The world is against me today....

So with pretty much no sleep last night the one thing I was looking forward to was a coffee when I got to the Virgin Blue Lounge... Turns out no such luck the coffee machine is broken so I am without caffeine... I fear there is a long day ahead of me yet!

MX-5... the possibilities

Maybe I was being a little to hasty in dismissing the MX-5 so quickly...

Mazda Miata: The Ultimate Hauling Machine



(BTW I'm up and on my way to the airport for those who are interested)

A late night..... (for no good reason)

As you can tell from the post time this isn't exactly normal post time, especially when I'm on a 6am flight to Sydney. For some reason (currently beyond my comprehension) I can't get to sleep so I'm reading myself tired (which isn't working so far). To break up the boredom I'm posting. I don't really have a lot of news to report (especially after yesterday's big announcement).

So here's the limited news...
Mandy and Tom came over last night for some Arcade Table and Mario Kart action. Unfortunately Mario Kart Wii didn't make it to my house this weekend (mainly Arcade table related) so we played some Double Dash. My efforts were particularly embarrassing resulting in no wins what so ever...

We also have done some car shopping over the weekend (in case you haven't guess already MX-5 and baby aren't really compatible) but I think all we've managed to do so far is increase the car options we're looking at rather than narrow down.

Well back to bed for me... (and hopefully to some sleep!)

And the Big News!!!

I know, I can hear you asking. "What could be bigger and better news than an Arcade Table?"

Well... The big news is that Ness and I are expecting our first baby!

We're VERY excited! (I'm also pretty happy to be adding a permanent 3Up option to the house!)

So here's one (of many) of the first photos, sucking it's thumb, already!


So in honor of the first "baby" post I'm starting a poll on whether you think Paris (the baby's current nickname) will be a boy or a girl (we're not going to find out!)

The Arcade Table... 2 Days in...

So the arcade table has been on pretty much every waking hour since it arrived....

I've started running through the (enormous) list of games and picking a few favorites out. Here's a bit of a sample...

1942
Tekken 3
Samurai Showdown
Last Blade (I & II)
Raiden
Raiden Fighters
Mortal Kombat (I & II)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Puzzle Bobble
Galaga (Obviously)
R-Type (I&II)
Dungeons and Dragons
NBA Maximum Hangtime
Street Fighter
And the list goes on....

I'm slowly hooking in a few people but I'm sure there will be a few more converts...


Oh I almost forgot to mention Macross II and Macross Plus!!

Arcade Gaming Goodness

So for my 30th my very steathly wife managed to organise a surprise present. Not only did she organise a surprise she managed to get just about everyone in on the surprise without letting the surprise out.

Well today was the day, after a few delays (like a small side trip via Sydney) the surprise arrive...

An Arcade table of Awesomeness!!!

Arcade Table unboxed

I knew it had to be something big when it arrived on a palette! It's a Cocktail Tabletop Model it's preloaded and is fantastic... I'm so glad that it's a long weekend. There are some fantastic titles in the preload...

Ness has already discovered Puzzle Bobble... At least I know it will get some use while I'm away!

Thanks so much to everyone who had a hand in this! And a BIG thankyou to my Fantastic wife for a FANTASTIC 30th present! (now all I have to do is plan for Ness's 30th present)

More Region hacks

Inspired by the region hacking of the hotel player in Sydney (and the discovery that although my LG BH100 will play all region Bluray discs it will only play Region 4 DVDs) I had a bit of a play around with the settings. There isn't a hack posted anywhere but I tried some of the hacks from other players and I found how to get to the EERPOM Settings for the BH100.
Turn the player on (with no disc in)
Press PAUSE, 1, 4, 7, 2
and Voila!

The values displayed are

41 55 00 8D 00 05 00 50

I'm assuming I'd be able to change the region codes from here but who knows which one. I haven't tried changing anything yet for fear of bricking it. I'm hoping to find a few other peoples settings (from other regions) to see if we can figure out which value does which.

Welcome to another dinner blog.

So i've taken to posting while i'm waiting for my dinner to come out. I've ducked down to a little place around the corner. It's looks nice but it's pretty quiet. After watching a few of kitchen nightmares episodes I am wondering. I have walked past them before and they've been busy. They have served a really nice pino noir so that's a good start.
I did give in today (after my bad start to the week) and buy the latest season of Battlestar after watching the Razor mid season filler. So I will probably watch an episode or two tonight while I'm finishing off some work that needs to be done for tomorrow.
I've managed a day reprieve from sydney on Thursday and will be working from brisbane.

Cufflinks... Someone needs to buy me these!!!

Ironically I forgot my cufflinks this weeks so I could totally do with a set of these!!!! (Pity it was my birthday a few weekends ago)

A new Poll as promised....

My Sister gave me a great ThinkGeek Voucher for my birthday... now all I have to do is work out what to buy.... so... check it out and give me some ideas!

