So, just over halfway through Arkham City on Xbox 360 and I’m becoming increasingly disappointed.  As a huge fan of Arkham Asylum I’ve been looking forward to the sequel for ages.  Arkham Asylum had it all, a thrilling atmospheric storyline, surprises, great boss battles and levels (Scarecrow was simply brilliant) but I’m searching for all of that in the new release.

On launching it looked very promising; the skylines look amazing and once I’ve completed the story mode I’m going to enjoy exploring but I’m over halfway through the game and there haven’t been any really notable points yet.  I recall from Arkham Asylum that I became frustrated by not knowing where I’m supposed to be going and they haven’t really solved that one.

I’m currently on the Demon Trials which seem to make it unnecessarily difficult to fly and even when (or if) I master that, I can’t imagine that section is going to blow me away.

I’m starting to lose faith in the reviews of sites like IGN who are so stroked by the manufacturers and developers, their ratings just don’t look credible.  Quite how this sequel can score higher than the original is just madness.

Right, I’m off to learn how to dive, bomb, dive, bomb…

Capitalism is Really None of Your Business

Capitalism Is Kind, a photo by Herschell Hershey on Flickr.

As someone who works in London, I keep stumbling over people in tents. First of all it was when I popped down to Sports Direct at St Pauls. As I approached via the side streets I became conscious that the only vehicles parked were Police vans and the odd large Transit with a massive satellite dish on the top. I thought I was walking into a riot zone but it was ok, it was just some quite smelly people in tents.

As I rounded the corner I thought I’d slipped through a time and space portal to Glastonbury, but hang on, St Pauls was still there. What was going on? 30 seconds later I’m up to speed having read the banners and placards. These protesters to love a banner and a placard. Most of the time they don’t actually say anything, they just leave it to the signs they’ve made and sit in their tents.

Then, a week or so later I trip over some more tents in Finsbury Square. The world is become a great big festival.

I’m not breaking new ground here when I suggest these ‘protesters’ are a tad hypocritical. They sit in their expensive, commercially produced tents drinking their Starbucks coffees (yes, I’ve seen them) preaching to anyone who’ll listen but who also actually doesn’t care, that capitalism is evil. These people are using mobile technology to publicise their views on the likes of twitter; mobile technology which is brought to them by capitalism. You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to camp outside Bloomberg and complain about the directors bonus (quite what the hell it has to do with anyone else is beyond me) then you need to be in pretty pure place yourself. So no mobile phone, no fancy tent, no products of errr… capitalism.

Because it you don’t put yourself in that pure place, you end up looking like people who just prefer living in tents and protesting about everything and anything to justify that lifestyle to the world. If you want to live in a tent then go for it; you just don’t need to put yourself in the middle of London and ask everyone to look at you.

You've got to love those people on the forums at Money Saving Expert. In Martin Lewis's latest email he put a link to people's most embarrasing money saving techniques. They weren't so much embarrasing, as quite often pointless. I cringed as I read them - using teabags 4+ times, boiling a kettle once then pouring the rest in the flask for the rest of the day, forcing yourself to have a poo at work before you go home to save on toilet paper (honestly). Cringe with me http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3531759

I did chip in to say that things like boiling smaller quantities of water in the kettle make fractional differences to electricity bills but gave up trying to convince people who buy a pack of ham, separate each slice and feeze them individually - it's the sort of argument you just ain't gonna win.

I was going to post some witty suggestions but they're a sensitive lot so I'll just make them available to you, my faithful reader.

Money Saving Tips

· Run around with the kids for 5 minutes before bedtime - It warms them up so no need to put the heating on!

· Hug the kettle when boiling water - Your body heat will speed up the boiling process

· Get double the use out of your underwear before washing it by turning it inside out on day 2

· If you get cold indoors, go and stand in the garden for 5 minutes - when you come back in you'll appreciate the warmth!

· On bin day, have a root round people's compostible bins - see what you can blend up to make a soup

· Never use the lights indoors - get head torches and only use those when you need to move

· Write letters, shower, go to the toilet, charge your phone, drink the tea, use the telephone all at work so you don't spend the money doing it at home

· On downhil stretches of motorway, turn off your engine until you get to about 20 mph - think of the petrol you'll save!

