It’s my birthday today.

I’ve been 17 years old for an hour and, as such, haven’t got any presents yet. We usually only open presents in the morning when everyone is awake, so I’ll report back later.

Anyway, my present to myself is that I’ve changed my iPhone theme. It’s looking really nice now, IMO. I’ve dumped the old tutorial for unlocking a 1st gen iPhone and replaced it with a page about mine with screenshots, which you can find here: iPhone.

Anyway, I shall make another post tonight when I’ve done everything and got all my pressies and stuff.

I broke WordPress again. Well, more specificially, I was trying to play around with the theme, which didn’t work, so I tried to do something to it manually (setting in the database) which broke it. So, I’ve restored the backup from earlier this month. Lost three posts I think. >_<

I might apply a new theme later, too. This one is old.

I didn’t like the one I had in mind.

I went to Drayton Manor today, which is a theme park, in case you’re unsure.

It’s about a 45 minute drive from our house, just a tad further then to Alton Towers. However, it’s much easier to get there, as you just drive down the M6 for a bit, whereas to get to Alton it’s mostly country roads to get there. Whereas Alton Towers is kinda South-East of Stoke-on-Trent, Drayton is more North-East of Birmingham.

Anyway, we went for most of the day, and rode Maelstrom (rode twice - IMO, it’s better then what Thorpe Park have), G-Force (rather unique lift hill design that goes upside down), Apocalypse, Shockwave, Stormforce 10 (very very wet….but Thorpe Park’s Tidal Wave is wetter), and a couple other smaller rides, including “Excalibur, a Dragon’s Tale” and the Buffalo Roller Coaster, which was pretty good.

It’s an okay theme park but it’s not really worth another visit, and they REALLY need to clean it up a bit. The was loads of litter all over the place, especially in the queue lines. In terms of litter, Thorpe Park is the cleanest, Alton Towers is pretty good (but there is still some…), and Drayton Manor is the worst.

Overall though, the whole day was quite fun, but if you’re planning on driving up from the South, go the extra 20 or so miles to Alton Towers, and if you’re planning on coming down from the North, don’t waste the extra petrol.

Could Apple potentially be taken to court because of false advertising? If you visit Apple’s UK website (this), and then navigate to the App Store page for the iPhone, it lists several apps including the eBay application, Loopt, and Super Monkey Ball.

Sure, Super Monkey Ball is fun, and for £5.99 it provides plenty of entertainment if you’re in need of a game. However, that’s where it ends. Because both Loopt and the eBay app are not available on the UK App Store. Now, if Apple had one global website for the whole world, this might not be that much of an issue, but they’re advertising two things, for the UK market, on their UK website, that are not available here.

Sure, there are alternatives, such as an application called “GarageBuy”, which you can use for eBay, but Apple aren’t advertising that. They’re advertising the not-available-in-the-UK official eBay app. Now, shouldn’t this be considered false advertising, to which pretty much any company can get in serious trouble for from the government section in charge of this type of stuff? I’d be interested in seeing if someone take Apple to court over this issue, as it could very well be that Apple are doing something wrong. I know that if, say, I purchased the iPhone 3G in the UK, and I needed the eBay app for my business, and found it wasn’t available, I’d be very angry.

What do you think?

The Apple Airport Express. What is it? Well, simply put, it’s a WiFi access point with two additional features. First, it has a built in printer server (and USB port), so you can plug a printer in and run it off that. Secondly, and this is why I purchased it, it has a 3.5mm audio output.

Now this may seem quite odd to you that a WiFi access point has a 3.5mm audio output, but it’s not. Because, once you setup the Airport Express from within OS X (or Windows…if there’s a compatible utility, which there should be):

You then get a new option in iTunes:

So now, you can choose where you want to send your music. It’s as easy as that. You just plug the Airport into an ethernet cable, and into your speakers, or in my case, AV Receiver, then run the setup, and you’re done! You can use either an analogue connection, or, an optical cable.

It’s really easy to setup, and awesome if you want to pipe your music to another room in the house. Plus you can add as many Airport Express’es to your home network as you like, and they’ll all show up in iTunes. And if running an ethernet cable to the back of your garden so you can listen to music while having a BBQ isn’t convienent, you can set it up to connect via WiFi - it’ll then connect to your current WiFi network, and does the same thing. Actually, you have several options:

• Connect via ethernet and create a brand new WiFi network.
• Connect via ethernet and merge with your existing WiFi network, to extend the range.
• Connect via WiFi to your existing WiFi network, and extend the range.

