What I'm up to right now!

Hey Guys!

My original intentions were to return to the server and start playing again, with the new world and all but I've just been tied and busy with other things so just thought I'd pop on whilst I got a few minutes say hi to you all and just enlighten you into the new world of Mikey B! - 2012!

Well... where do I start? - Last year went out great as many of you know I proposed to my now "Fiancee" on christmas day that went great! She said Yes! - Didn't really get much time over xmas seeing family and all and the rest I spent with my girl. - This year were hoping to try for a baby and start a family of our own!

Anyways at current on Minecraft I'm back in Stalingrad... Kinda ironic that place comes back to haunt me :] When I originally returned to ImDeity ages ago when I first started playing Beta properly I first joined Stalingrad :] anyways I haven't been able to get on much so I don't think I'll be restarting Mikecraft anytime soon as originally planned.

Since the new year I've been playing various games from Duke Nukem Forever, to Sanctum along with a bit of Minecraft and a few other misc games!

I looked into my own server (LAN purposes) for me and Sarah (my girl) - aka Baby89Angel to have fun on however that lasted about 3-4 days until my computer randomly started crashing... again -.- so I'm trying not to do much intensive stuff on my computer in the mean time, I'm hoping a format will fix things... but ain't even got time for that right now with everything going on.

The past week been sorting a washing machine and a conesenser dryer out >,< hectic... just bloody hectic! Tip: Don't bother... lol - Can't be bothered to go into detail over it

Weekend just gone my cousin came down and we fired up the good ol' Dreamcast! I love that console... It's my life! We played a good old day of Gauntlet Legends, oh the great times!!! Anyways that made me wanna play my dreamcast even more... but most of all... Record of Lodoss War... Damn, that game is AMAZING! - If you ain't seen it, played it or checked it out ever... I recommend you do! - However it's only on the Dreamcast so... Either find / buy a Dreamcast or look into an emulator ;]

Right so... been playing that game (Record of Lodoss War) however on my 40inch TV it just looks totally... Pixelated and wrong... Not in a Minecraft kinda way either D: so yeah... apart from that it randomly defocuses and refocuses going blurey etc...

So I looked back into the good old "VGA" on the Dreamcast. Most don't know but the Dreamcast was way ahead of it's time, and the greatest console out there at it's time, and imo, is still the best "console" now... With a VGA Box or cable you can "Enable" VGA mode on the dreamcast, allowing for amazing 480p graphics! On games like Crazy Taxi, Soul Calibur, Record of Lodoss War, Gaunlet Legends etc!!! So yeah... Me being me not wanting to spend a great deal of money on a VGA Box from good ol' overpriced China goods off E-Bay (which doesn't give you the best VGA picture anyways)... I decided I'm going to Hard-Mod a VGA port into my Cast :] well... at least 1 of them if not all 3. Yeah... I got 3 dreamcast I love them!

If you want a feel of my Dreamcast collection then you can checkout my short youtube vid here :] All in all I got like 3 Dreamcasts! 8 Controllers (7 official 1 unofficial but 1 of the official ones has a broken analog) I got like 6 VMU's erm 2 keyboards 2 lightguns (only 1 on vid I got 1 more after I did the vid!) and a steering wheel + fishing rod :] + misc games and a large collection of backed up games as most my originals are damaged and no longer read - Also it's a Shame the lightguns only work on my old Phat TV upstairs... :[ doesn't work on the new LCD flatscreens ... so I have to go upstairs in the bloody cold if I wanna duel wield a solo on House of the Dead 2! - Shame really. Oh well! Sorry I got carried away! ^,^ but I love my damn Dreamcast(s)!

Which brings me to the next thing Been out today got some of the stuff I need to mod the VGA port onto the dreamcast such as a Soldering Iron, Solder (Need to get some de-solder braid)... Found out the hard way thank god for my old toothbrush! lol. Got 3 audio jacks too for the audio, for the VGA's going to de-solder them from some old graphics cards or order from ebay £3.50 for like 2 of them :] and some other misc stuff just gotta get the rest of the stuff off a guy on the market on thursday.. Diodes, resistors, capacitors etc...

To test out my soldering skills (I'm a total noob, first time I used a soldering iron was today... well apart from like 10 years ago in school once lol!) ...so yeah I de-soldered the LED off the dreamcast power light on the controller board and put a nice fancy slow strobing RGB led, damn it's EPIC! I'll upload some pics and stuff when it's all done :] going to do some video's for youtube too! - Gonna spray paint it too, nice glossy or metallic effect... Lime Green or something else :O dunno yet ^^ depends where I can get some decent affordable spray paint!

