CONSTRUCTION REPORT / Domain Problems

Well, I think I'm nearly there with the redesign of the Captains-Blog. However, I have a horrible feeling that things might not look so good tomorrow. I am currently hosting all of the graphics and a few other things from this blog ON my webpace at stu-wilson.com, but I am having a problem with the people who I purchased the domain from - basically it expires tomorrow, meaning that stu-wilson.com will no longer direct to my website....

I renewed the domain last week, but it's now telling me that it will expire on the 1st January 1970!!

Anyway... Put simply, stu-wilson.com (the website) will probably be down as well as everything that is on my website (including the graphics for this blog). I will also lose my email addresses as well. I'm hoping to ring them up in the morning to see if I can sort it out, but it may be too late. I'm not sure if the domain expires at midnight tonight, or midnight tomorrow night.

This doesn't affect www.captains-blog.co.uk - I've still got over a year before that domain is due to expire

Anyway, you have been warned.

CONSTRUCTION SITE - KEEP OUT

Captains Blog may appear strange (or may not even work) today and over the next few days as I have decided to finally do something about the rather naff layout of the blog.

You can thank Dan over at http://www.0ddness.co.uk/ for this because he is always changing his template/layout, and I felt I'd better do something with mine.

Techie Alert!!

Bit of a techie post today. I've spent the last two days at school finishing the installation of our new server - our 4th one, and a lovely new toy for me to play with!!

It's an HP Proliant ML350 server with 2Gb ram, Dual-core Xeon Processor with 6x 300gb hot-swappable drives with a Lightscribe DVD writer and HP Ultrium 448i tape drive. It's all been set up and ready for the start of the new term in two weeks time.

I also had a go with playing on a Nintendo Wii for the first time today. I must admit, I haven't been that impressed with the software titles that are currently available for the console, but we set the console up in one of the classrooms and played Wii Sports using one of the interactive whiteboards via a projector and it was great fun - I especially liked the Bowling and Golf games. I'm actually tempted to get one myself now!

We're back!

Greetings!! Sorry for the 2 week break without any updates - this was down to Michelle, Kieran and I going away for a week to stay with my folks back in Essex. I couldnt say that we were going away because the other reason for us going was to attend my friend Peter's 30th Surprise birthday party (and apparently he reads this blog occasionally - wow, I actually have someone who reads this drivel!)

Actually we got back on Wednesday the 15th but we had my Mum and Dad come back with us and stay a few days. They've only just gone home, leaving me and Kieran at home while Michelle returns to work, so I'm just sat here at the computer listening to the excellent movie soundtrack to George (The King of Zombie Flicks) Romero's "Day Of The Dead" with Kieran playing with his cars next to me.

As I've been getting more and more into photography lately, I did take some fab photographs while we were away - one in particular of Hadleigh Castle which I have recently posted on http://www.renderosity.com/. Pop along and rate it if you have a few moments to spare (although you'll need to be a member), or take a look at it below.


I'll hopefully be posting some more pictures that I've taken over the next coming days/weeks. These will appear here, on my website at http://www.stu-wilson.com/, and over at http://www.renderosity.com/.

Anyway, going off subject...... I can't believe that I've had 4 weeks off work already. The summer holiday has gone so fast. I've still got 2 weeks to go before I go back to work normally again, but I do have to pop into the school tomorrow for a few hours as we are having a new server that is being delivered and that needs installing.

Right, I'd best be going. Catch you all soon :)

Kieran doing the housework.

I'm training Kieran up so that I don't need to do any more housework while Michelle is at work during the school holidays!!!!

Check out the small video below to see what I mean!

Click here if clicking on the image doesn't work.

Oh, and I'm joking by the way about getting kieran to do the housework - I know how gullible some people are out there!

PSP

Well, after nearly two years of "should I", or "shouldn't I", I've finally decided to go out and get myself a PSP (Portable Playstation), and boy am I happy with it!!

Of course I wouldnt have got one if it wasn't for the possibility of being able to play homebrew software and ISO's downloaded from the internet. Normally this is not possible with a PSP with its default firmware, but fortunatly the PSP I purchased came with the 3.40oe-a firmware which makes this possible. What it does mean is that I can play all my old PSone games on the PSP without the need of an emulator (at full speed and without the need of a PlayStation 3 to transfer them over), and I can also play games directly from the memory stick rather than UMD disks.

In other words, it can do all kinds of stuff that Sony would prefer you not to be able to do!

Kieran demonstrating Resident Evil on my PSP

I had been toying with getting either a Nintendo DS or PSP for sometime now (to quench my neverending need for mobile gaming), but to be truthful, I have not yet seen anything that really stands out on the DS, and most of the games I've seen look no better than a lot of 2D games on the GBA (Hell, I've seen better games on my old Commodore Amiga!!!)

Oh well, now I can play Resident Evil 1,2 & 3 (my favourite game series) and Silent Hill on the go (as well as tons of great PSP titles!!!!) Whoppeeee