Archives: March 2009

BSG: The Final Flight of the Galactica

Mar23
Published on: March 23, 2009
Categories: TV Shows
Comments: No Comments
Adama: Starbuck, what do you hear?
Starbuck: Nothing but the rain.
Adama: Then grab your gun and bring in the cat.
Starbuck: Aye-aye, sir!

BSG

The series has come to the end of its four seasons run. And we have the 2 hour finale, where they get to tie up all the loose strings, and answer all those questions we have been left with over the run up to this grand final!… Or Not.

So the Galactica is damaged to the point it can no longer jump, its being stripped of anything usefull and everyone is moving out to the basestar, When Adama decided to send the old lady out in style with a suicide mission to take on the Cylon colony & basestars. This is the cylon fleet that wiped out humanity, destroyed the more powerful Battlestar Pegasus with just three basestars, and been hammering the undamaged Galactica for the previous four years. And with a huge hole in its side from Boomers FTL jump.

So Galactic jumps into the place of death (Surviving the Jump) It gets the full force of a heavily armed and prepared cylon colonys defenses blasting away at this damaged battlestar, the whole cylon raider fleet attacking it,  Galactica on limited viper defense since stayed with the fleet (and for some reason the two best pilots were running around with guns?), the remaining raptors FTL jumped from inside the pod ripping another huge hole in Galactica. and at the end of the Battle she jumps a stupid huge jump and then her spine breaks, The Huge colony was destroyed by a couple of nukes. And this was a broken Galactica?

So.. Time for answers to the Questions we all been waiting for…The answer is “Its god!” Seriously, after four years that’s what they gave us!

Ok. Lets go.

Why does Baltar and the Six see each other in their Heads..  Oh “Head Baltar” and “Head Six” are angels who are leading the people of the course of God.

Why do some characters keep seeing an Opera House? That’s not really answered but we can only assume its a glimpse of Heaven. Well if heaven is an opera, I for one am spending the rest of my life sinning, I dont like opera.

How come everyone has visions of Hira. We’ll ignore that one

What awoke the final five? oh a song, played by God, which happens to be a song Starbuck was taught by her dad as a young girl, and the location of new~earth.

What happened to the Cylon fleets, they were big enough to take out the 12 colonies but are now reduced to one rebal one, and the main colony which has no basestars? Errr we’ll ignore that one, even though the colonial scouts took photos of basestars by the colony but show you a flashback to roslyn sleeping with a x-studant of hers.

Are the Cylons going to stop their constant revenge against the humans now their colony was destroyed. Remember those missing basestars. Err, lets ignore that and pretend all the nasty cyclons vanished since its gods will.

Why would every person on the fleet vote to give up all technology and live like savages? Come one, no one seen shipwrecked, survivor, we as a species are soft and unable to cope without our technology, and these guys are more technologically dependant than us, and they moved to strange world where they not immune from any diseases, and going to try and live with sticks and stones and native people who are trained hunter/killers.. (I give them a month survival). It would not happen. try getting everyone from the city of London to give up everything and go live on an island with just the clothes off their backs..  Answer Its Gods will.

What was the Cylons Plan? Err we been told about this plan all through the series, and as we reached the end, we never found out.

And The Biggest question. What was Starbuck? Now this is a biggie, after all, we know she died, possibly twice. We saw her ship explode in a vortex, we saw another viper burnt out with her dead body on it when they find earth, so thats two deaths. So is she like head Baltar/Six an angel? Nope, cant be because everyone can see her, she fights, drinks, freks, she kills. She also sees her own Head person of piano player/her dad in the bar reteaching her the song that awoke the final five and holds the path to new earth. So are the writers saying an angel with no knowledge of being an angel is seeing angels? (My head hurts) Well that does not explain the fact she has been drawing the same picture since birth, a picture that shows the way to earth? I know. Lets not answer this hard one and show a flashback to appolo watching a pigeon.

Ok. I got the feeling the writers had a good series, they built up lots of plots, and sub plots, and had like the cylons A PLAN. But as the series came to the end, they gave up, decided juggling all the complicated stuff was too hard, That or they could not think of a way to answer it? so the used a deus ex machina to answer everything.. Oh it was God

That or, since it was the last ever episode, and no comebacks “ie. the series could not be canceled” they decided to just throw in some propaganda. Everyone there is one true god, all worship the god, robots, ai, abortions, technology bad, nature and god good…

I feel bad for the series send off, Although the fleet flying into the sun to the theme from the original series was a nice touch.

