So, evidently a year has passed since I was last doing this…

This Bungie day is much more dull for us gamers though; last year we got a free map – Cold Storage, a ViDOC, podcast and, in what we thought was going to be tradition… a Bungie Day theme and Gamer Picture pack. We’ve been given a theme and gamer picture pack every year since 2007.

Way to break that streak.

So, I hear you ask — What are we getting this year?

• The “Bungie vs. The World” playlist. It’s a playlist consisting entirely of community made forge-maps on Foundry and [mainly] Sandbox which makes the Mythic Map pack a must.
  The reason for the name of the playlist is that Bungie employees will be playing for the majority of the day tomorrow and if you beat one of their teams-of-four in a game you earn Recon armor.
• Screenshots of the 3 other Mythic maps including Heretic — confirmed as a near perfect port of Midship from Halo 2.
• A Bungie Day podcast.

The last two items on that list I didn’t think we’d be getting when I first wrote this, so it’s looking a bit better now.

I wasn’t expecting another free map, I knew that was one-off, but I was looking forward to a Bungie Day NXE theme — the previous one’s look rubbish with the new dash. Sadface.

Oh well, only 77 days till Halo 3: ODST is released.

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* They haven’t said there won’t be a theme or gamer picture pack, its just that this time last year we knew there would be one.

This was far from a big thing at today’s Microsoft E3 event, but it’s certainly a good thing to have.

I foresee a future where there won’t be any optical media needed to watch movies, listen to music and play games; well, the first two are already becoming true at a rapid rate, and with things like the 360’s forthcoming new ability to stream 1080p movies, the second can’t be that far off (provided we all get better internet connections!).

As for games, well, sure there are services like Steam on the PC and you can download classic titles on the 360 already, but the ability to download full 360 titles (which you’ll be able to do in August) will be appreciated.

Something I definitely want to see is the ability to pre-order games from the marketplace and have them download before the launch of the game and become playable at 00:00 on the day of release.

Just imagine pre-ordering Halo 3: ODST on the Xbox Live marketplace, having it downloaded progressively before its release, and on the first second of the 22nd of September, having it unlock and be instantly playable.
It’s a lovely thought.

Sure, I like my physical mediums mostly because there’s some nice feeling about actually having something you can see – especially when they have cool boxes like the Halo Wars limited edition or the Halo 3 Limited edition SPARTAN Head!
But, there’s no denying that the convenience of the digital download method is a great one. I really hope that something like what I described will be implemented.

I look forward to the day.

So far it’s just the ability to download 360 games on the marketplace that’s been mentioned. No more details than that really but unfortunately it sounded as though they were planning it to be the same as the classic Xbox game marketplace where a title-a week or so is released after they’re already out physically.

/

As for the other Microsoft stuff at E3, it was impressive. I very much look forward to playing Halo 3: ODST in September, the beta for Halo: Reach in 2010 and the game itself later next year.

The motion camera looked amazing; I was impressed by what they’ve got it doing — it looks amazingly responsive and well, it surprised me – I expected something gimmicky; not that I’m saying some of the stuff won’t be, it’s almost certain that there will be silly stuff, but some of it looks cool.
Twitter & last.fm being integrated with the dashboard is cool, especially considering the amount I use them both.

WOW. If you haven’t seen it, Spoilers follow…

Certainly an episode that I need to watch again in order to have lots more stuff to say…. but… HOLY SHIT.

The bomb went off!!! Probably, I mean, that’s what the ending implied, and I suspect that is what happened there. Very VERY difficult to see what’s gonna happen in the last and final season of Lost which will grace us with its presence in 2010 It’s a pretty long wait.

So, Juliet’s dead…. and well, everyone else in the 70’s too??? I really have no idea.

My reaction to finding out what was in the box – Locke – was “Fuuuuuuck”. What does that mean!! How is that dude from the beginning in Locke’s body!?

Speaking of that dude, who was that!? Why does he want to kill Jacob?

Following on from that. Jacob! He’s seen a lot of the Oceanic folk…. though I wonder why Juliet’s flashback was shown and there wasn’t any Jacob there… it’s a little weird.

There was a couple reminders of Charlie in that episode — the Drive Shaft ring and his guitar which Jacob somehow had. Nice that he’s still remembered.

There’s already a teaser trailer for the next season, but it definitely lives up to the title of teaser. It’s just a reminder of how long you have to wait until the next episode at the moment.

A finale without Desmond… It feels kinda weird, to be honest, but I had been thinking that it didn’t seem as though there would be any reason to have him in it and, well, I guess that’s what the writers thought too. Sadface.

An episode with far, far more questions than answers… But that, in a way is what makes Lost. Even with around 16 episodes left they’re still throwing questions at us. Clearly some will be left unanswered but oh well.

Rose & Bernard. Nice to see them, but it also felt a little unnecessary. And I hope it wasn’t just me who thought on sight of Bernard “He’s gone Cast-Away”. [a la Tom Hanks].

That phrase that Richard responded to “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” has been translated to this: “He who will protect/save us all.” Good to know.

There’s a fairly good chance that after I’ve watched this episode again I’ll edit this with anything else I think of or make another post.

Other than that though, these posts will surely resume at that unannounced date, early next year. Farewell, Lost.

/

“Dude, What happened to your face!?”

I liked the bit where Miles pointed out that they may end up being the cause of the incident. It’s amusing that none of them considered that.

Well. I think ‘hmmmmm’ about sums it up.
Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it

As I expected, this episode definitely had that penultimate / finale lead up kinda mood going on. The finale music score even showed up towards the end.

It looks as though…. Well, I’m not entirely sure how to end that sentence. I don’t read spoilers; it’s much better when you don’t, and therefore I have no idea what is going to happen in next week’s (yes, next week’s [lostpedia was wrong! yay]) finale – “The Incident”.
It’s your standard 2 hour season finale and presumably Jack, Elouise, Richard and Sayid are gonna try and detonate the H-Bomb…
And Locke, for reasons I cannot comprehend at this moment, is off to see Jacob. So he can kill him.

Pretty odd, really. As for Juliet & Sawyer; well, it wouldn’t be Lost if there wasn’t some kind of love-triangle/quadrangle/shape going on. So, Kate gets thrown on the sub too.

Of course, those two hours next week will not be long enough…. And we’ll be left hanging; over a cliff, if you must, for many months until the last and final season of Lost comes on next year. Hmph.

So. Will the H-bomb be set off? And the whole storyline be reset to 2004 with them all still on the plane? Will they all die? I don’t think that’s too likely, even though Richard said he watched them all die…. Very difficult to say.

Anywho…. A mere few days until the finale, so until then I’ll leave you to your own predictions. I’ll certainly be writing a post about next week’s episode, that’s for sure.

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HOLY SHIT.
Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it…

Faraday’s back…. but unfortunately it seems not for long!!!

That was….. interesting.
For the first time this whole season I didn’t expect the end of the episode to be so soon… Of course, it was a natural ending….. Sawyer & Juliet caught out, Faraday DEAD and well…. crazy times..

I really hope that they don’t end up erasing their past which will be in the future… cos that could end with them on 815 landing in LA. That’d be a horrible outcome. Hopefully, since this has been discussed on screen, its unlikely to happen…. So far I don’t see anything to suggest that Daniel’s ‘Whatever Happened, Happened’ doesn’t still apply.

I wonder why Elouise / Ms Hawking for the first time ever, doesn’t know what’s going to happen? That poses the question… How did she know what was going to happen before?

Shot. By my own mother! You bitch.

Also, that scene from back in Season 4, when Daniel was introduced — we still don’t have an explanation for why he seems emotionally connected to Oceanic 815. Something like his him having jumped in time at some point but not being aware of it??

How is it that in the minds of Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Hurley, the plan to simply start again at the old beach would result in them not being bothered by the Dharma folk…? An unrealistic plan, I thought. Good job they got caught already.

