There’s about one week left to enter my rocking Bubbler contest. You can really win a brand new Bushmaster Bubbler, plus other cool prizes. You want some cool shit from the hippy, don’t you? Click here, click now!

I took delivery of a Playstation 3 this week, along with a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA 4). I’ve abandoned north London and am now a resident of Liberty City. Just call me the libertycityhippy from now on.

I’ve never been much of a gamer, the last console I owned was a Nintendo NES, back in the early 80s. I haven’t really played any computer games since then.

I debated buying a PS3 for a while as I think having one is the equivalent of giving up on reality, though technically I gave up on it a couple of decades ago. I’ve got friends who have been telling me how cool they are for a while and with the release of GTA 4, I thought it was time to take the plunge.

I very nearly bought a PS2 and GTA San Andreas, but convinced myself my free time would be better spent pursuing random acts of creativity. I’m feeling far less creative at the moment and rather than trying to extract blood from a stone, I’ve elected to spend my leisure time in a virtual world where I can steal cars, shag whores and kill people. That’s better than exploring the same activities in reality around north London, I guess.

Video games are time bandits and they will eat up your free time quite effectively and if you’re as crap at playing them as I am, they will take up even more of your time.

I thought long and hard about this purchase, seeing it as a mini-surrender to having a life. In some ways, this is me giving up, just a little. Not forever, not even until I finish GTA 4 (which at the rate I am going will take years), but just enough to clear some of the cobwebs out of my skull. It was either this or some LSD and finding quality acid these days seems like too much of a struggle, so I am now a gamer.

Setting up the PS3 was a breeze, I’ve connected it directly to my Bravia’s only HDMI input and I have the output set to 1080i, which is the best resolution my tv can deliver. The audio also goes via the TV and is then fed back to my amplifier via a stereo cable – not ideal, but serviceable. I only have 2.1 audio, so its not like I am missing out on the 5.1 surround sound – I don’t have enough speakers to benefit from it.

I was also able to get the PS3 straight onto my home wi-fi network, which means online game play and updates are already within my grasp. I’ve actually run some updates already and my operating system is bang up to date.

I bought 2 games with the console, the afformentioned GTA 4 and Gran Tursimo 5 – The Prologue, on the recommendation of a mate.

Gran Turismo is positively stunning, especially the backgrounds. I’ve been doing laps around a track in London and it is pin sharp and photo-realistic. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I mean, it is positively jaw-droppingly good! I’m still crap at controlling the car, though and I definitely need lots of practise.

GT5 is a taster of the full version of the game, which is due to be released next year and only cost me 17 quid, which I thought was a real bargain.

GTA 4 is unbelievably involved and has a scope and scale which is mind boggling. The gameplay takes place in an expansive and extremely realistic realm, which is massive and has a level of detail which would thrill most feature film makers. I can’t get over how good it all looks.

The main reason I really bought all this is I’ve felt for a while that I was missing out on a significant part of home entertainment by not having a games console. Video games are big business, making as much or more annually than most feature films. I think I read GTA 4 took over 50 million dollars in its first week of release, making it the best selling game of all time.

GTA 4 cost nearly 40 quid, which may sound expensive, but if you factor in the number of hours I’ll be playing it and the shear size of the playing field, you can see why they are that expensive. The amount of time and man-hours that go into developing such a game is immense and they have to make it back somehow.

I also think there’s probably work to be had in the world of gaming, for a middle-aged, make-believe hippy from north London. Someone has to write the storylines and create the characters – I could do that! I would love to do that! Games probably reach more people than films, so it’s a big audience to satisfy and satisfy them, I would!

So who out there has any contacts with the major gaming developers? Wanna hook me up with a highly paid, emotionally satisfying position coming up with concepts and stories for future games? I promise you that given the chance, I could come up with the most compelling games imaginable!

Like how about this…a northlondonhippy videogame! You would get to be me, in an RPG sort of way. You could hang out in my virtual lair, roll and smoke virtual spliffs, watch TV and play PS3 games, as me. And then their would be missions, like scoring weed on a Friday night, but still having time to get home and order a nice Japanese take-away, before the restaurant closes.

You’d pay 40 quid for that, wouldn’t you?

The entire month of April slipped quickly and effortlessly through my fingers. I say “effortlessly” because that is precisely how much effort I’ve put into my site this month and for that I am ashamed.

You shouldn’t have to pay the price for this and you won’t, which is why I am extending the deadline on my “bubbler contest” until the 1st of June, so there is still plenty more time to enter. And don’t worry if you’ve already entered, your email still counts very much so and you will continue to have an equal chance with everyone else.

I’ve had loads of emails with questions about the contest, which I will answer here in a mini-FAQ:

Is the contest for real? YES

What’s in it for you? SELF PROMOTION

Do I just send you an email to enter? YES

Will you really post me the bubbler if I win? YES

How will you choose the winners? LITTLE PIECES OF PAPER WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WILL BE PUT IN A BOWL AND I WILL WITHDRAW 16 OF THEM, ONE FOR EACH PRIZE, FROM 1ST ON DOWN.

Will you announce the winners? JUST THEIR INITIALS AND WILL CONTACT EACH ONE INDIVIDUALLY TO ASK FOR THEIR MAILING ADDRESS

And that’s it for now. Get entering!

