Tom Doyle :: TALK

Went to buy water in Tesco’s last week, they hadn’t got any of the usual brand I buy and I hate Ballygowan, so I opted for Tesco’s own brand.

After a couple of sips, I noticed it tasted very like water from a tap from your typical Dublin household. I proceeded to examine the contents of the water on the label and noticed that it contained Flouride. I’ve never seen this before on any other brands…. maybe flouride is a common thing in bottled water, I’m sure it’s not. Rant over….

Google have enhanced their anchor link tool in Google Webmaster Central so that you can now see the complete phrase a site uses to link to you.

We’ve been able to see snippets of words for a while, but now we can get the full picture! Nice overdue feature!

Only six weeks to go now before my wife and I will (please god) have a new addition to our family. I have decided it’s time to create a little getaway room in the house where I can work, rest and most importantly…. play!

I already have a small room full of musical intruments, from a keyboard to an electronic drumkit - but now that I will have more room, I needed to find a few more toys. 

The first item on the list was some sort of MP3 player that I could hook up to a speaker system of some sort. My Sony Hi-Fi has seen better days and is quite bulky, so getting rid of that was my first task. For the past few years, my PC has been my Hi-Fi in reality, but I don’t want to put a PC in the room anymore and I plan to just use my Laptop instead.

So whilst looking around for some snazzy MP3 player, I came across this : http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=325998 - The Samsung HT-Q20 Home Cinema. Not only is it a radio, dvd player, cd player and regional free DVD (Will show you how at the bottom of the page) but you can also hook up an external drive/mp3 player using USB 2.0. So my next task was to purchase an external drive….

My first stop again, was of course Komplett.ie where I found the MyBook - http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=318906 - 320 Gigs of space for just €115… excellent… So now I have a home entertainment system with room for hours of music, photos and video for less than €400!!

My only problem with the whole system is that it takes quite some time for the DVD player to read the 15GB’s of stuff I already have. It takes about 1 minute to read through all items. What happens when I fill the drive?

Anyway, for those of you looking for information on how to make your Samsung HT-Q20 Home Cinema region free…. follow the steps below: 

1. Remove Disc from Tray.
2. Switch Off Player
3. Wait 30 Seconds, Then Reconnect Mains.
4. Turn On player with Remote Control. Wait for player to Finish Loading and Display ‘No Disc’.
5. Press Enter on Remote Control. (There will be No On-Screen Response.)
6. Press 8, 4, 2, 6, 9 on the remote. (There will be No On-screen Response.)
7. Press Enter on the Remote Control. Player will Automatically Turn Off.
8. Turn Player On.
9. Open Tray
10. Close tray.
11. Turn Player Off then On Again.
12. Player is Now Region Free.
 

It’s been a while since I posted a story about soccer. To be honest, I just have been so busy, I haven’t had the chance to talk about football!

But I had a quick look over my old posts the other day and noticed the one I wrote in August… You can read it here…. http://www.tomdoyletalk.com/2006/08/14/chelsea-miss-out-on-their-first-trophy-of-the-season/

At the very end of the story, I posted this:

“My predictions for the premiership this season are:

1. Chelsea
2. Man United
3. Liverpool
4. Arsenal
I think United and Liverpool will be very close, but Chelsea will walk away with it again. ”

So far, the only thing I got right is that Liverpool and Arsenal are where I’d said they’d be - BUT - Arsenal have 2 games in hand and are only a pint behind.

The race at the top is way to close to call right now, that will most likely go all the way to the wire. So far it hasn’t been the greatest season ever, but interesting none the less to see how many people have turned and no longer like Chelsea. Chelsea in my opinion have been exceptionally poor in the way they played this season, very non-entertaining, but none-the-less grinding out results.

For me as a United fan, I hope we can stick it out, even though I gave Alex fergusaon so much abuse at the start of the season about his team - he has yet again proven me wrong - but that’s why I’m here and he’s there! And I hope to God we can stick it out!!! Cmon UNITED!!!

Microsoft are to submit a new photo format to the International photo standards soon. They are trying to create a file format that is similar to a JPEG but apparently better.

Recently named Windows Media Photo it promises to offer higher quality images with better compression. Could this spell the end for the 15 year old JPEG?

The ex-FM104’s Strawberry Alarm Duo started their new job this Monday called “The Colm and Jim-Jim Breakfast Show”. The much hyped and anticipated show has so far done nothing for me.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt each morning this week, thinking that it’s just this bad while they find their feet. However, things are just so annoyingly 2fm that I can’t listen to them anymore.

First and foremost is that terrible playlist that they must have to abide by. The one thing I really liked about Colm was his music selection. He just knew when to play the right track. But if you have a bad selection of tracks to work with, it’s hard to fing the right one! The jingles are also very cheesy and old fashioned, I could go on, but I’d only bore people.

I have to say, I thought I would move my alliance to 2fm as soon as they took to the airwaves, but I think I’ll stick with FM104’s Strawberry Alarm Clock. They’re not as good as the old Colm and Jim-jim show, but they’re doing a pretty good job!

I imagine the producers at Endemol are kicking themselves now. I wrote an article back in January where I felt that the producers could have done a lot more to prevent the uproar that was caused when accusations of racist remarks were made against the trio in the big brother house. (http://www.tomdoyletalk.com/2007/01/18/celebrity-big-brother-bullying-saga/)

Well now their small mindedness has come back to haunt them. Carphone Warehouse did suspend their sponsorship of the show when this all flared up, but now they have removed their sponsorship altogether!! The sponsorship was worth £3 million a year to Big Brother.