeed, there was a patch released to help with it), it seems appropriate to talk about the PS3, or rather PSN.  A friend of mine showed me this article on IGN the other day, and I was not impressed with it.  I’m aware that it’s a joke, but all it really does is piss off those who use PSN, while giving the PS Haters and 360 Fanboys more ammunition to say how “crap”the PS3 is; the article comes across to me as somewhat immature and a slap in the face to those who use the PSN service.  I’m totally aware that the same thing would have happened if XBL is down, but that sort of article in any case seems immature and/or a tad petty.  Like one of the commenters said, if you’re a gamer, it shouldn’t matter what console you own.  My reasons for not having a 360 aren’t really anything to do with hating Microsoft (though I amn’t exactly a fan of theirs either); my reason is that I cannot justify yet another MS system in my house, given I already have 2 Windows desktops, as well as this Windows laptop and a broken Windows laptop.  There’s also the fact that I have a rake of PS1 games which I wouldn’t want to give away and also I wanted a Bluray drive, so my reasons for buying a PS3 were purely based upon practicality rather out of dislike.  Admittedly, I’d have loved a 60GB PS3 (a US version), and the restored option to install Linux (hint hint Sony), but the system itself (and PSN too) is pretty solid.

I would also say the same about the XBL service too, given there’s never been any problems that I have been made aware of.  I do quite enjoy playing on the 360, even if it’s only Rock Band 3 mostly, although I’m not a big fan of the controller, but that said, it’s not mind-bogglingly difficult to use; my dislike of the controller stems more from the fact that I prefer how a PS controller feels.  Anyway, I digress… PSN outage opinion, yes?  My major concern would lie with my account details,which may or may not have been compromised; as a result, as soon as I’m able to I am totally going to have change my accounts system around for websites I access, just to prevent my details from being compromised elsewhere.  My payment details are thankfully safe, because I’ve had 2-3 new cards issued since then, but even so, others wouldn’t necessarily be so lucky (though perhaps the payment details are safe if they’re separate from account details).  Given PSN has 60 million users around the world, even some of those account details being compromised is still dangerous; we’re still looking at a figure in the millions at least, which makes me think if I ever want to buy something on PSN (or anywhere else like that in the future), I’m gonna stick to the pre-paid cards instead… it’s certainly safer!  That’s enough about me though… what about Sony’s way of handling things?

Well, from what I hear, Sony is handling things poorly, although given what they’ve done in the past, that’s kind of par for course with them anyway; that’s not a stab at all, just look at what they’ve done in the past and you’ll see what I mean.  I can’t help but wonder if this “attack” is related to what happened with the “GeoHot Incident”, as well as the removal of Linux, amongst other things it could be.  I know Sony isn’t exactly in people’s good books at the moment.  I know another company in the games industry who also isn’t in people’s good books either… you could say that some people are “barking mad” about one of their releases, but I won’t be discussing them here; this is merely a hint of what I’ll be tackling next.  In fact, I do actually have a lot of the post done, but it still needs working on.  Anyway, enough about that, let’s get back to Sony/PSN.  Sony being tight-lipped about the entire incident isn’t really going to do it any favours either… nor is the lack of compensation due to the outage.  The fact that MS actually gives every (Gold & Silver) XBL Member a free XBLA game for any outages is something that Sony should really take note of.

It’s ironic that a company like MS that is disliked by so many people actually knows how to properly treat its customers… then we have Sony, who caused a lot of controversey with their rootkit installer in 2005, and more recently removed the option to install Linux, after promising months before that it wasn’t going to be removed, and then subsequently locking people out of PSN if people refused to update.  When you consider the most recent incident, along with the Geohot thing that was recently settled, it’s no surprise Sony got attacked.  I’m not saying it’s right or anything (why would I, given my personal details are on there too?), but it’s easy to see why Sony were attacked, and the way they’re acting now just goes to show how much the consumer is getting screwed over by them.  On a random note, if this did happen to XBL, I realised I’d get a free game out of it, simply for being an XBL Member, which is nice, but yeah… that was just a random thought.  I understand that a company is out to make money, but at the same time, it’s not exactly morally right to essentially take a customer’s money, then screw them over by denying them advertised features… I don’t think even MS were that bad, and even if they were, they have at least learnt from their mistakes.

Someone I spoke to (though don’t like) on a chat room I frequent said that he hoped Apple would be next, although I’m not quite sure that Apple have generated quite the backlash against people that Sony have.  Granted, I’m not exactly happy with Apple, given how they have screwed developers over, the fact you need a Mac to develop for their systems, the fact they want to clamp down on open standards and that their iStore is subject to extremely draconian rules, but even then they haven’t quite generated the amount of shall we say “fury” that Sony has.  I certainly won’t be buying another iPod ever again in any case, and in fact, I’m quite happy with my Sansa Clip Plus, although I need to pick up a 32GB SDHC Card for it so it can store up to 40GB of songs; for what is roughly a matchbox-sized device, it is really impressive with what it can do… I certainly can’t wait to properly put it through its paces from next week.  I especially like that the playback time for MP3s is in the double digits… I think 16  hours was the advertised battery life, which will be great for when I fly home, although the plane I was on when flying between Canada and the UK did have a USB port, so I can recharge it, plus listen to their music and watch movies, so I won’t rely on it too much till after I touch down in Heathrow.

All that aside though, it’ll be interesting to see how long before PSN is back up, and what Sony will say happened, and also what the damage is.  I am expecting an email about that either by the end of this month or early into next.  Suffice it to say, I think I need to start beefing my security methods up a bit, especially where it comes to my money or access to it.  I’d be recommending that others do the same as well, in case an attack of this magnitude happens again… that first attack may have been just to prove a point as I’m not sure if anyone claimed responsibility for the attack yet.  What I do know is that the downtime has cost Sony allegedly between $20 Million to $24 Billion, although I think the latter figure’s a bit extreme.  And my bad, it appears (according to this article) that Sony may actually compensate users after all.  It’s kind of hard nailing details down when this post is being written on the fly, though I’m expecting more additions and edits to be made when the proper story comes forward, because there’s a lot of rumours flying around too about this story.  Rest assured that while I don’t know the full extent of the details now, I will eventually find out, between reading subsequent news articles and also reading the comments below.

I should end this post now as I’m nearly at 3000 words for this post, but suffice it to say, I will be watching the PSN outage with more interest and will be sure to update this post (and future related) with more factual details on this as and when I can.  I still think $24 Billion is a a it much though, but then I realise there are 60 million PSN users, so the maths do add up.  I really can’t wait to get the Gamed Up site up and running though, so I can finally do some proper reporting with stuff like this.  Anyway, that’s it for now… I’ll be back soon with another post.

