Rispon Avenue

A simple equation, yes, but true none the less.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’ve just gotten through watching the first season, and this is a truly underrated television show! I didn’t know what to expect before I actually started watching it, but it had been recommended by a good source so I decided to give it a shot.

I knew I had some spare time over the weekend as my computer was playing up so no LOTRO – bloody video card – which lead me to download the series off of iTunes. I was hooked in the first episode. This is seriously well done, I have to say. The characters are nicely believable, and none are caricatures, which is nice. I really enjoyed being brought along for the ride in the first season, and watching how the characters developed.

For instance, in the first few episodes, the character of Pryzbylewski was so irritating, and I thought, a terrible, terrible, cop. After getting to the end of the series, though, you see he’s a product of his environment.

It’s a bit of a shocking look into the policing system of the U.S., too, I have to say. The show is heralded as one of the most realistic portrayal of police in the US. That’s a scary thought, really. It’s so… business like, so concerned with stats and ‘clearances’ that it’s disheartening.

You see the good guys having to fight just to have a chance at the bad guys. That’s another thing, the bad-guys are also portrayed quite realistically. It’s a sad world they live in, and they take one of the most common roads in it, which is turning to violence and drug selling.

After enjoying the first season so much, I went and bought seasons two, three, and four on DVD as they were really cheap. It was odd to see them so discounted, and it’s odd to think that the show never really won many awards when it was hailed by critics as a marvel. Nonetheless, I’m just starting season three now, and it’s shaping up to be another good one. Season two was less my thing than the first, but it was still good, and I think season three will be more in keeping with the first. Off I go to watch a few episodes!

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A Game of Thrones, that is.

I know, I know, I’m dreadfully late in reporting this, but yes, A Game of Thrones, by George R R Martin – FINISH THE NEXT BOOK, GEORGE – has been picked up by HBO after the pilot was shot late last year and earlier this year. I’m excited, I must say, to see this come to pass.

I do know that I’ve said in earlier blog posts about this that I was trepidatious, that I was concerned for the ‘corny’ factor, the clichés that could arise, but I have to say, after watching Rome recently, and having just bought three more seasons of The Wire because the first was so bloody good, I’ve got confidence in HBO. They put on some damn fine shows, I have to say. More on that story later.

So yes, the show has been given the go ahead, and the first season shall cover the first book, and will contain ten episodes in total. That seems a little on the skimpy side for such a massive book, but so much can be said without words that I suppose it should be alright. I’m just hoping to see the story play-out as faithfully as possible to what happened. No missing certain awesome characters – Tom Bombadill is noticeably missing from The Lord of the Rings! – or just altering things for the sake of making it easier to understand or some such. I hate to see that sort of thing happen, but I do look forward to seeing this play out.

Of course, I have no expectation that all the books will be made into a season of the series. I mean, seven seasons of A Song of Ice and Fire would cost quite a fortune, I believe, and HBO does have a history of cancelling shows if the cost is getting too high.

I suppose, though, that this show will have a huge following before anything is even shot. That’s the bonus of working with non-original content, I suppose. Anyway, this particular geek is most anticipating this one!

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Yeah, Heartgold and Soulsilver are remakes of the original Gold and Silver, so it’ll be familiar to many, many players.

I’m strongly of two minds about this. The Pokemon franchise is set to hit the DS again, now with Heartgold and Soulsilver. Two almost identical games – they only differ in the Legendary Pokemon that you’ll encounter at some point in the game. These ‘two’ games are set to ship later this month, and they’re also just remakes of Pokemon Gold and Silver.

The game has been updated in terms of graphics and sound, and of course the DS capability, and you’ll be able to have a Pokemon walk around with you when you’re running around, which hasn’t been done in a very, very long time, but it all just feels a little shovelware-ish.

If you go out and pick this game up, and if you’re a ‘Gotta catch ‘em all’ freak then you might even get both games, and if you’re like that, then you probably picked up both Gold and Silver, too, then you’ve just forked out a lot of cash for Game Freak – the game’s developers – and Nintendo who’re publishing the game.

