texas pete

if i took the wrist saveer off, id find so much food from breakfast times that i could feed a small african family...

For home For work, it pretty cool becasue it has 2 USB ports on the back for extra stuff

I just started using steam for my games becasue games are way too expencive to buy over here. Ive got 3 or 4 so far and not noticed any issues with DRM just download and play instanly. I havent even had to be connected to the internet to play them Havent tried any EA games though, so cant help you with that.

Ahh I love the Daily Mail, they only give half of the story. If you look how they write, the statistics are completley meaningless. But almost one in five owners of the must-have phone admit that their main bank account is always overdrawn. so less than 20% are always overdrawn In comparison, 54 per cent of those who own a phone that uses the rival Android operating system and half of BlackBerry owners say they are never overdrawn. 54% of android users and 50% Blackberry users are never overdrawn, Without looking at all the stats you could conclude that 80% of iphone users are never overdrawn! I also like how they link the phone to the salary. As far as I recall, the blackberry was aimed at business types on the go because of the great encryption of the emails and they never gave out the encryption key. It was only later that the masses started getting hold of them. I cant say I have ever seen an Iphone given out on a business contract. so it would make sense that the high fliers would have a Blackberry becasue it is provided by the company, Iwould be quite interesting to see how many of the blackberry users actually also own an Ipod.

I got one very similar to that. it just seems a bit stupid ging to all the effort of downloading all the modules and stuff, why dont they cut the crap and say, yeah, we ruined your computer, pay us 10quid to get it back

Best gig: random bar in Andorra. We were skiing and ended up in a bar where the barman was doing the drinks and the music so I asked him what was up. He said the normal DJ got into a fight so couldnt work. I offered to do it the next night for a laugh. The next evening rolls around I was still horrendously hung oiver from the previous night so i was trying to stick to the cokes. The setup was really battered and just piles of CD's everywhere. so i managed clump all the classics and hip hop together and just started playing whatever good tunes i could find. next thing i know pints and shots kept coming over the dj booth. I told my friend to piss off and stop buyiong me drinks... he looked at me bare facerd and said, they are all free, we are getting free drinks all night. next thing i know the guys from dirty sanchez walk in and start a session. they complimented on the good music, I was happy enough with that! Worst gig: friends 21st My friend from uni had a big party in ulverston, lake district. I lost a needle on the train, so I had to run around looking for any shop that would sell any needle at 4.45 on a friday afternoon. then the crowd was his punk friends, chavvy ex school friends, and every generation of his family. Impossible crowd...

Id have been auite happy paying that for the game, but over here in rediculous price land it cost mme 50 quid. It pushed me over the edge and signed up for steam, which i was really reluctant to do.

Like it! Godd job !

Love how you go on a tram The new tram on the line is well pimped... it has fridge like air con and tinted windows.

When im at home and on my computer it will be mainly be through youtube. When im doing the washing or cleaning the bathroom whatever, I tend to stream the radio through my ipod. For stuff in the living room though I ll bang on some old records. I save all the MP3's ive dwnloaded for my trip to work on the tram and then fire up the portable hard drive in the office.

All hail the foot pedal slippers..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK8YpF6anzg&feature=player_embedded

I like the Zelda part in this!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmoov-IJ9jw&feature=player_embedded

PlayStation European customs ordered to seize PlayStation shipments in legal dispute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi2tae2PmmU&feature=related What with Skyrim and Dead island it could be quite a good year for gaming (and diablo 3 if it ever gets released....)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN4zb4LBNqk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOHvOhADAic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATy-0Gkrsl4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5BZom3vY0g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT0gVTjZEFE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzZ6tXCXz3o Are you just going hip hop ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ouOa9k0gE

I was tempted by one of the lamp alarms. but it just looked like a terrible flower vase or a sex toy from star trek. Another thing is that it didnt have a dock so it was only the radio. There was also a sony one that had a built-in ceiling projector thay could play a selection of nautre sounds (there was 6 different sounds including rain, bird song and waves) but I wasnt going to splash 60 quid without seeing it in action first ! This mornign It was quite succesful though at waking me up, becasue mainly it was a struggle to find out how to turn the fecker off.

The familiarity of the songs im hoping that it will actually get me into a routine.... so i try<ing to choose songs i dont normally listen to, so i can associate them to the different parts of waking up. Im sure that if i do it correctly, I will associate a certain song that will get me out of bed

good choice! perfect for the last song!

I developed a really bad habbit allowing me to sleep through 2 hours of the radio and turn my phone alarm off in my sleep meaning i always wake up late. Ive decided to splash out on a new alarm clock with an ipod dock so now i need music to wake up to. Starting slow and gentle gradually building up to something heavier. The idea is that i know how much time i have left before i have to leave the house by what is playing. Any suggestions ?

Is there any benifit to having USB over normal jacks in sound quality ?

I got a pair of these in Asda for a tenner. I wasnt expecting anything from them really... Cable is about 2 metres, mic mute switch and volume controller on the cable. The mic can be flexed in all directions and are pretty comfortable to wear for short periods of time, but after an hour or so they do tend to hurt your ears slightly becasue they dont quie fit totally inside the foam padding. The sound quality is ok I guess, but I havent compared them to a high end set, so they might in actual fact be terrible. Only jacks unfortunately so no Console action for me with these stereo bad boys!

I was a really big fan of the Total annihaltion games and the original supreme comamnder so I thought this would make a good game for me to test my new PC build on. I really enjoyed the original Supreme commander becasuse of the huge scale battles between land air and sea units all with vastly different abilities spread over 3 tech levels. However in the sequal they have made alot of significant changes to the gameplay that has in my opinion killed the fun of the original. The factions and story In the fist game you could choose between the UEF (humans) the illuminate or the Cybrans, each with thier own types of units and preferred fighting style. The story would progess from the view point of which ever faction you had chosen to play as. So for example, the last battle, if you were playing as the bad guys, you have to protect the doomsday device while it charges. If you are playing as the good guys, you have to destroy it before the time runs out. With supreme commander 2, however, the main story progesses across all 3 campaigns. If done correctly, it could have been quite good, but the story became so convoluted and confusing I had no idea who was still on my side and who was the enemy! Build build build! The trick to the game is to capture as many mass points as possible so your economy will never stop. This is the key to producing as many units and buildings as possibble in the shortest space of time. or so you would think... There has been a small change to teh way the economy system works that has really damaged the pace of the game. With the previous encarnations, if you were building more than your metal (or mass) income, then it would trickle itsway to everything that was being produced. Everything would take forever to be completed, but at least you knew that eventually the buildings and units you had queued up would be constructed and all would be well. In this game, the units will not start contructing untill you actually have enough materials to start construction. It may only seem minor, but it took me hours to get used to this fact. For example you send your construction bot to start a shield generator on your frontline defences, while constructing a steady stream of tanks and anti air bots. As the bots use less resourses to build, they always take priority so you end up with loads of units with no defence structures and lots of construction bots waiting around for enough materials to start production. Anoter major gripe I had was that you cannot aid with building to speed up production time. again, not that it has no consequence... as i will describe later. So now you should have a new base and can start churning out those units of mass destruction! Units, balance and reserch And now it all starts to fall apart. I was really looking forward to churning out all these great units and see which combination worked the