Barbapapa!

Since my disney post generated more interest in barbapapa than the trip itself (bastards!), here's a picture of the barbapapa toy I bought. He's the pink cuddly thing by the way :p

Autobahn and The Penguins

March Of The Penguins is a French documentary about the life of the Emperor Penguin in The South Pole. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this movie is an ABSOLUTE MUST for everyone. A captivating documentary into the very harsh and unforgiving life of a penguin, this film is about love, passion, survival, courage, and hope. Filmed more like a romantic movie than a fact-only documentary, and narrated by the Freeman himself, this film will really grab you by the balls and suck you in, only spitting you out 1 hour and 20 minutes later with a big smile and a fuzzy feeling inside. It's available as a DVD already, so you can't do harm in getting one of the best movies you'll own.

Autobahn is a 1974 album by German godfathers of music, Kraftwerk. I've had the album for quite a while but never really listened to it properly. Dominated by its 22 minute titled track, the music paints a picture of driving down a motorway (autobahn in German), everything from turning on the engine to passing big trucks and being overtaken by speedy cars. The music does an amazing job at recreating the image, and can only be listened to entirely to be believed. An electronic landscape of ups and downs, beauty and ugliness, it's amazing that 4 young men in 1974 could come up with such a masterpiece.
Don't listen to Autobahn at home, nor going to work on your mp3 player. Shove the CD in your car, go for a long night drive, and let the music trance you. It's an experience that you'll never forget. I seriously recommend this to anyone with a car.

The Disney Post

Right, suppose it's time to blog all about Euro Disney!

We (me and Kelly) left Colchester on Friday at some unholy morning hour (I hate morning travel!), and arrived at Waterloo International in London at around 8:30am. Our train was due for 9:39.
We got on the Eurostar and 1 hour later we were going through the channel tunnel. 2 hours after that we reached Marne La Val Chesse (the train station at Disney). Luckily the train had a power socket where we were sat, so we watched March Of The Penguins on the laptop on the way (great film!)
We then checked in to our hotel (Moevenpick Dream Castle) which as a big but very cosy 4 star hotel, 8 minutes away from the park (there's a free shuttle bus every 10 minutes). As we had arrived mid afternoon we didn't go to the park that day, and just spent the evening chilling (ie doing nothing)

The next day we went to the park, and decided to go to Disneyland Park (the resort has 3 attractions, Disneyland Park, Disney Studio, and Disney Village). The moment you get in to the park you are hit with a magical, childhood like excitement. The colours, the shops, the buildings, the characters wandering around just make everything feel like you're in a disney cartoon!
The park is split into a main area, and four lands (adventure, fantasy, frontier and discovery). Each is themed accordingly (adventure land is arabic themed! for alladin I presume). Each area has one or two "adult" rides (eg Space Mountain roller coaster, Indiana Jones coaster, scary mansion etc), and lots of kiddy things.

The entrance takes you in to "Main Street USA", which is full of shops and restaurants and stuff, and right in front of you is the magical kingdom itself, sleeping beauty's palace!







Mickey and Minnie and someone else's kids :)











One of the beautifully crafted buildings in Fantasy Land, the part of the park that's for the younger ones. Here the buildings and colours are just out of dreams.








Sleeping Beauty's Palace in all it's, erm beauty :p this must be the most famous palace in the world if you ask me!









Me and Kelly













The Magic Kingdom at night
















Later on that evening we left the park (closes at 20:00) after watching an AMAZING parade of lights and music called Mickey's Fantillusion. We went to the village to have dinner in one of those shows/food places which was called Buffallo Bill's Wild West Show, it was great fun!




The next morning we went the Disney Studios Park, which is a smaller, more spaced out park with lots of shows and a few rides (including a great Rock and Rollercoaster with Aerosmith! Each seat has stereo speakers with Aerosmith music while you whizz around the track!). Our day in the studios was more relaxed than the park, cos it's smaller and even though there's lots to do, it's not as stressful as the big park cos it's all grouped together in one place, and there aren't that many screaming kids!

Me by one of those brooms from Mickey's The Wizard's Apprentice.




Donald Duck, in a parade at the studios park.







On our 3rd and last day there (Monday) we went to a close by shopping centre (one metro stop away from Disney) called Val D'Europe. I bought a few things there (including Jarre's Live at Gdansk DVD (collector's edition)). As we were hunting for somewhere to eat, I found a shop called Album (just like Forbidden Planet). Wandering in to have a look what do I find? A big, squishy, and very soft Barbapapa!! the cartoon is very famous in France (well, it is french), and toys are still being sold! I bought a pink, papa toy which is great. He has magnets in his arms to help him keep his arms around something, and ofcourse that big infectious smile and innocent eyes..... I was so happy to find such a thing (I doubt anyone who's grown up in the middle east doesn't have fond memories of the Barba family)...

We left France that evening and reached Colchester around 11pm that day. It was great fun and a holiday to remember for life :)

I'm back! and I got the Jarre DVD!

hello everyone!!
I'm back from Euro Disney, a wonderful, magical place!
had tons of fun there, got loads of pictures, so later on i'll post all about it. Got lots of tacky souvenirs too, the mugs and t-shirts and fridge magnets and all that crap!

I also managed to find a fnac store and got the last remaining copy of Jarre Live at Gdansk (collector's edition) which was released on the 5th of this month there. It's great! been watching it today, and it's alot better than the tv broadcast, with no more silly overlays and lots of fireworks and crowd noise. The direction is generally better also, but still has less panoramic views than I'd hoped for. But at least it's a jarre dvd and one of a concert that I was proud to be part of (and very close to the stage too!).

I'll be back, with euro disney news and the best thing I found in france..... pictures and blog soon :p

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Picture this: you've got an exam tomorrow. You're stressed, over-knowledged, and pretending to be revising at 23:30 at night, to save your ever-insistent mum's breath (for those (if any) non-arab readers, arab mum's interfere with their children's lives until their very last breaths, even if the kids are 60 year old grand parents!).
Anyhow, what do you do? well I for one had the senses to pack my Nintendo DS (that I'm officially in love with, remember?) with me and with it I got M&L, but also Mario Kart DS.

Everyone knows Mario Kart, the fun arcade racing game from the SNES era. It's been reinvented alot (N64, GBA, Gamecube) and now NDS. The thing that makes the NDS version so special though is it's dual screen (one for the game one for the important map) but also it's the first nintendo game to be officially internet enabled!! Yes that's right, now you can play mario kart against anyone in the world.

Nintendo has always promised to go into the online console market when they deemed fit. And their NDS is the first to do so. It comes with wireless built-in, so to go online you can either use your own wireless network if you have one, or buy a cheap nintendo USB wireless dongle, or (here's the best bit), go to any of 15,000 European hotspots, and join from there for free (eg McDonald's and a ton of other public places). Amazingly, 7,500 of those are in the UK.

Anyhow, so there I was laid in bed at 23:30 with my NDS, Mario Kart, and those crappy white iPod headphones on to make sure the boss (mum) doesn't hear. I connected to Nintendo WFC (wi-fi connection) and starting searching for opponents (that's another thing, going online and starting a game couldn't be easier! there's no lobby, there's no chatting, hence there's non of that famous abuse/anti-beginner attitude in nearly all online communities). A moment later I'm with 2 other people, and the race had begun!

