April 2008 Archives

Chelsea will play Manchester United in the Champions League Final in Moscow on Wednesday May 21st.

The first half of tonight's game wasn't particularly inspiring; in fact I fell asleep during it. Liverpool played very poorly in the first half and Chelsea went into half-time with a deserved 1-0 lead thanks to a superb finish by Didier Drogba. The second half saw Liverpool play much better and Chelsea seemed to vanish. An excellent finish from Fernando Torres saw Liverpool equalize on the night and force extra time.

The first half of extra time saw Chelsea have a Michael Essien goal disallowed for offside and then a mistake by Sammi Hyppia which gave Chelsea a penalty that Frank Lampard converted for a 2-1 lead. Another superb strike from Didier Drogba, after good work by Nicolas Anelka and half-time in extra time saw Chelsea leading 3-1 on the night. A trip by Didier Drogba on Sammi Hyppia early in the second half of extra time should have resulted in a penalty for Liverpool but the referee waved away the claims. A late strike by Ryan Babel with less than 5 minutes left pulled it back to 3-2 but Liverpool couldn't find a way to equalize.

I would have preferred to see a Manchester United - Liverpool Champions League Final but beating Chelsea in Moscow will probably feel even better.

For the last 30 minutes I've been a bit of a nervous wreck; hoping and praying that Barcelona wouldn't get an equalizing goal that would take them through to the Champions League Final. Both teams played a lot of the game on the front foot and both sides could have scored a couple of goals.

I've been a bit critical of Paul Scholes in recent weeks; I thought he'd been playing poorly and giving the ball away much more than he should. The goal he scored tonight forgives him of all of that. Rio Ferdinand and Wes Brown were excellent in the centre of defence and Carlos Tevez was tireless all over the front line.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's second semi-final between Chelsea and Liverpool. I'd prefer Liverpool to go through but with an all-English final assured I'm not really going to be too bothered if Chelsea succeed and go through to face Manchester United in Moscow.

My current Ratkin story arc came to a successful conclusion last night. The rats managed to infiltrate the bad guy's haven and after a fairly lengthy battle defeat him and his 4 demon cohorts. This was mainly due to some careful planning beforehand where everybody was assigned tasks by the pack leader. Whilst the rest of the pack concentrated on the 4 demons the pack leader; Fred, a warrior, went toe to toe with the vampire. With both the vampire and Fred close to death Fred put in one last concerted effort; he spent a willpower point to ignore wound penalties, and managed to finally drop the vampire. Everybody received a healthy award in terms of their renown and a substantial XP award.

Even though I really enjoy running Ratkin I now want to concentrate on actually playing something for a while and have warned my players that I may not run Ratkin again this year.

Although Windows XP SP3 is due to be officially released through Windows Update tomorrow it is available for download from Microsoft's website today. I've just downloaded and installed it; took about 15 minutes to downloaded the 300mb or so and it installed in about the same length of time..

I made a point of creating a restore point prior to installation; although SP3 creates a system restore point anyway. Everything went okay with the update and the system rebooted afterwards. It seemed a wee bit quicker to boot back into windows although setting up personalizations for Outlook and Address Book took a while.

So far, the only thing that's complained is Style XP which seems to think it's incompatible with the SP3, although the style/theme I previously set seems to be working okay anyway.

Those awfully nice people at Avanquest and VNU have teamed up to give readers of Computer act!ve magazine a free copy of VCOM Fix-It Utilities 7 Express.

The download is available from here and then you will need to visit here to register with a valid email address.

Computer act!ve also provide a variety of other software downloads which can be perused here.

The newest version of Ubuntu, version 8.04 or Hardy Heron to it's friends, was released this week. Rather than waiting for my new discs to come through the post I decided to use the inbuilt update manager to upgrade. It would be a good test of how Ubuntu handled things.

I set it off at about 6:30pm yesterday evening and it had finished downloading and installing the upgrade by about 4am this morning with only minimal interaction from me; regarding obsolete software that it wanted permission to remove. The reason it probably took so long was that when the laptop is running then the net connection is shared between 3 pcs and the fact that it was in the other room and I only checked it occasionally, so I have no idea how long it had sat waiting for my input on the 2 occasions it needed it.

One reboot later and everything is tickety-boo. Nothing is broken and to be honest I think it boots a wee bit quicker. The next big step software-wise is Windows XP SP3 which is officially released this coming Monday.

