More Wigan DVD progress

Just finished the title sequence; consider this a teaser trailer (518Kb, wmv format).

For those in the non-windows world, here's a more static preview.

To ukmg-ers who are waiting for it...

... I made a start on the second Wigan Disc today - 3-and-a-half Gb of footage done in four hours! Top banana! I'll try and get the whole thing done this week.

In other news: Trev, good to hear you're on the mend sir. Keep it up!

Farewell Kirsty!

Yet another of my colleagues from work has escaped gone to a new job elsewhere. A leaving night-out was held in Barnsley, and here is the sordid evidence a selection of blurry pictures I took with my Nokia 3650:

Pic1 Pic2 Pic3 Pic4 Pic5 Pic6 Pic7 Pic8 Pic9 Pic10 Pic11 Pic12 Pic13

"These guys had everything under the sun: pistols, grenades, machineguns, anti-aircraft guns, and - of course - rocket-launchers. Asked if I got to shoot at anything, they offered me a choice of a coconut, a chicken or a cow."

Blow away a cow for $400, and other weird tourist attractions

Funniest video clip I've seen this year

I'm not even going to try to explain this; you just have to see it for yourself.

Download video (1.14Mb - requires Divx codec)

To my good friend Dr. Colin Moore, who is currently trekking his way through the Australian outback and trying to avoid being bitten by a whole multitude of ungodly creatures - thanks for the brilliantly written emails Col, we're really enjoying hearing of your exploits back here in blighty. It's Stu's birthday soon, so we'll be sure to raise a drink to you in some bar (probably the Raz) in Liverpool. And take care of yourself out there, you barmy Manx bugger!

Why does this remind me of those old British tourism films that were made in the 70s?

Bringing a whole new meaning to 'memory dump'

Unreal Tournament 2004 was released recently to great acclaim. It's an online multiplayer FPS game, great graphics, teamwork-building, gameplay, yadda yadda.

I downloaded the demo, and while it's seems like a decent enough multiplayer game I just don't have the time to get as fully immersed in this kind of stuff as I used to. Which is probably a good thing.

Anyway; most games that are released contain some some kind of 'easter egg'. This can take the form of a hidden level or secret area or some other cool feature hidden away in a corner of the game.

Some avid gamer has discovered that in the depths of the code of UT 2004 the developers decided to include this.

Game developers at Epic, I salute you!

Possible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs?

You can download the evidence as a video file right here.

(Thanks to Trev for the heads up on this one.)

I want more of this!

Good news: the excellent TV show 'Fur TV' has an official website!

Bad news: the show was a one-off pilot, and it's unclear if there will be a full series.

Bah!

Canning Spam

Regular readers will remember my last request for a (preferably free) solution to solving my spam problem. What I want is something that just sits in the background in Windows XP and junks spam quietly, reliably and with no fuss. Mailwasher is free but you have to run the program manually and the freeware version only works with one POP account. I tried POPFile, I couldn't get on with it. The free edition of Spamweed I got with PC World magazine was excellent, until it stopped working and I then discovered it was chock full of spyware.

Just as I was resigning myself to (shock, horror) spending some cash on some spam-fighting software, I found K9. This is freeware anti-spam software, and it is brilliant. You install it, get a load of spam, feed it into the program and tell it that you want it to junk this sort of mail. And it works! I only get the occasional bit of spam coming through on average once a week now, which is hardly a hardship considering the volume I was dealing with before, and it hasn't junked a single valid piece of email yet.

Highly recommended.

Here's a pretty good interview with Gabe Newell of Valve software, who are currently working on one of the most anticipated PC games at the moment, Half Life 2.

"I ate his liver with some baked beans and a can of Vimto, F-F-F-F-F!"

Katie, a colleague of mine at work - hey, say hello to the nice people on the internet Katie!

- oh well, never mind - anyway, Katie saw the picture I uploaded last night to test my website updating software (taken after about 2 hours of messing about with uncooperative software salvaging this website, I hasten to add) and commented that I looked "just like a serial killer".

Having looked at the picture again I have to concede that she has a point.

So, by way of contrast and to provide a picture of me in a better frame of mind altogether; here is another picture of me having just finished work and looking forward to the weekend!

Hmm, that's not a big improvement is it?

Damnit.

/me goes to fill bath with acid again...

PSIMPSON.NET LIVES AGAIN!

:-D

Website not work.

Paul unhappy.

Paul test image upload.

CD Review: August And Everything After - Counting Crows

The third in an occasional series of reviews of albums that you may well not have heard, but really ought to.

.

"Step out the front door like a ghost,

into the fog where no one notices,

the contrast of white on white.

And in between the moon and you,

the angels get a better view,

of the crumbling difference between wrong and right."

The first album by Counting Crows is one of those CDs you can put on whenever you're feeling emotionally fragile and just instantly feel... better. Originally released in 1994, it features 11 songs of rootsy American music of the type and quality that hadn't really been heard since Van Morrison was churning out his best stuff in the late 60s and early 70s. Lead singer and main songwriter Adam Duritz sings songs of heartbreak and isolation over tight-but-loose backings without ever sounding maudlin or self-pitying. The songs vary from the from the ballads 'Round Here' and 'Perfect Blue Buildings' to the up-tempo numbers like 'Rain King' and 'Mr. Jones' without ever jarring or spoiling the overall mood.

Damn good stuff, and available at discount at a music shop near you now.

"I almost fell off the stage when three of them started spanking each other's nipples with spoons."

Rick Booth's thoughts on playing a gig to a different audience than usual with his band.

My DVD player just blew up!

Really!

Shit...

Update 16/4/04 - I have found the receipt, and WHSmith are due for some serious stick. Watch this space.

