Stiffblog

Error message saying "Error 2738. Could not access VBScript run time for custom action"

2010-08-25T20:34:00.002Z

This has been driving me crazy for days...

Error message saying "Error 2738. Could not access VBScript run time for custom action"

There are loads of websites with fixes for this problem when trying to install Sky Splayer but none of them fixed the issue for me.

The problem is was having was caused by a trial of McAfee's which came preloaded on my comuter. The scriptsn.dll overwrote the following registry which should be pointing Vbscript.dll.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11cf-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}\InprocServer32

was set to
(Default) REG_SZ C:\Program Files\McAfee\VirusScan\scriptsn.dll

Changing this to be c:\windows\syswow64\regsvr32 vbscript.dll was not straight forward either as regedit wasn't allowing me to update the entry, in order to do this, i had to take ownership in the Permissions options, grant myself full control and then it enabled me to update the entry.

Hope this helps someone else who is pulling there hair out trying to resolve this problem...

Wileman Grotesques

2009-09-21T21:14:00.008Z

Ever since my family started collecting Foley Wileman China the most interesting (and Rare) of the collection is the range of Grotesques that were designed by Frederick Alfred Rhead.

We knew they existed as they appeared in a book in Black and White so gradually we have gathered up either the item itself, pictures of the real thing or in the case of the dragon an original painting from the pattern book.

It is our mission to try and fill the blanks.

Original

Colour

Warthog??, Frog/Toad, Elephant, Owl, Armadillo, Monkey, Dog of Fo

Original

Colour

Kelim Dragon??, Baby, Friar Tuck, John Bull, Chinese Lion??

The New World

2008-11-18T17:15:00.002Z

Watched this movie about the true story of Pocahontas, it was good - but very... very long.

The next day I was in Gravesend, so I thought I'd swing by St George's Church and get a picture of her statue. Her grave was originally in the grounds of the church but was destroyed during renovation work.

Panther Black 3dr New Ford Fiesta Titanium 1.6 TDCi

2008-11-18T17:01:00.005Z

Up on the roof - hence all the pictures all have a blue tinge to them, this car stood out amongst all the other new arrivals at the Ford dealership. The head lamps are stunning, the two panes of glass in the 3 door look much smarter that the 5 dr.

A quick peak inside the New Fiesta comlete with fashionable plastic covers...
Not much room to take pictures behind the car, so here is a shot of the spoiler.

Batman v Transformers

2008-07-16T21:16:00.000Z

I'm a Soul Man...

2008-07-16T18:15:00.007Z

I went for it after my last post and bought these Limited Edition Onitsuka Tigers, I have loved the brand since I saw the yellow and black ones worn in Kill Bill.

Here are the shoes unboxed

Aerial View - Check out the insides!

This is the shoe box they came in

Saving the best until last... until I got them out of the box I didn't know that they had Soul Art

First the left

...and the right

The Velcro strap which also features a Tokidoki x Onitsuka Tigers hologram

I was hoping for a lot out of them when I ordered them, and I am pleased to say I am pleasantly surprised by all the cool details on them.

Now do I want to wear them outside and get them messed up..... yeah of course I do!

I spent a while trying to track down a vendor for the shoes, i managed to find mine from the Italian tokidoki site

Here a few of my favourite things

2008-07-07T21:16:00.003Z

I have tickets to the advanced preview of The Dark Knight on the 23rd July '08

Can't Wait!

Manga meets footware in the

tokidoki x Onitsuka Tiger

The bottom left are sweeeet!!!

Finally is my dream car
This is a Lotus Elise which has done less than 30K and is a snip at £16500.

