I'm a drug user f*ck the police!

The above is of course a quote from the simply awesome Peep Show, the episode where Mark smokes Pot in the toilets at the bowling alley. For those not familiar with the show, OMG! Where have you been all this time?! It's simply a great show, Mitchell and Webb, both the stars and creative geniuses (should that be geniui?) behind the show are finally getting the recognition they deserve. Anyways, we're getting off topic so to bring us back I will start with a simple statement - I have smoked weed. Now, that shouldn't be that big a statement in itself, and it's probably not, but the perception is that I should now be cooler than I was, or at least that's what the World tells me.
I think it all starts with smoking in School, it's seen as a very rebellious act and we all know that rebels are cool, right? Possibly I'm given the impression that people that smoke weed are cooler is that I've known many people that have and it is regarded as something truly special and there's almost an elitism to it. Take University and there were some people on my corridor who would often go "on walks" as they put it, and I was grudgingly never asked to go. There's some thought process on their part going on - I was never deemed "worthy" to join them. Let's actually return to my experience, and heading back home for Easter to see the family as well as some friends. I've texted my good buddy Carl about possibly meeting up for a pint, nothing OTT, just something low-key where we could catch up and have a laugh, the usual. Anyways, thanks to some rail scheduling I happened to get the train back with him and he mentioned a gathering that I should come to. Now I'm usually wary of going to parties/gatherings with all strangers, I wouldn't call myself a people person, and could easily see myself wishing I was somewhere else, knowing I'd be having a better time. Recently I've been taken the more laid-back approach with social gatherings and going-with-the-flow, not getting stressed about meeting up times and just doing whatever, so I said sure "why not, could be fun". 

On to the gathering itself and me and Carl stocked up on the beer before heading over to Kevin's (the host of the party). We boozed up, got chatting and generally having a laugh - having a few beers with friends with nothing on the agenda is a relaxing venture, and something I don't do enough anymore. At one point we got a little heated debate on Macs and how they are in fact now marketing towards the dumb customer, that just wants a stylish bit of kit but no actual substance - that got me worried as I am more and more interested in Mac products - I always thought it was more an elitist thing - you've tried the Every Joe desktop, now you want to try something a little better, a little different. It was later revealed that they were having a delivery, and planning to smoke the rest of the night away. I was asked if I had ever smoked weed before, to which I replied I've never smoked anything before except the odd attempt at a cigar. I must make something very clear, I did not feel pressured into trying weed at any point. Like spending a night camping with a bottle of vodka, it's a very social thing - you take your few sips and then pass it on, knowing that you'll see it again soon enough, and the same applies here. I was offered a couple of times, the first few I passed, but ceasing my chance to become "one of the cool" - one of those people who I couldn't stand for looking down on me but yet yearned to be one of their circle so badly, I accepted the joint. A quick crash-course of smoking later and I was initiated. I was asked a few times if I could feel it's effects but to be honest I was pretty merry from the beer at the time so it was difficult to say if it was the beer, the weed or the fact that I was in a relaxed environment as well that was crucial to the relaxing times.

Yep, so we spent the evening with some beer, some weed, having some chats and generally chilling to music. I can't say if the weed was the ultimate factor on what I would label a good night looking back, or merely a combination of all these things. The one thing I know that it was a good evening and positive reinforcement will tell me an equally good evening can be achieved with those things again. It reminds me of part of one of Bill Hick's routines and how he wished they would report on someone having a good experience on drugs. I will admit here that I had a positive experience on drugs and would be quite pumped to go it again.

Other highlights of my Easter break include almost getting run over by a pony, thanks to Eric and Karlie for letting me crash one night, and of course stuffing my face full of chocolate whilst I watched the F1 at my Nan's. Overall a very good weekend - they always are if they are filled with varied activities - it's so easy I find to simply do nothing after a busy week at work.

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Big up the Graffiti snaps!

