I Think My Girlfriend Would Kill Me!

Once again Spike has delivered the dinner time laughs with a video entitle “How To Wake Your Girlfriend Up“. Now I know that any blokes reading this are expecting a video with that title to have some form of nakedness, but despite the poor victim being fully clothed, its well worth a watch!

This guy is one of the luckiest men I know because not only is his girlfriend good lucking, but she can take a joke. Enjoy the show:

Clever Thinking from Honda

Now this is what I call technology! Whilst stuffing an enormous cheese salad sandwich down my face on my dinner hour, I decided to check out the BBC website but as usual I only actually went to the sport and technology sections. For whatever reason, the world seemed rather un-interesting that day, so I decided to check out the technology section…

I was greeted by this article on the Honda U3-X, pictured to the left. Needless to say, me being a geek and also loving the way Honda operate their company, I had to find out more. It turns out that the U3-X is the third prototype device in a range of new mobility devices that Honda would like to bring to the market. If they do reach the market then I’m looking forward to watching the first new article on how several pensioners in a Florida retirement home suffered broken bones whilst using the devices!

The U3-X uses a technology that Honda is calling a HOT Drive System, this what allows for the ‘Omni-directional’ movement. It also uses the balance system used in the ASIMO humanoid project, who can be seen proudly presenting the devices in the main picture. I can see why Honda has used a mobility device to showcase this technology, but I personally think it will make its first major appearance in a military application, such as scouting or bomb disposal devices, either way I think Honda has hit on something big and hopefully this will ensure that ASIMO is around for many years to come.

Below is a video of the U3-X in action:

New Member of the Family!

This is Millie, a 14 week old Boodle. That’s a cross between a Bichon Frisé and a Poodle. After staying with us for a week whilst her owners were on holiday, it has now been decided that she’s staying with us permanently.

She’s currently full of beans, biting everything that moves and jumping all over us, but with a bit of training and encouragement she should be fantastic little pooch.

Slowly Going Crazy

I’m currently sat in front of my PC pondering this post, the television is on next to me and I’m trying to watch the Liverpool game. Due to a complete inability to sleep over the last 5 nights my attention span is about 5 seconds, my tolerance of people is even shorter and I seem ache in places I never knew existed. Needless to say, I’m not happy and as a result I’m no fun to be around, hence why I have locked myself away. It’s really effected my work too, causing me to lose my temper with people and even when I have plenty to do I’m finding myself drifting away from on it, not to mention the fact that my memory seems to have stopped entirely.

So here comes the point of my post. How do you best bring an end to a patch of insomnia without the use of drugs?

Aion Beta: Unexpected End of Archive Error

I received an email from PC Gamer magazine last week informing me that I had been given access to the open beta of Aion: Tower of Eternity, which seemed nice, but rather pointless, seeing as it was an open beta … ie: available to all. Regardless I decided to check out the website and see what it was all about. The game looks very impressive and worth a look, so I set about downloading the beta via their own torrent. Several hours later it was done and I attempted to open it, only to get a message through WinRAR saying “Unexpected end of archive”. This was a bit annoying, but in a 9gb compressed file I could understand that it may have corrupted during download, so I set about getting another copy from a more ‘direct source’ and did so. 2 hours later I had it (uber phat pipes ftw) and double clicked, only to have the same problem.

I did a little searching and found people simply blamed the lengthy file names or other stupid issues, non of which could realistically cause a problem. Eventually I stumbled upon a forum post that mentioned an issue with WinRAR and to try WinZip, so I downloaded the latest free trial and it worked. Woohoo … 2 days of frustration solved by using a little logic: use the program that the file was created in!

So to summarise for all those out there still banging their heads on the wall: Download WinZip (from here) if your getting the “Unexpected end of archive” error when trying to open the Aion Beta.

Enjoy!

