Classic Goal Celebration!

RATM for Christmas Number 1!

The music charts these days are a load of rubbish. However, I reckon this would be a good laugh. People are going to buy the classic "Killing in the name" by Rage against the machine between 13th December and 19th Dec to try and get it to number 1 and beat the X-factor rubbish.

I'll certainly be partaking :)

http://bit.ly/inthename

CHEW LiPS - a band to look out for! :)

I went to see the band Chew Lips last night. I first saw them randomly at this years Secret Garden Party and thought they were the best new band I'd seen for ages.
I signed up to their mailing list and got invited to a promo gig.
They are formed of two guys who play bass, guitar and synths who are great musicians and obviously have a talent for writing catchy riffs and up front we have a lady who has one of the most powerful voices I've heard for ages.

Check them out for yourself:

Martha Tilston

Saw Martha Tilston last night, she has a really beautiful pure voice. She's got an EP (ltil I reach the sea) on itunes for just £1.29. Go get it now! :)

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=38561934&blogId=324051913

Upgrading a Philips Showline 9350i from Vista to Windows 7 RC

A little while ago I wrote about upgrading my Philips media centre to Vista. Microsoft have just released Windows 7 RC and the media centre was starting to need a reboot more and more so I thought I'd try the upgrade. I've been using Windows 7 beta at work for a while and find it much faster and better to use than Vista.

To my surprise, I chucked the Windows 7 RC x86 DVD in the box, ran the upgrade and an hour later I have a fully functioning Windows 7 media center! It transferred all of my settings and recordings etc... and plays back all my movies, TV progs etc perfectly. The new media center interface looks much nicer than the Vista one.

I'll update the blog when I've used it a bit more but am very happy so far....

Why I chose Equallogic over NetApp

I recently had to buy some more storage for our virtualized XenServer cluster at work and just wanted to comment on how I believe NetApp have shot themselves in the foot when it comes to SMBs. I don't usually post such techie stuff, but this really annoyed me.

We currently run an older entry level NetApp FAS250 box. Its a single controller model with 14x300Gb FC disks in it and I can say it is one of the most reliable things on our network, although performance isn't incredible.

So I went to upgrade and wittled the choices down to boxes with comparible pricing: the NetApp FAS2020 (12x1TB SATA disks) and Equallogic PS5000E (16x750GB disks), both with dual controllers.

Here is a big problem with NetApp I found:

You cannot create RAID groups over 8TB on the NetApp. In addition to this, on a dual controller setup you need at least two aggregates anyway.

So, on a one box filer you not only lose a massive amount of space but also, as the more spindles you have in a RAID group the higher the performance, you lose that too!

Compare the two standard setups and see the difference:

NetApp FAS2020: 1x Five Disk RAID-DP, 1x Six Disk RAID-DP, 1x hot spare ~7TB raw space (1TB disks).

Equallogic PS5000E: 1x Fourteen disk RAID 10, 2x hot spares. ~ 5.25TB raw space (750GB disks) or 1x 15 disk RAID 50, 1x hot spare. ~7.5TB raw space.

RAID 10 is probably going to be faster than RAID DP anyway, so add the extra spindles and it should be MUCH faster than the NetApp box. Does anyone from NetApp want to comment on these stupid restrictions? I'll report more when my box arrives and tell you about the performance.

Roisin Murphy - "Overpowered"

I've recently came across this album, and I must say its great! :) I loved the later stuff Moloko did and was looking forward to hearing Roisin's solo stuff. Unfortunately, her album Ruby Blue was a slight disappointment to me, but when I read that the follow up was produced by Andy Cato (Groove Armada) and Seiji (Bugz in the Attic) I had to give it a try.

Here is the title track, a proper pulsing disco track that I love :) Download the original track and listen to it on headphones for the full effect!

Bang after bang after bang after bang!

Roots Manuva - Witness

A great song that I'd never seen the excellent video before, until today!

