Now that's Entertainment!

The last couple of months of Saturday nights have had one highlight for Serena, Lauren and I.... How do you solve a problem like Maria.

Whether it is how we were brought up, or whether it was just well crafted I couldn't tell you, but we have really enjoyed this programme and were getting to the stage where we were shouting at the telly! (Especially when Siobhan beat Aoife in the semi-final.)

Justice was done in the end with Connie and Helena making the perfect last two and with Connie getting our vote for the Win! (Which she did!)

I found it strange that ITV were so threatened by this show... Football and other commitments meant that the BBC move it round the schedules nearly every week, and ITV dutifully moved the X-Factor audition show around to match minute for minute. I just don't see why they felt they needed to do that as X-Factor isn't even at a voting stage.

So what else has tickled my fancy recently?

As previously commented A Town Called Eureka on Sky has been good fun, and I am delighted that Spooks has returned for a new series. I am even more delighted as the Hallmark channel on Sky have just kicked off a rerun of Spooks Season 1, which I missed!

For all you U2 fans! (look away now)

Chop

OK, it's not exactly a suprise, but yesterday's announcement confirmed what we suspected.... No jobs for the London Project Team.

So I have the choice between Voluntary Severance or Redeployment.

The latter means you get stuck on a list of people with no jobs and get matched to a vacancy. You get very little say in what vacancy you get matched against, so I am not inclined to pick that option.

The former means I get a pay-off of approx half a year's salary (not certain on the tax implications) and need to find a new job.

Looks like I will out of work come November!

A couple for Gareth

Thought this might interest you.
Also this is worth a look!

A message to Sally!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Blogging!

I had to laugh reading you blog in more detail last night.
I love the piccie of James asleep. That is a view I have woken up to far too many times in my 33 years. I must dig out some of the older pics for you to laugh (I mean look) at.
I have also been watching A Town Called Eureka. It is great.
I am having a bad relationship with my PDA... I have decided that it doesn't love me anymore, so it sits on it charger looking forlorn whilst I leave it at home. I think I need an upgrade, but budgets do not permit.
Road signs being "girl friendly"... Hmm interesting. We talking about making them pink and furry? (Just Kidding).
Serena and getting lost used to be a regular occurrence when we moved to London (poor dear). For her birthday a few years back I was planning to buy her TomTom GPS System and whilst it was on back order she got horrendously lost and returned home in floods of tears. She demanded that this would not happen again and she didn't care how much it cost, she was buying SatNav. I was harsh and told her she couldn't buy it and proceeded to get a serious earful. In the end I brought my proposed surprise to an end and told her I had already bought one for her and was just waiting for it to be delivered. Again that triggered floods of tears (fortunately the good kind).

For those of you wanting to know more about James' Beau (or should that be Belle?) then I have added a permanent link to her Blog on the right.

Deal or No Deal - US Style

So how do the Americans take the Noel Edmonds fronted quiz show and convert it into a format that works for the US?

New Spam Trick

Admittedly Norton catches and deletes most of my spam nowadays, but I have noticed that the B@stards are trying a new trick.

I was checking my webmail, which has more stored on it than usual, as I haven't reinstalled Outlook yet following my disk death of last week. It uses Squirrel Mail which displays 15 mails per page and I am well onto 3 pages needing downloading.

I processed the new stuff, being my own spam filter - i.e. deleting all the Nationwide emails telling me to update my account details and those offering me improved sexual performance (how do they kn0w?). Once I was done filtering and reading the message I wanted to keep, I noticed I still had "1 New Message". A bit odd, so I refreshed and nothing appeared.

OK, I jumped to page two... nothing. I jumped to page 3 and BAM. A new piece of spam dated 2002!

I guarantee it hasn't been sat their for 4 years, and I find it unlikely that even Blueyonder's mail servers are that slow.

So what are the implications for the "semi-savvy" user.

They download their mail and delete the ones they don't recognise (being "savvy"). Outlook Express etc still tells them they have one new message, but they can't see it. (Thier inbox contains hundreds of read messages sorted by date - they don't tidy into folders / archive). Confused they decide to let Outlet Express show them the new message by clicking the "Next New" button. BAM... the spam messgage is opened by Outlook Express from the very bottom of their Inbox, where they never thought to look. Now that opening triggers all sorts of nasty things.

I haven't seen this before but it can't be that new an idea can it?

Edit:

This gets weirder:

Sword of Damocles

I've just been invited to two meetings....

Thursday 4pm... "Important Annoucement - WM Operations Restructure"
Friday morning... My boss wants us to have a 1 on 1 to discuss the implications of the previous day's meeting.

Move over Damocles!

Word of the day

Sorry, today's Word of the Day cracked me up....

Courtesy of Red Dwarf it is one of Serena's favourites!

Regrets?

Well there has been little to blog in the last few days, since I have been too busy to have much of a life.

I was just catching up on some celebrity gossip over a Decaf Cappucino when I read the following interview with Kirsten Dunst, discussing her break up from Jake Gyllenhaal.

How much is she going to regret being quite so candid?

Jake and I couldn't last. He's a stay-at-home boy and I'm an out-on-the-town girl. We tried to spice things up - we had sex in cars, in the bathroom and even by the sea. The only place we didn't have the guts to try was in a walkway in a hotel because we thought we might get kicked out if we were caught.

At least Alex may be in with a shot!

Sorted

Well we had a fun weekend...
What with Lauren walking, fixing the computer (pretty good success) and Serena studying it wasn't too much of a drag!

I'll write more later.

Next CCL Competition

This fortnight's CCL compo is a piece of piss!

This fortnight's puzzle prize is a fantastic Cyber Acoustics A303 iPod Docking Speaker System that sound great in the home or on the road! They are ultra stylish and will impress and amaze your friends with pure audio quality! To win them all you have to do is solve our puzzle…

You’re driving a bus. At the first stop 9 people get on. At the second stop, 2 people get off and 12 get on. At the third stop, 6 get off and 8 people get on. At the fourth stop, 4 people get on (I think this is a typo and should read off) and 3 people get on. At the fifth top, 12 people get off and none get on. How many people are left on the bus?

As usual, answers on an email to answers@cclonline.com. Best of luck everyone!

Please don't disappoint me...

PS No one I knew won the hat compo, but B was the correct answer!

Flakey

CRAP!

Our main PC has been a bit flakey recently and crashed a few times whilst gaming and did the odd "funny boot".

To resolve the issue I decided to reinstall Norton System Works, which was always pretty good at tidying up after crashes.

Midway through the install the System Died and it isn't wanting to wake up.

I need to recover the Shared Docs folder, but beyond that the C drive can be wiped and started again....

Basically this is a bummer.

Khaki Day

I think this should become a global tribute.
If I read the BBC article sooner I would have dressed differently this morning.

Oh and it looks like Serena has been busy... a huge polystyrene box labelled "Martin's Seafresh Fish" just turned up on the doorstep!

Weird stuff

Firstly according to Google Weather it is rather cold here at the moment:



And secondly there is a new shop in Shepherd's Bush near my bus stop called "The Brain Warehouse". I'll try and grab a photo tomorrow.

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.

Found It!

James was trying to remember this:

Free Competition....

CCL Online are running a free-to-enter competition.

The prize for this puzzle is a 1GB MP3-DJ Vivid. A stylish number from the guys at Genius. It integrates a MP3 digital audio decoder, FM tuner, flash memory, built-in microphone, and OLED display all in one. This really is a cracking prize for one lucky winner. Check it out here!

The competition is as follows:


You email your answers to: answers@cclonline.com

I have submitted my "correct" answer! :P

Something a bit more manly!

Can't let my wife steal the limelight too much!

After 15 months it is time for a change!

One step too far?

Personally I think this is taking things too far!

Donkey

This one is for Gareth!

I am sure he knows why!

Frazzled Working Mum: All singing, all dancing!!

Frazzled Working Mum: All singing, all dancing!!

Check out the new appearance of the family website. Not bad for someone who knows no programming stuff at all; hope you like the changes!

Let me know what you think!

Early Adopter

Hmmm, for the first time I find myself with a technological dilemma!

