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 :)