Johnnyboy

Modern Warfare - error after v1.40 update

2011-12-17T13:27:00.000Z

Fired up my copy of Modern Warfare the other day as I'd started to get bored with all the nonsense of MW3/MW2 and I fancied getting my gold shotgun out again.

Anyway, had to download the latest update to v1.40 and once the update had completed, I was met with the following screen where it asked me a question without actually stating exactly WHAT the question was:

I could move between Yes and No but pressing the X button on the PS3 controller had no effect whatsoever. I made contact with Activision who admitted there was a problem and they were working on it.

AVAST - my preferred choice of anti-virus program

2011-11-03T10:29:00.000Z

Download the latest and greatest version of Avast here:

LINK

It's quite a bit faster than AVG and less of a memory hog. Sorry AVG, but you've had your day.

Regback process on Windows Vista - slow

2011-07-20T20:59:00.002+01:00

Open a cmd prompt box (right-click and Run as Administrator)

Navigate to the following folder:

C:\Windows\System32\config\regback

Delete any files names regxxxx - where xxxx is some arbitrary number.

Wireless ADSL routers - suggestions

2011-07-15T09:51:00.001+01:00

Here's a nice Buffalo unit on Ebuyer

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/243075

or Cisco/Linksys

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191547

PlayStation Network - Welcome back offer

2011-06-10T17:38:00.000+01:00

After the recent PSN hack fiasco, Sony have finally offered us gamers the option to download your choice of 2 free games from a selection.

This goes some way to recompense me for the fact that Sony have locked my account, saying that there were 5 PS3s connected to that account. When my old '60Gb fat launch version' borked for the last time, I took the option of purchasing a new 'slim' PS3. After connecting it up, and attempted to download all of my previously purchased content (DLC stuff like map packs for Call of Duty), I was met with an error message saying "5 PS3s connected to this account, unable to download". What a complete load of spherical objects. This is on a brand new PS3.

Anyway, on to the new free games situation. I simply hooked up my PS3 to all 5 of my PSN accounts, downloaded 2 games on one UID, then logged in to one of the other accounts, and hey presto, more free games.

On this occasion, Sony 0 - Johnnyboy 1 :-)

Windows XP error

2011-06-01T22:28:00.000+01:00

Just reinstalled XP after a new PC purchase and came across a problem:

Oh, how I laughed at the irony of Microsoft's DEP pulling the plug on Windows Update.

Clowns.

Playstation Network outage (PSN)

2011-05-09T14:01:00.000+01:00

The PSN went down on the 21st April, it is now the 9th May. I make that over 3 weeks ago...

What the blue blazes are you doing, Sony? Where's your commitment to all the loyal people like me who have invested literally thousands in your company's products?

In this day and age of SLAs and KPIs, Sony seem not to care about them one iota.

Get it fixed, soon.

Back in the day...

2011-04-17T22:07:00.001+01:00

Born in the 60s or 70s? Read on...

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were babies in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s probably shouldn't have survived, because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was regularly chewed and licked. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles or baby monitors or latches on cabinets, and it was fine to play with pans and cardboard boxes.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops and fluorescent 'spokey dokeys' on our wheels. If we rode in cars we had no seatbelts in the back, and riding in the boot was a real treat. We drank water from garden hoses and public fountains and it tasted just the same. We scrumped apples and ate blackberries without washing them first. Of course we ate chips and wham bars and drank full-fat milk, but were never overweight because we were always playing out. We shared one Lilt or Panda Shandy between four friends - from the same bottle or can - and no one died from it. We would spend several hours re-building go-carts, then go top speed down the hill, only to find out we'd forgotten the brakes. After running into a patch of stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded.

We looked out for the other kids on our street we knew who lived in each house, and not everybody was a paedophile. We didn't have televisions in our bedrooms and there were only three or four channels. Sometimes, the television just got switched off!! When it rained we played cards, or built things from Lego, Meccano, papier maché, egg cartons and pasta shells. Sometimes we listened to the radio. There was no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no Internet chat-rooms, or MSN. We had friends - we went outside and found them. We played penny-up-the-wall, football, manhunt and skipping. In the summer we had water-fights with kids we hardly knew and organised big games of football and rounders. Sometimes that ball really hurt. We fell off skateboards and out of trees. We double-dared each other and sometimes it didn't work out. We grazed knees and broke bones, but there were no law suits. We wore our scars with pride. We played Knock Down Ginger
and were actually afraid of the owners catching up with us. We were scared of the old lady who lived on the corner - not the other way round. The corner shop let the four of us in at the same time, and those pretend cigarettes are definitely not the reason some of us smoke as adults. We walked to friends' homes. If they lived quite far away, we borrowed our next-door-neighbour's bike. We also, believe it or not, walked to school; we didn't rely on Mummy to drive us to school as it was just round the corner. We made up games with sticks and punctured beachballs. We rode bikes in packs of seven and wore our coats by only the hood. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we had a run-in with the law was unheard of; their punishments were usually worse...

That generation produced some of the best risk-takers, problem-solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. Not every one of us passed our exams at school, not everybody did well at everything, and not everyone had a gap-year. But it all turned out okay, and everybody learnt to cope with the hard bits. And you're one of them. Congratulations!

PS3 - YLOD and now fixed!

2011-01-09T04:15:00.000Z

I had a bit of bad luck recently, what with my car accident and then my beloved PS3 died on me. Great, rang Sony and they refused to replace it. They offered me a 'refurb' unit at £130 and only 3 months warranty. See you later Sony.

Youtube revealed a series of YLOD fixes and most of them were based on the old trick 'turn power on whilst pressing the EJECT button on the BluRay drive'. No help to me with my launch 60Gb PS3.

One of the videos by a northern bloke called 'gilksy' pointed me in the direction of a possible fix. I took my PS3 round my mates house and performed the fix, which basically involved reflowing the solder on the board. It took us a couple of hours in total, and we did 20 seconds of 300C heat.

This didn't work.

3 days later, I tried again on my own - and used 40-45 seconds of 300C heat. Put it all back together and it WORKED!!!!

Very pleased with the result. The only difference to gilksy's procedure was that I used a drinks mug to support the BGAs when being heated from the underside.

What a total result! :-)

JB

Internet radio stations

2010-10-28T16:37:00.001+01:00

Bearing in mind the time I spent in Uruguay in 2008-2009, I developed a love for all things internet radio-based.

Some of the stations I listen to on a regular basis include Deep FM, Audiogrooves.net and PointBlankFM.

I've also been able to add a gadget to the right hand side of my blog as you can see...

Cheers,

JG

LG GH22LS50 DVD burner

2010-09-02T07:18:00.001+01:00

I've had all manner of problems with this particular DVD burner from LG, but only when using it under Ubuntu. Trying to burn using either CDs or DVDs usually resulted in producing a coaster, which is no use to man or beast.

After booting into Windows 7 this morning, I checked the LG ODD firmware update tool and it said that the drive had been upgraded from version TL01 to version TL02 firmware.

I rebooted back into Ubuntu (Lucid Lynx 10.04) and tried burning a DVD ISO image using my trusty k3b application. The drive sounds like a rocket ship and managed to burn my hefty 4.3Gb ISO image in no time at all! Wonderful stuff.

I would suggest that anyone having problems in burning with this particular drive should update their firmware from TL01 to TL02.

PS3 jailbroken with USB dongle? Read on...

2010-08-20T16:34:00.002+01:00

I've been reading various online reports about the PS3 being hacked with some USB dongle device. Videos have been surfacing on the 'tinterweb' purportedly showing how it all work. There is one in French, but a more useful Aussie one can be found, courtesy of OzModChips.

The website of the USB jailbreak device in question (http://psjailbreak.com/) is currently down at time of writing but I have managed to grab the text of the website below:

PS Jailbreak is a USB plug and play solution that installs in seconds, keeping your valid warranty seal in tact.

Easy to use installer and GUI takes you step by step.

Compatible with all production models FAT and SLIM. Supports all regions: USA, JAP, PAL and KOREA

PS Jailbreak disables forced software updates and will never brick your console.

Supports all games (it does not allow backups of bluray movies , dvd movies , or past consoles games)

Backup games to your internal hard drive or external hard drive through USB, and boot directly off GUI. Eliminating the need for expensive blueray burners and costly blank media.

Play backups off your hard drives 2x as fast as off the blueray drive. This eliminates lags and glitches to provide you with smoother game play.

Open up your console to a new generation of homebrew applications. Load homebrew apps/games off any USB hard drive/flash drive.

Fully updatable with new features/updates by connecting PS Jailbreak to any computers USB port.

The USB device, which apparently sells for around £80 (US$120), is plugged in prior to booting. When the PS3 is switched on, the Eject button is also pressed in quick succession. LEDs light up on the USB device to indicate mode of operation.

Its basic premise is that you seem to be able to perform backups of games to an external HDD, and then be able to run them as if you had loaded the game CD/DVD/BluRay into the drive on the PS3. This sounds great in practice.

Although BluRay discs seem to be quite resistant to scratches, once a game disc fails to load - then you are stuffed. Time to go out to the shops and buy another. This device fits the bill for my requirements, although having said that, I can see other miscreants using it for copying say rented games.

I'm convinced that Sony will be trying their best over the next week or so to release a new firmware update to negate this device's effect on the operation of the PS3. If they are unable to do so, then I might be interested! It may possibly give me the option of being able to perhaps reinstall my Ubuntu Linux as another OS to use, which was the 'other os' option that Sony so kindly removed for me in a previous firmware update.

Fingers crossed.

More info available here in the Register article:

PS3 jailbroken - The Register

SATA connections

2010-08-17T14:45:00.002+01:00

I'm a touch 'old school' when it comes to connections inside or outside computers. I had the pleasure of sorting out a PC that belonged to the parents of a dear friend over the weekend, and all seemed to be going well.

They had a rather dodgy version of Windows 7 installed and Microsoft Security Essentials was complaining that it might not be 'genuine software'. I elected to remove this and install Grisoft's excellent AV product called AVG. All was going well, until I went to reboot. I had removed a game CD from the CD drive prior to rebooting.

System rebooted and promptly told me there were disk errors - press Ctrl Alt Del to restart. Each restart then displayed differing errors, namely - slight corruption on the BIOS screen, failure at different points of the boot process, and oh dear, it was all going wrong for Johnnyboy at that point.

After checking the obvious, and then booting into my OS on my USB flash drive, all seemed OK. I normally carry around an install of Puppy Linux 4 OS to assist me in case Windows can't boot. And that happens rather too often for my liking.

