Mr FofR » My Stuff

My iMac and blog upgrade (7.1?)

Paul — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:58:21 +0000

Now that I have made my mammoth 5000 word Greece holiday post, which has been waiting around for a month or so to type up, I can move onward to new blog posts in this new and improved MrFofR.com blog, happily within WordPress.

Importing 5 years worth of posts from Blogger and then categorizing them was not a pretty task. Though I did notice a gradual descent into immaturity as I worked backwards. In celebration of this achievement, and bringing this blog inline with my other projects, the site has changed hosts and lives on its own domain as a separate outlet for unprofessional blurbs, rants and whatnot; www.mrfofr.com. The Mr. bit is new, I’d be pretty lucky to bag a four letter domain name.

After 5 years, my AMD Athlon 2700 XP with 1.5gb of RAM and LG 17″ screen was growing weary. Time for an upgrade, and the new 24″ iMac model took my fancy — I grabbed one from John Lewis in July and its now sitting pretty as the focus of my front room, coinciding with a big rearrangement of furniture.

Good timing really, considering that I had multiple and simultaneous hard drive failures on my PC shortly thereafter as I tried to transfer 40gb or so to the mac.

Having been through the old posts, I noted that, in hindsight, screenshots of my projects are very helpful for when the original source material has since vaporized into the mists of some internet purgatory. And on that note:

My New Flat in St Albans

Paul — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:12:00 +0000

Here it is. My spangly new flat, complete with computer desk and leather sofa…

… TV, Wii and plant …

… a table and another sofa thing …

… door and drawers …

… bedroom and double bed …

… a spangly tiled bathroom …

… and checkered floor for chess …

… kitchen with microwave, toaster and washing machine …

… fridge, freezer, cooker …

… and acres of worktop space …

… and finally my well constructed desk!

Hoorah!

Bucky O Hare chillin’ in his pimped out Ghostbuster mobile

Paul — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:45:00 +0000

Oh the nostalgia. Looks like Sonic is driving today.

Wii Wii Wii all the way home

Paul — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 11:56:00 +0000

On September 15th Nintendo announced the European launch date and price, a short while after the American and Japanese launch information was unveiled. And so, come December 8th the Great British Wii launch occurred amongst quivers of reduced stocks and pre-orders not being satisfied. The biggest problems seemed to occur at Play.com where their 10,000 orders were met with a paltry 700 units. Many people, friends included, are now not receiving theirs until after Christmas. I also ordered from Play but I was lucky enough to place my order within an hour of the price announcement aforementioned and Play.com putting up the product for pre-order. Indeed, my Wii arrived by post on launch day, although I could not pick it up until Saturday. This also coincided with a Chinese exam and the last day of term, suffice to say my brain didn’t know what to do — torn between the trials of revision and nerves and tribulations of a child’s Christmas eve syndrome. I have now had the Wii for four days and feel I am versed enough to give out my overall impressions thus far.

First impressions: this thing is tiny. Even the Wii-mote and nunchuck are deceptively small. They also feel surprisingly sturdy and there is a definite air of quality about their production. Holding the device is comfortable and enjoyable, pointing is incredibly easy and as precise as I had expected, even after reading some reports that this was not the case. The inner speaker is also excellent, despite quarrels about its quality, I just love hearing the sound of hitting a tennis ball or the thwack as I hit the ball out of the park. Turning on, the Wii-mote was sync’d correctly and it worked right out of the box, as did the automatic CD feed. The blue light only comes on when inputting a disc or turning the Wii on; I’m not sure if this is meant to be the case, I’m not bothered.

I could be a hand model

Connecting the Wii online proved a significant hassle. No Ethernet port lead me to the setup of my old wireless router which I am not currently using in my halls of residence. This itself came with hassles which I wont go into, but suffice to say it took more than an hour to get this PC back up and running. In attempts thereafter to connect the Wii it connected smoothly and downloaded the Wii updates. However when it came to downloading the license agreement for the Shop channel, etc. I received the Wii error code: 220602, associated with DNS propagation issues. Reading discussions online suggested a couple of solutions, my Wii is already next to the router, on channel 11 and had of course been previously connected. Firstly I tried removing encryption from my connection, this did not resolve the problem. Eventually the problem was fixed by some quirky DNS switching solution: opening the manual configuration of DNS addresses for my net connection I swapped the first DNS around with my second (find these out via run CMD > ipconfig/all). This worked and once again I was a happy bunny.

