I realise I've neglected posting for the last week, but it's been a bit manic. Work has been a total nightmare - I've inherited a project I shouldn't be working on but only took on cause J left and no one else was able to manage it. To be fair it was too much for him on his own too. It'd be too much for me on my own, so luckily I'm not, but I'm the only one with the experience/history to have a hope of fathoming out some of the issues. And there are lots of them. The main one is that it will never work within the timelines that apparently cannot change. So I'm fecked before i start. Anyway to make matters worse my car died on Friday night half way home from youth group. I managed to stop it under a street light by the side of the N11 and waited just under an hour for the AA. I'd been meaning to cancel my platinum lloyds account as I didn't see why I was paying for it but you get free AA and travel insurance and it worked perfectly. I wasn't convinced it would in Ireland (even though I asked them when I moved) but it was an excellent service. Called Dublin, got put through to someone french as I didn't have a local policy, they knew who I was from my sort code/account, took the details and forwarded back to Dublin, who rang back to confirm someone was on their way.
So I need a new car. The guy who rescued me was a VW dealer and even hearing the Ford discount suggested I come in for a chat, so I did on Sat. Interesting, am tempted by a 2nd hand VW. They'll call tomorrow to let me know what they'll give for the current one so will see how it compares to Ford.
M was ill over the weekend, he was very clingy on Friday afternoon and had a temp. Never seen him like that. Just wanted to sit and be cuddled. He slept OK and temp was down a bit on Sat then on Sat afternoon he just snapped out of it and was back to normal. Slept really badly sat night though so poor S slept in the spare room with him. He was on good form today though which is good.
The new PVR is well on the way to working - had a big fright when I first put it together as it did nothing. Completely nothing. It's all new to the point Idont have any spare bits I could swap out to find the problem but I got a speaker from an old case to see if it did diagnostic beeps, which it did although it did something that wasn't in the poxy manual. So I got bored and took a mem stick out and it turned on fine. Swapped the sticks and it still worked. It even works with both in if it's in single channel mode, but dual channel and I get the beeps. So it's good enough to build and it plays Blu-ray disks (well the one I have borrowed from C!) and DVDs which the old PVR has failed to do. So just got to work out when to move the sat card and HD over from the old one. Need to get the remote working on the new one first and then will do so.
I really am not in the mood for work tomorrow. Sadly I wont be able to drive there anyway so will have to work from home, but my phone will be going non stop with all the crap that's going on.

Had a nice quiet Saturday - it was good to have S and M back and we chilled out a bit this morning then went to Tesco's (which was manic - at least the car park was. Wicklow Tesco is poxy, again at least the car park is! I had great delight in discovering somoene who works for them in head office last Wed evening so I told them to build a decent one cause this one is crap), after spending ages looking for a space it wasn't actually that full inside so people must be parking there and buggering off into town, being too tight to pay the 2 euro parking fee in town... In the afternoon we went to Arklow to get M something fun to play on/in/with in the garden - oh and I mowed the lawn since it wasn't raining, that excuse didn't work.

I got my family back today!!! It's great to have them back, missed them both (all 3 of them?!) lots! Although I was actually far too busy to be moping about here much. M was actually pleased to see us both which was nice. I had prepared myself for him to not be in the least interested but I got a small cuddle when he got back here. Since neither of us had any intention of cooking we had a nice delivered curry. And given how completely knackered S is I guess it'll be me who gets up with M tomorrow so he'd best not wake too early!

Last day being on my own today, get my family back tomorrow! I'm under no illusions that M will want to be cuddled when he gets back here. But I live in hope! I've hardly even been in the house since he went and S went back to her work, but it'll still be good to have them back.
Finally ordered parts of the PVR rebuild. In theory they should all turn up next wed. We've got people round that night so not sure when I'll get to start building it, the following weekend I guess. Will post what I've got and what issues I have when I get round to doing the work.

