DreamHack: Epilogue

The last time i left the country was to go to Sweden with Multiplay to attend DreamHack, and all in all it was pretty fantastic. The atmosphere is different to any other LAN I've been to of any size.

Theres a party atmosphere thats just... Different. Music plays through the whole venue 18 hours a day and the production team run the stage with artists and competitions much like the iSeries. The difference is that they have more cameramen than the iSeries has production staff and they still run 12 hour stage plans on some days (some days are less, but can you blame them?)

The fact its a dry event in Sweden really didn't matter, beer is plentiful if pricey in the hotel if you want some but its not like its essential. The huge halls are interesting to game in, and theres often choruses of HAAAAALLOOOOOO going about the rows and between halls.

The  desks are a little... Ghetto. Pallets tied together, with chipboard tops arent the most comfy but for 11000 people, its still fairly impressive it all gets setup in such a short time.

Would i go back? Probably, but it is a long way and its not cheap, but its defiantly an experience.

Now serving country number six

About the time this get published we should have reached Denmark and broken through the 700 mile marker on the trip. Briefly stopping for a power nap earlier has made it possible to stay on the move almost continuously for the last 16 hours.

The only other minor inconvenience was from the German police who requested we get weighed, turns out we're just over a quarter ton too heavy, but within tolerance.

EDIT: just got stopped by Danish border control for a routine check, nice chaps.

394 miles to go, Mike at the wheel. Follow us on twitter @MikeGeoLambert and @adrianggordon if you want to!

The dark side of the channel

So we've reached the continent and started powering through to Sweden. At this rate non-stop we could be in jonkjoping by 4pm. But that's unlikely by the time we factor in food and fuel stops, not to mention probably needing sleep not in a van at some point.

Nevertheless we can only see how far we get before we give in. We're effectively ahead of schedule with a little over 900 miles to go. Roll on Belgium.

So... Road trip

Suddenly... Dreamhack! Somehow I've been roped into a roadtrip to Sweden with Multiplay to deliver a good load of kit for Trion World and Antec. Its 1050 miles from Southampton to Dreamhack through 5v countries not including the UK and Sweden. Its going to be a long night.

Currently on the M25 to Dover for the first ferry after midnight, loaded with a bag of energy drinks and enough equipment to stage our own LAN pretty much anywhere we fancy.

Will we make it? Does Europe know whats coming and does it really care?

Some of these questions may be answered, but probably wont be. Keep checking back to see how we get on.

Or don't. I'm not the police.

Where did all my time go?

Once again, the more often I promise myself I'll stay on top of updates the less often I seem to get things posted. Then suddenly I have a bit of time and the updates cone flooding in. That's not to say this is one of those updates, merely a post for the sake of posting as well as musing over the latest addition to to my gadget selection.

For a while I've pondered getting a tablet, specifically not an ipad. Not that I object to it as such, but the control apple has over it compared to android in terms of layout on screen to name just one niggle. That being said, the it does have one thing right; aspect ratio. 4:3 is just right, there's nothing wrong per say with widescreen for most tasks, but in landscape, and with a keyboard on screen, and there's precious little room for both decent size keys and view the for what you've typed.

After seeing a suspiciously cheap range of tablets in Maplin Electronics I had a look and found almost all to be widescreen, and including the temptingly priced 7" unit from £99. However, I interestingly for not much more was an 8" 4:3 ratio tablet, men as well as two 9.7" models under £200. The 8" was ultimately a bit small and in the end suffered from exactly the same problem the other two had.

All three ran Ice Cream Sandwich, another requirement for any tablet is got, and but crucially lacked access to the market, and or as it is now Google Play. Apparently these devices haven't been certified or approved by Google thus they don't get to benefit from the wealth of applications they have to offer.

While it's possible to get it to work via a work around, stick with the inferior or limited GetJar or Amazon application stores. Having apps which I use on my phone unavailable or unwilling to work put me off. Ideally I want something that will 'just work' despite being happy to to hack things into working, and it's nice to not have to every time.

By chance I remembered a friend had bought an HP TouchPad specifically to run ICS and it was perfectly happy. Minimal hacking required and everything worked just as any other android device would expect.

One browse of ebay later and a unit with a dock, a case and charger was about to finish. Luckily it didn't go much and so far, the other than finding it needs a LOT of power to charge (2 amps down a usb cable) its great!

I might even get a chance to post some more stuff soon.