The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret

I am totally thinking about selling up my XBox and jumping ship to the PS3 boat, partly for the Blue Ray but mostly because Microsoft refuse to even consider the notion of a free BBC iPlayer.

It's not so much that I am desperate for a BBC player (I can get it on my computer and even on my iPod touch), though it would be nice to get it on the TV. No, it's more the way that allowing their users to get any sort of functionality out of their console without turning it into a revenue stream is just so completely outside their business model. It gives you some real insight into how they think of their customers.

Fair enough for in-game DCL, I guess, but when you realise they want you pay to download game-based themes - which is, essentially, the privilege of plastering advertising all over the brief interstitial screen between turning your console on and actually doing whatever it is you want to do with it - it's just sad.

Yes T-Mobile I am aware I have gone over my Fair Use Policy^[1].

Yes I am aware this means that between the hours of four PM and midnight you will only allow me to use your network via the HTTP protocol.

Yes I do know that this will only last until the start of the next calendar month.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO REDIRECT ME TO A PAGE DETAILING THIS EVERY FIFTH OR SIXTH REQUEST^[2] TO INFORM ME OF THIS.

I wouldn't mind if they did it, say, the first request after 4pm, or the first request every browser session. For that matter, it wouldn't be so very intrusive if the "Please click to continue browsing" actually allowed you to, say continue browsing - ie, forwarded you to the page you originally requested - rather than just presenting a nigh-sarcastic "Oh thanks bye" message and forcing you to find your own way back to the page you actually want to see, which can be a chore since (having been redirected away from it) the page doesn't actually appear in your browser history.

I know they want to discourage people from going over their FUP (as, by definition, this suggests you have not been Using it Fairly), but this manner of inept and intrusive notification is not only irritating in the extreme but also puts the lie to their own Policy's insistence that "you´ll continue to be able to browse the web and use web-based email accounts". At any moment while using these services you may find your service interrupted and - for example - the email you were composing lost to the ether.

SORT IT OUT T-MOBILE.

[1] See previous posts. It's not a Fair Use Allowance, or "The bandwidth specified under our Fair Use Policy", or anything such. In some way, the amount of bandwidth you are allowed in some way is the Fair Use Policy.
[2] Actually it seems to be more or less arbitrary - though it is likely related to time (say, once a minute) or some other less transparent internal system variable. Actually, it would probably be more acceptable if it was in some way predictable.

Am ver' disappointed with Shrek the Third game.

The earlier Shrek II on PS2 (which I enjoyed courtesy of ajon) was very much multiplayer-oriented; the four characters on the screen could be taken control of at any time by 1-4 players, and each character's special abilities were required at some stage of the game^[1]. It was fun and pretty and engaging and even a little challenging at times.

Shrek the Third is none of those things. Though I admit I've only played it for about five minutes, the graphics appear simplistic^[2] and the gameplay facile. Most egregiously, the main game is single-player only, with the multiplayer aspect being relegated to some mini-games^[3]. Considering I bought the game purely because it seemed to be one of the rare X360 multiplayer games, this is somewhat annoying. (Kung-Fu Panda did the same, advertised "1-2 players" yet separated the "1" from the "2", but at least it had the redeeming feature of actually looking pretty darn smooth.)

Unfortunately I don't think I have the receipt - I bought it a few weeks ago and only just tricked persuaded Ant to have a go - so I'm not sure what to do with it. Sell it on to Game, maybe...

[1] A model used in many a modern 1P/2P game, such as Army of Two, Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon and the various the Lego [Franchise] games. It's a model with a number of good points, not least of which is that it's easier for the game designers, though it does mean you need to at least think about devising some AI for the computer player that takes over when the game's running with fewer than the full complement of players.
[2] I note that the game appears to have been released on the Xbox 360, Wii and PS2. The thought occurs that maybe - maybe - the developers developed for the lower-spec' systems, and just spruced the lighting up a bit for the X360. Seriously, the title screen almost looks 8-bit. After the sleek visuals of The Force Unleashed it's a bit of a shock.
[3] That said, according to the Gamespot review, the tower mini-game is actually the best thing about the game. Maybe I should be grateful I don't have to wade through the rest of the drivel to get to it.