While I’m here, a quick update on why I haven’t been here. I’ve been working too much, I’ve been distracted by other things, most notably a book which I will review at some point here, because it deserves to be read and I’ve been sorting out the usual bullshit at my north London lair.

My SKY+ box died a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was gone for good, but I was able to give it a master reset and getting it going again…for about 2 more weeks before it well and truly went to that great gadget shop in the SKY. It was around 5-6 years old, an original V1 Pace box and I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.

I booked a call out with SKY, which costs £65 and included a replacement box and I really didn’t have a choice. Well, I did, I could have used this as an opportunity to upgrade to SKY HD, but I’m still not convinced its worth the extra dosh with so little proper HD content available.

The SKY engineer was cool and it took him all of ten minutes to swap the boxes and pair the new one up with my card. The box he installed is a PACE V3, with an 80gb hard drive, though I think that some of it is partitioned for SKY Anytime, which is where SKY choose programmes they think are the best of the week and record them to your hard drive in the background. It can be disabled if you don’t like it, but I thought I would give it a go and see what its like. I’m not convinced if you switch it off that it will free up the other half of the hard drive for my recordings, but its worth looking into if the SKY selected shows are crap.

The new box is about a third the size of my old one, its really dinky. It’s also a bit noisier than the old one, either because of the fan or the hard drive and I’m not certain which. It seems to work well so far and isn’t much different from the old one, except for the aforementioned ANYTIME feature.

It’s not just a device that died, but I found out last night that one of my mother’s sisters, my favourite aunt passed away over the weekend. She was nearly 84 and it sounds like she was surrounded by loved ones and went peacefully. Whatever the fuck that means.

I don’t like many of my relatives, and to be honest I downright despise quite a few of them, but not this particular aunt. She was really special and yes, I know people always say nice things about the dead, but I would have said the same last week, when she was among the living. She was consistently kind, generous and loving and was beloved by many, myself and my younger brother among them.

I hadn’t seen her in years, as is true of 99% of my family and its probably been 4-5 years since I spoke to her on the telephone. I would have liked to chat with her, but she’d become quite deaf and the telephone wasn’t really an option.

One of my earliest childhood memories, which is vague and hazy as I would expect of a minor event prior to my 3rd birthday, over 40 years ago to be, is of my aunt visiting us in a house we lived in, in 1965. She took me for a walk up to a nearby supermarket and I can just remember being excited by this unusual outing with an aunt that I loved and trusted. It’s just a small memory, but I still carry it around with me to this day.

Good bye my dear, sweet aunt, you will always be remembered fondly by the many people whose lives you touched, including mine.

A-hoy hippyfans, there be hippies here!

Well, one hippy, actually and I’m not even a real hippy. Sue me for false advertising and then request a full refund!

My month of little working isn’t panning out as I had planned. Who’s surprised? No matter how much free time I have, its never enough, but then it’s never really free either.

How do normal people do it? You know, people who work Monday through Friday, 9-5, every week. How do they manage to keep it all together with nothing but the weekend to do their real life stuff? It boggles my mind.

For the better part of the last 20 years, I’ve managed to avoid the Mon-Fri routine. The life of a shiftworker is much more fun and there’s nothing I like better than having days off during the week. Except maybe easy sex and hard drugs, but then they go hand in hand with lots of free time and the soul of a junior-satan.

Don’t you have the soul of a junior satan? Guess its just me then!

You see, I understand the inherent difference between good and bad, I’m just a bit capricious when it comes to deciding which side of the line to choose. I make up my own mind, using my own moral compass for guidance and my “true north” probably differs from most people’s.

I often choose the path of least resistance, but then at my age and so lacking in ambition and direction, what else would I do?

I spent an entire day this week swapping out my shitty, cheap old stereo for a brand new, shiny silver AV Amp. I bought a Pioneer VSX-917v and saved 60 quid waiting until after xmas. That’s when I first scoped it out, back in December, but elected to wait and it was a wise decision.

My old stereo, an 8 year old Technics, was a combo CD player, cassette deck(!!) and radio receiver, but all I really used it for is the amp, which had SKY+, a DVD player and my mac mini connected to it, all with stereo analogue connections. For the last couple of months, the sound has been cutting out, only restored by a well placed, measured slap on the top of the unit with a flat palm. I’m sure that’s the best way to fix anything, anyway.

The cutting out was steadily worsening, so I ordered the Pioneer unit a couple of weeks ago and finally got around to installing it last week.

I bought some digital audio cables, TOSlinks for the mini and SKY+ and a digital coaxial for the DVD player. The new amp was too big to go on the shelf where the old stereo lived, which meant I had to tear down the entire set-up and re-cable it all from scratch. Yawn.

It took me a few hours to rip it all apart and clean out the years of dust trapped in the inaccessible bits and a couple more hours to reinstall, configure and test everything, but eventually I had it all working well.

The new amp will support 7.1 audio, but my living room won’t. I can’t even fit 5.1, because I have no space for the rear surround speaker. Right now, it only has 2 speakers connected, but I have a subwoofer ordered and the space cleared for it when it comes.

Everything worked great the first day it was connected and I was very pleased with the sound quality. I kept the Technics speakers from the old set-up because they are small, but decent and are bi-amped, which the Pioneer also supports. I am very happy with the sound and expect the subwoofer will make it sound even better.

