it seems strange to be sat here, in Mercuryvapour Towers, with something decent to write a blog about. Life’s been pretty shit over the last couple of weeks. I won’t apologise for my mood ver the last couple of weeks. Instead, I’d just like to say a big thanks to those who have stood by me. That’s all I’ll say on *that* subject. In fact, I’ll probably remove this paragraph over the next couple of days, just so I’m not reminded of what’s went on.

For those of you who see me as a bit of a miser, someone who would drop a penny and have it hit me on the back of the head, you’d be surprised to learn that I’ve spent a “considerable” amount of money over the last couple of days. Plans were made a couple of weeks ago, by Dick Brown, to go out on the lash on Thursday, 3rd March. This involved also getting me some new clobber. I’m not the most fashionable of people. If it’s not folded up on a shelf in Matalan / Primark, I just don’t bother with it. I’m too old to be “trendy”. Mr. Brown offered to meet me the day before, and offer me his infinite wisdom when it comes to all things fashion…

I could hardly wait. Jamie S came to the rescue, and announced that he was going to the Metro Centre with another one of my “work colleagues”, Davvi, and that we were more than happy to tag along. I think my exact words were “Woohoo!”

Everything was arranged, including the times to get picked up, even down to the budget I was willing to spend. I had a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Brown was going to drop out, so I dropped some bait on Twitter after I’d gotten in from work…

Waiting for @thedickbrown a.k.a. Gok Brown to work his designer magic. 6:29 AM Mar 2nd via web

Sure enough, when it came to getting picked up at approximately 1PM, I was broken the ‘bad’ news, that he had indeed dropped out….

On a scale of 1-10, @thedickbrown is a pussy. 1:12 PM Mar 2nd via TweetDeck

I’d like to say I was surprised. I really wasn’t. That means, there were three of us left. Me, Jamie S and Davvi. Therefore, we left Hartlepool, sans Barney-Rubble-With-A-Beard, and headed up the A19/A1 to the CENTRE OF METROS!

So, there we were. In the North East’s largest shopping centre, ready to buy clothes for the night out of awseomeness arranged by Dick Brown. Where was our first stop? Yes, you’re entirely correct – a record shop named “That’s Entertainment”. And I’ll tell you something, it’s absolutely superb. It’s where all of the old CDs go to die. Nowhere else on this planet has a shelf full of “The Awards 1989″. I’m quite sure it’s the first time I’ve ever walked into a shop and almost lost the entire contents of a testicle. Needless to say I spent ~£25, and walked out with a bag of CDs that would weigh me down for the rest of the day. I didn’t even touch the DVD section.

The time I spent in there was disputed. Jamie S claims I spent an hour in there. I reckon it was shorter, as I would have spent a hell of a lot more.

The clothes shopping began, and I entered shops I normally wouldn’t dream of going into. The reason for this, was every pricetag appeared to be 10 times more than I was willing to pay. Take the jeans for example. Maybe I’m missing a trick, or just not getting the joke, but why buy “distressed” jeans? As in the ones purposely ripped / faded? The more I try to get my head around it, the more I think that they’re so scruffy, I couldn’t even wear them to work. Why would I want to spend £80 on them? I’ve got jeans that I wouldn’t even leave out for the poly-bag

An amusing episode occured in Foot Locker. Jamie S saw some shoes. They weren’t bad to be honest. Black and yellow “Penguin” things. He goes off to the counter… and after a hell of a lot of rummaging, it turned out they only had the left shoe in stock. Oh, my *sides*. I must admit, that’s happened to me before in shoe shops, but it still remains a mystery how / why it can happen.

After many hours of shopping, all three of us were hungry and dehydrated. Unfortunately, my suggestion of heading to the indian restaurant (which I didn’t know existed, until I smelt it, and instantly lost the contents of my other testicle) was rejected, meaning we had to go to a “normal” place. I’d heard good things about Frankie + Benny’s, as in nice food. Unfortunately, nobody told me about the price.