Opening up the case revealed a rather warm PC. The power supply unit (PSU) was in the opposite corner of the case to that which I was expecting, and consequently covered most of the motherboard connections for the PC/case. I hadn't been able to figure out why I wasn't able to boot up after simply removing the CD.

After a bit of prodding around and checking, and then reseating cables, I discovered the cause. The CD drive had ejected rather forcefully (a good example of this effect would be a slide hammer) and in doing so had made the connection for the SATA HDD lose partial connection with the motherboard. I suspect that this was mainly due to the heat build-up and subsequent heating/cooling effect when the PC was switched off and on, and therefore making the connections possibly somewhat looser than required.

IDE connections are very firm and secure, but hard to work with in the confines of a PC case. SATA cables are great, and easy to work with but the less than solid connection has always concerned me. If you ever have troubles booting your PC after installing a new HDD, then I would certainly recommend checking the SATA cable connections as a first port of call.

Dad in hospital last night

2010-08-13T18:41:00.000+01:00

I had a frightening moment this morning when I woke to find a text msg from my Mum, saying that Dad had gone to hospital at 3am this morning on a 999 call. Apparently, he had breathing difficulties.

I arrived at the hospital to find my father in good spirits. It seems that he had suffered his first asthma attack, which wasn't too bad I guess for a 73 year old spring chicken. So panic mode over, and I can now relax again.

JB

Call of Duty - Black Ops

2010-08-12T15:33:00.000+01:00

The latest offering in the Call of Duty series of games is called Black Ops. There's a preview video available here:

Call Of Duty: Black Ops

The ability to send a remote-controlled car is ingenious - think something along these lines: (Tamiya model r/c car)

Work

2010-08-12T15:25:00.000+01:00

After my return from Uruguay last year, and a consultancy position working at my last company on an LDAP/Active Directory implementation project, I'm looking for work.

If there are any openings within your organisation or company, then of course I'd be glad to hear from you. Skills include HP-UX, Unix, Windows, Linux, ssh, DNS, TCP/IP, LDAP, Active Directory, rsync et al.

AVG - latest download link v9.0

2010-06-24T12:26:00.000+01:00

To save you all that time and effort, here's a link to the latest version of AVG (free edition):

AVG FREE

Clicking on the above link will take you straight to the Download page for the installation files for AVG9. As per normal, the FREE version is tucked away, some would say almost hidden on the main AVG site.

Regards

JG

Slow Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)?

2010-05-09T12:30:00.001+01:00

Recently, network performance on my Ubuntu box was appalling - to say the least.

Pings were taking 3,500 to 4,000 msec, a traceroute would take forever and a day to complete. Webpages were affected too, sometimes taking up to 30 seconds to load.

I could see that DNS resolution was slow but this wasn't a problem just with Firefox. It seemed to be affecting the whole OS.

I checked that DNS wasn't using IPv6 (which it wasn't) and also double-checked all the usual suspects; namely /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf

Originally I suspected that my Sony Ericsson K800i was causing a problem as I've taken to connecting the phone quite regularly nowadays, for transferring photos and also charging it. When connected, a message appeared on screen saying Network disconnected, and this made me think that perhaps Ubuntu was using the GPRS on my phone to access the 'tinterweb' ;-) This wasn't the case though.

The problem turned out to be a service called 'Ubuntu One'. I use it for syncing my local data to the so-called cloud. It seemed to be working fine but after checking the settings, I saw that the Limit Bandwidth option was set to On, but the default limits were set to Upload 2,048 and Download 2,048. As soon as I disabled this service, my pings went from 3000-4000 msec down to 20-300 as I would normally expect.

I think I'll be syncing manually from now...

PS3 firmware - update v3.21 - UPDATED

2010-04-01T19:33:00.000+01:00

I am now connected to the PSN but still using version 3.20 System Firmware. I managed to achieve this using the Logan5 tool proxy. Everything works fine - yay!

Custom firmware is currently being looked into by the man GeoHot so I'll probably give that a bash when it gets released.

Sony - you are a bunch of twonks.

PS3 firmware - update v3.21 - WARNING

2010-04-01T10:55:00.000+01:00

I was so close to installing the latest update, but somehow managed to spend 30 minutes online on my PC reading The Register - which revealed that the latest update removes the ability of your PS3 to run LINUX!

You appear to have a choice but no choice. Yesterday, I was able to play online games on the PSN and also boot my PS3 into Ubuntu. I've also played around with the Yellow Dog version but went back to Ubuntu in the end. Today, I can either accept the update and then not be able to use my Ubuntu. If I don't accept the update, then I can no longer play online games, and this accounts for around 80% of the games purchased.

It is simply outrageous that Sony have even thought about this, let alone actually implementing it. They are removing a feature that was advertised as being integral to the PS3 at launch. Where Sony stands from a legal viewpoint is far from certain. My analogy is that it's similar to a car manufacturer deciding to remove the stereo or sat/nav from your car, simply because they want to. You can then use the car as before (minus the stereo or sat/nav) OR sit there in your garage listening to your music whilst going nowhere.

Early adopters such as myself have invested big money in the platform and I simply don't understand Sony's logic. Like I said, they have 'given' me a choice when in fact there simply is no choice. I purchased the PS3 because it had the ability to run another operating system (OS), as well as play games obviously.

I am awaiting Sony's response on the matter.

Can't open Word docx ?

2010-03-17T19:13:00.001Z

Hello. I get hit with this type of question on an alarmingly regular basis. It's normally something along the lines of "I've been sent this Word document but I can't open it?"

To solve this annoying problem, there are a few options available:

Download OpenOffice, an alternative to Microsoft Office
Send the document to me and I will convert it for you from docx to doc format
Buy Microsoft Office 2007 - not recommended unless you have a fat wallet.

It all stems from Microsoft's decision to change the default document type in Office 2007 when saving a Word document as .docx format. It used to be .doc format e.g. Shopping_list.doc but would now be saved as Shopping_list.docx. Since most of the world and his dog use versions of Microsoft Office 2003 or earlier, you won't be able to open it. Ridiculous logic but then that's Microsoft.

My recommendation would be to use the open source product OpenOffice. This suite of applications is able to open the new file formats (XML based) such as .xlsx (Excel) and .pptx (Powerpoint). You can then save the document in .doc/.xls/.ppt format. Personally, I use both Office 2003 and OpenOffice. That way, I am able to open any of the newer file formats and still be able to use (in my view) the infinitely superior Office 2003 suite - compared to the nasty Microsoft Office 2007 suite.

PS3 now working again after Feb29th date bug fiasco

2010-03-02T14:04:00.002Z

My old fat PS3 didn’t work properly all day yesterday, and the only games I could successfully play were Colin McRae ‘DiRT’ and one of my old WipEout 2097 games. All the others failed to start with some trophy/copyright error. I’d tried setting the clock manually beforehand to see if it would ‘fix’ things but it didn’t.
Switched it on at 12:20 am this morning (minus RJ45 network connection) and without contacting the internet or doing anything else, my PS3 was then back to complete normality.
2 things.
1) Sony appear to have let 24 hours pass to let the bug fix itself.
2) More worrying is that my system wouldn’t let me play more than 90% of my games.
A poor show Sony, and the lack of updates was inexcusable. I’m currently on the 5th PS3 (initial 60Gb launch model) so you could say I’m more patient and loyal than some
Give it a couple of days and there will probably be a new firmware update, applicable to just those old ‘phat’ PS3 owners.

Facebook site was down

2010-02-20T16:24:00.003Z

Oh dear, the Facebook site was down today. What is everyone going to do?

I'm quite happy since I've been able to watch Arsenal v Sunderland at the home of football (Emirates/Ashburton Grove) via the wonderful p2p sopcast player.

Good luck to both Arsenal and the Facebook tech guys ;-)

JB

Those people that use Google for EVERYTHING

2010-02-13T15:34:00.001Z

I came across a story recently which amazed me. I've seen this behaviour myself where some people tend to use Google to then search for Facebook and click on the result, as opposed to actually typing www.facebook.com into their browser's address bar.

Take a look at this website: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php

You can quickly see that it's not Facebook.

However, that hasn't stopped lots of retarded people from posting msgs on that completely unrelated website saying 'Please let me login to Facebook' without realising that it's not Facebook. The stupidity of some people amazes me.

Enjoy reading the comments, although some are not safe for work.

JB

USB resets on external hard disks

2010-01-25T17:50:00.001Z

My syslog entries on Ubuntu x64 revealed lots of errors over the last month, specifically in relation to USB errors.

Jan 23 15:23:52 colossus kernel: [ 1806.970046] usb 1-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Jan 23 15:23:52 colossus kernel: [ 1807.131881] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
Jan 23 15:23:52 colossus kernel: [ 1807.131888] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
Jan 23 15:23:52 colossus kernel: [ 1807.131894] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 205518871
Jan 23 15:24:53 colossus kernel: [ 1867.600085] usb 1-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2

These USB resets caused either of my two external HDDs to make the dreaded clicking noise, which made me suspect that either one or both of them might be faulty. Both drives were normally plugged into the back of the server on the motherboard itself, which has 4 ports available.

This time, due to work commitments, I had been ferrying my disk drive around and therefore found it more convenient to plug into the front mounted USB2 hub that I'd installed a couple of years ago.

After doing the usual rounds on the forums, quite a few posters were suggesting some physical damage to the hard disks whilst others suggested it could be an NTFS problem. A small percentage of posters suggested that using a hub may be the cause of the problems. After exhausting the first two options, I then plugged both HDDs into the motherboard USB ports and lo and behold, all was working fine again.

JG

Skype on Ubuntu Linux, plus pulseaudio problems.

2010-01-25T17:34:00.001Z

After experiencing a load of hassle in the past with regards to getting Skype working at all on my 64 bit install of Ubuntu (Karmic Koala release), I was pleased to find that Skype now offer a 64 bit version to download.

After a quick one-button install, I was up and running. It seems to run even sweeter on Ubuntu, compared to Windows. Top marks to the developers for supporting this platform!

Prior to this, I'd started to investigate why the sound system in use by default on Ubuntu (pulseaudio) was giving me so many problems. My system would always start with the sound muted which was very annoying, although I fixed that quickly by hacking a script together to run on boot.

What really got my goat with pulseaudio was its inability to remain stable and usable for any length of time. Music played through Winamp was hit and miss, with radio static/crackle sometimes rearing its ugly head. Don't even think about mentioning Spotify since that caused all manner of problems! My solution to the problem was rather violent (in UNIX terms) because all I did to resolve the situation was to perform a killall on pulseaudio:

# killall pulseaudio

This would sometimes sort the problem out, but not always. After a lot of digging around on Ubuntu forums, the general consensus of opinion was that the pulseaudio system is still a 'work in progress'. Not an ideal situation I feel, so I took the executive option of removing the crud and installing a proper sound system, aka esound.