I got 2nd place in the first race, which earned me 5 points. Midway through the 2nd race I was lagging behind. We were racing in Wario Stadium, a track full of ups and downs and boosts. I was just approaching a hill and my 2 opponents had already crossed ahead of me. Luckily, I had one of those kick-ass Blue Turtle Shells that zooms right up to the first racer and explodes with lots of proximity damage! I released at the exact moment when he was about to be overtaken, and the Shell blew up and toppled both racers! This happened just as I was jumping over the hill, and saw the carnage happen right beneath me, as I took the first place.

And as the battery ran out. NOTHING. BLACK SCREEN. ZILCH.

I hadn't realised that, due to a marathon M&L session (I reached the mothership, whatever that is!), I had abused the battery and it was in it's last minutes! just as I had bombed 2 rivals, jumped over them and laughed my evil laugh, and just as I took first place, the damn NDS decides to run out of juice, and just SWITCH OFF. And I wasn't sensible enough to pack the charger. HMV, here I come.

But you gotta give it to the big N for releasing the best version of Mario Kart on the DS, for making playing online so fun and easy, and for being the wonderful people that they are. Oh, and soon, Animal Crossing-Wild World is coming out for NDS too. Where you can invite people from around the world to your virtual village, and it's goodbye social life and everything else forever.... I just can't wait.

Wish me luck y'all. SoB out

The truth about 22mbit

Right, I'm in London now (was here since yesterday).
I've got the 2nd part of the lovely mrcp exam tomorrow... it's a 2 day exam so all fun and games!

But, on to more important things!

I installed the adsl 2+ router yesterday (netgear, looks great and works good too), and after a few teething problems I am now connected to the web at top speed. If you remember a while back I said it would be an estimated 18mbit/second, but the reality is that it's synced at 16mbit. That's exactly 2mbyte/sec download speed.

Web browsing has generally been the same since 512kbit, so no change there... but downloading stuff from fast servers is awesome. In reality, the "pure" data reaching my hard disks is 1.6mbyte/second. I tried downloading a full dvd just now which was 4.4gig compressed, and that took 45 minutes. So the original hope that I could download 1gbyte every 10 minutes has been fulfilled!

Now what?

Mario and Luigi : Partners in Time

I am officially in love with my DS (PSP go to hell, haven't turned it on in months!) why? cos of Mario and Luigi! The original M&L was a GBA game called (superstar saga) that I never really got to completing. Essentially a hybrid between RPG, action, platform and everything in between, M&L:PiT lets you play as all 4 brothers (what?! there's only 2 right? wrong! there's a time hole in mushroom kingdom and so the younger baby M&L are partnered with their older counterparts!). Now this makes for some very interesting puzzles and gameplay mechanics, including wonderful combo attacks. Using both screens is great too. The top screen is either a map or a chronicle of the younger brothers as they venture off in places only they can reach to (eg small holes, small platforms etc). But the best thing about this game is it's sense of humour! The game seriously is funny... very very funny. Not since the good old days of monkey island has a game made me laugh so much.... until now the funnies bit has been 2 hammer brothers that talk in l337, making for the funniest and freshest dialogue I've seen in a video game for AGES:
"AREA RESTRICTED. ALL NOOB INTRUDERS 2 B HAXORED BY US L33T HAMM3R BROZ.! WE R TEH SHROOB ALLIES. WE ROXOR U AND THEN ROFL. THEN U AM CRY. WE RECEIVE ORDERS THRU ANTENNAS ON THESE L33T HELMES. THEY R HOTNESS. WE MUST OBEY ALL ORDERS. WE LIKE 2 PWN NOOBS 4 TEH MASTER SHROOBZORZ."

Thank you Alpha Dream and Nintendo. Thank you very much.

My new iPod...

...has arrived today! As I was on a 24 hour shift yesterday, I came home earlier than usual today (1pm). I was waffling around when my house-mate gave me the box! It had come earlier today. I gotta admit I'm very impressed with the quality of this thing. It's thinner than my old 4g iPod, and has a beautiful and very clear colour screen. I connected it to the powerbook and it automatically synced all my songs, videos, pictures, contacts, and calender.

Playing videos on the iPod is nice and clear, but ofcourse less responsive than a pc (ie you gotta wait a bit when seeking for example, especially large files). But ofcourse this is trivial. Songs now show album art when playing, and I was watching a slide show of my pictures while listening to Gorillaz :)

Quite neatly, itunes optimises the pictures so that they are reduced in size for the ipod screen, rather than just putting the full size pics on the ipod and then post-processing them. This saves you space, and there is an option to include the full res pictures if you wanted (for eg to download them on another pc). As my iPod is mac formatted I won't need this option, so I'm using the space saving option.

I'm also going to start using the powerbook calendar, to put important dates and stuff on, so my ipod can be a semi-PDA. Now if only Apple would make a PDA, I'd finally be convinced to buy one ;)

Finally, more and more each day I'm realising that Apple make seriously good software and hardware. It's amazing the amount of integration between os x, itunes, iphoto, icalender and the iPod. I'm definitely going to invest in a desktop mac soon after I've invested in a wife :p

Oh and I made use of the free custom laser engraving option that Apple offers with new iPods, check the picture below for what's engraved on the back of my iPod ;)

9th of May 2006 - Revolution!!

Breaking: Mark this date in your diaries - Nintendo are revealing everything about the Revolution at E3 in just under 165 days...

Nintendo has alerted the world's gaming media with a final, definate date for when "all the incredible details about Nintendo's upcoming games and hardware, including [their] next home console, code-named Revolution" will be revealed.

It's unsuprising the company is choosing to unveil the Revolution at E3, the gaming world's biggest trade-show, but it's good to have a date pinned down. Nintendo's conference will begin 09:30 Pacific Time (which is 17:30 GMT).

Story taken from Revolution-Europe!
And I can't WAIT!

The Hunt For The Triforce

I have to warn you, this post is going to be a BIG moan.

It all started 2 years ago, when I bought The Legend Of Zelda - Wind Waker for Gamecube. Even though I'm very anti-openended and freeform gaming crap, I wasn't going to miss one of Miyamoto's finest moments. And to be honest, i wasn't disappointed. The graphics, the gameplay and the whole thing was well-polished. Until I had to find the Triforce.

A bit of explanation is due here:

The game is set in a vast sea with islands dotted around the place. You go around in your trusted boat and eventually gain the powers to "wake" the "wind", hence helping your ship sail to the direction you need to go. In true freeform gameplay style, there are hunderds of extra side missions, little quests, and secrets that you can engage in. But as any gameplayer would tell you, a good game has got to have a path to follow so you don't get too lost. That was exactly the case with Zelda, until it was time to collect the dreaded 8 pieces that formed a triangle, known as the Triforce.

