Left Right Left Right Left Right

Quick one this - I promise a decent blog update in the next couple of days. My good friend Paul from Plinx has submitted something to the fine website Facebook Animations. Here's the offending article; Me angrily smacking Paul in the chops. Who knew so much entertainment could be gathered from simple two/three frame animations?

This is horticulturally significant

Zombies, eh? Blimey, they're scary. Shuffling along like pensioners clogging up the aisles at Mark and Spencers, these relentless denizens of the undead are relentless and remorseless. And much like HP Customer Services, they absolutely can not be reasoned with and will not rest until you are dead.

What defence to use in the inevitable zombie uprising, eh? Machine Guns? Unreliable and wasteful of ammo. Flamethrowers? Have you any idea how long flesh takes to burn? Do you really want a big walking molotov cocktail shambling towards you? What? You do? You're an idot then. Think about what you've said, and when you're ready to join the realms of the sensible again you're allowed to carry on reading.

Pop cap games have the right idea on how to keep the zombie menace at bay - by enlisting the aid of a species we happily share the planet with, albeit a species that doesn't really owe us any favours. Perhaps it was because some bright spark invented Baby Bio, for in the forthcoming holocaust it shall be the humble plant that aids us in our time of need.

The quite literal title of this foliage versus undead simulator is Plants Versus Zombies. In its simplest terms, it's a (sort of) variation on the old tower defence game - and is one of the most fun, lovingly presented and maddeningly addictive (and stupidly cheap) games I've played in an age.

The sirens have sounded and at the first sign of panic you've holed yourself like some survivalist Alan Titchmarsh straight up in your house, leaving the door wide open for some crazy reason. All the stands between the shuffling decaying masses and your tender delicious brains is your garden - and this is where the fun starts.

From your arsenal of seeds you'll plant your offensive and defensive plants on your lawn as a variety of zombies slowly advance on your position. You'll catch sunbeams as they fall from the sky (or plant your own sunflowers to generate more solar energy) which in turn are used to activate your stalwart arboretum. Need firepower? Plant some peashooters to spit deadly peas at the horde. Need some extra defence (or are of an Irish bent)? Plant some potato mines or Wall-nuts. Each new level unlocks new seed types, until you have a total of 48 different types at your disposal - which is more variation that David Attenborough could ever cover in a six part documentary. Some generate resource, some provide short or long range firepower, some counter particular zombie types and some are just there to earn you extra cash.

The environment changes every couple of levels; at first you're defending your front lawn, but later on you'll be defending your back garden (with its swimming pool) and even your rooftop. Day becomes night, which stops sunlight appearing so you're forced to generate your own.

As well as the considerable number of levels, there are a variety of puzzle modes (the best of which lets you play as the zombies) and endless challenge modes in which you'll take on a never ending stream of the undead attempting to find the perfect combination of defence and offence. And no Charlie Dimmock either, which can only be a bonus.

If there is a criticism, the game never becomes that difficult. On the plus side however, it looks gorgeous, is low-spec to play on the weakest of laptops and absolutely oozes with character, and it's infinitely classier and entertaining than you. And it's fun. And isn't that really what it's all about? And don't you like sentences that start with an "And"?

It's available for a relatively cheap download from the Pop Cap site, and it can even be found on the budget PC shelves (if you insist on getting a lovely box) for a pathetically cheap £5.99.

Drake Rattle and Roll

Do you remember in the early nineties with the dawn of the wonderful invention of the CD Rom when they told us that "interactive movies" were the future? And all we ended up with was excremental on-rails stuff like Night Trap, Mad Dog McCree and Rebel Assault? Well, Naughty Dog Studio have finally gone and done it and made the closest thing to a cinematic experience that I’ve ever played. And not a cinematic experience like Terminator: Salvation either - because that would be shit.I've spent many glorious hours over the last three days playing and beating the truly wonderful Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and can confirm that it’s utterly wonderful from start to finish. Apart from the odd irritating moment (which is more down to my impatient fat handed twat game-playing style than anything else) it’s easily one of the best games I’ve played all year – along with Arkham Asylum.

The first Uncharted 2 game was a pleasant enough tombraider-esque romp with excellent graphics and likeable and well rounded characters. Standing apart from similar games simply down a gorgeous graphical engine and excellent voice acting, it was hard to see how it could be bettered – but Naughty Dog have done exactly that.

The game itself is a globe-trotting romp in search of treasure – one of which is a potentially destructive artefact that the lead baddie shouldn’t get his hands on, naturally. The journey of the hero, tomb-raider and cocky smart arse Nathan Drake, will take him from deep jungles to long hidden tombs to icy mountain ranges - with the occasional high speed vehicle chase and gunfight on the top of a fast moving train thrown in for good measure.

The game is beautiful – as per Oblivion, you’ll spend much of the game simply standing looking at the scenery and the immense vistas you find yourself in. It’s easily the best looking game on any of the next generation consoles right now with utterly convincing environments.

Special mention must go to the quality storyline and stellar voice acting – the actors have been allowed to improvise many of their lines, and it really shows – the characters are believable, likeable, well rounded and the dialogue absolutely shines. I’m still smiling about some of the dialogue in the games closing sequence even now.

Of course, there are inevitable boss fights – but even all of these are excellently done. Even the final boss fight is satisfying, which is more than can be done for the let-down that was the finale of the otherwise excellent Bioshock and Arkham Asylum.

What you’ll take away from this brilliant experience is the little triumphant moments you find yourself in; the first time you perform a stealth kill on the train by pulling a guard over the edge to his death, the moment where you wrestle a chaingun from a soldier and use it on his colleagues.. all perfect little moments brilliantly realised.

I simply can’t rave about this game enough. If you own a PS3 please purchase this game – Games with a level of polish, sheen and love like this come along rarely – especially from big developers. You’ll enjoy it from start to finish, much of your journey accompanied by a huge beaming smile on your face.

Where are those pesky health packs when you need one?

Yesterday morning at 4 a.m. saw another panic attack; Again, stinging pains in my chest and the feeling that I couldn't breathe. The increasingly atrophied sensible part of my brain knew that I wasn't having a heart attack - the fact that it was beating nineteen to the dozen and that I was pacing around was evidence enough of that - this didn't stop the primal instinct part of my brain screaming "Fuck!Fuck!You'reDyingGetSomeHelp!Fuck!Fuck!" at me for two hours though.

NHS Direct were duly called by my ever-patient girlfriend and an ambulance was dispatched. As before, I was shipped off to hospital for a bout of ECG/Blood Pressure fun - along with two lots of blood letting; should have only been one - the first batch haematised on the way to the lab though.

With the pain in a more identifiable point on my body than last time - located most definitely in my sternum that was sensitive to the touch - a diagnosis was made, which both doctors agreed with - that I'm suffering from Costochondritis.

Although patients will often mistake the pain of Tietze's Syndrome for a myocardial infarction (heart attack), the syndrome does not progress to cause harm to any organs. It is important to rule out a heart attack, as the symptoms can be similar. After assessment, doctors often reassure patients that their symptoms are not associated with a heart attack, although they may need to treat the pain, which in some cases can be severe enough to cause significant but temporary disability to the patient.It can also be triggered off by coughing or sneezing.

So there you are; I'm not dying, but still in a considerable amount of pain - and don't feel entirely stupid in thinking I was having a heart attack. Knowing my luck I've ended up with Costcutterochondritis, a much cheaper homebrand variant.

I thought I was going to die today.

I've been feeling grotty since last Friday -a weird clutching feeling in my chest coupled with a lack of circulation in my left and right arms. The latter isn't so new; I've always had poor circulation - however, the former was worrying me. So much, in fact, that I packed up the fags and waited over the weekend to see if the feeling got any better.

This morning the same dull pain was there, but I went to work regardless - the intention being I'd go home if it got too bad and make my way to the NHS drop-in centre in Coventry.

At around eleven o'clock though it got really bad. So bad in fact, that I had to ask somebody to ring an ambulance for me. As I was asking for this, I staggered and nearly collapsed. Somebody sat me down and the ambulance turned up within minutes.

The paramedics lay me down and after asking the usual questions about my allergies to treatments (none), any ongoing medical problems (none) gave me some Aspirin and some spray under my tongue to thin my blood. She confirmed that my blood pressure was way too high and rang ahead to University Hospital in Coventry to get them to prepare for me as a precautionary measure. They injected me with something on the way to prevent anxiety - I was shaking so much as I was absolutely terrified; My breathing was short and my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest - I genuinely thought that every breath would be my last. I can't remember ever being as scared.

I was rushed into Cardio where they stuck me on an ECG and took some blood samples. Tara works at the hospital so came and met me shortly after touchdown. After speaking to a very pleasant cardio doctor called Steve, he verified that he didn't think I was having a heart attack but was concerned as to why I was feeling the clutching pain in my chest. They moved my trolley off to another room where a few doctors came in and asked me some questions (basically verifying what I already knew; that I smoke and drink too much) and took a proper full blood sample. A senior doctor said the worrying thing; That they didn't think it was heart related but needed to establish that it wasn't one of a myriad of horrible other things wrong with my liver, pancreas, kidneys, lungs, etc.

I was rushed into X-ray - a process that took mere seconds - and returned to my bed.

The next hour or so was horrible. I was dreading a doctor walking back in with an anxious expression, pulling the curtains across and telling me the worst. I've punished my small frame enough over the past 38 years for bad news not to be entirely unexpected.

But the news was good; Both blood test and X ray were clear - my organs appear to be functioning at full capacity without anu problems. I was discharged and just told to take painkillers for the chest pain and rest up for a few days; whatever it is should just pass, I've been told - and if it doesn't, I just need to see my GP. What felt like a heart attack was probably just a panic attack; I've never had one before, so have no idea what they should feel like.

So, now I'm back home - dosed up with Anadin and waiting for this chest pain to pass. I'm aware that this blog entry seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill ("individual wastes the time of the NHS thinking he's having a heart attack") but it's my bloody blog and I'll feel sorry for myself all I want. And I got to ride in an ambulance with the sirens blazing, albeit not in a way I'd really recommend to anybody.

No thanks. Yours, God.

For those of you who don't know me (which gathering from the readership of this blog isn't very many of you), some woman has been daft enough to ask me to marry her. Admittedly, I've been living in sin with this woman for more than twelve years now, but still.

To elaborate a little more, I've been married before. I was very young, naive and, with the benefit of hindsight being 20-20 as it is, very very stupid. The marriage didn't even last four years and ended due to me finding out she was sleeping with my best friend at the time - a situation that doesn't make for an ideal marriage, I'm sure you'll agree.

I've grown up a lot since then, and am quite confident that I want to spend the rest of my life with Tara. If only because I've spent a good third of it with her so far, and it's not been all that bad.

Now the problem is that Tara is a Catholic and I'm an athiest. We've discussed it before and came to the compromise that I wouldn't want a full religious service, but that I'd happily have the marriage blessed - for the sake of Taras faith and her beliefs.

Tara emailed the priest of our local Catholic church a short while ago to be told that even a blessing was "problematic". She went to speak to him about this, and was told that even though I'm divorced I'm still officially married in the eyes of God. This strikes me as being unfair, because I can even show God the paperwork that shows him I'm legally divorced - even though being omnipresent, he's more than likely already seen it, so it just seems like stubborn behaviour on His part. Apparently. I can get it 'annulled' by the Church, but - and the key point is that Tara agrees with this - why should I? I did get married - the mistakes I made then shaped me and made me the person I am today - so why should I deny in the eyes of the Church that it ever took place?

All in all I feel sorry for Tara. A faith she's upheld and defended for most of her life has let her down in this simplest of requests. I can be my cynical old self and say "Ho,ho, I bloody knew that would happen. Bloody religion". Pathetic rules written by stubborn old men interpreting the fictional words of some bloody bearded sky wizard.

So Sod it, a non secular service it will be - and it'll all the better for it. If God thinks he's getting an invite now, he can bloody well think again.

Who can't watch the Watchmen?

Being the legal upstanding citzen I am, when I ordered my copy of Watchmen on Blu-ray I decided to spend a couple of quid more to get something Paramount Films are pushing at the moment - a legal digital copy of it on a seperate DVD, the intention being to bung it on my ipod.

The inlay came with a little sheet of paper with a unique code. I dutifully inserted the DVD into my PC and typed in the code when prompted. I was asked whether I wished to transfer the file to itunes or Media Player, and I made my choice, clicked 'Transfer Now' and then -

my PC crashed.

"No worries", I thought, "I'll try again". But oh no, Paramount are wise to my little piracy games. Of course I must be trying to download it a second time so I can distribute it to all my friends, terrorist cells and Blackbeard the fucking Pirate King.

"You have exceeded the maximum number of transfers for this digital copy".

"No worries", I thought (again), "I'll just click on this helpful link and bring this little issue to the attention of the lovely people at Paramount". I followed various links until I was prompted to type my problem in a thoughtfully provided little box. I clicked 'Send' and waited. And waited.After two days of no reply, I tried again. My wording may have been a little more aggressive this time, and I may have mentioned I'd already logged this problem with them once.

That was 3 weeks ago. Having read some FAQ files lurking around their site I have to let them know in writing why my transfer failed - that appears to be in the form of actually writing them a letter, my email won't suffice. Of course they haven't sent me an email to tell me this - in fact it's all been very quiet in my inbox on the Paramount front. So, what I thought was a great idea at preventing piracy has had exactly the opposite effect that Paramount would want - I'm tempted to torrent the fucking thing just so I can watch it on a handheld device.

Good work, Paramount.

