I’m currently writing this on my laptop as I am updating my main machine with Windows updates after a rebuild. I had to do this after a bizarre issue occurred involving my Antivirus/Firewall software. I found that if I disabled it (a requirement for streaming to Media Center on the Xbox) my internet performance went out the window. I tried a few different things but none of them worked.

Anyway, after rebuilding my PC I did what you normally do: grab the latest updates and the graphics card drivers. This went according to plan, but after rebooting I was presented with a black screen, yup, nothing but black. The monitor was definitely on because I got no signal errors, Windows had loaded because I could hear the startup chime. WTF was going on? I loaded the thing into Safe Mode and checked out Google only to be presented with thousands of results of the black screen of death, all of which related to a Windows update issue that popped up in November 2009.

I tried several different things, I uninstalled the video drivers, tried the previous version, nope. Uninstalled the updates, nope. And then it suddenly hit me – disconnect the HDMI connection from my graphics card. I rebooted the machine, did it work? YES!

… the bloody thing had only gone and selected my TV as the default monitor…

And to think I was throwing my TV controller up in the air and catching it while thinking about the potential driver issue. It’s official, this user is a tool.

Whenever I do web design bits and bobs I always check to see how how the site looks in various browsers. Firefox is my browser of choice and the new version of this blog looks fine, however it does look a bit dodgy in Internet Explorer 8 and this is even under compatibility view.

I will not be messing around making sure this site displays correctly in Internet Explorer, web standards have changed quite a bit in the last decade and it’s about time Microsoft caught up. If you’re viewing this site in Internet Explorer, I would suggest you switch to one of the following browsers:

Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome
Opera
Safari

I’ve just had dinner. Yes… at 3:15 in the morning I’ve finally had dinner!

See, what happened was at around 7pm this evening I thought I’d try and watch the Inglourious Basterds Bluray I bought at Tesco today but PowerDVD had other ideas. After three quarters of an hour try to mess with the bastard thing (and trying alternatives) I admitted defeat and retired to bed while watching Robot Chicken on DVD. The only problem with this was I was out cold for the next 6-7 hours and now I’m wide awake.

I’ve already been looking into this but I am definitely in the market for a dedicated Bluray player now. I can’t put up with PowerDVD’s crap.

I reinstated the old router and now my latency readings look normal. There’s still the odd spike here and there but it’s not bad enough to affect audio playback and doesn’t occur on every webpage.

If you encounter similar problems the checker can be downloaded from here.

Over the last few days when using itunes there will be some severe crackling occurring in the audio whenever I load a webpage. At first I thought it was an issue with the soundcard driver so I uninstalled the drivers and re-installed them to see how it went. At first it seemed ok, but the crackle eventually made it’s way back.

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