I went into my local o2 store last week and had a go on an iPhone, and wow. It’s really nice to use. The YouTube integration is great, I watched one of my uploaded videos and the quality was pretty good. Had a look around the other stuff a little, Safari is really nice to browse on and the Google Maps stuff is great. I’d love to get one but I can’t because of the stupid contract. I wish they’d offer it on a simple pay-as-you-go plan.

Until then, I’m not going to get one because dad won’t let me sign up for the contract.

I’d love to get one of those pre-unlocked ones from France/Germany but they’re insanely priced - 999 euros?! No thanks.

If only o2 made a PAYG version, they’d have another customer.

Look what decided to walk into our house today.

Image 1 | Image 2 | Image 3 | Image 4

Dunno who it belongs to, but hopefully it will find it’s way home safely.

Right, so, that HTPC that I sold on eBay, apparently the BluRay drive in it wasn’t compatible with the southbridge chip on the motherboard. I didn’t know that when I sold it, it worked fine with a few CDs and a DVD I played in it, however it crashed with the only BluRay disc I had - I thought that was a problem with Cyberlink’s PowerDVD though, or the BD movie, so I ignored it. I didn’t know it was actually a problem with the drive itself.

So anyway, the guy who bought it phoned me up on Thursday and asked if he could have a partial refund of £90, if he sent it back to me. So, since I paid £140 for it originally I thought what the hell, sure, I’ll stick it on eBay as a seperate drive. I’ve had to borrow the £90 off dad, but if it sells for more then that, I’ll get a few more quid back. Woot. It’s currently sitting at £85 with 11 watchers.

Onto a completely different note, quite a few seasons of CSI ago, one of the episodes finished off with a pretty cool song, called “F.E.A.R.”, by Ian Brown (not related to the video game). Anyway, I got his full album today, which includes the song, along with eight others - it’s called “Music Of The Spheres”. It’s a really good album, in my opinion - 9/10.

And finally, one hour from now, I’m going to be in the Vista Forums Podcast (episode 4), so, have a listen. It should be late tonight or early tomorrow (GMT), so have a listen.

…for having so much tax. EVERY SINGLE media product - CDs, DVDs, BluRay discs, HDDVDs…everything, is so much cheaper on Amazon in the US then it is here in the UK. For example. All four moves of Harry Potter on BluRay will set you back $61 USD less if you buy it from the US instead of here. You even get a proper fancy cover for all the discs if you get it from there. Here, you have to buy each one separately.

Lost Season 3. It’s actually cheaper for me to get it on BluRay from the US and ship it here then it is for me to buy the standard DVD here. What the hell. Seriously. It’s insane.

The worst thing is, I would buy it all from the US, except for one major issue: region coding. It’s a lot better with BluRay (only three regions), but the US is still a different region from the UK. I don’t get the point of that either. That was originally meant to stop people exporting DVDs from the US to other countries before the DVD came out there…however, I’ve noticed that BluRay releases here are coming about a month earlier then the US release. For example, Harry Potter is out here, I think, this coming Monday (12th Nov), yet it’s only out in December in the US. Same with Die Hard 4 (already out here, not yet out in the US), and many other titles.

Of course, if I got an HDDVD player (another example - you can get an HDDVD player in the US for under $100 now. They’re still over £200/300 here), I would be able to buy ALL my HDDVDs from the US because 1) they’re a heck of a lot cheaper, and 2) no region coding!

Anyway…the point of this post, basically, is to say how stupid the current system is. And it’s all Gordon Brown’s fault. Mainly cos I hate him because he’s fat and ugly and does a horrible job at running this country.