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Random Stuff

Friday, July 27, 2007

Glasgow Greggs

GreggsI have been on a course this week in Glasgow and at lunch have been walking round the city killing time.  I was surprised by the amount of Greggs the bakers there are now in the city center of Glasgow.  There is one in almost every corner of a main street now.  Yesterday I counted 6.  After visiting there website to get a rough estimation there is 11 within a 1 mile radius! How lazy are the people of Glasgow that they need 11 within such a small space? 

Shop Locator - Stick in Glasgow to see how many are there!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Who reads books on PC's?

Harry Potter and the Death Hallows Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the 7th and final book of the series has already been leaked onto the Internet with 4 days before release.  Somebody has got a hold of a copy and then taken photos of every page and uploaded them. For anyone that cares you can find them in the usual locations.  This got me thinking who actually reads books or ebooks on PC's? This copy of Harry Potter will indeed damage your eyes if you were to sit and read it as the words that go into the middle fade with the light and you will struggle to read.

At Least I will get a quite weekend this weekend!

 

Update: Who ever has taken these photos has left details of their Canon serial number.  Canon camera owner # 560151117, a certain J.K. Rowling's lawyer would like to talk with you....

Super Mario Galaxy: E3 2007 Bee Mario

Continuing from my last post, Bee Mario looks like it could be fun......

Super Mario Galaxy: E3 2007 Walkthrough

I am not sure about this Mario, I did like Mario Sunshine for the cube even though there were a lot of people who disliked this game.  Super Mario Galaxy looks like there is way to much going on in the screen which will lead to mass confusion jumping from planet to planet.  Only time will tell.

Super Mario Galaxy: E3 2007 Walkthrough:

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Kwik-E-Mart

711 A selected 7-eleven stores in North America have been transformed for the Simpson's movie.  They have turned 7-eleven stores into Kwik-E-Marts and are selling selected Simpson's goods such as Krusty O's and Buzz cola.  This is fantastic only if we had something like this in the UK!

Flickr set of Kwik-E-Mart 1

Flickr set of Kwik-E-Mart 2

Kwik-E-Mart Blog

My favorite one

Here's a clip of Apu after being fired from the Kwik-E-Mart!

Looking forward to the Simpson's movie.....

Cash Loans

one_pound_coinI keep getting junk mail through my door about cash loans, ccj no problems, unemployed welcome etc.  The comedy thing about this is they advertise a loan of £300 over 55 weeks with repayments of £9 a week totaling £495 with a typical APR of 177%!  I mean 177% at first I thought this was a typo and they forgot to put the decimal point in.

After doing some research this is indeed NOT a typo. Provident Personal Credit were the culprits this time.  They have a loan calculator on their site I deiced that I wanted £50, minimum loan term was 31 weeks, right.  APR was 365.1% Have a play with it see what the most APR you can get!

I think anyone who takes a loan of this sort of money with such high APR must be crazy, I do understand that there must be people out there that do have problems with their finances but I am also sure that if the saved £9 a week for a year instead taking a loan they would be ok.

Half Life 2 : Episode 1

gman_fullIts been a while since I have been playing PC games.  Since I bought a new PC a few months back I decided to stick Half Life 2 back on.  I was amazed with the graphics as previously I was running this on 1ghz AMD Athlon with all settings down low.

I noticed that steam were doing a special $9.99 for Episode1. With the exchange rate being silly just now it would seem rude not to buy this for £5.

Episode 1 leaves off right where HL2 finished with the explosion of the Citadels reactor.  Time stops and Vortiguants appear and rescue Alyx.  The G-Man is then seen around a black screen and blue lights as Vortiguants seem to hold him back. "We'll see about that".  Vortiguants then teleport you outside the Citadel.

You start the game outside with Alyx robot Dog rescuing you from rubble.  You are then tasked with escaping city 17 before trying to disable the rector from exploding.

The game itself looks a lot nicer over HL2.  Only grumble I have had with it was it was way too short.

As I escaped city 17 I am now looking forward to Episode 2.

Trailer for HL2: Episode 2 below.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

T in the Park 2007

T in the Park 2007 From last years moaning about flags I am going to try and stay positive about T in the Park 2007.

This year was the 1st year that T would be a 3 day event, fantastic gives the campers something to do on Friday night.  Only downfall I could see with this would be the amount of traffic trying to get to the site for the 4pm start.  The campsite opening at 9am meaning a lot of folk would be leaving early doors.

With this knowledge we set off about 10ish.  I am wise to the Kincardine bridge and the roadwork's there so took an alternative route through Stirling.  No traffic until we got about 2 miles from the site, then took about 2 hours to get into the car park.  This year we got in a really good carpark right beside the campsite entrance, great.

On Friday we seen bloc party and the artic monkeys.  The monkeys were not very good live, I did however enjoyed bloc party.  With the campsite a bog it took 50 minutes to get back to our tents after artic monkeys.

Saturday we had planned to start the day seeing Little Man Tate, due to Gogol Bordello not playing the times were all wrong on the NME/Radio 1 stage.  Caught a few bands here and there until the Lost Prophets were up.

Stayed in the golden circle to watch James, the lead signer was in a right moany mood going on about feedback from his earpiece.  Bit disappointing.  We then made a dash for the Pet Sounds tent, this is the 1st time I have actually been in this tent missing it out in the past.  We caught Cold War Kids who sounded great.  Came out and had some nice food from the Healthy T area and caught the end of arcade fire.

Razorlight up next stood at the back for this and seen some neds trying to start a crowd surf from way far back, all ended in tears!

Once Razorlight were over we headed back into the golden circle to see the Killers who had an excellent set and were very good and entertaing.  I did like the fact that they came back out twice and played past 11.

Onto the Sunday, strolled in early as we had a busy day of trying to catch lots of bands.  Started with the Herdons - crap.  We then headed to the Bacardi B-Live stage to catch some of Itchy sax on Paul's recommendations.  Another 1st for me as I have never been into this, great atmosphere with the floor bouncing reminds me of a nightclub when you are on holiday in Greece or Spain.  Michele had a few Bacardi which went down better than the cider or Tennets!

Michele then was wanting to see Avril so we headed into the golden circle to see some of her performance.  I have to say that the other girls on stage were highly annoying, stayed in there for the Goo Goo Dolls.  We had planned to go back and forward to see Gossip Paulo Nutini and Mika but there seemed to be too much traffic between the stages so just faffed about the main stage and watched some Paulo Nutini.

Moved round to the right of the stage for some Fratellis and the sound was god awful at the side and after a few songs made our way down to the NME/Radio1 stage to see Biffy Clyro.  After seeing them in the Barras a few months back I knew they would put on a good show.  With not many folk there we easily made our way down the front.  Another great set just seen way to short for my liking.

Back to the main stage to catch some Kings of Leon, I do like this band but I have seen them at T before and are pretty dull, left with a few songs to go and seen Jet.  Another band that once they had played their hits failed to impress me and I grew rather tiresome of their set.

Went and got some more grub, and back in for the editors we were lucky to get in as they closed the tent as we just got in.  I was supervised at how many good songs this mob have!

To the headliners snow patrol - hmm having seen them before I know they are awful live with lightbody not being able to hold a tune.  Gave them 10 minutes then headed to the King Tut's Tent to see some Queens of the Stone Age.  Gave them about 10 minutes and caught the end of Damien rice.

My problem with T this year was that there was so many bands that we missed to do being on at the same time as others.  The 4 headliners on Sunday night we could have easily watched.

Highlights - Killers set.

Lowlights - Traffic on Friday.

You can watch highlights on BBC's T channel or 301 on freeview.  Red button may also work....

PES 7 Screenshot

Not sure what version this is from PS3 or 360.  Only time will tell which one will have the better format.

PES7 Screenshot