Chindie

If you're going to Aber, good luck getting accom if you missed the deadline. In my final year they were putting up first years that had met the deadline in hotels because there were no rooms.

My desktop PC has been lying dormant for a few months following a virus and age catching upto it meaning a clean install of Windows. I'd forgotten that, due a previous brainfart it had, I'd installed a new mobo that I'd picked up from a PC fair (it's a 939 one which at the time were rare as hens teeth as nobody had used them for 3 years - the fair was about the only place I could get one for unextortionate prices) that had been cannabalised from a production PC (a Hewlett Packard as it turns out) and required some drivers to be found. Typically, I forgot to note down these drivers, especially the network one. I turn on the PC today to try and fix it, and Windows wants activating. But the network driver isn't there, and I'm not ringing up Microsoft to re-activate an XP install. So I've spent all day trying to find out what the network adapter is, which I think I've discovered, but no driver seems to do the trick to get it work. I've now got a hand that hurts from punching the PC in sheer frustration. I've been running the thing off of a Knoppix boot disc to try and crack this problem, and even that hasn't really helped. Guess it'll be mothballed for another couple of months. Soon enough it'll jut be easier to cannablise the 5 year old thing and start again.

The problem Battlefield 3 may have in taking the popular crown from COD is solely the issue of Battlefield's gameplay. I don't think it has the universal appeal of COD's comparatively more simple style. Anywho, are http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXrEtBnJ8CQ. On the back of those, second especially, I think that Kotaku entire plot spoiler might be bang on the money. Eurgh.

Well, exactly, FPS in the West have pretty much universally been the top tier franchises, although I would argue that the current saturation is a first and may help burn out quit how popular they are. But my point is that Activision seem to suggest that just because COD is an FPS, it can't or won't burn out like Guitar Hero did. I think their argument would be more valid, as you suggest if it were from a point of view that 'FPS's won't completely burn out'. But it wasn't, imo. It was from a point of view that for a decent while yet, COD will be king and that is that. I disagree, the crown changes ahnds and I already think the series is on it's slope downwards to losing it and in time, disappearing. I see it becoming a less 'serious' franchise soon enough, being spun off in less than ideal directions and watered down as they chase the dollars.

It's the comic book film I've least wanted to watch. Not an inspiring character, one of the weakest of Marvel's front line roster, and I can't escape the feeling if Marvel hadn't wanted to make an Avengers film, a Thor movie would not exist. ...luckily, it isn't. The Street Fighter film makes Mortal Kombat look Oscar worthy. It's one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I've seen AVP2. Twice. Only good thing about that film is Raul Julia.

A definite guilty pleasure, but hokey fun. On ITV4 now. Also, I've finally seen a bad Thor review. Roger Ebert hated it.

Oh don't get me wrong I want to be able to access all of those things when I'm out and about once in a while, I just want to being doing that once or twice a day when I'm at work or whatever and do it in lump sums rather than have updates coming all throughout the day which I'd find distracting. When I'm at work I only check my phone for the time, and even texts I find a little distracting if I know they're there and I've not read them, so having emails and other updates coming all the time would drive me mad. I'd rather just get them in my break or when theres a spare 5 mins. I'll be embracing it, it'll just be an embrace done at my control . I can also say that Kies pisses over Nokia's attempt at useful software in the shape of the Ovi Suite, and it's predecessor - which was shit, and didn't work. Simplicity in that sort of thing is goal and Kies nails that so far.

Because I don't want them to.

Cheers, thats exactly what I wanted. I only tend to use mobile net very, very sparingly so that is the reassurance I needed. Still getting my head around the way Android does things but I'm really liking the potential there. Just need to start porting across some media to make the phone really 'mine', and get some stuff to play with on it .

Indeed. I've been expecting the series to take a further dive post the IW cull, but taking a look at this early stuff just makes that sense stronger. It looks absolutely phoned in, so to speak. Been said a number of times, but it's only a matter of time till the CoD series goes the way of Guitar Hero. Activision think it won't because (to paraphrase) 'People like, and always have liked, and always will, FPS games'.

First details SPOILERIFIC plot details Multiplayer details First shots out there too on those links. I can't reiterate enough that the second link there is spoiler mental, it's the entire plot pretty much. Which, having read it, sounds bad even on a scale where COD's previous plots are thought of as decent.

I need to really sit down and get used to it, but so far it's impressive. I'm unfamiliar with Android so stumbled through things so far. I'm currently trying to work out if I can make it do something my N97 did - if using the net at home, only use the Wifi, and otherwise only use the net when I ask it to use it. I fear the answer may be staring me in the face but I'm also just aclimatising to the phone.