New! Pens! Now with ink!

In the advertisement break in the middle of yesterday evenings "You have been Watching" there was an advertisement for Oxford notebooks. Astonishingly, I'm amazed that they hid this groundbreaking ad away at such a late time in the schedules, such was the level of scientific breakthrough demonstrated in it - with such a bold and daring claim at the end which could revolutionise the face of notebooks as we know it.

Notebooks, yeah? Really useful for all sorts of things in life, such as making notes, making more notes and potentially making even more notes than that. Notes on all kinds of things; Mundane notes about Toms telephone number, exciting and even world-changing notes about scientific formulae, inventions, cheat codes for Far Cry 2 and award winning speeches.

But the curse that has gripped the notebook from the beginning of time? The fact that an entire half of it is wasted - If only there were some way, some paradigm shifting concept, that could enable we humble species to write on both sides of the paper.

Well, do you know what? The crafty blighters at Oxford have only gone and done it, and apparently in secrecy as well! Did you see the BBC news articles about this revolutionary new idea? Me neither. It must have been buried in the press with all the news about CERN.

I'm off to order 4. I'm hoping not many of my friends saw the advert, so I'll be the talk of my circle of associates. "Both Sides of the notebook Dave", they'll call me. I'll be lauded as some kind of king. I'll run amongst them, wantonly ripping out sheets and dispensing them to the desperate masses.

Now if only somebody would invent a bag for these Maltesers so the shopkeeper doesn't have to pour them into my fucking hand, I'll be sorted. Oi, Boffins. Get on it.

I love Batman.

There it is, it's in the room. I love Batman. If you asked me who my favourite superhero was of all time, I'd have to save it is most definitely the Caped Crusader. Of course though, before I answered, I'd in fact correct you that strictly speaking he isn't a superhero at all because he doesn't possess super-powers. I'd probably argue this at such length that you'd threaten to hit me, I'd keep banging on, you would hit me, we'd fall out and wouldn't speak for ages and it would just be awful. Lets never fight. It was silly. Honestly, I've forgotten what we were even fighting about now.

To this end I'm quite excited about the forthcoming video game Batman: Arkham Asylum (although to be quite honesty I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl about quite a lot of the releases over the next couple of months - Halo ODST, Beatles Rock Band and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2). I found that the demo of it was available on Sunday and dutifully downloaded it.

The premise is nothing new; Batman ends up a prisoner in the titular Asylum after bringing the Joker in yet again, and the madmen have clearly taken over this particular madhouse. It's a mixture of stealth and combat wrapped up in a lovely Unreal powered shell.

It's great. The voice cast from the Animated Series reprise their roles - (I still think Mark Hamill portrays one of the best Jokers that there has been ever been on the screen; Way better than the frankly overrated Jack Nicholson performance from the Tim Burton film - and Kevin Conroy, voice of Bats, almost outgruffs Christian Bale) - and best of all, it looks absolutely stunning. The combat feels spot-on - simple in execution, but it really gives the impression that Batman is one powerful guy - each punch and kick comes with a genuine weight behind it and he makes it look effortless. The first half of the demo seems to be standard scene-setting with a couple of fights and a simple puzzle to solve.

The latter half, however, is where it comes into its own. You're left in a large arena with several armed thugs, none of whom know where you are. It's a maze of rooms and platforms and they are truly at your mercy. Batman is far from invulnerable - a couple of good gun shots can take him out easily, but you have the darkness on your side. Swooping in and knocking a thug out and hiding above another one and dragging him up into the darkness, it's all tense stuff. A toggled "Detective mode" allows you to highlight points of interest and also gives Bats X-ray vision - you know where all the bad guys are, but after a few of them have been dispatched they begin to panic - shooting blindly at anything that moves, even each other - whilst all the time you can see their heart rates via the Detective mode showing that they're terrified. All proper comic book stuff.

I'm hoping that the full game (released 28th of August - think I'll be booking the day off) is as good - but based on the demo, it looks like it's going to be awesome.

Which is good, because I love Batman. I hope this small review gave that impression.

Dear The Prodigy,

We note with interest your recent comments in the press. Here at the Mercury Music Prize nominations board, we couldn't help but read them as "Boo hoo hoo we didn't get nominated boo hoo it's not fair *sniffle* boo hoo". We all dearly hope that when you made these comments you were looking at the floor looking dejected whilst scuffing your shoes and avoiding eye contact.

You're noted as saying "the Mercury Prize should make more effort to include dance music in its shortlist because that's the type of music that stirs up the emotion" - We ask the honourable gentlemen to refer to your two previous (failed, no hard feelings, ho ho ho) nominations in 1994 and 1997 respectively, and previous nominations for Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, Talvin Singh, Faithless, Leftfield, Basement Jaxx and many other acts that could be categorized as dance music. We believe, and feel free to correct us if we're wrong, that what you meant to say was "the Mercury Prize should make more effort to include our new album "Invaders must die" in its shortlist because we'd really like to win a Mercury Music Prize".

We at the Mercury Board did consider your new album for the briefest of periods - although the general concensus was that we'd all heard the Prodigy Experience back in 1992 and didn't see the point in giving a nomination for what, to all intents and purpose, is the same album.

Yours sincerely,
The Mercury Music Prize

Nokia Music - Dictating what you can listen to since 2008

I've used some bad software in my time - hell, I've even written some of it. I thought I'd be hard pressed to find any music management software worse than Sonys own SonicStage but by golly, I've only gone and done it. iTunes not processor intensive and memory hungry for you? Enjoy the feeling of not being able to actually be outrageous enough to actually try and play any of the albums you've bought? You need Nokia Music!

Those few of you who read this blog can't help but have noticed me banging on about my new n97 and the, shall we say, interesting design features it possesses - I'm glad to see that the firmware patch was eventually released through Orange and actually did fix all the problems I was having with it. However, it'll take more than a firmware patch to sort out the hideous bloatware that is Nokia Music.

My desktop PC - with my previous install of Nokia Music - died a death a couple of weeks back - the fan finally gave up from a heady mix of dust, cat hair, bile and vitriol. Work got me a new one - a lovely HP Compaq dx2450 - and after the dull few hours of getting the typical work stuff on it, I was ready.

Having not been irritated with the Nokia Music bloatware to the point of marching to Nokia headquarters with yet, I installed the client on the new desktop. Dutifully I signed in and lo and behold, clicked on an entry called "Digital Vault" which held all of my previous downloads - brilliant, I thought, clicking the download button to get them all back - within minutes all of the albums were back in my music collection.

But could I play them? Could I buggery. Digital Rights Maintenance (DRM) prevents me from doing so - I don't have the rights to play them. The last time this happened it took two weeks for Nokia to actually sort the issue out, so I'd rather download them illegally, thank you very much. I've already bloody paid for them once.

Spent a couple of nights importing a shitload of albums into it and then went through the rigmarole of trying to assign album cover art to the majority of the ones it couldn't find. Should be simple, yes? No means of finding artwork from the web and copying and pasting like in iTunes - if it can't find it in its database, you're screwed - and, get this, even if it does find it, it spends five minutes assigning the artwork to every single track - you can't do it at album level.

How I pine for the old days of iTunes when a simple button would allow me to synchronize tunes between my PC and mp3 player - nothing quite so elaborate for Nokia Music though; Only a means of setting 'auto-transfer' settings to kick off when the device is connected and it actually recognises that it is connected (which doesn't happen as often as you'd like) and, unless I'm incredibly mistaken, you can only do it by transferring every single tune again. Utter balls.

So, come back SonicStage - all is forgiven. The half hour you would take to import a single album is nothing compared to the amount of time and frustration invested into this shitty piece of Nokia software - would I buy anything from the Nokia Music store again? No ta. I'm old fashioned in that I like to be able to listen to any music I've purchased without an error telling me that I'm not allowed to do so.

What I did at the weekend by David Court, aged 38 and a third.

Neil, who moderates the blog Cleverest Pub in Britain (which I've had linked to from here for ages, and he hasn't reciprocated, the little shit has finally done so, the lovely man) has asked me to do a guest post. Click here to have a gander.

The Nokia n97 - furthermore

So, I've pretty much messed around with every feature on the n97 now and have been using it for a few days; Here's my current verdict:

The Good

1. The keyboard is brilliant to use - and contrary to my post the other day, it is backlit, but only if some fat fingered idiot hasn't disabled the backlighting while randomly stabbing keys with his ungainly sausage fingers.
2. Rather than some convoluted sequence of keypresses (hit the # key, followed by the * key, and take away the first number you thought of) the device can be locked and unlocked by flicking a single switch. A simple yet elegant solution.
3. Typing a text is as easy as anything; Don't want to use the keyboard? Don't worry; tap the screen and get an old style numeric pad appear for old-school texting (with predictive text, if need be).
   

The Bad

1. This may sound like a daft point, but it isn't obvious enough to know which way up the phone actually goes. When I grab it to pick it up, 50% of the time I'm holding it upside down. The single button (and faintly lit) icons which are at the bottom of the device aren't distinctive enough to determine its orientation that quickly.
2. Unlike the Apple store for iphone/ipod touch applications, the Ovi store is pretty poorly stocked. There's really nothing in there I want to download, even for free - my ipod touch is packed to the gills with games and apps, but I couldn't find a single thing of interest in the Noka equivalent.
   

The Ugly

1. The switch on the side that unlocks the phone seems to have a mind of its own; Sometimes when unlocking it it switches the backlight on as well (this is a good thing) and sometimes it doesn't, thus requiring a few locks/unlocks so I can see the bastard screen.
2. The Nokia Music software is dreadful. Apart from (mentioned in a previous post) the fact that my computer is telling me I don't have the rights to play something I've just fucking paid for, it's slow, unwieldy and takes just as bloody long as itunes to rip anything. Downloaded track listings are wrong or missing album covers, if you're lucky enough to actually find them at all. Manually entering track details can only be done one track at a time - Woe betide I might want to label all 11 tracks of an album as belonging to the same bloody album at once.

There's a firmware patch for it released today, supposedly, which will address some of the niggles that users have had. Whereas its slightly concerning that patches are being released less than a fortnight after a phone is launched, it's also promising that Nokia are listening to and addressing the issues with it. I haven't thrown it out of the window or stormed back to the shop with it yet, so the Nokia n97 must be doing something right.

The Nokia n97

And now the blog temporarily becomes "Davids tech review". As an owner of a Nokia N series phone since 2005 with the release of the n70 (and a nokia fan all round, except for a brief flirtation with Sony Ericson and Motorola) , it was inevitable that I'd end up with the next model when the option arose.

Having had a ipod touch for around two months now and loving every little inch of it, I was really tempted by the iphone - The wireless stuff and web browsing on the ipod touch is awesome, and to have the same facilities wherever I went would be brilliant - but to have any model with more than 8gb storage (I have a 16gb touch) is ridiculously expensive from o2 - and as I have a wedding to save up for, I'm trying to drop the price of my monthly phone bill. I'm not willing to pay nearly three hundred quid for a phone and have to sign into an 18 month contract at the same time, especially as I'm trying to get away from o2 who I've found next to useless.

So, the n97. The same gubbins in the box; charger, earphones and controller, thin manual that doesn't really cover anything, an easily mislaid cleaning cloth for the screen and the phone itself. And, Brucey bonus, 20 quid of credit for the nokia music store. Wasn't expecting that.

First impressions after a day of use? Nokia are wise not to market this as an iphone beater. Apple really have it in the bag regarding making a gadget for ease of use. The iphone is way more intuitive in many regards; I've only had to refer to the manual for my ipod touch once, and that was how to do a hard-reset after it crashed.

The n97 has its quirks which I'm learning how to counter step by step. The widgets on the main home page seemed to keep vanishing, until I realised that it was an accidental swipe of the touch screen that toggles them on and off. I missed two phone calls on it yesterday because I couldn't work out how to answer the thing - obvious when you know how but not even touched upon in the manual -a Black and White style gesture to first unlock and then answer the incoming call is needed; not so straightforward in my casino drinking exploits of last night. The facebook widget seems to forget my login details, and - worst of all - when I come back I have to reactive the wireless scanning again to avoid paying for data fees; The beauty of the ipod touch is that whenever I'm in range of my wireless network, it picks it up without being prompted.

It sounds from the above like it's just been a catalogue of disasters, but far from it - I'm starting to love this phone. The build quality and battery power are great, as per most nokia phones. The 32gb of storage is more than enough, and having got past the niggles I'm finding the interface straightforward enough to use. The display is clear and the audio from both video and music are crystal clear.

But - and this is a feature I love - the best thing is its full Qwerty keyboard, the keys of which are large enough to hit and tactile enough to know when you've hit them. If only it was backlit, it would be perfect.

My only major gripe - and this isn't with the phone itself but with Nokias music store, thanks to the twenty quid of free credit - is that I purchased three singles - Two from The Bills June Acklands daughter La Roux (yeah, I'm sorry) and the new Basement Jaxx one and two albums - Angles by Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip and the new 'best of' Faith No More one. All except FNM are fine - Every time I try to play it I'm told that I don't have the rights for playback on it, because of fucking DRM. I've tried their troubleshooting (rename DRM rights folder, blah de blah) to no avail - When everybody in the industry seems to be giving DRM up, why do Nokia insist on this antiquated protocol?

From the sublime to the ridiculous

The last two days have seen me witness dramatic opposites in the field of customer service.

