"Ugly Next Gen Consoles"

Why have MS and Sony made such ugly consoles? The Xbox360 looks like a Dell and the PS3 has taken inspiration from the George Forman grill, as we can see below.

The only one I actually like is Nintendo's Revolution, but I can't see myself buying that one.

"Some very cool PS3 game movies"

Well the Xbox 360 and PS3 have been shown, both with hugely impressive hardware specs.

Two games so far have stunned me on the PS3: Motorstorm and Killzone Next Gen. Wow.

"Geobloggers"

A mashup of two cool technologies: Google maps + Flickr = Geobloggers.com

"What have I been up to?"

Instead of going to work and earning an honest living, I've been hacking code away at home.

I've made two quite handy Fat Fingers tools:

1) an add-in for Internet Explorer: select a word on any web page and right click to do a Fat Fingers search on eBay. Looks like this in action:



2) a Widget for OS X 10.4: Do a Fat Fingers search from the Widget Desktop. Thanks to Korruptor for helping out with the shiny panels - my ham fisted efforts were crap. I still don't like the Fat Fingers logo I put on it, but it'll do for a 1.0 release ;-)



They can be downloaded over here.

Time for my next idea....

"PSP Video Content"

That's more like it: ABC news provides news clips for PSP and an indie film maker offers downloadable films for PSP. All free.

Date:	2005-05-05 09:05
Mood:	amused
Music:	Heh Hey 16K

"Some people are never happy"

I just got an email from someone complaining that art4iTunes.com didn't find artwork for his vinyl punk singles (unreleased on CD).

Seesh, users? Who'd have 'em.

"Whoshouldyouvotefor.com"

I wonder if the election results would be different if we were just asked 25 questions, rather than asked to tick a box?

www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com

I also quite liked the Summary of Policys page.

"OurProperty.co.uk"

How much did your neighbours pay for there house?...hmmm, interesting.

OurProperty.co.uk

"Prague"

Prague is possibly the most beautiful place I've visited - every turn you are presented with gothic architecture, pastel coloured houses and grand stately buildings.

Some photos.

"House Genius"

It's been just over a week of my "House Genius" experiment. I resigned my job, and I'm taking a month off work to do my own coding.

I've been coding pretty much 8 hours a day, mostly catching up on a few things I wanted to add to FatFingers.com - some new features are almost completed, but it'll be another week or so before I finish it all and start on a new website.

I'm not missing the commute at all, but I'm already finding it a bit dull sitting in the house all day. I probably wouldn't be working so hard, but a torn calf muscle means I'm forced to take it easy and stay indoors. Once it heals up I'll be out on my bike all day.

"Entertain me"

I'm totally hooked on Metal Gear:AC!D on the PSP - I'm about 14 hours through, and still loving it. It's not the usual style, more of a strategy games with cards, but still lots of sneaking and dripping with Metal Gear nostalgia.

It's made the commute to London painless the past couple of weeks - occasionally not even noticing that the train has stopped in Waterloo.

When not playing that, I've been reading "The Timewaster Letters" which has me laughing out-loud on every page. It's a collection of letters making obscure requests to companies and associations, together with any replies.

Makes me glad I don't work in a customer relations department.

"High Definition"

This page gives a good demonstration on how much better things look using HD equipment.

"Two very cool add-ins"

Lookout - lightning-fast search for MS Outlook. The standard search is soooo slow. MS have bought the company so no doubt this will be standard functionality in the next Office release.

ForecastFox – nice, unobtrusive weather forecast plug-in for Firefox.

Both free.

"Double click TiVo remote"

Ok, this will only interest TiVo owners, but my remote developed an annoying 'double click' feature which made selecting menu options a pain.

Apparently it's a common fault, so I upgraded the remote to a US series 2 black model. See eBay for sellers.

The TiVo software suggested some useless keycodes to get my TV and A/V working; this page has PDFs of up-to-date codes which worked a treat.

"PSP and DS"

Okay I've been pretty quiet about the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS for a while, but with the imminent UK release of the DS I thought I'd voice my thoughts.

I love the PSP and still use it virtually everyday - the games really are near PS2 quality. Not only visually and aurally but in games design and depth. And in the next few months we'll see what the perennial giants GT4 and GTA play like.

Even though I have a few games I'm mostly using it for video. With freeware converters (3GPP or Rapiz) it is trivial to convert anything to MPEG4 format.

I stack up my memory card with TV and films at the start of the week and top up when needed. I also have a dozen MP3s to listen to, for when the mood takes me.

The DS was alright; Mario64 DS is an enjoyable game. But that's about it. I found I hadn't touched it for 6 weeks since the arrival of the PSP and no upcoming games appealed, so it was sold on eBay for a tidy profit.

I'm sure they'll both do well and I recognise that I'm probably not in Nintendo's target market.

"Bob a job (again)"

Time for a new job - I got a little bored of spending 4 hours commuting every day, so I handed my notice in at the start of the year. Been keeping quiet on here until it was announced officially at work.

Shame as the job was great in all other respects, and London is a cool place to work.

No plans for a new job just yet - I've got a few weeks before I leave. I'm going to take a month off to loaf :-P and then I might pick up some consulting work, or maybe a proper job.

"DIY G4"

Certainly the lovely hardware design contributes to the pleasure of using a Mac.

But if you can live without such stuff,  this article shows you how to build a G4 from spare parts.

Date:	2005-02-12 21:27
Mood:	happy
Music:	The Killers

"Webjay"

I love Webjay. It has just sucked up the past couple hours.

It's a simple idea: people create playlists that point to free MP3s on the web. Some remixes, some originals.

There's just so much good stuff I've enjoyed listening to, and I've found a few new sources for HappyFish.

"The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business"

This tickled me: The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business

"Now we are 2"

I'm no longer the only Mac user in the office - my manager bought a 12" Powerbook with Superdrive, £200 off as it is the old model.

You can decide if it is a bargain - the new models have had a price drop anyway, and a bump in memory, processor speed, disk size and iLife version but he did get the handy 2 year John Lewis warrantee.

Might be worth considering if you're wanting to get one...