Overall, if you already use iTunes and need a way to send your music somewhere else in your house, the Airport is a very useful device, and it’s nice and small too. If you don’t want to spend the whole £65 that Apple charges for it, pick one up on eBay - I got the older 802.11b/g model for a mere £35 (the new ones have 802.11b/g/n).

Now all I have to do if I want to listen to music downstairs, is send it to the Living Room speakers, go downstairs, and hit “AirTunes” on the Logitech Harmony remote.

The interconnected home. I has it. It’s brilliant.

Placed a small order tonight for a few titles…

Well…to be fair it’s all the way into March 2009, I’d probably buy that many discs by then anyway, right?

I thought I’d write an article about the Firefox extensions that I used, after totally coming up with the idea myself. It’s my idea, I swear!

All the extensions below are fully compatible with Mozilla Firefox 3, unless otherwise stated.

Customize Google

This handy extension adds some additional options to tweak Google to your liking, one of which I find very useful is to bypass Google’s annoying click tracking - basically, you can’t right click a link from within the search results and copy the path, instead, you’re copying a Google-based URL which then redirects to the page you want to visit. Plus, it adds some extra options such as removing ads, adding additional links to stuff like WayBackMachine, showing favicons in the search results, and so on.

Favicon Picker

If a site you visit doesn’t have a favicon, yet you visit it often and want to put it in your bookmarks toolbar, it won’t have a favicon visible. This annoys me, so, I generally always change the favicon if it’s either ugly, or doesn’t exist. Sadly, this extension does not work on Firefox 3, last time I tried, which is a pity (enabling it crashed Firefox for me). If anyone has a fix, please do share it.

Update: Just found out there’s actually a Favicon Picker v3, which can be found here.

Foxmarks Bookmarks Synchronizer

An invaluable tool (saved my owned bookmarks several times in the past from ‘accidents’), which backs up your bookmarks to either Foxmarks’ site or your own FTP server. Also very handy if you have multiple PCs, and don’t want the fuss of keeping them updated all the time.

FxIF

My latest extension, thanks to Pandya’s aforementioned article, this shows EXIF data for images - stuff like the camera model, apeture, and so on. Pretty simple really. Example photo used can be found here.

Greasemonkey

This highly useful extension enabled the modification of various web pages, to enhance them or change the layout or feel. I use a couple of Grasemonkey scripts including Flickr Rich Edit, Flickr Buddy Icon Reply, Flickr Camera Images, Flickr Multi Group Sender, and deviantART MCF Bypass.

President Bush Countdown

Not really useful, but it shows that he’ll be kicked out of office soon. Hurrah!

Server Spy

Shows what software the server is running. For example, on my blog: Apache/2.2.8 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.7a DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635. See the above President Bush screenshot to see what Server Spy looks like in the status bar, too.

ShowIP

Another server tool, this shows what IP address the server is that hosts the site. Again, as an example, my blog is on 91.186.27.166. It’s also intelligent, and shows any additional IPs for that site if you require so. See the above President Bush screenshot to see what ShowIP looks like in the status bar, too.

Stylish

Similar to Greasemonkey, but more for modifying the look and feel of sites then adding features. I use a couple of Stylish scripts including Firefox 3 Mac OS X - Favicons on Bookmark Bar, Flickr Vista Fonts, and IMDb - dark blue redesign.

User Agent Switcher

For stubborn sites that refuse to let me in because I use Firefox / OS X.

–

Anyway, that’s all I use, feel free to suggest any more, or, post your own in the comments.

Sorry for last night’s downtime. Turns out trying beta versions of software isn’t a very good idea (even more so when you don’t backup first), I somehow managed to mess up the permissions (I think), and overwrite the themes and plugins, which made the site unvisitable for about 24 hours.

Should all be working again, thanks to Minthost’s backups (and Jonathan’s help). >_<

Update (17th July 08): Sucessfully updated to Wordpress 2.6 final.

I seem to have switched to dialup.

Which is odd because I KNOW that I can get more:

Perhaps I should move to a datacentre:

Stupid BT.

I reached 100,000 views on my Flickr account in the past couple of days, and I didn’t even notice until browsing my account’s stats today.

Crave has seen all manner of sadistic alarm clocks, from models that emit sonic booms and electrical shocks to those that fly and roll away. But the appropriately named “Tyrant” from Taiwanese designer Alice Wang takes sleep disruption to a disturbing new level.

If you don’t turn it off, this little monster will randomly dial numbers programmed in your mobile phone every three minutes, according to SlashGear. That’s right–not calls to yourself, but to others who surely won’t be amused. Mercifully, this is only a concept so far (we hope).