Abbey Idiots

2008-07-02T20:45:00.003Z

I just sat in the Abbey phone queue for over 15mins to find out what an APPLICATION payment of -£39.32 was. When i got through to speak to someone i was told that there had been a technical fault on their internal system and that 70% of people that we calling were calling about this problem. When i suggested to the helpful man that it would be a good idea to put a message on the phone system, he explained that this had been requested by the call handlers but the higher management had said it was not possible! On the issue of the money I will be expecting a full refund including any lost interest (how ever small) and would also request a refund for my telephone call which could have been so easily avoided as your number is not free. After having no end of problems when i first opened my current account i have recently began to think that my woes with abbey had come to an end but this debacle again has showed how they really can't do customer service at all! As with all correspondence through the online contact us option - i will be sure to hold my breath to recieving a response!

GTA IV Problem

2008-05-13T18:38:00.004Z

"the connection to one or more players has been lost. Returning to single player"

If these words echo in your head since getting you hands on GTA IV then hopefully i have the answer to at least a few of you.

I have been receiving this error just before the lobby of multi player GTA or just as i entered an online game. I found a workaround which was to plug my PS3 straight into my cable modem. When this worked i realised that there was no problem with the game, no problem with the servers, no problem with my ISP - the problem lay squarely on my router.

After trying to make my PS3 a De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) - turning of the media server and opening up every port i could find was linked to GTA, i turned to the forums.

My rule i live by was proved right once more - if I'm having a problem, there will always be someone else who has had it and normally have already found the fix for it. I found the answer on the US PlayStation board.

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=gta&thread.id=411207&view=by_date_ascending&page=2

But it still wasn't clear what my problem was as the firmware was up-to-date... or so i thought.

I am using a Netgear WGT624v3 router and in the option to update the firmware it goes off and checks and then reports back that it is on the most recent firmware - this is not the case.

The newest firmware can be found http://kbserver.netgear.com/release_notes/d102982.asp

Simply download it to your hard drive and then browse for it in the update firmware section and then upload it to the router. After this is complete i had to reboot the router a couple of times to get the Internet on my PC and the connection back on my PS3, but one i had done i was straight back into Multi player GTA - i held my breath and entered a Deathmatch and... Success!!

I really this helps others as i always seem to find the solution to my problems but having to search through pages and pages of forums is no fun.

In da House

2007-02-04T21:12:00.000Z

We've moved in!!

We completed the move on Monday the 29th, I had the day off and collected the keys, Greyfox gave us a card and a bottle of wine with a photo of our new home on it.

I spent the rest of the week cleaning and sorting out the few crap pieces in the flat.

On Friday we had the sofa arriving and the man from Telewest coming over to install Broadband, Cable and Phone, it made it so easy it being a one stop call.

I then drove to pick up Laura and she then saw the place for the first timesince buying it. We spent the afternoon moving the rest of the stuff over from my parents house, including the bed which we transported the matress on top of my parents car, holdingit with string hanging outside of the window. Saturday we got a Van load of stuff from Laura's house and struggled to get it all put away. That night we had Laura's sister Clare and my friend Paul round for a Chiense, very civilased.

It still feels really weird to just sit and do nothing as I feel there is so much that still needs doing. I have to realise that I have the rest of time to finish everything else off!

Here are the initial pictures:

New Home

2006-11-27T20:15:00.000Z

Long time no post, I have had lots to post from my car getting crashed into to another trip to Spain but I haven't found the time.

Today's post is to show everyone a picture of the flat I am buying with Laura. I just got charged for the survey which is nonrefundable so as far as I'm concerned - ITS GOT TO GO THROUGH

Fuerteventura

2006-09-19T19:12:00.000Z

Not a very wordy post just needed to get some pics from my holiday on the net...

This is a picture of me and Paul, happy after watching England batter Andorra 5 nil!

and then a picture of the two happy couples about to sample some of the local food .... all you can eat Chienese buffet.

This is a photo from within a cave at Ajuy

and a view at Morro Jable of a lighthouse and a huge skeleton of a fish.

Finally the sunset taken at the restaurant on our last night on the island.

More pictures to come including ones from my Scuba diving trip...