Oh, actually… one last thing… I’ll end up doing less DiggerCast and DiggerFeast episodes than I originally planned, due to financial and hardware issues, but some will be done… also expect that the Stormhaven Media website will be up soon as well.  Also, Stormhaven Networks is essentially being downsized; it instead will merge everything (Stormhaven IT, Stormhaven IP, Storm Servers and Stormhaven Networks) into a single company called Stormhaven Developments, which will focus solely on software development, be it games, business software or web-based software.  I also have to develop a 5 year plan for the company soon as well.  Rest assured that nothing will really be hugely affected, though you may notice minor changes involved with Stormhaven Networks, and perhaps FSIRC, but that will be discussed at a later date.

Edit: It appears that customers’ credit card details are secure, according to an article here; it also links to the official Sony thread.  The payment data is encrypted, but that doesn’t mean it’s not 100% secure, so be warned.  It also appears the amount of PSN users is 77 million, which is a lot.  I read that the average cost of identity theft is about $319 which is where the 24 billion comes from. Admittedly, while it is nice to finally get some answers, they should have said something sooner, even if it was just to say that they are assessing the damage and to please bear with them, but I guess someone would complain about it.  There is a lot of stuff out there at the moment about this story, so I may need to revise a few things later…

Edit 2: Anonymous have stated that the PSN network outage has nothing to do with them, although they were responsible for a previous network outage at the start of the month.  Sony seems to be getting attacked a lot this month!  I did wonder if Anonymous had something to do with the attack, but given they had orchestrated an attack before, I don’t think they felt the need to proceed with another.  The hacking therefore is a concern, because as far as I’m aware, it’s not known who actually performed the attack, meaning there is an increased danger that the payment details could be compromised, even if it is encrypted.

Either way, 2011 is looking like a good year… well, better than this one in any case

Anyway, the main reason why I’m making this short post is because I stumbled upon this interesting post on someone’s blog (which was linked from a chat site I frequent,  named UKCB): National Novel Writing Month 2010, but given I’m still trying to get things sorted out, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to participate in this year, though I will however be committing myself to it next year, especially as I hope before the end of the year to take up writing again in some form… most likely with a new Forum Sim (Roleplay) I’m working on with a friend. as part of Xeno Storm, so watch out for that, and the addition of a wiki.

And also, I managed to find a full copy of my detective/comedy novel from 2004, although admittedly I’d end up rewriting it from scratch (though would keep a few elements) if I were to look at redoing it these days.  I’ll upload it in its current state soon (and update this post when I do) as a scrap to my DeviantArt, as well as to the XS Wiki, when it’s up and running.  Given it took me years to find the document, I want to have it in a safe place that’s not on my desktop, which is deciding to act up.  Just keep in mind that if you do read it, I know it sucks… it was written by me when I was younger and had certain things on my mind at the time.  I think the premise could still have merit, although I’d rather get myself into the Forum RP before I take that on as a project for NaNoWriMo. Admnittedly, I may just decide to develop it away from it instead and run with another idea; I can’t predict that far ahead though. In the meantime however, I have a lot of stuff to work on with websites, most notably a client’s site, followed by the XS RP forums and the wiki, then I’m going to look at other sites that may need attention, though I think I might spend this month focusing on XS entirely, with the exception of the client website.

I nearly forgot… I’ve now officially cancelled my ST Online subscription for the time being, so I’ll now have more money to invest, though with Lord of The Rings Online now becoming free to play, I’ll be focusing on tht a bit more. I’ve also been busy with Bush Whacker and Backyard Monsters on Facebook and I’m hoping before the end of the year, I’ll have a proper gaming blog to work with! I’m also off to Ireland on Friday for 2 weeks, so I’ll be writing a bit about that, no doubt, in addition to the Dublin Paranormal Convention, and also a security conferance I’m going to be attending towards the end of my trip.

It’s going to be a busy couple of months either way by the looks of it!

I was planning on doing something with the WonderBorg and seeing if I can recode the programming application into something that supports both serial and USB infrared transmitters, but I amn’t sure if it’ll work now, but I might wait till I have a look at the application before I give up.  The WonderBorg is a nice piece of kit though if you’re into robotics, but they’re hard to locate now and are usually quite expensive; mine cost me £4.99 and they usually retail for £100+!  I want to get a second one at some point, but they may be hard to source.  I promise that I’ll talk about more later, but I’m really finding it hard to focus for now, but rest assured when I’m better, I’ll be able to focus more so I can type about more… still this is as much a little update as it is a reminder for me to type more and type up a little of what’s been going before I forget (yes I’ve been that bad)!  Still, it’s only a matter of time before I get better and will be going back to my few thousand word count essays XD

Until then, I’ll see you lot later.

One thing I’ve also started to do is with the help of my server provider is install AWStats, in order to process server stats locally, although unfortunately it appears I cannot access any of my past site access logs, if any were ever kept.  Shame that.  At least I’m using StatCounter to keep progress on my sites; one of my sites (Therians dot Net – TdN) actually surprised me by indicating I’ve had over 1300 visitors to it in the past month, which isn’t bad going!  This site is a little lower on the scale, but hey at least it has exposure.  This site and TdN are the only active sites on StatCounter, though I do have more planned.  I would be putting the DiggerCast in as it is an active website, but it’s moving soon and I don’t fancy complicating matters with it just yet.   Besides, I’m still testing stuff out and it’s doubtful the stats would be all that impressive anyway.  At least though I have the groundwork sorted for when I do start it all, which I should soon.  I also need to sort out my IRC network’s website and plan out a prototype chat site, which should be fun.

Moving on to the 50 things bit, as I haven’t actually updated it much, if at all.  The list of updated ones are below – I’m going to summarise them in a paragraph each:

• 9. Properly produce a Podcast/Internet Radio Show. – (75% Complete)
  
• 14. Own part of a pub/bar. – (??% Complete)
• 29. Join the Special Constabulary. – (25% Complete)
• 33a. Be free of all short term debts  – (80% Complete)
• 35. Learn to to manage my time better. – (20% Complete)
• 36. Learn to budget my money properly. – (20% Complete)
• 46. See wolves face to face and maybe help out at a sanctuary. – (10% Complete)
• 19. Visit the birthplace of my ancestors and learn more about them. – (20% Complete)

Well, by far one of the highest in terms of completion is number 9, which has 2 pending episode edits and uploads.  I also need to change the software I use because as much as I like PrettyMay Skype Recorder, Pamela is much more suited to my needs, as I can lower the filesize, though I may need to use PrettyMay for longer until I’m sure I can afford Pamela, but when I can, I can at least feel that progression has happened with my podcasting techniques.  I have also decided as well that after switching between ideas, that the podcast would be best without time-sensitive content, meaning it gets adjusted to once every two weeks instead, which makes me think that I can fit in another podcast for the odd weeks.  I have an idea of what that might be… keep you posted on that one.  It is nice to know that I’m slowly hammering out a system though it is a bit frustrating it’s not a regular thing; however by freeing up the time constraints, it can now be recorded at any time available, though I need more thought on the timings.  Anyway, that’s the podcasting bit for now.