On the second day, Mrs. Hippy discovered a burning smell coming out of the amp. It turns out, the amp runs ridiculously hot and needs to be well ventilated. It’s current home, underneath the shelf where my TV lives, has precious little space between the top of the Pioneer and the shelf. Ut-oh. I have to move the Pioneer. Yawn.

My house is small, and my living room is smaller. I don’t have any other options for placing the Pioneer amp. I have to magic up a 50cm x 50cm space, and I think I’ve found it, all I need is a small table to put the amp on…and IKEA sells one for £7.99. Now, I just have to get myself to IKEA, which is hell on earth with extra-added yuppies.

I don’t want my new amp to burn up, it sounds far too good. Right now, I have a small fan aimed at it, which doesn’t really help with the ambient noise levels, but does keep things cooler and smelling less like an electrical fire! Hopefully, I’ll have the whole thing sorted out in the next day or so.

I meant to wake up really early this morning and visit IKEA, but I didn’t. Maybe I’ll go later today, if the spirit moves me.

I also need to buy another set of cables…longer ones. Repositioning the amp puts it out of range of all the new cables I bought.

Nothing in my life is ever easy, not even the simplest of tasks. Swapping out an old stereo for a new amplifier shouldn’t become a major engineering project. And I should be taller, too!

I’m still digging excellent coffee every day, though, which softens the blow on everything. Right now, I am sipping a freshly made cappuccino, crafted by my own hand not five minutes ago, from freshly ground beans that were grown in El Salvador and roasted 10 days ago. Yumm.

This week’s coffee battle has been over frothed milk. Frothing milk properly takes practise and skill and I woefully inadequate at creating microfoam, which is the goal of baristas. Microfoam has a velvety texture and is pourable, you should never need to spoon it into the cup. It shouldn’t have peaks either and shouldn’t be stiff like whipped egg whites.

I’ve yet to work out the secret to perfect microfoam, though I am trying all the tricks suggested online, from chilling the metal jug, to using full-fat milk. Actually, and this makes no sense to me at all, I am having better luck with skimmed milk, which defies logic and everything I’ve read online. Go figure.

Don’t laugh, one day my coffee brewing skills may save my life. When TV news finally chews me up and spits me out, Starbucks here I come!

I purchased a full copy of Logic Studio, Apple’s audio production suite of applications and loops, at the end of October, when I bought my copy of Leopard. Around a week after that, I started installing Logic Studio; yesterday I finished.

Yes, you are reading that correctly, it took me 6 weeks to get all of the software properly installed and functioning on my iMac.

Why?

Simple, because one of the installation DVDs was no good.

The first time I tried to install the entire package, the sixth DVD of seven was spit out by my computer, around 7 hours into the process. The DVD in question, Jam Pack Content 2, had some problem and my drive couldn’t read it.

Being the resourceful sort, I decided to give it another try before contacting Apple. At the same point, around 7 hours in, the 6th DVD crapped out again. I phoned Apple.

Phoning Apple is never fun, they are always busy, you need to wait a while before you speak to the first human being and rarely can the first person you speak to, help you, necessitating a further wait. I was more relaxed this time, because I was armed with a fresh serial number and a recently purchased, boxed copy of Logic Studio.

After leaping successfully through all the right hoops, I finally got to speak to someone from the Logic department. I described my problem to him in detail and he agreed I had a duff DVD. He confirmed my details and said that a replacement DVD would be with me in 3-4 days. This was six weeks ago.

Like a twat, I sat by my front door, day in and day out, awaiting the knock of the postman or courier with my replacement DVD and every day, it did not arrive. I stayed cool, I stayed calm, I waited a couple of weeks and phoned again.

On subsequent calls to Apple, you are armed with something even better than a serial number, something they call a case number. A case number from Apple refers to the specific incident you’ve contacted them about and it makes it much quicker to navigate through the hoops to get to the person who can help you.

I got the same guy in the Logic department, he has quite a distinctive accent and that’s how I knew. He put me on hold to check on the status of my replacement and after a few minutes, he returned to tell me that it would be with me in 3-4 days. This was five weeks ago.

I continued to press my runny nose against my front window, patiently waiting for the delivery to come and making nasty, gloopy marks on the glass. I remained chilled, I was relaxed and as the holidays approached, I formulated a plan of action.

I also did a bit of research on the internet and discovered I was not alone with a damaged installation DVD. It turned out many people had a similar experience to mine, with the installation failing at the same point.

I’m guessing Apple had a serious quality control issue with DVD number 6 and getting them remade took a lot longer than expected. Or they just lied to me. Or both. It’s all very un-Apple.

I waited four more weeks, before deciding to phone Apple again and that was yesterday. Just as I was looking up their number on the ‘net to phone them again, there was a loud knock on the door and guess what it was! A courier with the replacement DVD. Yipppppeeeee!

I spent five more hours installing all the content for Logic Studio and at the end of it I was rewarded with a finished installation and all the loops and sounds in their proper folders on my hard drive. Result!

Though, to be honest I was hoping to have a long, drawn out argument with Apple which resulted in me receiving some form of compensation for my lengthy wait, but they stole my thunder with their well-timed delivery. If only I had phoned them a week before, perhaps I could have beat them out of some credit, or a free copy of Final Cut Express 4. Now, we’ll never know.

Now that I’ve got a full, working copy of Logic Studio cooking on my iMac, I can start thinking about my next big exercise in futility; my first northlondonhippy album.

