Finally, after months of idle talk and creative web designer’s block. Sixty four days to be exact. In that time, I must have started at least twenty six individual designs, only to go back to the drawing board after spending a day working on each. Looks, like I am not alone. [andrewtegala dot net] is alive. Along with it my first work related blog hosted by those beautiful people at Blogger. This is by no means the final masterpiece. Eventually, the blog will be incorporated into the site, which will make for a seamless site integration. The future is bright!

While I have headed in one direction. JT of Diary of a Fast Food Life fame has gone in the other. On the suggestion of fellow bloggers, he has ditched his ‘work’ blog in favour of a personal blog, Notes About Life. Making sense of the madness. Or rather I bid you to try and make sense of his madness.

There are many blogs, which I visit on a much more irregular basis. Highlighted as being, always fresh, always chewy. Coming across as advertisement for a mixture of chewing gum and a local Subway. Originally finding the site, when searching for details on the then new MG TF sports car. Although the author does cover a variety of subjects I enjoy, dance music, funny videos (of the e-mail around the office mould) but also technical hints and tips. Something that would right up MightyMouse’s street. Anything that saves time appeals to me, so I was extremely pleased to see this time saving article. Highly motivated, I planned to make my own XP installation CD patched with the Service Pack 2. Looking at the Information Week article it appears quite complicated at first glance. However, when I got down to creating the disc on Monday afternoon, I was surprised at the simplicity and lack of expertise needed to create this time saver. Within an hour, I had a working CD, with Service Pack 2 installed. Finally, I can throw away my four year old original XP disc. Let me also explain that this is a great achievement for me. The scale of my projects may not up to the scale of our dear friend, MightyMouse.net. While he over clocks his PC by the Nth degree, I am quite happy to create the odd, “special” CD. Oh, how different lives we lead.

I love radio. No, I am not talking purely about commercial radio or for music radio in particular. I just love the idea of radio and wish I had been part of its more humble beginnings. Not sure exactly when, but I suddenly became hooked on talk radio, in the mid 1990s. It was not later in the decade, when I really began to realise the potential of this medium. But radio is now evolving. The future is Digital. The BBC are leading the way. For my birthday, yesterday (yes, you missed it!) my sisters got me a Pure Digital Pocket DAB 1000 device. The difference in quality from old fashioned FM frequency is amazing. I can only get a selection of stations in my room, but potentially, on the move I will be able to get at least 60! Wow! The best feature is the intelligent ability of the radio to store my favourite stations. This information is complied on the amount of time I spend listening to each one. I just can’t wait for digital radio in the car. There won’t be a need for CDs or MP3s. Not if you can just connect up a hard drive to the device and hit record.

Since the end of August, I have had a unique black box sitting, proud of place in my living room. Having taken over from a Phillips DVD player it has big shoes to fill. It is only now with the latest release of the XBox Media Centre software. With the assistance of Hussein on MSN I loaded on the new software on Monday night. For once in my short life, it actually loaded on first time. No problems. Although, I still need to edit the XML configuration file. (I will get around to it!) The new software is a major leap forward. In three short months, they have packed in more features and settings that you could ever wish for. Yet, they still are working on the software. Just think, how much progress they will have made in another three months time. One of the most outstanding features, is the ability to view movie trailers, directly from the main menu. Yep, no need to access menu, after menu. Click the link and you are directly at the fruit. As mentioned previously, I am a lousy gamer. Hussein had mentioned to me, soon after the mission do upgrade my console, that I would have the option to play games against users across the globe. I had heard of this major selling feature of the XBox, but was my friend referring to XBox Live?

No, to my relief he was not. He was talking about another option. Kai would allow me to play system link games (meant for LAN gaming, across 8 wired XBox consoles) on the net! I did not realise the huge potential of this. I had downloaded the small console needed to enable my XBox to ‘see’ the other users online and be fooled into thinking they were on my LAN. But never got around to playing it. Until now. Egged on my friend, I again downloaded the program onto my PC and added him as a contact. The one game I had been given with the console, was the adrenalin pumping, Project Gotham Racing II (now an XBox classic) Maybe it was time, I stopped, playing with myself! Surprised by the ease in which you can join and leave games. Plus the community is well established, with very friendly and helpful people on the end of the wire. You can chat during the game in the Arena chat rooms. After a few races, I was addicted. As hard it has been to keep my controller away from my hand, I have succumbed to the odd challenger most afternoons this week. Including the occasional few races against ‘sein! 😀 Comprehensively beaten on all accounts. All I need now, are some more games! 😀 Feed me! For the time being at least, feed yourself on some sweet sugar coated icebergs.