I came across something very interesting the other day – a games on demand service. With faster and faster broadband speeds this kind of thing has been promised by a number of companies and now it seems to finally have been put in to practice.

It's based around the idea that with really quick broadband, there is no need to run applications on your home computer anymore. They can be run remotely by the company that makes the application and the data streamed to your computer – sort of like how Hotmail and Gmail work but on a much bigger scale.

So no more having to upgrade your computer with faster and faster processors and better graphics cards. The computer that is hosting the app will take care of all of that – they will just stream all the visuals to you and do all the hard work on their end.

So here is the first company that is going to give it a go.

http://www.onlive.com/



There are lots of doubts surrounding this service – manly around the issue of lag. No one can quite believe that this service will run as smoothly as Onlive have promised. A veteran of online gaming myself, I know that it can really ruin your gaming experience. Also I have a download cap on my broadband, I have a feeling that a service like this would eat up my allowance at a very fast rate of knots.

Anyway I definitely think this kind of thing is the future - I will be the first one to sign up when it's out in the UK - I just think the technology behind our broadband just needs to catch up first.

Ok I have been noticing recently that for some crazy reason lots of computer game inspired shoes have been making appearances all over the web.

I decided I would put a few of them altogether in one place. They are a varied bunch, I was after the Mega Man Pumas but they don’t do them in my size. ARGH

Skate 2 Etnies



Mega Man Pumas



NES Nikes

Been a while...went to New York, like it there...very big. Trying to better myself too, learning and such. PC was on the fritz too...then I remembered I'm supposed to be writing for this here blog thingy, didn't just remember though, I stumbled on this trailer over at Twitch.

Many moons ago there was an excellent (if flawed, it was too short) manga called Blood: The Last Vampire. Was actually done as an experiment in the melding of hand drawn and CGI animation. It was atmospheric genius.



Then there was a series, it sucked, there is a manga series formula which goes young girl with split personality who is a sweet harmless, normal girl most of the time and then becomes a kick-ass bitch when there's danger. She doesn't know this happens and her bumbling human friends have to deal with this whole dichotomy. Pretty much every other manga follows this recently, shame.



And now comes a live action film, building on the original material apparently though I'm not sure. The heroine of this tale is a half vampire fighting to kill all full vampires, yup I've heard this one before too. Personally I got the impression from the original that the heroine was a vampire and the monsters she was killing were some other sort of vampire called chiropterans, in her eyes inferior and deserving to die. In fact, it actually says pretty much that in the trailer above. Basically she's not a hero, she's doing it for her own reasons, I can't stand bloody heroes, it's why I liked it.

So get passed some dodgy wire work, the terrible trailer voice guy and this could be a good bit of vampire kung-fu action.



Sweet.

I’m working on a Twitterfeed but everyone seems to have already found it.

http://twitter.com/geekytom

Argh

It will get better..I hope. JUST GIVE ME SOME MORE TIME.

I'm a big fan of Monkey Island. I grew up with the series. They still captivate a big following that love and reminisce about past piratey outings.

So when I discover some shoes that have been designed and created by another loving fan I decided to ask the question.

Are these the best trainers ever created?




They have been crafted by this person here.

Please visit their blog and tell them how great they are!

I had a discussion with my friend about this video. He thinks that it’s a fan made piece, probably by a university graduate. From reading a few blogs and looking at the video's website, I thought it could be the start of some viral marketing campaign. However I’m starting to lean towards the fan made video now. The guys in the jumpsuits look like skinny teenagers rather then experienced actors. They are also wearing trainers which for some reason I really noticed.

Anyway more to the point, it is obviously based on the game Half Life 2 with the gigantic citadel looming the back ground. Having completing the Half Life 2 I know that this video is based right at the end of the game when you (Gordon Freeman) are about to destroy the portal at the top of the tower.

So I guess it’s a trailer for a Half Life fan made film.



The more astute of you will notice they have nicked some music from Lost. Made me realise just how good the Lost soundtrack is.

They also have a website to go along with the video.

www.whatsinthebox.nl/

So I guess the question is what is in the box?

A present maybe?
A fish?
A cake?
A ham?
A rabbit?

Who cares?

So, I was kindly invited to the cast and crew screening of The Boat That Rocked, Richard 'Four Weddings/ Notting Hill/ Love Actually' Curtis' latest film yesterday. I'd already seen a bit of footage at some work-related thing a while back, so I knew I liked the cast and the subject matter. Have a look at the trailer here.

The cast is great - Nick Frost, Bill Nighy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Darby, Chris O'Dowd, Rhys Ifans, Emma Thompson, Katherine Parkinson, Kenneth Branagh, January Jones are amongt the sprawling ensemble. The subject matter is pirate radio in the 60s - back when if you wanted to listen to pop music or rock n roll (and 25 million, more than half of Britain's population, did), you certainly couldn't tune in to Radio 1 or XFM. Instead you sought out pirate radio stations, broadcast from ships out in the North Sea - like the one in Curtis' movie - Radio Rock.

