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By Surlywombat, January 14, 2010 2:02 pm

Found this stuck on stuck on the back of the house this morning!

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By Surlywombat, January 13, 2010 12:45 pm

I know being able to say “None of the Above” is something I’ve wanted to do on my ballot paper, and apparently I’m not the only one. A petiton has been started on the Number 10 website http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NOTA-UK/ and theres also a Facebook(yuk) group http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=mf&gid=173779446985.

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By Surlywombat, January 7, 2010 4:28 pm

Was a bit sunnier today so I went out again and grabbed some more pictures of the snow.

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By Surlywombat, January 6, 2010 10:41 pm

Today I learnt about Muprhy’s Law.

Muprhy’s Law: Whenever you correct someone grammar online, you will make a grammatical error.

Graham Lineham mention it on Robert Llewellyn’s Carpool on http://www.llewtube.com/

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By Surlywombat, January 5, 2010 6:21 pm

So my Linx B-Tube arrived today and figured I’d give say how impressed I am with it. What is it, I don’t hear you ask? Well it’s a portable speaker with a lithium-ion battery and bluetooth connection thats what.

But wait thats not all – its also a pretend lightsaber hilt. Ok, so it’s not a very good lightsaber hilt as lightsaber hilts go – but if you played the swoosh/fooom noises through it, it would get a damn sight better.

Aaaaanyway. I suppose I should talk about what its “supposed” to do. Which as I said is act as a portable speaker for any bluetooth doobry you may have that makes noises.

It does this by having a speaker at each end, the ends also act as controls. Left end has a push button control, hold short to turn on, hold long to pair, tap to pause and play etc. The other end has a twist control for the volume. In the centre of the cylinder there’s a microphone for hands free/skype etc. on the front, and on the reverse there is a power socket and  line-in.

Pairing it with the pc was a doddle, as was with my phone. Sound quality is good, as other have said it can have issues with bass, but that’s a trade off that comes with it being small and easy to carry around (oh and it comes with a nice little travel pouch too). Bluetooth range seems reasonable, it was playing fine in the kitchen while the pc is 2 rooms away, but there were breaks in the audio when i moved further than that, but only while I was moving. Once I stood it still again it settled.

The big benefit of this item is the looks and the price, mine came from Amazon and was £11.99 for the brushed aluminum version (for some reason the “Lite” version, which doesn’t have bluetooth, is £36). Twelve quid for a pretend lightsaber that also works as a wireless speaker? Yes please.

If you looking for a bluetooth speaker so you can listen to Just a Minute on iplayer whenever and where ever you want, then this is for you, because I did and its for me.

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By Surlywombat, January 1, 2010 9:09 pm

So welcome to 2010, which I guess will be the first of the teenies?

Saw the new Doctor arrive, hopeful that the show will continue to be good fun, last show was a corker frankly.

Personally my opinion that next Doctor (after this new one) may be a woman. Doctor made a statement after counting his fingers checking to see if he was female, seemed to me to be a sneaky early attempt to get us accustomed to the possibility. Guess we’ll find out as time goes on (don’t expect a regeneration anytime soon!). Looking forward to see Matt Smith’s Doctor fully in the coming series anyway.

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By Surlywombat, December 26, 2009 2:40 pm

Happy Christmas everyone, and merry new year for next week!

Christmas has gone good so far, the dinner was great and everyone seems happy with their presents. Was concerned when my mums handbag turned up a very dark navy rather than the black she asked for but she seems happy enough with it, which is good.

Bro seems happiest with the roman candles, cheapest thing in his package so i guess it goes to show value and price have little in common much of the time .

I was extremely lucky, got a new digital camera and a photo printer from the family. I’ll be out taking snaps soon!

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By Surlywombat, November 30, 2009 7:14 am

Can’t sleep again, 6am and just got up after trying to sleep for a few hours. If I did get to sleep now I’d just be feeling terrible when my alarm goes of in couple of hours time.

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By Surlywombat, November 29, 2009 6:58 am

Piracy is back in the news again, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8328820.stm .

Personally I don’t download stuff illegally, I may have in the past, but now I don’t, for a few reasons, in no particular order:

• Too much like hard work! Sorting out ports on the firewall, virus checking everything twice, simply finding what you are looking for!
• I don’t pay the ISP bill and the person who does is against piracy very strongly, so I respect his choice.
• It’s wrong! Well it is. Everyone knows it is.

Thing is, there’s lots of good reasons to download stuff, and the funny thing is, its the people who make the stuff, who also make the reasons.

DRM - Something I have to contend with these days, why? BECAUSE I ACTUALLY PAY FOR THE STUFF. Seriously, the stupid movie advert you get on every DVD. The only people who see that are people who buy it. The people who download every movie off the net don’t even know it exists, so what does it achieve except piss me off? Nothing. Same with SecureROM, and all the others on software, do game pirates have to register their installs online with SecureROM? Of course the don’t. So what does that achieve? IT PISSES ME OFF!

No refunds. Stuff isn’t cheap. But the vast majority of this stuff is nebulous in nature, it’s worth is based on opinion, not like a bar of gold, and people are hesitant to pay out when they don’t know what their opinion will be till they got it open and watching/listening/playing  this leads to the big corporate lie the one they love so much and you hear all the time:

“Piracy is costing *insert industy here* 70 Squjillion £/$/€ a year/month/minute”

What a load of horse crap. The way they make this huge “shocking” number is by guessing how many people are downloading stuff, I know its a guess because if FACT knocked on your door would you let them come in and count the films on your hard-drive? NO! So its a GUESS. Then muliplying that number by the RRP of the DVD on the one day of the year it’s not on offer at HMV. Then they put all these numbers they have, add some zeros on then end (cos, you know, it can’t hurt). Then shout them as loudly as possible at any dumbass journalist willing to listen.

When it comes down to it though, it’s a big fat lie. Most of the people pirating these things wouldn’t be walking down to Game to buy it if the pirating avenues where closed to them, 1) they have forgot where their legs are, 2) they would have to go outside.

They just wouldn’t bother with it at all. Of a course few would, but every time something gets pirated it brings it into the hands of someone who later decides to buy it, because they know they like it and my guess is, it would balance out.

The simple fact is the vast majority of people will buy products that are reasonable:

• Reasonably easy to get hold of
• Reasonably priced
• Do what they are supposed to, reasonably well.

Simple fact is that all the companies are doing these days is generating bad feeling with their customer base, and the sooner they start listening to their customers rather than their lawyers the better they will do. But they won’t