January 2008 Archives

Thursday was football's transfer deadline day. In the past my hometown team; Peterborough United, have tended to be rather busy on deadline day. However, today there has be no announced business from them. In fact, their main activity during the entire month was just signing Joe Lewis from Norwich City for £400k on 8th January.

My main club, Manchester United have also been very quiet this month. Other than signing Manucho from Petro Atlético for an undisclosed fee their only other main deals have been the sale of Ryan Shawcross to Stoke for £1m on 18th January and the sale of Phil Bardsley to Sunderland for £2m on 22nd January.

Ever felt frustrated enough to want to go and destroy something? Visit Netdisaster and destroy the web.

Diet Blog is all about filtering the best of diet news and advice - and combining it with real-world application and opinion. The whole spectrum is covered - everything from body image to fast food.

Open Source Living is an archive of the Web's best Open Source software, applications and references.

Fark is a news aggregator and an edited social networking news site. Every day Fark receives 2,000 or so news submissions from its readership. Fark is what fills space when mass media runs out of news. Fark is supposed to look like news... but it's not news. It's Fark.

A better quality version of the teaser I mentioned previously has now appeared on the official Star Trek movie site. The trailer's no different than the previous one other than improved quality. There is also the option to watch the trailer in HD and also to register for updates.

GreatInventions.tv, as seen on TV - Innovative products for your home.

10 Strange Keyboards, a list of ten of the most unique keyboards on the market, or soon to be on the market.

Stolen/Borrowed from Casp's website.

Click is the BBC's flagship technology show and, in the UK, is broadcast weekly on BBC One and BBC News 24. Every week Spencer Kelly and the team cover the latest developments in the world of technology. The team review the latest gadgets and major tech news. Web highlights are covered by Kate Russell in the Webscape segment.

You can catch Click on the following days and times:

• UK Viewers:

Saturday
0645 BBC One / BBC News 24 (Short version)
1130 BBC News 24

Sunday
0430 BBC One / BBC News 24
0745 BBC News 24 (Short version)
1530 BBC News 24

Monday
0030 BBC News 24

• International viewers:

Click is also shown on the BBC's commercial and international channel, BBC World. Please visit BBC World for full scheduling details.

• On the website:

You can watch the latest programme online using the video link on the Click website. The programme will play in the BBC News Player. The internet edition of Click is always updated at 18:00 on Fridays.

Although I was fairly content with the minimalistic look of the blog since upgrading to MT4 I felt it lacked something. Therefore, I spent long periods of last night playing with various styles until I found one that I was relatively happy with.

After a wee bit of further tweaking, including adding a local header image, I think I've come up with a personalised version that I'm happy with. Other than potential slight tweaks in the future I'm sticking with the new look.

I've also incorporated an updated "About Me" page to bring that inline with the rest of the site's overall design.

I've found an online version of Lemmings located here. It has options for sound but it doesn't seem to work. Anyway, I've played through all the Fun levels and it seems a fairly accurate reincarnation.

Quite cool mosaics of Sonic & Mario; made from Avatars.

To relax one's self.

Source: Slang.ie

Browsing across the web I've come across this site a few times.

Most recently it was referenced here; which details some of the sites that were in existence back in 1996.

Looking for some of my old sites I couldn't find any references to my old Compuserve site from way back in 1997 but did find my Clara.net site from January 21st, 1998. And, although I started using this domain back in April 2000, the first archive I could find was from January 24th, 2001. Even though this blog has records only from April 2003 onwards I was posting info/blog entries even way back then, in January 2001 and do remember that I had been updating people even earlier than that.

I also found an archive of my old Quest site: Dawnraiders HQ; and We Are Borg; a site that I had an idea for but never progressed. It used to forward to an old MUD; Trekker's Rest, that I frequented at one point.

Here.

I took my kid sister shopping earlier this evening and had Melissa Etheridge's latest album, The Awakening, playing in the car. Now, I must admit, I'm a huge fan and whenever you get in my car there's a fairly good chance that if it's not a metal/goth album; such as Rammstein, Slayer, Within Temptation or Lacuna Coil, playing it'll be a Melissa Etheridge album instead. However, I didn't realise until this evening just how true that was. Melissa's not exactly mainstream music in the UK but my sister was sat in the passenger seat singing along to different parts of various songs.