There is a poll where you can vote

A typical Monday.

So as you can probably guess it was a joyous day today. I won't go into too much detail but i managed to depress myself a little with some travel statistics. My project in sydney was extended today and once it's completed I will have spend 38 out of 52 weeks traveling (I won't go into the stats for the last 26).
In brighter news I managed to region hack the dvd player in my hotel so I could play my imported BSG Razor Dvd.
Mario Kart Wii is due out this week and I'm very much looking forward to it. I think it may waver my Advance Wars addiction on the weekend.
I'm trying to think of a new poll so I'll probably put one up before the end of the week.

A couple of weeks worth of posts....

It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted and a combination of guilt from Ben and a few others has let to a triumphant blog return...

The biggest news item of the fortnight is I had my birthday. I have a few photos courtesy of Tom... I was really sick in the week leading up to my party so I was lucky to make it. I had a great night though and it was fantastic to get everyone together. Ness has been a bit annoyed that my present is late but it has really drawn out the surprise... I did get some great presents though... even Amazon managed to mail me a present of about 16 HD&Bluray titles I'd been waiting on.

Being sick was a bit of a double edge sword, I did manage a week at home and not traveling which did lead to completion (at least rescuing of the princess) of Mario Galaxy, but on the down side my project (in Sydney) has taken a nasty turn and it's not the most pleasant place to work at the moment. As a result I'm back to the weekly flight to Sydney (coincidently I'm blogging from the Virgin Lounge in Brisbane... again).

I have started a new DS game which is likely to turn into an obsession (as all the previous titles in the series have). I finally got around to picking up the new Advance Wars title, which will not only have a great single player campaign, but now features online play which means I can waste away hours and hours battling it out.

It's a long weekend this weekend so I'm looking forward to 3 days not in Sydney and probably a bit of gaming thrown in. Ness picked up a Cricut on the weekend and is planning a mammoth session with it on Friday so I may just have to entertain myself with some DS time or the other current obsession of Battlestar Galactica. While I was sick I manage to knock over all of the First and Second Season. I ordered a copy of the bridging season Razor which turned up from (trusty) Amazon on Friday.

Sick, Shaped and RROD

It's not looking like a good week... I feel completely rotten, after the doctors today, I had to have a rest after walking up the stairs... Felt like I'd run a marathon, not climed 2 flights of stairs...

My net is shaped (first time ever) soooo slow...

AND my 360 is broken... It's going to be a quiet week for me....

I doubt I'll be posting much, looking at the laptop hurts my eyes...

And the 360 goes down hill a little more...

So... after letting the 360 rest of a little while I turned it back on today (no memory/hdd attached and plugged into the TV) booted ok. So then tried to insert the memory to do a reset... Hang... Restarted, inserted the card with a E71 code (no more E74 in sight). So back to the web... Found some better descriptions on the errors.

E74: There is high chance it's a scaler chip problem (the "ANA" or "HANA"
chip near the AV cable connection) it can also be caused by a faulty AV
cable

Which makes a bit more sense with the Projector having a hissy fit. Now the E71 error made a little more sense.

E71: possibly a dashboard update error, Check below in the "Console Reset Codes"
for instructions. If that does not work there is no other solution and the
console must be sent back to MS for repair.

So I took the card out and rebooted, thinking I could lose all the old memory and saves.... now it's another error...

E79: Hard Drive Error... It could be a problem with the Hard Drive itself or a
problem with the internal connection to the hard drive, Try removing the hard
drive and playing without it. Also the error code if xam.xex could not be
started, i.e. probably a file system corruption.

This one is staying put though... Ironic as I don't have a Hard Drive. Every reboot now is this error so it looks like I have a call to MS Support to make... Yay...

In other news, I'm getting a cold... it must be a good one, the people at soccer thought I had a hang over. I do feel pretty miserable... I'm really looking forward to the flight to Sydney tomorrw now!

Technology melt down....

There was a bit of a technology melt down tonight.... The 360 today had a bit of update for oblivion, which I've been playing just a little this weekend. The only trouble is that when I tried to turn it on tonight it had a little bit of a hissy fit and crashed. Now won't boot without a RROD and a E74 error on the screen. While the Xbox was having a bit of a cry it also managed to send a rogue signal over the HDMI connection which forced an emergency shutdown of the projector. Big red flashing lights are not something you every want to see (on either your projector or your 360)

Fortunately all is not completely lost. After the 5 minute shutdown and a power cycle the Projector came back to life. The 360 was not quite as lucky... there is some corruption in the memory card. Fixable but will probably require another HardDisk. Hopefully the 30+ hours of oblivion saves are recoverable...

After a bit of an absense

I'm back at the airport... It seems like for ever, but really it's only just over a week, but I'm back on the Sydney travel.

I've got the ret of this week in Sydney, but fear not I have my DS with me!