Anyway, I figured that I’d give a little update on things.  First of all, I’d like to make a couple of announcements, one of which affects this site directly, and one which is to do with a related website.  The most important announcement is that over the next few days, I’ll be moving all my websites over to a new web server, which means that some of the sites I own may be down for up to a couple of says (in rare cases, it may be longer).  Additionally, I’m doing a reshuffle of the structures of some sites, so you may find that even after the move is completed (it will be announced), some sites may be down while they’re moved to their new homes.  I’l post up more about this at a later date.  Additionally, I’m hoping to upload a new DiggerCast episode either before the end of this year, or not long after New Years.  Yes, I’ve been a bit slow with it, but I’ve been having issues with the recording software which caused a lot of recording to not be saved!  I need to record the final few minutes of this episode and upload it.  There will be a special episode recorded this month as well, but it isn’t due for release until after New Years.  I’ll make a post on the DiggerCast website in due time elaborating on all this more.

Now, another thing I have to mention (and this is quite big) is that the Pocket Games Review will be done in multiple parts, starting from this week.  I’ve finally managed to organise someone to film with, so we can play the games and give a better review of  the game, seeing as playing them alone is no way of reviewing them!   Also, seeing as Gamed Up won’t be up for another month or so (though it does have its own blip.tv and YouTube accounts), I’m both announcing it on here and posting the videos part by part on my personal YouTube account (TheStormkeeper for those who don’t know – though I don’t think anyone did!), then I’ll post up a more combined video up on the Gamed Up accounts.  Admittedly, this means that the videos may still actually be split up into parts on YouTube, but at the same time, they’ll be a little more coherent in some ways.  I can’t tell you what I’ll do yet, but rest assured, I’ll sort something out.

If any of you have been following my tweets over the past 2-3 weeks, you’d have noticed that I have been in touch with the lovely people over at pocketgamenews – who are a part of Cadbury, who set up a pocket game competition a few months ago as part of their new chocolate bar Spots v Stripes, which was created to commemorate our winning of the Olympic bid – and they are eagerly awaiting the video which I said I’m going to do!  So first of all, seasons greetings go out to the Pocket Games team and secondly,  I hope to have the first part of this video series recorded and uploaded by Tuesday, with a blog entry on here following not too long after the next videos are to be uploaded.  As for what’s in this first video, it’s essentially going to be me introducing the games, showing each of them off (and avoiding touching the chalk if possible!), then talking about them a bit, and essentially giving my first impressions of them.  Due to the fact that I’m using my laptop’s webcam for this, I won’t be able to show off how everything works with them in this video, but that’s why I’m doing it in multiple parts!

The following part will be myself and my friend Ollie (who some of you will know from the DiggerCast) demonstrating the games better, then playing each of them and giving them a verdict at the end.  This ensures that we give each game a fair amount of playing time and makes things easier  in the long run.  And of course, in the great Spots v Stripes tradition, we’ll each be either supporting Spots or Stripes.  As for who will be which though, all will be revealed in the next video!  In the meantime however, I need to get myself a haircut, to prepare for my video début as I need to make myself look reasonably professional, though I have no idea how I’d manage that overall… though I can but try.

A bit late for many of you, but I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a great (and safe) New Year… I know mine will be better this time round!  I’ll see you all next blog entry.

Actually, it seems my hassles won’t give up, as even though I deleted my accounts, it still thinks it’s linked into Facebook on those accounts. I’m not happy, but not much I can do at present… at least I have the nickname I want. I’ll sort out FB integration later. Anyway, after that exercise in frustration, I figured I’d also mention that I’m going to be making a couple YouTube vids and a blog entry related to the Matterbox, which I just received in the post today. There was a chocolate bar in there (emphasis on was) and also 2 games there which people are asked to review, so what I’m going to do is make an entry, and using pics that someone else has taken (properly attributed of course) write a bit about it, then the first video will talk about the stuff in it, and the second one (possibly a pair) will be with a person playing both games. It’ll make a change from the DiggerCast, which coincidentally is moving home, but the domain will still point to the DC’s current location, and in the future, it’ll be like it is now, although for the foreseeable future, the blog will get moved into its own space, till I work out how to move stuff into a multi-blog and put a domain on top of it. Of course, that’ll happen after everything has been moved over. Oh, additionally, I will be using the Rating WP plugin on the current DC site and future Podcasts website, so people can rate the episodes (be gentle!). It goes without saying that the Gamed Up website’ll use it too for its reviews system, though people will be able to give the game their own score..