I don’t know if they really deserve our money for this one, folks. I mean, sure, you get a neat little peripheral, which is essentially a pedometer that actually gives you in-game cash and XP for walking around in real life. Now, this is fabulous incentive, especially for a hobby that’s usually quite sedentary, but it feels somewhat wasted on Heartgold and Soulsilver…

I suppose, though, that each and every one of these games that I’ve played has, essentially, felt the same as every other. Perhaps if I was able to see the new changes, see my pokemon walking around with me, then I’d be more inclined to feel like I’m actually playing a new game, but yeah. I don’t know, I’m just feeling that Nintendo are the kings of shovelware, and that makes me highly sceptical about whatever they’re putting on the shelves at the moment.

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Ubisoft certainly failed, but at least it wasn’t quite epic fail.

So the PC version of Assassin’s Creed II launched in the US, UK, and Australia earlier this month, and within a week of the US release, Ubisoft’s servers were attacked. Which, of course, left many new owners of the game unable to play it. At all.

Ubisoft issued the requisite apology, stating that 95% of players weren’t affected, and that if you were already playing the game you wouldn’t have been affected, but that some players did experience the inability to play as the result of the attack. One has to wonder if that attack was by pirates, just trying to show Ubisoft up for being so ham-handed with their security policies.

It’s really interesting to see the reaction from gamers to actually having the game. It’s all well and good for us to blog our hearts out about how clumsy a security measure Ubisoft’s DRM is, but once the game is actually installed and running, well that’s when game developers and producers should really be paying attention.

If you’ve got a game, reviewed on IGN for a score of 8.9, and yet you’ve got a reader average of just 1.6, well you know you’ve messed up somewhere. That’s an enourmous disparity, and that also includes the fanboys who’ve rated the game 10, and those who’ve not had any problem and rated it in the 9’s. Half of the reader reviews on the game have given it 0.0 – no, that’s not a cute little emoticon, that’s zero-point-zero.

Ubisoft, it’s time to wake up and smell the poutine. You’ve got to realise you can’t just attach any price, any condition, any must-do to your games and expect them to be well received and sell well. I bet that a surprising percentage of Assassin’s Creed II copies for the PC get taken back to stores across the globe.

For those in remote places, the connection to the master server at Ubisoft is not an accessible thing, as noted in the Wiki page for the game. It’s unfair to expect that not only do people have to have a net connection to even be able to install the game, but to even play it! This is just poor form in my opinion. Those attacks on Ubisoft’s master server are just going to get worse and worse, in my opinion, until there is a cracked version of the game. Watch that cracked version take off, too. Many gamers who’ve never downloaded a torrent in their life will probably learn for this game, just to spite Ubisoft and their sledgehammer methods.

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It’s really nice to see hard work paying off.

In the last few months I’ve been trying especially hard to save a lot. My SO and I pool our finances, which does make a difference, and she’s just as committed as I am to saving for our future. We’re both of the mind to retire early in life, but that means putting a lot of effort into it now rather than later.

Since I was able to start working from home, I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve been able to save. As any savings news website can tell you, it’s often the little things that you waste the bulk of your expendable money on without realising it. For me, it wasn’t only things like fares for public transport, it was often food or coffee or tea on the go. Being able to grab a cup of tea whilst waiting for your bus, and not worrying about the few bob you spent on it: after a week or so you’ve started to spend some serious cash on little items.

My SO loves packing a good lunch for work – and doing the same for me before she leaves for work in the morning – and has even gotten us nice bento-box styled containers so that there’s no throw-away packaging either.

So, knowing that I would be spending less, when I did start working from home, I committed to saving more. It’s been fantastic to get my monthly statements and see our cash ISA savings account really start to pick up pace in the last few months.

Also, another word of advice, never be afraid to swap savings accounts! If you’re not in a fixed term account – and many good savings accounts are more about having a certain amount to deposit when you open the account, rather than having the funds in there for a certain amount of time – you can always shop around for the best savings deals. If I thought Nationwide Savings and Investments had a better account for me, I’d not hesitate to open an account and swap the savings over. It’s your money, and you’ve a right to put it where it will best earn you more!

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Here’s my impression of the game so far, based on about two hours of play.