Starting with the sublime; Ordered a new phone (the Nokia N97 - review in the next couple of days; Early tests are promising but with a few annoying quirks) from mobiles.co.uk (the online department for the carphone warehouse). Ordered it by lunchtime on Friday but had a few questions about it and the new Orange contract I was taking - all queries were promptly and efficiently answered by their staff, emails informed me of every step of the ordering and dispatch process, and the phone arrived via Royal Mail at 7 a.m. the morning after. It's unfortunate that it's the examples of good customer service stand out when it should be unusual to get bad service, but all kudos to mobiles.co.uk for an incredibly enjoyable and efficient ordering experience. Unlike my bad experiences with o2, for example, for whom the term 'customer service' is a foul and dirty phrase not to be used in polite company.

And then to the ridiculous; Yesterday evening saw Tara and I meeting up to celebrate our friend Ruths 30th birthday. We were meeting for a meal at Singers Bar & Bistro at the Ricoh arena which would then be followed by spending the rest of the evening at the nearby Isle Casino. After having a few drinks at the bar, we sat down to eat. We were presented with a disappointly brief one page food menu (which, I note from the link above where a .pdf file of one can be viewed is completely different to the options we had last night).

I ordered garlic mushrooms on toast as a starter, followed by pan fried saffron marinated chicken in a chorizo and bean cassoulet for main.

As the starters began filtering out to the table, nobody had even come to the table asking us what drinks we wanted. Members of the party had to scour the place looking for the wine menu - It was only when we asked a waitress to do so that they actually asked us what drinks we wanted; By now, we'd been making our own way to the bar to buy our own thus making her requests redundant at this stage.

The starter? Garlic mushrooms were nice, but so I'd expect for six quid for a small plate of fungi. Unfortunately they didn't provide me with a steak knife, so I'm unable to comment on the stale piece of toast that accompanied it - no way was my measly dinner knife cutting through this hardened beast. Complaints were made; Waiter told us there was no more toast so came back with a small of plate of croutons - by which time, all of us with the same starter had finished all the mushrooms (We'd waited for so long for the starters to arrive, we were all half starved at this stage), so they were quite unnecessary.

The main courses began arriving on tables - well, some of them, at any rate. Steaks were delivered cooked to the wrong requirements with the wrong sauce or no sauce at all (or in the case of our friend Hannah, the sauce arrived in a small espresso cup but the steak sadly didn't arrive for another hour, and even then at the end of the evening when we were all ready to leave - and to add insult to injury, her well done steak was quite, quite rare). Our friend Chandra had a fly in her lamb; "Don't say it out loud or everyone will want one".

My pan-fried Chicken in Cassoulet? The chicken was overcooked and dry, and the heat varied in the cassoulet depending on which quarter of it I approached. Tepid, cold or just right. The Cassoulet was dotted with evil bullets of rock hard chorizo which must have been hardening on a shelf in the sun for six months. Many of our party had been regularly complaining to the staff - we were now at the stage when half of us had finished our meals and meals still hadn't arrived - or had arrived and had been sent back. The menu only had eight options on it, for Christs sake, and none of these were what you could term complex dishes - how easier could it be to get them all out on time?

In the end we only paid what we thought the meal was worth. They gave us free champagne - small consolation - and we all walked out almost four hours after we'd gone in confident that we wouldn't darken their doorstep again. Awful, awful place. The small consolation is the hard worked staff were all a great bunch - odd how the management vanished though the second our complaints became more vocal.

"Our opening times are as follows and booking is recommended for dinner to avoid disappointment"? More like "Our opening times are as follows and we recommending avoiding dinner to avoid disappointment".

As for the Casino? I'm not a gambling man, but people watching is always fun. Watched some guy lose around 600 quid on the roulette tables. Wesley Snipes gave him a bad tip. Gambling idiot.

Drag me to Hull

At the risk of this blog turning into Davids Film Review (or more to the point “Dave moans about films he thought might have been half decent”), I had the pleasure of seeing Sam Raimi’s new horror Drag Me To Hell yesterday evening. For a film that must have cost a tenth of the budget of the abysmal Terminator 4, it was easily ten times as good – and it’s also a fine return to form for Sam Raimi after the bloated crowded mess of a film that was Spiderman 3 – (a film which went wrong for exactly the same reasons that Joel Schumacher single-handedly temporarily killed off the Batman franchise – a case of “lets throw as many villains into the film as we can!” – both films are of the school of ‘lets throw enough shit at the wall – some of it is bound to stick’)

Drag Me To Hells story is clichéd as hell and nothing original – it tells the tale of Alison, a humble (yet ambitious) bank worker who pisses off a gypsy. Before you can say “Two pounds a go on the dodgems” or “Want to buy some lucky heather?” she is subsequently cursed by our aforementioned peg-seller and all hell (literally) breaks loose as she finds herself in a fight against time to stop herself being (ta-daaaa) dragged to hell!

It’s laden with Raimi’s typical hyperkinetic directorial style and filled with lashings of Tex Avery style cartoon violence – (At one stage somebody drops a conveniently hanging anvil onto someones head, for petes sake). There are few parts of the human body that don’t end up flying around in its perfectly paced 90 minutes - It’s not quite Peter Jacksons Braindead, but it’s not all that far off it. It’s a cliché to refer to a film as a roller coaster ride, but this sums Drag Me To Hell up perfectly. It barely lets up, is genuinely scary (especially considering it’s only a certificate 15) and I was entertained throughout.

On another note, I’ve just ordered a spanky new Nokia N97. I really wanted one of the new iPhones, but I’m that pissed off with O2 and that flabbergasted by the prices of them to get anything 16 gig or over, I’m changing service provider and getting the new Nokia flagship model. Reviews on the web seem vary varied, so I’m slightly worried it’ll be shit – but I’ve had an N series Nokia for around five years now, and I’ve been thoroughly impressed by them so far.

McG and Uwe Boll, you're first against the wall when the revolution comes

After being misled by positive reviews by the (usually trustworthy) sources of Empire and Death Ray and being admittedly quite excited by the trailer and write-ups I'd read, I made the mistake of going to see Terminator: Salvation yesterday evening with some friends.

The only two positive things I can take away from the evening is that (1) My friends are still talking to me, and (2) It features the excellent Michael Ironside who is guaranteed to enliven even the shittest B Movie.

I'd honestly thought it was scientifically impossible to make a new terminator film and for it not to be better than Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Science, however, has been proven wrong.

I remember as a child watching the original Terminator, watching the future war scenes and thinking "Wow. I would love to see a whole film about this". Along with all those people who demanded another Indiana Jones film after the first three, I say this - be careful what you wish for.

Friend of sound engineers worldwide Christian Bale stars as John Connor, gravelly voiced (and seemingly inept) leader of the human resistance, a team of phonomenally well equipped perfectly coiffured freedom fighters. It's reassuring to know that even after the machines have all but wiped out mankind, that dental and hairdressing establishments are seemingly thriving. The resistance have discovered a crate labelled "plot device" that could end the war against Skynet once and for all. Or at least a tiny bit of Skynet, or there wouldn't be a sequel.

There now follow a series of special effects and many, many explosions. Occasionally the film threatens to add character development but luckily McG rescues us from this just in the nick of time.

The post-pub pick-apart conversation was more fun than the film itself - there are spoilers in this, but if this bothers you I don't really give a shit - If you're going to see it, you deserve everything you get. Questions posed were as follows; What does skynet actually want? Why doesn't it just use poison gases (and poison humanities collective asses)? How come the (admittedly cool looking) Motorbike terminators have "collision control" allowing excellent driving skills, but fail to see a rope strung across the road in plain daylight? How can a military field hospital perform heart surgery on two subjects they haven't even checked for compatibility? If T-800s have nuclear fuel cells capable of levelling a small city when destroyed, how come Sarah Connor didn't wipe out herself when crushing the T-800 at the end of the first film? And lastly, why?

Tara thought it should have been called "Terminator: Nonsense and explosions". She's spot on.

For time travel dramas, I'd recommend the excellent Timecrimes. Rubbish name, excellent film. Low budget with a small cast, but tightly plotted and entertaining throughout. It shits on high-budget high-testosterone no-brainers like Terminator: Salvation from an obscenely great height.

Sucking all the fun out of the room

As a brave new internet experiment (I.e. something that could go very wrong, or worse - be completely ignored) I've created a new blog Killing the Joke. In league with the lovely Paul "Full" Nelson (author of the fantastic blog Plinx - which, if you haven't seen it yet, I urge you to do so. He's a legend at finding entertaining stuff on the web) we aim to deconstruct all of your favourite jokes in true post-modern fashion until very little humour remains. Have a look and submit something before it dies a death. PROMOTION ENDS.

As an aside recommendation in order to give this thread some slight credulity, if you haven't yet seen The Wrestler, I implore you to do so. A deserved oscar nomination for Mickey Rourke, and one of the most heartwrenching films I've seen in an age.

Pointless bloody remakes

I am currently annoying myself by watching Quarantine. For those of you who don't know, it's one of those Blair Witch style steadicam films (much like Cloverfield, that film that I quite liked but everybody else seemed to hate) done in a psuedo-documentary style. It's not the handheld stuff thats upsetting me though - in fact if anything that aspect of it is very well done - it's the fact that it's a remake of a far superior film called [REC]. The amazing thing is that [REC] was made way back in the depths of 2007 - a whole two years ago.

I knew I'd be annoyed by it but watched it out of grim curiosity, hoping that the plot might be slightly different - It's not, though. So far it's almost shot-by-shot identical. So, this begs the question "What is the point?"

[REC] is spanish in origin, and subtitled throughout. Are people that loathe to read subtitles that they'd rather watch an inferior copy of something? Does anybody out there really notice that subtitles are even there after the first couple of minutes?

Another excellent film shortly to be released over here - you may have seen the adverts on TV - is the beautiful and haunting vampire film Let The Right One In which must be one of the best films I've seen in the last decade. This one is also being remade in Hollywood - It's less than a year old. It beggars belief.

Anybody who would rather see a shoddy remade made so that stupid illiterate people can read it deserves all they get. Perhaps we'll hit a stage in history where Hollywood can remake a film while the original is still being made - maybe even release it a little sooner. I've already started plans to try and get my remake of Transformers 2 ready before the end of next week - to make it more appealing I'm going to make the explosions even bigger and have a large breasted supermodel explain whats happening in the story so far in a childish voice whilst jumping on a huge trampoline. On the top of a building. Which is made out of robots. Which is on fire. And in space.

Go and watch [REC] and Let The Right One In and restore my ever dwindling faith in humanity. Fucks sake.

Foeti with Toni & Guy loyalty cards

Yesterday evening saw The Young Knives perform at the Kasbah in Coventry - I hadn't set foot inside the Kasbah for at least eight or so years, and it had a different name back then - The Colosseum. It's gone by a few names over the years, The Tic-Toc club, The Colosseum, Uncle Franks Happy Drinkydrink boozy good times emporium, to name but a few.

My memories of the place are of clubbing on a Thursday night in the days when I could get home at three a.m. in the morning and still be conscious and sober enough for work the next day - Now I suspect I'd struggle to be match-fit by the following week.

The Young Knives aren't that popular, so we didn't prebook and got tickets at door. Tara got asked for ID ("Are you 18? No, I'm 29") which made her night and upon entry we were made to wear a wristband - turns out the wristband wasn't for gig entry, but to allow you to buy drinks. The gig was open to those of age 14 and over, and there were a fair few infants roaming the place.

Tara overheard some pre-pubescent waif in the toilets whining to her friends about how she couldn't buy drinks because they refused to give her a wristband without ID ("I only came here for a fucking drink and I don't want to sit through this shit sober"). £12 to get access to a gig you don't want to see solely because you might be able to get a drink? Aren't all self-respecting underage drinkers clogging up the alleys and street corners these days drinking 20-20 and Stella? And they say there's a credit crunch on.

The gig was great - because of low ticket sales they got moved to a smaller (and crammed) room, but if anything the smaller stage suited them well - but balls to this, I'm not reviewing the gig. After they'd finished we decided to hang around for a bit - it's a fair walk from any other pubs so we thought we may as well grab a few more drinks at the Kasbah before heading home. After a short while it became obvious that all the other gig attendees had fucked off home, and pretty soon it became obvious why.

Being old, I'm no stranger to feeling out of place in clubs. This place took the fucking biscuit though - and a Farleys rusk at that. The dance floor was full of what I can only describe as children - it was as though a creche had exploded. All of them with absolutely immaculate hair and identically dressed, all looking they were in the audition phase to play the same character in Hollyoaks. I'm surprised that in true Bugsy Malone style the bar staff hadn't pressed some hidden button and uncovered several taps of Biactol and Garnier Fructis on draught. And the music? Fuck me - again, I've been in clubs where I wished they'd play something more than ten years old but I'm ashamed to say that I didn't recognise a single tune in the half an hour or so we dared to stay there.

The past is like the place where you did all them murders - you can never go back.

So Say We All

So, after five years and four reasons (and a potentially destructive writers strike) the genius that is Battlestar Galactica comes to an end. The final double-part episodes are downloading to my PC as I write this, and I'm both excited by the prospect of seeing how it ends - but saddened by the fact that there won't be any more. There's both a made-for-tv prequel movie and a spin-off prequel series, but they won't be the same- they won't be about the crew of the people I've been watching for five years.

Critics and the like will bang on endlessly about how Galactica is a "post 9/11 drama" and how it "neatly parallels the war on terror". This may be true, but I'd prefer to see it remembered as simply a damn fine character driven piece of expertly written Sci-Fi.