More or less everything about the McCanns annoys me. I'd love to know how much money has gone through their hands. Are they still working? I seem to remember hearing something about their little fund being used for them to support themselves while they carry on the search.

I now own an SGS2.

Shift at work today had me seething by the end as well actually. Dumb shift, spent all day 'de-sale-ing' the store, which meant digging through all the stock to find all the sale items (because the head office missed an absolute shitload of stuff they had on the sale on their price change circular). I spent the entire shift just peeling off stickers and putting on new ones. But that couldn't be that simple - the hardware sale items aren't taken off sale til tomorrow and we don't know what price they will return to. And there isn't the time to do all the price changes on hardware before opening tomorrow, and we can't be paid for the overtime necessary to do it tonight. So we had to fudge it today returning all the prices to the previous price before sale and hoping thats correct come tomorrow. If it isn't, it has to be redone tomorrow and pray no-one wants to buy anything with the wrong price on it. All while having to run the shop as usual. And of course today is the one day I have to leave on time but also is the day we do our quarterly refresher on sales law, which has to be done in our own time. Thankfully I always start early so that left me 15 mins at the end of the shift to get that done. Sod's law thusly dictates that as I'm trying to get this thing done, the phone starts ringing for the first time all day and everyone else is tied up doing other stuff so I have to answer it. In the end I left later than I would do any other day.

I may go to have a play with an SGS2 tomorrow. If I do and I'm sold on it, I think my overdue upgrade may be solved.

I think it's more that it's a good, well made and produced game doing something a bit different. It's not successful on it's nature as a puzzler (there are more devious, more complex, more taxing puzzlers), it's successful on it's nature as a well made original concept with humour and very few flaws. Whilst the shooter market is at saturation and anything good that is different should be applauded, any new shooter entering the market that innovates and is polished will be applauded, so I don't think the big thing behind the love for Portal is that it's not an FPS.

Food is a running 'piss me off' thing in our house. I live with my parents still and my mom isn't a great cook, also an unwilling one, and also has a very conservative pallet. Fish fingers, mash, peas and parsely sauce is a still a staple in our house. Our meals are pretty basic, when mom can be arsed to cook it's usually either the above, cheap steak potatoes and peas, pork chops potatoes and peas, fry-ups (often just bacon sarnies even), the dreaded 'something on toast' and then the weekly Sunday roast. With a couple of takeaways of some sort chucked in and occasionally to mix it up we'll have a frozen pizza, or if I have something different there might be a frozen pie done. And all done with the distinct feeling of my mom just really not wanting to cook. I'm not an amazing cook but I don't mind doing the cooking and trying to get something new going in the house. I've done lasagne a few times (completely from scratch bar the pasta), fajitas, other pasta dishes and so on, but it's always a thankless task as it's pathetically clear my mom would rather not be eating whatever I've made. Trying to introduce anything new to the menu is a pointless task and the meal time dirge continues on. My dad's fairly open to trying new stuff, and occasionally there's a breakthrough (a couple of years ago my mom wouldn't touch a pizza, no word of a lie. Now she'll eat it but remove pretty much anything other the cheese and tomato sauce). But blimey usually it's the same dull stuff week in week out. I struggle not to sigh when I hear it's something on toast again.

In what is becoming an annual bit of hilarity, Boltons new home kit. ..eurgh.

Just not for you then. It's probably one of the most universally applauded games to come out in years, praise it imo well earns.

'Estimated' is probably the important word there.

I'm going to suggest that that one is doubly useless since the percentage is almost certainly wrong.

At the very least, the new entry has to refine the movement so it is as far as possible faultless It's been an issue for 3 games, they fiddled a bit, to the series' benefit, for 2, and while I understand why they've done what they have with the movement (and when everything comes together, which is more often than not, it's superb), the times it fails are infuriating. If I'm hanging from a ledge and need to jump off to the right to another ledge, when I press directly left I want my character to jump directly left. Yesterday whilst playing in the same situation time and again the jump would be executed diagonally left, towards the screen, meaning a missed jump and a retry from the last checkpoint. Theres just too much vagueness, too much uncertainty. But even saying that I think the game needs to do more than that to stay fresh.

I hope my mood gets better with some kip, or else I hope we don't get any arsey customers tomorrow.

I'm yet to be convinced that Houllier won't be in charge next season. Well, in charge to a given definition of 'in charge', given his health.