Well the launch of Sky Player on XBL was a complete disaster! I logged in straight away on the day of launch and downloaded the app only to be greeted with various network errors whenever I tried to use it. I had a look on-line and there were hundreds of stories from people in the same situation. It turned out to be a problem at the Sky end, they massively underestimated how many people would be checking this out the minute it launched and as a result it took down all their servers!

The deal is this: If you’re already a Sky subscriber then whatever package you pay for you can stream for free as long as you have Multiroom or Broadband Unlimited. Current Sky subscribers can pay an additional £9.75 per month to stream for free if they don’t have either Multiroom or Broadband Unlimited. If you’re not a current Sky subscriber you can pay £15 per month to have access to the basic package. On top of this there are options to rent some programmes for £0.98 per programme. That seemed fairly reasonable to me, though I certainly wouldn’t want to pay for a series like that. It’s more suited to one off documentaries. Films would’ve been good, but maybe Microsoft thought it would be in direct competition with their revamped Zune HD Marketplace.

You don’t use MS points to buy any of the programmes either, you need to sign up for a SKY iD and create an on-line payment account. This links in to your 360 so you don’t have to sign in every time (although there is a security feature to enable that).

You can only use Sky Player on one console per account. It’s linked to the actual machine not your xbox account. I believe you can change this on the web-page for your Sky account if you need to (new console/replaced console, etc.) but I think that’s limited to one change per month.

Watching the sample channel now (Sky News) and even on High Quality I have to say it looks horrible Certainly nowhere near as crisp as Freeview. I’m also disappointed with the programmes I could purchase as PAYG. Hardly anything on Sky One at all. There were a couple of History documentaries that looked interesting, but they also looked quite old so would probably end up on freeview very soon if they hadn’t already. Not as impressed with this as I’d hoped, but in fairness it is the first time they’ve tried it and if they have the technical side working now maybe this will open the door for more. I would love to see a browser on the 360 (even Internet Explorer) just so more opportunities become available for us. iPlayer on the 360 would be great.

There are some voucher codes to make it a little cheaper to check out the features, these are the ones I know of:

One month free Sky Player Multiroom for Sky TV customers: XBOX1MONTHFREE

Three months Sky Player TV for the price of 2 for non-Sky TV customers: XBOX3FOR2

As above but from the Sky site: SKY3FOR2

I can’t believe it, I got on to another XBL Preview! Yay! This one is for the new Twitter/Facebook/LastFM apps and the new Zune HD Marketplace. I use Facebook, Twitter and LastFM quite a lot so this has been quite interesting for me to have a play around with.

I do like it so far, although there are some niggly bits. The social networking apps seem to be removed from the 360 experience itself which I think detracts from the point of them a little.

I did enjoy logging in to LastFM and listening to my music library there, although I have upnp media servers installed so could listen to my own music anyway. Nice that it scrobbles though.

Facebook looks like it’s had the most time spent on it. I think it works pretty well. As I’ve got my XBL account linked to my Facebook account now I’d have expected it to update when I got an achievement or at least have the option to do this. It doesn’t, although this is no big deal as I already have a Facebook app which does this.

Twitter isn’t all that useful for me at the moment, not because I don’t use it, I do. A lot. The 360 isn’t the best place to use it though as it has no browser so every time I saw a tweet with a link I had to use my netbook to look at it instead. It also doesn’t tie in with your XBL account so it won’t update when you get achievements (there are some services around which do this though).

I was really excited about the Zune HD marketplace as I’ve read that they’ve really improved streaming for people with less than great internet connections (that’d be me). Sadly there’s nothing there I want to watch. I’ve either seen them, got them, or I have no interest in the films available. Might’ve been nice to add a short free HD clip we could test with.

I couldn’t check out the Inside News feature as it’s US only.

