Since the 14th April 2010, work has been carried out on the Elmley Moor transmitter (based near Huddersfield) to upgrade the mast for the infamous Digital Switchover. This work was initially scheduled to last ‘up to’ 2 months, and be completed before the World Cup. In the meantime, a secondary mast was being used for all transmissions. Sadly, this completion schedule has now been put back to ‘late August’ due to some vague reason, possibly inclement weather? Who knows.

What can you do if you’re getting poor reception? I’d suggest some things NOT to do first – don’t have your aerial changed. I’ve heard of aerial fitters charging extortionate prices (500 pounds upwards) to swap an older aerial for a new one. If your current Freeview setup worked pre-April 20th, it’ll work again once the main mast is operational again.

• Swap to Freesat – if you’re lucky enough to already have a satellite dish and a Freeview receiver built into your TV, connecting the two up is easy enough. If you’re in this position, however, why are you still struggling with Freeview?
• See if any channels you can’t pick up are on analogue. This will obviously only work for BBC1, 2, ITV, CH4 and CH5, but if you’re like me and can’t view any BBC channels, its better than nothing.
• If you have one lying around, try a standalone aerial. I have an old two-pronged aerial I used for a TV in an old house that appears to be able to pick up all BBC channels, but none of the ones I can receive from my rooftop aerial. I don’t know why (maybe it’s pointing at a different transmitter), but it seems to work. I have to get up to change channels, but it does mean BBC WC games aren’t missed. Don’t buy an aerial though as there’s no guarantee whatsoever this will help you.
• Watch live TV on an internet service like TVCatchup. You have to sign up, but it seems to be pretty good.
• Wait it out.

For any other information, I’ve found this article at UK Free TV to be very helpful. I’d suggest asking on their forums specific technical questions as their admin appear to be very knowledgeable.

If you have anything to add, comment on this article. I’m not technical in the nuances of TV broadcast so if I’ve got anything wrong or am being misleading, let me know!

It’s me here. You know, Dave. That guy that had a blog that time? Yeah, that loser!

So on my last blog post I mentioned some bullshit about blogging more over the course of the year. Well, I didn’t anticipate getting a Twitter account and pretty much migrating any and all of the insta-bollocks that comes out of my mind straight into 140 characters over there. It’s convenient, it doesn’t mean people who don’t use RSS have to keep visiting the site and ultimately it’s pretty much the reason I’ve not updated in 10 months.

Sorry.

Anyway, my Twitter account is @dave_bullough.

So the past 10 months? Work’s been great fun, home life even more fun, beer making is awesome, drinking beer makes you fatter.

Oh and the answer to my initial question is ‘yes, probably’.

I spent a pretty long chunk of Christmas travelling around the UK seeing various people – it was fun, but by day 10 I was really ready to come home, you know? NYE was spent in Cardiff, somewhere I’ve never been to before and ended up been a really fun trip – I was expecting it to be rough as (I’m a pessimist about Wales… sorry Jof) but it was way better than Birmingham. At least we didn’t get the car smashed into by some retard in Cardiff.

So to 2009… onwards and upwards! Plans for this year are:

• Release the software I’ve been working on for the past aeon.
• Get a new office job, one that’s actually rewarding other than making me feel like a monkey pushing buttons.
• Get the garden at the house completely remodelled.
• Get a two new bathrooms fitted in the house.
• Have some parties.
• Play more bass.
• See more of my friends.

I think getting just one or two items done out of that little lot will make me happy.

Cheers.

If you like that there’s a similar manouvre/shit-your-pants-mistake by a Typhoon pilot too here.

*watches again*

Anyway, sayin’.

Sweet.

Anyway, I got Cube Runner on my iPod and decided to recreate it in Flash. My version isn’t exactly “finished” but as an exercise in controlling 3D space, it was a good one. It has some collision bugs, and some of the physics aren’t quite as polished as the iPhone version but whatever… I just wanted to see if I could do something similar with what Papervision offers.

I want to try and finish it over the next few days and get the following things done:

• Work out how to add more distance on the camera’s perspective, as the cubes tend to start too close to the viewport. They’re being added with a z position of 0 at the moment, but it looks like anything less than 0 makes them disappear off screen… maybe zoom out and let the cubes scale up?
• Improve the collision detection slightly – I’m using hitTestObject() to evaluate collisions at the moment but I don’t think my implementation is too hot.
• The fonts don’t work under Linux (only I’m bothered about that mind).

Instructions: Use the mouse to move the ship left and right and avoid the evil cubes!