# sudo aptitude purge pulseaudio
# sudo aptitude install esound

All is now well in the world of sound on Ubuntu x64 and I am very happy that this great software seems to have fixed all of my sound problems. All the more exciting is that I can now select my webcam mic as a recording sound source. Perfection!

JG

Mark - bruv would have been 40 today!

2010-01-20T17:36:00.000Z

It's my dear bruv's birthday today and it made me wonder how things would have turned out had he still been around?

A lot has happened in the last 10 years or so since he departed this earth. It's a shame he never got the chance to meet Ale, or see how his nephew and nieces have developed. There's not a day that goes by without me thinking about him in some way, shape or form and I miss him dearly.

I just hope that he made the right decision for himself and that he's happy where he is...

JB x

AVG moaning at you?

2009-10-24T16:23:00.001+01:00

Have you been on the end of adverts from AVG warning that support for version 8.5 (the current version) is being withdrawn?

Well, as per usual it seems like the staff at AVG try their hardest to make it as complicated as possible for people to upgrade from the free version 8.5 to the new free version 9.0

Most of the website is designed in a way that channels you towards downloading 9.0, so you get the latest PAID version.

Anyway, here's the shortcut link to their website. Download the 72Mb AVG9 FREE Edition install file here:

http://free.avg.com/ww-en/download?prd=afg#tba1

Hope this helps.

JG

Ubuntu Firefox - bus error?

2009-09-17T00:10:00.000+01:00

Annoyingly, I was hit with a problem after an update via update-manager on Ubuntu.

Firefox just wouldn't start and when I invoked it via a korn shell, I received the rather terse error 'Bus error' and nothing else. How wonderfully educational.

I took the option of installing Galeon, and then got hit with the same error. In the end, I installed Lynx (great text browser) and had a poke around.

My eventual 'solution' was to check the updates history, and then uninstall Firefox via Synaptic. Some of the related programs that were uninstalled were ubifox and xulrunner.

Afterwards, I was able to start Firefox again - to my relief.

USB batteries - do your bit for the environment!

2009-09-05T16:02:00.001+01:00

I've always tried to use rechargeable batteries, and it must have been at least 15 years since I felt the need to buy anything else.

I'm known to some as Gadget Boy and I was asked the other day about my USB batteries. I've had 4 of them now, and purchased them around 2 years ago. I'll have to admit that they are quite expensive at around £10 for just two AA size batteries!

USB batteries - UK based website

Still, they are very, very useful things to have. Run out of battery power? Simply stick them in a laptop, your PlayStation3, your PC, in fact anywhere that has a USB port. They start charging immediately (solid yellow light) and then turn to a flashing light whilst trickle-charging.

Whoever had the bright idea to make these things in the first place was a genius.

It's a boat, not a ship

2009-08-22T15:12:00.005+01:00

Yesterday really was the BIG day for my mate Ed, who has been busy building a small boat for the last year or so. And it's in his garage in Bromley, of all places.

We went to Chobham to pick up his new trailer from De Graff Trailers, near to Langland Stud Farm. I must admit that I was slightly concerned at the bulk of the trailer sitting atop my roof rack on the Audi badboy, but it was as stable as a rock - as you can see from the pictures.

Ed had a slight problem earlier in the day when he parked up outside my gaff as he had to call a taxi to get him to the pavement! Photographic evidence is there for all to see...

That's enough exertion for one day, I've decided I'm going to have a very lazy day today :-)

JB

UK ISP speeds - July 2009 Ofcom report

2009-07-28T01:57:00.003+01:00

Interesting results shown below, that were released today:

HOW UK ISPS COMPARE

All services at 8Mbit/s except Virgin Media at 10Mbps
Source: Ofcom

AOL are slower than O2, Orange, Plusnet, Sky, Talktalk, Virgin
BT are slower than O2, Virgin Media and faster than Tiscali
O2 are slower than Virgin Media, and faster than AOL, BT, Tiscali
Orange are slower than Virgin,and faster than AOL, Tiscali
Plusnet are slower than Virgin, and faster than AOL, Tiscali
Sky are slower than Virgin, and faster than AOL, Tiscali
Talktalk are slower than Virgin, and are faster than AOL, Tiscali
Tiscali are slower than BT, O2, Orange, Plusnet, Sky, Talktalk, Virgin
Virgin are faster than AOL, BT, O2, Orange, Plusnet, Sky, Talktalk, Tiscali

Lucky I'm on Virgin! :-)

Virgin Broadband - upgraded!

2009-07-08T11:19:00.002+01:00

Today I ran a speedtest and was pleasantly surprised to see that my free upgrade from 2Mbps to 10Mbps had been implemented.

Can't ask for anymore really can I? :-)

Well done Virgin.

New flat UK plug

2009-06-25T09:41:00.003+01:00

I saw this video recently of a designer's attempt at a new style of UK 3-pin plug.

See the video here

The UK plug is acknowledged as one of the most sturdy and safe electrical plugs in use in the world today, but this new flat-style plug is very interesting - especially useful for travellers, and also for use in the home.

My last plug count for the computer desk was 18 plugs!

My new ISP - much better

2009-06-08T13:11:00.003+01:00

Here's the test results from Speedtest.net

Same line speed of 2Mbps, but it only costs 1/4 as much and the latency is 37ms as opposed to 337ms! That's nearly 10 times better than ANTEL.

My Virgin cable internet is due to be upgraded from 2Mbps to 10Mbps at no cost during June 2009.

Sony - excellent Customer Care

2009-05-23T18:47:00.002+01:00

I had the pleasure of taking a call from someone at Sony CS today.

They rang me to apologise for all the problems I'd had with my PS3, and offered me a free game, cancelled my subscription to their 'ContinuousPlay' service, and re-instated the 12 month guarantee, effective immediately.

An excellent response from them, and it's merely confirmed in my mind that they are great to deal with -- it's nice to see that instead of seeing someone as customer XYZ, they've actually managed to renew my faith in the company.

Well done SONY, I hope they treat other customers in a similar manner. If they do, then they will have very happy customers.

Top hole! I'm off to play some Call of Duty again hehe ;-)

Sony PS3 dead again (3rd time)

2009-05-13T13:59:00.002+01:00

My play time suddenly ended yesterday when the PS3 decided to go all 'borked' on me.

Same problem, the feared YLOD (yellow light of death, and 3 beeps).

I'll be on to Sony UK Customer Care about this, since it was only replaced in December 2008. That was a factory refurbished unit apparently, but it looked like new to my untrained eye. So that's 4 months use... for the flagship product.

There HAS to be a design fault with this 60Gb model. Friends that have the 40Gb model have had no problems.

Windows 7 (RC) hangs on boot with external monitor

2009-05-12T18:53:00.005+01:00

I have installed Windows 7 (Release Candidate - Build 7100) on my laptop and the install went through fine. However, booting into Windows 7 results in a black screen with the Windows logo showing, every single time.

It will sit there all day long if you leave it, but I lost my patience after 20 minutes. Windows 7 will then complain on reboot that it wants to fix your computer by doing a 'Start repair" but hold on.... it will fix things temporarily but you'll be back to square 1 when you reboot.

It would seem that Windows 7 gets easily confused by the fact you have a second external monitor connected. Now I would have thought that if XP can successfully install and run without problems, then the new all singing and dancing techno kid on the block would be able to do the same, without breaking into a sweat. Not so.

To fix the problem, I rebooted the laptop without the second external monitor plugged in. I then shut it all down cleanly and powered off. I connected the second external monitor (which incidentally I use as my MAIN display) and booted up again.

All fixed.

I cannot believe that Microsoft made such a stupid error, and a basic one at that. Most, if not all laptops that I have encountered on my travels have had a VGA port on the back for rigging up to an external monitor.

Why it doesn't complain about it at install time is anyone's guess.

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty and high CPU on xorg

2009-05-07T11:40:00.003+01:00

I'd noticed recently that my CPU usage had crept up on my ACER laptop with an ATI graphics chip and was slowing down simple things like scrolling. I switched off my folding@home client straight away, and then delved deeper.

I tried the usual fix-all of moving my .gconf path so it would be recreated next time I started the Gnome GUI but this made no difference.

I discovered an option however on the Xorg file xorg.conf which controls the graphical setup. Simply adding the following 2 lines to my xorg.conf file and then restarting gdm and all was back to normal. I love it when a problem like this can be fixed by typing 2 lines into vi ;-)

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "ati"
Option "Accel"
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"

Sweet potatoes, as they say.

JB

Swine flu and the media

2009-05-02T14:58:00.002+01:00

I saw this recently after it was sent to me by Maggie of 'Maggie & Dave' fame... and I thought I'd share it with you.

It just seems to sum up the massive media exposure given to the subject, and dare I say it - perhaps too much?

Funny though!

JB

New release of UBUNTU

2009-04-23T13:23:00.003+01:00

There's an upcoming release of UBUNTU, which is an alternative operating system to Windows that I run on both my laptop and PLAYSTATION3. I currently use 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) but the new version 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) is due for release very shortly:

&amp;lt;a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;img src="http://www.ubuntu.com/files/countdown/904/countdown-9.04-1/00.png" alt="Ubuntu 9.04 - on desktops, netbooks, servers and in the cloud" width="180" height="150" border="0" /&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

I've already installed the upgrade by using the development version and it's rock solid. I'm currently upgrading the PLAYSTATION3 as I write.

As an alternative to the world of Windows, I thoroughly recommend it. It's free, it's open source and thoroughly reliable. Hasn't crashed on me once in 18 months of use.

JB

Pathetic ANTEL, my ISP

2009-04-17T02:14:00.002+01:00

I've had reason to ring ANTEL recently, even though I don't speak Spanish - such was my frustration.

They charge me 35 GBP a month for a pony service. That's for a 2Mbps connection.

Here's a list of my recent results from Speedtest.net:

I suppose I should just be thankful I don't have to rely on it for work purposes. ANTEL are a bunch of thieves and it's money for old rope. 3 times the cost, and 10 times slower, and that's when it's supposed to be running at full tilt - which I hasten to add never happens, unless you just happen to be downloading from a site somewhere in Uruguay.

Interestingly, when I phoned them, they said they don't guarantee times/speeds outside of Uruguay. Well that's complete nonsense - do they think the internet doesn't exist outside of Uruguay? Idiots, the lot of them.

JG

Interesting stuff on Google Books

2009-04-15T13:52:00.003+01:00

I found this whilst recently browsing the 'interweb' so I'll share it with you, if you fancy the idea of reading up about my home town of Wallington, Surrey:

Wallington (TinyURL)

I found out from this excerpt that my road (Clarendon Road) used to be called Cathcart of all things!

