Saturday, October 30, 2004
I swore blind I wasn't gonna do the dating site thing again, but true to form, my friend Penny put herself back on there, and I just couldn't resist doing the same coz it's just such a laugh.I'm taking a very different approach this time though. After looking through lots of profiles on there, it occurred to me that most people really don't say anything about themselves at all... not to the point where you have the first clue about their character, and they're equally vague about the kind of person/people they'd like to meet.
Last time I did this I was fairly detailed in my profile, but this time I'm really going to town... to the point where most women would just look and say "Holy crap! No way!" Now that's gonna seriously limit the number of interested people... probably down to zero, but sod it. If compromise is where two people agree that neither will get exactly what they want, I'm damned if I wanna compromise. If it ain't spot on right from the start, it never will be.
If truth be told, I'm really happy being single, and could happily remain so for a very long time... but there's no harm in casting out a line and seeing what it brings in.
I'm probably gonna regret this, coz there's plenty of piss takers who'd really go to town with this, but what the heck... here's the link to my profile. Just for anyone who wants a chuckle ;-)
Steve 5:08 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
It's very rare I get genuinely upset when a celebrity or otherwise famous person dies. The last time was when Ayerton Senna died in a crash during a race while the whole world was watching. He was something of a hero to me, and grand prix racing has never been the same since.Today though, I'm absolutely gutted.
John Peel is dead.
For those of you who haven't heard of him, he was a national radio DJ. An absolute legend who was around from the very beginning of Radio One, and the only DJ who played exactly what he wanted, unrestricted by dumbass playlists set by the producers and men in suits.
It wasn't just the music he played that made him great... it was his manner. He knew the music was more important than he was, so didn't let his ego get in the way of the show, and on the occasions when he messed up and got it wrong (which were many), he would sit back and laugh at himself. Listening to Peel was like listening to a favourite uncle, and even if you didn't care for some of the tunes he played, listening to the show itself was always a pleasure.
I grew up listening to John Peel... I'm 36, and he was *always* there. Many an awesome band who otherwise would have remained undiscovered and languishing in obscurity got their big break when he played them, and many others who never made it to the mainstream, found their niche with listeners like myself who prefer something a little different.
The music world is a far far poorer place today.
Steve 6:30 PM [+] (0) comments
I didnt know what to write tonight, untill I had this conversation....
d0gGi3`> sir
d0gGi3`> i wanna lick ur shoes
Benway> then you are a very strange person
d0gGi3`> why
d0gGi3`> ?
Benway> because shoe licking is a very odd passtime
Benway> especially when you don't know if my shoes are muddy
d0gGi3`> hmmm
d0gGi3`> please sir let me clean ur shoes
d0gGi3`> i request you
Benway> I'd let you, since I can't be bothered to do it myself right now, but you might run away with them
d0gGi3`> no
d0gGi3`> i wont run
d0gGi3`> hey
Benway> hmm?
d0gGi3`> let me lick ur shoes na please
d0gGi3`> ?
d0gGi3`> Sir?
* Benway cracks up laughing
d0gGi3`> hmmmm
d0gGi3`> but why
Benway> why would you want to?
d0gGi3`> cuz ur shoes r dirty
Benway> you don't know that
d0gGi3`> i know they r dirty
d0gGi3`> plz let me clean them :(
Benway> well, okay, but I'll have to charge a fee
d0gGi3`> sure
Benway> £50 per minute. How long do you think it'll take you?
d0gGi3`> as long as u want me to clean
Benway> I need an etimate so I know how much to charge you
d0gGi3`> 2-3 min
Benway> ok then. So.. £150 it is then
d0gGi3`> hmmm oki
Benway> just send the money over, and as soon as it arrives, I'll have my shoes delivered to you
There are some *very* strange people out there.
Steve 4:00 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Hah!After I dunno how long trying, (I've had the game for several years... so it's quite a while) I beat the Tahiti Road time trial on Gran Turismo 3 by 5/1000ths of a second.
Now I like to think I'm pretty good at the game, so to only beat it by such a tiny margin after such a long time trying just shows how bloody tough the final couple of time trials are.
So all I have to do now is beat the Complex String circuit.
Yeah right!
At the moment I'm 10 secs a lap off the pace of the slowest fixed time, and 20 secs off the time needed to win... so this is gonna take some doing. Saying that... I've shaved 8 secs off the time I set an hour ago and there's several places I know I can go much faster if I can just get the technique right, so we'll see.