To find a piece you have to go through what I can only describe as torture: First of all, you have to find a chart that tells you where to find a piece. This chart can be hidden ANYWHERE. Sometimes it's easy to get, and sometimes it's just down right annoying. eg, having to play hide and seek with 4 children, in a relatively big island. After finding them and taking them back to school they tell you it's their teacher's birthday, so you give her 20 gifts (yup!), she then gives you the deeds to some private island (it's just East of here she says). That "just" is actually miles away. When you find the damn thing you go in just to find yourself in a small but annoying basement maze. Once you've navigated that you get the chart!

Okay so we've got the chart. But we can't read it. So we have to go to some guy called Tingle who sits on top of a tall tower that you have to climb each time you go there. He then charges you nearly 400 rupees (!!!) to decipher the chart. Once that's done, what you get is a point on your map telling you where the Triforce piece is.

Then you have to sail to that point (luckily there's a warp function but unfortunately it has an annoying cutscene that you have to watch each time you warp), and then fish out the damn piece from the sea.

Now imagine having to repeat the above 8 bloody times. One piece was hidden at the bottom of a dungeon 31 layers deep! I kid you not, layer after layer of relentless enemies, and the bastards didn't drop any health at all. I was at level 30 and I had one quarter of a heart of health left (ie one fart and i'd cork it) and I was against one big mofo. Luckily I survived, but if I had died I would've been taken back to level 1! Yes it's that annoying.

After not playing the game for 2 years, I decided that tonight was the night. So, starting at 19:30, it took me 5 hours (and lots of walkthrough cheating, cos it really is annoying trying to figure out where the damn islands are, or those pesky kids) to finally form the completed Triforce. I took Link to the start of the last dungeon (Ganon's Tower) and saved the game........

Funny enough, Miyamoto himself admitted in an interview that he regrets this section of the game and thinks it's dull and boring. He blames it all on deadline pressure, and promises that the next Zelda would not have such crap. I'm not sure if I really want to put myself through this torture again, so perhaps I give the new Zelda a miss. Shame really, cos I'm sure it'll be a great game.

So call me old-fashioned, call me arcade-boy, or even thick - I don't care. For me, a game is about having fun, feeling an adrenaline rush and about reflexes. Give me a good old linear anything (shoot em up preferably) and let me blast my way through the pixels. Quake 4, I salute you.

The Pong Clock

I LOVE this. A great, geeky idea to say the least.
Some Dutch designers have made a clock that plays a game of pong, and when the time needs to advance one of the sides scores!
Very cool if you ask me and I'm definitely gonna hunt one down for myself.
Check here for a video of it in action.
Videogame playing geeks UNITE!

Dodge the ball

Warning.Very.Very.Very.Addictive.Stay.Away....

Icon's Story

When the MSN messenger icon gets bored, he decides to throw his head at the peaceful ICQ icon. What starts off as a small skirmish ends up as all out war between all the icons on a typical windows desktop!

A very clever and imaginative flash animation... go here and watch now :)

iDead

My iPod died yesterday!! (Damn you Madonna! for giving us such a good album that I kept listening to again and again!)
It started a few days ago when the iPod suddenly crashed. I reset it and all went ok. But yesterday in the car it crashed again and now all it shows me is the sad iPod icon, and tells me to visit Apple Support :(

So I did, and because I bought the damn thing just over a year ago I'm out of warranty! To get it sorted out they offer a replacement service which costs £160!! and you either get a new iPod or a refurbished one!

So, I've ordered a new black 60gig video ipod instead. It's £300 and I'm not gonna spend half that money to get a repaired iPod back. I also ordered the extended 2 years warranty (Ah, the benefit of hindsight eh?)
To be honest, I've always wanted one of those new iPods but couldn't justify getting one along with my 40gig (RIP).

And finally, Apple have been offering a free laser engraving service for a while, where you get to write a personal message at the back of your iPod. Mine reads "Property Of Ned Flanders" :)

For The Love of Dance

It's official! (well at least good-delicious official anyway), Brits love dance music!
The whole dance/club/techno scene is very popular here, and throughout western Europe.
Even game producers deliberately put dance music for games they want to market in Europe, while neometal/grunge/rock does the trick for the states and Australasia.

But why do I say all this on a Monday afternoon? Well yesterday me and Kelly got the new Madonna album - Confessions On A Dance Floor. And my oh my what an album!! 12 tracks of pure dance music, which really gets you buzzing. And I believe it's the first madge album that has continious tracks (ie one song merges into the other - true club style!).
I'm not a big fan of the abba-esque single (Hung Up), but every other track afterwards is sublime, especially the controversial "Isaac".

The album (and single) are number 1 on the UK charts (the single is no1 in 27 countries now). Since marrying Guy Richie I think Madonna has adopted alot of "Britishness", including their love of everything dance, and thank God for that cos she's given us a brilliant album to chew on!
A great album indeed, and one of a few that I can listen to without skipping any tracks, and I think that's the way you're meant to listen to it, cos it's a voyage in techno/dance/pop that no one can do better than the Queen Of Pop.

This year has given us some great albums, Coldplay's excellent X&Y, Oasis's Don't Believe The Truth, Gorrillaz Demon Days and now Madonna. Oh and mentioning coldplay reminds me that I'm going with Kelly to see them live at Earl's Court London, 16th of December! Can't wait!

Clever

PSP Lemmings

SCEA announced a while back that Lemmings is coming back to the PSP, in glorius 2D (well pseudo 2D, you know the one with 3D sprites but only move around in 2D). I'm not sure how to feel about this, cos I don't think Lemmings has stood the test of time as well as other classics. Anyhow, it should be a good game to mess around with when it eventually shows up.
Confusing thing is, it's being coded by Team 17, those of Worms fame... the original Lemmings was ofcourse by the excellent Psygnosis, whom SCEE lapped up back in 1997 or so, and got them churning one wipeout after the other for the then little known PSX....
So why Team 17 are coding Lemmings God knows, and let's hope they don't all shout KAMIKAZE before jumping off a cliff.

My day

I had a very consultant-like, office-worker like day today (well technically yesterday now)
It goes like this:

0730 - woke up
0820 - left home to drive to work
0900 - reached work
0930 - Outpatient Parkinson's Disease clinic (I like clinics!)
1215 - Clinic finished
1230 - Thursday afternoon seminar with free lunch from M&S :)
1400 - Ward meeting with boss and nurses to talk about all the patients
1530 - Ward round with boss to see all the above mentioned patients
1715 - Ward round and all jobs finished, off home

So as you see, there was no sitting around... but also lots of unnecessary things (ward meeting?!), just like an office manager pen-pusher person :)

Pee&Poo

I can't believe someone got away "designing" these toys. What's worse, they sold out really quick when they were released in their home country... Toys based on the products of human waste, whatever else? But kudos to that woman who designed them cos, ofcourse, there isn't ONE SINGLE human in this world that can't relate to these 2 :) Want one, get over to Sweden.....

The Future Is Here!