JG

It's all go ....

2009-04-04T01:41:00.004+01:00

Big excitement today when there was a major accident right outside where we live.

Apparently a motorcyclist and pillion passenger were trying to escape from the police, and came the wrong way down Luis Lamas and collided with a Citroen people carrier. As you can see, the people carrier was carrying a disabled person and they were stuck inside the vehicle after the accident.

I was concerned for the biker as he didn't look in a good way. His mate ran off but was soon collared by neighbours. Apparently a gun was involved, and that was used in an attempted robbery just prior to the accident.

The biker wasn't wearing a helmet but I didn't feel sorry for him after I found out what he and matey-boy had been up to with that gun of theirs...

Grub problems - error 17

2009-04-03T21:04:00.003+01:00

I got this error after installing the Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex and then the dreaded Vista.

The error usually happens because Linux and your BIOS detect your hard disks in different orders. GRUB tries to translate between the two using the device.map file in /boot/grub/device.map, which is automatically generated. Chances are, it guessed wrong.

In my case, I have three SATA hard disks.

My BIOS sees them as:
HDD1 - 80 GB - Windows
HDD2 - 80 GB - Linux
HDD3 - 250 GB - Media

Linux sees them as:
/dev/sda - 80 GB - Windows
/dev/sdb - 250 GB - Media
/dev/sdc - 80 GB - Linux

So it generated device.map assuming that order was correct, i.e.:
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb
(hd2) /dev/sdc

When the installer installed GRUB using that data, it tried to install the first part of GRUB on /dev/sda and told it to look for the OS on /dev/sdc. Unfortunately, this translated to "install on (hd0) then look for the OS on (hd2)", so it was looking for the OS on the wrong drive.

To fix it, you have to teach GRUB which order the BIOS uses. To do this, follow these steps:

1) Boot from the Ubuntu CD
2) Open a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal)
3) Run "sudo -s"
4) Run "mkdir /ubuntu"
5) Run "mount /dev/sdc1 /ubuntu" (where /dev/sdc1 is your Linux root partition)
6) Run "chroot /ubuntu"
7) Run "cd /boot/grub"
Edit device.map (using vi or another text editor)

In my case, my new device.map was:
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdc
(hd2) /dev/sdb

which told GRUB that sdc was really the second hard drive, not the third.

9) Run "grub --device-map=device.map"
10) Type "root (hd1,0)" (where hd1,0 is your Linux boot or root partition using the BIOS order)
11) Type "setup (hd0)" (where hd0 is your first boot drive, almost always hd0)

You should see a message that it's now telling GRUB to load 17+(hd1,0) instead of 17+(hd2,0) or something like that. This is what we want.

12) Edit menu.lst

You need to change references from (hd2,0) to (hd1,0), or whatever your Linux boot drive was autodetected as to whatever it is according to your BIOS.

If you get this step wrong, you'll see an error message something like:
Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

meaning it's looking for a Linux file system on that partition, but it can't find one (because the drive device number is wrong in menu.lst).

13) Reboot

14) Celebrate

Complete respect to the Ubuntu forums and Mikel Ward, from Melbourne in Australia in particular. Excellent detailed post.

Windows Vista and its huge disk space requirements, plus my external monitor

2009-03-31T21:20:00.003+01:00

As part of a project to get my girlfriend's laptop up and running again (minus its CD-ROM drive), I've had the displeasure of installing Vista again.

I am astounded at how much disk space it seems to consume. Two common problems appear to be Windows Event reporting alongside what's called the (side by side) Winsxs folder.

Allowing for 20Gb for install, I found that after only a few programs had been installed that the whole Vista OS had eaten up nearly all of my disk space. 20Gb for an operating system - I DON'T think.

Running the disk cleanup tool gave me back some of the space (4Gb) but it was unable to do much with the gargantuan winsxs folder. How the developers at Microsoft sleep at night, no-one knows. Total bloat in my opinion.

My recommendation is to set Windows Error Reporting to Off, which can be accessed via the Control Panel (Settings|Control Panel|Problem Reports and Solutions). Goodbye and good riddance.

On a more happy note, I was pleased to be able to get my external monitor hooked up to my ACER laptop. This can be a right royal pain under UBUNTU 8.10 Intrepid Ibex with its overly complex xorg.conf file editing etc. so I was pleased to be able to do the following.

Press Windows key and X to bring up the Mobility Center [sic]:

From there, you can simply enable the external monitor. Very useful.

JB

Mutant fly lands in Montevideo

2009-03-31T15:29:00.005+01:00

I was alerted to a monster fly in the living room when my girlfriend Ale grabbed hold of me, clutching my arm and shrieking 'Get rid of it, urrghhhhhh'. I went to the window and on the curtains I saw this enormous mutant fly, rather dozy and quite happy to be swatted. I tapped it lightly with a flip-flop once it had landed on the floor and was surprised to see its thorax crack open slightly. After gently taking it outside by holding its wings, I went and grabbed my K800i to get a picture of the unfolding nastiness. The fly was obviously ready to impregnate something with its load. Disgusting.

At this point, Ale was going a bit mental so I managed to take another picture before giving it the big squish treatment.
I suppose that's nature at work but it's still yukkaroo.

My mate Ed suggested that I put them in a jam jar and watch the maggots feast on their dear departed parent but I'm not that bad ... hehe

JB

AVG antivirus, new free version 8.5

2009-03-28T02:58:00.002Z

Here's the link to download the latest version of AVG's antivirus product:

AVG free antivirus download

It gets larger and larger each time, with this one clocking in at a hefty 60Mb!

Regards

JB

Off to sunny Brazil for a couple of weeks

2009-02-08T01:47:00.003Z

... if anyone's interested, you can download a .kmz file for use in Google Earth here:

Click here for Google Earth link to see where we're staying in Brazil.

Until next time, see you soon.

Let it snow

2009-02-02T09:40:00.004Z

I woke this morning to find that I'd received an email from my Dad, telling me that they'd been snowed in.

It's apparently the worst snow for 18 years - and it's just typical that I'm not around to enjoy it. What I'd give now to be able to go out and play in the snow, throwing snowballs at my god-daughter Hannah or even try to give it some 4-wheel drifting in the badboy Audi.

Here's a pic of my car all snowed in... only the aerial is visible. And there's also one of my parents back garden.

Mosquitoes - and why DO they exist?

2009-01-13T10:14:00.002Z

I was carpet bombed last night by a lone mosquito. Ale got the same treatment too, so picture the scene at 3:30 in the morning - trying to hunt down the bleeder whilst peppered with pink patches of Piracalamina, a wonderful product I must say.

When we finally found him, he got the squish treatment (naturally) and we managed to drift off to sleep around 4am.

Even though we are on the 4th floor, these irritant fligs seem to somehow make their way inside the apartment and lay in wait for what I assume is JB's sangre dulce. It really does wind me up why these creatures exist, and how much damage they do - and of course I'm talking about their activities elsewhere in the world.

I am investigating the possibility of making up an amateur trap involving the cunning use of yeast and a coke bottle. I WILL catch the blighters!

My venture back into the world of Windows

2009-01-13T10:06:00.002Z

I've always been interested in the latest OS from Microsoft as it promised to offer a lot more than Vista ever did, namely in terms of speed. I eventually managed to download the 32-bit beta version and get it installed under VirtualBox OSE in Ubuntu as a virtual machine.

First impressions are speed, speed and yet more speed.

This is good news for anyone that was mildly surprised that Vista wouldn't run well on their laptop/PC simply because of all the huge bloat-boat that Vista is. It does still look pretty much the same on the inside though. I'm off to test the 64-bit version to see how that fares.

Currently Windows 7 as a beta gets the thumbs up from Johnnyboy simply because they seem to have addressed the speed problem that afflicted Vista when run on fairly modest hardware. Of course, that could ALL change when the product goes live...

Happy New Year everybody, welcome 2009

2009-01-01T04:37:00.001Z

Hope you all have had an enjoyable evening, and the headache's not too bad hehe

We're taking the opportunity of a break in Playa Verde, approximately midway between Montevideo and Punta del Este.

This looks to be a WiFi free zone so don't expect to see me online for at least a week or so.

Pics when I get back.

Festive greetings from South America

2008-12-24T12:53:00.003Z

Hello and good morning (or afternoon for those elsewhere in the world).

I just thought that I'd wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I'm really going to miss the UK since this will be my first proper Christmas away from home. All that turkey and all the trimmings, alongside meeting up with the relatives and of course the legendary Boxing Day down at John and Jacqui's.

Tonight we're off to Ale's sister's house for a knees-up. although I don't think it will quite match what I've come to expect of Christmas. Here, there is more of a tendency to celebrate on Christmas Eve (BuenaNoche) rather than Christmas Day as we do in Blighty.

I've not been able to send any presents this year due to a) JB still being out of work and b) not having the necessary faith in Uruguay's postal system and/or Customs (Aduana).

I sincerely hope everyone has a great Christmas, and as you all know - I am ready to field any support calls over the festive period. I'm sure people will be getting lots of tech gifts ;-)

Skype uid is johnnyboydotcc

Cheers!

JB

Sneaky Windows - automatic updates turned back on?

2008-12-20T14:23:00.002Z

I note that a few of the PCs that I support have had their Automatic Updates turned back on to fully automatic recently. They were then hit again with the nonsensical WGA (Windows Genuine DISAdvantage) tool that incorrectly declares that the PC in question has non-genuine software installed.

Now I know this to be false, and have been able to remove this heinous piece of nagware from the PCs, only to find out it gets installed again. Automagically - good old Microsoft.

So a word of advice - if you do need to use the removewga.exe tool, first check that Automatic Updates aren't set to full autopilot or you will end up going round and round in circles.

Virus on your PC? Stuck for ideas??

2008-12-14T21:51:00.003Z

Install AVG8 first

http://free.avg.com/ww.download?prd=afe#tba2

Then install Spybot S&D:

http://projects.securitywonks.net/projects/details.php?file=2

Make sure you update first BEFORE running a scan.

These two superb programs should be able to help!

JG

AVG8 not working properly?

2008-12-04T21:54:00.001Z

Something about Invalid CTF file?

Please do the following:

Click on Start, then Run

Type cmd in the box and press return.

Copy the following text and paste it into the box:

del "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\avg8\update\download\*.ctf"

Try running the update again and it should now complete successfully!!

JB

ACL permissions - unable to delete file?

2008-12-01T17:46:00.003Z

I recently came up against a problem after backing up a client's PC to an external HDD. I use this storage for my Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex) system, and after doing some file maintenance, I saw that there was a folder that couldn't be deleted, even by root.

