Firstly there were the memories of good games and good times like connecting my brothers and my PC’s together using a stupidly long cable to play Screamer 2! Then there were the other racing games like TOCA Touring Car Championship and the fun Big Red Racing. I found Theme Hospital but not Theme Park which was the first game I ever bought on the PC.

Along with these games were some music CD’s. There were about 3 or 4 heavy bass albums from my old sub in the boot of the Clio days and a couple of my first home-made MP3 compilations. What I did find that was most interesting to me was something labelled “Adam’s Photo CD”. I popped it in and despite all the scratches, it worked just fine! It had loads of pictures from various parties and a few extra little compilations like the infamous “What is Mark doing?” collection! All of these photos appeared on my very first website called www.taveirne.8m.com and believe it or not, it’s still alive! Sadly not all of the links work but most of the thumbnails do and some of the larger pictures still work. Looking through these was a good reminder of our sixth form days when parties were regular – especially 18^th birthday parties – and we were out there enjoying ourselves.

Look at how young we looked – probably because were young! Sadly, and this happens often, there’s not many pictures of me as I’m behind the camera taking the pictures. I’ve put a few of us lads below for you to laugh at though!

No is the answer! I am about 6 pounds short. Sadly I have no excuses except motivation. I haven’t been running much but I thought the squash games would actually burn more than they have! I’ve not been good and allowed weeks to go past without either running or squash which hasn’t helped one bit.

My other target of running a mile by October? I’ll be honest. I probably won’t be able to meet that either. At the end of October I will have a go and see just how far I can get!

So is winter on its way? Are we now done with the summer? Are the leaves going to start changing colour and falling to the ground already or are we going to get one last blast of good weather before it sets in. I hope so!

In my opinion we’ve had a good summer this year. Not too much rain, lots of sunshine and plenty of heat. How is winter going to be? I enjoyed all the snow last winter and I’d like it to come again! Anyone else want a nice cold winter?

So what is causing all these tailbacks? There are two things really. The first is the sheer volume of traffic. There are only a 3 ways of crossing the Thames without going into central London: the Dartford Crossing, the Blackwall Tunnel and the Woolwich Ferry. The Blackwall Tunnel is practically central London so only London bound traffic uses it. The Woolwich Ferry is slow and therefore can’t carry large volumes of traffic. That leaves the Dartford Crossing as the main crossing for non central London bound traffic. It’s no wonder then that they have around 145,000 vehicles a day! The M25 is already 4 lanes at this point with no scope to widen so there’s little to be done about this sadly.

The second major contributor is the tolls. Initially these were created solely to pay off the debt created with the creation of the tunnel. A second tunnel was added and later a bridge which kept the tolls going. Eventually all the debt was paid off in 2002 and everyone thought the tolls would finally be removed, but sadly they have been allowed to stay due to the creation of the Transport Act of 2000 allowing Road User Charging to control congestion. It’s clearly working… Despite having such a large amount of tolls, some of which are auto-tolls, it’s still causing a major problem with congestion.

My theory is to completely take away the tolls but they can still charge if they want to. I vote that they build a camera system similar to that of the London congestion charging. You can either have a pre-paid account with trips being automatically deducted (similar to the DART-TAG system now) or you can pay as you go by phoning or online. This system would mean the tolls can be removed and cars can pass freely. Not having to slow down would dramatically reduce congestion. Just making it free wouldn’t help as you still have to slow down to get through the narrow toll boths. It’s all about maintaining flow.

For now though I suggest ALL regular users get a DART-TAG. They’re free, you save money each crossing and it does speed up travel through the tolls a little. If they’re not going to do anything about it then it’ll only get worse.

Seeing this film reviewed on Movie Space I decided it was time I wrote up my review. It’s not the most massive of the films done by either Johnny Depp or Christian Bale so you may not have seen it. SPOILER WARNING.

