Like a Rainbow

I’ve let Grand Theft Auto take over my life, and it is good to see it all coming together, but more on that in a bit.

Firstly, I’ve gone and got a song STUCK in my head, with no hope of getting it out! The latest Sony Bravia ad, with all the plasticine rabbits, has the Rolling Stones song “She’s like a Rainbow” playing as they make their way across New York. It’s been on TV for a while, but since I managed to download the song off You Tube I’ve not been able to get it out of my head. It happens like that every now and again, doesn’t help that it’s a brilliant song. It’s made me want to check out the album that it came from (Their Satanic Majesties Request) as the only Stones stuff I listen to is mid-70’s songs.

It’s also been the soundtrack to a rather fine weekend, weather wise. The first real taste of summer came on Saturday, and what was I doing? Working. What I noticed as I made my way through Nottingham was the amount of people who’d decided this one fine day meant it was time to get the summer clothes out. There were plenty of people walking around the square wearing shorts and t-shirts, or in the ladies case anything skimpy! I can understand why people are like this here in the UK, we aren’t renowned for our long hot summers, so I suppose you have to take your chances while you can.

Saturday night and I was having dinner in town to celebrate Iain’s birthday. He wanted to try out Nando’s. He’d not been there and was quite keen on trying their Extra Hot chicken. Luckily, common sense prevailed and he instead went for the Hot option, after a wise piece of advice from Carter over the long term affects it’d have on his mouth.

Nando’s is nice food, but they seemed to have staff problems at this particular one. I ordered the Chicken Fillet Burger with chips and spicy rice. When it came over to me, the waitress managed to spill a few chips from the plate onto my lap and then onto the floor. After an apology, a manager decided to give me a free portion of chips to make up for the four I’d lost. Result! 

Now, GTA. Over the weekend various videos have appeared on the Internet from people who’ve got the game already. They look incredible, and over the past few days have grown in number. I could provide loads of links to various people who’ve uploaded videos, or indeed some guy who is showing a live link of him playing GTA on his 360, but instead I’ll be the good citizen and not encourage it! From watching the videos, it made me change my mind from not just wanting the game to wanting the game RIGHT NOW! 

Vijay had told me of his intention to go to Tesco’s late tonight to pick up the game, and I was thinking of asking him to get me a copy, but then remembered that he was off Tuesday and I was off Wednesday, so no chance of me getting the game until Thursday. I then hit upon the idea of getting up early today and going into Nottingham to try my luck at all the various game stores. There are quite a few in Nottingham when you think of all the places that sell video games, but I’d been sure to check out the indie stores as the chances of them having stock were more likely than Game or Gamestation, who I’m certain are both already sold out.

I went to Forbidden Planet on Friar Lane, just across the road from where my bus stops. It’s primarily a comic book store/one stop shop for everything cult (Doctor Who, Star Wars etc.). They also sell video games, and have a fairly good and reasonably priced section. I wandered in there and asked the guy if I was too late to pre-order the game, he gave me a puzzled look and explained that they had in fact got loads of stock. Whenever people buy games they rarely think of Forbidden Planet, he said. He pointed to copies of Mario Kart and Wii Fit behind him as a case in point.

So, pre-ordering was a piece of piss, nothing like the long drawn out process that I was expecting. But what good is a HD game if you don’t have anything HD to play it on? Well that was the problem I faced earlier this week. I bought a cable for my PS3 that enabled a component signal to be turned into a VGA signal and through to my VGA only Hyundai monitor. It was the only possible way of getting HD on my monitor, as there is no HDMI port.

After a great big failure, I considered the options. I couldn’t do GTA justice and play it in shitty SD! Which is why I’m now currently using a new Samsung 20″ Monitor/TV with HD. After convincing Argos to let me have a store card, enabling me to pay off the monitor on a Buy Now Pay November deal, I’m fully ready for the next generation of gaming!

It’s amazing what lengths I’ll go to for things, isn’t it…

 

It Begins…

I was at work on Thursday, discussing the merits of having a Playstation 3 with my mate Leon. He said himself that if it was him in my situation and he wanted to get something, and had to money to do so, he’d go out and buy it. He spoke from experience, having got a Smart car the previous week. And indeed the other fella I work with, Vijay, had got himself an iPhone after i revealed to him on the Wednesday that they had gone down in price by £100. So being in the presence of these two wasn’t really going to convince me to hold on and wait before buying a PS3.