Permissions were set correctly but that wouldn't have mattered anyway since I was logged in as root. I couldn't remove the file by using the INODE trick so I ventured back into the world of Windows XP.

After some rooting around hehe I managed to find a forum post detailing a very quick 2 line cmd file that reset the permissions on the file/folder from a Windows perspective. This led me on to an improved version of similar software that had been written by a guy named Chieh Cheng, released under the GPL:

http://www.cynosurex.com/Software/TakeControl/

His scripts enable you to simply drag and drop a file/folder on to the script and then gain control by changing/resetting the permissions. His scripts were an absolute godsend and enabled me to reset and delete the folder in question. I have a feeling that the folder in question may have been created by a trojan/virus on the client's PC.

Hope this helps if you get stuck in the same situation.

get_iplayer.pl - a beaut of a perl script

2008-11-28T14:16:00.005Z

I've recently been looking at a perl script called get_iplayer.pl

To give you some background, the BBC offers the iplayer service online. Normally it would involve downloading and installing a Windows client program, selecting the TV/radio programs you want to watch/listen to and then playing the programs with either the inbuilt media player or (horror of horrors) Windows Media Player.

Now, I don't use Windows so therefore this is a pain. Why should I be excluded simply because I use the operating system of my choice (Ubuntu 8.10)?

An enterprising individual called Phil Lewis has created a perl script which basically does all the groundwork for you. It has been an absolute godsend since it can run as a cron job, and remembers what you downloaded. The perl script mimics the Jesus phone (iPhone) by downloading the H.264 stream and saving it to your hard disk.

Ubuntu - blank screen on boot fixed

2008-11-28T14:09:00.003Z

I'm very happy now that I've managed to fix this very irritating problem. I have an Acer laptop rigged up to an external LG 17" monitor and every time I 'normal' boot, I see the usual Ubuntu logo and then just about when you would naturally expect to see the desktop - nothing. Nada.

I've been resorting to playing around in recovery mode, using xfix, removing all xorg.conf type files and rebuilding/rebooting numerous times to no avail. lspci revealed the ATI Express Radeon 200 adapter so that wasn't the fault.

I traced it back to the compiz app that was installed. I simply removed it with the following:

sudo aptitude remove compiz compiz-core

Now my desktop greets me every time I login, what bliss. Compiz should certainly be your first port of call if you have blank screen problems like I did.

JG

Octal permissions from a shell

2008-11-27T18:06:00.004Z

I recently had the chance to resurrect a script from my HP-UX days which listed not only the usual human-readable drwx type permissions, but the octal permissions as well. Very useful when you're trying to teach someone about UNIX file permissions.

Here's a simple one liner that could be set as an alias or incorporated in a script. Personally I have mine created as a script called lsj, as shown below:

ls -l | awk '{k=0;for(i=0;i<=8;i++)k+=((substr($1,i+2,1)~/[rwx]/)*2^(8-i));if(k)printf("%0o ",k);print}'

An absolute gem to be honest and very useful. Works fine on Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex - korn shell).

Looking to get it working so it will display all 4 octal values i.e. SETUID and SETGID, plus the sticky bit. More later.

PS3 dead - again

2008-11-27T09:53:00.003Z

What else needs to be said.

The PS3 shut down a couple of times yesterday in a spurious fashion, before finally giving up the ghost once and for all. It's what is termed affectionately as the yellow light of death. There seems to be quite a few videos on YouTube with the exact same behaviour so I'm not alone.

Turn power on, red light.

Press power button, fans whoosh, green light, yellow light, red light - 3 short beeps.

There's good news and bad news. The good news is that after a call to Sony in the UK, they are prepared to replace my 60Gb PS3 with another one, even though the unit is out of warranty.I bought the PS3 in April 2007 so this is one hell of a goodwill gesture on Sony's part!

I've been the proud owner of the original Playstation, a slimline PS2 and the first PSP. So I must admit, it has troubled me that the PS3 has been this unreliable.

The bad news is I face a wait of a couple of months. The reason being, Customs here tend to view items like this as items you have to pay import duty on - as if you are bringing the unit into the country to sell, and deprive the government of funds. Not so in my case, and last time I left the country, I had to obtain a special letter from the Customs people (Aduana) to enable me to take the PS3 back to Britain and return without it being impounded.

I may send the unit back to my parents via DHL/FedEx, and Sony UK will then arrange for a courier to pickup/replace my beloved PS3. I'll probably have to wait until friends come over from the UK in January before I see the PS3 again :-(

Bread

2008-11-18T11:32:00.002Z

I must be at that stage of life where people buy useful rather than exciting presents for my birthday.

That was certainly the case when I unwrapped a huge box the other day, only to discover it was in fact a bread making machine. It was left on the side for a few days before I summoned up the enthusiasm to go and buy some fresh yeast, or levadura as they call it over here.

Three hours later, and I was in possession of a spectacular loaf of bread. Simply one of the best kitchen appliances money can buy. Apart from a dishwasher, of course.

A film to watch

2008-11-18T11:29:00.003Z

I was hoofing through the channels the other night on TV and came across Elizabethtown, which was a film starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. I've seen a few photos of Orlando Bloom and saw qualities that reminded me of my brother Mark.

Well, watching the film was a revelation. There are several spots in the film where he just looks SO much like Mark. It's uncanny.

More interviews and a birthday

2008-11-14T11:34:00.003Z

Yes, I was 41 on Monday. And of all things best not to do on your birthday, I had two interviews lined up!

The first was with some foreign exchange trading company, based in the exotic location of Montevideo's very own World Trade Center [sic] complete with two mini twin towers. I kid you not...

The first interview was a complete pigs ear due to the fact that they hadn't done their homework. I arrived in good time (in other words, I was early) and proceeded to sit around for 10 minutes in a holding room where Bloomberg TV was blaring out. It was my first real taste of money and I had a good feeling about the office environment. My hopes were dashed after another 10 minute wait in the boardroom when 2 power-dressed women walked in and started babbling away in their native Spanish. With my best puppy dog eyes and a blurted phrase 'Can we speak in English please?', I then discovered that the position was for Spanish and English - although I had pointed out that I only spoke English when I applied for the post. A complete and utter waste of time, and not very professional on their part. I left the office smiling and walked out into the sunshine to meet up with Ale.

The second interview was just across the road for a much smaller company that provided server solutions (goodness - I hate that phrase). The position was for a Solaris (UNIX) administrator to oversee the installation of IT equipment for a client. It all went very well so fingers crossed. Bearing in mind the wheels of industry tend to turn at a slower rate than walking pace here, I will have to wait and see.

Birthday boy had some friends round that evening. One of my prezzies of all things was a breadmaker. Superb! I've always hated the rubbish they produce here that turns to dust when you whack it in the toaster. So I'm going to start experimenting and see if it can make something resembling a 'split-tin' ;-)

That's it for now - off to play with my Puppy Lighthouse linux install on my laptop.

Weekend away in Colonia del Sacramento

2008-11-04T11:05:00.002Z

We went to Colonia at the weekend. Ale had booked it up about a month ago, and I knew she was looking forward to it as much as me.

Colonia is an old town, with lots of picturesque old buildings and homes. Most of the side streets are cobbled, some more so than others. And when I say some more so than others, the most striking examples have some real ankle-killer stones laid out in a haphazard fashion. I think these streets must be at least 200 years old and Colonia has some real history with evidence of both the Portuguese and Spanish in abundance.

Driving into Colonia is pleasant on the eye, with the last 10km of road lined by massive old palm trees. Life is lived at a slow pace, and the speed limits drop progressively on arrival. You simply cannot drive any faster than 15-20 km/h or all your fillings will come out. This is is no way criticism of the place, it's what makes it what it is!

When you are there, you have a feeling of security and peace. No more car alarms or barking dogs that grind you down when in Montevideo. We walked the streets on a guided tour, and spent some time just exploring. We also went up inside a lighthouse, but I think that Ale is regretting that right now. The 120 steps it took to reach the top have come back to haunt her and her legs hurt. Thankfully, I'm not afflicted in the same way, hopefully because of my old cycling legs ;-)

We stayed at a beautiful 'lounge' hotel right in the centre of the old town. It was an excellent place to stay and thoroughly recommended. Take a look at their website here

Uruguay makes an entrance on the BBC website!

2008-11-01T02:36:00.004Z

I've told many friends about the good old Fray Bentos canned meat pies we used to have in the 70's, and most didn't know that Fray Bentos is indeed a town in a Uruguay.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/10_things/

and more specifically here:

Fray Bentos - a town in Uruguay

See? I told you so....

Ten-pin bowling supremo

2008-10-26T13:27:00.005Z

Ale and I met up with some friends last night and hit the bowling alley here in Montevideo.

After some nosebag i.e. the usual chivito, the bowling started in earnest. Now I must point out that they do things differently here, because all the bowling alleys looked strangely bereft of any lighting whatsoever. Even more worrying was the fact that some of the bowling balls were fluorescent and the icing on the cake was when a smoke machine starting pumping loads of guff everywhere.

The smoke machine only seemed to start chucking out thick clouds when it was ME taking my go. I did suspect that someone had had a 'word' with the manager and it was all a conspiracy to put me off my stride. Well, those cunning Montevideans failed in their plan, if there ever was one, of course.

After an initial shaky start where I lost the first match, I won the second match by a small margin. By this time, a couple of people weren't playing and the final game started with the score at 1-1 (one for me, and one for a guy called Nacho Mullin). This game I was on fire, and I got 3 strikes and 5 spares. My total rocketed upwards and I ended the game on an all-time best of 167!!!

It's now early Sunday morning as I write this, and as usual, Ale is inspecting her eyelids. We have the christening for Magui and Nacho's son Nicolas today so I'll probably post back here with a few pictures later.

P.S. Since the clocks went back last night in the UK, it is now officially only 2 hours difference (UK 13:40, URU 11:40)

PS3 media server for Ubuntu

2008-10-25T12:27:00.003+01:00

Yay! I finally found a similar application to stream media to my PS3.

I used to use TVersity which is an excellent application, but unfortunately - they don't support Linux aka Ubuntu yet. Since I use Ubuntu as my primary operating system of choice, I was without my music collection of 18 Gb worth of stuff.

I found out about Mediatomb via the Ubuntu forums and promptly installed it via:

sudo aptitude install mediatomb

Server GUI runs on port 49152 on my system, and the server itself on port 49153. After a quick bit of configuration which involved setting the directories that needed to be scanned i.e. recursive MP3 paths, I was up and running. The mighty PS3 picked up the new media server without even scanning, so I assume this is done automagically.