With my order I of course received Wii Sports and I also purchased Zelda: Twilight Princess. To be honest, I haven’t played Zelda too much — I have picked up the dog, and fired the eagle at the monkey before catching two fish for the cat to steal but I am still relatively young to the game. My 7 hours clocked up thus far (total play time is shown on the Wii message board along side daily achievements which are interesting to look back on) have mainly been spent playing Wii Sports. I took first to the Tennis, Golf and Bowling which became instant favourites, now I have practiced a little more with Boxing and Baseball I am also enjoying these. My tennis rating is currently sitting pretty at 940, sub-pro whilst my top bowling score is 181. My Fitness age is 28 and I have yet to get that secret 91 pin instant strike.

My expectations for the product were exceptionally high due to hype and all the videos on YouTube, etc. I was positive nothing could live up to them, yet having played for more than 7 hours it most definitely has. Now all I need is a second controller, some Wii shop credit and another multiplayer game or two; it’s going to be hard waiting for Mario, Metroid, Trauma Centre and Smash Brothers. Oh how it all costs money and we British are screwed by our 17.5% VAT.

To end this, here’s a picture of Sonic enjoying this new toy:

Sonic and Bucky O’ Hare save the day

Paul — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:12:00 +0000

My trip to a retro store yielded a nice surprise to accompany the Sonic gift Samantha bought me:

It’s Bucky O Hare!!!
I’m such a geek sometimes.

Woe betide my broken Motorola V220 (and all mobiles)

Paul — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 16:00:00 +0000

At one and a half years I figured my phone could last at least double that and I wouldn’t have to fork out for a snazzy new gizmo for quite a while. I’m not particularly enthusiastic towards mobile phones, yes I am fascinated by their all-in-one capabilities and ongoing improvements (as, after all, I am an electronic engineer) and I would love to have a 7 mega pixel camera, built in digital radio, 4gb hdd, javascript enabled internet, bluetooth and all those other perks but one simple fact remains; I do not use my phone as a telephone enough to warrant a monthly paid contract agreement. Thus I am left with the low end pay as you go options and all the shitty fallouts, or the one off cost of £300 for something high spec.

Because everything is geared towards contracts and the technology is moving along so fast it seems nothing is built to last, this rules out my second option — a £300 price tag is not a worthy investment if it wont last me 2 years, that and I am liable to lose it and phone insurance is a scam. My previous two phones both died a miserable screen-fading Nokia death before their time and all the other in-betweens have had atrocious battery problems; I have yet to lose a phone and I don’t drop them — they just are not built to last. And so onto my Motorola story; having abandoned the faulty screened Nokia product lines I ventured towards a new manufacturer, Motorola paying a lowly £40 for the V220 model. I viewed this purchase as an intermediary until high specification models became affordable and I planned for it to last 3 years. Come Saturday afternoon, a windy but relatively warm winter’s day in Leicester, my fully charged un-dropped never bashed phone with already defunct camera is sitting quietly in my pocket. Oh, my phone is on vibrate-then-ring, set to loud - I have a missed call that I somehow missed while waiting expectantly for the phone to go off (this happens often). Unlocking the clam I am presented with this:

Pretty colours. My first instinct is to reset, remove battery and SIM, replace and restart. The error continues and this confirms my fears: c’est cassé! All the functions of the phone still seem to work, I can ring people (if I know their number) and change the ring volume, etc, I just cannot see what I am doing. My first guess as to the cause was faulty software — a nasty bug that I could fix if only I could get to that “reset to factory settings” option somehow (why isn’t there a button inside to do that?). However I am now thinking it may be due to wear and tear on the clam’s hinge which would explain why the camera went first. Ultimately I plan to open this all up and take a look inside, my sister has the same phone that she doesn’t use so I can raid it for spare parts, etc.

