15 Review

Continuing from my birthday post, I have decided to go over my past year. Not entirely of coarse, that would take ages, and some of it will stay where it belongs, in my head, or indeed  heart.

Several key events happened from the 22nd of July 2008 to the 22nd of July 2009. The first, obviously, been my 15th Birthday. It was a decent enough day starting with a game of football with my friends, and then a small party at my house. My nice shiny new EEE PC was my present, and we were playing around with it, most notably on MSN. (Compare to my 16th)

Things were on and off after that, I went on holiday visiting my Uncle in England, a semi-entertaining trip which the highlights were the local swimming pool and shopping centre. Butlins, in all seriousness, that place wasn't justified by the £65 entry fee. But all in all a decent ending to a long summer which saw the transaction from 3rd year to 4th year, and the dawn of GCSE's (Which I will be doing next year. Owies.).

4th year began slowly, mostly due to personal reasons. My school work wasn't affected too badly, justified by a decent Christmas exam result.

(26/04/2012: I never finished this but have decided to publish it for old time's sake. Mark)

Airsoft Fail

Airsofting is one of my smaller, but enjoyable pass-times. It is a sport similar to paintball which your primary objective is to eliminate members of the opposing team with your gun.

My involvement is somewhat limited now, mostly due to a "slight" fault with my Airsoft gun. Ah, my gun, the amazing JG M4 CQB. A decent replica of the M4 Carbine, used by the US armed forces and British SAS alike. When I was airsofting on Monday, this fault became apparent. Here is the result of it:

No, I don't have the number of the car that went over it. OK, OK, the picture was taken after I disassembled my gun. But the real problem was that the stock just snapped from the receiver. What? Oh, I mean it snapped in two. You can be fairly confident my future airsoft guns will be metal. My advice to kiddies: BB guns are fun, but never let your friend's younger brother poke with it. And certainly never let him unscrew a screw which you later find out, the hard way, that holds two key parts of the gun together.

My Birthday! (4 days ago...)

Yay! It was my birthday again on the Wednesday 22nd of July, I am writing this post 4 days later as I have had no access to a computer since.

I believe it is the 3rd post regarding my birthdays since this blog opened.

A lot has happened since I became 15, and I could go on for ages on it. But to summarise, I think it was a great year, it had as many ups as downs but that's life. I threw a birthday party with my mates on the day, starting with football at 1 and then at my house, at 2.00, we had a BBQ. Cooked by yours truly. It was a success, with only 2 burgers burned and the semi-needed assistance of only one female comrade! We ate and got entertained by the likes of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty. It was the biggest party ever in our house, with around 15 people present- and it's all on video.

After the party, I went down to Portrush (the local beach/seaside "resort") with some of my friends and had a good time. I stayed for 3 days, swam in the sea, went to a "theme park" (Barrys amusements), ran around a kiddies water fountain display half naked, yep, I did it all.

That's the best I can summarise my day.

To summarise the year would take much more. I might do a "Review of 15" later, but for now it's late on a Sunday and I value my sleep. Night all.

Coldplay - free live album

You heard me. Coldplay have released a free album on their website, which has a number of their best songs recorded live, all legal and free to download. I'm listening now, and one thing is Coldplay are awesome live (unlike some other bands). Definitely a keepsake for the iPod.

iTunes 99p Tax Rate beat

One day, when I went to buy some music for my iPod, I saw that the iTunes Music Store had increased the price of some music to 99p. I felt like spitting on my computer monitor. Looks like the old promise, "79p songs, as always" has been killed stone dead.

Whatever is the reason Apple? Are you trying to force more to the pirate file sharing sites? It's almost double the US price (99c), which equals about 59p per song over here!

Research discovered that apparently Apple are charging more for popular singles, and reducing the price on less popular singles, to "boost sales" and "bring better value". I beg to differ. The only single I saw at 59p was the third or so track on the "Rick Astley - The Ultimate Collection" album.

So, after getting fed up with this rip-off service, I defected to the Amazon Music Store. It may not be as streamlined or as simple as the iTunes Music Store, but who can argue with 69p music and albums which are considerably cheaper than iTunes or CD in cases. As I am a fan of Christian music, I am pleased to see they have a wide selection of it. With over 2 million claimed songs online, Amazon is a worthy competitor and alternative to the iTunes music store. I think I'll be staying for a while, at least until Apple wises up.

Save disk space in Windows Vista and XP

Here’s a good way of saving disk space in Vista and XP computers. If you never use system restore, like me, it certainly is worth trying. System restore is a part of Windows that lets you recover files after an installed program messes up. For me, it has never worked. So why not do away with that gigabyte-guzzling monster and save. I'll assume you are fairly computer-knowledgable.

Vista Instructions: (Click on the links for screenshots)

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Double Click "System"
3. Click "Advanced System Settings"
4. Go to the "System Protection Tab"
5. Uncheck your main drive (usually "C:")
6. Click OK, wait a while and bang you have more disk space!

That's it, I saved well over 10GB, a significant number indeed!

The instructions for XP are most likely similar, so it's easy enough.

School's Out For Summer

Sorry to anyone who reads this, that I didn't manage to keep this site going. I failed to write a post a week, got caught up in school work and social life too much. Oh, and xbox.

Now I'm back. And yesterday, school ended! Woohoo!

Had a water fight at my mates house, was thoroughly soaked. You won't believe how many buckets of water that Johnny Brooks put over me! And the pipe in my water pistol back pack broke (again). Some use it was. Well, I still had fun, and got roasted (believe it or not) by the sun.

The weather here is going mad. One day it's 25oC+, the next it near rains. Nothing short of the norm in Northern Ireland though.

Well, that's all for now. I hopefully will come up with readable material over the next few months.