February 26, 2008

EA Free The Sims Online

As I posted on Mental Gamers...

I remember back when The Sims were advertised on TV and I didn't have a PC at the time, I wanted that game, but alas, it was not to be due to insufficient means.

I got a PC in late 2001 and bought The Sims - Collector's Edition around mid 2002 and I was a happy bunny. After a while I thought, "Wow!, This would be great online." and at the end of 2002, The Sims Online was born ... but .. it wasn't free to play. This was a setback since I don't want to pay to play games online, so I had to give it a miss...

...UNTIL NOW!
I would like to introduce you to EA-Land, a world that is free-to-play, and based on a re-engineered The Sims Online architecture. Yes, free. If you played The Sims Online before, we have played together and I would like you to rejoin us in the game: My avatar is MaxisLuc (yes, I work for Maxis/EA). At the beginning of last year I assembled a team to improve The Sims Online. After months of ongoing hard work, we can say proudly that we have been successful and we have made this game fun again!

  • Former Members Of The Sims Online: You can come back for FREE right now by just downloading the game and REACTIVATING your account. If you do so before March 2008, you will get your earned 'account based' privileges back (gifts, skill locks etc...) when we run our 'amnesty' program. So make sure you are in game before that event!

  • New to EA-Land and The Sims Online: Sign up for free!

I don't care what anyone thinks, I'm a self-confessed fan of The Sims and to me, this is great news. For more info and links to anything and everything else about EA Land, visit the official EA Land site. See you online.. ;)

February 25, 2008

80th Academy Awards Winners

The full list of winners and nominees of the 80th Academy Awards.

Best picture
Winner - No Country For Old Men
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood

Best director
Winners - Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men
 Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jason Reitman, Juno
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

Best actor
Winner - Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
 George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

February 22, 2008

February 19, 2008

Lohan poses nude, hopefully never again

I've seen Lindsey Lohan looking absolutely gorgeous and to be fair, with all the make-up plastered on and her hair done right, she's a top stunner.

You've probably already heard and/or seen that she did a Marylin Monroe nude photoshoot recently and after seeing the pictures, let's hope she doesn't do another one without make-up ever again. She's 21, her body looks double that.

You can find the images on my WordPress blog as this is only a backup and I can't be arsed to upload them to here.

February 18, 2008

Amazon, of fail & win

I ordered a set of Sennheiser CX300 Eco Ear Canal Headphones Black last week and they were delivered this morning. As mentioned on amazon, "Packaging made from 78 per cent recycled paper, 100 per cent recyclable, NO plastics, NO glues", note the parts in bold.

Oops, now I'm sure they didn't mean to put the box in a plastic bag now did they?! I mean, this is supposed to be Eco packaging of which can be completely recycled, the rest seems ok, but what's this...

Oh dear, someone has accidentally used sticky tape to seal the plastic bag, would that constitute as glue?

I think it does and not only that, a naughty vandal has defaced the bottom of the box and main packaging with stickers...

Now why would someone go and do something like that? :(

I know it's only a bit of plastic and 'glue' and this post is only meant in jest to be pedantic about what's said is one thing, what's done is another, but it would be better if they mentioned the fact that there could be 'other' packaging involved.

That's the fail part, now for the win.
Amazon have deals of the week, something I've never really taken notice of ... until today.

I said to someone a while ago that knowing my luck, I would go and order the House boxset from zavvi for £50, only for it to drop about £10 a week later. So, I didn't and decided to wait and see if it became cheaper ... and it did. Amazon have it as a 'deal of the week' for just £41.97, so before it inevitably goes up in price once it starts selling (amazon have a habit of raising the price of items that sell well, even in sales), I've ordered it and should hopefully get it delivered by around Friday/Saturday.

3 posts in one day, must be some kind of record... :o

New DS homebrew stuff

Just a couple of things I thought might be of interest to some of you DS homebrewers out there.

The first is Pocket Physics, something you may have seen before on YouTube called Crayon Physics, but the DS version has been updated to 0.4 and is available to download from the official site.

The second thing is that Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe has been released on the DS, but is still in Alpha stage, details of that can be found on the OTTD forums.

February 14, 2008

A grand day out

Had a rather nice day out today by going into Birmingham to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets of which, there are bits in the trailer that were different to the film that I can't be bothered going into right now due to being tired.
Cinema Ticket
Anyway, I enjoyed it, it's a good action/adventure film of which was worth sitting through half an hour of adverts and trailers and then 2 hours of film. I'm a fan of Nicolas Cage, but was surprised to see some other top names in there like Helen Mirren, Diane Kruger, Ed Harris, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel that made the film that bit more worthwhile. The only moan I have about it is that the quality was pretty crap, considering it's a film that only launched in the UK last Friday and has been played less than 20 times, it had a green line running down it a couple of times and the picture actually flickered, I thought cinemas were better quality than that, especially Odeon cinemas.

