Nintendo GameCube – 28th December 2003, birthday present to Kix
I feel a loyalty towards Nintendo since it was part my childhood diet and the gameCube seems to be in trouble so I decided I would rescue Nintendo by getting a gameCube for Kix’s birthday. I know she’ll like Zelda and I don’t feel like a proper gamer unless I can criticise Mario Kart Double [...]
Freeview – December 2003, Christmas present from Mum
It was easy to setup and gave vastly improved reception. We don’t watch many of the extra channels except the music ones (TMF and the Hits) and ITV2. We sometimes have a laugh at the shopping channels.
Jet Set Radio Future
XBox,Adventure,7/10 – November 2003 This is an excellent game but I nearly didn’t complete it because it’s often really unclear what the-next-thing-to-do is. It’s not so much the doing, it’s more the figuring out how to do it in the first place (which really cheeses me off). You need to learn levels to get around [...]
Code Browser (2003)
I wrote a “codebrowser” maintenance tool to make things a bit easier at work: A HTML syntax highlighter for C, SabreTalk and S390 assembler programs. A script that uses Graphviz to draw transaction path diagrams to show the program flow through a piece of code. A search tool to find components and files across various [...]
The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers
XBox,Hack&Slash,5/10 – September 2003 This game takes scenes from the 1st two LOTR’s films and turns them into interactive battles. Each scene blends with DVD film footage smoothly and impressively. I think they did a great job of doing what they intended i.e. creating a film/video game couple however I didn’t like it at all. [...]
Use Of Weapons (Ian M Banks)
Sci-Fi, 4/10 – September 2003 A culture novel with a few good bits but otherwise a weird story cut into incoherent ribbons that kept skipping here and there just as the boring part of the latest skip was coming to an end. The main character is a depressing guy called Cheradenine Zakalwe, with many dark [...]
Hantario. (Died 31st August 2003)
We had a hamster called Hantario. He got this name from a mix up by Chloe’s brother of Hamtaro, a cartoon hamster. He’s now gone to the big cage in the sky but his memory lives on. RIP Hanty.
The House Of The Dead III
XBox,,5/10 – July 2003 You have to get a piece of the arcade game action now that it’s possible on a console, I mean it’s a way of saving money isn’t it? This was the first game on the XBox to come packaged with a light-gun (a MadCatz Blaster) which is the only way to [...]
Why I don’t have a mobile phone
I don’t have a mobile phone yet and I often get asked why? I like being totally cut off from the world knowing that I can’t talk to anyone or anyone talk to me. I could get one and leave it off but then I may as well save money and not get one. Mobile [...]
Necklace Mods (July 2003)
Rodrigo gave me the idea to make Chloe two necklaces out of a LED and a Capacitor:
The Player of Games (Ian M Banks)
Sci-Fi, 9/10 – July 2003 This book is the second in the series of Banks’ Culture novels, set in a futuristic human/machine symbiotic society. Player of Games submerges itself in the society of the Game Players, those whose soul occupation is to play games to the best of their abilities, formulating new strategies, quite akin [...]
Phantom Food
With a bit of imagination there’s loads of food one can enjoy on a diet. Welcome to the unreal meal: Breakfast: A Ethereal-egg on ghost-toast A Nothing-muffin or a None-bun (served with begone-butter). Lunch: A Fake-steak with zip-chips A Ghost-roast (either scam-lamb, sham-ham or missin-chicken) Black-Hole Spag-Bol Pudding: Air-eclair zero-belly jelly Fake-cake Tea-Time: Temporary-tea or [...]
Enter the Matrix
XBox,TPS,9/10 – June 2003 This game taught me the lesson that one shouldn’t take magazine reviews as gospel. My most respected mags, namely Edge and Games rated this game 3/10 and 4/10 respectively but I loved it. The great thing about is that the story line fits perfectly between “The final flight of the osiris” [...]
Baldur’s Gate : Dark Alliance
XBox,RPG,5/10 – June 2003 I got this because it was the first 2-player co-operative RPG for the XBOX that I’d seen. It’s not a deep game, it’s a simple hack and slash with very little inventory management or character progression and a shallow dis-joined storyline. The graphics are state-of-the-art with vegetation blowing in the wind, [...]
Advance Wars
GBA,Turn-based strategy,9/10 – June 2003 Nintendo does chess. This is a game of tactics and like chess things aren’t left to chance, you can get to know the exact outcome of a clash between 2 units. Unfortunately it seems to be geared towards kids but you wont be able to win by force-in-numbers rather than [...]
