Loompa Trouble

I had to double-take this morning, after having a not so very good nights' sleep, I thought I was seeing this.

It would seem that I am, well, not.

Taken from Digital Spy:

A man dressed as an Oompa Loompa character from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has been detained at a mall.

Donnie Davis was promoting an upcoming show for comedian Jeff Beacher dressed in a green wig, brown shirt and white overalls when he was apprehended by security guards at the Westfield Broward Mall in Plantation, Florida, People reports.

The diminutive male was plugging a Saturday night performance at the region's Seminole Coconut Creek Casino, much to the annoyance of mall authorities.

"They got Donnie and cuffed him," Beacher said. "He and several other Oompa Loompas have been promoting the tour, and I guess security finally got fed up with them.
Hundreds of shoppers at the centre are reported to have laughed and screamed: "Let the Oompa Loompa go!"

Davis was held for several hours before security officials let him go without arrest.

Sarth went down!

Last night our newly formed raiding guild, Elders of the Twilight, cleared Obsidian Sanctum 10 man with one drake up.

We left Tenebron up, and after a few attempts of trying to manage the adds that hatched and the ones that spawned from guildies getting hit by Sarth's firewall, we took down the mother and the rest was cake.

We did belong to a much larger, well established guild, and while attempts were made to make it into a raiding guild, it just never happened. Hence why some of the "hardcore" broke away and made a new guild. The old one crumbled the other week and got disbanded. Maybe it was because thunder was being stolen...

Anyway, I wanted to post this mainly because my Mage is in the screenshot on the guild's website... hehe...

I. HATE. VISTA.

Seriously.

That piece of shit they pass off as an operating system is just dreadful. It honestly beggars belief why it's on the market. Well, we all know why - money, but you catch my drift.

It had problems on release, then settled down a bit, hence why I opted for a laptop with it loaded. Now after some recent updates, it just seems to have got worse.

I don't have much on my laptop, but system performance has slowed right down. Booting up is a farce, shutting down/restarting is beyond a joke. Everything else in between is alright, but it'd say on it's school report card "could do better".

Running the usual system utilities (CCleaner, Defraggler etc. etc.) resulted in little to no benefit.

From using my mate's MacBook, in comparison... well, there just is no comparison - OSX puts Vista to shame and a bullet in it's fugly, imitation head.

Keeping in the Microsoft family, it's stupid that XP - an old, soon to be unsupported OS - is the vastly superior system, and I'm glad that I revived my old XP desktop.

Windows 7's looming release is proof enough that Microsoft full well know that Vista is the unwanted, bastard child of their software portfolio - and while it's touted as a shining beacon of light, I won't be partaking of the upgrade. Honestly thinking of rolling my Vista laptop back to XP.

Yesterday I could have screamed, shit meself and threw the ruddy laptop out of the window all at the same time.

For some completely unknown and head-desk educing reason, Vista decided that it wouldn't play nice with the laptop's wireless card, and when I say that I literally spent all day trying to find a fix, I do mean that I literally spent all day.

The problem was that the wireless card would pick up my router's signal, hold and then randomly drop and restart - sometimes it wouldn't come back on at all. Thankfully it wasn't my router like last time.

Updated drivers that were from 2007, went into hardware management and tweaked performance, made sure that power-saving settings were disabled for the wireless card... short of a re-install, I basically done everything I could to try and sort this mess out.

Wouldn't have any of it.

Then after digging deeper I discovered that Vista had disabled an essential network hardware device. An adapter that I hadn't touched, that no one else had touched, but one that Vista just randomly decided to shutdown. Reactivated it and... it worked... for five minutes and then disconnected again...

EPIC HEAD-DESK.

Then after a while it just sorted itself out. On it's own. Without me going into the settings.

Maybe it cottoned onto my vulgar language directed at it and felt threatened?

That aside, another problem that I absolutely can't figure out is why the Internet hangs on Vista. What I mean is that you'll be browsing and then click on a link and it won't load and the loading ring just keeps going around. The only fix it to restart or shutdown, but it happens again and again and again.

