I’m going to put music making, game making and web site developing aside here and write about something else today.
I’ve been looking forward to the olympic games this year, I am not an huge fan or anything – I just enjoy the competitive atmosphere and want to watch it for an hour or so every evening.
I have a Samsung PS42S5H plasma TV that I bought 28th July 2005. During the olympic ceremony, the TV goes KLICK and red pixels spread across the TV = properly broken. In sweden we are covered by law against manufacturer faults that occur within 3 years of purchasing hardware, such as a TV, despite the fact you may only have a one year manufacturer warranty. It was 3 years and a week or so when my TV broke, just my luck =) But it turns out as the first TV that got delivered to me in 2005 it was defect on delivery, so I had it replaced… so with some hope I will still get it repaird/replaced for free, fingers crossed… This, however, does not help me watch the olymic games as getting the TV repaired/replaced will take a month or more.
The solution? I’ll use my 24″ BenQ G2400W monitor with HDMI input until I get the TV replaced (or buy a new one)… My digital box from CanalDigital is only analogue outputs so I figure this is a great time to order their HD-package with the new recordable digital box that allows you to pause live broadcasts and record anything to the harddisk… Great. I place the order and 5 days after – still no delivery. I call CanalDigital and ask them where my new HD-box is and they say – hey, there’s something wrong with your account so we switched your channels off a few days ago, didn’t you notice? I say NO I haven’t as my TV is broken, what about my HD-box order, where is it? Turns out there was an error in the billig system and the order could not be placed, so they fixed the issue with the billing and placed a new order for the HD-box and switched my channels back on that I still couldn’t watch…
Yesterday (2 weeks into the olympic games) my new High Definition digital box arrives I plug it into my BenQ screen and watch the olympics in 720p for a good hour before I go to bed… a happy bunny. Today, I come home to watch a few more summaries after work and there is an error code blinking on the HD-box. I couldn’t resolve the issue myself and no metion of the error code in the manual so I call CanalDigital and explain the issue… Turns out the damn HD-box is trying to install a software update it downloaded from the satellite. The version downloaded is the SAME as the one already installed in the box… You would think this would not be any sort of a problem, but oh yes, it is a problem… So big that it can’t be fixed apparently and they have to send me a NEW box with a delivery time of 5 working days. It’s a weekend coming up now so it looks like I’ll have the box maybe wednesday next week. By then the olympic games are over.
Oh – the joy of technology. I’m sure the next box I receive and the TV will get repaired, just in time to break for the next olympic games.
=) I like to complain sometimes, is that apparent?
I am currently having a break this summer so not to worry. It is obviously still possible to purchase music and games (the games and mp3-albums are automated and there may be a week delay on the real albums if I am traveling at the time of order). I wish you all the best of summers and maybe if it rains a lot I’ll make a new track
Been preoccupied with work related stuff and a total remake of our racing site (www.nordicracing.net) the past week so not much Imphenzia related stuff to report yet.
The Nordic Racing site was created using Joomla 1.5.x – a great and free framework for creating websites with front- and back end. For anyone into wishing to develop a website quickly, I suggest having a look at this (www.joomla.org). The Nordic Racing site are using some really nifty (and also free) plugins, namely;
Expose Flash Gallery – have a look at the Gallery section of the site, it features this Flash-gallery and it does an amazing job at easily allowing you to create albums, upload images that is automatically resized to desired sizes and adds a copyright text if you wish. The gallery is really smooth with fades and it allows you to play a slideshow as well. The backend is easy to use and batch uploading and renaming images is a doddle.
Easy Guestbook – have a look at the simple Guestbook section – it features a simple guestbook with protection against spamming using captcha functionality.
YvComment - simple comment component allowing visitors to post comments to articles etc.
The rest of the contents on the Nordic Racing site is pretty much all included in Joomla. There are also plenty of templates to download and modify to save a tremendeous amount of time. Some people will object to using Joomla calling it “cheating” – but the way I see it – why reinvent the wheel if your main goal is to publish content?
I will, however, still develop the Imphenzia sites totally with my own code for a couple of reasons. First of all, Imphenzia sites feature more custom features than ready made components (e.g. registration, internet highscores, specific music features and purchase options etc.) and secondly because Imphenzia is my true passion and it deserves the attention to customize a site making it unique on the Internet =)
Finally, the title of this post is “Imphenzia on the web” – and it is because I oddly enough found a strange Youtube video with something I don’t quite undestand… A Pokemon Wi-Fi battle? Maybe someone can explain to me what this is all about? I found it by Youtubing “Imphenzia” and it features my remix “The Fallen”.
Yesterday it was thursday and I was stuck doing some work but also racing the ‘thursday race’ in LFS as planned. I qualified 10th on the grid on A-division and had a good race until lap 12 when I flipped onto my roof and out of bounds in the chicane. My team mates in Nordic Racing Group (NRG) did alright although Nicke had a potential podium finish in 3rd place when he ran out of petrol in the last corner to finish 5th instead – what a shame.
Tonight I’ve been out in Stockholm for a few pints. We started off in the “Bull and Bear” pub and then I can’t quite remember where we went, but it was a good night and I had quite a laugh with my mates.
Hopefully this weekend will allow me to work more on muisc, games and the new websites.
Today has not been very Imphenzia-oriented due to other commitments. Been to work and the gym and practiced for the Live For Speed race on thursday (it’s a new ‘Thursday Race’ season starting this week). I race for ‘Nordic Racing Group’ that is proudly sponsored by Imphenzia Now, however, I am creating a few copies of Illusion due to some recent orders so I’ll ship them tomorrow. I see it’s already past 1am as well, hopefully I’ll get more time for Imphenzia tomorrow.
