I’m entitled to a refund (or at least a partial one) on my PS3 because of an EU law relating to the OS removal in the 3.21 patch. I can’t discuss it right this minute, but I will in the next post. I did have something else to blog about too, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was. On a side-note, I got Roack Band 2 in the post, so happy days! Now I just hope it with the Band Hero drum-kit controller…

It seems that this blog has now become my main blog about personbal things though really my LiveJournal should be used for that although it’s good that I get my tweets sent to it as well, so it’s not like I totally abandoned it, though I’m due for a megapost soon. Anyway, things have started to settle down now; I’ve gotten used to this place, finances are improving, I’m starting to find and organise stuff properly (though list my headset and DSi – doh!) though it’ll all take time. I still have to deal with the shower from hell, although I’m rather happy to report that I have a decent bed and also have my double bed back so I can use it myself now! I’ve been on my laptop the past 6 weeks or so given I haven’t properly setup my desktop, seeing as it needs some work. There’s a slightly more urgent need to get my development/music PC up and running now, seeing as I am getting a tad annoyed keeping everything on the one PC; it would be a good idea to have anything production-wise on the d/m PC so I dont bog down the main desktop with a lot of stuff; a portable/USB webserver would be another great idea too, although I do need to keep in mind that certain software requires MySQL, so I might just use 2 USB sticks to do that. The less I bog my system down the better although I want a new one soon. I’m still at a loss as to why my desktop refuses to play any of the HL2 engine games as well, though I’m hoping a reinstall will help things. I also need to put Windows 7 on this laptop too. Another of my great ideas is to get myself a 1TB drve and backuo everything across my main network drive and PCs onto it so if things go tits-up on anything, I have a recovery point. I should make a driver repository too so I don’t need to go online to locate the latest drivers. So many possibilities though I’ve yet to plan them out.

Anyway, just to mention about the DiggerCast, I have an episode awaiting production but because of the move, I can’t record any more episodes until I find my headset. I also plan to get some new Skype call recording software as well, though I forgot the name of it… I think it’s called Pamela. PrettyMay served me well, but Pamela seems to be more suited to my needs. Well, it’ll tide me over at least until I get a mixing deck and other podcasting gear! Other than that, I’ve been getting into Guild Wars and playing about on the PS3 occasionally. Sadly though, my Band Hero drum-kit refuses to work with Rock Band 1, thinking it’s vocals and if it’s one thing I don’t do it’s sing while sober or around people >.> Erm, anyway, the Guitar Hero guitar works well with RB, so it’s not a total loss… need a second guitar though. I also need to get into learning the piano/keyboard as my friend has an idea about setting up a band at some point. On that note, I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned seeing Assemblage 23 who were quite frankly, awesome. One funny thing about one of the supporting acts that I didn’t realise till last week was that one of the blokes in Tenek was also in The Nine, who did one of the songs I remember hearing at least 10 years ago, most likely more; that song being My Fallacy. Was pretty crazy. I uploaded a pic of Tom Shear on my Facebook, with plans to do the same on Flickr; in my opinion the pic is perfect; perfect lighting and no blur… it was a great shot.

My mum was over for a few days last week and we went to the Science Museum and checked stuff out then we went to see Tangerine Dream (the point of her visit), at their Zeitgeist concert which celebrated their 40th anniversery of their first album and 35th of their performance at the Royal Albert Hall. It was impressively massive, but by god the seats in the middle were uncomfortable; my arse was really sore from prolonged sitting on them! Of course, between the lack of sleep (I have trouble sleeping before daybreak at present), the lighting and their music, I ended up closing my eyes and zoning out completely, because I’m cool like that. To be fait though, after about an hour of doing that and towards the end I felt well-rested and stayed wide awake for the last hour and a half! I remember during the intermission there was this bloke saying stuff and he literaly had the house in stitches and recieved a huge applause! I wish I had recorded it now so I could upload it to YouTube, but alas it never occurred to me. Anyway, heading home was really fun; we missed the last train from London Bridge back to mine, meaning we had to go to Lewisham on the final-final train, where I think cattle-class was an understatement… this was sardine class! To make matters worse, there was an incident, meaning the Met had to be called in. It took us quite a while before we moved. We eventually got to Lewisham and hung around for the N89, then when that finally came, we went upstairs where there was this bloke who was spitting on the bus… charming. Of course, it doesn’t end there… he starts getting confrontational with the guy behind us, which caused his phone to side under our seats… by this point, my mum decided it was best to go downstairs! I’m fairly sure I’ve now caused her to worry about me whenever I get on a nightbus, with drunk people. Anyway, it was nearly 3am when we got back to mine in the end… totally crazy!

I actually plan to go see a Tangerie Dream event in East London although I’ll have to see if I can make it, given 2 days before I’ll be having 3 of my wisdom teeth out. In theory I don’t see why I couldn’t do it, but I’ll see what happens on the 13th… for which I have to be up really early for, like 5am >.< I am not a morning person! Although I’l have to do it, so the sooner it’s done, the better. Hopefully next time I write, I’d have found my DSi or my headset… don’t hold your breath though.

I had hoped to have written up an entry sooner than this, but alas, I suffered a fracture on New Years Eve and I’ve only just been able to get the mindset to blog.  I was supposed to be heading back on the 29th of December, but had to wait a couple of days because the wind conditions for ferry crossings sucked.  Anyway, I was going to wait till the 1st of January to attempt to cross, but unfortunately I ended up having a nasty fall on my way to the pub, so had to stay in for 2 weeks, not helped by the fact I got caught while we had the “Big Freeze”!  At one point, it was thought I had a huge chip takenoff my elbow that had to be repaired by surgery, but thankfully, I now know that this isn’t the case, although I did find out I nearly dislocated my elbow, although I was lucky not to!  As it stands though, I do have little range of motion in my elbow, but I am recieving physio for it and trying to move it as much as I can.  Unfortunately though, I doubt I’ll  have the same range of motion in the arm again, which sucks given it’s my right arm.  I try to avoid using it to carry heavy weights as I don’t really want to make it painful, although it still occasionally hurts anyway!

