First of all, I will start off by saying that I actually quite like it. I have had a read of a couple of the comments on the forum so far and have been shocked at all the negative feedback on it. So many people hate change it’s quite worrying. This is not a review so I will not be going in depth, I’m just providing screen shots.

Shut up and show us I hear you scream, well here you go: (You can click on the images for a larger version)

Lets start with the opening Screen:

As you can see a few things have changed here. The only thing i’m not too sure about is the large text rather than buttons. But after  playing about with it for 10 minutes it has started to grow on me.

Next up we have the Games list (3 Versions):

Now the first screen shot I really like. I love the idea of putting the game background behind all of the information.

Next up is tools:

They have kept that one pretty basic.

Next is the Friends Panel and Chat Window:

What do you wish for?
A Chair that scratches your back for you?
slippers with heating elements?

Let me know!

Either leave a comment or contact me using the contact button at the top. No idea is too stupid, I want to hear them all!

For those of you who wish to know, the latest SDK Build has been released for those of us that Pre Ordered Natural Selection 2 (Yay).

Here’s the complete list of changes in this patch:

• Added ability to set individual parameters on multiple selected entities of the same type
• Added removal of degenerate vertices when loading a level (could cause the level to be uneditable)
• Added object origin to selection cycle options (as default)
• Added refinery_wall_16_d material
• Added generic_cablemods_01_bend45 models
• Added generic_cablemods_01_bend90 models
• Added generic_cablemods_01_circuitbox models
• Added generic_cablemods_01_clamp_lg model
• Added generic_cablemods_01_clamp_sm model
• Added generic_cablemods_01_hang models
• Added generic_cablemods_01_hangbunch01 model
• Added generic_cablemods_01_hangfloor01 model
• Added generic_cablemods_01_hangfree01 model
• Added generic_cablemods_01_hanglong models
• Added generic_cablemods_01_str models
• Added generic_cablemods_02_bend45 models
• Added generic_cablemods_02_bend90 models
• Added generic_cablemods_02_hang models
• Added generic_cablemods_02_hangbunch01 model
• Added generic_cablemods_02_hangfloor01 model
• Added generic_cablemods_02_hangfree01 model
• Added generic_cablemods_02_hanglong models
• Added generic_cablemods_02_str models
• Fixed situational crash bug with undocked entity selection window

———————————- INSTALL LOG ———————————-

I wont go over any tiny little things, just the two main things I have on at the moment.

Number 1: Sky Broadband!

Yes you pesky little company… Well, rather large company really but nevertheless. You will not escape my moaning! I’ve put up with it quite long enough and nothing ever seems to get done about it.

I am currently on the Sky Broadband Connect package, due to the fact that BT are a pain in the ass and there aren’t really any other options in this area as the Telephone Exchange has not yet been unbundled. Which I would also like to point out isn’t until Q3 of 2011… COME ON PEOPLE!!

This means my connection is “Up to 8 Mb”. Which really isn’t too bad considering the are I live in. (Middle of bloody nowhere).

For those of you that are interested, this is the connection status from the Sky Router (Piece of shit that it is);

Not bad considering what the connection is supposed to be. Now just as a rough guide to the current connection speed I used “Speedtest.net”. (UPDATED: 16:36 / 20:06)

Check out that ping. That’s a ping even a 56k connection could be proud of. This has been getting worse and worse over the last couple of weeks, during the day my ping averages around the 50 mark which as you know is acceptable I guess. But 533? What on earth are they trying to do to me! I will also attempt to update this post later on this evening, around 8PM with my connection statistics. You will love it, considering even my Twitter application on my HTC times out on occasion.

As you can see from the updated picture only 2 hours later, the connection has deteriorated quite a lot in such a short space of time. For those of you who are asking, everything was the same when the connection was tested for speed. I will update again later as promised at around 8pm, it’s just that I had noticed that the connection speed had dropped as one of my downloads slowed to a crawl!

Second update at around 8pm as I promised. You can now see that my connection has dropped from 6.88MBs at 2:15PM down to 0.74MB/s at 8.04PM. It’s pathetic. This really isn’t right Sky… Sort it out. I want to hear your comments!

So Sky Broadband… What do you have to say about this? Obviously not a lot considering you haven’t even bothered replying to my email dated: 24 January 2010 14:06:35 which is disgusting customer service. When calling you, you put people in a call centre (centre wordpress, I’m English) that have no clue what so ever about what they are doing. How are they supposed to provide a decent level of Customer Service when they can’t even understand what the customer is telling them! Use a fucking braincell people. Cheap isn’t always the best option for your company.

Number 2: My Leaky Pipe

This was lucky it was spotted this morning else it could have been going on all day. It must have started last night as the clothes that were ready for washing were placed in coloured piles on the floor were dry, and this morning were completely soaking wet. In fact if it wasn’t for the piles of clothes then there would have been water running out from under neath the door no doubt which would have really upset me. A small plastic corner joint had popped and was leaking water in the corner of the kitchen behind the fake wall (to make it look nice) covering some pipe work underneath the work top.

Luckily the floor slopes in such a way that it didn’t soak the kitchen floor completely as that would have been a disaster having to rip the entire laminate flooring up. There is only a small amount which should dry out nicely. The downstairs bathroom however was soaking.
It’s also laminate style vinyl flooring in there thank god, so I was able to pull back the floor revealing a mini paddling pool of sorts on the floor.

This is how it looks after around 2 hours of drying and a lot of towels soaking up the water that was sat there in puddles. Dryer patches are now starting to appear after around 6 hours of drying in total, but the floor is still soaking wet in places. I’m also hoping that I will be able to put the floor covering back down nicely as it had to be sliced out because it was fitted so nicely the first time around.

