March 2011
8 posts
1 tag
...And Ne'er The Twain Shall Meet
Friends, acquaintances…
All was well with the voyage up until three days ago. The ship and crew were both in fine condition and spirits ran high. Overnight and without warning we became hounded by bad weather; rain so strong it punctured the sails and wind harsh enough to tear the hair from your scalp. Despite my best efforts we were thrown off course into the fearsome rocky waters...
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Sébastien Loeb Wins Rally Mexico!
In a surprising turn of events, Ogier took himself out of the running with a crash on stage 20 of 22, allowing our favourite, Loeb, to take the lead. After his somewhat demoralising performance in Sweden, this is just what Loeb needed to get his spirit back up and push forward for his 8th consecutive world championship win. He remains in second place overall, with 37 points to Mikko...
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Day 2: Ogier Maintains His Lead
Little change at the end of the second day; world champ Sébastien Loeb managed to briefly sneak into first during a couple of stages but slipped back into second before the end of the day. Places 3 and 4 remain the same while 5th place is left wide open as Evgeny Novikov retires, allowing Petter Solberg to take his spot. Ogier leads by a huge 10.5 seconds.
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Rally Mexico Is Under Way!
I’m not investing too much time into the writeup for Rally Mexico, I’ve been typing my fingers to the bone recently and I need a break otherwise they’ll implode. The rally actually started yesterday, but the time difference screws things up and I end up a day late. Let’s not complicate matters.
The current standings are:
1. Sébastien Ogier 2. Sébastien Loeb 3. Mikko...
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Minecraft Spam No.000002
The main, uh… hall, probably, of an extravagant house I’m building into a cliff side. It looks simple enough but navigating my way around underground is confusing the hell out of me. Super fun times ahead!
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Rocking My iPod: iSlash
Name: iSlash Genre: Arcade/Reaction Price: £0.59/$0.99 Link: Ninja style
I genuinely cannot tell if I love this game or hate it. I’m definitely playing it, I can’t help but play the addictive little bastard. At the same time it’s annoying the life out of me and I wonder if it was worth starting in the first place. It feels good when I succeed though… I MUST FINISH.
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Clarkson's Notes: December 2009
I have bought a farm. There are many sensible reasons for this. Land is a better investment than any bank can offer. The government doesn’t get any of my money when I die. And the price of the food that I grow can only go up. But there is another, much more important reason:
I can now have a quad bike.
I have always loved the idea of such things. They are like motorbikes but they...
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Gallery: The Audi R18
February 2011
28 posts
2 tags
Minecraft Spam No.000001
I have absolutely nothing interesting to post today, so here’s a somewhat nice-looking mountain I stumbled across on Minecraft. As you can see by the post title I’ve limited myself, so I’ll only be able to do about a million of these before I need to get back to posting real content.
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Rocking My iPod: The Blocks Cometh
Name: The Blocks Cometh Genre: Platformer/Distance Price: £1.19/$1.99 Link: Double jumps! Pixel art! Robots!
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May's Notes: July 2006
As a childless man, there are things about the dark art of so-called ‘parenting’ that completely baffle me. Please don’t get me wrong here. I don’t want to bang on about how all my mates have been utterly emasculated by evening classes, where they’re expected to sit on the floor and talk about their feelings with other men. Neither is this the place to lament the way some friends, having never...
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Gallery: The KTM X-Bow
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Rocking My iPod: Tiny Wings
Name: Tiny Wings Genre: Casual/Distance Price: £0.59/$0.90 Link: Tiny Wings, big dreams
Simple as hell but oozing with charm. If you own an iPhone, you’ll likely hear about this soon. If not, buy one and then you’ll hear about this soon. You might as well just buy it now, then when it becomes popular you can tell everyone you got there first.
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Minecraft. That Is All.
I’m just getting started. More on this soon.
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Hammond's Notes: August 2009
Moaning about commonplace events and facts is something generally best left to my two esteemed Top Gear colleagues. They’re possibly the world’s best - and I really do mean that - at picking on something that the rest of us cope with quite easily, and ranting on about it for hours, and getting all red-faced and indignant.
On this occasion though, I shall add my own voice to their...
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Gallery: The Ferrari Scuderia Spider 16M
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Lenny Henry: From Cradle To Rave
To time for posts today, I’m off to see this guy. Y’all have fun now y’hear?
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Rocking My iPod: ChuChu Rocket!
Name: ChuChu Rocket! Genre: Puzzle Price: £1.79/$2.99 Link: I miss the Dreamcast
Anyone familiar with the Dreamcast’s most original and inventive cult-classic puzzler will know exactly why they need to own this game when I tell them that, nope, nothing has changed. It’s the ChuChu you know and love/hate; every puzzle is in there, multiplayer mode is in there and the game looks...
