Sun, 22nd Aug 2010 by Alfie.

I started out with a different (now disabled) ID, but here is my current XBox/Games for Windows Live gamer ID, AlfieUK4.

I only have Silver membership as I have never played on-line with the XBox 360, but fortunately we get multiplayer achievement recording for free on the PC

Its a shame that Microsoft didn’t start with a better base product or fix the massive early problems more quickly with Games for Windows Live, it could so easily have been the start of their answer to Valve’s Steam.

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Mon, 31st May 2010 by Alfie.

I played my first one hour of tennis in probably twenty years today.

It’s odd that considering that I have lived much of my life within walking distance of tennis courts I haven’t played on a proper court in that long.

Racquets have changed nowadays, all ultra-light and more springy than I remember, and in combination with an older body less capable of running and jumping, it took some time to get my eye back in and stop dropping shots short or firing them at the sky.

We never actually got to play a proper game as we learnt from our ‘knocking up’ that both us were seriously in need of practice, but we did keep going for pretty much the whole hour, so all that cycling has been helping my stamina if nothing else

Another session booked for the end of the week, time to practice serves and returns.

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Tue, 17th Nov 2009 by Alfie.

I’ve been a bit busy lately undertaking a self-enforced C++ refresher course comprising two ‘Learning C++’ books, and some on-line tutorials as well as looking through two ‘C++ for Game programming’-type books (one on DirectX).

I now feel ready to tackle the pretty much required reading of Scott Meyer’s Effective C++ and More Effective C++.

So, if you see me around looking a bit dazed and confused you’ll know why

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Wed, 14th Oct 2009 by Alfie.

We’ve just spent 2 days with no running hot water or central heating and boy is it chilly in the mornings/evenings.

Fortunately, we know a good boiler engineer who works evenings, and knows our type of boiler inside out. Took him one visit to diagnose the problem(s) and another to fix the important ones so we can have it back on-line. He still needs to do some more work but at least it’s usable now.

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Mon, 12th Oct 2009 by Alfie.

It’s not until your boiler breaks down that you realise how cold it’s getting nowadays. Woke up to no hot water and no central heating. Nothing obviously wrong with the boiler, it’s just not heating the water that passes through it.

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Wed, 12th Aug 2009 by Alfie.

My girlfriend wants to get in training for next years London triathlon, so she ordered a hybrid bicycle on-line, but it turned out to be too big for her (despite following the Evans Cycles frame size guide).

My 15 year old mountain bike would need some work to be made road-worthy again, so she gave me this new bike as an early birthday present (and ordered a new one for herself).

So, I now have a shiny, new, ‘Bianchi Spillo Rubino’ with which to get back into training!

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Sat, 8th Aug 2009 by Alfie.

I had a cable modem failure at the beginning of last week, this Scientific Atlanta Webstar modem was just 2 years old.

Strangely, the new modem seems to be more responsive in pings and download, but has a burst upload, which means that sustained uploads drop to about 40%.

I’m not sure how I feel about that ‘burst’ upload; it seems that it’s designed to counter illegal P2P, but it will also impact FTP uploads, running a home server, legal P2P, etc.

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Fri, 10th Jul 2009 by Alfie.

Well, I was playing Air Attack on Friday, lot’s of players on, mucho fun, but then disaster! During a rather violent stall turn, with me leaning into the turn as if it could somehow influence the game, my ancient office chair finally gave up the ghost and the mount cracked, spilling me sideways whilst my subsequent flailing to stay upright both broke my joystick and injured my hand.

This puts an end to my flying for a while…just as I was starting to get the feel for flight back

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Sat, 12th Mar 2005 by Alfie.

This is my Steam Community ID, AlfieUK.

My Steam Community page is http://steamcommunity.com/id/AlfieUK/

Feel free to request to add me as a friend

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