Ukonline (my ISP) have finally launched their ADSL 2+ service, offering up to 22mbit/sec download speeds for supported areas.
My London PC is included, and I've just upgraded the service. Here's what they have to say:

Your maximum download speed should be approximately 18Mbit. This is an estimate, based on the extensive testing we have done with ADSL2+, the new broadband technology that supports broadband faster than 8Mb. The final maximum download speed that you experience may be slightly higher, or slightly lower, and is dependent on the quality and length of your phone line.

I happen to be less than 1km from the phone exchange so hopefully the figure will be accurate. Now imagine 18mbit/sec downloads?! Wow, that equals to 2.25 mbyte/sec, which potentially means 1 gigabyte per 7 minutes!!
So in reality (with all the headers and junk etc), I should be able to download 1 gig every 10 minutes.... very handy.

Problem is, they promised 2mbit upload speeds but the bastards are only providing 768kbits, well at least it's better than my current 400kbit, but 2mbit would've been great for our quake 3 server.... oh well

I think that one day (soon, next year?) we'll be able to play online with low pings and video chat at the same time with our enemies/team mates.... I'm sure anything faster than 2mbit can handle that easily, so perhaps it's time to test :)

Realism

I don't know why, but when I reached this bit of Call of Duty 2, I felt very happy that I was a gamer. A PC gamer to be precise.
Games are getting too real, and it was really tempting just to blast the crap out of these two...

Euro Disney

I've been waiting AGES to go to Euro Disney. The only reason I've never been was that non of my friends were up for it. What exactly is wrong with travelling across the sea to go see Mickey Mouse? Grown ups just don't understand :p

So, I'm finally going there. 9th of December 2005 for 4 days. Can't bloody wait!! It's my x-mas gift for Kelly. She loves roller coasters, and theme parks, and has yet to grow up... ideal

I have a proper chair now :)
And NO Wolf, I like my old, crappy, small desk.... so it's here to stay :p

Sensible Soccer Returns!

I really, really, really, really hope they don't fuck this one up, like the horrible sensible soccer 3D all those years ago (when all new games had 3D in their name)

Read about the comeback here. Codemasters are responsible for the coding, so let's see if they can come up with the goods. One good thing is that it's still top down :)

Don't you just love spaceships?

Courtesy of Quake IV. id, you RULE

I don't dare imagine the future

Does anyone remember the very first time they loaded Quake? When your breath was taken away by the fact that you could look up and down? and that enemies were now polygons rather than just sprites? I remember spending a long time with Nile Warp back in Baghdad trying to get the game to run over a network, just to see what the player looked like! Great stuff.

Ofcourse time has changed and nowadays if a game doesn't have ragdoll physics we don't play it!
When I first ran Quake 4 Single Player (I thought I'd finish F.E.A.R. first before playing Quake 4, then after that I'll start CoD II), I thought the gfx weren't that good. But playing the game more and more I'm still firmly convinced that the Doom III engine is the best ever made. Raven have tweaked it a bit more and the game is absolutely amazing! And gory! and just great fun to play!

But then Valve released The Lost Coast HDR tech demo on valve yesterday! I ran the level and man we haven't seen anything yet!! HDR = High Dynamic Range, a way of rendering light so that it can utilise the whole 100% brightness of your monitor. This makes for amazing lighting effects in games, but the one that impressed me most is the "iris effect", which simulates a human eye's reaction to moving from dark to light and vice versa. The first time I walked out of a dark corridor onto the outside in the level I was astonished!
Truth is, games are just going to get better and better and better. And I do believe that one day they will be a totally immersive experience, like that cyberbar in Minority Report. Or something.

Have a look at the snap below, with special attention to the reflection of light on the sand to the right (the sand on the left is the usual rendering we're used to these days, bland eh?). And obviously, it's all in real time.....



Oh and one last (geeky medic) thing, the effect should really be called the "pupil effect", cos it's the pupil that changes size when the environment light changes, not the iris. We all know that :p

Save the best for last

I've just done something really silly. I decided to play the final 2 levels (or intervals as the game likes to call them) of F.E.A.R. just a few minutes after midnight. Now we all know the game is scary, with spooky little girls and clone soldiers that like to suddenly jump out at you. But Monolith has very cleverly left all their tricks in the bag until the last 2 levels. Without telling too much, but after destabilising some atomic-core-reactor-big-ass-thingie, things go very pear-shaped and our poor man has to escape the facility that's shaking and quaking with atomic instability. To add to his worries he's also being chased by some dimension-shifting baddies and a teenage girl that has a death-touch. Oh and he also frequent flashbacks.
Monolith has managed to create some very tense and scary moments in the last 2 levels that really have to be played to be believed. And they've also managed to make running out of a exploding factory (and the explosion itself) an interesting and refreshing feat (admit it, how many times have you had to run out of something or another that's about to explode/be destroyed etc? last time I did it was about a month ago in Project Snowblind).

End line, EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE has to play F.E.A.R.

Oh, and don't forget to watch the credits to the very end :)

Omar Simpson

Today The Guardain reports:

They're a famously dysfunctional family from small-town America but suddenly they have all learned Arabic and started talking like Egyptians. The Simpsons have changed their name to Shamsoon. Bart, the skateboarding, gum-chewing delinquent has become Badr. Homer, his slobbish dad, has become Omar and has given up Duff beer and pork sausages, at least for the duration of Ramadan.

As a treat for TV viewers during the month of fasting, the Dubai-based satellite network MBC has dubbed into Arabic 30 episodes of The Simpsons and is showing them twice a day. MBC, which has heavily promoted the series, signed up several of the most popular Egyptian actors - including Mohammed Heneidi and Hanan Turk - to provide new voices for the characters.

Ragdoll Physics

Now I've seen alot of dead bodies (virtual and otherwise), but this one is a classic:



I found him when I reloaded F.E.A.R. for my pitch-dark late night scare-athon. Apparantly I'd killed the poor sod before going out, without noticing what he'd ended up as. Which just shows how cool F.E.A.R. is, it even saves your corpses for you :)

Spoilt For Choice and Spielberg

What a night!
2 GREAT games showed up yesterday, Serious Sam II and F.E.A.R.
I managed to get my hands on sam relatively quick (for us mere mortal internet users), and came back from work today to find that F.E.A.R. was in my trusty d:\leeching folder (directory if you're old) also.
Unfortunately both are alcohol 120% clones, and need a bit of computer trickery to run but they're both running now flawlessly.
My oh my what games! I know I'm going to get flamed for this but I gotta admit enjoying playing Serious Sam II. I know it's mindless action, but the environments are great and the gfx are spank up to date with hdr rendering and the lot. Great fun.
As for F.E.A.R. well I really can't put any words that give this game any justice. It is one of the most amazing FPS games I've played in ages, with loads of scary moments and good shooting action to boot.
Tonight I plan to turn all the lights off, put my 5.1 surround headphones on and cream my pants. Gaming rules.

This also means that FarCry gets uninstalled yet again (yes it still sucks!).

I still think Doom III is the daddy of the latest FPS games. The gfx in that game were truely mind blowing. I still haven't seen them copied in any other game. But all other games are excellent in their own right.
Problem is, next week Quake 4 arrives (based on doom III engine!), so there's ALOT of gaming to do... this is THE year to be a PC gamer.

