My New(ish) Toy: A Review

Like it? After three and a half years with my Sony Ericsson K750i (an easy to remember figure of time, given that I got it specifically so only Lorraine could contact me before Chloe was born) I finally decided to upgrade my phone about two months ago, allowing me to have all kinds of fun with a new device.

Not that it was easy to move on, mind you. I was on a superb tariff with my K750i, it was a phone I loved and knew like the back of my hand. And I usually only had to charge it about once a week.

So it wasn't altogether easy to move onto a G1, but I did, and for the most part I don't regret it. Let's take a look at some of the benefits of it:

• The tariff. Not quite as good as I was on, but I managed to get eight months free line rental from T-Mobile. Furthermore surfing the web doesn't cost a thing.
• Instant access to my Gmail, which I run just about everything through.
• Lots of apps. Still finding my way around these if I'm honest. Love Twitroid though, makes it super easy to post to my Twitter account, as well as keeping up with friends throughout the day. Beats coming home to 106 tweets.
• Want to flash up your address book? I can do so with pictures. Small thing, but I like it.
• Masses of memory. 2Gb (i.e. lots of music), so no hassle in considering whether or not to get a Sony memory card any more.
• The trackball, which I wasn't looking forward to using, is pretty good for navigating around.
• Phone call quality? Pretty good I'd say. Nice and clear on most calls I've made.

And in the interests of fairness, some of the poorer sides of it:

• First and foremost, the battery life is horrible. I need to charge this just about every day. Yes, every day. Really not good.
• Not all webpages are equal. For instance I really don't like what it does to Google Reader.
• Let's be honest as well, the 3G speeds in the UK aren't great yet. Not bad, but could be better.
• No templates in text messages. Sounds like a small gripe, but when sending a message to Lorraine about when I would be home from various places this used to take me two seconds. Now it is more like two minutes.
• Grouping text messages together. Every to and from you send to one person gets grouped together, until you delete it, when you delete the whole conversation. No more saving the Jack Bannister-themed texts my friend Nick sent me two years ago that still reside on my K750i.
• Twitroid might be too easy to post from, as some of my posts my wife has made on my behalf might attest to.

One Of Those Brief Updates

I look at my last posts shows it has been far too long since I last posted anything. As a matter of fact there's nothing I particularly feel the need to comment on, but to show I haven't dropped off the face of the earth I thought I'd post a few posters that go along with a few things

Probably the most exciting thing I've done since my last post was to visit Sheffield for the first weekend of the World Snooker Championship. It was something I had never been to before and I'm really glad I did it. However first and foremost I'm glad I did it because it gave me a chance to catch up with three of my best friends at once.

Anyway, I was somewhat surprised at how small and intimate the Crucible Theatre is. I'm not sure how well this photo shows that but I thought it may be interesting to show.



Two weeks after that I had another Sheffield sporting event, only this time it was Sheffield United visiting Selhurst Park for Palace's last game of the season.

The weather was beautiful, but the game was a bit of a let down. Although United were going for promotion Palace had nothing to play for and it wasn't a particularly great game. It finished as a scoreless draw, which now means I haven't seen Palace score for over two years. Ouch.



Besides that? I've not been up to much, just a whole lot of working, helping my wife with the garden and taking Chloe swimming. Days are just flying by.

N.B. As always, all photos are from my Flickr photostream.

Three Months as a PS3 Owner: The Other Games

About a week and a half ago I posted Three Months as a PS3 Owner: Prologue, a short introduction to my review of the games I currently own as a PS3 owner. In that I talked about MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, my favourite game, and now I talk about the other games I own, in order of preference.

Don't get too excited, I don't own that many games. I haven't been a prolific games owner probably since I was at University. Work and friends - not to mention family - tend to take precedence these days.

FIFA 09
For a long time I must admit that I wasn't a great fan of the FIFA series. Between battles on my best mate's PC where the pitch seemed huge and times where I was overwhelmed by my brother-in-law on his Nintendo Gamecube, the game didn't hold a lot of appeal or fond memories (and that's before you even mention the old combo of John Motson and Ally McCoist).

But then I was given FIFA 09 by my aforementioned best mate when he came to visit, and you know what? It's a lot more fun now. Okay, I still haven't won a game online, but I'm slowly getting better at it and enjoying it more and more. I'd probably learn more if I actually experimented with learning new things in a game instead of trying to win every single match I play, but that's my being competitive I guess.

Odd quirk: the feedback on the Dual Shock controller when a shot hits the post, something which my best friend and I both pondered and couldn't reason exactly why they'd applied that at that point.

Update: Just fired this up today for the first time in a while. Saw the new trophies for the first time - lots of fun stuff there. Even scored a goal from the move which earned me The Ol' Switcheroo Trophy. Nice!

SingStar ABBA
A concession to my lovely wife, who I felt wasn't getting the most out of having a PS3 (the word "widow" did pass her lips prior to buying this). As we couldn't get the SingStar with microphones pack that Argos were offering at the time we decided to pony up for the microphones ourselves and then get the ABBA version of the game separately. Honestly, it probably worked out better for us. More songs we know, more fun, and we probably got our money's worth from it the first time we played it.

