Sorry I haven't posted for a while, what with uni and stuff going on. Nothing major i don't think to add. Just me buying stuff and getting on with work at UCCA.

Hopefully I will have some more time later this week to post some stuff that's actually interesting.

I haven't blogged in ages, just thought id catch you guys up on some of the stuff that's been going on that you might be even vaguely interested in. I've bought quite a few things in the last couple of weeks including Fusion Frenzy 2 for the 360 (Shown below)
 

I also have all the Tekken Figures all but one when is arriving in the post in the next couple of days from Asia (Shown Below)
 

Chris has just told me my gamerscore is 12345 lol which is quite cool and very hard to get on purpose, good job I got it accidentally then :p. (Shown Below)

I completed Saints Row 100% today on story mode, bit geeky to talk about that but hey I did it!

I have also bought some other bits and pieces but its just mainly photography stuff and stuff im interested in that's a bit mundane to talk about.

O I did buy the Orgy DVD finally which is cool cos its like a trip over the years with them and what went on behind the scenes and stuff from 1997 - 2004. (Shown Below)
 

Im gonna be drawing some stuff on my wall soon so il blog about that when im done :)

I got my BT home hub through the post today, and low and behold it was black! I've looked high and low on the Internet (aka Google images) and I cant find one the same. Maybe ive got a new line of them. It looks much better in black in my opinion anyway so I like it. What really matters is I can now host Xbox live games again (finally). Its prob rele boring for some of you reading this but I know a few will be interested.

(and yes that is a Toy Story figurine in the bottom left lol. My dad loves it.)

I decided to stick most of those CD's on my wall, thanks for all your ideas though guys. You can see a picture of it below. And no I wont be throwing them at old people like some people suggested haha.

I have also drawn Jin Kazama on my wall, I will rub out all those hand prints later on. Its quiet hard drawing on a wall if you haven't tried before.

Anyone got any ideas for what I could do with these old 100+ CD's?

Please comment on what you think should happen to them and il try my best to do it.

P.S. the reason why I have so many is I bought a whole load of crappy recordable DVD's and CD's which didn't always record my files properly and so would just be left as duds. I've collected these for like 6 years now. I'm sure there's something I can do with them. Hmm

As some of you know, im very fond of Canada, and although ive never been there I think its awesome lol. As its Canada day today, I thought id wish you all a happy one. If you have a Canadian xbox live account you can download some free gamerpics and theme today as you can see above on my TV.

Id love to go to Canada, I just love everything aboot it.
But its a shame not everyone shares my view eh?

 On another note, I updated my myspace a bit and made it look a bit smoother around the edges :p

48349500 Combo on Tony Hawks you say? Why yes actually, but not on purpose. I got stuck in a wall and I was kinda floating for ages, managed to get two achievements from it though, see below:

Gay thing is, when I updated my game, it deletes your high scores because some people know how to properly glitch stuff before the update came out, so all the scores were reset. But here you have it though! Would have been near the top of the leaderboards otherwise lol!

I just found this cool American makeup site which you can buy laytex masks from to blend into your own face. See below for some cool examples.

The site is: http://www.screamteam.com/

Vampire:

Harry Potter bad guy (don't ask me what he's called, I cant remember lol)

Facial scratch:

Wolf Man:

Ok that's enough hotlinking, go check out the site and click products on the left :p

If the video above hasnt loaded propely click here to see it:

http://www.unclegamer.com/tv/watch/halo_3_beta_zanzibar/

"The following footage comes from the internal beta of Halo 3 currently in progress with Microsoft employees and shows us footage of a redesigned Zanzibar aka Last Resort. You will see many changes including the deployable bubble shield so please excuse the cheesy music and let us know what you think.

*Matchmaking Menus New veto system implemented.
*Military ranks are used and the use of XP points help to determine a player’s skill level.
*Three types of matches: Ranked, Social and Custom.

General Multiplayer
*Spiffy new spawn animation we call the “blue grid sweep”.
*Spawn with an Assault Rifle and two frag grenades
*Map is called Last Resort and is a re-creation of Zanzibar, but on crack.
*Every HUD notification (deaths, awards, weapon pickups) pops up very bubbly-like.
*Air lifts are included in multiplayer.
*Teammate’s letter/code identifier expands when near, revealing their gamertag.