For those of you who either avoided it through remembering the cheesy 1978 television series or simply because of a hatred of science fiction, I implore that you watch this series. Other than the basic premise, the series is radically different from its 1978 source and the sci-fi elements in the series have always been secondary to character development and story - not watching it because it is science fiction would be like not watching "The Wire" because you never enjoyed "The Bill".

I know the end will be painful to watch - what makes this programme stand out is the utter bleakness. Every character has gone through the emotional and physical wringer so far, and it can't possibly have a happy ending for any of them.

I won't say that it hasn't lost its way at times. Sometimes I yearn for one of the incredibly shot space battles that dotted the first two seasons and occasionally it has a dodgy episode, but it always finds its way again - unlike Heroes and 24 for which an incurable rot has set in.

So, short spoiler-free summary because I want those of you who haven't watched it to do so. It's one of the best TV shows made in the last twenty years. So say we all.

RL Update: Mum doesn't find out whether the radiotherapy has worked until the first week of April. It was also my birthday on Wednesday. 38 at last. Hurrah.

Who watched the Watchmen?

Me, thats who. In an earlier post I mentioned how I considered it sacrosanct and unfilmable, how any filmed work could never do the source material justice, blah de blah de blah. Well, it would appear to be a monumental day indeed because it's a day that the "Things David has got wrong" notice board gets another entry. This takes the noticeboard up to 17 items now.

There are going to be spoilers in this review by the way, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't fucking blame me. Go and see it.

Zack Snyder (previously of the way-better-than-remakes-should-ever-be Dawn of the Dead remake and the juvenile but beautiful 300) has done a brilliant job of capturing not only the essence of the source material but also gone some considerable way of replicating its look and style. I've owned the graphic novel since 1985 and its worn out cover and pages are testament to how many times I've read it - Looking at again, it's clear that Snyder has almost used the comics as a storyboard - many scenes are identically framed and paced.

From the opening scenes with the death of the Comedian and the utterly fantastic opening credits - (I can't wait for the DVD release just to watch the credits again, they really are that amazing - Even having Bob Dylan singing over the top of them didn't annoy - thats how good they are) - I was transfixed. I was still prepared for a let down though; I remember being transfixed in Judge Dredd at the opening shots of Mega City One, but we all know how shit that ended up.

It's a long film, but it's a long book. The screenplay does a brilliant job of weeding out elements that seemed critical in the comics at the time (The origin of how Rorscach got his distinctive - and brilliantly realised in the film, by the way - mask, the Police interviewing Dan Dreiberg and subsequently raiding his apartment and discovering his true identity, etc) but would have slowed the pacing of the film and been quite unnecessary.

Kudus to Jackie Earle Haley for his portrayal of Rorscach - Exactly as I imagined him in the comics. Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Patrick Wilson (who I'd seen before in the excellent Hard Candy) as The Comedian and Nite Owl are also pitch-perfect performances. The only real let down was Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre 2 - a dreadful piece of acting. She seemed completely incapable of conveying any emotion whatsoever - more wooden than the scenery.

From the trailers and clips I didn't think Doctor Manhattan would work - However, 90% of the time he's an absolute triumph. The only genuine superhuman in the film, his origin tale (however cliched - scientist gets super powers by an accident at work) is spot on. I have always personally felt that there aren't enough glowing blue penises in films, and Watchmen goes some way to redress that balance.

Bad points? An unnecessary and quite embarassing sex scene towards the final third of the film that all seems a bit gratuitous for my liking, and the fake prosthetic nose on Nixon made him look a spitting image version of himself - but thats pretty much all the criticism I can muster.

The ending has been changed somewhat from the comics, but if anything I think this new ending makes more sense. I don't think the original would have worked on the film - If anything it would seem a little far-fetched and out of touch with the realism the film is trying to convey. We've already accepted Doctor Manhattans powers - a faked alien invasion would have seemed a little out of place. If anything it gives greater justification for Jon deciding to leave Earth permanently as well.

So, I was wrong. Watchmen deserves a hearty nine and half smily blood spattered badges out of 10.3 smily blood spattered badges. It's not perfect, but it's damn close.

..and the accompanying picture for this review? Look here. The second picture was made by yours truly.

Gigiquette

YOU. Inexperienced in the ways of the "Gig"? Worried that you might appear out of place, or not enjoy yourself as much as you possibly could? Worried that the entire evening might not centre entirely on you? Fear no more! With this simple guide to Gig Etiquette you'll appear to all and sundry to be a seasoned concert goer, and you'll simply fit right in!

1. It's easy to be mistaken into thinking that at larger gigs that the band may possibly have discussed or rehearsed their set list. Surely they didn't get famous by simply turning up and hoping for the best? You'd be completely wrong. Bands, regardless of how famous they are or how long they've been performing simply love a surprise and the whole evening is basically an excuse for some fun improvisation. If you have a favourite song that the band haven't played yet, why not shout out the name of the song at every conceivable opportunity? The band might not hear you when they're playing so it's probably best if you wait until the quiet between songs when the singer is attempting to speak to the audience. Every time you shout the name out it'll win them over a little bit more and eventually they'll simply have to play the song you've asked for. Set list be damned - this is all about you, the fan! Maybe even the lead singer is growing a little tired of your chants and asks you to stop because maybe, just maybe, you're intimidating some people and he'd like to be heard between songs - but what the fuck does he know, right? It's YOUR time to shine.
   
2. Many a band member would love to know more about their fans - If you happen to come from the same town/city/region as any of the MANCHESTER! band members, why not again take the opportunity of the quiet between songs (or "You time" as this period is officially known in the industry) to PRESTWICH! shout out this place name? This will cause the band to form a special bond with you - After all, what are the chances of you coming from the same town/city/region? Again, be extra MANCHESTER! careful to do this multiple times - the huge importance of this fact won't sink to the average band until you've screamed it at least ten times or so.
   
3. Is the gig particularly crowded and busy but you're desperate for a drink or the toilet? Don't worry about it! Everybody in the room feels exactly the same way - To this end, nobody will object to you barging your way through the crowd several dozen times in the same evening without asking for permission. There are too many people to say "Excuse me" to, right? They'll all understand - It's the gig way. and don't forget - ultimately this evening is all about you. Be careful not to combine your bar/toilet visit into a single trip though - You have the potential to make hundreds of new friends on your journey, so why not make the most of it?
4. You've paid more than twenty quid for a ticket, made it all the way to the gig in one piece, you've managed to both request four songs (which haven't been played yet, but give it time, right?) and every member of the band knows exactly where you're from and pushed all your way to the front - why not round off this perfect evening by starting a fight? Despite the fact you can't move because you're shoulder to shoulder with the people around you, why not take offence at every jostle or knock you take by simply punching somebody? Security will have a whale of a time barging through to remove you from the building, and eh, encores are for losers, yeah?

..and that is it. You are now prepared for the gig.. and remember, if all else fails... MANCHESTER!

...

Thanks to those of you who've passed on messages of support about my mum. Much appreciated.

She started Radiotherapy sessions last Monday, one session for each day of the week. She's also in every day next week, and at the end of it they find out whether it is having an effect on the cancer cluster or whether they need to adopt a new tactic.

She's already determined that she's going to refuse chemotherapy if it comes down to it. Me and Dad are trying to convince her otherwise, but she's always been stubborn. Hopefully it won't come to that - hoping and praying that the radiotherapy will have had some effect - and that it'll never be a decision she has to make.

I'm supposed to be seeing them today for dinner but dad rang last night about some side effects that mum is having from the radiotherapy that means she might have to go back into hospital. Waiting for the phone call so I know what to do now.

...

I was going to write a blog section about how I've bought Wii-fit this week. I was going to spend much of the article arguing about how I know it's no replacement for exercise to shift my beer belly and that I'm exercising as well, but Wii-fit is the last thing on my mind at the moment. They've confirmed that my mum definitely has cancer, and I'm in a pretty weird frame of mind at the moment.

She had a bone marrow biopsy last week - the last check they could think of doing, the cancer was that difficult to trace. Yesterday she got the results. I rang her to find out how the results had gone, and she told me. She has cancer of the bone marrow, it's incurable and they're starting her on radiotherapy sessions in three weeks because they might be able to "keep it at bay".

Tara and I met her and dad tonight for dinner. They're both upbeat about it, and we spoke a little about it (it's aggressive and can pop up anywhere) and what would be happening next. To help her into the restaurant I had to help her walk in, and help her walk out. My mum has always been so active, and it's the fact she's turning into a little frail old woman before my eyes that upsets me even more than the cancer.

I made the mistake of looking on the internet for details about bone marrow cancer. There's one which has a really shit survival rate - only out of three last more than five years. I hope and pray that she hasn't got this particular vicious brand.

I'm just a little bit lost at the moment. I've always been a pessimist and I'm terrified of losing my mum.

Get on your boots

I've just had the aural misfortune of hearing the new single "Get on you boots" by U2. "Ooh, it's a very different sound for them". It isn't. When it finished something was bugging me, so I've just looked up the lyrics on google. Here's a brief excerpt confirming my suspicions:

Future needs a big kiss
Winds blow with a twist
Never seen a move like this
Can you see it too
No income tax, no V.A.T.,
No money back, no guarantee,
Black or white, rich or poor,
We'll cut prices at a stroke.
God bless Hooky Street,
Viva Hooky Street,
Long live Hooky Street,
C'est magnifique, Hooky Street,
Magnifique, Hooky Street,
Hooky Street (to fade)

Twitter

Having been reminded of its existence by an email from it telling me I had a new 'follower'*, I've discovered the simple joys of twitter again. I'm FoldsFive on it. Why not become a follower and subscribe to several days of activity and then weeks of silence as I forgot completely about it, much like my blog?

* It all sounds rather cultish when put like that.

The most convoluted pie metaphor so far this year

For the second time in two years, my Xbox 360 has once again rejoined the choir invisible. It started playing up just after Christmas, struggling to run Far Cry 2 in much the same way as an asthmatic one lunged one legged pensioner has difficulty climbing the post office stairs. The occasional failure to read the disk or, my all time favourite, simply freezing mid game made me think that something was afoot - and indeed, a few weeks later it finally gave up the ghost. The dreaded three Red Rings of Death! One email to Microsoft, a UPS packing label, phone call and jiffy bag filled box later saw it winging its way back to Frankfurt for repair. Ironically, this means my 360 will probably end up having a better and more exotic holiday than me this year.

My PS3 must have been surprised to find itself being switched on for gaming purposes. It's more used to playing Blu-ray disks and torrented movies burnt to DVD at the moment, so I'm not surprised it simply refused to run my dusty copy of Motorstorm. Deciding at the weekend that I would really be hard pressed to find the critically well received Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (one of the launch titles for the PS3) any cheaper than £12, I decided to treat myself.

And what a treat! It's like a prettier Tomb Raider with an infinitely more likeable lead character - I can't stand Lara Croft. She may as well have a sticker hanging off her too-perfect arse reading "Custom designed by lecherous male committee for your demographic".

It shamelessly nicks the best bits from other games; The duck and fire mechanism is stolen straight from Gears of War, the treacherous jumping from platform to platform from the aforementioned Tomb Raider (clearly its biggest influence). The locations are exotic, varied and attractive - the plot entertaining and convincing enough. It also has a decent caliber of voice acting; the hero Nathan Drake and his sidekick Elena Fisher are good foils for each other, and the dialogue is well-written and authentic.

I'm racing through it and enjoying every minute - Investigating hidden tombs, engaging in high-speed vehicle chases, having gunfights in abandoned castles, fleeing through canals on a jet-ski. Niggles? The puzzles are of the "Solve Puzzle Yes/No" variety - "Ooh, a picture of four symbols with numbers by them. I wonder if I have to press the buttons with the same symbols in that order. Well, whaddyaknow!" - and I have the horrible feeling it might just abruptly stop.

But, all in all, thoroughly recommended - especially for the cheap price tag. I might have to do the same with Enchanted Sword now and some of the other early PS3 titles that shops can't even give away now. If I was inclined to provide a score, and its my blog so I'll do what I want, I'd give it 8.13 FoldsFives out of 11.07. If I wasn't inclined to provide a score, I wouldn't. Think on that.

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is in sharp contrast, entertainment wise, to the disappointment that was the final issue of the DC epic Final Crisis. Issues #1 to #6 were brilliantly written and paced installments of what culminates here in an absolute mess of a comic. I'm a big fan of Grant Morrison but I've really missed the point with what he's tried to achieve here - major events are shoehorned into a single panel ("Aquamans back!", "Hawkman, Hawkgirl and Mr. Terrific are dead!")and it's difficult to tell whether elements of the tale are in real time or flashback. It's incredibly confusing and a poor end to a brilliant saga.

And did the DC universe really need to see Captain Carrot and the fucking Zoo Crew again? For fucks sake. If Final Crisis #7 were a pie, it would be a delicious looking yet vile tasting pie with too many ingredients in. Which was overcooked. And hidden within five other pies. And it would only be a picture of a pie, and not actually be a real pie.

Update Schmupdate

New Years Resolution: Must update blog more.

Well, another resolution fucked up :) Still, this can be the first of a flurry of posts now life is returning to normal and I'm discovering the existence of free time again.

First, my mum. Regular steroid treatments have definitely caused the lymphoma to shrink, but she's been in and out for regular tests to find exactly where the cancer is. Two weeks ago she started losing her balance and found herself incapable of walking, and now the doctors think they may have damaged her back whilst performing a variety of biopsies. Her and dad just came to visit, and it was good to see them again. She's in good spirits, although worried - and dreading the doctors cutting into her back again.