Blu-ray or HD-DVD?

OK, neither technology is really up and running yet here in the UK, but then again I am not ready to buy.

Come next spring I will be ready to buy and both formats should be up and shouting.

I don't remember the Betamax v VHS war as my parent's aren't early adopters where technology is concerned (they only just got a PC - one of our hand me downs), and the DVDR format war never really surfaced as dual-format players / recorders came out within months.

We bought an HD-TV back in February, as we needed a new telly, so future proofing seemed sensible. Having sold our Hi-Fi / Surround Sound system (too bulky), we are back to watching DVDs via a Scart lead with dodgy stereo sound. I reckon that the reduced quality and a lack of contiguous time (Lauren) has killed our passion for watching films.

My spring purchases were going to be along the following lines...

• HD Disk player.
• HDMI Switching Amp + 5.1 / 7.1 Speaker setup.
• SFF PC (to act as Media Centre).

Early reports on the Warner Bros HD releases (WB is the only studio atm who is releasing on both formats) is clearly pointing to HD-DVD being the better format.

I am not convinced that HD-DVD will win in the long run though. I think Sony will steal the market with the PS3 / Blu-ray combo.
PS3 will be the must have Christmas present this year, and I can see parents justifying the spend as the console will also act as a HD compatible film player.

Obviously Dual-format players will emerge eventually, but can I wait?

Actually do I care? Now that I have typed most of this article I am starting to think again.
Getting the Amp and the Media Centre PC is a sound investment. It will be cheaper to upgrade the PC with an HD player and I can by-pass the need for HDMI switching in the Amp, as I can hook the PC up via DVI and Optical (which is good enough for HD). That will leave the HDMI on the TV free for the Sky+ HD box (when they drop in price).

Serena and I also talked about adding a Wireless Network File server (which we can hide in a cupboard). It can be ugly and hidden and we can stick big Raid HDDs in it to free up space on the Media Centre / Laptops. Streaming of Video over a 54g Wireless LAN works perfectly well (I have proven that already between my desktop and laptop PCs). I reckon that building the file server will be a piece of piss, as all I need to do it recycle our current desktop machine "as is", but stick bigger hard disks in it. Once the system is built I can use windows networking tools to remotely administer it from a laptop, so we can get away without it needing a keyboard / mouse / monitor most of the time.

Anyway, I seem to be rambling again! But then this is my blog!

NB I don't see us buying a PS3 (before someone suggests it).

Hoff-ally sorry!

I completely forgot to thank Gareth for sending me Junk Mail. Scan of post card attached!

What's the point?

Work sporadically update the firwall ruleset to block a few more "unsuitable" web sites.

Today's update blocked all BBC News pages apart from the front page! However, BBC News is split into three versions... UK Edition, International Edition and Low Graphics Edition.

They blocked the first one and not the others. Why? Internation Edition is still high graphics and is hardly ever different from the UK version.

Oh yeah... they also neglected to block the Sports section (but that could be deliberate!).

An Important Distinction

Its a very fine line and I try desperately not to step over it....

When I can!

I am back playing Oblivion and X3 as a change... I got a bit WoW'd out. I find that since I broke my addiction to MMORPGs, I get tired of playing them after a couple of months and need to take a break.

Anyway I decided to restart X3 and Oblivion now that I had done a clean install on the new XP build. I have been enjoying both a lot more than I did last time. No fear on WoW though, I'll be back.

X3 and Oblivion are also much more "Lauren friendly", as they have Pause buttons! I have also cracked Lock-picking in Oblivion. I can take a Master lock with my pitiful 5 skill points!

I also reinstalled Half-Life 2, and don't seem to have backed up my Game Saves... So I am back in City 17 shooting zombies. At least I get to do the cool dune buggy level again!

On Standby

Jase is not blogging as much at the present time (see this related post) but do not fear, he will be back.

I've noticed that after playing WoW a fair bit, he's now back playing Oblivion and X3 again in his spare time. This is not a great deal of time as presently we are both very busy at work and I am getting ever closer to my exam (so to aid studying Jase is on baby sitting duties at home).

Sorry for the disruption to normal services but all will be better after November is out of the way.

Oh, and I've decided to blog in a different colour to avoid confusion!

Do they think I am stupid?

Over the last few days our doorbell has been ringing randomly. I never caught any kids doing it, so I reckoned that someone else had a wireless bell like ours which was interfering and changed the transmission channel.

I am working from home today.
The doorbell goes.
As I am expecting to the postman I head straight to the door and just see a folded umbrella disappearing round the corner into my neighbour's front door... the kids are using it to press my bell and retreat quickly.
So I move to the sofa and peer out the side window straight at their door.
A couple of minutes later they decide the coast it clear and repeat the trick... I bang on the window and they look very sheepish before disappearing.

Clearly my neighbour's kids (or rather the youngest son and his friends) are stupid, but what punishment do I bestow? I don't want to start a feud, but I don't want them doing it again and disturbing Lauren.

Mainly for Balint

A long, long time ago, when we couldn't afford to go out on a Friday night, we used to have film nights, where Serena would cook and Balint and I would take turns providing films or wine.

Balint introduced me to two French films: Les Visiteurs (great comedy just ignore the Hollywood remake) and La Fille de d'Artagnan (young Sophie Marceau).

I have remained a fan of the French swashbuckling movie and enjoyed Le Pacte des Loups when it hit the cinema in Australia (despite it getting a very poor edit to R2 DVD).

I recently came across another film of the genre that I really enjoyed and thought I would post it here for those of you who may be interested.

It is called Le Bossu and features a very average plot and pretty nifty swordplay.

Now all we need is a remake of Scaramouche and we are complete!

Battlestar Galactica Season 3

After two seasons of rapidly increasing popularity it looks like the US networks have thrown a big budget at BSG and are seeking awards!
A special "Story Thus Far" film is being made as a prequal to Season 3 and it is going to be made freely available on the web.
They are also making this season in HD.... hmmm that upgrade is looking tempting!
Not long to wait now though!

Happy Birthday your Majesty!

No not Madonna! Its Lauren's 1st Birthday today!

Lauren shares her birthday with a much higher class of celebrity than I do! She gets Madonna, Ulrika Jonsson and Shimon Peres. I get Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lee Harvey Oswald and Martina Navratilova!

Looking at others...

Serena gets Teddy Sheringham, Dermott Reeve and Linford Christie!
James gets Romeo Beckham, Melissa George and Barry Gibb! (And a suprising number of Porn Stars!)
Gareth gets Ice Cube, Courteney Cox and Noddy Holder. (Plus the star of Britney Speared!)

Otherworld

A while back I posted on a TV forum (I even forget which one) to see if anyone could refresh my memory and name a random program I remembered from my youth.

No one could from my weak description (which turned out to be pretty accurate).

Anyway, I was reading today about a weird programme called She-Wolf in London (don't ask...) and someone linked a site called RareTV that sells rip-off videos of TV shows that networks can't be bothered to repeat or release on DVD.

Thinking back to my failure I decided to trawl the alphabetical listing of shows released in the 1980's and finally found my missing show... Otherworld.

Now the big question is does anyone else remember it?

My memories are really spurious! I remember really enjoying it and being annoyed that I had to watch it on Tyne Tees TV as Yorkshire TV didn't show it. We had lowsy TTTV reception in York. Reading some of the forum posts about Otherworld really triggered off some memories!

What other blasts from the past are lurking out there???

Absolutely nothing to say!

Well I haven't blogged on my own ramblings for a week now. Beyond doing the family thing and working I haven't done or come across anything worth blogging!

Someone give me a new movie theme and I'll maybe get inspired!

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.

I see that George Lucas must be running short of cash again!
We have a new set of the original three Star Wars movies coming out on DVD.
Double disk sets with the remastered special edition on Disk 1 and the grainy "Stereo" 1970s version on Disk 2!
Does he think we are complete mugs?
Let me know if they are any good Gareth! ;P

PS Here is a new "Demotivator" just for Jules.

So, this is where they keep the old relics, then, eh?

Ahhh, the Maestro is back!

I knew it was too early to promote you.

