I went to London this past weekend. Left by car on Friday, came back last night (Sunday), and had quite a good weekend. I went on the Eye (twice), had a wonder around London, saw the Apple Store in Regent Street (I got an EyeTV DTT stick from there, which now doesn’t work. I think it’s a reception issue. ), had dinner and food at a couple of places, then went to Thorpe Park on Sunday.

Thorpe Park ended up being a bit of a mess, as I managed to lose dad in the afternoon, so I spent about an hour trying to find him and by then we had:
1) Missed out on going on Stealth, Logger’s Leap, Slammer, Colossus (it was closed), Rush (it looked very broken), Samurai, Zodiac and Depth Charge, and
2) Had to go and pick mum up from Central London again and drive all the way back up to Stafford.

I did, however, manage to ride the Tidal Wave (which is wet…and I mean wet. It’s like having a bath, twice, in a period of 5 seconds), Detonator, Nemesis Inferno, Rumba Rapids (which, FYI, is rubbish compared to Alton’s Congo River Rapids), Quantum, Vortex, X:\ No Way Out (which was awesome), and a couple of others.

So, I’ll have to try out those rides again in either August (my birthday) or October (going to see James Blunt) when we’re most likely next going to London.

I also took a small selection of photos, which can be found on my Flickr Photostream, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamhook/sets/72157605901566515/

Well, kinda. Basically, I was at Alton Towers today and I (as usual) went on the Spinball Whizzer first. So, I queued for about 20 minutes (I generally always use the single rider queue as it’s generally quicker), got on the ride, and it starts off, round the first bend and then…..stops. On the very bottom of the lift hill.

So I wait. And wait. And wait…and eventually the one assistant girl comes over and says “sorry, someone jumped over the queue line and because of the sensors in the ride area, it automatically shut off so we have to reset the whole ride”. So I stay on it for about 10 more minutes, and eventually they come over again and say “right, we need to get you off, so, <blah blah safety info blah blah>, and then you’ll need to sign a form with your name and address on it for insurance reasons for us”. So they gave me a long explanation of how to get out the car because it was more then a 1cm drop (blame Tony Blair’s STUPID health and safety rubbish), so I ignored that and just jumped down off the car. They didn’t like that.

Anyway, I managed to get two free passes for either Oblivion or the Spinball Whizzer to get in the priority queue, for two people, so I went with my dad on both.

Before I went on Oblivion though, I decided to do a quick ride on Enterprise, which…..broke down. So, it was about an hour and a half I had been at the park, and not ridden anything.

Eventually though, I managed to ride most of the stuff, bar Air, Nemesis, and Rita (they ALWAYS have long queue lines), and one of the other rides, Ripsaw, broke down just as I was about to go on it…3rd time unlucky today.

I got an iMac yesterday, from the Apple Store in Birmingham.

It’s the 2.8Ghz 24 inch model, and it’s awesome. The screen is uber clear, and OS X is superb - I can’t believe I lived without it for so long since I had a Mac mini.

Anyway, I put some unboxing pics on my photostream so have a look here.

I’m still getting used to some of OS X’s quirks again, but so far I’m almost spot on, except for mainly copy and paste (CMD+C instead of Ctrl+C).

Two blog posts within an hour(ish), a record!

Anyway, I thought it would be nice to let readers of my blog in on a little secret, and it helps if you’re a regular on TVF as well.

So basically, two bits of news, first of all, TVF v3. I made a very simple small banner for advertising it, and, as much as I would like to say what it is, I’m not allowed to, bahaha. But I will say that it’s something that should make the whole site quite a bit better, and more intergrated, but that’s all I’m saying. So, just enjoy the banner for now:

Secondly, and I can talk about this more openly, is that we’re planning on giving away an Xbox 360 (and possibly some games, too) in the coming months, so look out for that too. I’m not sure exactly which model it will be yet, but it’ll most likely be the Elite or the one below that, the Premium. First prize will probably also get a free game too, but don’t hold me on that, as we’re still discussing the specifics.

You will need to do a little work to be able to win it, but, for a free 360 it’s worth it, yes?

That Dell 2407WFP-HC that I ordered last month actually wasn’t a 2407WFP-HC. It was the older 2407WFP revision A04 model, which is the one before the “-HC”, which has more colour then the one I have right now.

I only noticed this a few days ago when Fr3d posted a screenshot of his device manager in IRC, and his showed an “-HC” model, whereas mine didn’t. So, I looked around a bit, and mine is indeed the wrong one.

So, since dad had placed the order I got him to email the guy, Mark, at MCS, and check, and I was indeed correct, it’s the wrong one. So, after a couple of emails, a courier is coming next week with an actual -HC, and at the same time pick up the box with mine in it (so I’ll be without a monitor for half an hour).

Overall, very good service on behalf of MCS, so, I would highly recommend them. It was also pretty good value, even though it’s a refurb, the 2407WFP that I have now basically arrived brand new, the only sign of use was a tiny scratch on the left (and I mean tiny), but for the sake of saving over £100 off the retail price, who cares?