Okay so I know that two hours into an RPG is, well, hugely inadequate to get a real handle on the game, but that’s not what I’m doing here. I’m going to be doing a few posts on this game, and how I’m feeling about it, every now and then. This is one of the ‘now’ posts, so it’s early on in the game, the the ‘then’ posts will be much further into it. :D

Alright, let’s see, where to begin? Well, the opening cinematic was beautiful, and played out really nicely. No hitches in it on my system, and with the HDMI cable, it really is very pretty. The story is set up within this first sequence and is actually intriguing, which is nice. You first start off playing as Lightning, a typically taciturn character who’s not really letting anyone in at this stage. The other initial character you meet is Sazh, who’s quite funny in his own way, and has a Chocobo hanging out in his hair. That’s sort of disgusting, but that baby Chocobo is very cute. It’s irritating that the American voice actor says ‘cho-co-bo’ when I’ve always called them ‘Cho-cowe-bo’ as in, that centre ‘co’ rhymes with ‘owe’, but that’s just a pet peeve of mine.

Next you meet Snow and his group, who come across as all a bit silly. The characters are mildly interesting at this stage, and a little irritating, but it’s too early to tell where precisely they’ll go with them. One hopes there are some unexpected character developments, because if it’s clichéd as well as very linear then I’ll be rather disappointed.

As for all the criticism of that game? Well, that’s actually quite warranted. You really are forced down a track – a narrow one at that – at this point in the game, and whilst I do understand that the first five or so hours of a game like this you’ll often be forced down a track, I do remember Oblivion gives you freedom to roam less than an hour into the game.

I am enjoying the game, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes, but I’m also cautious about expecting too much from the game. I’m really hoping that this ‘accessibility’ trend in the gaming industry – read: dumbing games down so any schmo can pick it up and play without having to, oh God, don’t say the bad word, LEARN something – will die down soon. I’m not saying I want to see the complex levelling system of FFX back, but nor do I want to go backwards in terms of game content just so they can ship a few more units.

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I bought the Fawlty Towers series off iTunes the other day, and I’ve already watched both seasons twice through!

The title there is of course a reference to the changing sign that’s shown at the beginning of each episode. The sign is changed by the paper-boy, who’s taking out his resentment at Basil by messing with the sign. It’s cute, and one of those things that stick with you about the show. The little details.

It’d been a while since I last saw the show, but I was looking through my old – and surprisingly extensive – VHS collection the other day, and noticed that I had a few episodes that I had taped from the TV. I popped one in the old VCR and saw that these tapes had been watched a lot. The condition was pretty bad, so I took a look on iTunes and found that the two seasons of Fawlty Towers very actually pretty cheap. I mean so they should be considering there’s only six episodes per season and they’re about half an hour long, but anyway.

I bought both seasons and I’ve already watched nearly every episode twice! I love The Builders episode, as well as The Germans, Communication Problems, and others that aren’t coming to mind right now.

I know there’s been a few documentaries about Fawlty Towers in recent times, and I’d like to get a hold of those too. It’s just so much fun, and I do wish there were more, though I can see why Cleese and Booth wouldn’t write more, the intensity of the acting is enough to fear an onset of apoplexy for John when he’s playing Basil.

It’s so much fun going back and watching something you’ve not seen in a long time, and it bears up just as well as it did a decade ago. You’ve got to appreciate that, it’s certainly an amazing feat.

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For once I’m actually glad to see the end of Winter, which is usually my favourite season! This year, though, it’s been a very long and cold one, and I’m looking forward to the relative ease of warmer seasons.

Okay, okay so I know Spring is practically here, but we’re still getting intermittent snow, sleet, and rain, which causes the path in our front garden to be extremely slippery! If I don’t get out there and shovel and salt it regularly, it’s too dangerous and I hate the idea of either my SO or myself being injured because we didn’t take care of it.

Another reason I’m looking forward to warmer weather is that my SO bought me a rather awesome gift for our anniversary, she’s paid for the two of us to go ‘Zorbing’. It’s something I’ve seen a few times here and there, and always wanted to give it a go myself. Basically you get into a very large inflatable ball, and you roll down a hill. It’s much more fun looking than sounding, too. :D

I’m thinking at some point in the future I want to organise something like this for her, too. She has this thing about hot air balloons, so I’m considering taking her on one, or perhaps paying for us to go where she can create her own perfume or for the two of us to go jetskiing, which would also be fun but it’s hard to even consider going anywhere near water at the moment. Nonetheless, I’m enjoying considering what to surprise her with!

