Halleynet Headspace

Archive for the ‘Funstuff’ Category

The save Gillies Hill walk will take place on 22nd june 2008, starting at 14:00 in Cambusbarron Park. The Save Gillies Hill campaign has been running for over a year now, following the notice given by the operators of Murrayshall Quarry, that they intended to expand operations in accordance with a licence granted many years ago.

The Gillies Hill area is deemed to have both historical and environmental importance, being that it hosts a large range of flora and fauna on a rocky outcrop overlooking the village of Cambusbarron. Following the march last year, the expansion of quarrying did not take place but there is nothing really to stop it doing so and in so doing destroying what has become a hugely popular wild area for walking, biking, and wildlife watching.

We support the campaign to save the hill and hope you will too. You can learn a bit more about the campaign at the save Gillies Hill website.

I usually like a bit background noise on when I am at work, but then when I am stuck at the screen doing web development I tend to find listening to my own music is a bit distracting. A friend  (Dave of Kushikarate fame) told me about an online rock station, Totalrock.com. I have been tuned in all afternoon, and its been like a breath of fresh air!

Even got two requests played (Atreyu and Breaking Benjamin) – that has to be a first (and a second for me!). Thanks so much guyz,  you rock! and you’ve earned a new listener- You can tune in by clicking the banner on the right of the blog main page.

My son got FFOW at the weekend and I have to say if it was a car it would be recalled as unfit for purpose. I expect games to have some issues but these ones give the distinct impression of being untested.

1) First issue is if you try to install it anywhere but on a c: drive expect issues. The program does not appear on the start bar, the desktop or in the games explorer in Vista (32).

All these issues can be fixed by a c: drive install.

2) Once installed, don’t expect it to run easily- you start it from the Play button fired up from the DVD menu. Then it tells you to insert a valid disc in the drive! A work round for this is to run up the menu but don’t hit play, eject the dvd and insert dvd 2 inthe drive, this seems to then work oddly. However thats not a permanent fix.

The real fix for this is to install a Vist Hot fix available from the kaos website. However you need to install the 1.0.1 vista patch first and as the game won’t load you might be stuffed as it auto updates- though see bodge round in point one. The solution is to copy down the hotfix and the 1.0.1 patch to your PC as exe’s before installing the game- do a clean install then patch it then hotfix it.

This seems to sort all these issues out.

3) Finally if you have a Nvidia graphics card you may experience the game freezing every 20 seconds or so between bursts of running smoothly. As my sons PC is base don Nvidia GT8800 in SLI mode it might be an SLI problem only- I don’t know, however the fix for this is to grabe the Nvidia beta drivers for vista from the Nvidia website version 169.28