I’m also hoping to gather a team of people for the DiggerCast, so we can make sure it sticks to the new pattern I’ve planned out for it (once every 2 weeks is an episode). I plan on uploading the 2 episodes I have recorded soon, but the new eps recording this coming weekend won’t be up till Xmas Eve; I will upload the 2 outstanding eps that weekend though just to have them sorted. There will be one ep in January which will be a farewell episode with regards to the Phase designation, meaning it’s going right into production! Regular series episodes will start in February, and will be uploaded once every 2 weeks, recording the weekend before, giving time to edit the episode and eventually transcribe it. Either way, with the server move happening, it gives me an opportunity to integrate stuff better and get a decent system going. Hopefully by the start of next year, everything will be sorted, and I won’t want to tear my hair out >.>

I’ll add more updates in due course. Oh, and before I forget… I’m not playing Guild Wars for a while now, given I’m getting into Lord of The Rings Online, and hopefully will be setting up a kinship (when I have enough people to). I’ve gotten myself and 2 other friends addicted to it, so we’re gonna be travelling Middle Earth for some time. If anyone is actually interested in joining us, let me know here and we’ll see about questing together. Additionally please note that we’re on the EU version of LoTRO, so US people can’t join us, but I will at least make inroads to have an equivalent US version of what we’re doing.

Watch this space for updates.

Edit: I’ve just made progress with my 250 movies goal, although admittedly I’ve seen them in the past but I’ve seen them so much, i want to take them off the list so I can focus on other movies instead, especially ones I have but haven’t seen in a while. or even haven’t seen at all!  Still, progress is progress.  I can also update the entry regarding podcasting, seeing as the DiggerCast is going into a proper production phase which I”m going to dub G2, given that There was a G1 ep posted (under Phase 1), and phases 2 and 3 were planned with a few test recordings (but never released), so the 3.5 phase is the true G2.

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.

This blog isn’t supposed to have anything to do with games, but I managed to get myself addicted to Bejewelled Blitz and yesterday was by far my best score; I scored roughly 308k in that game, though I’m wondering how people can get scores of 500k plus in 60 seconds!  Anyway, that aside I’ve also signed up to a new browser game, much like Lord of Ultima (LoU), called Might & Magic: Heroes Kingdoms (MMHK).  It’s quite similar to LoU, except it reminds me more of the Heroes of Might & Magic series, except it’s in real-time.  Sadly, all games of these nature I end up dropping after a few weeks, sometimes months, so I’m likely to get back to Guild Wars and Lord of The Rings Online.  I might have to play a bit of Star Trek Online at some point soon too, seeing as I haven’t played it in a while and I pay for it monthly!  Anyway, still games related but in a different vein, I attended a Joystick Junkies (JJ) party for the first time in at least 3 years!  It was great to go there, although the venue was extremely posh… read that as I’d never be able to go there under my current, normal circumstances!  All that aside though, it was good to get back in touch with Chris as I hadn’t seen him since the second JJ party, the first being back in September 2004 after Game Stars Live… oh, those were the days.  I have pictures up online somewhere of the GSL Event, but damned if I know where they are on Fotki!

Of course back then, I was more obsessed with booth babes and freebies!  Oddly enough though, I was kind of working on stuff back then what would have fit into my current game site project; I still actually have some of the promotional materials from that as well.  This reminds me that I really need to get myself some business cards.  Anyway getting back on track, at the JJ party, I had the pleasure of meeting Ian Livingstone, the guy regarded as the father of Lara Croft (you may recognise him as being involved with Eidos, Fighting Fantasy or the Game Workshop).  Admittedly, I didn’t actually know what he looked like, which happens a lot with me.  I know of people, but don’t necessarily know how they look!  That said though, I imagine I’d have recognised Peter Molyneux and I know for a fact I’d recognise Jon Hare given I’ve met him a few times now!  Anyway, I asked him if I’d be able to interview him for the Gamed Up website and he said yes, so I’m happy about that.  I actually haven’t contacted him since then as I amn’t sure of what to say at present, though I might just send him an email to explain more about Gamed Up.

