I dont use this anymore because I have my own self hosted wordpress blog.

So if you are interested in keeping up to date then check it out at http://thebettertwin.co.uk.

Thanks

thebettertwin

After several months of using Spotify I cant help but wonder whether it signals the future for music listeners.

For those unfamiliar with Spotify it is a music streaming service which allows users to listen to millions of tracks for free.

The interface is similar to what you would see in iTunes allowing you to search for artists or tracks and allowing you to create playlists of your favorite tracks.

Users can opt for either the free version or a subscription based premium model (£9.99/month).

The free version is supported though ad-based services, similar to having advertisements on a commercial radio station.

However, these adverts are not as frequent as listening to the radio and the greatest advantage of Spotify over any other service is that it lets you listen to the tracks you actually want to listen to with barely any interruptions.

Spotify’s rival Last.fm also allows for users to listen to free music, however, users only get to listen to selections called radios which build a  playlist of similar bands. Hence, you may never hear the track you were intent on listening to, unlike with Spotify.

Spotify also allows for similar services as Last.fm giving artist radios, genre specific radios, and suggestions of artists you may like, which ensures you always have something to listen to.

Spotify isn’t without its faults, however. Some adverts can repeat endlessly, some new albums are held back for premium subscribers and if your internet connection goes down then say goodbye to your music.

However, Premium does allow (for those willing to stump up the cash) for ad free music and  Spotify have just added a listen offline feature (allowing the caching of 3,333 tracks).

Premium subscribers can now also take their music on the go with them, providing they have an iPhone, iPod touch, or android phone.

Spotify playlists can easily be shared from user to user so Spotify can become a social listening experience.

Sites such as http://spotifyplaylists.co.uk/ have already sprung up allowing users to give ratings to the best playlists.

Users never actually own any of the tracks they listen to, however, providing artists gain a fair wage for their work through the ad-based model, Spotify might possibly tackle piracy in a greater way than any legislation ever could.

It encourages users to listen to new music and bands and it does so in a legal method that most users would be happy with. Combined with purchases Spotify is a great way of listening to music and if you discover a track that you want to keep, Spotify also has a instant buy track button that lets you snap up your favorite songs.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to consumer choice and Spotify may just become the best choice for consumers and artists alike since the dawn of the internet age.

To find out more and to download Spotify visit: http://www.spotify.com/en/

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I am Proud to present Version 2 of my Xbox 360 Vista Theme. It is subtitled Elite edition because I chose to use darker colours and it has a few elite pictures thrown in for good measure. It also goes a lot nicer with darker backgrounds and, I feel, is more practical for everyday use.

Ok that’s out the way how about some pictures.

Desktop with new darker taskbar and new orb.

The wallpaper is a creation by Barry aka GT: Apollo T4L. It may look like cgi but is in fact a fantastic photo made by use of Halo 3 figurines. His flickr account with many more wonderful photos can be found here.

Start Orb
Since the last theme I re-did all the buttons and the orb to make the edges smoother and less jaggy.

The redesigned orb, shown below, keeps the same concept but is neater and more realistic.

Normal, Hover and Pressed

Start Menu

I have completely redone the start menu, I listened to the biggest gripes and changed the text colours and glows as well as all the panels. It also includes an Xbox Elite behind the programs list.

You may also notice a familiar face in the start menu but we will get onto that in a minute .

Frames, Panels and Scrollbars

I have done some work on the windows panels, and preview pane to give them a darker but still practical look and I have also edited windows frames slightly, they have a gradient going down the side, this was chosen to give a darker look but not to interfere with other applications like media player.

Additionally, the close, minimize and maximise buttons have all been redone to make them smoother and less jaggy as well.

DWM aero background

The reflections background,(what you see in the aero parts of vista) has also been redone to include some favourite Xbox 360 characters, including Banjo, Joanna Dark, the Chief, and others.

Taskbar buttons

Finally, for aero at least, I have changed the buttons and the text glow of the taskbar so it is nicer to look at and easier to use.

Normal Button

Hover Button

Pressed button

Active window

Hopefully, you’ll agree that these changes add up to a huge improvement and the theme is now a lot nicer but thats not all, I have also been working on, after many complaints, a basic version of the theme.

Xbox 360 v2 for Vista Basic users

The options for basic are pretty, well….basic given the lack of shadows, aero effect and text glow but I have done my best to make most of it look as close to the original aero theme as possible.

That’s it folks hope you like it.

For skinning beginners I suggest you check here for information on how to set a theme for vista.