Puressence - This Feeling

2006-08-28T21:37:00.000Z

The best band with their most successful single... nuff said

Out of the Blue

2006-08-24T17:44:00.000Z

My internet connection with Blueyonder has been more than flaky for the past 6 months, works for a while and then cuts out, this is really frustrating when your in the middle of an online game.

Well thankfully today I have the answer, after having previously been told that the problem lay with my wireless router.

The helpline said to check http://192.168.100.1/gscan.htm which is the settings page for my modem. The guy said that if the frequency was anything but 331000000 or 339000000 then it was wrong. Well ours was 331250000! How did it change I want to know.

Well I can't be sure it works but other people on the net have had the same problem and it has worked for them. I work in IT Support and I have no idea how I could have known what the problem was, who knew that you could set the frequency of your modem?

I've got soul... but I'm not a soldier

2006-08-13T19:43:00.000Z

My Favourite band of the last year The Killers are soon to release a new album to here the first track to be released from the album follow this link: When You Were Young

Did Someone say it was HOT!!!

2006-07-18T20:38:00.000Z

I think I have heard the best song ever Royksopp's - What Else Is There, the remixed version by the Thin White Duke..... who I am reliable informed is Stuart Price aka Jacque Lu Cont aka Les Rhythmes Digitales. ->->-> It has flashlight and explosions and sounds great!!

I have been constantly listening to the Ricky Gervais podcasts and xfm radio shows on the way to and from work, trying to not laugh out loud.

Stephen Merchant is possibly the funnier of the two and their fun they have with Karl Pilkington is just hilarious. Catch a video below of Stephen doing "the Crouch" shown before England crashed out of the world cup who annoyingly didn't play Rooney and Crouch up front which many people feel was the cause of Rooney getting so frustrated and sent off, causing us to lose the match. Bye Sven....

This ended up being the one of very few highlights from World Cup '06

Totally Lost

2006-06-12T22:28:00.000Z

For those who want to know why i haven't been updating lately it's for two reasons, 1 - The World Cup and 2 - The Lost Experience.

For those of you that haven't heard about it it's a kind of online treasure hunt loosely based around the show Lost. The hunt contains codes and passwords that revolve around one main site www.thehansofoundation.org

The latest clue comes from the person we are meant to believe is guiding us through uncovering the truth, Persephone (Pronounced Per-sof-any)

The page is here and like the previous two clues it leads to just a faceless picture.

The code was simply integers that needed converting into ASCII characters (I personally use Excel's =char() function)

43 49 32 116 105 109 101 108 101 115 115 32 116 111 103 101 116 104 101 114
+ 1 t i m e l e s s t o g e t h e r

The plus one realtes to the pages http:\\hole#.hansofoundation.org

So the latest is hole4

The pictures from the last three clues are below

The middle had words hidden in it but the full meaning of the pictures has not yet been found

Timeless Together is probably a password on the hanso site will need to navigate the website a bit more to find out where the new opening has appeared to enter it....

If all of this made no sense then check out www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Main_Page as it contains all things lost including "The Lost Experience"

FA Cup Final Day

2006-05-13T19:17:00.000Z

Today had to be marked in blog form...

The FA Cup Final this year placed my team Liverpool against the rest of my families team West Ham (3 against 1)

We did try to get tickets but they were just too expensive.

Anyway the match...

It started badly for Liverpool lots of bad passes and then disaster West Ham took the lead via an OG from Jamie Carragher and added another in quick succession after a goal-keeping error.

Liverpool quickly hit back from a volley from Cisse after a majestic cross from Gerrard.

After half time the tempo stepped up from Liverpool but again West Ham took a two goal lead after Konchesky's cross somehow found the back of the net.

But still I was not worried as we have the greatest footballer to grace a football pitch...

Steven Gerrard

He first smashed in a loose ball in the area to get to 3-2...

Gerrard started to look down as cramp set in and all looked lost...

