Really Frikking Busy and the New Dell XPS M1710 Core 2 Duo!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been hugely busy whilst at the same time appearing to be not very busy at all.

I've decided to revamp my old website, but I didn't own any webspace, and I no longer owned the space that my old site was on, so I couldn't even update it! So I got me some hosting with Media 72 hosting solutions. They're good, and run by a friend of mine. Me like.
The reason this is one of the things that makes me busy is because I'm trying to do my site using Macromedia's Flash program, whilst having almost zero knowledge of flash. It makes life interesting to say the least.

You can see what I've done to date, by visiting my site, RyanRocks.co.uk.
It's still under construction, but let me know what you think. Unfortunately flash threw a wobbly and deleted all the files in the directory I was saving in, and I've been unable to recover them. Luckily, I've found a .swf decompiler, which will enable me to get the individual components from my final swf file, so it's not a total loss, although it is a pain in the ass.

Rather than do any more work on this particular incarnation, I'm trying out different ideas, so my RyanRocks site might not change much for a little while while I build, test and decide on a replacement. This seems like an awful lot of effort, but it should make me fairly competant with Flash.

I've also joined ScreenSelect.co.uk. Not only do they rent DVDs, but they also do Xbox360 games! This is good news for me, when I sit down to play a game, I really go through it. I bought Prey for about £45, and I completed it in about 2 evenings the first time round, then I completed it on it's hardest setting in an afternoon. However £45 spent towards games rentals could get me over 4 months rental, and an unlimited amount of games, although only one at a time unless you go for the more expensive packages.

So far I've had:

King Kong - not very good, but I completed it anyway. The bits where you were the Monkey were obviously more fun. Got it on Saturday, had completed it before Sunday, and I was playing Xmen during the same period.

Xmen the Game - also not very good, although it had it's moments. Got it Saturday was done by Sunday, though took more play than King Kong to fully complete it.

Fight Night Round 3 - Great fun. Wish I'd bought this when I first got my 360. I played through on Easy, cos I was rubbish at it. Sailed through easy mode though. I beat one championship fight in 4 punches. Four Punches! To clarify, I threw four punches, every one connected, and I knocked him down twice during the fight. The second time he didn't get up again, but rather lay twitching on the floor.

MotoGP 06 - Quite frankly, this game is nails, and very time consuming. I put the game on the easiest setting, and didn't have too much trouble winning races, but the problem was that despite winning races, my riding sucked balls. I quite like this game, because it has it's moments where you really do feel like you're riding a motorbike (and I should know!). However, it's too hard to judge speed when coming into corners, and so unless you know the track well, it's hard enough even staying on the track, let alone put in a good performance. Pity really, but I just don't have half an hour or so to practise each track before I race on it.

Chrome Hounds - Apparently this game is great fun in multiplayer. Unfortunately the single player missions are shit. It's a game about giant war robots, like Gundam, except boring. The game displays a lack of imagination, the early robots (never got far enough in to get anything else) are really slow and unexciting, and the direction of the missions is terrible, you never seem to know exactly where you're going, and it always feels like you're lost. I found a couple of bugs in the early levels that just made me not wanna play any further, let alone have to play the level that screwed up again. Just glad I didn't buy it, although if I had, I probably would have put more effort in for the sake of value for money.

I've also got Perfect Dark and Rockstar's Table Tennis game on route rfom ScreenSelect. These will keep me busy for a while, but I also have 2 games I own to play through - Quake 4 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. Must get round to playing these at some point.

Yet another thing taking up my time is my search for a new PC. It's taken a while, and I haven't got much done at all for the last week other than read reviews, forums, anything really that has info on one of the laptops I'd been looking into.
One of the reasons I'm getting a laptop is that I've decided the PC I bought from PC world last year has had it, so I'm selling it. £250 for a PC with a 3.0ghz processor, 1gb 400mhz RAM, a 160gb HDD, and an ATI X800. I don't think it's a bad deal, and I've managed to sell my old (now unused) 17" LCD monitor for £70, giving me £320 to go towards the new laptop.

The other main reason for getting a notebook over a desktop is because my long term plans are to save a load of money, take a year off work, and then go gallavanting round the world (and yes Jeff, I will make sure I end up in Texas at at least one point in my journey!). If I have a desktop, it's gonna make things a little tricky when it comes to portability, so I've decided to go for a desktop replacement. Basically it's a big fucking laptop, but I don't mind the weight, because (a) I'm double 'ard, (b) my ninja slaves can carry it for me, and (c) until I go travelling I'm not gonna be carrying the laptop round much at all.

Also, a point I've just thought of - The laptop is only about 10lbs. That's about one fourteenth of my weight. Ants apparently can lift fifty times their weight. If an ant can do fifty times it's weight, I'm sure I can do one fourteenth.

