Firebat is under construction as I type. Firebat? Yes, that’s the name of my shiny new computer. My first new desktop machine in a good four years or so (Mac Mini not counting, as that’s really just a web terminal in the living room and a chance to play with PowerPC based Linux).

Why Firebat? I try to name my computers after things from some of my favourite old computer games. First there was my Atari ST, named Benson – after the sarcastic computer from Paul Woakes’ amazing Mercenary games of the era. Then came the Atari Falcon, named Benson 2, aka Benson Junior. My first PC, in about 1997, named Benson 3 – can you see a theme here? Benson 3 is still in use today, as my IPCop firewall, but now named Jameson, after Commander Jameson from Elite. Benson 4 was originally a Pentium 2 machine, my first home built machine, but has seen so many upgrades over the years that about the only remaining original parts are the case and floppy drive (and name!) Benson 4, aka B4, is still in good use as my secondary desktop machine and also running Ubuntu Studio to record the podcasts. Benson 5 is, for this second at least, my primary desktop. B5 is the last of the Benson computers. That’s for no other reason than as a reference to Babylon 5 – the last of the Babylon stations. My two laptops are named after Myst objects, the latest being called Kormahn. Finally, my home server is called Threepwood, after Guybrush from the Monkey Island series. There are other machines but they have boring names like Mac Mini and Zaurus. Yes, my electricity bill can be a little high…

I still haven’t explained Firebat, though, have I? I needed another classic game from my past. Something I spent far too much time playing. There are a good few but not many suggested a decent name for a computer. Populous? Civilisation? Quake? Diablo 2? Hardwar? Evil Genius? Black and White? Tomb Raider? None of those leapt out at me as a source for the name. I didn’t want to call my computer Lara Croft! How about Warcraft 2 or 3? Nah, I wanted something more Sci-Fi. StarCraft! Of course! Kerrigan? Protoss? No. Firebat – yes. A silly sounding name but I took an instant shine to it!

So, Firebat is still installing. Windows XP – this is as much, if not more, a gaming machine than anything else. I considered Vista but there appears little or no benefit to DirectX 10 right now, the only possible reason to consider the appalling bloat that is Longhorn. I’ve also got Fedora 8 being torrented down right now, another few hours to go. Coincidentally, Fedora 8 was just released today – perfect timing for dual booting on Firebat.

For the statistics interested people out there, this new machine is running an MSI P35 Neo motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 CPU, 2GB of DDR2 800Mhz RAM, a 500GB SATA HDD and (my favourite bit) a BFG nVidia 8800 GT OC (512MB). I wasn’t sure if that graphics card would hold up the order a few weeks as these new 8800 GT cards are THE card of the moment, high end performance for mid range price. They are selling out quicker than they get in stock at the moment. I got very lucky! I look forward to testing this machine with 3DMark and the like. It should put B5 to shame!

I should also point out that this machine being bought/constructed was not influenced by the Dunn’s recent purchase of a new machine. Really. I just got fed up with B5 freezing up two or three times an evening while I was playing World of Warcraft. Probably just an underpowered PSU, given all the drives I’ve got inside it now, but it was time for an upgrade anyway! Once Firebat is up and running I may fiddle around with B5 and may well end up fixing it. In the meantime I’ll have something a little speedier and, hopefully, rather more stable!

“Need a light?”

With all these deadly serious things I do in my life all I end up talking about in this blog are childish things like games consoles, MMOs, TV and, yes, the Second Edition of the Doctor Who Sticker Album! I must be doing something right!

