Last Friday I bought a new laptop, a top of the range Acer Aspire from PC World with all the trimmings, 4GB RAM, Wi-Fi, DVD rewriter, 64 bit CPU, built-in webcam and Windows Vista, imagine my heartbreak however after gleefully running Windows Update and seeing this after rebooting:


It turned out not only were my updates not configured correctly, but they had ruined my Windows installation completely! The next reboot failed completely, showing only a black screen and the filename 'drmmgrtn.dll'. Close to tears, I contemplated taking her back to PC World, but then I had an idea.... using Acer's recovery program I reverted to a clean install of Windows, this time I decided to run two little commands with UAC (User Account Control) turned OFF:


Boom! Windows downloads the new updates, I rebooted and no more incorrectly configured updates, now running Windows Vista SP2 quite nicely, so if you have bought a laptop from PC World and had this same problem, try my solution, it may just save you some tears and wasted hours talking to one of those 'Tech Guys'.

In other news, I learned tonight I have a new freelance job coming up which I am pretty excited about, also apologies for neglecting my duties at EAF, I've just been so busy with moving rooms, buying laptops and having pig flu, still have my sights set firmly on getting to 2nd Lieutenant by Christmas, though!!!! Right, no time for BF2, need to start work, laters!

Fuck, it's been too long! Ok first of all, it's damn good to see an email from AgentArmstrong, what a blast from the past, going to mail him back in a bit!


Last week (Tuesday 29th September I think), I went with RtK to Satan's Hollow in Manchester for the first time, bloody nice place I have to say, nice decor, liked the free bar between 10 and 11 and the place was absolutely packed-out with lovely dyed-hair, blacked-eyed little boozed-up studenty emo sluts, in fact slut-wise, it had Jilly's Rockworld trumped, I did however feel old, out of place and inadequate. I just don't think the Manchester rock or student club scene is for me, or perhaps I'm not for it, it would be nice to one day go out and not come back with a virus, I have been quite ill for the past few days, (at my worst on Thursday and Friday) but I've recovered fully now, I had what was thought to be swine flu, although I'm not totally convinced, anyway this leads me onto tonight's rant, I have been given my ration of Tamiflu, from what I heard it was a ration, but what happens if I get full-blown actual pig flu? You see, it's times like these I start to see some sense in Glenn Beck's anti-NHS rants... I am ill, I get free rationed pills, great. But, if I get ill again, does that mean I don't get any more Tamiflu? Something that can be taken from you is not a right. Anyway, I could be completely wrong about this, I'm beginning to sound like Daniel Hannan here. I just don't want to get ill again, so I can get a fucking job and start making changes around here damnit!

In other news... I now have a much larger bedroom and now have a fully dedicated office/den area in the loft which I hope to furnish with new PC stuff and a new plasma TV, it's going to be awesome. Ohh yeah, RtK aka Fishmeister is to make a triumphant return to Battlefield 2 under a brand new account. Watch this space for more info..

I'm almost done uploading 'Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain', if you're into British history, I definitely think you should head over to the HellwrathUK YouTube Channel and check it out. I'm off to watch TV in my new bedroom. I need a new laptop so I can do these updates from bed really. Gonna overhaul HWDN soon you know, ohh also exciting new project nearly done (Weeify). Right - bed!

Sat here writhing in agony with my neck and back, but anyway, it's been a while, been really busy... well not really. This evening I was playing BF2 and was having usual lag problems and for some reason, I decided to try it in single player in very high res, 1280x1024 in fact, I was surprised to see the game run quite well and looked great, so I had a thought, maybe my recent problems with BF2 aren't necessarily hardware related... sooo I launched the server browser and found a low ping Karkand server - Super Infantry Clan, the game loaded no problem and to my utter amazement the game was running... not just running, but was running better than I have ever had it running, great hitreg, nice graphics (bear in mind from the screenshot below I hadn't turned anti-aliasing on). Click the image below for the original screenshot (JPEG 147KB).


In other news, my application for a Flex Builder 3 licence was accepted, thank you Adobe! Also, I may very possibly be joining EAF... Speaking of BF2, I'm just 4000 points away from ranking up to Sergeant Major! Soon I will have crossed the 30k gap, and after that, just 10k points later is my butter bar (2nd lieutenant)! Codeined up now to the eyeballs, I'll leave you with the news that I am considering changes to HWDN, including making a nice new design and adding a BF2 leaderboard module to the main page. Oh yeah - I'm getting rid of AdSense for HWDN, it's just not economically viable and it screws up my HTML validity!

If you're an unemployed developer, you can apply for Adobe Flex Builder 3 at https://freeriatools.adobe.com/learnflex/. I'm not sure exactly how Adobe decide if you're accepted or not for the unrestricted (for personal use) version, but in the mean time the program will work for 60 days, of course, I applied, I'll keep you updated if I get any news...