I’ve been back in London now for about 2 weeks now, although I had my mum over for the first few days to help me, and while I did appriciate her help, being around her for a month was prolly starting to make things a bit strained!  Of course, i was rather frustrated at having very little motion in my arm compared to usual.  Anyway, it’s occurred to me between the X-Rays and CT I’ve had in Ireland, as well as the CT and X-Rays here, and also an X-Ray for my teeth, that I’ve been X-Rayed a lot over the past couple of months… more than I have been before!  I do hope I don’t need any more X-Rays though as I think I’ve had quite a lot now… any more and I will most likely start glowing in the dark!  Moving swiftly on though and I finally found a decent place that exceeds this one… it has a garden, is 15 quid a month cheaper, has a bus stop right outside it (one of the buses is a night bus route) and it retains the heat really well too!  The only problem though is that I don’t have enough space for my couch and 2 armchairs, so I’m going to sell them and invest in a sofa bed.  Anyway, the place pretty much exceeded my expectations, although I need to measure my stuff to make sure it all fits into it.  There’s very few disadvantages that I can see, though it is a mile or two away from where I used to live, but reduced costs more than make up for it, plus I know the area, so it’s all good!  I just need to do some more checks, then get things into motion.

Read the rest of the entry »

Yes, I know it’s been over a month since I last updated… those of you who watch my Twitter will know that I’ve been delayed somewhat by an elbow fracture and being stuck in Ireland a couple of weeks longer! Anyway, I’ll try to update by the weekend…

While compiling my 50 Things list, I’ve come across a few gold ones that either I’ve done and make me laugh, are just plain wrong or they’re plain funny in themselves… they’re not going  on my final list, but I figure I’d make a list of some of the ones I liked, with handy dandy categorising!  It’s kind of funny though that some of these got on a list of things to do before you’re a certain age.  At least I can say that I’ve lived somewhat compared to when I was a fair bit younger.  I have been thinking about how things changed over the past 8-9 years, although I think this is best saved for my LiveJournal.

Anyway, on with the show…

A warning before you continue… the content following is partly adult in nature.  If you’re easily offended I’d not click below.  You have been warned.

Read the rest of the entry »

I decided to start this post due to me starting to discuss about the above topic in this post on boards.ie.  Given that it was going to be off-topic if I went any further in the post, I decided that this subject deserved its own post on my blog.  Why on my blog?  Well, I am due for an update for starters and secondly, I get the feeling that it may be better off here because at least I know I won’t need to worry about how many characters or words in the thread I created.  The thread in question is located here if you’re reading this directly from the blog; gotta do some linkbacks after all as there’s going to be two sets of comments to read through I’m sure.  Anyway, as I stated in the boards.ie post, I would never charge for my services and nor would the majority of paranormal teams, though a few individuals and/or teams might do.  And while I wouldn’t necessarily charge for my services, I don’t think it’s unfair if the person/organisation who called out the investigator assisted with the travel costs of those who are attending.  I was a little unsure of this at first, but a discussion with Steve Parsons at the ParaCon on Saturday made me feel a little easier about stating this.  As for charging a rather large amount for performing an investigation of a private or commercial location, I do feel that it’s rather unethical to charge lots of money for the service.

Like I said before, travelling to somewhere does cost money and there’s nothing wrong with asking for reimbursement of travel costs; the percentage of which I’d leave to the team and the client to decide seeing as each case is different.  Anyway, while the previously stated method is fair, it’s when investigators start to charge what I’d consider large amounts of money for a service.  In a field that’s still in its relative infancy, I fail to see how a large callout fee can be justified for an investigation that may or may not bring results, and possibly do more harm than good.  At present, there’s no way of telling if a paranormal organisation is legit or not, which brings its own set of dangers.  Any Tom, Dick and Harry can setup what they call a paranormal investigation group and claim to be able to get rid of ghosts.

I’m sure a good few people (from boards.ie) will recognise some of what I’m saying now as being paraphrased from Ciaran O’Keeffe’s and Steve’s talk, which is a huge driving force behind what I’m saying. I do feel like talking about this more, both with people who saw the talk and also those that haven’t, especially as the topic of paying for investigations was brought up in the thread where my response was posted.  Anyway, back to my initial point… because anyone can go around claiming they’re a paranormal investigator (I’m not saying everyone who says they are is a charlatan) and that there’s no regulating body for this sort of thing as of yet, people who don’t know any better have the potential to be conned by unethical individuals which is not right.  Even worse is the issue that they charge for their services and can actually do nothing.

Read the rest of the entry »

Due to inaccuracies and important omissions within the review, I decided it’s best to withdraw it until I’ve fixed and/or rewritten it. This should serve two purposes; firstly it lets me get some stuff corrected within the review, so as to increase the quality and secondly, it also allows me for better preparation for the games blog.  In the meantime, I’ll update this blog with another entry before republishing the DSi review.

Apologies if this caused any inconveniences.

Feel free to discuss the DSi here as well, if you so wish, as I’m interested in others’ experiences with it.

I will not be able to update my blog over the next few days. However, what I do plan to do is have a First Play of the Monkey Island remake. Granted, many of you have played it before (I have played and completed it), but I feel like talking about it, as it was only released a few days ago, although it will be out a week by the time I get around to talking about it.

Until then, see you later.