And people complain about the license fee!

Beauty, grace, danger, survival, etc (There are two videos on the page, both worth watching)

One seriously determined cat!

A meteorite falls in Utah.

The future of food… now…

Great stuff, and no rubbish to wade through to find it!

For anyone out there who enjoys a bit of “video gaming” why not check out my gaming alter ego’s (Rax / Raxous) “Gameography“, and see if we have any games in common in our back catalogs!

Please bear in mind that this is an ongoing project, not yet a complete list of the games that have influenced me!

So following the event, there have been a few places featuring it / us / me! ;

Team UK Story (Official Video – BioWare)  -/-  Team UK Story (Official Video – EA)

Official Dragon Age Website

Official Event Website

EA Games

GameSpot: (Video 1 (Alt)) (Video 2) (Original Advert)

Newb Review

FHM Magazine

Nuts Magazine

Twitter

Facebook

Anything else interesting turns up, I’ll post it here!

Below is a part of a poem I was writing a long time ago looking at the theme of “work” and how it can, in some cases, be a negative force in people’s creative life, deliberately unstructured, monotonous and bleak, I intended it to roll on, unending, like the endless working “day” of those who feel they have no control over their life…

…
We must work to earn our pay
And so we spend another day
Toiling in a concrete cage
The slaveship of the modern age
Vast and towering high above
Devoid of hatred fear or love
They simply are, forever more?
As people pass, no one keeps score
For only numbers now are we
Although we’re told that we are free
Yet who can truly say they are
When we all travel from afar
To spend our hours in the light
Of flourecent neon out of sight
Stacked atop each other high
With just the air conditioned sigh
To remind us that there is outside
And yet there is no where to hide
For we are now watched round the clock
Inventoried like cattle stock,
All we do can now be seen
As we stare into the screen
Or swipe our cards or park the car
The unblinking eye sees from afar
Every little thing we do
Assessed if our results too few
Graded like a pretty flower
To determine the exact the hour,
When we are just past our best,
15 hours without a rest?
Who’s surprised we start to flag,
We have invented ‘career lag’,
Much worse than that from a jet,
Your number’s gone, systems forget,
You ever were at work at all,
As ‘For the best’ you take the fall,
Cast out like a useless toy,
Where to now to find employ?
…

Below is a very small part of a poem I am working on for my book, it takes the form of  a simple traditional “folk” piece which will be recited by “common folk” in one of the earlier passages of the first chapter…

…

Upon the hills,
Deep in the seas
Amidst the clouds
Above the trees
Under the mount
Around the vale
Along the river
Swift and pale

With the fishes
Birds and beasts
In the famine
And the feasts
Part of all
For from it made
Are all things
Which do not fade

In the song
and whistled sound
In the wind
blown all around
We can sense
What can’t be seen
And so we know
What it must mean

…

Whilst not complete, this does impart a flavour of what I am trying to achieve within the introduction to the peoples featured in the book.

Some photos of me through the years to help you identify me from “back in the day!” (As an extra bonus most of them provide for a jolly good laugh at my expense! )

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Below are the commands to include in “Shutdown” & “Startup” batch files. These commands will fully shutdown / startup all Exchange 2003 services cleanly and in the correct order. These files are useful in a number of situations, particularly;

1. Pre server shutdown: Windows Server is not very good (OK, it’s terrible!) at managing these services effectively, to circumvent this run the “shutdown” batch file to conclusion before actually telling windows to shutdown / reboot.

2. Pre manual backup / mailstore defragmentation / logfile management etc: Again, once the “shutdown” script is run you are safe in the knowledge that the Exchange 2003 data files in question are not being used by the system.

3. Post error / bug: Following any error event / issue with Exchange 2003 it is often wise, in my experience, to fully shutdown and then re-start all Exchange services to ensure all services are working correctly and have been initialised in the correct sequence to avoid service-to-service communication / reliance problems.

The Scripts;

Shutdown; (E2K3-Shutdown.bat)
net stop “Microsoft Exchange Information Store” /y
net stop “Microsoft Exchange System Attendant” /y
net stop “Microsoft Exchange IMAP4″ /y
net stop “Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine” /y
net stop “Microsoft Exchange POP3″ /y
net stop “Microsoft Exchange Management” /y
cmd /k

Startup; (E2K3-Startup.bat)
net start “Microsoft Exchange Information Store”
net start “Microsoft Exchange System Attendant”
net start “Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks”
net start “Microsoft Exchange IMAP4″
net start “Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine”
net start “Microsoft Exchange POP3″
net start “Microsoft Exchange Management”
cmd /k

A quick apology for the rather odd structure of the site at the moment, you see I’m merging a number of my “web presences” into this site, suffice to say, come back in a few days and things will be back to normal! (Hopefully!)