I really don't think I will be persuaded to buy a Steam game again. I do not like being treated as a criminal every time I try to play the game. I click the half life icon and I have to have the CD in the drive, now I its trying to "validate" the files and it is taking forever. What the hell is this about! It's hassle like this that makes people want to crack games!
50 ways to love your lever - definitely will offend!! NSFW!! Other warnings may apply! I thought it was funny though in a childish sort of way.
Well, I've finally got it going. A bit jerky in places for some reason - probably not enough main memory. I think the sound has something to do with it the problem as it seems to slow down when the sound gets complex. The opening sequence (until you get the crowbar) is way too long - the whole point is to be smashing and blasting! The graphics are impressive though.
So I've finally got HL2 running, but when I start a game half the screen is filled with noise, everything is running slowly and the audio sounds as if it were running backwards. Now what do I do?
Well, by dint of copying all the files on the DVD to the hard disc I finally got Half Life to install. I then had a huge hassle because the product code is almost illegible. Take it from me I will be very, very reluctant to buy a game that uses Steam again, no matter how good it is.
That huge digital image - the strange thing is how hard it is to find actual people in the photograph.
Oh damn it, I can't get Half Life 2 to install - it gets part of the way through and crashes my machine. Grrrrr.
We made our xmas cake tonight. Why is it, I wonder, that products such as glace cherries or candied peel always seem to "expire" a couple of months before the following xmas?
oh - madness ahead! Light of the World Note the scrollbars and do some scrolling - GIANT (and I mean GIANT) text and some content somewhere.
Grand Ole Opry Curtain Reunited! I have an album with a small piece of the original Grand Ole Opry curtain stuck inside the cover. Now, if I can just find all the other pieces we can stick them together and rebuild the curtain! So if you've got a bit, let me know. Ask around.
Death Clock - this has been around for a while but I don't remember it being tied to the selling of life extension products.
Cloaks - I own two cloaks, one moroccan and bright orange with a tassle on the end of the hood, the other jet black with a shiny gold lining, very heavy with a long pointed hood. I should also point out that I own these because I like cloaks not because I now or ever have been interested in role playing of any kind. Just so that is clear.
I saw a fantastic ad for "Memorial Cleaner" in a blow-in recently : a liquid special designed for cleaning gravestones. I shall scan it in.
Damn it, the iBook currently refuses to acknowledge the existence of any sound output devices. Is this a nasty result of the most recent OS upgrade which did mention something about audio I think. *sigh*
You know, maybe I'm getting old but I don't like fireworks that much anymore, at least close too: currently it sounds like my house is under attack by heavy artillery and it is most unpleasant. Big organised shows are fine but backgarden displays with the kind of powerful fireworks that you can buy now just seem over the top.
Nice Russian Landscape photos - this may have some catch to it or turn in to a pr0n so be careful, but it looks clean at the moment.
Organic and Local (and local to me too, but, no, I don't use it, because what they supply isn't a good match to what we eat!)
Mvine is looking for people to beta test their new music service, starting in a couple of weeks. If you are interested in helping send me email and I'll pass you along to the appropriate people. They are also looking for copyright free music to put up for the beta test so if you have some original material you'd like to offer tell me that as well.
This is a link to an online pharmacy that spammed me, so feel free not to follow it it if you are worried about possible junk (especially if you are running Internet Explorer!), but if you do follow it, look at the woman in the picture in the header. Botox and bad plastic surgery personified!
Damn, the delete key on my iBook has broken and I think one of the tabs has come off so it won't ever go on again. I've got a bit of blutac under it at the moment but that is not very sticky for some reason.
Earthly Delights "is both the name of a wonderful band and the banner under which a cluster of related passions are exercised"
Ah ha, so my informants were wrong and the World Series is not named for a newspaper. (I especially like the deluded idea that Australia and then Britain would follow on in playing baseball.)
From SPAM : "Introducing A Brand-New 100% Internet-Based Business With A Revolutionary New AUTOMATED "No-Rejection" Downline Building System That Will Give You Spillover Within The Hour You Join!" What on earth does this mean? I don't like the sound of spillover at all.
It's odd, but even in the USA it seems that people think that the World Series designation implies world cahampions. As far as I am led to believe, the series was started by a newspaper called the World hence the designation, and nothing to do with inflated sense of self importance at all. Of course I might be entirely wrong, or at least, my informants might be entirely wrong, I might just be misled.
Martin's78 turntable - loads of great stuff, check out the Bob Wills page : Beaumont Rag is a scorcher.
Very weird - watching Grateful Dawg and there is a sequence which is a video they made and as it went along, I thought,"If I were doing this I would have Ricky Jay in it", and the very next shot was Ricky Jay doing tricks.
What's all this fuss about the "mobile Internet"? I want the Internet to say right where it is - it's me that is mobile! If the Internet moved how would I find it? The Internet might have decided it doesn't want to see me anymore!
Check out the folk jukebox on The Ark - tracks from upcoming artists playing there. The Alasdair Fraser track is excellent.
Instructions for Reviewers for Leonardo - not entirely clear how you get to be a reviewer. You seem to have to be recommended by someone but beyond that it isn't obvious. You could all try recommending me and see what happens of course!