Ahhh we are back on the third floor after a month on level 1...
The remodelling of our old area has squeezed in double the number of desks and is now laid out "call centre" style rather than as little friendly islands.

I also owe a belated Happy Birthday to my mexican bandit friend Giuseppe! (See below.)
Also, I doubt that Lawrence reads this blog any more, but Happy Birthday stranger (if you do)!

The 1970s week is finished and I have arbitrarily decided to dedicate this week to James Bond films!

I reckon this one will be very challenging!

The only thing you can do with virgins like that is pounce!

Spurious links as always!

I ordered the new camera on Wednesday evening. It just arrived (friday afternoon).

That's rather fast... considering I bought it in Hong Kong!

Her Majesty did sting me for £30 of duty, but still a bargain!

I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?"

Slghtly dodgy connection with the quote, but hey - its my blog!

Serena and I have just shelled out on a new digital camera. Our old Nikon has lasted us nearly 5 years, which is an age as far as technology goes (the only thing older that we still use regularly is our Sony DVD player, which was state of the art when we bought it and still cuts the mustard now. That is waiting for the HD-DVD/Blu-ray market to stabilise! ).

Our new camera is the Canon Digital IXUS 800 IS (known as the PowerShot SD700 IS in the US). Its pretty new on the market and has been winning lots of awards and getting really good reviews.

We coupled this with a high speed 2 GB SD card and a spare battery (alway a must with these things), totalling a spend of nearly £300. Hopefully it will last us another 5 years!

I want you to round up every vicious criminal and gun slinger in the west. Take this down...

...I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

Giuseppe - for God's sake get a haircut and shoot the caterpiller!

What are you? Some kind of half-assed astronaut?

I am thinking of sticking a few photos into this compo....
Gareth - Your "Yellow" photo from last year (or was it the year before) could do well in the "Rock and Roll" section.

PS I couldn't think of a relevant quote, so I picked another '70s Classic!

I told you, we're an anarco-sydicalist commune.

I can't think of anything worth blogging this morning, so I'll see how much a of a roll Gareth is on by using this quote!

This is one you will either get straight away or will need to google!

I guess you've noticed something a little strange with Dad. It's okay, though. I'm still Dad!

Popped out for a hair-cut at lunchtime, since it has been nearly 2 months and I was feeling rather shaggy in all the hot weather.

Lauren is looking at me funny, as if to say... "What happened"?

PS This quote is a little obscure... this film is best known for its "5 notes"!

Listen, I can't get involved. I've got work to do.

Ahhh, the eternal torment...
Lots of things I'd like to do with my weekend and Lauren won't allow me the time!
Still I don't begrudge her any of it.

A bit more of a tricky quote today! Trust me you ALL know it!

Do you spend time with your family? Good. Because a man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.

Well Serena has to work all weekend, so I get the pleasure of Lauren's company.
Not certain what we'll do but I am pretty certain that Ice Cream will feature in there somewhere.

Today's quote is a easy one as it comes from the most popular film of the 70's.

I'm here under the orders of the President of Earth, I'm looking for Durand-Durand.

My morning radio DJ made an annoying mistake today. They were talking about pop groups who have taken their names from films and he mentioned Duran Duran, and then proceeded to link them to the wrong film.

Can you do any better?

It was a relief I tell you. I was seriously struggling with leading lady quotes!

I am my father's daughter, and I'm not afraid of anything.

I am running out of leading lady quotes fast!!!! This post would normally have gone on Rena's blog, but since it fits in with a good quote I thought I would post it here.

Two days running now we have gone to the park with Lauren after work. As Rena commented she is in full "mountaineering" mode now, climbing up and over anything in an attempt to stand upright.

Ravenscourt Park has plenty of pigeons and dogs to keep Lauren enthralled as well, however when Serena took her to see Jase & Charlotte's kitten (Rafferty) she was really scared. We think it is the way that he moves, as he is motionless and then suddenly jerks into motion, making her scream (which clearly makes him jump). We'll work on this, as I don't want Lauren to be scared of animals.

My Uncle and Cousin train race horses and my Uncle's brother runs a farm all in the same Yorkshire village, so I think we will have to take Lauren up there soon to see all the animals. Definitely next spring though, when the lambs, piglets and puppies are around and Lauren is that little bit bigger!

Our minds are unravelling and every time you bring us back it gets worse!

This Blew my Mind!

The Omegahedron Selena! I want it!

Post was called: "Silliness - Thanks Gareth!!" Admin'd by Jason

Well, I just couldn't resist.

After reading Gareth's post about the dog I spotted this. And I had to post this after James had talked about the subject as well.

Watch this; and you do have to have the music as Gareth said.

I had to giggle!

The quote is only relevant as it come from a very silly movie!

You're going to be bad for business. I can tell.

Hmmm, a toughy to get us started for the remainder of this week.
Let's start with one of my favourite female leads in one of my favourite films.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot!

OK - very spurious quote! Comes from the Gag Reel at the end of a movie! (OK I admit I am a nerd!)

I just had lunch with Alex and walking back across St Paul's Churchyard was a bit warm to say the least!

I am looking for suggestions for a movie quotes theme? e.g. If Gareth picks "Star Wars", and I need to come with relevant quotes for the rest of the week.

Suggestions in the comments!

It's hot as hell in here. Yeah man, but it's a dry heat!

Well London is shaping up to be damn hot this week.
I am glad I invested £250 in an air conditioning unit for our bedroom, as I find it hard to sleep when the temperature goes of 25°C never mind well over 30°C! We have relocated Lauren into our room so she gets the advantage of the cool air too.

However I wanted to post something a bit more serious on my Blog (for once).

I am very concerned about what is going on in Israel and Lebanon. Clearly the terrorist / militant activity in Lebanon is not a good thing, but does anyone else think that Israel is over-reacting slightly?

Also it grieves me that the US always stand firmly behind Israel. I know they have invested a lot into the Israeli state, but you have to take a step back sometimes and go "hang on a minute"! What is next? Nukes launched into Beirut?

I hold up my hands and admit that I don't understand a lot of the politics or history that is going on here, but from your lay-man's perspective it all seems a bit over the top and is not being condemned strongly enough by our leaders.

OK, enough serious stuff for now... I'm going to fill in some answers to the quotes in the comments fields.

I'll tell you something. If you're as good in bed as you are on the dance floor, then you're one lousy fuck!

Sophie Ellis Bexter found dead in a Paris flat.....

It's murder on Zidane's floor!

(Say it out loud... you know you want to!)

Game over man!

OK, so Wimbledon and the World Cup are finished as is the second series of Dr Who.

Wimbledon was mildly entertaining, the latter stages of the World Cup were blooming awful and the final episode of Dr Who was really enjoyable (even if I hoped a painful death for Rose).

So what now? Looks like I am back to the DVD box set of Alias Season 3 and catching up on a few films.

I have been playing a bit of World of Warcraft which I have to admit is mildly entertaining!!!! I even managed to play it for a few hours in France (in French), although I was hampered by being unable to decipher some of the quest text. As I am having to look after Lauren in my free time, I cannot explore the game fully as far as grouping or longer dungeons but that may come in time.

Yes, Pippin, my point is, he's clearly over-reacting. Run!

OK, I need to take a chill pill!
I have added clues to all the old ones back as far as So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!

DISAPPOINTED!!!! (shoots sofa twice)

Clearly no-one is interested in my movie quotes theme (despite Gareth's last comment).
Do you know how hard it is to come up with something relevant all the time?
OK, so most of them are really easy (e.g. the last two) but I reckon someone other than Gareth should be at least having a stab! I don't do this for my own gratification! (OK I do, but you are spoiling that gratification!)

Look at the size of that thing!

Maggie, Peter, Lauren and I went for a cup of coffee and a cake yesterday, whilst Serena was working... The slices served were HUGE. Fortunately there is no evidence as Maggie's camera batteries were flat, however I cannot look at another slice of cake for at least a week!

OK - I just wanted to go back to this earlier comment. I can solemnly swear that I have never been served such a huge portion of cake anywhere in the world... and that includes in the US.

I can also state that I haven't eaten any cake since!

