What it would do – FORMAT YOUR ENTIRE PC!

How we did it – we took format.com and renamed it after some new game like ‘bomberman’ or something, so it became ‘bomberman.com’

The Problem – when you ran format.com it needed a drive to format like ‘format c:’ and also when it was running it would say ‘formatting c: 1% complete’ and show the progress.

The solution – we edited the format.com file and found the wording for ‘formatting’ and changed it to ‘installing’

And bingo we had a nice little program that would wipe your computer clean, we then gave it to a ‘friend’ of ours and said it was this awesome new game.

Lets just say it the virus worked!

Haven’t tried to make another once since but maybe one day…

The very next day Larry King gets involved threw down the challenge with these words: “Do you know how big we are? Do you know what CNN is?!”

King promises to take on any challenge from Kutcher and will even try get him and Turner in on his show, video below:

@EA or Electronic Arts then tweeted out that for the millionth user they will put into The Sims 3 and that the follower will receive every game that EA makes this year. Nice publicity stint by EA to join in on this coverage…

The final interesting bit about all of this is that the CNN account (@cnnbrk) isn’t even owned or run by CNN but rather by a James Cox – CNN how ever has now acquired this account from James for an undisclosed amount, read here for more.

Think I may unfollow @aplusk and watch it closely to drive be the millionth!

And it was a rocking day!

Snow Patrol are absolutely amazing and its the third time I’ve seen them live (once at the O2 dome in London and the other at the V Festival at Chelmsford) how ever Oasis were disappointing and I don’t think I’ll pay money to see them again live. They rated themselves too much and didn’t really give anything into their songs, they are surely at the end of their run and its only their name thats carrying them now.

The South African bands also rocked with my favourites been The Dirty Skirts, Zebra and Giraffe, Cassette and Aking weren’t too bad.

Next year I’ll have to make sure I get into VIP as I heard Matt Damon was at the concert, anyway I hope if you were in the area that you managed to go!

It is amazing to see how corrupt our world is, be it here in South Africa or in the United States. The temptation that people fall for is unreal. Take a look at the first part below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTbdnNgqfs8&hl=en&fs=1&border=1]

Here is a photo release of what it will/could actually look like:

Currently there are a dozen or so working apps but this app could save a bit of time say if you watching the news etc. But not too sure if I would like little pop-ups every 5min while I’m watching a movie. The one thing that it will work well with is allowing us to comment to our friends while’st watching live breaking news events/sports events etc. Similar to what Facebook did with CNN this year.

Future apps coming later this year are 2 ‘premium’ video apps from either Netflix, Amazon and/or Blockbuster.

Samsung says that this platform will only be placed on mid to high-end TVs.

Now this kind of thing will scare big corporates like SkyTV(UK based) and DSTV(SA based) as this will offer definite options to having satellite TV. For me instead of developing this we all should just be getting a computer/TV in one or have one computer for your household but have 3/4 different LCDs/Plasmas running off it.

Either way its got to merge sometime soon.

Network operators are loving it because finally people are using the expensive 3G networks they put up a few years ago and their profits are rising BUT there is a thorn in their side and that is to do with VoIP (Voice over internet protocol).

This has been led by Skype which have over 400million users, I use and love it. The problem is coming into factor now whereby cellular manufacturer’s are including Skype services on their latest phones which is great for us users but not so great for the network providers.

What VoIP has been doing to the fixed line networks it now can do to the cellular networks and that is allow people to basically phone each other for free at the only cost of the data transfer. Nokia is leading this with the release of the Nokia N97 but network providers in the UK are threatening not to carry the device… now this isn’t very nice of them!

Skype today released an App for the iPhone, as seen here in the image. Now this app is great and all as it allows you to chat (IM) amongst your friends and even make calls between users, it how ever limits the calls to when the phone is connected to a wireless network.

This pretty much makes it null in void unless you living in a well connected city.

In the UK 3 has released a handset with Skype capabilities and T-Mobile is also coming to the party the networks that are throwing their toys are O2 and Orange.

At the moment these services seem to all be offered only when on the Wi-Fi network, lets hope the day comes quickly when its all done via the cellular network!

You can read more about it here. Or if you are too impatient to wait head along to Fring a website that has made an application that should allow you to make free calls etc by making use of Skype.

Now that is quite nice, think I’m going to use it for when I launch www.danbaileyuk.com

Thanks To Marc and David!

Cambridge managed to pull ahead here by a length and really looked good but then Oxford counter-attacked and took the rating up to 40, I couldn’t believe they took it up so high and Cambridge didn’t respond. Don’t know if their cox didn’t pick it up or if they couldn’t, heard on the TV that she asked for one more pip but that was only picking it up from 34 to 35 while Oxford was rating at 40 strokes per minute.

Oxford easily took a length lead then and going into the final corner through Barnes Bridge had the advantage. When you go up on a crew in a Boatrace you can just sit there and push away from the crew, suddenly you don’t feel so tired and you just love every second of it. Oxford did that and looked so relaxed then with their stroke and Number 7 giving them an awesome rate.

