Stex Toys

I’ve been a long time fan of the power given to a websites readers by RSS. Allowing you to keep tabs on what is being posts or written on a site without having to actually visit the site directly unless you want to read the full article. And despite finding many clients for managing my ever growing list of interesting sources I’ve always geared back to using Google Reader for it’s ultimate portability and simplistic, in a user friendly way, interface.

Today however I came across a Firefox plugin that takes things a little bit further, and better still it doesn’t set about replacing Google Reader, but on building upon it. That’s not to say you need to be a Google Reader user to make use of this tool, but if you do not only will your feeds be synchronised with it, but even your read count, stars and shares are all there too.

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So, what’s been going on here then? Well quite a lot, however with work being a bit crazy busy over the past couple of months I’ve not been able to bring myself to spend quite as much time on the PC at home of late, so I’ve been very much a pure twitter outlet of late.

Now though, with some rearranged holidays from November I find myself with some time away from work and can finally get back to blogging. At this stage I plan to add a couple of posts a day to get myself back into the swing of things, but first I wanted  to give a kind of overview of what’s being going on, and in a way a sort of table on contents of the items I’ll be talking about in the next few days.

First up is one of the biggest changes to come my way in a while, and a route which I thought I would never travel down. You see I’ve always seen myself as a PC gamer with a tow in the console market via the family favourite Nintendo having owned one of Big N’s devices since the N64. I did obtain a PS2 at one point, purely for playing Pro Evo, but in the end just used the PS2 controller to play it on the PC! Recently however I’ve found my gaming choices on the PC limits by the aging hardware in my three year old machine, despite a few choice upgrades along the way. Normally this would not present me with a challenge as I’m never happier than when picking up a few new parts to boost the PC along. However as I had rooted myself in the AMD camp during the glory years I found the stepping stone approach to upgrades a flawed route in the current Intel led performance world, leaving me with the only intelligent options being a complete system rebuild. Again not normally a problem as I’ve never bought a pre-built PC in my life and always build my own. However the computer market is currently in more flux than usual with Intel unleashing their new architecture and AMD looking for ways to regain their foot hold so I’ve been delaying and delaying waiting for the right time to strike. It is at this time that I happen upon a large bit of luck on the Next Gen gaming front, when my cousin reveals he has a ‘dead’ XBOX 360. Investigation reveals it’s the famed Red Ring of Death and he has since bought himself a shiny new 360 Elite.

Kindly he lets me take it off his hands, and one short return trip to Microsoft see’s me joining the world of XBOX, a route which previously I had only briefly flirted with for the media playback abilities of the device. So I am now opened up again to the world of the modern cutting edge gaming where I like to be, and playing games on the console they where invented for rather than some cheep arsed port to the PC. Of course I will still be gaming on the PC, but only with titles designed from the ground up for it, no doubt primarily in the RTS genre, whilst blasting my way through Locust Hordes, and being Left 4 Dead on the ‘BOX, so expect some feedback on 360 games to be added to the site.

Second change is slightly less of a revolution, and more in the traditional evolutionary path. After almost 18 months of happy mobile life with the BlackBerry Pearl, I’ve upgraded to the Bold after a shunt from Alex Watson of CustomPC fame. Actually whilst on the subject of CustomPC be sure to check out their new AKA first book Ultimate Guide to PC Gaming which is high on my wish list for Christmas! Anyway, back to the crackberry.. The Bold is turning out to be every bit as good a device as the Pearl turned out to be, however also with one of the major flaws intact also. But more on that another day.

As well as these two major points there are some other bits of tech I’ve picked up in the past few months that are also worth of some blog space, such as the Netgear Ethernet over Mains Power kit, and a portable DVD player with DivX capabilities, so there should be plenty coming over the next week prior to the Christmas break.. if I can put down Gears of War 2

• Taken on board the key notes from the SAP User Group. Time for an afternoon of BI! #
• Picked up another gaming bargain at the weekend. Medieval II Total War Gold for 15 quid. #
• @Sifter Been in mine for two weeks now, it’s grim up north! #
• SUGUKI Day 2, another day of getting up to speed on Business Intelligence #
• Leaving London #
• Left the house before 07:00 returned about 19:00 and still only got 8.5 hours work in. Traffic Fail! #
• The weekend can not cometh soon enough this week, only been in the office there days too! #

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