John Large ⁽¹²⁸⁾

Xbox Live - Stick to top-up cards Well its day 3 of the Not Spending experiment, and I am full of a cold (hence the lack of a post yesterday. The upside (if you can call it that) is that I would be unable to go out and spend even if I wanted to! So back to the No Spending experiment. I actually called Xbox Live yesterday to cancel my Gold Account. I tried to do this months ago as they where rebilling me automatically on a monthly basis to my credit card. The fact of the matter is, in…

A tough year without spending? Lets see! Well I feel inspired. After reading a few books & articles on the subject, not to mention podcasts, I have decided to spend 2009 without spending. I know it will be a tough year, but the groundwork is already in place. Coming from an academic background of first completing my degree and then my Masters, I have become familiar with frugal living. My salary for 18 months in between made me a lot of money which I wasn't used to, but alas we live to our means and spend it anyway. I can't figure out…

My Latest Books Well at last my three New Years purchases arrived. I ordered these around a week ago from Amazon to start the new year off right. Vicki & I have been talking for ages about consumerism and how we feel we have been sucked into the whole "I buy to feel happy" movement. What with the impending Financial meltdown, and the fact we are now home workers, it only seems right that we take the time to learn how to avoid consumerism. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a rant about capitalism, after all our economy is built…

iBook G4 - Still a damn nice machine! Well I managed to source an iBook 1.33Ghz 12" for the grand total of £0.00. Our friend Emma had been having trouble with the iBook rebooting and freezing, and the guys in the so called "Genius Bar" had suggested that the Logic Board was faulty and it would be a better idea to upgrade to a new Macbook. So she offered the faulty iBook to me to break up for parts. I received the iBook and after looking at the thing (it's pristine, a great size and too good to break up)…

Casio CMD-40 remote Control Watch I received the Casio CMD-40 watch for Christmas this year and the mischeif value is amazing! A quick cycle through the various manufacturer remote codes whilst at the pub or in the city allows me to wreak havoc with employees by systematically turning off every TV in the room. Also of great interest is the Learning mode on the watch which allows you to manually program buttons based on any infra-red signal. You click the button that is to be programmed and point the remote of the device which is being learned and press the…

I'm having a personal struggle with operating systems at the moment. I'm looking for a rock solid OS which offers the ease of use expected by my grandmother, but that isn't dumbed down so much that I can't do some real computing with it. Since the new PC build I have been using Vista, and whilst the introduction of DX10 and the improved update system is a welcome surprise on the windows front, I feel that that the OS is just to bulky, bloated and slow. The same machine (core 2 duo E6600 OC to 3.4ghz, 2GB ram, 500GB sata2…

Well the new PC build is finally complete, and what can I say, I'm very happy with the outcome. My old Athlon XP based machine was getting slightly haggard so I decided to go all out and build the ultimate machine. The specs breifly are as follows What can I say about that spec. I just had to overclock the processor and I have great stability at 3.2ghz with very cool core temps. I managed to hit 3.5ghz but I need a stable machine for work so scaled it back. The build all went well, aside from the PSU which…

Latest Picture of my Xbox setup. And a Macro of the xbox & Chip controller. I started Xbox hacking back in October 2004. I bought a Crystal Xbox for £100. I wanted to get an older model due to the more complex chipping procedure of the 1.6 motherboards in new machines but after aloof thought I decided to go with the new crystal machine. I then purchased a Xecuter 2.6 Mod chip from Kaneaction who offered a great service. The mod chip fitting itself was a nightmare. Took me almost 4 hours to make all the solder points and rebuild…