But just as the clocked clicked over to injury time Gerrard hit a 35m plus strike which was reminisent of his goal against Germany in the 4-1 game .

The match turned soar as it went into extra-time as players had to dig too deep to continue the pace. Both teams had nothing left as the full-time whistle went.

A penalty shoot-out for the 2nd year running was required to settle the matter.

Reina now had his stage and he didn't let us down.

Three saves against Hislops one and Liverpool had done it.

This team and specifically Gerrard don't know the meaning of the word quitting and the never say die attitude has seen Liverpool turn into one of the best Cup teams ever.

Well Done Lads... Can't wait for the world cup!!!

All Work and No Play

2006-04-03T19:44:00.000Z

Working on a saturday can really mess up your weekend!

Working 9-5 with not much happening and then the sh1t hits the fan at 4:55pm!

Anyway after being in a state of exhausting Saturday night - Sunday turned out to be more tiring. I went to Cascades sports centre with Laura and played badminton, as i write i'm still feeling pangs as my body doesn't understand this thing called 'exercise'. Then back out to get some lunch, went to an American Film themed restaurant which was nice - had a hawaiian burger with everything which i could barely fit my mouth round and a banana milkshake to wash it all down, mmmmm!

Then went to see Ice Age 2 which is just as funny as the first but with a bit more of a sing-along element to it a-la Disney sequels. If you have a kid nearby that you can take to see it - go, or blame your Girlfriend like i did, even though we both wanted to see it!!

Home for Sunday roast thanks to Mum. Towards the end Laura thought a walk would be a good idea!!

I quickly saw an opportunity and suggested walking to the pub, it was a nice evening and when this was the view from the bridge i can't complain.

Two good things came from the visit - as well as alcohol....

Managed to win £15 on the fruit machine and we saw famous actor Timothy Spall drinking there.

My Dad relished this as he still claims that he saw Louis Theroux drinking there once too. I didn't think it was, so to my Dad figures that if one celeb can be seen there then others must have been there too!?

It doesn't matter anymore

2006-03-26T16:36:00.000Z

This week has all been about the Puressence gig - they are my favourite band and after 10 years of listening to them I have finally gotten round to seeing them live.

In short they rocked, the songs sounded as good if not better than the album versions and James the lead singers sheer arrogance as he parted the crowd and walked through us all while still singing was brilliant.

The gig was at the Water Rats Theatre which is near Kings Cross station. The venue was small but made the whole thing much more personal. I met with my Emma (my sister) and Laura (girlfriend) at Victoria and made our way from there. At the venue we met with two of my sisters friends who had managed to get into the pub although we had all the e-tickets. The venue was one half bar and the other half the stage/floor. We thought best to get in the stage room early before the support act but found just space to stand right at the front. The support band My Architects were really good although it was a bit strange just standing at the front with them playing at us. I had already listened to one of their tracks (Under the Pines) on their site and recognised it straight away when they started playing. I think this track will really get the band noticed when it gets released next month.

When Puressence came on everything changed, all those who had been content to stand at the back all of a sudden wanted to walk through us to stand in spaces that bearly existed. The band lifted the tempo quickly and soon no-one cared where they were.

Standing near the front helped as we saw the set list from the beginning, so we knew that most of our favourites would be played and more importantly that they would be playing 2 encores.

For those who are interested here's the set list:

I Suppose
Drop Down <-- Currently featured on their myspace.com page
Don't Forget To Remember
How Does It feel
Sold Unseen
Standing In Your Shadow
Bitter Pill
Make Time
Baby Moonbeam
Life Comes Down Hard
Burns Inside
----------
This Feeling
Sharpen Up

After the gig I had the short hop to the Bowers Hotel near Victoria. This was so good as working 10mins from Victoria meant I didn't have to get up until 9 to get in work for 10 - Greeeat!!

