The building from the street

Last Thursday I finally moved house from Willesden Green, North London out to Woking, Surrey where I work and I couldn’t be happier.

A friend from work helped me moved most my stuff in his car but I had to take a suitcase on the train (where did all this junk come from?) so on Thursday I managed to get the new keys and after work moved in.

A proper sized fridge and a FREEZER!!!

My new SECURE front door

2 x Comfortable couch and a slightly bigger TV

So much better having carpet in the house and not just in the bathroom. The place even has Sky TV…working….and free!

Possibly the best part of the new place

The bedroom, plenty of space, might have to do something about the duvet

A decent bathroom where my elbows don't touch the walls

Plenty of green

Shared sun room and balcony

So after some exporing, a couple of nights of drinking and an overall very relaxing long weekend it’s back to work today. Luckily it’s only a few minutes down the street now. What will I do will the 3hrs a day extra I now have???

The other weekend was Matt from work’s Stag-do weekend and we headed out to sunny Santiago.

There is only one flight in and one out so I had to be up at the sparrows fart hour of 3:30 Friday morning to get ready, get a cab and then catch the hour long bus out to Stansted airport.
Once there I caught up with Neil, Matt, Paxton, Chris and John and a Weatherspoons breakfast and beers were in order.

The flight was pretty good and once the hatch door opened I could feel that magical heat I haven’t felt in almost a year.  After some negotiations we got a 7 seater bus but with luggage it was really only a 5 seater, so John ended up squashed in the back…top marks.   With that sorted we headed into town for some lunch and to meet up with Rupert. The tapas and beers along with the warmth made for a relaxing afternoon.

However that was all to change when the 7 of us piled into the car and headed out for some paintball action. We meet up with a young girl running the show and then ended up the the wood just outside a nearby village, it was great as it was only the 7 of us playing and asides from the basic safety stuff there were no rules.

After we had sufficently shot the shit out of each other we jammed back in the car and headed out to Ruperts villa to clean up and unpack.
The place was magnificant in all aspects but it was the shower that did it for me, ‘Best Shower Ever!’

Once cleaned up and a few more beers later in we headed out to a local restaurant for some home-made style local cusine. After a mix of stews, seafood, pork and devine cheesecakes we finished off with a local spirit (much like a scnapps) and then back for more pool at the villa.

Go Karting was first thing Saturday morning after a much needed sleep in. Rupert even snuck in a few quick laps before his wife noticed him missing.   John was kind enough to sit this one out and document the race for us. Neil was unsupprisingly the course leader but Chris and Paxton faught quite a battle for secon place, I clearly had a weight disadvantage but countered that with some thrilling drifting. 

Now Matt on the other hand was playing it very safe (either him just getting his licence or trying to protect his body for the wedding) but this didn’t last, 5mins or so in and a rouge tyre rolls past Neil, we look over and Matt has managed to park his kart on top of a tyre barrier right on the hairpin! He narrowly avoided being staked so we can be happy about that but I think if he just gave it a little more gas he could have launched the kart and created a course shortcut.

All that excitement had built up a hunger (which was surprising after the 7 meal bonanza from Friday) so we (eventually) made our way to the supermarket for more supplies for our big last night feast.

The rest of the day/night went pretty much as expected, plenty of drinking, loads of food, trying the swimming pool but not getting past my toes. After dinner and many more drinks there was some discussion and with some self help from Matt I threw him in the pool at about midnight

Sunday it wax time to leave and with only one flight in and one out it was important we packed up and left early, so it was really great when the GPS/ Matt/Paxton got us lost on the highway and we started heading in the wrong direction! I had resided to spending another day there but some tactical driving from Paxton and a spot of airport running meant we made the flight and were on our way back to the UK.

Congratulations Matt and Nikki! I can’t wait to see the wedding photos.  I look forward to seeing all the guys again sometime, I had a great weekend away.

_B

To pickup where I left off last weekend, I finished the hardware side of the mod and was halted by the fact that I needed an original Xbox controller do flash the chip. Last Sunday night I was looking on eBay for a new controller and most were around £4-5 but I found another great deal, an Xbox, 2 controllers, 2 games and remote for £11!!

Saturday morning I downloaded the new Xecuter Bios  flashed the modchip. I normally do this over FTP but I don’t have a router/switch here or any control over the internet so the safest bet was to burn the bios to a dvd and flash it that way. Once done the Xbox would accept unsigned code and I would be able to run my backed up games and more importantly the open source project XBMC (Xbox Media Center).

Sunday I played around a little more and have nice new ‘Media Stream’ skin for the program which displays all my movies and tv shows nicely. In fact I like it more than my Vista Media Centre I have setup back in Australia.

I think I will mod the new extra Xbox I have now and install a Linux distro on it, perhaps Xubuntu and run myself a test web server =)

_B

Saturday I made my second attempt on modding my Xbox this time with all the tools in hand. I gave up last week as the wire install method wasn’t working for me (not my preferred method anyway), this time Matt from work had lent me his solder sucker and it was time to clear the LPC port. The image to the right shows what I have in my v1.0 model and that you can just solder each wire to the board, this may work for some but the port was meant for a header so a header it shall have.

Stuart warned me on Friday that a solder sucker may not be right for the job as you need a tight fit whilst the solder is hot in order to remove it and I would be better with braid. That may have been the case but I had use the sucker before and wasn’t about to change plans at the last minute, these tools weren’t easy to get.

Anyway I removed the old pin install and made my attempts at removing the solder. After much negotiating of positions I managed to get 1 hole clear with the board on its side between my knees the soldering iron in one hand and the sucker in the other…this was to be the only time that move worked.

After many attempts I gave up and cursed around the studio for awhile until I had myself a light bulb moment. I ran out to the communal hallway and spotted my good friend Harry the vacuum cleaner (not in that way).

I pulled off the end and taped up the short metal end (so there was no metal on metal action) and let him rip. The vacuum attached tightly and formed a seal on the bottom of

the board and I simply touched the iron on the top of each point. With incredible easy the holes were clear one by one, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this last weekend.

Once that was done the rest came quickly as I had performed the pin header install many time before. Although you’ll see below my soldering skills are pretty rusty and I made quite a mess of the reverse pin header install but it works so that’s all that matters.

I booted it up and started the Bios flashing stage and encountered another hiccup which would prove to be another project staller. The controller wasn’t moving through the options on the FlashBios screen (to select the location of the new Bios file – HTTP, DVD, HDD), I knew the controller worked fine as I tested it the week before. Some quick interweb searching and I found out that only an original controller will work with the FlashBios screen (something to do with the Xbox being in low level I think).

With that I made a mad dash down the street to the pawnbrokers looking for a controller but come up with nothing, even a bus ride and walk up and down Kilburn High Rd proved fruitless. My weekend Xbox project will be delayed yet another week.

After the break are some photos I took during the process. Until next weekend.

_B

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