Adobe needs to be smacked with a +3 rod of grammar.

Posted via email from deKay’s posterous

We needed a new server at work. We always buy Dell, but The Powers That Be request that all purchases over £3000 require at least three quotes. So off I went to Dell’s website, where I spec’d up a server and they gave me a price on the screen there and then. I then emailed a Dell reseller the same spec, and he emailed me back a price in a few hours. Easy.

For the third quote, I decided to look at similar servers from other companies. HP was temporarily out as their site was playing up, so I thought – IBM do servers, lets look there. That was the first problem, as they pointed me at Lenovo. I went to lenovo.com, and chose Servers. Chose a rack server, and clicked View Models. Then spec’d one up. Easy enough so far, but then what?

There’s no “Buy” button. There’s no price.  There’s no “add to cart” (even though you have a cart). You get given a configuration code, but then what?

In the top right of the servers page, I found a phone number labelled “Buy now from a Partner”. So I rang them, and they told me their system was down so they couldn’t access the sales department via computer, but they’d ring sales and get them to call me back in 10 minutes. Four hours later, I rang back, to be told that they had no record of my call, and it was usual for me to be just put through to sales directly and they didn’t know why I hadn’t been.

They put me through to sales. After being on hold for ten minutes, I got to speak to someone who told me that “this isn’t server sales, you’ll need another number”. They gave me another number, and I rang it. Again, I was put on hold for ages, only to be cut off as soon as someone answered. I rang back, and after another wait spoke to someone.

Turns out this particular department only supply servers to resellers.

They gave me another number to try, which was busy when I rang it. I called back the next day, eventually getting through. Only to be told I’d come through to the wrong department. Sigh.

This department gave me another number. Which, unsurprisingly, was the same one I’d run originally. This was going really well. I rang them, to be told – again – their system was down and they couldn’t contact sales. But they took my name, number and email address and would “get right back” to me. That was over a week ago.

I therefore declare it IMPOSSIBLE to buy a Lenovo server, and, by inference, I simply refuse to accept that Lenovo servers physically exist. I find it astonishing that a company of Lenovo’s size can be so disorganised and incompetent, and completely unable to even provide me with a price for something listed on their own website!

For what it’s worth, HP’s site came back up and took me less than 5 minutes to obtain a price for a similar product.

From: clement boot
Date: 8 March 2010 12:15
Subject: Order

Dear Customer Service

My name is Rev Clement Boot with the Boot’s & Company Inc and i am
sending this email to your business as per regards to the order for
some ((Bar Grating)) . I will want you to send me an email response
back with the types of ((Bar Grating))that you carry as well as their
prices that you carry in stock now so that i can make my selection and
let you know the type that i am looking for so that we can proceed
with the order and i will also like to know the forms of payment that
you accept so that we can proceed with the order.

Best Regards
Rev. Boot

Since, bizarrely, I also happen to run a company that make gratings and fences (not actually true), I thought I’d best email him back post haste!

Hello Dear Mr Rev. Boot,

I am very glad you have the time in contacting our company for the very purpose of enquiring about the products in the type of Bar Grating that we are producers of. We have many Bar Grading products suitable for floors and fencings. We have thicknesses for you from 10MM to 500MM and make curves to a degrees of 90%. Bar Gratings can be made from steel or 17% iron alloy bronze.

Payments can be made by PAYPAL or WESTERN UNION, in advancement of your shipping.

Please supply the specifications of the Bar Grating you wish to buy from us and our sales will invoice you with pricings for our produce.

Best Regards,
Mr. Harry Bloxham
Gratings and Fencings GMBH.

Could be onto a bit of cash here!

Update at 09:30!

Seems I’m not the only person the very Rev Boot has been contacting! This guy was asked to provide details of his kayak products, and this one was asked for 200.000pcs of iron! Clearly Clement is a terrorist.

What they’re not realising, is that graphics do not make a game, and not all Wii games are $some_activity Party – even if most are.

Take for instance the games I’ve been playing recently: Mario Kart Wii, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Castlevania Rebirth, Mega Man 10, Ghost Squad, House of the Dead: Overkill, The Conduit and Rabbids Go Home. None of these are available on another current console (although Mega Man 10 will be out on XBLA and PSN next week), and yet all get blasted for one or more of the issues listed above.

Some, such as Ghost Squad and HotD, would simply be rubbish on the PS3 or 360 as they don’t have the controls (a light gun) necessary to play them. Others would be just the same, only perhaps shinier (Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros). Some would actually be exactly the same (Mega Man 10, Castlevania). However, if all these games were released elsewhere, nobody would look down at them, pointing and laughing.