Next month? Call of Duty II

And finally (as our good old British newscasters say), EA has signed up the relatively unknown film maker Steven Spielberg to create 3 games "for everyone". Being an avid gamer himself, he thought he'd take a shot. So what does that mean for everyone? a better, longer, and more involving Fahrenheit (Kelly finished that, it's great!)? Here's hoping so...

Keep on gaming people.

FarCry

I must have installed FarCry about 20 times till now.
The game that everyone heralds as one of the best shooters for PC, which started off as a tech demo called The Beach by German outfit Crytek.
Problem is, I hate the game! I've tried tons of times to play it but I just get fed up and bored with the so-called clever AI.
This morning, with a sudden urge of FPS-addiction (I haven't got any fps to play these days, all i've been playing is killer7 on gamecube and burnout revenge on xbox), I dediced to install farcry yet again.
I'm gonna give it a chance, honestly. Let's hope the damn thing is worth it.
If it isn't, there's always FEAR and Quake4 next week (I pre-ordered quake from amazon. I think it's only fair to buy it since I own q3a and I've played so many id games but only paid for one ;)

So, it's finished installing now and I'm gonna patch it up to the latest version and let's see if it captivates me this time round. Fingers crossed.

EDIT (10:25am): I'm hating it already. Why? cos farcry uses the age-old technique of step patching. I'll explain: The latest version is 1.33, so I downloaded that patch, but ofcourse it won't work cos it wanted me to patch up to version 1.31 first. OK, so I downloaded that patch, and that didn't work cos it wanted me to patch up to version 1.3 first. Now I've got that patch and it's finally agreed to dish its dirt. So, after downloading about 200mbytes of patches, and patching 3 times, let's see if the damn thing works. I presume I'm gonna need a nocd crack also. Sigh.

Opera Dude

Now this must be one of the coolest sites I have ever seen!
Make sure you've got flash installed and head over to www.tokyoplastic.com and check out the opera dude, the drum machine, and a whole load of japanese goodness. Amazing.
Thanks to Ookami Snow for the heads up!

My Precious....

in the dark...

Xtreme Fidelity

X-Fi for short. I've just finished installing my new X-fi Fatal1ty soundcard, and reinstalling windows (cos it sucked and alot of hardware has changed). Anyhow, the drivers for xfi are installed, and I'm just blogging at this unholy hour cos I'm so amazed at what creative has done! Not only is the user interface way better than before, but I've quickly tested some mp3s on it, and 2 things really stand out:
The Crystaliser: Supposedly makes your mp3s sound alot better, and man do they! I don't know what it does but it really really makes everything sound so much sharper and clearer, and I tried lots from different sourcers
But the best thing I liked is the smart speaker settings. As the card comes with a drivebay, if you connect some headphones it automatically detects that, and so mutes the main speakers, and changes my settings from 7.1 to headphones, plus all equaliser things are changed too! A small, but very nifty and impressive feature, that sure makes a difference.

If you're reading this and you like music, or like games, then this is the card to get. Just listening to those crystalised songs is hair-standing.

It must be a mistake

Wolf (Sheep and Dog) told me that since I got the razer copperhead, i've GOT TO get it's special mouse pad, the best ever, super-dooper ExactMat X, made by razer.
So I did.
And cos God smiled down on me and got me some work, I wasn't here yesterday to receive the pack, so I went down to the post office with my trusty "Sorry, we missed you!" card and my driving licence, all ready to pick it up.
After queuing for about 5 minutes, a pleasant lady took my card and checked my id and disappeared into the storage bit, she came back a moment later with a box about the size of a 17" flat monitor. I thought she'd gotten the wrong box, but sure enough, it had:
Ali Alsawaf
play.com

written on it. I rushed it back home (it was nearly time to eat), and after eating i openned the box up to find the BIGGEST mouse pad + box I've seen in my life!

There's nothing extra special to report about it yet (i haven't used it in games yet), but here's a picture of the box that the BFG will be proud of (note the scale of it compared to the tower/monitor. Scary).

Quake IV Release Date!

“On October 18, QUAKE is dialing it up to 4.0 on the Richter Scale with this new chapter in Earth’s war against the Strogg,” said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software. “Fusing an epic war-story driven single player campaign, and fast-paced QUAKE III Arena® inspired multiplayer, QUAKE 4 delivers a gaming experience fans will be raving about for years.”

More here

I'm all smiles, today has been all good news, I've got a locum, and now this :)

I should've wished for something else!

Remember in my "Where's the damn pointer" entry I was being sarcastic about mice with firmware, saying "what next? consoles with magic wands..... wait a minute.....". I was refering to Nintendo's excellent revolution and it's controller.
Scarily enough, today joystiq reports here that details of a patent filed by sony back in 2004 have leaked, and guess what, it's a magic wand! I kid you not, dubbed the sonywand, and is remarkably similar to ninty's revolution!
The fact that the news surfaced today is very freaky. Perhaps if I try again I'll get what I want. Here we go:
"what next? me winning the lottery and getting a job at the same time, making me rich, famous, and reemployed!........."

Left Handed

I remember my first ever WIMP system (windows/icons/menus/pointers). It was my good old ATARI 520 STFM. I used the mouse for the first time then (back in 1991), and for the last 14 years I've always used the left-click setting for right handed people.
Now, finally, I've decided to stick it up to the forces that be and rebel against the system and I've now swapped my primary and secondary mouse buttons, ie my right mouse button is primary!
Take that whoever made the left mouse button primary (XEROX I presume, afterall they invented the mouse).

Problem is I'm just not used to the change, and i've changed it back to normal twice now. But I'm gonna stick to this left-handed setting and make the world a better place.

SoB - Left handed (in case you hadn't noticed :p)

Where's that damn pointer

Did you know laser mice existed? I didn't either...
An evolution from the great optical mouse, a laser mouse uses a class 1 eye-safe laser to detect motion. What does that mean? well it's VERY sensitive and VERY accurate.
In a fit of shopping madness (like I always have, if you read good-delicious regularly you'd know!), I bought alot of unecessary things:

1\ xfx geforce 7800gtx: I hate SLi (henceforth known as SL-lie). It's a great idea that just doesn't work! If you remember my last big upgrade had two very big and expensive geforce 6800 ultras in SL-lie. The system is hot, way too noisy (you have to disable all eq options and leave all fans running max in SL-lie), vsync can't be turned on (leading to tons of teared images on my flat panel), and ofcourse it crashes. Check the nvidia forums for all the moaning. The only use of SL-lie is to give you a bigger virtual dick, and give you 10,800 points in 3dmark05. But in real life game playing it's shit, including the fact that the 7800gtx outdoes it in nearly every game at 1600x1200 res (my monitor's native res).
Anyway, it's installed now and even though my 3dmark score is just 8000, all my fps games are faster, cleaner, smoother, and quieter. Ebay, here I come!