Ladies, gentleman and stoners, I’m pleased to announce that coming sometime in the 2nd half of 2008, I will be releasing the comeback record from a career that never was!

I present to you for the first time anywhere, the title of my upcoming release:

“the northlondonhippy & the seven deadly sins - songs about sex and death”

My back-up band, “the seven deadly sins” are actually only a six-piece…Sloth keeps missing rehearsals.

I’ll be writing and recording the record over the next several months, aiming to release it for free on my website sometime this summer. I already have the bare bones of 5 songs in the works and ideas for the rest. The whole thing will be downloadable, along with cover art.

If 1 million people download this puppy, besides bankrupting my bandwith for a decade, I promise I’ll take my band and go on tour. No joke, no lie. I reckon if one million copies of this album are out there, sponsorship for a tour would be a piece of piss.

No DRM, no credit card numbers, it will be completely and totally free. I might make you handover your email address, so I can keep you up to date with a newsletter or something, but I would never sell, loan or give your details to anyone!

Here at HippyCo Industries Ltd (a division of HippyCo Enterprises plc), your privacy is important to us, just as is ours. For that reason, we’ll never phone you up at home for a chat or show up unannounced for a cup of tea.

It’s become very clear to me that I’ve already blown my “100 posts in 100 days” challenge. It’s time to abandon ship, because this captain’s not going down with it.

My intentions, as always, were admirable, but as usual I let myself down in the delivery. As much as I would like to post something every single day, my erratic lifestyle just doesn’t make it possible to sit down with the prerequisite focus and inspiration as often as I would like.

To put it more bluntly: I suck.

If this blog was my full time job, then yes I could make several posts a day. But until this blog can provide me with a six-figure annual income, it won’t be my main focus.

To put this in perspective, one of the things distracting me from blogging over the last week was putting together my long-overdue accounting for my media empire, for tax purposes. Having done the sums this week, I can tell you that I am running my empire at a loss. Being a media tycoon costs me money and not a small amount either. Any revenue this blog generates is quickly swallowed by my expenses.

This is not a cry of poverty, my full time job provides me with ample income and I can afford my media empire losses without any hardship. I won’t be seeking donations to my paypal account. I don’t even have a paypal account!

As I am the chief sponsor of my own blog, perhaps I should replace my banner advertising with some of my own, but that would be silly, because if you’re already on my site, you don’t need to see adverts for it - you’re already here!

The only money I generate from this site is through my affiliation with EDIT including their exclusive distribution deal for my beloved “RooR Custom 5.0 northlondonhippy deluxe”. If you’re going to shop at EDIT anyway, and you click through my site, you’re handing me 10% of whatever you spend, so if you want to say thanks the best way anyone can (with cash!), please feel free to do it. I know quite a few of you do that, anyway and I don’t often mention this, but again, prepping up my taxes has made me take a good look at my finances.

I know I could take on more advertising, but I really don’t want to. I suppose for the right price, I would consider a single sponsor with very deep pockets, but there’s a higher likelihood of me sprouting a tail and I don’t expect to be wagging one any time soon!

So what else have I been up to this week besides my dreaded taxes? I had a sight test and ordered my very first pair of middle-aged man reading glasses. It was either that, or have my arms stretched. Ask your parents to explain that one to you.

I also went to my dentist and had the middle-aged crud scraped off my teeth. It was precisely as pleasant as it sounds.

I’m really lucky, I’ve got a good, local NHS dentist. He’s walking distance, his office is never busy and you can almost always get an appointment. I know there’s supposed to be a shortage of NHS dentists, but dig it I’ve got a groovy one and don’t email me asking for his name. I like the fact that its never busy there, so it will remain my secret.

Tomorrow I’m taking the Yaris in for its annual service (one year or 10,000 miles), which is technically a bit fucked, because I have only had the car for around six or seven months and I’ve only put less than 3,000 miles on it. Toyota say its due because it was new a year ago and they had it on the road as a company car, for all of 1,600 miles. It’s not expensive and I can live without the car for a day, so what the fuck.

Today, Sunday, I had a delivery from IKEA. I finally got around to getting a new mattress. Our bed is around 10 years old and it was time. Luckily, you can now shop online with IKEA, which is a very good thing.

The bed frame is still in perfect condition, so we saw no need to replace it, but our old mattresses were showing their age. The bed is a superking size, originally from IKEA, so the easiest solution was to get the replacements from them as well.

Their website was ok, nothing fancy and many of the items listed were not actually available to order online, but you could check the stock on the item at your nearest branch. Great, but that defeats the purpose of shopping online.

I hate going to IKEA, it’s always crowded, it’s always stressful and at the end of all that effort, you have to hand your purchases over to the independent delivery people, who if you’re lucky, lug it to you within a few days. Even with the meatballs from their restaurant, I’d rather not go if I don’t have to. Thankfully, the online gods of shopping were smiling upon me and everything I needed to order was available for delivery from the website and I checked out.

IKEA phoned a few days later to confirm my delivery, which was not the date I was given by the website at checkout, but a few days later. A Sunday. That’s quite impressive, especially for normal people with Mon-Fri jobs, but for me it matters far less because of my erratic lifestyle. The middle of last week would have been better for me.

The delivery was painless and the 2 guys who brought me the stuff were cool. Now, all I have to do is wait for the council to come collect the old mattresses and my work here is done!

