F1 2010 – Xbox 360 – 24th September
Codemasters first attempt at an F1 game ended badly last year with a poor product arriving on wii in November. This year they debut on the HD consoles and the game is looking siiiiccckk. All of this years drivers and tracks, the best console F1 graphics ever and what is reported to be very good handling. This is the game I am most looking forward to over the next six months.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn – Wii – Q3 2010
Everybody loves Kirby right? The little pink blob is coming back to wii this Autumn and the art style is looking awesome. I probably won’t buy it immediately but Kirby games have always been fun.

Super Scribblenauts – DS – Q3 2010
So the original scribblenauts disappointed me. It was an amazing concept done badly. This year though the developers have taken note of the complaints and fixed the control issues. They have also added a lot more words and also adjectives. For example this year you can put in something odd like a ‘pregnant car’ and be given a pregnant car that will eventually give birth to a baby car… Will let these guys fool me twice but if this years game sucks then I will forget about this series.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future – DS – 2010
Professor Layton represents a brilliant story with amazing artwork and tricky puzzles to melt your brain. The first two games have been superb and another will not go amiss.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 – Wii – Q4 2010
Sonic the Hedgehog got me into gaming. We had sonic on the master system back in the day and I loved it. Unfortunately his 3d adventures have sucked with stupid gimmicks ruining the gameplay. Sega have gone back to basics with Sonic 4 a return to the game we all remember. Really looking forward to it.

So those are the games I am most excited about in the next six months. There is also a new Assassins Creed game coming which looks pretty darn good and also a Call of Duty game… which will be worth a rental. What are your most anticipated games?

We turned up at the track and were led up to the second track (which we had never seen or raced before):

I led the field out followed by Craig and we just felt our way around the track. Our first impressions were good, the track is wider than that downstairs but the ramps are steeper and so the weight disadvantage I experienced was worse. It also had some bumps in the circuit one of which at the most tricky braking point. On heading back down the ramp for the first time at near to full speed we came across Rachel Ross and Cathy coming the wrong way round the track. Rachel hadn’t followed Beth and had somehow turned the wrong way out of the pitlane meaning Craig and I came barreling down the hill towards them. It was dangerous and a bit silly.

Once everything got going Craig dropped off my back as I got stuck behind Cathy struggling to pass her after catching up after my uphill disadvantage she was good though and kept to the racing line. Eventually I had to resort to a little helpful nudging. Craig meanwhile having dropped back and found open space managed to set the fastest lap of the first session. Towards the end of the session I was confident but getting held up and was caught and passed by my sister at the end, she had also been going quite well.

It seemed from the first session that it was a great circuit for keeping people close. I found that there were only really two corners at which braking was necessary and thus the speed meant that there was less opportunity to really fall back. The headline fastest laps at the end of the first session were as follows:

1. Craig King
2. Jonathan Little
3. Helen Little
4. Beth Little
5. Catherine Leopold
6. Thomas McCorkell
7. Rachel Ross

At the end of the first session I got some stick for giving nudges to ease my passage past various people, personally I think my sister was worse but hey.

As I followed people out of pits in the second part I immediately came across my sister giving Cathy a wee shove out the way which I hope proved my point. Anyway the second session once everyone had gotten used to the track showed everyones true pace. It seemed that we were lapping Rachel Ross once every two or three laps and although he was gaining confidence Thomas turned up quite a lot as well but as was pointed out after he has barely driven anything before.

Towards the end there was a big old battle between Craig, my sister and I on the track and we all stuck together for about 5 laps. I could tell places where I was faster than them but I could not find a way past. Really seeing as the session was about fastest time I guess I should have dropped off the back of them but hey it was a fun battle trying to get past the other two drivers who were on my pace. Then about a minute from the end of the session I managed to get past Craig following a small mistake, I then made a big mistake though and found myself in the barrier. This followed a previous attempt when while we followed my wife she spun at a tight turn, Craig took one side and I took the other, he got through safe but my avoidance action on my wife put me very hard in the wall. I hope she appreciates how hard I worked to miss her. Also at the end of this session I got my own back on Craig for christmas by banging into him at the end… not quite as good but I’ll take it.