The beer was £3.10 a glass. I’m not sure if this is a record for what I’d paid, but I wasn’t too bothered. You’re in the middle of a shopping centre. I just wanted my throat wetting. The cost of the starters / main course were reasonable, I suppose, but the mistake *I* made was when the waiter asked… “Would you like some onion rings?” The room fell silent. I’m sure there were people gesturing me to say ‘no’ on other tables, but I must have interpreted it as a bout of wind. Surely they were complimental. I can’t think of anything cheaper to make. Yes, I ordered the onion rings. Some guy, three tables away just shook his head. The look of disappointment on the other two’s faces made me think instantly that something had gone south.

The meal came. I went for the steak, medium, well-done. It arrived, and it was delicious. The onion rings weren’t far behind. there were literally 7 of them. Davvi had one, and found them too spicy. I must admit, after one bite, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Unfortunately, the bill was next, after we’d gorged ourselves.

I’m not too bothered about everything else, however, the onion rings were… £3.55. No, I’m not shitting you. Three pounds, fifty-five pence. For 7. OK, they were the best onion rings I’d ever had, but that’s not the point. They must have saw me coming. (insert ejaculation joke here).

I didn’t mention that I did actually find some decent clothes in this whole trip. I also found a new jacket, and £3 Primark plimmies to top off the look. It can’t have all been expensive…

I do apologise for being a bit quiet since returning from Blackpool. Unfortunately, I was struck down with manflu. I have struggled on with the aid of Lemsip and several toilet rolls, and now the only lingering ailment is a chest that likes to fill itself up with green mucus every morning, meaning that I sound like a broken motorbike every time I get out of bed. I’d also like to apologise to the people who I may have infected with the afore mentioned plague. Considering I didn’t step foot outside of Mercuryvapour Towers for 6 days, I don’t think that would be many people.

Something that happened before I went to Blackpool was the installation of an “upgraded facility”. Regular viewers will remember that Mercuryvapour Towers boasts two toilets, however, the downstairs bog has been pretty much out of order since the 90s. It “worked”, but had to be flushed by the use of a bucket, as the cistern had completely gave in, and had to be sealed off. Fast forward to Winter 2011, and swollen pipes.

Now, as you can gather, the mention of toilets and swollen pipes usually means that I’ve had a rather vicious vindaloo the previous evening. Fortunately, this was not the case, however, the destruction was equally as bad, causing an entire toilet to be “written off”. The previously sealed pipes delivering water to the cistern froze, and split, causing a water leak, all over the concrete floor of the toilet, meaning the off-shot was little more than a large rectangular puddle. Grrr.

Several attempts were made to stem the flow of Hydrogen Dioxide, sadly, none of them came to fruition, and before you could say “Noah’s Ark”, Daddykins was on the phone booking a plumber. I assumed he was just going to get someone out to repair the broken pipe. This wasn’t the case, however, as he’d also ordered a new toilet to be fitted. Hurrah! I’d hinted that an extra working bog would be beneficial, after the “Lidl” incident several months ago. If you don’t know what this is, think yourselves lucky, all I’ll say is that “backups are important”…

I suppose you’d want to see what it looks like….

I’m not going to excuse the colour of the walls, or the flaking paint. This “room” has been unused since the mid 1990s. Repainting the walls and laying a carpet in there would be completely pointless. The only reason I’ve posted the photo is to show ‘Chad’, our resident troll (who oddly maintains silence in any blog post I mention him in), that the spirit of the Bangermobile is still alive and kicking.

Either way, I wasn’t around for the bog fitting. I had just finished work, and therefore went to bed. I do know, however, the plumber got soaked suring the fitting, as the main water valve couldn’t be turned off for whatever reason.

It cost a lot less than I was expecting, and now we have two shitters. This is good news, should we ever expect guests. I can stink out the off-shot as much as I like. Nobody would ever want to go into the back garden!

If you can see this, it means I can blog almost anywhere. Brilliant

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.