… just a very busy one who’s not had chance to update on here for quite a while. Therefore, I’ll attempt to give it a go now, taking recent tweets as source of my iinfluence.

2010-07-19 02:42:26: Just been freaked out by a light bulb and now can’t sleep.

a few mornings ago, I witnessed an odd phenomenon which I simply can’t explain, but it made me think something was wrong with the electrics… I’m sure you’re all aware of energy saving bulbs, and the fact they have electrodes at either end of the tube (and of course, the basics of how fluorescent tubes work). I was lying in bed, and I noticed a flash, then another one, rather like an ambulance going past with its lights blaring. This happened every few seconds. I looked up, and noticed it was the light bulb doing this, even though the light was completely off. I unscrewed the bulb, put it back in, and the flash never reoccured.

Ferr-eaky.

2010-07-20 19:19:37 Blossom Garden chow mein. Best food ever

This was altogether a fun and interesting day. Mainly because we were hit by another one of those freaky storms, similar to what happened in 2003, but not quite as severe. It was my first day of the second week of day shifts. The fun and interesting part came because everything broke at work. Twice. Unfortunately, my usual drinking establishment, which I’d planned to attend that evening, turned out to be flooded because of the severe storm, so Daddykins picked me up from work, made an excellent detour to the Blosson Garden takeaway. Regular viewes may know that this is my favourite takeaway in the entire world, and it didn’t disappoint. I also received a present from the postie…

Yes, it’s an Xbox 360 controller, but for Windows. I don’t think that there’s any difference between these and a wired Xbox 360 pad, except they come with a driver disk and a few windows logos splattered about the place. Still, I got it half price, so if I don’t use it much, I’m not going to be overly bothered. I found out that it makes “Flatout: ultimate carnage” playable. To an extent.

2010-07-23 19:09:49 Old tapes, beer, then indian. How can tonight get any better?

It simply couldn’t. I spent the whole night wallowing through as many tapes as I could lay my hands on… in fact, I started to write this post:-

For many years, Mercuryvapour Towers has been a place where things go to die. Music, records, computers, cassette tapes, and wasps, if my recent contributions on flickr are anything to go by. For several years, I’ve been able to make use of most of these things (barring the wasps), however, I’ve not been able to play cassette tapes. There are years worth of memories buried in these tightly wound reels of magnetised plastic, but seeing as I’ve had no way to access them, they’ve been kicking around in random boxes, gathering dust, losing their oxide, and sadly getting damaged.

During a conversation with Andy The Iridium fan over the value of cassette tapes (he bought a 10-pack of C120s the other week) and my discovery of a stereo 3.5mm cable, I connected his walkman to my computer, and managed to get a 2010 copy of “The Unknown Music”. He then mentioned he had a spare “proper” tape player and that he was happy to bring it round and loan it to me…

Well, that day was today! I now have it sat next to me, and I’m playing some of those old forgotten memories. Currently, I’m listening to “Everything I Do” by Bryan Adams, as recorded off “Radio Cracker” – a temporary radio station set up in Hartlepool for the Xmas season of 1991. It was the first and only Hartlepool based radio station for 12 years, before “Pool FM” got their temporary broadcasting license.

I still have the tape recorder, and yes, I’m listening to a tape while I’m typing this. Right now. Currently playing is a “The Sound of Silcence” I must have recorded off the radio in something like 1995… Home taping is killing music? Remember that? If I didn’t have these badly recorded radio versions, I’d have forgotten about the songs I taped, then would have never bought them on CD. Tee hee! Anyway, that’s a rant for another day!

Gah, will my childhood heroes please stop dying?

One of my favourite snooker players, Alex Higgins, has died, aged 61…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/8852020.stm

I might have a Guinness in his honour.

THE END: Ah well, that’s that all over with for another four years. This blog probably won’t be here by the time the next one comes along. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Good luck to the lucky git who won the sweepstake at work.

Normal programming will resume shortly, and thankfully, normal programming on TV will resume also. Except that Top Gear is very, very late.

Full time, for real this time: YAY WELL DONE SPAIN. Now get Top Gear on.

26:00: Goooooooooooooooal to Span. Iniesta. Forever. Booked for taking his shirt off. Tee hee.

Half Extra time Looks like it’s gonna be penners…

100:46 One of the guys in the blue football suits almost scored. But didn’t.