Roots Manuva - Witness The Fitness
by yanndirtybastard

Messiah Remix goes off!!!

Crazy idiots calling 999

Last circle line party!

I attended the last circle line party today on the London tube. Due to the stupidly of Boris Johnson legislating for a problem that doesn't exist (I thought the idiot Conservatives didn't want a nanny state) this was the last night you could legally drink on the tube, bus or DLR. I must say that some people were taking it a little too far (smashed bottles and ripping the carrages up), the atmostphere was quite fun.

Mixtapes are back!

Check out http://www.muxtape.com and create your own! A simple idea brilliantly executed.

Mine is at http://verydodgy.muxtape.com

BLTs in Iraq?

Why the Amazon A-Z Guarantee is useless for sellers...

I've sold about 50 items over the last year on amazon using their marketplace feature. All in all it has been a pretty good experience. Buyers seem to pay a pretty good rate for CDs on there.

However, I have a couple of big reservations which I is why I have decided to stop using it.

1. Their fees are very high and they even charge fees on the postage they charge the seller!

2. The Amazon A-Z Guarantee seems useless for sellers. As I've mentioned... I've sold over 50 items, but a couple of weeks ago I had a complaint. One of my buyers had not recieved their item. Now, whether he was telling the truth or not is another matter, but a 1 in 50 hit rate using royal mail isn't bad.
Therefore I got the buyer to launch a claim with the A-Z Guarantee that I thought was there to protect buyers and sellers from this. It turns out that sellers have no protection. I got an automated response telling me that I was responsible and I had to refund the money.

So, the massive fees paid to amazon to facilitate the transactions do not cover you at all for any loss by the post office, even though they barely charge buyers enough to cover 2nd class postage of the item.

What I'd like to know is why Amazon give the impression that the A-Z Guarantee is worth something to sellers when clearly its not!

Looks like this guy had the same problem: http://www.complaints.com/directory/2005/february/20/15.htm

Ray Von!

Top Music Video! :)

Back to the old school!

Hours of fun....

http://www.ravegenerator.com/

Big shout out to the Ratpack!

Back to the old school!

Hours of fun....

http://www.ravegenerator.com/

Big shout out to the Ratpack!

The Biff song!

Merry Christmas!

The Most Perfect Technical Glitch

Converting a Philips Showline 9350i to Digital TV (DVB) and Vista

I just picked up one of these great media center PC's off of ebay for £200. Unfortunately they have dual analogue tuners which are nigh on useless these days. Therefore I went to Maplin and picked up a USB dual tuner DVB TV adapter (K-world 399U I think) for £40.
I plugged it in but couldn't get XP Media center to work with it so I decided to install Vista.

Firstly I backed up the partitions using Acronis True Image Home. This was very important as the 9350i does not come with any recovery media!

I then added another 1GB of RAM to the 9350i as Vista is notoriously memory hungry. It takes standard DDR2 RAM (533Mhz or faster preferred but I used 400Mhz and it worked fine).

I installed vista and everything worked fine apart from three things:

1. No sound. The sound did not work initially. It took me ages to get it working....eventually I found that backup I took very useful as on the original C drive of the install there is a folder called Philips and in there was drivers for all the hardware. The audio driver in there was the only one I could find that worked so don't lose them!

2. Stuttering picture on live TV. I googled this and found the answer to be that Microsoft's Vista bundled MPEG2 decoder sucks. I downloaded NVidia's PureVideo decoder, rebooted and everything worked perfectly! You need to use this tool to change the default codec: link

3. Front Panel display says "Starting Up" constantly. I haven't fixed this problem yet. The drivers/program for this did not install properly on Vista. Anyone got any ideas?

Pictures to follow....

Update (Thanks to Ronald):

Vista drivers are here! : http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/get?url=/sca/sca/070314/070314170811_18207.zip&ofn=Vista drivers.zip

Van Halen disaster! :)

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/10/18/onstage-tech-disasters-van-halen-goes-microtonal/

Daft Punk by hands!

