PC Mover is free until 11:59PM today in honour of their 25th birthday.

Of course, Laplink is US based, so it's anyone's guess whether they mean EST, EDT, PDT or whatever (they don't mean BST or GMT, because I've recently downloaded it...)


PC Mover seems to move settings and data from an old PC to a new one (or even a PC to an Intel Mac), so could be useful. You'd better hurry up if you're interested!

I can't say I've used laplink much, but at one point it was one of the very few reliable file transfer programs out there and certainly has one heck of a legacy.

I finished Freedom Force vs Third Reich on Thursday - the last but one mission was a bit rock hard (I probably chose the wrong characters), but it ended well and I've thoroughly enjoyed the game. May try some of the better mods for it at some point. I have so many other games I've not finished, either.

Also played a bit more Discworld 1 - it's a good game, but some of the solutions are a bit illogical to say the least. I may have looked at the solution once or twice..

My ankle hurts a tad. I'm sure this is absolutely nothing to do with the several bike rides and dancing to the aforesaid 18 minute extended remix including lots of jumping up and down.. Hopefully it will be better if I decide to go to Bollox on Friday.

Now, Doctor Who.. I'd eagerly anticipated this episode and was a little disappointed. Although the episode wasn't necessary that bad, I'm so far rating this as another Fear Her (now that was a crappy episode).
( very spoilerific - I am unimpressed )

Weekend started off rather well with a quick 17 mile bike ride up to White Coppice and back, then home for a deep clean of the bathroom and pubbage.

Saturday featured a lie in (apart from getting up to feed two insistent kittens) and some faffing around with my main PC. Unfortunately it's rather hot internally (up to 41°C); ironically I think this is due to the fscking huge Tuniq Tower CPU heatsink which is actually impeding airflow. I've not yet swapped that out for the standard Intel cooler to see if it makes much difference (hopefully CPU temperature up, case temperature down) - first I added an extra fan (no difference), and then went down to one graphics card (also no difference - a max of 51W removed and no temperature drop!).

Of course, to make matters worse when I got up this morning the system had hung and will currently not boot into Vista. Even safe mode produces a corrupt screen. Duff video card?

Anyway PC aside there was some general sorting, letting cats into the garden, retrieving a fluffy spotty kitten from under a car three houses away where he'd discovered there were Other Cats and was hiding..

Then there was L's 50th birthday party. This was rather fun, after a slow start. Good chat, drinks, dancing - I even got teenage kudos for keeping up with an 18 minute extended remix (of course this was for being an Old Bastard that can keep up, rather than actually being young and cool).

Sunday featured lots of kitten cuddles, fixing the lawn mower (just needed wonky cable cutting, stripping and reseating), watching Dr. Who whilst it rained hard, then another bike ride (managed to spot a hare).

I was also rather pleased to find I was also fractionally under 11 stone, and can fit into my small stretchy t shirts again. I may be in danger of going down a trouser size if I'm not careful!

I'm not planning to be ridiculously zealous about weight, but I feel stabilising a few pounds below 11 stone is quite a good healthy target.

This week will feature drinkies on Tuesday for L's real 50th birthday, Bollox Friday maybe? Also lots of furniture re-arranging. I think I shall have a real go at the study, after sorting this bloody PC out.

Bad : mowed the front lawn last night. Got 90% of the way through and the control unit sparked and had the distinct smell of Magic Smoke :(. Hopefully this will be easy to fix and not require the purchase of a new mower. Grrrrrr.

Good-ish : Alchemy for Audigy will be free - free EAX on Vista. Of course this is probably because daniel_k of modded Creative drivers fame produced a free (hacked) Alchemy, but this may go a very small way to recover the shitty reputation Creative has studiously developed.

Let the cats out into the garden again. Maisie loves running and playing, Cairo is a bit of a roamer. Unfortunately far from calming him down he then wanted to play fetch when back indoors over and over and over and over again. I eventually had to close the study door to actually do something useful. I suspect in the cat mind sitting down=available for play.

(Also, standing up=potentially available for play, lying down=available for play after nagging, etc etc)

On Thursday I finally took the cats to be chipped and to purchase some spot on to prevent fleas/ticks/worms (another £70 on top of everything else, but chipping only needs to be done once and it works out at £5.50 per cat, per month to keep them flea free..).