The BBC are reporting that Guillermo del Toro; director of Pan's Labyrinth and both Hellboy movies, has been named as the director of the The Hobbit and its proposed sequel.

The films, planned for release in 2010 and 2011, will be prequels to the Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by New Zealand's Peter Jackson. Jackson will produce the films, to be made back-to-back in New Zealand.

According to studio New Line, the first will be an adaptation of The Hobbit, the novel Tolkien published before his Lord of the Rings cycle and the second will be an original story focusing on the 60 years between the book and the beginning of the Rings trilogy.

I went out for a drink last night. I've only just got home. I had fun!

Tricia Helfer, Six/Caprica from the new Battlestar Galactica has landed a role in the second season of Burn Notice. She will play Carla; Michael's handler.

Amy Acker, formerly of Angel, has been added to the cast of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and will co-star with Eliza Dushku.

Sky's drama department has commissioned Blakes 7 Productions, a subsidiary of Blakes 7 Media to write 2 60 minute scripts for a potential relaunch of the BBC's cult sci-fi classic; Blake's 7. No word on dates or potential cast yet.

Reports are also circulating that both Sarah Chalke and Britney Spears will be be reprising their roles in upcoming episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

Finally, rumours are rife that Gary Dourdan may be leaving CSI; some reports even suggest that he may have been fired, and that Khandi Alexander appears likely to be leaving CSI:Miami.

Okay, not quite, but it did sound like it had; or at least got shot. Actually, it was a CD shattering in one of my drives. I've heard stories of discs shattering in drives before but never came across it either with one of my drives or any of the myriad of friends and family that own pcs.

Anyway, I powered down the PC; took the drive out and then took it apart and emptied out all the bits of cd that were scattered inside and spent a good 15 minutes going over it with a fine brush to ensure there were no remnants left. I've put the drive back together and it's still reading and burning discs okay. Lucky escape methinks.

This blog was officially launched five years ago today.

In those five years I've made over 400 entries and received over 300 comments. Topics I've covered include my job, my health, my relationship with my ex-girlfriend, my roleplaying experiences, my music tastes and the gigs I've attended; including Download festivals, my tv tastes, the movies I've seen, the games I've enjoyed, tech that I've thought worthy of note, websites that I've come across, Manchester United and other sporting topics that interest me.

For about the first year of the blog's life I used zShaped as the backend before moving over to using Movable Type in 2004. I've also changed hosts twice. I originally started with Fasthosts and then moved to Easily before settling in December 2006 with Compila.

The main reasons for going with a dedicated host rather than using an ISPs provided space were:

• If I moved ISP I wouldn't need to worry about having to upload the website and database to somewhere else.
• It was also a case that ISPs didn't provide the sort of php, perl and SQL support that I needed.

From April '03 until April '07 I made 191 entries. This is entry 227 in the year since then and 193 of those have been made since the start of January this year. I never officially announced an intention to blog as regularly as I have in the last 4 months but the fact that I lost my job kind of motivated me and has given me more free time. Sometimes it's been hard to find anything to blog about and I've just ended up posting links to sites that I've discovered and enjoyed. At other times I've had loads of things to talk about at various times of the day and ended up posting 3 or 4 entries in a day.

The next milestone is 500 entries and then in 2 years time; 12th April 2010, it will be the tenth anniversary of the launch of the domain. You never know, I may, by then, be celebrating 1000 entries.

This week is week 7 of the current 8 week session of Ratkin and it should hopefully reach a conclusion this evening. With this only being week 7 of 8 it means that if they run into difficulties there's still next week to get the story arc finished. Either way, next week will hopefully see the party get back to an area of safety and get their exploits acknowledged.

The current story arc has involved a vampire causing no end of problems to Umbral travelers and the group have gained information that leads that to believe that the main bad guy has a hideout on the island of Isla de Vieques, just to the east of Puerto Rico. However, they still need to reach the island and then find his hideout.

Information they've received suggests that he's a 700+ year old sorcerer/infernalist who was originally sentenced to death for witchcraft in the 14th century. They've done some considerable research and his name pops up every now and again. Evidence also suggests that he's a very wealthy and influential figure with places on the boards of various Pentex subsidiaries.

