Chindie

I can't stand Alan Pardew. It isn't helped by the fact I'm utterly convinced he's actually a pretty poor manager, and has stumbled upon a decent side to manage that last season seemed pretty unable to put a foot wrong.

I had a suspicion that Petric might be a decent signing for Fulham, and he's had a good start to proving me right. Michu looks like he might be one to watch as well obviously.

Song confirmed off to Barca then. Arsene might need a busy couple of weeks.

Unsurprising. It's early days, of course, but this side just isn't good at all. We need a lot of work.

Don't think we're winning this, personally. Asking me yesterday I'd have said the game had draw all over it but today... even with the excitement, the interest, this new era has, I feel like a loss is coming. The team just doesn't inspire me much.

I downloaded Dust: An Elysian Tail today, the last Summer of Arcade release and, by all accounts, the highlight of a poor, poor year for SOA. I'd been interested in it, because I like that Metroidvania influenced game style (2d platforming with decent combat, and exploration edge that you gain abilities throughout to open up new areas of the map and back track to use them in earlier areas), but every time I looked at it my eyes were offended. It's been made by just 1 guy and it's an achievement in itself, unfortunately the bloke is a big fan of the 'DeviantArt' aesthetic, and is a furry. So all the characters are hideous faux manga/Japanese inflected anthropomorphic animals all just the wrong side of trying to look 'cool' or, worse, a little sexy, with the big eyes thing every Japanese animation has had since year dot. And the environments look like they've been done by someone with a bit of skill on photoshop but little talent for appealing, original art, absolutely not a pro, and having no idea of scaling back a little... which means every single environment has garish and overwrought look. Even the dark sections are somehow cloying to the eyes. The game is made with very bold, flat, colours, and then many of the environments have an almost painterly effect, which looks exactly like you'd expect if you coloured something on Photoshop with the brush tool. A lot of the enemies have an almost sprite like feel to them. It's hideous, frankly. It's a shame really because underneath the game is decent. It has a lot of polish to the gameplay and a lot of systems that frankly didn't need to be there (a crafting system for instance) have been put in. The combat feels a little unwieldy and doesn't, thus far, really, punish mashing asides from a slightly increased feeling on being on the cusp of having no control over the combat. But it works and it satisfies that itch for combo building. And it moves fantastically, the animation (horrible look of everything in the entire game notwithstanding) is top notch, apart from a slightly weird... frame-y... feel to the 'cutscenes' (play it, or the trial at least, and you'll see what I mean). It's a fun, good game (not great like some reviews will have you believe, mind. It's not that good. I dearly wish that this had been made by someone who could whack a really great aesthetic on top of it. Because what we have here is a fundamentally good piece of work, but one someone decided to paint over the top of with arse gravy.

Suffice to say that whatever has gone on at OnLive isn't good. they appear to have quietly been in serious trouble, and subsequently look like they agreed some deal with... someone... to be bought out, but seem to have also agreed that part of that transaction would involve culling the staff and then rehiring some. I'm still not convinced OnLive will live long term, which I've always thought.

Quite possibly dead.

Don't like him, never have. Doubt it'll happen, thankfully.

Isn't the argument that a number can't really provide any accurate/meaningful picture of something? Whereas description of the qualities of the product, and it's flaws, gives you a tangible reference of how good it is, which says far more than just a number.

Finally people are coming around to my way of thinking. Thank you Zeus. Way ahead of it's time tbh. It will be heralded by critics the world over in 20 years, you mark my words. Pretty much everything I've read of John Carter suggests it's such a fundamentally flawed film that I'm willing to bet the only people heralding it are people who get off on the technical achievement of top class CGI (and even that I doubt tbh) and people attempting to prove something about their cinemaphile nature by naming something nobody else would even consider as some landmark in film making. I actually want to see it. In the same way, deep down, that part of your being says '...jump' when you near the edge of a huge drop, or urges to look at things you know are going to haunt you with their horror.