The second session contained a second red flag (the first of course being the pair of drivers going the wrong way round the track). This one was caused by Beth spinning and somehow stalling her kart. The stoppage was called as the driver had to go and restart it. Nothing serious.

Session 2 times (also overall fastest laps)
1. Craig King (faster in S1)
2. Jonathan Little (faster in S2)
3. Helen Little
4. Catherine Leopold (faster in S2 and overtook Beth)
5. Beth Little
6. Thomas McCorkell
7. Rachel Ross

After one round the championship standings are as follows (an explanation of the scoring scheme is below):
1. Craig King – 14 points
2. Jonathan Little – 10 points
3. Helen Little – 6 points
4. Catherine Leopold – 5 points
5. Beth Little – 4 points
6. Thomas McCorkell – 3 points
7. Rachel Ross – 2 points

The top 8 score points:
1st: 10 – 2nd: 8 – 3rd: 6 – 4th: 5 – 5th: 4 – 6th: 3 – 7th: 2 – 8th: 1

In a practice scenario (like this):
2 points for fastest in each session
1 point for second fastest
1 point for beating a previous personal best (set on a different day)

In a race:
2 points for fastest lap
1 point for second fastest

2 points for pole
1 point for second

With three events to go then, Craig holds a good lead. Unfortunately we are not certain he will make the next event but fingers crossed eh?

Also if anyone who went has stories of the sessions then feel free to comment.

We are currently voting on when our next event will take place on our facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=343599396053&

It was such a good deal as well, at least at trial stage. four pounds for a four week subscription. It then goes up to £5 a week for which you get the weekday papers plus the Saturday edition.

The papers themselves have proved great, I now am a lot more interested in the news and in politics than I was when I wasn’t keeping up with it all regularly and found I found more interesting stories that I would never have come across normally. It also gave me sudokus to do on tea breaks and news to read at bed time. Generally the paper was well written as well, certainly it could have been spell checked better at times but most articles even on subjects I had no prior interest or knowledge in were enjoyable to read. It also helps that the independent writers largely share my views on important subjects but it also helped shape my opinions on several subjects.

So am I going to keep up my subscription?
The answer has to be no, firstly it is not good value. While I am happy to pick up the paper on weekdays and take it to work with me, I found it a stretch to pick up the Saturday edition. The paper was not interesting enough and was filled with extras which were largely dull… the 50 best kitchen appliances springs to mind. Therefore if you exclude the Saturday edition then you are looking at paying £5 a week for papers whos value is… £5 a week.

Where is the incentive to therefore subscribe? It limits me in that I would be forced to pick up the paper every day where without the subscription I can happily walk into Londis on three days of the week and pick it up and make a saving. It also means if I want an extended break or a holiday then I am still paying for that privilege. Sure they give you a two week holiday but I still feel constrained.

In addition to the prior mentioned errors (which are a very minor issue) I also found their Monday edition a little on the light side, the sports coverage is no match for the Times’ on Mondays and this was disappointing.

So my overall thoughts? There is still life in the newspaper, at least for me. It is the same argument as the one I have against ebooks, I just like having paper in my hands. Sometimes I don’t want to be staring at a screen. It will be a sad day when this likely outdated medium comes to rest.

The Independent is currently a very well put together and well written newspaper to which I would happily subscribe for a weekday only subscription at about £3.50 a week. This would bring papers down to the level I have mentioned before on this blog that I would buy them more often. Until that day I will happily pick up the independent several times a week but will not be constrained by the limiting factor of a subscription. For me newspapers (at least the non-tabloid ones anyway) still have a place and I hope they stick around for some time yet.

