Just to say, this site may very well close soon. I really can’t be arsed to maintain it. The only reason it still exists is because I still get an extraordinary amount of traffic to the article ‘Using the ION iED05 USB Drum Kit with MIDI capable software’. Who knew so many people bought cheapo drumkits and then found themselves wanting MIDI?

So yeah. Closing. Soon. Probably. Fair warning. Given.

Bye.

Just to say, I’ve closed comments on all posts and pages due to scum sucking, mother fucking spammers. Sure, I have spam plugins and blockers, and I regularly block ban offenders, but I really can’t be fucked to go through the 7000 odd pending comments a week that still get in pending comments to find out which are genuine and which are not, so the upshot is I just bulk delete all pending comments anyway! Therefore, may as well close ’em. Sorry to anyone who actually did want to make a genuine comment. Blame the cunts who think it’s a good idea to try and  advertise viagra on a page about midi drum kits. All comments have ALWAYS been moderated manually anyway, so it’s not like they’d have ever been published.

So following a four day email ping pong match with EA’s support chimps, they have closed my case as resolved by telling me to stop running the game on two video cards, stop running it on two cores, and stop running it on my sound hardware, and if I get any problems, get back to them…

Firstly, none of this actually helps, since my initial description was that I cannot save any games or start and save any new games because the single file that links ALL your game saves is corrupt, and they have done absolutely nothing to resolve that.

Secondly, how pathetic is it that I have to disable half the hardware on my pc to run it? I know they started coding it like 6 years ago, but does it only work on six year old pc’s or something?

In fact, apart from SLi, under which it flat refused to run, I ran the game fine for around 70 hours on dual cores with hardware accelerated sound, which really just adds up to EA not knowing what the fuck they’re talking about.

I’m off to download the cracked, DRM free version of Spore now so I can install it without fear of losing an activation trying to get the game working in the first place.  Kinda wish I’d done this as a road test before buying it and saved myself the money in finding out what a flakey pile of crap it is.

Ok. It doesn’t suck. But I’m not a happy bunny with it at the moment.

I actually started writing a mostly positive and enthusiastic review and was going to bitchslap some of the naysayers that seem determined to hate the game… but then Spore kindly corrupted my game saves and I can neither continue any of my five or six games on the go nor create a new one. I’ve lost somewhere around 60 or 70 hours of game play – I know this because it was several DAYS ago that I achieved my ’50 hours play’ badge.

It is also exhibiting numerous other bugs. Here’s a list in no particular order:

• Crashing to desktop randomly. Looking at the resources, it seems to have a huge memory leak.
• Won’t import most of the hundred something creatures I made in the Creature Creator before Spore came out. Those it will are listed as owned by Maxis, and not me.
• Some of the creatures I’ve created in the full version show up on my Sporepedia page with no image at all, and some flat refuse to appear despite the fact the game insists they’re uploaded.
• Some games just bug out… after sacrificing all my game saves to restart, the first game I played, EVERY creature I encountered in the Space stage were the same creature, but not affiliated with each other. Imagine how ridiculous this is gonna be? You are allied with the Deceptilow empire, the Deceptilow empire and the Deceptilow empire – but are at war with the Deceptilow empire and the Deceptilow empire.
• Sometimes you’ll spend ages creating a vehicle, space ship or building that is still well under the complexity maximum and it’ll refuse to save it without telling you why. Basically at this point you have to start ripping off parts to see what it disagrees with.
• Also, it doesn’t work with SLi at all, you have to disable one of your video cards, and it doesnt work with hardware acceleration and you have to disable your sound card down to software only.
• There are other bugs I can’t think of atm but I’ll add em if and when I do :p

So at the moment, my enthusiasm for Spore is at an all time low. Which sucks, because I’ve had it on preorder since 2005, and salivated at every teaser video, screenshot and preview since. I have been so up for this game it’s unreal, so to have it and be currently hating it hurts!

Of course, the other factor is that it’s an EA product. Soooo, that means absolutely DIRE support from a bunch of morons. :/

» Read The Rest

Aside from being pissed off at Caligari – who are owned by Microsoft, btw, and I’m perpetually pissed off at them, so I suppose piling new hate on them doesn’t make any difference – I’m pissed off at Mozilla, too. I installed Firefox 3, which initially seemed great… except it has caused some very weird problems in Windows that don’t even correct themselves if you completely uninstall Firefox nor if you do a system restore to pre FF3 state.

