A Blast from the Past

I was reading an article from IGN about the 10 Worst Controllers of all time and I stumble across a console from my past the TI-99! It's controller (if you'd call it that) managed to make 6 on the list.

6. TI-99 Joystick

Computers in the 80s weren't meant for the gaming market, but let's be realistic: that's all we really used these things for anyway. Texas Instruments' TI-99, a computer with an optional disk drive twice as massive, jumped on the gaming market early with a bunch of classic games like…um…M*A*S*H…and, um…some Pac-Man clone… Anyway, you had the choice of controlling these games with either A) the keyboard, or B) one of the crappiest, most unresponsive, piece of junk joysticks ever produced. But hey, there were two of them!

Brought back some font memories... How could you forget this home page!
Some of the games were pretty advanced for their time. My favourite was Parsec a side scrolling space shotter that I spent hours playing with my Dad trying to get to the end... Don't think we ever did!

The system had a speach module that was unheard for in a Home Computer, I think we even the text to speech engine for it. Not only that but the fact it had a Disk Drive... not just tapes and cartridges... a REAL Disk Drive... sure it was the same size as a mini tower, but it was there..

So despite it's competely useless joystick it was a heap of fun... I'm going to hold the TI completely responsible for my current gaming addiction... That's right the fact that I bought a Gameboy Micro yesterday is completely the fault of the TI99/4A...

Getting Very Very Close now

It's officially 1 Month and 1 Day until our wedding today! And It's 2
weeks and 2 days until my bucks night!!!

I'm not really sure what's happening but it's all planned to happen on
the 11th March!

Hope to see you there!

Weekend run down!

This weekend was pretty packed in the end. I arrived back fairly late on Friday night from Toowoomba, but in the end it was in enough time to see Ness score 2 awesome goals in her trial match against Kangaroo Point.
On Saturday I'm not exactly sure what came over me but I decided to get up with Ness in the morning at about 5am and walk her to boot camp... Just to top it off I then filled in the time she was at boot camp with a 6km round trip to the city, although I did managed to fit in enough time to play one cup of Mario Kart DS.
Saturday also marked the first trip for MinX to have some work done. I had her booked in for a new Alarm/Immobiliser, Central locking and some new front speakers. I decided that the front speakers were not to crash hot with some rattles and crackling with just about every base note. I had some nice new Boston Acoustic S65 coaxials fitted which improved the sound no end but on inspection of the speakers that were in the doors fitting a $5 set from SuperCheap Auto probably would have been an improvement. Still the speakers sound great even running off the stock headunit.
This was the first time in a long time that I've had anyone actually install stuff in the car, usually I opt to do the install myself, but the guys at Autobarn at Springwood did such an awesome job at such a good price it's hardly worth doing it yourself. The new speakers are in the factory holes and you'd never know that anything had been done to the car except for one little blue flashing light on the dash.
After droping off MinX it was off to Indoor Cricket final... I think the less said about it the better. I hit a 7, They Won... We lost...
Sunday was mostly filled with Wedding jobs, I found a suit and shoes... All in all it was a good weekend!

OMG I've been without internet for 2 days

I'm out of Brisbane onsite at the moment and the only internet I have is the email access on my phone... which is hardly idea! Oh and before some one pipes up with "Just go to an internet cafe" that may be all well and good during the day when I'm supposed to be at work but a internet cafe that's only open 9-5 is no more help than ..... something not very helpful.

On the up side I have been able to get back into some serious DS action because lets face it I can't surf the Web! I've almost finished getting all the Stars rankings in Mario Kart DS (something that I've managed to slack off on for the last few weeks. I also got through 2 levels that I was stuck on in the Hard mode of Ouendan!

This weekend is the dreaded summer finals at indoor, which means playing cricket in a tin shed at about a thousand degrees. Fortunately we've got a morning final which means the centre will have only reached about five hundred degrees by the time we finish. After that MinX get's her first trip for some work, a new alarm system and central locking.