This is awesome, bear with it until after the song intro! :)

FIFA stamping out racism? Start with Jack Warner

They should start near the top, vice president Jack Warner : "Nobody in Europe likes England. England invented the sport but has never had made any impact on world football."

For a man who is notoriously corrupt and with the region he presides over only producing Mexico as a team who are world class I wonder why he's got such an important job and can say such rubbish!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_%22Jack%22_Warner

"FIFA's auditors, Ernst & Young, estimated that his family made a profit of at least $1 million from reselling 2006 World Cup tickets that Warner had ordered."

intel Q6600 (quad core 2.4ghz) in a Dell Optiplex 745

yes it does work. I searched google for this problem and couldn't find anything so bought the chip and it works! Hope this helps someone else.

Stupid people

A problem with people today is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

My Humps - Alanis Morissette :)

The Beer Prayer

Don't you love it when people make mistakes.....

Do the people who work on the ITV News not watch what they are doing?

Cat Washing Machine!

Magic Magic E!!

Similiar to the one below :)

Drop that E?!

No wonder we are a nation of drug addicts. Check this clip from the BBC's "Look and Read" program. We were all made to watch it in primary school.

Speak the Hungarian Rapper

Ho Ho Ho

Oh my word: http://www.honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1845064&page=1

One question IQ test

From Chronowatch, “here’s a one-question IQ Test to help you decide how you should spend the rest of your day….”

There is a mute who wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action of brushing one’s teeth, he successfully expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done.
Now, if there is a blind man who wishes to buy a pair of sunglasses, how should he express himself?

Think about it first before looking below for the answer…
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He opens his mouth and says, “I would like to buy a pair of sunglasses”.
If you got this wrong- please turn off your computer and call it a night.

In a festive mood....

Hand dryer or bacon machine?

Pac-man chart

He man camps it up!

This kid doesn't look too happy.....

How to annoy people!

1. Before exiting the elevator, push all the buttons.


2. Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.


3. In the memo field of all your checks, write "for sexual favors."


4. Specify that your drive-through order is "TO-GO."


5. If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.


6. Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.


7. Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up."


8. Reply to everything someone says with "that's what you think."


9. Practice making fax and modem noises.


10. Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and "cc" them to your boss.


11. Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.


12. Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophesy."


13. Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears and grimacing.


14. Disassemble your pen and "accidentally" flip the ink cartridge across the room.


15. Holler random numbers while someone is counting.


16. Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you "like it that way."


17. Staple pages in the middle of the page.


18. Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a croaking noise.


19. Honk and wave to strangers.


20. Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints at the cash register.


21. TYPE IN UPPERCASE.


22. type only in lowercase.


23. dont use any punctuation either


24. Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole streets.


25. Repeat the following conversation a dozen times.
    "DO YOU HEAR THAT?"
    "What?"
    "Never mind, it's gone now."


26. As much as possible, skip rather than walk.


27. Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce "No, wait, I messed it up," and repeat.


28. Ask people what gender they are.


29. While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.


30. Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.


31. Sing along at the opera.


32. Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.


33. Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something about "psychological profiles."

George Bush singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

Where's the any key?

http://www29.compaq.com/falco/detail.asp?FAQnum=FAQ2859

Ducks! Noooooo!

Pandomax. Free music!

Ever sit around wondering what music to listen to? Do you want to listen to some new music but don't know where to start?

You need Pandora Internet Radio! It asks you for all your favourite bands and then plays a selection of tunes that include your artists and also artists that it thinks you'll like. Its based on the music genome project.

Thats not all though! With the pandomax plugin you can save each song out as an mp3 with full id3 tags and album info.

Check it out here: http://www.pandomax.com/

How unlucky was this?!