So, in spite of my absolute love of Winter, I’m really looking forward to Summer this year. I wish you could choose how long you wanted each season to be, because if I could, Winter and Autumn would last for four months each, and Spring and Summer would get two months each. Yes, that would suit me rather well, actually. :D

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I’m re-watching Rurouni Kenshin at the moment… Yep, nearly done.

I first watched this anime series about six or seven years ago with my SO based on a recommendation from my brother. When I first watched it, I thought it was fun and entertaining, and have always fondly remembered it. I’m sure you’ll even find me referencing it here at some point as ‘good anime’.

So about two weeks ago when I was shopping for DVDs, I noticed in the anime section and thought why the heck not, and picked up what they had in stock, which was the first two volumes. My SO was excited to be watching it again, and we were eagerly watching episode after episode most nights for the past fortnight.

We are up to the second last episode at this point, and let me give you a run down of what the last twelve episodes have been like.

Recap of what happened in the last episode
Recap of the scene where Kenshin left for Tokyo and Kaoru is sad
Sojiro quoting Shishio saying ‘If you’re strong you live, if you’re weak you die’
Sojiro quoting Shishio saying ‘If you’re strong you live, if you’re weak you die’
Sojiro quoting Shishio saying ‘If you’re strong you live, if you’re weak you die’
Tiny bit of actual fighting

Then finally when Kenshin beat the snot out of Sojiro, he finally fought Shishio and the battle went:
Recap of what happened in the last episode
Recap of the scene where Kenshin left for Tokyo and Kaoru is sad
Shishio saying ‘If you’re strong you live, if you’re weak you die’
Shishio saying ‘If you’re strong you live, if you’re weak you die’
Shishio saying ‘If you’re strong you live, if you’re weak you die’
Shishio kicking everyone’s ass really unfairly in a stupid ‘Jim the Giant Eagle who was almost as strong as God’ kind of way.

Finally Kenshin’s won, but now he’s half dead, and if I hear that stupid half-baked misunderstood Darwinism one more time I’ll be heard half way down the street swearing!

It’s really not as good as I remembered, and it feels very silly at times, and not in a good way like at other points in the series. The first meeting between Misao and Kenshin is hilarious, though.

It’s an alright introduction to anime, but Cowboy Bebop is much better!

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It seemed so recent that the DSi hit our stores, and already we’re being hit with a new update to Nintendo’s handheld.

Oh I’ll get it, don’t get me wrong. I know that ol’ Ninty knows that, too, but I can’t pass up a better DS, but at what point should Nintendo bite the bullet and just work a little longer and release a brand new handheld? And… Hang on, I need to address something here, and it needs an entire paragraph of it’s own…

Ahem.

What the hell is with ‘i’ everything? Bloody iTunes and they’re stinking repugnant camel case. Yes, that’s what it’s really called, because it’s stupidly humped – no, I don’t think camels are stupid or that their humps are stupid, I just really hate crappy grammar – and all up and down. Since iTunes made it huge, every bloody thing has an ‘i’ in there somewhere! It’s ridiculous and inane!

Okay, back to Nintendo’s DSi XL. Okay so I’m still wondering about this. There have been three updates to the original DS already, DS Lite, DSi, and now the DSi XL, and now the DSi and the DSi XL are supposed to be sold together, that you’ve got the choice between the two. Does it seem to anyone else that Nintendo is now becoming not only the kings of shovel-ware but inventing shovel-hardware? Because that’s what it seems like to me!

The DSi XL will ship in the US at the end of this month, in burgundy and bronze, and is going to retail over there for US$189.99 whilst here it’s going to be £159.99 and Australians are looking at AU$349.00 and Europe is looking at €159.99. Anyone in the know about current currency conversion will know that the console is much cheaper in the US than here, cheaper than it is even in Japan. Also, the DS is not region specific, so if you’ve got a friend who can ship you one from the states it’d cost you less than buying it here when it comes out!

