• Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
Finally managed to get my Wordpress blog install updated to the 2.2.x branch. I’d tried once before but it crashed and burned returning blank webpages so I reverted to the pre-install backups. Turned out to be plug-in incompatibilities. Since no one makes the exact plug-ins I want I’m still rolling my own or custom modding those written by others. Despite the incompatibility issue I like the API changes and widgets make things so much easier and go a long way to help prevent similar incompatibility problems in the future. Hopefully the Livejournal syncing still works too. 
I started playing Tenchu-Z on the Xbox 360 although I’ve been a bit to preoccupied with other things to have more than a cursory glance so far. Needless to say there will be comments to come. On an unrelated note, the new 120GB Xbox 360 hard drive includes a device that lets you transfer saves from your old hard drive to your new one. It seemed to me this device was really just a bus powered USB to SATA adaptor so I thought I’d experiment a bit. Seems I was right, both MacOS X and Windows XP recognised it fine and let me repartition and format the old drive. Quite handy really, most “bus powered” external drives seem to need an external power adaptor to really work properly whereas this one works fine. I’ve found some good uses for it now.
Oh, it was my birthday a few days back. I seemed to be acquiring leather things including a very nice laptop bag and a wallet as birthday presents. A few days before I’d ordered some super thin leather gloves from overseas, the idea being I could keep my hands a bit warmer while still retaining enough flexibility to type and write. I’d wanted some for years and looked in various “bricks and mortar” stores to no avail. Don’t know why I didn’t look at online ones sooner really. Looking forward to them arriving.
Current Music: End of the Line - Traveling Wilburys - Traveling Wilburys Collection
• Monday, June 18th, 2007
Argh, I hate dealing with Systems Administrators from other companies. Well, that’s probably not entirely true, but there is one I have to deal with on occasions who somehow manages to make everything as difficult and as painful a process as he possibly can for everyone else involved. Almost every comment he makes implies somehow that the other person has done something stupid or he is just outright insulting them. I’ve actually had people in the company he works for ring me on the verge of tears pleading for me to deal with him for them. What’s worse is that he’s the only guy at the company with the authority and system access to do the job. If he’s away, tough luck, even the most important business plans have to be delayed with no apologies. How someone as abrasive as this keeps their job is beyond me. Needless to say he was up to his old tricks again today. It’s almost like he’s trying to be the personification of the Bastard Operator From Hell. If so, he’s succeeding well.
During the weekend I took my PS3 over to a friend’s place as he had a largish 1080p capable Dell monitor. It was nice and overall looked very impressive (although lacking contrast) but unfortunately it couldn’t manage true 1080p. I must say it’s frustrating how many displays are being advertised as “HD ready” or “1080p” capable that just aren’t. The problem we ran into is that the display was 1920×1200 and 1080p is 1920×1080. Not a problem you might think, just turn off the scaler and let it fall into 1:1 pixel mode. Unfortunately with a 1080p signal the scaler could not be disabled. A small thing perhaps but it made the aspect ratio look wrong. Also I just don’t understand why anyone would ever want to design a screen of that resolution that could not do a 1:1 pixel ratio. Seriously, it makes no sense.
Quite a while back now I commented on the Dead or Alive movie adaptation criticising the Hollywood casing and mostly agreeing with the game creator Tomonobu Itagaki’s choices. I do actually own the movie on DVD now but part of me just refuses to watch it. I did make the comment at the time though that purely on looks I felt model Leah Dizon would have been a far more appropriate choice to play Kasumi than Devon Aoki who ended up playing the role. Well now that Itagaki’s Ninja Gaiden Sigma is coming out on PS3, who should be chosen to front the advertising campaign but, you guessed it, Leah Dizon. If I didn’t know better I’d wonder if Itagaki-sama was reading my blog. Apologies for falling into weeaboo mode there but that guy is my hero. XD
Oh, and I saw my 5th dead Xbox 360 today. It’s freaky how many of these things have started dying since the warranty ran out. I’m one of the lucky ones so far.
Current Music: Life on MTV - Miss Kittin and the Hacker - First Album
• Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
I’ve been somewhat preoccupied for quite some time hence the lack of updates or replies. It’s not that I haven’t had free time but with everything else going on at work and at other times any spare time has been used to relax and switch off the brain watching some stuff, playing some games or lurking in (trolling?) some forums.
The leg I broke in 2004 has been bothering me lately making sitting rather uncomfortable. Been to the doctor a few times and had some x-rays done. My doctor is pretty sure it’s due to the titanium rod in my leg although the x-rays don’t show any problems with it. He wants to take it out and has referred me to a specialist. I’m not convinced it’s the problem but I’ll see what the specialist says. I don’t mind it being taken out if it’s the problem but I definitely wouldn’t want it being opened up again otherwise.
All’s quite on the gaming front. None of the “next gen” platforms have had anything interesting lately and there’s little on the near future lists either. Looks like they’re dragging things out till September at least much like last year.
Speaking of recent technology there still seems to be a lot of feeling around that Blu-ray and HD-DVD aren’t going anywhere and that DVD is here to stay. It’s an understandable view in many ways, many DVD stores aren’t even stocking these new discs. I have noticed something strange going on though that would seem to go against this school of thought.
Now I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this but mainstream DVDs in NZ have got very expensive lately getting back to their old 2001-era prices where it was a new format without the mass sales of today. A year or two back new releases could be had for as low as $22.95 and you might have got bonus items and loyalty bonuses on top of that. $24.95 was common and $29.95 was the regular price. Now stores are trying to claim $29.95 is “special” for a bare bones release and the normal price of DVDs seems to be going north of $34.95 even reaching $40. Clearly it’s not the exchange rate putting prices up so what’s the deal? Now as someone who can actually play all of these formats I may be one of the few currently in a position to choose here and I don’t know about anyone else but this is not 2001 and I’m not paying $30+ for DVDs. It begs asking…are the suppliers charging more to push the new formats?…are the retailers skimming profits from what has become a huge market?…is there some kind of price collusion going on here? Needless to say I’m suspicious.
Current Music: Those Dancing Days Are Gone - Carla Bruni - No Promises
