Supersword.com

Urgh. Why does it take so long to sync my iPhone? Well come to thnk about it, it’s always been slow when syncing iPods as well.

I dont have an extremely large iTunes library, mainly because I have slowly found myself to despise everything that is iTunes. I only use iTunes to sync my phone’s iPod and applications. I have to manage iTunes because I only have a 16GB phone and have more music than that. I am a happy user of Winamp for several reasons, the main one being the fact that it takes no time at all to load up. It’s also very good at organising all my library and while iTunes does edit ID3 tags as well, Winamp does it just as well.

I wish there was a faster method of updating this phone. I mean, I can drag and drop those files onto an external hard drive quicker.

I don’t know if anybody has been following the news on what’s going on with Windows 7, but us Europeans are kinda getting bent over backwards. We have no upgrade option for W7 which means that we can only buy the full version of Windows 7, the version blessed with a trailing E.

Today, copies of Windows 7 have been made available for pre-order. I want to use the Professional version, seeing as there is no real value in me using Ultimate or Home.

It’s currently priced up at £89.97, 59% cheaper than it will be in a few weeks when the discounts are removed. Urgh. I guess I will buy it, reluctantly.

Edit: Missed my chance. Amazon now sell it for £159. Will have to find someone with TechNet subscription.

I hate finance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ready to become a naturist, live out in the jungle and spend my life eating coconuts because I hate the thought of money, but I hate the way we deal with it. Everytime I consider buying something online, I always make sure I look for it on “trusted” websites and use “trusted” methods like Amazon and PayPal. You slowly learn the ropes of safe practice when dealing with money the longer you have it and any responsible person has a rough idea of where all there money goes. Anbody in accounting probably knwos where things are going down the the penny.

Most have you have probably heard of and used PayPal. PayPal is an online payment service which allows you to send and receive money. It’s basically a glorified direct debit system. Now I have had my account hooked up to PayPal ever since I got it, when I got my job. I have always used it when possible because I know it’s a relativly safe system for buying things online, especially if you arn’t buying from the most well known site on the net. No, not everything can be found on Amazon, eBay or Play.com.

My current old bank account never had an overdraft facility on it. Why? Most people do? Well, it didn’t exist because you have to be 18 to get credit. Seeing as I got my job when I was 16, I was clearly not old enough to get an overdraft. Did I know about it? Yeah, but the bank never told me about an Overdraft. I knew about it from another place. So 2 years go by, money goes in and out and we’re doing pretty well. I saved up alot of money in that account for my car and insurance, being responsible with my money. Yeah. I’m good like that. hehe.

A few weeks ago, I have seen an avdert for a student credit card. I’ve read so many bad things about credit cards, but I have also heard abotu how you can build a fairly good credit score with credit cards, assuming you pay off the balance in time. That appealed to me because I could see value in it. I know about getting in debt and how to manage money. I don’t have shopping sprees and I wouldn’t overspend. I’ve spent the last 2 years spending the money I had, not the money I didn’t. So I apply for the student account required by Lloyds TSB (who have actually been really good) and even though I didn’t get the credit card, I had a decent account with them which had more benefits than Abbey/Santander at no extra cost. Awesome.

I move all my money over to the new Lloyds account, minus about £5. I have a direct debit set for that account so I didn’t want them to bounce before I got a chance to change them to the new account. A week goes by and I have no problems, except I forget to take my new card to work. So I pay for my lunch on my old card. Unfortunatly this takes me 13 pence into the red. I was actually under the impression that if you didn’t have an overdraft on your account or you didnt have funds available, your transaction would be blocked. This wasn’t the case. This put me £5 into debt because of the charge going into the minus and another £25 for using an overdraft that I didn’t have. Crap. I manage to get this payment reversed by going into the bank and complaining, but they gobbed me off, told me that it’s usual practice and refunded me the £25 charge, the highest one.

Now this is where it becomes my fault I guess. Even tho I hadn’t had a statement for the previous month, a new month had rolled around and I make a PayPal transfer for $20. This takes me £7 into the red resulting in a £35 penalty for the transaction and £25 or the instant overdraft, again. This is absolutly pathetic. I pay £30 for going 13p over and £60 for going £7 over. That’s hardly proportionate to the amount I went over and in no way fair. I’m browsing the web trying to find legal advice and so far I’ve found an interesting article.

Urgh. I hate this. Abbey, you SUCK! Either way, all my subscriptions have been cancelled because of the mess up by the bank.

It’s defiantly been a long time since I posted here. I think it’s time we make a change to that, don’t you?

