FoxBoom!

Speaking of Sunshine, I think I found the cinema where I saw it.

I just found the “Sunshine” homepage. Fucking hell, that was a good movie. The world doesn’t need more sci-fi– it needs more sci-fi like that.

Sunshine is also the first movie I’ve decided to wait for the HD-DVD release for, rather than just get the DVD now and buy it again later.

I know it’ll be worth the wait.

Becky’s guide to corvids just made my coffee come out of my nose.

I said…

I’m about 12 months into an 18-month contract with O2. When the iPhone is released, will I be able to purchase the handset and transfer the remainder of my contract to it?

They said…

We’re really excited about the iPhone - for the most up to date information we recommend you visit our website www.o2.co.uk/iphone or www.apple.com/ukstore

That’s an awesome response, thank you.

Here goes my first post via Mars Edit. Here it goes!

Isca Outdoor “is a friendly, Exeter-based company offering a wide range of adventure activities for groups of all ages and abilities.” They also sell some pretty cool outdoor kit. Man, I know where I’ll be shopping next time I go camping!

Well, yeah, I do work with a slightly mad close associate of the owner, but hey! Don’t think of it as free advertising! Think of it as personal guarantee that Isca Outdoor is probably fucking awesome.

And speaking of the great outdoors, I’m gonna start planning my Big Weekend Getaway to Newbarn Farm pretty soon.

And: oh man! Battlestar Galactica episode “Maelstrom” is just finishing now. Cry!

For one reason or another, I ended up at home during the announcement that the iPhone will be released in the UK next month.

I was relatively excited. I mean, I could imagine North Americans living without MMS, but that’d never happen over here in Europe. There’s was bound to be some kind of announcement on a software update to enable picture messaging… surely?

Nah.

Bugger.

I’ve already been embarrassed this week by not being able to make video calls on my phone. As nice as the iPhone is, I can’t take another step back and go without picture messaging.

And I was looking forward to it so much, too… *le sigh*.

I got a warning e-mail today that my bandwidth here is about to be maxed out. I just had a look through the logs to see where it had all gone, and it’s almost all down to the party video, though a huge chunk of that is from a North American audience, which I didn’t think I had. Who are you guys?

I also had a quick peek at some of the search engine referral phrases, and here’s a cut of my favourite:

• body magic porno
• canon cp510 won’t work with my mac
• csi atlantis
• use reiserfs or i will fucking kill you
• westward bound plymouth
• if i could travel in time sometime i’d travel to the end of all of mankind and there i’d find a brother of mine we’d travel through space
• red headed step child
• doctor who flying car
• lyrics i m so excited and delighted today because you decided to be in my life
• equal rights for robots
• bondage shopping
• nerv logo

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? ["Caring for your Introvert", Jonathan Rauch.]

If you haven’t subscribed to the lifehacks.org RSS feed, go for it right now. Just forget for the moment that “hacking” into “life” sounds a little geeky and go take a look.

I’ve been catching up with the articles tonight, and “Overcoming Jealousy” was just too deliciously apt. Or:

“Jealousy, like many negative emotions, is a waste of your time and you should keep your involvement with it to a minimum.” ["How To Overcome Jealousy", lifehacks.org]

Elsewhere on the site are guides to being happy in work and developing your writing style. Go for it!

And, oh man! I was, like, so intellectual this morning. I read a book… in a coffee shop. Awesome! The book was “The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten, and 99 Other Thought Experiments”, and the coffee was a large Americano with cold milk. The book is good, and the coffee was awesome. I mean, until the amazing amounts of caffeine kicked in and I started hallucinating and I went home much earlier than I’d planned. I mean — AWESOME!

And Jacel showed me “How Is Babby Formed?”.

Is there anything that didn’t happen today? OH YEAH I KNOW.

Party at SpiritRaptor’s on 26/08/2007, with entertainment provided by Spirit, DJ Swolf and Red Fox GT.

If you were there and you want a better copy, drop me a line and come over here with a CDR or flash drive or something.

So, I was out shopping this morning, and I noticed Virgin had a special offer bundle on the Xbox 360 Elite and Bioshock. When I got home, I mentioned the offer to Spirit and he asked me why I didn’t buy one.

I had no good answer. I went back and bought one.

Now, this Xbox is only my second plug-into-TV console, the first being an Amiga CD32. Beyond that, I’ve only ever owned a GBA, GBA SP, DS and a PSP (which I traded in for the DS, due to being pants). Bear all of this in mind when you imagine my brain trying to comprehend how FUCKING GOOD Bioshock looks in 40″ of HD.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t help the fact that I suck pretty badly at FPSes.

But heck, after having an afternoon to play around with the thing, I think it’s going to be almost permanently used to host my DVD collection. I’m in the process of ripping my library to H.264, which will be dumped onto a USB hard disk and played back from the 360. I’ve just tried it with a video I put together of last weekend’s party, and it looks stunning. I reviewed the footage last weekend on my Mac via the TV, but it wasn’t running at native 1080i resolution; it looked good, but not great. The 360 runs at real 1080i, and the difference is incredible. The first ripped DVD test will occur in about an hour, when Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope is done. That’s assuming my MacBook Pro hasn’t burned through my jeans and cut my legs off before then.

But hey, my Xbox Live gamertag is “Howl the Fox”. See you out there!

UPDATE: As of the end of November, my XBox LIVE Gamertag has changed to “FoxBoom”.