best. I used to love swarming with loads of cheap bots while the long range missiles would rain down from afar all while my bombers would joint strike with a strategic bomber sneaking in through the carnage to take out the important structures! ohh.... 3 units.... you start off with 3 land units - tank, anti air, missiles.... this is all that you have through out the game. unless you decide to unlock the bot in the research tree which is completely useless. They have even done away with the tech levels. so the tank you get in the first level is the same tank you will keep unitll the end oif the game. They said it was becasue people were saying that onec you unlocked the experimental weapons (massive machines of ultimate death!) that the tech 1 units became redundant. The only trouble now is that ALL the units are now redundant once you get the experimental units. They tried to even it out by adding a research tree in game. You aquire research points in the game (you can build research centres to get more points faster) allowing you to unlock upgrades for your units and buildings. For the most part they are useless, for example "jump jets" for your land units. So do you want jump jets or do you want to unlock troop transports ?! I think they just ran out of ideas... all you have to do is research shield generators and the experimental units and you win the game. In the later levels of the game you start with 20 research points to start you off. Naturally you get the shield generator and the cheapest experimental unit and then you can build everything you need to claim victory. For the price and build time the experimentals are far too strong. You can build mabe 10 normal tanks or 1 experimantal unit in the same time period for the same resources but the experimental will make mince meat of them! Strategy and level design There is none really. Every level is the same and can be won by following the same routine. build line of ground and air defence in a line across where the enemy forces always come. grind research points to unlock experimental. build 4 or 5 experimentals and roll over their base. I found this was the case for all of the levels. I never even bothered to build any of the buildings like the nuke factory or the long range batteries becasue there was no need. Another major gripe I have is that the maps are completey static. In Supreme commander 1 the nicest part of the campaign was that once you had completed an ojective, the map would expand revealing more bases and units, meaning you were never too sure where the next might come from. So naturally I would be cautios and build up a huge defence force, reserve force, and over estimate their numbers ready for the map to expand. *Mission accomplished* ohh already ? maybe the next one will expand... *Mission accomplished* ohh.... i see where this is going... AI and multiplayer Ok, Maybe I am being a bit too hard on the single player, I think they made the game with more multiplayer action in mind. So after I loaded up a skirmish map I was quite supprised and horrified! The AI was completely different! I had selected a "normal" player with the same resources as me. I selected a map with a definatel bottleneck so i could rush there and setup a nice wall of defences and be safe! but it didnt take long for me to realise the computer had other intentions... I was sat all smug in my base with all my production facilities churning out all types of experimental weapons when i heard the warning for a nuclear launch... and another one... and another one... and another one. It wasnt long before half of my bace and all my defences were dust. hmmm.... didnt see that one coming! so I had to restat and change my tactics quite alot ! However, it is still quite annoying to have your commander sat there spining round in circles becasue the order you gave him confused him where to travel ! So all in all, I was quite disapointed in it. Yes, I do regret buying it but I was keen to test my computer out. It does look good, it runs really smooth and the loading times are quite good. The single player campaign can be finished in a couple of evenings after work with absolutley nor replay value what so ever. If I would do it again, I would have just stuck with supreme commander 1 and avoided the senond one like the plague!

