Will

Maybe things have changed since I was at college but I really don't see how you could possibly need £30 a week to enable you to go. I understand certain families need more benifits than others and there are genuine reasons for them. This is just one I have never understood. Taking rent+bills out of the equation I doubt I spend £30 on expenses a week even now I'm working and living in central London.

That whole EMA thing pisses me off anyway, if people want to learn then they should, if you need to bribe them then why bother? Theres plenty of jobs you don't need any qualifications for, just let them do that. I wouldn't get pissed off too much with those that just take the money and don't put any effort in. Chances are they'll be on that sort of money when they're 30, with your education you'll be getting a hell of a lot more.

At the moment cyclists are really pissing me off. They go on and on about cars giving them no respect yet when it comes to pedestrians they couldn't give a flying f*ck. I'm very sorry Mr. Cyclist but yes YOU DO HAVE TO STOP AT RED LIGHTS. Argh! It really really aggrivates me, I'm getting hot under the collar just thinking about it. If one even comes close to hitting me again I swear to god they're going to get a smack up side the head.

To be fair I actually think Alonso brought a hell of a lot to the McLaren package. You don't spend 2 years in the best car without picking a few things up to take with you. His ability to set the car up and develop it will really be missed at McLaren next season, imo, they now have two young guys with no experience of this and their performance will suffer as a result. De la Rosa will do a good job up until the season starts and in between races but I fear that race weekend tweaks will see them underperform. Hopefully Renault will improve though, it would be great to have four teams capable of winning races next year.

I've always just done the thing that seems right at the time and what I enjoy. Seems to have served me well so far. When I was younger I prefered playing games to school work so thats what I did. Still managed decent GCSE's and A-Levels. Didn't feel ready for uni straight away so I spent a year messing around doing a few crappy jobs. Chose my uni based on being by the beach rather than the course or quality of uni - turned out to be a great desicion. Had a fantastic time in the sun on the beach and the course turned out to be pretty good too. It just so happened that my course included a year out which is how I ended up in my next job. Somehow landed a job as an Analyst at Panasonic which apart from the long drive was a fantastic role in a company that will always look good on my CV. Bought a good TV on staff discount and meant I could afford the 360 when that came out. After a year I was back at uni and decided to finally make a website I'd been thinking of for a few years. Taught myself PHP and MySQL as I went and the site turned out pretty good. I probably neglected my degree a little but I still passed that and ended up in the West Midlands Business Awards final for the website. All in all worked out very well. After uni I worked on the website in the summer while applying for jobs. I'd applied for a job at a games company ages before and it just so happened they had a little look at the website and decided to call me in for an interview having previously turned me down. Went in and had a chat and thats how I ended up living in London as an Analyst at a games company. Currently still doing that as well as sorting a few other web projects. Hmmm, that turned into a bit of a life story but it wasn't meant to. Anyway, what I'm really trying to say is I've never once really knew what to do with my life. I just always tried to better myself and make my desicions based around what currently feels right and is likely to lead to better times in the future. Main point being it doesn't matter if you don't have a clue what you want to do with yourself, so long as you stay true to what YOU want to be doing you can't go too far wrong.

Correct, making McLaren 22 and 23. The new cars do look nice, I look forward to seeing how they compare out on track though. Right now I can't see anyone but Kimi winning the title this year.

If you need another pad, for multiplayer maybe, then I'd say its well worth importing a DS3 rather than getting one of the UK pads. I got mine just before Christmas from yesasia.com, it came to about £32 including delivery so its cheaper too as long as the exchange rates haven't changed. Bear in mind that not all of the games have been patched to support rumble yet so there are occasions when it may as well be a regular pad. I prefer mine, bit more weight to it and rumble is something I definately missed.

All of the 60gb models are BC with PS2 games. Do you know somewhere that has them in stock? As far as I'm aware they're incredibly difficult to get hold of now.

They should be back in next week, there's a big shipment going into stores so it should be fine for at least a few weeks. Damn annoying though, it would easily have been Christmas No. 1 if it weren't for Nintendo's manufacturing problems.

It was the 25th, we haven't been told anything about the change though so I've no idea how accurate that is. I certainly hope its out next week, been waiting ages to get my hands on this game.

I'm not really sure what mine would be. Probably moving down to Bournemouth a few years ago to start uni. Moved from up in Birmingham and I reckon getting down south was the best thing I ever did. Moved to London and started working a few months ago but as I'd already worked and been away from home in the past it wasn't such a big deal. Big changes are definitely good though, I reckon I'll get itchy feet sooner or later and need another big change of some sort.

Well its really up to you, I'm not going to personally. These type of things wont fetch anywhere near what you paid for them and its not like they're suddenly going to stop working.

