Small baby steps.
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Charlie Brooker hits one of my little frustrations right on the head today,
I tend to assume other people share my obsessive need to examine the settings until everything is just so, and get genuinely enraged when I go to someone’s house and discover, say, that they’re watching programmes in the wrong aspect ratio. People over 50 are the worst offenders: they’ll blithely sit through a Dad’s Army repeat that is unnaturally stretched across the screen so that the entire cast look as if they had difficult births that left them with flattened skulls. Faced with this, I get acute back-seat-driver anxiety, and end up hectoring them like an exasperated pilot trying to teach a four-year-old how to fly a helicopter.
It’s not just the aspect ratio, when I go back home shows are being watched in standard def even when they are being broadcast in HD on the next channel and we are paying for the luxury of Sky HD. That’s not as bad as watching a whole nights TV with squashed or stretched heads but still makes me wonder why they pay for it.
The exception to the over 50 rule is my brother who couldn’t care less and is oblivious to picture quality. I’ve caught him watching analogue terrestrial with black bars (put on by the broadcaster for 4:3 correction) stretched across the 16:9 LCD. Ouch.
The dedicated few made the difficult trip up to Newcastle to check out UFC 80 this weekend. The Metro Radio Arena is a tiny shed of a venue compared to the O2 and the M.E.N. making our cheap ‘nose bleed’ seats seem considerably closer than previous shows. This was a great show to see live as only one fight went the distance (the opposite of UFC 75) and even that was pretty exciting. The roof blew off whenever BJ Penn did anything and we were all pleased to see him finally get the lightweight belt, he deserved it. I don’t think the noise in the arena came across on TV, although I didn’t realise quite how bloody the fight was till I watched it back at home.
Oh and due to a hilarious lapse in security when the show ended we got octagon side, met Mike Goldberg and got involved in the numerous chants aimed at Joe Rogan, Dana White and of course Micheal Bisping. At one point there were about 20 guys chanting like crazy at Goldberg right behind the camera while he was doing a fill for a prelim, if you watch it back you can just make out the noise but Goldberg never cracks - what a pro.
Great show, fun weekend, shame about the location, come on Dana bring UFC to Birmingham!
I am staring at the Windows XP installation screen as I type this. I just removed my Vista partition, formatted the drive and am going fully back to XP.
The final straw came a few nights ago. After trying and trying I simply could not get Vista to playback a 1080p video without slowing down, scrambling the picture or just cutting out completely. So I tested it on my MacBook - passed, tested it on an Ubuntu Live CD - passed, and then on a seperate XP partition - passed.
The fact that playback was better off a god damn live CD is proof enough that there is something fundamentally wrong with Vista. I’d stripped Vista down, tried different codecs, used different players but nothing worked. After trying out XP on seperate partion I started thinking why I actually need Vista. DirectX 10? Thats been a flop. Areo? More hassle that its worth (and not a patch on Leopard). Vista special features? Exactly.
Bye Bye Vista.
Go read my round up from last year first. Wow. What a difference a year makes.
Most turbulent year in the history of MMA: 2007
Best Division: UFC Lightweight
A ton of high quality fighters having a ton of high quality fights. Fast paced, entertaining and highly competitive. It will be interesting to see who gets the winner of BJ/Stevenson vs Sherk next year.
Favourite Fighter: Quinton Rampage Jackson
Inside and outside the octagon always a character and with a new training team behind him this year was able to take out Liddell and defend against a very game Dan Henderson.
Favourite Match: Phil Baroni vs Frank Shamrock
This one is too hard. I picked this match because of the story, the characters and the fight all built up perfectly. Both guys were physically and mentally destroyed afterwards. Also worthy are Tyson Griffin vs. Frankie Edgar, Chuck Liddell vs Wanderei Silva, Clay Guida vs Roger Huerta, Roger Huerta vs. Leonard Garcia, Tyson Griffin vs Clay Guida, Forrest Griffin vs Shogun, Randy Couture vs Tim Sylvia. The list goes on.
Favourite Moment: Randy Couture comes out of retirement to defeat Tim Sylvia
This was such a special fight, it was Rocky but real. Everyone disliked (hate is a strong word) Tim Sylvia and everybody loved (past tense) Randy. No one expected that first punch and no one expected it to be such a great performance. I was standing for all 25 minutes.
Worst Moment: Randy Couture parts ways with the UFC
After the high of winning the belt and then crushing Gonzaga, Randy decided to hang up the gloves due to some really dumb reasons. I think he is hiding something now. UFC should just call his bluff and co-promote a Fedor vs Couture fight with M1 Global. With the cool $2 million that will get him there will be no excuses.