Desmond going to the hospital…. It’s not clear to me what the point in showing that was. He seemed perfectly fine when he got up and beat the sh*t out of Ben.

Anywho… Only 3 episodes left, 2 of which make up the finale so I suppose you could consider the next one (”Follow the Leader” — sounds as though we’ll be seeing Ben, don’t ya think?) as the penultimate episode of this season. Unfortunately, Lost-Pedia suggests that after that one there will be ANOTHER recap episode. I hope that isn’t true….. But they’re frequently right.

/

Faraday

Dudes!…..

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it…

So….. I’m gonna start off with something from the end of the episode – DANIEL!

FARADAY!

Yes, I probably do go on about him a little too much, but as he said “Long time no see”. I’d say it’s fairly likely that next week’s episode [it's in two weeks time recap week.] the next episode “The Variable” will be a Daniel episode. Episodes in which he features largely have been rather awesome, especially “The Constant”. Thus, I expect good things.

Anywho… So, it was a Miles flashback episode…. That’s his first full episode as he’s only had a brief flashback before with Charlotte and Dan. I thought it was a pretty good episode. Sure, not a great deal happened, but there was at least one answer revealed for us viewers — Miles IS the kid of Pierre Chang / Marvin Candle.

That “Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue” thing from the last episode…. it seems to play a larger part than I expected it to. And, in the fairly regular Lost way, Miles was kidnapped by that dude from last weeks episode [another previous 'coincidental' connection] who crashed on the island with Ajira flight 316.

One has to wonder what made Ghostbuster-dude’s parents move away from the island taking Miles with them… Presumably it was the very same thing that meant Charlotte ended up off the island too. Saying that though, I’m assuming Candle/Chang dies on the island or something… and that’s why he didn’t get to raise Miles.

Long time no see indeed.

Yet again, rather amazingly, it seemed Jack was able to control the volume of his voice…. What, have they been teaching him some acting skillz!? Seriously though, at the moment he’s being rather boring and keeping quiet; appreciatively, that fits in with him not wanting to get his or, their cover(s) blown…. but I’m amazed to say that I miss laughing at his shouty outbursts. I also don’t think there were any Jears in that episode!!

I definitely want to find out about Miles’ power; perhaps his dad has the same ability, and that’s why he wants the corpses taken to the Orchid? Or was that just so he could be buried under a building? It seems as though they’re not aware of the magnetic anomaly that the island has… or that they’re not careful enough about it, as that random guy got killed by his own filling as a result of it.

I’ve gone through this whole post without a mention of Star Wars…. I feel I should at least type those two words…. it did play a fairly large part in this episode and it was another awesome moment for Hurley, in my opinion. Not as good as the Back to the Future bits though.

Two weeks till our next fix of Lost then….

/

Oh yeah… the numbers being stamped on the hatch…. surely they knew it was more than a “serial number”??

Wow…

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it.

That episode certainly had a lot more of things I have been wanting from Lost as of recently namely Locke, Desmond and a dose of awesomeness.

Well, I’m gonna start out with a mention of the episode title: Dead is Dead – As Ben said in this episode; it’s normally true with Lost, and real life for that matter :p….. so why is Locke different? Well, apart from his extraordinary relationship with the island, we don’t know. Personally, I don’t think it matters… Consider how much of a mind fuck it would be if he wasn’t actually alive though! On that note, is Christian Shephard alive??

Moving on…

So, it seems even Ben doesn’t know a great deal about smokey. Just how to summon it, and not really what it is or where it comes from…. Pretty strange, that.

I always assumed that Widmore left as a result of turning the time wheel, for some reason; but him just being sent away actually makes more sense.

As predicted, it was Desmond who beat up Ben by the harbour; though it certainly wasn’t predicted that he was shot right before. Miraculously, since the island wasn’t finished with him, he survived and saved the day. I hope we get to see more of him in the future. Perhaps with Faraday.

One has to wonder as to whether Ben will actually follow the wish of the smoke monster and listen to Locke in future. It would be rather weird if he did, but, it seems if he wants to carry on living, he’ll have to. It should hopefully lead to some interesting scenes in the future.

What lies in the shadow of the statue? – What was that all about? I wasn’t really expecting them to play a big part, that Caesar guy seemed more likely, but he got blown away in a rather awesome manner by Ben. So, what are those guys up to? What’s in the crate? Most importantly: will LaPedus be ok? I hope so.

Next week’s episode is called “Some Like it Hoth”… I have no idea what that could mean, but I’m looking forward to finding out. After that, I believe there is a week break where a recap show is on….

Anywhoo….. That was a gooood episode….. Till next week….

/

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it yet

Well, at least we have finally had a resolution to the Aaron storyline.

Like the person that commented on my post about last weeks episode, I too enjoyed the discussion about time travel between Hurley and Miles. I’m sure it confused some, helped others and just made some most people laugh.

The woman in the grocery store (I had to resist writing supermarket straight away) who looked as though she was taking Aaron away with her…. She was a little suspicious, me thinks. Perhaps there was nothing to it and it was just as she said…. But it seemed weird.

So, Ben didn’t die as a kid and time works as we expected. Yay(?)

The question Hurley asked Miles about Ben seemingly not remembering being shot by Sayid was resolved by Richard saying that Ben wouldn’t ever be the same and that he would forget this incident so Miles’s explanation about time holds true…
One has to wonder what is inside the temple that fixed Ben and also ‘took his innocence’ at the same time.

It seems as though the writers are trying to pass off Ben’s entire personality in the future as a result of what happened to him in the temple; fair enough, I suppose, but it wasn’t something I wanted explaining.

Locke at the end – I seriously hope that we see more of him in the next episode (entitled “Dead is Dead”).

Well…. ummmmm. This episode was highly Kate oriented and yet I have nothing to say about her. Hmmm.

One thing I did notice about this episode though: Jack was able to control the volume of his voice!! Congratulations, Matthew, perhaps you’re finally learning how to speak lololol.

With that, I leave you until next week…. Which, by reading one sentence written by ack-attack, I expect to be good.

/

Oh yeah: Why no Faraday in that episode which was titled with something he said not too long ago!? Need MOAR FARADAY and DESMOND and LOCKE!

Woah….

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it.
DID NOT SEE THAT COMING!

One has to wonder whether Sayid just seriously fucked something up there or if nothing they do matters.

After all, he did just SHOOT BEN!

Other than that, it was a fairly uneventful episode.

The title for the next episode - ”Whatever Happened, Happened”  hopefully means we’ll get some answers. If you recall, that’s what Faraday said a few episodes ago now. Firstly, hopefully we’ll find out what happened to Faraday…. and also whether Sayid just broke time.

It’s still quite difficult to see where the rest of this season is heading… Though, at least it seems to have settled back into the flashback interluded Lost that we’re all used to. I wonder what Sayid’s gonna be up to, too.

That woman who got Sayid onto 316 — she genuinely doesn’t seem to be working for Ben…. Who is she working for??

Not much else to say, I feel. Till next week with Whatever Happened, Happened then.

/

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it

Something about this episode made it feel… Transitional. That’s not a bad thing. It’s important to set the scene and get people in place properly. It was a pretty good episode overall.

As I predicted, Locke, Sun, Ben, LaPedus and the 316 survivors are in a different time, well, decade to the Oceanic 5 (srsly, where’s Aaron!?) and Sawyer etc.,

I wonder where Daniel went? They brushed over it but hopefully it’s one of the questions that will be answered. And I’m still hoping to find out what he was doing at the Orchid station as seen at the beginning of the season.

They did a really good job of casting the young Ben. Sure, we’ve seen him before but he seems to have developed some of his more sinister characteristics already. His eyes. It really does look like him.

What would the hostiles have done if they found out where the Swan was being built? Surely they would have found out when building started anyway??

