So, our illustrious owners are going all IPO at last then?


Wonder if it's anything to do with all the publicity surrounding gmail. Though some of that is quite negative.

Oh well, just a thought, seems topical. And allows us to gloat about having gmail accounts by the handful. (Sorry Pao!)

Oh, and for those of you that keep hitting us with the 8 Queens of Death Solution searches, I guess I should make sure you're not disappointed.
A4,B1,C5,D8,E6,F3,G7,H2
Killed us for a while too, till Paul solved it. Think that might have been the original reason Dom was writing that damn game.

Toilets
I like using the visitors toilet. It is an enclosed room, with a sink and walls and stuff. I appreciate the privacy this provides.
There are, however, two problems. Firstly, it's not obvious from the outside that it's a single toilet, and it would appear to the uneducated eye that it may be a normal multi-unit toilet facility. In addition, the lock is not too strong. This results in occasions where the door is tried, the potential user thinks the door is just stiff and tries harder , at which point the lock gives way and the door swings open revealing you in full Greyfriar's action glory.
There is a story related to this, involving a gentleman who was in full pud-pulling action as the door was forced open, and proceeded to pull his top over his head to hide his face. This is known as the 'Ravanelli Incident'.
The second thing is that it's always busy.
The other toilets are more open plan, in the normal urinal and cubical fashion. This results in the Urinal etiquette that has been described below. It also has another down point in that you have to walk the full length of the office, past a whole bundle of people who could potentially track your toilet habits. It also has the loudest doors on the planet. They are on the usual fire door things that make sure they close after use. They're also loose fitting, so the wood hits against the frame. Very hard, and loud. This has the effect of making you jump, which is not a good idea when you're on the job.
I like my own toilet. I like being in my own house, alone, when I go to drop off the kids. I like to sit till my bum is numb and my legs are like jelly.

Hitler's Youth
So, just in case you didn't know.
I've been learning German, so that I can read Mein Kampf in it's native language. I don't really trust translations due to the amount of interpretation of the translator involved. I don't really care too much about the actual war Hitler, more what drives a man to behave and believe as he did.
My initial thoughts - He had a pretty poor relationship with his father. Dad was an alcoholic who would beat him at a whim. He did, however, have a close relationship with his mother, despite her lack of protection. This was at the turn of the century, so it is probably more understandable in that context. There have been many studies of when the young Adolf became anti-Semitic, I'm not entirely sure it's been convincingly proven though. It is said that during his late childhood in Austria (He moved to Linz with his mother, after the death of his father and on to Vienna shortly after to go to some for of classical art college) there was a strong anti Jew feeling, and it was thought that he developed his pathological leanings at this point. This is somewhat disproved by the discovery in his own documents that describe a relationship with a girl at this time. It is a strange relationship in that there was no contact between Adolf and a young lady who was some society persons daughter. He did, however, fall completely and totally in love with this girl and continued his infatuation for a number of years prior to moving to Vienna. At this point he sent her a note declaring his love and asking her to wait for him to return so he could marry her. (Slight sidenote - she is on record as saying she had no idea who the note was from when she received it - unrequited love indeed.). The pertinent point of this is that the girl was clearly, through bloodline and obvious name, Jewish. So, perhaps elsewhere needs to be looked at for the beginnings of his sentiments.
The young Hitler was brought up in schools which had a relatively strong German connection, and he developed an obsession with the history, both real and fable, of the Germanic culture. He was pictured at the rallies after the assassination of the Austrian bloke with a look of demonic excitement at the prospect of war. He was accepted into the German army shortly after, which gave him great pride. He has described his role during the first world war as being a 'frontline fighter, involved in hand-to-hand combat with his fellow man'. This is far from the truth. He was actually a dispatch rider, delivering notes behind the front lines. Still a dangerous job of course, but not one that would be respected by actual infantry veterans if made public during his political career.
He was injured in a gas attack at one point, where he was sent to a hospital in Berlin for treatment. While here, he was disgusted by the defeatist attitude of everyday Germans, and the lengths people, especially Jews, would go to in order to avoid being sent back to the front. There is some belief that this is the seed of his anti-semantic feelings.
So, was he a poof then?
There isn't actually any evidence to prove this, although there are some (boring) pointers which suggest this might be the case. Hearing evidence from housekeepers that there was never any evidence of sexual relations with Eva Braun, even though they spent a lot of time together at Hitler's retreat, it would appear that he may actual have been completely celibate.
I'll knock this on the head now.

