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.

If you have a cameraphone, or other type of cheap camera, you may have accidentally taken a photo like the following one I took on my mobile…

Notice how the car in the shot appears to be skewed. That’s because some cheaper cameras, like the one in my phone, don’t take a photo immediately you click the button, they instead “scan” the image and actually take a photo one line of pixels at a time over a few milliseconds, meaning that if you (or the object you’re taking a photo of) are moving, then the image can become oddly distorted like that.

One thing I mentioned to include in my previous post, but… erm, forgot, is that my Canon A480 camera doesn’t have any trace of this “rolling shutter” phenomenon. I’m sure you’re looking at the screen, wondering what the hell I’m on about. Here’s an interesting article which I’m sure I’ve linked to before.

That is all.

Last week, I bought a camera to replace my Acer. Although I wrote the following blog about it, I never actually got round to finishing it to what I would have liked, but here it is anyway…

Both of my regular viewers can’t have failed to ntice that I’ve been blogging more and more about the slow demise of my trusty little Acer camera – the pocket-sized photomaker that has travelled with me everywhere in the last 5 or so years.

After much umming and ahhing, I decided to upgrade to a Canon Pwershot A480 (and thanks to regular commeter Marko for spotting it £20 cheaper than what I was originally going to pay).

It was reserved from the Argos website Wednesday night, and picked up on Thursday morning, and it was a lot easier than I imagined. I’ve stayed away from Argos for buying stuff, mainly because I didn’t like their “check-in” system – I’ve been there in the past to buy something, only to find when I got there, it was out of stock. Obviously, this has happened with many other things, in many other stores over the years, but it seems a lot more of a piss-take when you visit a shop, type the product you want into a computer, only to find that “Computer Says No”…

I was happy to find that they have some type of “reserve” option on their site, so you can reserve items, visit the local store and then pay for the item when you get there. Many places probably do this, but it’s the first time I’ve ever used such a system. As much as I love technology, I absolutely despise “self service” checkouts, to the point where I refuse to use them.

I arrived, just after 9AM to find that the shop was empty, meaning that I was able to… *shudder*… use the “self service” checkout, pay for it via a card, pick it up and walk out in under a minute. The trip to the town was probably the quickest I’ve had, with only a stop off at Home Bargains to pick up some cheap cans of coke, before I headed to the bus stop.

It’s the first time I’ve bought a camera from an actual shop, so to celebrate this fact, I wanted to make a video of its arrival.

I’m all for a bit of bandwagon jumping, so I thought it would be a bit interesting to create an “unboxing” video. Normally, these are for expensive “Squee! I got one!” products like a new version of the applezPhone or the uPad, but as I don’t actually have one to unbox, you’ll have to make do with a “Cheaply priced camera from Argos”…

I do apologise for the fart. I don’t really.

I’m pretty impressed with the camera so far, even though I’ve not had chance to make use of it properly. Thursday was the first day back to work for me, so although I’ve had a little play, I’ve not looked at it properly. The first image taken was this…

… which was taken during the recording of the unboxing video. I’m not going to create a gallery about my test shots like I did with the Acer, instead I’m going to leave that up to Flickr. Of course, this doesn’t mean I won’t write a bit of a review about it.

One thing I already love about the video is the macro mode, it’s certainly impressive. This close-up of a hawthorn flower should show you what I mean…

Obviously, the 500px version there isn’t up to much. Click it, view it as original, etc. It’s stunning. The detail of the droplets, small cobwebs, etc, is something that my full-size Canon can’t accomplish with its stock lens. The other macro photos in that set also show off the strength of the camera.

As I mentioned in the previous post, presuming anyone actually took the time to read it instead of just looking at the pictures, Daddykins and I had agreed to replace the door, and after buying the materials, there was no going back….

I couldn’t actually believe it was happening. A DIY project between me, Daddykins, several pencils and a hacksaw. Things were bound to go horribly wrong.

I’ll be honest. the only thing that went wrong was the laptop. I’d set it up, with the webcam, to take a timelapse of the goings on from the comfort of my window. Unfortunately, the camera gave up the ghost after about an hour.

Between 3PM and 7PM, we had successfully constructed a door.

Please excuse how I look. I was knackered (Daddykins did the measurements, I did all of the manual labour), but that is a complete door. I’ve not felt pride like that for a long time, and I’ve not enjoyed actually doing anything like that for a good few years.

Amazingly, the door survived the night, and the next day came the completion of the door frame. I got to use the mallet (and a screwdriver) to knock out the old rotten wood. The job didn’t last long, as the wood was considerably more rotten than it looked. So were the nails. Rusty, rusty nails.

