Beware... Techie at work......

I haven't been able to post a message recently because I've been having a few problems with my computer. Managed to get it up and running again, although I'm not sure for how long, so I think I might be popping over to Novatech to see what bargains they might have. I never buy a fully built/configured computer. I think its always better to build it yourself - you get EXACTLY what you want, and at a fraction of the price you would normally spend if you were to buy one from say PCWorld, or Currys.

One of the teaching assistants at my school contacted me, asking if I could fit a new harddrive into her computer. Apparently she had taken the PC to a reputable PC repair company and was told that her harddrive had completely failed and needed to be replaced. Now, they were going to charge her £70 for a measly 40Gb drive (I've just bought a 200Gb drive £25!!). Fortunatly she realised that was quite expensive and ended up getting one elsewhere for £20. Anyway she still had to pay £50 just for having a look at it.

Well, I had a look. I took the old drive out and put the new one in. Powered it up - nothing. Now, the two things I thought it could be were that the IDE cable was damaged (which it wasn't by the way), or that the IDE connector which the hardrive was connected to on the motherboard was faulty. I took the new drive out, and put the old one back in again, connecting it to the same IDE channel (secondary) as her DVD Rom. Not ideal, but it worked fine. Her harddrive booted without a problem and now her computer works fine. Now, what the f*$@ was that Computer Repair Company (whose name I shall not mention here) talking about??? They charged her £50 for having a look at her computer, mis-diagnosing the problem, and trying to flog a 40Gb harddrive for £70 when in fact she didnt even need one!!!!!!

BEWARE of IT specialists who haven't a clue what they are talking about!!

Anyway, enough of that...

Yesterday I decided it was time to make my home computer network completely wireless, so I decided to buy myself a Belkin 802.11g 125mb PCI wireless card for my desktop PC to work alongside my wireless tablet PC (Acer Travelmate C110) and router/modem. Got it all setup within minutes and it works like a dream (I just wish I could get our wireless network at school working as well - although thats another story for another time!)

Oh... Me and Michelle sat down and watched Poseidon last night on DVD - absolutely fantastic film, and one which I think is actually better than the original. Highly recommended.

Enough of me waffling on....

Action Biker - The Remix

Another day, another song.

I've been going through my hard-drive looking at the hundreds of unfinished songs I've started to compose but have never got round to finishing.

Ladies and gentlemen.... may I present to you....

ACTION BIKER - THE VINCE CLARKE (GUY FROM ERASURE) SOUNDALIKE REMIX

Action Biker was released for the Commodore 64 (and other 8-bit computers) in 1985 by budget publisher Mastertronic. You played Clumsy Colin (the star of the KP Skip adverts at the time) and had to ride around an isometric 3D town collecting bike parts before entering the bike race at the end of the game.

It was a fab game, and I still like to play it now. Anyway, the game had a fantastic soundtrack by lengendary C64 composer Rob Hubbard

Download the original Action Biker theme tune HERE

My version can be download here

ACTION BIKER - THE VINCE CLARKE (GUY FROM ERASURE) SOUNDALIKE REMIX

Hope you like it. Comments welcome.

Psycho's and Madmen

View of Weynouth, and Chesil Beach from Portland

We're back!!!

...And not a moment too soon may I just add. Probably one of the worst holidays I have ever been on. I won't say what ruined it for us, but all I will say is next time me, Michelle and Kieran will be going on our own.

Still, it wasn't all bad. We did get to meet my very good friend Fiona who lives in Jersey. I've known her for over 8 years and have never been able to meet her up until now. She's getting married in October and both me and Michelle can't wait to fly over then and see her getting hitched.

We're getting back to normaility again now, but still need to unpack the suitcases!

The Stumeister has returned..............

We're all going on a summer holiday

Today will probably be the last day I'll be able to post anything here on my blog for a week as we are very shortly due to leave to go on holiday. We are only spending a week in some farmyard cottage in Weymouth, and I very much doubt I will be able to connect my laptop to a wireless internet connection while we are there. We are going with Michelle's family (her mum, stepdad, grandparents, sister and her partner. Not sure how I am going to cope, but I am making sure to take my laptop, a fair number of games and a couple of DVDs to watch on the laptop when I'm bored.

So.... until I return............ WHOOSH
(vanishes in a puff of smoke)

"I Want To Break Free..."

Someone who doesn't seem to mind the hot weather at the moment is Kieran! He just loves to sneak by without me watching and escape into the back garden. Fortunatly our garden is rather large (well, 54ft long), and he has lots to explore. I'm sure however that if he could talk he would tell me to cut the grass. Its like a jungle at the moment.

As you can tell from the picture, the poor little sod has a bit of a sweat going.

I'm having problems with my PC at the moment. The bloody thing keeps crashing for no apparent reason. I think it may be a driver issue with my graphics card. For some reason, when I was playing Dreamfall the other week the game wouldn't run properly with nVidia's latest GeForce drivers so I had to downgrade to the 81.98 drivers. Now, since I've upgraded back to the latest 91.31 drivers, I've been having problems galore. Hopefully nVidia will release some sort of fix for this as it is really p*%!ing me off! I'm amazed I've been able to write this post without the computer crashing on me.

Schools out..... for summer!

I'm off work and on holiday for 6 weeks..... YAY!!!