As for 14, no idea what happened there, it seems to have gone kaput!  What else can I say other than it’s just as well I haven’t invested any money into it, or is it because I didn’t that that happened?  We may never know.

With regards to 29, I’d like to think I made some progress here, even if ultimately, I failed this time.  It appears, based upon the rejection letter that I got, I passed the written test but failed the interview, which is fair enough.  I honestly had a feeling I failed it anyway; it’s extremely nerve-wracking and I really should have attended the workshop thing to help me.  Admittedly, I think my lack of interview experience may also be a factor as well… it’s been over 7 years since I had to attend any sort of job or positional interview now, so understandably I’m well out of practice.  In fact, the last job-related thing I attended was a group screening at Asda, which I failed.  As for Tesco, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, still nothing to report there, though I think I’ll be less nervous with that compared to the Specials gig.  I intend to reapply sometime in the new year, though I might wait till I have a job first and get back into the routine of working and/or customer service, as it might improve my prospects.

33a, 35 and 36 are all tied into each other in a sense, well 33a and 36 are at least so I’ll start with them.  I’ve never been all that good at managing my money, and the fact I currently have no real “local savings” at the moment proves it.  Although admittedly, moving does actually take a lot of blame for that; it’ll be a total of about 8 months since I moved before I can start to see a slight improvement, 9 months before I see something noticable and 12 months before I see a more signifiant improvement.  At present, I’m now in month 7 since moving, meaning by the end of next month I should have increased my spending power a bit, though it wont be till sometime in November before I can plan with it better.  It won’t be until February next year that I can actually start looking long term into my finances.  I plan to move my bank account to another company at some point and also setup an ISA, but I can’t really set one of those up till next year because I was going to move the money I have in a Post Office Savings Account to the ISA and they pay at the end of the year;  if I asked for the money now, it would be October before it comes out anyway and with it being around 4 months before they pay the interest on the account, it seems silly to take it out, plus it also means I can plan it much better.

I find it a little frustrating that I have to wait a month for the money to come out, and it appears the interest rate is a bit dismal, so I may as well put the money to better use elsewhere.  It may only be a relatively minor sum, but it can earn more elsewhere; I need it to either fund my bike or trip to the USA, if not both.   I also have some Premium Bonds which I plan on cashing in and putting into the Post Office account, which seems a better use of the money to be honest, especially when you consider I haven’t a chance in hell at winning… I certainly haven’t won anything since the bonds were issued!  They’d serve me much better gaining interest.  It is a little bittersweet having to get rid of them all to be honest, as they have been around since either just before I was born or within a few years after, but I guess it’s less documents for me to manage and also, I have more immediate access to the money.  I honestly have no idea how the interest on the account works though to be honest… I may just send it off in the new year to get a balance update, though selling off the bonds and transferring the money from them ro the account would be a sensible idea first… I’m doubtful there would be all that much interest on the whole though.  Still, every little helps, right?

As for time management, I’ve gotten myself a diary and plan to continue to get one, and start writing in it.  I’m going to get an A5 one, given I never really have anything to put in it anyway.  I’m going to look at getting one from PoundLand, as they’re cheaper.  I still amn’t sure if I want one for personal, one for business or just merge the two together… actually, that may be best; I can just tag each entry with B or P, so I know what’s what, though this means that I need a bigger diary… erg, complicated!  I’ve still got a few months before the new year starts though so I can start working out the best method, though I may get 2 diaries; one for all my engagements and another for engagements that require me to be on the move, so I’ll have to have it with me at all times.  The benefit of that system is that if I have a big, central diary, if I lose the small one, I can just buy a replacement, which seems the best option, given how forgetful I am!  Still, once I start getting to use a diary more properly, it’ll work out a lot better for me.  I am slowly getting better in both of these, even if they’re not exactly related, apart from the fact I’m awful with both of them!

Lastly, and still somehow not being as verbose as yesterday’s blog entry, we come to the wolf sanctuary bit.  I’ve decided it’s best if I go to somewhere more local to me, so I’ll eventually be visiting Wildwood, which is coincidentally near Canterbury although when I eventually go around there, I can’t visit, as it’ll be for a different reason entirely.  I completely forgot I updated it!  I’ll eventually put some photos up of my visit to Wildwood, when I go, which reminds me that I need to upload rakes of more photos to my Flickr account, as there’s many old and new ones I haven’t uploaded yet.  I am rather glad though that given I have more space and a decent internet connection, I no longer have to shrink the pictures, meaning Flickr is a great backup area for my photos too, so I just need 1 more safe area, given that My network drive and desktop will be keeping the photos.

And definitely lastly, the geneology thing.  I’m taking a notepad and camera with me for notes on the family tree and also to take photos of the area and also the family gravestones, so that will be an interesting thing to do.

I think it’s only just shorter than yesterday’s post at this point!  I do have a lot to write about sometimes, and I’m going to be unapologeltic about it (as I should), given that it’s my blog, and its entire point is a place for me to put my thoughts to paper.  It is likely that I’ll end up putting the stuff I get up to as a blog of this site’s multi-blog system now, given I’m not going to have a dedicated blog for my CV & Portfolio site now.  The entire point of the portfolio site is really an excuse for me to learn (x)HTML/CSS and PHP, so in a way it’s good to have somewhere where I can just write without worrying about code.  And on the subject of writing (like I haven’t done enough already!), I’m going to be setting up a wiki off the Xeno Storm dot Net website so I have somewhere to put up some stories I plan to write.  It also gives me a chance to try out a sub-wiki system, via “subdirectories”, given I’m going to have a travel section, projects section and writing section.  Admittedly, my friend Scott (who is the other half of Xeno Storm, Broken Xeno) has a domain for a universe he is designing with a friend, which I will eventually see myself contributing to, but at the moment I’ve heard very little, so I’m just going to do my own thing, flesh out a few characters I own and see how it goes from there.  The XSdN Wiki is essentially the centralised infobase for everything under the Xeno Storm brand, meaning this site, the Xeno Storm site, Scott’s site and anything related, such as the Thames Cycle and Hop On, Hop Off projects as well as anything else I come up with now, during and before them.

I’m beginning to think my theme for the next year is consolidation, which should start to save me money, especially once I get my community consolidation project up and running.  It’s going to replace the WikiNet idea I initially had, as I realised I can just come up with a subdomain and stick a wiki, forums and other related stuff to do with that site there.  If it takes off, it’s likely to get its own domain because then I know it has enough support to get off the ground; it’s not really in my best interests to register a domain for every single idea I have, as it adds to my costs, so this is a compromise.  I’m subsequently dropping off 2 domains for renewal over the next 2 days as I no longer need them.  Those of you remember the Jammed In Project, if I ever mentioned it here would either know that it got replaced by the DiggerCast (which let’s face it, has a better sense of awareness anyway) and the st-timelines domain, which essentially is dead, but exists in small pockets.  I’m folding it into the Xeno Storm Wiki, under the writing section, so we at least have some record of its existance, as the writing there is too good to be forgotten, but maybe that’s just me thinking that.