Anyway, Leon put it into my head that I should get up early on Friday and go out and buy the PS3. Me being me, I thought that was a great idea. I went home, packed up the Xbox 360 - aka The Game Scratcher! - and filled a bag full of all the games and accessories, as well as a few PSP games that I’d got bored of, and set the alarm for 8am.

Getting into Gamestation in Nottingham for half nine, and probably being their first customer, I unloaded all Xbox branded crap on them for a trade-in. I had wanted them to tell me what it was worth as cash (always lower than a trade-in price) but the guy told me cash was out of the question as the tills were empty! Nevermind, as after the girl serving me had turned on my 360 to test it, and rung through every item I had with me, I was told that the grand total of it all was worth £198! I’d only been expecting around £150, so I was quite a bit chuffed.

I chose the PS3 + Gran Turismo 5 bundle. There were others, but they all wanted to foist a shitty Blu-Ray movie on you. If - or when - I get a Blu-Ray disc, I want it to be something I do actually want to watch and not some crappy film like Beowulf or Hitman. Besides, with the money saved from my 360 trade in, I have enough to cash to get some games and movies should I want to.

The PS3 is a big black beast of a machine. The 360 was heavy, but the PS3 is wide, heavy and shiny. It also doesn’t scratch games, which gives it a +1 in my book. Playing it on my old style telly, the graphics are noticeably worse than through a HD screen, but it is wholly expected, and I doubt it’ll bother me at all once GTA 4 comes out.

The PS3 is also quiet and unassuming. The 360 was noisy, like it wanted to make sure you knew it was there at all times! To compliment the PS3, I bought a 250GB harddrive from Dabs. Being able to up the hard disk to crazy levels is a genius move, one which should mean I’ll have room for anything and everything. What Sony don’t tell you though, is that it is damn near impossible to remove the Hard Drive from the ‘caddy’ once you locate it. After half a day of unsuccesfully trying to unscrew the tiniest of screws, i just thought fuck it. I don’t need a flamin’ caddy anyway. I stuck it in without it and, after a firmware update, it works fine!

I’m having to get used to games installing whenever you put a new one in, but it isn’t like I didn’t know the PS3 would be doing these things, and it is nice to know I have a machine that won’t ruin my games.

The next big event in this young consoles life will be a game that will probably reside in the machine for months. GTA!

Xbox 360 - Game Scratcher

I had my 360 on yesterday as I was on the internet, planning to catch up a little on Burnout Paradise after not playing it for a few days.

The game loads, goes to the title screen then my Xbox makes a funny little noise and tells me the disc is unreadable. Knowing that the game hasn’t been taken out the machine for fucking ages, I knew it couldn’t be scratches from dropping the disc or owt. Opening the disc tray and pulling out the game, I see this…

My £40 game, ruined! The 360 has decided to fuck this game up, deeply scratching the disc to make it unplayable. And it isn’t just this game it’s done it to, Assassins Creed has also gone the same way, but with considerably less scratches then what has happened to the Burnout disc.

To say I’m annoyed is an understatement. Any doubts I had of selling the Xbox to fund a PS3 are now gone. I’ll be selling this machine on, trading it in somewhere and getting shot of this disc-scratching console. I dread to think how much more annoyed I’d have been if it’d been GTA that it scratched!!

Grand Time Ahead

Grand Theft Auto 4 is very nearly here!

The more I read of the game, the more I can’t wait to play it. After getting excited at the single-player game, I’ve been reading about multiplayer. Essentially the same, but with the added prospect of a city full (well, nearly) of random online people ready to kill!

There are about ten online modes that Rockstar have already told us about, but they are still keeping various parts of the game under wraps. Fair do’s, I can only guess we’ll have a fuller idea of the game when the reviews start coming in a week or so before the game comes out.

I remember the build up to San Andreas. The magazines, much like they are doing this time around, would have features on the game monthly, showing off new pictures and letting you know what you could get up to in the game. I spent the whole of that summer and autumn waiting for that game, and I’ve spent a great deal of time doing the same for the sequel!