I just like the idea of completing GT3 100% before GT4 comes out in a month or so.
Update:
Shaved another 13 secs off my time... still looking for another 6 secs though.
I know I've got at least another 3 secs in me, but I dunno where I'm gonna find the other 3, coz I'm already on the ragged edge. I must be doing something wrong, but I dunno what... or where. I know where it's not though... I'm taking a 2nd gear series of bends in 4th... lol.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 1:44 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
It's been a fun couple of days, and I'm not even done yet.Clothes shopping.
There was a time, not so long ago when just the idea of it made me shudder, but now.... fun fun fun :-)
2 jackets, 1 leather, 1 suede from River Island. 3 pairs ouf trousers from Zara, a sweatshirt and jumper from Monserrat, and another jumper from Mexx.
What I wanna know is, as someone who couldn't give a monkeys about fashion and designer labels, why do most of the clothes I like come from bloody expensive shops?
Anyway... shopping for shoes and maybe another sweatshirt tomorrow, and then I'll be done.
Went to the movies this evening with a friend where we saw Shark Tale.
It's not bad, though I wouldn't say brilliant. It had moments of brilliance, but seemed to be coasting much of the time. DeNiro was great and fitted the part perfectly, and though I never thought I'd say this... if there was a weak link, it was Will Smith. I'm not sure if the problem was him, or his fish character... just something didn't quite hit the spot.
Still... fun film.
Labels: movies
Steve 9:47 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, October 15, 2004
I dunno how long Battlestar Galactica (the remake) has been out across the pond, but it just came out on Sky 1 over here, and I have to say, it kicks serious butt.What I like about it is it's lost the lightweight tonngue in cheek feel and the cheesey glitter and sequins, but has retained something of the feel of the original.
When Star Trek TNG came out, it felt kinda wrong. It was a great show in it's own right, but going to that straight from the original series, it just felt wrong. Galactica however seems to have got it spot on... you know exactly what you're watching, and I like that.
As for a show in it's own right... well, the battle sequences are the best I've seen in *any* tv show, bar none.
Yup... I like it a lot. I just hope the rest of the series matches to two part pilot.
Steve 10:56 PM [+] (0) comments
That's a pity.
After much messing around with wires, cables and whatnot, I've managed to hook both my vcr and freeview box into the WinTV widget.
Trouble is, even though it accepts the signal from the vcr, for reasons that elude me, it struggles to encode and display it. It's possible to watch a vhs movie on my monitor, but it stalls and stutters every 20 or 30 secs. It's not catastrophic, but it's not really good enough quality to bother recording the tapes digitally.
Oh well.
While messing around with the tuner, I stumbled across a whole load of scrambled channels on my cable, so went for a hunt around the net to see if I could find any descrambler software. Naughty, I know... but it's gotta be done. I found absolutely loads, and some seemed to do 'something', while others simply crashed or hung, but I couldn't find any that actually worked in any way that was gonna be useful.
It was worth a try though.
Labels: gadgets
Steve 8:19 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Ahhh, how I love gadgets, widgets and toys.Today's toy is WinTV USB. A little tv tuner that plugs into a usb socket on my pc, so I can watch (and record) tv programs on my monitor.
Yeah, I know... it's old hat and they've been doing it for ages, and yeah, I could get a PCI card to do the same thing and look much more tidy, but since I only have one free PCI slot, I dont wanna use it for something I could do externally.
Why would I wanna watch tv on my monitor, I hear you ask? Well, I don't, specifically, though it's a nice bonus. What I wanna do is copy all my vhs videos onto disk... either on my HD (gonna need to get a BIG slave drive, coz 200 gig ain't gonna be enough) or burned to dvd.
You've never seen my video collection, but believe me when I say it's rather extensive, and as such, takes up a lot of space. The idea of saving all those films onto one big HD, or even a load of DVDs is very appealing when you realise how much living space it would free up in my flat.
Time to go look for a 500 gig HD, methinks.
Labels: gadgets
Steve 11:27 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Finished reading my book.Very very funny, and in the best way possible, or at least, the way that most appeals to me. Totally irreverant... I believe thats the right word.
I know what comes to mind... old Warner Brothers or Hanna Barbera Cartoons... though not for any of the reasons you might think.
