I haven’t made any New Years Resolutions in quite some time, and I rarely tried to stick to them when I did in the past, however this year I want to give it a shot. So here are my resolutions for this year! Health – part 1 For quite some time I’ve known I am overweight and...

  After the success of the Lord of the Rings films Peter Jackson returns to produce The Hobbit in full ‘technicolor’, this time complete with 48 frames per second versions of the movie (something which I’m not particularly convinced by). Plot Whilst I realise that Peter...

This year my present was a shiny new graphics card (my thanks to my folks)! Specifically the Gigabyte HD7870 2Gb OC version which is a pretty tasty piece of kit, and a substantial jump up from the Radeon HD4870 which I had previously in terms of overall performance. This was purely for additional power in terms of gaming, and indeed in Starcraft 2 all of my settings immediately jumped to their highest which was nice to see.

Of course it wouldn’t be my latest PC without there being some teething issues!

I have no idea how many people experience genuine insomnia in their lives. Maybe everyone has it at least once, maybe brought on due to stress or self induced through too much intake of stimulants like caffeine. Chronic and repetitive insomnia though is something I’m confident very few...

On a whim I decided about two weeks ago to give this a game a shot since I hadn’t actually played it, but had heard that it was worth a shot. How little did I know … Gameplay The biggest thing about this game is that the it is simple enough to play, yet you can make so many...

Simultaneously relaxing and frustrating at times Osmos is a game of such simple premise yet with a great puzzle challenge which makes it thoroughly enjoyable.

When it comes to carrying your stuff, not your shopping but rather your camera say, in my opinion there is only one brand which is worth going with. Crumpler.

As part of my ongoing personal project to clear out all the stuff I really don’t need from my life I realised I have literally hundreds of books. This shouldn’t be of great surprise to most since I worked for a publishing wing for over a decade, plus I like books generally speaking. However I very rarely read a book twice and the sheer amount of space these take up is just too much. So instead of hoarding them forever I figure why not offer them to a new home and turn them into a little spending cash for myself in the meantime?

Every once in a while you come across a true gem on Youtube and recently I came across these series of “Honest trailers” where a group of enthusiasts have cut together their own trailers for box office movies. Instead of the classic marketing script for the voice over they pick out flaws, faults and cliches whilst still making it sound enthusiastic for the most part. The comic timing is great and well worth a watch! Below are my favourites but there are a couple more, and undoubtedly more to come.

Following on from seeing Dredd and several other remake / reboot movies over the last few months I decided I had to go and see the 2012 version of Total Recall. The Arnie version is practically comical now if you watch it back with one liners littered throughout the script, so when I saw this trailer and got the impression it was trying to take the concept a little more seriously it had me intrigued.

I recently purchased a pair of Carl Zeiss lenses (50mm and 135mm) on eBay for my Canon 500D camera (using an adapter, they aren’t EF mount so everything is manual, but they were quite cheap). When they arrived this morning I obviously had to give the 50mm a quick test! The result? This set of photos…

There have been so many “reboot” films lately that when I originally heard there would be a new Dredd film I groaned a little, then thought that actually perhaps the Stallone one could do with being knocked off that spot. If I’m honest the fact that you saw his face in the 1995 film (yes, it was almost 20 years ago) meant that the film was more a riding on the name of the lead actor and other stars than the character. So my friend Pete and I decided we wanted to give it a shot, so off to the Savoy we toddled.

Those who know me are aware that I have run a couple of triathlons now and am gradually getting better at it as I improve my fitness and learn more about the sport. It began really as something which I always fancied the idea of and when I got the chance to actually take part in an event it gave me the push to make good on my desire to regain a higher level of fitness than my desk job laziness had created.

The third, and final, part of Christopher Nolan’s rebooted Batman films had to contend with Avengers Assemble in the media but as I had enjoyed the previous two films I looked forward to seeing it at my local Savoy cinema here in Nottingham.

Read on for my commentary on the plot, Bale’s return to a strong performance and my reservations about the ending.

As part of our annual trip to Scotland to see my parents it seemed only fitting that we take mini-me to see Brave, so armed with two Orange phones we headed over to the Cineworld in Dundee for some entertainment.

Since it was mini-me’s birthday I gave him the treat of going to the cinema. A proper, popcorn in hand, father and son visit to enjoy a film of his choosing. On this occasion it was The Lorax, apparently he was really looking forward to seeing it so off we went!

In the first part I talked about the core components of the system which I chose for this upgrade, namely the motherboard, processor, CPU cooler and RAM. These will let a machine turn on but of course aren’t enough for you to actually run Windows and applications, for that you need...