Day 52: Har du en röd bil?

My name is Dom and I am a wheataholic. But the good news is I have been wheat free for 3 days and the pounds are simply falling off. If you would like to learn how you too could be wheat free send $10 and you could start being wheat free within hours - no postage necessary, terms and conditions apply.

Last night was the second lesson of my third term of learning Swedish and I enjoyed it very much. I am finally beginning to feel that I might be able to have a proper meaningful conversation with someone, rather that just being able to ask if they have a red car. So if any of our regular readers are going to be in Stockholm at the end of May watch out, lest you get accosted in the street and asked if you have a car that is a patricular colour (I know red, blue, green and yellow).

Day 50: Yorkshire Chainsaw Kafuffle

I can't remember if I mentioned that I bought a chainsaw a few weeks ago, but if I didn't mention it - I bought a chainsaw a few weeks ago. I got home and ripped the outer cardboard wrapping open and extracted it along with instructions and free headphoneas and goggles. The first thing I noticed was a big sticker stuck the the side of the chainsaw which said "Do not use this until you have filled it up with chainsaw oil". So I looked in the remnants of the box for the cahinsaw oil, but there was none. So I had just travelled all the way home from the DIY store with a chainsaw that needed chainsaw oil before it could be used and did it mention this fact on the outer packaging? No it didn't. So I wasn't about to go all the way back to the shop to get the oil so I thought I would have to just leave it unused until the next weekend.

I think I also may not have mentioned what the chainsaw was for. It was to remove a tree stump from the garden of my new house, that we moved into last december. I started off attacking it with a normal saw and an axe, but all that did was get me very tired and my arms very sore. So when I was in the diy store a few weeks ago I saw the chainsaw and thought it would be the way to go.

So once I had got the thing open and knew that I had no oil I carried on by reading the instructions. It mentioned a procedure for adjusting the chain tension and said you need to follow this procedure before using the chainsaw as well as at regular times while you are using it. It then went on to show that if you press the end of the chainsaw against the wood you are cutting it will fly up and split your head in two. At this point I decided that rather than get some oil I should take it back to the shop and get my money back as: a) I couldn't be bothered witn the hassle of having to keep adjusting the tension all the time (I would rather just 'wash and go') and b) I didn't fancy getting my head sliced in two and the chainsaw didn't even come with a free helmet! But, of course, I couldn't take it back to the shop because I had ripped the box to shreds while taking it out.

So, for the next couple of weeks the chainsaw was left unused in my garage until this weekend, when I went out and bought some oil and then thought I'd make a start at chopping up that tree stump. First of all I dug a hole around the stup then I filled up the chainsaw with oil and fired that bad boy up. The first thing I learned about chainsawing is that it is not like slicing a hot knife through butter, it is actually very hard work. You have to push really hard and you get very sore hands and arms and you have to keep adjusting the chain tension all the time. But, eventually I got enough wood removed so that I could fill the hole in with soil and there was no sign of the stump. I also had a decent supply of logs that I could leave to mature for a year.

Mid-life crisis
I figured something out yesterday whilst cruising in my hairdresser's car.
You know how convertible sport cars are normally driven by middle-aged men with baldy nappers?
The reason is - when you're driving along at a fair old pace with the roof down, the wind kinda comes at you from behind and swirls around your head. This has a whipping effect on your hair, resulting in it flapping against your head like you're being flailed by a cat o' nine tails. It's actually very painful, so you tend to get a bit peeved after a while. So, having no hair is a bit better since there's no such effect, you see.
This doesn't answer the question of why you see lots of women driving them, and they've got very long hair. This is an obvious one though - they're knobbing rich middle-aged men.
Message Ends....

