My first attempt was foiled by the 62% problem (documented by Microsoft here). So after having read the article, off I go to view the log, and sure enough there are the entries I was hoping to see. Bingo, workaround applied, we’re in business. Or maybe not. The next run through doesn’t even get that far. I get an error stating that it can’t unpack the files, with an error code that a quick Google later seems to suggest that there is a faulty memory stick in my machine. Memtest downloaded and run, but no errors. Odd. So let’s try an old favourite instead. Reboot and try again. But no dice, still failing on the unpacking step. Hmm….

So perhaps I should go down the route of dual booting my machine to at least be able to do a clean install rather than an upgrade. Ah yes, good plan. Except there isn’t enough space to create a decent sized second partition for the install. Damn. Now what to try? Maybe I should free up some space for that partition. Oh hang on, there’s a shed load of temporary Windows install files sat here. Well I can’t need them surely? And that’s them deleted. Ah now hang on. Maybe they were causing the unpacking issues. Let’s try again.

Now that’s interesting, we’re now past the unpacking stage and rattling through installing features. And now we’re into transferring my files and settings, this looks promising. Whistling through and past the 62% point, this is the best yet. And installer is rebooting my machine, fantastic! Starting Windows… Should Starting Windows actually mean that it starts? Hmm… I sense there is something wrong here. After 15 minutes of the Starting Windows screen, with the little flag animation not moving (it did to begin with) I think it’s time for the reset button. Which caused the BSOD with a “Driver_Power_State_Failure message). Please no. Ok, all coming back up ok. And there’s a Windows 7 setup screen. Nooooooo! I was greeted with the “Windows wasn’t installed properly. Rolling back to previous Windows installation”.

So I have to say while I’m getting closer, I still feel a million miles away. One thing I will say for the Windows 7 installation process though, is how well it reverts back to your previous version of Windows when something goes wrong (I’m guessing it only does this if you do an upgrade). It really is the best at “self recovery” that I’ve ever seen a Windows installer be, and I’ve seen a few! So a trawl through my action logs this time show that it had a problem talking to one of my external USB hard drives that seems to have gone to sleep and not woken up properly. Now taking my lead from others on the internet, I reckon the next attempt will involve unplugging the USB drives before I start the upgrade. Fingers crossed that works (and that should also reduce the amount of time to install as it will massively reduce the number of files that need transferring).

Expect more updates to come, but hopefully from a Windows 7 machine…

UPDATE: So after a weekend of more trying, I can finally say, I’m giving up trying to install Windows 7 on my desktop. It just won’t have it. Went through the process of ensuring my external drives were disconnected, went through the install procedure again, but again it is hanging at the “Starting Windows” screen, after a BSOD “Power_Driver_State_Failure” message. So I’ll stick with Vista and I guess I’ll go with Windows 7 when I come to refresh my hardware…

And so before long the time came to move across and start playing Eve. And it was good, very good. It was the game that Earth and Beyond should have been. Where these 2 differ is that Eve is still going from strength to strength, Earth and Beyond is a distant memory. But again, before too long, I wanted something more, something different. And so I moved on again.

Fast forward to 2009 and here I am again. In those intervening years I’ve played (and left) Guild Wars, Horizons, Everquest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Conan, Lineage 2, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, D&D Online, Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft and The Matrix Online. For at least half of these, I was also involved in the beta and so saw the game before it was “polished”. But each one of these, in turn, has killed my enthusiasm, and therefore lost my subscription.

And so I look at where I am now. I currently subscribe to both Warhammer Online and Champions Online, both on long term plans. I’ve been with both since day 1, and was a beta tester on both. Warhammer was superb. The idea of Public Quests was a great new thing, the combat was good, the changes introduced made the game better, and it was one of the most polished games at launch that I’ve ever played. Scratch that. It was the most polished game at launch that I’ve ever played. It’s the game where I’ve discovered my hunger for good PvP, and I keep going back to that. You’re immersed in the feeling of being involved in a conflict from Level 1. I got in with a good guild from early on and have been with them ever since. I’ve been with WAR now for over a year, and that’s a long time for me!

Champions is still new. It’s great as it’s like City of Heroes but better. Lots of fun, and allows that child inside who always wanted to be a superhero to come out! I’m still getting used to it but it seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun.