Given I want to have some features up for the site which will be sometime within the next couple of months (properly), I’m going to approach industry people and ask them if I’d be able to interview them sometime.  I eventually hope to do this on the Gamed Up site proper, even if it’s just a temporary blog on there – indeed I’m putting up the multi-blog system so I can start blogging about games somewhere; given that my games blog will take a different format to the rest of the site, I should be able to get away with using it while the site is still being built! – but for now, I’m going to field interview questions here, so if anyone reading has a question they’d like to ask Ian Livingstone, please comment below, or if you have my email address, you can send questions that way.  Please do title it “Re: Interview Questions” though so I know what it’s about.  In the future I’ll have a dedicated interview email address, but that’s a little time off yet, same for the other email addresses.  Please keep in mind though that I may choose to combine, rephrase or even not use questions to help things flow smoothly.  Lastly, if anyone is interested in Gamed up and either wants to know more about it, or sign up to it, they can comment here or email, and I’ll answer what I can.

I eventually plan on writing a nice long blurb about it, but that’s not going to be for a while yet as I need to think about how to word it, although admittedly I may have to come up with it sooner, so I have something to show people when they ask about it!  Watch this space for details and I’ll get back to you.  At the very least, I hope by the start of November to at least have my WordPress installs in place.  I will eventually be adding my project blog to here as well, but I need another few weeks to sort that out.  It’s becoming increasingly likely as well that this will be my only personal site for a while!  I do also plan on getting back into writing, but for now, that’s limited to games design documents that I’m preparing seeing as Notepad doesn’t quite cut it, no matter what I’d like to think!  I would love to code some sort of reader thingy though, so people can read what I write in a more linear format.  Anyway, that’s something that can be worked on in the future.  I’m going to let people in on a little secret though… I’m designing an RPG with a friend of mine of which we’re using RPG Maker 2003 (it’s simpler to use!) to design a concept with; it’ll be a fully playable game, though the full game mechanics won’t be present, due to the limitations of RPG Maker.  Also what won’t appear is the entire story, given we’d save that for a more professional release.  Still though, it’s better to have something basic down before taking it further… it’s a given the planned mechanics won’t work too well, but at least if nothing else the story, characters and maps can be fleshed out in this manner; it provides a means to see how well the basic components work.

Of course, the issue is that we need to work out how RPG Maker 2003 works although we’re making progress in that regard but we’re gonna make something basic first before expanding upon stuff, so we understand how the engine works and such.  I’ll eventually start a blog with regards to it going but again that’s a while off.  I imagine though that the independent (yet related) blogs will take off sooner than the main site will, which is by no means a bad thing… may as well get something started with it, right? Part of my plans though is to get a blog up for every section I have planned for the site, so there’s at least a placeholder, which saves me from doing anything later, plus has the added benefit of making sure that everything works correctly.  I’ve always been more about function over aesthetics, but in the case of Gamed Up, I really want to site to look professional and have something to show for when it’s up and running, hence why I’m gathering up staff atm, and preparing for interviews early as well.  Indeed, the sections are still being planned but I at least have a small idea of what I want to get on the site, although the list gets bigger as I realise the scope of what I’m doing.

I can’t really say anything else at the moment with regards to it, but I do hope that when it does finally get up and running, it’ll be something amazing… although given that my sites tend to have a slow takeoff, I’m going to have to accept that there might be a small userbase at the start; of course, it will help if I can start tying the site into other sites on my network and also places like Steam, Mypace, Bebo, Tagged, Facebook, etc. just to have some sort of presence there.  I do at least plan to have the site’s internal backbone working soonish, though there is already a clan presence at least; it’s all about the small steps.