Today is a day
It's been a lovely weekend. The sun was shining awfully bright, I got the roof down on the car for the first time this year, which officially marks the beginning of summer.
I've got a spot (boil) on the bridge of my nose, the size of a small elephant. Remember the one from Jungle Book that kept getting lost? That one.
I'm not sure what to do about it, I've tried poking it with sharp objects so it pops like a balloon, but no luck. Also tried a poultice, boiling milk and adding a bit of bread before applying to the nose for a long period so it draws out all the gunk. That didn't do anything either. My mum says to just leave it alone and put Savlon on it occasionally, but I'm not terribly happy with that approach.
Any ideas?

Day 46: Öppna ögonen

Yesterday lunchtime I spotted Vanilla Sky in HMV for £6.99 so I swept it up, headed for the checkout, but then got second thoughts. I'd never looked this film up on imdb before so I had no idea whether it would be good or not. So I turned round and put it back on the shelf. Back at work I asked my colleagues what they thought of the film and got a mixed, but generally favourable response. So I decided I would buy it on the way home and watch it that very night. However, just as I was leaving Ravi said why do you keep buying all these DVDs? Why don't you join Blockbusters and rent it. So, I took his advice and did just that.

And did I enjoy the film? Yes, it was really good thankyou. Another one of those films that opens your eyes, removes a few more layers of silken veil and causes you to re-asses your life.

It has been a few days since my last post and I have been meaning to add a post about a new idea from Geezer which will help train spotters get on with their job in a much more streamlined and high tech fashion. What they should do is put a barcode on each train and the trainspotters could have a pda (or laptop) with scanner attachment and simply scan the trains as they go past. They could then even get the details of those high speed inter city jobbies that rush through the station and you have to stand behind the yellow line lest you should be sucked into the vortex. This provides a good link to a pastime that was invented by my friend Adrian. I have yet to try this, but I intend to do so at the first available oportunity. All you need to do is stand on the platform of a station that has high speed trains and yellow lines on it, and when a high speed train rushes through the station you shout or scream at the top of your voice. You should find that no matter how close you are to somebody, they will have no idea what you are doing as they won't hear a thing.

This brings us nicely onto the subject of relaxation. Recently I have been listening to The Kings of Convenience quite a lot. My particular favourate track at the moment is Summer on the Westhill. Very calming and relaxing.

My subject for today is LCD and Plasma.
TV's that is.
I'm trying to decide whether to buy one or not. It's difficult to decide between the LCD or Plasma, though the quality in the latter is inherently better. The former, however, seems to have a better lifetime.
I've got a Sony widescreen at the moment, which had full surround sound, great picture, all round good performance. Had it for about 5 years, cost 1500 smackers, but feel due for a change.
LCD and Plasma have the benefit of being much thinner, so can be wall mounted, saving a significant amount of floor space. On the other hand, the DVD, Video, satellite box, and wiring have to go somewhere, under the music system perhaps?
Also, my living room is L-shaped, with on wall taken up by a bay window, and two which have doors to the kitchen and bedrooms. So, the wall that I would choose is the one that the large couch is resting against, so would involve rearranging furniture to use. I need to go all visio and see if I can fit everything in.
The other option is to use a stand and sit it on the floor, but then what's the point since it'll effectively take up the same space as the current one.
Why is upgrading to new technology so hard?

Day 43: A seed in frozen earth

Well its monday again, but this week in addition to fighting through the fatigue of getting up at 05:00 ready for my non stop red eye flight from LBA to EDI I also have to contend with the fact that I am ill with some sort of flu like symptoms. Ibruprofen and lemsips are helping me get through the day, but I am looking forward to getting in an early night tonight with the hope of feeling a bit better tomorrow.

The other thing I need to get sorted out is my preparation for my next term of Swedish lessons at snel. I need to be able to tell everyone a bit about myself, why I want to learn Swedish and a bit about any previous trips to Sweden, and of course I will have to say all this in Swedish. Due to the way I am feeling today, I guess this is going to end up being a last minute job in my lunch break tomorrow.

Dumb is as dumb does
Bit busy today, so a quickie.

I've got a new PC - nice one, good spec and cheap. I also have a few Deacon Blue albums in mp3 that I wanted to burn onto a CD this morning to listen to in the car (Yup, car CD player plays mp3 - woot!). So, said mp3 files were on the laptop, which was all connected up and raring to go. Laptop has a CD writer, so all is well. Now, new PC has a new writer drive, so is super fast for writing CDs, but I hadn't really tried it. Solution - burn CD on new PC with network link to laptop to get files.
The burn was going well, 450MB and estimating 5 mins - so I thought I'd tidy up the house a bit before work. There were a few things lying around in the living room, so I put them away. The laptop was sitting in the middle of the floor, with the power cable trailed across the floor. I was debating whether to reroute the cable when I figured that I wasn't using the laptop anyway, so could just put it away in the bag, nice and tidy like. So, did all that, then went back to see how the burn was going. The dam thing had failed half way through and eject the useless disk. Dammit. As I clicked on the shared drive to restart the burn I noticed that an error appeared, the network had gone down. So, I walked through to check the status of the laptop. Realization dawns like a thick treacle over your brain sometimes, doesn't it?

Day 40: Se det är vackert utanför

Last night I didn't fancy watching any of my DVDs so I thought I'd better nip out to Asda to buy a brand new one. The first DVD I picked up was Dreamcatcher; they had one copy left, but I wasn't sure if that was the type of film I wanted to watch. Also I have often thought that Stephen Kings films are really good at the start but don't have such good endings. So I spent the next half hour going round and round the DVD section trying to find the perfect DVD for that night. Along the way I considered Green Mile (looked a bit depressing and set in the olden days), The Ring (too scary?), Vanilla Sky (they didn't have it), The Mothman Prophesies (already seen it, though it was some time ago), Unbreakable (as per Mothman Prophesies), and a few more that I forget just now. Anyway I ended up back at the single copy of Dreamcatcher so I bought it for £11.97.

When I got home I fixed myself a drink and set out a few snacks and started watching. During the first 10 minutes I realised that I had made a good choice as it was just the sort of thing that I really like watching. I realised that even if a film does have a bad ending it doesn't matter if you enjoyed the first 90 percent of it. After all watching a film is something you enjoy as you are doing it. Its like a life really - the end is never going to be good, but you certainly (hopefully) enjoy everything up to that point. I also realised that films with lots of snow in are really good too (but not stupid comedies). And if you are wondering whether the ending was good or not - I don't know because 20 minutes before the end I was so tired that I went to bed.

This morning I met one of my new neighbours and had a chat before driving into work.

Day 39: When the whole world says no - I believe in you!

Air was asking for a link to the Bang & Olufsen BeoCom 6000 phone, so I thought I would send it via the power of the blog. Thus allowing our regular readers (and hangers on alike) to find out about its many and varied features. Including the fact that each phone handset is assigned a hostname and also has an iPod style scroll wheel (although it is not touch sensitive like the latest iPods). Each phone is registered with the base station and if you add a name and number to the address book it is propagated to each of the other handsets registered to the same basestation.

ps anyone who can name the artist and song from which the above title comes can deservedly feel a warm glow inside.

Sook Ma Bobae
Not so sure about the spelling, but the sentiment is sound.

Well well, looks like there's not too much happening on the InterWeb today, all my standard haunts have pretty mundane stuff on there, best thing was the full size lego model of a Volvo, which I'm not linking to because I can't be arsed.

I've decided that we must be the first hit on google for the phrase "Pirate", I think this can be done by mentioning the word a lot and having other people link to us. Since I, again, can't be arsed with the latter, the former will have to do.

We've been asked to stick around here for another six months. This is great for the bank balance, and for you, dear reader, in that you'll be able to enjoy our pish and drivel for another little while. I do think, however, that we need to put a bit more thought into the postings to make them more informative and entertaining. Obviously by this I mean the other posts, not mine, which are already difficult to improve upon. So, c'mon guys, get with the program!

I watched a documentary or two about Stephen Hawking(s) the other day. I think it's his birthday soon, turns 40 tomorrow or something, which explains the saturation of coverage. The first thing I watched was on council telly, and was a dramatisation of his life from 20-30 or something like that. It was very touching, covering the diagnosis of his motor neuron disease and the gradual deterioration of his condition at the same time as him coming up with the Big Bang theory that he is so linked with. I have to say though, I watched the documentary on one of the bbc+ channels later on, which clearly demonstrated some inaccuracies in the story. Not unusual I know, but given the programmes were on basically the same channel, one after the other, it felt a bit strange.
I also watched some interviews with the guy, and have to say he's an arrogant twat. I'm not sure whether we can just accept that as justified because he's a genius (which brings me to another subject, based on the Isaac Newton thing I mentioned - but I'll leave that for now).
So, in summary - Hawking(s) - Genius and Wank in equal quantities, thanks for reading.

Pirates -

I follow the same pattern of thought as Billy Connelly, so bear with me on this.

Billy has a condition called Attention something. It means that he loses a grasp of what he's talking about as his brain makes links to other things as he talks. For instance, he might mention Pirates, then as he's talking about them, mention boats. This might lead him to think about the story about the new destroyer that was just completed and launched to great fanfare on the Clyde, where it duly slipped down the, umm, slip and straight across the river into the wall on the other side. This can sometimes go on for a while, skipping through subjects like a blob of sodium across a pond.

Anyway, so Pirates have been moulded over the past few hundred years such that their image now is of some sort of Robin Hood type characters. This is mainly due to stories such as Peter Pan, and musicals like Pirates of Penzance. Other musicals of note are Cats and Phantom of the Opera. I saw the punultimate show of Cats on Broadway a few years ago. It had been running for quite some time, so it was a bit historical. Now, most people think of pirates as being ragamuffins who run around in their ship plundering treasure galleons all the time. In general this actually refers to Privateering, which is a kind of licensed pirating. For instance, as Spain was killing off the Aztecs and the Incas and shipping the amazing amount of trasure home to finance the growth of the Spanish empire (Yes, they had one too), Britain was a bit peeved about this so licensed various people (including Francis Drake) to captain ship and go steal. Interestingly enough, Francis Drake started out by travelling with his cousin, Jim Hawkins before growing up and going it alone.
The biggest fleet of pirates was actually Chinese, some bird had an incredible amount of ships and people and ended up more powerful than a large number of nations (in terms of their naval fleet, at least).

So, that's what I've read so far, I'll update when I learn more, or can be arsed, whatever.

Day 37: A mystic river runs through it.

I watched Event Horizon last night, which I enjoyed very much.

My friend Adrian has suggested some London related film titles:
Crouch End Tiger Hendon Dragon
Dirty Harringay

So I think we should see what other place related film titles we can come up with.
Here are some more for starters:

Night of the Livingston dead
Home a-Rome (with Chinese subtitles)
Warwick and Piercebridge
Golders green finger
Gwent Horizon
From Russia with love

I'm back.

Apologies to our regular readers for my absence, and the dire lifelessness you've had to endure.

I was in Spain. It was fine thanks, weather was okay, apart from a bit of rain.

There is a theme park, and a couple of water parks. I avoided the water parks since it was cold and I didn't want to get wet.
The theme park, on the other hand, is quite good. It's actually a Universal Studios one, kinda like EuroUniversal or something. I went on some roller coasters and some fairground things and got sick.

You know what I hate? Bank Cards. I've got the usual cashline card, but use it seldom, so never remember the PIN. So, as I was buying the tickets for the theme park, they refused VISA without a passport, and I lost my card due to entering the wrong PIN three times. This resulted in a round trip in a taxi back to the hotel and the hilarity of being short of cash for the rest of the holiday, on Easter weekend when all the banks were closed.

Flight was delayed going out. It was delayed 1hr 20mins, which is standard for Airtours apparently. This wouldn't be too annoying apart from the fact that we had to get up at 3am to get to the airport. I don't have words for this.

The water in Spain is soft, or hard, I don't know. I do know that you couldn't get that squeaky clean feeling you get in a shower in Scotland, and it feels like you're constantly washing with some soap on your body, or something. That made me homesick.

