You know what really grinds my gears? Dara Ó Briain

I really enjoy Mock the Week, and actually find him quite amusing BUT why the fuck does he have to use the words umm and eeerr as punctuation? JUST STOP TALKING AND STOP SAYING UMM AND EEERR every five seconds. Listening to him talk makes me feel like my brain is leaking out of my ears. Five years olds can manage to complete a sentence without eeerrr uuuummm so why can't someone who is actually basically being paid to talk.

If I was sad enough I would find out how much he gets paid for doing Mock the Week, count how many words he say per episode then count how many times he says those damn non-words. The equation would look like this:

Micro$oft steals your bandwidth! Shock! Horror!

In astounding news that such a reputable company would do such a thing. It has been discovered that Windows XP Pro uses up to 20% of your bandwidth for its own devices (unnecessary updates, checking your system etc).

Luckily you can stop this theft:

Click the Start menu, then select Run and type:

gpedit.msc

Then goto:

Local Computer Policy>Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Network>QOS Packet Scheduler>Limit Reservable Bandwidth

Then click on the 'Explain' tab:

"By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default."

You can change the settings to speed up your connection.

The best game of all time.

Way back in the mists off time.......

I first got Final Fantasy 7 (FF7) at a time when all the other Playstation (also on PC) games that I was playing lasted about 20 hours from start to finish, some even less (I'm looking at you Resident Evil (12 hours) and Resident Evil 2 (6 hours!!!)). I was getting increasingly irritated at paying £2 per hour and more per game. Fair enough - some of these games, like Abe's Odyssey & Exodus are fantastic games that I could quite happily go back and play again even now.

I'd watched a friend play a bit of FF7, he had been playing for 12 hours and had hardly even scratched the surface, so off I went a bought it.

The game starts with a mercenary (you) helping a terrorist organisation. (That statement sounds like the game is some first person shooter but nothing could be further from the truth.) But then continues with probably the most in depth story of a game that I've ever player. I've never played a game where I actually really care about the characters in the same way as you would with a good book, film or TV series, rather than just keeping the game character alive so you can complete the level or game. The bit where (SPOILER)....

Graphically the game varies drastically from fantastic to quite poor. The rendered backgrounds look quite amazing, even beautiful in places. The FMV interludes are stunning for the time (1997) and still look pretty awesome today. However the in game characters are fairly blocky, but against the cool backgrounds it doesn't seem to matter.

I don't even know where to start on the game play, there is just so much to do but you there are only a few times when you really feel rushed, mostly you can explore at your own pace. And explore you can, after leaving the city of Midgard (after 10-12 hours) you have a continent and eventually a whole word to explore, also with several modes of transport including finally, if you are lucky and your breeding skills are up to it - a gold chocobo.

Most of the criticism about this game is the random battles, which do occur very regularly, what these critics seem to forget is that battles give you experience and gil (money) so therefore you get more powerful. I personally think the battle system is fantastic as you can take your time and think about what you are doing - there is no rush at all on the correct setting, but the best bit is the customisation of the weapons with Materia (basically magic gems, but that's like saying a G5 Mac can work out 1+1). Then there is the summons Materia - how many games can you summon a huge dragon (amongst other things) to come and blast the hell out of your opponent's? You want the Norse god Odin to turn up and cut you enemies in half? Then find that materia. The 12 Knights of the Round Table might just pay your adversaries a visit and each do massive damage.

Going back to the beginning of this post. I've played through this game three times. The first time took me about 80 hours to complete it. The second time about 100 hours. The third time I decided that I wanted to do everything and find everything - with this game that's no easy task, getting the gold chocobo alone can take hours, but it was worth it - that took about 160 hours.

I haven't even mentioned the wonderful atmospheric music and of course Moogles!

To summarise - play it. Once you've played that then there is always:
Final Fantasy 8(PS,PC) - very good
FF9 (PS) - which I didn't really get into
FF10 (PS2) - Brilliant
FFX2(PS2) - didn't like as it seemed to move away from everything I liked about the games
FF11 (?) - haven't played - an mmorpg
FF12 (PS2) - haven't played....yet - its sitting on the shelf ready and waiting

and the previous older games FF1-6 which are available on various nintendo consoles and handhelds - SNES, GBAs, DS.

Then there is always the prequels and sequels:
The movies

• FF: Spirits Within
• FF: Advent Children (a direct sequel to FF7 - woo hoo)

plus a Japanise anime.

