Notting Hill Carnival 2007

Pretty crowded as usual. The massive police were operation was justified. We personally witnessed three raids in which kevlar vests were involved! Despite the presence of troublemakers the majority of the crowd were good natured.



















Chicks playing footie in Bayswater!




Related posts: Notting Hill 2005 and 2006

Video games blamed for the killing of Rhys Jones?

The suspects has not been identified yet and the motif has not been established by the police, but the unfortunate killing of 11 year old Everton fan Rhys Jones has resulted in certain quarters coming out to blame video games yet again.

In today's The Times' "Letters to the Editor" in which the headline was 'A nation brutalised by drugs and computers', a commentator from West Sussex wrote in reply to the clearly uninformed piece by Emma Majony that chastised the "violence depicted in PlayStation games freely available to children of all ages" claiming that with even reputable mainstream dailies reviewing video games, the battle against video games has been lost.

Video games are available to children of all ages only if their parents allow them to obtain it. It is the same case as television, films, music, books and magazines. And even then there is no clear evidence that video games (or indeed any forms of media, whether print of electronic) can act as a stimuli for violence.

And to Ms. Majony, your son kicked the shoe stand not because he was influenced by a crap Simpsons game, but because you did not teach him that it was wrong to kick a shoe stand.

Leipzig Games Convention 2007 link dump

Live text Sony press conference here. Announced Tivo-like function for PS3. Redesigned PSP will arrive in Europe next month in boring black, white or silver. Two boring film tie-in special editions will also be available (Simpsons and Spiderman). No Europe PS3 proper price cut or Dual Shock 3 announced. Conference mainly made up of fluffware for non-gamer journos and lifestyle people. Grrr...

New Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer reveals four new bosses. Looks hot. Europe won't get screwed, Kojima promised. Video maybe tomorrow.

Nominations for best of Leipzig Games Convention 2007 right here.

PS2 Rock Band exclusive track list. Still do not know what the fuss is about. Get a real guitar people and form a real band! And learn to play Faith No More properly.

Iga developing yet another Castlevania DS... maybe another PSP version as well.

Still no sign of a proper next-gen Rayman platformer. If mini-games is your thing (which shouldn't be a problem considering 90% of Wii titles are mini-games) check out the new gameplay videos from Rayman Raving Rabbids 2.

Nintendo still turning its back on conventional video gaming. Ridiculous Wii Chess apparently in sight. Nothing new will be announced, instead time will be spent gloating about Wii success to journos. WHERE ARE THE GAMES???

"PlayStation 3 is very much benefiting from Gears of War. That sounds silly, but it's very much benefiting from Gears of War"

With waggle wand wonder, 3rd party Wii developers aren't even trying any longer. Check out this mobile phone game, to be released on Wii soon.
Konami announces new Track & Field for DS!

Half of Germany will be video gamers in three years time.

Far Cry 2 looks lovely. Not as lovely as Crysis though.

Nokia announced details on new N-Gage platform. Hope it doesn't suck. Will target more casual gamers. Someone better reminds Nokia that S60v3 sucks without more RAM.

Updates over the next few days

Upcoming DS games

My copy of Gyakuten Saiban 3 DS is due here soon and I can't wait to battle prosecutor Godot. Expect a review sometime next week, maybe. While waiting you can read my impressions on GS1 and GS2.

With Heroes of Mana, Atlus' sRPG Luminous Arc and a proper DS Harvest Moon Rune Factory, this summer games draught is finally coming to an end (what an awful summer).

UK games draught continues though, unless you do the right thing by importing.

Gyakuten Saiban 3

My copy of Gyakuten Saiban 3 DS is due here soon and I can't wait to battle prosecutor Godot. Expect a review sometime next week, maybe. While waiting you can read my thoughts on GS1 and GS2.

With Heroes of Mana, Atlus' sRPG Luminous Arc and a proper DS Harvest Moon Rune Factory, this summer games draught is finally coming to an end (what an awful summer).

UK games draught continues though.

Cassiobury Park, Watford

This is only our second visit to Watford just on the edge of the M25. It isn't as bad a borough as its reputation. There is plenty of greenery everywhere. We noticed that the shopping district is massive, as the fairly large Harlequeen shopping central is just situated next to the long high street. Watford's public transport network seems to be piss poor. While there are many railway lines into London, we noticed that automobiles rule here. There is hardly any cycle lanes and the bus service is shoddy at best.

Pictures of Cassiobury Park taken with mobile cam:






Don't forget tonight's meteor shower.

GayGamer target of vile homophobic attack

Things like this is why I sometimes dislike the video gaming community.

For those in the know, the majority of gaming sites has a main target readership of 15-25 year old male heterosexuals. Don't believe me. Visit any one of the mainstream video gaming sites and tell me it isn't so. Every time a discussion involving characters like Raiden (who is actually straight) or games like Singstar pop ups you will no doubt be treated with vile homophobic related comments. It truly sickens me.

Fact is our hobby isn't dominated by us straight men any longer. Females like my girlfriend and her girlie mates are into it. Our gay friends love playing their PS2 consoles and World of Warcraft as much as they do with each other. It is about time we abandon an out of date prejudice, based on a thousand year old book written by relic old dead people, and accept people for who they are. LGBT are normal people, and many of them like to play video games as well.

I am glad that the people at GayGamer.net are working hard to fix the problem. It is one of the better gaming blogs out there, even for straight gamers.

Brighton Pride 2007

Today was the annual Brighton Pride. Despite the city filled with "sinful" people, we were blessed with warm sunny weather throughout the day, again proving the Church of England is made up of stupid people. We later spend most of the day on the seafront, trying to catch up with 2 months worth of skin darkening sun.






















The homophobic bigots (or "godis" as one fellow commented) from the fascist vile hate group Christian Voice were protesting near the entrance to Preston Park, banging on about nonsensical scriptures and waving miniature bibles. They were pretty subdued though. Twenty of them versus 150,000 revellers? Not a chance. There were actually twice as many police to protect them...



Related posts: Brighton Pride Parade and Festival 2006