After that, I need a bath. Damn Nintendo, stop being so damn greedy!

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It’s sort of irritating, and that irritation is only increased when you are well aware that you don’t deserve it.

Every now and then I go and check George R R Martin’s ‘Not A Blog’ to see how much longer I’ll be waiting for a book that he said would be done within a year, five years ago! In perusing his previous posts, I noticed an irritated mini rant at his blog readers, and I had to investigate.

It turned out that back on the 29th of January, Martin posted a very brief, and rather vague in my opinion, blog post that was titled ‘A Good Day, With Snow‘ and the only contents of said post was ”nuff said’ and the mood listed at the bottom was ‘accomplished’. Now, I took this to mean he’d finished a Jon Snow chapter, but many others didn’t. Comments poured in on the post congratulating Martin for finishing the book, and excitement rose to see when the book would hit the stores. There were also many others like myself who took this post to mean that George had just finished a chapter, but it was easy to see where some had gotten the wrong idea.

The following day, George posted another blog entry, but this one had a lot more in it. This mini rant, entitled ‘No, No, No‘ – as if admonishing a naughty child or disobedient dog – was having a go at his blog readers for trying to ‘decode’ his previous post and assuming that it meant that A Dance With Dragons was done. He made a comment about this being why he hated to make updates, and that all he was saying was that he’d had a particularly good day of writing. To that I say, for a person who makes their livelihood off of communication, he should be able to readily understand why his ambiguous post got the hopes up of many readers.

Quite frankly, the idea of Martin being aggravated with us, his readers, for the understandable assumption that that terribly obscure post meant that the next ASoIaF book was finished is quite preposterous. Sure, I thought it was quite clearly about Jon Snow, but it’s much like an optical illusion, it’s easy to see two different images contained in the small amount of information given in that post.

The fact that fans of this series have had to wait five years for the second half of the last book is bloody ridiculous. The first in the series was released back in 1996, and at that point it was set to be a trilogy. Book two was released in 1999, book three in 2000, and book four in 2005. We are now to expect seven books in the series, but if Martin keeps this writing pace up – and lack of focus, in my opinion – we’ll be waiting on the final instillation till 2020!

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I don’t mind paying for good insurance, but I don’t like paying extra fees for undue purposes.

I was wandering around the web viewing all sorts of finance news articles. It’s amazing how much you can learn by reading an article, following a link to a related article, then reading that, then following a link to a related article, and so on and so forth. Anyway, during one of these meanderings I came across this news article about why our car insurance premiums keep going up here in the UK.

Surprisingly it’s because of the greater amount of money each insurance company is having to spend in order to cover their clients against lawsuits. This surge in personal injury claims comes directly from insurance companies sending their clients onto lawyers who specialise in this field, who then try to extract money from the opposing insurance company representing the other person involved in the initial car accident. The reason the insurance companies are sending their clients onto the lawyers – and the same deal applies with car rental companies – is because then those companies will pay the insurance company a referral fee, which can be up to £900.

Ironically, what started out as yet another way for insurance companies to try to get more money for themselves has actually ended up costing them more per year than it nets them, because of all the injury claims made against them. What this does me, though, is that the clients of these insurance companies are paying more every year to try to cover the cost of how much insurance companies are spending on pay-outs each year. Daft, I know.

I think people need to settle down a little here. If you are actually injured by the negligence of another driver, and you can’t work for a while, then sure, you’ve a right to be compensated. If it’s more serious than that, you’ve a right to be greatly compensated. But if you’ve got a bit of a sore neck and use it as an excuse to take three days off work, don’t try to take the person who gave you a tiny bump due to slippery conditions to court just because you checked some bloody personal injury calculator and figured out you might be able to get some cash.

That’s not what the legal profession is there for, so stop abusing the system and perhaps your next car insurance quote won’t turn quite as many of your hairs grey.

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Stopped working. Bought recently and stopped working.

So the handsets are fine, except that they are running out of power because the base stopped working. Yep, the rather necessary base part which charges the hand set and does all the important stuff like actually being hooked up to my modem, well that part died on the weekend for no apparent reason, which is rather annoying. I’ll go and buy a new one, because I don’t want to wait the time it takes to send the phones back to the manufacturer, wait for them to get to them, then repair or replace them, then send them to me. I kind of need a phone now, and I’d already given my old one away.