Weapon Information
*Weapons featured: Assault Rifle, Battle Rifle, Plasma Pistol, SMG, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun, Spiker and Spartan Laser.
*The Sniper Rifle’s radar features a bright green picture in picture scope.
*The Shotgun now holds 6 rounds instead of 8.

Equipment Information
*Equipment items featured: Bubble Shield and Power Drainer
*Equipment item listed under grenades on HUD.
*First equipment item is picked up by walking over it, no button pressing needed.
*Bubble Shield is a cone type device that doesn’t move, can be entered by any person, but no weapon can penetrate it.

Vehicle Information
*The Warthog, Ghost and Mongoose are shown. Both the Warthog and Mongoose are demoed.
*Hold the “RB” to get into a vehicle. 

"

Better? Kinda...well it looks a lot better and its nice to use. There's lots of features which let you optimize your space which is cool cos it means you can see more of your photo while editing it. I made up a quick image below with a few brushes which you can import from CS2. Click the image to enlarge it.

The thing is, CS3 like CS2 is a memory hog and takes up over 300mb of RAM just to run without you touching it. Below you can see how it compares to other programs I have running.

As you can see, Itunes takes up 46mb while Photoshop CS3 takes up the huge amount of 344mb. You would expect it to take up more, but not that much. Blimey!

I might need to buy some more RAM, im already using 80% now! lol

Looks a bit explosive to me :p What the hell is America up to?

Click here to see it for yourself on Google maps

 "Instant Messaging Comes to Xbox 360

Redmond , Washington —Your Xbox Live® friends list is about to get a whole lot bigger. Microsoft Corp. today announced the launch of Windows Live™ Messenger on Xbox 360™, connecting friends across Xbox 360 consoles, Microsoft® Windows®-based PCs and Windows Mobile®-powered devices.

Chat with your friends via Live Messenger.

With this update to Xbox 360, friends and families can easily connect and chat directly from their television using Windows Live Messenger, a network of more than 20 billion relationships and more than 260 million active accounts.

Beginning the week of May 7, 2007, the Xbox 360 Spring Update will provide Xbox 360 owners worldwide with access to Windows Live Messenger features, broadening the communication options on the Xbox Live social network.

Connected Experiences
Members of the six-million-strong Xbox Live community currently send more than two million text and voice messages a day and can now use Windows Live Messenger to text chat with up to six people on their contact list at one time, while playing games, listening to music, or watching movies. Text chat adds to the variety of options friends and families already have to communicate with on Xbox Live, including voice and video chat.

Look for this new accessory this summer.

Current relationships on Windows Live Messenger and Xbox Live will be unified on Xbox 360 and users will see at a glance if their existing friends on Windows Live Messenger have gamertags, instantly expanding the breadth of connected experiences they can share online.

"Bringing the largest IM community in the world, Windows Live Messenger, to Xbox 360 makes sense, as Xbox Live has really become the largest social network on television," said Jerry Johnson, product unit manager of Xbox Live at Microsoft. "For our growing community of six million on Xbox Live, using Xbox 360 is a very social, connected experience. They are using Xbox 360 to play games, music, and movies while simultaneously communicating with one another through video, voice, and text chat. With this announcement we are simultaneously expanding the access of Xbox Live users to existing friends and family while introducing Windows Live Messenger users to the benefits of Xbox 360."

Know instantly which achievement you accomplished.

Beginning the week of May 7, users of Windows Live Messenger on Xbox 360 can text chat using the virtual keyboard accessible on Xbox 360, or by connecting a USB keyboard to the console. This summer Microsoft will launch a QWERTY text-input device, a new accessory that will connect directly into the Xbox 360 controller to support text and instant messaging.