The Facebook and LastFM apps benefit from being things you can just sign into and forget until you’re feeling lazy and want to use them (seeing Facebook photos on my big TV was pretty nice). The Twitter one falls down here because even if I decide to use it just to check tweets rather than post them, I can’t with about 80% of them because they contain links and photos. I also don’t like the way Twitter doesn’t automatically log you in. It remembers your details but sits waiting for you to press the login button. MS needs to add a browser. It’ll make all this stuff so much better. Twitter without a browser is so neutered.

A few years ago I heard about a film called Survive Style 5+ and it sounded pretty cool so I wrote down the name on a notepad. As time went by I moved it to my WishList. It stayed there for a couple of years, but no-one bought it for me. As my folks were in Florida and I was sick of getting no post, I ordered it from Play.com. I watched it about a week ago…

WOW! It is now in my top 5 films list! I love it! It’s completely mental, really laugh out loud funny the whole way through. The fight scenes look brilliant. The colours are magical. It even manages to have a real lump-in-throat moment near the end. It bombards you with mentalness and then suddenly BAM! Hits you full on with something so wonderful it makes you want to cry. It’s likened to Pulp Fiction quite a bit due to the 5 seemingly unrelated stories intertwining, and Pulp Fiction is also one of my favourite films… but I think Survive Style 5+ tops it. The soundtrack is fantastic and upbeat, I’m going to try and get hold of as much of it as I can.

The storylines go like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The past weekend it has to be said, was pretty fucking good. Sunday had a bit of an “arghhh!” moment, but once I calmed down things worked out cool.

Saw 300. It’s a good film, but it’s also an awful film. For pretty fight scenes it’s great. For dialogue and un-cheezeyness… it’s rubbish! I pissed myself through most of it as the dialogue was cringe-worthy. It’s good as mindless entertainment though.

Also went to The Oakford Social to see Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip. I am really getting to like the Oakford. Shame the drinks are soooo expensive, but it does seem to keep most of the riff-raff out. The music is also really good.

What can I say about Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip…. AWESOME! Absolutely fucking ace! We ended up having really cool seats. We watched through a cubby-hole right next to the stage from a comfy leather sofa :oD I’m definitely going to try and catch them at Plug n Play in April. Really, really fun to go and see. And still such nice lads :o)

Erm… well, my trip to London didn’t exactly pan out. :o/ Firstly it was pissing it down when I woke up and I could feel myself getting less & less motivated to move.

Then I got talked into a trip to a Garden Centre. This to me is proof of me getting old.

I did get 2 nice Datura Fastuosas though… Hmmm… that makes me seem even older. Doesn’t it?

Still, I’ll be up in London some time next week.

So far the plan is to see the League of Gentlemen film at some point. Get a nice take away for Chris’ birthday, then head out and see if anyone’s about. Then for me to head out on Tuesday night and get picked up by Chris on his way back from Thai Chi/Kung Fu. Then I have to go up to London shopping/drinking on one day. Then on another day (either Thursday or Friday) I have to go to Bowtell’s Farm in East Tisted again with my Mum. Then on the Saturday I may be persuaded to go to Drop Zone although I really don’t like downstairs at the TUC. It smells :o(

I’d also really like to get a visit to Savill Garden in cos all the Azaleas and Rhododendrons are out at the moment (not helping the age thing am I?) and also a visit to Dale Chihuly‘s glass exhibit at Kew. Looks flippin’ awesome.

/me joins bandwagon…

http://www.cannibalthemusical.net/ta/america.htm

Been neglecting the LJ again. Sorry.

Not much has happened… except a couple of weekends ago I did something very strange. It worried me a bit :o/

Me & Chris had just watched Moulin Rouge, we were having a laugh, I said something mean to him so he tickled my feet to get his own back. One minute I’m laughing… then I feel my lip start to quiver, I panic feeling totally confused. Drag a blanket over my face & hide. It takes Chris a minute to realise I’m crying. Then the floodgates opened and I sobbed (and I mean full-on sobbed) for about 5 minutes solidly. Then fell asleep exhausted :os

It was such a horrible feeling, my brain didn’t know what to do. I assume I just really needed to cry, but… well, it was weird and freaked us both out.

