Now this probably old news to some but as a Firefox user I had not realized that Microsoft had taken IE8 out of beta and actually made it available to everyone.
As I type this, I am currently installing IE8. Now I have sort of got into the Firefox thing, just by habit more than anything so for me to move browser it would really have to do something special. Saying that I have heard good things about the likes of Opera and Flock so if I were going to change browser I would probably take a good look at a few.
Typically I must restart my computer now to finish the installation……
…..right I’m back. I think thats what I like about Firefox after plugin’s etc you only need to restart your browser not the full PC. Anyway back to IE8.
First impressions are that it doesn’t look much different to IE7, the first thing I noticed is the tabs a square and a little smaller. A few click around and I found something that could be useful, its called Accelerators.
What you do is highlight a word on any webpage and you get an icon appear, by clicking on this you are given a range of option as standard (which can be changed), you can then search the word or do various other things with it. Say you highlight an address, you click the icon, hover over maps and are given a map of where the address is without even leaving the page.
I must admit, I stopped looking after that but it looks like a great new feature that will save time. This seems to be the big thing with IE8, surf the net faster and save time.
I did want to go and see Watchmen but time and the kids permitted that happening. My brother did however go see it and his review left me intrigued, all he said was…
“Yeah, it’s weird………”
So, that is still on the list to do, but back to the megadrive. After some helpful advice from the guys across at Sega-16, I found the problem with the sound on the machine was down to two thing:
1) there being 15 or so years of dust in there, or
2) some capacitors needed replacing!
So out came the compressed air (which was very expensive for air in a can), and after blowing dust and muck from side to side the lid went back on. The joy at hearing the “Segaaaaaa” when starting up Sonic The Hedgehog was a great feeling, the machine was back to its old self again.
So that is where most of the weekend went, playing Sonic The Hedgehog with my son and girlfriend pestering me to let them have a go and put either Aladdin or The Lion King on. The old consoles are starting to add up now as I also received a PSOne with the 5″ screen I require to start my project at turning one of these old machines into a portable, the thing is I don’t know if I can bring myself to chop one of them up.
Maybe I’ll just spend a few more days playing on them first……
Its a bit of a random choice this weekend. I get to either clean out an old megadrive I purchased while in a bit of a retro mood on eBay or go to see Watchmen at the cinema.
Both of these involve doing them while the kids aren’t around because well the movies an 18 cert. and they’re…well…. younger, and also because I would have no doubt have fingers pointing and touching things they shouldn’t inside the old black case (and things being split near if not on it too).
So my lovely old, retro NES arrived last week. I was eager to play on Mario 3 with the tiny square controllers so I hooked up the machine, slid in a game and hit the power button………
Nothing! Just a white screen.
I did what all people who have experienced a Nintendo games console would have done, I took the game out and blew both that and inside the machine. I put the game back in and tried again……
Nothing, but now a white screen and a flashing red light on the NES. After a little investigation on the web it looked like it could be a problem with the connectors in the system so out came the tools, well in fact all my screwdrivers were too big so I nipped down to the hardware store to pick up a set of small ones. About an hour later and with my finger prints removed I finally got out the 6 tony screws that had been holding the machine together for the last 20 years. I then basically had to remove all of the parts of the system to free up the 72 pin connector shown above.
Th connectors had been bent down over time so using a tiny screwdriver I had to push these back up being careful not to break any. After this had been done, I tried the machine again. Still the same problem persisted so I had another look on the net and there was something else to try. This meant removing a connector off of a chip on the main board, so out came the cutters. After that got snipped and the machine was put back together I settled down to some Mario 3, hand still sore from using metal screwdrivers with no grip, was it worth it?
Hell yeah. I even remembered where I could fly up into the clouds on the first level for extra coins and how to get the warp whistle on level 3.
I don’t know why, but the relief at winning the auction on the NES combined with the excitement of it finally arriving, totally geeked me out and this is what I came up with…..
After a little investigation on the web it looked like it could be a problem with the connectors in the system so out came the tools, well in fact all my screwdrivers were too big so I nipped down to the hardware store to pick up a set of small ones. About an hour later and with my finger prints removed I finally got out the 6 tony screws that had been holding the machine together for the last 20 years. I then basically had to remove all of the parts of the system to free up the 72 pin connector shown above.
