Acrobots

Articulated, stackable and very artistic, Acrobots feature crystal clear round heads, magnets in their hands and feet, flexible joints and the ability to contort into hundreds of shapes. Pose them gracefully and stick ‘em on metallic stuff. Great to fidget with. Each Acrobot is packaged inside a museum-quality clear acrylic box. Acrobot measures 4″ tall. Get two, they love to play together and they’ll stay happier longer. You want your Acrobot to be happy don’t you?

So, who will be the first to buy me an acrobot?

January 31st, 2006, posted by Neil in Brilliant · 2 Comments

Fed up with having to sift through a seemingly ever-shrinking VHS collection to find just the right amount of space to squeeze a long-play recording of QI between two unwatched episodes of a program I’d probably cropped the start and end off, I spent an inordinate and unhealthy amount of time in December trying to find a more elegant and workable solution to the problem of wanting to watch TV, but never being in front of the tellybox at quite the right time.

My not unworldly requirements were as follows:

• Freeview
• A hard drive to store recordings
• Some sort of EPG, or at the least a simple way of recording and labelling so I know what I’ve got recorded with the minimum of effort.

Optional nicenesses would be the ability to transfer from hard drive to some other medium for long-term storage, and that’s about it.

My first thought was to get a DVD Recorder, but can you buy a DVD-R with freeview and a hard drive for a reasonable price? Can you heck. At the high end there might be a few lurking, but replacing a VHS just so I can record a few programmes off the telly should not cost the earth. So, onto the current crop of PVRs. Right now, in the UK we’re pretty starved of really good PVRs, unfortunately, with offerings from Topfield, Humax, and Digifusion at the top of the pile, and a few cheapos offering competition at the bottom end of the market.

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January 31st, 2006, posted by Neil in Tech! and Vague rants · No comments

It’s nearly February 2006, so what better time than now to look back to last year, and pick out a few of 2005’s top albums, in no particular order. If any of these weren’t actually released in 2005, well done on having the library mind and all, but if I bought it in 2005, that’s good enough for inclusion. (Captain subtext says: I’m too lazy to look up the release dates right now.

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January 30th, 2006, posted by Neil in Music · No comments

Oh dear.

January 28th, 2006, posted by Neil in Tech! · 4 Comments

• Fixed problems with Full Tilt hands caused by players going-all in
• Corrected handling of antes at Full Tilt

January 25th, 2006, posted by Neil in Hand converter updates · No comments

• Fixed Full Tilt results not appearing in output
• Fixed all known UB issues

January 22nd, 2006, posted by Neil in Hand converter updates · No comments