I'm enjoying the artsy habit I've developed of taking snaps of cool bits of graffiti or silly/cool phrases on signs that I spot on my travels. I popped a few on facebook, and this one has been getting a load of attention:

This picture can be seen, along with others like it can be seen on my flickr page which can be found here at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimiminar/ so go check them out.
At the moment, they have all been taken on my phone camera with questionable quality. The plan is to purchase a compact digital camera so I can have it on my person literally all the time. I think it would be a very cool habit to have a camera, see something smart, take a snap, and then stick it up on my flickr page, literally every day. Of course these snaps can be seen in the slideshow in the left sidebar, but check the flickr page for full screen goodness.
Enjoy!

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Rock Band EU details released finally!

I was just goin about my normal lunchtime internet browsing when I stumbled on an article that Rock Band is finally been given a European release date.
Good news you're thinking, I had the opportunity, thanks to my good buddy Adam to try the US version many many months ago - probs around 6 months ago. First off, I was very miffed that the wait is so long (release date May 23rd) they ("they" being either EA or MTV, or a combination of them both) decided to shaft us even more in the PAL territories.
Usually when it comes to pricing, they don't actually convert the currency but rather lazily they swap the $ sign for a £ sign. Whilst that's not great, it's something we Europeans have gritted our teeth and beared with, but the Rock Band pricing is ridiculous.
They've decided to, rather than sell the game + guitar, drums, mic all in one package, and instead sell just the game on it's own and then the instruments seperately. Not only that but the instruments alone will cost £130 with the game expected to retail initially at £50. What's worse is remembering that the US got this over 6 months ago AND for the price of approximately £90. This article on Kotaku, particularily the comments reiterate my anger at these decisions.
I always said that I would be getting it when it is finally released, but now it seems simply too much of a ripoff - I really hope that people have some sense and stay away come end of May, and force them to drop the price hard and fast.

EA and MTV, you've just lost my patronage.

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Add this to facebook <click here>

Just a quick post mentioning something I should have done a long time ago and that is add some blog presence to my facebook profile.
It's quite funny that I added the BlogFriends application, a viral take on blog sharing, the premise being that other blog posts which I would be interested will be highlighted to me, prompting me to click, and vice versa with people potentially interested in my posts.
This works fine, and it showing a blog post made in the news feed is cool, I often check the facebook home page to check the news feed items of friends, whether that be status updates, new photo albums, one of the better things about facebook. Ok, so I must resist a rant about what is wrong with facebook and we all know what it is, and so do the 100+ invites I currently have - and that's probably too much of a clue. Anyways, no sooner had I added BlogFriends, that the developers go ahead and announce that they can no longer continue the project. Great, I think, is there an alternative facebook app out there. Now before I stumbled I checked out Widgetbox and there clever idea of taking a blog and making a widget out of it, which they cleverly called a blidget - pretty clever guys...
Whilst great in principle it seemed a bit clunky with the facebook integration, and at the end of the day it was nothing more than a list of post titles which can easily be pulled from the RSS feed and placed into a shiny box.
I had a look a few hours back, and a quick search later, and FlogBlog was offered to me. Yes, the dream of joining the Flogosphere and other bastardised terms await me.
It lists a number of recent blog posts on my profile which will click through to the blog thanks to a quick tinker with the settings. Not sure what will happen in response to a new post, if it adds a mention of this, along with title and linked up back to the blog itself then I will announce myself chuffed.
Yes, this has been a bit of a contrived post, a small milestone, this is post #50. Whilst that's great, it's not that many when considering the lifeline of the blog. I'm thinking of really getting the hammer down and working on developing a new positive habit, to go along with the others (more about that in a later post). Thinking a target of 10 posts a month should be achievable, that's approximately a post every 3 days. Like with new habits I've found it's all about little steps, so expect smaller bitesized posts to go along with the number of the themed posts which I have currently in the works.
Wow, that was actually much longer, enjoy and if you're coming from Facebook and have a blog of your own, then add the facebook app and I'll become an avid reader - I've been meaning to add some more links as I promised, so a set of links of blogs which I actually read on a regular basis would be a rather cool segment.
Take it easy.