So anyway, back to searching for telephones online. I suppose this is the only downside with not going through a company like BT who’d supply me with one, but at least I get better rates on everything with my non-phone supplying company. I really do like my UK ISP as the rates are good compared to many ISPs in other countries. There’s lot of places for business broadband and ADSL lease lines these days, but I like the one I already have.

The digital dect cordless phones look okay, but I’ll be reading a lot of user reviews on tech sites before I choose, to find one that’s not going to break down.

I’m always very thankful at this point that at least if I have to shop for new phone, I can check out online reviews and such before I do go and buy one. I don’t mind shopping for tech in person, but it’s much better to go armed with information. I wonder if there’s poor reviews for the phones I bought or if they are merely an exception to the general quality of the phones, because I really thought they were alright…

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Where do you stand?

Basically, a while back I saw this news article on the BBC News site for the ‘naked scanner’. Basically there’s a scanner that’s being tried in various airports here in the UK which takes a complete image of a person in an x-ray sort of format. The contentiousness rises out of the fact that it produces a clear image of the entire person, regardless of clothing, as if they were naked. Some people feel that this is an extreme invasion of their personal privacy, whilst others are happy to be scanned if it means safer air travel.

I personally feel that safer air travel is worth it, because the image will be destroyed afterwards – there’s no way to store them – and I don’t think the person viewing all these pictures is going to care one bit about seeing a hazy negative looking image of thousands of people a day. The airports using the scanners are implementing them in replacement of regular metal detectors and/or being patted down, so some people do prefer to be scanned rather than go through all of that. On the other hand, it is getting to be extremely invasive to go anywhere, anymore, and making it seem less worth it to travel.

Many Brits seem to find security invasive and offensive, with many being angered by CCTV camera systems, and to be fair, we do have more of them per capita than any other country in the world, and that’s pretty hefty. There’s both good and bad about all of these security measures, same with GPS vehicle tracking, but I tend to see the up side to those more than the down.

I heartily dislike this RFID tracking business that companies are trying to implement, as this is not a security measure but as a means for companies to track who’s buying what, and that I don’t agree with. It’s a viable option if it helps maintain safety for everyone, not if it only helps people to make money.

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IGN put up a series of articles recently about gaming through the past few decades, so I thought I’d write about it here because I found it an educational read.

The first of the articles outlines the birth of modern video gaming. Most gamers are probably aware that gaming really kicked off in the 70’s with coin operated machines, primarily, with Pong which came out in 1972. Though Pong is often remembered as the original computer game, it was actually very similar to a game which had been released by Ralph Baer who created the Magnavox Odyssey home console, along with a Pong-like game only a few months before Pong hit the market.

In ‘71, Nolan Bushnell created the very first consumer video game, called Computer Space. Apparently the game was overly complex and somewhat abstract, which unfortunately meant that the game flopped, but hey, it was the first cab off the rank and that’s rather important.

There were games that kicked off entire genres in the 70’s, such as simulator games with Lemonade Stand in ‘73. There were also some of the most important advances in computer gaming in this decade. Gaming consoles for the home were first introduced in the 70’s, the Magnavox Odyssey, then a few years later the Fairchild F, and then the one that really made an imprint, the Atari Video Computer System was released in ‘77 for a hefty $US200.

During the 70’s there was at least one arcade game in every pub or gaming room, though towards the end of the decade they weren’t finding the popularity that they had once had.

What amazes me is that from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s, the advances in home gaming were astronomical. The earliest computer games were built on mainframes the size of a room, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop. To look at that mainframe, and then the Atari 2600 in ‘77 which just plugged right on in to your television… well that’s just awesome in the eyes of this avid gamer.

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Odd story, no doubt about that, but one that bares reading by all gamers, in my opinion.

So, I’ll give a brief run down of what is in this news story here that I found via a link on the Penny Arcade news section. Basically, there was once a little drug dealer from America, who was arrested on dealing many types of drugs. This little drug dealer decided that, when the arrest warrant went out for him in 2007, he’d rather not go to court and maybe prison, so decided to skip the country.