Either way, it’s being moved so watch out for that – I’ll add an update to show when that happens.  Also expect me to write something about my character, Felix “Strider” Sheridan, as part of the Strider Chronicles.  I’m more than likely going to try to write it in a novel format, in the sense that it may be 2 book pages to a wiki page, although depending on how long each page is, it may actually end up being closer to 6; it’s going to be an even number for the most part (I’ll write it up first in a Word document, then see how much it takes up.  I’m rather excited at the thought that I’m finally getting into writing, but more than likely, the actual story will happen in installments from next year, while I flesh out the character before I start writing about him properly.  Keep in mind also that you may see a representation of him in Scott’s universe too, though different.  I intend to write up a few character profiles for him, and differing depending on the universe.   I think though that if I’ve a logical place to write in, then I’ll eventually start writing, although it’ll mainly just be text.  Also, as time goes on, I’ll be making use of the Wiki’s features in otder to make it better organised and also flow more freely.  It’ll certainly be an exciting time, all the same.

Anyway, I’m going to stop here, as I have nothing else to add, and I’m damn sure I’ve written more than yesterday’s entry >.>  I really have a tendancy to get carried away with myself, but I guess that’s by no means a bad thing… I just wish I could do it more often, especiallt with fiction.  Also, on a side-note, the XS Wiki will not be editable by anyone other than myself, Scott or my project partners.  The Wiki is more or less a place to display our ideas to the public, and not an outside collaborative effort; it’s entirely internal.  The reason why I’m using a wiki is purely because it has the features I’d be wanting for writing and showing off stuff; as much as I like blogs, I find it’s not really a system that’s good for really showing off ideas the way I want to, that is I want to be able to, without having to worry about too much coding, write a story and have it displayed in such a way it flows the way I want it to, as opposed to blog style.  I’ll most likely post an extract from a story I’m writing in my personal project blog from time to time and add in a link to the story, but that’s really the only blog exposure that anything with a narrative and is fiction will get.  The project section on the wiki will most likely be a summary of each the team/group project that is done under the XS banner, by way of a record; the gallery will be linked, as will the blog and any other info that the blog doesn’t handle, so in a sense it’ll contain things that we haven’t mentioned on the blog or in the photo gallery or other little, interesting things.

I sometimes seem a little too ambitious for my own good, to be honest, but the reason why I’m using blogs and wikis, and their multi counterparts is purely for simplicity and less hassle and remembering of passwords.  That and the fact that I can just write something and format it more easily, and not have to worry about much coding.  It makes perfect sense for me to go the way I’m going at the moment.  I’m also thinking that I may actually just make the Techie Guild Wiki the central place for tutorials and how-tos for all my websites, provided it’s techy stuff anyway.

It’s made me realise that my objectives seem to be the following:

• Don’t repeat content if you have to; if you need the same thing for another site, just link the original page you did, with a short explanation.
• If anything is related, share the base software, ie: have a multi-blog or multi-wiki system, so you only have one install, but multiple systems running off it, ie: have separate single blogs on a multi-blog system.
• Reduce the amount of coding required where possible, so it’s simple to get what you require out.
• Reduce the amount of separate logins where possible, less to remember.
• Reduce the amount of installs of the same software to conserve space and reduce headaches when backing up; use plugins to software if possible to get a more integrated system going.

It all makes perfect sense to be honest…  and while everything may be a little shaky at the start, as time goes on, the system will start to work better, especially given some of the systems are yet to be fully planned, or they’re easily integrated into a future system.  You can totally see the random randomness come in now, can’t you?  Admittedly, people may or may not understand what I have to say, but hey, so long as I understand it I guess it’s okay!  If you do understand it, then fair play to you; all I’m doing at the moment equates to a brain dump of ideas, in some possibly comprehensible, albeit readable format.  If anyone wants to make use of any of my ideas, feel free… but please let me know that you used it, because I’d be very interested to see it in action.  The problem with many of my ideas is that I think they might work, but I either am too disorganised to do them myself (quite common) or they’re beyond my ability at the moment (surprisingly common).  I’ve given out ideas freely in the past if I see a use for them in a friend’s project; in fact for the “Camelot” mIRC project I’ve worked on and off for the past 8 years is an ehancement of a MUD-like environment someone else developed, called Starbase Oceania (SBO).  The reason why I’m mentioning this is because I was the one who came up with the credits system for it; it was a system where you earned a credit for each time you typed a single line within the bot.  I also assisted with some of the descriptions as well.  Sadly, SBO appears not to be up any more, but I have plans to design a successor in mIRC 7.x although it may be a case of being too late, but to be honest I’ll more than likely use it as the basis for a prototype and then design a proper client-server system around it.

I’ll have to sort out the design for it though, which could take a while.  Either way, I want to first sort out more immediate projects before working on anything new, even if it was a preexisting project.  It’ll be a bugger to get it working, because of the network complications at my end, but I’ll think of something no doubt.  It may be that I’ll instead just use a VPS to host after and connect a website VPS to the dev server, so I can have a web frontend.  But yeah, I need to focus.

I’m going to stop here now before I run away with myself any further because I think I’ve nearly gone twice as long as the other entry without meaning to!  I could actually use Twitter as an alternate, off-site status system as well which would be useful.  Sadly though, I think MUDs are slowly being phased out, but I don’t care because I’m essentially designing a future framework and want to see how it would work at the most basic level first as I need to learn more advanced stuff.  I’ll speak about this project more in time, but for now, I’m stopping it here.

I feel that I’ll have a third entry, possibly more this month, so watch out for it, otherwise I’ll post more next month… I really need to write to my LiveJournal sometime though

This pretty much means that I’m going to spend a lot of time in Guild Wars (GW), hunting for treasure and also collecting copious amounts of grog, go me!  On a related notw, I’ve also gotten myself a second account, which works out cheaper than buying 4 more character slots, especially given that I got Guild Wars Prophecies (Prophecies) for 99p, after my Reward Card discount, which was quite nice indeed.  I coincidentally, by sheer luck managed to get a copy of Eye of The North cheap (second hand with an intact code) off Amazon so I can bring my characters up North and get them reserved for Guild Wars 2 (GW2).  Unfortunately, this means I’m only limited to the entire Tyria continent, which is by no means a bad thing, but I tend to like exploring the whole world.  All that said though, I’ll most likely get the other campaigns over the next while, when they are cheap enough.  I’m working on a few different title tracks for all the characters over two accounts at present, most notably Survivor (as the name suggests, it means you are not to die), of which I have 4 characters over all 3 campaigns marked for.  I also have a couple of characters going for Defender of Ascalon (reaching L20 in the starting area).  Before I continue, I’d like to reassure readers that this isn’t just going to be about GW, I just want to mention it now, as I’ve never really mentioned it before and it ties in nicely with the grog and loot collecting!  Anyway, with that aside, I’ve been working on all of this for quite a while now, though the second account only has been around the past month.  Still, there’s plenty to keep me going till GW2 comes out.  Coincidentally, if anyone ever wants to ever hang out on GW, let me know and we can do so.