It's been just over two weeks now since I had my toenails removed and I was back at the podiatrist yesterday to get the dressings changed. I've changed the dressings a couple of times myself but this was the first chance for the podiatrist to have a look at my toes since they first changed the dressings themselves the day after the procedure.

Anyway, the podiatrist was fairly happy with my progress but decided that I should change the dressings more frequently than I have been; every other day rather than every third day, and to continue using Inadine dressings on both toes for the next 4 changes to give them a better chance to heal. They still haven't started to scab up properly and do still weep a wee bit. They don't look at all pleasant at the moment.

My toes tend to hurt most of the time at the moment; although, not mind-numbing agony, but rather a dull ache. There are times during the day when they hurt a lot more and I end up taking a couple of painkillers to try and ease it. For example, I didn't need to take any painkillers at all yesterday but took 2 earlier this afternoon. I'm usually averaging 4 painkillers a day but there's been a couple of times when I've ended up taking either 8 or 10 in total and a couple of days when I've taken none. The weird thing is that it's rarely both toes at the same time and it's also interchangeable as to which toe is sorest at any given moment; although, it's mainly been the right toe for the last couple of days.

Wearing socks is painful and I currently tend to avoid doing so unless absolutely necessary. I can just about get my normal trainers on but when I put weight on either foot they hurt enough to persuade me to take them back off. My new slippers, although really soft and comfortable tend to crowd my toes so I'm currently wearing my old slippers, which have a nice, wide toe area, in the house and my really old trainers; which are more like a laced plimsol but very loose fitting when undone, if I have to go anywhere. Luckily I haven't needed to try and put shoes on since the procedure but I guess if I get an interview I will have to endure a couple of hours of extreme discomfort.

Thankfully, I've become a lot more aware of my surroundings and have taken great care to avoid knocking my toes in the last week or so. I've even gone so far as to place cushions/pillows in the bottom of the bed to raise the bed clothes off my feet at night and avoid scraping my toes on them. I tend to limp on both legs at the moment and driving any distance longer than a couple of miles is currently beyond my ability.

It's slow progress but the healing process is going in the right direction. I just hope it's far enough along by the end of March when we intend travelling down to Birmingham to see Nightwish.

Spotted the above vacancy with the Forestry Commission. Wages are on a par with my previous job but it sounds really interesting. The post is permanent and is located at North West Region Office, Peil Wyke, Bassenthwaite Lake, Cockermouth, Cumbria.

They are looking for somebody to provide efficient administrative support to technical field officers in processing grant schemes and felling licence applications from landowners and agents, and also provide administrative support to field based Woodland Officers in processing England Woodland Grants, (EWGS), Woodland Grant Scheme (WGS), and Felling Licence Applications (FLA) from landowners and agents throughout the application process.

The duties listed include:

• Administer grant payments associated with Forestry Commission grant schemes and Contribute to the team’s requirement for data capture and information management.


• Assist Woodland Officers manage existing business through the closed grant schemes. Also support them by occasionally attending site visits in cases of alleged illegal felling and assist in the information gathering and report preparation of the same.


• Occasionally, carry out GIS |(Geographic Information Services) mapping work as required. (Training will be given)


• Undertake general administrative duties to the wider team including IT support, answering telephones, filing and dealing with visitors to the office, also helping other members of staff respond to Freedom of Information requests.


• Take part in the annual Outreach Programme to inform our customers through regional seminars, events and workshops.

I've emailed them for an application pack.

Free on Xbox LIVE Arcade!

With all the connection problems that XBox Live users suffered over the Christmas and New Year period Microsoft announced earlier this month that they would be giving an XBox Live Arcade game away free to all subscribers.

They have now announced that Undertow is the game they are giving away. Undertow is a fast-paced action-shooter that sends you underwater as you battle up to 16 players for control of the oceans! I downloaded my copy yesterday afternoon and it's quite a fun little game.

Undertow would normally usually cost you 800 Microsoft Points but, for a limited time only; from 10am GMT Wednesday, 23 January until 8am GMT on Monday, 28 January it's absolutely free to all XBox Live subscribers. So, I recommend XBox 360 users, log into XBox Live and get downloading before the offer expires. This offer is valid for both Silver and Gold members.

