Can You Wrap It Up For Me?

Ebay being the place where you can buy and for that matter sell anything have a couple a auctions going that might be of interest for the football fans amongst you.

Lot 1 - Jamie Redknapp's Range Rover Vogue 4.4

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=29748&item=2487468461&rd=1

Current Highest Bid: £37,350

Lot 2 - RYAN GIGGS MERCEDES C32 AMG FFSH 53K 2001 51 NO

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=9855&item=2487379057&rd=1

Current Highest Bid: £23,850

Finally also on Ebay, if you are looking to move house and don't want to bother with estate agents feel free to put in a bid in this auction.

Lot 3 - Large 3-Bed Detached 145' Rear Garden Swimming Pool in the much sought after area of Witney Oxfordsire.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1607&item=4319298969&rd=1

Current Highest Bid: £300,000

Long live Ebay.

Gaming Top Tens

Anyone with an interest in computing or for that matter gaming will at some point come with a list of their top ten games (I'll probably do mine one day), now consider every aspect of gaming and then compile a top ten for it, that is exactly what Gamespy have been doing.

You can find the list of available top tens here:-
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/?constraint.grid.section=Top+10

Okay I know you want to go and read the top tens for yourself, alright I'll wait until you get back and then I'll finish up here.......

Good you're back, now where was I?

Out of the top tens, Lara Croft is unsurprising the No.1 gaming babe, it is hard to imagine the Tomb Raider series without Ms Croft but the original lead character was going to be male (Indiana Jones anyone?) and some might argue that the Sega Dreamcast did 'make it' and doesn't warrant an entry in a top ten of consoles that never made it.

Holes found in Windows XP update

Within a few hours of home users starting to secure their PCs with Windows XP Service Pack 2 (so they thought), security experts have found ways around it, in other words the Service Pack is not safe.

Amusingly Microsoft have already started to release patches for the Service Pack.

It is a case of closing the gate after the horse has bolted, now I am sure the multi-million (or should that be billion dollar?) corporation that is Microsoft can afford to pay for some significant testing and research, why don't they get one of these security firms on board to test the software for loopholes before releasing it to the general public, rather than releasing it and then in days and weeks that follow have security firms tell the world how the flaws in the software can compromise system security, it comes across as Microsoft don't care.

If there were a significant number of rival operating systems creating competition for Microsoft I'm sure the updates wouldn't come across as being unfinished, but therein the problem lies there is no real competition for now.

A word of advice turn Windows Automatic Updates off, do not install the Service Pack at the moment. Wait until it is a bit more reliable....

It could be a long wait though.

More here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3583860.stm

The More It Fixes, The More It Breaks..

After what can only be called a long wait, Microsoft has finally released it's Windows XP Service Pack 2 to business users. Now before you get excited, reports have circulated about programs behaving differently once the upgrade is in place and some programs have stopped working completely.

Microsoft have issued two knowledge base articles relating to this development (or should that non-development?):-

Programs that may behave differently in Windows XP Service Pack 2

Some programs seem to stop working after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2

One issue that becomes apparent from the articles is that the update seems to interfere with the workings of some antivirus and firewall software and there was I thinking that the update was supposed to improve system security.

Oh well back to the drawing board, maybe Service Pack 3 will fix Service Pack 2.

Higher..Faster..Stronger

So the 28th Olympic Games are officially underway (the Olympic Football competition started on Wednesday) and with over 200 countries (some of which I've neither heard of or know where they are geographically) there's going to be a lot of national anthems to try and identify as the games progress.

Hopefully these games will pass by with little or no drug related stories, but that may be too much to hope for.

Anyway, roll on the next 16 days.

Angry Alien Productions Presents....

Films In 30 Seconds With Acting Bunnies!

http://www.angryalien.com/

If you don't have the time to sit through a film let Angry Alien Productions help you as they condense a film down into 30 seconds (cutting out all the non important bits) and make it all cartoony and stuff.

The cartoons are animated using Macromedia Flash and so far the '30-Second Bunnies Theatre Troupe' have performed in the following productions:- The Exorcist, The Shining, Titanic and Alien and there will be more to come.

See for yourself why The Exorcist bunnies won a silver public prize for Best Short Film at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.

It's all tremendous fun, shame there are only 4 films at the moment.

We want more dammit!

Maths Test

Okay in an effort to make this blog educational we are going to do a spot of algebra. Ready?

First let me give you the variables:-
es = escalating music, u = the unknown, cs = chase scenes, t = sense of being trapped, s = shock, tl = true life, f = fantasy, a = character is alone, dr = in the dark, fs = film setting, n = number of people, sin = blood and guts and 1 = stereotypes.

Now here's the formula:-
(es+u+cs+t) squared +s+ (tl+f)/2 + (a+dr+fs)/n + sin x - 1

I'll give you a few minutes to work out the answer.....

Give in?

The answer is of course Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

WHAT! I hear you cry. Well the secret of making a scary movie has been calculated by university experts (who else?) and apparently you can find that out by using that formula. An easier way would probably have been to see which film made the most money at the box office (no formula needed).

Now where's that get rich quick formula.....

More here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3537938.stm