Thoughts from the Shelf

I have always been a fan of the latest gadgets; unfortunately I have not always been a fan of forking out for them. This makes them a pretty safe choice when it comes to shopping for me, as I have a tendency go on about the things I like well in advance of actually contemplating buying them. I think this is a process I put myself through by a means of justifying buying them and convincing myself I actually need them, when in fact the reality is I am far to level headed to believe it.

The latest acquisition I have made was a new silver 4GB IPod Nano. I am well aware there plenty of good MP3 players around, and in fact the ITunes limitations always did and will continue to bug the hell out of me. As a result I had previously been content using my Sony Ericsson Walkman mobile to cure the boredom of my daily commute.

This was of course a birthday present from my partner, and was thoroughly well received. After having it for three months now it is far better than I first thought if for nothing else than the usability and way the interface is designed.

As the title of the post suggests I have however encounterd problems. Upon syncing the IPod I recieved several -50 errors. After digging around a bit I read about ITunes 7 creating similar problems with other units. The resulting advice was uninstalling ITunes 7 and reverting back to the preferred 6.0 version, then re-importing your music library.

If anyone is faced with the same IPod error and doesn’t want to go through this hassle try these simple steps. Go into your control panel>Admin Tools>Services and restart the IPod service. Plug your IPod back into the computer and re-format the IPod through windows in My Computer (Right Click), and next time you load ITunes it sees your Ipod as a new IPod unit. All you have to do is re-sync it with your library.

Hope it saves some people some time and effort. Worked for me.

P.S. Perhaps I should not have assumed people know reformatting the IPod will wipe it clean, but it will, so back your files up and don’t blame me.

For avid gamers there is the one question that divides the pack, X Box or Playstation? The competition between the two games consoles manufacturers to grab a lucrative share of a multimillion pound games market is by is no means new, but as I recently noticed still sparks many a front room conversations and bar debates in gaming circles.

I suppose it is the type of conflict in opinion I should be used to, growing up similarly with the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad, and then later the Atari, Sega and Nintendo offerings. The most memorable of these console offerings for me was the Master System from Sega competing against its Nintendo Counterpart, which resulted in the push for the development of the first 16bit home console that followed in the form of a Sega Mega Drive.

Growing up on video games my own choices were the Commodore 64, Sega consoles and then finally the Playstation. Although I don’t game as much as I once did, mainly due to lack of free time, I still own a PS2 and a selection of games of which the Medal of Honour and Pro Evolution 6 titles are the most popular.

Since the release of the first PS2 (I have the model that could support a wall of your living room), I have not been able to justify spending the money asked for the newer console models. However, after recently seeing the PS3 in action and the online game play facility provided that has only been available on an Xbox previously, I must say I was impressed.

Although I am well aware that as the market has continued to grow so to have sophistication of the consoles on offer, and thus this pattern will no doubt continue, this console looks something else. It takes off from the Xbox with the provision of an online gaming facility, but the fact Sony is setting up the PS3 as a PC alternative with standard hard drive, a high definition Blu-ray optical drive, shows what an upgrade it is from the PS2. I am tempted

Being online nearly all day most days I listen to a variety of music over the interwebs that keeps my appetite for new music quelled and my IPod full. As a result I have found that of late I haven’t had the urge to buy any specific music albums and have instead reverted back to the days of comprising my own play lists from individual sounds I have liked.

This is very much a different stance to what I have been used over the past 5 years or so, where I have enjoyed listening to entire albums of artists that I have unearthed. That is however until I heard a song from Maximo Park entitled Books From Boxes off of their album titled Our Earthly Pleasures.

I felt this was a good song, but having not heard much music from Maximo Park in the past, they had a sound I felt was inline with other bands that I like. I eventually got the album and I have to say that it is up there with the best I have heard this year.

It is the first artist album I have found myself lusting after for quite some time, since the Artic Monkeys release of Favourite Worst Nightmare back in April. It seems to have broken the lull of new music artists not appealing to me, and I now have the thirst for several new albums recently (or soon to be) released including Biffy Clyro, Kanye West and Athlete.

It has seemed a long summer as an avid spurs fan, and as previous posts have detailed their has been an air of optimism quietly building as the squad has been added to prepare sufficiently for an assault on a top four finish this year.

This optimism was still lingering with our first trip away to Sunderland, and although we have never been our best on the road over the last two seasons, I still found my self believing this year we would be off to the flying start we have needed last year.

After seven wins out of as many games preseason I felt this optimism was justified, but was sorely brought down to earth with a bump after watching the first 45 minutes of the opening fixture of the season. Not an ideal advert for the most exciting league in the world I am afraid!

