Bob's Patch

Firstly it's been a long time since I've blogged on here – sorry for anyone waiting J secondly this is a really handy sheet that makes sorting out permissions in SharePoint really handy – it was put together by Mark Arend (http://blogs.msdn.com/markarend/). You can download a copy to Excel so that you don't even need to be connected to the internets!!!

You can find more information at: http://blogs.msdn.com/markarend/archive/2008/02/14/sharepoint-2007-permissions-matrix.aspx

Enjoy!

I’m fortunate to have a very good friend – no not imaginary… At 15 he introduced to me to a great sport called basketball which along with the culture, the writers of the sport, the music and of course the players became a major influence in my life – I still follow it now, but after last season, I had to question my faith… not in the sport but in the team that I follow(ed?) – the Phoenix Suns.

They’re exciting, they’re great to watch and have a great run and gun mentality.  But…

I can’t help thinking that there’s some muppets in the organisation.  This isn’t a new thing – back in the day when KJ and Barkley were in the team they were good, very good, but then KJ retired, Barkley went and things changed.  Even at this early age, something felt not right.

Fast forward a few years and things seemed to be improving there were some good trades and new players came into the team but they always seem to trade off players – make them good, give them the experience and get rid of them – most notably Shawn Marion – the team were coming together nicely and then Shawn was traded for… Shaq.  Huh?  Also D’Antoni going as well seems a blow.

The last trade they had as well was the same.  It’s something that I can’t understand.  Something else was different as well which became clear in the playoffs last year.  That was watching the Boston Celtics.  The difference between the two teams was startling and it wasn’t in skill level.  It was in the attitude and the energy.  Phoenix has always been an energetic team but Boston were in another league (literally!).  It caught me by surprise.  In Game 4 (I think it was) LA Lakers looked like blowing out the Celtics.  It was a 30 point lead and it seemed that it was game over… something niggled me.  The Celtics won, the niggle was confirmed.  Boston were going to be champions.  It was only after the Celtics had dismantled the Lakers in Game 5 that doubts starting to form about my feelings to the Suns.  It wasn’t glory-hunting but more passion seeking.  I’ve got no doubts about the Suns players but now I’m starting to look east, where the sun rises…

So now it’s a predicament, do I leave the Suns and follow the Celtics?  Do I stay loyal to the Suns?  From a winning point of view it wouldn’t be a contest as last night can attest.  The most telling comment:

“It was a good ol' spanking. That's what is was,'' said Suns coach Terry Porter, who called it his team's worst loss of the year. "They came out and turned on the intensity on us early and we didn't respond. They got whatever they wanted. There was no resistance from us whatsoever.''

It’s sad to see.  I’ll follow both teams as I have a lot of respect for Boston, and a loyalty to the Suns, but if the finals are Suns Celtics, then the Celtics will be who I root for…

Yesterday was a crappy day in the world of games news journalism – 1Up was sold by Ziff Davis Media to the Hearst Corporation and will be merged with UGO Entertainment.

This 1UP News Story painted a pretty positive situation whereby it seemed that ZD were relinquishing their hold on this valuable IP to a group where money and other resources would be more freely available.  This seemed a good thing as the News Story also states that 1Up IS the people:

“"The acquisition of 1UP, with its authentic voice, tenured editorial personalities and bustling user community…”

This is what drew me (as I’m sure many others would agree) to the site and to it’s written, audio and video content.

Unfortunately UGO entertainment didn’t…  Joystiq reported here about the number of staff members being laid off – including Shane, Philip, Nick and Anthony as well as many other.

UGO takes a different approach to it’s games “journalism” as Shawn Elliott twittered: http://tinyurl.com/7ngh6b

This is a big shame as all the quality Podcast and Videos show content as they were have now stopped and EGM is no more.

Hopefully UGO will let the people they have kept do what they did best and hopefully will do what they can to keep the spirit of this site going.

Some former members have created RebelFM (and a site called Eat-Sleep-Game) to aid the blank empty space left.  check out their first episode here.

It’s probably best to finish off with a link to someone who knows 1UP very well – check Jeff Green’s post on Greenspeak.

It’s a well known phenomenon (do, dooo, do, do) that Sports Stars (primarily North American sports) have a very bad year after they appear as box art for Video Games.  This has been given the name the ‘Madden Curse’ for the Madden Sports franchise – the Gamezone site also has a list of unfortunate stars here.

Well, I’m wondering if this predominantly NFL issue is jumping sports.  I bring to the table Top Spin 3 – the cover of which is below…

So you will notice there’s a few people on the front cover, the main one being Mr. Federer the number 1 ranked player in the world.

The game was released in June… he lost Wimbledon, the next open and major tennis tournament, his rank dropped from #1 in the world to #2 (still not career ending, but all the same)…

All of this may, of course, be a total coincidence, but you can’t help wondering why bad things happen when sports stars appear on game covers…

Denon make some quality stuff – predominately around the AV space and cinema equipment.

It’s also fairly expensive as well – probably for good reason too (can’t tell you first hand that they’re brilliant but we’ll take their words for it!).

They’ve done cables before but they have decided that it is time to when the foray of RJ45 cabling.

Well, here’s the cable:

First impression is that it looks very good – if I needed to get hold of a cable then hey, why not… except for the cost.  Yup $499 for a 1.5m cable… yea- no!

I wired my whole house for 10% of that!  I respect Denon, they’ve make some good stuff – but to be honest even if you didn’t want to make you’re own cables you can pick up LAN cables for less than $10 (about £5) that will do EXACTLY the same as this cable for, quite literally, a fraction of the cost…