Think they ended up winning by 6lengths, that is heart breaking for Cambridge but Oxford had one guy in their crew at 6ft 8 and the other at 6ft 9 – that is just crazy! All I need to do now is grow a bit…

A friend of mine, Sam Pearson, was in the Goldie Crew in 2006. This Goldie crew is Cambridge’s 2nd eight that races against Oxford’s 2nd VIII just before the main race. Just to make this crew is no small matter.

Currently a friend of mine from Rhodes, Andrew Craig, who won the Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University has been in the Oxford squad for this years race. Unfortunately he didn’t make the B crew (Isis) due to injury and joining the squad late but he has been there back up and here is an email I just received from him:

Three days to go and you can all imagine that the pressure is mounting. Last week there was an injury in the Isis boat, so I spent the whole week filling in in the two seat. It was excellent experience and we were able to make some good progress, and clock some fast times, in spite of having to reshuffle the order a bit. Justin is now fit and ready to go, and from here on in we are all holding thumbs that everyone stays healthy until the race.

There has often been a informal spare pairs race, which, when it takes place, sees crews race from the Mile Post to the start a few days before the main event. Because I had been in the eight the whole of last week, our coach decided that we shouldn’t race this year, as he felt that having not spent enough time in the boat, it made no sense to go out and hack around in a unprepared combination. A little disappointing not to race, but at the same time, it probably wouldn’t have been that much fun anyway.

For some reason, people involved in the Boat Race have an absolute fascination with the weights of the crews. Even in 1829 they had the vision to work out the average weight (in stone and pounds, naturally), so that 180 years later some statistician could get busy and throw all sorts of numbers at people who follow the race. I think the figures say that roughly two-thirds of all the races have been won by the heavier crew.

This year’s weigh-in saw Oxford break the record for the heaviest crew ever, lining up with an average of 99.7kg a man. Cambridge tipped the scales at 96.1kg a man, which is the heaviest Light Blue crew in history. The lightest men in each crew make a bit of a mockery of the weigh-in hype. Colin Smith, at 87kg for Oxford, is an Olympic silver medallist, while Rob Weitemeyer, the bow of the Cambridge eight, just 79kg, won a bronze medal at World Champs in the M4- for Canada in 2005. So there you go, the number crunchers are happy that they have some new figures to play with, but at the end of the day it will all depend on who makes their boat go faster (as is always the case in rowing).

Conditions on the river have been pretty appalling most of this week, with some seriously rough water being served up. All of the crews have pumps fitted to their boats in case of bad conditions. The worst of the water usually comes just after Hammersmith Bridge. Predictions so far are for sunshine on Sunday, with some light wind, so I wouldn’t take the bookies’ long odds on a sinking.

Dan Topolski (the coach in 1987, the year of True Blue) is still involved with the Oxford squad. His official role is coxing coach, and so he is down on the Thames whenever we come to London to help the coxes learn as much as possible about the river. They are looking to take the shortest line around the bends, but also to stay in the stream as much as possible. I’ll be surprised if the commentators don’t mention the “second lamppost from the left” that is the supposed best line under Hammersmith Bridge.

The basic recipe for the race is that the crew on Middlesex (on your right if you were umpiring the race) has the first bend in their favour. The Surrey crew then gets a long bend that begins before Hammersmith Bridge and carries on to around Chiswick Steps. After that the advantage swings back to the crew on the Middlesex station.

http://www.theboatrace.org/article/image/243/full.jpg

The last two races have been won by crews on Middlesex, by managing to keep in contact until the end of the Surrey bend and then moving away. Even though last year Oxford won by more than six lengths, they were still half a length down after more than ten minutes of racing.

This year’s race will be umpired by Boris Rankov. He won six consecutive races for Oxford from 1978-83. He also rowed in one losing and one winning Isis crew. His eight appearances led to the so-called “Rankov rule”, that no oarsman shall row more than four races as an undergrad, and four as a post grad. People say that he has forgotten more about the Boat Race than most people will ever know.

http://www.theboatrace.org/article/introduction/featurejanuary07/umpiring

Last weekend our squad went to Henley to support the women, lightweight men and lightweight women in their fixtures against Cambridge. Here the crews race the Henley regatta course in reverse, a shorter race, but still the focus of their year’s training. Oxford won both the women and lightweight women’s races, but lost the lightweight men’s event; the first time since 2001.

The broadcast in SA is on Supersport 1 from 6-7:30pm (delayed for some reason).

Cheers,

Andrew

Here is a video clip of last years race:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WpPmA5uTL4&hl=en&fs=1]

Good luck to the guys racing, I’m not quite sure who I support anymore – used to support Oxford but then Sam rowed for Cambridge so met quite a few of the guys there and supported them and now Andrew is at Oxford… think I’ll support Cambridge as Oxford won last year!

Video: Laptop Hunters $1000 – Lauren Gets an HP Pavilion

For me I’ll definitely be getting a new Windows laptop when Windows 7 comes out and the closest I’ll come to a MAC is possibly getting an iPhone.