The only consistent usage tech site I use is Tested. Following the move to Berman Braun and the Mythbusters tie in I was convinced the site was dead to me but it's done alright. Moved further away from tech now, it has more of a token presence/interest than it had before (podcast aside), but it's just an entertaining site. They tend to obsess about things which can get a little tedious - Lego was a huge thing for 3 months, since the Mythbusters link up 'making' has become a tedious obsession (it's interesting, but they overkilled on it crazily fast). But the obsession to end them all is, as Rev says, Apple. The site is so Apple biased it's obscene. Criticism of Cupertino is always token. That asides though, just a really great site for a geeky guy to enjoy. The podcast is a joy (even with the flaws), though as Rev points out, it suffers massively when token Brit Gary is away. One of my favourites moments - I do use Engadget when I know theres big news or the like happening, but other than that my tech browsing could be better. I might give the Verge a whirl.

Didn't get Borderlands at all. One of the most painfully tedious games I've ever played.

And seemingly fixed today. Totally on Virgin's end this, as expected given the fact that the problem is one that a bunch of people in the Birmingham especially were having, and has gone away following Virgin completely turning off our connection today for maintenance, apparently. I do like Virgin, overall, but they seem to have a service that is far from reliable. The only thing you can rely is, at some point, the whole thing going wrong. While it works it's great though, broadband and TV (which is only let down by the inability of Virgin to acquire content on the level Sky can).

It's taken me 6 attempts to load this thread to the point I can actually read it. It's gotten worse. I've also have my (far from unlimited, admittedly) patience go out the window as I actually need to be able to use the net at the moment, and instead I'm unable to load things as simple as the Network West Midlands site to usable standards, or pretty much any train timetable site. Utter horseshit.

Oh shit no. For the love of all that is holy, shoot her

Worst Muse song ever. And in recent years they've been...Er...below par, so that's saying something.

Can't stand this woman.

I love Waterloo Sunset, but Ray just can't do it anymore

I've already seen confused reactions from foreigners with the Batman gag

Trying to get an idea of whether a problem we're having is a wider one (Virgin's own forums suggests it is but quickly gets wrapped in diagnostics postings and doesn't really help or provide any information on whether you are suffering from the same issue others are). Since Friday it seems we've been left with a service that, for all intents and purposes, barely works. Browsing the net at the moment is painful - pages, even simple mostly text affairs, take an absolute age to load (if at all). Many images load corrupted. Video files simply do not load, if you are lucky a Youtube video will load up 2 seconds and no more. Any download is a no go, for reference I tried to download Chrome, which of course downloads a small installer (under a meg IIRC). It failed that, the file corrupting and cancelling. I remembered I had a previous version of the installer still hidden in a download folder and gave that a run - no luck, that also fails. I attempted to download Chrome onto my phone over wifi, a 20mb file. This took the best part of an hour and, lo and behold, failed at the end of that time. Updating anti-virus software definitions effectively just hangs. Webmail accounts either do not load or take obscene lengths of time to do so. All I can gather from Virgin's forums is that there is some kind of corrupt downloads issue affecting some routers (the *cough* Superhub *cough*, which we have, appears to be diabolical for faults generally but is also a culprit here), as well as a separate but similar issue affecting a Perry Barr exchange which, with us being not too far from Perry Barr, I'm wondering if that is effecting us... Anyone else having issues? It seems that it's not worth your while ringing up Virgin, you'll be put through to India who won't have a dicky bird what's going on.

I've just been on the m5-m6 link, both ways to the Scott Arms junction are absolutely static, and most of the traffic seems to be football fans from what I saw. Strange they all decided to get off there, they'd have been better off at Spaghetti junction, which was completely clear.

I don't like Daley either in fairness. He just seems to come across like a cock. And that voice. Christ, the voice... I hate that **** accent.

My immediate reaction is some sort of malware these days but it seems to be affecting every computer in the house. I just sparked up my desktop and tried to download Chrome again (just to remove the browser variable). I couldn't complete the download of the initial installer even, it errored and could not download (does the same on my laptop). I then ran a previous version of the installer still hanging around my download folder - it's estimated time to completion jumped between an hour and 5. Running MSE definitions update (a tiny download) on my desktop also was taking so long I eventually gave up. Opening up webmail accounts takes forever as well. A quick Google suggests theres a few suffering from similar issues around Brum so that puts my mind slightly at ease, especially after the bizarre 'someone in Essex accessed your Facebook account at 5am - was it you?' email I got this morning. That's still got me somewhat worried even after a load of password changing.

Having broadband troubles now. Slow, struggling to load many pages, anything involving a download/streaming of pretty much any sort (even stuff like trying to use Youtube) is a complete no go. Service is supposedly in good order. ...**** computers. I've already spent all afternoon changing passwords.