MrGrey`s Place

I have slowly been raising money for the MS Society for the past few months. In order to boost donations I have foolishly decided to do a sponsored parachute jump - despite my extreme fear of heights. My plan appears to be working as during this week, with thanks to the great folks on the EU Playstation boards, I have more than doubled my previous figure and am well on my way towards my £500 target.

All donations are welcome HERE

I came across an advert on Ebay many months ago telling me how I could get a free Nintendo Wii (or <shudders> an Xbox 3nasty) via some referral scheme. At first I though `eh-up, that right there is a scammy type con` but, being a nosey git, I decided to investigate more. I Googled the scheme and found a website/forum called Exceem which claimed to have all the required info and a thread called `I got my free item` where many people post proof that they have done the scheme and have actually received their free item.

To cut a long story short I decided to give it a try and, although it`s taken a bit longer than I thought, I finally have the required 9 people signed up with offers completed! My account has also been verified and my Wii is in the order system, waiting to be processed! EDIT: just checked my account and it has been shipped and should be delivered within the next few days! YAY!

The scheme I`m with is FreebieJeebies and throughout they have been professional and quick to reply to any queries or problems I had with people`s offers not showing up as complete etc.

I will post a picture when it arrives as proof that the scheme really works: all in it has cost me very little (I completed the Lovefilm offer and have kept the account on for a few months after my free 2 week trial with them)

If you`d like further information please don`t hesitate to contact me

EDIT: IT`S HERE!

Click on the above picture for full screen. The receipt clearly shows it was a freebie (I did sharpen that part of the image for clarity and blur my address out )

I was surprised to receive Raving Rabbids 2 as I thought only Wii Sports came with it…BONUS!

It arrived early this morning via Parcelforce

I entered a Warhawk design competition a few months ago. I entered 3 Warhawk paint designs and 3 insignias. Unfortunately my paint designs didn`t make it through, but ALL THREE insignias did

I am so chuffed - not only will my designs be in my favourite game in the next update - v1.5 due to arrive on 27th August - but I also get a limited edition Warhawk model, like this one:

Here are the winning insignias

The monkey on the 2nd row down - first insignia - the chinese dragon and the lizard on the bottom row - numbers 5 and 6 - are my winning designs

Here are the winning paint designs:

Well done to everyone who won!

I have just begun a 2 week holiday in a small place just outside Marizion, Penzance in Cornwall. We are staying in a nice 4 bedroom cottage with friends. The day we arrived the weather was gorgeous, today it`s wet - very wet. We discovered today that the cottage has interweb access and, after a bit of trial and error, we have finally sussed out how to get online. Had I known this before hand - plus the fact our hosts have supplied a brand new Sony Bravia HDTV for our use - I might have brought along my PS3…ideal for quiet rainy days such as today. Never mind eh.

Lately I`ve been experiencing more and more problems with PS3gamer - firstly the fact that the hosting has been up and down as CirtexHosting (my hosts) have been experiencing technical difficulties with the Scratchy Server (on which PS3gamer and this site are housed) definitely hasn`t helped matters. They now assure us that any changes they have made to the server should have sorted the majority of problems out.

But even after the site was back up, it was loading extremely slowly. One curious thing I found was if I go to the Cpanel for the site and mess with phpMyAdmin, select the database PS3gamer uses and optimize it, it immediately speeds things up. Yet I still noticed the site slow back down after a short while. So I set about investigating matters a little more deeply: I stumbled across an article written by someone with similar problems who went on to explain how Wordpress (on which these 2 sites are built) and it`s plugins can slow things down and how he used Firebug - a Firefox plugin to investigate his site.

Basically, once the plugin is installed into Firefox and you load your site, it throws all sorts of statistics at you and shows you how long each and every element in your page takes to load. I immediately found one of the main culprits - a call to a Java script which didn`t actually exist was embedded in the header - and the browser took 20 - 25 seconds to process it! So I quickly backed up the original header file, edited it (deleting a couple of lines of code pointing to the Java script) and uploaded it to my site and…..IT WORKED! This immediately cut down the time it took to display PS3gamer. While I was there I found that the Events Calendar and the `Coming soon PS3 titles` pages were slowing things down too, and took the decision to remove them. The Justgiving Widget also slowed things down somewhat, so that has been replaced by a simple link button. Google Analytics still refuses to work properly and slows the entire site down to a crawl, so the plugin for this has been deactivated.

One further change I made was to install the Super-Cache Wordpress plugin. This basically stores a cached version of the pages ready for faster serving. The only small catch is this will not work if you are actually signed into PS3gamer, but as most people don`t sign in anyway I can`t see it posing much of a problem. The page still loads if you are signed in, just not the super fast cached version.

