We Surrender!

So let's take a quick summary of the last 4 weeks...

• Jason's car dies and needs a new starter motor.
• My car suffers from a blow-out whilst I am driving the girls to nursery.
• Jason's PC's graphics card dies and the replacement has taken over two weeks to be delivered (still waiting).
• Lauren catches chicken pox.
• Jocey catches chicken pox.
• The tumble-dryer stops drying.
• And finally, the hot water pipe that supplies the washing machine decides to supply the kitchen floor at the same time.

We are nearly £1,000 worse off than we were at the start of the month and neither of us has had a decent night's sleep in far too long. 

We give in!  No more please!

Got a spare $200,000?

I just got this email from Virgin for an amazing experience.

Only problem is, I don't think I can afford it! It would be really amazing though and a once in a lifetime experience.

So those of you with $200,000 to spare should have a think about it...

At last a film to look forward to!

Dah, dah dah, daahhhh!  Dah, dah dahhhhh!

Predictions!

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Format Wars...
Anyone who has talked technology with me in the last month, will not have been shocked by the delay of the Euro launch of the PS3 as I have been predicting it.
Just reading a couple of news sites made it perfectly clear that Sony was way behind in building the PS3 and wouldn't have enough (more than 5 million units needed) for a glocal release. Even more scary is that they may only manage 1 million units for November, which would mean the US would only get 500,000 or so (demand there was predicted to be 10 times that number).
However, does the delay mean that HD-DVD will get a head start over Blu-ray?
I had been predicting that Blu-ray would win the format war, solely on the back of the PS3.
Most consumers are smart enough to wait for the format war to settle down before buying new kit and I reckoned the Christmas rush for the PS3 and its built in Blu-ray player would result in a big enough market share to kill HD-DVD pretty quickly.
Even more weird is the concept that Blu-ray will win in Japan and the US, but Europe and Oz will pick HD-DVD. Not a problem for film distributors, as their content is localised anyway, but hardware manufacturers won't like it. In the end I expect that Blu-ray would be forced upon us by the Japan/US technology market.
Anyway, Sony has fumbled the ball and it remains to see if this could be their undoing.

Way back I postulated that Blu-Ray would eventually win the HD format wars, based solely on the integration with the PS3.

Looks like I was right as Toshiba (the main HD-DVD technology producer) has decided to pull out of that format following the mass evacuation of its original supporters.  I'm so glad I didn't leap on that bandwagon.  Especially since I would have picked HD-DVD as the superior format!!!!

If it's not one thing it's another!

We are saving money like crazy so we can build a new PC.
Gareth's PC woes have managed to infect us though, as the video card in our main PC decided to blow up on Friday night and is well and truly dead.
Since that system uses the older AGP format, getting a replacement will be neither easy nor cheap, so we may just have to wait for a couple of months for the new machine.
BUMMER!

Lessons in PC Voodoo!

I love urban myths, but I get a secret grin when I tell people some things that I know to be facts and they dismiss them as Urban Myths or me pulling their leg!

My first example is the hard disk in the freezer trick!  If your PC won't boot up and you reckon this is down to a hard disk drive failure then if all things fail I suggest taking the drive out and wrapping it up in cling film or a sealed freezer bag (must be air tight) and then leaving it in the freezer for an hour.  The most common cause of HDD failure is component seizure and rapid cooling can unstick a stuck drive.  However the problem is very likely to recur so this only gives you about 15-30 mins of cold life during which you should back up everything you can from that disk.

My second example is very much a last resort and will only work for a self acknowledged geek.  We all know that in Voodoo rituals you often require the blood of a freshly sacrificed chicken, but given that techno geeks tend to steer clear of anything fresh or bloody, I can confirm that waving frozen chicken portions over a dead PC, three times clockwise and three times anti-clockwise gives a true believer the ability to reboot a stalled system!

If you do find the two tricks above don't work for you all I can say is that (a) the hard disk is REALLY fucked or (b) your faith / geekiness is not true enough.