After seeing the film and going to get something to eat, we had a walk around and took a look in zavvi who had a bloody good priced Family Guy season 1-6 boxset at £65, it's an exclusive boxset which contains just the DVD's in their slim cases, but hey, it's a darn good set. I went and added a new 7" pictured vinyl to my small collection, this time it was Alter Bridge - Ties That Bind / The Damage Done and for £3, I just had to get it.

It was a good day out of which we all enjoyed, made a change from sitting around the house all day...

February 12, 2008

Justin Currie UK Acoustic tour

Who? Most people probably won't know who he is without visiting Google, so to save you that little trip, he's the man behind Del Amitri and he's doing an acoustic tour in March.

23rd – Manchester, Late Room
24th – Edinburgh, Pleasance Cabaret Bar
25th – Birmingham, Glee Club
26th – Cardiff, Glee Club
27th – London, Bush Hall
28th – Brighton, Komedia

I only post YouTube vids when I need to since I prefer to actually blog about stuff rather than fill this space with endless videos like as seen on other blogs of people that are so boring, they think it's necessary to put 5 videos in a post.

Anyway, I'd like to post this Justin Currie vid of him performing No Surrender live which is an awesome track from his album, What Is Love for.


{Edit}Tickets for the Birmingham gig have been ordered! Rcoker

February 07, 2008

R4 Kernel 1.15

It's been out for a little while now, but not many appeared to have announced it.

Update R4 v1.15 kernel 2008-1-8
1）Solved the 1905 problem

The problem is to do with Luxor - Pharaohs Challenge, but as said by Pilot_51 in the DCemu forums:
Why are they only fixing problems with licensed games? They're promoting piracy that way which in turn harms the homebrew community. I mean the last 4 releases only fixed one licensed game per release and did nothing else. If they would at least do something else with the patches like add the SDHC compatibility they promised something like 3 months ago, I wouldn't have such a problem with it.
As much as I like my R4, this is making me want to stop promoting R4 and find something else that puts the focus on homebrew.
Which is true, instead of just fixing problems with 'backups', lets try and focus on what the R4 is supposed to be about, homebrew.

Anyway, to download the latest update, click here.

February 06, 2008

February 04, 2008

Bender to finally score in the UK

Bender’s Big Score DVDHoorah for random browsing of the interbutts!

Well, maybe not that random, but while on amazon, I noticed a link to Futurama - Bender's Big Score which didn't have 'Region 1' by it, so thusly I clickedeth upon it.

It turns out that the Region 2 DVD is set to hit the UK on...

APRIL 7TH

Which is, strangely, on a Friday. DVD's are normally released on Mondays in the UK, then again, I received Family Guy Blue Harvest on the Saturday before the Monday it was officially released, so...

Anyway, I'm not sure who I'll be pre-ordering/ordering it from yet as the price seems to be around £10.74 at the moment, but from sites I don't normally shop from.

Down with the sickness

Not only is it a great song by Disturbed from their album, The Sickness, but it's also what I'm afflicted with.

As usual, one of the kids had caught a cold, so she had a week off school and that was that .. until daughter number two caught it. She suffered mainly from a fever for the first week, then she had a cold for the second week which she has now kindly passed onto her loving parents. :(

This won't be a very productive week from me, so for those of you that visit here and/or especially Mental Gamers, once this fever/cold really kicks in, things will most likely come to a standstill for a while.

February 02, 2008

The MMORPG bug has bitten

Hmm, I never thought I would like an MMORPG, but I was offered a copy of Lineage II with the latest expansion, The Kamael to review and I'm rather liking it.
One reason I didn't fancy playing something like Guild Wars was due to it being PvP, Player versus Player and I'd rather play co-op style where you and a bunch of others go against monsters and stuff. Now I know you can do that, but what you also do is when in a clan or guild, you battle against other people, ala PvP and that's what I'm not really into.

I don't care if it sounds wussy, but that's just the kind of gaming I prefer, I'm not a fan of deathmatch type games, been there and done that yada yada... I'm just going around doing quests and enjoying it in Lineage II, so much so, I'm even thinking of installing Guild Wars Nightfall which was something else I received to review when it was first released, but didn't play due to my old PC being crap and if I can do the same kind of thing in that without having to worry about having to fight other people and just run around doing quests and stuff, then I'd enjoy it very much.

Maybe as time went on and I built up a decent character, then I could think about joining a guild or something, but as it is, I'm just happy doing my own thing. :)
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