I am always looking for ways to improve my blog. I have tried many different designs, hand-coded everything almost from scratch, thrown it away and started again. It would make sense that everyone is looking for that one design that will make their blog memorable and to stand out from all the others.

I found a design blog that provides information on everything from the basics of web design to how to create the best Adwords advertisements.

Judging by the look and feel of the site, I consider it very important that a web design blog be well designed. This sounds obvious but it is something that many web design blogs and sites occasionally overlook. In the case of Stylish Design, this blog is well designed and innovative, with a format that is fresh and unlike most blogs I have seen in my daily surfing adventures. Well worth a look if you are interested in blog design and web issues in general.



This post brought to you by StylishDesign.

For the last couple of months I have been deciding what to read next. I had a hankering for Stephen King - my favourite book of his would have to be "Rose Madder" but I wanted something else. I was thinking I would like "The Dead Zone". I know the basic outline of the story and I have seen a few episodes of the television programme recently. Then I forgot about it and lo and behold - I was out walking today and passed a newsagent. At the front of the newsagent was a table with secondhand books on sale.

And what should I find almost immediately staring back at me:





















Ooo! Spooky! It was like it was saying "buy me!" "buy me!"

And the price was $5.99 - hehehehe!!

Perhaps this is "the secret" at work....

(spooky music out)

technorati tags: shopping books stephen king

Wikipedia, the web-based encyclopaedia project is a source of information just about everything you can think of. I often find myself "wikipediaing" (did I just make up a word?) famous people and their careers. There is a section of Wikipedia on the Nouveau Riche that is, those people who have made their fortunes in their own generation. This obviously does not include Paris Hilton! One of my favourite rags to riches movie would have to be "Rocky", the story of a relatively unknown boxer who gets the chance to fight the heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed. I always get teary in these films, but not just at the end. In fact I can quite easily go through a whole box of tissues per film! The most beautiful thing about rags-to-riches stories is the thought that there is a possibility that we too, can become the very heroes we admire.


This post brought to you by Wikipedia.

I thought it was going to be so easy to set up my new High Definition set top box. I mean, really, how hard could it be?

The answer came to me when I was waist high in cables and instruction manuals, pressing the "menu" button for the fifteenth time trying to work out what went wrong.

I'm going to try and simplify this so nobody ever goes through the same unnecessary troubles that I endured.

These steps are for connecting a HD set top box to a plain old normal television. These instructions are for a Tedelex HD set top box but should be able to translate to other models.

Step 1:

Unpack set top box. Get the cable that looks like this: (red, yellow and white)



and plug it into the set top box like this (it is colour coded so you can't really get it wrong!):




Plug your aerial into "ANT IN" on the set top box:

Then plug the other end into the red, yellow and white bits at the back of the TV.


Step 2:

Turn the set top box on.

Get the HD remote.

(THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT!)



Set the format on "PALI" - I presume this has something to do with PAL for Australia / UK TV.

On this particular remote you do the following:

FUNC
FUNC
PALI (on this remote it is the RED button!)

That's it!


Step 3:

Generally normal (older!) TVs have AV1 and Av2 to plug in audiovisual equipment. So, you will have plugged the red, yellow and white cables into eitherAV1 or AV2 which means when you get the TV remote, put the channel on Av1 or Av2. Whichever one shows up the HD menu, that's it!

On this particular model, (Tedelex TE-8200) the instruction manual tells you to press menu, select "TV channels" by pressing "OK" and searching for channels either automatically or manually.

I did an autosearch and found quite a few channels but not TenHD. Which is a disaster because TenHD is the main channel I want for the extra golf tournaments.

I realised that the aerial wasn't in the "Channel 10 spot" when I did the autosearch.

I readjusted the aerial in the Channel 10 spot and rescanned. Lo and behold all the Channel 10 stuff came up.


Step 4:

If you want to watch a channel that is being previewed in a small box on the screen, select the channel, press:

EXIT
EXIT
and
EXIT

Then you can watch the channel. I tell you something, these instruction manuals should actually say what I just said here. In plain English. Why oh why do they just skip over steps like "on what friggin channel does the set top box come through?" or "I've got the TV on, the set top box is on, the remote is working so why the crap isn't the HD menu coming up?" They just assume that you will naturally get to the point where the menu is magically displayed on screen. I ask you, what is the point of having an instruction manual if they think you can jolly well work it out for yourself?

From recent research on HD forums, it seems lot of people have spoken about the difficulty in finding a proper TV guide that includes the HD channels. I would love to find a hard copy but for now here are the online guides:

Yahoo7 TV Guide

CitySearch TV Guide

EBroadcast TV Guide

NineMSN TV Guide

According to recent news reports, Nine HD will not launch until March 2008. I wondered why I couldn't find it on any of the TV guides! Duh!

The picture is amazing. It has gone from something like this:



to this:



It's nuts. It's like watching DVDs all the time.

Hope this helps :-) Enjoy.

technorati tags: High Definition Set Top Box Normal TV Connect Set up

Discover the alternative to expensive cable TV, no monthly charges and global access to 4500 channels. No hardware required. Stream HD channels directly from your laptop.

I used to own a Macintosh. *sigh* I wish I did again - I miss the look, the feel, no viruses... but I digress. I really love those simple games sites - the kind of games you played when you were a fledgling nerd (or was that only me?) - the kind of games you played while you were working out operating systems and formatting hard drives and scaring people who didn't know anything about computers...

Like me, you can discover free mac games and play to your hearts content. It's a mac games fest and everyone's invited. Some games are free and others you can download in demo version and buy if you decide you like them.


















You can play the cute and reportedly addictive airport mania for mac - attend flight controller school, run an airport, spend too many hours playing, miss meals...

Don't you think simple platform games and basic graphics are the best? Or is it just me?


This post brought to you by Mac Games and More.