After getting the kicking of a lifetime over their controversial plan to force gamers to use their real names when posting on its official forums, Blizzard vice president and executive managing director for international operations Michael Ryder told Eurogamer before StarCraft II’s midnight launch in London that the “process” had “worked”.

So, it turns out that getting their arse kicked by the community for coming up with such a stupid idea was all part of the plan.

To celebrate this revelation, I have prepared a couple of images that show other people’s plans coming together.

After my launch Xbox 360 died on me the night before last, I ordered a new Xbox 360 S. It arrived a couple of hours ago (though sadly the data transfer cable was sent separately and won’t be here until tomorrow – thanks, Amazon!), so I quickly opened the box and took out all of the essentials.

First off, the console is gorgeous. It’s noticeably smaller than the original and very shiny. The power and drive tray buttons are both touch-sensitive so you only need to tap them for them to work and there are 5 USB ports instead of the old one’s 3 – which means my USB hub is now unemployed.

Somewhat annoyingly, the connection to the power brick has also been changed so I had to go behind the TV and untangle a load of wires to get the old brick out so that I could put the new one in.

Anyway, once all that was done I looked again at the console. The hump that housed the HDD on the old model has disappeared and in its place is a little slot with a little cover clipped on it. I took this cover off and found a little HDD case about a half inch tall and about 3-4 inches wide. I pulled out the HDD to take a look at it and saw a couple of standard Serial-ATA connectors on the other side. Was Microsoft finally letting people upgrade their machines with unofficial drives that were bigger and cheaper than the official offerings?

A discussion with @XboxSupport on Twitter revealed that no, this is not the case. Somewhat annoyed by this since my PS3 is happily running a 7,200RPM 500GB drive since I got it, I asked why. The ensuing conversation (after the jump) has been edited to make it more readable but the content is untouched.

Read more…

Just over a week ago, United Utilities issued a hosepipe ban because we’d had about 3 days of sun and apparently all the reservoirs were running low. Since then it’s done nothing but rain and today we’ve even had flooding all over the north west – which has even made the news – and still the hosepipe ban persists! In the south of the country though where the weather has been much warmer (and not raining), there is no such ban!

Here’s a photo that I took of a road that’s less than a mile away from my home – clearly this is not the weather for hosepipe bans. United Utilities: sort out the leaking water pipes, you clowns. We all know it has nothing to do with the weather!

Having picked up my old Mustek 600CU scanner from my parents’ house over the weekend, I discovered today that it won’t work with Windows 7. The drivers on the website relate to Windows 98, and a Windows 2000 patch that I found years ago (which also worked with Windows XP) refused to work on a 64-bit operating system. Hmm.

Rather than spend a few hours trying to hack something together with drivers from the four corners of the internet, I decided that I’d buy a new scanner. After all:

1. Scanners aren’t expensive;
2. Technology has moved on a lot since I got that old Mustek and a new scanner would give better results, faster;
3. A new scanner (and its software) would actually work on 64-bit Windows 7.

I needed to scan some documents to send over to my graphics designer ASAP, so rather than place an order online and wait a few days I decided to pop down to the local industrial estate and get something from Currys/Comet.

Both Currys and Comet are right next to each other in Southport, so I went into Currys first with a view of seeing what they had available and then going into Comet to compare. On the way in I noticed a huge “Our price promise” sign next to the door that claimed that Currys would beat the price of a range of local competitors including “Argos, ASDA, Comet, Jessops, Tesco, John Lewis… in fact any local retail store”. Impressive.

Inside, Currys had three scanners – a Canon LiDE 100 for £69.99, a Canon LiDE 200 for £89.99 and a Canon CanoScan 5600F for £149.99. Thinking those prices were on the high side, I went into Comet to see what they had. Nothing. Some laptops, some printers, but no scanners. Back to Currys.

At this point I decided to check Currys’ website because I knew their products were cheaper on there, so the plan was to go in and ask for one of those scanners for their online price – something that I’ve done before with positive results. After all, if a company is willing to beat its competitors in price then it should happily match its own website. I got my phone out and navigated to the Currys website where I found that the scanner that I was most interested in (the LiDE 200) was indeed on there for a reduced price – a full 25% off in fact at £68.28.

