McPhee

I'll wait for the game to come down in price. Paying £39.99 for the game, then £9.99/month is a bit steep really. If I don't like it then I stand to loose a good £20-£25 selling it on because the initial 30-day sub will be gone.

No, they're always down south because there's jack shit to do in most northern cities other than drink. Personally I think that's a good thing, the beer up here is better, much cheaper and there's less stuff to distract you from drinking it. The tee-totalers wouldn't like it though

Orange San Francisco without any shadow of a doubt. Unlock it using; http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blade-blade-modaco-com/322848/free-sim-unlock-codes-for-orange-san-francisco-and-zte-blade/

Dead State has me intrigued. It'll probably be shit (it's from the guy behind 'Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines') but it's an interesting concept. Pretty sure I'll be picking up this lot before the year is out: PC DCU Online/SW: The Old Republic/AoE Online (not all 3, too much MMO!) Bulletstorm Crysis 2 Dragon Age 2 Deus Ex: Human Revolution The Witcher 2 TES: Skyrim (unless there's co-op, in which case I'll get it on 360) Batman: Arkham Asylum Guild Wars 2 DiRT 3 360 Marvel vs Capcom 3 Ghost Recon Portal 2 Hitman 5 Mass Effect 3 Gears of War 3 Duke Nukem Forever (got faith in this one now Gearbox have bought it) La Noir Plus others if they turn out to be any good (Darkspore, Warhammer, Alice, Diablo 3, Children of Eden, anything else that crops up over the year). So tempted by a PS3 looking at it's 2011 line-up, but don't think I'll have the time/money for this lot without adding more (plus I'd have to play through the first two Uncharted and Resistance games to get up to speed).

This is actually quite a scary thought. I wonder how much of my life so far I've spent playing video games? Months? Years? The most time spent playing one game has to be pretty close between Team Fortress 2, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, Perfect Dark, Smash Bros. Melee, Timesplitters 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004 (can use the work excuse on the last one though, earned my place at uni through the mods I worked on). Most completed is definitely Super Mario Bros. 3. Got All Stars for Christmas 1993 and Mario 3 quickly became my favourite. No idea how many times I'd completed it by the time I got my N64 in 1999 but I gather it was a lot.

Top 5 albums for me were; 1. Brothers - The Black Keys 2. How I Got Over - The Roots 3. This Is Happening - LCD Soundsystem 4. Only Revolutions - Biffy Clyro 5. Le Noise - Neil Young Plenty of other quality ones this year though, along with two in particular that I'm yet to get (Spoon and Arcade Fire - thought I was getting them for Christmas but it seems no). Oddly I've not been to a single gig this year. Picked up tickets to see BRMC and LCD/Hot Chip but missed both due to flu

It's tomorrow's 12 Days of Christmas download so grab it quick, will prob only be free for 48 hours.

Yup. Should be in the Control Panel. Network and Sharing settings or something? Been a long time since I last used XP (first Vista beta, so over 5 years ago now!) so I can't remember the exact menu layout, but it should be something like that.

The chopper in Vietnam is the UH-1 Huey. That's why it's got weapons. The Blackhawk is primarily a troop transport whereas the Huey was the first real attack helicopter. It's smaller than the Blackhawk and rather vulnerable to small arms fire (as all helicopters were in that time period, the US lost near 5000 in 'Nam!).

Some cracking tunes on this album. Downloaded it a while ago but only just got around to listening to it. Not sure if I prefer it to How I Got Over by The Roots though, one of the two is definitely my Hip-Hop album of the year.

I'm just after Left 4 Dead/2 and Team Fortress 2 for gifts, not too bothered about anything else at the moment. Too much to play and I don't use the PC much any more. Still, been some cracking bargains! Was really tempted by Dead Rising 2 and Borderlands GOTY.

I figured this board needed a sole HDTV thread because most of the threads in here are questions about which TV to buy. In this guide i'll go through a glossary of terms, an outline of where the industry is now and where its going in the future, a brief buying guide detailing what to look out for and what to avoid and a list of good tvs at various budgets. I'll start with a brief description of the different types of TV sets (because its late and this will only take me 10 mins): Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) - The classic style TV set. Its being phased out now, first in favour of Plasma and now in favour of LCD. General Advantages: - Cost - CRTs are very cheap, especially when compared to Plasma Advantages over LCD: - Higher refresh rates/response times - Makes the picture appear more fluid - Better colour clarity - Wider viewing angle In short, a CRT produces a better picture than LCD but it does have its drawbacks: Disadvantages: - Bulky - Heavy - High power consumption - Display is analogue so some loss in quality from digital sources - Potential screen burn Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) - The new boy on the scene. These sets are relatively cheap, small, light, power efficient and they are getting better at a fast rate. LCD is on its way up and will be the standard very shortly Advantages: - Relatively cheap - Small and light - Power efficient - Good colour reproduction - Perfect sharpness at native resolution - No screen burn Disadvantages: - Fixed resolution - Poor contrast ratio - Handles blacks poorly - Dead pixels can be a problem - Low viewing angle - Low refresh rate Plasma - Plasma screens are expensive but they produce a great picture. This technology has been on its way out for years but companies like Pioneer and Panasonic continue to push it with great results. Although the market has shifted towards LCD, Panasonic, Pioneer and other Plasma specialists still produce TVs that prove that LCD still hasnt quite made the grade. Advantages: - Good contrast ratios - Excellent colour reproduction - Excellent viewing angle - Handles blacks well Disadvantages: - Heavy - Expensive - Power hungry - Susceptible to screen burn - Fragile Sorry about the lack of an update, i am working on it but as it turns out a decent glossary takes a lot of work. Thought about cutting and pasting but cant find a decent up-to-date one so been going about this the old fashioned way...