Public Enemies is set in 1933 and tells the story of John Dillinger (played by Depp) who is public enemy number 1 on account of being an extremely efficient bank robber, and Melvin Purvis (Bale) the FBI agent tasked to catch him. During the course of Dillinger’s career of bank robbery, capture and audacious escapes he falls in love with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) and in time the FBI realise that she is the best way to get him. So follows a series of bloody gun battles, car chases and intense scenes.

Whilst this film is very very atmospheric and has been applauded for its sticking to the facts there is something of a History Channel documentary about it. Depp is as ever good and Bale does his usual dark and broody thing but sadly I think that the two actors cancel each other out, especially because everyone in the film is playing things as black and serious as possible. Its a serious subject don’t get me wrong but the whole thing is just too slow and miserable for me. I found the plot quite predictable and I don’t really like how the film sets out to imply he was some kind of loveable gentleman thief- he worked for and with nasty people who did lots of nasty things. Despite this he really doesn’t come across as a likeable individual and the FBI are portrayed as little better than killers themselves so there was no character there that interested me enough to pull me into the film.

In conclusion this is a good film that nicely captures a period in history but its not a laugh a minute or particularly entertaining.

I had come to the conclusion that I didn’t like MMO’s but finding myself with some extra gaming time I decided to take a chance on Star Trek Online. I stopped playing World of Warcraft because it was no longer holding my interest as a single player experience and I even accidently deleted it, replacing this massive chunk of data is not on my list of jobs to do. Instead I thought I would pick up STO which comes with a months prepaid play and was quite quick to install when compared with WoW. Star Trek online is a mmorpg, meaning its requires an internet connection to play and takes a place in a massive environment including thousands of human players. Like WoW it is a subscription game but also includes a store component where “real” money can be used to buy uniforms, playable races and ships. The idea is to take the role of either a Starfleet or Klingon officer setting out to command a starship. The world, or rather galaxy, the games takes place in is the “proper” Star Trek timeline- that is the one that existed before Spock fell through the blackhole in J J Abrahms film.

The form of the game is mission based, you are given tasks to perform that in turn earn you experience points. As a captain these missions involve fighting enemy ships, journeying to certain locations and defeating enemies in ground based combat. You assemble a team of officers which have abilities both in space and on the ground, and these people can be chopped and changed. The missions also reward you with items and points to upgrade the skills of your team and currency so you can buy items and weapons. The graphics are fairly good and as much effort as possible has been made to use the original sound effects and try and tie the game in with star trek lore. They have advanced the game by 20 years beyond the events of Nemesis so that they can change the political landscape, invent races and change things up.

But it fails on almost every level. The starship combat is repetitive and often requires your one little ship to take out well over a dozen enemy ships…not that you can’t do it…but it just feels silly destroying so many ships time and time again. The mechanic is also pretty basic in that you really just need to put your ship behind the enemy and fire away until their shields drop and hit them with torpedoes. This would be a lot more fun if like i said you were not having to take out fleets of identical ships every other mission. In terms of ground combat it introduces good concepts like cover and flanking damage but you have very few attacks and moves to make so that again it is very very boring and repetitive. The crafting mechanic is complicated, the exploration mechanic is rubbish and the levelling mechanic is too complicated and achieves little. To be fair sometimes the narrative takes over and a mission is well put together- there will be a space battle, a ground battle, a chase, and a ground battle all linked together by a theme and its fun. BUT this is rare, most of the time you go to A and fight 12 different ships of type B and your done.

It’s barely even an MMO because I have not in two weeks of play had cause to speak or been spoken to by any other human player, though I have cooperated with some by virtue of entering an instanced mission, they never talk to me or even buff me. There is no real social aspect- you can cooperate with other players if you know them but otherwise there seems to be no interaction between players at all despite their being hubs seemingly designed for it. You can walk around your own ship which is cool for about 10 minutes until you realise you cannot interact with npc’s or indeed anything in the environment. Yes you can invite human players to join you aboard your ship but what’s the point role-playing one on one? Before anyone asks the emotes are rubbish so not even the most avid or depraved roleplayer is going to be able to get jiggy with anyone.