Other New Features
Beyond Windows Live Messenger, the Spring Update for Xbox 360 includes hundreds of new features and enhancements including:

• A richer Achievement notification pop-up will showcase the name of the unlocked Achievement and the gamerscore value without needing to leave the game to check the Achievements list.
• Enhanced family settings features for Xbox Live communications enable different defaults for video chat and voice chat.
• A new Xbox Live Marketplace blade lets Xbox Live members access the content they seek—whether it is game content or TV shows and movies (available in the United States)—from one place on Xbox Live.
• Updates to Xbox Live Arcade allow owners to quickly see which Xbox Live Arcade games their friends are playing and join in the fun. Xbox Live members can also compare progress of leaderboard scores and Achievements directly with all friends on their friends list. Expanded "Tell a Friend" capabilities make it easier than ever to boast about Achievements and high scores.
• Expanded "Tell a Friend" capabilities make it easier than ever to boast about Achievements and high scores.
• A new option in Auto Downloads provides faster access to the entire collection of free, trial-version Xbox Live Arcade games.
• New progressive download controls provide easy access to optimal viewing options by letting people fast-forward, rewind, pause and resume as their video is downloaded from Xbox Live Marketplace.
• Extension of the background download functionality will allow owners to set their Xbox 360 console to turn off automatically after downloads are complete.

The Spring Update is free beginning the week of May 7 and will be easily accessible to every Xbox 360 owner through Xbox Live or on Xbox.com.

You may not even notice all the new features, but they are all designed to enhance your Xbox Live experience. Some of the other features in this upgrade include:

• The name of game in tray is now displayed in the dashboard.
• When the tray icon is highlighted, a list of achievements, game icon and gamerscore for that game is displayed.
• Video trick modes are enabled for content that is being progressively downloaded from Video Marketplace.
• Playback progress bar indicates download completion.
• Improved skip forward, skip back functionality during video playback.
• Switchable aspect ratio now available during video playback (Auto to Letterbox, Zoom, Stretch, Native).
• Player and friends lists now quickly show session presence information for quick identification of users that are joinable.
• Support for streaming WM-DRM protected content from a PC
• Folder view for video content on connected devices
• H.264 video support: Up to 15 Mbps, Baseline, Main, and High (up to level 4.1) Profiles with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
• Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 8 Mbps, Simple Profile with 2 channel AAC LC and Main Profiles.
• Show folder hierarchy for video content played from all devices.
• Bookmarks are stored for each video that the user plays remembering the users last location in the file as well as the aspect ratio that the user choose for that file.
• Video trick modes (fast forward, rewind, chapter skip) can now be used while downloading Video Marketplace content.
• Skip forward and backward functionality has been improved to skip to the next or previous chapter. Each video is divided into 10 “chapters” allowing you to quickly skip around video content.
• The information bar that is turned on via the On Screen Display (OSD) now shows you exactly where you are in the playback of the video file.  In addition it will also show for Video Marketplace content how much of the file has been downloaded and where the “chapters” exist in the file.
• Windows Media protected content (WM-DRM) can now be streamed from the PC to the console. If the WM-DRM license is missing or corrupted then a specific error message is displayed to the user. Bookmarking is also stored for protected content.
• When the user is in the dashboard and an Xbox 360 game is in the console then the name of the game is displayed in the tray icon of the dashboard. If the user highlights the tray icon then achievements and gamer score are displayed for that game based on the signed in user. Xbox1 games show the name and image of the game.
• Bookmarks are stored for each video that the user plays. The user can delete all bookmarks but this will reset all bookmark information for every video that the user has played. The bookmark database is exposed in the system/memory/system items
• When a user selects an item for download from Marketplace then the system will determine if there is sufficient disk space for the item and, if not, will ask the user to delete content on the HDD. The system provides a sorted by size list of videos, game trailers, demos and arcade content to aid the user in the deletion process. The same list of items are also available from within memory so that users can quickly see which items are consuming the most disk space.
• The console will block the user who attempts to download content onto a storage device that will never have the capacity to store the item without deducting any points associated with the content item.
• The screensaver is disabled when playing photos from any source

"

Devil May Cry coming to Xbox 360, Another great title is coming to the Xbox 360.

Details in the Capcom press release

Source: Xbox Live's Major Nelson

I'm not sure if this is an error on Gameplay.co.uk's part or not. But id get one quick while your eligible to get one for this great price. If not only to sell it on for more!

