Chindie

Meant to watch that last night. Hoping for a repeat - along with the Rock connections Brum thing that was on a little later.

I've spent a lot of time in that part of the world, so know Machynlleth pretty well. It is quite rural, the town is tiny and is surrounded by countryside dotted with very small hamlets and solitary farm houses. Until you start getting towards Aberystwyth/Borth/Aberdovey theres really not much around there, besides hills and sheep and forest and rivers and marsh, it's a surprisingly isolated part of the world. If the Dovey is in flood they believe the body was dumped they will probably end up looking towards the Dovey Estuary proper. I would not be surprised if they never found a body. Kids being out and about in Mach isn't unusual. It's a town based around 2 roads, really, and you could walk from one end of the town to the other in 5 minutes with ease. Kids roam around there constantly, and there are always people about, as it is one of those small communities where you'lll pop round the neighbours to see if they want anything from the chippy or the Co-Op. It's just a tragic moment, there are people with kids in Mach who would have roamed the town as kids like they let their kids do now, and nothing ever happened. In fairness, Mach is one of those places where nothing ever happens anyway. I found it quite interesting that, seemingly without all that much to go on (that we know of) they announced who they had arrested and revealed pictures.

A challenge system system doesn't solve the problem, and ultimately only serves to add a layer complexity to the game that is not required.

The new Red Dwarf is an absolute racing certainty to be shit. The combination of the original chaps behind it falling out (which coincides with it's fall from grace perfectly - series 7 is where the arse falls out the series, despite my personally liking it still. Chloe Annett (?), unpopular, but good grief YES), the series being very of it's time and the ideas running dry meant it was dead as 12 years ago. Now? They're all too old for it and the comedy doesn't really play any more. It just ends up a little sad. I used to adore Red Dwarf but I just can't bring myself to watch the latest reanimating of a long dead corpse. Back to Earth was **** atrocious - they even nicked the 'twist' from an earlier series.

You're right! The first few hours are very dull (I think they were trying to sneak in a tutorial into the beginning) but the game picks up a lot afterwards. The tombs are utterly brilliant and it's a shame there are only 6 of them. The only slight criticism is that the side quests (assassinations, courier missions) are a bit pointless. Ordered the Brotherhood for a fiver. If you enjoy 2 Brotherhood is more of the same. A little smaller in focus but polishes 2's gameplay to a mirror shine and adds in a couple of nice new features. I personally prefer 2 overall (it has more variety) but the Brotherhood mechanic is a really nice addition. Revelations can probably be skipped unless you really want more Ezio after Brotherhood - it's the weakest of the AC2 'trilogy' by a distance, simply by adding little of note and not really doing a whole lot with the plot (despite the title)

Seen a fair bit of talk that Romney just lied throughout the entire thing in particularly blatant manner and that Obama seemed to be tired and didn't bother to combat Romney much at all. Doesn't Romney have a rep as a decent debater?

Yeah, it is weird that they seem to just draw a line of some things being bad and others alright - purchasing a 25p app (which has GOOGLE plastered all over it when you check who was paid that 25p) apparently is an immediate 'Be on the lookout'. Another thing that happened today. It's my final week of my contract, work is winding down and lots of filing the last 2 months efforts is going on. Then I receive an email notifying me that the powers that be have decided that they want digital copies of every proposal we bound and every renewal we let go, in a digital archive. And they want it done ideally by the end of the week, except we won't even be able to begin uploading tot he archive before Thursday morning. Thats over 120 cases. Some of which we only have hard copies of and on average weigh in at 40 odd pages (some much more). Even the copies we do have digital versions of are generally made up of numerous files and emails and correspondance. We've spent the last 2 months working from hard copies on everything and now they do something that a) makes more work, and makes our printing off thousands of sheets of paper pointless... And best of all, they do it at the very last minute.

The PC version any good? Didn't enjoy AC1 on the PC very much. Never played any of the series on the PC but, besides Ubisofts notorious DRM (that I assume would be present on the game), I can't imagine it being a particularly poor play on the platform. It's a far better game the first one though, it's less regimented and has better characters and more confidence in itself.

Resident Evil doesn't really know what it is any more. RE4 was a revolutionary and ground breaking step for action games generally and more specifically third person shooters - it influenced pretty much ever example of the genre that followed - but it also completely left behind what Resident Evil series had founded itself on. And subsequently the games influenced by RE4 have overtaken the series by miles. Subsequently they've tried to evolve the hit they had in RE4 by adding in elements from other hit series and it just hasn't worked. RE6 has a fairly clear influence from COD and Gears, for instance, and it's not for the better. It could do with going back to it's roots to develop a truly interesting game again (assuming they did it properly... a fairly big assumption), but games these days are so expensive to do seriously top level stuff that you have to try to appeal to broad demographics and the fact of the matter is a survival horror game these days doesn't have the pull. RE6 itself, regardless of it's ropey standing these days, isn't helped by the fact that, by all accounts, it's just a bit shit.