The basic specs of the laptop are as follows:

-XPS M1710 Core 2 Duo Processor T7600 (2.33 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
-17" UltraSharp Wide Screen WUXGA (1920 x 1200) Display with TrueLife
-Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive with Software
-XPS 512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX
-100GB (7,200 rpm) Hard Drive
-3Year NBD (Next Business Day) On-site Base Warranty

Free Stuff I got with my Order:
-Memory Upgrade from 1024MB to 2048MB - DDR2 667MHz
-Free 15 month McAfee Security SW upgrade
-Inspiron XPS Gen 2 Nylon Backpack

If you want the full specs, or you want to read why I bought this laptop, check here.

I will post a full review up when I get the laptop...


Yet another thing that's been stealing away my time is TV episodes I've got from the net.
One such instance is The 4400. Although when it first came out, I watched the first couple of episodes, for some reason I didn't keep downloading and watching the show. About a week ago, I saw a trailer for an epsiode belonging to the third series. It looked really exiciting, despite the lack of Pirates, Ninjas, Robots, or Monkeys in it. So I got hold of the first 2 seasons, and I'm done with those already. I'm really enjoying the series, it's been quite thrilling.

In between watching the 4400, playing my x360, designing my website, searching for a new laptop, and teaching myself flash and adobe illustrator, I've been watching lost. I didn't see the first series until it was completely finished, which allowed me to watch the entire first season in about 4 days (I did the same with the 4400 too!). Showing an incredible amount of willpower, when the second series came out, I didn't watch any of those either. Now that the second season has finished, I've started watching those too. Unfortunately what with all the other things going on, I've not had the chance to watch the whole series in about 4 or 5 sittings. I'm now up to episode 13 ish, and despite the series going a bit slow until now, it finally seems to be picking up a bit...

So... if you made it this far - congraturations! You are good player! :)

Now you know why I haven't posted here in a while... I'll post again sooner rather than later...!

A Lack of TV...

As you may or may not know, I pride myself on not being addicted to TV. The hundreds of millions of people who go go home after work and flop in front of the TV disgust me. Look at them, they're motionless, they barely move or think, they just tune out and let it all wash over them. There's no interaction or input from them, other than channel hopping and going for a cuppa during advert breaks.

In my opinion, TV is the 'prison for your mind' that Morpheus was talking about in The Matrix. It traps people, to the point where they won't go out for fear of missing a program. You have very little say regarding the delivery of ontent on those channels, and like I said earlier, the only choice they have is to flip the channel.

I on the other hand, don't even own a TV, it's pleasing. I don't find myself sitting in front of mindless crap just because there's nothing else on. I choose not to fritter away my life with this medium. However, this isn't to say that I don't watch any TV shows, because I do. There are a few programs that I choose to grace my eyes and time with, and for those, I download them via the fabulous intarweb, and then watch them at my leisure/pleasure.

***/ BEGIN INTERVAL/***



***/ END INTERVAL /***

Two such shows I enjoy are waiting for me to watch them. The first, KYLE XY is about a boy who appears to be a 16 year old newborn. Everyone else thinks he has Anmesia, but we, the viewers know better, partly because 'everyone else' is stupid. This show puts to good use the 'Usual character is actually amazing' concept, and generally has at least one scene per episode that makes you go "woah!" and wish you were Kyle.

The second show, and maybe even more exciting is the first episode of season 2 of Prison Break. I won’t mention what happened at the finale of season 1, but shall we just say that after all that planning by Michael Scofield, the end was kinda lame. It’s one of those “how the frig are they gonna get out of that?” kind of situation.

Despite all this TV goodness for me to zonk out in front of, I might not get round to watching either of them tonight. I may be going to See Pirates of the Caribbean tonight. If I do, I probably won’t get round to watching the TV eps.

Also I’ve been hugely busy recently, which is why I haven’t been posting as much as I should have. However, this is a story for another time. It’ll probably be the next post, as I’ve actually written most of it already!

So, sorry for the boring intermediary post, I’ll try and spruce things up tomorrow…!

Snakes/liquids/turds on a plane/train/automobile.

Morning all, I thought it was about time for another update.

I'm supposed to be going to see Snakes on a plane soon, but I'm not sure when. To be honest, I thought I was supposed to be going last night, but nobody phoned me to say they were going, so either they all went without me (bastards!) or they forgot (which is more likely).

Well, mixing the joy of snakes on a plane with current affairs, you get this:



What I find most amusing about this whole business of liquids on a plane, is that they say that liquids are not allowed on flights, because they might be explosives. So what do they do with all these volatile explosive liquids?

That's right, you guessed it, they mix them all together in one big vat. That sounds sensible and not at all dangerous. This makes me laugh (especially as I have no plans to fly anytime soon), partly because one of the primary reasons for collecting the liquids is because they are extremely volatile, and some sources have even said that a hard knock could make them explode.

So.... if this is true, why the hell are they mixing all these dangerous chemicals together? Is it so they explode in the middle of the airport, and kill potentially thousands of people instead of hundreds?





