You’ll find out here.

Looks like I’m…

Whoo… Brilliant.

BigAl

Bwah ha ha!!!

The fools! What have they done?

They gone and given me broadband again. Ha ha!

Settling back down to Earth for a moment, it wasn’t the most straightforward setup. According to the nuggets at NTL customer service, the only way to set up your account (through an ethernet connected cable modem) is to go through an IP address that you have to sell your firstborn to get hold of.

Then the whole shambles gets worse.

Note to NTL: Wise up, halfbrains. You’re not making any friends here.

Then came the Wireless Broadband Router which, with a bit of tinkering, is now setup and working a treat.

Ah, technology. Dontcha just love it?

BigAl

Probably one of the funniest cricketting quotations leads me nicely into a short homage to this years Ashes contest.

I’m a football fan, through and through. But over the last 5 years of so I have come to appreciate cricket in a new light; it’s very relaxing to watch, and, on occasion, can be exciting too. I admit that not all cricket is exciting (but then, not all football is either), but this years Ashes have been something else. I’ve never been so rivetted to a game of cricket in my life. And I, for one, am glad to see people getting back into the sport - some of them even north of the Border.

As an aside, I thought that I would take a look at the demos of a couple of cricketting games - EA’s Cricket 2005 and CodeMasters’ Brian Lara thingy. Here’s a quick summary based on the demos:

• Both games look and sound fine. Both have a tendency, however, to spend ages on replays and crap like that, meaning that playing the game takes a while. BL is probably better than EA in that respect.
• EA is far to complicated to bat. Trying to get anything but a defensive stroke is really tricky. The demo doesn’t let you bowl or field, which is a pain too.
• BL is fun to bat. It was a great feeling to hit Glen McGrath for six You also get to bowl, which I haven’t mastered yet, and some fielding. It just feels more “fun”.

So - buy BL if you really want a cricket game

7 days until the final test.

mrBen