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://news.spong.com/article/21176/Sony-No-PS3-OtherOS-Refunds
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/04/19/sony_firmware_compensation/
http://www.thinq.co.uk/news/2010/4/14/sony-refuses-to-sanction-ps3-refunds/

It seems that judging by the above, getting refunds is proving to be a problem.  I still haven’t persued the possibility of getting a refund though it doesn’t look I’d have much luck at present.  There is also mention here of a 3.30 patch and as you can see, there’s no mention of the Other OS (OOS) feature being restored.  I imagine if (and at the moment it seems a big if) it does get restored, it’ll be on the next patch after this one.  Still, it’s madness that Sony pull the plug on a feature that was advertised as a selling point, especially as to actually exploit the security issue in the first place, it requires more effort than all but the most dedicated of individuals are willing to commit to.  Let’s face it, who but the most dedicated would want to open up their PS3, void the warranty on the machine and risk bricking it?  I’m not knocking them by any means, but the point is that only a handful would even consider doing this, so why would it even be considered that serious and issue?

As it stands now, those who want the OOS feature and PSN access have only one recourse, now that the proxy has been shut down (from what I gather) and that is to install the CFW, which is likely to get you banned off PSN.  As much as I’d love to have the option to have the OSS feature, I’m not willing to risk getting locked out of the PSN for it, even though many have most likely been.  It’s shocking that Sony are so willing to stand aside and let people get blocked off from PSN (be it a ban or refusal to upgrade) just because they’re allegedly plugging a security hole very few would or could exploit.  And this comes not long after Sony saying they weren’t going to remove the feature!  This is why I cannot really trust Sony at present.  Another reason for me to distrust Sony has just come up here, seeing as it appears Sony can update the PS3′s firmware without asking!  This really gets me raging!  First of all, they disable the OOS feature and now they say we can download it to your system without your consent?  What the hell are Sony smoking?  I mean seriously… first they said we had the choice of installing the FW update or not and now we don’t?  Consumer rights groups will have a field day, especially as I doubt such a thing is legal.

Before anything is said to me about how this isn’t illegal, let’s put it like this:

Say you have a car that you bought and paid for and thus you own it.  The car is computerised, so the system occasionally needs updating to iron out any kinks, etc.  Now say the car’s computer system currently has a feature that was advertised as a selling point… I have no idea what example to use but say it’s a useful feature to those what would use it and less so for those who don’t (much like the OOS).  Anyway, if you refuse to install this update, the system will have severely reduced functionality in another area more important (such as no PSN access) than the one you wish to keep until you update to the latest firmware.  You could also attempt to install a customised update but due to the way the computer system works, if such a thing is detected, the important feature will no longer work (getting banned from PSN).  Before I continue, I apoligise for non-specific examples in explaining it in terms of a car, but I honestly cannot think of any parallels at present… anyone have any ideas?  Anyway, you have chosen not to upgrade your car’s computer so you can keep the feature because you use it quite regularly, though unfortunately you also used the important feature too, but now you cannot use it because of your insistance of keeping the feature that would be removed in an update.  Of course, that EULA states that the update people have permission to break into your car (while you’re in it) and install the update anyway, regardless of whether or not you consented to it!

The main reason why I used a car though is because some people seem to think that if someone buys a PS3, Sony have the right to force their updates upon people.  Everyone understands that once you buy a car, you own it, not the company… so why is Sony thinking they own individual PS3s?  We paid a lot of money for it (some more than others) and thus we own it, which means no one, not even the company that manufactered the device can tamper with our property.

This brings me nicely to my next point.  I recently started a group on Facebook called “I refuse to buy another PS3 game until Sony restores the Other OS option!” (catchy title, eh?), which at the time of writing has only 2 users, though I’d like as many as possible. I intend to use this as a protest group, as you might have guessed and the idea is to get as many people as possible on it, so I can eventually write an email to Sony and say to them “unless you restore the Other OS feature, this many people will refuse to buy any PS3 games or a PS3, thus causing you to lose out on a lot of money!” Of course, ne recent loophole that came up which I intend to take full advantage of, or at least let others take advantage of is the purchase of second hand games/systems. Why you ask? Well, I may as well explain why I’m not buying any more PS3 games as well. Firstly, Sony makes a loss on every PS3 they sell and make it back on games sales… thus, if I don’t buy any more games (though I have in the past; Rock Band 2 is 2-3 weeks old now – before I found out the implications of this) then Sony will not make any more money. As for buying second hand stuff, the retailer gets 100% of that money, which Sony doesn’t like one bit because they don”t see that money.