Staying with MMORPGs a bit, and Lord of The Rings Online (LOTRO) has gone Free to Play in the USA, with the European edition following eventually.  There’s a delay with the European patch which you can google if you’re interested in it.  Alternatively, you could always try the USA edition, but I’m not on there, and I’m honestly in two minds about going there, even if I have an account.  I also have a Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) account which I haven’t really played yet either, due to updating issues, though the software is fully updated now so maybe I’ll give it a try.  I may end up having to setup a page specifically for my social networking/gaming/profile stuff so I don’t need to constantly mention it in a post.  But in order to do that I need to possibly remove a page, or be creative with the title (as well as rearranging other page titles!).  Same deal for LOTRO (Europe) applies for GW and Star Trek Online (STO), which I’ve started to get back into.  I also have plans to form a Fellowship in LOTRO and already have a guild in GW, if anyone wants to join.  As for sTO, I’m not sure what’s going on there as of yet, as my friends may be setting up a fleet, so I’d be inclined to join them if that is the case.  Coincidentally, any game clans/guilds/etc that I form are actually global ones, in the sense that they encompass the membership of all my websites and the ones I’ve a high involvement with.  This saves a logistical nightmare later and also means that the clan can be of a decent size.  There’s an official site up through GamerDNA, but it needs tweaking first.  As for my sites, I’ve decided to have a few changes.  First of all, I’m gonna be bringing out a site called the Techie Guild (TG), which will deal with a lot of techy (non-gaming stuff) and is coincidentally the parent site of the Gamed Up project.  I also decided that the TG is the best place for a support and tech wiki, though beyond the support section, I’m unsure of what that’ll entail as of yet.  I also think that it will reduce the burden on my planned IT support site in that I can just put all the paid services on there with the Techie Guild providing free support.

Granted, I may potentially lose money by offering free support, but some of the money I get will be through ads, plus there’s always someone who isn’t able to follow instructions (for whatever reason that might be), so there can be a service offered there… that’s the plan anyway.  Other than that, I’ve learnt that HTC are bringing out 2 new Desire models, the Desire HD and Desire Z.  First thing that struck me is that the Z version has a keyboard (obviously), which harks back to the G1 days… though some of the journalists online appeared to have forgotten that HTC did the G1!  Anyway, the nmajor difference between the HD and Z is that the HD has a 1GHz processor and 768MB of memory, whereas the Z has 800MHz and 512MB of memory.  They both have 1.5GB storage and are expandable (naturally).  That kind of puts a possible dent in my plans to aquire a Desire, although that said, it may benefit me because that means the original ones should go down in price and they are much better than a Tattoo anyway!  On a related note, I think I’ve actually become rather attached to the Androis OS now, not least because I have a secure place for all my contacts now as well, without having to pay anything extra.  I also managed to get rid of all my old phones cluttering things up, and between the ones I sold to CEX, and the ones I sold to Mazuma and Top Dollar Mobile, I made about… £150 quid, plus I managed to get rid of some of the boxes, apart from a couple of Nokia ones, which are used for the accessories and manuals.  Apparantly, people actually buy the boxes, which I was aware of, but didn’t do a lot about.   I may need to consider selling off the boxes in the near future instead of recycling them, if they make a few quid…. I certainly need any money I can get!

Continuing the gadgets theme, my old laptop has kinda died now, as the graphics card seems to have died, which is great.  I’m estimating a 200 quid repair cost as well, which isn’t good.  While I decide what to do with it, I purchased an Acer 8935G with a 3 year extended warranty (once bitten twice shy).  You’d think I’d have gone for another brand, but really, the laptop at least lasted a year and a half before deciding to mess up, and I think I may be able to get it fixed for less than 200 quid, if I’m lucky.  Either way, I’m pretty impressed with what I got with it, even if it has 2 things I bought separately built into it this time (BlueTooth and a TV reciever).  What particularly impresses me though is the inclusion of a Blu Ray recorder and also a quad core CPU.  It coincidentally is able to do the virtualisation for XP Mode on Windows 7, even though MS dropped the requirement.  I’m assuming though that with it, things run a little more smoothly.  It also has 2 x 500GB HDDs which is quite nice as well,though I learnt that this one needs 3 DVDs to back stuff up with this time!  That’s quite a few, to be honest and I’d much prefer just having it on a BluRay Disc, but those are pretty expensive at present, so sadly not an option.  Still, I expect that this computer will serve me for about 3 years before it comes to a replacement; the Quad core and Blu Ray drive have at least ensured that.  So long as it plays the games I want it to, I’ll be happy.

As for my two desktops, I’ve finally hooked up my KVM switch, so now I can switch between the two with ease andthough I can’t use the mouse or keyboard yet due to the fact it doesn’t like USB.  Additionally, I need to sort out the hard drives I’m going to put into the desktop too though I see little reason to upgrade the motherboard, given that I only have DDR1 RAM at my disposal at present.  I do eventually plan to upgrade my desktop as well, but not for another year yet.  I want to get it upgraded to 7 Home Premium 64 though and stick Ultimate 64 on the laptop as it can take it.  Given I was going to put Windows 7 on the laptop, I decided t keep the “new” Vista interface to prepare to use 7, although I need to sort out the drivers and how I’m going to reinstall everything, given I need to make a list of the drivers I need.  What is made easier though is the fact my desktop has internet access, so the process will be a lot simpler than I think.  Still, I think I’m going to have a major geekgasm when I see Guild Wars running at full resolution.  Oddly enough, I can now transfer some of my platinum on my main account to the character on my alternate account and I can also get myself past the gate, so score!  Admittedly though, I’m going to have to keep the alt character out of harm’s way as she needs to be kept alive for survivor.  At the very least though, I can complete all the quests for her now so that’s a good thing.  Both characters are rangers, as a point of interest, though my main is male going for Defender and staying in the starting area, and my other is female and going for Survivor and will eventually leave the area.

The cash boost will be very much appriciated too.  Given that she’s leaving though, I may actually just give all the flowers and collector stuff to my main character so I can get him an equipment pack.  This means I’d have a lot more storage as a result.  Oh, the possibilities.  One last thing before I stop writing though… I also started on Might & Magic: Heroes Kingdoms which is essentially Heroes of Might & Magic crossed with Lord of Ultima, which I think is a good thing.  I certainly enjoy it more than LoU anyway, which wasn’t a bad game but the Heroes of Might & Magic series was always a great one.  If you happen to be there or are interested in playing, let me know and we can chat or I can invite you to my alliance.  I really need to sort out the clan site soon though.  The Gamed Up Site is still in the planning stages as I need to rethink the design I had for it an experiment with it.  I also have a few more site ideas, but I’ll reveal more about those in time and also when I have everything else out of the way first.