Firefox, Safari and IE - all have this problem, and Microsoft's supposed "solution"? Disabling my firewall and anti-virus.

Seriously.

Seriously?

EPIC HEAD-DESK x2!

I swear, the sooner I leave Microsoft behind forever and get my MacBook Pro the - pardon me - fucking better.

Neon Genesis World of Warcraft

In order to fully appreciate this, you must both like Neon Genesis Evangelion (or have a good working knowledge of anime) and Warcraft.

Early morning YouTube browsing while drinking your first cuppa of the day, will usually yeild random points of interest.



I was never much a fan of Asuka, but her and Shinji in the thermal springs and the "thermal expansion" talk really was a highlight.

/random

I don't have a spare hand

It would appear this here blog has regenerated again. Well, not entirely. More like how David Tennant sorta-didn't regenerate after getting exterminated. The difference being that I haven't drawn on the essence of my spare hand, bubbling away in a jar...

I make it no secret that coding isn't my forte. I'm more into the visual loveliness of things. That said I'm slowly and surely starting to expand my coding knowledge into the intermediate/advanced realms. Blogger may not be the best platform to practise on as it uses its own special brand of headache (i.e. widget code), but I like a bit of a challenge. Sort of. Can't hurt not to learn Blogger, way I see it.

This isn't the final draft of my new layout. I did have one that I was working on originally, and while I liked it to begin with, the more I saw it, the more I started to dislike it. This new one I really like (particularly the logo) and I'll be implementing new bits here and there, so things'll change, but I'm sure you lot won't mind.

So yes... carry on.

VM to get HD Channels

There have been whispers for some time that Virgin Media were looking into acquiring linear HD channels to run alongside the lone BBCHD and their On Demand content.

In April reports came out that that four HD channels were set to launch on the VM platform later this year as they "recognise HD is growing".

Well, the wait seems to be over as it's been announced today on my favourite of favouritest media websites, Digital Spy, that Living HD will launch at the end of the month - meaning that we can now all get our Grey's Anatomy, Private Practise and CSI fix in glorious, pretty high definition.

On a roll, VM also revealed that the three other HD channels that will join Living HD are FX HD, National Geographic HD and MTVN HD - free for XL customers, though launch dates for those are still TBA.

Taken from Digital Spy:

Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett said: "As more homes become HD-ready, the launch of four new HD channels marks the next stage in the evolution of our pioneering TV service.

"Our lineup of HD channels and hugely popular on demand content is a unique and winning combination and we'll continue to bring more sport, films, entertainment and documentaries to our customers."

Virgin Media is also "currently in active talks" with UKTV about launching a high definition version of Good Food on the platform.

As if I wasn't waiting with baited breath enough, I can't wait for Living HD to show up on the EPG so I can start setting up my series links.

"It is coming"

No, not those children-crack addicted 456 that have plagued Torchwood over the last week.

Rather my multi-region Blu-Ray player.

Prepare for fanboy-mode in three, two, one...

ZOMFG!!!11!!!1!!!1!!11!

/fanboy-mode over.

Its been a long time coming, that's for sure. Ever since Blu-Ray came swaggering onto the market a couple of years back, like the new cool kid at school who could beat the living wotsits out of you, I - and much the rest of the visual-phile community - have been dying to get ours meticulously clean fanboy hands on a multi-region model.

It was inevitable that it'd happen, it was just a matter of when.

Multi-region DVD players started out the same, taking their time, few and far between, and while still not mainstream, they're much more readily avaialbe these days thanks to places such as, my favorite audio-visual retailer, Richer Sounds.

Early multi-region models were thanks to modded hardware, normally by way of soldering a chip or component to the board, as opposed to the software hacks you can get nowadays.

I'd Google "multi-region blu-ray players" every so often, but to no avail. Well, there was an avail a while back as some Swedish company were selling what they touted "the world first multi-region player", but as obsessive as I may be, needless to say I am not £899.99 obsessive.

So, it was with great elation and squee that Thursday evening on a random "got nuffin' else to do" Google, that I lucked out and landed on Multiregionmagic.com. A reputable UK based service who I'd be all too happy to exchange my Green-Queen's with, and well, did.