With the second half much the same, Sunderland added to the disappointment by nicking a late 94th minute winner when there was only 3 additional minutes to be played. *First gripe of the 2007-08 season*

Overall I am not that worried, I didn’t expect too much from this fixture and in fact bet on the draw, but home to Everton tomorrow is a different matter. I expect nothing other than three points from the fortress that is The Lane to put us in good stead for my own trip to The Lane this Saturday to watch our match up with another newly promoted side - Derby.

We will need the points over these next two outings with both Man UTD and Arsenal in our next three games, closely followed by both Liverpool and Newcastle who are also hoping to have promising seasons after a busy summer period.

On Sunday I played in a poker tournament that had a bit of a twist. As well as playing poker online, there are regular table games that are on offer that I usually find myself participating in. The difference this time was that we intended to take advantage of the fact that the seventh leg of this years Grosvenor UK poker tour was to be hosted in Plymouth.

Each leg of the tour is a £1000 buy in no limit tournament, and the prize fund has an additional £10,000 added to it by sponsors Blue Square Poker. It is played over a four day spread form the 5th September to the 9th September and players can either buy in or win a seat by finishing in a qualifying position in on of the online qualifying tournaments.

With the seventh leg of the tour being held locally, we decided to run our own table qualifier, with 21 seats, £50 a seat, and a ‘winner takes all’ format paying for a seat at the event.

As it happens the day went well with a lot of good local players filling the seats. As the tournament progressed the three tables of seven eventually merged into to tables and then a final nine seat table.

After progressing through the day and making the final table a seat at the event was firmly in my sights. After hitting a string of bad cards and losing an all in shout on pocket KK against pocket bullets pre flop I still managed to sit last three, mainly thanks to two medium pocket pairs holding up against the draw heads up.

This was a tight tournament and long day as you can expect, and when I received pocket bullets twice whilst in the final three and failed to get paid, it was clear how tight it remained right up until the end.

The table sat with one favourite who held over 70% of the chips, followed the other two of us waiting for an opportunity. The short stack (but not by far from me) was gradually being worn down by the blinds, and my opportunity would have to come against the stack in order to swing the chip percentage enough to mount a challenge.

This opportunity came on my big blind, last to act one player had folded and the small blind (and chip leader) limped in and I subsequently put a rise in on on A7s. After his re-raise I was left only with an all in shout which was then called. When he turned K9o I was notably quite pleased. The flop paired my seven, with a 4 7 10 which further impressed me with cautious optimism . The turn then delivered an 8 and I cringed with the thought of him catching his straight through running cards.

This pot would have resulted in a two horse raise with a 60/40 chip divide, (or near enough minus the third players stack). Anything but a King, 9 or a 6 would have seen my battle back from being done on KK complete, with a good chance of a seat on the tour event. As you may have guessed he hit the running cards needed with a 6 on the river to make a straight off his kicker.

A great reminder of how you can play solid cards, make the right decisions time after time, but there will always be that element of chance, and that is what makes poker the exhilarating game it is. Better luck next time!

I recently moved into a new flat and along with everything you would expect we discovered that although there was a telephone line within the premises, there was no connection to the main phone grid.

For domestic broadband purposes there was a need to get connected to the main telephone grid. Although there was a £120 connection fee for this service from BT what wasn’t made apparent upon time of order was the fact that as well as this installation fee, a 12 month line rental contract with BT was also required.

As mentioned in a previous post I have been in the process of comparing broadband packages that suited my domestic requirements. The draw back of the contract being tied in with the connection fee, apart from a 12 month financial commitment, was that any call package that was included within a monthly broadband fee was now worthless.

I found out from numerous conversations with customer services departments that even with inclusive calls within a monthly broadband fee, the BT contract meant a third party would not take over the line and thus your free calls could not be provided.

Needless to say that the broadband packages short listed looked very different without inclusive call packages. Some what feeling pushed into the decision; I decided to take on the BT broadband package with free wireless router and cordless phone as we now had a line rental contract with them too.

I did have the option of cancelling the phone connection which would have left no broadband or phone line which was not an option, so somewhat reluctantly we have been goaded into a BT broadband package. I was not impressed with the corner we had been backed into, but unfortunately large companies often have the ability to do so when another alternative cannot be sort.

In hindsight it got me thinking if there was any other local companies that would have been able to connect the phone line to the main grid, and whether anyone else had had a similar experience.

Recently I read about a competition to reclassify the seven wonders of the world. The reclassification was sought as a way of recognising the achievements of societies outside Europe and the Middle East.

The original list was formed 2000 years ago by Greek scholars, and consisted of several long vanished wonders. In fact the only wonder that remained from the original list was the great pyramid of Giza.

Over 100 million people voted in this survey, compiled by a non-profit organisation, and although at one point it struggled the Taj Mahal was included on the final list. Some notable casualties were Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower.

News of this survey broke a few weeks ago, but it was only today that I stumbled across this seven wonders article that included some panoramic pictures of the chosen locations that I thought were worth passing on. Enjoy!