Mediatomb set itself to automatically run on boot, which I was able to verify by popping in to the Webmin server config page.

I'll post back with any anomalies I may discover, but hopefully it will be all plain sailing from now on. What an excellent piece of open-source software!

JG

The legendary IceMan aka Ian Pinder

2008-10-21T13:57:00.004+01:00

I recently managed to get in contact with Ian Pinder, who was also known as the Iceman. Ian's car back in the days was a brown Cortina that was filled to the brim with Earthquake subs and literally blew me away. Whilst most of the other nutters in souped-up cars seemed to spend loads of money getting Carlos Fandango wheels and drainpipe exhausts fitted to their silly little Vauxhall Novas/Corsas, the big guy simply turned up in his Cortina and blew them into the weeds.

I used to go to both the Chelsea cruise and also the one at Dartford - which then became the Lakeside cruise. I must point out that this was years ago, say around 1994-1996. It was all good-natured and there was no trouble, and I really enjoyed it. My car at the time was a Honda Prelude '89 4WS which had been lowered to sit on the floor.

Going back to Ian's car, the sound emanating from this beast really struck a chord with me since I loved the low low bass it was producing but so many cars seem to be either hard mid-bass or loads of tweeters sounding like lasers going off. The situation would normally be that you'd hear the plank coming in his Escort RS Turbo because of the shrieking tsk tsk coming out of his windows, just as he came around the corner. With the Iceman's car, it simply came from nowhere (bass being omnidirectional) like a great big scary monster. Hugely powerful and the only thing I've heard since that came anywhere close was the Cerwin Vega van at the IASCA finals in Dallas, back in '96.

I've since discovered that his latest project puts out around 30,000 watts - perhaps I'll get the chance to see it (or perhaps more importantly - feel it) when I next return to the UK.

As a certain Sacha Baron-Cohen would say, REESPEK

johnnyboy dot cc domain now all OK

2008-10-21T13:30:00.001+01:00

I've managed to sort the problems out with my domain, and everything is now working perfectly again so I can afford to breathe a sigh of relief.

Email rejections on johnnyboy.cc

2008-10-19T22:22:00.002+01:00

I've no idea why but in the last 2 or 3 days I have been receiving rejections when emails are being sent to my johnnyboy.cc domain. I've raised this with Support at Virgin and hope to get it resolved soon. Please send any emails to my arsenal at adinet dot com dot uy address (email address is obfuscated to stop bots from picking it up, so please reconstruct it replacing the word dot with an actual dot)

I have already changed things at my domain forwarding service to point to another email address so it should resolve itself automagically in the next few hours, dependent on when the change goes through obviously.

JB

Queenborough No. 3

2008-10-17T12:52:00.004+01:00

I spoke with my parents yesterday, after they had arrived back from a trip on their narrowboat which is moored in Northants somewhere. It was previously based at Stoke Golding but the trip always took a good few hours so they made the decision recently to moor it closer to home. Whenever anyone makes mention of the 'barge' to me in conversation, I always hastily correct them - it's a narrowboat, not a barge. It reminds of of one of my old teachers (Bill Linton) at school who used to fly into an incandescent rage and stated that it was a ship, not a boat.

Anyway I digress as usual. The main reason for posting was to attach the following picture, which I think perfectly shows a lovely autumnal scene, taken from the stern of Queenborough No.3 at Stoke Bruerne, and it was taken during the last couple of days when my parents had some friends stay over on the boat - Brian and Helen Hipgrave.

For those of you that don't know, Queenborough was named after the place on the Isle of Sheppey where my dear Nan and Granddad used to live.

Clown in a Jeep

2008-10-08T20:39:00.002+01:00

This one is a classic.

Spotted this old Jeep which had seen better days after travelling back from one of Ale's mum's apartments in the Prado area of Montevideo. When I first saw it, I thought it was on a kerb - the listing was so bad. Anyway, that was nothing.

It pulled away and when we caught up with it at the next junction, the full horror story was revealed. Anyone who reads this blog knows full well my disdain at the decrepit motors on the roads over here. Some of them are just totally rusty, most don't have legal exhausts (if one at all) and as for lights? I give up.

Well, this one was no exception. With an exhaust loud enough to make your ears bleed profusely.

Anyway - I digress. As you can no doubt see from the picture, the Jeep was leaning heavily to one side. The offside rear suspension was totally mullered and just waiting to violently snap. When we got closer, I was amazed to see not 2 people but at least 6 or 7 people jammed into this thing. The only thing I've seen more dangerous is the old pizza bike delivery drivers who seem to excel in driving around with no lights on. If it's a personal choice, then I'd have to question their sanity....

JG

A cinema visit

2008-10-04T12:21:00.003+01:00

After an early evening walk along the rambla, we had a phone call from Majo suggesting we went to see a film. After taking a quick peek at the MovieCenter website (apologies for the spelling but it's very Americanised here, or should I say Americanized) - we decided on a film from the UK.

Called 'Death at a funeral', it was a comedy based on the events surrounding a middle-class funeral in a slightly posh area of England, somewhere near Crawley - IF that's possible. Notable characters included the delectable Daisy Donovan (of 11 o'clock Show fame), Kris Marshall (My Family and those bleeding BT ads) and a dwarf! Best performance was from Simon, who was playing Daisy Donovan's fiancee in the film. You'll have trouble believing that he's natively Texan.

It was hilarious and I felt intensely proud that British humour had managed to cross the Atlantic and keep the crowd in the cinema laughing or gasping all the way through. Top stuff.

It was subtitled in Spanish so there were a few moments where the audience started laughing either before or after me, but that's something you get used to. All in all, well recommended.

Holiday over, now back in Montevideo

2008-10-02T13:36:00.003+01:00

I was back in the UK for a whole month. Spent most of my time guzzling the world's resources by lumping petrol in the Audi V8 hehe.

I did manage to meet up with Alden for the usual chicken lunch session, and also Paul Connor and Mark Debruin.

On the work front, I've had varying degrees of success. One job for Sabre Airline Services in 2nd line Tech Support wasn't offered to me as I was TOO experienced whatever that means. A back-handed compliment I think! Another job is mine for the taking at an English Language institute here in Nueva Helvecia/Montevideo (www.institutovinculum.com) but it's relatively poor money.

My last hedged bet is with Tata, but with the outsourcing arm called Tata Consultancy Services. They operate here in www.zonamerica.com which is a free trade zone with lots of tax perks. The job is affectionately titled VI Analyst which sounds suitably noncey and I went for the interview and landed the job, on a good salary. This all kicked off the day before I left for the UK, so I was told they needed to approach the client (Johnson & Johnson, US) to gain authorisation. End of story, or so I thought. After a month of lazy shenanigans in the UK, I emailed them on my return to be met with the reply that they were waiting for an Oracle DBA so my job is on hold.

Forgive me for sounding pedantic, but when someone rings you and offers you the job and you accept, then surely you start work? Call me an old-fashioned Luddite if you want, but is it meeee???? hehehe

Highlight of my week is going to be meeting up with 5 English people who've made the trip to Uruguay. I think Ale wants me to welcome them with open arms and make them cups of tea ;-)

That's all for now.

Huge bumble bee

2008-09-19T21:22:00.002+01:00

Spotted this monster whilst staying at my parents house. I thought it was a Chinook flying overhead until I actually realised it was just a bee. Absolutely huge thing it was...

Another arty shot of the badboy

2008-09-17T11:26:00.001+01:00

Taken atop the Gibson road car park in Sutton, Surrey

Arty shot of the badboy

2008-09-17T11:24:00.000+01:00

How to remove that annoying AVG8 notification window

2008-09-11T10:34:00.003+01:00

Open a command prompt box by clicking on Start, then Run and then type cmd (hit Enter)

Copy the following text and then paste into the black box you have on screen and press the Enter key twice.

ren "C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8\avgmwdef_us.mht" "C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8avgmwdef_us.mht.bak"
ren "C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8\avgresf.dll" "C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8\avgresf.dll.bak"

Et voila! No more annoying pop-down windows for you to spoil the view.

Queenborough 3

2008-09-10T17:05:00.003+01:00

I've been up to see Mum and Dad's boat today, as it was having a new cratch cover fitted. That's the bit at the front of the narrowboat, for those of you who are unaware what a cratch is....

Had a spot of lunch at the local pub - perfect - and then on to meet up with the people who had travelled down to fit the cratch cover. My back now hurts since I've driven my dad's Clio now for over 200 miles hehe ;-)

AVG 8 update failing with 'Invalid CTF file error'

2008-09-04T21:38:00.003+01:00

Try this method instead:

Click on Start, then Run and copy the following text and paste it into the box:

del "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\avg8\update\download\*.ctf"

Try running the update again and it should now complete successfully!!

JB

Back in Blighty

2008-09-01T08:38:00.003+01:00

Well, my 6 months was up and I managed to get my ticket booked and sorted within a day or so. All I had to do was go and collect my PlayStation3 from the menders (the 2nd one in as many weeks) and jump on the plane.

My trip was supposed to be with TAM which is a Brazilian airline, and routed through Sao Paulo and onto London. We somehow managed to miss this booking, and got an Iberia flight instead. More expensive, and the initial leg was MVD to Madrid which took nearly 13 hours. In my view that's an enormously long time to be over a vast expanse of water such as the Atlantic!

I arrived after an 11 hour delay and was met by my parents - it was great to see them again. Almost immediately, I was greeted by the sight of all the lovely new motors on the roads, and even saw an Audi S5 in the airport car park. There was a funny moment outside the airport where my Mum and Dad ingratiated themselves with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who was ahtside, havin a faaaag ;-) He's quite a thesp, but rolled back into a rather heavy Irish accent when my Dad made a joke about the situation.

I've already been down to pick my Audi A8 up from Benenden, where it was being stored by a friend. I took Claudia with me, so she could see a bit of the English countryside. Claudia is the sister of Gaby Russo, and she is Uruguayan. She was staying with my parents for a week in order to arrange further accommodation in Kilburn, and my kind parents offered to put her up in the meantime. After seeing virtually no sun all week, Claudia was most happy when Saturday turned into an archetypal English summer's day. It was very pleasant.

My old motor hadn't been started for 6 months, but after a quick hook-up to my sister's Honda Civic Sport and it started first time. Very impressive. Not so impressive was the fact that half of the car looked like it had been resprayed for some reason! I think there are a few questions that need answering on that subject.... Later that afternoon, there was a traditional wedding at St George's Church in Benenden, and we saw a couple of vintage cars namely a Lagonda and an MG.

I'm now splitting my time between Sue and Ian's, and my parents. Sue is the mother of Hannah, and Hannah is my god-daughter.I'm hopefully going to meet up with some more friends this week as I am now officially mobile.