Should be said again this is for vista OS and is a tribute to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console so all images used belong to them.

Let me know what you people think.

The better twin.

Before you do anything you must first create a system restore point to ensure that if anything does go wrong it can be fixed by just rolling back your system.

To start you need to first install Vista Glazz which patches your theme files and allows you to have custom themes.

It can be found here

After installation close the installer and find it in your start menu and run it. It will pop up with a security warning but allow it because this will run it as administrator.

When running the program click the computer icon and choose patch files you will need to restart your computer after doing this.

After the restart open Vista Glazz once again and click the colour icon next to the computer and patch them too. You will not need to restart after patching these.

Now you can download and use any custom theme.

To use a custom theme, go to your system drive (usually c drive) and go to the windows folder, find resources, themes.

Now copy the files of the downloaded theme into the theme folder like so.

Copy the content of the downloaded theme, the theme folder and the theme file into C:\windows\resources\themes

Now you can double click the theme file (the file with the coloured icon) and in the pop up box select the theme that you want and click to apply.

the better twin

Worse than the big bad wolf

Barely one month after Mexico reported its first death from a suspected swine flu outbreak the topic is already falling off the media agenda. In that time we have seen global media organisations  calling the outbreak a “global crisis” and a “real threat to humanity.” However, there has only been one death outside Mexico (a Mexican infant visiting America) and now those same organisations are backpeddling stating that it is not as bad as first feared and the flu is only a mild form of the much feared H1N1 strain.

Did the global media over react to the so called “crisis”? Well the media certainly loves a good horror story and nothing is greater it seems than the end of existence. It seems that everyday humanity takes one step closer to its inevitable doom and these companies seem to be competing to have the biggest and best coverage. The accute irony, that if it was actually the end no one would be around to read this fantastic coverage, seems somewhat lost.

Sombreros mandatory

What the media should state in cases where a global pandemic seems possible is that western countries are most likely going to be least affected. The vast wealth of these countries, experienced medical organisations and the effective hygine controls mean that they are very well equiped to combat viruses speading. The actual places that we have to fear for are the countries like Mexico, Africa, China and many more where standards of living, medical care, and health are so low the virus is far more likely to rack up a horrific death toll.

Of course the media werent the only ones proclaiming that swine flu could be tragic. The World Health Organistation were also stating that it was a real threat, however, they did not have much in the way of reliable information from Mexico and most Western scientists still do not know much about the virus. Therefore, a lot of advice was based on guesswork and what could have been the worst possible outcome.

It now appears that swine flu will not be the end of human existance, with scientists even suggesting we should contract it so as to build up natural immunity. Clearly, the human race will have a little longer on this earth, at least until global warming kills us all off…….

the better twin

I have changed a few things around, added some cool effects and some other things.

Anyway enough yapping onto the pictures

Xbox 360 desktop with custom start orb and big taskbar

Custom start button when inactive, when hovered over and when pressed

New start menu with text glow

Green shadow colour and xbox themed close/maximise/minimise buttons

New aero background transparency

It must be said that obviously its only for vista users who have aero enabled.

Additionally i have only tested it on 32-bit systems so i dont know how it would look on 64-bit.

Finally, this is in no way endorsed by Microsoft and it is only a fan made theme.

Thats out the way.

Do you like?

Download here

Install instructions

To install a new theme if you have never used a custom one before follow these instructions.

You need to first install Vista Glazz which patches your theme files and allows you to have custom themes.

It can be found here
http://vista-glazz.uptodown.com/en/
After installation close the installer and find it in your start menu and run it. it will pop up but allow it because thiss will run it as administrator.

When running the program click the computer icon and choose patch files you will need to restart your computer.

After the restart open Vista Glazz once again and click the colour icon next to the computer and patch them too. you will not need to restart after patching these.

Now you download and use any theme.

To use a custom theme, go to your c drive and go to the windows folder, find resources, themes.

now copy the files of the downloaded theme into the theme folder like so.

Copy the content of the downloaded theme, the theme folder and the theme file into C:\windows\resources\themes

Now you can double click the theme file and in the pop up box select the theme that you want and click apply.

Double click the theme file and choose your desired theme

Thats all folks. I hope you like it.

Any comments, feedback, gripes? Let me know.
Be nice lol its my first ever go at making a theme and im not an expert.

the better twin

Online you get to choose from 6 leaders, 3 covernant and 3 UNSC. They all have various strengths and weaknesses but as a general rule UNSC are stronger the longer the game progresses while Covenant are stronger at the start of the game because after a temple is built they get given a leader at no additional cost.