There's been a few deaths along the way and Craig's character is the only character still left in the current party from the original 8-hour session. Although, that session did only have 3 characters. The party has seen some changes over time and is now a party of 6 characters with another 7 characters that are not involved in the final stages of the plot.

Hopefully, they can manage to catch up with and dispose of the bad guy; although, there is still a chance he may escape. There's also the possibility that some or all of the rats could die. I'm hoping not though; because there's a really good group dynamic going on and I want to finish this arc and then move on with them; possibly after a couple of months away from it.

Whatever happens, it should be an interesting evening.

Three times last night Boston came from behind before taking the lead 4-3 with 4:15 left in the third period. Montreal tied it back up 11 seconds later before Boston took their final lead with 2:37 left and finally won 5-4. The series is now tied 3 games apiece after Boston had trailed by 3 games to 1. Game 7 is in Montreal on Monday night.

The Bruins, seeded 8th in the eastern conference, have never won a series after trailing 3-1. Monday night, they get another chance, the 21st in franchise history, to end that streak and knock out the Canadiens, the 1st placed seeds in the east.

Normally on a Monday night I'll record WWE Raw and perhaps, depending on how tired I am, watch the first hour or so. Not this Monday! Instead, I'll be recording Raw and watching and cheering on Phil Kessell, Milan Lucic and the rest of the Bruins.

Strong rumours coming out of Fox suggest that they've renewed Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles for a second season. Yay, more Summer Glau!

We have now reached the pinnacle of the movie industry.... Yeah, right, my thoughts exactly.

A hard fought draw for a below par Manchester United has opened up a three point lead for them over Chelsea at the top of the Premier League table. Both teams have 3 games left and they meet next weekend at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium.

For long periods it looked like United were not going to get anything out of the game; especially with Blackburn's Brad Friedel making a string of excellent saves near the end of the match. United felt they should have had a penalty within the last 10 minutes when the ball struck Brett Emerton's elbow but with about 5 minutes left Carlos Tevez headed in from a corner to cancel out Roque Santa Cruz's first half goal.

Even if United lose to Chelsea next weekend they have a vastly superior goal difference and the title would still be in their own hads. They round out the season with games against Wigan Athletic and West Ham United. However, their next game is the Champions League Semi-Final 1st leg vs Barcelona at the Camp Nou on Wednesday evening.

If I ever find out who is responsible for writing the Vundo trojan...

I've recently made a couple of minor tweaks to the blog:

• Category archives now display all the entries in a category rather than just the last 20 entries.
• The links and blogroll navigation on the left now uses a cascading menu rather than displaying a huge, long list.

The category display change was a 5 minute job but the blogroll menu took most of the afternoon to get it the way I wanted, and is accomplished totally within CSS; I've used no javascript at all to create it. I'd appreciate feedback over whether the new blogroll menu is preferable to the old style. I've noticed it's easier to navigate if you move off a section sideways before trying to open up a different section rather than trying to move straight down between the sections.

The merger of Vivendi Games with Activision has gained approval from the EU. Amid claims that it could prove to be anti-competitive the EU has argued that the combined company would still face stiff competition in the marketplace from the likes of EA, Sony & Nintendo amongst others.

Under the terms of the deal, Vivendi would hold a roughly 52 percent majority of the merged company by contributing Vivendi Games, valued at $8.1 billion, including Blizzard Entertainment, and $1.7 billion in cash. Activision would then be renamed Activision Blizzard and continue to operate on the Nasdaq as ATVI. Within five days of the deal closing, Activision Blizzard would launch a $4 billion all-cash tender offer to purchase up to 146.5 million Activision shares at $27.50. Vivendi has agreed to purchase up to $700 million of new shares at the same price.

• Current Activision CEO Robert Kotick will be president and CEO.
• Bruce Hack, current CEO of Vivendi Games, will serve as vice-chairman and chief corporate officer.
• Mike Griffith will be president and CEO of Activision Publishing (including the Sierra Entertainment, Sierra Online and Vivendi Games Mobile divisions in addition to the Activision business).
• Mike Morhaime will continue to serve as president and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment.
• Thomas Tippl, currently CFO of Activision, will become CFO.
• Jean-François Grollemund, currently CFO of Vivendi Games, will be appointed chief accounting officer of the new company.

The new company will be the largest of the third-party games publishers ahead of the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Take Two, with an estimated value of approximately $19 billion.

