Blue Fish Logic goes live

Well, we've finally done it! The company we setup "Blue Fish Logic" way back in December last year has finally gone live. Having spent the first 6 months of this year developing frameworks for producing 2D and 3D games for the mobile market, I decided that it was far too much work for a one person and I couldn't afford to employ anybody, so we decided to go down the more practical and simpler route by developing smaller applications for Pocket PCs...I've currently got a few ideas for more enterprise level apps, but let's walk before we fall (or whatever the saying is)!.

At the moment the company consists of me and Sarah. I do the techie stuff and Sarah does everything else (including marketing). We have lots of ideas so should keep us very busy for a few months.

The new website is up and running, still lots to do to it and is currently only offering 1 product. I plan to add the facility to purchase direct from our website as the resellers we are currently using take a massive 40%...this is going to be a priority task :) I'm also in the process of upgrading the site to a business level plan as it it currently a home user plan and is too slow.

www.BlueFishLogic.com

Nothing much to say!!!

As I've failed my "at least 1 entry a week" target, I thought I'd just talk about...stuff!!!

The weekend just gone was fairly busy. It was my birthday on Saturday...yippee, hoorah, ooooh my back...I'd better sit down! We had a nice meal out at lunchtime once we'd found somewhere that was open (around Annecy is a fantastic place to live but everywhere shuts up for the winter....don't the locals ever eat out!!!!!). Anyway, we ended up in The Imperial Hotel which is probably the poshest looking hotel for miles, very grand, white and over looking the lake. Nice meal, no chips though, but we'll probably have our christmas day meal there.

Saturday evening, we went to a dinner and dance at The Palace Hotel, probably the second grandest looking hotel for miles, very grand, white and over looking the lake. A good time was had by all with many a bad head the next morning.

On Sunday we went and got the entire family kitted out with ski gear. 5 sets of skis, 5 pairs of boots, 5 pairs of battons and a couple of helmets for the kids. All second hand of course ('cause we'll probably only do it once :) ). The whole lot came to less than 350 euros which if you've ever looked at the prices of ski stuff...is a real bargain. And next year (if we want) we can take it all back to the same place and they will try to sell it on our behalf...a bit like a thrift shop.

(Phil Cole, if you're reading this...are you on the UK X Factor (as Ben) or have you got a twin brother????)

Just to liven up the entry, I've attached a video from a company called "Blame Society Films". I think they are really funny...check out the rest of their stuff.

Congratulations to Me!

What can I say, I'm almost speechless.

Today my "Dan the Proclaimer" video has reached 100 views. With YouTube receiving just 30 million video views a day, I cannot believe it only took 25 days to get 100 viewings!

My next big milestone is 1 million views and based on my calculations I will only have to wait 685 years!

Damn Funny

I watch a lot of stuff on YouTube and most of it is a waste of bandwidth, yeah OK, and possible so is Dan The Proclaimer (see earlier post), but tonight I came across this one which is hilarious (WARNING: Very strong language).

Ascent of La Tournette

Last week my brother-in-law Mike came to stay. Both being keen hill/mountain walkers, we decided we would do La Tournette. This mountain is the highest peak in the region and reaches 2351 metres at its peak. It took 3 hours to walk up and apart from it being a constant ascent it wasn't too difficult. Nearer the summit there is some scrambling over rocks, but chains have been secured to the rock faces to help you. Once you get to the top the views are amazing, Mont Blanc was stunning, particularly as we had almost perfect weather without a cloud in the sky.

At the bottom

Refuge (in case weather gets bad)

Me and Mike about halfway

At the top

Mont Blanc from La Tournette

Am I mad or just not sane!!!!!

Recently I got a new stills camera (early birthday and christmas present). This camera also has a pretty good quality video camera and like, I' sure, most camera techie people know, there is really only one way to test this sort of thing...enjoy...

Retour des Alpages

Yesterday was the Retour des Alpages, which according the Babelfish translates to "Return of the Mountain pastures". Basically, every year on the second Saturday of October, all the animals are brought down from the mountains and are paraded through Annecy old town.

The whole day is dedicated to this event with the entire old town being converted into a huge fair whereby people are demonstrating and selling a variety of things.

We had a really nice day out and I'd definitely recommend it if you are in the area at this time of year.

Tech Stuff: svchost.exe and Windows Update

Yesterday, my machine received the usual monthly batch of windows updates. They appeared to install and everything seemed OK.

This morning, however, was a different story. When windows had booted and had finished loading all the services a message appeared saying svchost has tried to access some dodgy memory. Clicking OK to this message prevented any further programs from running and so the only way to get out was to do a hard reset (switch the machine off).

Booting into safe mode I was able to access the internet and do some searching. I restricted the search to the last week which yielded dozens of other people who were getting the same problem...and the common scenario was that it happened after windows update.

For future reference, if you ever get a similar problem then this link details the steps that I followed to fix the corrupted automatic windows update options. After doing this, everything was back to normal.