These conferences tend to have themes, back in my university days I went to a video forum with Paddy two years in a row. The first year was on online and DVD and the year after was dominated by HD kit. Internet World is no different. Last year’s show seemed dominated by Mobile marketing, the iphone was beginning its major ascendency and it dominated the booths. This year the theme was social media. As this is a part of my companies current IT plan it especially interested me. The problem this year was that the seminars were attended seemingly by a lot more people than last year. This year there were queues the whole way round some of the theatres and I had to give up on some of the seminars I intended to go to. This lead to a nice time sat outside in the sun that was not overly productive. That said I still managed to get into 5 seminars and learned a good amount in all of them.

This year though there were some other features that caught my eye. First of all I found a couple of versions of the Microsoft Surface technology. It was not the best technology but the company demoing it said they’d had to turn down the sensitivity for the show (lighting issues). Apparently they have rolled out a couple in airports. Because of the lack of sensitivity I was not overly impressed but I can see potential. That said I don’t really want to look down and interact with a table.

Next I played with a touchscreen technology that everyone has heard of but few in this country have played with… I refer of course to the Apple Ipad. After a couple of minutes playing with one I thought that having touched one I could see the potential in tablets but I don’t think Apple are on to the best idea. I like the idea of it not running a full desktop style operating system but I think the Iphone interface is a little stretched. I await tablets using Android as this can more easily be tweaked. The other downers for the ipad are that it is really heavy. For something you are meant to use on the sofa it is surprisingly uncomfortable after a couple of minutes. The other downer is that the brightness and contrast do not encourage its ebook reader functionality. I am now willing to give a tablet the benefit of the doubt but do not think it will be the ipad that wins people over even if it is the thing that grabs all the headlines.

Finally I got around to trying an F1 simulator for the first time. Previously I have wimped out when I have seen these fake F1 chassis sporting RFactor and ‘realistic’ handling. I took my shoes off and got into the car, my word is an F1 car not properly configured to its driver uncomfortable. It is a seating position you will not find anywhere else and in the simulator the seat was digging into my back… which I am sure would not be the case in reality. Anyway onto the driving. The track was Silverstone so I knew where I was going (that said the guy felt the need to tell me every turn). I managed to spin on lap 1 by touching the kerb a little hard at one point but from then on I was fine. I managed to set the second fastest lap at that point of a 1:33.200 but by the end of the day I was 6th out of however many people had a go over the day (I would imagine at least 25) so am relatively pleased.

So overall a good day, I learnt a good deal about how we should deal with our social media strategy at work and I got to play with some good toys as well. I look forward to going back next year.

6. Apple Safari – I tested Apple’s browser at work yesterday and found it very slow, sure browsing speed was fast but the software itself kept stalling and smacked of software built mainly for another operating system.

5. Flock – Flock is the best of the smaller browsers. It allows you to keep an eye on your social networks with a style largely based on Firefox even borrowing the rendering engine

4. Internet Explorer 8 – Its become rather cool to mock Internet Explorer, IE8 goes a long way to fixing the problems but its still not as good as several other browsers but with IE9 coming in a few months time Microsoft will be hoping that they can get back onto peoples computers.

3. Opera – Opera were the company making the biggest noise about the need for microsoft to stop packaging IE in Windows which immediately made me hate them. That said though they have built a decent and speedy browser with some very neat addons to improve the experience including a turbo button that puts sites through their server, compresses the images and then shows it to you a lot quicker than usual. They have also added a system to allow you to share files and host websites via your browser.

2. Google Chrome – I’ve liked google chrome for a long time for its speed and minimalist style. This is the fastest browser in my opinion and it never nags you about updates which is a bonus.

1. Mozilla Firefox – Firefox has gone downhill a little in the last year or two, the browser has gotten slow and clunky but the range of extensions and its brilliance as a browser for web design makes it a must have for me.

What do you think? Which browser do you use?