This little drug dealer had had friends in his home town, somewhere in Howard County, and he had told them that he liked to play WoW. When the sheriff from that good ol’ county started asking those friends about the little drug dealer, they informed him of his predilection for that stupid game, well, they thought why not send a missive from the king – read, a subpoena – to the caretakers of the land of Warcraft. The sheriff waited and waited, for three or four months, before a wad of scrolls was sent back to him. A package of information about that little drug dealer, what his billing address was, his favourite server, and his character’s names. Funnily enough, he played as a Shaman, not terribly dissimilar from is apothecarish tendencies in real life.

Okay now I’ll drop that pathetically fractured story-teller style and deal with the rest of it. So, after they got all this information from Blizzard, sheriffs at the Howard County used the information to figure out that their quarry had gone to Canada and then enlisted the aid of the Canadian Mounted Police, who picked up the dealer and shipped him back to the states.

This is something that’s not been done before, but it’s very interesting. Personally, I think that everything that was done was completely above board, completely reasonable, and if some scum bag drug dealer get to go to prison as a result, then booyah!

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Save yourself and those around you much grief by shopping from home instead of hitting the pavement in the last few days before Christmas.

It’s so much better shopping online, so long as you know what you’re looking for and the good sites to buy from. Obviously it’s getting awfully close to Christmas now, so you’d have to make sure you can get express postage on anything you order, but this is good advice for any holiday season.

Most of us have a fairly good idea what to buy for the people we get gifts for, and don’t just head into a department store with no idea, but if you are a little stumped there are always lists online of what are considered good presents for men, women, and children.

Lets start then. If you want to get a man something you’ll know he’ll love, make it active! I’m a geek, but pretty much all of the gifts on Into the Blue appeal to me, and probably men in general as well as many women, making it a really great gift and time out together sharing in something really fun. Seriously, they’ll let you drive a tank… a tank! You can also go jetskiing, bungee jumping, and some old school falconry is available too!

Okay lets see now, often you’ll find yourself somewhat stumped as to what to get as a gift for your mother or such, and that can be annoying, but I like to check lists like this for gifts for women, because they’ll let you know what’s considered a good gift for a lady without you having to watch one jot of day-time TV.

If you’re not a parent, you can really have the same issue when trying to find gifts for any children you’ve got to buy for. I always look up gifts for my nephews, it’s best to when buying Christmas presents for kids.

If you’ve no idea, then you can always drop by Amazon, they’ll have something that’s apt for nearly anyone! It’s saved my bacon a couple of times in the past with gifts for my family.

So there’s my shopping round-up, and don’t expect me to do anything like that again! :D

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It’s hard to say if the game is not so good, or just massively over hyped, but either way, I’m less than thrilled with the game.

It took quite a while before I actually bought and played the game after it was released back in October, in fact, I’d only played it from around mid November, so there was quite a lot of reviews out there at that point, though I didn’t really take much of a look at them, because I was still down with H1N1 and game reviews didn’t seem very important right then.

Anyway, IGN US gave the game 8.7 whilst IGN AU gave it 8.5 but the metacritic score was actually 80, so in terms of IGN that would be an 8.0. I have to say, though, that even that score is, I think, somewhat overrated. Some sites rated the game as low as 50 (5.0) even though they did have good things to say about it.

The game’s controls are more than a little irritating, no, they are completely frustrating. There is no room for fine movements, you’re either running that little fellow full tilt across the screen, or jumping over the exact spot you want the little blighter to stand on, over and freaking over. It’s really annoying. Also, the range of items in the game is dramatically less than I had thought there was going to be with what developers had said about the game prior to release.

It’s also VERY annoying to type something in, and only have the last part of the word count. For instance, I wanted sleeping gas, so I input it, and rather than telling me that this item too wasn’t available, they gave me a little bit of gas. Hmmm, lame 5th Cell, lame.

Another thing that really bothered me about this game was that it was just way too easy. Ridiculously so in most cases. The only thing that made this game difficult was the poor controls, and that’s not a good thing, that’s a very bad thing.