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Clarkson's Notes: July 2007
As we all know, the Citroen Picasso is bought by the sort of driver who likes to press his trousers and press wild flowers. But press on? No.
So when such a car wheezed out of a side turning in front of me yesterday, I was a bit disappointed. This was my first outing in the new Gallardo for a month, and now I was going to spend it stuck behind someone with no sense of style, no sense of...
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I Wish I'd Seen This Ten Years Ago
There’s a chance I would have picked it up at the price of £240. A decade later and you’ll be lucky to find an unopened copy going for anything less than £2750. That’s a value increase of around 1045% and as much as I like music memorabilia and rarities I just can’t see myself forking out that kind of cash for a book. I’m pretty sure it’s a fantastic...
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Gallery: The BMW Vision ConnectedDrive
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Rocking My iPod: Blockoban
Name: Blockoban Genre: Puzzle Price: £1.79/$2.99 Link: 2252 levels!
You heard right, this game is completely and utterly stuffed with content, most of which was dreamt up by you, the user. The guys over at BonusLevel are all about user-created content, which pretty much guarantees a lot of it and good value for money to boot. Assuming of course… you don’t just go and play it for...
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May's Notes: January 2007
As those of you who do me the honour of reading this column on a regular basis will know, I have pretty straightforward views on the business of saving fuel. Saving fuel is for fools. I don’t even accept that, for some people, driving is a necessary evil, and that it should be done as cheaply as possible. Driving is not necessary at all, because trains and buses are very good these days and...
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Mikko Hirvonen Wins Rally Sweden
No particularly exciting switches on the last day of the rally, Mikko Hirvonen managed to hold on to his lead throughout last six stages and grab the well-earned top podium position with a time difference of 6.5 seconds. The win marked his 13th victory at world-championship level which officially makes him Ford’s most successful driver in the WRC.
Mikko says of the result:
“It’s so...
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The Battle For Victory Heats Up
It’s all change on the third day of this year’s Rally Sweden. Mads Østberg loses his lead to Mikko Hirvonen despite Hirvonen taking a spin on SS13, a mistake that enabled Sébatien Loeb to drag his way up from 9th place overall into 6th. In all Loeb managed to place first in four of today’s stages, recouperating some of the speed and precision we’ve come to expect from the...
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Rally Sweden Is Under Way!
[Note: SS1 was actually yesterday, but one stage wasn’t much to go on.]
A somewhat confusing start to Rally Sweden this year; Per-Gunnar Andersson appeared to have the advantage on his home turf, racking up three stage wins, but ultimately let himself down with the other four, even rolling his car on SS2. He currently stands in 12th place overall.
Disappointment surrounds our friend...
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Hammond's Notes: March 2009
Every event in my life was leading to this month. And, when it finally came, the culmination of all those events, it really bloody hurt and now I can’t ride my new motorbike. Let me explain: I live in the countryside, where I get to play with my Land Rovers. A passion which can, through an early chain of events in my life, be traced back to Jimmy Saville. Though quite what chain of events...
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The Secret Of Happiness Is Freedom
…at least that’s what Thucydides says. I’m inclined to agree with him, ‘cause while there’s an almost surprising lack of actual racing to be had, Test Drive Unlimited 2 does feature an extraordinary amount of freedom, and it’s relaxing as hell. I love the more race-focused games such as Gran Turismo and Burnout, but there’s always been something missing....
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Gallery: Mitsubishi Eclipse GT
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Rocking My iPod: Moviecat!
Name: MovieCat! Genre: Trivia Price: £1.19/$1.99 Link: Meow
Like cats? Like movies? Like trivia? I think I’ve said enough.
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Clarkson's Notes: May 2010
The other day, for reasons that are not entirely clear, I decided to sit down and re-watch Armageddon, an extravagant Hollywood blockbuster in which some Americans have 18 days’ notice to try to stop a rock the size of Texas from crashing into the Earth at 22,000mph. It’s all very exciting. Paris gets wasted. So does Owen Wilson. And so, in a rather harrowing scene, do the Twin...
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People You Should Know: Stirling Moss
Quoted from Wikipedia:
Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss, OBE FIE (Fellow of the Institute of Engineers) (born 17 September 1929 in London) is a former racing driver from England. His success in a variety of categories placed him among the world’s elite – he is often called “the greatest driver never to win the World Championship”. Moss, who raced from 1948 to 1962, won 212 of the...
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Rocking My iPod: Super Stick Golf
Name: Super Stick Golf Genre: Sports/Arcade Price: £0.59/$0.99 Link: Don’t miss out!