My good friend Trev has just started his own Livejournal, and a good read it is too.

Frenetic Phone Fiddling Frenzy

Spent a bit more time exploring the capabilities of my new phone this weekend. For any fellow 3650 owners who might find this stuff useful, here are my findings:

(Before I get started: no, I don't know how to get the 3650 to work on Bluetooth with PC suite either. And as I don't want to use any of the features it offers, I couldn't care less. Oh yeah, just one more thing: psimpson.net is not responsible for the content of any sites it links to. Obvious really, but worth stating.)

You can play Doom on a 3650, and to make things a bit more convenient you can install a patch that allows you to store the game on your phones MMC memory card.

You can play video files on a 3650 too - you can download them from various places onto your PC, then transfer them to your phone. The picture quality is generally pretty good, sadly the sound is usually not. But it's a novel feature all the same.

'Mad props' (whatever they are) to fellow 3650 user Nicola for telling me about FExplorer - a Windows Explorer-like utility for browsing the files that are stored on the phone. Simple, free and incredibly useful.

On a side note, FExplorer also allows you to take screenshots:

There are also lots of bits of software and updates you can get from Nokia themselves, the most useful of which is probably the video recorder update that allows you to to record sound along with your video.

The upshot of all this multimedia madness is that I will be able to put pictures and video and stuff here on psimpson.net whenever I feel like it - I take my phone with me pretty much everywhere I go.

Will the results of all this be a fascinating insight into the life of a 21st century gadget freak?

Or just the same old blurry pictures and boring crap that seems to wind up on so many other weblogs?

We shall see.

Oh, one more thing - if you do find or know of any other cool stuff for the 3650, then please leave a note in the guestbook.

Nipped out to Discount Computer Supplies in Doncaster today and got a USB Bluetooth key for my PC. While I was there I also got a 64 Mb Flash memory card to upgrade my phone - both a damn sight cheaper than I expected too.

This Bluetooth stuff rocks - I can now wirelessly connect my phone to my PC and transfer... well, just about anything really. As an example, here's a picture I took yesterday:

Farewell Nicola!

Another colleague who made my job tolerable is off to pastures new. Best of luck at the new place, Nic!

Due to a set of unlikely but highly fortuitous circumstances, I have just sold the mobile phone I bought last Tuesday and purchased my second mobile phone in the space of a week. In these days of marketing campaigns designed to try to force us to buy new phones as fashion accessories it won't come as a surprise to anyone that knows me that previous to this last week the last phone I was bought in 2001.

My new toy of choice is the utterly amazing Nokia 3650 - not the very latest model, but it has all the features I could possibly want and more, and at the price I bought it for it was a real bargain.

Needless to say a good part of this evening has been spent fiddling with the thing and boggling at the things you can do with it. As soon as I get the Bluetooth connection to my PC sorted out and Orange switch on the GPRS connectivity on my account (which according to the chap on the orange customer service phone line takes "up to 24 hours" - we shall see...) I shall upload some examples of it's capabilities.

"This is a life-changing event, and some profound and deep words are probably required.

I am, however, knackered, so fuck it."

Many hearty congratulations to Jeremy '5x5' Kimmons and his wife on the birth of their new son!

(I still can't believe JK was on IRC in #ukmg when his wife started having contractions...)

The Force is strong with this one...

(A portrait of James Screaton, Photoshopped by Pete Spaldin)

I have a new toy! A new mobile phone, to be precise. And while I realise this 'picture messaging' thing that all the hip young folk are doing (and are probably already bored of) isn't exactly new, I'm just getting into it - and the possiblities seem pretty damn cool.

To kick off - I'm going to a leaving do tomorrow for a couple of lasses from work, one of whom originates from 'a land down under' and is continuing her travels around the globe. So:

Farewell Alison!

We're gonna miss ya, cobber.

Legal note - all complaints about the stereotyping of Australian people contained within this weblog entry can be directed to thatbrickwalloverthere@psimpson.net. No Kangaroos, Wallabies, Aborigines, Boomerangs, Paul Hogans, 'tinnies' of Castlemaine XXXX or members of the cast of 'Neighbours' were harmed during the production of this weblog.

LiveJournal goes, well, live... kinda

I now have a LiveJournal - this is purely so I can keep track of the ever-increasing number of my friends who are using the service, so don't expect a flurry of activity on that page, my periodic ramblings are going to be kept strictly here on psimpson.net.

Wigan 2003 DVD Disc 1 is finished!

See uk.music.guitar for details on how to get one.

Further sneak peeks:

UKMG TV!

Menu in motion (avi video file)

Wigan 2003 DVD: almost there...

For all the members of uk.music.guitar who are waiting for this; there is a sneak preview of what I just spent this evening working on here.

Email now back to normal after 5 days of (no doubt frantic) server maintenance and tweakage by Tiscali. I had 750 smegging emails waiting for me, and while I did my best to pick out the non-spam ones (all 3 of them at last count) [1] it is possible that if you emailed me with something in the last week it's been lost to my 'delete' key, so if you were expecting a response and didn't get one just send the email again.

[1] - Spamweed also seems to have some 'issues', so I'm back on the hunt for some software to trash my daily dose of unwanted advertising. All suggestions gratefully received [2].

[2] - In the Guestbook please, not my Inbox. I seem to have quite enough tragically ironic emails telling me how I can reduce my spam problem already.

If you've been trying to contact me by email recently and not had a reply it's because Tiscali's email servers currently have problems and I can't get any of my email. I've had four days of this now and it's getting quite tiresome - grrr...

Yet more video editing crap...

...but an extraordinarily useful site if you fancy giving it a go yourself.

Camcorders and Video Editing

I worked out most of this stuff on my own, wish I'd found this website when I started out.