I've disabled comments because they are filling up with spam. Sucks, but then this is the Internet, where people will take advantage of anything they can, just because they can. I'm not sure why anyone thinks that people reading about poker and fuck knows what else in my comments will make them part with their $$$, but the mentality of spammers is far far removed from that of normal people.

I really didn't think it would go this smoothly at all, but I have just been playing Half Life 2 and Counterstrike:Source at pretty acceptable rates in Transgaming's Cedega. Woo! It's a really impressive engine - realistic physics is definitely going to make games a load more fun :)

Suck suck suck suck suck. That's how much a really sucky thing sucks. What sucks more than that is crap like this. For those who don't read the link, the 4 word summary is "Operation Screw The Iraqis", this time by rewriting their constitution to place all sorts of insane legal restrictions on their agricultural industry and specifically the seeds they are allowed to use. I mean, come on, we've been doing this agriculture thing for thousands of years without needing large corporations to sell us infertile seeds we have to buy year after year. In my opinion it is sick and amoral to do this kind of thing. I sincerely hope the new Iraqi government overturns insane orders like this, but I don't hold out a lot of hope given the amounts of money people stand to make :-/ As the article makes out, this is all about pleasing the WTO, which is a whole other rant I won't get into now, suffice to say, despite whatever good intentions they have, they suck too.

I think I've figured out what I'm going to be doing on New Years Eve..... another Ugly Duckling gig! woo! If you're interested (and you should be), check it out here before the tickets run out!

If you are a Michael Caine fan, or like brit movies, or just generally like good old movies (or were young when it was released), you've probably seen the original Alfie, tale of a Jack The Lad character who cares only for himself and slowly becomes aware of the hurt this causes those around him. Of course, the original is now too old to make any proper bank, so it's time to take a good idea and apply a thick layer of shiny mediocrity and remake it; and so they have, with Jude Law as a modern Alfie. Law has the charm to pull off the kind of character Alfie is supposed to be, but I felt the film generally was quite hollow. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but it didn't feel like it offered very much in the latter stages of the film - Alfie is learning the errors of his ways, but I just didn't care very much. Also, the wardrobe people need firing, Alfie didn't have a single suit that was actually big enough for him. Your arms shouldn't bulge out wider than the shoulder pads!

Last night I went to Dig in the ribs with a few friends and some 2-for-1 coupons. It's a Tex-Mex restaurant in Brighton's food quarter (a nice way of saying "that road with all the steak and chinese places" ;) that offers a fine array of meats and sauces. I had a 16oz T-bone and brought a really feeble appetite with me, so I didn't make a very impressive dent in it, but Simon, Simon and Tam put in a good showing and tucked into a big plate of Nachos and sticky desserts too! Well worth a visit, although the staff could have been a little more attentive, we waited about half an hour to pay the bill; It aids digestion though ;)

It's Monday. It's the 1st of November. It's 2004. This means only one thing... Tonight I am going to an Ugly Duckling gig in London! WOO! More when I've actually been ;) Update: Wooo! UD rock live! They were unfortunately a little late arriving, so could only play for about an hour, but the set they did was fantastic - funky and funny. I strongly recommend you grab their albums/EPs.

It's scant hours since the release of the latest in Rockstar North's venerable GTA series and we've been giving the game a good bashing; these are my first impressions. The last GTA game, Vice City, was itself a dramatic improvement on the preceeding titles and Rockstar have continued the evolution of their beautiful engine with a variety of changes and new features that make the game more engaging and sustainable. Prime examples of this are the attributes of your character, CJ. As you undertake activities your skill at them improves (so shooting more people improves your aim and opens new combat style movements for gun battles, running more improves your stamina). Overall this seems to make the game far more engaging, although attributes such as hunger are more annoying and it seems to be possible to starve your character to death if you don't buy it a burger every so often. The map is *huge* and in the same way that Vice City was blatantly Miami, this is blatantly LA, San Francisco, Las Vegas, the Sierra Nevada desert and some of the coastal stuff, plus a bunch of bits that didn't look obviously like anything I know of. Only one corner of the map is unlocked to begin with, but thanks to some sneakiness at the airport we managed to steal a jet and fly over the rest of the map (getting shot down by the Air Force in the process ;) and it is simply stunning. The Vegas stuff looks particularly good, I expect the missions there will be interesting; San Francisco also looked cool although I kept crashing before I could figure out if Alcatraz is there. As much fun as the missions are, I still like the odd one-man-army style rampage, so it is most helpful that the weapons cheats are the same as in Vice City. The new and vastly improved aiming/targetting system makes taking on multiple characters much easier than before, but when you start gaining weapons skills the speed and accuracy of your character is amazing, he can fell crowds in seconds. A good way to attract the police, but also a good way of taking them out too. Being able to recruit gang members is cool, although they have an annoying habit of shooting at other gangs at every available opportunity. Getting shot at by rival gangs all over the place is not cool, but it makes it more interesting I suppose ;) So, if you liked the previous GTA games, I strongly suggest you take a look at San Andreas, it seems like it is the best of the bunch. If you've never played a GTA game and you can safely detach virtual violence from the real thing, pick up a controller and get shooting/stealing/racing/kidnapping/etc.

Ok ok, so I slightly downloaded a copy of Team America: World Police. Sue me, I'm gonna go pay my dorrah when it comes out in several MONTHS time and buy the DVD ;) It is extremely childish and stupid, but it was also hilarious. I can see a lot of people aren't going to like it though and quite a few will probably be offended by it. The puppets have amazing heads, they're really astonishingly good. The bodies are shit, but it looks like they did that deliberately to make the puppets fight/run really stupidly. Their charaterisation of Kim Jong Il is absolutely fantastic and I found myself laughing at almost everything he said; Some of the Team America characters were quite annoying though, so it wasn't perfect by any means. As my flatmate pointed out, they didn't do enough work on the satire really. I'd still recommend it if you're a Trey and Matt fan.

I've been running Ubuntu since a week or so before the launch and so far I'm quite happy with it. It feels mostly like Debian, which is what I was running before I moved to Fedora (for the better 32/64bit compatibility), but has a little more pace to it so far, plus a pretty significant surge of good will and interest. One thing I am a little disappointed in is that it seems the releases (in this case their first; warty) won't change much beyond security and important bug fixes. They are scheduled for every 6 months though. Personally I still think a rolling-stable approach to the desktop is going to be a killer feature if it happens. What will set Ubuntu's real course now they have a userbase will be the development of the next release, hoary. There are now quite a lot of people who are want to get involved and want to help. We just have to hope the process shapes itself well and a coherant way of working emerges and works well. My favorite things about it are really all things about GNOME, especially the automatic digital camera importing. It's fantastic to see the computer become more aware of what is happening to it and behave Correct™ly. My least favorite is really inherited from Debian - the 32bit compatibility on AMD64 machines isn't great. The good thing is that I can confidently append "yet" to that :)