The most efficient piece of aversion therapy I have ever experienced!

How Wude!

OK, this is way, way overdue!

We returned from France on Saturday, in time for an England v Portugal penalty shoot-out in the baggage collection hall (so much for avoiding the score and watching the replay on digital).

I have to admit as to not feeling too great (must have been the sweetbreads!) and started to run a fever, and come Sunday I was feeling blooming awful! My throat had swollen up so much that when Serena had a look at it even she was worried! (I often complain about not getting any sympathy as Serena is a Doctor and is used to seeing people with bits hanging off, but when she actually gets worried then it is really scary!)

A visit to the GP on Monday (he barely glanced down my throat in the 3 minutes I was in his office) resulted in some weak antibiotics (Serena calls them the "pissing in the wind" variety) and I skived off work for two days feeling miserable!

Back to work yesterday and found a building site where my desk used to be... bit of a shock actually! Apparently our department were given two days notice to pack up and move out! (Hence the title.)

Anyway I found my stuff including half a Kensington lock security cable - apparently it only took 5 minutes and a pair of pliers to cut through it to free my docking station from the desk - and got my desk up and running again. It still needs a good juggle to get everything where I think it should be, but that takes energy and I am seriously lacking that at the moment.

I had 250 emails to plough through and one urgent situation that had arisen... I may get round to another updated sometime this month!

I don't think we are in Kansas anymore!

Wow! Finding internet access here is St Malo has proved to be a chore!
Serena is still trying to work on her paper and needs to lookup some more references so I pulled out all the stops and found the ONLY internet cafe in St Malo for her! (I looked at 3 others but they had shut down.)

I am touch typing this as I am using a french keyboard and the letters are all over the place. I managed to convince "Le Windoes" that I am American, which gets most of the keys where I think they should be, so I just need to not look down and type on instinct!

The weather is OK. Not particularly warm, but at least it isn't raining. The food is great. Fresh shellfish and lots of crepes & gateaux! Maggie, Peter, Lauren and I went for a cup of coffee and a cake yesterday, whilst Serena was working... The slices served were HUGE. Fortunately there is no evidence as Maggie's camera batteries were flat, however I cannot look at another slice of cake for at least a week!

Go "Trig Boy", it's your birthday!

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday dear Gareth!
Happy Birthday to you!

I like the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favorite. Fantastic language. Especially to curse with...

OK the quote is too good to be truncated: I love French wine, I like the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favorite. Fantastic language. Especially to curse with. Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta mère. It's like wiping your arse with silk. I love it.

How bloomin' hard is it sort out internet access in France for Serena? Paris is OK, but it looks like Saint Malo is the back end of beyond as far as technology is concerned! The only advertised Internet Hotspot I can find is in the Ferry Port. I hope we have more luck in the centre as I can find out no useful information on the internet.

Orange are no help either. Despite owning Wanadoo in France (now called Orange.Fr) they won't give me HSCSD access whilst we are there (that is old style 28.8k modem access via a mobile) as they "don't provide that service in France". My French may be rusty but the www.orange.fr website seems to offer this service to local subscribers!

I am sure things will be much more obvious and simple when we are there, but it is really frustrating when trying to plan ahead.

Lions, Tigers and Bears... Oh My!

This one is for Rena:



So is this:



And this one is for Gareth:

Yes well, you put your clothes on and I'll buy you an ice cream!

To survive the heat of the weekend I consumed a couple of large ice-creams.
I was feeling rather guilty about it until I saw this picture of my old mate Balint!

Quote from another old favourite (1981 was a vintage year for movies).

To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I've known sheep who could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs!

I am kicking myself! You can call me Mr Thicky!

Since we moved into our newly extended house we have had our ancient portable TV running in the kitchen. It is one of those ones that predates SCART and from when teletext was a dirty word! You have a normal RF input and that is your lot!

Suffice to say that we don't have a roof aerial socket in the kitchen, Serena won't let me run a Magic Eye cable along the length of the house from our living room Sky+ box and all the wireless AV senders I have found only support SCART TVs (SCART to RF signal converters are suprisingly expensive).

I resigned myself to squinting at a lousy picture on the loop aerial (indoor booster aerials are both ugly and expensive for what you get imho). We intend to put an LCD in the kitchen later in the year anyway, so I can be patient and wait.

Well DUH!!!!!!! What piece of kit has been sat in the loft for 12 months and has 2 SCART sockets and a built in SCART to RF signal converter? My old VCR! All I need to do is hook the AV sender up to the Sky box in our bedroom, the receiver up to the VCR in the kitchen and the TV up to the VCR. Bingo - Sky in the kitchen! Why I didn't think of that months ago I cannot say!

Today's movie quote is from one of my favourite British films and is in honour of its star who has announced his retirement.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Well the hot weather pinned me indoors this weekend, as it was too hot for Lauren and Rena was working. Lauren also has a sore throat at the moment so she was having difficulty sleeping during the day, which meant that it would have been nigh on impossible to play some KOTOR2.

Instead I watched films as part of a catchup session. In order they were:

Assault on Precinct 13 (Remake): Should be retitled assault on the eardrums! Sky listed it as a 15 certificate. I think there must be some mistake! 18 all the way in my books - or am I becoming a fuddy duddy? Anyway it was pants apart from the proper treatment of Psycologists!

Stepford Wives (Remake): Whilst this story leans itself well to a comedy make-over and the cast was pretty good, it was still a lousy attempt with a predictable twist. Stick to the original.

Logan's Run (Classic): Shown on TCM and edited to have the bouncy bits taken out so it can be shown as PG before the watershed. Still a Classic but I missed the bouncy bits that made this a teenage classic! I can't believe they are planning a remake!

Bull Durham: An old favourite. I am weird as far as Brit's go... I like baseball movies (such as Major League and The Natural)! Anyway it was still great and Crash's list of beliefs only didn't make it as my quote title as it is too long!

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Better than I expected. Best for all the in-jokes linking back to the BBC TV version! Not brilliant though.

Æon Flux: This was completely panned so I didn't hold out much in the way of expectations. I don't think the panning was deserved! Not too bad but there have been better films of this style (Equilibrium comes to mind). Charlize Theron is very watchable and the amount of Toupée tape that she must have gone through makes the mind boggle!

I also watched the football, but would have probably gotten more entertainment from watching Anchorman! (OK, maybe not!)

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!

OK, so my last post was a bit weird, but I just wanted to get into the spirit of things.
Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack to The Omen still sends shivers down my spine!

I had to laugh when I read that the boy who played Damien in the original has been given a bit part as a reporter in the remake! Clearly the Antichrist has gone down in the world!

I have to say that I was a bit miffed yesterday. I have sorted out my DivX woes (cheers G) and even managed to fix the audio problem (missing AC3 codec) on one film, and so could finally get round to watching Angel Season 1 (downloaded as Sky have been skipping episodes!).

Turns out I had downloaded "Galaxy Angel" (in Spanish) which is some sort of Manga cartoon. I was a bit miffed. Anyway Episodes 1-4 were at 96% when I left this morning and the rest of Season 1 was sitting at 10%, so we are getting there!

Ave Satani

Ave Satani
Sanguis Bibimus
Corpus Edimus
Tolle Corpus Satani

Sanguis Bibimus
Corpus Edimus
Tolle Corpus Satani

Sanguis Bibimus
Corpus Edimus
Tolle Corpus Satani

Ave Versus Cristus
Ave Versus Cristus
Ave Versus Cristus

Ave Satani
Sanguis Bibimus
Corpus Edimus
Tolle Corpus Satani
Satani
Satani
Satani
Satani

Where's Gareth? Torturing Americans. How thoughtful of him!

My blog has four regular readers (I am tracking you!)...

So here is my first dedicated post to celebrate my biggest fan! :P

Bloody hard to come up with a movie quote though!

Cheers G.

What is this, a dance off?

This cracked me up when I watched it on Saturday:

Link if clicky doesn't work!

Its Alive!!!!!!!!

Well CCL Computing delivered my new 250 Gb hard disk is record time and after a bit of jiggery pokery we have Windows up and running (legitimate copy too) and most of the "standard" applications. You know - Word, Excel, KOTOR2... just the basics!

