Tom Fotherby
Magic the Gathering: Battlegrounds
XBox,Strategy Combat,7/10 – April 2005 Think pokemon meets street fighter. This is strategy combat where it’s tactics and planning that win a battle rather than button mashing. Collect mana orbs, cast creature spells, magic spells, enhancement spells; try to do all of this and still evade your opponent’s attacks. I got to the pen-ultimate level […]
Kitchen prepared for plastering (April 2005)
Having gutted our kitchen and living with a just a microwave and fridge in the dining room, we got some electricians in to do a 1st fit of the new kitchen electrics. One of the walls was uneven and so we used battens and plasterboard to level it out. We also bought our new kitchen […]
VoIP is exciting technology (28th/April/2005)
I’m very excited about VoIP technology – It’s going to change the whole telephony business-model. There are a number of killer-apps for each element of technology, email is a killer-app (even my mum now uses it), Wi-Fi is an up and coming killer-app and I think that VoIP will become a killer-app. I don’t understand […]
Tory mud slingers (27th/April/2005)
I think politicians should argue about how to make things better rather than spend time slagging their opposition. The current Tory election campaign is disgusting because all they are doing is slinging mud at Tony Blair. I know politicians always point out the other parties mistakes but they have gone too far and I’m sick […]
Meters relocated
We got Southern Electric to move our electric meter from an annoying place in the sitting room out the way into the cellar. (04/Jan/2005) We did the same with Transco for our gas meter. (18/April/2005)
My Geek Code
—–BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK—– Version: 3.12 GIT d- s++:++ a- C++ UL+ P++> L++> E W++ N? o? K? W(–) !O !M V(-) PS PE+ Y+ !PGP(–) t+ 5? X R+++ tv++ b++ DI– D+ G e+++ h- r++ y+ ——END GEEK CODE BLOCK—— For more info see www.geekcode.com
Nintendo DS – 20th Mar 2005 (Birthday present from Kix)
This has the power of the N64 in a portable form but with the quirk of two screens (DS). The touch screen is certainly interesting and I think the long battery life, zero loading time and backwards compatibility with the GBA makes it better than the Sony PSP. Playing Super Mario DS is certainly bringing […]
Cordless Headphones – 20th Mar 2005 (Birthday present from Grandpa)
These Philips HC 8520 wireless headphones are great. They are comfortable to wear and easy to use because they automatically tune into the signal. They are easy to charge up because the base station is also the charging station. The most impressive thing about them is the range that the signal can carry – I […]
Virtual Light (William Gibson)
Cyberpunk, 7/10 – Feb 2005 I was quite disappointed that “the Matrix” didn’t come into this book (and might not be in this trilogy at all) but it’s still got some interesting tech ideas. The story revolves around some stolen Virtual Reality glasses called ‘Virtual Light’ which directly feed the optic nerve with EMP to […]
Mona Lisa Overdrive (William Gibson)
Cyberpunk, 9/10 – Jan/Feb 2005 This is nothing to do with the Mona Lisa painting, it is the 3rd and final part of the “sprawl trilogy” and there’s a chick called “Mona Lisa” who bumbles about in almost ignorance. It doesn’t exactly tie all the threads up and man the Matrix is getting weird but […]
Fable
XBox,Adventure,9/10 – January 2005 This game has the most flexibility and scope that I’ve ever come across. To give you a clue about how varied the objects in the game are, you can buy “tofu”. Have you ever seen tofu in a game before? You can get married and divorced, dig, fish, get haircuts, tatoos, […]
Replaced leaking flat roof (03/Jan/2005)
Our 3rd bedroom had water running down the inside walls whenever the weather was wet. I borrowed a ladder from mum and when up on the flat roof to see what was going on. It had a tear in it, so we got it replaced.
Squeezebox – 25th Dec 2004 (Christmas present from Kix)
This is the most awesome toy! It plays music and radio. It gets the radio from the internet and it gets the music from mp3’s stored on a PC. It is called a “Digital Media Adaptor”. It streams files over our Wi-Fi network. All you need to do is to run Squeezebox software which acts […]
Wi-Fi Access Point – 25th Dec 2004 (Christmas present from Kix)
Kix gave me this Linksys Wi-Fi access point for Christmas. We use it to connect our Squeezebox to our network without needing to trail Ethernet cable all over the house.
L.E.D Binary Clock – December 2004 (Christmas present to Kix)
This clock may take a few seconds to read but it’s worth the effort for the interesting factor. It’s a bit easier to read than if the entire time was coded into binary. Instead, each decimal digit is encoded separately:
