Inspirational Song

Recently the lyrics of this song have inspired me:

People get ready there’s a train a-comin’
Don’t need no ticket you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear diesels humming
You don’t need no ticket you just thank the Lord

There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner
whom would hurt all mankind Just to save his own
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
For there is no hiding place against the kingdoms throne

People get ready there’s a train a-comin’
Don’t need no ticket you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear diesels humming
You don’t need no ticket you just thank the Lord

Boney M. - Rivers Of Babylon

Very rare video of Boney M. performing Rivers Of Babylon using the original lyrics as performed by The Melodians. Due to the success of this video, Frank Farian decided to re-write the lyrics in to the ones we all know and love, and the rest is history...

Boney M. - My Bonnie lies over the Ocean

Very rare video of Boney M. performing My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean. This track has never been released on LP / CD or Single

Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection

Nintendo have made Wireless gaming great with their Wi-Fi connection. It makes playing games online fantastic. I have just bought a Nintendo DS-Lite, along with Mario Kart DS, Need For Speed Carbon - Own The City and Ashphalt Urban GT 2. Playing Mario Kart over the internet is great fun, as you never know who you are playing with, unless you use the friend code system, which enables you to play against your friends online.

What is also good about the system is that Opera have made a browser for the Nintendo DS, so that you can go online on the DS, either through your home wireless network or at a free Wi-Fi hotspot, thus making online gaming fantastic.

The Wi-Fi connection is also available on the Wii, although there is only one title available at present - Mario Strikers Charged Football. Hopefully more titles will be available for online play, as it would be silly not to make them online compatible.

Another benefit of the Nintendo system is that the service is free, unlike some other console online services such as Xbox Live, or Games For Windows Live, which charge you to play games online.

All in all Nintendo have created a winner, and with the right games then Wi-Fi connection will become the best online gaming experience.

A Windows Safari

Apple have just announced that Safari - the default web browser in OS X has been released as a version 3 public beta for not only Apple machines and now Windows XP / Vista machines. This is a fantastic development for the PC as it means that PC users can browse the web in the same browser Apple users can.

This makes for a fantastic introduction to Apple software for PC users - first came QuickTime, then iTunes and now Safari. It shows the world that Apple software works in the same way as PC software, has a similar feel. This is great for web site developers as they can now see how there web site will look on a Mac, and ensure that it is working correctly. What is also great is that using iBench - the internet browser standard benchmark test Safari was rated the fastest browser on XP - twice as fast as IE 7. This I’m sure will give an even bigger market share to Apple, as im sure it will persuade more people to switch to an Apple machine.

Get Safari today at www.apple.com/safari

Nintendo Wii

I have recently purchased one of these fantastic new consoles. I was lucky to find a retailer that a few in stock and me and a friend bought one.

Wii Sports - the game that comes shipped with the Wii is fantastic. It comprises Tennis, Baseball, Golf & 10 Pin Bowling, along with a Fitness Test and practice modes. What I like about this game, is for example when you are playing Tennis, you hold the controller like a tennis racquet and use the controller like a tennis racquet. When bowling you use the controller like a bowling ball. This makes for a great game that the whole family can enjoy.

The Wii is also a Game Cube as there are slots on the top (or side depending how it is placed) of the console for up to 4 Game Cube controllers and 2 memory cards to be connected. This makes for a great gaming experience as there are several great games available for the Game Cube.

As part of the software on the Wii there is a download-able internet browser from Opera, one of the leading developers of web browser on PC’s, etc. This enables you to surf the web just like on a PC. Also a Virtual Console is provided. This is a system that enables you to purchase download-able games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo 64, Sega MegaDrive or TurboGrafix console, from the Wii Shopping Channel. This makes the console even better, as it means you can play classic games from your favourite console of the past - I’m looking forward to playing the SNES classics F-Zero & Mario Kart.

All in All while the Wii might not have the graphics performance of the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360, it is a fantastic machine, has great backwards compatibility and very well priced - the PlayStation 3 at £400 is too expensive for my liking

The Sims Life Stories - Mac Mini Friendly Game

It is great to see that Aspyr Games have finally released a game for the Mac that is compatible with the Intel GMA 950 graphics card. The Sims Life Stories is another game in the successful Sims series, and this time you can either play in story mode or classic free mode. It does not require Sims 2 or any other Sims game to work, and is a great game for those who enjoy playing The Sims.

This I hope is the first in a line of games that will work happily on a lesser spec Intel Mac - many Mac Laptops, the Mac Mini and the cheapest iMac (machines that I understand sell well for Apple) do not have ATI Radeon or nVidia chip-sets, and are thus not able to play the latest and greatest Mac games, which is a pity.

If Aspyr is not going to release that many games that work with the Intel GMA 950 graphics card, then Apple need to think about adding ATI Radeon or nVidia graphics support in to there lesser specced Macs - there are a large number of Mac owners who cannot afford to spend £1000 just to get a decent graphics card in their mac laptop or iMac. I think it would be great to have a Mac Mini with an ATI Radeon or nVidia graphics card as it would then make the Mac Mini an even better games machine.

So come on Apple, persuade Aspyr and other games makers to release good games for the Intel GMA 950 graphics card!

Boney M - Summer Megamix

Interesting video this one, shot on location in Monaco. Liz Mitchell decided not to join in on this single and was replaced by Madeline Davis, who sings the Liz solo parts.

