Another one of those stop start thingies

I love stop motion there’s just something about it that I love its probably just the sheer amount of time that goes into making such a short clip.

well here’s another good one for you all to enjoy

feel the pain of that poor rubix cube

ok back to Gantt  charts WHOO!

OK officially back

ok this is the first official post of the new formatted blog I have about 10 failed post from that last few months that I need to publish and now I can YAY! so once I find them out (on my external back up drive) because i wrote them before my last format. I’ll publish them

well it good to be back so now I can sort out all the loose ends that I couldn’t before *dances*

Back in business – Wordpress Forbidden Error

Finally the blog is working correctly its about bloody time its only taken me nearly a year to fix it!!!

so for reference for me and anyone else who has suffered from major problems with this even forbidden error.

first back up your database (you wont need it but do it anyway)

next use the export tool that comes with later versions of wordpress if you don’t have the export tool do a quick auto update to get your hand on it (it wont back your posts just might break everything else but that doesn’t matter now)

next install a fresh copy of wordpress and i mean completely fresh this should weed out any legacy bugs (mainly BD related)

first MAKE a new database with completely different table names! second if possible move your blog directory to force a recache if not request your host to delete your sites cache.

$table_prefix  = ‘wp_’;  // change this to something else!!! anything else

ok you are now ready to completely delete your blog so go and do it now (note if you are changing directories leave the WP_content folder for the time being)

now install you shiny new wordpress blog and import your post. if you get an error about permission just fiddle with the permission of the new wp_content folder this will vary from server to server but 755 should work if not trying 766 but try to avoid the evil 777 setting. now if you’ve moved the directory of where you blog is then make sure you import everything otherwise everything will have the wrong links.

lastly and the most important if you are still suffering from this problem with external blogging software you require to create a .htaccess file in the same folder as xmlrpc.php (root of your blog) or edit the one that’s already there.

just add this

<IfModule mod_security.c>
SecFilterInheritance Off
</IfModule>

if that doesn’t work or if you not happy with turning the inheritance filter off use

<IfModule mod_security.c>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule> 

simple?

good now if your still having problem with standard publishing and saving then just edit the .htaccess file in the WP_admin folder to include one of the above.

So is online game rental…

So I have been trying out some online rental services to try and save myself some money.

so the real question is

Will new rental services revolutionise the video game market?
Independent article

and to sum it up quickly all I can say is hope for the sake of all us that its not. but I have now tried out LOVEFiLM and Boomerang both had a similar outcome.

now you can Googling around and find out pretty quick that the best online rental service is currently Netflix

now unfortunately for us Netflix is no longer planning to expand to the UK, so no hope of any film or games there then.

LOVEFiLM

so what’s on offer then well the most popular DVD rental service currently is LOVEFiLM which you can quickly find out by once again Googling round that LOVEFiLM isn’t even half as good as Netflix

Netflix Yes LOVEFiLM NO

so not a good start for LOVEFiLM but they do offer game rentals and that are the most popular in the UK, it might not have anything on Netflix but its the best we’ve got right?

ok so I signed up for the 14 day trial thinking 14 days that should be enough time to try out some games if there claims were true I could have 2 games by tomorrow play them for a few days sent them back and get another 2 a few days later. So i had worked out i could probably get though 6 games in 2 weeks.

so I started off by picking a few games that the house hold wanted to play which consisted of the following

FIFA 2010 (oh joy!) – PS3
Need For Speed Shift – PS3
Call of Duty 4 – PS3
Call of Duty 5 – PS3
Katamari – PS3

Dirt 2 – 360
L4D – 360 (not my choice believe me)
Fable 2 – 360
Price of Persia – 360
Fallout 3 (one of the expansion i can’t remember which) – 360

so as you can see a few new title but alot of olds but popular titles but surly they would have some in right??? they must have there a big company that tries to meet the demand of its customers.

but guess what 7 days into the trail I received nothing! not even a single email saying sorry but ALL of these title are out of stock. I even reordered them (well I didn’t I tick some radio boxes) and still nothing.

ok above isn’t my screenshot because I forgot to take one (oppss) but you can either set high med or low but you can’t order them like say I want the top one first etc you get what they feel is best so you can set the 2 you want to high and the rest to low and that’s about it really. but after a whole week of waiting I didn’t get a single game.

now the most worrying thing is most people say the service during the trial period is remarkably quick but when it ends it no so good. so I want to know what’s worse than a week+ wait??? 

