Pound-a-Mile Update – 100 Miles!

Last night was cold and dark and cold. And dark. But mainly cold. So cold that the roads had started to freeze over while I was out on the bike, making junctions and corners much slower than normal and I generally just had to be more careful. However, despite all this, I took my “miles cycled to date this year” figure to just over 100 miles. That’s 103 miles in 17 days – and yes, I’ve managed a bike ride …

Pound-a-Mile First Week

So, I’ve had 8 days of the Pound-a-Mile challenge. My legs hurt. In a good way, though. I think. In those 8 days, I have already blown my required 17.5 miles-a-week average out of the water, cycling over 50 miles. OK, that’s 8 days not 7, but still. It was 40 on the 7th day anyway. And you know what? I’ve enjoyed it. Sure, I’ve not enjoyed the oh-god-its-2-degrees-outside, 25-mph-winds-WHATness of last week, but after a couple of miles on each …

The Pound A Mile Challenge

In previous years, I’ve attempted to curb my game spending and encourage myself to actually complete games I have by gradually reducing the amount of money I’m allowed to spend on them. These were known as the £25, £20 and £18 Rules. Last year, I kept to the £18 Rule – meaning I’ve currently missed out on Mario 3D Land, Skyrim and Batman Arkham City, as they’re not cheap enough (yet) for me to buy. That isn’t a problem though, …

The 2011 Gaming Expenditure Horror

At the start of 2010, I began recording the price of everything I bought that was gaming related. At the end of the year, I put together the stats. That was all well and good at the time, but without anything to compare it to, it meant nothing. Until now! I’ve not bothered with a dull list of each and every game I’ve bought in this post (they’re pretty much all on my Gaming Diary anyway), but I do have …

Mario Kart 7

Hey, did you know that the free GBA games for 3DS Ambassadors were up today? Well, they are. And Mario Kart: Super Circuit (wot is ACE) is one of them. Of course, the 3DS Mario Kart, Mario Kart 7 is out too. And probably better. But you could have both! Hurrah! Skidding on to the Nintendo 3DS comes Mario Kart 7. Pick your favourite Mushroom Kingdom character and aim for the chequered flag in the latest addition to the popular …

The new Xbox 360 Dashboard

Rant moan rant rant moan. That’s all I’ve seen written about the new 360 GUI. It’s rubbish. Everything is hidden. There’s too many adverts. Games aren’t the focus any more. It’s too confusing. Everything is seventeen menus deep and behind carousel images. Rant bloody rant moan moan. With good reason: Everything is hidden. There’s too many adverts. Games aren’t the focus any more. It’s too confusing. Everything is seventeen menus deep and behind carousel images. Of course, it looks nice. It really does – …

Behold – the NESurrection

Dug out the NES the other week to record some more stuff for Game Over, Yeah!! but it wasn’t working. The PSU was shot, so I bought a new one from consolegoods.co.uk. I was sceptical because the NES needs a 9V AC adapter at 1.3A, and this was a 9V DC at 400mA. I read up a bit about it and it turns out that much of the current is needed to actually convert to DC internally, and in fact, theres …

Let’s Play! Daley Thompson’s Decathlon

Remember Daley Thompson? He was that guy in the 80s who was always in the Olympics. Who was reasonably good. And had AWESOME facial hair. Like a brush, it was. Well, in gaming circles, he was known for his ability to break joysticks. Many a Quickshot 2 was destroyed in the playing of his waggle-tastic sports games. And this, was the original – Daley Thompson’s Decathlon. It’s possibly worth noting that Ocean were a bit colour blind when they made …

Let’s Play! Hunchy

In the 80s, whenever a new, popular, game came out twenty million other white rappe…uh games that were the same appeared. Also, back in the 80s, it was quite common for us kids to think the real game was actually a clone of the clone we’d known first. For example, I had a game called Road Toad, which Frogger blatantly copied. It didn’t, of course – Road Toad was the “fake”, but that didn’t matter. See also Orbiter/Defender, Maze Chase/Painter, …

Getcha spool macs here!

I have no idea what a spool mac is. Well, I do now, by the miracle of Google. They’re a big cable reel thing. A spool, if you will. However, like Bar Gratings, I’m clearly the place to get some spool macs from. Or so the email I got this morning suggests: From: glen johnson Date: 11 November 2011 07:12 Subject: order Hello, Am Mr Glen Johnson and i will like to order spool macs from your company,can i have …