And that was before I learnt to save other people's songs, then play it back with the pitch shift effect applied - Chipmunks in your living room, wunderbar!

Just don't ask me to provide backing vocals on "Take a Chance On Me", it isn't pretty.

(And yes, I will be getting SingStar Queen at some point. It's a cast-iron certainty.)

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
Ah yes, part of my reason for wanting a PS3, to be able to indulge in the Gran Turismo series, the one game which pays the proper homage to Laguna Seca, my favourite racetrack in the whole world.

Small problem: version 5 proper keeps being pushed back and back, leaving us with the short version of the game which allows a total of six tracks in a grand total of 12 different configurations. Of these tracks, four are in Japan, four are nigh-on impossible to overtake on, and six don't exist in reality at all. That being said, the two-player battle mode is great fun, especially for the time when I watched my wife play against my mother-in-law. It wasn't a quick game but I'm amazed we didn't wake Chloe up with all the laughing.

Back onto the negatives and the online mode, which might be the most frustrating experience of any game I've ever played, having various other players batter me about and then I get penalised for hitting them by accident? Infuriating. Less of that, more two player battles for me are the way to go. Lots more fun.

(And get on with the main game... with Laguna Seca please!)

Midnight Club: Los Angeles
To be honest until a few days ago I hadn't had this out of the box for weeks. To begin with I liked this game. The presentation is stunning, it looks beautiful and some of the graphics are nothing short of stunning. However for a casual gamer like myself it slowly loses appeal for a number of reasons, these being:

1. If you only play games every so often the thought of earning a few hundred dollars each race and looking towards a target of earning a million dollars seems like a long way off.
2. There is no multi-player mode (yeah, I know that PS3s work towards online play, but I'm old school and like playing games against someone in the same room).
3. The soundtrack is a little bit, how can I say this?... urban. It isn't really my style (and my style is a whole other debate, as anyone who has ever lived with me will tell you).
   
4. It all gets to be a bit samey after a while. At least Need For Speed Underground (my previous fave of a similar nature to this) had circuit races, drift races, drag races. The different modes in Midnight Club: Los Angeles are pretty much the same (and don't get into how many times I've managed to get lost in red light races, that's my pet peeve about this game).

That being said, if they launch a Midnight Club: Atlanta/Glasgow/London I'm probably buying it. It isn't that bad, it just isn't quite my thing.

Three Months as a PS3 Owner: Prologue

I thought I'd put together a little post on being a PS3 owner, but as I'm struggling to get the time to put together a longer entry right now I thought I'd post a little taster with some words about my favourite game.

Motor Storm: Pacific Rift
Yes, I'm putting this game at the top of the list. Me, the sports buff. Just because I really think this game is that good.

Prior to getting a PS3 I played a demo of this on my friend Douglas's PS3, and we both really enjoyed it. It showed enough of the game to me to justify picking one of the bundles that included it when I bought a PS3, and I've enjoyed it from the get go.

While winning races takes a little while to master, having fun during them does not. Lorraine enjoys this game as well, although mostly for the spectacular crashes (she earned the Stuntman award for performing an impressive barrel roll).

Whether played by just yourself, with a friend in the room, or online, this game provides all kinds of fun, plenty of challenges, a range of different race options depending on your level of skill and experience. I start playing this game and then find I can't stop. I actually had to earn the Survivor award on the same night as I got the Timesink and Bully awards, just so I could feel a little better about myself.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this game.

Facebook By Numbers

As I finally crossed the 40-friend plateau on Facebook in the last week I thought this might be a bit of fun to do. I swear this didn't take me that long to do, I'm not that much of a geek.

(And I know this should be titled "Facebook By Percentages", but that doesn't really sound as nice, does it?)

By nation:
English - 40%
Scottish - 37.5%
USA - 20%
Other - 2.5% (Hi Sally!)

Male/female:
Female - 65%
Male - 35%
Other - 0% (insert your own joke here)

I know you all so well:
Percentage of my "friends" who I've not met - 10%
Further friends who I've only met once - 5%

Where I know people from:
Church - 50%
Work - 30%
Fellow supporter of by far the greatest team, the world has ever seen - 15%
Uni - 2.5% (Hi Gill!)
Other - 2.5% (Hi Pat!)

One person actually crosses the Church/Work divide, but I'm sure neither he nor I want to think back to a time where earning £2.50 an hour in a summer job was acceptable.

And as a final aside, of my best friends I'd probably estimate that 40 to 50% of them are actually on Facebook.

How and where do you know your Facebook friends from?

2008 Review In Pictures

I thought it might be nice to do something a little bit different here, and so with the help of inspiration of blogs like The Big Picture I thought a pictoral review of last year might be fun.

As always, all photos can be found in my Flickr photostream.



Our big girl is now a big three. Chloe is walking, talking and still bringing more smiles and fun to the house than I would have ever thought possible.



