The Rants of a Scotsman

Politics of the Workplace.......

2011-10-18T19:50:00.002+01:00

Been ages since I wrote a blog! But I very much doubt many people ever read this so I don't mind to be honest.

Been right fucked off by "backroom politics" at work people bitching about me behind my back. If people have a problem with me then they should man up and tell me mono e mono. It did reveal to me an ugly side of the place which I thought I had long left behind in my previous employers. God the backstabbing there was terrible!

On the bright side it also enlightened me to the people I can trust in the place and not the people I immediately thought it would be. Surprising indeed. After this rant however I am not gonna hold a grudge or seek revenge, this a way of expeling it from my being. Revenge is NEVER justified.

Finally moved into a place with my fiancee and it's a pretty nice house now that all the problems have been fixed! I won't go into them, but I will say that the company we are renting the place from have been pretty quick off the mark to sort them and we recently had the three month check up and everything was ok phew! Hope to renew the lease when it comes up after the six month period. Just have to see what happens.

Still collecting my transformers figures and loved the fact I finally got a hold of a classics Cliffjumper! Are rare figure and a re-paint of classics Bumblebee but well worth getting hold of. Now I need to get his upgrade kit to make him look more like Cliffjumper and less like Bumblebee!

Don't worry if you don't know what I'm talking about stumblers onto this blog it's ok it's just my hobby in life. :)

Video game wise I'm really out the loop these days, which is a shame in a way as I used to keep up to date with the gaming scene. It's hard to have gaming, wrestling and transformers as hobbies so one will always suffer I guess, not enough hours in the day. And of course work saps so much free time, Ah to be a student again. Actually fuck that! lol.

Completed Gears of War 3 a nice ending to the trilogy indeed.

One last thing before I go, here's a link to my youtube page folks. It's mainly going to be transformer reviews of figures I own with odd other figure (seeThundercats SDCC11 Lion-o) and the odd VLOG. But if you know someone who collects transformers then please pass on my youtube site, I could do with the subscribers!

http://www.youtube.com/user/BordersDude?feature=mhee

Thanks again!

This is the last time.............Until the next time

2011-06-05T22:44:00.002+01:00

Well its been a while since I've been blogging. Not really been much to blog about really. Been house hunting in the private sector and find a house myself and the other life liked.

However (there's always one in there eh?) the up front cost that was needed was far to great sadly (it was £1,105) So that was really a big blow to both of us and some stressfulness insued. Much needed steam was let off last night however (more on last night later) and we are looking at some other houses hopefully if viewings and they actual houses are still available.

So on to last night. Went out with the missus and a couple of mates just stayed at the one pub and got very drunk just like I used to do in the old days with a few others friends was jolly good! :D Gave my mate his b'day presents, which where to little transformer legends figures (G1 Jazz and Hound) and he was chuffed!

Much chat and drink was consumed and cannot certainly wait for the next time! just a couple of links to share for anyone who stumbles onto this blog site.

Duke Nukem figure for sale on ebay The Duke is still carded rare figure, or so I have been told but money is needed so the duke must go!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320710110686&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

And my transformers reviews on youtube! More transformer blogs to come soon!

http://www.youtube.com/user/BordersDude?feature=mhee

A week off flies by!

2011-05-13T21:02:00.002+01:00

Rather than jump straight in and talk about my week off I thought I might tell you about my week back to reality. Monday (I'm not gonna go through all the days) Was pretty pump. I had to call the inland revenue (they deal with your income tax and i asume other tax related business) stating that they access my records for a company I worked with!

So on the phone I go, oh by the way I got this letter on the saturday and they are conveniently shut on the weekends! Any after going through an ANNOYING automated set of options and then having to wait for 25 freeking minutes to speak to someone they tell me not to worry and they will sort out! How nice! not even a call back to say that its taking care of! I don't want some git in the uk using my NAT insurance number and borking up my tax records and future taxing stuff thank you very much!

Got off the phone made my lunch tried to watch some recorded tv on my freeview recorder box only to listen to it struggle and then suddenly hear this clicking noise coming from it. The hard drive as crashed the clicking was the needle trying to fix itself to no avail.