Christian Shepherd saying “You’ve got a long journey ahead of you” to Sun was interesting. As was that whole scene. Was there something to the smoke in the background?
I wonder whether it’ll be Sun (and hopefully Locke & Ben) who go back in time somehow or Jack, Kate… Going back to ‘their’ time zone.

I’m also curious as to who boarded up Dharmaville? It wasn’t like that when Ben left.

Juliet, Sawyer AND Kate; that’d be awesome. At least in my head; minus the Sawyer, but it makes more sense as a sentence to have him there.

Looks as though Sawyer will have a hard time trying to get Sayid integrated with the Dharma initiative…. I wonder what’ll happen with him.

This episode needs moar Locke! I hope he’s gonna be seen in the next episode (which is entitled “He’s our you”).

I’m sure I had more things to say after I watched this rather good episode, but it’s been a few hours since I watched this and the majority of it was written on my iPhone whilst I was in the car. Also, I have a headache, so this is all you’re getting for now. Crazy sentences about Sawyer included.

/

I just upgraded to the latest version of iTunes (version 8.1) and I can’t really comment on whether it’s any faster as it wasn’t that slow for me in the first place.

Supposedly it improves the speed for people with large libraries (I have around 2500 songs, I think.)

Anywho…. onto the new feature with this version – Party Shuffle has been renamed to iTunes DJ and it seems more useful. Especially if you know people with iPhones or iPod touches.

Here’s why:

The already brilliant Remote application for the iPod / iPhone has been upgraded so that guests and regular (enrolled users) can request songs and therefore change the playlist that is currently playing.

Think of it as a jukebox — people with iPhones or touches can request a song, or simply touch the heart symbol next to a song already on the playlist, indicating that they are voting for that song…

A song with 3 votes will be played before 2, for example. And songs are automatically selected if none are voted for (from a playlist you select or your whole library).

Enrolled users i.e. your iPhone / iPod can edit and rearrange the playlist completely — just as with any other playlist or if you were at your computer doing it, but guests can only suggest songs and vote, they can’t change which speakers it’s playing out (with Airport Express(es) / Apple TV) or change the volume.

Genius recommended songs based on a DJ song.

As a guest there is one feature that seems unavailable to the enrolled users – You can touch the ‘i’ arrow in the top right and be shown songs that are similar based on iTunes Genius which you can then vote for, if you should so wish. Click the picture on the left to see.

It’s pretty cool. Especially when your music is playing out through multiple speakers using Airport Expresses.

I can’t say I’ve noticed anything else that is different, though genius now works for movies and tv shows, apparently.

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Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it yet

This was a much slower, character building, back-story filling episode. Appreciatively, this is not a bad thing, but it means I have to put more thought into writing this post rather than just writing questions that have occurred to me whilst watching [how inconvenient ]…

Oh and before I get started I should mention that there isn’t an episode on next week — see the counter on the right for how many days till your next Lost fix —->

The way this episode started was cool. It was a very efficient way of switching between the previously and the actual episode that made it immediately clear where the episode was going to start.

Was the statue that they saw during their brief time flash the 4 toed statue from Season 2? It was certainly careful to not reveal anything about the ancient history of the island — though I really do hope we get to find out something more about it in the future (or rather the past…).

After that, there’s another time flash — this time caused by Locke putting the wheel back on its axis and stopping the time flashes for the foreseeable future.

Turns out, we’re in 1974.

Oh and Hai, Michelle from 24. Watch out for people also out to kill David Palmer in the future [p.s. Charles Logan's behind it all!]

Anywho…. back on topic.

To be honest there isn’t a great deal more to say — Richard walking into their camp Locke style was pretty cool.

And the end of the episode suggests that the love quadrangle isn’t as sorted as this episode may have implied — not that I thought it would be.

Which island / time zone are Sun and Sayid on / in? and for that matter, Lock & Ben…?

Overall, it was a nice episode in which not a great deal happened. I’m hoping for a more exciting episode in two weeks time.

/

It’s true, all three topics in the title are related to Halo; frankly I’m glad to write about something other than Lost, not that I don’t enjoy it.

Anywho…..

Halo Wars – Truthfully I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying the part of the game I have played so far. Sure, I played the demo and thought something along the lines of “it’s better than I expected”; but I fully expected it to become repetitive and boring.

I’ve heard that opinion from others, but it is certainly not mine yet. I’m up to mission 5 and it’s quite challenging and enjoyable. My niggles from the demo are, as expected, still there — I don’t like the fact that you can’t look further afield i.e. that you can’t move the camera to face forward enough for my liking… I think there was something else that annoyed me, but, as I can’t now remember it, it can’t be that big of a deal.

Graphically the cut-scenes are fantastic; clearly a lot of time and money has been spent on them. As for the actual gameplay graphics…. They’re ok, if not inconsistent.

Moving swiftly onto the Mythic maps for Halo 3….. Well, any downloadable content for a game which I spend so much time playing is always appreciated and this is no exception.

My original thoughts about Sandbox were that it would be another Foundry; designed mostly for Forging and therefore not really any good for actual games (all my opinion, of course). However I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was when matchmaking — I like it.

Assembly – Whatever was said about this map not being a remake of Halo 2’s Midship was true… However it cannot truly be said that it is not like Midship…. lots about it seems familiar and….. well, at the moment I’m not loving it. Easily the worst out of the three.

Orbital [as I said on twitter] is way bigger than I expected. So far it seems okay… Though as both Clarkson and I agreed, it should have had the option of deploying warthogs on it. As I have probably already said in person, in a rather English way, it’s an awful long way to capture a flag on this map and I think it will actually suit 6v6 games better for this. Also… that level above where the mongooses are – why isn’t the flag up there!? [Perhaps because it's already a long way away]

I could *probably* have found a more reprasentative picture of the Mythic Maps, but oh well.

And finally, a whinge about the bastards that are employing Denial of Service attacks on players of Halo:

What the hell is the point? It just makes for more laggy, shitty games resulting in more anger and frustration from not being able to kill the enemy when you should have or simply not being able to hear the person that you are gaming with clearly.

Since there is no viable solution to these kinds of attacks, unfortunately it looks as though they will continue for the foreseeable future. Though I do advise people to get anti-virus and anti-spyware software updated and use it on a regular basis to ensure that your computer, or those of anyone you know is not unwillingly being used as part of a botnet to spam others with malformed and erroneous packets of doom…

/

Another awesome episode…. It’s shaping up to be a very good season in my opinion.

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it…

Well, based on the name of this episode (The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham), I presumed that this episode would be all flashbacks based on Locke off the island up until the point when he died.

You might say that I was partially right; As expected, Locke is alive in the present and on the island  - YAY.

Interesting that it seems he and Ben aren’t in the same time zone as the Oceanic 5 and Juliet, Sawyer, Daniel et al. They seem to be in the time zone of the 316 crash. And my presumption is that the Oceanic 5 et al are in the time of Dharma’s prime.

Anywho… back to what happened in this episode. The person I didn’t expect to see again in this episode was Matthew Abaddon; sure, I expected to see him again but I didn’t think he would play such a relatively large part before being fucking gunned down by Ben!

This episode added further confusion to the Widmore / Ben thing…. Widmore made a good point – Locke could not say that Widmore had tried to have him killed, but he can certainly say that for Ben…. and later in the episode he kills Locke who remains dead for a few hours!

His [Ben's]  justification: Widmore was just using you to get back to the island and then he would have killed you.

Hmmmm…… well, there’s no point in me even trying to say which one should be trusted because Lost doesn’t make it easy for you to call it.

The beginning scene was quite well disguised — I thought it was a flashback or something.

It seems as though we know who was shooting at Charlotte, Daniel, Juliet, Sawyer, Miles & Locke a few episodes ago…. the 316 survivors…. Who evidently crashed on the other little island that was a large part in season 3.

Locke’s attempt to kill himself was a really emotional scene… it was done really well.