I stumbled across Widgetbox by accident and after having a play around I've added a couple of the available widgets to my MySpace page. I may also add 1 or 2 here if I can find the right ones.

Anyway, from the Background page at Widgetbox:

Widgetbox™ is an open web widget marketplace and syndication platform. It serves both the developers who create widgets and the web publishers who use widgets on their sites.

A web widget is a small piece of interactive content (like an ad or a game) that can be dynamically embedded into a web page. Widgets allow for a new level of expression and creativity as personal web publishers use them to create value and interest in their blogs, social networks, personal home pages, and web sites. Widgetbox enables developers to easily build, distribute, promote, monitor and monetize widgets. It enables web publishers to easily find, configure, integrate and manage widgets.

Web publishers can search the Widgetbox gallery and use the categories, ratings and reviews to find the right widget. Once a widget is selected, Live Preview™ enables the web publisher to see the widget exactly as it will look configured for their site. The configuration is done without coding and the installation to the blog or web site is a visual process. In addition to this ease of use, Widgetbox has unique capabilities that make widgets smarter and more useful:

• Widget Panels: Drag & drop placement makes it easy to install and manage widgets within Widgetbox.
• Widget Metrics: Widget publishers get a metrics dashboard that allows them to track the spread of their widgets across the web.
• Live Widgets: Widgets are always “live” within blogs and web pages. They can be re-configured instantly and without touching HTML code.
• Smart Blogs: Widgets can be “tag aware”, meaning a web publisher can make widgets react to the content of their web site. For example, an image widget might display images related to the content of the most recent blog post.

Funny Or Die is a comedy video website that combines user generated content with original, exclusive content. The site is a place where celebrities, established and up-and-coming comedians and regular users can all put up stuff they think is funny. At the same time, the site hopes to eliminate all the junk that people have to pick through to find videos.

Money Blogger isn't a site I've really visited before today but a mention on Pewari's Prattle about a competition piqued my interest. Dom Ramsey, the guy behind the site, is offering his own personal 8gb iPod Nano as a competion prize.

The idea behind Money Blogger is quite simple; to see how much money he can make in a year from blogging. I will be revisiting his site at semi-regular intervals to keep up with his progress.

OnMyList is a site full of lists. From 10 Amazing Optical Illusions to Why Having a Roommate Sucks to Celebrity Scientologists to Signs You Are Having A Bad Day to Best Pictures from Google Street View. All these and more.

Shocked to discover that Heath Ledger, star of 10 Things I Hate About You, A Knight's Tale and Brokebank Mountain was found dead this afternoon in his Manhattan apartment. Police have said they do not suspect foul play. He was 28.

He plays the Joker opposite Christian Bale in this summer's Batman movie; The Dark Knight and had also been attached to Terry Gilliam's next feature; The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which is currently filming.

I've just watched one of the best games of football I've seen in a long time.

Tottenham Hotspur just beat Arsenal 5-1 in the second leg of the Carling Cup semi final; progressing by a 6-2 aggregate score. The game was very open and swung from end to end for virtually the entire match. Although Spurs were at full strength and Arsenal rested some key players the result is still quite a shock.

Spurs will now play the winners of the second semi final; either Everton or Chelsea, who conclude their tie on Wednesday evening. Chelsea lead the second semi final 2-1 after the first leg and Everton have it all to do.

The final will be played at Wembley on 24th February.

The burlesque performer and former Mrs Marilyn Manson is the new face of Wonderbra. The "Queen of Burlesque" will also design her own 1940s inspired limited edition collection for the lingerie firm. She follows in the footsteps of Eva Herzigova, Maja Latinović, Adriana Sklenaříková and Sophie Anderton.

Although some shops do manage to sell blank cds or dvds at reasonable prices the best deals are still to be found online; especially if you're buying in bulk.

I tend to check about 5 or 6 different sites before purchasing blank media and two of the sites that I use more often are:

• SVP Communications
• UKDVDR Ltd

Both have a large selection of media available and tend to be cheaper than the others more often than not. They also sell a number of other PC and general entertainment related items.