So I now have (an admitedly swanky) new freeview recorder. Which was money I wasn't wanting to spend as my fiancee and I are trying to save up to get a place of our own. Which brings me to my next point. My fiancee called up the local council trying to find out what our situation was in the housing way of things to get an idea of whats going on.

Only to be told that we really don't have much of a chance getting one because I have a bedroom! What a load of pish! It's gonna end up being private housing and then worrying every 6 months if the landlord decides they want to sell or move back into their prob original council house that they we are paying for! FUCKING MARGRET THATCHER BITCH! IRON LADY INDEED!

So if you're still with me onto my weeks holiday. Celebrated being engaged for a year on Sunday 1st (woo!) with a nice lazy day and chinese buffet. Went to edinburgh for two days stayed over night did some shopping. I managed to finally get a Reveal The Shield Wreck-Gar I've been sorta huming and hawing over at argos, seen Thor, which is awesome and I recommend going to see (and stick to the end of the VERY LONG credits for an extra scene) Stayed in a travel lodge was nice enough just the noise of the traffic that gave me a soso sleep but a good two days none the less!

Was a shame to come back to town on the tuesday evening boo! Celebrated the fiancee's b'day on the Wednesday and went for a lovely meal! Was glad she liked her presents phew!

Just chilled on the thurs and fri. Went out on the sat night and had a right good knees up! Then come Mon back to reality, work. Boo. See above for how that went!

I'll have a more cheerier blog next time folks!

RantingScotsman

Quick catch up

2011-04-21T17:25:00.002+01:00

Just a quick blog update while the oven heats up for my soso Asda pizza! I've been up to a lot since I last blogged (mean the blogs before my last update not to long ago) I've changed jobs still in the retail sector of work but far more happier and their is a lot less pressure on my now than there was in my last job and I'm glad of it.

I guess with my last job the bottom line was I couldn't cut as a manager type person. It takes a special kind of person to deal with that type of stress! Anyway I won't be talking to much about my job due to the legal laws that are now in place for these things lol. I will defiantly say I have no problems with my job in anyway and love the place.

The biggest change in my life is that I now have a girlfriend who has became my fiancee and we are getting close to a year on that special day when I proposed to her! (May 1st) I couldn't be happier now and I think it was defiantly a much needed addition to my life and hers I hope hehe!

Currently looking for a house through the council means but I can imagine we will have to end up going private rent in the end.

There has been loads of other things going on in my life some bad some good mostly good and I try not to dwell on the bad and focus on the good!

Anyway with any luck the oven will now be pre-heated and ready for my pizza!

RantingScotsman!

I'm back! Kinda.....

2011-04-10T22:28:00.002+01:00

Not gonna blog about anything at the moment but when I can find something to rant or confess my love of that I feel I can share I shall update the place!

-Ranting Scotsman

There can be only one............

2006-08-10T00:18:00.000+01:00

Well if you haven't guessed it I'm starting off my talk about The Highlander, not the films but rather the series.

I've seen the odd ep on FX but today the first season DVD boxset dropped through my door and I've watched the first ep. I'm liking it so far, ok pretty hard to judge it on the merits of one or two eps but I like the highlander films (except the third one that's pants) If I was trying to figure how this series fits into the highlander films, it would have to be set before the first film.

But as we know from the films timeliness are thrown out of the window!! Good old Lambert makes an appearance in the first ep of the series which is a welcome bonus. Basically I'm saying I'll love this series!

Gaming wise, I've completed King Kong on the 360 I enjoyed it. It's how a Jurassic park game should be. It's on the rails as I've mentioned linear as heck but worth a play. And if you're a gamerscore WHORE you'll get the full 1000 wack just by going through the game. None of this "play 100 games online to unlock 10 points"

Borrowed TopSpin 2 from a mate, but I hate it, far to hard for my patience these days!

Work is well, work. Direr by the day I've got an app from for somewhere else so hopefully I'll get off my ass and get it down tomorrow and put back in!

Later!

Nostalgia.................

2006-07-29T23:23:00.000+01:00

What a powerful tool isn't it?