So yeah on top of all of sorting out the dang washing machine and dryer (ordered that today...) and trying to sort my house out, the more I sort the more mess I make lol! Getting rad on my Dreamcast again and going mental with ideas of modifications I'm also going to be a Trainee Bus Driver!!! Yeah! Me, Driving Buses!!! ^,^

Went for the initial "Info Session" on Wednesday... Listened to some guy talking for about an hour, did a simple maths test along with a theory test and that was it. He called me up this morning to congratulate me on passing the initial test etc after he looked through my application form! Said it's a bit short notice but he wants me up their training center tomorrow for the first Driving Assessment (Little driving test) I'm kinda looking forward to it but crapping myself at the same time! Although when I applied about 4-5 years ago I passed the Driving Assessment they make you drive a van before they put you in a bus... So I'm hoping that's all it's going to be tomorrow!!! Don't fancy driving a bus yet! - Hopefully I pass that :] then it's 10 days of long hard training followed by an immediate test! D: Gotta also do my Bus Theory test :S with 2 practical bus driving tests + a further 6 day training + test to actually be able to carry passengers on the bus! Lol! So yeah that's gonna take a fair chunk of time out my life, but I can't complain at the wage of £8.74 an hour :] contract for 38 hours a week with possible overtime! gotta invest like £40-50 on books / dvd's though to learn the Theory etc! D:

So um yeah I got carried away a bit but I know a few of you miss me if you don't hear from me :] j/k no one misses me :[ or maybe they do? ^,^ I dunno anyways I miss you guys I miss the server so yeah I thought of something I could talk about and post and well, I'm great at talking about me! ^,^

If anyone else wants to post here about anything particular going on in their life at the moment then fire away ^,^ or feel free to reply to me or whatever I don't know anyways I gotta get off it's like 11pm and I gotta be up at 6 and out the house for 7am so yeah

Wish me luck Ladies, Gents and Deities!

P.S. I'll keep you updated on the how dreamcast modifcations go ;] and the bus driving if anyones interested! - See you guys soon, hopefully I'll get some to pop on sometime!

 

Good to hear from you (even though I never really knew you ). Hope your dreamcast modifications go well aswell as your bus driver test stuff.

 

Nice to hear from you mikey! Hope to see you back on soon

 

So they succeeded? I was not useless then

 

i see you haven't changed much
tl;dr

 

lol ^^ ain't done the Dreamcast mod yet gotta get some stuff for it Thursday (Tomorrow) off the market then the rest I'll get from ebay. I'll post some pics if anyones interested

The bus driving thing... I went on Saturday to find out they couldn't even take me out in the mini bus for the initial driving assessment (to see how my general driving is) because I ain't got marked on my licence that I need glasses to drive. So I gotta get that sorted before I can do it. So just waiting on the DVLA now for that to arrive :]

Apart from that bored at the moment just messing around with screenshots and stuff :] check some of my recent posts

 

Was hoping to see you online more Mikey, was always a bit of craic with you rambling on.

 

Well thought I'd add to this thread I'm online a bit more now kinda getting back into a minecraft a little right but the important thing is I've ALMOST got all the stuff needed to mod my Dreamcasts!

I'm well siked... although it's starting to cost a fair bit... I think I've spent around £35-40 so far... but that's still cheaper than if I bought 1 VGA box for 1 of my dreamcasts this way I got soldering equipment which I can use in the future, I'm doing LED mods aswell as the VGA mods so my dreamcasts are gonna look well epic! and part of that £35-40 is £15.50 for 2 new controllers and 4 new VMU's from ebay the controllers are £8 delivered for 2 NEW controllers, keep in mind these aren't made anymore so they're rare even though there's alot of new stock still floating around from when Sega pulled the plug on the Dreamcast but that price for new controllers is too good to pass up... hence why I've bought them :S when they arrive I'll have 10 controllers :S but 1 has a broken analog and 1 is an unoffical one so technically I'll only have 8 "good" controllers lol as for memory cards I got 6 and they're full >,< Seventh Cross Evolution uses 172 slots... 1 VMU is 200 slots so yeah >,< dedicated a whole card to that and then Record of Lodoss War uses almost a full card for just 3 different saves at around 62 blocks per save :L but it was either £5.25 for 2 vmu's.... or £7.49 for 4 xD so yeah I got 4 lol so I'll have ummm 10 memory cards lol

Anyways I'm rambling but can't wait for my stuff to come off ebay so I can finally do these VGA mods then going to do the led mods and then find some cheap spray paint and pimp my dreamcasts! Thinking of selling a modded one if I could get the right buyer and price then I could buy another dreamcast and mod that ^^ lol but ummm yeah I'll post some pics and video's once theyre all done so anyone interested stay tuned!!!!

As for the Bus Driving ummmm I went on that Saturday but was told I couldn't go out on the initial driving assessment because I haven't got the correct restriction marked on my licence because I need glasses to see the number plates at the required distance? 0,o DVLA wanna know everything >,< so yeah had to send my licence off and get that amended been over a week and still nothing but can take up to 3 weeks then I gotta contact National Express once my licence is here, go all the way to their training center again probably early saturday morning -.- and then do the driving assessment :L can't wait ^,^

Although Sarah read up online the other day that 1000's of people are failing this bus driving thing, most of them for basic stuff like points on their licence? Lol what do they expect but yeah some of them can't pass the bus driving test I think it's hard but meh, nothings impossible right?

Well ummm yeah just thought I'd update this beings I started it so I'll keep you guys posted if anyones interested

Regards,

Mike.