So in conclusion this game is a massive disappointment, it misses the point of Star Trek reducing everything to a massive fight and manipulates the lore in very obvious ways. It is a poor third person shooter, a passable starship combat simulator, a rubbish role-playing game and a non-existent mmo- Blizzard have no need to worry!

Yesterday Matt, Jon and I headed to Medway Park to play a mammoth game of squash in a 2 on 1 off kind of fashion. I still can’t believe i’m finding it fun, especially as I’m in quite a bit of pain! Today though it’s my back that’s hurting rather than my legs, although I think they’re hurting too but I can’t feel it as my back hurts so much!

This time though we took some pictures so we’ve some actual proof! I got a picture of myself and Jon and also Matt and Jon. Sorry for the blurry pics but it’s difficult to get a good clear picture without the people standing still!

Whilst I have to admit to having the soundtrack to this film and being impressed by the finale (as seen on Youtube) I only added it to my rental list a week or so ago, more out of desperation than anything else. Its an old film and if you haven’t seen it you probably never will but just in case SPOILER WARNING!

This film follows Andie (Briana Evigan) an orphan who is part of a Street Dance troupe, they are heading for glory in the annual dance contests “The Streets” when Andie’s behaviour leads her foster mother to tell her that she has to move to Texas. In order to remain where she is she must enrol and stay in the local school for the performing arts. This she does but soon gets dropped from her old dance team, however she forms her own dance crew from the misfits at the performing arts school with the help of Chase (Robert Hoffman) the resident heartthrob. Queue lots of dance numbers, poppin, lockin, and a little bit of unexpected violence. All this culminates in a dance sequence in the pouring rain.

I would probably have enjoyed this film more had it not immediately revealed itself as the model by which Streetdance 3D was written, the two films are very similar, though to give Streetdance 3D credit it does reference this in one line where they say “you cant dance in the rain in England”. Overall though the two films follow very very similar paths. Of the two I probably enjoyed 3D better though I have to admit as cheesy as it is I do like the water dance sequence. However to be fair to Step Up in its own right I did enjoy this film as it deals with one of my favourite themes, that of enjoying whatever it is you enjoy doing with the people you enjoy doing it with. This is why I like Big Bang Theory and Glee for example (one of misfit crew is the dancer in Glee). The soundtrack is good and though corny a lot of the characters seemed pretty believable.

I can’t exactly sat i recommend the film but its certainly fun if you like this sort of thing. Step Up 3D is out soon and I challenge anyone not to laugh at some point during this trailer-

I was chatting to Matt earlier about computer configurations or more specifically, hard drives. I’ve two 34GB WD Raptors, an old 80GB Seagate and a newer 750GB. The first Raptor has the OS. The Seagate has some programs and backups. The 750GB has my DVD ripping and converting as well as my video editing stuff, and the final Raptor has World of Warcraft.

This is where the old man part comes in…

The entire 34GB drive is housing WoW and WoW alone. At the moment WoW is taking up a massive 32GB and an entire drive! That’s crazy! No game should take up that much space! I can remember the days when the standard was around 500Mb. Our first computer had a 540Mb hard drive and whilst we could fill it up with stupid amounts of games, it took a lot! Then the 800Mb drives started appearing and they were more than enough! Then the 1GB drive was released and it was almost impossible to fill it up!

Granted, these days nobody wants to insert the CD to play a game. It easy to understand then why games are taking up some much space! CD’s can store up to 700MB but 32GB for a single game?! That’s crazy! That’s 45 CD’s! 45!!! I know that some of that will be my screenshots and addons but that can’t be that much. The problem is all the updates. Often an update can be in the GB’s and can take hours to download! Once that update has been downloaded and patched, the original download remains. I think when Cataclysm arrives I’ll wipe it all and start afresh… or I’ll have to get a new drive!