My So Called Life…

I am now the proud owner of a new(ish) HTC Hero which I bought off eBay for a fair few quid. Was a bit concerned at first but all arrived OK and works like a charm.

The original plan was to end my contract and get the new shiny with a new contract, but that wouldn’t be until at least august next year, but as I’ve only had 3 phones in the last 10 years I thought it was about time. And besides I’m not tied in to an expensive contract for the next 18 months. Job’s a good’en.

Well we’re in!

I never knew we had amassed so much crap in our time living in Sidwell Street. We threw out about 6 fill bin-bags of stuff and there was still mountains of stuff to move.

We’re sadly without internet at the moment as we’re still waiting for the agency to sort out the bills for the gas, electric and the phone line so we can get the broadband up and running. All I ca say is after the gas leak that was in the flat, which was sorted out this morning, they’re about a gazillion times faster to respond than our old landlord. To be fair, they couldn’t be much slower…

I’d invite you all  over to see the new place, but we’re still unpacking, and besides this is the internet and you’re all a bunch of weirdos.

For the last few days I’ve not been able to get steam running, it just sits at “Steam – Updating – 0%” and does nothing. It was allowing safe mode but after trying to reinstall it from the download it lost that too. One fix on the forums says to delete StreamUI.dll and try again, but that didn’t work.

In the end it turns out that Steam doesn’t like network bridges. Deleted the bridge and deleted my second network port and it went straight in. Finally!

VLC media player has just had a major update but the new version has a fullscreen controller that is just plain annoying. In the old version once you went full screen there were no controls and it showed you the video. Now, for some reason, it simply blinks the annoying controls off and on. It also freezes randomly.

So much that I’ve dropped back to 0.8.6i so it just works. That’s what VLC was best known for after all.

I’ve been trying to get the PS3 to play videos off the network, so I can use that instead of the server, but there’s no way to browse a network for media files. Turns out you need to stream the video to the PS3 with a media server. After having problems with TVersity, it kept crashing trying to decode and encode the video, I tried Fuppes and it seems to be doing the job so far. There’s still a few files that don’t seem to want to play ball, but I think they just need a little tinkering.

Saves getting up though.

So the new telly looks great. We went with a 32″ flat screen in the end, much easier to get up the stairs, I can tell you. Had to get a PS3 to go with it eally. We only got a 720 set in the end, I was looking at 37″ of 1080p greatness originally, but the Sony Bravia was on special offer and we couldn’t resist.

Then we get home to find a pipe in the bathroom has burst and is spewing water all over the bathroom. Fan-bloody-tastic! So now we’re waiting for the landlord to call back so we can sort out a plumber to come and fix it.

Our TV finally gave up the ghost this morning. For the last few weeks it’s been flickering about a bit on the warm up, eventually sorting itself out after a few minutes use, but now it’s refusing to even power on. Bugger.

It does give me an excuse to get a nice hi def set though, although they’re still a little pricey. So much for the budget.

The thing is, is it worth picking up a PS3 while we’re at it. Would be a shame to have a nice new telly with nothing to watch on it…

I finally plumped for the HDRSR5 after deciding there was no difference in the two. A few odd reviews online, but I’m pretty sure it’ll do the job. Should do for the best part of £500.

Last big toy for a while now….

OK, so narrowed down my search for a nice shiny new piece of kit (and possibly the last for some time) to one of these two beauties… The Sony HDRSR5 or the Canon HG10. Both, very nice HiDef HDD recorders, although I’m not sure what the difference is between the HDRSR5 and the HDRSR5E is… All very confusing. More research needed.

This is the exact reason I will never get an X-Box. Microsoft have massively failed their customers who have paid for their consoles, paid for their games and then paid AGAIN for a non-existent on-line service.

With a PC you buy your kit from whoever makes the best equipment, but the game and play on-line on whatever servers you want. Sony managed a perfectly decent on-line presence, why are MS so piss poor at doing the same when most of their business is based on-line.

Muppets.