Following on with my consumerism, I am being forced to buy something unexpected - a new sound system, sort of. My present stereo, a cheap Technics mini-system is having some serious problems and is prone to cutting out completely. A few gentle taps on the top and the sound returns, but this is not a sustainable solution. I’ve been forced to research AV amps and receivers.

Fuck me, its confusing. Consumer audio has become a minefield of complexity which has left my head slightly spinning. I’ve finally settled on a model from Pioneer, which I haven’t actually ordered yet, chiefly on its features, price and most importantly, availability. It’s a VSX-917V if that means anything at all to you, 7.1, HDMI switching, blah, blah, blah.

I haven’t even got the space for 5.1 sound, nevermind 7.1, but I am thinking I might opt for 3.1 - center, left, right and subwoofer. I’m not sure yet, I haven’t really gone as far as speakers. My simple plan is to use some old speakers initially, as I expect my old stereo to die any day and I’ll need to make a quick swap to the new one. If we ever move house, this system can grow a bit.

I’ve got three audio sources, which are all digital, SKY+, my Sony DVD recorder/player and my Mac mini. Oh wait, I have a fourth analogue signal, which feeds out of my Bravia’s Freeview receiver.

My biggest problem, as always, is space. My new amp, when it comes, won’t fit where my old mini system stereo is, which means I’m going to have to tear down my entire media centre and rebuild it from scratch, including all the cabling. What fun!

On the plus side, the new AV Amp will do all my audio switching for me. At the moment, audio switching is the one weak link in my system as it requires you to get off the sofa, go to the media centre and manually turn the dial. That means changing sources will all happen at the touch of a button, audio and video because I have a Logitech Harmony 885 remote.

Oh shit, I will have to reprogram the Harmony when I install the new amp. Damn, this stuff is all so complicated, luckily for me, I’m very techno-friendly!

The other thing I have been researching is espresso machines. We currently got a combo coffee maker, a big drip pot on one side and a steam espresso maker on the other. I’ve never, ever used the drip maker and the espresso side makes really lame coffee.

In doing my research I’ve discovered that steam powered espresso makers burn the coffee because the water is too hot when it is forced through the filter. What a true coffee lover wants, or rather needs, is a proper pump machine.

Pump espresso makers aren’t cheap, but it sounds like if you want to make proper espresso, its your only choice. And if you are going to use it every day, which I would, it would pay for itself in no time.

Think about it, a decent cappuccino costs around two quid or £2.50 from a coffee bar. Let’s say £2 which is on the low side I expect, for a tall one, every day for a year, would be £730 and the coffee makers I’m looking at cost a lot less than that. I haven’t factored in the actual coffee, milk or sugar costs, but they would not be that significant compared to the cost of the machine.

I’m very tempted by a Gaggia, they are well reviewed and extremely popular, but I haven’t decided yet.

This will sound silly, but normally I consult Which Magazine on purchases such as this. I’ve yet to go wrong by following their Best Buy advice and as a consummate consumer, I’d like to continue this guidance, but Which has not reviewed them in over 2 years! Times change, models change, their Best Buys from two years ago just aren’t valid any more!

What’s a coffee loving hippy to do? I might actually have to decide for myself without the benefit of advice from the experts who test all these machines side by side and report on the one that’s best value for money. I’m all about value for money, dammit! What if I buy one that comes up poorly in their next survey? Then what? Do I just throw it away and buy the one they tell me to or do I suffer for years with a substandard device?

These are the problems that currently plague me. It’s a tough old existence, fraught with hardship at every turn. Modern life presents many challenges, but confronting my coffee conundrum could just very well be the most significant difficulty ever faced by a cappuccino sipping-hippy. Well, that or deciding whether or not to switch off my father’s life-support machine, I’d say its a toss up.

Recently, I purchased a Slingbox Solo. I ordered it from Amazon and set it up a couple of weeks ago.

For those of you who don’t know what a Slingbox is, please allow me to explain. A Slingbox is a device which you connect to your audio/video sources and to your home network and it allows you to place-shift your viewing on a computer, in your home, or anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection and it also allows you to control the source device.

I’ll elaborate: I have a SKY+ satellite receiver and DVR (Digital Video Recorder) in my living room, connected to my flatscreen TV. I’ve connected the Slingbox to the SKY+ and my network and the Slingbox takes the raw TV signal and compresses it, then streams it onto my home network, to be received by, say by my laptop, wirelessly in any other room in the house.

Are you getting the idea? In theory, I should be able to view my Slingbox outside of my house, but I am having some port forwarding issues which I’ve yet to resolve, because it goes through two different routers before reaching the internet.

The Slingbox Solo is a very simple looking device, with connectors on one side and some blinky lights on the other side. There are no buttons or controls, the idea is to connect it, configure it and forget about it, everything else is done via the software you download, called SlingPlayer.

I connected my Slingbox Solo to my SKY+ via an S-video cable, as its the highest quality output signal available. My SKY+ is an original V1 Pace unit, feeding my TV via SCART, but the S-Video output mirrors it. This means the Slingbox Solo only sees whatever the SKY+ sees. If someone is watching the TV at the same time, you both have to watch the same programme.

I used a normal RCA stereo phono cable to connect up the audio from the SKY+ to the Slinbox Solo and connected the power supply. I also put the IR blasters above and below the SKY+ IR receiver as these provide the remote control functionality.

Finally, I had to connect the SlingBox to my network. The SlingBox only outputs ethernet, there is no built in wi-fi, which is fine if your router is next to your television. Mine isn’t, which meant using some sort of bridge.

