The long overdue post about recent events.
I’ve now officially moved out of uni accomodation and into Fallingstar’s ‘rents house. First some introductions to the local wildlife:
Flossie (aka Floss, Foxy, Flossers)
Likes: Chasing anything that moves, crazy acrobatics, sitting on boxes
Dislikes: Having her tummy rubbed apparently – leading to the gummy hand-biting (She hasn’t got many teeth, poor thing=S)
Temperament: Mad as a Hatter
A cheeky wee scamp who gets into all sorts of trouble clambering over anything she thinks she can climb! Here she is having fun with the barbecue..
Georgina (aka Gigi, Georgie)
Likes: Any and all attention, sleeping on shoes and boxes
Dislikes: Lack of attention
Temperament: Usually very friendly but she has a tendancy to take a swipe at her brother Quentin when she feels like it=S
The lady of the house and a very demanding cat! Here she is sleeping in a basket outside the back door..
Quentin (aka Q, Tigger)
Likes: Sleeping and eating, sniffing the flowers, me apparently!
Dislikes: I don’t know, he’s a very friendly cat..
Temperament: Very peaceful, he gets a bit scared some times but he’s well loved in this house!
A handsome little prince who has sadly lost most of his eyesight. He still manages very well though and regularly tries to escape when we let him out in the garden. Here he is on one of his excursions (with me close by as his chaperone!)
All this talk of animals is making me homesick for Rocky. Obligatory photo moment..
All together now..”Awww!”
My new digs themselves are pretty cool. The fridge is well-stocked with those tempting alcoholic beverages, within easy reach of the Euro 2008 football..(Ha! Italy are out, fantastic!). The room Falling and I have is a loft conversion right at the top of the house. It’s quite secluded and gets good sunlight in the mornings..I’ve woken up to nature’s alarm clock quite a few times (No I mean the sunlight..not THAT!). The only downside is the two flights of stairs I seem to be running up and down quite a lot..phew!
Over the weekend we tried to cram all my crap into her already full room. It all fits, but I’ve had to catalogue* my games in decorative shoeboxes rather than having them on show (*Oh that reminds me of something else – see below..). We’ve discovered we have quite a few duplicate DVD’s – in fact it has only just occured to me that I could start watching Falling’s DVD’s rather than renting through the iTunes store like i’ve been doing…Oh and Falling has four shelves of DVD’s compared to my one, erk! But my seventy or so games makes up for it and that’s not counting the ones still in Scotland;-)
I’ve also been doing quite a bit of housework of late – I told Falling today I feel like a house-husband – but it is the least I can do to help her mum out for giving me a roof over my head – and I only seem to have an aversion to housework in my Scottish house..Oh and i’ve also been doing a bit of DIY – hanging some rather crooked pictures=S
o O (Yes if you haven’t realised by now, I use dashes (-) quite a lot..my terrible grammar!)
Anyway, back to what I was reminded of. While I was packing up all my games and DVD’s at uni I decided to have a look around the web for some software to catalogue them all. I’ve always had lists of all my games before and which saves were on which memory card but they always grew out of date and wandered off. So anyway I found this cool app: Delicious Library.
I had a feeling i’d heard of it before but I’d never tried it. I had some problems downloading – it happened to quite a few ppl apparently – running the application did nothing and there’s no error message.
I believe the problem is Delicious Library 2 only works under Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”. If you have “Tiger” like me, you need an earlier version, turns out I have 1.6). I couldn’t find a different version on the official site but I must have stumbled on this version from one of the sites I downloaded from. If you get the right file, you should get a mounted disk containing the executable that you just drag into your applications folder and voila! it’s installed -So easy on a Mac see;-)
So the app itself. It’s basically software that lets you catalogue your music, books, movies software, gadgets etc. It has a nice interface like a bookshelf (I’m not sure if it’s customizable) and the way you import items is really cool: You scan the barcode of your game/dvd etc using a webcam. So in the case of a Mac, the built-in iSight camera works fine. It can be a bit tricky because you have to hold the item a few inches away from the camera for clarity but 9 times out of 10 it works first time. Plus, when you buy the software you have the opportunity to buy a handheld barcode reader which I assume would be a lot closer to the ones they use in the shops.
The novelty of barcode scanning does wear off (especially if your scanning your entire collection like me!) so you can also import items manually by entering either the barcode, ASIN or title. It gets it’s info from Amazon so it usually finds things first time. Also, because it gets it’s info online, it knows if you’ve scanned a DVD and puts it in the right collection, regardless of whether you are on the books screen etc.