Source: c|net Crave

*do want*

What I hate about Digital TV, in this case, a DVB-T signal, is that it either works or it doesn’t. When I was in London I purchased an EyeTV for DTT stick, which is a small USB based TV tuner for Mac. It comes with a very nice software package called EyeTV.

Next up, where I live. I’m around 30 miles from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter, which, according to a couple of sites I searched for, is 1) uber powerful, spitting out 1000kW of analogue power (and I think about 50kW of digital power), and 2) services a ton of people, including the whole of Birmingham.

Except that doesn’t help. Because annoyingly, our house can’t even pick it up. Basically, we get average analogue reception, and really crap digital reception. Both the TV and an old Freeview box I had manages to lock onto most of the BBC channels, and some of ITV, plus a few others, but that’s it. Channel 4 and 5 and a lot of the other channels were extremely dodgy and dropped out wayyy too much to be watchable. Still, I only really wanted to watch the channels that we do get, so I got the EyeTV thing anyway.

I bring it home, plug it into both the upstairs and downstairs jacks, and, nothing. Not even the BBC which works fine downstairs.

So our antenna is either broken, not plugged in, pointing at the wrong place, or not big enough. I wonder if that means I need to get one of those ultra high antennas that are 10 meters high and need to be attatched with long steel cables so they don’t blow away?

Otherwise, I basically have a spare EyeTV here now doing nothing.

I went to London this past weekend. Left by car on Friday, came back last night (Sunday), and had quite a good weekend. I went on the Eye (twice), had a wonder around London, saw the Apple Store in Regent Street (I got an EyeTV DTT stick from there, which now doesn’t work. I think it’s a reception issue. ), had dinner and food at a couple of places, then went to Thorpe Park on Sunday.

Thorpe Park ended up being a bit of a mess, as I managed to lose dad in the afternoon, so I spent about an hour trying to find him and by then we had:
1) Missed out on going on Stealth, Logger’s Leap, Slammer, Colossus (it was closed), Rush (it looked very broken), Samurai, Zodiac and Depth Charge, and
2) Had to go and pick mum up from Central London again and drive all the way back up to Stafford.

I did, however, manage to ride the Tidal Wave (which is wet…and I mean wet. It’s like having a bath, twice, in a period of 5 seconds), Detonator, Nemesis Inferno, Rumba Rapids (which, FYI, is rubbish compared to Alton’s Congo River Rapids), Quantum, Vortex, X:\ No Way Out (which was awesome), and a couple of others.

So, I’ll have to try out those rides again in either August (my birthday) or October (going to see James Blunt) when we’re most likely next going to London.

I also took a small selection of photos, which can be found on my Flickr Photostream, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamhook/sets/72157605901566515/

Well, kinda. Basically, I was at Alton Towers today and I (as usual) went on the Spinball Whizzer first. So, I queued for about 20 minutes (I generally always use the single rider queue as it’s generally quicker), got on the ride, and it starts off, round the first bend and then…..stops. On the very bottom of the lift hill.

So I wait. And wait. And wait…and eventually the one assistant girl comes over and says “sorry, someone jumped over the queue line and because of the sensors in the ride area, it automatically shut off so we have to reset the whole ride”. So I stay on it for about 10 more minutes, and eventually they come over again and say “right, we need to get you off, so, <blah blah safety info blah blah>, and then you’ll need to sign a form with your name and address on it for insurance reasons for us”. So they gave me a long explanation of how to get out the car because it was more then a 1cm drop (blame Tony Blair’s STUPID health and safety rubbish), so I ignored that and just jumped down off the car. They didn’t like that.

Anyway, I managed to get two free passes for either Oblivion or the Spinball Whizzer to get in the priority queue, for two people, so I went with my dad on both.

Before I went on Oblivion though, I decided to do a quick ride on Enterprise, which…..broke down. So, it was about an hour and a half I had been at the park, and not ridden anything.

Eventually though, I managed to ride most of the stuff, bar Air, Nemesis, and Rita (they ALWAYS have long queue lines), and one of the other rides, Ripsaw, broke down just as I was about to go on it…3rd time unlucky today.

I got an iMac yesterday, from the Apple Store in Birmingham.

It’s the 2.8Ghz 24 inch model, and it’s awesome. The screen is uber clear, and OS X is superb - I can’t believe I lived without it for so long since I had a Mac mini.

Anyway, I put some unboxing pics on my photostream so have a look here.

I’m still getting used to some of OS X’s quirks again, but so far I’m almost spot on, except for mainly copy and paste (CMD+C instead of Ctrl+C).

Two blog posts within an hour(ish), a record!

Anyway, I thought it would be nice to let readers of my blog in on a little secret, and it helps if you’re a regular on TVF as well.