It’s surprising that Ben seemed to know about Elouise [Ms] Hawking and yet he needed Locke to tell him before it clicked in his head that this was the way he would be able to get back…. Once Locke had revealed that information, in Ben’s eyes he was no longer needed and it seemed that Ben genuinely thought he wouldn’t see Locke again. I await his reaction when he realizes he is still alive (and when they realize what time zone they are in etc.)

More to say, of course. But time constraints and a lack of organised thoughts leave me, and this post here. Next weeks ep is called “LaFleur” and after that there’s gonna be a one week break.

/

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it.

For reasons I’m not entirely sure how to describe, I thought this episode was epically awesome.

The Oceanic 65 are back on the island!…. or at least, 3 that we know of made it there.

On that note…. what the hell did Kate do with Aaron!? Yeah, the kid is probably a bit of a production headache, and Claire told Kate to not take him back to the island…. But I hope we get an explanation of what happened to him…. Him and Sun’s baby who she doesn’t seem to care about right now.

Clearly that bloke who was at the airport and spoke to Jack and was then on the plane is going to play a larger part in the future story…. he just seemed so conveniently placed.

Another thing I’d like explained – How did Hurley know to go there? Somebody dead from the island talk to him again?

I really hope we get to see more of Locke in the time when he’s off the island. And, though I haven’t watched the trailer for the next episode, the name for it perhaps implies what it will be  about.

Ben had a good line in this episode: Jack: “How can you read?”. Ben: “My mother taught me”

I also liked Jack talking to Locke.

Anywho… Sayid. Did he attack Ben and get arrested for it? If that’s the case then why does that allow him to be on the flight?

Jin and the rest of the people on the island — stuck in Dharma-time since Locke replaced the wheel?

Didn’t expect to see Lapidus again. His reaction to seeing the Oceanic 5 was cool — “We’re not going to Guam, are we?”

Anywho…. ’twas a very good episode and it left me with little to say, which is quite strange really.

/

Hmmmm…

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it

I can’t think of a great deal to say about this episode….. and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. It was an ok episode…. but it definitely had the feeling that it’s leading on to bigger things.

Charlotte’s dead! I’m sure lots of people don’t care. But I had warmed to her character, especially with Daniel’s feelings for her…. it’s a little sad. And she confirmed that she was born on the island.

Still… there’s every chance that she’ll be seen again since it’s Lost.

As for Ben…. he’s one step forward, but two back. He’s got Sun on his side but now he’s lost [pun not intended] Kate & Sayid… and he is yet to go after Hurley.

Ben’s little rant in the van was good; Michael’s an amazing actor in my opinion; and you’re never sure of his intentions as a character.

Desmond had a small role in this episode…. but he’s now found Faraday’s mother…. and found out that it’s that old woman who told him about ‘course-correction’ waaay back in season 3!

Now that Locke has moved the wheel (or put it back on its axis)…. do you suppose they are stuck in whatever time period they were in last? That could be interesting….. perhaps explaining Faraday in the first episode being in the same time as Dr Candle when Dharma was in full swing?

Anyway… since I can’t think of anything else though I know there is more, I’ll leave you with this:

“Say hello to my son.”

“Who’s your son?”/

A pretty good episode, this…

Spoilers follow if you haven’t seen it…

I’m glad I hadn’t noticed that Daniel Dae Kim’s [Jin's] name had appeared at the beginning of the show because I really didn’t see that coming unlike last season when Michael turned up. My reaction was something along the lines of “Holy Fuck” when I saw Jin.

It’s good that he’s still in the show. He’s a nice character. And he’s returned 16 years in the past!

As for what else went down in this episode…..

I think they pretty much confirmed that Charlotte was born on the island. But they also hinted that Ghost-buster dude Miles had at very least been on the island before.

My suspicions from the premiere was that we would know who Dr Marvin Candle’s baby was in the future…. Chances are high that it’s Miles. Don’t ya think?

Charlotte just waking up was weird. Not what I expected at all. Perhaps there’s more to come… And that it’ll now happen to Miles and Juliet.

Who was shooting at Locke, Juliet, Daniel etc.,? Based on the water bottle found on the beach, this is after the Oceanic 6 had returned to the island (google Ajira Airways if you want to know why).

The name on the van that Ben was driving was CANTON-RAINIER….. This is an anagram for Reincarnation — Referring to Locke?

What’s Ben up to? At first I thought he had hired the lawyer to go after Kate in order to get her to have a reason to want to run away [what better place than the island? :p ], but the fact that he told her that he was responsible negated that possibility. So I don’t really see why he was doing it.

Sun killing Ben? Likely? Me thinks not. But it should be interesting — if she did, would she be able to get back to the island? Not that she want’s to at the moment, but we know that Jin’s there!

At the moment it looks as though the Oceanic 6 will be able to get back to the island pretty soon — they’re all together other than Hurley, and it seems as though Ben will have that sorted; he does always have a plan, after all

Till next week then…

/

Oh yeah…. What exactly was the episode title “The Little Prince” referring to? It wasn’t particularly clear.

If you haven’t seen this episode: Spoilers follow after the break, brotha…

Frankly, this episode was niiice. I thought it was good to be away from the ‘main’ plot of Jack, Kate, Sayid….. getting back to the island for an episode.

Though, I guess I may be in the minority in thinking that. A lot of people, I’m sure would rather have resumed that storyline from last time.

But, this episode offered some interesting revelations:

Widmore. He was on the island! I always suspected this due to his extreme interest in the island, but it’s nice to know more about his past. We still can’t tell why exactly he was on the island — he doesn’t appear to be part of the US military / army who were there to test the H-bomb; especially as it seems that Richard’s people have killed them all off. And it should be more interesting to find out how he ends up off the island with no idea how to go back and a life long desire to do so.

I don’t think Charlotte will suffer the same fate that Minkowski did, and that Desmond nearly did. At least, I hope that she doesn’t. Initially I was unsure about her character, but it seems that she has some interesting stories to tell. Especially with that hint that she may have been born on the island. Also; she seems enough of a major character now to not be killed off so close to her introduction.

Will Desmond meet anyone we know in Los Angeles (Jack? Kate? Ben? — that might spell trouble for Penny). It’s weird, because both Penny and Desmond seem to be under the impression that Widmore is out to get them. Yet I don’t see any reason for him to do so & we know that Ben has more of a reason. Am I missing something?

According to what I’ve read, the ‘enhanced’ version of the Lie (episode 2) which gets shown after the normal showing in the US revealed that Ms Hawking’s [the old woman who knows about time who talked to Desmond and more recently, Ben] first name is Elouise. Sound familiar? That mouse that Faraday had was named Elouise. And, the girl that was holding a gun pointed at Faraday for a large point of this episode was called Ellie!

Could that be Faraday’s mother? After all, Desmond was told that she was in Los Angeles — where Ben is, with Ms Hawking [the old woman :p]. At this point, it’s looking fairly likely!

Thought it was nice that Penny & Des’s boy was named Charlie.

Anywho…. that’ll do for now, I’m sure that I’ll think of something more to put here later.

/

LOST is back! Yay. Two part premiere, first episode entitled “Because you Left” & second: “The Lie”

Spoilers follow! [if you haven't seen it]

Wow.

Mind Fuck!

This is one of those episodes which clearly needs more episodes to allow us to fully understand what’s going on…

What’s Ben’s real agenda?

Why won’t we Jack & Ben find out what happened to those left on the island if they are going back?

It looks as though Desmond will have a big part; woo!

Who is that baby from the very beginning? – the kid of Dr. Marvin Candle — someone we know?

So….. If Ben doesn’t get Hurley back to the island, it seems as though something verrry bad will happen to everyone — at least according to the old woman from Desmond flashbacks who seems to be involved with Ben and time.

Looks like Charlotte is gonna need to sort out a constant; or the island needs to stop moving them or itself in time!

Locke turning up and saving Sawyer & Juliet was awesome; very enjoyable.

So Locke has to get off the island, convince people to come back with him, die and then be taken back to the island in order to save everyone else! Will he come back to life when he gets back to the island!?