It's nearly my annual "Gut out my room while my parents are away on holiday because I get peace to do it time" And I was just rummaging about to see what I could keep and what to throw out, etc

Anyway while I was doing that I found my highschool year book from 2001. Even though I was never the most popular person at school and such it still give me a warm feeling just looking at the photos and thinking "If we all knew then what we know now........" and "God we were all just punk kids"

But it was such a good feeling just flicking through the book and seeing friends that you still see and friends of yore long gone somewhere out there.

Well on with the gaming bit.

On monday I popped up to edinburgh (again) and picked up Prey and King Kong at gamestation Prey has already been completed and it was a bloody fun game story line was good if predictable but hey I enjoyed it. A pretty funky FPS with you having to crawl through boxes to get other parts of the level and going up elevator type walls and hanging upside down. Great stuff.

Kong while it's an old game in terms of the 360 (so not that old really) It's fairly linear and the enemys are event triggered meaning they wait for you to cross and invisiable line before attacking. And of course if you go back across that line they turn tail and head to the respective activation points so you can kill them with ease. Thats when you're playing as the hero jack but with kong is a basic mash em up which are fun sections that break up the game!

If you can get it cheap like I did for the 360 £16.99 go for it!

Thats me out folks

2006-07-17T22:41:00.000+01:00

Well time for another post eh!

What a torrid two months is has been peeps. I mean it's been hell with the odd sprinkle of heaven. But more hell than heaven!

New contracts are gonna be starting at work soon due to somerfield buying up a lot of other shops for other companies they want to merge all the contracts to this one horrible one, which is excludes time and half on Sundays the horror!

Anyway it basically means my position is also up for grabs but I'm NOT being made redundant oh the joys eh! Of course it's not just me it's everyone and some are losing their jobs which sucks so you can imagine the atmosphere in the place is not the best!

And the new manager as whole just can't manage, which bodes well for all. There was a mini staff argument the other day, luckily for the manager in the back of the shop where the customers didn't hear.

In the good side of things I've been out a lot, trying to get out with one of my workmates friends albeit it's been a less than successful task so far but it's been cool getting out drinking and generally meeting new friends along the way. So that's been good.

Staff night out this weekend I'm sure that will be fun! Sarcasms at 100% captain!

Anyway gaming wise been playing a lot of live arcade stuff and need for speed most wanted which has now broken on me. Teach me to by second hand games eh? I dunno how people can treat games or stuff that costs them £50 a pop it's crazy!

Anyway I can't think of anything else to say but good bye!

May Day Funess!

2006-05-01T22:36:00.000+01:00

Yeah I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last update but I never said I would make the updates daily/weekly/etc!

So yeah today being may day and also a bank holiday for some means I got the day off as it's "voluntary" to work, basically I did that last one so that's how I got this bank hol off.

Well on my day off I headed up to Edinburgh to meet a mate so we could just generally piss about and besides I had some stuff to trade in at gamestation! Namely a spare Dreamcast that my friend didn't want when he moved house. So I cleaned it up a bit, added of couple of DC duffers of games and an extra control pad.

Didn't get much for the package twenty something for a trade in but as my mate said (a different one than the one that gave me the DC) "It's better than a kick in the nuts"

So what did I use my trade in credit for you ask? Another sega console this time a sega multi mega! Pictured here (about the middle of the page) It's a rare megadrive/mega-cd hybrid console that damn sexy looking. Also it runs with ONE adaptor not the two that sega megadrive and megacd need solo!

You can play music CD's on it portably with two AA batteries and one assumes with HUGE pockets! I suppose it would come in handy if something goes wrong with a music system at a party or something!

I'm still playing at oblivion although I haven't done so for about 4-5 days now mostly due to that bane of my life that is work! In saying that apart from me having to apologize to some old git at some point this week work was fine apart from the shittiness of some of the shifts 1-10 on wed and then back in 7.45-5 on the thurs OUCH!

But I've had a relaxing weekend sadly it's all over now and back to work tomorrow 3-10 oh well I suppose I get a sleep in!

A post before lunch time? Only the proclaimer would dare!

2006-04-17T12:11:00.000+01:00

Well then lets get down to business.

Ok rant first. Last week at work was fucking terrible! Well that's not completely true it was fine till Thurs. Thur was just a busy day very busy and it's hard to deal with a lot of customers and bells etc!