I was reading a couple of books, one was a biography of Newton, but turns out to be a long discussion around the use of the word Genius. The other one is a study of the lives and times of Pirates, which is a favourite subject of ours. It seems quite good.

Finished all the puzzles on Super Collapse, it seems to loop back to level one at the end.

Cheers,

Day 36: Little fluffy clouds

Have you noticed that the minute your plane flies through a cloud all hell breaks loose. It starts suddenly dropping, the wings start shaking as if they are about to snap off and you find it hard not to spill your drink.

Have you also noticed that when your plane lands the air hostess always says "please don't unbuckle your seatbelt until the captain turns the fasten seatbelt light off", but the minute the plane stops you hear clicks all around you because just about everyone else has taken theirs off before the captain has turned the fasten seatbelt light out. I always leave mine on for a few minutes after the seatbelt light has gone out, just to make a point.

Have you also noticed that if you are sitting by the window of a double seat and someone sits next to you, they always put their arm on the joint arm rest as if it belongs to them. They are also usually fat aswell.

Day 31: Hot or Goatee?

On monday night instead of shaving off my weekend stubble I thought I would leave a goatee shaped bit of growth. It is still intact today, but I will be flying home for the weekend today so whether it will still be in place on my return next Tuesday is another matter. Al may have missed a once in a lifetime oportunity.

I saw the film Magnolia earlier in the week. I thought it almost qualifies as a film that would change your life, but not quite. I didn't really understand what was going on at the end. But I had a quick look on imdb and after reading the discussion section I realised that I now did understand and yes it probably is a film that could change ones life (if you let it).

One of the themes of the film was coincidence and it reminded me of when I used to work in Sweden. I flew via Brussels and I used to notice a distinctive white building near the runway as the plane took off for Arlanda. I thought the building might be the Brussels office of Sun Microsystems as it loked very similar to their building near Stockholm. Anyway, a few years later I got a contract based in Brussels working for Sun. On my first day I took a taxi to their Brussels office, but it wasn't the building I had previously noticed and it looked nothing like their building near Stockholm either. I was informed that I would be working on a client site near the airport and low and behold it turned out that their client had the building I used to notice when I took off for Sweden each monday morning and I spent the next 9 months working in that very building.

sicilian curses

I was just casually looking through the site stats and I foudn that someone had found this site by searching on google and the search term was "scicilian curses". So I put that into google and sure enough it found a link to this site. However this gets so much better and works on so many levels because of the following:
a) The search only found 1 result
b) The text searched on was spelled incorrectly
c) The entry it matched was one by Al where he said he hoped people searching for a nasty sicilian word would find our blog
d) In Als entry where he said he hoped people would find this site by searching for a particular sicilian curse, he has spelled sicilian incorrectly as "scicilian" and that is exactly what someone searched for and found his entry
e) Al didn't actually mention the word curse in his entry, but I mentioned curses in my original posting due to the fact that I originally wrote critical mass in order to familiarise myself with curses
f) It just doesn't get any better than this

I wonder if that makes us a google wack?

Day 28: Each peach, pear plum, out comes Tom Thumb.

So another monday, another flight on the LBA to EDI red eye and another blog entry to write.

We have almost reached our 1 month anniversary and we have to keep writing these things or we will suffer from the well known symptom of "bloggers elbow". This is were somebody creates a blog and then spends the first day typing in all sorts of text and then each day there are less an less entries until suddenly there are no more entries, and then nobody visits anymore, and the blog owners teeth gradually fall out one by one until they are left sad and alone living in a garret flat above a disused ballet school. But have no fear gentle reader for that won't be happening here. Al may be off to sunnier climes, but the rest of the gang are hear and by crikey we won't let the team down. (strains of land of hope and glory faid into the background).

Dom has just informed me that he has experienced yet another example of bad bathroom etiquette.

Let me ensure that all readers have a good understanding of this important subject to avoid any reoccurence.