I agree, there were alot of issues at launch, for example not being ale to buy a racing truck to compete in one of the earliest cups was a slight oversight, but they have sinced released an update (600mb!) that addresses alot of the concerns brought up by fans. The fact that they actually went and did this in a short space of time means they are willing to support the game and hopefully it will improve constantly. I was quite glad they added the option to remove the UD though... I was getting terrible screen burn!

After giving this game a thorough play through now I think its time i gave my thoughts on the game. Before you can even play you have to sit through the longest installation perios and update I have ever encountered. It took about 30 minutes from inserting the disk and actually getting to the main menu. For consoles I think this is completly unnaceptable in this day in age! forunately its only a one off! Navigating around the menu screen is really annoying. The different events options such as A-spec , specials and various other options are all different sizes, so you seem to go round in cirlces before you actually land on the one you want. Moving between the menus (for example going from the main menu into the various race menus) can take a while and if you want to actually start a race, you will grow tired of the loading screens. The loading times for individual races can take about a minute. It would have also have been nice to actually go from the car sleection screen to the tuning screens because it is really annoying to be inside the car ready to enter a race to find you need different types of tyres. you have to basck out of the race screen, the race level, racing type, go to the tuning options, buy the new tyres, go back through the racing menus and goo back to the race. having a direct link would have been alot more useful. The first thing to notice in the race is the sublime graphics and visuals. However I have noticed that they dont run consistnatly throughout the game. The tracks themselves look really pretty but the cars can be quite hit and miss. The cars are split into standard and premium cars. The Premium cars are really nice and they have done a really good job in moddeling both the exterior and interiors. However they have missed a few minor details. Ive noticed in a few cars the digital clock always reads the same time but I guess thats just being a bit pedantic. the standard cars though are a bit of a let down. The interiors arent modelled at all and the exteriors are a bit sloppy and the shadows cast are really poor. The gameplay is slightly different from the previous games. In number 5 you must level up your driver before you can enter the races. I was growing increasingly sick of trying to grind through the same races to increase your level enough to enter the next event. The balancing of the level requirements and the races seems really ill thought out. For example at level 20 you unlock the first tournament with the Le Mans cars. The only trouble is, you cannot actually buy a Le Mans car untill you are level 23 (or if you buy the signature version of the game then you get the best car at level 1) So after completing the super fast race you can then enter the Gran Turismo cup! Its a no limits race so any car can enter, but for some reason you are racing againt much inferior cars. the best car you will face is an M5 or an audi. it seems like a real step back. I was almost about to give up with teh grinding, but then i decided to check out the seasonal events. after completing only 4 races in the seasonal events, I had accrued about 4 levels of experience (20-24) and about 3.5 miollion credits! not bad for an hours worth of racing! with the over the top prize money on offer in these events you can buy almost any car (excpet the historic race cars) in the game within an hour of racing. Another terrible example of the balancing is a level 18 race, the historic racing car competition. You cannot win a car to compete in this cup, so the only way you can enter is to pay through the nose in the dealership. The average price of a good one is 20,000,000 credits. The F1 car isnt even this expencive! The other big change is the way that the B-spec or directors mode works. Here you actually have to create your own driver and then watchi him in real time as he drivers around the same cups as you have just raced. you cant speed the races up as you could in GT4 so you jsut have to sit and watch. for short races, its not so bad, the races are pretty quick. but later on, the races take approximately half an hour (the B-spec driver must do twice the number of laps you raced in A-spec) The Ai is absolutely terrible too. I wasnt expecting much though, but the drivers seem to have a pre-set path and will not deviate much from the racing line even if its posisble to take a car on the outside. its extremely frustrating to watch. The only advantage is that you can now select pit stretegies for your driver so you do not have to keep returning every 20 minuites duiring the endurance races. However this is useless in 90% of the races! The different racing modes are quite nice, especially the go karts! The rally events are nice, but there is not much variety in the courses. The same goes for the Ice rally levels, but they are generally too easy. I managed to finish the expert ice rally stages over a minute faster than the other so called drivers. The top gear test track specials are really amusing becuas ethe track crosses over at one point which can cause real carnage mid race while racing war time era volkswagons! Then it brings up to Nascar. Fucking Nascar. This racing mode really ruins the whole game. everything about it is terrible. The challenges are rediculous. the begginer challenges are, use the car in fronts slip stream to overtkae and come first. the intermediate challenges are go round a corner! seriously! there are 4 "go round the corner" challenges! first on the inside.... then go o nthe inside but there is a steeper gradient! dont hit any cones on hte outiside! then it go round the corner on the outside without hitting the cones on the inside. then its the same again but on a steeper gradient. with these the difference between a gold and bronze medal is 0.3 seconds! then the expert challenges are rejoin the pack after a pit stop and come first. but you have to sit through and watch the pitstop everytime you restart. I dont think it would be quite as annoying if there wasnt some nas car superstar driver having piped instructions coming through on the radio everytime you do something! the quality of these messages are just cringe worthy.... "be careful, the car is heavy!" "oo that looks like a nasty crash" For me I think the game would have been much nicer if they had completely removed the Nascar aspect and included either more rally events or tried something with advanced driving techniques such as drifting competitions or trick driving. All in all its a well polished game, but let down with sloppy menu designs and terrible loading times. Was it worth the wait from when it was first announced ? I dont think so, but I still really enjoy the game. I hope they start increasing the car lists with downloadble content.