I think every other spare moment of the weekend will be spent catching up on much lost 'net time!

Wood You Believe?

This was just too weird not to post...

Wood You Believe?: "We knew things were getting bad in Serbia, but this is ridiculous. Our beloved blogging brothers-in-arms from Jalopnik tell us about a Serbian Yugo with a rather unusual fuel source. Instead of pulling the car along with horses, somebody tapped into a different kind of 125-year-old technology and ended up with a car that's faster than the original—which is not a tall order when you're talking about a Yugo. That anachronistic-looking smokestack on the back of the car uses wood gas for fuel. The idea here is that wood doesn't burn completely, and emits hydrogen and methane is a byproduct. Hey, isn't that stuff flammable? Yep. Put it in a conventional internal combustion engine, you have a special fuel that gets the job done. You laugh. Someday we may be looking for the plans for this thing.

Just what you need after an 8:30 Cricket Match

Last night I turned up for indoor cricket to discover it was finals time... This means play offs, the problem with this is we're second on the ladder. So our first match was against the top team meaning we had a second chance if we lost. But here in lies the problem, if we lost we had to play the winner of 3rd and 4th straight afterwards.

Of course we lost the first game so after playing our guts out in the heat and humidity we had to line up for another game at 9:50pm (which started at about 10:20pm) which resulted in me getting home at about 12:15am this morning.

I haven't played for a few weeks so I was happy to get back into the bowling with a wicket on my first and second ball and only going for about 2-3 runs over my whole spell. My batting wasn't anything to shout about but at least I managed to get a practice session!

Fortunately we won the second one which means we're in the Grand Final on Saturday. It's an early morning match so I'm hoping for a bit of a cooler session.

Every DS needs one of these

It's been ages since I've posted about some technology but when I saw this I couldn't resist! Engadget have previously written about a 4GB add on for the PSP but it's the best news about a media player for the DS I've ever seen!

Using the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot to store and power the hard drive, and the DS card slot to store the Media Player software, the combination promises to turn your game-centric DS into a PSP clone 'a powerful home entertainment device, with movie playback, music on the move and a convenient picture viewer.' It's unclear if this system will work with the new, smaller, Nintendo DS lite. All things told, it looks like a pretty nice product and, for about $225, it better be!

Basically it will give us everything we need to take all your media on the go... The only real problem is the DS isn't pocket sized to begin with and strapping this on the back doesn't exactly help!

Out on the open road....

In a fortunate turn of evens I managed to get the car out for some open top running on the weekend.
I picked up the car Thursday night and took it for a nice run down to Springwood and back, just to stretch it's legs and show Valavien my new toy.

So when I had to go to Pittsworth on Sunday to sing so there was no choice but to take MinX up the range and out on the back roads! MinX is just a pleasure to drive. Everything about the car makes you want to drive it, from the driving position to the great exhaust note as you push your right foot that little bit further down.

We managed to get through almost all of the weekend with the top down, there was just a bit of rain on the way back after we'd got down the range that forced us to put the top back up.

The best trip of the weekend was a cruise out near Picnic Point in Toowoomba at dusk, the weather was cool, the sunset was great... I was just upset I forgot to take my camera with me... oh well there's always next time.

The other open roading on the weekend was back on the bike after a few weeks. It was a great ride out through the city to UQ and back through Graceville to West End before heading home (pretty much the route of last year's big bike ride). The only downer (apart from all the hills, and I hate hills) was getting a Flat on the way home. Not too bad, just a tube ($9), but it was annoying because I was 5k from home without a patch kit, so I had to wake up Ness to come and get me... Luckily I haven't sold the Blue Car yet so I can still get the bike home, once we're down to just MinX it's going to be a long walk!