But already I’m yearning for the next thing to come along. Now I can guarantee that I’ll sink a lot of hours into Star Wars The Old Republic. And I quite like the look of both Star Trek Universe, and Stargate. My reason for already looking to the future? Warhammer is becoming a bit samey. WAR is the game that I’ve come closest to the level cap in any game I’ve played (my main is a 39 with a level cap of 40), but progress is now desperately slow. I appreciate that this is due to the kind of things I spend my time doing now (zone captures mainly) and I can accept that. What I can’t accept is the fact that the imbalance that has been in the game since day 1 is still there. If you play for one of the sides, you can build a group of 6 players that is pretty much indestructible due to the combination of skills. That’s all well and good if you can do that on both sides, but you can’t. It’s just not possible. And it’s a game breaker.

My guild in WAR has gone from over 100 members to less than 50 in less than a fortnight. People are flocking away from the game. I’m still with it, but will I renew at the end of my current 3 month subscription? At the moment, I’d say probably not.

So where does that leave me? Perhaps a return to WoW? Perhaps a move to something new (Aion has peaked my interest but I don’t think it’s a long term game for me). Perhaps a move to a different genre (I played the beta of Fallen Earth and didn’t get on with it but I’ve heard so many good things I might have to try it). Maybe I’ll find something else that I’ve not discovered yet that might just tide me over until SWTOR arrives. Who knows. 1 thing I do know is that I’ll find a home somewhere, and when SWTOR arrives, I’ll be packing up wherever I am and moving my MMO time to that…

When I was younger (about 12) I went to a secondary school (as most 12 year olds do). Whilst there in Year 1(Year 7 they call it nowadays), everyone was offered the chance to take extra-curricular music lessons in an instrument of their choice. Lots of us signed up across various different instruments, everything from the flute to the drums. Me, I went for the drums (as they sounded fun and a bit more practical than a wind or brass instrument).

I was assigned to a teacher named Kel Dennis. A name I knew well as my brother had been taught by Kel’s father. Kel was an incredible teacher. He could play just about anything, but loved being behind a drumkit, and therefore I always saw him at his most passionate about music. One of the trade-offs for being taught an instrument (for free) was that you played in a local Campus/Concert band. These were great organisations where all of these people came together and played music, generally developed their musical and social skills, played concerts, and generally had a blast.

I joined one such band in my local area and was immediately thrown in with some superb musicians and percussionists (people who have since gone on to have their own bands in some of London’s more well known Jazz and Swing venues). It was such an eye-opening experience that these people who had so much more experience than me, and that were technically so much more gifted, were more than happy to share techniques with you, and to listen and comment when you learnt something new – even if they already knew it themselves.

The sense of community was incredible and the 7 years I spent in the band were fantastic times that I’ll never forget. Then it came time for me to move away from home and go to University. I was put into Halls of Residence and had nowhere to store my drumkit, so it was time to sell it. It wasn’t something I did lightly, but it was necessary at the time. And so my drumming ended (or paused as I believed at the time). I never managed to go back to it, and often wish I could, but I now have very little time to be able to return to it.

One thing I do miss is the community spirit of being amongst that size group of like-minded individuals. And this also went across the taste in music. I learnt so much about music while I was there that it staggers me now when I think about it. I listen to music in a whole different way now. Over the past few years I’ve considered finding out when the band are playing a concert and going back to see them, just to see how good they are (in our day we were good – we had awards to prove it and won competitions) and to thank Kel for the inspiration he gave me and for the musical enlightenment that it brought.

Unfortunately I’ll never get the chance to do that as Kel died 2 years ago from cancer. His death sent shockwaves through the musical world in my hometown and is something that I doubt the music scene there will ever recover from. He was an incredible man with such a passion for his music, and he managed to instil this sense of passion in everyone he taught.

So why Carpe Diem as the title? Well now that I can’t, I want to thank him more than anything. I had so many opportunities to do just that and yet I didn’t take a single on of them, and that’s something that saddens me so much it hurts. I have dreams of going to see the band again and being to chat to him about music, and waking up brings me back to the reality that I’ll never be able to do it.