Back in January 2006 I blogged about wanting a new keyboard; the Optimus Maximus. Well, it's now officially available.

Unfortunately, it's a wee bit out of my price range and I can't see too many everyday PC users buying one. If you had £800 spare would you spend it on a new keyboard for your PC? No? Neither, would I! I think I'll stick with my current Cherry keyboard until I can get around to buying myself a Saitek Eclipse II instead.

£800 for a keyboard; I could build a decent quad-core PC for that...

I've just discovered a rather awesome Battlestar Galactica podcast; the Galactica Watercooler. The podcast has a definite talk-radio feel and includes phone-ins.

I installed Ubuntu on my laptop about a month or so ago and have been dual booting it with XP ever since to see how things worked out. After a month of using Ubuntu I haven't once had to drop into XP on the laptop and am considering the test successful. There's been nothing I've wanted to do on the laptop that I haven't been able to do in Ubuntu and the next step is to upgrade to Hardy Heron, the next version of Ubuntu, when it's released in a couple of weeks.

However, having said all that, I'm still not going to install it on my main PC; for a number of reasons:

• I still have a lot of Windows based applications and games and really don't want to have to mess about with Wine or other software to get them running under Linux.


• If somebody phones, emails or IMs me looking for some PC advice it makes life much easier having XP in front of me so that I can walk them through the problem.


• The desktop is left switched on virtually constantly; it's only ever switched off if there's a need to reboot, so dual booting would be a waste of hard drive space.


• And, the main reason I'm not installing it on my desktop is that I like the way my PC is currently set up and am very comfortable with it. Even with having to reinstall XP once or twice in the last 3 or 4 years I've still ended up using the same sort of settings and the same little utilities I've always used.

However, I can happily say that if you don't like or just don't want to use XP or Vista I can recommend Ubuntu as a very good alternative. Just be aware that although support for Ubuntu is very good, it's nowhere near as widespread or accessible as it is for the Windows platforms, and gaming suffers similarly. There is a vibrant community out there and members are more than happy to help others out.

In summary, Ubuntu is brilliant and I've no intentions of removing it from the laptop. I might even go the whole hog yet and remove XP from it totally. But, I like XP on my desktop and am not going to give it up.

As part of a promotion meant exclusively for readers of VNU, ComputerActive and Personal Computer World, Avira is giving away a free 6-month license for Avira AntiVir Premium.

Visit the Avira Online Shop to register for the key code and then download Avira AntiVir Premium (for Windows 2000, XP, XP 64 Bit, Vista 32 Bit and 64 Bit) from here.

To conicide with the launch of Trackmania United Forvever, Nadeo have just released Trackmania Nations Forever and it's free.

Trackmania Nations Forever features :

• 65 brand new tracks.
• Solo and team based multiplayer modes.
• One complete TrackMania environment: Stadium ''Forever''.
• An in-game track editor to create your own tracks.
• A video studio to realize your own movie.
• A paint shop to customize your vehicles.
• Official ladders for solo and multiplayer.
• Compatible with TrackMania United Forever (profile and multiplayer servers).

Trackmania United Forever, which will retail for £29.99, features :

• 4 single player modes (Race, Platform, Stunt and Puzzle).
• 265 spectacular progressively challenging tracks.
• 7 types of vehicles offering different gameplay and driving experiences.
• 7 TrackMania environments.
• Solo and team based multiplayer modes.
• A spectacular graphics update for the three historic environments.
• Integrated peer-to-peer sharing system to showcase all of your customizations.
• A resource-sharing system to acquire and exchange new tracks, vehicles and skins.
• Manialinks, an in-game Internet browser.
• Earn "Coppers", the virtual currency of TrackMania.
• Official rankings in solo and multiplayer.
• Create your own tracks with the TrackMania editor.
• Create your own vehicles with the TrackMania paint shop.
• Create your own videos with the TrackMania movie studio.

You can pre-order Trackmania United Forever for £24.99 from Amazon, via my associate store, or you can buy it as a digital download for only £19.99 from GamesPlanet. Be warned though; it's 1.5GB.

An article on last night's Gadget Show caught my attention. With the abundance of digital downloads nowadays it's rather a minefield as to whether or not they are covered by your contents insurance. I've never actually bought any digital downloads and would much rather have the physical media in my hand. But, the article got me thinking "What if I did own some?"