Coffee The Easy Way

Just bought myself a Tassimo hot drinks maker. It’s a fantastic way to make an easy cup of coffee, a cappucino, latte, tea or hot chocolate. A Tassimo machine uses a disc, called a T-Disc that has a barcode on the label. This barcode tells the machine how to make that particular drink - how much water, how hot and how to ‘spurt’ out the drink in to the mug.

I find this machine is so much easier than boiling a kettle, and then putting a tea bag in a cup or measuring the right amount of Hot Chocolate powder as the machine does this all for you - each T-Disc contains the right amount of ‘drink’ needed. When making a cappuccino or a latte you use 2 discs - 1 with the espresso coffee and another with the milk or creamer. You can even combine T-Discs to make drinks, eg an espresso T-Disc with a hot chocolate T-Disc to make a mocha

My only bugbear with the machine, is the limited amount of T-Discs available to the UK - you can only get Kenco Classic Blend Coffee, Kenco Classic Blend Decaffeinated, Kenco Espresso, Kenco Cappuccino, Kenco Caffe Crema, Twinings English Breakfast Tea, Suchard Hot Chocolate and Carte Noire. Online you can also order Tassimo Creamer, Twinings Earl Grey, Twinings Green Tea and Mint and finally Twinings Camomile Orange and Linden Tea. Yet if you live in America you get brands such as Maxwell House, Mastro Lorenzo, Gevalia, Nabob, Carte Noire, Jacobs, Seattle’s Best & Tazo, as well as Twinings and Kenco, giving you a much wider choice of hot drinks available. I hope that the range of drinks available to the UK increases soon.

I can quite see why this is product of the year, it is fantastic! and the best way to make a hot drink, with no fuss.

Trust

Recently when talking to a friend on the telephone, he suggested I read a bible verse - Proverbs chapter 3 verse 5, which goes like this:

Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track.

This is a really good Bible verse as it is reminding me that God has got my life in his hands, and I should listen to God’s voice as he is the one who will keep my life on track, although sometimes I forget that God is in charge of my life, and it is great to have this Bible verse reminding me of this.

Apple ProCare

Recently I purchased a great product to go along side my Apple Mac Mini. It’s called ProCare and it helps me get a lot out of my Mac. For just £79 a year I get up to 52 training sessions - 1 per week and 156 technical support incidents - 3 per week along a yearly tune up, and screen, keyboard clean to ensure that my Mac is running at it’s best. This is a fantastic service and I’m surprised that no PC maker has thought of an idea like this!

I have already had my first training session and it was really good to be able to learn off an Apple expert, and get answers to the questions I had, without the feeling that I was being stupid for asking them, as well as getting the chance to work with files I had created, and get advice as to how to get them to work in the way I wanted.

Apple Mac’s may not be the market leading home computer, but couple the ProCare service with their fantastic computers and I think they are on to winner. Add in the fantastic .mac service, iLife ’06 and iWork ’06 and you definitely have a winning combo. I think in the future we will see Apple Computer becoming more popular in the home, due to their ease of use, and the proliferation of Apple Stores around the country.

Boney M - Rivers of Babylon

Fantastic video of Boney M perfoming Rivers Of Babylon, the best selling single of 1978 on Top Of The Pops.

Digital Rights Managment

I have recently read an interesting article from Steve Jobs, one of the bigwigs at Apple, he thinks that in the future digital music downloads should not have any form of Digital Rights Management added to the download to prevent piracy. This he believes will make it easier for people to play their purchased digital music on any device.

I agree with Steve Jobs, as I am annoyed that when I purchase a song in iTunes I am unable to play on the media player included with my mobile phone, as it cannot play iTunes DRM encoded files. Also if I buy music from another online store then it is more than likely I will not be able to play this music on my iPod.

We need to come to a point in music downloads where any music you purchase from an online store is free of digital rights management software to ensure that the music you have bought can be played on any device. After all when you purchase a CD you are not limited to where you can play the CD, and if you so wish you can make MP3 files from the CD.

WiFi Calling

I recently purchased a Belkin WiFi Skype phone. This is a fantastic device that enables you to connect to Skype without needing your PC/MAC switched on. What makes this phone great is the fact it gives you the chance to make free calls, to friends / contacts who use Skype, even when you are not at home, as all you need to is connect to a wireless network to make a call, which means that if you are on a foreign holiday, and your hotel has free wireless access you get cheaper calls back to the UK, free voicemail access, and don’t get charged for receiving a call, which makes it cheaper than using a mobile phone.

Also with Skype you can purchase voicemail, a Skype In number (to enable people without Skype to call you) and Skype Out credit so you can call people who are not on Skype at a cheap rate of 1.2p a minute to most countries in the world (some countries cost more to call on Skype)

I think WiFi calling is going to be a big thing in the next couple of years, due to the cheap call charges, and the expansion of wireless networks all over the country - some cities are installing city wide free WiFi, which could make a mobile phone redundant, as it costs more to use. Businesses will also benefit as it will be a cheap way to enable employees to call each others, and mean that no matter where an employee is, such as working from home, that employee will have one contact number / ID

The only downside as far as I can see is that the device does not have the ability to connect to a “pay as you use” wireless network, as the software does not have the ability to connect to networks that require you to pay to use them, and the phone itself does not have shortcut keys to key functions, as on mobile phones, such as a voicemail button etc. Also the phone does not yet support the SMS function recently built in to Skype, nor can you send a message rather than call a Skype contact.

All in all this is a great phone, and makes a great way to communicate with people.