Friday was a fucking nightmare mostly because the customer services manager decided to plonk herself in the fag counter while did all the supervising and the shit hit the fan. Then later on in the day I got into trouble with the new manager because the queues built up. Which in fairness to him he had every right to have a go at me.

BUT it didn't help that THREE of my staff left at 5 and no one else was coming in till 6. Which left me with three staff and being good Friday you can imagine it was busy. After getting moaned at I just give up and when the main supervisor for the night came down I just sat on a till for the rest of my shift.

And I had a quiet weekend in prob better than turning to drink although I dunno maybe I should have for the sat at least. Anyway on to something else.

So yes as I mentioned I bought he-man for the PS2 for £3 in mypreviouss blog. And as I expected it sucks even with the cheats it's a buggy mess. Although it's pretty funny as well. One example when I was roaming a forest riding with the battlecat I jumped of a cliff and landed on this blue machine like thing and I got stuck!!! Still for £3 what do you expect eh?

So I decided after much humming and hawing to get the elderscrolls oblivion for the 360. Now I hate RPG's with a passion (that's role playing games for you people not in the know) But by god this game is amazing. It's not a stat cruncher and you're not in those god awful turn based battles they happen in real time.

You can do the main mission if you like but you don't HAVE to there is plenty other things to do in the game. It's set imedievalil times so you can take part in arena challenges and such. If you have a 360 go out and buy this game!

Anyway I'm off for my lunch and then a god damn 2-10 shift at work arrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (still I get tues and thurs off woo!)

It's been a while I know............

2006-04-09T23:53:00.000+01:00

But hey, what are you gonna do about it eh? I've been a busy *cough* lazy ass forgetful *cough* boy!

So what's been going the humble little life of the ranting Scotsman? Well not much really! Things took an interesting turn in work this week when we GASP! Finally got a fucking manager! Everyone has actually been doing some work including the really lazy ass people in the shop I wonder how long the ass kissing will last.

Anyway this manager is a breath of fresh air to the store and a completely different kettle of fish to the previous manager who had been there for a bizzlion years or something. It can all be for the best I guess.

The store is also finally hiring new staff which I guess I'll have to at least help train cause if I don't I'll be in the shit with people that don't know how to work a till! The extra stuff I do for a freeking 50p per hour raise I tell you!

So then my usual games rant well I have Ghost reacon 3 for the 360 while it looks the mutts nuts and finally showing what the 360 has under it's hood the gameplay suffers a little because of it. I've noticed a few bugs in it more noticeable the dodgy A.I In the mission I'm on atm I've to protect a VIP, now with guns a blazing you'd expect him to hide for cover but no he stands out in the open like a dick waiting to be shot! I was ranting at my friends about this on live earlier this evening.

So rather than throw my pad down I played the Tomb Raider Legend demo for the 360 and needless to say I'll be buying it!

It has nice tight solid controls the graphics look lush (believe me there is a noticeable difference between the PS2/Xbox and 360 versions) Lara looks more like a believable human she doesn't have tits as big as two hills now.

Oh yeah I also picked up He-man for the PS2 for £3...................Thats all I'll say about that.

In other news I'm part of the "Consolevania players" don't know what that is? Head here can you guess which one I am (hint the one holding Guardian heroes) apart from that on the site you can download the fantastic consolevania show which is the best games related show I've seen! Check it out you know want too!

Anyway that's me out I'm gonna stare at Emily Booth on FTN's quiz night live!

Introducing the worlds smallest dinobot snarl!

2006-03-14T23:36:00.000Z

Isn't he the coolest? He's a high quality bootleg from Just-it-toys you can buy him at the TF Source or Xybertoys and other places I'm sure! It's for collectors only because he small parts and you might have to glue on a fin or two. But as long as he's for show only you shouldn't have to worry! A must for any transformer or bootleg toy collector!

Well enough about snarl I've had one SHITE day. Work sucks at the moment simply because we don't have a manager and everyone is basically out for themselves. The person in charge of our department had a holiday last week so a lot of shifts didn't get covered for this week. Which left me up the creek last week and today. Apparently it was mine and the other supervisors fault.

HOWEVER the person in charge had my hours worked out before she went on holiday so she could have had those shifts covered. Still what do I care? The place will be shutting in about years time give or take. So no team work, no help no fuck all you're shafted essentially. Oh encase you don't know my job is working in a supermarket, as a checkout supervisor so after reading that and the paragraph prior you'll get why I'm pissed.