This brings me onto Christian Shephard (Jack’s Dad) — is he actually alive and not just a vision? [like Ana Lucia, who I totally never expected to see ever again!] Could he have come alive when in the past and moved forward in time?

Faraday. At the beginning with Dr. Candle! He actually moved through time, surely! Oh yeah, and did he know that it was gonna be Desmond in the hatch or not? I think he looked in his journal before so perhaps he did. Though, unless he changed the past, he knows a lot about what he has to do!

Very confusing. Lots and lots of questions! But a VERY good start to a new season.

/

Afterthought: As expected, Claire is nowhere to be seen

FYI: These instructions work perfectly well for the upcoming RC1 (Release Candidate 1) build of Windows 7 which is build 7100.

As I expected, installing the 64 bit version of build 7000 on my MacBook Pro wasn’t as easy as perhaps it should have been.

You can’t just burn the x64 image to a disk and expect it to work. My MBP didn’t boot from the disc presenting me with the same stuff as before (choose option 1 or 2, but the keyboard doesn’t work!)

However, I’ve had further time to research better methods of getting around this issue since I wrote the Vista x64 article.

Note: I wrote this guide using my MacBook Pro which I got in Summer 2007. (Apple identifies it as “MacBookPro3,1″; It’s the Santa Rosa 2.4Ghz model). Some steps may not be required for your Mac. By deduction, I have already determined that some people are able to boot straight from the DVD. I wasn’t able to.

Ok, here we go:

Download the x64 image of Windows 7

Follow the instructions here to build a compatible iso file.

Burn that iso to a DVD (I’ve tried with a USB flash drive but it wouldn’t boot )

Put it in your MacBook / MacBook Pro / iMac…. and install like normal!

Driver support in build 7000 is okay for my MacBook Pro; certainly a lot better than it was with Vista x64, but you’ll still want to install some stuff especially if you’re on a laptop (to get the brightness adjustment, bluetooth, touchpad etc., working). So:

Either try your Leopard DVD and run the setup from there (Mine doesn’t have the 64 bit drivers on, yours may. Who knows….)

OR, download these 4 files: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.  They contain Boot Camp 2.01. This is the version that works the best on Vista and, it seems to in 7 too. I did try downloading the latest version from Apple, but this didn’t want to install on 7 so this seems to be the best for now. Plus it gives you the choice of installing the whole package or just individual drivers.

EDIT: you can also download the individual driver files from the above package which should save some time waiting for Rapid Share. They’re here. You won’t see any application run, maybe just a UAC prompt,  but they do work.

Oh, and to get sound working you can just run the RealTekSetup.exe from any of the above packages in Vista compatibilty mode and it’ll work.

Now you should have a completeish install; but, be sure to check Windows Update (there’s a better video driver) and apply security updates / install antivirus….

/

EDIT: to improve your hard drive’s windows experience rating, look at the solution I posted in the comments below.

Since the 3G iPhone came out in July (’08), people have been waiting for an unlock.
On new years day, the iPhone-dev-team released one…

Many reports I’ve seen suggest that people aren’t having any luck with the unlock. This was part of my reason for testing it; the other part is that when I go abroad, I would like my iPhone to be as useful as it is at home. Doing that with my O2 SIM would cost a literal fortune.

So, I tested yellowsn0w with a Vodafone & a Virgin Mobile SIM. I installed it with Installer, not Cydia if that makes any difference.
Initially it didn’t look promising with the phone just saying “No service”. Rebooting it one more time fixed the problem and everything worked fine.

With my testing done and there being no need for me to have it whilst at home, I uninstalled it. Hopefully it will work out as well when I go away and all I’ll have to get is a pay as you go SIM from whatever country.

Thanks, dev-team.

/

And don’t get me wrong; saying yet another is not my way of saying I don’t want these promo’s, they’re good!

It looks pretty cool!

There’s some backward speech in the beginning part; it’s Locke saying “When am I?” – Clicky

Why won’t they know what happened to the people on the island if they’re planning on going back there?

Not a particularly great preview IMO… but it doesn’t matter because there’s only 35 days until it’s on!

/

This morning I woke to see the news that George Bush had had shoes thrown at his face there was a new map pack available for Gears of War 2 which costs 800 MS points.

My initial thought when seeing this was “Why?”

Of course, for such a high-calibre game like Gears 2, DLC was inevatible; but should it have come this soon?

Gears 2 has been less of a success than I’m sure they could have hoped for, not with sales, but with multiplayer and Xbox Live popularity – it only remained the most played game on Xbox Live for three weeks; far less than the original Gears.

Primarily, I think this is due to the fact that there have been hideous problems with actually getting into a game. I’ve only been able to get into two, one which was okay and the other which was extremely laggy and ended premeturely. Other than that, I have just spent large amounts of time waiting to be matched into a game only to be rewarded with nothing until I eventually give up.

I’m not alone. Epic has already released a title update which was supposed to help with this issue (I can’t say that it achieved it’s objective though )

So, for me new maps for Gears really isn’t enticing, I’ve not even seen all the one’s that it came with! And personally I don’t see these new maps bringing people back to Gears 2 multiplayer; perhaps fixing the matchmaking?

/

With The Fray in it…..

It has to be said, it looks like it’s gonna be an EPIC season of Lost.

I’m glad Desmond features heavily in it; I was wondering how much we would see of him (even if the bits in the trailer seem to be old footage).

I’ve seen a theory that events on the island in that trailer (Juliet uncovering a window in the ground & Daniel being confronted by a guy in a yellow suit with a gun) could be that the island has ‘reset’ to a time in the past and therefore that the window is the hatch (from season 2), and the guy is Kelvin.

It’s possible for Lost, I suppose. But I don’t know how likely it is…. especially as Lost is often far from predictable.

52 days

Your thoughts on the trailer? (including The Fray)…

/

I’ve been trying out Windows 7 (build 6801) for a little while now, and I figured I would share some thoughts I’ve had:

• Holy shit! I could possibly live with UAC in Windows 7! [*see rant on UAC at the end]

• Most of the applications I’ve tried so far work okay. iTunes for instance, works fine for playing music and the bonjour service works as well. If I plug my iPhone in though, I’m asked to reinstall iTunes. Still; it’s very early for Windows 7 and I believe this is more than early Vista testers could have said with iTunes.

• Under 7, plugging in my printer is easy! It automatically downloads and installs the driver (and quickly, too). In Vista I have to go to the HP website and install it myself.

• The Windows Experience Index has been uncapped from 5.9 (see picture below).
  

As I spend more time with it, I’m sure I’ll think of more things to write about. But, as some will know, this early build doesn’t even have the features that Microsoft showed off last week (like the new taskbar). That’ll probably come along with Beta 1. EDIT: If you follow the instructions on this page, you can enable the new taskbar in build 6801.

/

My rant at UAC: Pretty much the first thing I do in Vista is disable UAC; (don’t tell me that this is a bad idea; I haven’t gotton any viruses or other shiz because of my decision.) Frankly, I don’t see the point in UAC as it is in Vista – who is it for? people like myself are annoyed by it and many others just click yes because they don’t understand what it’s asking!

At least Microsoft understood that UAC is too annoying in Vista and they’ve toned it down in 7. Finally I can have UAC enabled and see all user’s processes in task manager without being prompted by UAC!

The only times that I’ve seen UAC in Windows 7 is when I’ve tried to install an application. Synergy, something which I use often, has to be run as Administrator and still, two years after Vista, there is no way to stop the prompt from appearing each and every time I run it.

So, even though UAC is better in Windows 7, if I were to be using it as a primary machine, I think I’d eventually turn UAC off.

Looks like they find another hatch….. and that there’s someone in it

Only 104 days. Only

/
I’ve had to change the video two times already because it’s been removed from YouTube. So… If this one get’s removed, there’s always copies of it on there. Just search Lost season 5 trailer.