As the Covenant

So the 3 covenant leaders are the brute who has brute choppers instead of ghosts and brutes as his special unit, the arbiter who has suicide grunts and the prophet of regret who has elite honor guard units.

They have vortex, rage and cleansing beam respectively.

As the Arbiter

The rage mode of the arbiter is the strongest against units so if you are playing as him try to level him up as quickly as possible and then concentrate using him against all enemy units.

As the Brute Chieftan

The brute is probably the weakest although his special units  are quite strong early on so use these to counter early attacks.

As the Prophet

The prophets beam does quite alot of damage and so do his fuel rod guns so use him early on to counter attacks.

Remember Halo Wars employs a rock paper scissors gametype this means that certain units counter certain units while others counter those and so on so remember look at what the other person is and prepare to counter.

If they are Captain Cutter expect to be attacked by lots of men so build either lots of jackals or wraiths, If they are professor Anders expect lots of air units so build lots of vampires and if they are Sergant Forge expect to be spammed by tanks so build lots of hunters.

A good word of advice is not to build scarabs because the opposition can focus all their fire on it and destroy it quite quickly especially if they are Cutter.

As the UNSC

UNSC are stronger once you have all your units levelled up and all your powers at max too.

The leaders are Captain Cutter, who has the Mac blast power,  ODST’s and elephants as special units, Sergant Forge, who has bombing run, Grizzlys and the Cyclops Mech and professor Anders who gets freeze, hawks and the Gremlin.

The picture below was released by Rare to show off their new Banjo Tooie theme for the xbox 360 it clearly has Joanna Dark in the guys played games list.

The game picture highlighted by the red box shows joanna dark from the N64 version of the game

Does this mean that PD 64 will be coming out? Well Rare does like to screw with people but it does seem like a high probability especially as it was probably Rare’s second most popular game, behind a little game known as goldeneye. Goldeneye was of course rumoured to have been scheduled for the arcade and we even had videos of the completely reworked graphics but it seemed like something got in the way of its release, not pointing any fingers, (cough cough nintendo!!!) so it would be the next logical step.

Perhaps Rare has a new Perfect Dark title in the works and are planning to release the arcade version along with the new version in a similar way to the banjo kazooie releases. this would be great news as i was a big fan of Perfect Dark Zero which had some great online modes and was great fun when the xbox 360 was first released.

Only time will tell if this is actually just a prank (but late for april fools?) or its a tease for whats to come.

What do you think about this? Looking forward to playing Perfect dark onec again? Let me know what you think.

the better twin

In this video below he turns his back on the policeman’s out-stretched hand despite watching Obama shake hands with him.

Just goes to show that Gordon Brown in a bit of a bumbling politician sometimes in my opinion.

While it may have been a genuine case of him just not seeing Mr Brown should be trying his best not to be shown up by a politician who managed to sweep to power through massive popularity rather than becoming the leader of the country after someone else steps down.

What do you think of this video? Do you see it as more blundering by our PM? Do you  like or dislike Gordon Brown anyway?

Let me know what you think

the better twin

Short on desktop space? Got a small screen and it seems like you cant really fit much on your desktop? Then this might be the program for you.

360 desktop uses panoramic images and lets you pan round 360 degrees

360 desktop lets you spin around panoramic images with your mouse by moving to the sides of the screen giving you lots more desktop space.

Images don’t really do the program justice so it might be worth watching this video.

In addition to letting you pan around 360 desktop also allows you to slice a part of any website and use it as a desktop widget, in theory getting rid of the need for RSS readers and other such programs as your favorite sites can be displayed on your desktop. An example of the news section from the BBC website is shown below. All links are click-able and open in your default browser.

cut bits from your favorite websites and display them on your desktop

Finally the 360 desktop website also lets you create your own personalised 360′s from a collection of images. You upload the ones you want and then piece them together on the website. This can be found here if you register for a free account. Dont worry you wont get any spam.

http://360desktop.com/gallery/main.php

Additionally to this program i came across a really good panoramic photo creator from Microsoft.

Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE) pieces together your photos in a much better way than the 360 desktop website and actually lines the photos up where they should be.

An example of it in action is shown below.

First select your images from the scene

then paste them into the program and it will do all the work for you

360 desktop can be downloaded from here

http://360desktop.com/downloads

and Microsoft ICE is here

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

Have fun.

the better twin