I did also manage to pick up a few PC games as well, for quite cheap.  I got myself Evolva, Mass Effect, Star Trek: Borg and Space Empires V and with the exception of the ST game, they were all new!  I ended up spending a lot on games the past week or so nut they were so cheap I couldn’t help myself!  Staying on the subject of PCs, my desktop has developed a slight issue where one of my SATA power connectors has broken so I can only have one hard drive going at a time, which quite frankly sucks.  Thje laptop isn’t fareing well either, given that the screen has gone all funny on it.  I do hope it’s just a loose connection because otherwise I’m going to have to shell out for a new laptop, given the gfx card replacement is a good 200-odd Pounds!  Thankfully, my desktop problem is only a couple of quid to fix, though I might get a spare one, in case it falls down again.  In case you’re wondering how it fell, it was simply a case of me getting tangled up with my mouse lead and pulling on the desktop and knocking it down.  Thankfully, it was just that which was damaged… the hard drives seem to be fine which I consider a small miracle.  Not that I could afford to replace them at all.  Not the best week for my computers, is it?

And it isn’t really the best week for me phone-wise either in a sense… I’m trying to pick up a HTC Desire reasonably cheaply, but I’m not having much luck at present here either!  Oddly enough, C64Glen was talking about them quite recently, and I added my little part; I think it’s awesome there’s a C64 emulator on Android, but that said I think I had it on my G1… certainly is better with a keyboard anyway!   As it stands though, I now have less money than I thought I did, which isn’t a good thing, although I’m finally taking the plunge and selling off my extra phones though I seem to be missing one at the moment!  I’ll find it eventually, but I’ve decided to get rid of these phones partly to help fund my purchase of the Desire and also because they’re sitting round doing nothing!  I’ve actually also started to throw out the boxes the phones have come in to save a bit of space, though it seems that you can get money for them on eBay, but I can’t be bothered with that at present.   It is actually a bit of a concern the phone went missing, although it may be upstairs.  Anyway, I hope by the end of October, things will have picked up in many areas.   I also want to make a quick mention that I’ve finally recorded a 3rd episode of the DiggerCast with my friend Ollie, and that the second one will be going up soon, followed by the third.

Moving on now, I stumbled upon an interesting “Mocumentary” through the Money Saving Expert email, which I watched with interest.  It’s essentially an environmental thing, but well worth looking at.  It also brought me to this video about a person called Captain Charles Mooretalking about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” on TED, which is related to the previous video. I then started looking at TED’s other videos and came up with this video, titled “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” by Sir Ken Robinson.  This video is well worth a watch, especially towards the end where he starts talking about someone who was behind the coreography of some of the most popular theatre productions of all time.  I won’t say any more right now, but suffice to say, it both moved me to tears and also got me thinking about how certain people are treated and how different would things be if they were treated differently, like this person was.  The reason for the secrecy is that I don’t want to spoil the surprise, because it really is that amazing (at least to me), I feel that no matter what I say, I’ll never do it justice.  I do recommend watching the whole video through because it really makes perfect sense.  TED is really a great resource and I think that I need to start using it more than I have in the past.

I also watched another video from Clifford Stoll, titled “18 Minutes With An Agile Mind“, and I’m not sure if he’s actually like that, playing it up a bit or a bit of both, but all I know is that I could so see myself doing what he does, although admittedly, I was a little frustrated in the opening minutes because I couldn’t find an anchor point initially to help me follow the conversation, but as someone pointed out, it does keep you on your toes!  Lastly, I had my first experiences with FreeCycle and also GumTree Freebies a few days ago, which I support the concept of, that is giving something I’m disposing of another chance at being used.  Unfortunately though, the item I put up was set to be taken by someone, but we couldn’t get it down my stairs!  Such a pity, because asides from some minor (repairable?) damage, it was perfectly usable and now I have to destroy it simply because I can’t get it down my stairs!  The item in question was a divan bed base, one of those boxy sorts that was in one piece, so couldn’t be disassembled.  I have no idea how the moving guy actually got it up the stairs in the first place to be honest, seeing as after removing the banisters, the person collecting it and I were still unable to get it out!  Such a pity I’ll have to cut it in half, but I guess that’s what happens sometimes.

Fortunately, I have a bed base to replace that, one that can actually be easily taken apart and moved, but I would have liked the base to go to someone who needed it, as opposed to in the rubbish, though it may be able to go into the local recycling plant, so it mightn’t be a total loss.  I am trying to do my bit for the environment, but sometimes there’s stuff that grinds my efforts to a halt.  Oh well, such is life I guess.  Here’s hoping that I’ll be able to blog soon that I finally have a HTC Desire and can tell you what it’s like… though I suspect I may need to pay a lot more than I think.  I am also in the market for a video camera now too, as I’m hoping to make some videos, as well as bring the camera on investigations too.  This also may take a bit of time, but I have a better chance at getting a cheapish video camera over a cheapish Desire!

We’ll see what happens in time.

All that’s missing on this new PC is an internal speaker and a couple of hard drives; my system has always been to have a smaller drive for the OS, then at least one larger drive to install games, put downloads on, etc.  I have some spare drives for the job, but one which was connected to the board I’m using in the “new” system has a corrupted partition, which is a bugger.  I’m working on fixing it and downloaded a utility to help me recover the bad sectors, if possible.  The worst thing is that I might have to just give up on the drive and get a new one, which isn’t cheap, especially as it’s an IDE drive.  And when I went looking on the Maxtor site (it’s a Maxtor drive), I found out that Maxtor and Seagate have merged!  That one completely passed me by!  Anyway, another problem with my laptop, coincidentally is that the speaker wire’s become loosened while it was bieng fixed, so I no longer get sound from it, apart from the sub.  However, this issue is easily repaired by the tech, but I figured I should add it as it’s leading to something and related to PC issues.  My laptop also now has a fly lead in place of the DC jack (though the DC jack is a part of it), which makes it a lot more resiliant and robust (do they mean the same?).  I was told that not everyone likes it as it doesn’t look as good (costs the same price as a replacement, which are rare for Acers I might add!), but as I value function over looks, it was perfect for me.

Oddly enough, it seems that the DJ jack gets the most strain of laptops and I can see why!  I was told my DC jack was cracked and that luckily I nipped it in the bud… even though I had to be creative till I could afford to get the repair and even then the contacts were a bugger, I smelt burning and the unit heated up round the DC jack.  It sucks when you can just about afford to do it… fact is, it needed to be done, so I did it.  Anyway, I hope to get all my PCs up and running properly again soon, so I can finally start on my websites.  I have a new idea for the radio site I want to implement and my Gamed Up project now has a look, but I can’t afford it, and need sections to come up with.  I’ll mention some stuff I’ve done in a later blog entry and where possible, even without the layout, I’ll be adding in a games blog to write to, so as always watch this space.