Anyway, apart from Gareth, no-one seems to read or leave feedback on this Blog... either that or you were all scared silly by the picture of the God of Wit! Looks like I'll have to revert to Hoff pictures!

Anyway I need some advice... DivX and XVid. Is there a consistant and safe way to watch movies encoded with these blighters? For some reason the Sony Laptop plays them fine straight off the bat, and the desktop won't touch them. I am reluctant to spyware my system with the downloads for these codecs, so if anyone can tell me a safe way of installing just what I need then that would be great!

There's always room for Jello!

I'm going to see how long I can drag this out...
I'm going to title each post with a relevant movie quote.
Guesses in the comments!

Heartbeat?

OK, thanks to Gareth's comments on the family Blog I have the Heartbeat theme tune buzzing around in my head!

He commented that I look like Nick Berry in the photo from my 21st Birthday Party, so to give you a bit of a laugh I thought you could suggest some other look-a-likes for me (without being too cruel).

To start you off here is one I used to get at Uni:

It's Dead Jim!

Well I rebuilt the Partitions and the Master Boot Record and it is still not working....
Windows now recognises that the drive is there and that it has 3 partitions, but it still can't talk to it so I can get at my data. Just tells me there is an I/O error when communicating with the device.
I reckon this means hardware death.
Looks like another £50-100 out the window for a replacement.

Anyone know a good company that specialise in data recovery from dead hard disks? I think we have some piccies in the shared docs folder on the dead drive that we really don't want to lose!

Tech Demon Haunting

I am beginning to think that we have some sort of tech demon in the house causing havoc to all our electric / electronic items. Either that or I have been watching too much Buffy. Anyway, time to set the record straight after Jase complained about the rice cooker post taking priority over his PC.

Jase's PC has mysteriously decided to keel over. It was in the middle of a virus scan at the time and attempting a reboot (never a good sign). Jase thinks it had probably found a virus and was trying to reset the system or something.

We couldn't get the thing to reboot.

Of course, this occurred on the day Jase was planning to back the system up prior to a rebuild. The corrupt hard disc unfortuantely housed all of our photos (luckily I think I had most of them on the laptop too). I think I did do a photo archive relatively recently but am not sure if I've got everything; bear in mind that most of our stuff is still in boxes in the living room or in the loft. Finding anything at the moment is nearly impossible.

Oh, and did I mention that all of Jase's game saves are on the corrupt disc? I suppose he thinks that those are much more important. He's already moaning that this means he will have to start KOTOR 2 for the sixth time. He had already started again to fix certain shortcomings from the last time I posted. I think he also had one light side game and one dark side game going.

Anyway, you know your PC is in trouble when not even Partition Magic can save it. It refused to salvage anything at all from the corrupt disc.

Jase did some surfing this morning and found this programme called Partition Table Doctor which claims it can sort the problem. He's running the initial diagnostic programme which is estimating it can analyse the problem in 31 hours. It would still need to fix the problem after that! Guess we will set that going beofre we leave the house for York.

Failing that, we can always try the patented Balint Joo approach of waving a dead chicken over the PC. Allegedly exorcises all known demons.

Rice Crisis

Our trusty rice cooker went kaput last night.

We've had it for 3 years now, since our return from Australia. It wasn't fancy but did the job. It wasn't elegent either I might add; it sometimes dribbled and made a sticky mess on my kitchen top. Other times, the rice would stick horribly to the bottom of the pan but it was still easier than cooking rice in the microwave or in a saucepan.

We are lost without it. A Chinese household cannot function without a rice cooker. Even Jase said "Well, we can only eat noodles for so long..."! We are going to the Chinese supermarket over the next few days to get a replacement to sort out this crisis.

Speaking of Chinese cookery, I have just been watching a cookery programme on Sky where they were making "Chinese pork chops" with a stir fry of vegetables. He added apple to the stir fry "to keep it authentic".

Eh??

Since when does a Chinese stir fry of vegetables contain apple? I can understand that apple and pork is a typical Western combo but surely "authentic" was the wrong word to use when making a Chinese style dish? Not that there was anything remotely authentic about this "Chinese style" dish.

Much like those buffet "all you can eat" allegedly Chinese restaurants that are springing up everywhere nowadays. They serve poor quality pseudo-Chinese food in the worst possible way (it's like saying Pizza Hut food is Italian food). Don't eat at those places!!!

Sorry, I'll get off my soap box now...

All Joined Up

After my post about RSS feeds and tidying the look of our blogs, I was really chuffed to see that Gareth also decided to tidy his blog archives and link to his RSS feed. Hehe!

Now I can say that we are all joined up - I have updated my newsreader accordingly. If any of you our friends out there have a blog or are starting one, let us know and we can extend this joined-up-good-feeling to your site!

I must admit that I had to chuckle at James' latest post about his huge pile of marking here. Ahhh, the life of an academic!!!

If you've read the family site you will know that we are going to York soon to say goodbye to Jase's Nana. We will be away from the weekend until Wednesday next week.

Frazzled Working Mum: Sad News

Frazzled Working Mum: Sad News

We'll be going up to York soon (see above post on Family Blog) so probably not much posting will happen in the next week or so.

Atomic Techno Babble

Jase was showing me his Google homepage last night, which he has configured for reading all the news and blog sites in which he has an interest. I thought it was a really good idea, but quickly realised that you cannot find the link to our blog's site feed (this is the blog web address for your chosen newsreader to look at which then automatically updates the reader when your blog updates). Blogger uses a system called Atom.

Techno babble? I certainly thought so.

However, there is a link here which explains things better.

Now, with no knowledge of any web languages, I managed to change our websites' templates to include a Site Feed link. You click this link and copy the address into your newsreader and (as if by magic) your newsreader will update every time we write a new entry into the blog.

Whilst I was there, I also changed the way our sites archive our older posts.

Gosh, does this make me at least an honorary geek? Move over Balint and Pradeep!!

Addendum

The below post was not an excuse for posting dodgy links... I was just citing an example of innocuous webpages containing breasts that don't get hit by the work filters!

Keeley Hazell???

I've just been scanning Yahoo news over lunchtime and it appears that the above named lady came second behind Keira in the FHM sexiest women poll.
I have never heard of her!
Curious I clicked the link on the Yahoo webpage and suddenly my work screen was covered in Breasts! Oops! Won't be doing that again!
Apparently she is "big in Page 3 circles", whatever that means!

Ramblings

Given the title of this blog and the content so far I reckon I ramble fairly nicely, not managing to stay on any particular topic for more than a week!

First up here is a newspaper cutting that amused me this morning. It was the video title at the end that cracked me up!



Secondly, if you enjoyed Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate then pop over to GameSpot and check out their Neverwinter Nights 2 videos. The latest one that I watched had a few minutes worth of real game content and the commentator gave some really interesting tidbits of information on the general gameplay - such as 1 main character and 3 fully controllable companions (a bit like KOTOR), great new graphics engine, DnD v3.5 ruleset (not that I know what that means any more!), cooperative multiplayer support (bloomin' good job too) etc etc.

GameSpot is definitely my favourite website for Gaming news etc. I must get round to adding a link on my sidebar. Shame it is blocked from my office!

Finally, how are you doing with Google's DaVinci Code puzzle? Only 2 days left!!!!

Weekend update

Its Monday morning so it must be time for a Blog update... (Thanks for the KOTOR post Rena).

The trip to the park was great - see Rena's blog for more on that.
She has also been working like a slave uploading our photos onto Flickr so you can look at more cuteness (Lauren not me!).

This weekend turning out to be a Sophia Myles weekend for me...
She was in Dr Who and Tristan + Isolde, both which formed part of our viewing menu.
It was bugging the heck out of me where I had seen her before and I finally placed her in Underworld, where she was cute but completely overshadowed by a certain other lady in PVC!
Various interview thingummies on the web keep calling her the "New Kate Winslet", which I think is a bit unfair as I think she is better than Kate.