Secondly, work. The product has reached the finals of an industry award which is being presented next month. This is one rare thing in my life I'm being very smug about; I did 99% of the work on it, after all. Sometimes seems all the hard work was worth while - the customer is happy, and that makes me happy.

Anyway, I promise regular updates in future. I have a lot to blog about now, so watch this space. Pax.

A brief period of calm

Wow. What a few months it has been. I've a lot to get off my chest, so excuse me if this blog comes across as more of a sprawling rant than the others!

The big project at work went live on time, but not without a herculean effort. We took on another member of staff but she turned out to be just as poor as the first guy (although it took us longer to discover this and was only really uncovered after her multiple attempts to sabotage our efforts). To this end (and I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, merely stating the truth) I pretty much developed the entire system myself and it nearly killed me. 7 odd weeks working 7 days a week, up to 15 hours a day. My boss and I nearly fell out on a number of occasions, such was the level of stress, and I'm sure I must have written a letter of resignation at least half a dozen times during the project.

The customer has been running the software for around a month now and apart from the odd minor glitch (not unexpected in a development that, due to the nature of the project and the timescales I was making up as I was going along) seems to be doing exactly what it says on the tin. Customer is happy and telling us that they will need to enhance the software in the new year to cover the rest of their UK operations and not just London.

The 7 weeks was made worse by the fact that Mum has been ill. What she thought was a back ache turned out to be two collapsed vertebrae and during the treatment of this (by creating concrete replacements) they've found cancer in the form of lymphoma in her back. They start finding out how to treat this next week, but it's a huge worry for all.

On a positive note though, I have a new member of staff - as of a fortnight ago I had two but one of them quit three days into the job - I don't think our company suited her. He's a nice guy, gets the job done and is proving to be a good assistant. I'm interviewing again next week to fill in the final position - All working towards me being able to have a holiday!

So, fingers crossed I'm entering a period of calm. Hope you all have a great christmas (those of you I don't see or speak to before then) and hope all is good.

Lifes small pleasures

* Watching somebody rush around in a panic attempting to find a flat surface to put a tray of hot drinks onto before they sneeze.
* Being half awake at 5 a.m. in the morning worrying that you have to go to work, and then remembering its the weekend.
* Hearing the lovely chirrup sound that my cats make when they're happy to see me walk in the door.

Dictionary Corner

Crab-apple [krab-apuhl]

verb
1. fail to do something twice in a row; "Tara tried to kick the small, sour, wild apple down the street but missed. Angry at being laughed at for failing, she attempted to do so again and crab-appled."

Dogging the Bounty Hunter

I've just caught the opening credits for that glorious show containing everybodies favourite eighties reject should-be-playing-the-saxaphone-in-lost-boys mercenary "Dog the Bounty Hunter".

If you've never caught this show, it really is quite remarkable. Dog and his terrifyingly large breasted wife hunt down and capture ethnic minorities (Puerto Ricans or Mexicans, mostly) who have skipped bail. Dog himself looks like Chuck Norris with shitter hair and his redneck family of retards don't need to arm themselves with guns because they're protected by Magic Jesus forcefields, or something. They protect themselves solely with prayer and through being American, although in one of them Dog may well have whipped the halo off his head and threw it at a criminal like the Glaive from Krull in order to incapacitate him. I might have dreamed that last bit.

The best thing about the show? In the opening credits it reminds us that Dog is a professional and that in the NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY Do not try this at home.

A what now? "Do not try this at home?" Is this show genuinely telling me that I shouldn't carry out bounty hunting activities within my own property? I have six bail-skipping Hispanics hiding out behind my sofa eating me out of house, home, tequila and green shield stamps and there's nothing I can do about it? Wankers.

Glum with a capital G

Yesterday I had to sack somebody. It's something I've never done before, but something I felt to do - but more on that later.

When I started with my current employer (almost ten years ago to the day) I was one developer in a team of five. I'd been headhunted from my previous job, and all seemed well for a while until the companies fortunes turned bad and one by one the developers were made redundant. Work would briefly pick up again and we'd employ somebody else, but it seemed for a while that being trained by me in any skill was the kiss of death. Getting trained up by me and then being made redundant wasn't that unusual an event.

We moved offices and things seemed to be okay again, but then we lost a major support contract (not my department, but affected the fortunes of the company all the same) and things got a lot worse.

Two years ago I found myself the last developer. A very good friend of mine who I worked with was the last person to be made redundant. It was bad for a while, but ultimately there wasn't a great deal of work - just enough to tide me over in new development and supporting existing products.

Recently however (I.e. in the last month or so) things have picked up again in a major way. We've scored a huge contract that could potentially change the fortunes of the company forever - five years minimum with serious money associated. I was told by management that we simply had to employ new people and this is understandable. I can't support existing products as well as develop the new one in a very short timescale.

We approached an agency who have usually been reliable in the past and interviewed two candidates. The interview was very informal (as is the way of my company) and both candidates were very good. After deliberating over which one to choose over the weekend I made my decision and the guy started last Monday.

The initial day went very well; he was asking the right questions, seemed to be picking things up and was all in all a very nice chap. Polite yet a little quiet, but I was upbeat about the whole thing.

Tuesday was when we showed him the systems and what he would be doing. He looked a little bewildered but that was fair enough - there was a lot to take in. I showed him the programs he would be required to learn and change, and that was when the trouble started.

I left him alone for an hour thinking he was studying the Oracle forms code, but when I checked up on him a window was visible in his toolbar reading "Oracle tutorial" that he'd quickly hidden. I gave him some simple functions to write but by the afternoon after poring over them for several hours he admitted he'd never written a function in SQL - pretty basic stuff, I would have thought, especially considering his CV revealed him to be a skilled developer "in both commercial and academic fields".

That evening I didn't sleep very well. I wasn't sure which way to take this - was I being too demanding or was it that he simply didn't know what he was doing? I described my concerns to my managing director the next day and said I'd leave it a few hours and give him some simpler tasks.

Simpler stuff still confused him equally. I could hear him tutting, turning pages noisily across all the documentation I'd given him. Stuff I'd explained to him three times still confused him and my heart sank.

I met my MD outside while he was on a cigarette break and told him I didn't think it was going to work. I'd already wasted two and a half days trying to train this guy and didn't want to waste any more. My MD offered to do the deed but I thought it fairer coming from me - I was the one he'd been working with and it would have been insulting to him for the words to come from anybody else.

I took him inside a side room and explained the situation. I needed a developer I could rely on and one who could work quickly, and that I thought he was out of his depth. I explained that I thought he would struggle, especially when the work started becoming more and more difficult over the coming weeks. My MD wouldn't be as tolerant as me waiting for code, and that we would have to let him go.

It became apparent that his skills didn't lie in the work he had applied to do at our company. Whether this was the fault of the agency who had put him forward for the job, or this individual in exaggerating the skills on his CV - Meh, it didn't matter. We shook hands, I told him we'd pay him for the full three days and he was gone. I felt like shit, despite the fact I also felt more than slightly cheated.

Ultimately though, we now need another developer. I had the bright idea of approaching one of my old friends - the last guy I'd worked with there - and we met up this evening to discuss it. I'm not very eloquent and I don't think I could adequately put over how good an opportunity this is. This contract could be incredible for our business and I could comfortably see myself in charge of a large department of people again because of it, and I'd desperately and genuinely like him to be a part of it.

He replied that he was interested but at an unrealistically high fee that I couldn't even put before my managing directors. I explained that we couldn't meet that, and he took it okay, but it doesn't help with the fact that I feel like utter shit. I had this perfect vision of me working with again - we were a fantastic development team, the two of us - but that is not going to happen now.

I'm feeling more than a little down. I wish I could explain the potential of this new business better, but I clearly didn't. A more eloquent man, a salesman could have convinced him, but I can't do so. He's been let down once by my company, and his reluctance is understandable.

Apologies for length - I just felt the need to rant. See ya.

What do you call somebody who hangs around with musicians?

It's Saturday night, we've got good friends round, we've all piled round Toms new house (where he has only one neighbour and there is more potential for loud noise) with my XBOX 360 and Rock Band. Admittedly Tom has a 360 of his own but the last time we tried it on his console we found an issue whereby his console wouldn't recognise any of the songs on my hard drive which we'd purchased seperately. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem, but I'm anxious to play some of the songs I've bought for it - specifically some of the Pixies stuff.

We've had a few drinks at this stage and we're ready to ROCK. By "Rock", of course I mean we're ready to "stand there and play pretend instruments and sing to a backing track and be judged on our accuracy accordingly".

Two songs in and Tom notes that something is wrong - he keeps failing at the drumming parts. Ordinarily we'd just drunkenly accuse him of being shit but he's actually very good at the Rock Band drums - Me? I just can't get the hang of them.

The problem is quickly identified - the drum pedal isn't actually doing anything. Have the makers of the game identified this as a potential issue? No - without the drum pedal working we can't actually use the drums. It's impossible to keep the score high enough to stay in the game having missed so many notes. An attempted field repair does no good - Interesting to note that the actual drum pedal trigger itself doesn't have any moving parts - I presume it works by magnets or by some kind of impact sensor.

So, off down to the pub to drink more and then we play it again when we get back - two guitarists and a singer, but it's not the same. Still, it's enough to keep us busy until 4 a.m. and great fun is had by all. Although I've found that I'm incapable of singing "Tom Sawyer" by Rush.

The box clearly states don't take any damaged components back to the store you bought them from; I'm spoiling for a fight and preparing for an argument on some warranty forum about how I've paid a small fucking fortune for a game that doesn't work properly, but their site seems very straightforward and within minutes I'm told a drum pedal will be whisking its way to me.

That was four days ago, however, and looking at the EA support forums now my request hasn't even been changed from the status of "New request". The replacement USB hub I asked for at the same time (The one I got with it originally only had two ports working - I have other USB hubs but the official one didn't work - so why not get a replacement?) has arrived in the post as of this morning which is some going on EAs part.

Not all that interesting a blog entry; It will just be interesting (to me at least) to find how long it takes EA to actually send me a new drum pedal - according to t'web, loads of people have had the same issue with it. In the meantime I'll just accuse Tom of being a fat footed twat and life will continue as normal.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever

As a first time passport applicant (I've been abroad a few times but with the old style child passport) I was sent a letter some three weeks after the initial application inviting me, nay, instructing me to attend one of their offices for an interview.

The purpose of said interview? To prevent identity theft and so I could actually confirm I was me. Now, one thing I'm absolutely fucking great at is being me - I've mastered the skill over the years and consider it to be one of the things I'm best at. Nobody does it better - except for a guy I occasionally see in our City Centre who is almost as good as being me, except he doesn't quite have the edge.

From the list of sites on offer I booked an appointment in their Birmingham one. Admittedly Warwick is closer, but there's fuck all to spend the rest of the day doing - at least in Brum I could wander round the shops afterwards.

I thought it odd I didn't have to take anything along - (Well, actually in hindsight it's not that surprising - I couldn't exactly take my passport to prove who I was, could I? After all they hadn't actually given me one yet).

A part of me would love to blog about my experience; That I was shown into a drab concrete room after having to wait several hours to sit on a hard wooden bench and queue for another two hours. After a while my voice was called through a barely audible tannoy and I was shown into another bare grey room, the scent of misery hanging in the air like a Bridgend teenager. Terrified, I answered barked out questions before being ejected back into the street.

In all honesty, it wasn't anything like that. The staff were friendly, the room clean and large, the interview informal and polite. I'm yet to work out how the system actually works - apparently the interview process hasn't uncovered any fraudsters or bogus passport claims to date.

The questions? Over in ten minutes and none of them that taxing. "How long have you lived at your current address? Your previous one? What are the full names of your parents? What credit accounts do you have?". I got one wrong; I can never remember my dads birthday - I know it's in November, but thats about it. I think that makes me more of a bad son than an evil fraudster.

The passport? Arrived in the post two days later. And I have an excellent passport photograph. Result!

Snake..? Snaaaaaaake!

Well, I've put a good few hours into Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots now and have completed the first act (an act which causes the game to spend three minutes installing more game to my hard drive. Didn't I get a console to avoid all this?).

I approach this review from the perspective of a relative newcomer to the Metal Gear series. I played and completed Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation years back - I thoroughly enjoyed it but found the experience short lived. I'm well aware that from other comments I've read on the web that this one in the series is really dedicated to the fans; There seems to be a phonomenal amount of backstory to these characters that I'm not aware of and even reading 'story so far' posts on wikipedia only satisfies my curiosity about the Metal Gear Solid universe to a certain level.

The game itself? It's a sequence of absolutely gorgeous cutscenes interspersed with the occasional bit of game. Enemy A.I. hasn't moved on a great deal from MGS on the Playstation. Enemies see you, so you hide. After a short period of time they forget you ever existed and carry on as they were. I may be rubbish at it but MGS4 seems to be a lot less about stealth and a lot more about gunfights - the first perspective person mode works very well for this.

Probably the most damning thing I can say is this; With GTA IV I actively looked forward to playing it and completing it - even though I've beaten the actual story mode, I'm still keen to explore every nuance to a fine minutae of detail. I'm in no doubt I'll complete Metal Gear Solid 4 but I'm not actively looking forward to my next session on it. I'll beat it through a sense of getting my monies worth and to see how the story pans out rather than to play it for the sheer enjoyment of it all.

I am very aware that this is a game that may suddenly grab me.. In which case consider this review a work in progress as opposed to the finished article. Time will tell.