2\ Razer Copperhead Lasermouse: at 2000dpi and 1000hz frequncy, this is a bad mofo! Ambidextrous design and cool glowing blue leds make this a beauty, and with 7 buttons there's no shortage. Problem is, it's too accurate and sensitive for me. My last mouse was a humble microsoft optical, and using the copperhead for a few hours today (in Guild Wars, CoD2 demo and others) I realised juts what I've been missing. The mouse functions PERFECTLY in all games, and really does improve your responsiveness (and scores!). It even has on-the-fly sensitvity changing so if it's going to fast just change it. And finally, it has 32k of ram to store upto 5 profiles. So if you use it on some other PC, it's all ready as you last left it :)
Also, the one I got happens to be one of 10,000 "first edition"s, it even comes with a certificate to prove so. I didn't know that when I ordered it, but is it a good thing? first edition things tend to be buggy... at least the firmware is upgradeable (no joke! mice with firmware, what next? consoles with magic wands..... wait a minute.....)

3\ Soundblaster Fatal1ty X-Fi FPS: still haven't got that.
4\ Saitek Eclipse Keyboard: still haven't got it either

5\ Speedlink Medusa 5.1 surround headphones: I have read so many good reviews and praise for these babies that I ordered them. I still haven't received them but they are apparantly very good, with 5.1 surround in games/dvd and music. I sorely need something like this since I'm sharing a house I can't play on 7.1 speakers all the time, so these headphones will come in handy for late-night Quake3/quake4/cod2/fear/ss2/hl2/cs:source (delete as appropriate)

6\ Konica-Minolta Dimage A200 camera: 8mpixel, 7xoptical zoom, Antishake (rocks! makes nearly all pictures clear and in-focus), and a ton of other options make this camera a great buy. It looks semi-pro too, so it's time to get rid of that stylish sony dsc-t1 (looks good, works ok)

I spend too much money, I hate it. I've decided not to impulse buy any more, and not to buy cutting-edge shit that costs too much. I decided this 5 years ago........

PS: and i know this has nothing to do with spending too much, but Golden Sun Team have finally released a universal NintendoDS rom patcher that makes all releases run on the neoflash backup system (which I have). I've been nuturing my labrador on the excellent Nintendogs recently. If you haven't got a clue what I'm talking about, google's your friend!

LEGO Halo

This is just way cool. Why didn't I think of this before. A very dedicated gamer known as saber-scorpion has created custom LEGO models of Halo and Halo 2 figures! Very cool if you ask me! Pictures below of the Warthog and a Master Chief driver.
Visit his site for some more LEGO figures, like D&D and Star Wars.
Why couldn't I come up with this? After all, I loved LEGO as a kid and I still love games as a, erm, grown-up kid :)

Videogame Chick

I'm very happy at this moment in time.
It's a Sunday evening. I've spent the whole of the day doing NOTHING.
My girl friend (yes, I haven't mentioned her before on the blog but she's called Kelly and we've been going out for 2 months) came around yesterday, and she stayed around. We woke up late and had some breakfast, then I started playing Splinter Cell : Chaos Theory (incidentally, I lost my original disk! -yes I own it! I had to download the damn thing to play it!) and Kelly was watching and giving me her useful(less) advice!
Next, we watched Gladiator (I haven't seen it believe it or not! great film) and then some dinner, and now she's playing Fahrenheit on the xbox!
The cool thing about Kelly is that she likes video games! When I first dated her I asked her about games and turns out she's played (and finished) everything from Sonic to The Nomad Soul!
For a girl to come over and spend the weekend at home with you while you play games and she plays game too while you surf the net (and blog) on your laptop is a great thing, worth sharing with the world!
She's now playing a guy called Tyler in Fahrenheit, looking at himself in the mirror going "you're a good looking guy". SO true :)

Late night surfing

I love the internet.

I've loved it way before I even knew how it worked, or what it did. Back in the old days of living in Baghdad, we had no internet. We knew there was an internet explorer with windows, and we knew the internet was a great place. PC heaven. But what did it look like and how did it work?

I was to find out in June 2000, the year I left Iraq. My first time so to speak was at an internet café in Jordan, when a friend of mine type www.hotmail.com in a browser, and from then on I was hooked.

It's not just the info, but the other main reason I love the web is communications. Thanks to the net I'm in touch with loads of friends all around the globe, some just emailing now and then, some chatting randomly, and others regularly voice/video conferencing and playing games.

And now, I'm laid on my bed, browsing the web for random tidbits at 2:30 in the morning on my laptop, and I'm enjoying it so much that I thought I'd blog it. Come to think of it, today was a good geeky day, cos my gaming buddy Dan came round and we played the Serious Sam 2 demo, and then played ALOT of Mortal Kombat : Shaolin Monks (Ko-op mode). Essentially golden axe but in the mk universe, the ko-op mode is so much button-bashing fun and arguing about screen-stealing and item allocation that it just takes you back to the good old 2D co-op games of yesteryear (double dragon anyone?). Great game. Great day. Great internet.

69 Love Songs

I don't know why I haven't mentioned this earlier. I've been bugging poor old anarki13 about this every other time I post on his blog.
69 Love Songs is a triple CD album by the not-so-known The Magnetic Fields. Why would a blog about computer games, medicine, and jarredom mention such a soppy album? Well, cos not only is it one of the best hidden nuggets of music around, but it's also got nearly nothing to do with lovey-dovey love, but more about betrayal, lust, passion, sadness, happiness, adultry, and anything else that no one else would sing about other than incomprehensible metal bands.

The 69 songs on the album cover a wide range of genres also, from folk rock, to electronic, to pop and even experimental, it's just a brilliant experience all together.

The main man behind the music is a Stephen Merritt, a genius at lyric writing and composing at the same time. With a dull, monotonous haunting voice like moby, he adds more meaning to his music by singing the majority himself (with a few other vocalists sometimes).

With song titles like The Cactus Where You're Heart Should Be, It's a Crime (To Fall in Love), and Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits, you know that this is a special album that deserves recognition.

Worth mentioning is "I Don't Wanna Get Over You", a song about giving up on trying to forget, and about living in blue. Sung with Merritt's trademark dull and dark voice (that you wouldn't expect to be so sentimental and sad), to a bouncy sing-a-long tune that again contradicts the sad and sentimental lyrics, which are about living in blue forever, it's a great example of the genius behind this album.

My personal favourites have got to be:

Absolutely Cookoo:

don't fall in love with me yet

we only recently met

true i'm in love with you

but you might decide i'm a nut

All My Little Words:

you are a splendid butterfly

it is your wings that make you beautiful

and I could make you fly away

but I could never make you stay

Reno Dakota:

reno dakota I'm reaching my quota of tears for the year

alas and alak you just don't call me back

you have just disappered

it makes me drink beer

I Don't Wanna Get Over You:

I don't wanna get over you

I guess I could take a sleeping pill

and sleep at will

and not have to go through what I go throuh

I guess I should take Prozac, right

and just smile all night

at somebody new

The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side:

Andy would bicycle across town

in the rain to bring you candy

and John would buy the gown

for you to wear to the prom, with Tom

the astronomer who'd name star for you

but I'm the luckiest guy on the lower east side

cos I've got wheels and you wanna go for a ride

It's A Crime (To Fall In Love):

my mother said gently

syou can buy her a bently

but my son she'll only drive it away

I didn't listen

cos my brain was missing

and I only found it today

Yeah! Oh, Yeah!:

Are you out of love with me

are you longing to be free

do I drive you up the tree?

