deKay’s Blog

But I can’t skate.

Even better, is that I bought it because it came free with a copy of Tony Hawk’s Project 8 for the Xbox 360. Which I already own.

I’ve just found SpeccyDS, a Spectrum emulator for the Nintendo DS. Which means I can play Chuckie Egg on it!

And Run Baby Run! Aces!

It seems I have a slow puncture. Not only that, but I have a tracking problem causing wear (and possibly the puncture) on both front tyres.

So here I am at Kwik-Fit whilst Davey gets some new wheels. I don’t think he likes being up in the air like that, but at least he knows there’s something in it for him…

Another day, another delivery from eBuyer via City Link. These are a for-work delivery, though. And, oh! Look! It’s smashed up!

However, unlike last time, the boxes inside (some Seagate external hard drives) are also bent out of shape. Lets hope they’re actually working, eh?

Why does formatting a new (super-fast SATA) hard drive take FOREVER? So far, it’s been going for about an hour.

I wiped and reinstalled Tiger on an old G4 Mac mini last week in less time than this is taking just to format, and the mini has a slooooow 4200rpm laptop IDE drive in it.

Yeah, I could do a quick format, but since this drive arrived in the smashed up box from yesterday’s post, I thought I’d best do a full format to make sure it isn’t damaged.

City Link is a well known courier company. Infamous, in fact, mainly because of how crap they are.

I order a fair amount of stuff over the internet, and have yet to deal with a courier company who isn’t crap, but of all of them City Link stands proud as the Worst of the Worst. I won’t go into the problems I’ve had with them in the past, but will say that I’ve had things incorrectly delivered, lost, broken, and even been denied access to my own stuff because it’s the wrong time of day.

Sadly, eBuyer use City Link for deliveries, and so I have to endure them. Today, some computer parts have arrived in a smashed up box. Sigh.

Today was Apple’s WWDC ‘07 keynote. I don’t normally get interested in these things, but I found myself reading a transcript of the event earlier.

And the thing that stood out most? No, not Leopard’s new features. Or the fact that it’s only US$129 (or as Steve Jobs put it, “Leopard shipping in October. Basic version, $129. Premium version, $129. Business version, $129, Enterprise version $129. Ultimate version, $129.”). It wasn’t the iPhone either (no keyboard, so useless to me).

No. The thing that stood out most, was this: http://www.apple.com/safari/

That’s the Safari 3 Beta. For the Mac. And Windows.

I don’t use Safari on my Macs. I prefer Firefox, and since Firefox is what I also use on my Windows and Linux boxes, it makes sense to stick with it. It just confused me somewhat that they’d made Safari 3 available for Windows. Bizarre.

A while ago, I found out about the HTC Athena (eventually sold as the HTC Advantage). It’s a large PDA with a mini-laptop air about it. There was no way I was going to buy one, as they were £750 or something.

But now, I’ve seen the Asus EeePC.

It’s a thing of wonder and beauty. Yes, it’s a little larger than the HTC, and no, it’s not a phone as well. But it is a lovely 7″-screened, DS Lite-alike mini-laptop. It’ll even run proper grown-up Windows (although it comes with Linux). Built in webcam, wireless capability, and a choice of flash-based “hard drives”. 512MB RAM, Bluetooth, VGA out… the works. And it’s just 22×16cm.

The best bit, though, and surprisingly, is the price: just US$199.

Let me say that again. You get this amazing, stylish, well-spec’d box of gorgeousness for just US$199. That’s a little over £100.

I think I’ll buy three.

See Asus‘ presentation here.

On the 4th of March 2001, I posted this message to uk.games.video.misc:

I had a thought today. After seeing the new issue of Zzap!64, and being a reader of www.ys3.co.uk, I wondered if a load of bods from ugvm fancied doing a multiformat web-based magazine.

Maybe every few months - you know, some reviews, some news, some letters, etc?

Well, it was just a thought. Show Edge/IGN/GamesRadar/etc how to do it properly?

I’m not suggesting I “take the reins”, but I am willing to take some part in the proceedings.

And, with that, ugvm was born. As it turns out, I did “take the reins” and finally, come September 2002, the first issue was released. Between then and the end of 2003, seven more issues were created, each larger than the last, with the final issue being a smaller one-off Christmas Special. Then, nothing.

I simply didn’t have the time or energy to carry on the project, and so it, well, stopped. I’d started Issue 08, but didn’t finish it.

Then, last year, Zomoniac, a poster on uk.games.video.misc offered to revive the magazine. I passed everything I had onto him, and lo, almost 18 months after that, ugvm is back!

How “back” it is, we don’t know yet. There is some debate as to whether we should have a web-based system in the future (meaning no magazine, but no delays or deadlines), or more magazines. Or both. Or neither. We just don’t know.

Anyway, head over to ugvm.org.uk to download the new issue, and, if you’ve never heard of it before, get hold of the back issues.