Incidentally, this is the first blog entry I have ever made from my mobile phone.. An n95 8gb by the way. Sitting in the merchants pub in rugby drinking a pint of white dwarf. Best phone I have ever had. Hark at david dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty first century.

The Ultimates

Good afternoon, true believers! I thought I'd wax lyrical again about my love of comics - mainly, what the first of a list of things you should be getting your grubby little hands on, if you haven't read it already..

Ultimates Volumes 1 & 2



Reading more like an excellently crafted billion-dollar budget Hollywood film than another take on one of Marvels oldest superteams, "The Ultimates" is the genius creation of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. This great comic takes the classic supergroup "The Avengers" (Captain America, The Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Wasp, etc) and throws them up against world-devastating threats, all to the accompaniment of the some of the best dialogue and artwork in modern comics.

Until you've seen the Hulk make mincemeat out of an alien invasion force because he mistakenly belives they've called him a sissy, or seen Captain America refuse to surrender against overwhelming odds whilst pointing to the 'A' on his mask and asking, "Surrender? What do you think this stands for? France?!", you've never lived.

The beauty of this (and all of the other "Ultimate" stuff that Marvel have done) is that it is essentially a "reboot". Many of the Marvel titles (the X-titles in particular) are so bogged down in a level of continuity that beats most soap operas, that it's difficult to pick up new titles. The "Ultimate" universe is effectively a new take on all of the characters - Indeed, the first volume of "The Ultimates" concerns itself with the supergroup being established - there is no need to know anything about Captain Americas background - and indeed you could get by with not even knowing who he is.

Millars writing and ear for snappy dialogue is easily matched by Bryan Hitches art. Some of the work in this, especially some of the single or double page spreads is absolutely stunning. There is the odd problem towards the end of volume 2 where it would appear deadlines meant the work appears more rushed than usual, but thats a very minor criticism.

The only warning I'd give you is to avoid anything past volume 2 - Neither Millar or Hitch were involved after these and it's no longer the essential reading it once was. Poor script and confusing art simply remind you how much better its predessor was. Both Millar and Hitch are now doing Fantastic 4 - In their hands it's becoming as good a read as Ultimates ever was.

Excelsior!

Metal Gear Solid

I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 4 for around an hour but sadly there is work tomorrow and sleep beckons. First reactions? Cinematic. Epic. Absolutely surreal cut-scenes. (What is that interview with David Hayter all about?) Gorgeous. Funny. So far, very impressive. Proper verdict after the weekend when I've had a couple more hours with it. A review of volumes 1 and 2 of "The Boys" by Garth Ennis as well next week - a comic YOU SHOULD READ. Goodnight, you lovely people.

In the meantime, I strongly recommend you read Sexy Videogameland as well - link to the right in the new fancy blog section. It's a great read.

A new summer game for all the family

As posted on b3ta

The Pixelmash Collection - Star Wars

Because it would appear that via the wonders of google analytics that a number of searches are coming through to this blog via people looking for 'foldsfive' and 'pixelmash', here are episodes 4-6 of Star Wars for your dubious pleasure. An interview I did for some web magazine way, way back about their making can be found here.

Are you ready to rock?

*Backing music stops abruptly*
*Dimmer lights are turned up a notch*
"Good evening, Davids living room! Are you ready to (ROCK/Be subjected to the sight of grown-ups with no shame and who should really know better playing with the largest console peripherals since Steel Batallion was released on the Xbox)*?

..and so it is that the ridiculously expensive but incredibly entertaining Rockband is released on the xbox 360. Comprising of "The band in a box" (large plastic drumkit controller and stand, full size Gibson replica guitar controller and USB microphone) and the game itself and coming in at a value slightly less than the gross national debt of Peru, it's one of the most entertaining multiplayer experiences since the Romans popularised the orgy.

If you've ever played Guitar Hero or any rhythm action game, you've aware of the basic premise. Play/sing along to songs of increasing difficulty with the aid of a fake plastic instrument to increase your score (or in the case of Rockband the number of fans) until you've beaten the game. This clinical description doesn't even begin to describe the sheer amount of fun had whilst playing it. It's important to leave shame at the door - you will look ridiculous playing this game and at some stage you will find yourself moving around in the manner of a drunken dad at a relatives wedding as you find yourself being sucked into the game itself and end up losing yourself in the moment.

Guitar Hero allowed the multiplayer aspect by letting two people play the guitar to a song at once. Rockband takes this further by allowing you and your friends to play as a full four piece band (with the person who draws the short straw getting singing duties) and by letting you customise your on screen avatar to your hearts content to a thing that vaguely looks like you. Albeit a cooler thinner version of you.

Expensive? Yes. Stupidly so. Somebody saw fit to convert the complete set from dollars to pounds simply by changing the currency symbol. Amazon is full of one-star reviews for this game from people (justifiably) complaining about the price. This proves that primarily I'm an idiot with more money than sense, but we're certainly getting our monies worth out of it so far and I can see this getting dragged out at countless parties to come - It's the sort of thing that everybody will want to play, especially where alcohol is involved.

One day I'll beat the stupidly high rift in difficulty levels they've placed between 'Medium' (at which everything is too easy) and 'Hard' (which I can't even complete the first set of songs at). Mind you, I am old and my reactions are terrible - so ultimately this is more a criticism of my elderly hide than anything else.

* Delete as applicable

I think his brain is full

After a brief absence after a problem with hosting, the blog "I think my brain is full" makes a triumphant return. Get your daily 1 of 5 bilious rant requirement here.

Passing visit: Iron Man=ace, Indiana Jones=watchable but meh, Rockband for the 360=fantastic fun, Rockband for the 360+Alcohol=Even more fantastic fun. As you were.

And for my next trick, I'll vanish from the public eye completely.

I note with great interest that the arch nemesis of Eammon Holmes, Mr. David Blaine has set a new world record by managing to hold his breath for 17 minutes and 4 seconds whilst on live American television.

Why the lack of ambition, David? Surely you could manage an hour if you put your mind to it. I'd be willing to stand on the edge of the pool with a team of others preventing to urge you on in your endeavours, by which I mean "prevent you from breathing". *

This would achieve an incredible magical double-whammy; One, you'd break another world record. Two, you'd perform the greatest disappearing trick of all time.

Think about it.

Shazam.

* David would like to make it clear that this is intended as a satirical post and is no way a death threat against the fine David Blaine. This footnote is in no way influenced by the fact that David Blaine may have magical powers and the ability to turn me into a newt.

Grand Theft Anticipation

At 11:15 a.m. this morning the nice man from Citylink dropped off my special edition of GTA IV.

Opening the box and gazing in wonderment at the contents (A black metal safe deposit box containing a Duffelbag, soundtrack CD, art book and the game itself) I realised I hadn't been as excited by a game release in a long time. Halo 3 was probably the last one, and that didn't even compare to this.

The excitement and anticipation had not been in vain. It's been years since I've played a game that has been so entertaining, so well put together, so funny - just so damn complete. It's still the same old Grand Theft Auto - the same perfect blend of sandbox and satire, just better.

It would appear that the stupidly high review scores found on metacritic are quite justified - I can see this game occupying me for months.

See you in Liberty City.

The greatest video game in the world

Couple of things; Look up there. No, not that high. A little bit lower. Lower still. Thats it.. look! A funky new Myxomatoasties logo. Thats brightened up both your page and your life a little, hasn't it?

Some new blogs linked over to the right that are a cracking read. My good friend Paul (Many of you may know him as rhcpaul on the website b3ta and lament the passing of his famed 'link of the day') is writing the blog 'Plinx' which I strongly recommend. The gentleman of the worldly wide web Robin Johnson also has a blog that is a fine read, and finally Sexy Videogame Land is a cracking videogame journalism blog. It of courses goes without saying that every blog linked to on this page is both entertaining and life-enriching. If you go without clicking on any of them, you're a poorer man/woman for it.

Right, the point of the day. Videogames. I LOVE videogames and am actually giddy with excitement over the impending release of Grand Theft Auto IV. I'm a little annoyed that I didn't pre-book it in time so have had to order the special edition of it to be able to play it on release date, but that's purely down to my own lack of pre-planning. I'm sure a GTA bag and safety deposit box (!) will bome in handy somewhere down the line. It had BETTER arrive on release date, at any rate. I have to get my daily kill of running over hookers, drive-bys and drug deals and if I can't do it in GTA IV I'll end up doing it for real and Amazon will be to blame - (Or at least that is what the Daily Mail Editorial will say).

To celebrate the bleep bloop bing majesty that is the world of videogaming, I'm going to force my opinion on you on what I judge to be the greatest games of all time over the next week. Just imagine that its like one of those channel 4 talking head "best of" shows albeit with considerably less Stuart Maconie and Rick "Get an adult haircut" sky.

I'll set the ball rolling with the best of them all. "The best videogame of all time?", I hear you cry in your masses (or, judging by the dearth of commentds that this blog ever seems to get, your ones and twos at any rate), "That is certainly a bold claim to make and a very audacious statement. I'm astonished that you can state such a thing."

The best videogame of all time took place on one low resolution screen, had crudely animated single colour characters (the animation consisted of two frames at most, I seem to recall) and is the single most fun game I've ever had the joy of planning.

I speak of the Spectrum classic "Chaos: Battle of Wizards". As a teen there was a neat gap on a Tuesday afternoon between sixth form and attending a local college to do RSA typing classes - This time saw me and my friend Jon going to my house and playing Chaos for hours. This happened every single Tuesday. For a year.



I had a PDA a few years back, and the first thing I did was seek out a decent spectrum emulator so I could play it again. It was also the first thing I did with my current mobile phone.

For those of you who don't know about it (of which I suspect that there are many - it wasn't a great seller and I haven't met any people who've played it), it is a simple turn based strategy game. Between 2 and 8 wizards (which can be any combination of human or computer players) battle for supremacy over a single screen. A random selection of spells are dished out at the start of the game ranging from fireballs to the ability to conjure up creatures to assist your wizard. Players take it in turns to use their spells in either an offensive or a defensive capacity until only one wizard remains. The state of play can change in an instant; an unlucky player can find himself taken out on the first turn, and even a dismal initial draw of spells can be used to turn the game around.

There are plenty of decent emulators out there and even some decent online java versions to play - The game seems to have a decent underground following on the web, and it's good to see many loved the game as much as I did.

If you decide to play it, have fun. The web has all manner of instructions and strategy guides for it. If you like it, remember the halcyon days of gaming when we didn't need huge cinematic cut-scenes and film budgets to make playable computer games. If you don't like it, you're wrong.

..and finally, using the wikipedia reference above I've just found an excellent remake of Chaos for the PC - completely authentic but a lot easier to understand and play - It's called ChaosFunk.

Dogs can't look up

Ah, the joys of working from home and daytime television (although I see that Billy Murray ad is still running). Carcraft have had a current advertising campaign that opens with a shot of a duck with the voiceover, "Did you know a ducks quack doesn't echo?".

It's just been on television but they've redubbed that bit with "Did you know a duck can't walk without bobbing its head?"

I'd like to think that Carcraft were forced to change this advert after being inundated with letters of complaint along the lines of "Of course a ducks quack has an echo. You fucking duck idiots."

Bigotry, chips and peas

A combination of starvation and hangover last Saturday saw us heading into the fine greasy spoon/chip shop "Buttons" for a grease and cholestrol injection, stat.

We were queueing when an individual in a baseball cap, overweight and late thirties, barged in front of us, thrust a tenner into the managers hand and said "Get me some food to eat and a diet coke. I'm diabetic" and then proceeded to go and sit himself down.

Upon ordering our food (pie, chips and mushy peas - I'm not proud) we went to sit down to find ourselves in the same room as Mister Baseball cap. Upon receiving his meal and diet coke (thats DIET coke, you understand, he was quite vocal about this to the whole room) he announced to the table next to him that he was diabetic. Not the traditional opening gambit used as a greeting, but different strokes for different folks.

The couple on the table next to him consisted of an old dear and her quiet husband, both munching away on fish and chips.

The three of them then spent the next twenty minutes putting the world to rights. We tried to have our own conversation, we really did, but the urge to listen in was too strong.

Drug use amongst teens was first on the political agenda (the overall opinion was that they weren't keen). Social behavioural issues were briefly touched upon in that store detectives must be reluctant to chase after shoplifters because you never know who is carrying a knife. The chairmans diabetes were briefly touched upon again, almost as an aside. Immigration issues were tackled forcefully (too many Eastern Europeans, and they all look swarthy). The thorny issue of global warming was hit head on ("I don't recycle. That Global warming is a con"). Policing issues were briefly touched upon from Mister Diabetic. His black friend (yes, BLACK friend - repeated out loud for those in the room who hadn't heard) had stolen 30 grand from him some years back.

Two highlights stood out for me.

The old lady in the group bemoaned the fact that Prime Minister George (Oh yes, "George") Brown was taking so much money off her she couldn't even afford to eat. The irony was that this sentence was punctuated by at least three gaps so she could continue to shovel fish and chips down her throat.

The second highlight was when they briefly touched upon charity. The diabetics mother had died some time back, and one of her final instructions was to "throw away everything she owned. She didn't want charity getting hold of any of it. All the people who run charities, they're all skimming off the top".

Incredible. It was like a Daily Mail editorial had magically come to live. Perhaps it was an avant-garde performance art piece with the unlikely venue of a Chip Shop in Coventry.

I wish I was braver. I wish I could summon up the courage to lean over and say, "Actually, you're talking bollocks". I wish Tara had done what she wanted to and poured sugar into the diabetics throat. One overwhelming thing, however, stopped me. One thing stopped me standing up and making myself heard and damn it, making a stand.