With more than 2 million readers per month, Oddee serves quality entertainment focused on the oddities of our world. Be amazed!

Seatwave.com is quite a useful site if you're thinking of going to a gig or sporting event and cannot find tickets.

The Escapist is a weekly online magazine that covers gaming and gamer culture with a progressive editorial style, with articles and columns by the top writers in and outside of the industry. Its magazine-style updates offer content for a mature audience of gamers, entertainment enthusiasts, industry insiders, and other “NetSet” readers.

One of the main highlights is Zero Punctuation, a series of weekly web video game reviews by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw; a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn't talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and does the occasional feature for Australia's Hyper Magazine.

This puppy is about as cute as you can get.

Cool video on YouTube called Suggestive Doodling.

A teaser trailer for the new Star Trek movie has managed to find it's way onto the web. It's very dark and low quality but can be seen here. It's likely the trailer may play alongside Cloverfield in the cinema.

GAME OVER is one of the art projects developed by the Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond (NOTsoNOISY creative agency). It consists of a series of collaborative animation movies which revive some of the very first video games. The pixels are replaced by a group of real human-beings that are moving from seat to seat in a theatre during about 4 to 6 hours. Each "pixel" has its own rules and decides what s/he wants to do for each picture. Once all these pictures are turned into a short animation movie, a giant human-scale video game unfolds "live".

The long-mooted Dragonlance movie has finally arrived. It was released in the US straight to DVD on Tuesday and I've managed to get hold of a copy of it.

Vocal talent includes Kiefer Sutherland as Raistlin Majere, Lucy Lawless as Goldmoon and Michelle Trachtenberg as Tika. With Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman both acting as creative consultants it's fairly faithful to the original novel and would appear to be the first in a series of films; depending upon how successful it is.

I watched it this evening and whilst it's not the greatest movie ever released, it's still reasonably enjoyable. It's an animated film more in the style of an updated version of the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon rather than something like Hoodwinked or Flushed Away.

This site was quite cool. It will change your browser resolution but do no lasting damage.

I don't know if it's just me but has anybody else ever noticed how many times you stub your toes during a normal day?

Obviously, my toes are rather sensitive at the moment and I've been taking it easy and trying to pay attention to where I'm placing my feet. However, I'm still managing to stub at least one of my toes once or twice every day. And, it bloody hurts...

Hopefully, they won't be quite so sensitive when they finally start to scab up.

If you're logged in and you get an error about requiring registration just log back out and then log back in. This should solve the problem. There is also the possibilty that some MT3.x cookies may be persisting. These are not compatible with MT4. Might be an idea to check what cookies you have referencing bowch.co.uk and deleting them.

Due to the current rules regarding licensing fees for Internet music services Pandora are to block access to its service by UK users. Pandora founder Tim Westergren recently sent out an e-mail to Pandora users explaining that the U.K. version of the site would have to shut down. In the e-mail Westergren writes, “both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.”

There is a petition on the 10 Downing Street website asking the government to look at the current situation and legislate if necessary. Please visit and sign the petition.

RPG Motivational Posters.

After it had originally appeared that the move to MT4 had gone fine it transpires that the commenting system has broken.

I've had reports of people trying to post, only to receive an error stating that registration is required.

Could people try and post comments on this entry.

Please drop me an email at bowchuk(AT)googlemail(DOT)com if you can't post.

The doctor has decided that my blood pressure is high enough to warrant concern and has prescribed Irbesartan to try and bring it under control.

Instructions on how to create Mii Characters based on famous people and characters.

Please check out: FreeRice.com.

As the title above suggests, this link is a collection of statues and sculptures. The comments on the page also includes a few extra links to other statues.

A list of Digg's best 25 images from 2007 can be found here.

The SASRA FRP & Wargames Club are having a late Christmas Party this evening.

We'd originally booked the venue; a local Scout hut, for an LRP but when it was decided that the LRP wasn't going ahead the idea was raised of holding a late Christmas Party instead. The nice thing is that we have the venue exclusively for ourselves all weekend and means we can crash at the venue overnight.

It's not going to be a classic party more of a communal get together of a load of like-minded friends.