I avoided the tetanous-needing nails, and moved onto the woodstain. I have never had a good relationship with paintbrushes, as anyone who has seen the Mercuryvapour Office Space can testify. I gave up painiting the doors in this particular room the moment I realised I couldn’t actually reach the top of the door without needing a chair. For six years, this painting project has remained incomplete, and considering the fumes from the gloss paint turns my chest into some kind of pulmonary alveolus graveyard. Luckily, the fumes from this soupy-looking product didn’t bother me. In fact, it looked a bit too much like a can of tomato soup…

I managed to complete the task, with minimal damage to my clothes, and the door was properly stained. This, unfortunately, gave me another chance to pose in front of the camera

There are so many things wrong with this picture. My awful pose was worse than the last one (though my man-tits are less prominent), I’m wearing a baseball cap (I never wear headgear as a rule, but I really didn’t fancy an incinerated scalp), and you can see the partial mess I’d left behind. At least the door was an impressive shade of “red”. Well, saying that, my neck was redder, but you’re not seeing a photo of that.

Just typing that into a keyboard can guarantee that in the next few hours, I shall have one of the little blighters land on the back of my neck. If that happens, you can guarantee I’d scream a lot more than if it actually stung me, for you see, I’ve managed to get my first sunburn of the year. In fact, this is the first time for as long as I can remember, I’ve actually made good use of my three days off. I shall use the media of Twitter to help you keep track of the past three days.

2010-05-18 11:34:10: Started walk

After going to bed at 7, and waking up at 9:30, thanks to Daddykins on his rig, and me not turning my speakers off, I thought I’d get up and make use of the day. I demolished some oven chips whilst watching Homes Under the Hammer. The sun was cracking the pavements, so I thought I’d walk off the chips, along with the night before’s kebab wrap.

As you can probably gather, I left the house at that time, and headed along the coast road and up “Hart Road” towards Hart Village.

2010-05-18 12:09:10: Mmm, farmy

This tweet referred to the overpowering stench of shit that filled the patch between Clavering and Hart Village. It was a hot spring day, and the smell of some nearby horses wafted around the place.

Oddly, this was my last tweet of the walk. Instead, I had to work out where I was going to go once I’d reached Hart Village. I could head home, or I could risk crossing three lanes of traffic, and head off to photograph the nearby turbines. Despite them being there for many years now, I’d never actually been near them.

Thanks to Google Streetview, I knew that the journey would be pretty uneventful, except for the afore-mentioned road crossing. I headed up the road that would take me towards the turbine, only to be infiltrated by the locals….

Next stop was the road I feared. I almost felt like King Canute, as when I got to the road, it was entirely empty, and I could quite happily stroll across the carriageway without fear of getting squashed.

I was happy to find that when I got there, the field the turbine was in, was growing oil seed rape, meaning that it gave everything a lovely yellow colour…

The walk back seemed to take for ever. I’d slightly misjudged just how far it was from Mercuryvapour Towers. Turns out, it’s a 5-mile round trip. I think I can safely say I neutralised those chips.

The rest of the day was spent in bed after watching some telly. Daddykins commented about repairing “the door”. For anyone lucky enough to have received a guided tour around Mercuryvapour Towers, you’ll know that the “games room” has had its back door hanging off for several years after a storm snapped it in half. I’d be interested to see if this would come to fruition.

2010-05-19 09:06:28: Off to the flea market. There is a strong smell of rapeseed in the air.

Well, I can’t keep away from the flea market, as much as I try. After waking up stupidly early on Wednesday (5AM), I headed off to the market of fleas. I’d spent the previoous hours changing the music on my phone. I realised, mere minutes into the walk, however, that I should have avoided “Now 40″, as my ears bled along to the sound of Steps.

The walk took me along the scenic vistas of Raby Road, along York Road, and then to the flea market. CDs were purchased, so were records. I couldn’t help myself. I have bought some cheese in the past, but this is pure, ripe Stilton of the highest order…

It cost me 50p, and to be honest, after playing it, I like it a lot more than I thought I was going to. Clare Torry is (only) known for Pink Floyd’s track “Great Gig in the Sky”. Apparently, everyone who purchased her album from Amazon bought it on the strength of that Pink Floyd track.

2010-05-19 09:48:51: On bus home. Flea market poor

On the way home, Daddykins texted me asking if I had my keys. Without a single hint of sarcasm (that was sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell), I replied “Yes. Let me know if you still want to attempt door this afternoon”. Imagine my shock and horror as, at 1PM, we actually went on the search for some wood. Or, at least, some material that a door could be constructed of.

Imagine my horror when these materials were actually purchased…

We were about to attempt DIY on a scale never attemped before in the ground of Mercuryvapour Towers…

EDIT: Fixed webcam photo as it was broked.