Anyway, Dr Who was great again... lousy bad guys but a great character driven plot... written by Steven Moffat who also wrote my favourite British Sit-Com "Coupling". I am enjoying this season much more than the previous one and I reckon that David Tennant is brilliant as the Doctor.

For those of you who worry about these things I finally have three lightsabers for my Jedi in KOTOR2, although I need to find some more appropriate colour crystals! Pink and Yellow are so last year!

Anyway I am off to smile at the new photos of Lauren, so more later.

KOTOR 2

I know Jase has been a bit quiet on his blog lately. This has been for a number of reasons but mainly that Lauren has been unwell, as most of you will know from the family blog.

However, he has also not been playing Oblivion or X3 in favour of a return to Knights of the Old Republic 2 (KOTOR 2: a Star Wars Universe game, set in times before any of the films take place). He now has 3 Jedi in his main party.

However, it isn't all roses. He was moaning about the fact that he has only 1 lightsabre between the three of them and now has no lock-picking skills between them (due to poor skilling up choices whilst leveling). Also, there was one part of the adventure where the main three got trapped and a fourth character had to come and get them all out of their predicament. Unfortunately, as he had stripped all the non-main characters of all their clothes and equipment (to give to the adventuring three) the fourth character had to perform the rescue wearing only a cute thong and with no useful weapons!

Life is tough in the adventuring world! Funny though, the above scenario was reminiscent of a James DM campaign...

I think he is waiting for the Oblivion patch to sort out a few things. That and the fact that there are things to do in the house and episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to watch on our Sky+ box (Sky were showing them from the beginning and I have been persuaded to watch them for the first time). I am going to try to get him to hang up some curtains and some bathroom cabinets today, after our outing to the park (it's really nice weather today).

That's if I can drag him away from the computer...

Who's up for some panto?

Anyone interested let me know.

Warning Signs

Natalie sent me this picture. Whether it is a genuine advert or a bit of fun, I thought it was worth sharing!

Optimising Oblivion

The article I referred to before has been updated to v3.0 here.

Blog Flop

Hmmm, blogger died yesterday....
Managed to save articles to draft, but publishing wasn't possible.
Anyway all up to date again!

Oblivioned Out

Well I am having a break from Oblivion. Its turned from a great game into a frustration to me so I need a break.
I've been playing X3 again and the new patch (1.402) has really sorted out 99% of the issues I had with the game.
Having restarted after the 1.4 patch my empire is slowly growing and I have two factory complexing producing Alcohol and Crystals for much profit. The former is illegal but in high demand... the latter is just in high demand!

Dr Who on Saturday was great, although I almost wanted it to be delayed by the football going to extra time - I think I am becoming a closet Chelsea FC fan! At least they are my local Premiership Club (and will remain so until QPR get back in the top flight!).
We now know the origins of the Torchwood Institute... Clearly there is going to be serious plugging of the new Torchwood series due to start in the Autumn.

Dr Who and EBay Numpties

This morning I finally watched Saturday’s season opener for Season 2 of the new Dr Who. I really enjoyed it, although the papers this morning gave the story a bit of a panning. Who cares – I reckon the base story was a bit weak, but then it launched a few hooks for the future (always a bonus – Babylon 5 was the master of this) and involved a few familiar faces for those of us who watched Season 1.
I really like David Tennant as the Doctor and I think Billy Piper is becoming a great sidekick. It certainly looks like the scriptwriters have decided to give her equal billing with DT and it looks like she is capable of acting. If you haven’t watched it yet – Sorry – but I loved one of the ironic bits of dialogue. When Rose is first possessed by Cassandra she looks in the mirror and exclaims “Oh my God I am a Chav!” I had to laugh! I await more episodes with baited breath (and at least you can’t download them in advance off the net, unlike most of the US series we get)!

I am still staggered by the numpties who bid on items on EBay. I have been hunting for a few nick-nacks for a while and I know exactly how much they cost online. People consistently pay 10-20% more than the normal regular online purchase price when buying off EBay. Its as if they don’t notice that the vendor has added extra postage onto the item to bolster his profits… These people should be slapped!

Finally - do we believe Gareth when he says that he is going to try blogging again? If he does then I suppose we should relink to his website......

Quick links

Quick post to say we all found the Dark UI mod to be useful for Oblivion. Makes those pesky menus a darn sight easier to read!

This and loads of other goodies (see Jase's previous post re. portable hole and saddlebags) were found at Planet Elder Scrolls below:

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.List

Let us know if you discover anything else funky on the web.

Levelling Frustration and Mods

Hmmm....
This game is frustrating at times.
James and I have both experienced over active levelling. You wander into a dungeon and before you know it your skills have ploughed upwards and you have levelled twice before you can sleep. This is bad as all skill-ups from the 2nd level don't seem to generate any statistic multipliers so you may get a few x5's on the first level but the second will always be resticted to 1s.
This almost forces you to leave a dungeon part complete and find somewhere to sleep. Not always practical.

Pradeep has helped us optimise both our desktop and laptop PCs for Oblivion and the game is running really well on both. I'll post a link to the optimisation site when I get home (as I don't have access to it from work).

We have also been playing around with Mods, such as the Portable Hole and Saddlebags, both of which are really fun (although the prtable hole costs about 20K to buy - it gives you a small portable room in which you can store stuff).

I see that Bethesda have released the first official Mod for the game, which is a pay to download file (only $2) containing Horse Armour (aka Barding to those of us who are anal about these things)!
This doesn't interest me, but it seems to have create an uproar on the official boards. I don't know why though? Bethesda advertised that they would be launching both free and pay for add-ons for the game when they started talking seriously about it a year ago. The pay for add-ons are no different from buying an expansion pack and are not essential to play the game. I think the majority of complainers are coming from the XBox community - console gamers aren't use to having to buy extra content!
Bethesda have already stated that patches will be free (charging for those would be a bit of a cheek) but it will be interesting to see if the pay for Mods will be included in any subsequent expansion packs - that would cause a real uproar in those people who already bought them!

I remember something similar with Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies. Sony included one of their earlier expansion packs for free in a later expansion and people were annoyed that they were paying for the same thing twice. I think this is just stupid (from the gamer's perspective). If Sony had annouced that they would be giving away their latest add-on free in six months time when the launched a subsequent add-on I still think that the majority of players would shell out the cash for the add-on now rather than waiting six months.

Over the last few years I have watched the expansion of official gaming "boards" with interest and it frustrates me the number of people who complain about how bad a game is. The fact that the software developer has created a forum for you to discuss their product and is interested in finding out what you believe could be improved upon or needs fixing is a very good thing in my eyes. Just typing criticisms with no constructive feedback is a waste of space.

I will use Egosoft as my example. Since its launch in October 2005 X3 Reunion has had four patches, all of which improved upon the game drastically. The Egosoft forums are a lively place and the amount of flaming has drastically reduced with each subsequent patch. It looks like the message is getting through to the gamers that Egosoft do care and do listen and that if you have a bit of patience and give them useful feedback then things can be changed.

However if you compare that to Sony and the debacle of Star Wars Galaxies. Increasingly the boards became more and more hostile as it was clear that Sony were not listening to its client base. The board administrators did a remarkable job, but in the end they all quit in turn as they got frustrated with not being able to deliver good news. The end result.... SWG is now dead (pretty much).

OK enough ranting for one post!

Lock Picking 101

Using an old gamesave (as Eriador is currently in Oblivion - Hell - at the moment), I had a play with the Security Minigame (Lockpicking). Here is my guide to breaking the law!
First up - Quicksave. This gives you infinite retries!
OK, so you are looking at a side view of a lock with 5 tumblers.
Depending on the lock's difficult 1-5 of these will be closed and the rest open.
For Very Easy locks only 1 will be closed, so it is trivial to knock it upwards (move mouse up) and open the lock (left click).
For Easy upwards you need to open 2 or more tumblers which means you need to take one tumbler at a time and jam them open.
Each tim eyou knock a tumbler upwards the returning spring varies in its strength, so sometimes the tumbler pings back down quickly and othertimes more slowly.
To jam the tumbler you need to left click when the tumbler is at its highest point (there is an audible click in game when it gets there). If you time it right then the tumbler jams open. If you time it wrong then it springs back down and breaks your lockpick. Failure can also result in some of the other open tumblers falling back closed. As your skill improves the penalties for failure reduce with less open tumblers falling closed.
So what does this mean....
With patience, practice and copious reloading you can open any lock with only one lockpick.
This means you can always break out of prison (as you always get to keep one lockpick when you are arrested - assuming you have one).