92:48 Some of the LED advertising hoardings have white dots where there shouldn’t be white dots. The sound also died temporarily on the Beeb.

90:00 Kick off. Again. Top gear delay inevitable. Sigh.

Full Time: Well, this is the 2nd World Cup final to finish 0-0. The other was in 1994.

86:59: Please don’t say this is going to delay Top Gear…

78:16: Can see this going to extra time. Oh…. joy.

69:15: Oooooh, unlucky Spain

66:13: Yet another yellow card. Currently, I’m eating some roast beef slices which have been in the fridge since the beginning of time. They appear to have the same taste as the plastic they’re wrapped in. Larvely.

62:45: “There is something brewing in this world cup final”…. Yeah, sorry, that’ll be last night’s madras…

45:00: Why does everyone keep missing that bloody octopus? He’s been lucky. Seven times.

Half Time: Well, that was predicably dull. It says something when you’d rather prick about deleting spam than watching the match.

39:56 I’ve just noticed that the light and dark stripes on the pitch line up exactly with the markings. I wonder if they’re used to help calculate the “distance from goal” captions when there’sa free kick? Tsk. I remember when they were purely decorative.

35:00 Well, there wasn’t a goal. Maybe it only workds if I leave the keyboard to go to the toilet?

32:10 I’m going to put some stuff in the bin out of the back. There will be a goal.

27:18: They’re still kicking a ball around. On 9th July, someone searched for “juicey n wet pussys” on this site. One of the orange guys just did a karate kick to the chest of one of the blue guys. Best moment so far.

23:20: I’ve turned my intentions to clearing some of the spam entries out of the stats database, as it’s absolutely huge at the moment, and it could do with a bit of a clean up. this may, or may not slow the site down to a crawl.

16:06: Two yellow cards already. Dirty match.

10:45: Every time I hear “Iniesta”, I always have to add, “For ever, come on and sing my song…. ALLL NIIIGHT LONG”.

07:30: Wow, look at all of those cameras behind the net!

05:22: Ah, the blue ones must be Spain. I do like BBC’s colour coded scoreboard.

04:27: Oooooh, them in the blue nearly scored.

03:45: I’ve just spammed Glen’s forum with a link to this page. I’m such a naughty boy, but hello if you’re reading from there anyway.

01:08: A free kick already. I have a feeling this match is going to be incredibly dull

Kick off: They’ve kicked off.

Random Thought: 4 years ago, I was on my first laptop, typing my thoughts into Glen’s forum because this site used Blogger, and I couldn’t update it in realtime. That laptop had no wireless built in. I believe I was connected via a 15-metre ethernet cable trailling all of the way upstairs. How times and technology have changed. I’m watching this footy in HD. I also dreamt that a pop group I’ve never heard of were firing fireworks at me and Gregg (who I’ve not seen for years, by the way), as we walked up Horseley Place. That dream was about as pointless as this match is going to be.

National Anthems: Bollocks to this, I’muted the telly, and am playing the video below and singing along. It’s awesome. Tinny laptop speakers don’t do it justice.

They’re walking on the pitch: I LOVE this music, it’s called “Fifa Anthem”, don’t you know.

Buildup 3: Jesus, what time is kick off? I’m sick of listening to ex-footballers rabbiting on about tactics and “dragging people out of the box”. Apparently, the Germans are marked. I hope they had a shower before they go on the pitch. Oh, it’s so warm in here. I’m going upstairs for a wash.

Buildup 2: You know, I didn’t even know who was playing? I just added a “uaregay” tag, which was supposed to be a parody of “Uruguay”. It’s Spain v Netherlands. Wow. I just realised how much I really don’t care! Did I mention I’m not drinking any beer for this? I only got up at 6PM. More BBC footage I’m afraid. I can’t hear Jonathan Thingy’s voice without thinking “Robot Wars”.

Buildup 1: Right, I wish they’d just get on with it. BBC are currently just showing endless video footage. Oddly, the match is also on ITV. Following ITV’s track record of abysmal coverage (see England’s goal missed), I won’t be touching them with a bargepole. I can’t remember if the last world cup final had coverage on two channels. I’ll probably switch over if BBC have Mick “Vuvuzela” McCarthy doing the commentrary.