CN

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Micro$oft 0: GothNinja 1

Mar20
Published on: March 20, 2009
Categories: Hacks, xbox 360
Comments: No Comments

Tales of My delve into the world of Micro$oft repair work.

I had put out requests during the day yesterday for the parts I needed to repair my xbox, and rectify the inherited design flaw of the system.

So i had a half dozen M4 bolts (always get more than you need in case things go wrong) Ideally they should have been about 10mm long thread, mine were about an inch and a half, but no problems that’s what hacksaws were invented for.  A dozen Metal Washers, and a dozen Nylon Washers.

I had the correct tools, Thanks to the DemonP who actually owned some torx drivers, a very handy thing to own, and something I am going to get this weekend.

Step 1) Dismantle xbox to as many bits as you can… Done

Step 2) Remove the badly designed Xclamp from the back of the motherboard, and remove heat-sink… Done

Step 3) Using the m4 bolts, with washers (Remembering to use the NONE CONDUCTIVE ones next to the motherboard)

Step 4) Semi reassemble xbox, mainly to the point its safe to be plugged into the electricity supply, and making sure the DVD player is plugged in to prevent xbox live bans. Plug into power, and switch on. Leave it running for 10-15 minutes without the fan on the GPU to get it nice and hot, so the solder melts back on connection.

Step 5) Switch off and let cool down, The heat-sink will be “oww oww it burns.. .arrrggghh my fingers melted..” Hot.

Step 6) Look at the vast amount of xbox parts scattered about, scratch your head a bit, make a promise to pay more attention to the how you dismantle the next thing you take apart, and rebuild.

Step 7) Power up and Play……

Doing it Yourself

Cost: £0.00  (ok, if you don’t have the bolts that may cost you £1 maybe £2)

Time: Hour or Two tops.

Sending it off for Micro$oft to repair.

Cost: Minimum £60

Time: 3 weeks turnaround

I know which I prefer…

The Culprit

The Culprit

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The Dreaded 1RLOD

Mar18
Published on: March 18, 2009
Categories: Hacks, xbox 360
Comments: 6 Comments

So I have a free evening with no plans, nothing urgent requiring my attention, so have the opportunity to go a bit further on re5.  Try and get past the heavily armed zombies who had me pinned down with their machine gun fire when i last played.

So a quick jump on the sofa, power up the xbox and….

e74

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now my xbox elite is about a year and a half old, so unless it gets the full RROD (which comes under a special 3 year warranty) its not under cover. So I have no cover for this VERY COMMON problem, that’s a stupid Micro$oft design flaw which should have been sorted many version back… (Not that i’m bitter or anything!)

So. While lying on the floor clutching the re5 boxset and crying, I had to decide what to do…

1) Send it off to Micro$oft and pay the ransom for getting it repaired (plus 3 week turnaround). This option also costs shipping charges, and prices start from £60 going up for how much they need to fix, and i do not trust the money grabbing *!$£^*%!£$”&.

2) Take it somewhere else to be repaired, and pay whatever they charge, and have a week or sown downtime…

It was at this point a small voice at the back of my head said. “Err didn’t you spend years in university doing an electrical/electronic engineering degree? Don’t you have a shed load of electronics qualifications? Aren’t you supposed to be able to design motherboard, and build them from components upwards, even programing them?

Damn right, strange voice in my head! There’s nothing a Micro$oft engineer can do that in theory I can not.

So, my plans are to collect equipment i need, and tomorrow fix my xbox myself (And remove the design flaw at the same time preventing the issue coming up again!)

So stay tuned for my exploits delving into the insides of my xbox, to find where all those characters live!

1RLOD

6 Comments

Why do they never learn?

Mar18
Published on: March 18, 2009
Categories: Customers
Tags: ,
Comments: No Comments

I am considering hiring a HitMan.

MPD has Just phone me up, disturbing my afternoon nap to ask “That functionality you said in your email that the site had. err How do I get it to work?”

So I start explaining it to him for the 6Th time, while just looking at his code to see if there’s a problem preventing the functionality working, and I spot a small problem, THE TOTAL LACK OF MY CODE.

He’s only gone and overwritten all my work with old copies of the files again!

Vent over, but seriously, If you know any good assassins? Let me Know

CN

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GothNinja + shotgun + Infected = Happy

Mar16
Published on: March 16, 2009
Categories: xbox 360
Comments: 2 Comments

Resident Evil 5

Friday the 13th saw not only the Knights Templar’s keeping a low profile, but the release of Resident Evil 5!