I must say I had great fun with the first of these sticker albums last year, it took me right back to 1981 (not via a coma, I must add) and what was probably the last sticker album I had – Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Of course the album itself is long since gone, trapped in carbonite somewhere, I expect. I do seem to remember the finished album being somewhat thicker than the last Doctor Who one. Probably just my childish imagination! It was certainly very shabby by the end, though – it hardly left my school satchel for many months! One thing that is for sure – my ability to put the stickers in straight has not improved with age…

Clearly last years album did well enough to make a second worthwhile for Merlin. I had no idea sticker albums still existed! I’d like to think that these Doctor Who albums have helped create a resurgence in the products but I see they also do the likes of WWF wrestling (or whatever they call it this week), Barbie, Pokémon and the big one, no doubt, Premier League Football. I suspect there aren’t many grown ups buying many of those, though. Yes, I know, there are probably only a few of the saddest old fans buying the Doctor Who ones, too. So, who else is going to join me for swapsies this time then?!

Shop assistants have no sense of humour.

If they insist on stocking and re-stocking the shelves with every Doctor Who toy on the market, they have to expect people to press every button on every toy until the shop sounds like there is a war going on between Daleks, Cybermen and K9s while a million TARDISes take off and land.

Getting grumpy about it really is unnecessary.

I’ve done it. I’ve bought a new TV. A new flat panel TV. Despite the wiser voices of others I could hold out no longer.

It actually happened a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to wait to see real HD content on the panel before making any public statements! True HD pictures look excellent.

Back to the beginning of the story, though. A couple of weeks ago (on a Thursday – I never could get the hang of them either) I found myself in the centre of London on business. As I was finishing up and about to make my way back to Victoria, I paused. Should I quickly nip to Tottenham Court Road to see if they have this fabled new Sharp LCD panel in? I’d read reports it had already appeared in Harrods (but apparently the feed wasn’t very good there, one reason I wanted to avoid the place). The electronics shops would be a better bet, all around. In the end, I decided I’d rather go home, get the weight off my feet and have some dinner.

The following day, however, I stopped by the local Comet Superstore over lunch. Without warning the Sharp LCD panel in question appeared on display! Almost equally as if by magic a shop keeper also appeared. Was I dreaming? Apparently not. The price was a few hundred more than I knew I could get it online. Nonetheless I managed to get some information from the salesman (and looked over his shoulder to see the computer saying they only had three in stock). A tad expensive. I made vague suggestions I might return on the Sunday to buy one and left.

Back in my office I phoned up the people who recently supplied my upscaling DVD recorder, AV Sales. Their website said they still didn’t have any in stock. Talking to them on the phone revealed that the preorder queue was quite large, their supply trickling in very slowly indeed and I was unlikely to see one before Christmas. There went my preferred supplier.

Over ‘Beer and Skittles’ at the end of Friday afternoon (when somebody at work goes out to get some snacks and we all spend the last hour of the week having a little party!) I decided. Those vague promises about going back to Comets to buy the panel, that I hadn’t intended to keep, would be kept. I wouldn’t wait until Sunday though. Not even until Saturday morning. I’d buy it on the way home. And so I did.

The 46″ panel filled the back of my little car. The only problem was – it was far too bulky for one person to offload. I needed help and Macfadyan was close by. A quick drive down the road from my place to his car park, a mobile phone call (not leaving the expensive equipment unattended) and help I had. The best part of the next hour saw us unpacking (totally failing to discover the easy way to unpack the large panel…) and my attempts to plumb it in to my myriad of AV equipment in the TV Room. Success! A big thank you to Macfadyan – not so much as a scratch on the set.

To be honest the first pictures on it were disappointing. Standard Definition pictures from the built-in Freeview decoder. Trying a DVD, using a SCART lead, proved a little better but still not wonderful. It wasn’t until the following day, with a shiny new HDMI cable (roughly the new, HD ready, equivalent of a SCART cable) that things really improved. Finally some pseudo High Definition images, upscaled by the DVD player to 1920×1080i (rather than 720×576i). A big improvement but could do better. I needed real HD.

It is only as of this past Saturday morning that I finally have seen true HD on the panel, thanks to a Telewest TV Drive. Torchwood in HD. Robin Hood in HD. Even Space 1999 in HD (yes, really – on ITV HD, they must have gone back to the original film and rescanned/remastered it for HD). They all looked excellent. That’s the future. It’s just a shame there isn’t more HD content yet. Still, as an added bonus, the TV Drive also does some upscaling magic to SD pictures in the same way my new DVD recorder does.

