Formatting mail merge fields in Word

This comes up all the time at work, and I always struggle to find the page and never remember to bookmark it. So now I don’t need to! Who’d have thought you could use a blog as a bookmarking tool? Oh yeah, StumbleUpon realised. Anyway. The reason I needed it this time was because numbers in an Excel spreadsheet were being rounded up, or down, or converted from (say) “75.0” to “74.99999999999999” for seemingly no reason when mail merged in …

Amazing graffiti

But not in an artistic sense. Pictures of Walls is a site with hundreds of photos of, well, pictures of walls, with graffiti on. Funny graffiti, clever graffiti, and downright bizarre graffiti. Par example: And:

Emails from the Dawn of Time #3

In 2001, the Game Boy Advance was released. I was pretty keen on getting one (and I did, as soon as physically possible), but before it came out I chased up a few places to find out how much it was going to cost. I sent this to “Madeira Games” on the 17th March, 2001: How much will the GBA cost? Is it a Japanese import, or is the preorder for a UK machine? How much are the games? When …

Eternal Sonata crash horror – and fix!

So I’ve been playing the 360 game Eternal Sonata a lot recently, and now, 17 hours in, I’ve been getting a lot of crashing and freezing. In fact, I can replicate the following every single time: It seems to do it as it’s loading something new in, like a baddie, or a list of items, or some dialogue.Thankfully, I found what appears to be a fix. Like many Xbox 360 games, the problem lies in the data the game caches …

Answering unasked questions #1

Some questions I’ve not been asked, but I think are on your lips anyway. I’ve been looking at the search terms people have been using to find my blog, and the same things are cropping up most days. Q: Hey deKay – what’s this “destroy my gems” thing all about? A: I have no idea. Well, I have some idea. You’re talking about this, right? Well, there was some discussion about the Amiga puzzle game “Gem-X” (specifically, its crap box-art) …

Fillum Review: Magicians (2007)

Imagine an episode of Peep Show, only three times as long and with the two main characters in a different situation, i.e. that they’re not Mark the dullard and Jez the layabout, but Harry the (dullard) magician and Karl the (layabout) magician. So Harry finds out Karl is sleeping with his wife (who also happens to be their assistant), and lo, Harry accidently kills her with a guillotine. As you do. The pair split, careers spiral, and they don’t speak …

2007: A Year in Gaming – Epilogue

Phew, eh? That’s a lot of games. Overall, I’ve completed 61 this year, and played around 200 (if you include demos).¬¨‚Ć So what was best?¬¨‚Ć What was unexpected? Biggest Surprise Almost certainly Halo 3. I didn’t like the campaign mode (which I played a fair bit of in co-op – I actually completed it too, although didn’t play every chapter). The surprise was enjoying online multiplayer as much as I did. Team Fortress 2 is better, in my opinion (especially …

2007: A Year in Gaming – Part 3

September The beginning of The Big Game Crunch of 2007.¬¨‚Ć Basically, every game in the world arrived in the post and I had to play them all. Most played in September (once RE4 was out of the way) was probably Super Paper Mario.¬¨‚Ć A fantastic game, by all accounts, and coupled with RE4, Mercury Meltdown Revolution and MySims proved that the Wii certainly was a fantastic console. Sonic the Hedgehog made himself known this month too, with Sonic 2 on …

2007: A Year in Gaming – Part 2

May May was more varied than previous months this year.¬¨‚Ć There was Eledees and Wing Island on the Wii, Crackdown, Lego Star Wars II and Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland on the 360, and the amazing Ouendan 2 on the DS, as well a plethora of 360 demos, XBLA games, and Wii VC titles. I struggled with the original NES Castlevania (on the VC) for a while too, and never did manage to complete it.¬¨‚Ć It’s just too hard! June Oh …

2007: A Year in Gaming – Part 1

So, the end of the year is nigh, and I thought I’d round up this year’s games. That is, the games I’ve played this year, rather than just those that have come out this year, although in most cases it’s the same thing. January The year started as 2006 ended – with Castlevania. Specifically, Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance on the GBA, supplemented by Super Castlevania IV for the Wii’s Virtual Console. There was also a lot …

The day of presents

Hurrah! Big Hairy Jesus Day is upon us, and gifts galore were unwrapped. So, in the style of first day of term playgroud boasting, what did you get? Personally, I snagged a pile of games I’ve been after for a while, including Psychonauts, Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, and camp-tastic Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. Amazing! Also: David Bowie albums FTW!