Sorry I haven’t been posting for a while, due to my exams. They have now finished; well the last one was on Monday and I took some time to relax from the past 2 years of stress! Anyways that burden has now been lifted, and I think it’s safe to say I think they went pretty well. I will get my results in mid-August so I can have fun until then.
Being summer time, I probably won’t be able to get back into regular posting mode until August, as I am going on a school holiday to Italy next week and 2 weeks after that I will be going on a summer holiday with my family. During that time though I will be able to make some posts, but probably not too many (days when there is nothing to do etc), from my Auntie’s computer. I do have quite a few topics piled up today so I will be posting as many of them as possible. This week is an interesting news week!
Monthly Archive for June, 2006
Page 2 of 3
An employee of a UK games shop has managed to sneak out a black DS Lite and take a few snaps of the thing, which he promptly let Joystiq know of. He has preferred to remain only under the name of Spudstercool, probably because the shop would have his ass! The shop was also nnamed as not to arouse any suspicion at all. I bet it was either GAME, or Gamestation, as they are the most popular and specialised games shops here in the UK.
So what can I say about the Lite. Well it looks good, and I like the fact that the outside is a really shiny black, but the inside is a more subtle yet elegant matt black. The screen also looks amazingly bright, and now I’m wondering whether I shoud get one or not. I certainly like the white as well, but I want one which is not the most popular one; as I like to be different, just ’cause!
This is an unusual and unlucky story about the fate of an iPod Shuffle. The story goes like this; Francis’ friend had a buggered Shuffle. It was out of warranty and he looked around the good old interweb for guides to disassemble it. He first checked to make sure it was ‘dead’ by plugging it into the laptop. He got right into trying to take it apart and never left the battery and various components to ‘discharge’. This was the most likely error which caused the iPod to go kaboom. He used a knife to pry out the bottom, and started to hack his way in and must have hit a capacitor as he started to swear and run around the room. The iPod “basically exploded in his face and caught fire, sparks flying and thick black smoke“.
So this is a meaningful story for those who want to venture out and fix your iPod. If you don’t know what you’re doing, then find someone who does. And be carefull when doing these types of things, as electronic devices can be somewhat dangerous. Always follow guides carfully and never just ‘hack’ your way through if things don’t work out as they are supposed to!
This morning I woke up at around 9:30 with a nasty headache (I went to a party last night 
) and I couldn’t go back to sleep so I went downstairs. Just as I stepped into the living room the phone rang. The Sky Technician was calling to say that he’ll be here between 10AM-2PM. 2 minutes after ten and I hear a knock on the door, shure enough he was here and ready to install the high-def Sky Box. He changed the old LNB on the Satellite Dish so that you can now view one channel and record the other. He also set up the box, made sure everything was right and gave the system a spin. All in all, it toom around an hour to get everything in working order, The instruction manual says it has a 300GB hard-drive, with 160GB for personal use, but I don’t know whether that’s true or not. What would the system need 140GB for? Who cares, that 160GB is good enough for our family, capable of 30 hours of HD content storage and 80 hours of standard def.
I was amazed with some of the things it had (physically). There are 2 USB2 ports and an Ethernet port which currently can’t be used for anything, as Sky are currently planning later use for it. But here’s what gobsmacked me: a SATA port so that you can connect your own hard drive to it, if there isn’t enough space. That’s so awsome from Sky, and I can’t believe they did such a thing. The manual claims it works, but having no SATA drives at home I can’t test it out. I’ll be giving the system a fuller review later on, but the picture is so amazing. I watched the Iran vs Portugal match on BBC HD and it looked so nice; it certainly made the SD version look like toast! I’ve taken a few photos of the ‘event’ so click the link below to take a look.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen. 18,000 DS Lites, that’s almost $2.3 million worth of DS goodness (18 million Hong Kong Dollars). The DS Lites were swiped — the whole truck sized container — en route from China to Europe to be sold on 23 June. Hong Kong officials fear that these were swiped to be sold on the black market (what else would you do with that many Lites?). So they are offering a $1m Hong Kong Dollars, that’s around $128,831, for anyone who can give them a tip as to who is behind this.
I hope this gets recovered, and I really hope this doesn’t mean that we will get a shortage of Lites, like the PSP shortage (which was sooo bad!) But those guys who stole it were, well, quite organised, as I think this is the biggest gadget heist ever!
My Dad decided to jump at the chance of getting Sky HD (the first available HD in the UK – comes over satellite), and well we don’t have it yet. We should of had it on May 27th, but sadly due to Sky HD’s overwhelming popularity they haven’t been able to make enough boxes. Thompson, who I believe is maing the Sky HD’s digital receiver box, is behind on schedule for some people, as they didn’t think it would be this popular. Fingers crossed we should be watching high def goodness by Saturday afternoon, as Sky should be coming to install it Saturday morning.
