One of my New Year resolutions has been to keep better track of my finances. As such I’ve started using the excellent accounting package MoneyDance, which is available on Windows, Mac and Linux, for a mere $50. The big stumbling block I had, was importing bank statements into the package; there’s no way I’m typing every transaction in. Although MoneyDance can connect directly to some banks to retrieve statements and can import common file formats like QIX, OFX, QFX and CSV, none of these were readily available from my bank. I’m with the UK bank Smile, which is an online banking subsidiary of the Co-Operative banking group. Smile merely give you an online HTML page per bank statement, that’s it. I’m no longer smiling. 
Being a resourceful programmer, I set about the problem and put together some code to import Smile bank statements into MoneyDance. In brief, this involves saving your bank statement as a HTML page, converting the page to XHTML, then running an XSLT transform to convert it to the universal OFX format, which can then be imported into MoneyDance.
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Stuck for Christmas presents? Don’t know what to get people? Someone particularly awkward to buy for? Check out this site: www.whatthefuckdoibuythem.com, lots of suggestions.
Another SingStar has hit the shelves. This PS3 game, returns to the ’80s to feature lots of classic tunes like; Duran Duran – Wild Boys, Def Leppard – Animal and Beastie Boys – (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party). Perfect for the coming parties over Christmas, New Year etc. I know Mary’s going to enjoy Duran Duran… 
After working like crazy for the last year, the finished game, DanceStar Party has now launched and is ready to buy. I say it was crazy, but not too crazy, crunch was minimal, with bare minimum of late nights and we hit master acceptance early! All thanks to some top management, production and scheduling, down here at SCEE, Team Soho.
It goes without saying, that this is the best dance game currently on the market and I’m only a little bit biased. 
Pick up a copy, its got 40 top tracks and is a bargain at £15! Also look out for bundles with Playstation 3 console and Move Controllers (now unofficially known as the DanceStar-Controllers!).
US version is named Everybody Dance, launches 19th. Europe/Aus version is named DanceStar Party and launches 20th/21th depending where you are.
My wife has an old Mac iBook G4 laptop (12″, 1.33Ghz, full spec here), which after several years, the original battery will only provide approximately 1 hour of running time. Being such an old laptop, replacement battery options are limited to just third party compatible items. After scouring ebay I came across a brand called Powercell, who produced a compatible battery rated at 4400mAh, for the reasonable price of £27 delivered.
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I recently inherited my wife’s old Mac iBook, a 12″ 1.33Ghz G4. Initially the hard disk had suffered the click of doom, which I replaced. Following that it started becoming very unstable and oddly only booting up/operating when squeezed just to the left of the track pad.
After some research it seems the iBook’s suffer from dodgy solder joints, especially on one chip just to the left of the track pad. Some people try squeezing in shims to press the chip down, other try touching the connections with a soldering iron to rejoin them. I tried the latter, however still had no success. Whilst in pieces I noticed that it wasn’t so much the pressing of the chip that enabled the machine to boot up, but more the flexing of the whole board. It was at this point I read about a solution involving the cooking of the main logic board. That’s right, sticking the logic board in the oven to cause all solder joints to flow.
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My sister has recently sorted out her WordPress blog; judderbug.co.uk and is really started to shape up into a nice looking site. Well worth checking out.
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Amazon now have DanceStar Party listed for pre-orders. Development is still rather busy, but almost no crunch, thanks to some good management. Not long left now, all quite exciting really. With a bit of luck, this game will be everywhere in a few months time.
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I mentioned previously I have been busy coding away on a new website, and at last, now I believe it has reached a point where it can be announced. The site is www.HiFiHunter.com – Second Hand Hi-Fi Search Engine. It is a specialist search engine for finding the best second hand or ex demo Hi-Fi and Home Cinema bargains. Its goal is to be a single portal for finding items for sale on classifieds sites (like Gumtree), Hi-Fi forums, eBay and dealer sites.
Think of this as the start of a public alpha phase, where the key functionality is in place, but some rough edges still remain and need ironing out. Please check it out, find some bargains and send any me feedback, critique or bug reports.
One of my fondest memories from my youth, was riding in my parents old three door Range Rover (and later on a Land Rover Defender 90), across the Shropshire and Welsh rural landscape. In the car, we only had one tape that worked. That tape was Paul Simon’s Graceland
, a seminal piece of work, that without a doubt moulded my musical tastes at an early age. When a piece of music has such a strong emotional attachment, it can be difficult to be objective and rate it compared to other works. At the same time, everything Paul Simon has done since Graceland, has been compared to it, with little deemed as good.
So with hearing Paul Simon’s latest work: So Beautiful or So What, its inevitable I’ll compare it to Graceland. Now I personally don’t think it comes close, but whether that’s because it doesn’t evoke the same fond memories or because it simply isn’t as good, is a tough call to decide. That said, this is still a great record and will be loved by any fan of Paul Simon.
You may also be interested to know this album is available in hi-res 24bit 96kHz flac format from HDtracks, which sounds top notch and a distinctive step up from Spotify Premium.