Game wise has been sloooooooooooooowwwwwwww mainly because I haven't had time. Downloaded need for speed most wanted demo on the xbox360 M.P It's pretty cool I'll prob buy it down the line.

Still on the plus side today I had a fantastic driving lesson so that's something,

Later all!

It's snowing! But in march wtf?

2006-03-03T15:29:00.000Z

It's strange weather in Scotland, or rather the UK. We didn't get much snow during the proper winter months so we're getting it now. It's been chaos over most of Scotland, England and Wales except for here, until today that is!

I live in the Scottish borders in a town called galashiels and we seem to have missed most of the snow. Most likely because the place is surround with hills (I wouldn't go as far to call them mountains) So we have a bowl like effect. Which means when it's hot it's freeking hot and if it's cold it's ball shrinkingly cold.

So apart from the weather I've not been up to much. Been off this past week from work for no reason other than I needed to take a week off. You don't get the money if you don't take all the holidays so I might as well!

After being bored to the nth degree with Kameo honestly it's one boring 'kin game! I headed to blockbuster to pick up some cheap ex-rental games. I got killer 7 and SNK vs Capcom chaos.

SNK vs Capcom chaos is the SNK take on the Capcom vs SNK games. It's not better than those games it looks different but in good way. Bearing in mind the hardware that the game was made on is over 15 years old now! They've redrawn all the capcom sprites expect Hugo they've just palleted him to the snk look. Good game, tight controls what more could you ask.

Killer 7 is just one strange game and I mean STRANGE! Gameplay wise its a super light resi evil. Easy puzzles and you shoot zombie like things. Storyline wise is bizarre. You play a team of hitmen (and a women) although it might not be real and all in the mind of a split-personality old man. All the characters speak really odd as well. The cel-shaded look adds to it's oddness.

And that's me off again bye for now!

Happy Valentines Day!....................Or NOT!

2006-02-14T21:32:00.000Z

Hello folks,

I know its been a while since my last rant but I didn't really have anything to rant about, well apart from yesterday when I got moaned at for not counting some scratchcards at work right on the weekend but that's another rant.

So then Valentines day eh? Well it's about some guy called st.valentines maybe he got laid or something on the 14th I dunno but the history is now irrelevant. Basically it's a "holiday" for a select few and perhaps a painful day for others. It simply nowadays points out who has someone special and who hasn't in their life a tad rubbing it in perhaps?

And yes I am one of those ones who hasn't can you tell? :p

So what does the single male (or indeed female) do to pass this day of rubbing-my-noise-in-it day? Buy something of course! Seeing as another one of my mp3 players got broke and I bought a new one last week I couldn't really go nuts so I got a game for my shiny white Xbox 360.

Kameo Elements of Power or Kameo for short. I haven't played much of it today due to other things among work and self wallowing. But its a pretty good game none the less. Very Disney esque looking but with an adult edge. Story is hardly Shakespeare. But basically Kameo has got these "elemental animal" powers passed on to her by her folks and her hotter looking sister is not best pleased with this so she becomes evil and unleashes a really evil troll to help take over the kingdom and capture her family bar kameo of course. It's your basic vandamme plot but does the business.

I'll lament further on the game once I've completed it!

and indeed for you couples out there I hope you're having/had a good valentines day!

I'm not boy.

2006-01-31T22:46:00.000Z

Hey ho!

Some of you (prob not many of you) may not what I'm referring to in the title. I picked up a neo geo pocket when I was in the "Kingdom of Fife" at Glenrothes visiting the aunts with my folks. It was one of those boring weekends where I didn't go out on sat night and did sod all so I more than made up for it on the Sunday when I was up in Glenrothes and picked up a neo geo pocket with samurai showdown 2 (unboxed) and metal slug first mission at gamestation (GAME doesn't so old consoles pfft)

The console it's self is nice and light and has some basic calendar function and time and date etc. The joystick is microswitched the buttons are responsive as I said earlier a joy to hold. The games are quirky and cool. One thing that does annoy me is there is no back light! But then this handheld was made in the late 90's to compete with the all mighty game boy colour. It's a shame that it didn't last longer on the market it's a pretty nifty machine! It's a 16bit processor inside but the games don't really look 16bit to me (I'm using the megadrive/snes as comparisons) but still a cool machine none the less. Did I mention it's cool?