S has gone back to the residential and M has gone to stay with J (and G and C). He seems to be having fun and isn't upset at all. It's been a long day. I left before 7:15am and got back about 10:30pm and am nackered. Ford wasn't too bad, 50 quid to fix the break light issue (of which most was labour) but to fix the clutch (which isn't bad enough to be critical yet, but I guess will be at some point) will be 750-800. Given I've spent already around a grand on it this year (service, tyres etc.) I think it's probably time for a new one. You dont know but perhaps this 750 will make it last for another 5 years without any major spend, but my gut feeling is that isn't the case and I'll have annoying niggly things go wrong... So what to do? The Irish government are changing the tax on new cars so some diesels will become considerably cheaper (2k+ in some cases) but Ford are going to reprice everything. You can be sure they new prices wont give us consumers the full discount which pisses me off! Then there's the privilege discount. They've changed the rules in the UK but the guy insists they haven't in Ireland. I'll get a fixed "staff" price on the car but they'll give me about 1k less for my current car. Which is mean but I guess they dont really want it and would rather I sell it privately. I cant be arsed though. So what to get next? Cant really consider the options until Ford come out with their post July prices, but I guess I dont need another Mondeo (although the space with 2 kids would be handy). So a Focus or a Fusion??

I need chocolate, but I dont think we have any. Had a good day with M today. I even managed to get a reasonable amount of work done. Found the key to managing to work on a laptop without him going mental is to give him a laptop of his own! So I set up our personal one on Kneebouncers while I worked on my work one. He sat next to me quite content for ages! I had to help out every time he pressed one of the few keys guaranteed to screw it up (which he does remarkably often). After a while he'd had enough so I took him to Brittas for a run on the beach which was fun. Had to stop him running into the sea and I forgot his boots and "make a mess" dungerees, so me, him, the car and then the house got covered in sand. Managed to get there and back without causing problems with no break lights. The new fuse I'd put in the other day was dead by the time I started up. I have a cunning plan to try tomorrow to see if I can get a journey without blowing it, but will probably just end up electrocuting myself. Anyway rang Ford first thing who said they could have it a week tomorrow - so over a week with no reliable car and rush hour Dublin traffic to survive - I wasn't happy! But she rang back later in the day to say they had a cancelation and I could bring it in on wed, which is perfect as it's realistically the earliest I could have taken it to Stillorgan.

M went down well earlier so I have a few hours to myself. There were two people to chat to at the same time earlier and none now and total shite on the telly. I've left it a bit late to watch a film so perhaps an early night with my book is in order. I'm nackered enough! Oh yes, just remember we have chocolate cake! (left over from youth group).

S has gone for her work week residential, leaving me and M to fend for each other for a couple of days. She'll be back on Tue ev and will take him to Js on Wed while she goes back for the rest of the week. M was upset when she went but was soon OK and had a good lunch. He's having a nap now so I've got about 1.5 hours to myself to do absolutely everything I want to that involves a laptop as I haven't a hope of touching one when he's awake! Think I'll watch a film (probably too loudly without S here) this evening so decided to post now while I have the chance.

It's helpfully hossing down with hail at the mo and even managing to blow up the hill, so not sure what M and I will do this afternoon when he wakes. Oh, wait, it's sunny again. Might manage to take him out for a walk after all.

For those languagely-sensative, please turn the volume down now, but HOW THE FUCK ME SIDEWAYS did SFC get into the bottom 3 of the Championship? It's like my teenage life all over again with SFC trying to avoid relegation but this time the wrong buggering league and without a Matt LeTissier!! I cant believe it. I knew things had got bad there and I've been too depressed with football to actually look at the league tables which is just as bloody well as I had a right shock when I read the paper today and saw us 3rd bottom! If they go down again it's time to call in the liquidators and just pack it in. I mean who on earth thought it a good idea to get rid of the chairman when there was no one else lined up with any cash? Surely you suss out that there is a better option before shagging the only one you have? But no. No chairman, no money, no decent manager (although maybe I'm being unfair on Pearson, but it does seem the cheap shitty option to me).

