bordagen

I was running around the Interwebs on Tuesday when I found a particulary impressive piece of Line Rider ‘art’.

It is a fairly long ride through scenes based on sets from Stargate Atlantis. Check it out after the jump.

On a more disappointing note, I heard that Grindhouse, the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature I have been looking forward to, will be presented over here as two seperate films, the first of which is Death Proof (Tarantino) to be shown in September. Guess I’ll have to import the DVD when it comes out in the US. With any luck it’ll show both the films in one go.
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I decided the other day to dual boot my Vista machine with the latest release of Ubuntu.

This was all well and good, the OS went on without a hitch, quickly and painlessly. That is, of course, until I wanted to use the wireless network. It turns out that Ubuntu 7.04 (codename Feisty Fawn) only ‘just works’ with Atheros chipset wifi cards. The one I was using, a D-Link AirPlus G+ G520+, uses ACX111 and I was having a lot of trouble getting it to work.

Whilst in the ‘office’ today, I remembered that there was an Atheros chipset card in the machine downstairs, a D-Link G520 (no ‘+’ this time). This went straight in and worked beautifully. I was straight on to the Internet. Good thing too really. I now cannot use this network card in Windows. This card is not supported in Vista, even though it claims to be.

Looks like I’m on Linux until I can find a cheap, Atheros card that works under Vista AND Ubuntu. Least this will give me the ideal chance to learn a bit more about Linux by using it on a day-to-day basis. I’ve already had to edit configuration files for X11 in order to get a decent resolution on the system, 1024×768 is just too low these days.

Recently, I’ve been getting comments from people I’ve never met before, who aren’t actually spambots. They have actually asked me questions, so I think that I should answer your questions. Plus it will give me something to write about…

Chris Bettini from North Carolina says:

“So i just hit google to find a fix to NTLDR: Fatal Error 2592. Cannot read BOOT.INI…. i found this website and the one with the guy youre talking about…funny stuff

so how did you fix this issue? i can get to recovery console but im not given the option to “repair”

any help would be awesome”

Well, Chris – When I received my NTLDR error on ym Virtual PC on my Mac at work, I looked around the interwebs trying to find an answer. THe only ones I could find about a fix were to use the recovery console within the XP setup.

If you can get to the Recovery Console prompt, select your windows partition that is giving you the problem and enter your administrator password.

When you are in this at the prompt, you’ll need to try to replace the existing one in your windows installation with the good one off of the CD. This can be done by executing the following commands:

copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\
copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\
(where e: is the CD-ROM drive letter – change this for yours)

I recommend reading up on this here as it shows how to solve this NTLDR problem and a few other issues using the RC.

Darren Coates from Pembrokeshire asks:

“Hi chris,
You haven`t blogged for a while hope everythings ok.
I was searching for details on xbox360 crashes and came acros your blog. My xbox 360 decided to take a break from life last night so I rang microsoft this morning. After 20 mins on hold got through to some bloke who i didn’t understand, cross between pakistani and scottish I think. Anyway I got enough details and recieved an email after work with my label to print off. What I’d like to know is did you have to ring UPS and get them to pick up from you as I live in Wales and it says the nearest drop off is in london, if so how long did they actually take to arrive, and did you have to get your own box and fold the label in half and tape it to the box? any response would be gratefully recieved.
i agree about spiderman by the way, check out my myspace!!!!
thanx in advance.”

Hi Darren, thanks for reading.

When I eventually sent off my Xbox 360, I neded to arrange pickup of the parcel myself. THis is really simple, as you can actually do it through the UPS website. If you click this link, it will take you directly to the page where you arrange your collection.

As for packaging, yes I had to find a box to ship it in. Don’t use the original Xbox 360 box as you won’t get it back. Luckily I had the coffin from when my Xbox 360 joined the choir invisible previously. That time though, I found a box that was roughtly the right size and tore up some newspaper for padding. It seemed to do the trick. Then seal it up nicely and attach the label. And your set.

The Xbox took around 7-days in total I think to come back, but Xbox Support say it could take up to 15 working days.

I hope these have answered your questions.

On Thursday last week, I finished work at lunchtime to head over to Darlington to get my car door lock fixed after someone decided to try to open it with a screwdriver.

I was expecting, when I got there, to be going to a Citroen dealer/repairer. As it turned out, it was a little locksmith on the corner of a street 20mins out of the main centre.

It was a very warm day and there was too much walking, but the repair seemed to work and I was charged less than what I was quoted which was a pleasant surprise.

I woke up this morning and played a little DS in bed. Got up and had a shower. It was a regular Sunday morning and Liz had somehow called in a trip to Butterfly World at Preston Park today. Reluctantly I agreed (I hate things that can crawl around in my mouth and that can fly).

We got ready and went out to the car only to find that my key didn’t work in the passenger side lock, as it happened to be the nearest lock to me at the time to open the car from. I looked down only to find that the lock was broken, appearing as to have been ripped inside out probably with a screwdriver or similar object.

Least it wasn’t stolen, just a minor inconvenience that I now have to get the lock repaired/replaced. It kind of feels strange that they chose my little 1.1 Saxo over the BMW that was sitting across the road at the time.

I just got back form seeing Spider-Man 3. What a disappointment.

Considering it was 2 hours 20 mins long, not a lot really happened. Once again, it focused on Parker and less on Spider-Man. And once again, his mask breaks in the same place as in the other 2 films. You’d think he’d go to a different tailor after all this time…

I’m not saying it was a bad film, it was just disappointing compared to the previous two. They hardly do much with Vemon, one of the more interesting characters in the Spider-Man universe which was a bit of a let down. For me, it felt a little whiney too. I thought that too much focus was put on the Peter/MJ relationship, although when the film decides to add some action the movie picks up.

If you really must see this film, go for it, for completist sake, other wise I’d wait for the DVD. I however, am in no real hurry to see this again.

It’s a shame that after I was blogging my experience with Xbox Support for this long, I didn’t finish the tale right away but what with birthday things and actually getting the console back, I was quite overwhelmed.

Yes the console is back, and plugged in to HD-goodness. It is, dare I say, ultimate greatness. Typically though, the day it arrived was the day that I was back at work and Liz was in York. So I had to enlist the help of my brother to wait in for the delivery for me. But after the busy that was that, I can sit back and finally play Dead Rising as it was meant to be played, in glorious high definition.

Now we have a bank holiday weekend coming up and I can spend some quality time with my console catching up on games I haven’t finished, or not played enough.

I just came back from Richer Sounds today, after getting myself a spiffy nice upscaling DVD player. Quite a nice bargin too, what with the HDMI cable being bundled with the player (should have been £15) and the optical cable having some money knocked off it (should have been £20).

I can now watch my DVD’s in 1080i which makes them look awesome – I tested it on Superman Returns.

The DVD player also has a USB port on the front so I can put DivX on to my 4GB memory stick and watch them downstairs on the big telly rather than huddled up to my monitor.

I also have all my AV equipment going in to the telly and the sound output in to the AV receiver which channels it rather nicely.

I’m still waiting on my Xbox 360’s return, I found out today that it is in Prague still! I have been told though that it should be back in the country by tomorrow and back to me by Thursday, but on current form, we shall have to wait and see.