We'll have a Nintendo Wii there and a few tabletop games such as Munchkin and Illuminati.

Should at least take my mind of things and give me a chance to unwind and maybe have a little bit of fun.

If you are, then maybe one of the following sites might be of use:

• A+ Video Game Cheats
• Cheat Code Central
• CheatCentral.net
• CheatServer
• Console-Cheats.com
• GameCheats.eu
• GamerHelp
• GamesRadar's CheatPlanet
• Gamespot's GameFAQs
• GameWinners.com
• GameZone
• IGN FAQs
• MyCheatSite
• PureCheats
• UGO's Super Cheats

Some of them are better than others.

Of the 15 sites listed I would personally recommend Gamespots's GameFAQs and IGN FAQs.

After upgrading to the latest version of Movable Type I decided to shuffle things about.

All the blog links are still on the left but all other links, including links to pages still on the site are now on the right.

I've also added a calendar for the current month and expanded the monthly archives to show all months rather than just the last 12.

Consumer Electronics Show 2008

The biggest electronics show of the year has recently taken place in Las Vegas and you can check out various reports of what we can look forward to below.

• Engadget take a look here.
• Gizmodo take a look here.
• MSN take a look here.
• Reg Hardware take a look here.
• Wired.com Gadget Lab take a look here.

I may have blogged about this site in the past but thought now was a good time to direct you there again.

Please check out Order of the Stick.

Not only am I heartbroken but I also feel like a complete bastard.

Had the toe nails on both big toes removed this morning.

Click here to check these out.

As the subject suggests; some pretty creative ads here.

My dog, Tasha, is not well.

A first-grade teacher, Ms. Brooks, was having trouble with one of her students. The teacher asked, "Harry, what's your problem?"

Harry answered, "I'm too smart for the 1st grade. My sister is in the 3rd grade and I'm smarter than she is! I think I should be in the 3rd grade too!"

Ms. Brooks had had enough. She took Harry to the principal's office.

While Harry waited in the outer office, the teacher explained to the principal what the situation was. The principal told Ms. Brooks he would give the boy a test. If he failed to answer any of his questions he was to go back to the 1st grade and behave. She agreed.

Harry was brought in and the conditions were explained to him and he agreed to take the test.

Principal: "What is 3 x 3?"

Harry: "9."

Principal: "What is 6 x 6?"

Harry: "36."

And so it went with every question the principal thought a 3rd grader should know.

The principal looks at Ms. Brooks and tells her, "I think Harry can go to the 3rd grade"

Ms. Brooks says to the principal, "Let me ask him some questions."

The principal and Harry both agreed.

Ms. Brooks asks, "What does a cow have four of that I have only two of?"

Harry, after a moment: "Legs."

Ms. Brooks: "What is in your pants that you have but I do not have?"

The principal wondered why would she ask such a question!

Harry replied: "Pockets."

Ms. Brooks: "What does a dog do that a man steps into?"

Harry: "Pants."

Ms. Brooks: What starts with a C, ends with a T, is hairy, oval, delicious and contains thin, whitish liquid?"

Harry: "Coconut."

The principal sat forward with his mouth hanging open.

Ms. Brooks: "What goes in hard and pink then comes out soft and sticky?"

The principal's eyes opened really wide and before he could stop the answer, Harry replied, "Bubble gum."

Ms. Brooks: "What does a man do standing up, a woman does sitting down and a dog does on three legs?"

Harry: "Shake hands."

The principal was trembling.

Ms. Brooks: "What word starts with an 'F' and ends in 'K' that means a lot of heat and excitement?"

Harry: "Firetruck."

The principal breathed a sigh of relief and told the teacher, "Put Harry in the fifth-grade, I got the last seven questions wrong.

Found a nice collection of Flash games here.

This looks and feels deceptively easy.

Click here.

Cops have a sense of humour.

Check out this link.

Found a nice useful geeky site.

Just over a week after Christmas and it's started snowing here. Unfortunately the forecast is for rain on Friday and Saturday; but we can hope...

The 2007 Darwin Awards.

Yes, it's that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us.

Here is the glorious winner:

1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach , California , would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.

Here's a link to a neat little game

This is quite good.

All the best for 2008 to one and all.