bordagen

This is quite possibly both the greatest and saddest thing I have ever seen.

It is someone drawing an anime character in HTML with some really bad Japanese rave music playing in the background.

After the announcement on Monday about Apple releasing it’s Safari browser to Windows, I decided to give it a go to see any differences from using it on a Mac and how it compares to IE or Firefox.

The Apple site claims that it is quicker than IE7. I’ll agree with that, but only by a small margin, nowhere near as quick as they claim on the Apple site.

The user interface, I’m used to it at work. It’s minimalistic and doesn’t clutter the place up – although the lack of sides or status bar on the bottom of the window is quick unnerving.

Tabbed browsing, the inline Google search and other features are nothing new, plus there is no Address Bar history – so you can’t drop a menu down to see where you’ve been.

All in all, I don’t think that anything new has been brought to the browser in this new release – but then it is only in beta.

One comment that has been floating around that I’ve noticed is the slightly blurry fonts because it uses it’s own font rendering rather than windows, it doesn’t seem as sharp to me.

If you’ve never used it, get it down and see what you think.

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.

Well, yesterday was my birthday. Was a really good day.

I was feeling a little delicate for most of the day due to drinking far too much on Saturday night, but it was fine. Got a few games (Mystery Detective – DS, Hotel Dusk – DS, Dead Rising – 360, some Xbox Live points) and a DAB radio, oh, and a LCD TV from everyone. Just wish my Xbox was here so that I could see what it looks like in HD.

Thanks for the presents everyone! I had a great day.

Interesting.

It would seem that I have been lied to by Xbox Support again. After ringing them on Friday enquiring about the status of my Xbox repair I was informed that it was with UPS but hadn’t been scanned. I just rang them up today to check on the status of my delivery, as the tracking number I was given was not showing up on the website tracking system.

As of this morning, the tracking reference is still not registering on the site, so I figure that I might have written the tracking number down wrong. I rang up Xbox Support again to be told that it has left the repair centre. I rang UPS who tell me that it hasn’t been registered with them and that Xbox Support might just have printed the tracking label out.

So it would appear that my Xbox is stuck in Limbo.

I rang up Microsoft Xbox Support again today to see if I could find out about the status of my repair.

Turns out that it has gone out for dispatch by UPS, but at the time of the call hadn’t been scanned at a station. I was told that I should expect it to arrive back after the weekend. I was however given a tracking number so that I can keep an eye on it’s progress.

Luckily I have Monday and Tuesday off of work so at least I can wait in for it.

Disappointingly, my Xbox 360 went in for repairs today, shipped off with UPS to it’s destination – with no discount to the charge I had to pay.

After speaking to them on Saturday, asking to speak to a supervisor only to be told they do not work weekends, and on Sunday, finally getting through to a supervisor who was very unhelpful and didn’t understand anything I was saying, I still ended up paying the full £83 for repairs. On the plus side though, I will be getting 12 months warranty and a month free on Xbox Live. Still, I won’t have my console back for up to 15 working days. I was also told that should anything happen with this problem – such as free/discounted repairs – that I would be credited the difference. Whether they hold up this part of the deal or not is yet to be seen.

Part Three: The Phantom Supervisor…

I’ve just got off the phone with MS again over this matter of the GH2 patch screwing my system. Apparently there were no supervisors for me to talk to around at Xbox 360 Support. The guy I spoke to also said that he didn’t have the access to page a supervisor?

I’ve not worked in a call centre before so I don’t know if that is true, but it sounds like an excuse to me.

I don’t think I’m even getting closer to a solution over this. Now I’m setting my sights on at least a discount on the repair costs since it isn’t exactly Microsoft’s fault and my console is out of warranty. Apparently my account now has a note on it about the fact that I want to talk to a supervisor over this matter so next time I ring up which will be tomorrow now (as I’m not spending another 25mins on hold) hopefully something will get sorted – whether I will be paying a discounted repair fee or being the proud permanant owner of an XBrick 360.