Ah bollox... I can't really say anything about it without totally spoiling it for anyone who might read it (assuming I haven't already). Suffice to say it really appeals to my sense of humour, and more so, to my twisted sense of esthetics.
I haven't grinned so much in ages.
Labels: books
Steve 3:13 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, October 11, 2004
I'm reading the latest book by my favourite author... oh yeah... I'm slightly drunk, so excuse any more extreme than usual typos.Anyway... I'm not gonna say who the author is, or what the book's called, coz I'm about to toss out a huge spoiler, and that would just ruin it for anyone who happened to be reading it. There's logic in there somewhere... trust me.
So you have this race of truly ancient aliens living in gas giant planets all round the galaxy who live for billions of years... not just the race, but the individuals. Okay, anyone actually reading the same book knows exactly what I'm talking about, so if you havent reached half way yet, stop reading right now.
Anyone left?
All of you... good. I'll continue.
So, they're ancient, and wise beyond your imagination, and a bunch of drunken cantankerous, bumbling, seemingly incompetant, awkward old gits who never tell the truth about anything when they can tell a perfectly good lie, since no-one else has been around long enough to tell them its not true.
Anyway.
Picture the scene... they're holding a race (it just happens to be being held in the middle of a war zone, but thats beside the point right now) and the racing craft are kinda like sailing ships that catch the 'wind', sailing round the inside edge of a great storm... like the red spot on jupiter. Gambling on the outcome is a big thing.
So, the race is underway, when out of no-where come a load of high tech space craft from the local stellar system (I wont go into why this is happening, but suffice to say these craft are pretty heavy duty shit).
The initial response of the gas giant aliens is to fire on the hi-tech craft with the equvalient of world war one battleships. Needless to say, these got well and truly creamed.
So just when you think all is lost, coz they're so obviously outclassed, a fleet of super hi-tech souped up ww1 style warships come steaming in through the wall of the storm, like the cavalry coming to the rescue, and you think 'okay, maybe they have a chance', only for the invading craft to hurl a load of nukes at them. (Remember, this is all happening at a race meeting, so the aliens start taking bets on who's gonna win.)
Battleships duly nuked, you think its all over, when out of the depths of the gas giant's atmosphere comes a small planet sized... 'thing'... that simply blows all the hi-tech invading ships to shit in a matter of half a second.
Aaaanyway.... entertaining as all this is, the bit that really cracked me up, after hundreds, or maybe even thousands of lives have been lost.... the response of the gas giant aliens was to wonder if the race was gonna continue, or be postponed, and would their bets be honoured?
Good stuff. This guy never fails to make me laugh.
Labels: books
Steve 8:59 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, October 08, 2004
I feel music a-brewing.Among those of you who've actually heard my music (and none of you have heard *all* of it), I know quite a few have been eager to hear new material, so here's the score as it stands, and what I have in mind.
Actually, no... let me go right back to where it all started, and then you'll understand exactly what it is I plan to do.
Way back in 1986, when I still lived in my parents house, I bought an electric guitar... just coz I thought it'd be cool to have one, and figured it couldn't be *that* hard to learn how to play. Truth is, it was just one of those days when I had money burning a hole in my pocket, I was bored, figured electric guitars were cool... so what the heck.
Needless to say, I soon discovered guitars were actually bloody difficult to play, and for the best part of 2 years, I didn't touch the thing.
Then in late '87 I left home and took up lodgings in Milton Keynes before moving into my first flat. In that time I found myself with a circle of frineds who were into the local music scene. We went to all the local gigs, saw lots of bands, many of who'm were utterly crap... and decided if they can be that crap and go up on stage and do that... why don't we?
And so was formed 'The Non-Existant Puppies'. A disaster of a bedroom band with an ever changing lineup, some of who'm actually had instruments, and some who could 'almost' play them... a bit (kind of).
Over a period of a year or so we never played live... never actually got out of my bedroom in fact, but what we did manage to do was record some *very* badly produced 'songs' onto tape.
And yes.... I still retain the only (known) copy of those tapes. If anyone else has copies stashed away somewhere (I seem to recall doing edited hilights for Trish and Jackie), they're either very sad, or just haven't cleared all the junk out of their loft in around 15 years.
So anyway, as all bad bedroom bands do, the Non-Existant Puppies disbanded, mainly coz I realised I was the only one putting in any money or effort, and was still the only one who'd learned how to play more than one note.