Today I also got red dwarf series five with a corgi star bug! All for 8.99 bargain.

Oh if you're one of those lucky people to own a xbox 360 pick up DOA4 it's freeking sweet.

Well that was a rather geek infested rant this time something different for the next!

What a difference a day (or two!) makes

2006-01-21T00:10:00.000Z

Hey all!

As you recall from my last post I wasn't exactly having the greatest time at work. Well after speaking to the person and finding out it wasn't them who actually said anything about it (I assume it was one of there family members who work there) the worker just filled in the details after getting a phone call from the person who got told about the events.

But hey after getting my balls grabbed I suddenly became back in favor after having to cover a shift tonight (Friday) because the supervisor who was supposed to be working had pulled yet another sickie, a sore neck that was really hard to move so I believe. But hey it's prob true (although the days this person has been off in the past begs to differ)

I couldn't do the entire the shift because I had some stuff to do but I was getting comments like "we appreciate it" and so forth. I'm sure they do till I do something wrong again and get hauled in to the office! Hopefully that won't happen in the near future anyway!

And before I go if you're a fan of the 80's toy transformers head to this link and give them lookie

cya soon for another rant!

Pissing off an employee but not knowing you did!

2006-01-17T23:49:00.000Z

Interesting post this a little incite to the life of the Scotsman!

I have to tell you the boring the bit so you'll understand the story. I work in a supermarket as a checkout supervisor at nights. Now the supervisors duties include stuff like counting the tills, cleaning them etc and of course customer servicey type stuff like packing bags and shit.

One of the checkouts converer belts was broken and one of the staff had a ton of shopping so you can imagine the scene with this piling up and the belt not working LOL. The checkout boy asked me to help pack but I thought he was joking as it was member of staff so I went off on a pretend rant (I do that sometimes with staff members they usually find it funny, it's a bit of banter as it's called)

So I went spoke to another member of staff and the one buying the stuff at the broken checkout came across and was saying things like "that was terrible customer service" etc I thought she was joking and made some random comment like "write a letter of complaint to the store" and didn't think another thing about it.

Well that was till I was promptly called upstairs today (Tuesday) and this member of staff had called one of the deputy heads and complained eek! Needless to say I got in trouble I didn't get torn into because I'm generally regarded as a good worker apparently. So after about 15mins of discussion and my balls metaphorically grabbed and torn off, I'll now be saying "sorry" to this member of staff tomorrow as they weren't in today.

But in all fairness I should done what they asked after all it IS part of my job. So there you go folks be careful what you say in front of fellow staff members encase they take it the wrong way!

Although an interesting development has happened through this but I'll save that for another blog!

Perfect Dark Zero Time!

2006-01-16T23:46:00.000Z

As you know this is a follow up to the Xbox 360 hardware rant.

Firstly I think it's unfair that this is getting compared to Halo, Indeed Halo is a much better game but it's a completely different kind of FPS to me anyway. So I will NOT be comparing PDZ to halo throughout this rant.

Firstly the graphics are just WOW even on the standard TV (I can't afford your swish HDTV types yet) You won't really notice just how wow the graphics are until you get to the some of the later levels but there is no way the Xbox could produce a looker like this. I was saying to my Swedish friend the first day I got the 360 how lovely the main Character J. Dark arse looked! It puts Ms crofts to shame! The jungle level is amazing and you can easily get lost in it if you didn't have those helpful arrows on the floor showing you the way to go.

Which takes me to the actual gameplay subject. Now, I haven't played Perfect Dark on the N64 so I can't say if it plays like that or not, but what I can say is that it plays wonderfully. The first level is a training level and it gets you used to the controls pretty sharply.

Interesting things you can do is properly take cover and sneak out and shoot you start of with a weak gun but you can kill people with some nice headshots! Other moves include a dive so you can dodge enemy fire which works fairly well you can dodge and shoot at near enough the same time.