Instead, people ignore the great titles available on the Wii and settle back to “enjoy” the latest Call Of Duty: Dull Soldier Shooting and Generic Racing Game X, because they look great. They may well play great too, but that doesn’t mean they’re better.

So while I’ll happily play Batman: Arkham Asylum and GTA IV in glorious HD, I’ll have at least as much fun shooting mutants in the face in SD House of the Dead, and BWAAAAAAAHing at everyone and everything in Last-Gen-Graphics Rabbids Go Home. Because, y’know, fun is in the doing, not the seeing.

After all, there’s nothing worse than letting the creature who has devoured you waste your precious internets.

Note to self: Stay away from forum trading folders.

Anyhoo – the magazine!

The mobile version lets you add your location. Unlike Twitter’s map reference, Buzz displays your position as an address; a street name, shop, or business. Or for me, it thinks I might be inside a man.

The thing is, I know Shaun Conway. He was my driving instructor 10 11 14 years ago. And although he did have very nice hands, I don’t think I’d take it as far as Buzz is suggesting.

That’s the text message I sent, and this is a clip from the Chris Moyles show. I’m about 2:05 in.

The Chris Moyles Show

And, although I was looking forward to the reveal, I didn’t think I was going to be especially interested in the product. After all, I’ve had tablet PCs and PDAs and an iPhone and laptops and netbooks and stuff in the past. So it wasn’t going to be anything new.

I was wrong. I really want one. I’m right in that it does nothing new, but that’s not the point with Apple kit – little of it is actually new. The iPhone did nothing new. The iPod did nothing new. But Apple are masters of mastery; Of doing things right. The proof is there: mp3 players didn’t take off until Apple’s iPod, and now half of the competition are trying to duplicate the iPod. Touch screen phones had been around for years before the iPhone, but now every phone is an iPhone wannabe. So it is with the iPad.

Everything it does, has been done before. But it’s how it does it. How easy it is to do it. How powerful it is in doing it. How slick, smooth, seemless and shiny Apple have done it.

I can see the naysayers and iPad haters already making complaints and rubbishing it. It might well flop yet – after all, every other similar PDA/tablet/touchscreen device before it have already flopped – but this feels different. It gets so many things right that even if some of it’s functionality doesn’t take off, there’s loads left.

Take iBooks. It’s just Kindle mixed with Delicious Library. But then this is Kindle which can also play films. And games. And surf the internet.

Or it’s a portable movie player. That lets you read books, check your email, and do your online shopping.

Or it’s a games console. That doubles as an electronic photo frame, lets you view YouTube and plan a holiday.

Or it’s all of those things, and everything else the App Store can provide for you. As with the iPhone, it’s all the “value added” stuff that will make the machine. The iPhone without the App Store is a basic, but pretty and functional, smartphone. With it, it does everything you can imagine. If you can think of a need, there’s a pretty good chance (as they say) there’s an app for that.

If you’re the sort of person who wants a mobile office desk, with your desk diary, email, internet, notepad and so on, with features for when you have “down time” or are travelling (that’s your music, books, films and games then) it’s great. If, like me, you love the iPhone but when playing games or reading web pages you just want something… bigger, then it too is great.

Imagine playing the sort of games Microsoft were showing off with Surface – only without having to spend ten billion pounds to own one!

My only concern with it is the lack of a camera on the front. This would be ideal for Skype, but I’m betting there’ll be a camera add-on for the expansion socket available at some point.

Will I be getting one? I’d like one, certainly. But I might just wait until the second revision. If I can.

You see, Blogger announced recently that they were going to ditch FTP support for Blogger users. Since my Gaming Diary uses Blogger’s FTP features, and always has, this caused me a problem.

My options were:

• Migrate to a Blogger subdomain (urgh)
• Create a lofi-gaming.org.uk subdomain and direct that to my Blogger-hosted diary (not that bad an issue, but my URL would change)
• Move away from Blogger entirely (to Wordpress, by preference)
• Close the diary entirely
• Merge the diary with this blog
• Wee on some cakes and send them to Blogger with a note saying “Hey you guys!!! You suck! Have some cakes!!”
• Blast off and nuke the site from orbit

Since I’d been considering the third of these options, I decided upon that. And did. And now it’s done.

The new, migrated, diary is still at the old address of http://lofi-gaming.org.uk/diary but the RSS feed URL has changed to http://lofi-gaming.org.uk/diary/feed/so you’ll need to update that if you subscribe (and if you don’t why don’t you?!).

Maybe one day I’ll tell you all the story of how the migration involved headaches with MySQL servers and folder structures and Blogger’s interference trying to overwrite the new Wordpress install and css files going missing and Germany invading Poland and everything. Or perhaps I won’t. That would be very dull.

And, in that time I only broke the rule once, except that somehow, I hadn’t.

