Apparently I’m solely responsible for the downfall of the British Empire and the current state of the UK economy. I didn’t ask how.
Apparently…
March 17th, 2009Have You Ever?
January 13th, 2009I know it’s the cover version, but it’s the only version I’ve heard.
Have you ever loved somebody so much, it makes you cry?
Have you ever needed something so bad, you can’t sleep at night?
Have you ever tried to find the words but they don’t come out right?
Have you ever? Have you ever?Have you ever been in love, in love so bad?
You’d do anything to make them understand
Have you ever had someone steal your heart away?
You’d give anything to make them feel the sameHave you ever searched for words to get you in their heart?
But you don’t know what to say and you don’t know where to startHave you ever loved somebody so much, it makes you cry?
Have you ever needed something so bad, you can’t sleep at night?
Have you ever tried to find the words but they don’t come out right?
Have you ever? Have you ever?Have you ever found the one you’ve dreamed of all your life?
You’d do just about anything to look into their eyes
Have you finally found the one you’ve given your heart to
Only to find the one won’t give their heart to you?Have you ever closed your eyes and dreamed that they were there?
And all you can do is wait for the day that they will careHave you ever loved somebody so much, it makes you cry?
Have you ever needed something so bad, you can’t sleep at night?
Have you ever tried to find the words but they don’t come out right?
Have you ever? Have you ever?What do I gotta do to get you in my arms, baby?
What do I gotta say to get to your heart?
To make you understand how I need you next to me
Gotta get you in my world ’cause, baby, I can’t sleepHave you ever loved somebody so much, it makes you cry?
Have you ever needed something so bad, you can’t sleep at night?
Have you ever tried to find the words but they don’t come out right?
Have you ever?Have you ever loved somebody so much, it makes you cry?
Have you ever needed something so bad, you can’t sleep at night?
Have you ever tried to find the words but they don’t come out right?
Have you ever? Have you ever? Have you ever?
-_-
Football Manager 2009 on Windows XP
November 16th, 2008Do you get the error message “This application failed to initalize properly (0xc0150002)” when starting Football Manager 2009 on Windows XP? Chances are that it’s trying to tell you that the .NET Framework 2.0 is not installed. I don’t know whether this an isolated issue or whether it affects all XP installs without the framework, but it’s a problem I’ve come across half a dozen times already.
To resolve it, you can either download the framework here, or run the installation from the program directory (from memory) “C:/Program Files/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2009/directx/dotnetfx.exe”, substituting the drive letter if necessary.
On a side note, why is it that activation is such a pain on this game? The serial number, instead of being printed in a normal font, is one where you can hardly establish the difference between various characters, and is in dots rather than solid lines.
Then the phone activation, you have to enter 25 (?) characters five times, and then a 7 (?) digit response key a total of 8 times. And I thought Windows activation was a pain.
First day back…
November 5th, 2008For somewhere I claim not to like, I manage to put in a hell of a lot of unpaid hours there. I managed 10 and a half today instead of the nine I was paid to do (8.5 if you want to get technical). :duh:
All throughout my time off, I’ve gone to sleep/woken up at strange hours. I went from waking up at midday to falling asleep at midday, and all the times between then. Of course, the day before I went back, I had to wake up at 4PM. So althroughout the night I couldn’t sleep, until I finally drifted off around 6, a whole 90 minutes before my alarm went off. And still managed to wake up 5 minutes before it went off, and actually get out of bed instead of falling asleep again, which never happens.
Being my first day back, I wanted to be there on time, so I left 25 minutes minutes early for a journey that normally takes 10-15. Upon getting there, I found that I was an hour early, as I was due to start at 9:45 instead of 8:45.
Today was incredibly hectic, and normally I would end up completely stressed by this time. We’re have almost a 3 week backlog of jobs, and the times promised to customer apparently range anywhere between next day and 10 days, so most of the people I dealt with today were pissed off that 3 weeks after bringing their machine in they still haven’t heard from us. As per a typical day, I didn’t get anything done that I wanted to and I left 30 minutes late because I want to get a 20 minute job finished that I didn’t have time for during the day and I thought I would be playing it safe my saying tomorrow than trying to get it done today. At the moment I feel fine, apart from my legs aching like a motherfucker, I’m possibly ready to fall unconscious at any moment. How long it will last though, I don’t know. I really think I need to take a week off every three months or so. And one of those times I will actually do something or go somewhere. Honest.
What exactly the point of this post is I don’t know… :-P
I don’t know…
October 31st, 2008At the moment, I feel so relaxed and de-stressed it feels like such a shame to have to be going back to work next week.
Even though I haven’t actually done anything with my time off (unless you count completing the main storyline in Fable 2) despite my wonderful plans to find a new job, update various websites, migrate everything to a new host, start losing weight, start working on a business and, I don’t know, starting thinking about actually getting a social life.