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Insert Coin #2 Belated 360 Dash Upate, part 2

Hey ho, we're here again and this time we're continuing my extremely belated review of last year's xbox 360 dash update.

Last time I mentioned the fun I've had with the new codec support and how it has enriched my living room. This time, we're having a look at some of the other features that came with the latest dash update.
Obviously this isn't a comprehensive list of all the new changes, but gives an idea of what I consider to be the other important and/or cool changes, enjoy.

One of the notably immediate features is an increased speed when using the Guide button and all the friends, messages menus that are contained within etc. Now before the update, accessing the Guide was starting to get really painful, often faced with a surprising delay before responding. I was always convinced that it was a symptom of my 360 starting to show its age, I've had it for about one and a half years, and it was inevitable with the lousy reputation 360s have in terms of reliability. With the new update, accessing the guide was much faster, effectively instantaneous which is great. Now, it is possible on Windows machines to change a registry setting which is responsible for the millisecond delay between clicking on the Start Menu button, and then the menu actually appearing. Supposedly, sneaky IT people simply change this setting, and then demonstrate how much quicker the Start Menu comes up as proof that they have improved the speed of the PC. I am hoping that Microsoft have not done something as crafty as this. Although I'm sure they would not reveal how they have made the improvement, but hopefully it's not something as superficial as lowering the delay, or removing transition animations - stuff like that.

Another move which on the surface looks a little cheap trying to jump on the whole social networking bandwagon, is the Friends of Friends feature. I can be perfectly honest and say I took a quick look at some of my Live Friends' friends the first few days after the dash update, but have since not bothered. Apparently it is a work-around a limit of a maximum 100 possible Friends. Now, I have ~40, and to be honest, probably half of those should be pruned as I've befriended them back in my halo 2 days one eve, and never spoke to them/played with them again, mmm....

Another big change is the reworking of the Marketplace Blade. They've now split up the Video sections which go along with the movies which are now available, some even in HD so that's pretty cool, I am yet to purchase one, I don't know, I am always afraid I'm not getting my money's worth and with the non-tangible sensation of a digital download, that counts doubly. Included in the new marketplace is this introduction of the "twist" interface. Before the menus on marketplace with effectively a simple list, where you could scroll up/down and click through to reach lower menus, but now you can go sideways, OMG! It's not that revolutionary, but with the amount of content always increasing, it does make it a bit easier to navigate. Also incorporating the twist interface is the new Spotlight section. Again, this is quite useful, this just provides a very concise list of the new releases in each of the headings, movies, game demos, DLC content etc - I do find myself just having a quick check here if I have a spare moment it's good to see what new stuff has come out.

Speaking of which, another feature is that of "Inside Xbox". A new option on the Xbox Live Blade, thanks to moving both number of new messages and online friends onto the one option, again small changes to neaten up the interface. Now, Europe was getting screwed over compared to our American cousins as for us the Inside Xbox composed of Acey Bongos letting us know how we could spend our live points (whatever the online currency is called?!) on new Live arcade demos. America had the ability to watch streaming videos, some of which came from Major Nelson (a podcast of which I subscribe, it's pretty good actually and surprisingly neutral console-wise at times). Thankfully, that has changed over here, and I think it was around the time of the GDC that suddenly video content was being made available through Inside Xbox, including Major's Minute, which despite being tips/did-you-knows that most people already know, it's a very good start. Also, it has gone from a weekly update to pretty much a daily update - some days (like today), there's nothing there, but mostly there's something new to have a quick look at when I switch on the 360 after work.


I know, I know, this review-of-sorts is a bit late in coming, but it's here now and on the whole it is very good, some very nice changes indeed. '07 has been a very good year for the 360, there have been many contenders for Game-of-the-Year, most of which I have the please of owning, perhaps with the omission of The Orange Box (arg! don't hate me!).


Till next time folks, happy gaming, and to plagiarise the wonderful Consolevania - May you always hit a 1-UP.

