bordagen

After much pestering, I finally got an old AV receiver from my parents since they got a new one. Got it back yesterday and started to plug speakers in to it, only to find that the 5.1 set we have (from a DVD Combo set of Liz’s) doesn’t have an active subwoofer, its passive. This means that I cannot – at present – use the subwoofer with the new setup. This isn’t too much of a problem seeing as Richer Sounds have one in for £60 which will do the trick nicely.

Also I spent some of my Christmas money on a new digital coax cable to link the DVD in to the system. Money well spent. Now I need a SCART -> Component cable (for the Freeview box), a Phono plug-to-plug cable for various video inputs and the subwoofer. Some speaker stands too, but they can come later down the line. For now the rears can stay where they are, on the back of a chair/sofa.

In other things, a few of us went in to town today to have a look at the sales. Whilst town itself wasn’t too busy – the queues inside shops were terrible. The one in Game went right around the store. I have to go in to the mealstrom tomorrow as I said I would go with Chris to Maplin which is at one end of town. Sadly I also need to visit various banks to square up accounts and see if I can afford a car. I have most of the asking price, but I’m a few pennies off that I’m hoping that the bank can advise me on.

I managed to treat myself to Snakes on a Plane today on DVD to watch through the new system. Whilst not extremely surround-soundy, it had enough background for me to know that the system is working. So far it runs my Xbox 360 and the DVD player. The film itself is actually pretty good considering it was delayed by a year so that the Internet community could make changes to it – something I found curious to see the outcome of. Turns out they managed to raise it from a PG-13 to an R by listening to the fans. After viewing the film I can justify the R rating in the US, but it’s only a 15 here.

Merry Christmas to you all!

I hope you’re all having a good day so far and that ‘Santa Claus’ brought you all the fun things that you asked for.

Later on I’ll post a list of thing that I received, but now I need a shower to wake myself up a bit since I have been up since 6 after 2 hours of non-sleep due to a wheeze attack. Oh well.

A lot of stuff has been happening in the last week or two, what with the run up to Christmas and everything – but I have managed to still do somethings worth writing about amidst the rush of my oh-so busy time.

First things first, my health has hit a bit of a bump in the last couple of years and after talking to my Doctor, the initial prognosis is that I might be asthmatic (I’m hoping it’s spelt correctly). I have been coughing and wheezing through days and nights since living in Bradford in my final year of Uni – but I just chalked it up to a dust allergy. Turns out it’s something a little more. I have to monitor my Peak Flow breathing for the next couple of weeks then make another appointment and we shall find out the results of the test then.

On a different note, Liz has gone home for Christmas now so I am keeping myself busy (until the run up to Molton Core this evening) by developing a little Gadget so that I can listen to Planet Rock from the comfort of my Vista Sidebar. It is based on a player found for listening to BBC Radio, but i have changed the images used and pointed the active stream address to the Planet Rock one. Amazingly it worked first time and the only thing that I had to tweak was my drop shadow on the image (images after the jump). Thanks go out to Thomas Pleasance who developed the original BBC Radio Player.

Right – Molton Core time!
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The time is now 18:41 and Liz and myself are standing in line at a not-so local branch of Tesco waiting for a NIntendo Wii.

Allow me to explain how we got here…

I got a rather upset email from Liz telling me that Currys will not have a Wii waiting for us on the day of launch. This was due to a European stock shortage whicih seemed to be affecting several retailers on the high street.

When I got on my lunch break, we ran around town asking in every shop that would possibly sell the console if they had any pre-orders left. Least I didn’t get laughed at (much).

Anyway, I got in tonight and start ringing round several branches of Tesco to see if they are going to be selling them tomorrow. As it turns out, one branch gave me the Stockton branches direct number and I got through. I then get told in the following conversation that yes there will be selling them. It will be at midnight, but there are only 27 in stock and there is a queue of 6 people. I then tell Liz but she didn’t feel like queuing for 6 hours to get one. I rang back 15mins later and the queue had grown to 9.

Liz managed to rope Andy in to taking us to the store where we sat around waiting for a console.

[UPDATE] We have been given a ticket at 20:30 and told to be back at 23:30 and in number order for her console. We are back home now until later when Andy is, very nicely, taking us over again to get one. Hopefully pictures should follow later on (maybe tomorrow morning)