There’s a newer one here.

During the Tokyo Games show, Microsoft showed an ‘extension’ to the Prepare to Drop trailer which showed an ODST Marine leaving the drop pod that crashed. It was also stated that this will ship in Fall 2009.

The trailer has just been uploaded to Bungie.net & presumably the marketplace too: look here.
Xbox.com gives us a few more details: Campaign will be a side story that takes place during the events leading up to Chief’s return to New Mombasa in Halo 3, Multiplayer will provide “groundbreaking multiplayer content” With Exclusive new maps & Forge options as well as Saved films, Screenshots…. Oh and 4 player co-op
EDIT: It’s now called Halo 3: ODST which makes more sense, but I’m not sure I prefer it.

LOL - The Super Intendant Labels the crashed ODST pod with "POSS. PARKING VIOLATION"

Microsoft for the first time is keynoting at the Tokyo Games show which kicks off this Thursday and finishes on Sunday….

Will we be graced by the reveal of what ‘Halo 3 Prepare To Drop’ is? Click here to see what we know so far (it’s just a trailer, an awesome trailer.)

Well, there have been a couple hints that we might do:

• “Tokyo Rules” mentioned in one of the Super Intendant’s news posts on Bungie.net
• “Prepare to J-Pop” Sound familiar? No? Could be a reference to Prepare to Drop from the trailer. And, from the same source: “Brian and Luke are, as you read this, witnessing the marvel that is the beautiful city of Tokyo.” From last week’s Bungie update.

Also, generally speaking, a keynote at a gaming show implies that there is stuff to show off; hopefully this ‘new Halo 3 campaign experience’ is one of those things.

The keynote starts at 12:00PM Tokyo time. If you want to find out when that is in your time zone, click here.

/

Edit: I was right; Look here

During the time up and around Christmas last year, Xbox Live had some serious issues.

Sometimes the service was completely down, and sometimes it was just very flakey meaning that you couldn’t play any matchmaking games due to some sort of issue with the service.

For anyone trying to play during these times, Xbox Live is excruciatingly annoying! It is also known to get a bit flakey during popular periods e.g. Saturday evenings. Fantastic for a service that we’re paying for, eh?

Hopefully, having had a year and at least two scheduled maintanence periods since then (one of which was yesterday), the service will cope with the influx of users over Christmas.

Did we recieve any compensation for these problems last time? Yeah, we got a free arcade game (Undertow).

Frankly though, I’d rather have a stable service that works when I want to use it.

So, place your bets: will Xbox Live have problems this year? I’m gonna go with yes, especially with things like Gears 2…

/

EDIT: For a longer version of this trailer which was shown at the Tokyo Games Show, look here

After the countdown finished at 07:07AM PDT, Bungie.net revealed a teaser trailer for the next game they’re bringing out. OK no-one knows what the trailer was for, just go and watch it!!!

The description for the video from the marketplace: “High action and deep mystery await players in this new Halo 3 campaign experience. Prepare to drop!”
We can haz new campaign levels???

You can see it here GOGOGOGOGO

Click on any of the pictures below for bigger versions.

WTF?

Don't think water...

Yes, it's upside down, that's how it was in the video!

Possible release date? It

/

This time it seems they’re sure that it won’t be cancelled though; if you look carefully at the messages on the current bungie.net homepage they now include:

“THERE WILL BE A PAYOFF”

“IT WON’T BE A LETTER”

Expect something big. It’s what we deserve after last time!

/

LOOK HERE FOR WHAT HAPPENED

BTW, sorry if this post doesn’t mean a lot to some people; if you want to read about this and when it’s happened before, look here

Today, September 26th 2008 marks Halo 3’s 1 year anniversary.

There really isn’t a great deal to say, anyone who is a true fan of Halo 3 would have gotten it on its release day one year ago (the 27th for Europe ) and is still playing it to this day. 

I’m certainly one of those dedicated fans; over the last year I’ve played Halo 3 multiplayer for a rather scary 265 hours! (that’s 11 days straight!!!!). (If you want to see how many hours you have spent in Halo 3, click on the picture below or the Spartan over on the right and create an account.)

Supposedly we’ll get a new episode of the Bungie podcast today and hopefully(!) an announcement or at least something more from the Superintendant.

So far he’s not invaded Bungie.net as much as he did the last time but there is a news entry from him on the bungie.net homepage. The entry is a transcript of a ‘conversation’ between the Superintendant (who appears to be an AI) and a Communication Duty Officer. The conversation comes from the UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE – CLASSIFIED SIGNALS ARCHIVE

This along with the closing message from Luke in this week’s weekly update (“Earlier this summer, my bipolar, crazy landlord told me, ‘The night is darkest just before the dawn.’ Dawn is about to break.”) suggests that we will see something about Bungie’s next project very soon; what better day than Thursday – Halo 3’s one year anniversary?

Keep an eye on Bungie.net for any other weird goings on and hope for an announcement!

Bungie had better be damn sure that Microsoft isn’t going to stop them this time!

/

EDIT: If you watch the Bungie logo on any page on bungie.net for long enough it flashes to the Superintendant (last time it flashed to ‘tru7h’)

EDIT: He’s back in full like last time BUNGIE.NET INVADED BY SUPERINTENDANT – AGAIN – COUNTDOWN TO 7:07AM (PDT)/ 03:07PM(UK) September 25th.

Bungie confirmed today that Title Update 2 for Halo 3 will go out on Tuesday the 23rd;

This’ll introduce individual ranks for each playlist, the new achievements and the playlist changes and, as I’ve written about these before; if you want to know about them, click here..

The new achievements can be seen on Bungie.net now; but one won’t appear work until Halo 3’s one year anniversary on the 25th – is it one we haven’t seen / been told about? It’s the one where you have to finish the last level with the Iron scull on, in 4 player co-op with all of you in Ghosts.

There’s 10 new spoken-about achievements which you can get now and 20 which haven’t been mentioned (because you need to have the Mythic map-pack which hasn’t been announced yet.) You can see what the others are here.

Bungie.net has had a few upgrades as of today. For instance, now both ranked and social kills by weapon etc. are shown on one screen and you are able to compare your career stats with someone else’s. (as shown in the picture)

The weekly update which was a day early ended with this:

“Outtro in Go Minor

Earlier this summer, my bipolar, crazy landlord told me, “The night is darkest just before the dawn.”
Dawn is about to break.”

Does this suggest something is very close? I think so. EDIT: look here

Could we see something on the 25th? It’s a definate possiblity. The announcement of the next Bungie game!?!? By this time next week we may already know………

/

Don’t get your hopes up though, you never know when Microsoft will spoil the fun

OK, so…. When you’re in Windows on your MacBook / MacBook Pro and your computer is asleep, if you plug in the power adapter, it wakes up; in lots of cases, this is annoying and it certainly doesn’t do that when you’re in Mac OS X.

Follow these steps and you’ll be able to stop it from doing so:

1. Click start
2. Right click on My Computer / Computer
3. Click properties
4. Click Device manager (in XP, you have to go to to the Hardware tab to see this option)
5. Click the + next to Batteries
6. Double click on “Microsoft AC Adapter”
7. Click Power Management
8. Untick the “Allow this device to wake the computer” box.

Note: I’ve only tried this on Vista; it should work the same on XP but the position of the AC adapter in device manager might be different. Comment if it is and I’ll try to help.

/

Yes, I know it’s just been ‘updated’ along with the iPod nano & touch. But you can’t surely say that that was an upgrade?

It’s exactly the same! WITH LESS SPACE.

Prior to today you could buy an 80GB or a 160GB iPod Classic in black or white. Now, it’s 120GB (in black or white) or nothing.

And it’s no different; the nano got all the newness: the new software, the accellerometer, the new design….

The software on the iPod Classic seems to be exactly the same as the previous one; it doesn’t even appear to have been given Genius like the touch, nano & iPhone. Admittedly, it could be added later with a software upgrade but it seems weird that they didn’t want it as a launch feature.