I approached a member of staff and asked if the store would match the price they had on their website for a scanner. The assistant said no, they don’t match websites. I pointed out that this was Currys’ own website, to which he enquired if I meant Dixons. No, I was talking about Currys. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to price-match his own website, so he went off to check. A few moments later he returned and said that no, he couldn’t price-match his own website. So much for their “price promise”.

I noticed that there was a “Reserve and Collect” facility on the website, which upon closer inspection allowed me to reserve an item online for local store pick-up. I hit the button, selected the store at which I wanted to reserve my item (no prizes for guessing which store I selected), entered my name and email address and then went to the till where my reservation was already printing out. With the ink on my reservation still wet, the assistant asked a colleague to fetch the scanner for me. I paid the £68.28 (I know it’s available cheaper still online, but I really needed it today), got my receipt and walked out.

This was the most bizarre case of red tape that I’d ever experienced when making any kind of purchase. Were it not for the mobile internet exposing this blatant case of double standards, I might actually have been forced to pay £89.99 for a scanner just so that I could take it away today. Thanks to this technology however, I saved myself 25% without even leaving the store.

I contacted Currys about this and referred them to this blog post and asked them for their opinion. They made no comment.

I signed into YouTube to watch one of those “Downfall” parodies and to my surprise noticed that one of my sisters, Gwenan, was being recommended as a subscription feed.

I decided to check out her video stream and whilst I was initially disappointed to see that she had uploaded just one video, that video would turn out to be quite funny. Here it is:

So girls, what’s the next challenge going to be?

Yesterday I was reading through my RSS feeds, catching up with the world’s news and this one about the iPhone 4G on Engadget caught my eye. Engadget had some (slightly blurry) images of what was supposed to be the latest version of Apple’s best-selling iPhone, reportedly found left behind at a bar in a 3G case. The whole article was written in a sceptical tone and an update at the bottom confirmed that the phone was indeed a fake. The update linked to a Twitter page that seemed to be home to several independent sources claiming the phone was a cheap Chinese knock-off. The tone of the update was pretty bullish because they had apparently been offered time with the phone for $10,000, but had decided not to proceed because they suspected it wasn’t a genuine item. They then took great pleasure in informing the rest of the internet that in their wisdom they had not been fooled by any of it – and that pity should be bestowed upon anyone who had.

Well, what a difference a day makes!

The same phone has now turned up on Gizmodo, and not only do they have lots of hi-res photographs of it but they’ve also examined it inside and out to confirm that yes, it is genuine.

I thought Engadget’s smug proclamation of wisdom and (in this case unfounded) self-belief would look pretty stupid now, so I headed back over there to see how they’d taken the news that they had done a “Decca Records” and passed up the real deal. I arrived at the site to discover that Engadget has removed ALL references to this phone being a fake! They’ve re-written the update at the bottom of the page to say merely that the phone looks like a Chinese knock-off, but the smug proclamation is gone. Not only that, but on another post dated today Engadget has the brass neck to declare “Well, we told you so. The fourth-generation iPhone prototype that leaked its way out into the world over the weekend has found its way to Gizmodo, and they’ve examined it exhaustively, erasing any doubt that it’s real.”

“We told you so”?! Umm, no Engadget, what you actually said was that the phone was a fake! And I guess Gizmodo got the hands-on and photographs because they were “stupid” enough to pay up the $10,000, right?

I’m sorry guys, but I think you had quite an audience when you slipped on that banana skin.

I recently received a phone call from someone who was interested in Name that Note.

Caller: Oh hi, are you the guy with Name that Note for sale? The musical note recognition game?

Me: Yes, I am. How can I help?

Caller: Oh, excellent! This game is exactly what I need! I’m a music teacher and I’ve been playing the game with my students on my laptop but it would be great to have a local version that I can run from my laptop, rather than having to go online.

Me: Oh! Well, we do have an installer on the website that you can download, and once you’ve bought a license from the site, you’ll be able to play the game on whatever machine you like.

Caller: Great! I’ll buy it now then!

Me: Great, thank you!

I haven’t heard anything from him since!

I can only assume that zombies are cute and fluffy up in Lancashire, as this was Nicola’s reaction to a trailer for Colin, the zombie movie that cost £45 to make:

Gareth says:
£45 zombie movie – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkJZ3FlOWeM

Nicola says:
eewww! should have warned me it was unpleasant!

Here’s Alex Stocks, my brother in law, getting a soaking at Oakwood Park over the summer. The fact that he was so close to the end of the slide when he fell off the sled just makes it all the funnier in my opinion.