Sadly no photos from today’s scan, but no changes in his condition. He’s measuring over 40 weeks now so it’s no wonder that Vicky is full to bursting. The caesarean is still booked in for May 13th so we’d better start getting all the baby things out of the loft and aired ready for use. Vicky’s overnight bag is all packed so I think we’re prepared… 13 days to go.
The invisibleSHIELD™
April 22nd, 2009 No Comments »
Not wanting to risk scratching my shiny new PSP, I decided to invest in a screen protector. Now in the past I have used and discarded quite a number of these things – most of the cheap ones aren’t worth using even if they are given away for free. I’ve used them on PDAs and phones galore before and you end up with air bubbles and/or dust if you aren’t careful which you just can’t get rid of. Self-adhesive ones are a nightmare cuz if you make even one mistake when applying you have to throw it away and start again. Up until now, my favourites had been silicon ones which cling to your device – you can remove them, wash them, reapply them – but they do have a tendancy to peel off around the edges and never quite stay on properly. After a lot of Googling™ (sorry Google, I know you are trying to protect your brand name from generalisation) I discovered the invisibleSHIELD™ from Zagg. Full body coverage for your shiny gadgets and they are apparantly made from the same stuff that coats helicopter blades – how can I possibly resist that? I thought they’d be worth a go at least, especially as they offered a money-back guarantee if you buy direct from them. And direct from them means direct from their web site in the USA (although my parcel arrived from Manchester?!).
The method for applying these protectors is a little unusual: clean your device, peel the invisibleSHIELD™ from its backing, spray it with a fancy tube of solution (ordinary water???) and plop on to the device. You can then use the provided squeegee to push the bubbles out. It actually works and you can get it bubble free very easily. I messed up a bit and decided it wasn’t quite lined up properly so peeled it back a couple of minutes after I’d applied it, so there’s a slight mark on the invisibleSHIELD™ where I did this – my fault not theirs but it’s not a huge problem even for me. The full body protector for my PSP came with 12 parts to apply, so it really does cover around 95% of the whole body of the device. Once applied you have to leave it alone for 24 hours to set. I made another mistake here and put the PSP in the case – when I opened the case to have a look only two hours later I was gutted to see that the protector has been dented by the pressure of the strap in the case – a rippled material indentation was in the middle of the screen. Fortunately leaving it out of the case over night allowed those marks to disappear, brilliant! Time will tell how good this protector is, but so far just going by the application process alone it is the best screen protector I have ever used and I’d definitely reccomend you consider this product when you buy your next phone / PDA / watch / GPS / laptop / helicopter – I will be buying from them again. They have custom made invisibleSHIELDs™ for around 2500 devices… Oh yes, and Zagg, if you read this review, any chance of a replacement front panel for my PSP-3000 so I can get it perfect this time?
Don’t forget, if you do buy one then Zagg are offering cashback via www.topcashback.co.uk
Blog Spam
April 20th, 2009 No Comments »This is something I haven’t seen for a few years… spam for blogs. Normal spam comes in the form of unwanted email, blog spam manifests as random comments on a blog advertising all sorts of things. This morning, I had the following comment placed on one of my blog posts: “viagra If you have to do it, you might as well do it right”. Lovely. The text included a link to some random web site and was posted by a computer behind the former iron curtain. I remember when I first set up my blog I ended up with hundreds of these types of comments and had to put in a special spam filter to catch them, but then all of a sudden they disappeared. Well, if you decide to write a comment on any of my blog posts from now on you’ll notice that you have to decypher a cryptic looking image containing some warped random letters and numbers. This is called a ‘captcha’ and is intended to be illegible to computers – hopefully my loyal readership won’t be too put off by this, my other choice was to give you a maths question to answer whenever you post a comment but I thought this might alienate 
I said I could
April 11th, 2009 No Comments »I managed my target of 10 runs in 4 weeks with a few days to spare. I think I’ll set myself the same target but continue increasing my running time. In 4 weeks time I should have done the 5km… let’s see if I can manage that target!
Oops I SliPSPed
April 9th, 2009 No Comments »A new toy
Yes, my fingers slipped whilst on the John Lewis web site and a PSP landed in the basket, somehow checked out using my credit card then delivered itself to my house. My excitement was somewhat short-lived as although I knew I’d need a memory card to save games and things, I didn’t think it would be completely unusable without one. Even the supplied game refuses to run unless I upgrade the firmware – and to do that I need a memory card. Never mind, so far I’ve been able to set up Remote Play which allows me to remote control my PS3 from my PSP.. hopefully this weekend I’ll manage to get that working over the Internet which means I can listen to my music, watch videos, or look at photos stored on my NAS from any wifi connection I have permission to connect to. Ultimatly, I hope that Freeview will be available in our village by August and my PS3 / PSP will let me watch TV or recorded TV programs remotely. Until I get a memory card (8GB arrived today…) I can’t do anything though. And another thing, I know I said I was going to wait until the possible announcement from E3 in June about the new version of the PSP which may be out in time for Christmas this year, but I decided that Christmas was too long to wait.
A rant about gaming distribution…
Also, the rumours are saying that the new version will not have a UMD (like a diddy little DVD in a special case) drive and games will be purchased as downloadable content only. This does screw over the possibility of buying cheap second hand games, and also stops competition dead – the only place I’d be able to get new games from is the Playstation Store and I’d have to pay their premium price. I like to be able to shop around and buy a game from the cheapest vendor, possibly getting cashback. Downloads are technologically great and convenient, but when implemented like this they are expensive and stunt competition. Any games console based purely on downloads from one store (and Nintendo, you are not excluded here!) deserves to be cracked. I only hope that the new PSP is just a fancy redesign of the current one and won’t include a new featureset such as a second analogue stick which would tempt me… and that Sony and Nintendo find some way of letting you purchase downloadable games from other stores – how about an ‘Amazon.co.uk’ channel? If Apple can give in and allow ipods to play mp3s purchased from places other than iTunes, then the games industry can find a way too.