So Saturday morning (This being first available chance since i was busy Fri evening) I shot to my nearest town and hunted down a copy of the game. I settled for the limited Edition Steelbook version since it was only a couple of pound dearer than the basic version.

Then home to boot it up for a quick game!

So the game starts, as most these games do, with you weaponless just walking about to get the hang of the controls. (So far so good.)  OK, next stage is normally where you get a weapon and learn how to use it in a small simple attack. So I find a bloke who gives me a pistol, and some ammunition and sends me out the back door of his house. (So far as expected from game, I should get attacked by a zombie or something now) Theres a cut scene, ok I see someone becoming infected, so i now kill him and start the game. (NO!)  I’m in a alley with several dozen armed zombies coming from all directions, theres just more and more, My pistol ammunition ran out within first five minutes, I’m down to trying to hold them off with a machete, And they just keep coming……….

re5 - Chris Redfield

(This is the tutorial bit of the Game? I’m Hooked!)

Several hours later, I’m better armed with a shotgun and sniper rifle, fighting off the type of mutated creatures you’d expect from a resident evil game, while trying to solve puzzles in a tomb raider style… All set to a dark backdrop, blood stained walls, deep claw marks in the floor, shadows moving, glimpses of people moving in background. And the zombies are armed, and driving vehicles…

Add to this you have to be careful with equipment, You have 9 equipment slots, and they only hold so much amunition. And if you are not carefull you run out of space for health packs, or worse you can not pick up amunition.  I’m seriosly restricted at the minute as I’m running about with pistol, shotgun, sniperrifle, armour, stun stick, and 3 lots of amunition.  (one free slot, handy for mines or grenades…)

So basically, Don’t expect to hear from me for a while…

2 Comments

Some times Fridays just Drag!

Mar13
Published on: March 13, 2009
Categories: Work
Tags:
Comments: 6 Comments

A Picture paints a thousand words!

Bored

I think the picture says it all really.

Today is just dragging slowly on to its close, It could be because its a Friday, and I’m waiting on the weekend. Or if its the curse of Friday the 13th!

Or… Its Friday the 13th on top of a Full moon.

6 Comments

Beware Ninja Developers

Mar12
Published on: March 12, 2009
Categories: Customers
Tags: ,
Comments: No Comments

All is on edge in the Techno Insane Asylum today, I think its just a coincidence that I also happen to have brought a shinai into the office today.

You took a weapon to work?” I hear you ask!

Which tells me two things :-

  1. You don’t know me,
  2. You don’t know developers.

I should also point out that MPD was due into the office for a meeting today, This is the MPD who has on several instances deleted my work. And needs to be taught a lesson.  And let me tell you its very satisfying to walk into a meeting with a customer who has annoyed you carrying a shinai, and answering his quizzical look “This is for a health & safety lecture, on the dangers of deleting a developers work!

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Some people seem to want me to hurt them!

Mar09
Published on: March 9, 2009
Categories: Customers
Tags: ,
Comments: No Comments

I’m not antisocial: I’m just not user friendly!

I’m almost positive he’s doing it on purpose! In fact I am tempted to bring a shinai to the meeting tomorrow and teach the customer, not to mess with me!

I’m working on MPD‘s project. Now it was decided I was only doing the fancy backed magic that makes it all work, leaving a very boring, plane, basic front for a web designer to work his magic on.

That was the theory! only MPD has decided to do the web design himself to save money. He also plans on doing all future updates/tweaks to the code. Now on the whole I am in favour of the customers looking after their own sites once they are finished. As long as they know what they are doing, alas MPD has no skills in web design/programing/IT, But its all ok, He’s going to learn as he goes (and theres a two week going live turn around on the new system)

So, I have two weeks to write a full, multi user, multi site site, all complex stuff, and while I am doing this, he is writing the style and content on the same site i’m working on. And I’m sure he’s trying to see if he can make me explode.  Some examples :-

Last wednesday I turn up for work, open up his site and stare blankly as all my links, and options are gone. Nothing, blank screen. Well that should be “apparently a blank screen” for all the data was there, it was just written in white writing on a white background. So quick email to the bloke asking basically “WHY?” to which it takes several follow up emails to point out “everything’s now white?” it really did take several emails.

Last Friday I refresh the form I’m working on for it all to vanish, well the labels were there, just all the data entry bits were gone. Now this time I was more prepared for it and checked, and sure enough it was there just invisible.  Turns out he’s writing the style for IE and it does not work on other browsers.

No wonder their old developers quit.

CN

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