As a brief aside I accidentally started the Assassin's guild quest during my trip to Oblivion this morning. When fighting some mini-demons my guard compatriate strayed into my line of fire and took a fireball in the back, dying. A message popped up "Your actions have been observed by unseen parties!" This means that next time I sleep I will be invited to try out for membership into the "Dark Brotherhood". I think I will save that quest for much later, when I have completed the Mage, Fighter and Thieves Guild quests, as murder generally goes down badly. (Plus the thought of me as Archmage of the Guild, and associate assassin has extreme comedy value! - Especially as one quest will involve stealing something from myself!)

Grabbing

The manual and options both refer to a "Grab" key (Z) and for the life of me I couldn't work out what it did.
It wouldn't activate things. It wouldn't perform wrestling moves in unarmed combat etc etc...
And then I hit it by mistake whilst looting the fallen body of an annoying bandit. Suddenly the corpse had moved. I had dragged it across the ground.
Playing about I found I could move things much more precisely using Grab, than the old pick up and drop routine, which scatters things around you.
This definitely has potential!

Advancing, Archery and more

So time for another Oblivion update.
PC Zone came yesterday morning and they have reviewed the game, giving it 95%. I predicted this score on the nose when talking with Serena at the weekend.
I’ve explored a small amount of the game now (which took hours) and can see definite disadvantages to advancing your character up the levels too fast! I deliberately travel to new locations either on foot or on a stolen horse just to explore the world a bit more.
Doing quests you do get steady skill advancement, with a couple of skill-ups in weapons, armour, sneak, athletics and acrobatics pretty much guaranteed. This is great unless you have a lot of these skills as major skills and suddenly you get the message telling you that you have levelled.
If you have read my earlier posts you will have picked up that it is best to be prepared for levelling up by practicing some minor skills to guarantee x4 and x5 multipliers on your key stats. If you get caught out by a level up it is almost worth dropping back a save game and interrupting what you are doing to practice (as soon as you get the level up message any skill ups, including minor skills are counted towards your following level up). This is annoying – but then it appears I am a bigger power gamer than I thought! I even started writing down my 21 skill scores so I can easily work out what multipliers I will get! SAD!
To test the theory out I have created a new Female Nord Paladin type character whose combat skills are all “minor” and her “major” skills are all easy to train, but hard to get skill-ups accidentally (if you play the game “correctly”). This should give me much greater control over when she levels up and I shouldn’t get random increments from playing the game “fighter” style.
I intend to boost her strength and endurance up quickly to give her a real edge in combat and slowly bring up her other stats in a strict rotation (although Personality may get an early boost whilst I grind out her Speechcraft).
Despite it being much easier than in Morrowind, the archery in game has been giving me some difficulty. It does appear that the game adjusts your accuracy (rather than just damage) based on your skill level, so I may not be as bad on the mouse as I thought.
James was telling me that he was very pleased to get a critical hit with an arrow to kill a nasty necromancer and when he approached to loot the corpse he found the arrow sticking out of the guy’s head. Well I duplicated that feat and when I approached found that the silly girl bandit had my arrow stuck in her wrist! I must have hit an artery!
I do love the fact that the game leaves the arrows both in your target and in you if you are hit! I just wish you could pull the arrows out of your own body and shoot them back! (You can recover most of the arrows that you shoot and those incoming ones that miss you, but those that hit you are lost!)
Now all I need to get the hang of is Blocking and the Security mini-game, which is apparently easier than I had thought – I was just doing it wrong! The Speechcraft minigame is now trivial to me! I will write that up another day.
OK enough for now… More to come!

Good Info Site

Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages

Contains quest walkthrough and much, much more....

Voice Actors

Patrick Stewart - Emperor Uriel Septim VII
Sean Bean - Martin Septim
Terence Stamp - Mankar Camaron
Lynda Carter - Nord Females
Ralph Cosham - Breton Males
Wes Johnson - Imperial Males, Lucien Lachance, Demons
Michael Mack - Redguard Males
Craig Sechler - Dark Elf Males
Jonathan Bryce - Various
Catherine Flye - Various
Gayle Jessup - Various
Elisabeth Noone - Various

Hardware and Levels 1 to 4

James and I have been having a few issues with Oblivion. It looks like there is some issues with the NVidia drivers released specifically for the game.
In-game movies are unwatchable due to jerkiness, which is a shame, as when I loaded up on my Sony Laptop the intro video played pretty well (GeForce 6200 Go drivers haven’t been updated since last May!) although the game needs to be cranked right back to Low Detail settings to be playable.
Once there is a definitive fix for these issues I’ll post a link, but in the meantime a suggested fix can be found here.
On my main PC the game is beautiful and runs like a dream. My specs of Athlon 64 3200, GeForce 6800 XT (256 MB) and 2 GB RAM seem to be plenty for 1280x1024 and high detail (although AA is turned off).
Looking at other peoples' setups I reckon the RAM is a big saver on lag as it allows to the game to buffer better. I noticed this in X3 as well which is prone to combat lag even with 1 GB of RAM.

OK, so you have finished the tutorial and are staring at a lake, a dock and some hills with towers in the distance…. What now?
First time through I decided to explore, wandered into a dungeon and had a great time. This is probably a bad idea. Why? Phat Lewt! After the tutorial I was stuffed to the gills with stuff to sell, so that last thing I wanted was a dungeon crawl with even more treasure.
I suggest you head straight to the Imperial City. If it is daytime (8 am to 8 pm – look on your Map for the current time) then head to the Marketplace to sell up. If it is night time then visit each of the city sectors and run around to reveal the minimap so that all the doors are revealed for future use.
You can also try Speechcraft on the Guards as it is worth putting in a bit of practice on the minigame before you hit the shops. The minigame for Speechcraft is not rocket science and is all down to practice. I’ll let you learn the details yourself (read the manual!) but each round (after the 1st) is a question of recognising that you either have a good starting position or lousy one! Good starting positions will give you a massive boost in NPC Disposition if you play them right and Lousy ones just need to be sacrificed to make certain that the Disposition loss is minimal.
I mentioned “after the 1st” round just there… The 1st round is generally a write off as you need to spend a few seconds extra working out which of the 4 options are positives and which are negatives. This costs you about 5-10 points of wasted disposition (which ticks down every second that you think) and so damage limitation is your main exercise here.
Initially both Serena and I struggled with this minigame but after a few practice sessions on Guards it is pretty straightforward and should be used on all characters to maximise their Disposition to you before you take any other options. (A Quicksave before you start is also a good idea!)
OK, so you are ready to sell. Different merchants buy different stuff and some have more money than others. Their money determines the most expensive item or stack of items they will buy, so a merchant with 100 Gold will not buy a 200 gold sword or a stack of 15, 10 gold potions. In the latter case he will buy the potions 10 at a time though. A merchant’s gold does not decrease as you sell stuff to them, nor does it increase as you buy stuff.
The price you receive when selling or are charged when buying an item is dependant upon the level of haggling that you have set. If you leave it alone and never change it you will get poor deals and your Mercantile skill will go up slowly.
Clicking the Haggle button brings up a slider that shows the merchant’s disposition to you, the merchant’s Mercantile skill title and your skill level. Dragging the slider to the right (haggling harder) means you get a better deal, but are more likely to get refused on a deal. Every time you get refused on a deal the merchant’s disposition to you drops by a point.
Your success at haggling is dependant on the difference between your Mercantile skills and the merchant’s disposition to you. If you can find a merchant with an Apprentice skill level and 80+ disposition then you can push the haggling over half way and get really good deals! Generally you can expect to get fleeced early on! Just tweak the haggling up a point on each sale until you start to get refused. Then drop back down two points to get the best deal and the highest likelihood of skill-ups.
Whilst exploring and selling I gained enough skill-ups to level (I have Speechcraft as a Major Skill). If you sleep for an hour or longer you will level up. This raises your Health, Fatigue and Magicka scores and allows you to pick three attributes to raise by a point. Depending on what skill-ups you have done (Major and Minor skills) some of the attributes will have multipliers, so in my case Personality had a ×3 next to it, which means that spending a point there will raise that attribute by 3 rather than 1. By carefully planning your skill-ups you can usually get three attributes with ×3 or better next to them each time you level. I think ×5 is the maximum, but I haven’t managed that yet, (and possibly only ×3 bonus from Minor skill-ups) so I can’t get any deeper into the mechanics at this time.