I went out with my friend Emma the other night to go down to Riley's in Clapham for a bit of pool or snooker.
Jimmy White is visiting there in a few weeks and she signed me up for a competition to play against him. Apart from it being potentially highly embarrassing due to our names being the same, I am absolutely dreadful at snooker. Oh well, anyway, on the left is the most crazy shot that I've ever made. I'm sure the balls aren't supposed to wedge in the pocket like that! :)

Look at this nutter's house

He must have a lot of time and money! :

http://www.nescapades.com/gameroom.htm

What is inside a doner kebab?

This is a question I've always wondered about, until I found this newspaper clipping. Sorry for the poor quality :)

Engrish

I have to read a lot of technical manuals that have been translated from Chinese. Some are very good, but some are hilarious. I was at a friends house the other day and she lived in China for a while and owns a number of Chinese CDs. These were my favourites :) :

(All I have to do is cream, Don McLean)

World Cup fun

Police in Berlin have arrested two men suspected of planting nine footballs filled with concrete across the city, each with a message in English challenging passers-by: "Can u kick it?" Three people gave it their best shot and immediately wished they hadn't bothered.

Isle of Wight Festival!

Last night I got back from the Isle of Wight Festival. I had a great weekend!
Highlights included Chris Martin's crouch song, the amazing light and laser shows that accompanied the Foo Fighters and Coldplay andmeeting a load of great people including camping with the Girls in Green Shoes.

The weather was amazing, I can't remember a better weekend of weather here. I have the slight redness to prove it :)

Bring on next year! Check out our photos here.

I should hope so too!

I see this sign everyday at London Bridge station.







If my train driver was disturbed I'd be very worried indeed!

Matches

What a funny picture :)






Someone at the match firm must have a sense of humour.

Whats wrong with this picture?

First of all, well done to the Gunners last night. Of course I'm disappointed we didn't win, but you need a bit of luck and I think Barcelona had it on their side. We played our hearts out and thats all any fan could ask.

Anyway, on my way home I took this at clapham junction, sorry for the bad quality but it made me laugh, can you see why? :)

Fairwell Highbury....

....hello ashburton grove! I loved highbury, it was one of the only stadiums in the Premiership that most of the seats were very close to the pitch. However, it was impossible to get tickets for league games so hopefully i'll be able to go a lot more next season starting with Dennis Bergkamp's Testimonial on 22nd July!

The Old School

Came across this the other day.

One day, i might even go back..........
to the old school.

:)

Barbeques - Don't you love 'em!

Saturday was the first BBQ of the year, woo hoo!
The food was pretty good and we had a right laugh.

Unfortunately I left before this happened:

Justin drinks a raw egg

What a nutter!

Roll on more BBQ's and hot weather!

£20 for a radio controlled helicopter!

I got this this morning. Its survived at least 5 crashes and i've got it to 20ft so far! (too scared to go higher). Its great fun, can't wait for lunchtime. Hopefully it'll survive the rest of the day :)

If you want one (they have now gone back to £30) check out here.

Finally! A quiet and powerful PC that does everything I want.

I've just finished building my PC and am very very pleased. I picked up a cheap refurb Dell 5150 from ebay and chucked in another 3 hard disks (4 in total with a bit of hacking and power splitting) and a dual DVB-T (digital TV) tuner PCI-E card. All running Windows Media Center 2005.

It rocks!

I love this new BTX motherboard format. The PC (even with the 4 drives) is almost inaudible!

Here's the spec for all you geeks:

Pentium 4 HT 630 3.0Ghz (2MB Cache)

160GB SATA drive
plus 2x250GB and 300GB Maxtor hard disks
(960GB in total!)

Terratec Cinergy 2400i dual DVB-T digital TV tuner PCI-Express card

ATI X600 256MB

NEC DVD-RW

IDE RAID card

Soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinum Pro with breakout (sounds great with my guitar)

Windows Media Center 2005 OS with IR sensor and remote

Scandal of Evening Standard spelling!

Standards are obviously slipping in schools. Maybe the Evening Standard should go back there and do a story on this! :)
I saw this glaring error on more than one of these boards which leads me to believe that they are printed beforehand. How many people missed this error?!