My first try was an Airport Express from Apple. They are normally very robust and dependable units and this was a cost effective way to do it, but it didn’t work very well. I don’t know why.

I connected the AE to my network in WDS mode, connected the Slingbox Solo to it and within a minute, the Slingbox was connected to my network. I was able to configure the Slingbox quickly and was watching my SKY+ on all my Macs in fairly good quality.

It didn’t last, the bandwith dropped dramatically, and at least once a day, the Slingbox would lose its network connection, though it appeared the Airport Express was still connected to my network. I had other network problems as well, losing connections to my different computers and other Airport Express units, used for music streaming, were having dropouts too. Resetting the Slingbox and associated AE unit restored my connection and got the network working again, but the same problem happened every day.

When I disconnected the Slingbox and AE, my network performed fine, so I decided to connect the Slingbox another way.

I bought a set of NetGear HomePlugs, which do ethernet over powerlines and they are a total revelation. You plug them both into the electrical mains and they find each other automatically and create a durable and robust ethernet bridge between the two locations. Once plug is connected to my Airport Extreme, the other is connected to the Slingbox. Within seconds, they were connected and so was the Slingbox and its held the connection continuously since I connected them. These things are very cool!

I’m still having slight problems with my network; it grinds to a halt and loses the internet about once a day, but then comes back. I think I need to set it all up again, as my base unit is still looking for an AE in WDS mode and its not there anymore. When I have the time, I’ll reboot all the units and reset them up from scratch. That’s how it was before the Slingbox, so it should go back to being perfect again.

I’m also determined to sort out the port forwarding, as it would be cool to watch SKY+ from outside my home, either live TV or recorded programmes. The SlingPlayer software includes a virtual remote for the SKY+, which means you can duplicate any remote command with a simple click of your mouse. Very clever!

There are other models of SlingBox available, some offering more connections for more devices, others offering digital and analogue TV tuners. For my needs, with one main TV source, the Solo was perfect. I’ve got shitty freeview reception here, so a tuner was pointless and there’s no need to connect it to a DVD player, because most computers are already DVD players!

If I wanted to watch SKY in another room, I could have a second box installed, which I would have to pay for and I would be charged a tenner a month for the privilege. It wouldn’t be connected to my main SKY+, which means it would only receive live tv. Also, it would be in one fixed location, like my bedroom. What if I wanted to keep an eye on the news, while cooking dinner?

The Slingbox is a cheaper, more flexible solution, it offers great picture quality, at full screen resolutions, anywhere inside my home. When I can view it over the internet, which I am certain I will do one day soon, it will complete the package. It’s a welcome addition to my A/V arsenal!

Thank you for dropping by tech-geek corner!

Hey.

Yeah, you.

YES, YOU!

Hi there.

Thanks for dropping by.

You’ve reached the northlondonhippy’s happening website and that makes you very cool.

If you’ve come here today for something genuinely entertaining, informative or interesting, you’re bound to be disappointed. Today, all we are offering is lame excuses and an invitation to explore the rest of the site. There’s some good stuff buried just below this apology and even deeper if you can be bothered to dig.

I’m letting the 100 posts thing get away from me, I can see my post count slipping away. I’m off for the next week, though and I’m bound to come up with something in the next seven days. I’m aiming for 10 posts of an indeterminate length and subject, but we all know how well my aims pan out.

I’m still adjusting to existing in daylight and I’m still catching up on my sleep. By the time I’m feeling nearly normal, it will be time to get on the nightbus again, metaphorically speaking, of course.

I’ve just been chilling out for the last couple of days, sorting out real life bullshit that is as tedious as it sounds. I’ve still got more to do as well and I want to have some fun too.

I need to have some fun! I’ve earned it!

Fun, this week is not going to involve hard drugs and whores, no matter how much you beg me, but playing around with my new copy of Logic Studio. I spent most of yesterday trying to install it, but one of the 8 installation DVDs was corrupted, so I’m not there yet. Apple were cool when I phoned them and the DVD they think is damaged is to be replaced. I should have it in my hot little hands in a few days. Then, lucky me, I get to re-install most of it again. It will take around 4 hours, but once that’s done I’ll have all the content I should have, loops, instruments, etc. Groovy!

Now, all I need is some talent, but I’m sure they have a pill for that. They have pills for everything!

Welcome to a lazy Sunday with the hippy.

I finished my last shift Saturday morning, which technically means I worked the first 7 hours of my first day off. That, in my mind makes it an actual 1/2 day off. I’m off all day today, but back at work again tomorrow night. Does this make sense? I’ve got a day and a half off. So what am I doing with all that time?

Sleeping mainly.

I had a 4 hour nap on Saturday in the late afternoon into early evening, woke up for a few hours (and for a Japanese takeaway) and then went back to sleep around midnight and up again at 6:30am this morning.

If you are wondering why I haven’t posted anything until now, I hope that answers your question. I also hope I’m not approaching proper blogging with detailed explanations of my fucked up sleep patterns and takeaway menus. At least it wasn’t lunch!

As today is my only proper day off in the last week, I’ve got to do all the real life shit I’ve neglected while I was working. I’ve got to run a few errands, do some stuff around the house and I’m hoping to have the time to finish installing the last of my big software purchase last week.