Those diabetics sometimes carry knives.

Oh, and my television highlight of the week.

Doctor Seuss was never like this

As posted on b3ta

We'll drink and drink at these gigs

Courtesy of Tara and her place of work, we were lucky enough to get VIP tickets to see The Enemy perform at the Ricoh Arena last Saturday. I must admit I'm not a fan, having only heard a few of their songs on the radio, but we had no other plans for the evening and an evening of corporate hospitality sounded entertaining enough.

There was a little confusion when we turned up whether we were actually allowed in the VIP section or not, but shortly afterwards the organiser turned up - and armed with our "Corporate Hospitality Guest" lanyards we found ourselves entering the hallowed sanctum of ridiculously excessive corporate budgets..

The hospitality was taking place in a very nice area of the Ricoh called The Jaguar Rooms. A bottle of Red and chilled white already sitting on the table, complete with a buffet and a free bar all evening. After a few hours of chatting with Tara and her work friends, having doors opened for us and basically being treated like, well, VIPs all evening, I'd almost forgotten there was a band playing. We briefly checked out on the two support bands (going in via the exclusive VIP area and not queueing up, obviously) but the free drinks in the Jaguar Rooms (and the mystery of why Jon Gaunt was in the VIP rooms) were way more appealing.

I am usually uncomfortable with being waited on. It often makes me feel guilty when people do things for me that I'm perfectly capable of doing for myself, and I felt like a fraud. I half expected security to come wandering in at any second, point at me yelling "He's the one!" and dragging me out of the room by my lanyard and depositing me with all of the other concert-goers - I'm ashamed to say though after a few hours of this I realised I could become quite accustomed to nights like this..!

And The Enemy themselves? They sounded like a Sixth form Jam tribute act put together for a second rate Battle of the Bands competition. Either the accoustics in the venue were terrible or the Lead singer genuinely does mumble like he has a mouthful of cotton wool -

"Mmmfff bmmmmf mmmmf Coventry!"
*cue huge cheers*
"Mmmff bmmmf good to be back mmmmf mmmmf bmmmmf Ricoh!"
*More huge cheers*
"Mmmmmf bmmmf mmmmmf we wish we were The Jam! mmmmf bmmmmmf"

Actually, I may have made that last line up.

Credit to them, it must have been great playing for a home crowd like that, but I still prefer The Specials.

You'll have no objection if I pry this gun from your cold, dead fingers now then?

Charlton Heston has died. Good.

Any credibility the man had as an actor was destroyed by his advocacy and links with those pseudo-survivalist psychopaths in the National Rifle Assocation.

The planet is now a fractionally safer and saner place.

During the entirety of his prison sentence, Woodstock marked off the days the only way he knew how.

As posted on b3ta

Stabbed to death with pitchforks amid fountains of my own blood

This article in the Daily Fuhrer terrifies me.

Not because it features lazy journalism to create an absolute non-story ("Anne Diamond decries 18 certificate games for being only suitable for those older than 18") but for one major terrifying factor.

Look at the photograph of her in the article. DO WE REALLY WANT SOME MANNER OF GHOST TELLING US WHAT WE SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE PLAYING? SOMETHING SHOULD BE DONE.

Somebody should complain to the Daily Mail about it.

Pixelmash Movies

After promising I wasn't going to bother again, the urge is increasing to do another Pixelmash movie as it's been more than a year since my last one. In case you don't know what I'm talking about (or simply don't care) all of the past ones can be found here.

The criteria is probably apparent from the ones I done so far; I seem to have subconciously stuck mostly with films made in the eighties - I'm not sure of my reasoning for this. It could be that this was the decade in which I really got into movies, or it could just be that films were better back then. The film has to have a lot of action, or at least some memorable set pieces that everybody remembers about it. Driving Miss Daisy would NOT a good pixelmash make.

Also, despite having done Star Wars Episodes 4 to 6 I refuse to do episodes 1 to 3 - mostly because they were all utter shite.

I've toyed with the idea of Terminator, Predator or even Tron but need some decent inspiration. These things take me a good couple of months and I really need an idea to give me the suitable drive to get it completed - I'm also grateful for any help if anybody wants to contribute.

Meh, just thoughts flying about at the moment. We'll see what develops, if anything at all.

Just because they put an arty black and white shot on the cover, don't fool yourself into thinking you're reading a book meant for adults

J.K. Pissing Rowling and Harry Bastard Potter.

Clearly upset that she's out of the eye of the media since the release of the final Harry Potter Novel, J.K. Rowling must be climbing up the walls in desperation at the lack of attention she's getting.

Last year, terrified that she would vanish into obscurity now her silly childrens books were finished, we had the "Dumbledore is gay" bullshit. I'm ashamed to say I read the first Harry Potter novel if only to see what all the fuss was about (The answer is "nothing" in case you're even vaguely tempted to put up with what I had to) and certainly at no point in that did I ever suspect Dumbledores true sexuality (unless my copy was missing the chapter in which he conjured up some Erasure albums and hid his copy of "Pride" inside the Wizardy Fucking Times or whatever).

From what I've gleaned from people I know who have read the books, it's all absolute nonsense. Just some crap made up to rekindle interest in the books.

J.K. Rowling has found herself back in the news today, having revealed in an interview that she has had "suicidal thoughts". Well done. Have a prozac-coated banana. This again strikes me as an attempt by the Rowling estate to remind us she's still alive, but even this doesn't annoy me as much as authors retconning their works.

Tomorrow in the news - George Orwell returns from the grave to point out that Winston Smith, hero of 1984, was in fact a military cyborg. "It was fucking obvious", claims Orwell, "All the signs were there. Are you STUPID?"

I gave up insisting you call them graphic novels when I realised I wasn't ashamed of the fact that they're comics

Inspired to post this by both a drunken conversation held last night and a brief forum discussion yesterday with the ever entertaining Dan Cross (who has one of the most entertaining and readable blogs out there at the moment), let me briefly touch upon Zack "300 is the most heterosexual film out there" Snyders forthcoming epic Watchmen.

Watchmen was a seminal DC mini series from the 1980s, as guilty as The Dark Knight Returns, Maus and Archie meets the Punisher for completely reinventing the genre and making comics for adults again. By this stage though, gentle reader (I nicked that from Stan Lee) as soon as you've read the word comics you'll already have decided whether you're interested in this or not.

Watchmen is an epic tale, grandiose in tale, regarding retired super heroes in a world that no longer needs them dealing with a conspiracy way larger than any of them can appreciate. It's bold, daring, uses narrative techniques previously unseen in comics and truly is (and its a phrase I'm loathe to use, but will nonetheless) a work of art.

Which is why it should NEVER be made into a film.

I truly am of the frame of mind that some things shouldn't be done because they hurt the thing that made them great in the first place. In drunken conversations I'll often (in fact, probably over predictably so) remark how the matrix sequels ruin the original film. Just because something CAN be done (and in this case, it's special effects boffins realising that some of the visual effects in the film are actually achievable now) it doesn't mean that it should.

For one, the film is too detailed and colourful to fit into a single film (unless it had an eight hour running time, and I don't think Hollywood is quite prepared for that). The comic works because of the length - as a reader, we've invested quite a lot into the history and background of the characters we're reading about. To condense this would make Watchmen appear to be just another superhero movie, which is the LAST thing it should be about. It should be about legacy, heroism and that overwhelming eighties fear of nuclear oblivion and NOT about interesting CGI set pieces that turn it into Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Watchmen is now so far along the Hollywood conveyor belt that the publicity machine has now kicked in proper. The first photographs of the sets and costumes have been revealed (I could link to them, but you could just as easily find them yourself. I'm too depressed by them to do it) and by the time it's out it will blend into the other summer blockbusters.

I really hope I'm wrong, but I fear I'm going to sit down and watch another Judge Dredd. I really hope that I'm wrong on this one. It's been known.

The version of facebook tailored to Primary Schools makes for difficult reading

As posted on b3ta

It's like The Bill, but with less actors who used to be in Eastenders

Did I miss something? Did they change the way that those convicted of murder would be presented on television? It's been a murder frenzy for the BBC in that we've recently had the very high profile cases of Mark "I'm a necrophile, not a murderer. There's a subtle difference. Still, means to an end" Dixie, Steve Wright in the afternoon and Levi "Baba Papa" Bellfield.

The television footage of each of these has really stood out because each and every one has featured footage from the police interview rooms. It's like I've accidentally switched on Life on Mars, and I'm not sure I agree with the way this is going.

The footage in all three cases has been identical - aggressive questioning and the culprit shrugging his shoulders or uttering "no comment". What are the BBC expecting from this kind of footage? Some froth-mouthed murderer strolling nonchalantly towards the camera, shaking his fist at the heavens and crying "I did it, but you'll never prove it, Coppers!"

It seems to be an odd direction to take for this style of reporting. Mark my words, we're not far away from televising the entirety of suspect interviews - Hell, perhaps we could have footage of the actual arrest as well, with police battering down doors. A little bit of footage from the forensic people wouldn't hurt as well. And a new fancy theme tune. And footage of the reporters feet as they walk away at the end of the news.

It'll all be very exciting, I promise.

Somebody should do something

That's it. That's fucking it. The membrane-thin level of tolerance I once had has finally dissolved into some bitter bile-flavoured liquid and I find myself hating many of the people I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. In fact, fuck it. I'm beginning to hate a great many of the morons I'm forced to share the planet with. They breathe in air that I'd like for myself, thankyouverymuch and wear down my concrete pavements with their overpriced trainers which, on the whole, have more intelligence than their wearers.

I'm a software designer for a living so spend much of my time programming, but due to the fact that I work for a very small company with relatively few staff (and those support staff we do have are all primarily skilled in solving hardware problems) I do telephone support for the stuff I've written. I really haven't got time to train anybody else in it so I mostly don't object to taking the odd phone call from confused and bewildered end-users.

Now, I love error and warning messages. I'm all for making them as clear as humanly possible because, and here's the important bit, the clearer they are, the less that people have to call me and interrupt my very important programming time. If something I've written tells you that you can't run the month end routines because you haven't invoiced all your customers yet, my faith in human nature tells me that the individual who reads this can put two and two together, wait ten or so minutes for the appropriate electrical signals to pass through the clotted neural pathways and think, "Ooh. Best invoice all my customers then."

If only this were the case. Politeness (and the fact that I really don't want to lose my job) sadly prevents me from pointing out the bleeding obvious to the people who ring throughout the day with problems such as this.

Therefore, because of people such as this and their ilk, I propose a cull. I've thought this through before (unhealthily too much, if anything) and I already have a fair few groups from society on the list.

(1) People at cashpoints who approach the question "Would you like to carry out another transaction?" as though it's the start of some terrifying philosophical debate and therefore have to press "No". They'll then reinsert their card and start the whole process again - and typically will do this when I'm standing behind them either in a rush or standing in the pissing rain.

(2) People at Zebra crossings who are under the misguided impression that clicking the button several dozens of times will in some way speed up the crossing process - as though the more clicks they can achieve in a set period of time trips some light at traffic control who therefore designate the particular crossing as having a higher priority than the rest. "Twenty three clicks at the ringroad, Bill. Best set that one to Red."

(3) Soap Stars who leave their shows to concentrate on a singing career, fail, and then have no shame into returning from the show that spawned them. They should be forced to have the words "desperate and talentless" added by deed poll to their surnames which then BY LAW must be appended to their names in the shows credits AND THEIR NAME THEN HAS TO LINGER ON SCREEN FOR AT LEAST THIRTY SECONDS.

I have many many more that I'll no doubt cover at some stage, but this is a good start. It's good for the environment for one - a less populated world means a healthier one. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING.

Pixelhat: Snake

The Button

It was only quite by chance that it had been discovered. A satellite scan from one of the major American petrochemical companies (which had ended up pointing in the wrong direction following a drunken fumble on the control deck between two employees at the christmas party) had found evidence of metal where none was expected.

An investigation revealed a hidden chamber within the side of a mountain hidden behind a sheet of ice hundreds of thousands of years old. On one of the smooth walls of this rock chamber was a single bright red button. The chamber must have lay undisturbed since before Man had walked on the surface of the planet.

Some of the best scientific minds were flown out there from the biggest Universities and Governmental think-tanks. Seismologists, historians, structural engineers and individuals from every conceivable scientific field were sworn to secrecy and set about performing every single piece of analysis that they could for several long months.

The studies were inconclusive. Forbidden as they were to physically dismantle the button or surrounding area, studies were confined to X-rays and non-destructive analysis and this severely hampered the scientists in their studies. The button was carbon dated as being as old as the planet itself, which was clearly nonsense. It also didn't appear to be actually be connected to a power source or any mechanism but then neither did the light set into its surface, which was clearly illuminated in a dull red glow. Every result was either unreliable or contradictory.

Only the historian managed to provide anything of actual worth; A translation of some microscopic markings found on the button itself. Hieroglyphic in nature, the historian had managed to narrow the meaning of these symbols as being either "Normality" or its exact opposite.

Now there is increasing pressure to continue the experiment by pressing the button. There are fears amongst those of a philosophical bent, however, that the button has been pressed before.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier

Being a fan of Alan Moores excellent work "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and having heard of a third graphic novel ("Black Dossier") being released, my interest was piqued. The fact I had to purchase it from the states ($19.79 from Amazon; God Bless the poor dollar) only put me off ever-so slightly.