I've checked my policy document and I'm still not certain whether I would be covered or not. The policy document doesn't specifically define digital downloads but in the section on General Exclusions it lists 'Date change and computer viruses' and has the following definition: 'Computers include hardware, software, data, electronic data processing equipment and other computing and electronic equipment linked to a computer.' That means that I'm not covered for data loss by date changes or computer viruses. Now, because it says that these exclusions apply to all sections of the policy I would think that it's probably fair to assume that the definitions also apply to the whole policy. If that's the case, then digital downloads; as part of the data, would be covered for loss by theft or accidental damage.

I've just created a Twitter profile for myself. Anybody interested can follow me. Shockingly, 'Bowch' was already taken so I'm signed up as 'BowchUK'. In fact, further delving reveals that the 'Bowch' username is actually me when I signed up for Liberal Democrat updates back in January. Unfortunately, I don't know what email address or password was used and can't seem to recover it. So, I'm 'BowchUK' on Twitter.

Just a quick link for you today:

• Snurfy

My internet connection is currently busted. BT are sending out an engineer tomorrow morning.

I'm off roleplaying today so here's a quick link for you:

• Red Square

See how long you can last.

My record is 17.047 18.016 seconds.

Oh, and this is my 400th entry since starting the blog almost 5 years ago.

Today, I have been mostly troubleshooting PCs.

First off this morning my sister phoned me with some problems so I ended up talking her through installation and running of some Anti-Spyware software. Dad's PC had a similar issue just after lunch and I spent a good hour or so sorting that too.

Scoot phoned mid-afternoon to say he was having problems with his PC. The screen resolution had downgraded to 800x600 and anytime he tried to change it back to 1024x768 it came up with an error. Ended up popping down and finally decided that a reinstall of Windows was in order. He's been running Win98 and had only done 1 reinstall in the last 10 years. Anyway, I had a spare copy of XP which I gave him and installed that for him. Installed a few other bits and pieces and set the hard drives off defragging to help out as much as possible. Couldn't do any software updates for him since he isn't connected to the net.

I got home and my sister asked me to help her out on The Spiderwick Chronicles. I spent a good hour or so trying to help her out and ended up giving up.

I came back upstairs, plugged the laptop's lead in and got a nice white flash from the extension. Quickly unplugged and took the lead downstairs to change fuses. The fuse that I took out happened to still be fine and powered up a CD player. I put a new fuse in anyway and took the lead back upstairs. Moved a couple of plugs about and everything, including the extension that had flashed and my laptop, is still fine.

We've got an unwanted and uninvited visitor; a mouse. I went to get the cereal out of the cupboard this morning to discover one of the cornflakes bags have been split open and one of the boxes of weetabix have been chewed through. We've disposed of anything that even had the slightest chance of contamination and spent the rest of the day going through all the cupboards in the kitchen, emptying them, disinfecting them and ensuring that any possible route of ingress has been blocked. We've also moved any boxes or bags of foodstuffs at risk out of the bottom cupboards and put them up into the higher cupboards, We haven't put any poison or traps down but we may yet end up doing so.

Tonight, Manchester United successfully joined Liverpool and Chelsea in the semi-finals of this season's Champions League. This is the second season in a row that 3 English clubs have made the semi-finals and marks the 4th season in a row that an English side will reach the final.

The 2 semi-final first legs will be held on 22nd and 23rd April with the second legs on 29th and 30th April. First legs are:

• Chelsea vs Liverpool
• Barcelona vs Manchester United

I ordered some blanks dvds over the weekend for myself, my Dad and a friend. I ordered them from BigPockets and they arrived this morning.

Along with the DVDs I also ordered a Bag O' Crap. For £2.99 they sent me a box with 'three crappy items' in it. The only guarantee they made was that the contents would be worth a lot more then a measly £3.

I received a Masterplug Weather Resistant Plug Shelter which isn't on their website, but sells for about £1.30 from SVP, a pair of in-ear earphones which also aren't on their site but probably retail for about £1, a pack of 4 Memorex Energy Super Heavy Duty 'C' Batteries, which they sell for £1.80 and the pièce de résistance; a 240 disc AMPS DJ Style Aluminium Carry Case, which they retail for just over £11. So, £15 of product for £3. I can't complain and am actually quite happy with what I received.