Specifically, I’ve got a full, boxed copy of the new Logic Studio, purchased at the upgrade price, because I have Logic Express. I think there are 6 DVDs or so to install, which means its probably going to take a couple of hours or more to transfer all that on to my hard drive.

After my next 2 shifts, I’ve got 9 days off and my plan is to put a fair bit of time into learning this new application and laying down a song or two. I even have a couple of things in my head, so I won’t be starting from scratch.

I haven’t done anything properly musical in around 20 years, though I’ve recorded some incidental music which I’ve used in videos and things. For example, the background music on my nlh deluxe graphic promo is taken from something I recorded around 3 years ago, when I first got Logic Express. It was a test recording and not meant to be anything more than that, but it worked for my purposes and there were no copyright issues, since I wrote it.

The cool thing about the music I am hoping to record next week is that I have some lyrics and melodies already that I want to play around with and I’m going to try to sing.

I’m not a singer and I can’t sing a note, so this should be fun. I’m going to attempt to find my voice.

The most inhibiting factor to this is that singing, unlike guitar or keyboards, can’t be hidden with headphones; you have to sing out loud. That means my neighbours will probably hear me, only without the benefit of any guiding background tracks. Oh, they are going to get a right laugh out of me!

If I really do come up with any music, I’ll post it here, don’t worry and you all will be able to download it for free. It’s not like a record company’s going to give me a contract! I’m not that deluded.

I brought a new kitty-cat home yesterday and I don’t mean the fuzzy variety. I purchased my very own copy of Leopard from my local Apple Store!

I did debate going last to the Apple Store last Friday night at 6pm, when they launched their latest and greatest operating system, but I hate crowds and I hate people and quickly thought better of it. Besides, did I really need a free tee-shirt?

When I bought my first iMac, nearly 3 years ago, it came installed with Panther, but a few months after that, I upgraded to Tiger, which I ran on all my Macs until yesterday.

Tiger is a great OS, stable, easy and intuitive to use and it brought me 2 and 1/2 years of computing bliss. Leopard appears to be the next logical step in the development of OS X.

The “300 new features” Apple keeps touting is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but over all the changes appear to be welcome.

I spent yesterday upgrading my 3 main systems, my new 24” iMac, my MacBook and my Mac mini. Each system took around an hour and I upgraded, rather than clean-install or archive-and-install. Apple software tends to be stable and trustworthy, plus I had the weekend’s field reports online to warn me of potential installation hazards.

One of the issues flagged up by the first installers, was something called Application Enhancer, a 3rd party framework, utilised by some 3rd party software. This framework causes a conflict in the installation which bricks your Mac, leaving you with the dreaded blue screen of death! Updating to the latest version of Application Enhancer will prevent this and if its too late, there are fixes posted on the net which show you how to remedy the situation.

Only one of my Macs, the Mini, had AE installed and I caught it before upgrading, so no worries there. The Mini was the first system I upgraded, because at a year old, it’s the oldest of my 3 systems.

The upgrade was a breeze, the installer walked me through a few screens, rebooted from the DVD and presto-change-o, it rebooted into Leopard, with all my original settings and files right where I left them.

After that, I did the iMac, which was extremely quick, around 40-45 minutes from start to finish. I followed that up with the MacBook, which took a little over an hour.

As each system booted up into Leopard for the first time, I had the chance to explore the new system. The first thing you notice is the login screen has a new background, the Leopard desktop photo. That makes a nice change from the plain blue background, though I know there’s a simple Terminal command to change it.

The systems all boot up faster under Leopard. I don’t really know how Apple do this, it was the same with Tiger. Applications also seem to launch faster and in general all three systems seem slightly more responsive.

I like the new look, the change in folder icons, the slightly translucent menu bar and the redesigned dock, all work very well. The Stacks concept is also very cool; when you click on a folder in the dock, the contents are quickly revealed for easy access. Put your Application folder on the dock, if you haven’t already and you’ll have a very quick, easy way to launch any App you have installed. It’s simple and clever.

Speaking of simple and clever, the new-look Finder window is much better too. The sidebar has been reorganised and is much more useful, with groupings that make exploring your hard drive and other computers on your network that much easier.

Coverflow, a feature added to iTunes last year, is now part of the Finder and it makes browsing through files a painless task. Even better is QuickLook, which does exactly what it says on the tin - select an item, hit the space bar and you can see just what’s inside the file, whether it’s a text document, spreadsheet or video - it’s all preview-able!

By far the most useful new addition to the Finder is the screen-sharing function, something I do quite a bit with my Mac Mini.

My Mini is connected to my LCD TV and I use it primarily for media, music and video. When I want to download something on BitTorrent, I normally control the Mini from my iMac via an open source program called “Chicken of the VNC”, but I don’t need to use that any more, because a better, version of it is now part of the OS.

The screen sharing is fast, faster than Chicken of the VNC, but by far the best thing is it can reproduce my Mighty Mouse’s right click. I could see how this function would be of use to people with family and friends who have Macs, you can effortlessly control their machine and show the person on the remote Mac how to do something, without too much trouble. If you have more than one Mac on your home network, I’m sure you will find this a useful tool.

The other major change I’ve noticed while using my Mac Mini is the completely redesigned FrontRow. The user interface now matches the Apple TV, it’s more responsive and reacts to the remote control faster. It’s also organised more logically and you have finer control over media playback. This is a very solid and welcome upgrade, especially for me because I use FrontRow so much.