Firstly, a good rule of thumb is to ensure that any selection of urinal results in the maximum buffer zone, or potential buffer zone from any current or future patrons. This is usually achieved by selecting one of the urinals to the far right or left, as is shown here
- - x
This gives any future atendees the opportunity to utilise the other extreme
x - x

Actually, let's run through this properly

Day 24: K|I|S|S

DVD players: love them or hate them, they allow you to watch a dvd on them; provided you also have a telly.

Don't you just hate it when people use the old "love them or hate them they are here to stay" type rubbish. I know I do.

Anyway the real point behind this posting is that a couple of weeks ago I ordered a new DVD player because the one that I currently have in my Scottish retreat won't play my dvds that I have recorded at home on my Toshiba RD-XS30. First off I went to Asda to see if I could get one for £39 that would play these dvds, but all their cheapo ones didn't mention what formats they would play. The only ones that said they would play dvd+-r or dvd+-rw where in the £79 to £99 price range. So I then thought of the fact that Al had bought a K|I|S|S dvd player (with integral hard drive and ethernet connectivity) and that these are meant to be able to play all dvd formats plus DIVX and just about anything else you can throw at it (and it is also Scandinavian). I didn't need the hard disk or networky stuff so I thought I'd see what their bottom of therange players looked like. I initially spotted the DP-450 which looked good, but then I spotted the smaller (and cheaper) DP-1000 that has the added bonus of easily being made region free. So, the DP-1000 it was to be then and it arrived yesterday. When I got home I resisted the temptation of plugging it straight in and thought I woulf get a shower, then do my ironing while watching Corrie and then I would plug it in and celebrate the new dvd player by having a chicken fried rice. Or so I thought. I plugged the dvd player in, and after a few seconds the front panel screen spoted the slogan "BOOT ERR". Oh dear. I powered off and on, but still the same. I even tried putting a dvd in and powering off and on, but still the ubiquitous BOOT ERR message. If only I had an internet connection in my house in Scotland, I could have downloaded a copy of the latest DP-1000 firmware and tried to load it to see if it would fix the problem. But then I thought I have an internet connection at work, so it was straight into the car and back into work to see what I could find. I spent the next hour scanning the kiss website and the kiss newsgroup (and no I can't be bothered to put links in just now). I ended up downloading the latest DP-1000 firmware (version 2.8.5) onto my laptop and went back home. My laptop happens to be a Mac and on the kiss website it only gave instructions for creating the firmware cd using Roxios's toast software (yes I know I could have put a link in here too) and I haven't got that. So, when I got home I tried creating a couple of cds in various ways, but each time I tried to download the firmware to the player I just got the old BOOT ERR. Oh well, it was now too late to watch a dvd anyway so I would just have to send it back to the supplier the next day. When I got to work I first sent kiss an email to see if they could come up with any sugestion before I rang up the supplier. They suggested uploading the firmware and it that didn't work i would have to send it back. SO due to my lack of success at creating a valid firmware cd on the mac we deiced to make use of Paolo's laptop for firmware creation duties. The email from kiss mentioned firmware version 2.8.4, but we knew that wasn't the most upto date so we downloaded and burnt version 2.8.5. We inserted it in the drive, connected the dvd to one of the televisions along the front wall at work and lo and behold we got the firmwar update screen. We pressed the enter button and it immediately came back with "update complete" and spat the disk out. Great! I thought. But, on powering off anf on we were straight back to the BOOT ERR message. So I rang the supplier and and they said they would send a courier round for it that very afternoon and I could expect it back in 5 to 7 days. Meanwhile Al suggested "Why don't we try and earlier firmware upgrade?" and I thought "Well Kiss did say to use 2.8.4, so now Paolo was straight on the case and a 2.8.4 cd was in the drive and waiting for me to press enter. I click later and the firmware starts uploading. This time it takes longer and after the old pwer off power on we have a live and working DP-1000. So I rang up the suppliers and cancelled the courier and we then had another go at loding in 2.8.5 and it went like a dream. Thanks to Al and Paolo for their assistance.
The morals of the story are as follows:
1. If I had bought a normal DVD player and it was broken I would have had to have returned it.
2. Scandinavian stuff is brill.