Broken Laptop, Animal Crossing, Prague

Chapter 1 - Broken Laptop: Has anyone here ever noticed that when things go wrong, they go wrong with style and vengeance? Take hardware for example: it runs like clockwork for ages, and then suddenly goes out with a bang. Remember my machine_check_exception BSOD post? well that was cos my spanking new Maxtor Diamondmax 11 hard drive was a bitch, one that took out the mobo on it's way out. I had to do alot of firmware flashing and other crap to sort it all out.

That's all behind me now, but what happens this morning? The Powerbook decides to take a Powerslide down the chair and fall flat on it's screen (it was open at the time), rendering the damn thing USELESS, as you see in the pic.

Luckily, the computer itself (and hard drive) is fine, so today I networked it to the PC and transfered all the data over. I connected it to the LCD TV via D-SUB and it all went fine. When it was connected I was treated to a big 27" version of my favourite screensaver, the album art saver. Have a look at it in the pic below :)



I've also arranged for it to be repaired tomorrow (thank God for personal belongings insurance from HSBC, they rule!). If they can't repair it they'll offer me a new one (I'm secretly hoping they can't cos the new ones are better :p). But I bet they will...

Chapter 2 - Animal Crossing: remember ages ago I was going on and on about throwing my life away by playing Animal Crossing on the Gamecube? The nintendo game that can literally be played for YEARS without feeling boring, just cos it's a micro village that lives and breathes each day and night?
Well the Big N in all it's wisdom have released the game cor the Nintendo DS. Essentially more of the same, except ofcourse with the great addition of Wireless + wifi play! Me and Kelly have both got a copy and today we experimented with it over the internet. I got her to visit my village where she picked some fruits, met some of my villagers and so on. I visited her village and did the same. The cool thing is that these villagers are now my penpals and they send me letters and vice versa! Some of them even migrate to me if she pisses them off, and again my people can go to her if I annoy them!
I gotta admit that sounded really boring, but trust me it's alot more fun than anyone can describe. One of those games that if you don't play you just don't understand, and one of those games that's either loved or hated, nothing in between. Get it if you dare (or if you've got an NDS :)

Chapter 3 - Prague: And finally, this Sunday I'm taking Kelly to Prague. We're staying there for a week in the city itself. We're going alone (ie not with a tour) so we're just gonna do some discovering. From what I hear the city is a beautiful historic place with loads to see. So should be fun.

On that note, hope you're all having fun and good-delicious :)

PS: forgot to mention that someone finally got a ps2 emulator running on the pc, with moderate results. Grab PCSX2 from www.maxconsole.net if you want. Apparantly it runs Tekken 4....