So really, when I say I’m not buying PS3 games, perhaps what I should really say I’m not buying PS3 games brand new, or do anything else that puts money in Sony’s coffers; I needed a bit of a dramatic title though so it can stay

But yeah, it seems nowadays that the only way to get big multinational company to listen to you is actually threaten them the only way they’ll understand; through their pockets. If they realise that a significant part of people are angry enough and refuse to financially support them, then they should eventually sit up and take notice…. at least that’s the plan. I’m crap at writing letters so I’ll be essentially needing time to actually forulate a letter, though help is appriciated. Anyway, I’m going to leave this for now and I’ll make some minor updates to this if needs be, and if there’s anything fully newsworthy over the next week, expect another update.

Watch this space.

Update: I should mention as well that I still intend to use my PS3; I own it and I intend to use it fully with the games I have paid for already. the only things I won’t do is buy anything off it or buy any new games for it. I may consider second hand games though. It seems stupid not to use something I have already paid for.

Update 2: Here’s another link about the updating of the PS3 without consent. I love the Penny Arcade strip that goes with it too!

Unfortunately, I can’t take screenshots of C&C4, though I can of STO, and expect some in my Flickr gallery soon.  And just to talk a little bit more about C&C4, I’m honestly not sure if I like it, but it’ll be released next month, so we’ll have to see what happens then.  There’s noconventional bases in it and it sems rather remensicent of Dawn of War without the building options… actually, those of you who remember the game Z, it’s more like that.  Other than that, I’m having to wait for stuff regarding my new house and I’m hoping to record a DiggerCast pilot episode either tomorrow or next week.  I also plan on going to see Assemblage 23, which are pretty damn good.  I recently managed to properly listen to all their music and I do quite like them, so I’ll be seeing them next week.  I’ll post some more here later, although I think my LJ needs to be updated some more, seeing as it’s swamped with Tweets.  Realistically though, unless something significant happens between now and my next post on here, it’s likely that the aforementioned next post will be a better opinion on STO, which should really be put onto a games blog, but at present I have none so here will have to do.  I really need to give Guild Wars some attention too; although in a way I’m glad there’s no monthly fees as like I said in the past, it doesn’t feel like a chore in that I have to play it.  It also means I can save money.  Either way though, I’m going to start balancing it out.  Heh, I might even consider playing WoW again, just to use the trial time I have.

And if anyone has wondered what I’ve actually played, I can tell you I’ve played these:

• EverQuest
• Subspace/Continuum
• Guild Wars
• World of Warcraft
• Lord of The Rings Online
• Star Trek Online

I might have also played these games, or at the very least I have them or have them downloaded or bought/aquired a copy:

• Dungeons & Dragons Online
• Ultima Online
• Dark Age of Camelot

Well, it’s safe to say that I’ve played a fair few games.  Not surprising given I have been gaming since at least 1989.  And by this point I’d like to think I’ve a pretty respectable opinion when it comes to games.  Well, at the very least I can work out how to play most games within half an hour.  I’m old enough to  remember playing Doom, Wolf3D, Quake and their successors as well as also The Catacomb Abyss.  Games were certainly more original back then anyway, and when I mean “back then”, I mean before 2000.  I need to properly go “retro” at some point, although it feels a little odd to me calling anything before 2000 retro, but there you go.  I do actually have plans to write an entry about the games industry and how it’s progressed, although I think I need to do research on that first.  I should be able to do it now, given I have read enough about the history of games and consoles.  Look out for that at some point in time.  I also want to develop my own game at some point too, which I’m looking at getting a team together for, but more on that later.

Well, I can’t think of anything else to say really, but I might look at talking about STO in more detail at the very least.  I certainly want to play some Guild Wars again before I do though.  Expect some screenshots at the very least.

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.