Had a nice day with the S and M. M was invited to a birthday party so we went up to Castlenock (?) which is a reasonable drive from here but despite the paper saying the M50 would be a nightmare this weekend it was completely fine. I nearly fell out the car with surprised to see the finished parts with not only 3 lanes (as promised) but a bonus 4th lane that ran the length of the road between the Mad Cow and the Liffey Vally exit. Seems there will be 4 lanes between a few of the junctions up there which will make a big difference. Still need to sort the poxy toll out though.

If you have no interest in or care about my PVR woes I suggest you stop reading this post now! I'm annoyed with it. I recorded Dr Who and then I'd Do Anything (yes, OK, I realise I'm admitting to watching that!). The latter I decided to record of the BBC HD channel as it has full 5.1 Dolby Digital sound and a far better picture on the 42inch telly. But the poxy thing wouldn't play it back right. Sound/visuals were very out of sync which made it unwatchable. So I play around with the software and no luck. So I'm trying to explain to S why we cant watch it and why I didn't just record the BBC1 version (without being very convincing) so I try it the simple way with Windows Media Player and it plays perfectly. Not a single stutter in sound of visual throughout the whole program. So the box is capable of perfect HD playback. Now why the GBPVR software cant do it is my challenge for when S is away!


Just for anyone geeky enough to still be reading (and there probably is one! Hi P!!). So why all the hassle? I used to run a Myth box connected to the NTL cable box and all was well. When we moved house and found a Sat dish on the wall I found a DBV-S card kicking about and it was even better to capture the raw mpeg stream from the free (FTA) channels. It worked reasonably well. Had a few problems - ie no dynamic aspect ratio control and a bit of interference occasionally. However the purchase of a 42inch LCD telly changed all that as the picture quality from the s-video TV-out was really rather poor in comparison of what you'd get from an HDMI - esp with the advent of HD TV channels and the BBC HD one just waiting for me to watch it. What's the point in all that telly if you dont use it?! Since the guts of the box were AGP and I didn't want to spend more than I absolutely had to, I bought an AGP ATI HD2600XT video card (which was HD hardware accelerated - so in theory my 2.5G celeron would cope). There were no linux drivers that were capable of using the HD HW accel so windows it was. That meant no more Myth.

So I discovered GBPVR. In theory dead easy to setup and get working. In practice a complete and utter bastard, but most of that was ATI driver problems and pages and pages and pages of support forums of how to solve and get the video working respectably. So I have pretty much got it OK, although I get stutter once in a while. I dont think my PC (probably the CPU and maybe the AGP bus) is good enough for the renderers that GBPVR wants to use (either VMR9 or EVR). I'm using XP to limit the load on the CPU. VMR9 customer produces the best results (VMR9 FSE should in theory be perfect but the HD channel goes a bit screwy at 720p but I dont think the AGP bus can cope with 1080p/i as I get some odd results with that too - although 1080i is close and maybe I should try to iron out the problems there, esp as that's what the BBC HD is broadcast in. Anyway I have it so close to a great system but I need to get rid of the stutter once and for all (it's perfectly watchable now both SD and HD) and preferably have it run at 1080i and not 720p and get poxy DVD playback to work (I think I've put odd firmware on the drive as I'm getting some very odd results - but that's a whole other post). I'm not sure weather to be delighted or pissed off that WMP played the HD recording absolutely perfectly but I cant get it anything like that good in GBPVR itself!

So I've decided to spend my recent bonus on some sensible hardware and stop messing about with AGP boards that really weren't designed for HD rendered video playback. I'll post the specs I ultimately choose whenever I get my arse in gear and order it! But I have my concerns that I could spend considerable money and still have crap DVD playback (will probably get a BluRay drive anyway but still, if that playback is crap I'll cry).

So for anyone who actually bothered to read all that, congratulations, you deserve a cup of tea! Even better if you read it and understood it and have any opinions on how to sort my problems out!!

Forgot to say that my Badger count as increased by one! Unfortunately it's a plus in the "dead" column.