Golf is a classic example of a genre becoming too realistic to be fun. As a general rule; if it has Tiger Woods’ name on it, avoid at all costs. Super Stick Golf on the other hand, is excellent. The sequel to plain ol’ Stick Golf only makes one major improvement but manages to...
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Gallery: The Aston Martin V12 Vantage
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May's Notes: June 2005
You may not know this, but during the First World War a certain young German corporal called Adolf Hitler narrowly avoided being shot and killed.
If I remember it rightly – I can’t actually be bothered to look it up – he was awarded a medal for gallantry after he rescued a wounded comrade from no-man’s land. It was during this incident that some unknown British or French foot-slogger, had he...
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Gallery: The Mercedes SLS AMG GT3
January 2011
23 posts
4 tags
Rocking My iPod: Gravonaut
Name: Gravonaut Genre: Retro Platformer/Running Price: £1.19/$1.99 iTunes Link: Go get it!
This game is awesome. It only took me an hour to finish with imperfect scores but I loved every last frustrating minute of it. Perhaps more than anything because of the obvious love of retro gaming the developer holds. Everything about it feels 1980s, from the graphics, to the music, to the awesome...
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People You Should Know: Lewis Hamilton
Quoted from Wikipedia:
Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton MBE (born 7 January 1985) is a British Formula One racing driver from England, currently racing for the McLaren team, and was the 2008 Formula 1 World Champion.
Hamilton was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. In December 1995, at the age of ten, he approached McLaren team principal Ron Dennis at the Autosport Awards ceremony and told him,...
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Hammond's Notes: October 2009
Young Henry Surtees is killed by a wheel hitting his head in a Formula Two race and then, just six days later, Felipe Massa sustains horrific head injuries when a suspension part hits his head following a crash. Felipe looks set to make a full recovery and return to F1. Henry, son of former double World Champion, John Surtees, died at the scene of his accident.
I’d be lying if I...
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Gallery: The Fiat 500C
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Gallery: The Pagani Huayra
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Pocketful Of Megabytes
Picked up a new one of these the other day. Let’s just be clear that this doesn’t make me one of “those” people, I actually needed an upgrade in order to write reviews for PoM, the old 2G won’t run newer games. Not that it isn’t lovely and shiny though, retina display isn’t too unlike staring into the vault at the Federal Reserve Bank.
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Clarkson's Notes: December 2000
Amazing, isn’t it. Mr Blair charges car tax, value added tax, car tax on the value added tax, tax on the petrol you put in the tank and tax from taxed income for permission to drive on the road. Then he has the gall to say that car prices are too high and that they must come down. And the car-makers, instead of telling the silly little man to get lost, said OK.
So, with prices falling and...
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People You Should Know: Ken Block
Quoted from Wikipedia:
Ken Block (born November 21, 1967, in Long Beach, California) is a professional rally racer with the Monster World Rally Team. Block is also one of the co-founders and recently appointed Chief Brand Officer of DC Shoes. Block has competed in many action sports events including skateboarding, snowboarding, motocross, and most notably rally racing.
On September 14, 2010,...
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Gallery: The Hamman Victory II
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Shepard For President
I’m going to start incorporating smaller/shorter posts into this thing. It was hard enough before trying to come up with a gallery or something insightful on a daily basis, and now I’ve been employed to write articles for Pocketful of Megabytes I have even less time on my hands. Not sure yet how I’m going to tag these new posts.
Oh, and Mass Effect 2 is an incredible game.
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May's Notes: March 2004
This month, I was going to pen an incisive and thought-provoking piece about the curious smell of the screenwash in my mate’s new BMW 3-Series. But what the hell, it’s the new year, so I’ve decided to stick with a straightforward knockabout subject: the future of transport.
But in case you’re expecting a tiresome rant about integrated strategy, or whatever it is the lefties are always going on...
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Gallery: The Citroën GQ Concept
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People You Should Know: Tommi Mäkinen
Quoted from Wikipedia:
“Turbo” Tommi Antero Mäkinen is a now retired Finnish rally driver, born in Puuppola, Finland near Jyväskylä on 26 June 1964. As of 1999 he lived in both Monaco and Jyväskylä, married, with two children. Mäkinen is one of the most successful WRC drivers of all time, ranking second in championships (4), tied with Juha Kankkunen and behind Sébastien Loeb (7),...
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Hammond's Notes: April 2009
A moment can be a big thing.
It probably took a guy called al-Jazari just ‘a moment’ in 1206 to cook up a nifty idea for turning the round-and-round motion of a water wheel into the reciprocal, back-and-forth movement of a piston in a chamber. But in doing so, he invented a concept that lies at the heart of every car engine, bicycle, motorcycle and steam train in history. I had a...