The problem is that, seemingly randomly, mouse clicks will simply stop working… for anything. I mean, hyperlinks aren’t clickable, windows cant be brought into focus with a click, shortcuts or taskbar items cant be clicked on. The only way to get it working again is to alt+tab thru the applications list. Which wouldn’t be so bad, albeit dowright annoying, if it wasnt for another little issue… it can happen on the Windows Login Screen itself… soooo, I can’t click my user name to put in my password and log in.

Rapidly learning a bunch of Windows shortcuts I never had to know or use before. :/

How do I know it was down to FF3? Because a bunch of other people have experienced the same problems, as detailed on the Mozilla Support Forums

Along with all the video courses. And that really, really, really pisses me off. Because it’s just about exactly one year ago that I dropped $700 on buying it – and then discovered  the gaping flaws in it that essentially negated my reason for buying it in the first place.

I cannot describe what I’d like to do to Roman with a pair of pliers right now.

Still, for the rest of you that didn’t just get royally fucked up the ass by Caligari, it’s great news!

Personally I couldn’t get it to download any of the training videos. It still wanted me to pay between $59 and $79 each for them… yes, imagine if you had bought every one of their dozens of training videos, which were still on sale up until yesterday, along with Truespace?! How much money did you just get fucked for then?!

Fortunately, I’m not in the habit of paying for instruction on how to use the software I just bought due to the manual being woefully inadequate, or I might well be headed for Caligari HQ right now with those pliers.

Anyone got any good experiences of any UK broadband providers? I was with Virgin, who are fucking shit. And then I moved to BT. Who are even more fucking shit. So any suggestions for my next move appreciated!

Sometimes, venting on a blog pays off!

Following my last rant, the manager of my local SpecSavers called me to offer his apologies and a new and free pair of glasses.  It seems head office got involved and were interested to know about their spontaneously imploding lenses. Supposedly they have no other reports of this happening ever. Which I guess makes me about the unluckiest person alive to have it happen twice…

On the plus side, though, I can see again now, albeit through a much sturdier non frameless design that hopefully won’t try to blind me!

Or: SpecSavers… Blindingly Good Value! Yeah, I could have had fun with a title for this, although the content is far from amusing.

Like many people, I wear glasses. That might well be something to do with sitting at a computer monitor for most of my waking day. Which is also why when I do buy glasses, I spend a lot of money on getting all the extras, like scratch resistant coatings, uv filters etc.

So I’m all the more pissed off, then, about the build quality of SpecSavers glasses and their attitute towards their shoddy products nearly blinding a customer…. TWICE.

The pair I was wearing up til yesterday were a rebuild of an identical pair. They are of a frameless style where the nose bridge piece connects directly to the lenses. In the first weeks after I got them, the connecting screws would come loose regularly, and since they use a special nut that no normal person would have a tool to tighten, I found myself going back to the SpecSavers store several times to have them tightened back up.

So one time just after one of their staff tightened them back up, I was out walking and a gust of wind picked up, I heard a crack, and felt a blinding pain just under my eye. It transpired that the edge of the lens around the screw had shattered, and very nearly into my eye.

Obviously I took them back to SpecSavers, and they made me a new pair. As well they bloody should.

The new pair seemed better – they didn’t keep loosening. However, the other night, I’m sitting doing nothing more strenuous than watching tv when I hear a pop, and again get a searing pain right near my eye. In fact, this time it drew blood. The EXACT same thing had happened – a razor sharp shard of lens had just shattered out from around the screw.

So I just went back to SpecSavers to complain. Their response to their obviously fundamentally dangerously defective spectacles shattering the exact same way and nearly blinding me twice? ‘They’re out of warranty’. What could they do for me? I could buy new spectacles from them.

So beware, folks. If you DO choose to save a bit of money and go to SpecSavers, make sure that you lose your eye within the first year, ok?

When I dig out the original pair, I’ll post a side by side comparison picture of the two pairs to show just how identical the two shattered sections are, and maybe a nice closeup of the razor shard that embedded itself in my face just to the side of my tearduct. It’ll be the same photo I send to BBC Watchdog and Trading Standards. Like I say, there is obviously a fundamental problem with the design and build of these glasses – the lens is obviously under a lot of (inward) pressure, as I can attest to with the force that glass shards were flung into my face both times.

So to add to my growing list of problems (the main one being lack of job and income), I can’t see now, either. Life can be so fun, sometimes.

Hey. I’ve been playing around with the mission editor in Hunting Unlimited 2008. If you have it, by all means have a go at them! 🙂

Hunting Unlimited 2008 User Missions