Take advantage of Googles nice Play Store deals this week. Make a reasonably large purchase shortly afterwards. Far away in my banks HQ, warning lights go off like Blackpool Pleasure Beach with neon lights flashing 'FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!'. Bank prevents largish purchase, doesn't notify me of this fact. Next morning receive automated message at work which reads out a number you need to call without warning once. Spend half an hour trying to get through tedious bank helpline to be put through to the Fraud Prevention team. Get cut off during transfer. Spend further 20 minutes going through same palava before being put on hold. Finally get through, sort things out, get told the payment for reasonably large purchase will be authorised and everythings alright. Await delivery. Keep waiting for delivery. Finally check rarely used email address that I had to use to make said purchase. Read email notifying you that payment cannot be authorised and can you fax them the details or arrange for them to ring so transaction can be completed. ...**** the modern world, everything seems designed to be slightly annoying in a death by a thousand tiny cuts kinda way.

I still like Lambert, was my first choice (although I didn't, and don't, think he's as good as many did. I'd have been happier if he had had another seasons experience of the league and proven his mettle a little more), and I actually think today was a decent result. I expected a loss. I'm just not convinced about us as a side. I think we're destined to struggle till seasons end. I think Lambert will make mistakes, and the side is for various reasons weak (which will exacerbate the mistakes Lambert will make)... It's going to be a long season all in all.

I don't mean we've not improved from last season - in some cases we have, and we're generally a far more positive side. When I say we're not improving, I mean that the side is not appreciably improving under Lambert from that seasons beginning. You'd think the month and a half we've had might start have developed a bit but we don't really look much better than we did in the seasons opener to me. Even accepting that we've had a number of new players, I'd have expected us to be making some strides to being better. I don't see it, really. Hopefully it's just a slow development.

I'm worried. Have been for quite some time in fairness. But I really haven't seen much to change my mind. We've largely looked pretty shite all season. The good is noticeably outweighed by the bad, and I don't think we're making any particularly large strides towards improving. We need to become a far more solid team - at the moment it's difficult to see us not conceding game to game. It's basically a waiting game ever match till we concede. Worse, this appears true whatever the opposition.

We need to him to improve markedly.

A straightforward defeat I fear.

It blows 1 out of the water once you get past the opening few hours.

Not only is it Friday tomorrow, for me it's also dress down day at work, and the end of the busy renewal season they hired me to help with, so we're going out after for food and booze.

Quick heads up - if you have a particularly jumpy bank, and you buy one of the cheap apps on offer then make a reasonably large purchase, expect a call from your bank's fraud department. Like I did this morning.

Went down to the canteen at work, to discover that today, they were offering a roast turkey baguette, with gravy and cranberry sauce and stuffing, carved in front off you. This genuinely made my day, it was **** incredible. And highly edible. Best lunch ever.

Having checked the payslip it's tax again going up - I've had similar issues before with my tax code being wrong while I was at Gamestation and had it sorted (with a rebate) so will give them a bell next week sometime probably. Shouldn't be too hard to sort - I simply haven't earnt enough to be taxed this much/at all. It shouldn't be a problem long anyway - contract ends next week. That pisses me off.

Have you worked out what it ought to be? I'm not sure to be honest - I don't think I've ever been paid quite the amount I was told I was going to be, but it was enough that I wasn't too bothered. Even when it first dropped (following the phonecall saying they needed to change some details on the contract, 'you won't notice a thing') I was still happy with what I was getting paid. Last week the drop was down to a pretty inexplicable hike in tax - I fairly sure I've not come close to the tax threshold for earnings this year. I was made redundant at the end of the last financial year, and only picked up this job in July, and I've not been paid enough to go over into tax paying in that time. I've also been paying student loan repayments despite that also not coming near the threshold for repayment. But even if you were to say I had earnt enough for tax to start being taken, that wouldn't explain the jump this year. I'm waiting on my e-payslip to turn up - if it is tax going out again I'm on the phone - I'm not quite in the position to let what it is £66 now slide!

...pay packet'has dropped another £26 this week. I foresee a phonecall to the tax man.

An absolute spanking coming up. Balotelli will get 2 just by turning up, that seems to be the way when he's up against us.

I seem to remember the TPS is increasingly just ignored, especially as considerable numbers of cold callers are now calling from abroad. I **** hate cold callers. My brother actually had this exact thing happen to him, eventually managed to spook the guy on the phone into hanging up. We had a period where we were getting calls from 'surveyors' constantly, I took to just hanging up instantly after trying to get them to stop ringing first with politeness and then anger.

Any problem to which Nigel Reo-Coker is the answer scares me. Besides, I'd have thought he'd be fighting off Milan with a stick or something.