I eventually bought a 4 track portastudio, a cheap and crappy keyboard, and between '89 and '93, working under the 'performing' name of Overjoy recorded a large number of tunes. Many of these are now lost, but I do still have the edited hilights on a tape that was provisionally named Silver. It's a rough and ready collection of tunes and you can hear my lack of skill, but some of those tunes have a real charm to them, and are almost quite good in their own way.
Then in around '93.. maybe '94, I don't remember, I started making a completely new style of music, entirely electronic alternative stuff using Octamed, and later Octamed Sound Studio on the Amiga computer. Going by th name of Cold Steel Brainstorm, I put together a mini album called Huh?, burned it to CD, and managed to sell around 15 copies to work friends and colleagues. How many of those copies still exist I couldn't tell you. Again, these tunes are quite primitive in terms of production values, but a couple of them have an energy that really is quite surprising, and show signs of things to come. If anything, they show my liking for quirky music that doesn't conform to any specific genre and a willingness to experiment.
Next, somewhere around '97ish I picked up a 2nd hand Roland MC 303, and took another step towards producing half decent music. Over the period between '97 and 2000, I completed a CD album which has been on sale online via peoplesound.com for some time, with mp3s available for download from my two main websites.
Since then, I've only produced 3 other tunes, 2 of which were available for a very limitied period via this blog, and one which has never been completed beyond a mono mp3 copy which two or three people beyond myself have heard. Technical issues, a lack of enthusiasm for the equipment I've been using when I know I could do so much more with the right gear, and generally being distracted by other things have kept me form producing anything else.
This brings us to today then.
So... I'm in the position where I could dig out my mixer and Roland, hook them up to Steinberg Cubase on the PC and produce some pretty impressive music... but no. It's not enough.
I figure when I start work on my next project, I intend to go all out and do something ground breaking (well, groundbreaking in terms of music I can make anyway). So the plan is to get my guitar sorted out (it needs a little work), get a decent guitar effects unit, brush up on my chords and stuff, get a decent mic... and *then* start recording.
We're looking at a month or two.
More than this though... I intend to *pay* (shock horror) for decent webhosting, dig out all my old tapes and CDs and make every half listenable tune I ever did (and some which arent... Non-Existant Puppies cover of Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas, anyone?) available for download on mp3... or at least as many as I can fit in the storage space abailable to me on the web server.
Including the brand new tracks, as and when I record them.
I know there are a few people who say I'm nuts to make all of my tunes available for free, but in the time I've had that one CD for sale via peoplesound, only *one* copy has ever been sold. So sod it... if I want people to hear my stuff... like, all of it, then I'm just gonna have to make it all available for free. If I add advertising via google adsense, I may just be able to break even with regard to server costs.
Labels: music
Steve 11:31 PM [+] (0) comments
So I was in town yesterday and this guy in a suit walks up to me with a clipboard, and I think "here we go... insurance salesman or somesuch."
I was about to do the usual thing, say "not interested" and keep walking, but he asks something entirely different. He asked if I was interested in full or part time work.
Now this struck me as an odd way of handling recruitment, but i decided to see what he had to say. In typical salesman style, he spoke very quickly and was vague on details to say the least, but assured me that if I gave him my name and phone number, someone would get back to me in the evening with full details. Out of curiosity, I gave him my number. I don't really need the work as such, but something part time might add a bit of stability to my life that's rather lacking just now.
So in the evening, the call comes through, and they give me their address and a time for an interview, but were still very evasive when I asked what specifically their operation was. Like... was it an agency or what? The nearest I got was "It's a call centre. All of your questions will be answered in the interview."
Mmhmm. This didn't feel quite right to me.
So this morning, half an hour before the interview was due, they phoned me again to confirm that I would be attending, and I told them I didn't think I would. When asked why, I replied that the idea of attending an interview when the people concerned wouldnt even tell me what the job was, and the contact number was a mobile phone, jsut didn't seem quite on the level to me.
The woman asked if I'd reconsider if she told me exactly what the job was. I said I'd consider it. So she starts off with "It's a call centre... though not exactly sales..." I interrupted, "So it's cold calling?" Hesitation... "Yes."
"Well, since it's clear that your company's policy is one of deception, just from the way you handle recruitment, I really don't think I want any part of it, so I most deffinitely won't be attending any interview."