I thought I'd broken iTunes last night.

The Apple Software Updater stated that there was a new version available so I let it download and install it. Part way through the process it came up with an error, during the QuickTime portion, regarding not having enough privileges to install. So, I cancelled the install, got it to retry another 2 times with no luck and then told it to just download and I would do a manual install. Still popped up with the same error.

By this time iTunes was unusable, so, I went to Apple's website and downloaded the full package from there. Still no luck. Next, I decided to try a different route and install QuickTime first and then iTunes. Still no luck. So, I decided to change the default install location and managed to get QuickTime installed. Next, iTunes. Still, no luck, kept on coming up with the error regarding privileges.

I then decided to admit defeat and try to reinstall the old version of iTunes. Still no luck. Right, restore point. Nope, Windows refused to roll back. Further delving and I finally figured out what was going wrong.

I've previously had problems with the PC sharing files properly over the network and had tried all sorts of things to solve it. One of which was to disable Simple File Sharing and use NTFS security settings. Looking at the security settings for different drives and folders I had managed to change some of the settings so that nobody other than the Administrator had rights to certain folders. So, when the installer tried to install it came across the problem that not even the System had rights to write to a directory. Restoring the security settings solved that problem.

I started the iTunes installer for about the 15th time and it installed QuickTime fine but then kept on coming up with an error concerning the iTunes.msi file. Pointing it to the file didn't work. Reading the error closely I realised it was referring to the version of iTunes that I had previously had installed. I pointed the installer at the old iTunes.msi and everything was fine from then on.

As a nice added bonus I've finally got file sharing working correctly all across the network, including Dad's PC and my laptop under Ubuntu. I can even browse the network using my phone.

Moral of the story is that even when you think you know what you're doing, you probably don't!

Since 1991, Regulation (EEC) No 918/83 has limited the maximum value of goods imported into the EU before incurring customs charges at €22 [£17.50]. From 1st December 2008 this limit will rise to €150 [£119.50] as a result of EU Council Directive 2007/74/EC. The text of the proposal can be found here.

We had a power cut this afternoon. The weather has been okay for the last couple of days and it would appear that the local sub station failed rather than the weather being responsible. Big plumes of white smoke and the replacement of the biggest fuse you could imagine later and all is good again. The power was down for about 3 hours or so and thankfully we went out shopping so didn't have to find alternate forms of entertainment in the interim.

Ikaruga, one of the greatest, and hardest shoot-em-up games ever to grace the Nintendo Gamecube is coming to XBox Live Arcade. It's launched worldwide tomorrow, April 9th, and I'm seriously tempted, even though I've already got the Gamecube version and can ill afford it, to go out and buy myself some Microsoft Points so that I can pony up the 800 points to get the full version rather than the demo. I actually loaned the Gamecube version to Evil Mozza a while back and I don't even know if he's played it yet. He was heavily into UT3 at the time. Might have to pop down this evening to grab it back.

After being afflicted by a serious case of wanderlust in the past it would appear that my good friend, Mondrak, has finally settled upon a home on the web. His email address hasn't changed in at least six months; okay, it's more than a year, but people who know him will know how often we used to receive emails saying he'd changed his email address. He's also moved his blog over to WordPress.

There's an updated link on the left if you're interested.

I watched the season 4 premiere of Battlestar Galactica last night. It was a pretty damned good episode and really got the viewer immersed in the narrative right from the start. Now, when you compare it to the season 4 premiere of Doctor Who it's fairly obvious that there must be a considerable disparity between the budgets for both shows. Both are flagship shows for their broadcaster but it's clear that BSG has a much higher budget. And when you consider the BBC's place in the global market, that's a shame.

Dr Who is probably one of the best shows on British TV at the moment but when you compare it to BSG it's really does feel like it's made on the cheap. The BBC really need to inject some extra money into the show; especially considering it's their top cash cow. Don't get me wrong; I love Doctor Who, but BSG just comes across as a slicker, more polished product.

Just one example of the gulf in production values is the bit in 'Partners In Crime' where Donna is hanging from a window cleaner's cradle. It's blatantly obvious that it was green screened; you can tell from the fuzziness around Donna. A lot of effects in Doctor Who feel decidedly cheap and tacky. I know people will argue that Doctor Who has always been like that and it's part of the charm. But, the truth of the matter is that the TV marketplace has moved on from the 70s and 80s and cheap and tacky looks just that. Cheap and tacky. Especially, when compared to some of the more polished product available.