Yeah! Oh, Yeah!

though I need you more than air

is it true you just don't care?

are you having an affair?

Yeah! Oh, Yeah!

Revolution!

Not the Jarre album or track (both great), but Nintendo Revolution!
Tokyo Game Show started today in the Empire of the Sun, and Satoru Iwata (ninty boss for those on the wrong blog :p) did what the whole world was waiting for, he revealed the nintendo revolution controller!
On first impressions you'd be excused to think that you're staring at a TV remote control. Ditching the very thing nintendo invented 20 years ago, ie the 2-handed control method, the revolution controller is a one-handed simplistic affair with a few basic buttons, and the now trademark big A button in the middle. What's so revolutionary about that?
The revolution comes in with the sensors on the console and the controller itself. Using bluetooth, the controller can sense any kind of movement. Not just gimicky twist and turn, but full rotation and 3D spatial awareness! It's a something you've got to see to fully understand, but imagine a fully 3D mouse and you're nearly there!
Also, the controller can have wired attachments, the one displayed is basically an analogue stick, used for FPS games.
Confusing right? dwell on the pictures below but more importantly, get yourselves browsing here for Revo-Europe's story on the revealing, here for a brilliant trailer of the controller in action, and here for the full 60 minute webcast of Iwata's keynote. Watch the trailer to understand what I'm going on about!
My mind has been made up, Revolution all the way! I was initally on that opinion but thought I'd wait for the controller to materialise before making my mind up. I'm not sure how much the western markets will warm to this idea, but all nintendo needs is Japan, and knowing them they're gonna lap this up big time.
A very excited SoB signing out for now!

XBOX 360 Overload

Bizzare Creations (them of Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham Racing fame) are trying to Burn Out (Pun intended - Criterion's racer rules!) an Xbox 360 by putting 35,000 spectators polygon rendered spectators on a corner of a track from their next-gen racer!
The new game boasts realistic fans and crowds that react and take pictures etc, but Bizzare promise thousands (which is still alot) rather than 35,000 in the real game!
Check the pic, and count the heads if you don't believe it.
PS: No results yet whether the box has burned. Keep an eye out here.

Friends

I'm gonna be out of action for a week or so. Reason? My good from Zzz is coming over from Dubai for a week! We last met when I went there back in xmas 2003 and this time he's coming here for something called PLASA at London's Earl's Court. It's something his company boss and him are coming to attend. I'll be going to London today to see him (he arrives today), and will be spending the week over there. Wanna take him to all the great places, Oxford Street, TCR, Trocadero and Leicester Square, Westminster and Waterloo, Imax, Madam Tussaud's, and ofcourse Thorpe Park!!

SoB out for the week or so. Will be online from powerbook but don't think I'll blog.

They invented Tetris...

...and now Russia's biggest design agency has come up with what must be the coolest invention since Alexey Pajitnov's masterpiece.
Cue the Optimus Keyboard - where each key is actually a mini LED screen on it's own! A brilliantly cool idea, with endless possibilities. Push one button and your keyboard changes from English to any other language in the world. Pissed off at all those keyboard shortcuts you can't remember in photoshop? Optimus' keys will show you an icon of what each key is.
BUT, the main thing this keyboard gets a mention here? check this out:

The Da Vinci Code

I've just finished reading The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown.
I used to read loads of books as a kid, especially all the Roald Dahl novels - that man wasa genius!
But, recently, thanks to the internet and laziness, I've lost my passion for books. Having being persuaded by a friend to read The Da Vinci Code, I bought a copy and found myself transfixed! It's an amazing story that capitalises on the myth of the Holy Grail and secret societies, with enough riddles and twists to keep it more than interesting. It's also full of historically correct facts and serves up not just a brilliant thriller, but a lesson in history, art and geography of Paris and England.
The book is becoming a motion picture next year (with Tom Hanks), so now's your chance at reading the story. A brilliant book to say the least.

I've also finished reading The House Of God by Samuel Shem. A book about junior physicians, very true and very funny! Don't think I can recommend it to someone who isn't in the medical profession though....

Next Stop: Bill Bryson - A Short History Of Nearly Everything. I've had this book for ages and I've forgotten where I've reached. I'll start again.

No Comment

Virtua.Tennis.EUR.MULTI5.PSP-WAR3X

I have a feeling of deja vu
I think it was 5 years ago, the dreamcast was dying, and I was waiting for the excellent virtua tennis 2 to "be released". I found out it was out at some unholy midnight hour, and it took me about 4 hours to get the damn game and succesfully burn it (my toshiba combodrive sucked then, and dc games weren't easy to burn).
Fast-forward to today, and again I just found out (albeit too late) that Virtua Tennis for PSP is out. As it's now possible to play isos from the memory stick (been enjoying too much Hot Shots Golf recently thanks to that), I'm now downloading the damn thing and now all too well that I won't sleep till 5am. SIGH.
And, if you can, get a PSP for 3 reasons: Lumines, Mercury, and Virtua Tennis

SoB (Jarre fan) out.
PS: need to post about Space of Freedom soon

The.Happiest.Man.On.Earth

I can't believe what just happened!

I wasn't really looking forward to this fan meeting business. Everyone was a stranger and being alone was putting me off even more. But still, I thought I might as well get out of the hotel and go find out what's going on in the city. The fans had all met up by some famous fountain, so I got there and decided to join them.
I headed for a guy I recognised from the flight but hadn't spoken to. His name was Mike and he was a military aeroplane geek as well as a jarre fan, all rolled into one big, red-headed, chain-smoking nice guy! After a while of small-talk, everyone wandered off around town, while me and Mike decided to go to the concert place (the shipyard) to see the place and perhaps listen to the rehearsals.
Picking up a few drinks and the polish version of a doner kebab, we eventually got there, and were happy sitting outside with the loads of people just listening to the rehearsals. It was difficult to see what was going on though.
After a while, we noticed that one of the gates openned and people started pouring in, with some brown tickets on them! Turns out that today was a preview day only for workers of the shipyard and their families! The concert was to start at 9. While me and Mike were trying to get in one way or another, a very nice polish couple offered to sell us tickets for 20 zlotis, about 4 pounds! We bought them straight away and went in (with our cameras!) and managed to watch the whole of the concert a day earlier!!!! Every single thing (with a few hitches, it was a rehearsal), complete with fireworks, laser harps, light effects, projections and all!
Man, being there is just something else!
I could talk on and on about today, but the proper concert is tomorrow. With 120,000 people attending, I just can't wait! Best thing is that I took loads of pictures and movies, so I don't need to worry about the camera tomorrow and just enjoy the show.