Worst Trend: It’s all about the money
Randy, Tito, Fedor, etc. Stop bitching and start fighting.
Best Match That Never Happened: Fedor Emelyanenko vs Randy Couture
See above. Fedor ran away and Couture left his contract.
Show Of The Year: Pride 33
An absolute classic filled with upsets. The last great Pride event.
Best Show: Battlestar Galactica
Runners Up: The Sopranos, Doctor Who, Rome, Entourage, Heroes
BSG does it again! Capped off by an amazing season finale and recent the spin off Razor made BSG the king of TV for another year. The Sopranos, while controversial, did provide an entertaining end to its long run. Summer 2007 was known as the ‘Summer of Entourage’ for HBO having the genius idea of putting two seasons back to back and boy was it great. 2007 also included the second half of Heroes season 1 of and the whole of season 2. That’s why it appears in two categories ;-).
Best Comedy: Flight of the Conchords
Runners Up: South Park, The Office (US), Entourage, Flight of the Conchords, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Screenwipe
I’ve added this section because I knew I could never bring myself to give a comedy a best show award and the quality has been high enough this year to justify it. Flight of the Conchords came out of nowhere and I instantly loved it, some of the songs they come up with are so memorable and its unlike anything else on right now. Tenacious D they are not! South Park had another excellent year with the Imaginationland Trilogy and the Guitar Hero episode. The Office (US) when it moved to an hour long format for the first few episodes of the season really shined, it’s just a shame everyone in the UK refuses to watch it.
Best New Show: Flight of the Conchords
Runners Up: None
Something is wrong when I can’t think of any runners up for this category.
Most Disappointing: 24
Runners Up: Lost, Heroes
Many felt 24 had already jumped the shark in previous years but this year it literally did. No amount of swerves and guest stars could save them from everyone feeling like they had seen it all before. Lost gets a mention because I have a love hate relationship with it. While season 3 was far better then last year (which received my most disappointing TV award) it still felt convoluted and most things that needed explaining remained unexplained. Heroes gets a special mention for the majority of season 2 which sucked.
Shows I switched off half way through: Scrubs, Bionic Woman, Sarah Connor Chronicles
It has been awesome year for games and definitely the best since 2004. Everyone will disagree in some way with this list so I’ll just throw it up. Feel free to remind me of anything you think is missing (non Wii).
In the latest Xbox 360 dashboard update they added support for Xvid aka DivX aka MPEG-4 ASP at long last. I finally had the opportunity to try it out this week and so far I’m very impressed. For some reason it isn’t included as standard in the dashboard and requires a 2.5mb download of the “Optional Media Update” which you are prompted to fetch when it encounters a suitable file. Once you have this the 360 will read AVIs off DVDs, CDs, USB drives and over your network with very little trouble. All the files I tested worked as documented in the above link with no playback issues at all and while it doesn’t support AVIs with an AC3 track it will playback 720p Xvids no problem.
Good work MS it’s great to see this feature finally working, just keep the codec machine churning and eventually we will have a fully functional media center :-). Next on the agenda Matroska containers with x264 encoded video please!
I had always found it frustrating to get a good Skype setup going in Windows. Either the speakers were too loud and caused an echo, the cheap handset was falling apart or Windows had forgotten the audio device I was using. So getting a handset that just worked well with the Skype network was very refreshing but getting one that I could use anywhere was even better.
The 3 Skypephone is on the surface a standard handset with an average camera, ok screen and fairly decent build quality. But it comes into its own when using the unique Skype software on the device in conjunction with the 3 mobile network. Aside from video calling the mobile client is almost identical to its PC counterpart giving the ability to make and receive calls on the Skype network, manage contacts and even use the instant messaging function.
One of my concerns was how it would manage being logged in on the PC and the mobile simultaneously if at all. Luckily it works just fine with both the phone and PC ringing out when receiving calls and any messages received appearing on both.
Calls are clear to, from and between Skype/mobiles with no noticeable lag. The keypad is solid and the screen is big enough to make texting and IM pretty easy. The only catch I can see so far is that if you wanted to purchase a pay as you go handset just for Skype use it needs to be kept topped up. This is because any credit you purchase will eventually expire and having credit on the phone is a requirement of using the Skype features. Alternatively you can just go for a contract and you’re set.
It’s not replacing my SE k850i as a camera phone but it’s hardly fair to compare the two. As a solid second handset or¬† a dedicated Skype phone it’s almost perfect and for ¬£50 or ¬£90 for a pair it’s a rather attractive deal.
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