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...!