A few gadgets are at your disposal. You have two types of lock hacking gadgets, binoculars and a demo kit (for blowing up stuff of course) Each of these has a mini puzzle to it nothing to taxing though! And you get a spy cam that you use to spy on the enemy and other things!

You do get to control a couple of vehicles ala halo (remember NOT comparing) although these parts are short and sweet and you can of course mount the odd gun turret.

Other than that the game is fairly normal FPS the enemy is intelligent and will hide and take cover which is clever but annoyed me when I was trying to get that perfect shot!

Storyline wise it's your usual spy mission impossible-esque plot but I won't spoil that for you.

All in all it's a great game and should be one of the first 360 games you buy! Rare is indeed on form with this title, some magazines have slated it but don't let that put you off. If you don't believe my rant rent it you'll buy it and you can thank me!

Next Rant: I haven't a clue! Wait and see what gets posted!

Xbox 360 A scots verdict

2006-01-16T00:03:00.001Z

So the Xbox 360 is it good or bad (fuck knows it took me long enough to get one but I'll get into that on another topic)

I thought I should at least complete a game before I wrote a verdict on the 360 although I doubt that matters TOO much.

The console it's self is loaded with a ton of a neat features. I'll talk about the hardware/software side of the console in this rant and about Perfect Dark Zero in my next.

Turning on the console can be done in two ways either by pressing or rather lightly touching the circle on the console switches it on OR you can switch it on via the control pad by simply pressing the "X" circle button on the pad! While this is a neat feature is does make one think that Microsoft see gamers as too lazy to get up off their asses to switch on the machine!

Also on the power button/pad you have a green half circle. On the power button the half circle indicates how many control pads you have and on the pad the half of the circle is what player you will be while playing a game e.g. top left player 1. You can stand up the console ala Playstation 2 and a neat feature is that the half circle moves to the correct position as well sweet!

You can now open the disk tray via the control pad a nice but unnecessary feature because for some reason you can't re-open it (at least to my knowledge) once a disk is in the drive without pressing the eject button on the console.

Setting up xbox live couldn't be easier. Well I only transferred my account over and that took a matter of seconds. Providing you have created a gamer account on the ms website http://www.xbox.com/en-US/?EventID=1032279655&Culture=en-US you just have to fill in a few details and bam!! You're done!

On xbox live you can download demos of games (sadly not king Kong as of yet) and they've updated the xbox live arcade as well.

Another feature of the 360 is that you can connect USB items such as a mp3 player and use it to play music (duh) through the 360 player and it's excellent looking visualization mode it puts all the rest especially windows media one to shame! It was developed by Jeff minter a UK programmer hero who made attack of the mutant camels among other games.

You can play WMV movies but you need to have windows media centre on your pc and I don't so I can't comment on that feature!

The control is a absolute JOY to hold they've moved the black and white buttons to the top of the pad which is a bit strange at first but you get used to it. You are best getting a wireless pad even if you bought the core system as it feels so much better and you're not restricted by a wire. You can either use two AA batteries or you can buy a plug and play charge kit. Seeing as I've only had the console for about 6 days the AA batteries that I got with the console are still running fine and they look really cheap and nasty so I imagine something like Panasonic Xtreme batteries will last a good month or more.

So then do I like the Xbox 360? gee's didn't you read my blog?

Next Rant: Xbox 360 the games: Perfect Dark Zero

Boobies!

2006-01-15T00:51:00.000Z

An interesting heading for a first post don't you think?

But there's a point to the heading. I'm a wrestling fan and in a recent ep of WWE Raw one of the female wrestlers called "lita" had a nipple flash in a pointless "Live sex segment" now obviously you weren't supposed to see anything like that, after all the show goes out at 8 in the states and it's shown live in sky in the UK.

In the states and some other countries this boob flash wasn't shown but as you might have guessed screen caps of this "nip slip" have been plastered about on the net and everyone is going mad over it! It's bloody crazy you can't really make it out but you're reading replies to posts like "if you squint really hard you can see her nipple" What the fu*k it's only a nipple! You can get far better than it on the internet even without looking for it!

I really don't understand the madness of it!

The blog is still a work a progress as far as the design goes, in the mean time why checkout those two lovely link blogs of people I know you won't be disapointed!

NEXT RANT: Xbox 360 my verdict coming soon