This of course meant I could then take them out into the garden! :). They generally enjoyed this, although I have taken some measures to stop them exploring the building site beyond the rear fence. Maisie loves running madly after me with a bootlace, but Cairo is still more lazy - I need to do something about his podge. I'm trying to encourage them not to go into the front so much, but they do like to explore. I suppose everyone needs to let their babies do their own thing sooner or later though.

At the moment I'm only letting them out when I can supervise them, and opening the patio door. A cat flap will require reglazing/a new patio door and will not be cheap.

Sunday was computer game day as it was miserable. There was a bit of Freedom Force vs Third Reich. There was some Discworld (1) to test out the Sound Canvas, a run of Ultima 7 to confirm that even if a sound module is a league ahead of an older one the sound can be poor if it has not been remapped to suit the instruments of the new one..

I got Cyro Interactive's Ring working (for varied values of working) to which I can only say : don't bother, as the game is irritating, obscure and dull even if it contains Solti conducting Wagner. Finally, there was a little Rise of the Triad, which remains an extremely fun game even if technically dated - is there a modern alternative to it?

Finally, at some point last week I had a go of Beyond Divinity and am finding it a little uninspiring to get into. May require a little effort to make the most of that.

Progress on hacking exult has been slow; I need a half decent memory profiler - any suggestions? (I'm sure I have some links somewhere).

Things were going well last week until a few unexpected expenses materialised.

First, there was deliberate shiny buying in the shape of a cheap Sound Canvas 55 off ebay. It's somewhat more modern than the MT-32 I got a while back - the piano actually sounds like a proper piano and it can be mapped for proper General MIDI compatibility (even if it's capable of a superset of that) although my modern standards the note polyphony is a bit low..

Then the UPS died at home (it was cheap, and has lasted a couple of years) encouraging the purchase of a second hand with new batteries one (this also showed that the old one was never doing a fan test, which may be why it failed). The new one carries on the tradition of the old one in continually trimming the input voltage - it appears the household voltage is a bit high.

Eye and dentist appointments hit simultaneously, and I think it's likely I'll need a new prescription - probably the same frame though.

Thus, despite the fact there are lovely people I wanted to see in London, I stayed around Manchester - particularly as it was therainbowqueen's 30th birthday, and that only comes around once!

Due to the rainbow theme, there was a last minute dash on Thursday to grab some orange machine dye. An old pair of white jeans magically became burnt orange, coupled with my Stuff Is Awesome orange t shirt with a rainbow on it :).

Saturday consisted of going to Futuresonic with T. I was confused here, and actually thought it was Eurocultured - which is on the coming bank holiday weekend. Anyway, it was a decent diversion and some drinks and chat were also had. Then, onwards to see the RQ in all her splendid rainbowy glory together with various colours in the rainbow friends (S in green and C in an orange jumpsuit were particularly good).

Sunday was spent vegging on games (it rained) and Monday a bit of snoozing and a quick 17 mile bike ride - jolly good.

Last night was Biphoria.. I'm pondering looking at running Manchester Bifest in November.. Any suggestions or offers of help (workshops, cake, crafts, decorations, entertainment) welcome!

Driving to work watching two people walking down the road.

On the left - a woman wearing a robe
On the right - a man in a hoodie

The similarity is rather amusing.

Humphrey Lyttleton is dead. FUCK :(.

Appropriately I heard about this on the way back from the pub on the radio (behold, the joys of a Nokia E51 with radio built in).

Humph will be sadly missed. 86 isn't a particularly bad innings but it's still not bloody fair :(.

I really liked ISIHAC, and although I'm more into Blues than Jazz, Humph remained a veritable British Institution. He will be sorely missed :(.

Nipped off to Trafford Centre to find presents - after some fruitless searching I located some decent items. Then back home for some chat and watching the beginning of Doctor Who series 4 - it was a bit late so I listened with headphones, which didn't work too badly.

I was rather relieved to find out that Catherine Tate was not, in fact, fantastically irritating as she was in the xmas special. Fiesty I have no problem with. Decent episode, although I suspect that if asked many people would just welcome the Adipose with open arms! It's been a while since aliens have been so cute, too.

I also watched a bit of Doctor Who Confidential; the person who used the same music for them walking down the street as to that in Austin Powers : International Man of Mystery needs a bit of a spanking if it's not a coincidence..

Bad : chain snapped on bike
Worse : no tool to fix it
Sort of good : only a few miles from home

Fucking bike. I'm taking it into the bike shop tomorrow, I'll get a better front derailleur and the chain fixed. Whilst I'm at it I might as well get a chain fixing tool so I can fix it myself in the future.

Bikes. feh.