Truck Stop

Truck Stop, a photo by /\ltus on Flickr.

Looming Sky

Bratalie Okri

natalie-okri-britains-got-talent
Originally uploaded by mrpatok.

So Natalie Okri gets a hard time from Simon Cowell and we’re all feeling sorry for her?

Natalie “bursts into tears” when she’s beaten by the dance group Diversity.

Stop for a second and watch the tape again.

Natalie doesn’t burst into tears on hearing Diversity are going through to the final. Her first reaction is to perform the most stroppy little brat-face you could imagine. She wasn’t sad, she was brewing up for a tantrum.

She then realises she has to maintain that shruggy-shoulders cutesy girl act and tries to force some tears out. Unsuccessful, she covers her eyes with her arm (still no sign of genuine emotion) and then manages to squeeze out some tears.

Even as she leaves the stage she does so in the kind of way my 2 year old stomps off to bed when I turn the TV off.

Sure, she’s young and all that but why are we blinded by such people? If she was taller and uglier she wouldn’t have got through. If she didn’t keep doing that shruggy grin she wouldn’t have been popular.

Watch it back again and all you’ll see in an averagely talented girl who has been infected with a need for stardom at a ridiculously young age. Even down to the point that she almost burst into a full-blown diva tantrum. Modelling herself on people like Beyonce isn’t healthy for a little girl.

Zone Alarm Screen Snip
Originally uploaded by iloveiggys.

I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (whatever that means) but the latest update from Zone Alarm (version 8.0 I think) was rubbish. I've read they have actually told people NOT to download the latest version because of the bugs it causes. This is the same company who issued an update in the summer which broke everyones Internet connections.

In fact, the problem I experienced was it was blocking Windows Update and my XBox (AGAIN). Annoyingly this was very hard to verify until I eventually uninstalled Zone Alarm and hey presto Windows Update worked again. And of course, after spending hours configuring Zone Alarm to allow my XBox to connect to my PC, this new update completely screwed that up.

I reinstalled what Check Point said was a version 7.xx of the product but it somehow made itself the new version. But now it allows Windows Update which is helpful. I haven't tried the XBox. What are the chances?

I'm seriously reconsidering my use of this product. I've used it for years but they really need to make it simpler to do things like allow your XBox to your computer without the need to spend 4 hours Googling the issue to then spend another 2 hours following complex instructions written by some tech geek. I don't know, and shouldn't need to know what a subnest mask is. Life is too short.

I'm wondering whether the standard Windows Vista Firewall would be OK to revert to?

CREDIT CRUNCH!
Originally uploaded by Laura Mary.

All this talk of the 'credit crunch' across the world is enough to depress you. I must admit, some of the sob stories I hear generate less sympathy than others.

You might think me harsh when I say this but I find it extremely difficult to have sympathy for all of the city traders who have been affected by this. These people earn ridiculous six figure salaries and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them because they won't be getting their £50,000 bonus this year? Sure, they have families to support like lower earners but they also have greater means to save in case of hard times.

I saw a report about a couple who worked for Lehman Brothers who said because they lost their jobs they might have to postpone their wedding. These people were earning a fortune, so my heart bleeds they won't be able to dress their crab with quite so much caviar now. I don't begrudge people high earning jobs but please, don't expect sympathy when the bubble bursts. These are finanical people, have they been living exactly to their means? Don't they save? Ironic?

And talking of saving, I saw another piece about a chap who had been saving for his retirement by buying shares in one instutution (forgive me, I forget which). Last year it was worth something like £175,000 and he's seen something like £50,000 wiped off the value. Again, I feel no real sympathy. To be saving that amount of money I'm thinking he's had a reasonable income but clearly lacks intelligence (or a financial advisor) to tell him not to put all of his eggs in one basket. Apparently, the value of shares can go down as well as up. What sort of person rests their entire retirement on the performance of one institution? A mad one.