SKY+ baby!!

Our regular Sky digibox packed up last week and sky were going to charge £65 for a reburished box with only 3 months warranty! After speaking with them, sky+ seemed to be the most viable option. Charging an intial £49 for the box and additional £10/month we would have the awesomeness of sky+ sitting under our TV. Furthermore, paying an added £10/month they would replace our old digibox with a new one and set up sky multiroom (the ability to watch a different sky channle in another room).

The installer came round a few days ago, to set it all up. He was extremely eager to get away as soon as possible and was drilling holes in the wall about a minute after opening the door to him! Nevertheless, he did a good job with the install and even tacked the coxial cable along in some of the more difficult areas along the wall.

Within an hour, he'd packed up and left...leaving me to enjoy an afternoon of playing around with the box. First thoughts...noisy. I asked for a Pace box to be installed, but all I got was a shibby Amstrad one. You can clearly recognise the hard drive needle zipping around the disk and when the fan automatically comes on, it sounds as loud as my PC. Anyway, I'll be asking for a new box soon...so I'm not to bothered at the moment.

As for the functionality...simply incredible! The classic Sky easy to use interface remains, but the addition of the recording feature is seemlessly integrated. After getting over the intial amazement of being able to pause live TV, I decided to set up my regular recordings. Using Series-link I have my favourtie shows automatically recording. So, if ever I'm bored in the middle of the night, I can switch on the box to watch an episode of the simpsons!

Having a twin tuner means being able to do the following:

Record one Sky channel and watch another one
Record two different Sky channels at once
Record one channel whilst watching a pre-recorded programme
Probably some more combinations of the above..

Overall...chuffed...well chuffed....

+nicks

Star Wars IV summarised

Star Wars fans have been at it again. You may have already checked out the telnet version of this original classic, but now you can view a GIF summary of the film via this link:

http://x2.putfile.com/10/29405035849.gif

All for only 168Kb

Worst movie...ever!

I'm trying something new...I'm going to try to aquire some of the worst movies ever made in motion history. I'm not talking about the mainstream flops; I'm talking about the random films you have never heard of....mainly from east Asia.

Some, that are already in my collection include:

Shaolin Vs Evil Dead:
A horribly drab film about a monk who goes around putting souls at rest. How anybody could sit through the first 15 minutes of the movie astounds me. It is soooo boring and the SFX are cringe worthy at best.

Hanzo The Razor:
This one I just had to get. A decadent hooker, her pimp and the bordello's gay cleaner fight over the gigolo's missing money, with the utmost mental cruelty. Hanzo (the legendary Shintaro Katsu..of Zatoichi fame) is a Samurai policeman who uses his penis to extract information from beautiful women involved in an illegal abortion racket. He keeps his penis is ship shape by beating it, burying it in coals and exercising it daily. How on earth the producers of this money actually received a budget for it is insane. Nonetheless...good stuff!

Ghost For Sale:
Actually, this one is not quite in my collection. I'm currently bidding for it on eBay...let's hope it doesn't go over the shocking high price of £1.75 including postage. Ghostbusters was made in 1984...I'm sure few people know of the 1991 Chinese remake of it. I have to watch this to believe it....

If anyone knows of other not-worthy films I should add to my collection, please leave a comment....

+nicks

Final Year, Final Year!!!

Crikey, it's been nearly a month since I last blogged! Not much of a blog if I don't update it regularly, but then I've been extraordinarly busy these past few weeks. Now, I'm a pretty lazy guy, so I've been well impressed by the amount of work that I've actually done recently!

Back again at uni, and as the title suggests...it's the miserable final year. The year where you pretty much have no life at all and devote all your time to 'studying' (whoop). This is also the year where the FYP (final year project) needs to be done. So far, it's been a shedload of work...normally the first two weeks of uni are a doss, but not this year.

Having had to choose a suitable FYP, it is then the task to try and get a 'good' supervisor. Of course, those who aren't lazy do this over the summer....which means everyone else has to scramble to salvage what they can (like moi). I was actually fortunate enough to get a good supervisor, so I'm not complaining. In order to get the supervisor, I was required to write a detailed proposal of what my idea was about (including academic references/literature to back it up). I can't be bothered to explain what it is in this post...but maybe I will do in the future.

Anyway, time is scarce, got some reading to do....in the meantime occupy yourself by watching lame TV stations from all over the world:

http://www.beelinetv.com/

+nicks