FIXED!

Got Donkey Kong fixed after several misfires. Seems that the screen is made up of a polarized cover screen (similar to Polaroid glasses) and if placed incorrectly the screen will be darkened. But when you rotate the plastic cover 180o it magically clears up before your eyes.

 

Also the top screen (where Kong throws down the barrels at you) was not showing all it's LCD displays clearly. So I simply cleaned all the internal contacts with nail polish remover. After some hassles with the controller not functioning (some clown placed a metal round disc in the controller) I had myself a fully working Donkey Kong unit! I might just scrounge eBay for more "not working" Game & Watches and see if I can get more working again!

Finally, DONKEY KONG... but...

After a quick visit to my parents place several hundred Km's away I come back with a new arrival to the Game & Watch collection. Donkey Kong! But it is not working... yet! Seems someone got curious and opened her up. So now the bottom screen is upside down and the middle hinge cord is not connecting 100%.

 

Now the fact that the average beaten up Donkey Kong unit is fetching approx AU$100 I must get this one of mine to work to avoid having to purchase another one. Here's to hoping it works!

Xbox Live is Alive!

Well let's run down my experience in getting connected to Xbox Live. First I wait for the wife to go to sleep! LOL Then I connect all the modem wires up and fire the Xbox up. After diving into the usually unused Xbox Live screen I hit connect.... then ERROR. DOH! I test it and test it but still nothing. I disconnect the modem and reconnect it to the PC (hope Owie gets me that router!) to look up to see if there are any tips online to common errors. Nothing. SO I decide to try the beefier and newer modem I have still in it's shrink wrap waiting for iiNet to release ADSL2 in Kogarah. Well I get the modem to be detected at least but no DNS connection. So a phone call to iiNet later and 30 minutes of hold music comes my way. Finally I speak to some obviously knowledgable fella but he is a bit too point dexterish to tell me in step by step moves to get anywhere. I try again to do what he tells me but no luck. I phone again... ready to lose it by now. Finally I get through to another guy who is more helpful and he talks me right through it after doing some major googling moves to find me the info needed.

 

Turns out you need to specify the IP addresses... the DNS address and some other things too before you can get on board. Nice one Microsoft... so much for "out of the box". But now that I am on board the whole Xbox Live thing I am stoked.

 

First I put the Xbox Live DVD in to make sure I am doing everything the right way. But after saying no to a few crappy pay per download games I grow impatient and shove Halo 2 in. I hit Xbox Live selection and a few updates occur and then... NEW SCREENS! I hit all the OK OK buttons and finally land in the Multiplayer Lounge room. But it takes a while to figure out where to go. But eventually I see more and more entities arrive along side my bcostelloe name and finally I'm in a game... 2 seconds later I get fragged. WHAT THE? Nothing wrong with the game... just the player! You simply get cooked by the Yanks and whatever else that you are playing against. But I did have limited success. You hear some smart arse comments sometimes but it's mostly in good spirits. People saying things like "good move" and warning players "sniper up top!". You hear your players in your mics and if you are near an opponent when they speak you hear it in the TV speakers.

 

I tried Project Gotham Racing 2 but it seems no one was online. I looked at some extra maps (2) which are a pay for download (about $8 each city) but nothing else exciting otherwise. Seems Halo 2 is where the action is till I get NHL 06 that is.

 

Overall I'm happy. The inconvenience was worth it as the end result is killer multi player action whenever I want! Kinda like beer on tap!

iiNet Goes Off Like a Frog in a Sock

Just felt like I should tell the world that my new ISP is 1000 times better then crappy Optus and their stingy 400M/month limit. I pay $10/month more and now I get 20G/month on ADSL2. So all those looking at those cute animal ads wondering how Optus can afford to create those commercials just take a look at what little they offer compared to iiNet. My pages now fly off the screen and I'm not looking at a white loading screen anymore.

 

Sad to see so many suckers keeping Telstra and Optus rich.

Congratulations to Wayne & Dannielle!

Yet another wedding! On 31st October this year Wayne Costelloe and Dannielle Brice exchanged vows and walked the big walk. It was held at Gymea and a gathering of approximately 50 were there to witness the two younglings become adults. I'll be posting all my photo's online soon (when I move onto a new ISP in a few days time) but I have a few pics for now as a teaser.

Just a word of warning to anyone thinking of inviting Owen J Kelly to their wedding. Avoid mud cake as your choice of wedding cake. What he does with it is simply disgusting!

Donkey Kong 2

This time I have gone Donkey Kong mad and recieved two different DK games. One is not truly a G&W game but a keyring version of the original Donkey Kong JR. It's in it's original blister pack and that's where it's staying. But it's tempting to rip it open to have a go of it.

But the more exciting addition this week is Donkey Kong 2. Only thing wrong with this one is the latch is buggered. But it's got it's battery cover and it works 100%. Anyone out there ever remember playing this one in it's day?

GPS

  I haven't mentioned till now the fact that my beloved Palm PDA (Tungsten E) has snuffed it. Well to the point of being unusuable. So I now had to look for a replacement PDA to help with the long dull shifts I sometimes get at work. After some difficult decisions and circumstances where I was offered a second Palm that was "much better than Tungsten E" but turned out to be a prehistoric brick some gay guy wanted to off load onto me as a way to meet me after work, I finally struck pay dirt with what I believe is the best option I could have hoped for. I was showing the smashed screen off to a work mate who suddenly got excited and exclaimed "you can buy mine!" Now after my ordeal with the gay guy the last thing I wanted was yet another old outdated peice of crap loosely dubbed a PDA. But he was adamant that it was not a crap one and that the only reason he wanted to sell it was to get money up to buy a new Walkman mobile phone. Then he said something which really grabbed my attention. "Oh... and it's got GPS too!" he claimed! Really I thought. "So what is wrong with it?" I snapped back. Then he went on to reassure me that he simply wanted to money. Also he told me that he has never even used the damn thing.

 

  Cut a long story short he was right! Daddy bought the iPaq for him to use GPS but he got overwhelmed with the amount of messing around you go through to set it up.

 

  It's an h3630 iPaq Compaq Pocket PC. It originally came with Pocket PC 2000 which sucked ass. Looking around on the internet was almost a waste of time till I hit www.ebay.com.au where I got lucky and found an "unlocker" seller who sells mostlly codes and passes to obtain hard to get software. So through him I was able to get the 40M download to install Pocket PC 2002. That's when new problems arose around the issue of memory. The PDA only has a measly 32M RAM. Hardly enough to go messing with GPS. But the GPS attachment has a  Compact Flash slot. So first day I grabbed a 256M card and whacked her in. But my main drama was in getting software to install onto the card and not the squeezy RAM of the ipaq.

 

  Well after learning more than I cared to learn about iPaq's and their set up I ended up solving my dramas.

 

GPS

 

  I've always known that GPS was a great way to get about as I hire them out as part of my job. What I didn't know before was the way it changed your driving patterns when you owned one. I'm seeing streets in Sydney I've never even seen before. You'll be coasting down the road along what you thought was the quickest way home when you'll get a surprising TURN LEFT announcement for 300M ahead. As you hold your breath you turn placing total faith in a emotionless persona in your PDA. Next thing you know you've just avoided 4 traffic lights and learnt a new short cut! Oh and did I mention how deadly accurate the pick up is of your current location? Scary to say the least. You get into your driveway and the dreary destination announcment rings out. I'm sure I'll be making more entries in relation to my new Navman GPS unit in the not too distant future!