Happy Holidays

Hello everyone, hope you're having a wonderful festive season.

I know I am. On Christmas day, I got one of those new Daleks, the Voice Command ones which are a foot and a half tall and whose heads (Eye and Dome) can be controlled manually from the Remote Control or who can be set little tasks by simply saying words.

Today, I finally upgraded to a new iPod. I went for the Touch. Mainly for financial reasons, but also because I decided I could do without the hassle of a contract phone. It's an 8GB - that's where finance comes into it, I had £200 in cash.

Of course, tonight at midnight I'm being paid £193, but then I would have had to have paid all my money into my bank account and that would have delayed matters...I really wanted my new iPod ASAP. And hey, the iPod Touch kicks ass.

So I'm loving my new iPod. Video, internet, touch controls. It's awesome. Loving my new Dalek, he's a badass. Looking forward to buying a Blu-Ray Drive for my computer. A LiteOn for £95 which will also finally give me some decent disc playing software.

Then I'm gonna grab The Simpsons Movie on Blu-Ray. Going to kick ass.

By the way, Parker make the best fountain pens on earth. I got one for Christmas and damn is it good. Smooth, consistent, nice weight and good feel. If you write anything and you can get a Parker fountain pen, do it.

Jens Out

Election '08: Maybe elect someone good this time?

In the immortal words of one Homer Simpson, a resident of Springfield, SP:

"These candidates make we want to vomit in terror."

So far, 21 people (Excluding 3rd Party candidates who will not win. Sorry, they just won't) have declared themselves in the running for the US Presidency. Admittedly, 3 have pulled out. Of these 21, only 2 are high profile enough with the wind in their party's sails to win (Obama/Clinton - now that's a ticket).

Of course, the man most likely to win this election - so likely he would barely have to campaign, has not declared yet. However, he is being actively drafted. I refer of course to Al Gore. Al Gore everyone! Al Gore is awesome. No question.

But then, someone new has declared. Stephen Colbert has announced partly on Jon's Stewart's Daily SHow and partly on his own Colbert Report that he will seek the office of the President of the United States. He says he will be bi-partisan, though Wikipedia seems to believe him Democratic.


I've gotta say, if I can't have Gore as President, I want Colbert. And I want Jon Stewart as his Running Mate, setting him up to take the job once Colbert's term is done. Which is why as of now, I will be covering the United States 2008 Presidential Election in a brand new blog.

Oh yes.

And it's name?

Only Three Choices.

Those choices? Gore, Colbert and Stewart.

Sorry, what? No Republicans on that list?

Yeah. You're right. There aren't. There's a reason for that.

Vote Colbert

Jens

Backwards Compatability

As some of you may know, I plan to get a PLAYSTATION 3 in the new year, once I have an XBOX 360 (The Halo 3 Edition most likely). The reason being, there are a few games I want on it (Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Metal Gear Online and Warhawk) and one movie I simply must own in HD which is going to Blu-Ray Disc (The Simpsons Movie).

Now, you may have guessed from the above games that I like Metal Gear. And I do. A lot. So I went to check the backwards compatibility of a PLAYSTATION 3 with the PS2 entries. Metal Gear Solid 2 will play fine, good. I have both versions of that.

But by far my favourite Metal Gear game of all time is Metal Gear Solid 3. Subsistence will play with "Noticeable Issues".

I have the original, Snake Eater, only. It is not listed.

I'm extremely annoyed. I do not want to have to pull out a PlayStation 2 every time I want to play my favourite entry in one of my favourite series. It may well be that I like Metal Gear Solid 4 better, but it doesn't matter. I will still have a desire to play 3 again, and unless they remake it for another platform (Say, Wii, *hint*hint*) I will have to plug another console into my TV.

Which will be no mean feat. By the time I have a PLAYSTATION 3 (I will by then have a 26" HDTV), I will have the Wii, an XBOX 360, the PLAYSTATION 3 itself and possibly one more product to plug in. The final product is a DVD Recorder into which I can plug the Wii, freeing up one SCART socket...But I can't guarantee the ports will be there - it may be that I use the port on the DVD Recorder for recording FreeView.

I could plug the PlayStation 2 in via Composite, but can you imagine the mess? Cables trailing from all sides of the TV, 5 or 6 Mains plugs...This would all be much simpler if Sony had put a PlayStation 2 inside the PLAYSTATION 3 like they were supposed to.

This went on a fair bit longer than I expected, but it really Grinds my Gears™. Anyway, I'll shut up if Konami put Metal Gear Solid 3 on Wii.

Jens Out.

The Simpsons Movie

That could be the best movie I've ever seen. Definitely the funniest one I've ever seen and unquestionably the best Simspsons episode ever.

It's the only film I've ever seen where everyone in the theatre was laughing at every single joke.

And those jokes are pretty much all dead-on perfect. In particular, the jabs at Fox, moviegoers and other movies are amongst the greatest jokes of their kind ever committed to 2D animation...Or indeed, live action. Sorry Epic Movie, your brand of cheap parody doesn't cut it against this film.

I'm going to be interested to see how this film does at the Box Office. I've seen some people underestimating its potential income. I think it's a dead cert blockbuster, but that depends on whether or not people stupidly decide to watch Transformers or Harry Potter 5 instead (Both of which could have been better).

And remember: stay through the whole credits sequence.