And this is the hole that had to be made in the kitchen. You can see just to the left hand side of the plug sockets where the wall had to be cut away to get to them. So after replacing the small plastic corner joint, I’m now having to leave my kitchen in a complete mess waiting for that little section there to dry out, so I can replace the cover to those pipes.

Keys have now gone. Very sorry

I currently have two extra keys for Star Trek Online Beta to give away. The first two people to add GameVR and Grayski to their Twitter accounts, they will get the keys.

Good luck!

Recently, I had a not too nice experience of one of my email accounts being compromised. Not a very fun time at all, considering this gave this person access to all of my Bank Account information and User Names for a couple of online games. This has now changed and all of this information is only stored on paper on my desk safely.

Because of this, I changed all of my passwords on every single account I could think of. One of which being my Google Mail. Now I know for a fact that I changed my password successfully as I managed to log in once after changing. Unfortunately all went to pot the next morning when I attempted to log in to check my emails. Username / Password incorrect.
That’s fine, we all making spelling mistakes every now and then, so I tried once more… Same answer. Wonderful! Have I written the password down wrong? Nope because I still had a copy of the file on my desktop with my passwords that had been put there to print. I Copied and pasted the password, and still no access.

Not a problem I hear you say? Well I thought exactly the same thing until I attempted password recovery. “Password reset instructions sent to alternate email address”. Little bit of a problem there, I hadn’t updated my alternate email for a good few years! (Doh!)

The next alternative was to wait for 24 hours for the other option to become available of answering the secret question… Now usually this also wouldn’t be a problem, although I have had my GMail account since late 2002. Some people have good memories but I don’t!
I Could not for the life of me remember what the answer to that certain question was.

By now I was starting to get a little bit stressed, through nobody’s fault but my own really. So I decided to use their account recovery form. What a waste of bloody time.
After filling in EVERY single question on the form, including the exact time, date, and sign up link I used (Was a Beta Invite, so friend had copy of email sent), they replied with:

"Thank you for your report. We've completed our investigation and cannot
return your account at this time. We were unable to verify that you own
this account based on the information you provided."

I mean, what other information could they possibly want, to prove that I was the owner of the account. So I attempted to submit the form again, with all the answers. Received the same reply. I then tried going through it all a different way (keep in mind there is pretty much 24 hours between all attempts), I proceeded to go through the AdWords way.
They couldn’t help me because I hadn’t added any Payment Information to the account, so that was that way out.

Another couple of days passed, with me trying to figure out what the hell to do, it then occurred to me, I would try and give them a call. Seems like if you don’t know exactly who you are calling there, you can’t get past the automated system. Bit of a let down really, I would at least expect a receptionist.

With that idea gone, and another couple of days pondering what the hell to do, I decided there was no other option but to purchase the old domain name which the password reset emails were being sent to. What a joke… After 24 hours for the order to complete, I could finally add the email addresses to the new domain name and send myself a password reset email.

I now have full access to my GMail account again, but for future reference, I will not be relying on Google Support to help me out in any way shape or form for anything… Disappointed Google…

So let this be a lesson to all of you out there who think you can remember all of your passwords. You can’t! You will inevitably forget at least one, or have problems somewhere along the line.

1. Twitter for Windows Mobile
2.  Go Compare SHITE
3. 7 New Visitors
4.  (Left open for whatever happens during writing)

Right then, off we go:

1. Twitter for Windows Mobile

It took me some time last night to actually find a Twitter client that i vaguely liked for Windows Mobile that worked reliably. First of all I found PokeTwit, which in all honesty isn’t too bad. It’s a little odd having to scroll left and right for the options when the application is in full screen mode, but it does it’s job none the less.

Some kind soul then pointed me in the direction of moTweets which does the job just as well, but does look a little prettier around the edges. So far, I’ve stuck with the moTweets free option.

2. Go Compare SHITE

Who, in the name of all that is fucking holy, came up with the utter utter bullshit adverts that these complete morons use. The only thing that advert makes me do is mute my TV for 20 seconds so I can’t hear the damn thing.
Saturday also proved how stupid the advert really is, as the only person it actually grabbed the interest of was my 4 year old daughter.  The only reason I’m having a moan about this today is because I was forced to listen to it as I was not able to mute my TV in time due to removing a psycho kitten from the behind the sofa.

My god what a racket it is! Does anyone else have views on that advert or is it just me who is completely unable to tolerate stupid things and people?

3. 7 New Visitors

Moving away from the moans for a moment, 7 New visitors and 3 returning yesterday. Which means word is spreading and someone actually reads this utter babble, which is quite impressive really. You would have thought that many people would have something to do. But hey, keep them coming

4. Left Open

I don’t really think I have another point to make yet. Other than maybe the on going topic of “Frozen Britain”.

Looks a little bit on the  chilly side of life doesn’t it?

Apparently this picture was taken by NASA’s Terra Satellite on the 7th January. (Source: BBC News). Now I seem to recall the UK has had worse  snow than this before, yet everyone seems to be struggling. Take us back 10 years or so, and I remember having to fight my way to school with  snow almost up to my knees. (Yes it may have only been up to my friends ankles, It’s not my fault I was short ) But in all seriousness where has  all of the Common Sense gone from the world?

People jumping into FROZEN LAKES to save their dogs. I’m a pet lover but come on…
People going for Mountain walks… IN THE SNOW. Nobody seems to be able to think for themselves any more, what the hell is the problem?

Anyway, I may have another rant on the severe lack of common sense of the coming generation a little later on. Right now I think it’s time for a cuppa.