While I can applaud the 4th season of Doctor Who I still feel troubled by the obvious failings in the production values of the show.

Puki is a pretty good flash game. It's nice and simple; and pretty addictive. Controls are mouse and keys. Read the info first.

Nokia's N-Gage site has finally gone live. Currently, only the N81, N82 and N95 are supported. Support for the N73 and N93 is coming soon. However, it only works with the latest version of the N95 firmware so I had to update my firmware first.

Previous experience has taught me that updating the firmware on the N95 blanks the phone's settings, contacts and stored messages. I made sure I backed up the phone first and, after having something to eat, the phone's firmware was updated. I restored my backed up content and installed the N-Gage application onto the phone. There's not that many games available on N-Gage at the moment but it looks promising.

Some of the extra icons that were previously proliferated around the interface have been removed and integrated into other menus with no apparent way of restoring them back to the way they were on the old layout. An annoyance rather than a problem though.

Season 4 of Doctor Who launches on BBC One tonight at 6:20pm. Don't forget!

Season 4 premieres tonight in the USA and on Sky One on Tuesday 15th April. Oh, and Sky Two are showing the two parts of the season 3 finale tonight at midnight. Thay are also re-running the mini-series this Sunday and Monday. Sky One are also airing Razor a couple of times next week and a couple of documentaries also. You'll also be able to find repeats of most of the new stuff they're airing across Sky's three entertainment channels; including the free-to-view Sky Three.

Check out the BSG content on Sci-Fi's website.

The trivia today is some tongue twisters for you:

1. Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.
2. Round the rugged rock, the ragged rascal ran.
3. Which witch wished which wicked wish?
4. Six thick thistle sticks.
5. Greek grapes.

If you've ever spent any time working on web design then you'll understand this link.

I've just bought a new truck; and it was brand new. Cost me $85,500 rather than the full price of $95,000 thanks to the company discount.

I know Pixie has blogged about Trukz before but I thought I'd try and raise it's exposure a little bit; especially since Pixie isn't updating his blog anymore.

From the about page: Trukz (pronounced "Trucks") is a text based trucking simulation game where you create your driver, buy yourself a truck, then earn money by hauling loads to and from various cities around the USA, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and numerous countries in and around Europe. Each city has its own distinct supplies and demands that update throughout the game.

I've been playing since mid-July 2007 and I'm now ranked #460 of 15,307 drivers.

I originally spotted this quick little test on Wil Wheaton's blog and had to share.

One of my mates asked me to sort out some free Anti Virus software for his sister a couple of weeks ago. I finally got around to doing so today. Rather than just sorting out 1 for her I've put together a CD with a few choices for her to pick from:

• A-Squared 3
• AVG Anti Virus Free Edition v7.5
• Avast Home Edition v4.7
• Aviva AntiVir Personal Edition v7.06
• BitDefender Free Edition 10
• ClamWin Antivrus v0.92
• Comodo AntiVirus 2.0 beta
• PC Tools Antivirus 4.0

I've also included 4 choices of Firewalls:

• Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro
• Comodo Firewall Version 3.0
• Sunbelt Personal Firewall
• ZoneAlarm® Free Firewall

4 online scanners in case she ever runs into something the Anti Virus software can't sort:

• McAfee FreeScan
• Panda Active Scan
• Symantec Security Check
• Trend Micro™ HouseCall

And I've also added:

• Spybot Search & Destroy v1.52

I've also left a note on the CD recommending either AVG or Avast as the AntiVirus I would use if I was going to use a freebie. I've also suggested that any 1 of the 4 Firewalls would be a good free choice. And, finally, I've recommended that she install Spybot.

I really can not be bothered with the world in general today.

My head is pounding, nothing I've taken has worked and I feel like I'm at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. I just want to crawl back into bed and let the world pass me by. I hope my sister's kids are quiet when they turn up later.

Anyway, I'll see you all tomorrow; if I can be bothered!

Studenthacks.org is a site primarily aimed at students but it has some useful bits and pieces for everybody. Especially, if you have a need to do any sort of research on the web. The Research Resources link on the site lists 100 online resources of some use.