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Sports Thoughts #1 F1 2008 Season Preview

Hey ho, a new post and a new themed post going on, there seems to be some kind of pattern forming... *rubs chin*
This is going to be the first in a series of posts loosely based in the field of sports. Half the battle seems to be coming up with a witty title that will survive the test of time.
EDIT: For now I've played the rhyme card and will go with the name 'Sports Thoughts'. It's a little lame but here's hoping that the pain will lessen give time.

This should have come about earlier as this weekend (15th & 16th March) marks the start of the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship. Yes, it's been four months since the end of the tightly contested 2007 championship which will hopefully be remembered for Hamilton's unbelievable rookie season and the closely fought race for the title with Raikkonnen emerging the winner at the very last race, and not all the stolen documents, spy scandal which reflected a lot of negative attention for the sport.
That should be all behind us and so we can emerge from the winter testing and look forward to what should be a very competitive championship with a number of drivers already backed to challenge for the title with a handful more with the ability (and car/team) to win races.
At the start of the F1 season it always seems customary to have a look at how the drivers have moved between the teams over the Winter break. The most notable of all is Alonso being kicked out of McLaren and returning to the team where he made his name, Renault. Renault struggled with the switch to bridgestones last year, and already Alonso is playing down his chances of even challenging for wins. I was a fan of Alonso during the Renault days, but his behaviour last year has not won him any friends, and whilst the inter-driver squabbling probably happens a lot more than we are exposed to, his outwardly public attitude was pretty shocking and only healped to endear Hamilton to the fans, well British ones anyway.
In terms of other driver movements, a few rookies are finally getting drives but it is very much status quo. The Ferrari line-up is unchanged, as is Honda's. With Alonso going to Renault, Heikki (sp) has gone the other way to McLaren. He also has the same amount of F1 experience, last year being his rookie season too although he should prove to be a more obedient servant for McLaren - they do hold the stance of treating their drivers equally, but the feeling very much is that Hamilton is their best shot for the title, although don't be suprised to see Heikki being a regular on the podium if the McLaren's are competitive.

Moving away from the drivers, it's time to make some season-long predictions in that old-timely fashion. Pre-season testing is a rough indicator of the expected performance over the year. Considering that, the Ferraris must be the favourite, and despite me not being a Fan of Kimi (although his drinking habits are legendary!), I expect him to win his second title, with Ferrari collecting the constructors. That being said, I expect (and hope to the point of getting on my knees and praying) it to a very competitive season, with numerous drivers winning races. I think the season will pan out with Ferrari and McLaren fighting it out for the wins, whilst BMW will be lurking if the top 2 have reliability issues. I expect Renault to end up behind BMW, I'm sceptical that they can realistically challenge as the third best team out there.

Now F1 is probably the only sport I follow where they change the rules pretty much ever year. The current form of qualifying is my opinion pretty darn awesome, although its "fuel-burn" phase did come under criticism. That has been noted and cut from 20 minutes to 15 minutes which should hopefully allow the phase to match the previous 2 sessions for spectacle.
Technical changes notably include the banning of traction control and engine breaking. Also the electronics have now been standardised, with all the teams using the same unit. There have been mixed thoughts about the banning of traction control, but I hold the opinion that fast drivers will always be fast, and ultimately the better drivers should be able to adopt quicker. Hopefully this will allow Jenson to have a good season with his renowned smoothness behind the wheel, although the Honda '08 car doesn't seem to have the speed - they've cured the woeful handling of the '07 car but that won't be very useful if it's very tardy.

The opener is again in Austrailia and has proved to be a great season opener in recent times. The teams aren't sure exactly how competitive they will be when compared to each other, but do expect the familiar names to be heading up the timesheets before this weekend's race.
Now all I have to do is break up my sleep pattern so I'll be able to watch the coverage live and not have it ruined by ITV's heavy editing for reruns and the habit of passing the coverage onto their digital channels which for those out there which don't have at least freeview (there's not many but people will be affected), they will miss out. It does make me worry how much importance is tied to ITV's coverage if it constantly has to make way for Rugby etc. That being said my predictions for the race itself and I'm gonna go with a Raikkonnen win as much as it pains me.

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