Back to reality

2006-03-21T19:19:00.000Z

Had a hectic week at work, final got everything sorted today which turned out to be the deadline to everything so it's nice everything got resolved, back to normality tomorrow. Hopefully!

Spent the weekend watching movies, sport and movies about sport. I started watching the rugby at Bluewater on Saturday which was rather disappointing as France ended up winning the 6 nations. Watched GOAL! that night which was quite a good Football film that even my girlfriend liked. Sunday consisted of watching Liverpool beat Newcastle and on a lighter note The Constant Gardener, which was interesting but even after the film I didn't understand the title of the film, maybe I would have done if I had been watching the film 100% and not mending a pair of headphones with a soldering iron and no solder!

Sunday night I saw V for Vendetta which I thought was much much better than the reviews made out. Lots of English actors, a 1984 feel to the film and the dry wit of the main character made for an all round good flick.

That's all for now, tomorrow I'm going to see a gig of my all time favourite band - Puressence - review to follow.

Oh yeah Happy Birthday to my workmate Arup - and cheers for the donuts!!

Leaving on a jet plane

2006-03-13T20:48:00.000Z

Eurgh.... More drinking this weekend than I have done in months

Started Friday by buying a box of 12 Krispy Kreme's following a KK fund being setup at work. Useful as not eating donunts before going out drinking can make you more drunk (so i've heard).

Started the evening by losing a pool match in a league that I'm in, I think I'm still top though but probablty not for long.

The evening then moved to works regular haunt the Masons for Steve and Arup's leaving doo, although Arup is not actually leaving just moving to another department. Funnily enough most people hadn't been there before as we haven't been out after work for yonks.

Some of us were hungry so we headed uptown to get a chinese, stopping while others on a street corner while some parked. While there me,Harsh and Gary debated whether the smell wafting around was Chienese Food or Indian, including passerbyes we established it was Thai, the give-away being that we were in front of a Thai Restaurant (oops). While standing in the cold three people emerged from a street. My drunk brain shouting, you recognise those people, go say Hi! , so i did. These were people I had never met so I strool up and ask do you happen to know someone called Pan (my mate from work and blog hoster), yes they replied "We were just making fun of his name"!, they were three of his good friends the sad thing is that I only recognised them from pictures on his blog!! (A real crossover between the real world and cyberspace)

Here's a vid of us at the Chienese, abusing the spinning table. It was my idea to put the camera on it and spin it but not sure if that was genius or not...

Saturday I went and saw Last Holiday which was one of those films where your meant to come out and re-think your whole life, but not sure it was quite powerful enough to have any impact on me though. Nice film but not worth cinema prices.

Saturday night went to dinner at Cafe Rouge in Chelmsford it was Laura's old school friend Beany's birthday.

Here's Me, Laura (my girl) and Beany (birthday boy):

Martin and Tracy got him a shot drinking game, queue lots of shots of Pinot Grigio being drunk at under 2 seconds. After some groving in Yates it was over to Dukes. More drinking and dancing. Best tune of the night had to be the remix of Britney's toxic by John Marr - Toxic Rhythm, me not normally a big fan of garage music think this tune rocks and seems to always get a good response from the crowd. If you can find it since it's a bit old now give it a listen.

That's all for me know except to say:

Pan outdid himself when he turned in his "Champ Bear" romper suit

Home Sweet Home

2006-03-02T20:38:00.000Z

My street:

My Dad was playing on Google Earth the other day and he showed me that they have improved the res of where I live, great but where was my car?

So I followed my route to my station and found it! Just about to pull into the car park. The car park was full and it was light which must have meant I was on the late shift. If only the pictures were live it would be like the real Big Brother.

This means nothing to me ah....V...enice?!

2006-03-01T18:05:00.000Z

No update over the weekend as I was in Venice Friday - Monday not so much of a holiday, more of a long weekend. The picture above is of St Mark's Square on Saturday which was rather wet even for Venice.