So the time has come to update the challenge. Looking at every game I’ve bought in the last year or so, not a single one has cost me more than £20. Why not, then, drop the limit to £20? It should be perfectly do-able, right?

Lets hope so!

Here’s the rules, recycled from last time:

I will no longer pay more than £20 for a game.

Hopefully the pay-offs will be three-fold:

1. I will save money (obviously)
2. I will, in a very small way, be protesting about the high cost of games
3. I won’t buy so many launch-day games that I don’t play for months

The latter in particular is a big thing. If I pay £40 at launch, and then don’t play it for six months, the chances are the price will have come down. OK, so I run the risk of never actually buying the game, but that’s better than the risk of buying it and never actually playing it, yes?

However, there will be some exceptions to this £20 Rule:

• If I have loyalty points, gift vouchers, store credit, etc. then these don’t count in the £20.
• If the game is, say, £25, but is in a “2 for £40″ offer, then the price counts as £20 if I buy both.
• For games that include extra hardware (Guitar Hero, for example) I am allowed to pay over £20, but never full price.
• Any postage costs are not part of the £20.

So, anyone fancy joining me in The £20 Game Challenge?

Shame I can’t do the same with live TV. By tomorrow morning I’d know the lottery results!

Oops!

Of course, it had to be this:

It’s three old Game & Watch games – Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Green House – all for the DS. Which is oooh shiny enough in itself, but becomes even more oooh shiny when you realise it isn’t available for sale anywhere. Excellent.

More surprising, is that I’ve somehow managed to complete a total of 43 games in the last 12 months. In 2008, I “only” completed 33.

But the best games of 2009? That’s an ask, isn’t it? Mainly because I’m pretty sure a lot of the games I played in 2009 were actually out in 2008. Or earlier. Much earlier in the case of some of the Megadrive titles I blitzed in the middle of the year! Apologies, then, if some of these are of an older vintage, but I’ll try to stay on-target with the year.

5. Words With Friends (iPhone)

Because it’s one of the games I’ve played the most. It’s just Scrabble, only legally not (so different letter scores and board layout), but the fact you can play others online and have a billion games on the go at once, makes it somewhat addictive.

4. Lit (Wii)

I seem to be the only person in the world who actually bought this, which is a shame. It’s a puzzle game, played out like a sort of reverse stealth game -you have to stay out of the dark or evil beasties eat you. Unusual and challenging.

3. New Super Mario Bros Wii (Wii)

This would be one notch higher if it wasn’t for just one thing – I’ve not played it enough yet, having only got it for Christmas. Perfectly built, inventive and clever. Nobody makes games like this any more – only Nintendo.

2. Little King’s Story (Wii)

Pikmin was an amazing game, and Little King’s Story owes much to it. You control a (growing) army of followers, of different types with different skills, and roam the world defeating bizarre bosses and collecting strange objects in order to “unite” the world essentially through ethnic cleansing. It’s cute, it has a few huge difficulty spikes, and it’s story can only be attributed to a loon. And it’s great.

1. Shadow Complex (360)

I love Metroid games. And I love Castlevania games. And Shadow Complex is the same sort of game – lots of exploring, and picking up new powers and items that open up more of the map. There’s nothing really new in it, and it’s got terrible, grating, voice acting. But! It’s the gameplay, the spot-on controls, and the amazingness of going from feeble weakling with a water pistol to an indestructible killing half-man, half-machine. So great is it, that the doable-in-5-hours story was done so many times, on every difficulty (bar Easy), that I’ve racked up over 60 hours on the game. And the OCD sufferer in me loves the item collection. 100% complete or nothing! It’s also a staggeringly good bargain at 1200 MS Points (it’s an Xbox Live Arcade title). My Game of the Year, for certain.

And the rest:

Other games of note from last year include the GTA IV add-on The Ballad of Gay Tony, which is another excellently written, funny, and fun to play GTA romp, Fallout 3 and it’s extra DLC (yeah, Fallout 3 was 2008 – but not all the DLC was) because it eats time itself, and GTA Chinatown Wars for the DS, which somehow managed to be a proper GTA without much compromise.

And hurrah for point-and-clicks! They made a return for me last year, with the last few Strong Bad episodes, Sam & Max, and Monkey Island. Thank $deity for Telltale Games!

So here is the Top Ten Things People Searched For And Found My Blog As A Result:

Interestingly, most of these refer to the twin scams of The Loyalty Awards Club and Survey UK. The error code (the second highest search) relates to an issue I solved with Microsoft Exchange 2003 – obviously it’s affecting quite a few people! The phone numbers are for another scam, and the final entry is because I seem to have become the Philips Freevents One Stop Shop Help And Advice Line.

In fact, looking back, most of the results are the same as those from last year!