Considering I have just finished a safety critical systems course where required failure rates are 1 in 100,000 years, this persistent failure of phones within 24 months when no mistreatment has occurred irritates and annoys me to no end. The irony is that I was for a short time over the summer an “honourable Motorolan”, i.e. an employee of theirs (somewhat). I guess now I shall move on to Sony Ericsson and then another manufacturer when that model unavoidably fails.

Art House Movie Posters

Paul — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 17:23:00 +0000

What do you get when your favourite local art house cinema starts giving away its reserve of original theatrical posters from over the past 10 years? A lot of freakin’ awesome and huge posters, that’s what. The rest of this blog entry is just one giant boast and a list of pictures. The most impressive of finds was the Welcome to the Dollhouse poster, a rare little Todd Solondz feature from 1996 that is hard enough to find on DVD and the David Lynch/Disney team up in “The Straight Story”, the soundtrack for which contains “Lauren’s Walking” by Angelo Badalamenti, one of my consistently favourite tracks.

Here we go:

Signs

Note the weights to hold down the poster and prevent it rolling up again — some of these have been rolled in storage for years.

The Machinist (sorry for the blur on this one)

The Woodsman

About Schmidt

Lower City

Memento

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Birth

A pretty shitty Starship Troopers

Broken Flowers

The Squid and the Whale

The Royal Tenenbaums

The Sixth Sense

Requiem for a Dream

Metropolis

Welcome to the Dollhouse

To illustrate how big these posters are the next pictures are of the ones posted on my walls. These were the first posters I found and I haven’t changed them for my more favourable films yet:

The Others & Memento

The Straight Story, Doom the Movie (heh), The Talented Mr. Ripley, Corpse Bride

If people have interest in any of these I might be willing to “swap” for a large Ghost World or Lost in Translation (vertical with Scarlett Johansson) poster.

Japanese Import Amelie Poster

Paul — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 23:57:00 +0000

My new japanese Amelie poster is really awesome

My Student Bedroom

Paul — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 19:14:00 +0000

So, I am in the same house as last year but this time I have been relegated to the smallest bedroom. While this may seem bad, the room is actually the warmest in the house, feels very homely, plush and is just much much nicer.

My workspace, computer and shelves. Note the JS, MySQL and Electronics text books.

My large fitted wardrobe and bedside corner with Godfather framed poster.

The house plant in the corner and an open wardrobe that reveals its technological glories.

An Overview

More of the television and housed Xbox and PS2.

Pimping my foobar, whisky ash tray (I don’t smoke) and iPod.

I absolutely despise cables and their assorted messiness. In these photos you should only see a couple, the hundreds of others are quietly and neatly hidden away from view. The one trailing the bottom of the wardrobe is the annoying net connection to the Xbox that wouldn’t fit through the drilled hole at the back (inside) where the power enters. It’s nice being able to hide away the TV and consoles when they are not being used. The room also has 5.1 surround sound setup with correctly positioned speakers in corners. The small shelf lying behind the screen makes a nice cosy area for connector cables to come through from below (away from view); housing the DVD writer, iPod connections, card reader and such. The screen also doubles as a USB hub. So I am happy.

Attic Treasures and Easy Rider Rare Vintage Posters

Paul — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 00:52:00 +0000

In a bid to clean up parts of the house we decided to rummage through our attic to make space for more boxes of things we don’t really need but like to keep. We removed some old boxes and looked through them, most of it was junk. Door handles, screws, locks, metal brackets, paint brushes, wallpaper, broken things and lots of dust. However we did come across a bag containing two large rolls, upon closer inspection they were my Dad’s old posters. These posters look pretty darn cool and I’m trying to value them at the moment.

Easy Rider Posters, very rare and vintage:

Black and White, 29″ x 51.5″, Peter Fonda and “Chopper”, in Las Vegas on scene for filming
Poster date: February 16th 1969 (pre-release)

24.5″ x 33.5″

25″ x 34″

One of the greatest posters I have ever seen at a massive 34″ x 51.5″

Jimi Hendrix:

Black Sabbath:

Soft Machine

Random Science Fiction Monthly Posters

This one’s pretty cool.

Che Guevara

If you are interested in purchasing any of these, feel free to contact me at kangoophoo NO at SPAM gmail dot com, state how much you are willing to pay also. Most of these posters are in mint or very good condition and have been rolled away in the dark for 20 years.