Category Archives: Entertainment

The problem with Golden Balls – always Steal!

TV, , ,

OK, other than the fact that it is rather crap, the biggest problem I have with Golden Balls is the Share or Steal at the end. Whilst I never studied Game theory, this is pretty much a Prisoner’s dilemma. However the payoff matrix is weighted in an odd format.

Assume that you have a 6th sense, you are sat in the chair and the amount is £50,000.

If you knew that your opponent who you will never see again is going to share what would you do?
If you share it’s 50/50, and you walk away with £25,000, but if you steal thats £50,000 in your pocket!

However if you knew that they were to steal, your f*cked. You’re going home with nothing, so what do you choose? Well if it’s share, you’ve just given your opponent fifty grand, but if it’s steal you could shaft them and ensure that they go home with nothing too.

So if you look back, on both scenarios steal was the best option, which means that you should always steal.

Lincs FM goes digital

Entertainment, , ,

Yesterday Ofcom announced that Lincs FM has won the licence for the Lincolnshire DAB multiplex (with MuxCo). Ok there was only one bid, and as the only countywide FM broadcaster it would have been hard for them to lose.

I’ve looked at the stations which they are going to run:
Lincs FM 102.2 (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Compass FM (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Lincs Country (Lincs FM Group Ltd)
Easy Radio (Easy Radio Limited)
Shuffle (MuxCo Lincolnshire Ltd)
UCB UK (United Christian Broadcasters Ltd)
Traffic Radio (Highways Agency)
and I’m pretty sure that I wont bother with any of them except Lincs FM and Traffic Radio.

When I was in Hemel, I was used to having over 10 good stations to pickup including X-FM, however since getting to Lincoln my choices have been BBC Radio 1-5, BBC Radio Lincolnshire, Classic or Lincs FM. As Radio 1 don’t play any music, I can’t understand either Terry Wogan or Ken Bruce and I would crash the car listening to the Today programme, I began listening to Lincs FM two years ago.
Whilst the music is a bit too much Radio 2, at least they play lots of songs. All the presents are local, the quizes are good to listen to, the traffic is really useful (even if it is to tell me that the A46 is closed, whilst I’ve been sat in it for 20 minutes in the fog on Monday), and unlike almost every other regional radio station they are owned by themselves. They don’t drop out to national quizes pretending to be local, don’t have evening shows shared with other stations (other than the Sunday Chartshow) and something like 95% is broadcast live.

So good luck with the DAB, just hope that one day I might be able to get a signal without holding my radio high in the air without breathing!

A tale of two tickets

Entertainment, , , ,

In the last few days we’ve bought tickets to two events, Supergrass at the Engine Shed and Hard Graft at the Drill Hall.
Supergrass tickets were on sale at £17.50, so for a pair it should cost £35. However I was also charged £2 per ticket booking fee and £1.50 postage taking the cost to £40.50. (Collection would have been £1.75)
Hard Graft were on sale at £8, so for a pair it should cost £16. However I was also charged 50p to pay via card, and 35p to have them posted.
So the question is, how do venues and promoters get away with charging so much in extras. There is no option to aviod the booking fee. There is only one offical supplier of tickets (Ticketline), so I can’t shop around for a cheaper fee, and is a first class stamp really £1.50 these days. Whilst the fees from the Drill Hall were reasonable. If I went to the booking office and paid with cash, there would have been no extras.
Ryanair have since been forced to quote prices with all unavoidable charges included (taxes etc), shouldn’t this also be the case for gigs?

Debrand your W960 / P1 for FREE (or your P990, M600, W950)

Featured, Mobiles, , , , , , , , , , ,

After my successful debrand your phone for about a £5 (33,618 hits, 104 comments) and then unbrand your mobile for free (11,680 hits, 161 comments) posts. I now bring you the easiest way to de-brand your phone for free.
No more looking for files in folders which are about 41 bytes, no more trying to get the Box.com to download the files, no more running SEUS fifteen times, just 8 simple steps.

But before I begin, here are the usual disclaimers:

WARNING doing this could brick your phone!

Whilst I have successfully converted several Vodafone W960i into unbranded ones, I can’t guarantee that the same will happen to you. If you’re not 100% confident then DON’T do it. All actions are taken at your own risk! Yada yada ya…
There seem to be some issues with the M600, please read the comments first and then judge for yourself if you want to go ahead!

The things you will need to successfully remove the network customisations from your phone are:

  1. Perform a back-up of your phone via the PC Suite (or however you prefer), as you are going to wipe all of the phones C drive.
  2. Run the Sony Ericsson Update Service (SEUS), click on the icons matching your phone, when prompted pull the battery out and put it back in, when prompted plug the cable into your phone whilst holding down C (this is either the letter C on the keyboard, the Cancel button or even the @ internet button). Once it’s found your phone it’ll will either prompt you to update the firmware or inform you that you have the latest. Either way, quit SEUS without doing anything else. (This will force your PC to find the drivers required for your phone)
  3. Run XS++, click on the SMARTPHONE CONNECT box, and press Connect. The box on the left will tell you what to do, but it’ll be similar to step 2.
    Click for Full Screen
  4. Once connected you now need to select the new CDA for your phone:
    W960 – CDA 162032/1
    P1 – CDA 162022/1
    P990 – CDA 162007/1
    M600 – CDA 162011/1
    W950 – CDA 162014/1
    and hit Run Script. (They all have GW1 in the script name, however you can choose any of the others, but I recommend the Generic World 1 scripts)
    Click for Full Screen
  5. You can now close XS++, I recommend that you don’t touch anything else in XS++!
  6. Now run SEUS again, this time do the update on your phone.
  7. Boot up your phone to the Sony Ericsson or Walkman startup screens. Goodbye Vodafone, Orange or o2 🙂
  8. Restore the backup of your phone

See wasn’t that easy.

As before, feel free to put questions in the comment box.

And if you feel like it you can always send a donation via PayPal 😉








Remove parental control on the BBC iPlayer?

iPlayer

There seems to be a large flaw with the BBC iPlayer, their Parental Control feature is based on a cookie.
This makes it very easy for any computer whiz kid to allow themselves to watch programmes which are normally shown after the watershed whenever they like. And to top it off, the BBC explain how to delete the cookie in their help page.

2016 Edit turns out this page is rather high on a Google search. This post was first written in 2007 for the web version of the iPlayer. If your TV is asking for parental control it’s most likely due to the TV’s built in restrictions. If you’ve yet to set a PIN, it will tend to be 0000, 1234 or 1111. If these don’t work search for “default code” along with the make and model of your TV in Google.

Nintendo Wii for £1000?

Tech

Nintendo Wii The press seem to think that Nintendo Wii’s are going for over £1000 at the moment with the Christmas rush, yet a quick look at eBays recently sold items show that most Wii’s are going for less than £300. So where are the journlists going wrong? It’s the usuall eBay scam, the Nigerians. People are selling their consoles and not restricting sales abroad, and then amazingly a small bidding war ensures and the goods are won by a hijacked account and if the seller is rather greedy and unlucky the Wii will be shipped off without any payment. Just take a look at the feedback of the winners.
It’s the same for mobile phones, and I’m still not sure why eBay try to suggest that I would be better off allowing people abroad to buy my goods.