Scribblenauts was touted as visionary, an extremely new and creative game, however as I played it I felt like I’d done it before. It’s like Crayon Delux but with cartoon visuals and pre-made items instead of being able to draw your own. So if you’ve thought about getting Scribblenauts, save your money and buy Crayon Delux for your PC. You’ll have more fun, more money in your pocket, and won’t want to snarl in frustration at the horrible controls.

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Nah, this isn’t a post on ghost hunting, but rather on the new Zelda game, Spirit Tracks, which I’ve been playing for the last week or so.

I know, I know, I’ve got at least one rant around here somewhere about being annoyed with the upcoming Zelda game, that a train felt very limited compared to the boat seen in previous games, and yeah, I’d still prefer something else, but I’m actually enjoying the game nonetheless.

Okay so lets see, where to start… I know that some are frustrated that the controls remained the same and that you still have to control Link via the stylus, and I can see why, but apart from the occasional time where you only want to move a very small amount, I don’t mind the stylus controls. I like being able to tap items rather than have to run up to them and press ‘A’ and also like the sword control, so it doesn’t bother me really.

The story line is good old Zelda style; it’s nice to see that even though their ideas might not be my favourite, they still have the ‘Zelda’ knack of making the game enjoyable. Running around with Princess Zelda makes for a nice change from seeing her for a total of five minutes in the entire game, though she is a ghost the company is still refreshing. It’s a little reminiscent of Twilight Princess in that regard, I suppose. The dungeons are good but they are a little easy. I’d not needed to use either a potion or the ‘Song of Healing’ until the boss fight in the Snow Temple, so I do feel like the difficulty could stand to go up a bit.

The train rides are… well… irritating at times. They can be very tedious, unless you decide you’re going to treat it like the journey is as worthy as getting to the destination. Perhaps that’s an English thing, I’m not sure, but I do find that I have to have a certain mental approach to getting from place to place, lest I find myself becoming frustrated very quickly.

I like that Beedle is running around in a hot air balloon in this iteration, I’d thought he’d be on a train as well, though I can see that being a problem. I can’t stand the stupid ‘bad’ trains that run around in certain areas, purely because you never get the chance to fully blow them up with your cannon. All you can do is slow them down, and if they hit you, you go back to where you began your journey, and VERY irritating occurrence!

All in all it’s still a fun Zelda game, however I think the IGN rating on the gameis a tad fanboyish , it’s a really fun game, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure if it deserves a 9.3 rating, perhaps a 9.0 would be more fitting? It’s hard to decide because the game really is extremely fun! I mean sure, it’s not that challenging, but it’s no slouch, either. It’s a super fun game and I’m going to stop blabbing about it here and go play the damn thing!

Oh, and I’m going to just say it here and now, I’m hoping there will be a third instalment in this DS series of Zelda games in which we get to travel around in a hot air balloon like Beedle, or perhaps an air ship.

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There was a salesman knocking at my door today, and upon going through all that is entailed in getting rid of said salesman, in the future I just won’t open the door!

I’ll set the scene. I’m working away quietly, slowly catching up on missed work due to being ill, and I hear a knock at the door. My SO was out, so off I go to see who it is. I check the peep hole in the door, and don’t recognise this person in a suit, but I thought I better open it.

No sooner had I opened the door when this man launched into a very generic speech about certain telecoms deals the company he was representing were offering to those in my area…

First off, to those in my area? Do you think I believe that crap? No, that’s just something companies do to lure people in by thinking they’ve got a special deal, that not everyone can have this deal, no, you have to be special. Gag. I told this guy that I was happy with the voip phone system I’ve already got, that I don’t need any of their numerous telephones, and that business SDSL availability was a pretty crappy selling point considering this was a residential area.

Then he did something that made him stand out as really annoying. He started in on asking which company I went through for my phone system, why I didn’t think I needed SDSL, and where I bought my telephones.

For a person who’s had very limited social contact for about a month, this was a little more than I could take, and I told the guy flat out that this was ridiculous, that his interrogative questions were presumptuousness and rude, and that he and his company where absolute shysters if they were going to try and come into this area and start telling people they need SDSL. The salesman looked so shocked and bewildered I thought he might faint, then he said he hoped I had a nice afternoon, and then left. Ahhhh. Still, next time I’m not answering the door!

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