Jobs admitted that the iPod Classic is the one that started off the iPod range and that in itself probably means it is here to stay, but perhaps it is not the highest priority because the other models sell more?

Only time will tell whether the iPod classic will stick around; the only selling point that I think it has at the moment is the larger storage space (I’m sure many have more than 32GB of music or want to use it as portable storage) and the fact that it is by far the cheapest per GB.

/

EDIT: According to this, the iPod classic will “eventually get an update to enable Genius playlists”

Damn it, he's back. "A small, private Bungie Invitational looms on the horizon."

Bungie came out and admitted that Auto Update 2 (AU2) for Halo 3 will bring some new achievements to the game; they only gave details of the one’s that will make sense now -

“As folks have seen, these aren’t the only achievements we’re adding. But without proper context, there’s not a whole lot else we’re going to say. Stay tuned.“

Most likely, there will be some more achievements with another map pack / update to Halo 3

Here’s a list of the one’s that they did tell us about:

• Vidmaster Challenge: Lightswitch (0 points) – Get to the rank of Lieutenant in any playlist in the new EXP progression system.
• Vidmaster Challenge: 7 on 7 (0 points) – Enter into any ranked or social playlist with 7 EXP on the 7th of the month.
• Vidmaster Challenge: Annual (0 points) – After 9/25/08, complete Halo on 4-player Legendary LIVE co-op, with Iron, and everyone in Ghosts.
• Double Double (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get two Double Kills during any ranked or social match.
• Poor Yorick (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get 3 Oddball melee kills during any ranked or social match.
• Came…From…Behind (50 points) – On a Legendary map, get 3 assassinations during any ranked or social match.
• Defend This (50 points) – On a Legendary map, get a flag melee kill during any ranked or social match.
• Flag Dropped (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get 2 flag carrier kills during any ranked or social match.
• Road Rage (25 points) – On a Legendary map, get 5 Warthog chaingun kills during any ranked or social match.
• Look Both Ways (50 points) – On a Legendary map, get a Splatter Spree during any ranked or social match.

EDIT: You can see a list of all the other achievements here – They all require the un-announced Mythic Map Pack.

They also said that Auto Update 2 / Title Update 2 will most likely be delayed – “the previously announced date may slip a bit closer to the Halo 3 one-year anniversary.” That’s September 27th so presumably it’ll be between the 16th and the 27th.

/

Wasn’t something I was intending to do but I have now dropped my 3G iPhone and it still works! Yay.

Dropped it from the height of around 1 metre whilst *slightly * drunk.

To be honest I was surprised that the screen didn’t smash; all it has done is made a couple of marks on the bottom where it landed on the pavement. Not a big deal, by any means.

My best attempt at photographing the damage is shown to the right ->

Just out of interest though, I looked to see how much a new back would be; without spending too much time on it, the cheapest I found was £40 (about $80) which I think is a bloody rip off!

Also, some of the components are housed inside the back part so ultimately, it really isn’t worth the bother.

My iPhone lives to fight another day!

/

iPhone vs iPhone 3G

So, I, like many others have had my iPhone 3G for about a month and a half now….. I think that’s long enough to decide whether the upgrade was worthwhile – was it worth the money? oh no, that isn’t a valid point for me; I’m £100 up from the upgrade to 3G

Let’s see now; there’s only really 2 major differences between the original and the 3G: the latter has a 3G modem (go figure) and a GPS receiver. Of course, firmware 2.0 brings 3rd party application support through the excellent App Store; I’m not going to count that though, since that upgrade is offered for the iPod Touch and original iPhone.

The design has changed a little – the back is now made of plastic rather than that MacBook Pro style aluminium; it’s offered in two colours: black and white (16GB only) and the back is curved (so it tapers out from the sides) rather than being flat. Overall, these design changes make it feel and look better than the original, as usual with Apple.

3G - two colours available

So principally, the new model should offer faster internet access and the ability to locate you more accurately. The question is, does it?

First, I feel I have to explain that my experience with the original iPhone was ummm average – I loved it… but almost everywhere I spent time there was no Edge coverage, only GPRS; I very rarely saw Edge. So, to be frank it was very very slow. Something upon which I blame O2 for.

Almost everywhere I spend time with my iPhone 3G has very good 3G coverage and it’s pleasantly fast. I can’t be sure that it is as fast as it should be (and I don’t really care for the most part) because it is so very much faster than GPRS.

I see people complaining about how they thought the speed increase would be much bigger; those people went from Edge to 3G rather than GPRS to 3G like I experienced – I’m happy with the speed increase it yielded.

Though, with the amount of complaints I’ve seen on the internet about it not being as fast as it should be; it probably could, and should be faster than it is.

Overall though, I’ve been very fortunate; I’m yet to experience a dropped call, I’m satisfied with the speed and in other ways, it’s the same as the original – brillant!

Pro’s:

• Faster data access
• GPS
• 3rd party applications (not really a pro for 3G, but 2.0)
• Looks & feels better

Con’s

• Compatible with less accessories; chargers, speaker docks….
• Laggy response in some applications (mainly down to 2.0 as it is the same on the iPod & original iPhone & should be fixed by future software updates)
• Same old camera – still a 2 mega pixel model from 2005; without the autofocus! It’s adequate, but disappointing for 2008.

To conclude, I think the upgrade to 3G was definately worth the -£100 I spent on it. Ahh, scratch that….. I made £100 out of the upgrade and I got a much better phone for it -  It was definately worth it!

/

This week’s Bungie update details what is going to happen with the monthly playlist update and the date that Auto Update 2 will be released – both the playlist update and AU2 should be released on the 16th of September. EDIT: a later bungie weekly update suggests that it will be delayed and will be nearer to the 1-year anniversary of Halo 3 on the 27th of September — now confirmed for the 23rd.
You can read about Auto Update 2 and what it does to Halo 3 here.

September’s matchmaking playlist update does make a few more changes than normal; as promised by Bungie a couple of weeks ago. A summary of the changes appears below:
• Rocket Race is being removed
• Both Ranked and Social Big Team Battle are being removed
• Head to Head is being removed
• Team Doubles now requires all DLC – Heroic & Legendary packs and Cold Storage
• Default Team Slayer games will now have the Magnum as secondary weapon
• Squad Battle – a new ranked playlist will be introduced; it’s 6v6 and will be Slayer / Capture the Flag
• DLC Free For All (new) – 8v8 – Slayer, Objective and Infection!
• DLC Big Team; another new playlist – 8v8 Social Slayer and Objective (just like Social BTB)

Some of the playlists will see Bungie-forged map variants of Sandtrap (they’ll be no elephant), Epitaph (without shield doors), Snowbound (with some shield doors removed) and The Pit (with “with inaccessible spawn hives.” — That sounds annoying). The normal versions of these maps will also appear.

You can read the Bungie update containing all this information and much more here. It offers some consolation in the fact that the Rocket Race gametype will be added to the Multi Team playlist as well as the fact that there will be less objective, SWATGuns and Magnums in SWAT – and the fact that there will be Carbines on the map!

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Also, they confirmed that they’ll be no bots / campaign characters in H3 multiplayer – just to hush those rumours after the thanks video’s.

…. At least, I think it’s worthwhile – there are a lot more applications available now compared with when the first jailbreak was available & Installer is available (though it’s a beta version and the majority of good applications are currently in Cydia)

I haz Installer, App Store & Cydia

What sold it for me is that there are now ways to theme your iPhone / iPod Touch like SMBPrefs offered in the past.

There are two theming apps that work, one which many jailbreaker’s will be familiar with: customize and the other; Winterboard.

Customize is definately the more fully featured of the two offering the ability to theme the home screen as well as change sounds, message text throughout the software and much much more.

Also, MobileTerminal works pretty well; just as well as it did in 1.1.4 as far as I can tell and it comes in really handy if you know what to do with it. Command-line FTW!