…

I’m clearly addicted to UK Nova. I’m now a Power User :o/

…

This song (M83 – ‘Safe’) rox so much it’s untrue. Quite possibly the most emotional I’ve ever been just listening to a piano (and kids watching fireworks).

OK, I haven’t put much up here lately. Mainly because I’m bored.

So… I figured I’d have a good old rant about work for you to skip over & not read. I’m gonna be evil & not even LJ-cut it ;op

Firstly… I’m emotional right now, no idea why. I think it must be stress.

Well… Last Monday was really shitty, but for no real reason. Until just before 17:00 when I stormed out of work. I was the first one in that morning at 07:55. By 16:30 all my team had left. Which is lovely when we’re supposed to be covering until 17:00. Made even better by the fact that they all knew I was struggling to cope all day cos I had a migraine. Bastards *grrr*

Tuesday was just fucking awful from start to finish. I had to miss out on my lie-in as I’d been booked into training that started at 09:30.. yeah, real good idea when I come in at 11:30 on Tuesdays! I got back from one of my breaks in the course to discover my PC had been murdered by the Networks Team. Somehow they’d caused a hardware error (PSU or Memory, I didn’t hang around to find out) and wrecked my PC just by putting some cabling behind the desk. I have no fucking idea how they managed it. Anyhoo, it all got too much for me when a colleague un-plugged the PC I was working on & I found myself crying at work. Again. Arse. I hate doing that. It makes me fit all the girly stereotypes. Ick.

The rest of the week was just rubbish, rubbish rubbish.

I felt so rank at the weekend I stayed in on Friday. Chris went out & proceeded to get very drunk and constantly text me telling me how shit it was and how no-one was out. This didn’t mean he went home though… :o/

Saturday was terrible too. We got pizza from Papa Johns and it was rancid! REALLY salty cheese (please God tell me it was the cheese) and minging dips. We threw most of it away. We definitely won’t be going there again. Then we went to watch Kill Bill II only to discover the DVD that Chris had bought didn’t actually have a DVD inside it… then I fell asleep really early missing pretty much all the DVD watching. :o(

Sunday I hooked the PowerBook up to my TV & we watched some Mind, Body & Kick Arse Moves and a little bit of Viva La Bam. God I love my TV & my PowerBook \o/

…a certain LizardBoy might have this on pre-order:

http://www.play.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=R2&title=181010&p=41&c=&g=56

Went out on Friday only to find a very annoyed Chris at the pub. He meant to drive, forgot… got pissed about it.

So, we decided to go & see Shaun of the Dead one more time. Maybe we could actually see the screen this time? Well, we saw the screen, but it was on Screen 4… and we had the same trouble with wankers shouting all the way through that we had last time we were at Screen 4! They must live in there or something.

Anyhoo, it was nice too see it, if not hear it this time :oD Also, thanks to for letting me use his Shaun of the Dead icon :o)

Saturday we pigged out on pizza (I know, not good, but I have been walking home lately) and played Beyond Good & Evil on the GameCube. It does look pretty good actually, I may have to buy it myself.

I am so dreading work tomorrow. It might not be all that bad though as I seem to have done something right. On Thursday I was on a short training course for our upgraded Call management software. At the end we got to ask questions, no-one said anything, so I raised my concerns that there was going to be no data migration from the old system. The amount of times we use the “find similar” search to see what we did on old calls… I can see this being a real mare. The trainer couldn’t ask my question so she had to get the Big Bossman out of a meeting to answer it…. he looked at me like I was pure evil, but did say it was a good question and he was as worried as I was that no-one had asked it before (I was on the penultimate training course).

I still wasn’t sure if it was good or a bad thing to ask the question as he had a little dig at my section after he’d answered it… they don’t like us asking questions, I think it’s a Civil Service thing. Anyhoo, Bossman’s not a Civil Servant. Turns out I might have done it right. As I was leaving on Friday he called out “See ya Jo, have a good weekend” Not only does he know my name… but he wished me a good weekend?! OMG. I nearly fainted. :o0 Kewl :oD