All in all the changes have decreased the loading times from an average of 30 - 45 seconds (totally unacceptable) to well below 5 seconds, usually between 1 and 2. Quite a difference, I think you`ll agree

 

I have MS (Multiple Sclerosis). What does this mean and how does it affect me? This from the MS Society:

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the most common disabling neurological condition affecting young adults. Around 85,000 people in the UK have MS.
MS is the result of damage to myelin - a protective sheath surrounding nerve fibres of the central nervous system.

When myelin is damaged, this interferes with messages between the brain and other parts of the body.

For some people, MS is characterised by periods of relapse and remission while for others it has a progressive pattern. For everyone, it makes life unpredictable.

Basically the way I generally describe MS is to imagine your brain and central nervous system as a computer. MS is very much like having a dodgy operating system which mostly works, but occasionally throws a spanner in the works and cocks everything up. This is why I refer to MS as Microsoft

The main symptoms I suffer from are sharp `electric shock` type pains which suddenly take hold, are quite severe and can - if they are in my head - literally knock me off my feet. They have been known to make me instantly vomit, pass out and feel quite spaced out. Usually they subside quite quickly, occasionally they last for hours. They are unpredictable and can come at any time without warning, affecting any part of my body. I also experience a lot of muscle twitching which whilst not being particularly painful can range from annoying to humorous, especially if they are in my face. It`s amazing when a part of your body where you never knew you had a muscle starts twitching for minutes at end.

MS can also affect your moods and I can switch from being quite happy-go-lucky to extremely angry within the space of seconds. I can at times get very emotional over the silliest thing and, although I`m loathe to admit it - being a bloke - I can burst into tears at the drop of a hat.

A lot of the time my head isn`t quite tuned in - by this I mean it`s almost as though I am drunk but without the fun. It`s quite hard to concentrate and takes a lot of effort to focus on one thing. It`s quite difficult to follow conversations unless they are one on one, being in the company of friends is very frustrating as I feel I can`t contribute or feel a part of the group.

I am constantly tired, physically, mentally and emotionally. Most days I have trouble walking and using my hands.

Why did I decide to share this? At this moment in time I`m quite lucid and can share and express the way I feel physically and emotionally - tomorrow I may not. See, that`s the thing with MS - you never know from 1 day to the next if and how it`s going to affect you. I realise I am quite lucky in that physically MS has not robbed me of my mobility and I can walk, albeit with difficulty some days. I mostly have my faculties intact. I have met fellow MS sufferers who are in a wheelchair and in a much worse state than I am. Luckily I have loved ones and friends who help, assist and push me to keep it together.

At this moment in time I`m experiencing more spaced out periods and am finding it more difficult by the day to concentrate. For example, if I`m involved in a conversation, something that was said a few moments ago feels like a much older memory to me - if you get my meaning, it`s very hard to describe. There are holes appearing in my memory and I find it increasingly difficult to remember the simplest thing. Somedays are better than others.

So there you have it, confirmation I`m losing the plot

I am running an MS Society here on PS3gamer. I hope to raise £500 over the course of the year. Feel free to contribute, it`s for a very good cause

I am pleased to say that after entering a Warhawk Wednesday competition at the Official Playstation Community I have been sent an invitation to the Sony beta testing program. This means two things:

1 - I`ll be able to test and play upcoming Sony titles way before they are released, reporting back with any bugs or problems and general feedback on the product

2 - I will have to make damn sure I don`t publish anything sensitive on PS3gamer, related to any titles I`m testing. I have had to agree to a Non Disclosure Agreement forbidding me from discussing anything to do with the beta trials, so DON`T ASK - I`m not going to be so stupid as to risk losing this golden opportunity.

If there are strong rumours published elsewhere, where I can provide my source of the information ie. another article, then if I feel PS3gamer should cover it, I will consider doing so only as long as I feel it won`t jeopardize my position as a beta tester. In such instances it will just be a case of `this is what we`ve heard, here`s the link to check it out for yourself`

I hope you understand…if not then meh!

Well, I`ve been and gone and done it. Wordpress 2.6 was released recently, having come out of beta - so without further ado I`ve upgraded PS3gamer to the new version.

It works. There`s a few more options. It has Google Gears so the admin side of things is quite nippy now (from what I gather it stores site files locally on my PC for faster access). All plugins/widgets work as before. On the actual web-side of things it looks and acts exactly the same way it did before, so I`m really struggling to see why - apart from the speedier admin.

I`ll reserve judgement for now…

Having installed the beta here (now up to 2.6 beta 2), I am impressed with the apparent increased speed of Wordpress. I am now toying with the idea of upgrading it on PS3gamer - I am still a bit reluctant however as it is still beta. I shall therefore continue testing here, see how it goes for a little while longer. Maybe I should try some of the current plugins/widgets to see if they are compatible. Just a thought.

Welcome to my little corner of the interweb. Don`t expect too much…you might be disappointed