Click here to see page

Blog This for Firefox 2.0 now available on Windows Live Gallery The Windows Live Writer Blog This extension for Firefox has been updated to officially support Firefox 2.0 (in addition to Firefox 1.5.x). The Blog This for Firefox extension adds a button to Firefox which starts a new Windows Live Writer blog post prepopulated with content and title from the current web page. Blog the whole page, or just selected snippets. Interacts with other registered plugins to parse and structure web content where appropriate. Blog quickly when you find something of interest on the web. Spike Washburn Developer, Windows Live Writer

Source: Writer Zone

Bought this game today, the level of difficulty is pretty varied. Should keep me entertained for a while :p Crackdown is in the GTA/ Saints Row genre and has everything you would expect from a new game of this type, there is already downloadable content for it inc new characters.

Woop!

It enables me to colour/draw on the computer with a hand held pen

After having to buy a new modem I finally have everything working. Windows vista starts up much quicker than XP thanks to some memory changes and tempory files. As you can see below it has a few games that it didn't last time and you can display windows in a unique fashion so you can see what's happening all at once. One excellent feature is that your computer is rated so you can look for that rating on software and games you buy for your PC so you don't have to work out each specific part of your computer and if it will run it or not. Currently ITunes buggers about and keeps opening at gay times but they are fixing that right now. You can see some other stuff they have added in the screen below such as seethrough windows, massive icons, stuff you can add on the right or left (clock etc). All in all its worth getting hold of if your finding XP is being a bit of an ass on you. But check to see if your programs will work with Vista (there's a link in the below post)

If you didn't already know, Windows Vista is the next one up from Windows XP. Its being released in different country's hour by hour as a type this now. If your computer came with a free vista upgrade when you bought it then you should be able to download it from Microsoft.com or windows update.

 As before there are different versions of windows released of this type, all of them are called vista but have far more or less things on them that could make your life easier. Windows Vista Ultimate is the best one of the lot containing everything the other have and more. But at £369.99 its hardly inviting to purchase.

Some new features of vista are that it can open and/or type any program by you speaking to it (how good this is we will see), more search bars (woooo!! lol), see through windows (cos this is essential), more teletubby style icons and clock faces and hopefully better compatibility with programs and a better user experience.

Once installed the desktop and computer environment will look similar to below.

Unreal Tournament 3 (aka Unreal Tournament 2007) will be on Xbox 360!! Woop Woop! Thank god I wont have to upgrade my PC to play this game now, yay!! So many PS3/PC only titles are coming to the 360 just because of sales from the 360, this is awesome! I cant wait!

The double bass drum pedals I ordered came today, they work quite well but its a bit of a sham trying to fit them in with the other drums as there isn't much room at all so its a bit crampt until I can work something out.

Went to a band gig last nite a mate was in, they were awesome. Check them out here: at http://www.myspace.com/mexicofallz and buy their EP :)

Poped down to the new Argos Extra today near my school and purchased Viva Pinata. Viva Pinata is a sim game which lets you create a garden to attract different animals that can eventually mate after you have items of their liking in your garden, e.g. other animals to eat or grassy areas. The aim of the game is to create the best garden and to attract many species of animals. You can also build homes for these animals if they decide to stay. O, and all the animals are Pinata's :p

You have to play the game to rele understand what's going on because it just looks like a shambles of colour otherwise.

Pictures below:

I just nicked this from gizmodo :p

"

All you mysophobes out there may wanna listen to this. A new study reveals that your cell phone carries more muck on it than the bottom of your shoe. Researchers at Dial-a-Phone collected swabs from everyday objects like keyboards, shoes, and even toilet seats and in each case, the swab that was exposed to the surface of a cell phone was the dirtiest of the bunch. Apparently phones are perfect bacteria carriers since we tend to keep them warm and toasty inside our pockets. Their advice: "wipe!" Couldn't have said it better myself, though this makes me hesitate about lending out my cell and using other people's mobiles when my battery goes dead. – Louis Ramirez

"

Finally re did my Myspace and made it much more pleasing to the eye. Click the link below to see it,

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=us...