Music is clearly the main character in this indulgent, rather too long love letter to the era in which Curtis grew up and the soundtrack is cool. Lots of stuff I knew, plenty I didn't. Probably older and wiser types might disagree and berate some of the 'obvious' choices but frankly, I think you need some well known tracks to appeal to the younger audience members who won't know loads of obscure stuff.

Anyway - my bugbear is that the movie is simply stuffed too full of characters with not enough to do, inconsequential scenes with little or no dramatic payoff, and not enough in the way of humour. I enjoyed parts of it - mainly when Nick Frost or Rhys Darby or Bill Nighy were saying basically anything, but overall left feeling that I expected more. And I'm a sucker for feel-good movies so I'd say I'm fairly easily pleased. Oh well. The scenes with Kenneth Branagh and Jack Davenport playing officious government types were so ludicrously hammy that I actually cringed. Having Davenport's character named 'Twat' simply so anything said to him could be ended with "twat" was tragic - a pale, pale echo of the genuine humour behind Captain Darling's moniker in Blackadder

I did enjoy the ending which had the trademark rousing, triumphant tone that Curtis' films tend to feature. But so much of what went before was so 'meh' that if I were scoring, this would be a 2.5/ 5.

HAHA, I know you all secretly love the jumper. You only mock because you love!

Here is a picture and a link for its purchase:



The more observant of you will realise that it's BRIGHT RED!

I blame The Lost Initiative cameras for doing a poor job of representing my jumper. Nobody likes orange, however everyone likes red...FACT!

I get bored easily, it’s a personality flaw I realise this. But sometimes I just get bored of the same old films, the same old directors, the same old plots and the same old sequels. I need a change, I need something strange, something weird and normally it comes from Japan. Well, Japan or from the mind of Michel Gondry. Luckily enough he has a new film coming out but he has teamed up with another French guy that I’m sure that I should know and the fellow that made The Host – that scary monster horror flick. So I have managed to combine two of my favourite things – Tokyo and Michel Gondry - which I’m pretty chuffed about. Well, I say "I have" but it’s really the person that came up with the idea for this film. Which is split up in to three separate stories all based in and around Tokyo. I can’t wait to watch it as it promises to be incredibly strange and perfectly surreal – I’m rather excited.




Also on the Japanese tip, I have found a pair of rather expensive jeans made by Howies (Kaizen Jeans). Apparently you don’t have to wash them…



I’m not sure who that works but apparently the less you wash them the better they become, thus combining two more of my favourite things – not washing and things getting better over time. Here is a good fact for you, if you put them in the freezer it will stop them smelling, but you probably want to keep them away from the food. Also, I wonder what happens if you get them covered in shit? I bet you have to wash them then!

I found this really interesting, this guys explains the 10th Dimension in a way that I can very nearly understand. However the best bit is the way that he describes the way we perceive time. If we were to see it probably then it would look like a giant snake protruding out of your chest...sound familiar, Donnie Darko anyone?



So according to this guy, time travel and dimensional travel are all possible...you just have to fold some stuff. Be warned though the last time someone tried folding space time, Event Horizon happened and they opened a portal to Hell. You live and learn.

I reckon this could be a possible future of gaming. Browser based games that are on a par with console and PC games. Very little installation required. All the game’s important files are held on the server of the company that makes the game so nothing will ever go wrong with it. Also they can make constant updates to the game without having all their users download a new patch or an addon. It’s pretty clever and ID are the first people to have done it.

Does anyone remember Quake? I do...I played it a bit but never really got in to it – apparently it was a pretty big deal back in the day. Anyway Quake is an old shooty shooty game from 1996 and it seems that computers have come such a long way that you can run it perfectly in your internet browser.



This is going to be the bane of businesses world wide – we are talking Facebook proportions here, mark my words. It’s so simple to setup and takes only secs to log in to a match with other "real life" people and shoot the hell out of them... what’s that? The boss is coming over? Alt-tab and you’re just checking your emails...the perfect crime.

What is REALLY interesting is the way they might be making this earn them a bit of money on the side. There is a possibility of them selling ad space on the walls of the arenas that you play in. So you could blow your friends to bits while watching Howard sing a song about the Halifax on the billboard above you – ok maybe that was a bad example, Howard is probably down at the job centre now crying his eyes out…bloody credit crunch.

Anyway they have to make money out of this or their server cost will skyrocket and they will just be pissing cash up the wall. So watch this space and lets hope for some other old games being turned in to browser games - Xwing Vs Tie Fighter anyone?

PS. It doesn't work on Macs LOL

Yes I mucked the number system up. So I have named this weeks episodes "twelfty"

Yes I'm an idiot.

Yup it's a Tron Hoody. You can buy it here.