I missed Kel’s funeral, at which an estimated 600 people turned up. He was a legend and he is very sadly missed. As a tribute to him, a road on a new housing estate has just been named after him. Ironically this road is a stones throw away from where the band used to meet every Monday evening. If it means that someone who lives there in a few years time asks who he is, does some digging and discovers the joy that he brought to so many people, then that can only be a good thing…

In the past Shearer has managed to resist the pull to move to Newcastle, and I was always one of those fans that didn’t want him to come back. I was worried that the status that he had worked so hard to get for himself (that of a hero amongst the geordie faithful) would be forgotten if he came back to manage us and it didn’t work. But now I think the timing is right. Lets look at what’s changed.

Well for a start we’re looking at the very real possibility that we’ll get relegated. And this will probably still happen. Do I want it to? Absolutely not. But I still think it will. Even with Wor Al’s influence on the team I think we’re already past the point of no return. But I still think it’s a good move. If we go down then at least he tried, and the fans can’t exactly blame him for the relegation. But if we stay up, Shearer will be hailed as an even bigger hero around St. James’ Park, and his place in history will be even more secure than it is at the moment.

For today at least, it feels good to be a Newcastle fan again. All the recent results seem like they don’t matter quite as much today as we’ve got back our second Messiah, and we know he’ll try. He’ll inspire the team, he will not suffer fools, and he’ll demand that every player gives the same amount of passion and commitment that he always did whenever he pulled on the number 9 that is now synonymous with his name. Lets face it, Shearer is the number 9 that Newcastle fans talk about.

Of course if it is actually an April fool then I’m looking very silly right now…

Ok so madness hasn’t quite set in yet, and yes I’m being sarcastic, but I figure it’s the only way I’ll ever be able to afford one of these. Yes a Lamborghini Reventon. As soon as I saw this I fell in love with it. I’m not going to wax on about how I think it makes the Gallardo look like a frightened little child. All I’ll say is that, in the words of Sir Bob Geldof himself, “Just send me your f***ing money”.  All I need to raise is 1.25M Euros. By way of a thank you, I’ll even take all contributors out for a spin in it, with the person sending me the most money actually being allowed to drive it (although you’ll have to get your own insurance!!). So let the donations begin…

As a former player (and corporation director) of Eve, I have to say I’m not surprised this is happening. As in real life, it’s very easy to become disgruntled in an online game, especially when part of a player-run organisation such as a corporation. Again, as in real-life, there are then a number of things you can do. The most of extreme of which is to run off with everything you can get your hands on. To my mind it just adds to the realism that CCP (the company that runs the game) has tried to build their universe around. With this in mind, I can’t blame them for not stepping in to resolve things either. Yes a “crime” has been committed, but then let the law enforcers of the universe deal with it, not the “masters” of the universe (no He-Man gags please!).

But who are the law enforcers in the game? Well for crimes like this it has to be the players themselves. But who is going to take on the amassed wealth and power of this corporation to get to the man who stole everything in the first place? You’d need a massive amount of firepower to try and take them down. The kind of firepower that can only be gained by putting in the hours and hours of work needed to build a corporation up to such a level. The kind of firepower that might convince someone else to go and do exactly the same thing.

Moral of the story? Keep your friends close, and your disgruntled ex-employees even closer!

Seems the error occurs because the install program is running under elevated privileges, whereas my m drive is mapped for my standard user account. Simple fix is to map an equivalent m drive for the local admin account and, hey presto, it all works fine. Steps to follow are below (taken from the vista64 forum):

1. Disconnect the previously mapped network drive from Windows
Explorer.
2. Right click on Command Prompt in the Start Menu and selected Run
As Administrator.
3. Type “Net Use m: \\servername\sharename”
4. Exit out of the command prompt
5. Open Windows Explorer
6. Click ‘Map network drive’ menu item
7. Select the m: drive and typed \\servername\sharename into the
Folder box.

Of course if you already have an m drive mapped, then you only need to do steps 2-4.

Also, for the record, last year saw me playing on my XBox 360, PC, and to a lesser extent, my Wii. Don’t expect me to include any PS3 or DS titles as I don’t own these platforms. So, without further ado, here we go….

Also rans:

These are in no particular order, but are the games that almost made the top 5, but not quite!