So basically, two bits of news, first of all, TVF v3. I made a very simple small banner for advertising it, and, as much as I would like to say what it is, I’m not allowed to, bahaha. But I will say that it’s something that should make the whole site quite a bit better, and more intergrated, but that’s all I’m saying. So, just enjoy the banner for now:

Secondly, and I can talk about this more openly, is that we’re planning on giving away an Xbox 360 (and possibly some games, too) in the coming months, so look out for that too. I’m not sure exactly which model it will be yet, but it’ll most likely be the Elite or the one below that, the Premium. First prize will probably also get a free game too, but don’t hold me on that, as we’re still discussing the specifics.

You will need to do a little work to be able to win it, but, for a free 360 it’s worth it, yes?

That Dell 2407WFP-HC that I ordered last month actually wasn’t a 2407WFP-HC. It was the older 2407WFP revision A04 model, which is the one before the “-HC”, which has more colour then the one I have right now.

I only noticed this a few days ago when Fr3d posted a screenshot of his device manager in IRC, and his showed an “-HC” model, whereas mine didn’t. So, I looked around a bit, and mine is indeed the wrong one.

So, since dad had placed the order I got him to email the guy, Mark, at MCS, and check, and I was indeed correct, it’s the wrong one. So, after a couple of emails, a courier is coming next week with an actual -HC, and at the same time pick up the box with mine in it (so I’ll be without a monitor for half an hour).

Overall, very good service on behalf of MCS, so, I would highly recommend them. It was also pretty good value, even though it’s a refurb, the 2407WFP that I have now basically arrived brand new, the only sign of use was a tiny scratch on the left (and I mean tiny), but for the sake of saving over £100 off the retail price, who cares?

I’ve been playing GTAIV since the release day, and I just passed 50% this weekend, so I thought it would be a good idea to summarise it in a bit more detail since my last (rather short) post about it.

It still remains my favourite game of all time, for sure. The look and feel of Liberty City is absolutley fantastic, and it actually feels like a real city. The hundreds, if not thousands of little touches to the game make it a superb environment to play in, and the story line so far is also very good. It does get a little confusing because there are so many characters, but it’s still an incredible game.

The fact that Rockstar also have not only thought about the game, but the out-of-game experence, is superb. Case in point, if I like a song on the radio, I simply pull up my phone, go to the phonebook, and call “ZiT”, the music service. Just like in real life, it’ll “listen” to the track you’re playing and then a moment later, you get a text message. But thats’s not all. You also get an email from Rockstar, so you can download the song yourself on your PC. Now that’s clever. Here it is, for those who don’t have the game:

However, as good as GTAIV is, I do have one complaint. The in-game phone. First of all, it’s too small, even on a 40 inch HDTV. Second of all, why are the multiplayer options there? Honestly, Rockstar, the phone is a very good tool, but it would be a whole lot better if it was bigger. I’m talking Blackberry. Niko can get the horrible standard phone at the start of the game, but then give us an option to upgrade or something!

Anyway, apart from that, and a few other minor issues, it’s still a fantastic game, and if you haven’t yet played it, get out from under your rock and go buy it!

Acksaw found a really neat Flash-based script today, that basically loads images off your Flickr account, and displays them in a pretty damn cool way. Basically, it’s a grid with all your photos in it from Flickr, and you can zoom in and make it move around and stuff. It’s actually a very cool idea.

It can be used with a Flickr account, or your own xml-based gallery thingy. The Flickr method is the easiest as you just have to edit a few bits of code and you’re done. The XML method means you have to edit a file whenever you add new photos, so it’s a bit annoying in that way, whereas Flickr is super-easy.

You can see mine here: william-hook.com/tiltviewer

Pretty cool eh? If you make your own, post a link to yours in the comments.

Why?

Since I started this blog, I’ve used the exact same template. I’ve not edited a single piece of code at all except for my own mods, and it’s not broken a thing.

Also, if I install a plugin, it can somehow modify the WordPress files on-the-fly and add in any functionality. For example, The reCAPTCHA, the Flickr thumbnails, the iPhone skin, all those plugins were activated with a single click. NO code edits, NO file modification, nothing.

That’s why I like WordPress. It’s so easy to use.

Invision Power Board, on the other hand…..oh boy. Have a look at TVF’s blogs. IPS recently changed the layout a little, but all our custom skins are totally screwed. What it should look like, is this: IPS Blogs.

Somehow, if it was WordPress, that would be possible without needing any code edits. But being IPB it means there’s a TON of code to be edited, which is a chore.

So, IPS, please, steal some code from WordPress and make IPB work better then it does now between upgrades!