Matthews Street Festival: Dancing in the Rain

The last 12 months have seen me doing a lot of things that I previously haven’t had the time or money to do, not to mention the ear ache I would have got from the ex-girlfriend. Now though, me and Lisa are happily exploring everything that is put before us. This weekend we got invited to meet friends at the Matthews Street Festival, which was a first for both of us. The added bonus of the weekend was that my nephew, Ian, was over from Rome and showing his friends Marco, Angus and Enzo around the city.

We set off about dinner-time and got in to town for about 13:30, only to realise that we’d missed Pink Floyd – I was not impressed because I’d got myself all excited about that one. Disappointed, we set off in search of our friends, after some dashing around town and listening to the Beatles tribute band, we eventually met up with Ian and the lads to have a beer. The hangovers on display where outstanding, especially Angus’, who I think was actually asleep, standing up, with his eyes open! After a few drinks we set off to the Lambanana Stage to meet some of Lisa’s friends, but finding them in the massive crowd that was matching the Motown set was difficult, to say the least. We eventually met up once the crowds dispersed and made our introductions. This resulted in some slobbering and flirting, but it was all cut short because the lads wanted to watch the Guns ‘n’ Roses tribute, so we headed off with them and agreed to meet up with her friends later.

The crowd around the Tunnel Stage was big and we had to resort to being quite far back, but we still had good enough views. Some of the singing/screaming was a little suspect, but I didn’t expect anything else, Axl Rose is a difficult act to follow. However, when the classics like “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” came on the crowd lit up at the atmosphere was superb. Shortly in to their performance the rain began to drizzle down on us, but the band missed the chance of a comical moment and didn’t play “November Rain”, much to my disappointment. Me and Lisa left just before the end of the set and headed back to the Lambanana Stage to catch the second half of the Motown set, the lads headed off to watch the football.

On the way I grabbed some paella from a bloke who sounded more polish than Spanish, but I didn’t care because I was starving and it tasted superb! We ate on the move as we wiggled our way through the crowds, but once we got about 50ft from the stage we could go no further, not because the crowds were too packed in, but because everyone was dancing around in groups and I didn’t intend on getting caught in someone’s circle and made to dance like a clown as punishment. As each superb act played the rain slowly began to get heavier, but when the Jackson 5 tribute band came on I think one of the sound engineers must have wired things up wrong, because as each new song started the rain got significantly heavier, to the point that we were drenched form head-to-toe and stood in a deep puddle by the time the third song had finished. Despite this, no one seemed to care, so we all simply carried on dancing away, spilling beer and getting poked in the eye by those clever enough to bring an umbrella! When I looked at my plastic, watery pint of beer I realised it was filling up quicker than I was drinking it, something was not right here!

As The Supreme’s came on to do their final set we had a moment of magic … Lisa got a text from her friends saying they where about 10 feet in front of us and had umbrella’s … we dash like crazy though the crowds and found them stood on a raised area, with great views and a way out of the rain, perfect! We enjoyed the rest of the set and then headed down to Café Sports England. We met up with the lads and settled down to watch the Roma vs Juventus game and have some food. I enjoyed playing devils advocate between Marco, a Roma fan, and Enzo, a Juventus fan and especially when I saw the look of disappointment on Marco’s face as the third Juventus goal hit the back of the net – he was not a happy man! The meal was superb and the price was so cheap I thought I’d robbed them, so I will definitely be going there again.

After the football the lads wanted to head up to another bar on Bowlers Street who had a live band on, but as Lisa and myself were soaking wet and had an hours journey home, so we said we’d join them for one before getting the train home – what a disaster this turned out to be! We got soaked on or way there, so after a REALLY quick drink we sloped off to the train station, only to be told that the trains had been cancelled!!! This left us with two options … an expensive taxi or a guess as to which bus to jump on. We decided to chance the buses, but when we arrived at the bus station it was closed off and the temporary stops outside Lime Street Station where heaving, but I still wasn’t going to get a taxi. I decided to play my joker card … I rang my dad, thankfully he didn’t mind and agreed to meet us a mile or so outside of the town centre,. Luckily the rain had stopped by now and we were able to dive in to the local Subway to use the toilet.

It was a long, wet and fantastic day. I can’t wait for next year!