I pre-ordered San Andreas from play.com, it came on the day and I spent most of the time playing it. I haven’t even bothered pre-ordering GTA 4, partly because play won’t accept my payment method (bank details don’t match up, apparently) and partly because I’m still not 100% on what console I’m buying the game on.

I’m getting a PS3 within the next few months, and I’m 80% certain of buying the game with the console - especially considering the news that the game and the console will be bundled together - but upon seeing various details of the game, I keep thinking that I maybe should just go out and get the 360 version of it! It’s a bit silly, but this game has reached new levels of hype and I’ve fallen for it.

As it is, various places are already selling out of the game. I recall going into Game in Loughborough about two or three days after San Andreas had been released to see a massive line of people, all holding the game in their hands! I’m looking to get the game in mid-May, after I’ve come back from Norfolk, when I hope the supplies of GTA IV are normal.

Away from the best game ever (!), I did a 10 hour shift at work yesterday. My manger, Diane, persuaded me to do it. I’d only been down as doing an hour yesterday, but she got me to come in at midday. It wasn’t hard work, it never is at Royal Mail, it was just a long time to be in that mail centre! She also wanted me to come in today, but sod that - until I get Saturdays off, Wednesdays will remain a work-free zone! I’m already coming in at 2pm tommorow and Friday, taking the grand total of hours this week to 38! If I can carry this on for a few weeks (or better yet, reach the 40 mark!), then paying for the holiday and the PS3 will be easy.

A twisted logic

Losing weight is hard - damn hard - but even harder than that is keeping it off.

I’ve hit a brick wall as far as weight loss is concerned.  My weight seems to be alternating between 15 stone 8 and 16 stone 3. After over a year of dieting, my body seems to have found its natural level. But at the same time, i’ve noticed a few little bad habits starting to creep back into my daily routine.

The fact that I know they’re bad habits and that I shouldn’t be doing them is good, as at least my way of thinking hasn’t become totally warped. “I had this cream cake earlier so I may as well carry on eating badly all day!” - that kind of twisted logic was in danger of coming out again, after I’d done so well over this past year to normalize my diet. Ever since the chocolate overload at Easter I’ve been on a patchy diet.

With me, there is no middle ground for dieting. I’m either on one or I’m not. It sounds silly and odd to any normal person, but It’s how its been ever since I realised I had a weight problem. If something ‘breaks’ the diet then I’ll be fretting, worrying about how it’s gonna affect me, and in turn I become too obsessed with how I eat. It was probably no surprise looking back that I managed to lose a significant amount of weight then put it all back on (and more!). It’s just a case of watching what I stuff into my mouth for the rest of my life. Everyone has their vices and I guess for me it is food.

I’ve got absolutely no intention of putting on weight to the extremes that I did before. I care about my body and health too much to put it through any of that again. The worry of any weight gain is what leads me to obsess over any dietary detail, but I need to take it down a notch from obsession to just plain watching what I eat.

This is what they don’t tell you after you’ve lost weight. It’s hard - damn hard - and it’ll be that way for the rest of your life!

————————————-

Away from me (but not from food!), I read in the paper today that Melton Mowbray pork pies have been given ‘protection’, meaning that if a Melton pork pie is made outside of the local area then it can’t legally call itself a Melton Mowbray pork pie. In much the same way that Champagne and Parma Ham are localised foodstuffs, so now is this pork pie!

I’m led to believe that the local area wherein you can make the pies is a 30 mile radius around the town of Melton, which includes the southern half of Notts - meaning Notts factories Pork Farms and Northern Foods can continue to make their pies - it also means that I am well within my rights to cook, sell and market my own brand of Melton Mowbray pork pie!

Stilton cheese also has the same distinction, it originates out in the Vale of Belvior but is made in a factory out in Cropwell Bishop, just a mile or two down the road from me. Their rules on who can make it differ a bit from the pork pies. Apparently anyone from Notts, Leicestershire or Derbyshire can make the cheese, regardless of how far away from Cropwell Bishop they are.

————————————-

Back in the real world, I didn’t get the £200 on friday. Apparently it’s the 25th of April we get it. I wish I’d known in advance and not been waiting eagerly for a paycheck on Thursday that was to show the same old £150. I was expecting closer to £300! I have big plans for that money, and I hope to have even more coming in as I start an indefinite period of overtime. Depending on how much I get for the 13 hours I’ve been given, it could be the start of something regular.