Where do I start? I haven’t posted in about 8 months, 2 of which would have given you a blank directory should you have chosen to come to Supersword.com in search of the latest news from me.

Realistically, those 8 months have been the most stressful I have experienced. I remember posting about leaving school about 2 years ago and thinking about having to go through the next 2 years at college. I don’t think anything quite prepared me for how quickly things change when you go into higher education. Maybe it’s because I finished college in June instead of July this year, but the second year seemed to fly by so quick. I had so much work to do and so little time for personal things. Sorry foyleman. I had no intention of just disappearing off the face of the Earth while we were working together.

So what’s next? Well, I have a place in University, but I don’t know whether I should take a year out or not. I really want to just do my own thing for a year. I was thinking about working full time for 6 months and spending the rest of my time travelling. I just need someone else who would want to do the same thing.

Speaking of earlier posts, I made a list of things I wanted to do. I can say that I have successfully seeped, slept, worked and got my driving license. I passed first time and now own a Peugeot 106. It’s a nice little car but I definatly want something bigger next year. Unfortunately, being a young driver in the UK means you get raped financially. My insurance alone cost me around £2000 which is an unreal amount of money to spend on insurance. My car isn’t even worth that. Argh. Either way, I am loving the freedom of being able to drive and I have done about 3000 miles in it since March.

The furthest I have driven was to Birmingham which was possibly one of the worth experiences I have had while driving. The drive there was fine, no issues whatsoever, but coming back. That was horrible. It was absolutely pissing it down with rain when I was coming back and my wipers couldn’t even keep up with the rain hitting the glass. My satnav went apeshit because one of the slip roads into the M6 was closed and I was trying to follow diversions, competing with out of sync traffic lights which were basically sending traffic into us as out lights went green. It’s hard to explain, but that wasn’t fun. We got about 10 miles from home, only to find out the junctions we needed to pass were closed, so more diversions. I got home at about 2.30, half deaf (we went to see Brand New) and just went to sleep.

So there we have it. I am back, fully functional and ready to.. well… relax. I have lots of time off

… or not.

Wow. It’s been over 2 months since I have published an article here. I have honestly had nothing good to write and as much as I thought about it, I just couldn’t come up with anything worth talk about. Well… now I have stuff. So there. Read….

Firstly, I wish I had sold my 360 when I was getting bored with it and be done with the thing. But no. I had to keep it for a few months, then suddenly plug it in again and spend cose to $200 on games in the last month or two. To name a few, I have bought Fable 2 (360), Gears of War 2 (360), Mirrors Edge (360), Call of Duty: World at War (PC). I still have L4D and Fallout 3 to go so I am so screwed when I get my bank statement and remember I am supposed to be saving for a car. If anyone wants to add me on Xbox Live, my Gametag is SuperswordUK.

I have signed my own death warrant by signing up for the Gym. I want to do something active and considered a few options. One was Power kiting. It looks so great, being able to jump 5 or so metres in the air with a kite in little wind, but it’s 1) Expensive for good equipment, 2) Only really suitable for big (whatever you are thinking of, it’s not big enough, think bigger) and probably something else. Anyway, I’m in for 3 months so if he you see me complaining about my aching body, blame Dr Pepper. lol.

Putting beds together is stupidly stupid. Stupid stupid heads that came up with the pidgeon english guide. “MAKE CAREFUL WHEN INTERSECTING PLATIC COVER INTO WOOD SLAT END”. Urrgh.

I have about 10 or so more lessons to go before I think I will be ready to take ym driving test. Jenkes has been trying to find some cars he thinks I might like. Knowing him, I should expect “Oh Super, here is a rocket you might be interested in sticking on your new ride” in an email a couple of days after I buy the car.

Youtube Live was a bit weird. There was no atomosphere. Check it out if you have time, there were some good bits and pieces in the show but there definatly needed to be more people there. I don’t know if it was invite only for the crowd, I think it was.

Stop.
Sign off.
Sleep.

Asus have really let me down recently. Now I have read alot of mixed reviews about them, about how poor their service is etc. Now apart from their crappy website (nothing is more fun than downloading at around 1kbp/s and having is pause every 5 seconds), their hardware has been nothing but rock solid (no intentional connection to their tag line).

So Saturday rolls around and I need to get XP back onto my machine, which goes off without a hitch. Now it’s time to install the drivers. D’oh. I couldn’t find the disc so I do what almost anyone would do, check the Asus website for the drivers. Guess what, they don’t support my hardware and XP anymore. WHAT? Vista only? What a bunch of arse’s.

