The following will be of little interest to anyone unfamiliar with the inner workings of Windows, just a warning

Earlier this year I had a choice between getting a nice 17″ LCD monitor, or 2×17″ CRTs (the prices are pretty much the same). I went for the latter, and haven’t regretted it. The nvidia nView software stretches the windows taskbar across both screens, so it’s like one big desktop. The only problems I’ve had have been either with games - scrolling around maps with the mouse isn’t very easy when the cursor just moves onto the next monitor - or with the odd software program not being able to display on anything but the primary monitor. Nothing huge.

Earlier today I downloaded RightMark 3dSound in an attempt to diagnose the madness that is my sound output. It revealed that my computer outputs sound based on an iteration involving fifteen random infinite sets derived from a distributed lava lamp. Or something. A good plan seemed to be to download the latest nForce drivers, as they control the audio and a new version came out recently. I installed these, and it made no difference to the sound, but did manage to wind me up in other ways.

The option to span the taskbar across the screens appears to have been removed in the new drivers. I initially thought this may be a conflict between the new nForce drivers and my old Detonators, so I installed the latest “ForceWare” - version 52.16. This didn’t help. All I can find on the internet is a reference to the ‘nView display settings’ window, in which you can choose to use ‘DualView’. This doesn’t appear on my computer, however, and I’m thinking it may only be for Quadro users. I could downgrade drivers, and probably will if I don’t sort this in a couple of days, it’s just so irritating!

If anyone can help…please do

If you’re at least my age and into computers, chances are you’ve played Prince of Persia at some point. <yoda>kicked mucho ass, that game did</yoda>. Play it again, via the (debatable) wonder of flash, here. Ah, the memories. Not to blow my own trumpet, but I got so good at the original that I could complete it, without cheating, with 15mins to spare. I don’t think I’ve been so good at anything since The new game, Sands of Time, looks like it could possibly be great fun, too.

As some of you know, I’ve been doing a creative writing course for a while now. I think I’m getting better, albeit slowly. The tasks are often to write a short story under a certain amount of words. I’m not very good at this I have a fair few sitting round that I’m loathe to cull. Given that they’ll just disappear otherwise, I’ve put one online. I’m not claiming that it’s any good, but I believe it’s better for it to be at least available for reading than to disappear, never to be seen again. It’s called “Strands”, and can be found here. If you read it, would you mind letting me know what you think (bearing in mind I’m just a n00b )? Thanks very much.

Just a quick note to say that I rented Adaptation this evening. Another fine two hours of entertainment. Highly recommended. I’d give you the link to the imdb page, but it spoils things. It’s the one starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and directed by Spike Jonze (who directed Being John Malkovich). Charlie Kaufman (not, as far as I know, related to Andy) is the writer…yeah, I think so. It gets complicated.

Hello hello hello. First off, the answers to last week’s puzzle:

Longbow wood (3)
Yew
UPDATE: Changed from ‘ewe’ (stupid boy) after Kate pointed it out

Part of west India (3)
Goa

Time long ago (4)
Yore

Entrance (3,2)
Way In

1990’s US Vice-President (2,4)
Al Gore

Principal (4)
Main

Got the phrase yet? Bad, isn’t it Made me laugh though. The best one ever managed to use every single one of the across clues to make ‘Oh little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie’ without using any of the actual words other than Bethlehem.

So I bought IL2-Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles last weekend after enjoying the demo of the original game, simply called IL-2 Sturmovik. The website said that Forgotten Battles was originally intended as an add-on, but ended up being a full blown sequel.

Unfortunately, it’s really disappointing.

It has additional planes, scenarios and maps, but interface-wise it’s identical to the original. This wasn’t a problem for me, as I made an assumption that shall become clear shortly. It has a realistic physics model, which attracted me, and each plane is different. While you can fly over 50 different planes, the eponymous IL-2 is the standard one. If you run the training exercises (non-interactive, but thorough) you are taught how to use the IL-2. Taking off, landing, stunts and air combat are all covered. However, the IL-2 isn’t available as a plane in the single player game. All I can think is that the original game was based on the IL-2, so the sequel concentrates on other planes, and actually removes the scenarios involving the IL-2. It’s kinda weird for the plane in the title not to feature, isn’t it? I wrongly assumed that, as it was intended as a bonus pack in the first place, the entire original game would be included, plus all the new stuff. Perhaps you ‘earn’ the IL-2 after a few missions or something, but I can find no reference to this anywhere.

You may be thinking, why is this such a big deal? Well, each plane behaves differently, so the planes you start off with in the single-player don’t respond in the same way at all. They have different flap settings etc. And worst of all, there is no way to practice taking off or landing in any plane without starting up a full campaign. The full campaign maps take over a minute to load, which is really annoying when you perpetually crash on takeoff. The ‘quick mission builder’ allows you to choose what plane you want to fly, enemies etc., but you always start up in the air. There is a ‘full mission builder’, but it’s extremely complicated and seems OTT for what I want to do. After innumberable crashes I had to download a custom map designed for ‘newbies’, then set it up as a multiplayer server, in order to practice!

I appreciate that the game isn’t really designed for ‘newbies’ to flight sims, but it doesn’t seem like any are! If you want proper physics you have to leap into the hardcore flight sims, which aren’t very forgiving. I’ve been hoping all week that I’ll discover some feature I’d missed that would allow me to enjoy playing the game, but I haven’t. I’m finding it very difficult to get into, and am worried it’s going to end up lying on my shelf, never played. Which is a shame, as the game seems like it would be good fun if you could ever actually practice doing the things you’re meant to do!

On the good side, the graphics are nice. I’m having trouble with the sound, but my computer’s being a bit loopy atm sound-wise (I got some 5.1 headphones a while back, and I’m damned if I can get the sound to output to them properly).