And lastly, before I forget, I’m gonna be using Google AdSense on this site.  I’m hoping to make sure it doesn’t get in the way, but I’ll have to see.  I also plan on opening up 2 more Zazzle stores as well; one is for the Radio site(s) and another is most likely for the paranormal group I’m setting up.  I may actually set one up for Gamed Up as well, but we’ll see what happens.  I have somany ideas, I find it hard to focus on just one, lest I forget about the others.  I’ll get something sorted eventually, but I’ll take things slowly.  I hope to have things mostly run themselves eventually, which is why the DiggerCast is being moved back to the Radio site, as it cuts down on multiple logins.  One day soon though, I plan to sit myself down and dedicate a whole page to each site and domain so I know what is going where, as frankly I need it!

Anyway, I’m just rambling now, so I’ll stop.  I’ll try to have an update on my sites for the next post, though it depends on what else comes up between now and then.

http://www.shoutmeloud.com/facebook-spam-name-this-is-without-doubt-the-sexiest-video-ever-p-p-p.html

http://www.tricksdaddy.com/2010/05/facebook-spam-this-is-without-doubt-the-sexiest-video-ever-p-p-p.html

And lastly, a link on how to remove it: http://www.lifedork.net/post/how+to+delete+winamp+facebook.html

Alternatively, if you happen to have me as your friend on Facebook or MSN I’ll help you through it.  But yeah, this just makes me glad I’ve become more aware of securing my online accounts as of late.

Edit: I know the alignment is a bit screwy, but at present I have no idea how to fix it.  Anyway, the post is still legible so it’s not that big an issue and likely can wait until after I move this blog to its new home.

I also paid Maplins a visit as well and got some books on robotics, soldering and electronics, as well as a book on oscilloscopes, which sparked my interest since I studied at Greenwich.  I also got another set of LED Safety Glasses (which are gonna be modded, leaving the first ones I bought intact) and also an Audiophile 2496 audio card, which I was hoping to use for helping me with music composition at a later date, although it would be more nice just to have something professional to use with MIDI.  The problem is however that it needs audio cables, and while I do have them, I don’t have the space for them, so I’m either going to have to locate an external version of the card or make the space.  It’s occurred to me that I have also lost my reciept so I need to goo looking for it, damn.  That aside, I may have to just accept that this may be the best card for my price range (I don’t want to pay a lot more to be honest) and get a Game Port to USB adaptor, which to be honest may not be a bad idea, seeing as they’re cheap enough at 8 quid each!  I really only wanted that expensive card for the built-in MIDI port, and considering I can have a decent audio card with a cheaper separate bit, it may be best off just going down this route.  I have too many game controllers that require Game Ports to just drop the idea; I didn’t realise till much later that I had no MIDI port on my soundcard!  Another bonus as well is that it has some composing software with it, as well as some loops, so that’ll help me some more.

I think I could do with regorganising my PC both inside and outside, as there’s cables everywhere!  I have also been considering moving my router downstairs as well, so I can free up some space on my storage cabinet.  On that note as well, I should consider getting myself a printer server so I can use the printer with the network.  It might also be in my best interests to get an Ethernet-over-Power adaptor as well as although my desktop will have a wireless card in it, I will most likely want to wire it up too!  And if I don’t use it on the PC, it was going to be used on the PS3 as the wireless is notoriously unreliable on it, although that may be due to the fact that it doesn’t like AES encryption for some reason.  Perhaps this will be rectified in another update, but for now it’s damn annoying!  I phased out 802.11b and WEP in my network, due to both security and practicality issues… the majority of my devices are G compatible, and use WPA/WPA2 although my laptop is N, but I dunno if it’s been standardised yet, not that it’ll be beneficial to me, to be honest as most of my devices are G.  I was going to use a USB stick as an AP (access point) for my older DS games as it seems that the DS games only support B and WEP which I think is rather silly, but I can’t do a lot about it to be honest… oh well.  Moving my router downstairs would allow me to wire up my PS2 and PS3, thus bypassing the need for wireless.  Although I don’t know why I’d put my PS2 online as I’ve got no games that support the feature!  I prefer wireless (despite the insecurity of it), seeing as it means that I don’t have as many wires about and it keeps the place tidier.

Something tells me though that when I do decide to move the router, I’m going to have immense fun rearranging the place, seeing as I want to make the wires look as inconspicious as possible.  I already have a wire untangled from when I wired up my laptop (in my bedroom) to the router in the study although that just barely reached and I had to move the router as it was a foot short!  It was 3 foot short for if I wanted it on my lap in bed so I had to switch to the wireless again, after I worked out why it ouldn’t connect!  It is nice to know that I’ve learnt more about networking and computer hardware over the past few years so I know more or less what I’m doing now!  I’m best off doing all this when I return home though as the PC will be off, though I’m thinking it’ll be worth the extra hassle of moving stuff around.  The only problem is though that the router has a tendancy to reboot itself every now and again.  The other problem is that I’d have to remember to install the network card or use my laptop till I do install it in my desktop!  And while I think about it, I want another bookcase in my living room for additional storage of things although I’d only need a half-height one this time around.  That said though, the more I think about it, the more I think I might need to do some  interior redesign to be able to store stuff better.  Moving the router and my NAS drive certainly would be a few steps in the right direction, although I’m not 100% sure of where to keep them.  Either way, I think all my wires definitely need tidying up;  I could put 2 of my PC speakers on the wall behind my screen to make a tiny bit of space as well.  It does look like this will require quite a bit of thought.

The ultimate aim is to make a bit more space than I have now, or rather additional space.  It’s times like these make me wish I owned my own place as opposed to renting as it’ll be a pain having to restore everything in the future.  But enough about my living space (I do want to eventually show off some pics of the place later when I’ve organised it more), I’m going to talk more about my DC3 idea.  For those of you new to the DC concept, and also what happened to the first two, I need to talk about it some more…

The DiggerCast (DC) was a podcast that had kind of random beginnings.  Back in 2005 or 2006, my friend Sean and I were on Skype, where he was testing his audio equipment and we were testing the recording function.  I suggested we try out a podcast, and the DiggerCast was born.  I registered the domain diggercast.com and Sean hosted the site on his space.  He also produced the first podcast as well, though unfortunately we never did any more after that.  Also the original, undedited content is no longer existant. , which is a shame but it was too large to keep.  Phase II, as I referred to it as was to be revival with a new member of the team, Mark (from thelongmile.net) joining us.  We managed to record some semi-rough drafts for the series, but again it didn’t take off, despite all the hype I was giving about the releaunch.