Team Fortress 2 – yes I know it’s old, but it’s still masses of fun. I discovered this one night whilst online with Dan from Is There Food. We had gotten bored of running round Liberty City and so thought we’d give this a try. And it was a bit of a revelation, defined by the moment I saw myself running into the room to try and steal my team’s flag. That spy caught fire very quickly!

Braid – one of the surprises of the year for me. I didn’t know much about it until I tried the demo, and then immediately bought the full title. Brilliant idea, fantastically implemented, and really gives you some of those moments of complete enjoyment when you finally work out a puzzle.

Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts – like Marmite, you either loved or hated this game. Personally I think it’s superb. Take a franchise of days past and re-invent it. It would have been so easy just to release another platformer, but the new game mechanics and numerous ways to complete a level really give the player freedom. Superb fun.

GTA IV – appearing in virtually every game of the year list I’ve seen. Very gritty, good story and great fun shooting people while racing through the city on a moped!

Lost Odyssey – the only JRPG I managed to play last year (despite there being 2 more on my shelf), but what a game it is. Beautiful looks, good writing (as you’d expect) and very good turn-based combat. Definitely look at this if you’re a fan of the genre.

So now to the Top 5:

5. Fable 2 – I was never a big fan of the original, but Fable 2 was very enjoyable (I say that but I’m only about 25% done with it!). A great look with vistas that look like they go on for miles, simple but fun combat, great quests to keep you running round, and lets not forget the trusty dog as your guide. What’s next from Lionhead?

4. Fallout 3 – again one that I’ve only scratched the surface with, but that I know I’m going to get massive enjoyment from. Leaving the vault at the start of the game gives you a real feeling of seeing a world for the first time. Then stumble across abandoned and ruined towns on the way to your first quests, get ambushed by bandits, then feel the satisfaction as you loot their dead bodies. Brilliant fun, and one I can’t wait to get back to.

3. Prince of Persia – one of the few games I managed to get all the way through in the last 12 months. Yes the combat was simple, and no you couldn’t die, but that doesn’t make it a bad game. The aim of re-inventing the series has been well and truly met, and with an ending that leaves the door wide-open (it couldn’t be more open in fact) for a sequel, I look forward to the next instalment in the series.

2. Warhammer Online – now this one even surprised me. As someone who has played through nearly 60 levels of World of Warcraft, I was very pleasantly surprised by WAR. Public quests were a great introduction, and the Realm vs. Realm combat really gives you a feeling of living with the bigger battle that’s going on. I think it’s telling for me that when I do get time to play an MMO now, it’s always WAR that I fire up, and WAR hasn’t had a look in since my WAR account became active. Superb, and I look forward to many, many more enjoyable hours here.

So that leaves me with my number 1 for the year. A surprise to some (least of all me) given that, up until about 2 weeks before this title was released, I wasn’t even going to buy it! So, drum roll please….

1. Left 4 Dead – the most fun you can have on an XBox 360 with 3 friends. What a superb title that really shows other games how to do suspense. Couple that with the AI Director for the game, and no 2 encounters are ever the same. The tension as you see the swarm round a corner, and know that you’ve not got much health or ammo, but you can see the safe house. It has to be experienced to be believed. This is the only game I have ever (yes, ever) played that has had me cheering and grinning from ear to ear when you finally manage to be evacuated from a level. Absolutely stunning game, and one that I always look forward to playing. This will be in my collection for a long time to come.

So what think you, dear reader? Any that I’ve missed? Any that have made my list that you thought were complete twoddle? Leave me a comment, or better still, write your own list and let me see it….

• Fable 2 – 6.8 GB
• Banjo & Kazooie, Nuts and Bolts – 6.6 GB
• Left 4 Dead – 5.0 GB
• Midnight Club LA – 6.0 GB
• Fallout 3 – 5.9 GB

One thing I’ve not done yet is to set up my avatar. However those smart people over at Microsoft have already published details of how you can use your avatar outside of your XBox, and have provided a handy URL to get a png version of your in-game personage. If you browse across to

http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/<Your Gamertag here>/avatar-body.png

then a lovely png image of your avatar will be displayed for you. Once I’ve set mine up I’ll add him to this post…

Update: So here I am, in avatar form….