The PlayStation 3

As many people know, the PlayStation 3 was released today in Europe, as some people are quite exited about this, I thought I would give an in depth view into the PlayStation 3.

The release was meant to be in November 2006, and problems in the normal SONY way, was delayed to MARCH 2007. SONY recently came along in the GDC (Game Developers Confrence) SONY keynote, and released the fantastic service, HOME. HOME is a kind of better looking Sims, and in a Second Life context, it lets people enable to chat, and stream live media in a virtual world.

HOME has a realistic physics engine, and was demonstrated memorially with the guy doing it at GDC by dropping a SONY BRAVIA TV down the stairs.

HOME is currently in Beta, and is being released for testing to a huge 15,000 people, and unlikely known if it will be released here for testing in the UK. But good things come with downsides, so SONY was incredibly annoying by making the backwards compatibility, dead...really that's just how to describe it, but they got rid of the service like the annoying buggers they are, in there pixie SONY offices and...urmmm, yeh.

The launch titles are interesting though, and the one that caught by beady little eye yesterday peering though the glass of a store window, and Motor Storm looks fantastic, and so does Formula 1, and the graphics for F1 are phenomenal! When I saw the trailer last year, I thought it wasn't a game, they also have damage which really is the perfect thing to go with any racing game. I mean like, Grand Turismo, Polyphony Digital has always promised, DAMAGE! But nooooo.

The PSP-to-PS3 connectivity is good with the console to, that really is the topping on the cake, use your PSP as a second screen or perhaps a second controller, which you won't get the 6-axis control, still would be good if you want to play PS3 anywhere around your house.
The 6-Axis is a Nintendo Wii idea, and yes, as normal, SONY has nicked all the ideas from Microsoft and Nintendo.

Nintendo: The Wii like control or 6-Axis
Microsoft: Same LIVE service


There was a previous version of the PS3 controller that looked like a boomerang, but was changed due to health and safety reasons, we don't want people in white coats observing you while you play do you. So a more Duleshock 2 control was re-made.

The other things that SONY has done is made no one buy the console by making it so expensive that no one will buy it. When the PS3 went on pre-order on Amazon, and when the Wii went up for pre-order it was 5 minuets before they were sold out. But the PS3's never really shifted, it was well, more than 2 weeks 3 weeks before they really where sold to a compleat extent. So alough I think I will never really by the magical wonder box, I do think that I would by a Wii.

New Money

Ohh, goodie! The new £20 is in a series. Yes, going to a cash point I came across one of the new £20 note.
The new note will signal the start of a new series of notes which will come into circulation next spring.

BEFORE:

AFTER:


The UK's most common banknote was today set for a relaunch as newly-designed £20 notes hit the streets for the first time since 1999.

The Bank of England's new note will bear the image of 18th century economist Adam Smith, renowned for his Wealth of Nations analysis on free markets.

Customers at the cash machine will find the new £20 in a brighter purple colour to make it more recognisable, although it will be the same size as its predecessor.

The new note will also feature a larger silver hologram and metallic thread recognition strip to combat fraudsters as well as a new security colour tag which shows up under ultra-violet light.

Around 350,000 forged £20 notes were discovered last year.

The Bank of England's chief cashier Andrew Bailey said: "We do not have a serious counterfeiting problem in this country, but because it is the most common note it is the one that has proved most attractive to counterfeiters."

There are 1.3bn £20 notes currently in circulation designed with a portrait of composer Sir Edward Elgar, which will gradually be phased out over the next two years.

According to UK payments association Apacs, the £20 note accounted for 66% of all notes dispensed by British cash machines in the last quarter of 2006.

Spokeswoman Sandra Quinn said: "Most of us are likely to see one of these new £20 notes at a cash machine as it's where many of these new notes will first be dispensed.

"We are all still carrying around quite a bit of cash because, despite our continuing love affair with our cards, cash remains first choice for small value payments such as for a pint of milk or our morning paper."

The £10 note is the second commonest note, with 550m in circulation, and carries the picture of natural scientist Charles Darwin, famous for his theory of natural selection.

The £5 note was the last note to be relaunched in May 2002, featuring a picture of prison reformer Elizabeth Fry.

Blah Blah Blah

Once again, I am annoyed. Well, it only really annoyed me for a period of time, but still, it was annoying. Sainsburys is a place of food and wonder, and I today was buying the new, Diet Citrus Coke, or Lemon & Lime to be realistic. And I had to wait in a Q of 3 people, and it took ages! This woman at the till was just, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! And then it took ages for her to do somthing even without talking, yes they can talk, but what the other woman was buying was 5 or 6 items and it tooks maybe 10 or 15 mins just to do all of it.
I DON'T GIVE A PISS ABOUT YOUR BACK PAIN, JUST LET ME GET MY FRIKKIN COKE!
And then she tryed to have a fake conversation with me, oh how are you, you do know that soft drinks are bad for your teeth. JUST GIVE ME THE FRIKKIN DRINK!!!
I know they are trying to be nice, and I do think that its nice, but no, I don't care, I don't give a toss, if your hamster larry died because he decided that the british airways flight he got on ebay was to expensive for him.

I made it clear if she could hurry up, and so did the guy behind me, but noooo, nooooo, you can't you need to stop what your doing and talk at the lady who is DEATH! I took 20 seconds, in, out, done.

CUT THE CRAP, GIMMIE THE GOODS. (Should be a slogen)

What Movie Does Your Computer Run?

Last night a friend of mine asked me what the big differences among Windows, OS X, and Linux are. After talking my way through it for a while, I thought it would be best to use an analogy to describe it. So this one's for all of you out there who are new to computers: think of your operating system as a movie. The way I see it, the following movies relate to the type of movie stated;

Windows - The everyday, nothing-special, run-of-the-mill movie. These are usually the movies that fill up the box offices that everyone goes to see, but don't really care about too much. Think chick flick, teen comedy, horror, and action movies. Tons of people see them (just as tons of people are running Windows), but the don't get good reviews, and really aren't expected to. Some of them will get a lot of hype, but then let down everyone who goes to see them. Your friends see them, your family sees them, they keep the movie industry going, providing most of the income at the box office.

URY

I have recently discovered a cool little student radio station called URY short for University Radio York.

URY do quite a lot of good shows, one of which is the evening selection with the source at six. The show each day has different presenters on, and each have there own broadcasting style, and then at 6'O Clock there is the news, named the source at six.
One of my favourite shows is The Magic Roundabout, with the funny duo Chris Donald and Andy O'Reilly who both make the show a hilarious mash-up of talk and music. The show is aired on Mondays at 11pm.


Another good thing about the station is the music played is vary varied, so one moment you will have some pop rock and then up next we have some indie acoustic. The station broadcasts in York, and at the moment York Uni, seems to have almost anything to broadcast with, for example YSTV, the student TV station, that I am sorry to say doesn't really please me. The programs aren't really very well put together and the sets and people they have on sound like cardboard. But URY is completely different.



The style is always varied, so you will always get something you like. Another good thing is that there is an almost positive chance that your request will be played and that you will have your comment read out, as they make that very easily available on the website, http://ury.york.ac.uk/ and you will always have a web cam to see on of the presenters doing something. The last thing is the design on the website, now there are some good and bad points, the good point is that you can see almost every CD that URY have to offer for request.
The bad thing is the fact that you need to Google search the site if you want to get to a certain page like the podcast page, as I can't find it listed.
If you have a band and you have a recording or a CD well I am sure they will play it.

The best AM radio station by far and even beating FM, varied style and a laugh, URY 1350AM.