For those not familiar with The League (and please, let us discount the dreadful movie which pretty much only shares a title and vague theme) it's essentially the tale of a group of individuals under the employ of the British Government in Victorian times to carry out work in Englands interest. That this motley band consists of Alan Quatermain, Doctor Jekyll (and naturally Mister Hyde), The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo and Mina Harker should imply that this is far from a traditional tale. Volume 1 consisted of the team being recruited and their first case, whereas the 2nd volume involved the events of "War of the Worlds" and the Martian Invasion of Earth that this entailed.

The previous two volumes (and Black Dossier alike) are phonomenally well-researched. (Heroes and Monsters, an excellent companion piece by Jess Nevins in the form of an annoted guide shows the true depth of this). It seems that Alan Moore has plundered the vaults of Victorian fiction for characters and situations. I imagine even the most skilled student of Victorian Fiction would be hard-pressed to know the details of every single reference contained within, of which there are hundreds.

Black Dossier is an odd piece, not quite as action-oriented as Volumes 1 and 2, and altogether way more verbose. The comic strip segments are interspersed with reams of written text, pamphlets, pull-outs and period pieces (which form "The Black Dossier" - as the characters learn the secrets contained within in, so do we). The book itself relates to a still youthful Alan Quatermain and Mina Harkers activities in the 1950s - the reason for their eternal youth is revealed within the story - The league is officially disbanded, and the two of them seek to reveal the secrets of the titular dossier whilst being pursued by those who would see it reclaimed. Much of the fiction of the time has been plundered again; Jimmy Bond, Bulldog Drummond, Fireball XL5, Dan Dare and the like.

Kevin O'Neills artwork has never been better; I've been a fan since his work on Nemesis the Warlock back in 2000ad, but his work in "The Black Dossier" is fantastic. Every panel is so incredibly detailed that it will take me several reads to pick up all the subtleties and nuances he's carefully left for the reader.

The book concludes in a segment entirely in 3D (3D glasses are provided within the sleeve of the hardback cover) which feels somewhat out of place with the style of the rest of "The Black Dossier" but looks phonomenal.

All in all I give this book 5.17 FoldsFives out of 5.74. God Bless Queen Victoria.

..and why, you might ask, is this not available in the UK? Being set in 1950 as opposed to Victorian times means that the copyright of many of the characters within is still active and legally dubious (the appearance of a handsome yet womanising would-be-rapist secret agent known as Jimmy Bond, for one). Hence, it's allowed to be published in the States but not over here.

Tiscali: Throttling bandwidth so YOU don't have to

I have the rare distinction of being banned permanently from the Tiscali forums after making just two posts. Go me. You can touch me if you like.

Last year I upgraded my 1/2 a meg link with Tiscali to their 8 megabyte max range which had recently been introduced to my area. This in itself was a feat of some skill as I had tried for a year to convince them that my line was capable of it as all of my neighbours were getting comparable speeds - eventually Tiscali were convinced and allowed me to spend more money with them.

It had all been running quite well until the very start of this year when suddenly at any time after 5 p.m. speeds would drop to stupidly low rates. Everything outside of port 80 was being choked like a cheap whore - downloads (and we're talking legitimate driver downloads now, not just torrents and copious quantities of pornography) were bringing download speeds back of less then 2k per second. That's worse than dial-up.

I found it wasn't just me. The tiscali forums are full of similar complaints. My banning came from daring to complain that Tiscali weren't in fact doing anything about the problem (oh, and a sarcastic comment on somebody elses thread that they needn't worry about upgrading to an 8 megabyte link and should just stick with their dial-up modem).

After a fortnight (and a complaint to Watchdog) it became obvious that Tiscali weren't really doing anything about the issue. Any attempted phone call to them was met with up to half an hour of "Your call is important to us. Please hold. Your call is important to us. Please hold. Your call is important to us. Please hold."

Four attempted e-mails to their customer services department (which by this stage were along the lines of "can you confirm when my contract ends") met with a similar lack of response. My concern was that I wasn't sure whether my contract start date would be classed as when I first joined Tiscali back in 2003 or when I upgraded last year.. I didn't want to face a financial penalty for canceling if I didn't have to.

Last night though, a stroke of luck. A phone call from Tiscali along these lines.

"Hello, Mr Court?"
"Yes?"
"This is name adapted to sound English by call centre worker from Tiscali. We're just ringing to see if you'd be interested in upgrading your service."
"What, my broadband connection?"
"Yes."
"I'm already on your maximum broadband connection - and that rarely works."
"We can improve the service you get from Tiscali with a bundle, Mr. Court."
"Does this bundle involve getting a phone from you as well? Actually, I'm glad you're on the phone. I've been trying for a month to speak to your customer services department so you can help me. Can you tell me when my contract started with you please?"
"Err.. Yes.. In September 2003. With our phone bundle you.."
"That's all the information I need, thanks. Bye."

*fists aloft in the air*

I imagine it will now take several decades to get a MAC code from them - but hell, it's a start.

Pixelhat: Sonic fought the law

Cloverfield

Tonight Tara and I went to the cinema to see Cloverfield; It's rare that we go to the cinema, but after such hype we thought this one worth seeing.

Now, to the point. Having heard about the Blair Witch style hand-held camera trickery being used, I really expected to put up with it and have something to moan about in my blog later.

But.

I really enjoyed it. For the whole 85 minutes duration I was gripped. At no point during its running time was I anything less than spellbound. I haven't been as involved in a film since James Camerons "Aliens". The cast were excellent - I was caught up in the whole "this is actually happening" vibe. The special effects were totally convincing - reminded me of the whole handheld camera new Galactica and firefly stuff, but still.. brilliant.

Can't recommend it enough. The whole film was about ten minutes longer than it needed to be, but still. Brilliance.

Also.. is anybody actually reading this blog? Let me know if you are. As I'm comment-free, I don't know.

Pixelhattery

By now you can't help but have noticed that whenever I'm short of something to say, I'm just knocking up a picture and sticking it on here. Let me know if you like/hate them - hell, just comment away - I strongly suspect that Myxomatoasties will in future be a mix of both written stuff and pictures.

Tooth update for those who asked: Infection has completely gone and gum is healing over nicely. Life is good.

Pixelhat: SWANS!

Pixelhat: Hall of Mirrors

Pixelhat: Super Computer

The whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

Those of you who know or have met me, you can't have helped but noticed that I have terrible teeth. Too many years of neglect coupled with sugary drinks have left my mouth looking a little like Boot Hill, only with considerably less dead cowboys.

It had gotten to the stage where I was terrified to go to the dentist. Not because I'm bothered by dental work (I'm no stranger to it having to have undergone many years of it in the past due to earlier dental problems) but solely through shame. Despite the sensible part of me knowing that dentists are just doing their jobs, another part of me didn't want to face the embarassment of having to sit there, open my mouth and present this grisly scene to them. I could be the poster boy for poor oral care.

Ultimate kudos to the girlfriend then for booking me an appointment at the dentist some three months back. She did exactly the right thing - she'd had too long of asking me to do so, me saying "Yeah" and then never bothering to do anything about it (and in all honesty, this utter shame meant I never would have).

Do you know what? They were great. The female dentist was understanding and made me feel completely at ease. They explained what they were going to do and that the problem in the sarlaac pit lurking in my mouth could actually be corrected.

They did the small stuff first; the odd filling here, a bit of root canal work. Painful, but it felt like something was getting done. They took impressions of my mouth ready for the big stuff - some crowns - and I was fitted with a temporary crown which was supposed to be in for one week before the permanent one would be ready from the lab.

And then it all went a bit wrong. The week after, the new permanent didn't fit, so they recemented the temporary - the old cement had only lasted two days. For one reason or another (another poor fit, dentist getting the norovirus) this temporary ended up being in for five weeks. Well, I say five weeks but each Friday visit to the dentist involved them having to recement it - the cement never lasted long and I'd have to carry a tube of poligrip around with me to have to recement it myself and stick it back into the hole.

Eating was a nightmare. Every mouthful of food would be accompanied by the fear that the temporary had dislodged, and more often than not it had. I'd read horror stories online about people who had swallowed their crowns - the biggest worry was that if I'd lost it my mouth would change shape again and the permanent would be delayed.

Then the glorious event. The permanent crown was a good fit and was cemented in, hopefully never to leave my mouth - and to their credit, one week down the line and it's still fine. The cementing of the teeth was accompanied by two extractions to prepare my mouth for a dental plate - I don't have to go back to the dentists for six months now while my gum heals and reshapes ready for the moulding.

Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday - fine. On Monday though the pain starts - first a gentle throbbing which I put down to the fact that the dentist nearly ripped my head off to remove the two teeth. It gets worse. Monday evening I get about two hours sleep because of the pain, Tuesday night in the same. Wednesday I realise I can't take any more and go to the Walk In Centre because I suspect I have a post-extration infection which they agree with - I'm dosed up on amoxicillin (a broad spectrum antibiotic) and I'm happy that this will sort it.

But it doesn't. A day passes with the same amount of pain, and another. Yesterday morning (Friday) I woke up in such overwhelming agony I find myself delirious with pain, punching myself in the head and I'm crying through it all. Utter hell.

Looking online for a solution, I suspect the issue is dry socket. (science bit; it's where the clot after extraction falls out and you're left with dry bone in the place of the extraction so it's painful to heal) - loads of people (Americans, mostly. Damn helpful lot at times) are banging on about how helpful clove oil is so at work I pop out to the chemists and try it - a cotton bud dipped in clove oil applied directly to both of the sockets.

The pain goes - instantly. It's now 24 hours later and other than having to dab the clove oil on twice yesterday, the pain is stil absent. I'm feeling a lot better - I'm able to concentrate on things other than the incredible pain and actually feel like it might heal and my mouth might finally get sorted.

I'm aware that this post isn't funny or witty in any regards - It's just something thats quite overwhelming in my life at the moment and thought it would be useful to write down - Sorry to put you through all that!

Thought you should be aware of the following

Emails with pictures of your mum are being sent and the moment you open these emails somebody prods a kitten with a sharp stick.

If you get an email along the lines of ‘Please open this attachment’ or ‘Pretty please open this attachment’ DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT. Unless you really want to.

This e-mail is being distributed through countries around the globe. Be considerate and send this warning to all those you know, especially people you don’t like.

You should be alert during the following days. Do not open any message with an attached file called 'Picture of a puppy’ regardless of who sent it, even if its your mum. This attachment will open up a picture of a puppy and distract you from work.

This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. This is why you should send this e-mail to all your contacts.
In fact why not just send it to everybody you know. Even people you don’t know might benefit from the information. Send it three times to each of them just to be sure.

If you receive a mail called 'Invitation', even though it is sent by a friend, do not open it, but shut down your computer immediately and evacuate the building and get your colleagues to do the same. This virus will destroy your office building and erase anybody in it from history.

This is the worst virus announced by John Cravens Newsround. It has been classified by Microsoft as frankly daft.

This virus was discovered by Mr McGee whilst searching for The Hulk and at present there is no repair for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys reality.

Up, down, left, select, left, left, start.

An admission - I've opened some post that wasn't meant for me. It was for my address but I didn't recognise the name - it definitely wasn't the previous owners of the house, but the package seemed so tempting (and bulky) I really couldn't resist. Where's the guilt? I wouldn't know where to start looking for its intended recipient.

It was a softback book, a couple of hundred pages thick and just over A4 sized. Distinctive and brightly coloured like one of those computer game guides you see on the shelves of "Game". Loads of colour photographs on the back (oddly familiar ones though) and the legend "Your Life: A Strategy Guide".

I couldn't resist looking through at least the opening chapters. At first it bothered me how much content I've actually missed - It seems like I spent a lot of time rushing through it just playing it for the sake of it - but then slightly relieved to find that I hadn't done too badly so far. I'd beaten the odd illness here, the odd life-threatening thing there, avoiding walking out in front of that car here, etc.

What's worrying is that I've checked it to see how far I've got. I was at first relieved to find I'm less than halfway through it, but then slightly unnerved to find that a lot of the back of it just seems to be appendix (maps and photographs and the like) and no more actual guide.

At this stage the cheat codes look tempting.

Get to fuck is universal balance restored

I get to work from home a fair bit so am kept entertained by the daily televisual output provided for students and the unemployed. Amongst the adverts for stairlifts (which are the only ones that provide any interest, due to the fact one would be damned handy) are the standard assortment of adverts for those "had three accidents? Why not consolidate all your accidents into one easy-to-manage accident" sharks.

This one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2jNLwg_C4Y) caught my eye more than many and is evidence of an increasing trend of these adverts to make you think that claiming will in some way help the world. No longer is it sufficient to sue people just for personal gain but now you can ease your conscience safe in the knowledge that you've made the world that little bit better.

"Yeah, I sued that driver for fifteen grand but thats beside the point. They've moved the crossing so the lives of countless kiddywinks have been saved."

"Yeah, I sued my employer for twenty grand but thats not why I did it. Despite the fact I fell over because of this fucking stupid fringe I have, they've now moved the paper bin and put a big fuck off neon sign on it."

..which leads me to the youtube link provided for your convenience above. Now by claiming for what is rightfully yours, you are bringing order to the universe. Chaos and disorder be damned - you getting money in your pocket at somebody elses expense is now the cosmically right thing to do.

Your place in Heaven is assured...and who is advertising it? Billy Murray, well known for playing a gangster on Eastenders. At least that part of the advertising is accurate, at least.

For those of you with a short attention span, I'm consolidating all the words in the above thread into a single easy-to-manage affordable word which is this; Wankers. You won't have to pay a penny to read that word and you are guaranteed every penny of compensation.