I picked up Gears 2 recently to give multiplayer another go. Imagine my annoyance when I found out that I can't play multiplayer because I don't have the map packs! Suddenly that cheap (4 for £20) game is either no longer cheap, or it's worthless. I'm not against DLC, but stuff like that really annoys me. Had a similar problem with CoD:WaW, got booted back to the main menu every time a DLC map came up. I bought it about a month before MW2 came out so there was no way I was about to part with money for multiplayer DLC.

I've kinda mellowed lately. I used to drink a lot and wouldn't say no to a spot of weed if it was there. Don't really bother these days though. Different circles. The people I knew who smoked heavily are a bit fucked up now (to varying degrees) so I'm glad I never really got caught up in it. The drinking habbit has been cut down massively too, I buy good quality stuff and drink it because I like the taste, rather than because I want to get drunk.

Ohh. Stupid Dice. The game told me I needed to update to play online and took me to the marketplace to buy "BFBC2 Vietnam Multiplayer Update" at 1.64GB. I just assumed that something with that name and that filesize would be the Vietnam update, not enforced preloading for an update that I may/may not buy.

It's out on the 360 now. Just started downloading. Weighs in at a massive 1.64GB! free though which is awesomely unexpected (haven't read anythingon it since the firt announcement).

I'm not so sure it's a matter of success, more one of life fulfillment. If bringing up a family helps you achieve a full life then that's the important thing. It's actually quite a scary thing to think about. I haven't planned to get married or have kids, but then if I think forward to when I'm 50 do I really want to be alone? If I compare my dad's life to his sister' then is certainly looks a lot warmer and more appealing (she never got married or had kids). I'm in no position to think seriously about either right now though, my life is unlikely to settle until I'm past 30 and building my own restaurant/deli.

Had a similar issue with T-Mobile, except there were outstanding charges that caused them to put a black mark on my credit rating. CS wouldn't speak to me as I didn't have an active T-Mobile phone number, and as such I couldn't settle the balance. Managed to get an email address for someone quite high up the company by asking around mobile phone related sites (think it was the CS director or some such) and he got it sorted pretty quicj, waving all charges as an apology. I'd try MSE and What Mobile forums for a start.

FUUUUUUK YEAH! Can't wait. Been after a new Elder Scrolls game since Oblivion, never really got in to Morrowind. Please give us some sort of co-op this time tho... Please!

Oh it ain't easy. The opposite in fact, I was almost constantly out of ammo until I managed to afford the Rock-It Launcher. Now I'm just out-gunned. I might just start again. I tired to balance stats across a number of different skills, but now I'm thinking going all-in on combat would have been more sensible?

Picked up Fallout 3 this week. I'm not sure if I'm missing something or not, but it feels very 'meh'. Even after two years it's still buggy/glitchy with performance issues, the story ain't really grabbing me (not far in tho, just left Vault 112), the gunplay doesn't really stand up to today's shooters and the weapons feel crap. It has given me a desire to go out and buy Borderlands again though, a game which I enjoyed far more than this one on account of the co-op, awesome guns, awesome gunplay and vehicles (no trekking across sparse landscape for 15 minutes to get to the objective!).

I hadn't really given it any thought, it looks good on my TV regardless. However, now I'm looking more closely I'd wager it's still 720p scaled up to 1080p. It's missing that overall sharpness that I see on Blu-Ray disks. I've been quite disappointed by the latest dashboard update tbh. I was expecting Zune, Facebook, Twitter etc. to be fully integrated in to the dashboard instead of being separate programs. Would be wicked to be able to play Zune Music tracks while playing a game. Hopefully it'll be in next year's update along with Zune Marketplace (i.e. apps), a web browser and IPTV (I can dream lol).

You actually are getting an 8GB iPod Touch though, there is no con. The confusion comes from the dawn of computing, when it was deemed acceptable to term binary values with decimal names. As such, 1KB was 1024B, not 1000B as the name would suggest. This caused a problem where 1KB could be two different values, either 1000B or 1024B depending on which scale you are using. This was put right in 2005, the binary KB was renamed KiB (or kibibyte), MB became MiB or Mibibyte, and so on upwards. Now, 1000B is 1KB and 1024B is 1KiB. So, when you are sold an 8GB iPod Touch what you get is 8 Billion bytes. What the OS sees is 7.45GiB (with the unit shown as GB), still 8 Billion bytes. The problem is the use of KB, MB, GB etc. as binary values is so engrained in society now that they can't really be dropped from common usage. While KiB, MiB, GiB etc. will become the norm in the world of computer science they are very unlikely to ever replace the old units; to do so would cause even more confusion.

Part of it is the difference between GB and GiB. Storage is sold in GB, Operating Systems work in GiB, the difference between the two being about 7% (or roughly half of your "missing" storage). The rest has gone to formatting and the OS.

Any room for a late entry? Or wait on a new tourney?