While googling about, I discovered the SambakZa animation series (mentioned in a previous post) has a dis-owned younger brother.  'Step 0' if you will, entitled 'Hot Fish - Same, but different'.  It disappeared from the set because rights to use the music could not be attained.  The Internet being what it is however... the prodigal son of this talented animator is out there in the world... somewhere... for us to find on the back streets and dark corners of the world wide web.  On some distant unknown server in deepest cyberspac... alright... it's not hard to find - just google 'HotFish - Same, but different' and you'll find it easily enough.

You can never have too many bunnies and kittens!
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Phil
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I'm gonna show off my little rig here - purely indulgent showing off but folks - this is why I don't have a place of my own and please wont somebody stop me spending any more money on this crap.  That said... though really not a huge amount of gear, it's looking very nice >:-)

The laptop was detailed late last year - it's a fairly powerful machine with a beefy graphics card - good for everything really and certainly no let down.  I highly recommend Acer's right now, especially the GemStones like this one.

After that an X-box 360 was bought.  I've put it on the shelf below - it's a noisy little thing to have beside the screen, but it's easy to get to down there.

The second screen you see is a HD 24" Widescreen monitor with a camera and intelligent mic array on the top.  The laptop has both those things too but the monitors mic's seem to be far more effective at cutting out noise.  We did a recording of a guitar hero session and to my amazement the mic's picked up the clicking sound of the guitar buttons and completely ignored the music blaring out of the screen because that's what it was pointing at.  It's got speakers built in the back and for now I'm using those.

With my Father's help I've installed a mount onto my desk, allowing my to suspend the 24"w monitor so I can move it, tilt it, and rotate it at will.  I intend to put a second screen (19" 4:3) beside it and the mount has been built with that in mind, but right now the laptops own screen provides a good enough amount of space.  It makes a lot of desk free and allows me to position it for movie watching in bed - I'm rather pleased with it.

When I first got the 24" screen, switching source from PC to Xbox was faffy.  The monitor didn't auto-select and in fact, you had to press the button at the bottom of the screen and cycle through the various inputs (which it went round very slowly) to get to the one you wanted.  I splashed out on a bit of extra kit to sort this out, and that little black blob that sits on top of the mount is the only visible part of it.  That's an IR receiver that lets me switch to the X-Box and back to the PC with a remote, though this isn't often needed because the box that sensor is linked to can auto-select the source to the last one turned on, and switches back to the previous active source when a device is switched off.  What's even better is that when it changes source, it actually physically disconnects the laptop from the screen, which means the laptop knows to reconfigure to single screen mode by itself.  Vista has even learnt to remember the resolution and layout settings, though sometimes you can confuse it if you try hard enough and it just sets both screens to be the same res.

A powered USB Hub makes a clean operation of taking the laptop out and plugging it all back in.  Before I got this little 8 port baby there were 4 or 5 USB plugs to slot into the side, all of which would have fallen down the back while I was out.  Now it's the HDMI cable, a single USB, and you're away.  It's all wireless so no drilling through walls for my Internet connection, and amazingly I've found my wifi to be extremely reliable.  People ask me what brands of wireless adaptors to by and honestly - though there are several factors that will affect your wireless signal strength and so on... I can't tell if there's a good brand or not.  Just seems random sometimes that the dongle will work consistently or not.

Well, that's enough showing off for one day.  While I'm blogging though - Caleb - this is just for you...

Evidence of GameStop in the UK:

The man in the foreground is Russ, a workmate, placing the scene in Stockport.  Also note the none-US style van to the left, the UK no-parking cones behind, and the very Northern English 'woman wearing a hideous 2 piece purple velvety suit'.

And here we notice an England flag to the right of the shot, and a union flag in the background to the left of it.  Again lots of UK-esc evidence including the overcast sky.

And that really is all for today folks,
Be good!
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Phil
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I finished a book this weekend. 

This is the 4th book I've ever read fully from cover to cover.  The first being 'Spot Goes to the Park' - a timeless classic.  The second was 'Vulcan's Forge', a Star Trek novel about Spock and that group.  The third came from Caleb who put this in my hands on a barge holiday - 'On Basilisk Station', which I think is the best book I've read to date, but at the same time don't think it would do it for everyone - it gives a lot of detail about method and statistics when it's making up it's action - some like that, some really don't.
Now though, I've completed the fourth book:  'JPod' by Douglas Coupland. 

Carlos put this one in my hands.  It tells the story of Ethan, and his oddball friends and family.  Ethan is one of a several games developers who share a small working area called the 'JPod', which acts as the central base from which we view the bizarre and quirky events that surround Ethan's life.  The book invites you well into the random conversations, everyday thoughts, and familiar identifiable perspectives of the people in JPod - how they work, how they play, and how they handle things that come into and out of their lives.  Add to this a crazy Eastern mob boss, a high flying estate agent brother, drug dealers, users, a trip to Industrial China, a power-lesbian, and Douglas Coupland himself.... and you've basically got the novel. 
It's not a bad read - well written enough and amusing in the right places, but it could have been up a notch or two of funny, and I'm left a little.... unsatisfied by the experience if I'm honest.  Actually - you know what - the first half of it is pretty damn good.  The novelty of what you're looking in on, the personalities of the characters, the ridiculousness of Ethan's family - it's all fun and interesting.  When Ethan's back from China... yeah - you can pretty much stop reading any time after that - maybe skip through to pick up the answers to the few question-marks at this stage and you'll be fine. 
To be fair - I read this book in a disjointed fashion.  Big chunk in Budapest, big chunk in Mansfield, bits in Rochdale, and a big chunk in Newcastle - all spread out over a few weeks when really, it probably takes less than a week to read if you put an hour or two in a night.  Perhaps in a tighter time scale, it would have been fresh the whole way through.
That said... the ending, however well explained as being 'off-beat'... felt a bit... meh.  Though that's appropriate... and clever... it's not quite clever enough to turn it round for me.  I dunno - I'm still waiting for the point of it.  This book is more... part of a TV sitcom series than a movie style story line - but that's not to say it was bad, I just think it could have been a bit more, well, just more in some places.

Anyway.  Four books!  Go me!
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Phil
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I know a few of you have been waiting for this, and you'll be pleased to know that my friend Josh has been diligently sitting there 24-7 pressing F5 on his browser so that we would know of it as soon as possible.  Years go by, but finally, here it is...

There She Is: Step 3 (http://www.sambakza.net/peom/dokinnabi.htm)

If you missed out on 1 & 2 and have no idea what I'm talking about - shame on you.  Check all the SamBakZa vids on http://sambakza.net/amalloc/amalloc_frameset.htm

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Phil
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