It was between the first and second phases that I renamed the DiggerCast to the NotCast, as the domain was unable to be registered, as I let it lapse by accident.  Anyway, I subsequently re-aquired and renamed the NotCast back to the DiggerCast and I’ll be keeping the domain for the forseeable future.   Anyway, those Phase 2 attempts will be uploaded on the new site when I get that up after I return from Ireland and after the next blog entry meaning anytime between the 15th and the 28th.  The 3rd attempt is perhaps the most ambitious version of the project, and maybe the final one if it doesn’t work out.  This means I’m being both ambitious and cautious at the same time, and making sure the concept and premise are both rock solid.  This means that the official recording won’t be starting till sometime in the next year.  There’s also the fact that there’s going to be some content that needs to be put on the site first and this is where many people will be needed to help.  Essentially, the concept of this phase of the DiggerCast is thatthere will be a few blogs, he first one being the main site itself, which will have a forum plugin and also a social bookmarking plugin.

This will mean then that as opposed to getting stuff to talk about from the likes of Slashdot, Digg.com and similar sites (as was the case with the 2nd phase), we get stuff from the site proper and talk about the top 5 or 10 links posted by the users.  The format of the podcast will most likely be a 30 minute podcast about the top content for the past two weeks, though the podcast will always be two weeks behind the site content.  I’m still trying to work out the nitty grity of it all, but what will happen is the following:

Let’s say that each month has 28 days for simplicity…. not that I’m sure if this is going to be simple to explain or not!  Anyway, say we have to talk about content from the 1st-14th of the month in the podcast.  The podcast wouldn’t be released till the 28th of the month, though thinking about it maybe I can shift it to the 21st.  The idea essentially being that we get 1-2 weeks to read up on the content and associated comments, discuss it amongst ourselves a little, write it all down, then also do recording and production on the podcast.  This could possibly be done over a single week, although I’m still trying to sort out the finer points, especially in the interests of being consistant with having a podcast at a regular frequency.  Another alternative is that once a month, the podcast gets posted, at the end of the first week of each month, which summarises last month’s content and about 5 weeks of comments.  The only problem there is that we’d possibly have to do it for an hour, or just focus on the top 5 or 6 posts for the month so it can be fir into half an hour.  Bleh, so much to think about and decide!

Anyway, why I need people’s help is that I would ask you to sign up to this site when it’s released to the world officially, but only if the idea interests you.  I’m not forcing you to sign up if it doesn’t interest you, especially as the content of the podcast is based upon what users contribute to the site and it’s all well and good having lots of users, but if hardly any of them post it won’t work too well.  In this case it’s quality over quantity.  If you have any friends that may be interested as well, you can point them to the site to see what they think of it.  Perhaps the idea has been done before, but I’d like to try it out for myself.  Even if you don’t want to sign up to the site, I’d appriciate suggestions as to what I could do with the format or recommended software for using this with.  At the moment, I plan to use WPMU with a forum plugin, a social bookmarking plugin and also a podcasting plugin.  For the podcast itself, I’d be using Prettymay Call Recorder, Skype and Audacity.  The idea is still in flux atm, and I haven’t worked out some of the finer details, or how to summarise the concept, so I’m just doing a brain dump in here.  Again, I’d appriciate any suggestions or comments on the idea and if you have any questions, ask away as it might help me to focus better.

I’ll stop talking about this idea for now, as I think I’ve said enough about it for now.  I’ll reveal the name for the site in a follow-up entry, but seeing as I was supposed to post this yesterday, I’m gonna pick up the pace.  I want to mention as well that I got a good deal at Game for Lord Of The Rings Online Vols. 1 & 2, along with a 60 day game time card.  I got them both for 25 quid, which is cool.  I’ve been wanting to play LOTRO for quite a while, so this is a great time for me to try it.  I might actually report on it at a later stage as well when I get to grips with it.  I’m also reordering my blog a bit too, as there’s some blogs that I list that haven’t been updated in a while and also a few things that are redundant which I’ve not even fully looked into.  I’m also aware that this blog is a bit of a melting pot of my ideas and thoughts and everything else put into the one place, which isn;t necessarily a bad thing, but I feel I could do with some better segregation in the new future.  Something tells me that I won’t get it till at least the next year, when my games blog is up and running.  There will certainly be a reduction of categories and tags when I’ve finished with revamping the blog, as well as also checking out the links.  I’m also going to work out how to use the trackbacks properly as well and start linking people’s blog entries.  I’m relatively new to proper blogging, so I’m bound to have a few rough patches here and there.  One thing I do need to look at though is moving stuff from my Blogger blog to here, and stuff from my GameTrailers blog to my games blog.  I also intend to have a paranormal-type blog as well where I’ll muse about paranormal stuff and anything I’ve done in relation to rhat field.  Keep in mind that the frequency will be semi-regular, much like what I plan my Project and Experiment blog to be.  Still, it might be worth a look if you’re into things that go bump in the night.

It’s funny that with a lot of these things I’m doing, I’m seemingly spreading myself thin, when the actual fact of the matter, I’m essentially just streamlining and regulating my posts so there’s consistancy behind them.  I do admit I have a lot of free time at the moment, but I am gonna start occupying myself more over the next year.  I’m also, finally going to the gym, although I will miss out on about a week of it due to going to Ireland, but when I return it’ll be a bit easier to do, apart from at Christmas.  I’ll be glad when I streamline this blog a bit better though, as it means that I won’t have as many huge posts to worry about as my average post seems to run up to about 3-4000 words!  I seem to have a lot to say, that said.  If I could focus this tendancy to write 2000+ words into my academic work, I’d be doing well!  I may have to consider the 1 post a week method in the new year, so I can average out the words making sure there’s less to read, and slowing down my rambling.  It is just as well that I separate stuff with paragraphs as I write as reading this without paragraphs would be a nightmare!

I’m gonna finish off here, and continue the once every two weeks posting until February next year, where I’ll reevaluate things.  It’s going to take me some time to settle into the patterns of writing, to be honest.  I will also try to keep things a little less verbose in the future, as well as starting to include links and publishing on time!  I am thinking that once a week may become a more viable option though, especially given my short memory!  Well, thinks can only improve, especially when I’ve nailed this blog down.  In the grand scheme of things though, a blog is one of the easier sites to manage; I kept this blog simple as all I needed it for was writing mainly, although my Twitter and Flickr are linked into them for practical purposes.  Rome wasn’t built in a day though, so I can’t expect to see instant improvement.  In the future, I’ll try to make the blog more about my opinions on stuff, with some links to read, as opposed to what I’m working on.  I may actually make a blog for that on my secondary site, so I can talk about stuff there in a bit more detail, as it seems that I talk about what I’m working on more than anything else when that’s not what this blog is supposed to be about mainly… I think I’ll need to think about things a lot, to be honest.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I’d appriciate your comments on the DiggerCast 3 project, as well as suggestions for it (how many times have I asked that now?) as I want to start seeing what I could do to make the site as good as it could be, although requirements do change given it’s a dynamic project.  Keep in mind that I may not be able to implement the suggestion right away, or even for the DC, though it may fit in elsewhere.  I’ll inform you of this though.