So do we do the main mission delivery quest or not? I have chosen not to, have explored the City and done a quest for the Merchants to bring one of their wayward fold back into line. I have also visited both city spell shops and bought some low cost spells for training the spell skills. I visited the Mage’s Guild only to be sent to my “local recruiter”, but no-one can tell me who that is! I assume that I have to do the first part of the main quest to unlock that.
James and I have both explored outside the city as well and have picked up quests such as Kill the Necromancer and Investigate the Missing Villagers, although I haven’t started them yet. The world is teeming with wandering monsters and dungeons / ruins / caves for you to investigate further.
If you are a Morrowind veteran you will be glad to know that I haven’t found a Cliff Racer anywhere yet!
So what next?
Well I really want to join the Mage’s Guild to get access to the Altar of Spellmaking, so I think I am going to do my core quest delivery and see what happens then. After that I reckon there is a Necromancer who is waiting to be slain and Villagers to be rescued!
To be continued…

I rest my case

Even Tim Buckley agrees with me in his comic!

The Tutorial and Character Creation

At the start of the game you just pick your race and appearance.
There is a huge amount of tweaking that can be done, but to be honest you will probably be playing the game in 1st person and will hardly ever look at your own face, so what is the point!
I created my elfin looking Breton and was promptly thrown in prison for reasons unknown (I seem to remember starting the first Elder Scrolls game in prison as well - must be a character flaw!).
Both your appearance and race can be changed at the end of the tutorial if you change your mind, so need to fret.

All you skills start out with a score of 5/100 for now.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil the plot but let’s just say you end up crawling around under the prison.

Up first are some handy rooms where you gather some basic equipment and get taught how to use it - bows, swords, lock picks, torches, armour and shields etc.
Then it is basic combat training against the old RPG faithful (rats).
Next comes magic training (also against rats).

Soon you hit the "You are encumbered" message and are unable to move - no crawling around at nanospeed here - you go from full speed to stop just by picking a mushroom! Time to go into your inventory and drop all the crap you picked up. My advice is that if you are not wielding a weapon or wearing some armour - ditch it. Too heavy! Keep the interesting and valuable stuff. That Two-handed warhammer may be worth 60 Gold (on average), but it takes up 20% of your carrying space and by the time you hit a merchant your mercantile skill is so low you will be lucky to get 20 gold for it! Keep stuff you can use along with Gems, Potions and high quality loot (Goblin Witch's Staff etc).

Whilst you are running through the tutorial you will start to get a feel for the controls, which aren't bad - I switched jump and activate round, as they didn't feel logical at their default settings. I'll probably remap Block and Cast round for my Mage as well, as shields don't form part of my fighting style. Expect to whack a few chests or boxes instead of opening them though... They are indestructible so don't fret. Just try not to do that when attempting to initiate chat with NPCs! Note to self - look up the Yield Key again!

Wading into combat for my Mage involved a puny fire based missile spell. Targeting is a bit tricky when you and your target are moving, but I reckon that you will get the hang of it pretty quickly. Defensive spells will be the order of the day as you progress though, as being backed into a corner was a regular occurrence for me. Casting heal spells during combat is hard - Pre-combat Regen spells and Instant Heal potions on a hot key are another essential for the future.

Lock Picking has its own mini-game. Feel free to indulge in this all you like, but apart from "Very Easy" locks, you will soon find yourself hitting the "Auto Attempt" button. Why? At low skill levels the mini-game is too hard for Average and upwards locks and so hitting the Auto button may burn a few lockpicks, but you will eventually succeed.

There is another mini-game for Speechcraft, but that is out with my tutorial ramblings and I will come to it another time.

Eventually you get a bit more of the plot and get asked to pick a star sign (again you can change it later if you want). The Thief and The Mage seem good choices for a starter, with the others being more specialised.

Again the plot moves on a bit further and I accidentally nuke one of the "good" guards in a royal rumble. After the fight he walks over and tells me that it is a good job he likes me, but don't do it again! Nice touch I thought, but it was his fault for running into my line of fire!

Soon, the plot gets serious and only one good guy remains standing (apart from you). He nicks the best sword you have found so far (bastard!) and then suggests what class your playing style indicates. This is when you completely ignore the recommendation and click "Custom". Select your 7 major skills, your bonus stats and your focus type (magic, combat or stealth). You name your combo (or pick "adventurer") and then off you go. More on this in a sec.

Soon you reach a grate to the outside world. Time to do a hard save before exiting the tutorial. Why? This is the point at which you can completely respec your character, so being able to reload after deciding that you don't like your character after all is a major bonus. Otherwise you have to play the tutorial all over again.

To round this off, here are some pointers on skills.

The "obvious" thing to do would be as follows. OK - I want to be a thief. I shall pick the 7 stealth skills as my major skills (+20 starting point bonus), pick a focus in stealth (+10 point bonus) and pick a race like Khajit (+45 in assorted stealth skill bonuses).
Congratulations - you now have a really skilled level 1 Thief, but have just put a level cap on yourself of Level 42 (Max level is 53) and all your other skills stink!

How does that work? Ignoring a few skill ups obtained during the tutorial your skills start as follows:
7 Major skills at 25 and 14 Minor skills at 5.
You then apply Focus bonuses of +10 to all of one type of skill (Magic, Stealth or Combat).
You then apply racial bonuses of +45 across various skills.

You start at level 1 and for every 10 skill points you gain in your major skills, then you gain a level.
Your skills are all capped at 100.
Assuming that your Focus and Racial Bonuses are all in your Major skills, then you Max level is calculated as follows:
Starting Major Skill Total = (25 x 7) + (10 x 7) + 45 = 290.
Maximum Major Skill Total = (100 x 7) = 700.
Difference = 700 - 290 = 410.
Max no of Levels you can gain = 410 / 10 = 41.
Therefore max level = 42 (You start at level 1).

However if you start with your focus and racial bonuses all in Minor skills then the calc is as follows:
Starting Major Skill Total = 25 x 7 = 175.
Difference = 700 - 175 = 525.
Max no of Levels you can gain = 525 / 10 = 52 (rounding down).
Therefore max level = 53.

So there is a balance to be struck between being well skilled at Level 1 and not reaching Level 50+.
Every time you level up you get a bonus to your Health, Magicka and Fatigue scores and can increase three of your stats (just like in Morrowind).
The monsters in dungeons and the loot you get from chests is based on your level, so it is only at the high end that a power gamer might see a drop off in their abilities. Your Average Joe gamer won't ever notice the subtle differences.

So what did I do?

I am playing a Breton Mage/Thief (Spellblade).
My Major skills are all Stealth related apart from Destruction swapped for Acrobatics.
My Focus Bonus is in Magic.
My Racial Bonuses are mainly Magical.
The combo gives me lots of starting skills (All Major and some Minor) with scores of 20 or 25 (Destruction being 30) and allows me to progress my level (or not) by using non-combat skills like Speechcraft and Sneak, rather than being forced up levels by being hit or hitting things in combat. My Max level is still 53 as my difference score is 520.
I can progress my magic skills using training spells without it forcing up my level and hence can increase my survivability.
This was not me powergaming but was a pure fluke as I wanted a more balanced character at level one. Just lucky!
Well I will let you digest that and write more about Levels 1 to 3 later.

PS The game is great!

PPS Typos and Apostrophes corrected (thanks Serena)

Back in Business

OK, time to put this blog to some practical use.

I will be tracking my progress through and thoughts on The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion for PC.