Category: Blog

Le Guen

So Rangers have finally confirmed that Paul le Guen is the new manager, only the twelth in their history. No big surprise except for the way it was announced – via their website and not with a big press conference. Hopefully Le Guen will use the war chest he’s been promised wisely – too many managers in the past have spent vast amounts of money for very little return – Flo anyone?

McLeish did a good job on very little money. Tuesday nights exit from the Champions League was typical of Scottish teams in Europe – so near but yet so far. Shame.

To finish on a moan – why does the official Rangers website only show the league up to 2nd place? Shocking that they can’t accept that Celtic are runaway league winners this year. Poor form.

The New Mini

It’s just over one year since I saw the Mac Mini in the flesh and I made the statement…if I had a plasma I would buy one without hesitation. Well I’ve got the LCD and a new version of the Mini has just been announced. The mouse has been hovering over the buy now button but I just can’t click it. Doubts have crept in.

The first one is the amount of duplication in gadgets – just what do I really need? The Mini would ideally replace XBMC and also allow so much more. At the same time I’m looking at the 360 which is more powerful than the Mini and the PS3 will be on the shelf in the next year – do I really need another box with similar specs to deliver slightly different functionality?

Second is cost. $799 does not equal £599. That’s £140 above the pound dollar conversion rate. A DVI cable from Apple is £60. Why don’t I bend over and take a humping at the same time. Thanks Apple.

So I will bide my time yet again, but hopefully for only another 3 or 4 months. By then I should know what the PS3 really will deliver and also just how good the small form factor pc’s from Intel will be like. Maybe I should just go with the laptop, scrap having a player at the TV and plug in the laptop when required. Anyone else have a good idea?

Sent Them Homeward

Scotland 18 – 12 England. What a match. At the end of the first half I had real doubts about the Scots. They had to defend most of the half and it was looking grim. Second half though saw the English tire badly and the Scots had most of the possession. Great performance, great defence but most importantly a great win and thoroughly deserved. Disappointed that we had the Scottish commentary team not because they were poor – would have loved to have heard what Jeremy Guscott had to say after that win.

Jill Douglas – At what point did you think you could beat England

Frank Hadden – Last week

Loved that quote – summed up the confidence that Scotland now have. Bring on the Irish.

Google Page Creator

Google Page Creator has just launched. You get 100Meg of space, a basic web page creator and a page manager to arrange your site. No mention of bandwidth restrictions either. Not a replacement for having your own web host but if you setting up a smallish site, say for a local group, it’s not too shabby especially as it’s free although you do need a GMail account (I’ve 100 invites just in case someone still doesn’t have one). Crashed once though while I knocked this up.

Rangers 2-2 Villarreal

Woo-hoo. A 2-2 draw is a pretty good result. Could we sneak an away win? Well – I can but hope. What was Prso doing though? Hard to criticise arguably our best player but to handle the ball in the box in the manner that he did in the first five minutes of such an important game…Alan Sugar’s quote in tonights Apprentice sums it up.

Anchor to wanker.

Curse of the Online Gamer

Stumbled upon a blog where the owner did a bit of stat taking. Not the normal number of kills, number of head shots. No – this was the number of times he heard someone cursing or being sexist/racist while playing Halo 2 (the worst game for this type of thing). Stats make for interesting reading and certainly ties up with what I hear on line. I wouldn’t be comfortable with juniors hearing some of this stuff. Bitch talking is not something I normally get involved in – Roy still holds the title for most abusive in a Halo session.

That’s where The Lickers kick in. It’s a league for folk that aren’t obsessed about being number 1 and where cheating and glitching isn’t tolerated. Certainly friendlier than random Live games although looking at the forums sometimes you wouldn’t think so. It’s also full of folk that are over 20 so you don’t feel like an old duffer when posting at the forums or playing online with them. If interested pop over to the forums and sign up.

XBMC How-To

A great guide has been created on ProductWiki – How to mod your Xbox and install XBMC. The media playing capabilities of XBMC have to be seen to be believed – I really struggle to think of a better media playing device (at this moment in time). Well worth doing if your thinking of buying some sort of media playing device that would sit near your TV. Further info can be found at the XBMC Homepage or on the forums at Xbox-Scene.