Had an eventful flight out as when we got to 17,000 ft the plane filled with the smell of sulpher like something was burning, so we had to do an emergency stop back at Stansted. We pulled up trailed by 5 fire engines and a fire car! We quickly swapped to another plane and we were back on our way.

We stayed in a nice hotel called Hotel Leonardo in the Jewish Ghetto area (in the Ghetto...)

Loads of people dressed up on the streets as it was Carnival time, so mask wearing was order of the day and even me and my girlfriend Laura went out one night wearing them. Unfortunately the one picture I took came out badly so you don't get to see. (Shame)

We had a very nice day on Sunday which included a gondola ride. The gondolier we had was very OTT and did a tour like a young history teacher "before we see Venice we must first understand what made Venice" he had a bit of a fixation with the special Black Mud that the city was built on repeated this many times which all added to the comedy. It was however still very romantic and a group of tourists even gave us a round of applause as we set off, very embarrassing.

Got to Treviso Airport 4 hours to early as we had nowhere to go (as we had our luggage and it was cold). It turned out we had the wrong time for the flight back and we ended up having to wait another hour!! Got back to Stansted at midnight and I was home by 1.30am caught a few zzz's and then back to work.

Take your postions

2006-02-22T22:25:00.000Z

Phew really tired tonight as my Dad took me to his company organised Karting evening.

It's surprising how grouling two hours worth of racing can be.

I turned up late after trying to make it from work to Streatham which should take 30 mins but ended up taking an hour. Because of this I missed the rules (important later) and tips.

I started well overtaking loads of people, not realising it was a practice lap and therefore (normally) meant to be no-overtaking, oops.

Well this gave me a lot of confidence going into the qualifying heats. But starting near the back made it tough to get points. I ended the heats in the bottom half which meant I drove in the B Final. The top three of this 10 lap race then would be added to the A Final - also 10 laps. I managed to win the B Final and without even getting out of the kart flew into the A Final. Starting in grid position 8 i didn't fancy my chances but a huge pile up after the first corner sent me over the line in third, a spin and I was up to second. I was chasing the leader and saw a chance to take the lead on a hairpin, I dipped inside the leader and took the lead but bumped him in the process. Now we had been given warnings of "NO BUMPING" in the heats but after this bump I was given a half black/half white flag I wasn't sure if this meant I had been disqualified or what... still I let off the pedal feeling a bit guilty and lost the lead. I chased him for the rest of the race only getting close when we started lapping people. But I got caught in the tail enders and had to hold on for second!

What I hadn't realised is that my Dad had been leading at some point in the race and he ended up third. The winner Doug had lead from start to finish in the heats and had set the best lap time and he clearly deserved the top spot on the podium.

I shouldn't be here

2006-02-21T21:34:00.000Z

I should be packing as I'm off to Venice early Friday morning and it works out tonight is the only evening I'll have a chance to pack.

Not the best idea when I've been trying to watch the Benfica v Liverpool match.

Benfica snatched it with a goal in closing minutes. This means the return leg will be much more troublesome.

Cheers to Pan who has already "linked" me on his Über-blog. I told him to wait until there's more content but still...

Loads of car ads on during the footy, which got me thinking "Which one of these Orange cars wins out in the looks department?"

The M6 Schnitzer Tension Concept

Or the new Ford (A.S.B.O) ST

I saw the Ford in the flesh (??) last week and it definately stood out in the car park

Personally I like them both - but that's probably cos they are both fast as hell!

Startup Time

2006-02-20T22:06:00.000Z

I'm starting this blog more than anything as a experiment to see how it affects my life.

I have lots of things to look forward to in the next month and should get some good photos to upload as they come around.

At the moment of writing I'm watching Prision Break which is addictive viewing. Kinda like a cross between prison drama Oz and MacGyver.

Not sure how to end this post as there's so much I could say but a blog is meant to tell the present not the past, so the rest of me will have to unfold as I go along.