Our dog Cookie is slightly older, but still just as loved. His age is showing a bit now, as the white on his chest is spreading subtly, leaving shades of grey even in his face. I still love him to bits, even if he's a big Mummy's Boy. This picture was taken on the freezing cold Saturday after Christmas, when I knew the park would be quiet and I could take him off his lead safely and let him have a run around. Well worth bearing the cold for.



The Mrs is still the Mrs, and she still loves me (thankfully). This past summer she was the bridesmaid at her brother's wedding, and here can be seen with Chloe after the service.



One of my favourite blogs ran the question "What Are Your Biggest Accomplishments of 2008?" After the initial guilty/panic-stricken blank thoughts I did think of some things, but best of all had to be appearing on - and winning - a TV gameshow. Something which started as a "Why not give it a go?" thought turned out to be something well worth doing on so many levels. The medal is actually given to each day's Going For Gold runner-up, which I was on my second day on the show, and isn't as large as it appears on the show (blame the camera angle they use for that, I guess). Still a nice memento though.

Two Reasons Why I'm Going Nowhere

With another year set to draw to a close I have once again not left the country for foreign shores this year. Here are two pretty good reasons, brought to you by Travelex's rates today*:

1 Pound = 1.0765 Euros
1 Pound = 1.506 Dollars

(*I used Travelex's site as I've always found their online rate to be the most competitive for me as a customer. You're probably not seeing a rate much better than this anywhere else.)

At around this time last year you the £/$ rate was flirting with the $2. I was tempted to pick some dollars up, just on the off chance that I could use them, all because the rate was that good. I didn't, more's the pity.

While the Euro rate hasn't been as good I remember colleagues late last year saying about it being in the 1.40 region, and even in the summer you could get approximately 1.25 for every pound. Now it isn't far off being an even swap.

So before you even begin to think of things like dog-sitting, insurance costs and all the other extras that come with going on holiday, the exchange rate situation doesn't exactly make going overseas appealing right now. Call me choosy, but I like to get a bit of bang for my buck.

(And no, Turkey and Egypt don't appeal to me, but thanks for asking.)

MP3s Come to Amazon.co.uk

Remember a while ago when I sang the praises of Play.com's download service? Well Amazon have joined the party in the UK and have dropped pricing and increased range even further. Prices for single tracks start at 59p and while the selection isn't that extensive at the moment I would imagine that will be changing. All tracks are DRM free.

Your move, iTunes.

Amazon launches music downloads [BBC News]

Some Thoughts on the US Election

Thought I ought to post something here, given that I studied American Studies at University and it was the politics that most interested me.

It seems to me that Barack Obama's victory in the Presidential election was a classic example of Populism. In other words drawing together many different interests for a common goal. It probably helped him that the economic woes of the past few months affected so many people, leading to a greater desire for change.

However I'm somewhat of the opinion that John McCain was a dead duck from the beginning. There was too much anger towards Bush and the Republicans for him to fight against. I actually think McCain is a decent man, who took defeat gracefully and seems keen to work towards a better future for his nation regardless of who is leading it.

In saying that though some of the opinions of the American right did him no favours. I had one friend in California who kept posting anti-Obama links from Fox News on Facebook at every opportunity. It smacked of grasping at straws, just because Obama is a Democrat. Honestly, I can't understand seemingly smart people being so blindly partisan.

All the talk of change does make me laugh a bit. At the moment Obama clearly has a mandate to work with, and after his inauguration will be his best opportunity to push forward with his own legislation. After that if mid-terms don't go his way it gets harder, and if he wins a second term he is likely to finish it with just about no power at all. By that point the title of "Most Powerful Man In The World" is very misleading.

What I'm Watching: Deceiving Innocence

In 1992 issues of Time were still dropping through my parents' letterbox, as the subscription my recently deceaed Grandmother had taken out was still active. On the cover of one issue was a man in chains and the grim headline: "This man might be innocent. This man is due to die." And so I was introduced to the story of Roger Coleman.

Despite a mass media campaign and apparent doubts about the case Coleman went to Virginia's electric chair on the 20th May 1992, declaring his innocence right to the end. For people who don't agree with capital punishment - myself included - his story was a cause, a reason to show that innocent people can be executed by flawed human beings.

There was one small problem with that. In 2006, nearly 14 years after his execution and 25 years after the murder of Wanda McCoy, DNA evidence showed that Coleman was the killer. Or if you're really sceptical the chances were 1:19,000,000 that someone else did it.

This Friday on the Crime and Investigation Channel (that's channel 553 if you have a Sky dish) they are showing a documentary called Deceiving Innocence which looks into Coleman's case and quite why so many people felt - wrongly - that Coleman was innocent. I think it is going to be pretty interesting.

Deceiving Innocence is being shown at 4pm on 10th October 2008 on the Crime and Investigation Channel.

Roger Coleman - Time Cover [TIME]
Roger Keith Coleman [Wikipedia]
Crime and Investigation Channel [Official Website]