Coming in at £345 on the nose, the Panasonic DMP-BD60 is they "budget" multi-region unit. Normally I'm brand specific, and stick to one particular company for certain products - Samsung's for TV's, Pioneer's for DVD players - and while they offer the meaty Pioneer BDP-LX91, again, not going to pay £2099 for keeping in-trend.

The DMP-BD60 suits me fine, and boasts more than enough features to keep me happy - and considering that it's a multi-region DVD and multi-region Blu-Ray player, with DivX support, to me, it's a reasonable price.

My precious should be with me tomorrow, failing that, by Wednesday. I just hope that my "Akira" Blu-Ray makes it on time.

As with keeping in tradition, there shall be bloggage and unbox-age and photos galore. Oh yes, indeed.

Gropecunt Lane

Thought this interesting and ever so slightly random, but lacked the time to post it yesterday.

Basically, the fact that it contains a swear - a rather naughty one at that - was the one and only reason why it caught my eye. Possibly why it caught others’ too.

In case you missed it, yesterday the featured article on the search giant Wikipedia, was all about the wonderfully named, Gropecunt Lane.

Yes.

Gropecunt Lane.

... was a street name found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages, believed to be a reference to the prostitution centred on those areas; it was normal practice for a medieval street name to reflect the street's function or the economic activity taking place within it...

... Streets with that name were often in the busiest parts of medieval towns and cities, and at least one appears to have been an important thoroughfare...

... Although the name was once common throughout England, changes in attitude resulted in its being replaced by more innocuous versions such as Grape Lane. Gropecunt was last recorded as a street name in 1561...

Shame, but it does make you proud to be British. Well, me anyway.

Raid Reminder

Last night my iPhone started chiming. I thought to myself "I honestly didn't set a two hour reminder for Torchwood, did I?".

I can confirm I did not.

Instead the reminder read:

"Guild OS 10man HC at 19:30"

For those of you whose eye brows are twitching at this otherwise nonsensical gibberish, let me kindly explain in one, simple word - Warcraft.

Yes, my hobby has now expanded onto my iPhone. In fact, I find the iPhone the perfect, essential raiding tool - being able to have tacs (tactics for the uninitiated) open in Safari on the handheld. I like to think of it as a dual screen set-up, and certainly saves having to alt-tab or play in Windowed mode.

I tweeted what some may call a sad reminder, and seem to have started a trend where a couple of my followers have now also input their raiding schedules into their phones.

We are not sad, we are awesome - and for those who hate and proclaim that we have no life and that gaming provides no life skills, to you I say a pox! A pox!

As I've said before, with co-op and MMO's becoming more prevalent, team building skills via the gaming medium are on the up, and could give those corporate days out to a rugby pitch or the like a run for their money.

Take for instance the raid last night - it required preparation as we read tacs for doing Obsidian Sanctum with one drake up (it's harder and stuff, though not as hard a three drakes up), and decided upon the best drake to keep up. Building the raid involved crunching the gear and damage numbers. Organising who did what. When to nuke the skull and when to jump in the portal. To monitor and maintain aggro for the Tanks, and to make sure us DPS'ers (Damage Per Second) don't over aggro. Attack/Spell rotation - all the while watching for Sarth's lava walls.

So you see, it requires a lot of team skills - a lot of management and a lot of organisation - and if one goes down, mainly in 10 man raids, you might as well all wipe.

There's certainly more to it than you think, and if people understood it more, I think they'd be impressed at the level of skill involved (that's in regards to the recent report about don't tell your work that you play WoW thing doing the rounds on the Intertubes).

And to end, I was asked to take a pic of my raiding set-up. I was on my laptop last night in front of the TV. Seriously considering making that my main raiding spot. Comfy and Simpsons.



As Jase said - perfect timing - and yes, I don't use AddOn's. Mages don't really need to, plus I like to be an non-conformist.

I tell you, I was so glad the raid ended with two minutes to spare before Torchwood came on.