Why yes, it’s another one of those posting where I rack my brain about something worth typing about, or at least take space on an innocent server which really should have better things to do than parse this crap. Talking about servers, my homke-hosted server, which I’ve been toying about moving this site to for a good long while spectacularly died. I know it as windowcam3, you know it as scribcam.co.uk. Well, you don’t know it as that, as I only use it for “internal purposes” now.

I was generating some thumbnails for the gallery, when all of a sudden, it became unresponsive. The power light was on, nothing else was. A sure sign of overheating. I removed the power cable, powered it back on, and watched the CPU fan. It went at about 3RPM whilst making some ongodly scratching sound. It was dead. I’m awaiting a replacement heatsink/fan from the good folks at ebuyer. I’m a bit upset that my attempts to temorarily move the server software to another machine resulted in failure. That might be one thing I sort before I bring the whole thing back online. The server software is a bit of a mess!

Right, moving on. I’ve really not got much that I can type about. Most of the time when I’ve been in the house, has been playing some of the games that Steam have had on offer over the past couple of weeks. Therefore, not that anyone cares, but here’s a quick run down of some of the shit I’ve purchased…

Peggle Complete Pack 6.99 GBP

Yeah, Peggle.

I originally discovered this at work, when it was downloaded as a demo on the works PS3. I played it until I completed it, which took me all of 10 minutes, as the PS3 demo is very short. It was available for the PSP too, and after Kris at work purchased it, it became a bit of an urban legend after he posted this on facebook…

… with “Peggle on the toilet” becoming a short-lived catchphrase for those who also liked the game.

The “Peggle” phenomenon wore off, until the recent sale on Steam, where I purchased both versions of Peggle (original and “Nights”), then posted this on FB…

Admittedly, I have yet to take my laptop into the toilet and enjoy a nice steamy peggle, but at least the opportunity is there…

Puzzle Kingdoms 0.80 GBP

80p well spent. Saying that, the game doesn’t need a storyline. Expect me to know the puzzles are going to get harder as I play though the game. Like Peggle, this game works on my laptop.

Super Laser Racer 0.75 GBP

Glad this was only 75p, because this wasn’t 75p well spent. I don’t enjoy this game at all, despite some of the music coming from the Amiga music legend that is Bjorn Lynne. The music is by far the best part, as the gameplay is incredibly basic.

Shatter 1.75 GBP

Talking about good music, the soundtrack to this one is jizz-tastic. The game iself is simply Arkanoid on acid (or, Batty on acid for those who remember this awesome Spectrum game). It’s very easy, however, with extra lives being thrown out at regular opportunities. But, back to the music. I love it. The soundtrack is apparently available for almost 10 times the cost I paid for the game. As much as I love it, I’ll not bother.

FlatOut Ultimate Carnage (ROW) 1.70 GBP

I loved the Burnout franchise on the original Xbox. This game appears to be an xbox game , converted to PC, simply so they could show off some odd ragdoll physics engine that the manufacturers wanted to sell. Each level contains several thousand objects that can be knocked flying, though you do have to raise one eyebrow when a fence you make contact with can go the same distance as a water tank. The ragdoll physics enginemakes you raise another eyebrow as several mini-games cause you to fire the driver out of the car windscreen and control the flailing corpse in such tasks as hitting a wire mesh fence as high as you can, knock down as many skittles as you can, and skim the dead body across a swimming pool as if you’re skimming a stone across a pond.

The music is an absolute abomination, presumably from several shit indie bands. I think there’s about 5 tracks, all sound exactly the same as the last. You apparently can’t change the music. After the sale, this has gone back up to £16.99. Despite all of this, I have enjoyed playing it, but it’s not even woth close to full price. Wait until it comes back on a sale.

EDIT (SEVERAL WEEKS LATER): Good news everyone! Turns out you can delete all of the music files – just browse to…

\steamapps\common\flatout ultimate carnage\data\music

and you can delete all of the files in there. You’ll still get the game of which tune is meant to be playing, but obviously, you get no music! Oddly, the files are simple .ogg files, so I was hoping it might support custom .ogg files, but after creating a couple, it didn’t seem to recognise them. This game is also infinitely more enjoyable with a gamepad.

You can return to looking now.

Oh, OK. For those who didn’t see it on facebook…

That is all.