Golden Brits at the Olympics

2008-08-19T14:57:00.003+01:00

I cannot believe how well we have done at this year's Olympic games in Beijing, China.

We've achieved the best medal tally for over 100 years which is certainly something to shout about! We're currently in 3rd place on the medals tables, second only to China and the USA.

UUPDATE at 15:14 (GMT): Christine Ohuruogu has just won another gold for the women's 400m. Stunning run, and she came from nowhere...

Go Britain !!!

Cats and dogs

2008-08-13T12:35:00.006+01:00

I've always wondered why there are so many dogs and so few cats in this city.

Perhaps it's because cats aren't that good at guarding people's property in the way that dogs are supposed to. Mind you, having said that - the amount of barking you hear all day long along with the car alarms reminds me very much of 'Peter and the Wolf' syndrome. You hear so much of it that your mind becomes numb to it all that when you do hear someone's alarm going off, or a dog barking, then you just think it's usual.

Anyway, on to the far more interesting story of cats. Or cat to be precise. Since I have a lot of free time and essentially spend a lot of it looking out of the windows, I've struck up a long distance relationship with a cat. Well, it's about 30 ft to be more precise. As you can see from the photo, there is a black cat that sits watching by the drain on the corner of our street, Luis Lamas. He's obviously waiting for a rat or similar creature to pop its head out so he can have some dinner. I love that cat! Hours of painstaking work. He doesn't move.

And on to the subject of dog walkers. This has always irked me since I fail to understand why the dogs need to be walked in the first place. You buy the dog and you walk the dog. You don't fob it off on to someone else to do. That's called responsibility and it's something inherent with the whole idea of having a dog.

Enough of my social rant. I normally get to hear about the exploits of a local dog walker, who seems to think that taking dogs for a walk (and extracting money from the owners for doing so) doesn't actually involve walking the dogs. What a novel concept! This lazy bleeder arrives at the corner of the street we live on, and then proceeds to tie up all his dogs to the lamp posts. Last time I heard all the dogs barking, I took a picture of them all.

He then sods off down the road for about 15 mins and leaves the dogs barking their tits off. Not only that but with dogs being dogs, one of them started humping one of the others. So not only are the owners being short-changed, one of them is going to be the proud owner of a set of puppies, whether they like it or not. Shameful behaviour.

I've a good mind to follow this clown one day, and after he has dropped the dog at the owner's house and left, I'll knock on the door and show them the pictures of their dog being 'walked'. I don't think I'll need to tell them in Spanish for them to get the whole picture!

Indian curry King and Queen of Montevideo!

2008-08-09T16:07:00.005+01:00

Hello all.

Last night we took part in the curry contest organised by the Montevideo Players society in Acevedo Diaz. Quite a few people turned up, around 30 at my estimate and the competition was fierce - the same as some of the curries!

Entry #1 was some kind of sweet concoction, with pineapple. Rather poor in my opinion.

Entry #2 took my breath away, as it was chilli-ed up with some real bite. Interesting as it contained apple, and even more interesting - bananas. This was the entry from John, the Scot we've met recently.

Entry #3 was typical of a 1980's interpretation of an Indian curry, complete with the requisite sultanas. Quite pleasant, although it reminded me of the Vesta curries my Dad used to have ;-)

Entry #4 was pretty good. Not much to describe, but medium hot.

Entry #5 was our concoction. I'd prepared the onion, garlic and freshly grated ginger. Ale seasoned the chicken with some rogan josh mix and garam masala, then some fresh cream. It all came together well, although we had to reduce it somewhat. In other words, I spent 20 mins continually stirring it until it had thickened to the required consistency.

After much deliberation and the comment by the judges that this year's contest was one of the closest, first prize went to:

John and Ale !!! Yippeeee !!!!

We won a meal for two at a restaurant in Carrasco.

Pictured above right is Ale receiving the mortar and pestle cup, from Jack - the president of the Montevideo Players society. It shall be engraved in due course, although we'll have to think up a name as per previous winners (Nehru/Gandhi etc.)

No sirens but fun all the same

2008-08-04T14:01:00.006+01:00

Posted this just so everyone reading the blog can have a laugh at my expense!

The picture taken by my Dad shows the old Bedford CA ambulance we used to have. In the picture, you can see my sister Claire, my brother Mark, me - and in the background, my Mum in the ambulance itself. The dog laying down on the grass is our Pyrenean mountain dog called Belle. Anyone my age will easily remember the legendary children's TV programme "Belle and Sebastian" on BBC2. Hence the dog's name.

My Dad purchased the ambulance from a garage in Clapham (or Clarm if you're posh) and set about converting it by putting in beds etc. One of our major adventures was touring Europe in the early 70's and getting as far as Denmark! How wild and crazy is that? Some of my earliest memories include:

Sleeping overnight in Antwerp and watching car transporters
Eating chips with mayonnaise somewhere in Holland
Meeting up with a friend of Mum's called Elke, in Munster - Germany
Eating rhubarb with a liberal coating of sucrose somewhere after I complained about the taste, and my Mum duly tipping the sugar bowl all over my red stringy dessert
Teefing some sugar beet from a local farmer's field ;-)
And the best - visiting the original Legoland in Billund, Denmark - complete with a trip up in an aeroplane. Very exciting for a young Johnnyboy I can assure you!

We were the local celebrities when we turned up to school in that Bedford. I feel a wave of nostalgic British pride as I look back at that photo to see the Union flag above the windscreen. Ingenious idea by my Dad to replace the previous AMBULANCE lettering!

The picture doesn't show that the Bedford was actually painted two-tone purple and white, very 70's I feel. I loved that vehicle.

Wanton violence in Montevideo

2008-07-30T21:01:00.003+01:00

Last night we were the victims of some nutter on a motorbike.

I've always learnt that you should look both ways when pulling out of a side turning, and I look again just to make sure. It's a good habit I picked up from my father a long time ago. I'd spotted a moped coming from our right and warned Ale. I also saw a motorbike at some distance, so after we'd pulled away I said to her that someone was woofing it down the road at a great rate of knots. He was flying.

I didn't think anything more about it until I suddenly became aware of the motorbike rider pulling alongside Ale's window, and he booted the door good and hard. He accelerated away along Jose Ellauri until he got to the traffic lights. At a distinct disadvantage here, I egged Ale on to pull around the waiting cars so we were doubled up at the lights. I managed to get a flash photo of the cretin at the lights and that's when he legged it on his motorbike. I think he thought at that point he'd got away with it, until he got caught at the next set of lights - at which point, I jumped out and shall we say, remonstrated with him [Post censored due to the fact my parents might be reading this]. I don't think he'd seen me as I was wearing a black jacket in the car, and my head literally scrapes the roof of that poxy Chevrolet Celta (Vauxhall Corsa in the UK).

We 'persuaded' him to follow us to the police station, where we gave a statement. Ale didn't think that much would be done about it but the guy was driving with no front head lights. HELLO? If it wasn't for my sharp-eyed reactions in the first place, he could already be one of the accident statistics here.

What a clown. To cap it all, he started getting all airy with the police, who then ushered him away into a back room. Good riddance to Mr 'SEL 861'. If I ever see his bike again at the side of the road, he will mysteriously suffer from a puncture. Or two.

Where is everybody?

2008-07-30T20:53:00.002+01:00

I''ll certainly admit that I'm unable to see good old Blighty from here in Montevideo, even on a fine sunny day. Even Buenos Aires isn't within reach. However, I can't see a blinking thing recently, as we seem to have been cursed with fog over the last two days or so.

Dank is one word that springs to mind, and that's a word not often used in the English language.

I sit here awaiting news about a possible job offer, and the weather seems to fit my mood ;-)

At least it seems to deaden the effect of all the noise coming out of the cars, which for some reason over here tend to have blown exhausts 50% of the time. Perhaps the owners need their earwax removed. More than likely, they're simply tone deaf or don't give a flying ....

Grey JB

KDE and Gnome on Ubuntu

2008-07-30T14:11:00.005+01:00

For those of you that don't know, these are the names of the two desktops that are primarily in use on Ubuntu. KDE used to be more Windows-like in it's appearance but my view on that has changed a lot since I've installed/tested KDE4.

KDE4 now looks like a toy desktop with oversized icons, and poor response speed. Goodness knows what the developers were thinking when they released this. I've quickly purged all of KDE from my system and I now run exclusively with Gnome, with Compiz enabled.

Compiz allows me to manage my desktop in a rather nice graphical way. For example, I have 4 workspaces available which I can switch to and from, and the transition between different workspaces (or desktops, if you want to call them that) is handled by some rather fancy graphic effects. Mine is set to display a desktop cube, with the four desktops shown on the face of the cube. You can move it up, down, left or right with the mouse or keyboard. It is incredibly useful, and also looks superb.

All the Windows users feel very jealous when I show them what I can do with Ubuntu 64. Who needs Windows in a world without Gates eh?

JB

Old skool for Winamp

2008-07-17T17:34:00.008+01:00

This blog post is made especially for Steve Miller ;-)

I have been going through some of the plugins for Winamp recently and became frustrated at the lack of suitable visualizations, as they like to call them. I remembered having a great spectrum analyser installed way back in the mists of time and just couldn't find it.

I spent a while on the Winamp plugin section of their website, and after much digging - I came up with this legendary plugin by Mike Lynch (from Canada) which of course I downloaded and installed immediately!

As a convenience, I've whacked it on my personal webspace here:

Classic Spectrum Analyzer for Winamp (DOWNLOAD)

Simply double-click on the file once it has downloaded successfully to install. Next, fire up Winamp and do Ctrl-P to access the preferences. The spectrum analyzer should now be listed in the Visualization section, where you can start the plugin, stop it and also change the settings. I quite like having mine set with large bars on the default red/yellow as shown in the screen dump shown above right.

Judging from what this bloke's website says, it would appear that it's not being developed any further, which I think is a shame.

JG

Montevideo Players anniversary party

2008-07-15T14:39:00.002+01:00

We both went to Acevedo Diaz last night for the anniversary party of the Montevideo players. If you've read the blog before, you'll know it's the oldest 'foreign language' amateur dramatic society in Latin America.

We were delayed on the way as Ale's mum called us to visit her, as we hadn't seen her in a long time. We stayed for a while and gave her the invitation to Sofia's 2nd birthday party which is happening this Saturday at Manzana Azul (Blue Apple) on Luis de la Torre.

