Top tip, no need to buy a 360 Elite as it looks like all of them have HDMI on these days. Wooo! Just ordered the cheapo Arcade pack, so I can plug my HD in and return to a bit of CoD loving. If there was ever a pack that should be renamed “replacement”, that’s the one.
Still totally gutted that mine died, but looking around the web I’ve done better on a 1st gen 360 than most people have managed. Truely shite build quality, but compared to the hassles I’ve had with the PS3, I’ll put up with it… I’m fucked if I’m buying another if this one pops though.
I did manage to get GT5:P to download its update in the end. Took >20 tries and about 2 hours, but it came down eventually. Irony being, I didn’t have a good enough car in my garage to actually join any of the races. The anger has subsided, at least…
Quite enjoyed GT5 in the end. It’s no Forza, and the driving model takes a while to get used to, but I’ve got gold on everything C class and I’m looking forward to trying out some higher spec cars. It’s probably sold me, tbh. As long as the full version really does come with the Top Gear test track 
Yup, 360 is dead. And after an hour of trying I’ve given up trying to download the GT5:P update. No online for me today…
Fucking arse. Was really looking forward to having a bit of gaming today 
Looks like my 360 is dead, or at least, heading to the red rings.
Got up this morning, ice and early, updated the podcast, tidied up a bit and did some bits and bobs around the house, purely so I could settle into a few hours of uninterrupted COD. First game in the screen corrupts badly, colours all messed up, so I play on until the end then reboot the box. Now I’ve got no display.
I’m letting it cool down for a while, which means the PS3 is on. So far it’s spent 30 minutes doing yet another bloody system update, and GT Prologue is on it’s 4th attempt at downloading it’s update, so I can play online.
No, wait, make that 5th. It’s just timed out again
Full on game rage is brewing.
Gone off the place now
No garlic. Lots of queue.
Not much garlic here, either
Distinct lack of garlic. Beer tastes ok though 
Just off to the isle of White
Gaz is topping the comedy finds today…
All action films should be shot in IMAX
We’re on our way to Waterloo to watch dark knight at the IMAX. I’ve not been there in ages so hopefully it’s as awesome a screen as I remember.
I’d post the photo of us on the train, but I forgot to make the uploads dir writable
Life with the iPhone is great. I can already see my usage patterns changing. It’s like having my first GPRS phone and tibook all over again, Except in my pocket
I’ve got a couple of niggles - the Bluetooth and network switches should be a lot more accessible as it’s a fuss to dig into settings all the time. More apps should support the landscape mode cos it definitely feels more comfortable to me. And yeah cut and paste, or even just URL remembering would be dead handy. Small stuff so far though and my girly fingers are getting pretty quick at typing
I’m going to while away the journey hunting for apps
Had yesterday off to cover for K, as she’s been busy in London on her HR course. Today we were meant to be seeing some people at MS, but that got bounced… So I had it all planned, yesterday I’d work the sets for DR this month, and polish off my set for The Genre Show. And today, I’d have a look through the official iPhone SDK and plan out the work I’d need to do to move BallZup onto it…
So, obviously none of that happened. For the first time in ages I hit a mix brick wall. 30 tunes, none of which went together or sounded nice, no matter how hard I tried. I gave up after a couple of hours and prepped the laptop and big box with the new SDK and examples, grabbed the Gaz’s latest version of GR from SVN and spent a couple of hours sifting through code. The day wasn’t a total loss. Once I figured out the Ortho projection so you can get pixel accurate rendering of textures, I was well chuffed. There’s some work to build up the game, piece by piece, but replacing the sprite class does look like a few hours graft. The rest would mainly be some structural changes to remove weird dirty rect cases I didn’t handle all that brilliantly in the first place. So, I’m hoping with some downtime at LH I can dig into this.
Of course, I meant to start today, but I got the iPhone, and if I’m honest I’ve pretty much played with it all day. Of the apps, Vicinity, Remote and Things are all utterly superb. Vicinity is very good at grazing sites and pulling more than just useful info out. Can’t recommend it enough
The major problem I’ve had is with utterly piss poor connections. I’ve had less than 3 bars all day and I was starting to get pretty worried that I’d bought a turkey. I’d not heard anyone else really complain, but it was so bad I couldn’t even record my voice mail message and upload it. Web access has been through Wireless only (no bad thing)…
But, after some fiddling and looking through settings (General->Network, if you’re looking) I noticed that you can turn 3G on or off, which I did, and viola! 5 bars of super strength signal and a flurry of voicemail messages. Huzzah!
I know I’m slow and I know I do know better, but I forgot that the 3G network is a different network to the old 2G one. And, after a day on it, I can confidently say that O2’s 3G network is utter fucking shite.
Has that put me off the phone? Nope. I don’t mind browsing slowly if I have to and tbh the 2G network wasn’t as slow as I was expecting. It’s not great, but it does work. Yeah, it’d definitely be nicer if Apple could release a firmware update that bounced you over to the 2G network when the signal got lower than 3 bars, but in the meantime, now I know the secret, I’ll switch back and forth until O2 sort their shit out.
I won’t go into the fucking mare I had with O2 and Carphone warehouse yesterday, as that’s actual rage at their fucking stupidity.
Anyway, iPhone with Apps? Blooming lovely!