Just get Touchpad Pro & VNSea working and I’ll be content.

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I have known about this issue for a while and as of yet I haven’t found a good solution (though, admittedly, I am yet to look for one!) and the reason as to why I’m posting this now is that I know I’m not alone in having this problem — I got two hits from someone searching “no sound macbook pro vista ultimate 2008″

The problem occurs randomly, but I’m pretty sure that I see it more after my MacBook Pro has resumed from sleep in Vista (Ultimate 64 bit).

The problem is that no sound will play out of the speakers even though the system is unmuted and should be playing sounds!

The only way I have found to get around this is to insert some headphones/speakers into the headphone jack and then remove them. This always restores the sound for me….. But, I will get on to finding out if there is a better solution than this and I’ll update this post if I find anything.

Does this work for you? Or have you found some other way to restore sound? If you have found another way, please comment.

This week(end)’s Bungie Weekly update brings details of some of the changes that will be made when Auto Update 2 lands for Halo 3 at some point in the future….

As you can see in the picture over there —–>
auto update 2 will make it so that you will have a rank for each playlist and it will introduce the bar of progress that others, and I have missed from Halo 2’s matchmaking system.

The bar shows how close you are to ranking up in that particular playlist. It is not currently clear as to whether the bar will show how close you are to ranking up (Recruit, General….) or how close you are to the next skill level (28,29,30…..).

Principally, it seems as though they are just showing how much EXP you have in each playlist (earned by winning, or tying a game).

Quite why this is being introduced, I don’t know. But, they’ve always said that they can’t make UI (User Interface) changes to the game — perhaps this will be a change that will only appear on Bungie.net? That would be very silly in my opinion. But if it does show up in the game, Bungie should be prepared for a fresh influx of people wanting changes to the interface of the game (like pressing X just after a game finishes to save that film – a la H3 Beta(woo!)).

Also detailed in this weeks Bungie Update is the changes to matchmaking that will occur in August (they may already be live – I don’t know!). It’s a fairly boring list for this month (but includes some changes to Team Doubles that I don’t like — the inclusion of Oddball, for instance).

But the last paragraph in the update suggests that there will be some bigger changes to matchmaking in Septembre!

“You may be thinking to yourself “Hey, that’s a pretty short change list.” While a lot of the changes done this month were backend things that players will never notice, you would be right to think that August’s changes feel very minimal. The reason for this is that we’ve been focused on preparing a larger series of changes to Matchmaking for September. Much larger.

Much, much larger.

No, really. It’s huge. You should see how giddy Luke gets when I talk about the tentative plan.”

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Edit:  Auto Update 2 will be released on September 23rd

Probably not, but according to Damon Lindelof, "When season five starts, you won’t know when or where you are. And the way we tell stories will be different too."

The video below was filmed (clearly without permission )at Comic-Con 2008 and can serve as a kind of season-5 teaser.

There are some other points about Season 5 here including the fact that Lost has apparently finished with Flash-Forwards & Flash-Backs

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As a Lost fan, stumbling upon this a while ago was very cool – - people have made Dharma logo’s for quite a few products that you might have in your fridge / cupboards.

Click either of the pictures above in order to see a list of printable labels (in PDF).

Wouldn’t it be cool to ’sabotage’ someone’s kitchen by covering everything in these?

Initially they’d probably be like “WTF!?” and then (only if they’re a Lost fan), something along the lines of “Coooool”

On another note, Season 5 of Lost begins in approximately 182 days.

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Preliminary thoughts on the WordPress iPhone client:

It’s ok.

A way to view blog stats would be nice since the graph doesn’t show up in Safari.
You should be able to see / moderate comments in it.
Landscape mode is a must for the next version – the keys are much bigger that way.
Some more formatting options e.g. being able to bullit point this list!
Having the ability to search for images on the web from within the app would be more convenient.
And, as far as I can see, you can only add pictures to the bottom of posts *goes to computer to move*

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And yes, I could probably have found a more suitable picture for this post but I searched wordpress and found a Halo-WordPress logo which looks cool! — I wonder why it was made?

With 12 hours left on the countdown, a message was posted [supposedly?] by Harold Ryan, the President of Bungie Studios on the superintendent-Bungie-homepage.

It can be seen in the picture below or by going to Bungie.net at this very moment; don’t know how long that’s gonna last.

Is it real?

Is Microsoft preventing Bungie from announcing whatever they were going to announce?

Will anything happen at 07:07:07 AM?

I hope so

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EDIT: 07:12:00 AM – Nothing…. I’m just gonna go be depressed somewhere now….

EDIT: September 20th ‘08 – he’s back! – click me

EDIT: September 25th ‘08 – he’s back in full – click

Both Microsoft “Messenger for Mac” and Adium offer far fewer features than the Windows MSN client – Windows Live Messenger — Why is that!?

For instance, just now I was signed into MSN in Adium and I wanted to send a link to a friend, but he wasn’t online; fine, I thought – I’ll just send the message now and he’ll get it when he comes online.

But no! Adium informed me that the contact wasn’t online and gave me two choices – to send the message now and that it would only go through if the contact was appearing offline or send it later.

I tried the first option – but he wasn’t online… So, thinking that it would work the other way, I chose the second option – to send the message later. Little did I know that this doesn’t work in the same way as on Windows; In order for the message to get through later, both the contact and I have to be online (and I would have to be using Adium; rare for me, the person who bought an MBP for Windows :p).

So, frustrated with the offering from Adium, I downloaded Microsoft’s offering – Messenger for Mac and I was immediately disappointed – just clicking on an offline contact presented me with a dialog saying they were offline and “Would you like to mail this contact?” NO, I JUST WANT TO SEND AN OFFLINE MESSAGE!

So, are there any MSN clients for Mac that can offer this feature and preferably others i.e. Shared Folders (which is absent from Messenger for Mac)?

Is the fact that Adium (which seems to be a fairly well featured IM client) isn’t able to send offline messages through MSN Microsoft’s doing? If so, they should at least implement it in their own client!

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The original purpose of this post was going to be to do with what happened at the Microsoft E3 press conference; due to my bias towards Bungie / Halo that will be a minor discussion in this post.

So… The 360’s gonna get a new dashboard in the Autumn / Fall; To be honest I don’t like the look of it but hopefully it will work ok. On the up side, it will have 8 person private chat w00t! Fortunately, they clearly realised that people don’t like change — the xbox guide (accessible by pressing the guide button!) will take the form of the blade-like dashboard we currently have and you will be able to use it in game and in the dash.

Gears of War 2 looks awesome and will be released on November 7th.

Fallout 3 looked cool but the demo didn’t show enough for me to decide whether it will be worth buying — this is combined with the fact that I haven’t read anything about them in the past so I can’t tell!

A few more announcements… including that Final Fantasy XIII will be on the 360 and it was the end of the conference leaving Halo / Bungie fans severely disappointed.

Not even a mention of Halo Wars and this after the Bungie guys on the Podcast severely suggesting that something was going to happen on the 14th.

AND SOMETHING DID HAPPEN!

GOTO BUNGIE.NET!

THE SUPERINTENDANT HAS TAKEN OVER AND A COUNTDOWN IS SHOWN COUNTING DOWN TO 2:07:07PM ON THE 16TH!

To be honest; no-one really knows what is going on with the Superintendant but it is driving all the Halo / Bungie fans crazy and it definitely shows that Bungie can capture the attention of people without using the Microsoft conference like others do.

If this is the beginning of an ARG like ilovebees.com, it’s certainly trying to get the attention of a lot more people; and I think it’ll succeed.

So, yet another post where I leave you waiting for an announcement or something else from the brilliant company that is Bungie.

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Edit: just been linked to this page http://www.bungie.net/Inside/soffish/Soffish.html links in with that fish on the Bungie Day 2008 theme….

Someone explain it all!!!

Update – click here