Listening to a David Grisman album I found when searching for Smoky Smothers - Dawg Jazz : I must be honest say that I have no recollection of seeing it before; very good though, with Stephane Grapelli and Martin Taylor on some tracks. Mind you a found a signed copy of an album by the late Johnny Cunningham (brother of Phil) and I do not remember ever seeing him so I haven't a clue where it came from. (Though Penny does think that we saw many eyars ago before he moved to the US)
I wish they would hurry up and fix firefox on the Mac so that it can open new windows again! (or maybe I need to do some kind of major de-installation to fix it)
iPod Photo - I really think they ought to give me a review unit. Pack it up with a nice iMac G5 as well, for the complete experience.
I wanted to play The Driving Blues of Smoky Smothers - an album recommended on the John Peel show many years ago which I sought out and bought - and had to search through a lot of vinyl to find it. So much stuff that I got directly from listening to Peel - entirely shaped my early musical taste. I would listen to the tribute show tonight but I think it would upset me too much. (Smoky Smothers is playing right now - recorded in 1960 in Cincinnatti with Freddy King on guitar as well as Smoky Smothers)
RIP John Peel - a great loss to broadcasting in this country. A great shaper of musical tastes.
Song on the radio : "Mama used to whup me with a George Jones' album, that's why I sing this way"
Hank Makes it Flat (see yesterday) seems to be a viral marketing thing by Motorola. I didn't notice so it can't be that good
This morning I actually slipped on banana skin in the street. Hurt my left knee, but an interestingly bizarre thing to happen.
McCain on courage - a good piece (BTW I know nothing about McCain so I'm taking it at face value- comments suggest otherwise)
Went to see Ali Bain and Phil Cunningham last night. As usual simply fantatsic, even though 80% of the tunes and the jokes have been the same the last 4 or five times we've seen them. (To be fair the tunes and jokes have grown and changed a bit) They are doing an tour of England at the moment so catch them if you can.
Alan Hull - I know the person who lives in his old house. I saw it before they did it up. It was very 70s rock star.
Penisland (perfectly work safe)
WOW Bus - ugh, springs to mind, as well as "Why?" ("because I am a wacko", is not a valid excuse)
I just got some bizarre spam about Prisoner Rehabilitation courses, but I notice that they were described as PICS courses. I was searching google the other day for stuff about PICS (the rating scheme). Seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
I'm not sure why this is meant to make me think more highly of the site owner's musicianship.
Which file extension are you? I'm .ogg just like Brett who I knicked the link off. Actually just at this moment I think it ought to be .drunk
Hmm, I wonder where I could get a copy of "They all played Maple Leaf Rag" - 27 vintage recordings of the tune. Haven't found one yet.
Hmmm, Yelp seems to implement a service that we've been thinking about (in a researchy way) for a while. I suspect that it is missing some of the technology we have been researching though.
Essential reading for all who like to talk about music "Every genre is artless, boring, lame, or pretentious. Personally, you can’t understand how anybody could listen to something so tedious, pretentious and masturbatory as progressive rock. Does this mean you prefer punk? No! Punk is for tin-eared plebeians and retarded, politically clueless teenagers. Electronic music is for boring white geeks with no souls. Jam bands are for burned-out stoner hippies. Industrial music is for Dungeons & Dragons-playing social rejects in trench coats." How true.
Dispatches from a public librarian Last week, I received such a call from an elderly woman wanting me to settle a bet between her and her son. She wanted to know what countries in Europe the Great Wall of China went through and what was the year Reagan tore it down. When I explained that the Great Wall of China was still mostly intact and that she probably meant the Berlin Wall, she replied coolly, "No, hon, you see, the Berlin Wall is just the part of the wall that goes through Berlin." I put on my best geography-teacher hat to try and explain the Great Wall of China was, in fact, exclusively in Asia. She replied, "I'm pretty sure you're wrong. What would be so great about tearing down a wall in Germany? It's not even that big of a country."
Here's the link that Doonesbury had in the strip today if you can't be bothered to type it in.
Sheesh, Lloyds have taken their perfectly fine and fully functional Internet banking site and redesigned it so that I get a message saying it doesn't support Firefox fully. And it's ugly.
Hard discs - good article
mVine - not open yet though
Wonderful piece of scaremongering - has the person writing this even stopped to condsider the amount of data involved what they suggest is going to happen?
ANyone who the "fading rockstar" who attacked Keith Richards with a knife on the 1972 US tour was? He (she?) is interviewed in Greenfields book "STP" but not identified.
Polidex - I don't understand stocks and shares (or indeed any other form of gambling) but some people might like this
inspot "In San Francisco, there's an easy way to tell your sex partners you have an STD. Send them a free inSPOT e-card"
Angusdiet v Angus-Diet. Pleezure? I had the misfortune to have to eat in the Burger King in Newcastle the other day - I have rarely had such poor service and such bad food (bad fast food that is). BK used to be OK as fast food places went, but it seems to have nosedived drastically.
Teaser for Tripping the Rift 2 - can't remember if I've seen this or not. Looks familiar though.
I couldn't get SiteBar to work, and I didn't want the kind of service that del.icio.us provided, so I rolled my own centralised bookmark server this evening. Working fine now.
Yesterday, I think I caught one of those TV moments. It was on one of the Saturday morning children's programmes and I will swear the presenter said something like "that's as infectious as VD". It was at the very end of a piece and the camera cut away to the other presenters who glanced at each other significantly and then continued.