Grr... Used Car Salesmen

Honestly, it's no wonder Used Car Salesmen have a bad name. After being told that the parts to fix my car were coming yesterday and the car would be ready today I got a call asking for a delay. RACQ found a couple of minor things wrong that I insisted were fixed before I would take the car, so it was back with the dealer being repaired. I'd organised for it to be reinspected to ensure everything was just as the dealer said it would be. Today I got a call saying the parts weren't here and I need rebook the inspection. A total of 30 mins later I got a call saying the car was fixed and I could move the appointment back!

So got the final report, everything checked out ok.

This is where the real fun started. Now I noticed when I bought the car that the rego was out, so I didn't have any problems buying it with expired rego because they would need to fix it before I bought the car. The problem was no one had noticed until I pointed it out today :) So the car isn't registered... Then they proceeded to say that I would need to pay for the rego because it wasn't part of the purchase price... I pointed out they couldn't sell me a non registered car.

So after some haggling, then haggling with the GM... I'm picking the car up Friday... with rego...

No wonder used car salesmen have a bad name!

It's Official, The Wharfedales are no more

I did it. It was hard but I let the wharfedales move on to be loved by someone else. Someone through a friend of a friend found out I had an extra set of speakers that sounded like they would go well with his newly purchased plasma. After a brief audion he decided they were the ones for him. Having another listen to them all hooked up reminded me just how good these speakers where in the first place, especially the amount of bass they could produce when I demoed the Star Wars Episode III Disc. Even after he request a test with the sub on to see the difference I was evident that the Diamond 8.4s could lend a lot of authority to any sound track.

The lounge room feels kind of empty with only one set of speakers in it. It feels like I've gained 50% of the room back.

The MX5 has a name

Ben pointed out the other day when we shopping for his MX5 that we needed to name our new toy. We don't have it yet but at least it will have a name. As it's very much Ness's car I gave her naming rights, so from now on the MX5 will be known as MinX

Car Decision Done!

Well we made the decision to purchase one of the older NA series MX5s. We picked the Limited Edition in "Classic Red" with tan leather interior. It was in the best condition out of all of the ones that I saw by a long way!

We've put a deposit down on it and got to borrow it over night which was great fun! It's been for an inspection and I'm just awaiting the repairs that were required after that. It's due to go for another inspection on Wednesday afternoon to check it's all ok, then it will be ours!

They have agreed to get a new windscreen (had a small chip), full service (oil, plugs, etc), master cylinder service to fix the leak, 2 new rear tyres, rear alignment, head light alignment, rear suspension control arm fixed and power steering service all at their cost, before I take delivery. It had a full service 15,000ks ago which included the timing belt. All the services have been done by Centenary Mazda.

Managed to get it for an OK price considering it's condition and the price they had it maked at. I've put up some photos on Flickr from when I dropped it off for inspection!

Ben's also been doing heaps of research on them which's been very useful, hopefully we can track one down for him in just as good condition (but in Green)!

We have a BUZ!

Ness found out yesterday that there will be a new BCC BUZ service starting that goes from our stop! It's the only thing that i've missed since we moved from coorparoo!

Car Shopping

We've decided to get a first generation (popup headlight) MX-5. The one topping the list at the moment is a Limited Edition Classic Red one. (like the one in the pic)
The third Limited Edition, the "Classic Red", was released in May 1993.
100 vehicles were imported into Australia featuring BBS alloy rims, tan softtop and interior, leather gear knob, leather upholstery, CD player, headrest speakers, stainless steel scuff plates, power steering and colour keyed hardtop.

Took one for a test run yesterday... just a complete joy to drive... even for it's age

Welcome to another episode of the world goes mad!

I came across this in my daily gadget readings... but really... come on people!! Is the bathroom really that far away!?!

Coming to a bar district near you, the Pee Tree. This was designed by Joa Herrenknecht for use in public spaces. It is big, bright and ceramic, just pee on the tree itself and lets the urine run down, or pee directly into the receptacle around the base of the tree. The urine is then flushed down to the sewage canal in regular manner. The tree is in a contemporary design that could easily double as a fecal slingshot, sweet.

Taken from Gizmodo