You can spot 'em from a mile off.
Labels: annoyed, interviews, work
Steve 8:27 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Progress.After much messing around with various builds of the emulator executable and tinkering with a proxy server, I now have the ppc mac running with net access and native CD support. Better yet, it's faster than it was too, now thinking it's a 1.15ghz G3 mac.
It has to be said, this is the most interesting emulator I've come across. Like... there's a whole emulator community out there anyway, but this one has a community all of its own. There's around a hundred people working on the emulator itself, many producing different builds, yielding different results. This is handy in that you can often find a build that suits your machine very well, but it can get very confusing when it comes to configurations, coz no two emulated machines turn out to be the same, and one persons fix doesn't work for another.
The best example of this is setting up net access. There's a billion and one totally different walk throughs explaining how to do it, all completely different, and all very confusing.
To finally get it working, I had to install a virtual ethernet card onto my pc which allowed the mac to talk to the pc... even though they're both in the same box. Having done that, even though the mac could "see" the internet, it couldnt connect, or rather, it couldn't find a dns server. It'd probably work just fine if I knew what IP number to stick in what box, but since there's 3 different areas needing different IPs (my pc local area network, my virtual ethernet and the mac itself) I'm damned if I could figure it out. Anyway... the bodge fix of setting up a proxy server on the pc and routing the mac through that worked just fine... though I do worry a little about what that does for security.
Conversly, getting native CD access was an absolute doddle.
All I did was download a new build, copy 2 lines from a config file, and bam... CD access on the mac.
I doubt many people who read this blog are actually very interested in emulators, so I wont bother putting up a billion links to all the places I found the necesary info, but just in case there's anyone who's up for a challenge and wants to try it, this is a good place to start. As for finding an OS to put on it... well, legally speaking, you could download a free version of linux or whatever for power macs, buy a copy of OS X, or if you're not bothered about legalities, find a preconfigured disk image on one of the many peer to peer networks. I hear there's a good one on limewire, though obviously I can't confirm that.
Labels: emulators
Steve 5:06 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, October 04, 2004
Bleh.These emulators are doing my head in.
Both the classic and ppc macs are up and running, but even after much reading of online tutorials and doccumentation, messing with assorted virtual ethernet adaptors and proxies, and god knows what else.... I can't make either of them go online.
It shouldn't be this hard. My amiga emulator only requires the ticking of one simple box and it's online, just like that.
Worse, the ppc mac won't even recognise CDs when I put them in the drive. Doh!
I think I'm gonna give up for now, before I pull all my hair out.
Labels: emulators
Steve 8:30 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, October 03, 2004
More emulation malarky.I've got an old style apple mac emulator up and running, but for reasons that escape me, can't seem to make the thing go online.
Anyway... this is all old hat, as I emulated the classic mac very effectively back when I used an amiga.
What I'm also working on, and I dunno how easy it's gonna be, is a powermac emulator that 'should' run mac OS X. The doccumentation says it'll run way slow, so I'm not expecting much. I have to try though, just to see if it works, coz it's one of those things people always said was impossible.
Now if this 500 meg download will just get a move on....
Labels: emulators
Steve 11:07 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, October 02, 2004
You'll be thrilled to know there will be no more Farcry blog entries.I just completed it.
Needless to say, I rather like the game, though the ending was something of an anti-climax.
Anyway... what next? Doom 3 perhaps? Dunno if I can be bothered with that one. From what I've read it's just Doom with very flashy graphics, and to be honest, I always found Doom to be a bit one dimensional in terms of gamneplay.
Labels: games
Steve 8:02 AM [+] (0) comments
Weird.
I turned on my CB radio for the first time in 3 years last night, just to see if anyone actually still uses the thing.
Yup... they do.
The first voice I heard was a certain ex of mine who would no doubt be none to thrilled to hear my voice on there, so I didn't bother to speak.
It was odd though, just sat there listening to a bunch of old voices I remember from way back... albeit not very many of them.
It also made me remember why I abandoned CB in favour of the net. After listening for around an hour, it occurred to me that there wasn't one person on there that I'd actually want to talk to... not one conversation I'd want to join in with.
Nope. Not my scene any more, not by a long shot. When you sit and listen to the same old voices saying exactly the same things they said 3 years ago, you realise it's much better to have moved on.
Steve 1:16 AM [+] (0) comments
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