Out of all the items I scanned only about 5 had to be manually searched for on Amazon for the ASIN number. Strangely, scanning the Metal Gear Solid barcode gave some random car chase game, lol. Another cool feature is you can keep track of who has borrowed your stuff,lol, so you’ll never lose track of anything again.
The version I got costs $20 dollars and is for Mac only (sorry Windows users). Version 2.0 for “Leopard” costs $40.
Some screenies:
I’m listening to Coldplay’s Viva La Vida album at the moment, kindly offered for iTunes import by Falling’s dad. It’s quite good. In particular I like Life In Technicolour, Cemeteries of London, 42, Violet Hill, Viva La Vida and Strawberry Swing – okay most of the album! That said, it is not, in my humble opinion, the greatest album ever as many a media pundit has exclamed. That accolade is reserved for Ocean Colour Scene’s ‘Moseley Shoals’ with ‘The Best of The Stone Roses’ and Muse’s ‘Black Holes and Revelations’ a close second..oh and there’s Bloc Party’s ‘A Weeken
d In The City’ too!
I think Falling was right when she said Coldplay can be a bit pretentious. The album is good but the lyrics themselves are not exactly clever or as topical as say, Bloc Party. The album has raced to number one or something and I am enjoying it, but come this time next week I’ll probably be sick of it (Think of the fuss when Scissor Sisters’ ‘Laura’ was on the radio that day..and that day..and the next..and the next…you get the idea..geez I was gardening with my dad back then, how times have changed!).
I played my first wireless session of Pro Evo on the PSP last night! Falling’s sister’s boyfriend was my challenger and i’m ashamed to say he won the first match 6-1, erk! I redeemed myself with a convincing 3-1 victory before he had a 1-0 lead in the third match when my battery died=S It’s quite irritating that the PSP doesn’t seem to warn you when the battery is low..Oh and recently I got a retro EA collection or something and it includes one of my favourite teenages years games: Desert Strike. I still have the original at home – Mega Drive I think – but the PSP version is exactly the same. You control a helicopter, taking out SAM sites (Surface to Air Missile) and rescuing POWs (Prisoners of War) etc etc, its great.
Also on there is Jungle Strike, same idea basically but I haven’t really played. There’s a few others including Syndicate that I wanted to try but it seems to be a poor imitation of the Syndicate game i’ve played very briefly on PC, i’m thinking it’s an early version or a rubbish port (But it looks nothing like the PC game). Now Commandos on the PSP, that would be something..
Eh what else..ah I found some more cool Miniclip games the other week there: Canyon Defense, Final Fortress, Tennis Grand Slam, Baseball and Tropi Golf. The screenshots say it all and i’m too tired to write it up so here you go:
Canyon Defense
Final Fortress
Tennis Grand Slam
Baseball
Tropi Golf
Phew! I think that’s everything I wanted to cover. Oh the post title? It’s an obscure reference to that dream machine the iPhone. I’m harbouring secret desires for the new iPhone 3G due in July .. and I like that phrase “The Machines of Dreaming..” It came to me as I was bounding down the steps after seeing off Falling’s train to York. A bit of wordplay from Rambo? My seminar tutor would be pleased..
See you later space cowboy=)
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June 25th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
LOL at above.
Congrats on moving…you’re lucky to be surrounded by so many cats. :p All I have are the birds and fishes, neither of which will let me cuddle them. I want a snake, but T’s scared of them…¬_¬
Have you ever played Diner Dash? I rather sadly bought it yesterday…x.x
I still haven’t watched Cowboy Bebop, but, if it makes you feel better, I haven’t watched the Godfather either. Both are top of my list, I’m getting fed up of Jeremy Kyle in the afternoon.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I haven’t played Diner Dash, however i’m sure it got really good reviews in one of my magazines..at the time I was tempted – you must promise me a review!
No worries with CB, as I said it’s yours for as long as you want it – such a classic series will never go out of date;-)
Day time t.v. – oh the agony – i’m partial to property programmes myself, while Falling goes for cash in the attic/bargain hunt escapades..
July 5th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Hey Dan, I got tired of practicing 3ds Max because I got up to the ‘Interface’ chapter and it doesn’t really require much use of the program.
The book uses a strange order where you begin with animation BEFORE you learn the interface…I was quite proud of my baby mobile spinning around
And Jesus! Think you have enough animals? It’s nice to home them all and I thought I was crazy getting two cats for the following Tuesday.
AND [quote] So easy on a Mac see
[/quote]
Yeaaaaaah. The whole paragraph above that SOOOOOO didn’t make it sound hard
I love you Windows despite having to reformat you twice in one year…