My car is nackered (again, break light fuse gone again so must be something wrong in the circuit) so took Ss to youthgroup. So found myself with Take That in the CD player and was even more concerned that I found myself singing along... Youth group was good - we have a small but great group that come regularly. Hardest thing is to get them to think and discuss anything sensibly. Give them a football and they're as enthusiastic as it comes but I guess that's 17-18 year old males for you!

I need a new car as annoying things keep going wrong with the current one. Stupid thing. Granted it's 8 years old, but still! Turns out my break lights weren't working. No idea how long I've been driving around like that, sure they were last time I noticed when it was dark but that could have been months ago. Might take account for the gestures made to me the other day by some weirdo... I was driving home down the N11 (dual carriageway) minding my own business. Rush hour traffic is busy enough not to pelt it along, but I was going happily in the right lane behind a string of traffic in front of me, going past a splattering of slower vehicles in the left lane. For a while I wasn't actually over taking anything but while I'd happily have gone faster I couldn't due to the cars in front of me in my lane. Suddenly some weirdo comes up next to me, winds down his window and starts gesturing. I think "Mad Brit hating Axe-man!!! or worse, a Pompy Fan!!" and put my foot down and probably scare the car in front. Luckily there was a slow vehicle in his way and I go off into the distance. So maybe I scared him by slowing down without warning and nearly caused him to go into the back of me killing both of us. Oops! So out with the pliers and into the fuse box. I dont have a working fag lighter for now (until I buy another fuse) but the break lights work again. I guess I'm lucky nothing more serious happened....

Arsenal are playing Liverpool in the Champ League yet it's not available on UK free to air TV. Hooray I got an aerial installed for the 4 local channels last week as it's on RTE2! Ireland doesn't have a domestic digital terestrial TV service (yet), however there is one currently being trialled. By all counts I should be well outside the coverage area, however a new aerial from Angelcomms, actually make that 2 aerials, perform a digital scan on the telly expecting nothing and it's picked the whole lot up from Dublin no bother. Perfect picture on the whole with the odd minor glitch. Ireland broadcasts TV on VHF as well as UHF hence the need for the two aerials, but DTT will only be on UHF and having picked it up the other was a bit of a waste. The guys did a great install though and also changed my rusty sat dish while they were here with no pre warning.

Now, do I keep watching the football or switch to The Apprentice?!

Was over in Winchester for Js wedding (which was in Guilford) over the weekend. Being back there always does slightly weird things to my head. I miss England. I'm not dying to move back there on a daily bases but when I'm there I realise that I do miss it. Winchester is even odder than just England as it's where I grew up for 18 years or so before going to Uni. Not that I want to live there either! The wedding was great fun. Met up with some old friends I'd not seen in over 10 years. Not hung out with them for more like 15. On the one hand it seemed sad to have lost touch with people and I wondered if I should have made more effort to keep in contact with people I move away from but then when the reality set in I realised that I'd moved on so much since then and that to be blunt you dont need to keep every friend you ever make. Those that you care enough (and that care enough about you) will stay around in some form or other. Those that you dont (or dont about you) it's kind of tough I think. Still I'm happy to be in contact again and will enjoy the benefits of FB of keeping me in contact with acquaintances I'd otherwise not bother ever contacting.

The wedding itself was a laugh. While I missed having S and M there, I also kind of enjoyed the freedom not to worry about either of them or have to drive and could just relax and enjoy myself. With the table I was sitting at, it was kind of like being 18 again! S and I were trying to subtly sneak too many welcome drinks only to discover that they were going round refilling them anyway... The evening do was a barn dance - which I'd forgotten what fun they are. Dont think I've been to one since Js 18th!

Took yesterday off to spend with S and M. Was lovely. But back to work today... My work is very manic at the mo. I go from extremes to just wanting to quit to deciding to put in the effort and make it good. I'm in a reasonably good place at the mo but it can change rapidly! Dont be surprised if I've decided to quit tomorrow!