We eventually turned up at the Montevideo Players around 22:30 to find the usual motley crew assembled. A raffle was held, with top prize being dinner for two at some place in Carrasco, which Ale seemed very interested in. Suffice to say, we won nothing ;-)

We were able to meet up with John and Stephanie again last night, as I needed to get some info about immigration. Stefanie seems to know all the information required as she had dealt with it for her Scottish boyfriend. We were also able to exchange stories about how long things take to arrive from the UK. It would appear that 6 weeks for a package to arrive from the UK is certainly not out of the ordinary!

My time here is running out unless I apply for an extension which hasn't been completed yet. Last time I was out of the country was Buenos Aires back in April, so I need to get cracking with this - with the help of Ale of course.

Just as a footnote, today is a beautiful day here, except for the incessant canine discord. It's a lovely change since we are officially still in the middle of winter!

JB

Vero Abella's birthday

2008-07-15T14:32:00.002+01:00

We were invited to this event on Saturday, which took place at the Golf Club in Montevideo. Sounded good at the time but then I was told I had to wear a mask. When I discovered that it applied to other people and not just my ugly mug, it seemed like a good idea, much better than some fancy dress lark. If you're sad enough like me to have a Facebook account, then you should be able to track down some of the photos of me.

As usual, Ale looked at her best whilst I did my best English man abroad impression hehe. She danced the night away whilst sipping Diet Coke (or Coca Light as it's called here) whilst I slunk into a corner glugging on the Johnny Walker hehe.

I'm sorry but the music here just doesn't do it for me. Perhaps I'll grow to love it in time. Vero Abella seemed to be enjoying herself, and the night out ended around 4am with a quiet drive back home.

Thanks for the mammaries

2008-07-14T17:22:00.003+01:00

Well, apologies for the title but I thought it quite apt in the circumstances.

We were browsing at the local shopping centre here in Montevideo, rather stunningly original in its naming convention of 'Montevideo Shopping' when I came across this clothes shop. Apparently, it's like a black-hole where women get sucked in and lose hours of their lives. And come out with nothing useful to show for it.

Obviously something was lost in translation here when the decision was made to name the shop, or worse still, the owners have no idea of the meaning of the word in the English-speaking part of the world. So here it is in all its glory.

Don't cycle in Montevideo

2008-07-10T12:15:00.005+01:00

Woke up yesterday to hear a lot of commotion outside, or in other words - lots of emergency sirens. I discovered that there had been an accident involving a cycle and a car, although the car was nowhere to be seen.

It would appear that there were two blokes on one bike, so one was pedalling and he was giving a 'backy' to the other one on the saddle. Not the safest option I grant you, but then again you don't expect to be mown down by a car either.

The aftermath (if you can call it that) was pretty non-eventful with a single police car and two ambulances. Note the rather helpful parking demonstrated by the 2nd ambulance driver.

I think on reflection that cyclists here tend not to have the same importance as the UK to the drivers of Montevideo as you can no doubt see, with the badly mangled front wheel of the bike in front of the police car on the 2nd picture.

JB

At long last (PayPal situation)

2008-07-09T12:21:00.002+01:00

After 4 months of painful 'correspondence' with PayPal, the clowns have finally unlocked my account. It only took 18 emails, a fax and a 20 minute long international phone call to get it sorted. The 20 minute conversation was pointless by the way, as I was eventually told that they don't discuss security details over the phone. Priceless.

The people involved in this hopeless organisation sit behind a stonewall defence of webforms and the game they like to play most, pass-the-parcel.

One day I am in communication with someone called Aurora, the next and it's someone called Ferizchel. And to use the word communication is probably too strong a term.

And all of this occurred because I simply bid/bought for some memory on Ebay from a PowerSeller in Hong Kong whilst I am here in Uruguay. My Ebay account works fine and so did my PayPal until their systems flagged my IP as 'possible 3rd party activity' on my account.

Their logic is patently flawed and it's caused me a lot of problems. Don't whatever you do pay for anything on your PayPal account in a different country or your account will no doubt get locked like mine did. You will then enter a black hole of miscommunication with the automatons at PayPal. You have been warned ;-)

I am going to vote with my feet and say goodbye to PayPal, and hello Google Checkout!

JG

Party party

2008-07-01T15:08:00.003+01:00

Ale arrived home from work yesterday to tell me that we were attending a party for one of the daughters of her close friend Caroli, as it was Federica's 15th birthday. Here in Uruguay, it seems to be some sort of custom to have a party when you're 15 years old - normally they wear a more formal dress, and celebrate by cutting the cake, and blowing out the candles. Last night, Federica blew out each candle in turn, giving the candles to people like her sister, parents, godparents and friends which was a lovely symbolic gesture.

I also got to meet up again with Gaby Peralta and her husband, who seems an avid PlayStation man much like myself. He had loads of suggestions and was talking 19 to the dozen in Spanish so you can imagine how funny that was, with me understanding perhaps one word out of every 20 or so! Still, I think a PS3 evening is on the cards very soon providing it gets fixed or replaced.

My last visit to Uruguay finished with Gaby's wedding, and I got hammered on pure whisky, which seems to be the drink of choice here. Now this was over 2 years ago, but I had a great time. The next day wasn't quite so good (translation - I felt like death warmed up) so it was nice to be able to chat to her under more normal circumstances. She suggested that it would be a good thing to get involved with teaching English to people for use in business, and it's something that I may follow up. It could be quite an easy way to make some money here, as I am currently out of work. We'll see what happens.

That's all for now.

JB

PS3 - a ray of hope ;-)

2008-07-01T14:50:00.002+01:00

There's a smidgin of good news about my PS3, which is dead. See previous post for details.

After some detective work by my girlfriend Ale, we managed to find the official authorised Sony Repair Centre here in Montevideo. We took the PS3 there last night to find that the place itself looked a bit worse for wear, with just a few bits of old Sony kit on display. Part of the repair centre was co-habited by Abitab, which is a payment centre where people can pay facturas (bills) etc.

Still, I've got my receipt and said goodbye to the magical black box for the next 72 hours, as I've been told it will take them that long to figure out what is wrong with it. I doubt they have that much technical expertise on the PS3 as it is so new here in Latin America, and I'm left wondering if they will simply replace it, or send it to Buenos Aires which is a possibility.

My only concern with the option of replacement is that my PS3 is the 60Gb version, with 4 USB ports and the ability to play older PS2 and even PS1 games. The version available here I believe is either a 20Gb or 40Gb. The hard disk size doesn't matter to me at all since that is easily upgradeable to 160Gb or even 250Gb, so it will all hinge on whether I can get the backward-compatibility or not. Fingers crossed.

However, an alternative option is available to me as I was able to speak to my insurance providers yesterday back in the UK, and they were able to confirm that I was covered. They were willing to provide a new replacement either here in Montevideo, or back in the UK. The UK option would be best for me of course, as they would be able to source the 60Gb version with all the bells and whistles (I hope).

So Wednesday is the big day for me, when we get to hear from the Sony centre what's happening. Fingers crossed.

JB - bored at home.

PS3 not working - so called 'red light of death'

2008-06-29T14:35:00.002+01:00

Yesterday we had some friends round for a reunion, people that Ale knew from a year long course she had taken with them. The scene was set since I had blown them out previously as I was cheering on Arsenal in the Champions League.

About half an hour before they turned up, my beloved PS3 bit the dust. Not as dead as the proverbial dodo, but still pretty terminal. It just switched off with 4 beeps and a flashing red light. After Googling some forum posts, it suggested it may have been heat-related but delving deeper, it quickly became apparent that it was some sort of hardware failure. Switch it on, and it starts up the fans - then a green light for a second or so, and then rather quickly followed by an amber light, then red with 4 short beeps.

Looks like I'll have to eat my words of criticism at the bearded geek in the local computer games shop and see what he can do. Some of the people last night were, shall we say 'disappointed', but one of them knows about a Sony repair centre somewhere near Boulevard Artigas so I guess we can also try that option tomorrow.

Gutted - that's all I can say. I'm sure it's completely coincidental and nothing to do with the numerous power cuts we have here in Montevideo - and the subsequent surge/spike when it comes back on. I think I'll be buying a surge protector 4 gang socket as a priority ;-)

Sad Johnnyboy.

GTA 4 - the wait is finally over (for me!)

2008-06-27T11:50:00.003+01:00

Grand Theft Auto 4 or GTA as it's more commonly known was released well over a month ago in Europe but it has taken me nearly 6 weeks to receive my copy, all thanks to Dave and Maggie. I've known them both for nearly 20 years and I play online with Dave on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

I did make tentative enquiries at the local computer game shop, only to be told it would take 2 weeks to procure, and it would also cost $180. Blatant greed and profiteering from the bearded geek so I said no thanks. How a game can cost double is beyond me.

Well - on to the game, and it has surpassed all my expectations. Great graphics, and superb gameplay. I now have 5 badboy motors stacked outside my gaff and have completed many missions, although it tells me that I've only completed around 8% of the game so far.

The music on the game is just so good. Most of the radio stations that you can listen to in the car whilst driving around have many of the good old-skool tunes, ones that spawned some of the popular ones that other people may have heard. '2 People - Jean Jacques Smoothie' is one in particular. It features a vocal sample from the Minnie Ripperton song "Inside My Love". There's another tune that is the basis for Ice Cube's Ring Ding Dong but I need to find out who made the original.

No problem - you simply call a number on your cell phone within the game whilst the tune is playing. You will then receive a text back in return, giving you the details of the artist. It's similar to the technology being used nowadays by mobile firms in the UK who offer to identify a certain piece of music.

I've used the same cell phone to cheat on 2 things so far.

OK OK, its the lazy option but guns are hard to come by! I've used the cheat to get full ammo so that I can swagger around with all (tier 1) weapons at my disposal. I've also used the Annihilator cheat (it's the name of a helicopter) and this is incredible fun. I've landed on the top of some of the best buildings in the game, or just simply attempted death leaps out of the helicopter whilst flying along. It tends to make the landing just that bit softer and less terminal if it's over water, of course ;-)

The good thing about using the helicopter cheat is that your wanted level rockets up to 6 stars if you simply go nosing about on the other islands. I can only see 2 of the many islands so far because of the 8% missions complete status. If I could simply land on one of the other islands and get away with it, then it would make the game far too easy.

Some games are all about completing certain tasks, or doing things to make something else happen. Whilst this is also true about GTA 4, there's nothing better than just cruising around, listening to some good music and watching life go by. That is, just so long as you don't forget about driving - like I did, when I rear-ended a police car. All good fun. You can just sit there, spinning the back wheels but eventually they will pop. Similarly, drive through a fire and your car tyres will catch alight and go bang after a short time.

Call of Duty has taken a bit of a back seat at the moment, but I am sure it will spring back soon. I'll probably lose interest in GTA sooner than CoD to be honest, but time will tell.

Nice one Rockstar - a fantastic game!!