Lots of other games including:

• FF: Chrystal Chronicles (several versions)
• FF: Tactics (several versions)
• FF: Chocobo Tales
• FF: Crisis Core

plus several others which escape me at the moment. What am I Wikipedia?

Note: I haven't played through FF7 for 2 or 3 years so some of the information for this post may not be 100% acurate as it was taken from memory.

All's quiet on the blogging front

Its been a bit quiet on the blogging front of late as Guitar Heros 1 & 3 have been keeping me busy shredding to retro and newer rock.

I have been trying to think of a positive version of What Grinds My Gears but thought that "What Lubes My Shaft' is a bit rude

However I thought that I should mention a rather cool blog that I've found called Dark Roasted Blend which has links to really cool pictures, youtube videos to geeky and funny stuff.
E.g. A pigeon tower!

How much fun is this???

Guitar Hero 3

Got this today and I've been playing it to death, I'm on level 7 already.

DS Games played this week

Deal or No Deal

• Nearly as annoying as the programme.
• 3/10
• Play again? No
  

MechAssault - Phantom War

• The only proper mech game that I've player, not counting the Iron Soldier on the Jaguar. Good fun, ok graphics, lots of mechs and some minigames to hack other mechs and doors.
  
• 7.5/10
• Play again? Yes
  

Who Wants to Be A Millionaire

• Does what it says on the packet really, nicely presented but not really my thing, I lost at about £5000 or £6000.
• 5.5/10
• Play again? Maybe
  

Nanostray

• A vertical scrolling shoot-em-up, very nice graphics, quite tough though.
• 7/10
• Play again? Yes
  

Point Blank

• A remake of the PS1 light gun game. Lots of fun, I want to try this on link-up. Makes me want to play the original again.
• 7.5/10
• Play again? Yes
  

Rayman

• A 3d platform game. I played the original 2d platformer years ago which I recall was fairly good. This however was yet another 2d game which some bright spark decided would be good as a 3d game. Its not terrible, the game play is ok, i've played much worse, the graphics aren't that good though.
• 5/10
• Play again? Maybe

Space Chimps

• Got irritated very quickly, couldn't get through the first level.
  
• 2/10
• Play again? I'll give it another try

Spongebobs Atlantis Squarepantis

• I like Spongebob. This is daft but fun. A 3d platformer in the way that the Lego Star Wars and Lego Indy are.
  
• between 4/10 and 8/10
• Play again? Yep

Telly Addicts

• See Who Wants to be A Millionaire, a bit more fun though. I watch too much telly though as got 18/20 on my first go. Either that or my brain is full of crap.
• 6/10
• Play again? Maybe

Tony Hawks Proving Ground

• Lots better than I though it would be, I've been a fan of the xbox version and thought this would just be a poor version but it is surprisingly good. I only did the tutorial and about 10 minutes of the first level but found it worked like the xbox one and though it will probably take me a little while to get used to the controls, this is one I'll definitely persevere with.
• 8.5/10
• Play again? Definitely

Top Trumps Horror and Predators

• A bit boring really. Nicely presented, will probably be better multiplayer - could be worse, it could be the Dr Who one.
  
• 5/10
• Play again? Multiplayer - yes, otherwise no

Transformers - Autobots

• Played for about 15 minutes. Graphics not that great, but game play was ok, and you can beat big robots.
• 7/10
• Play again? yes
  

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

• It amazes me that in this day and age that Second Hand Car Dealers can still get away with being lying bastards. I recently bought a second hand car from Keith Bass, Swaffham. Although he swore blind, that he was 'honest'. I'm not naive enough too believe every word that he said, for example, the one careful owner turned out to be at least 5 probably not so careful owners, so to summarize Keith Bass=lying git.

• I quite like the Dragons Den programme, but there are several things about it that I don't like:

• They seem to be using apprentice camera men, I'm sure this is supposed to look cool and trendy with them wobbling about all over the place, but they first did this with Network 7 and The Word in the late eighties/early nineties, not exactly and up to date technique. So my tips for the camera men are
1. Point the camera at the person you are filming.
2. Try to get the zoom right as quickly as possible.
3. Once you have done the above try to keep the person you are filming in the middle of the screen.
• Could the commentator/voice over bloke stop telling me what I was just watching and listening too two seconds ago. If Duncan says "I'm ooot", I don't need to be told that again. I KNOW I JUST BLOODY WATCHED IT.
• The answer too the above question could be that Gollum isn't necessarily the best choice for a presenter for a business tv programme