Aaaanyway. Anyone else been to see Matrix Revolutions yet? I want to discuss it with someone!

You know what’s on TV this evening? Nothing. I may rent a DVD if I can motivate myself, or see what’s on Front Row. I came across Webflix today. For &pound9.99 a month, you can rent as many DVDs as you like (1 at a time), keeping them for as long as you want. When you’re done, put them into the pre-paid envelope and send them back. There are no postage charges or anything. This seems very cool to me. When Kate’s around, we tend to hire two or three DVDs a month from Blockbuster, who charge &pound3.75 for the new titles. So I’d actually be saving money at those times, but I rarely hire them when it’s just me. I’m not sure I can justify &pound9.99 a month at the moment, sadly.

Speaking of movies, how long do you think it will be until cable tv offers an equivalent movie service? Front Row shows a selection of films at regular intervals, and you pay x amount to tune into one. This is good, but sucky. There are only 15 or so separate films, and having to tune in at a specific time seems backward. Ideally, you want to be able to choose from a broad selection and have it available to watch straight away. I don’t know of anywhere this kind of content-on-request system operates, yet. I imagine it must use vast amounts of bandwidth! Hopefully it’ll come in time. Once you’ve got that, however, what’s to stop the cable companies from supplying tv shows in the same way? There would no longer be any need to scheduling, as anyone could watch whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Would this put the smaller tv channels out of business, I wonder? They must get a great many viewers simply through channel-hoppers. On the other hand, if they produce interesting programming, people would still want to watch it.

The gadget, dubbed Finger Whisper, uses a wristband to convert the sounds of conversation to vibrations that can he heard when the finger is placed in the ear.

Can’t wait for the fax version…

More here.

Did anyone else watch Double Jeopardy on ITV this evening? Because at about half 10 I swear the title screen said ‘double jeopardy continues after the news’, so I went off and did something else. I checked digiguide 5 minutes later to see how long the news was, to find that there was no news. I went back to the tv and the film was indeed on. I admit I’ve had other stuff on my mind this evening, but I’m sure it said something. I imagine I must have assumed it was the news thing, but can’t think what else it could have been…Can anyone help?

Rarely do I feel a sense of camaraderie with more than one or two people, but standing in the queue to collect tickets for Matrix Revolutions, with perhaps 15 other people, I felt a fleeting sense of being part of something. It was quite strange. There were perhaps 10 people, all male and between 20 and 40, waiting for the cinema doors to open. A few more joined the queue later, and though I was seated on the second row I think there were around 40-50 people there in total. Not bad, considering that I saw Reloaded at its first screening and there were 7 of us. Only 2 of the 50, however, waited until the end of the credits, despite the cleaning staff turning the lights on, completing cleaning, then turning them off again.

As for the film, I don’t want to review it, I shall simply say that it was excellent. My head is still spinning. Go see it, you’ll enjoy yourself

Do you know what day it is today? I bet you think you do, but you don’t…

It’s Matrix Revolutions day! I make no apologies for being excited about this Providing nothing spectacularly catastrophic happens to any of my clients I shall be in the first showing at UCI, which is at 2pm this afternoon. Woohoo. Please don’t suck. Please don’t suck.

I’m a bit exhausted so can’t write for long. Due to unforseen circumstances I stayed in York last night, so came back this morning. Traffic was light, thankfully. I had a good weekend, I’ll probably write something about it tomorrow. I note nobody’s had a go at last Thursday’s puzzle yet…here’s a hint: The longbow wood is also a word for a certain creature mentioned in saturday’s post. Speaking of which, I see I put ‘which saves on the cost of an audio cd’. What I in fact meant was an audio book / story cd. I used to buy a tape for each journey, but when I upgraded to a car with a cd player I found that the cost rocketed to about &pound17, so I now download them from audible.com and burn them to CD-RW. This works out a lot cheaper, although the quality isn’t quite so good. I’ve listened to 5 or 6 Michael Connelly novels this way, as well as 1984, a PD James novel the title of which I can’t remember, Goldfinger, X-Files: Ruins and a couple of others that I can’t remember atm. It’s a nice way of getting through books I probably wouldn’t read otherwise.

I was never overly happy with ‘dreamTunnel’. It seemed good at the time but was a bit corny when I woke up the next morning. Hopefully I’ll like this one tomorrow, if not I shall try to think of something better. Let me know what you think! All alternative suggestions will be considered

Good morning chicklets, how are we all today? Excellent. Even you at the back with the mutant foot growing out of your neck? Fantastic.

Dad got up this morning, just like any other morning, and went downstairs to get the breakfast ready. He opened the curtains, only to see that the road had been invaded by Sheeps! There were millions of them, flocking up and down the road like a pack of deranged toddlers, eating trees, shrubbery and unfortunate passers-by.

I may be exaggerating slightly.

There were 5 in the garden of the house opposite, happily munching away. Dad had to play shepherd (we suggested buying him a little bo-beep outfit for Christmas, but he didn’t seem that impressed) and eventually managed to herd them back into the field from which they had escaped. You know what we could have done with? A sheepdog. We have a dog. Unfortunately, said dog was so frightened of the fireworks last night she refused to go to bed. So she had to share the bed of the last person up, who naturally would be the one to discover this problem. This person was me. My bed is a single bed. There is little room. I did not sleep well. Therefore I will probably be grouchy today. I am about to embark on a journey to York. Fortunately I have sweeties. If I leave soon I’ll be able to listen to the Jonathan Ross show for most of the way, which saves on the cost of an audio cd, which is my normal way of making the time go by.

So, my children, despair not at the lack of updates for the next few days. I shall return, unless I die that is, and be with you once more. Have a fun weekend. Syanora.