Have picked up two Super Furry Animals albums from Tesco for £4, 'Guerilla' and 'Rings Around The World'. I mention this purely to win arwel's approval and esteem.

Am quite tired today, lamp outside our window (which has, for the last year or so, been intermittently clicking thanks to a broken motion sensor) decided it was time to ramp things up a notch, and began a dedicated buzz. Thankfully after only a couple of hours I was able to block the noise out by trying to smother myself with a pillow.

"We do like the design," said the client, which was probably for the best, since the site was due to go live and they'd been using it in development for three months and had somehow managed not to see the design, apparently, until this point.
"However," they continued, "we find that we are required to request a trivial change in order to maintain our sense of involvement.
"We would like to change this orange for one three shades lighter, making the text harder to see.
"And we would like this change to take place on every image throughout the site.
"By tomorrow."

Something about the components I installed yesterday (or the way I installed them) caused my PC to migrate from "occasionally unstable" (unexpected restart once a month or so) to "cripplingly plagued" (total system freeze within an hour of turning it on). I don't know, maybe I dislodged the memory, or something's touching something that shouldn't, or something. Either way, buying a new core system is suddenly markedly more enticing than it was.

(Is it likely to be one of the new components? All I put in was a new DVD-RW, a boxed Netgear wireless network card and a new fan. Anyone?)

What's holding me back right now is the motherboard. All I want is a reasonably cheap (~£40) Core 2 Duo-supporting S775 board with 2 IDE sockets that will take up to 4GB of memory. (This last is optional. I'm not planning on putting that much in to begin with, but it's nice to futureproof.) It's like IDE connections are going out of fashion. Which, you know, fair enough, but still, it's important (to me) for me to be able to connect both my optical drives and the old hard disk, at least to begin with. And ideally I'd like to continue to use the HD at least for storage backup - I don't see 100GB of storage as something you simply throw away.

Pricing rants aside, I'd be tempted to just buy this on the basis that it will definitely all work together, except it's only got 1GB of RAM. And one IDE connection. And it won't tell me what the motherboard is, so I can't buy more RAM myself. But still, it tempts.

EDITED TO ADD: Ah! eBuyer do that thing I've been wondering why people don't do, and suggests compatible (and alternative) hardware. Unfortunately it is genuinely starting to look like the second IDE socket is what they take out to make room for the second core...

EDITED TO ADD EDITED TO ADD: Oh, it's the wireless network card. Taking it out allowed the system to run for 2+ hours without difficulty; returning it caused immediate apoplectic fits. Am downloading new drivers. Using the faulty network card. May be some time.

Am just stepping out.

Hmm.

Unless I've misread this, if I were to take out a new contract with T-Mobile (on more or less the same price plan), I'd be able to get a KRZR free.

Conversely, if I show my loyalty, stick with them and ask to upgrade to the same phone, I'd have to pay them £149 for the privilege. In fact, I'd have to pay £30 just to get a new RAZR (the phone I have now). If I stick with the same handset I get all of a £5/month discount.

I'd always assumed the cost of the phone was factored into the line rental and that. Now I am slightly disillusioned. I'll probably stick with it - the lovely Mr nattydreadi's friends and family discount makes it more or less worth it, along with the hassle of changing numbers around - but I was rather looking forward to a shiny new phone. Oh well, easy come.

What did you do at work today, Timmy? Why, I opened 120 PDFs in Photoshop and resized them and saved them as JPGs because some fucker only has the images for his product catalogue as PDFs for some reason.

After spending so long dithering about what to do with this Maelstrom downtime, the submission deadline apparently rolled past without notice some weeks ago. This means my character will be doing random tasks, and will once again be a day more than a downtime short of learning a new skill. If only I hadn't randomly removed the "learn skill" action as soon as downtimes opened. Or the system was intelligent enough to add it again. Or the new news system had got to the point of sending emails out before the deadline loomed, rather than after. Oh well.

That'll teach me not to wait for the email notifications of approaching deadlines. Just because it happened last year...