Anyway… good times.
This morning…
October 25th, 2008While I was outside having a cigarette, one of my neighbours asked me whether I was cold standing outside in only a t-shirt. Rather than saying good morning, or no, I starting looking at my arm in fascination, completely unintentionally, like it had been grafted onto my body by some unknown person during the night. :wacko:
Other than that, I think that last night was the first night in months that a) I’ve slept for 8 hours straight and b) I’ve woken up when the sheets and pillows aren’t strewn across the room.
One 45 minute phonecall later…
October 22nd, 2008And I’ve been issued a new product key… Apparently the one I have has already been registered.
As a side note… I really need to set up my custom smilies again, which I lost after upgrading WordPress.
Random update
October 22nd, 2008I’m strange. It’s ok, I’ll readily admit that. I’m the kind of person who will be uncomfortable warm when the temperature is below 10°C and you’ve set the aircon at 24. My ideal temperature is like it is now, around 5°, as long as the sun is out. I can’t sleep at night unless I have the fan constantly blowing at me, and I have both the windows in my room open.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m only ever going to quit smoking if I’m jobless. I’m currently 4 days through my 2 week holiday, and I still half a pack of cigarettes left from Sunday. Most of which were only half finished anyway. I normally smoke around 10 a day.
Windows Vista is becoming a great pain in the arse for me. Generally I’ve found it quite usable to be honest, but I can’t get the damn thing to activate. It seems to switch between two error codes, 0xC004C003 (activation server determined the specified product key is in use) and 0xC004F061 (product key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations)
I’ve tried to run another upgrade installation, but I get an error message about my product key being unable to be validated.
If only Apple offered…
September 11th, 2008A desktop tower a little cheaper than their current cheapest iMac, I would be using an Apple computer right now. :hmm:
None of their current offerings appeal to me. Since acquiring a half decent desktop (an old work PC, on which I’ve upgraded the processor, RAM and added two HDDs) I’ve found myself using a laptop less and less, and when I do most of the time it’s RDCing into the desktop PC anyway. So spending £830 on a laptop (I want a DVD-RW, no matter what the future is 
) isn’t really a sane option.
The Mac Mini is too limited in many ways, the HDD is a laptop drive so it’s more expensive for less capacity, the unit itself isn’t upgradable without cracking open the case, which I would rather not do, my history of opening Apple products isn’t too good (broke the HDD connector on my 4G iPod, pierced the battery on the iPod Touch) and the integrated graphics.
I don’t want to go for an all-in-one PC, again mostly because of upgradability and ‘repairability’ (if the LCD develops a fault, the only real option is to replace the whole unit)
And the Mac Pro… well, if I could afford one without taking out a bank loan then sure, I’d love one. But until then, it’s not for me.
I’ve used OS X for a year at my previous job, and it was generally a very pleasant experience, although not without it’s faults. I’ve spent all of today playing around with OSX86 and I’ve managed to get everything else but the graphics card properly working (well, I gave up on the ethernet and am using a wireless adapter, so sue me :P ) But if I can’t even watch a video then it’s pretty much useless for me, and the interface lag will probably end up bugging me to no end.
In a weird sort of way, it’s like my experience with Linux. I generally didn’t have any major problems, there were applications which I fell in love with (Amarok!), but at the end of the day there were just minor things which over time starting to frustrate me, and I end up going back to the lesser evil. (Windows XP)
Oh, and if Apple were to release OS X for any beige box, I would be first in line for it. (As long as I have decent graphics drivers, which given NVidia’s track record with Vista is probably unlikely )
iTunes 8 – Hide Genre in browser/iTunes store links on Windows
September 10th, 2008iTunes 8 was released today (well yesterday, but who’s counting?) with new features like Genius sidebar/playlists, HD TV show and a new visualiser. (wow :rolleyes: )
However, they have removed two of the UI options I used, namely hiding the genre in the browser and links to the iTunes store. I don’t find browsing by genre useful; only a handful of my songs have genre tags. I’ve never thought to myself “Self, I really wish I could browse for a specific genre.” Add to that you are limited add one genre to a particular song and for me at least they are completely pointless (tags, on the other hand, would be awesome )
Searching Google, there are solutions for both of these issues, but they are Mac only :hmm: . However, I’ve found the solution for Windows (which works for me anyway).
- Ensure iTunes is not open. Browse to the iTunes Application Data folder (C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes on XP, C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes on Vista, substituting the drive letter and the user profile name where necessary.
- Backup and open the iTunesPrefs.xml with a half decent text editor (ie not Notepad, my personal preference is Notepad++)
- Find the User Preferences key, and below the <dict> tag insert:
- <key>show-genre-when-browsing</key>
<data>
AA==
</data>to disable the genre column in the browser, and:
- <key>show-store-arrow-links</key>
<data>
AA==
</data>to disable the links to the store.
- Start iTunes.