Another welcome change is the new Downloads folder, which is a new category of Home Folder. It lives on the Dock and I’ve already set up my BitTorrent client to use it. It means never having to hunt around for a downloaded file again, that’s a very good thing!

In general, all of my Apps are working well, as is everything on all three computers and I’m liking everything I’ve seen so far.

I’ve yet to get my head around Spaces, the virtual desktop tool, though I can see how it would be useful to manage and run groups of related applications. I need to experiment with it a bit.

My one disappointment so far is Time Machine, which I haven’t set up yet. I upgraded to the new Airport Extreme last summer, in anticipation of Leopard and Time Machine, because of the AirDisk function. AirDisk is the ability to attach a USB hard drive to the Extreme and have it function as a network attached storage (NAS) drive and use it for Time Machine. Apple touted this function right up until recently and then all references to it disappeared.

I’m guessing that the functionality is still not working properly and at some point, it will be added back to Leopard. I hope so, anyway. Until then, it will only work with drives attached to each Mac, locally and that makes it just too involved and expensive. My plan was to have one central drive working with Time Machine on all 3 Macs and I’m probably going to wait for this feature before setting up this great new automated back-up system. It’s a minor disappointment and one I am sure they are working hard to address.

If you’re considering an upgrade to Leopard and any of the new features appeal to you, then go for it! It’s solid, stable and adds lots of cool new features to your already very cool computer! Apple will continue to tweak Leopard over the coming years, with bug fixes and new features, just as they have with Tiger.

Rumour has it that Tiger is due for an update as well, which means Apple will continue to support it for some time to come. That means there’s no rush to upgrade to Leopard, but there’s nothing stopping you from taking that next step in Apple’s OS evolution! Follow in the hippy’s footsteps and you’ll be running the most advanced operating system in the world!

Here is my slightly delayed, but finally complete review of my brand new iMac!

Two weeks ago, I took delivery of my brand new, shiny, superfast iMac. It’s my second iMac and 5th Apple computer in the last 3 years. You could say, I’m a bit Apple-mad!

You could be onto something if you did…

I fell in love with my last iMac, I’m talking serious techo-geek devotion. The previous one I had was a 20”, 1.8mhz G5 model, which I still have and is still going strong. I might try to sell it, or it might become the media centre in the bedroom. I haven’t decided yet.

The system replacing my old iMac, is a 24” aluminium, 2.8mhz Core Duo Extreme model, with 2gb of RAM and a terabyte of hard drive. It’s quite a technological leap from my old one.

First of all, it’s big…considerably more screen real estate than my 20”, around 30% bigger I think. The screen is glossy, the same as my MacBook and I do like the way it makes things look. It’s very bright and the colours are very deep. The downside is that it shows smudges very well, but Apple give you a cloth to keep it nice and shiny. I haven’t found glare to be a problem and I do have a double-window right behind me.

It’s also considerably thinner and sleeker than my previous model. The ports run along the bottom of the back and not along the side.

It is also much quieter than the last one, with the fans barely audible.

I prefer the aluminium case much more than the plastic. It has a more substantial look and feel.

I miss the sleep light, which has been omitted from this version. I liked the way it pulsed, almost like a visual version of snoring.

Unboxing my new computer took no time, as it lifts out in one piece. All I had to do was connect the power cable and plug it in. I also had to put batteries into the wireless mouse and wireless keyboard, but that wasn’t complicated either.

I plugged a firewire cable into my new iMac and my old iMac and used the Setup Assistant to transfer all my data and accounts and that was the only hitch I experienced. The old iMac rebooted about 2 and 1/2 hours into the process and I had to start again from scratch. Had that not happened, with would have only taken 3 and 1/2 hours to transfer around 120 gigabytes of stuff.

When I finally started OS X on the new iMac, my desktop looked identical to the old one in every respect. My desktop picture was there, so were all my files, applications, home folders, even my login photo! It worked perfectly and was relatively painless.

It was actually kind of strange, having a brand new computer, but it looking and responding like the old one.

My new computer is lightening fast, and will only get faster when I max out the RAM to 4 gigs. It was a bit pricey to do that now, but in 6 months of so, it will be a lot cheaper. Even with only 2 gigs, it still performs exceptionally well.

I’ve played with some of the new applications that shipped with my iMac and from what I’ve seen, I’m very impressed so far. The new iPhoto ’08 is amazing and a giant leap forward for the program. I’ve also had a look at the new iMovie, and I can see the direction they are trying to take with it. I think, in time, it will be regarded more highly than it is now, but it will take several revisions to get to that point.

I haven’t had a chance to use the other iLife app’s yet, but will get there eventually. I have used Final Cut Express and Logic Express and both run exceedingly well. I’m going to be upgrading Logic Express to the full version of Logic Studio 8 in the not too distant future, which will give me the full version of everything in Apple’s audio production suite of software.

I’ve also been test driving iWork ’08 and I like it very much. I’m using Pages right now, to write this and I think I’m going to drop MS Office in favour of it. I’ve also used Keynote and think it is very powerful, yet simple to use and could see using it for simple animated graphics again in the future. I’m going to buy a copy of iWork before my trial runs out.

Overall, I’m glad I upgraded my desktop system. I can see huge performance gains already and I really do appreciate the extra screen space. Leopard is shipping later this week and I’m sure it will run like a dream on my new machine.