SoB - Needs to shower/sleep/eat/jarre

Gdansk

Right.
We reached Gdansk at 11:10 (local time). By we I mean me and the plane :)
Got in a cab (guy called Richard. Seems nice, I'm sure he's overcharging), and checked in to this huge hotel, with a big room. to my delight the room had wireless broadband! Problem is, the signal is shitty, and my room is the only one without an ethernet socket! They've offered me to move to another room, but I can't be bothered and the signal seems to be OK now.
Just gonna go down to town to attend that Jarre fan meeting near some Neptune Fountain. Problem is, there will be NO CAMERAS AT THE SHOW!! Bastards!
Oh, and here's something Jarre said, to wet your (and my!) appetites:

"I am going to cross all boundaries with this concert. It is going to be better than you expect. You all are going to be the participants of my spectacle. I just have to say this to you - do not plan any holidays at that moment, stay in Gdansk because it will be well worth it. This concert is going to be the best concert in my entire career!"

The useless drag of another day

Anyone heard (Hear Is No Why) by The Smashing Pumpkins? A great song, from the even greater (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness). It starts with the title of this blog, and carries on to tell you about how you'll forever stay in your sad machines. Classic.

Anyhow, 3 things I need to mention here:
I\ I leave for London today later this evening (still gotta go to the damn gym first. I hate gyms!). My plane to Gdansk leaves Luton airport at 08:10am, so need to be there at around 07:00 or so. Luckily, my brother lives about 15 minutes away from Luton, so that's a relief. I'm starting to worry about this trip. It's the first time I go away all alone (as in, with no one there to meet me that I know), and ofcourse my tummy is in knots cos of the small teenie weenie fact that I'm seeing Jarre play live! weather.com says that there'll be showers in gdansk on friday, but as the man himself said in London (Frogs like rain!).
The hotel I'm staying in boasts of internet access in each room. Wether it's wireless broadband or over-priced dialup is yet to be known, but I'll try to post something from the east.

II\ ICONOCLAST. This year's Assembley demo party was won by Iconoclast. A state-of-the-art demo for PC. It is an amazing product, with some brilliant middle eastern music, great gfx, and a tribute to one of the other best PC demos ever made! Old timers that'll watch it will immediately recognise the scene (and music) from the older demo. The last demo to really (blow me away) was VIP2 (Very Important Party 2) by Popy Team, although it had commercial music and some very obvious Poser models in it, it was still great to watch. This one is totally original though. Grab the demo from here.

III\ This one is for all those Amiga-lovers out there, and especially to a certain (anonymous) poster on good-delicious that I'm sure will love this to bits. Courtesy of Nile Warp who gave me this link today, check out this great web emulation of many classic Amiga demos, all coded in pure html (with a bit of java here and there). It's a beautiful tribute to the great 16bit machine. Unfortunately for mac users, it needs a fairly new version of IE. I tried it on Safari/Camino/Firefox/Omniweb/Mac IE and it doesn't function right :(
Everyone get your browsers over here and remember your spotty teenage years.

SoB OUT

Count down

I can't be bothered to go to the gym today.
For, erm, other reasons, my legs are hurting me this morning and I feel like I've had a good work out as it is :)
This Thursday I fly to Gdansk, can't wait! Jarre plays live on Friday at 20:00 (gates open at 16:00, gotta go early!). There's a fan meeting on the Thursday (organised by www.jarreuk.com), so I guess I won't be that lonely! Man this is going to be SO GOOD! I really can't wait, I'm dying from anticipation!
The concert will be broadcast live on the web (in dolby 5.1 surround nontheless) at http://www.itvp.pl/ so hope you guys will enjoy watching it. Can someone save the stream? it'd be so cool.
Gonna take my powerbook with me, and the hotel I'm in has web access, so I'll blog from there. I also bought a 1gig memory card for my camera, so I can shoot tons of pictures. Drool. Man if I actually meet the guy or get a picture with him then my life is complete.

MUM PWNZ JU

Can't help laughing at this one!
A young boy who was sneakily playing WoW at 3:30 in the morning was caught and grounded by his mum after he posted a thread in a forum she read, as she was a player of the game as well!
Other than the poor boy being caught, how cool is that?! Geek women rule!
Read the story and see the thread here.

Link courtesy of Wolf - Cheers mate!

Up Up And Away In My Beautiful My Beautiful

The 15th of August this year marked my mum's 50th Birthday. Being the nice son that I am I decided that this time I'll treat her to something different. So I got her a big-ass birthday card, and took here to a Chinese restaurant appropriately called Palm Trees (don't ask me why!). See, how nice am I!
But, before the restaurant, we drove half the way around the rural country side to get to some crafts show in a place called Braintree. There, in the middle of the field, lay this MASSIVE balloon in all it's glory!

Man the thing really was big, and very colourful, and also very dead! After everyone had gotten ready (it takes 16 passengers), the pilot told us all about what to expect, how to get on, and how to panic if something happened 2000feet above the ground!

Then him and some henchman came out with some kick-ass industrial fans and started inflating the balloon with "cold" air, with the help ofcourse of some passengers (it's all part of the fun you see!) Half way through it inflating, they both went inside to do something or another (perhaps make sure it blows up evenly, don't know) but it was cool seeing to adult men in there and the balloon just dominating all over them!


Soon afterwards, the balloon was nearing full size, and it was time for the captain to turn on the big burners. But, before he could do that, all the passengers had to get in, otherwise it'd fly off all by itself. Easier said than done! To get in, the basket is tilted on it's side and you have to climb in, sit down, and hold on for dear life with both hands!

Once everyone is in, the burners start (And they are HOT! it did say on the website to wear a hat or cap, but being arab we decided to ignore any official warning and just brave it. After all, who wore a cap in Iraq eh?)

Soon after, the balloon straightened itself and was tugging ferociously at the rope keeping it at bay (tied nontheless to a Range Rover Defender), the rope soon gave way and we started flying! Higher and higher, it was a scary feeling at first, cos there was no comfort in the fact that you're flying in a wicker basket with some flimsy balloon keeping you afloat!

Higher and higher, until we reached about 2000feet (so he said), and then it all became very surreal. When the burners are off you hardly feel or hear a thing, and all you do is just float in the middle of nothing! Houses and cars look like toys, the landscape patched beautifully with the colours of summer, the greens and the yellows and browns. The weather was helping as well, for that day it was actually sunshine in Britain!

As it was the flying season, we were soon joined by other balloons (I counted 4), and it was fun to watch them hover around and nearly follow the same path as we did

Surprisingly, it's not windier nor colder up in the skies as one would imagine. The sun started to set and I risked life and limb to take a picture of the beautiful sunset without showing any part of the balloon nor the passengers!

Then we started to descend. The captain explained that they could never pick where to land, and hence we'll end up in some random farmer's land any distance from where we started. Luckily, the Defender was connected by GPS and walkie talkie to us and it was following us around, to take us all back to the original flight field (and where our cars were!).
The landing itself was a bumpy affair (again you have to sit down and hold on to dear life!), but it went as smoothly as possible. We landed in some harvested wheat, and spent another 20 minutes packing the balloon into a tiny bag!

And that was the end of a great flight. All hungry and thristy, we went to that palm tree thing thinking it was a pub, only to be greeted by Mr and Mrs No Cum Too and their All-you-can-eat menu. Great stuff!