I was tempted to throw in a game like GRAW or Cod 3 or something but I’m never going to use the service like that so why try it like that? getting games I don’t want to play that would be pointless.

so on the 8th day of my 14 day trial I cancelled which was easy click this button here to cancel sorry no to be redirected to a customer support number seriously?? why have a cancel button? This was hard going it took me 20 minutes to cancel because the mentally challenged person on the other end of the phone couldn’t work out why I didn’t have anything rented and I couldn’t cancel until i returned everything. so what he was saying was I needed to rent something then return it to cancel? emm ok but after about 20 minutes of him trying to offer me discount I finally got me to cancel it so I really feel sorry for people who try and cancel and have item currently rented.

so LOVEFiLM according to review seems ok for films if you don’t mind watching anything so you really need to love films (I can see where the title came from). but if you want to rent game you’d be better off going to your local blockbuster atleast they have stock!

Boomerang Rentals

next up is Boomerang Rentals now surely these will be better just because they are a dedicated games rental service. What I did like about this service when I signed up was there colour coding system for each game.

above you can see some games have a red dot next to rent it others have orange and others have green.

now this is was suppose to mean that if it is green that demand for the game is reasonable so that to me translated to that they have some in stock for renting orange meant that demand is high so once again i assumed this meant that there wasn’t any in stock because demand is higher than the stock levels. and red meant there is going to be a log wait.

“The "Rent It" button, which you click to add a game to your Pipeline is colour coded. Green = Demand is reasonable Yellow = Demand is quite high Red = Demand is high. We also repeat this colour coding in your Pipeline to help with prioritisation. Please note that this isn’t an exact science and a titles with reasonable demand may still not be available on the day you return a game.”

so that is a fair statement because they probably only updated them once a day after despatch.

So I picked

FIFA 2010 (oh joy!) – PS3 (Green)
Need For Speed Shift – PS3 (Green)
Call of Duty 4 – PS3 (Green)
Call of Duty 5 – PS3 (Green)
Katamari – PS3 (Green)
Uncharted Drake Fortune – PS3 (Orange)

Dirt 2 – 360 (Green)
L4D – 360 (not my choice believe me) (Green)
Fable 2 – 360 (Orange)
Price of Persia – 360 (Green)
Fallout 3 (one of the expansion i can’t remember which) – 360 (Green)

so you can see by that I choose the same games and that most of them are green!!

now another plus to this site is the ability to reorder your rentals so that you get the top ones first you can also select different priority options these were

Top 3
You always get 2 games from the top 3 in your list but it might be slower (2-3 days)

Top 5
you always get 2 games from the top 5 in your list but might be slower (1-2 days)

Balanced
get a mixture from your list but try to get top titles (normally 1 day)

Fast
send out any game from your list asap (almost always 1 day)

ok that seem pretty fair to me so I just tick balanced (also note that on a trail i can only have 1 game at once) so lets see if this is any better.

so far a whole working week has gone by without even an email saying the games are out of stock… so the same service as LOVEFiLM just with a slightly less professional looking site, but with better features but what good are features if the service doesn’t work!

so now I’m moving onto the original game rental service, which is Swap game I am hoping that over 5 years experience it will have more of a Netflix approach and over stock games and sell them off later (which boomerang does but it appears they do this very early) so i’ll let you know how it goes.

Conclusion

Well what can I say other than is just doesn’t work either there is a really low user base or the companies just can’t be bothered to get any stock. On paper it seems like a great idea games through the post with no deadlines at a set monthly fee of ~£15 that’s great! But it clearly doesn’t work, which I honestly think is a major shame.

So who wants to set up an online game rental service? looks like there’s a whole in the market