At the moment there are quite few channels offering HD content but some of them are quite enjoyable (I hope). The channels are; Sky One HD, Sky Box Office HD (pay-per-view), Discovery HD, Sky Sports HD, BBC HD, Artsworld HD and National Geographic HD. I am quite keep on Discovery Channel and BBC as they host some quite popular programs such as the World Cup on BBC and MythBusters on Discovery HD. My exams end in about a week and half, so I probably will do a lengthy if not full review of the services and feeds.
Today’s short links are:
- Green fliud found oozing from the backside of a number of G5′s (above) [link]
- 600 PowerMac G5′s used to digitally re-encode and master the Ultimate DVD Collection of James Bond [link]
- Hilarious recording of an AOL user trying to cancel the account which he doesn’t use, but the rep tries to say that he used yesterday [link] [mirror] [mp3 mirror]
It has been spotted by a number of people that piraters (is that even a word?) have been making bootleg copies of DS games. 4 color rebellion has some photos and pictures to illustrate how you can recognise these fakes and avoid paying a bunch for fake and malfunctioning carts. They make a few main points:
- Miss-aligned label placement – A lot of fake carts have labels that are not properly aligned with the sides of the cart and shoddy build quality. Some look like they’ve been printed by inkjet printers with no glossy finish.
- Incorrect labels – Some carts have labels which may look real but the images on them are not the ones they have on real carts.
- Back contacts – The contacts on the reverse of the cart should be gold (used for better connections) but on most fake carts there are black contacts showing rubbish build quality.
- Proper logo’s – Real carts should have the Nintendo logo slighly recessed and more ‘subtle’. The logo should also be higher than the centre of the cart.
Use these tips to help you steer away from fake copies of DS games, and if possible report them to eBay or others so that a catalogue of some sort can be made of perpetrators. I would also be weary of buying things like these on eBay. A good general rule is; if it looks to cheap to be real, it probably isn’t. Also, if there are no real photos of the actual product, and just some press images and details copied from the original website, it probably isn’t legit.
JAL, Japan Airlines, is offering a in-flight DS Lite campaign during their international flights between June 1st and August 31st 2006. Granted this is only for First Class and Executive passengers but it is still a rather cool idea. So all you need to do is check whether your flight has this service during those dates and then ask the flight attendent for one, nicely though! Interestingly under the Terms and Conditions, one of the points states that the DS Lites have been specially manufactured without WiFi, so you can’t even test out the gameplay with your angry neighbour. I think there have been a few reports of people’s laptops being hacked on flights using WiFi (so it’s not that dangerous), but I guess they don’t even want to risk it. Some other funny T&C’s include;
- “The Civil Aviation Law prohibits the use of these consoles during takeoff and landing. Flight attendants will collect distributed Nintendo DS Lite consoles and earphones during takeoff and landing.” – Good luck trying to get it out of a kid’s (or adult’s) hands, they’ll be like ‘I’m so close to the end, can you just wait a minute’
- “The number of consoles on each plane is limited, and one may not be available upon request. The service is also limited to one console per passenger. We ask for your understanding in this matter.” – Because we can all use three DS Lites at once can’t we. Trying to beat ourselves through the non-existant WiFi.
This is a very interesting story, and the first of the sort that I’ve heard of. Some pictures on Flickr really clear the point up so rest assured, this is not because of greasy fingers. Apparently this has been reported by quite a few users, so it maybe a batch problem, or worse (eg, total ‘infection’ of all MacBooks).
The spots don’t wash off, I’ve only had the MacBook for two weeks. Genius at Apple Store told me to call Apple about it, as he’s never seen anything like it. My iBook didn’t discolor in the 3 years I had it — can’t be my hands. I don’t smoke, don’t use latex, etc. And for those who worry about my hygiene habits, thanks. I wash my hands.
Other people have also tried cleaning solutions, such as the famed iKlear which removed scratches and other defects from the PowerBook and iBooks and even magic markers. But these did not work for the MacBook. So I think this is most likely the cause of the heat dissipating from the MacBook combined with the type of paint / plastic that Apple covered the MacBook with. This is very interesting and I think it is most likely the paint / plastic that Apple used has not been coating or is not strong enough for general/heavy use of the MacBook. And the heat also helped speed this up. I hope Apple fixes this, because knowing all the Apple bashers and those who like to make fun of Apple when a product goes slightly awry (they totally over-cover these things), this will not be let off lightly. I love Apple and all, but its things like these which you don’t expect that sometimes annoy me.