So tell me, what the hell is the next step? Naked passengers, because clothes rubbing together cause static electricity, and static electricity causes sparks, which in turn could ignite a freshly loosed fart?

How about banning passengers altogether? I mean bladders contain liquids too. Who's to say the terrorists aren't going to drink some Astrolite G and then jump up and down? As for the link, to placate the American security forces who are checking out my website due to the link to a "How to create liquid explosives" page, welcome to my site. Please don't lock me up as a terrorist, the link provided was the first one to come up in Google when I typed "Liquid Explosive". Not that this will stop ou in your desperate search for terrorists, and you'll probably still request my extradition, which Tony Blair will sanction, as he is Gearge Bush's bitch. If Tony was just smoking George's God fearing American cock and keeping quiet about it, then I wouldn't mind, but the fact that they have to force all this 'Terror" on the rest of us makes me sick. A happier couple I've never seen, but that's because all this 'False Terror Propagander' is giving them the control to run the world.

In other news, who wants to see snakes on a plane, when you could be enjoying such delights as Snakes on a Train?



I have this, it looks quite gory. I'll review it once I've seen it....

Clerks 2 and Silent Hill.

I watched 2 films last night. Can you guess what they were?

I thought I'd give them both a mini-review, but don't worry, I won't let slip any spoilers, apart from the fact that everybody dies, in both films. There's a huge nuclear explosion caused by a special nuclear liquid taken on to a plane and detonated above the North Sea, somehow also killing the President of the United States of a America. The explosion was so incredibly huge, it killed everyone in both movies simultaneously.


Silent Hill:

"What the fuck was that?!?"

I really enjoyed this. If you've played the game, the movie will probably have quite a big impact on you. The sets are incredible, they looked like they were literally straight out of the game, and I found myself saying a couple of times, "What is she doing? I didn't do that when I played the game" whenever the lead character would do something likely to get her killed. I still cannot get over how faithful to the game this film was.

If you didn't play the game, then don't worry too much. It might get a bit confusing at times, (like when the air raid siren goes off) but they more or less explain everything at the end.

It's also gotta be said that this film contains about the nastiest death I've ever witnessed on film. It wasn't a long drawn out death and so probably wasn't the most painful death I've seen on film, but it was about the nastiest. It was schweet.


Clerks 2:

"My Girlfriend sucked 37 dicks."
"In a row?"

Ahh Clerks. Genius. I was quite suprised to hear about Clerks 2 as I swear I've seen interviews where Kevin Smith informs us that Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was the last of the 5 'Jersey' films, exluding Jersey Girl as that was about Kevin's life sorta, and didn't have the same set of characters as his first five films.

Clerks 2 was good. It's also in colour. I would say that Clerks 2 has more laugh out loud sections than it's predecessor, but at the same time, doesn't quite pull off the same smouldering cult humour that made the first one such a hit. Don't get me wrong, if you saw me watching Clerks 1 followed by Clerks 2, you would observe me and probably come to the conclusion that I found 2 funnier, because I laughed more.
I did indeed laugh more, but I find that 1 rarely has a break in it's subtle display of 'Dante's downtrodden life'. Dante isn't quite so dejected in this film, which seems a little weird to me, as I've never seen his character display some of the emotions he displays in number 2.

There's still plent of Kevin Smith going on though, and if you like his films, you won't be disappointed by this film either. There's also a whole load of political incorrectness - I'd say even more so than any of Kevin's other films.

Ahh... good old 'Ass to Mouth'....


Overall I would highly recommend both these films. I for one shall be buying them on DVD when they get released, as they are 2 fine purchases!

Go out and watch them, right now.

No Time for the full 89 minutes?

As you know, I LOVE the movie Office Space. It's frikking great.

Sometimes I sit down and think to myself, "Man do I wanna watch Office Space. But it's just too long, and last time I checked, there wasn't a single bunny in it.

Thanks be to AngryAlien.com, with their 30 second films performed by bunnies.

Office Space in 30 seconds, performed by bunnies

Enjoy. I did, five times, and that's just today.

What my Housemates are doing....

Today my housemate Laura is getting her ass pumped. Go Laura!

Her boyfriend/my other housemate, Nate, is probably sunning his ass in the garden, as he keeps mentioning that he has a pair of white skin shorts on.

Today has probably been asstastic for my housemates, but not for me, oh no. I've been in work. :(

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2007

Cowabunga!

That's all I really have to say on this topic. Enjoy the pictures...











It's completely CGI apparently. This can only be a good thing, as the costumes in the last movie (released way back in 1993) were let's face it, pretty shocking.

Visit The Official TNMT website for the teaser trailer...

PROOF! (As if it was needed)

Dear all,

I found this NewFlash website, which pretty much confirms my suspicions....

http://andrew.foster.isgay.com/

Sorry Foss. Thought the world should know. :)