I will say this, though. Flat panel TVs, especially Full HD ones, probably aren’t really there yet for the average Bloggs on the street. Decent sized flat panels really show the flaws with SD material. If you haven’t got HD content (and almost nobody does yet on these shores) then take the advice I ignored and wait. I’m not in the least bit sorry I didn’t, I really get that cinema experience. It didn’t come cheap though and I will have to continue paying for the luxury of HD content every month. If, like me, you must be a foot in the future then join me. Otherwise wait a couple of years. Ultimately you’ll all overtake me long before I will swap this TV for another!

Now I just need to finish furnishing the TV Room (I need a front row of seats, for one thing) and the Home Cinema will be complete (for a bit!)

Sharp LC-46D62U 46″ LCD Flat Panel TV (with Pertwee’s Head for scale)

Pertwee’s Head will return.

The old TV Room is starting to take on the new shape of a home cinema, new flat panel or not.

I arrived home yesterday evening and I immediately knew something was amiss. The inner, airlock, front door was open. The outer door was closed but the inner one wasn’t. I never leave it like that – it rather defeats the object of the door! I immediately knew what must have happened (and I really must get my surveillance cameras back up and running!) I rushed to the TV Room and, sure enough, the house elves had done some work. My old futon had been raised up on two parallel blocks, one along each side under the feet, and a long foot step along the front added so people don’t have to jump up into the seat and have their legs dangling down like Kermit the Frog! This is now the raised back row of my home cinema!

So, what’s left? A front row of seats, for one. They’ll have to wait a while as the recliners I have in mind are a good few hundred pounds each and that money might need to go elsewhere first. In the meantime, if there is a need, I can always drag in swivel chairs from the computer room. There is also still the question of a flat panel TV. I am still undecided on this matter. People have made very good arguments for waiting and I should take heed. Still part of me is urging myself on, though. If I wait a bit I can buy a Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display (SED) or perhaps a Laser TV. I expect it will be a few years before these are ready for mass production/uptake and there’s always something better and cheaper around the corner. I may yet take the advice and wait a bit longer or I might give in. I don’t know yet! TV aside, the other minor bits outstanding are things such as little tables for drinks raised up for the futon and a raising of the light fitting which is now all too easy to bang your head on!

The other recent innovation in there is a new DVD Recorder – finally VHS is completely obsolete! The only use I’ve had for video tapes in the last few years (since getting a TiVo) has been to record things off for other people. Now I can just put things onto DVDs. It’s a Panasonic DMR-EX75EB, with built-in freeview and a hard disk drive. You can record to the hard drive or directly onto DVD, either by using the freeview guide to set timed recordings or just record live (from any input). If you put it to hard disk you can edit it and then save it off to digital versatile disc. Not only that but it is also multi-region (absolute requirement!) and it even upscales Standard Definition DVDs to High Definition (it will never look as good as real HD but I’m told it does a pretty decent job nonetheless). From what I’ve seen of it so far I certainly recommend it!

That only leaves one thing: the gap under the throne-like raised futon. The back is against the wall, under the left and right sides are two blocks that raise the chair (and stick out so the futon can still be converted into a temporary bed, if ever needed (hasn’t been so far but the spare bedroom has been used from time to time)) and along the front is another block to rest your feet on. The futon, being on four metal legs with no skirt, now appears to have a large pit beneath it! What to do with it? The old piranha pool idea is always good but you’ve got to feed them – the local area will too quickly run out of cats, I think. It’s not big enough for respectable sized sharks and I’d have the same feeding problems. No, it can’t be anything that exotic. Storage? Maybe but it isn’t the easiest area to access. For a childish moment I thought it would be great to make a little camp under there! That’s going back to the old childhood of getting a few dining room chairs together and covering them with blankets to make a tent-like structure! That would be fun! But, sadly, I think I’m far too old for that. No, there’s got to be some semi-practical use for that new space. Anyone with any ideas?!