Luckily, I found my disc, but that isn’t the point. I searched high and low for the drivers elsewhere and came up with nothing. I don’t really like downlaoding third party tools which “can find your drivers is 0.25656281564ms at a low low cost of £5, followed by an insallment of £7.98 and then an installment of £989034534″. It was hard to find the right software and, had I not found the driver CD, I was screwed.

Any how, I have uploaded the drivers for anyone that wants them. I had problems finding them, other people shouldn’t. (Note: These files are taken right off the CD and are considered to be VIRUS FREE, with that in mind, if something goes wrong, I am not responsible. I am not including any other software).

AMD
Audio
Chipset
LAN
Linux Drivers
VGA

There’s also a page for these drivers, just check the menu of this blog.

Honestly. I am begining to think that this blog is becoming my outlet for my rants. Awesome!

I hate it when you expect someting to go smoothly, especially when it comes to spending money, and it just doesn’t happen. What makes it even worse is when you contact the all high and mighty customer service team, only to find they don’t give a crap and don’t email you back. What am I talking about? I’m talking about shipping a parcel. Argh.

I recently sold an item on ebay which meant that I needed to use a courier. It’s too big for standard post and needed insurance. No way was I going to ship this without some cover for loss or theft.

So there I was. Happily entering the details into the website, getting a quote on how much everything is going to cost. Then, it;s time to pay. Nothing weird right? I do this all the time. I know my number pretty much off by heart, but like always, I check it to be sure. It’s tme to press the button, and hey presto, the werbsite crashes. At this point, I am slightly concerned because I wasn’t up for sending the info across again and being charged twice. That would suck, right? I sit around for a few moments, and ding, Thunderbird tells me I have an email from WorldPay.

Phew… everything went through. I email CS anyway and let them know what has happened, asking simply if they can confirm everyting for me. Low and behold, they don’t contact me which leaves me wondering, whats going to happen. So Monday rolls around, I have 2 hours left before the parcel should be picked up and I think aboput calling the company up. Just for peace of mind, right? So I call them up and get some woman on the other end who isnt too fussed (probably because I don’t have an account with them) and happily tells me that my order hasnt gone through, my payment however, has. Awesome!

Here I am with £500 worth of equipment waiting to be shipped to the buyer and all I can think about it, there goes my money. See, PayPal have frozen my money until I get positive feedback or no complaints within the next 21 days. Grrr. I get my refund (which wont actually happen for another 3 days) and think about using someone else. The problem is, the only other company charges through the teeth for delivery. They are, however, very good. Anyway… I call up and get the item rebooked. I’m charged another 40 quid and all is happy in the world. Not.

It pisses me off that every other domestic and business courier can get their shit right, but when it comes to the partners of the “Royal Mail”, I get screwed. Not only am I £40 down, I now have to wait around until 5.30pm instead of 3. Not a happy customer. The fact that I wasn’t ofered atleast a fraction of a discount also reinforces that fact that they are tight fisted gits.

More sunshine and lollypops on Supersword.com soon. Now where the hell did I put my noose….

Anyway. Guess what. I have finished the first year of College. It seems like only a month ago I was writing about finishing school and complaining about the fact that I still have another two years of stuff to go through. I guess time flies when you’re having fun rushing to get get the work done. The upside is that I now have time to do some of my own stuff until this September when the last year starts:

Atleast it’s a huge weight off my shoulders for a while. Anyway, I have started playing Age of Conan. Thanks for the idea foyleman, I am addicted to this game. I am really ejoying it at the moment. Saying that, I did feel the same with other MMO’s and then they just sucked all of a sudden. Anyway, I’m liking it. Theres a really helpful lot in the New Player Chat channel and the gameplay is very nice. I’m playing as a Barbarian (I keep hearing it’s overplayed.. I guess I better be good at it then. lol) so I am slashing up people. It’s pretty gory for a game like this and I like it.

As for what I am working on in terms of projects, well I started a config builder for Call of Duty 4. I was helping a guy out of the MODSonline forum and he commented that there is no config builder for COD4 year. Ok ok, I know what you are saying. “Builders are lame, everyone makes them” and to that I say, touché. There are alot of builders but I wanted to do it so there.

The problem I have is that designing the thing is tricky. It’s a choice between having a menu which opens sub-forms that contain the detailed options or having everything cluttered but on the same page. Welshy has helped me quite a but with coding tips and we discussed the possibility of having a tickbox/button that toggles the form between Basic and Advanced. Thanks Welshy. Have a Cadburys Cream Egg on me.

That’s all I got for now. Muffin crumbs.