heh

My god, it’s full of beer!

Ignore the brand, embrace the concept.

Will Nick disappear completely?

Bejeweled, Warcraft Combine to Form World's Most Addictive Game

Battle Bears!!!

I can’t comment about the quality of the game itself.  However – if this video is any indication, then they guys who are making the game are nuts.

Real World v Apple World

Gordon Freeman spotted at CERN

More here.

Rising Sun Faction

WeGame.com - Gaming Videos

I Think Adam will like.

Lego + Portal = Awesome

Watch here.

They've escaped

More here.

Zerg 2, Blackpool 0

See here.

Will it blend?

Survey says yes.

F@ck you iTunes

As some may know, I have an iPod.  And while some people (cue GrantRantTM) may find them not much to write home about, I think they're a pretty damn good portable music player.

As a consequence of having an iPod, without having to resort to all kinds of technical tom-foolery, you're forced to use iTunes in order to load music of any kind onto it.  And where the iPod does a damn good job of being a music player, iTunes does the complete opposite as a media player (especially in windows).  It's dog-slow, frequently stuffs up meta-data and it's video playback often bogs down a pc so badly it sounds more like a stutterer trying to recite the lyrics to Theophilus Thistler.

Oh yes, and it also has a really annoying habit of randomly bringing itself to the front when the program is minimised or, even better, randomly restarting itself after you've closed it down. 

Why do these quirks matter you ask?

Last week, when my mouse decided to up and die on me for no apparent reason, I was forced to try and discover how to navigate a point and click interface, without the ability to point or click.  It was quite fun.

While Windows is possible (although painful) to navigate by using a keyboard, some programs which don't want to behave with the OS, don't let you use all of the features you could otherwise access with a mouse.  iTunes is one of those programs (shocking I know for a piece of software written by Apple.  Who would have thought...).  I needed to download an individual podcast to take to work (a Chaser broadcast if you must know).

iTunes won't let you tab to navigate to the pane where you can select individual items to download by using the keyboard.  The only way to download it that I could discover was by switching on the option hidden in a series of submenu's that tells iTunes to automatically download a new podcast when it was available.  So I switch that on, download the required podcast, shut down iTunes and head off to work.

So what you ask?  Where is all of this going?

Remember where I mentioned earlier that iTunes has a really annoying habit of restarting itself after you've closed it down?  Well, after I went to work, it did.  And seeing that it the option switched on to automatically download new podcasts, it proceeded to do so.  Now normally this would not be a problem, but last week I had subscribed to a HD video podcast for curiosities sake to see how well it outputted from my iPod onto my television.  So the randomly restarted iTunes proceeded to grab the latest episode.

And the one before that.

And the one before that.

And the one before that.

And the one before that.

And the..... well - I'm sure you get the drift by now.

These video's average a file size of between 350MB to 470MB.  And seeing as they're stored on an akamai server, they're being downloaded at a really fast rate.  How fast?  Well, in the time I was at work, iTunes managed to download 10GB's worth of video.  That's right - 10GB.

Not surprisingly, that exceeded my remaining quota for the month.  Itunes did this in 7 hours.  So, since last Thursday, I've been shaped at 64k until December 01.  So f@ck you iTune for doing this to me.  You and your sh!th@use Apple software can go scr@w yourselves.

heh

Best game reviews evar

Vista FUD

Relating a conversation between Nick, Adam and myself on Saturday.

Clarification here, here, here and here.

Good Bioshock review

heh

The trouble with iTunes

Good reading.  Incremental updates don't come in 50mb chunks.

New Games

E3 is on and Ars have their coverage, so far there are two games that I want.
Stranglehold (Have to see if we will get the special ed. with the HD version of Hardboiled)
Bioshock (If you pre-order at EBs and put down $20, they'll drop $20 off the price)

Coincidence?

Okay - so I have an iPod.  And like most people with iPods I use iTunes to synchronize my music between my pc and my device.  Not because it's a great piece of software - it's not - it's ugly, it's dog-slow at starting and closing, it's a memory hog, it frequently looses podcasts and other files that I've downloaded, it doesn't want to support a variety of other audio codecs like .ogg - you get the picture?  There are other alternatives out there that I could use.  I simply use it because it's the path of least resistance.  Sometimes you don't want to stuff around.  Sometimes you just want to use something that simply works (most of the time).  Anyhow...

Anyone who's paid any attention to technology news in the last week or so would be aware that Apple has just released the Jesusphone - you know - that $US500 flash music player that doesn't event support mms.  As part of this new release, they've updated iTunes to a new version to add phone support.  I don't need support for a phone that's not even available in Australia - do I?

Apparently I do...

For some strange reason, my version of iTunes decided to start crashing on me every time I attempted to start it.  It gave no reason in the error box other that it just decided to stop working.  My first thought was that is was one of those mysterious errors that Windows sometimes has with a program and rebooting would fix it.

But it didn't.  It just kept crashing.  So I figure - when in doubt - reinstall the program.  If it's somehow become corrupted, that should sort it out.

It didn't.  It still kept crashing.

I can't even start iTunes for it to tell me that a new version is available.  However I did remember a web site stating they're updated it with a new version.  Might as well give that a try - nothing else seems to be working.

So I went ahead and downloaded the new version of iTunes, installed it, and miracle of miracles - iTunes started working again without the instantaneous crashes.

Now I'm no conspiracy theorist (I leave that to Grant), but it seems awfully coincidental that at the same time that a new version of iTunes is released, my old one refuses to work, forcing me to upgrade.  The timing is just so.... convenient....

Now I'm drawing a pretty long bow here with scant evidence to support myself.  But then again - I've seen crazier theories thrown Redmond way with even less evidence...