Its been suggested by a few other executives within Microsoft also. Its not really up to Toshiba at all, they can carry on making players for the next hundred years, if no-ones releasing anything to play on them then the format is as good as dead. With the recent happenings can you really say HD-DVD is alive even now? I don't keep up with the battle too much but will anything of note now be coming to the format exclusively? If blu-ray wins the battle, which it almost certainly has given the recent events, and it seems people are buying a PS3 soley for blu-ray support I'd say its a pretty safe bet that MS won't be too far away from releasing an add-on for the 360.

Thats true, obviously the major factor is MS don't want to support one of their most public rivals formats. They've never denied that they would support blu-ray should it become the dominant format though.

I really wouldn't worry about that, the Nintendo games are all that really matter on the Wii. I'm pretty sure MS have said before that that was one of the reasons HD-DVD wasn't included in the box. They can move over to Blu-Ray if (when) HD-DVD fails. As for those wondering how many non-gamers are buying the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player I'd say its a hell of a lot less than the amount of non-gamers buying the Wii as a toy.

Currently I'm an Analyst for a games publisher. Lots of fun, get to see new games before they're out, have access to actual sales figures so can follow arguments about which machine is better and then just state quite blatantly the actual situation. Get to do a few cool promotional things and best of all free games! Dream job would be an F1 driver, haha! Not very likely and I'm sure I wouldn't be too good at it but I'd take a pay cut for a chance. Realistic aim is to move into game production. Hopefully work a little while longer in my current role and then see what comes up. Trying to learn a bit of Japanese at the moment which would help with working on Japanese titles rather than UK or US ones.

Personally I hope Blu-Ray wins. The only reason being that my HD-DVD player (360) is far too noisy to watch a film on and my Blu-Ray player (PS3) is completely silent and most suitable for films. I'm not going to buy another player so for me that will work out best. The big problem with the whole thing is that they didn't come to an arrangement before release and get one format out there. People didn't just upgrade to DVD because it was better quality - they upgraded because they had to due to everything being on DVD and not much being on video. With Blu-Ray/HD-DVD everyone still has to release everything on DVD while the two HD formats battle it out for a winner. Once this happens I'd say the transition to HD players and movies will start moving along much faster.

I never understand how people manage to get trapped in the tube barriers. They stay open long enough for anyone capable of walking to get through easily. Theres always the larger gates they can open for you if its a problem I suppose.

Well here's mine, latest job was added today so this isn't exactly what I'd send off if actually applying for something new. The image quality isn't great due to having to convert it a couple of times. I did have a better PDF but the forum won't allow it due to the size. I think the best tips I have are: 1. Don't write CV / Curriculem Vitae on it - its obvious what it is. 2. Print it in high quality on nice thick paper. Then don't bend it, so as others have said, send it in a nice A4 envelope.

Good idea, will post mine up soon. Just a quick thought though - I'd take your address/phone details off for internet posting.

Your really not missing out on much if you don't get them. Unless your a total mong they're the biggest waste of time ever.

Bought myself a 4GB Asus EEE PC today. Really liking it so far - a nice early Christmas present.

My next games will probably be Ghost Squad and NiGHTS when I get my copies off work. Might pick up a few things in the sales if theres some interesting deals though.

McMad's method of showing the best games is a sound one. Its certainly the way we do it to analyse quality of games and the relationship to sales. The key point is that on the Wii quality really doesn't matter, theres very little correlation between review score and sales of a title. For the 360 it's very important, better games have much better sales and the correlation is quite distinct. All of this shows that there are very different overall consumer bases for the two machines. One with the hardcore gamers who want to play the best a machine has to offer, and one with a casual userbase who aren't really that interested in critical success, they just want to have fun.

1 Do you play videogames? [Y/N] Yes 2 In your own words, please describe your definition of a 'gamer' Someone who plays video games. 3 Would you consider yourself any of the following: [multi] - Hardcore gamer - Casual gamer - Console gamer [only playing games consoles as opposed to using a PC] - Retro gamer [only playing games/consoles deemed 'retro'] - Import gamer [importing games from Japan/America] 4 Describe your use of videogames? [multi] - Recreational - Relaxation - Escapism 5 How much time do you spend playing video games? - 1-2 hours 6 What is/are your preferred genre/s? [multi] - Adventure - FPS - Platformers - Multiplayer games - Sports - Racing - Simulation - Fighting - Fantasy - Sci-fi - Party games 7 Where do you mainly play videogames? In my lounge. 8 What consoles do you own? - Microsoft Xbox - Microsoft Xbox 360 - Nintendo Wii - Nintendo DS - Sony Playstation 3 - PC - Other Saturn, Mega Drive, N64, Dreamcast, Gameboy, Master System, NES, Mega CD, Jaguar. 9 Do you engage in other forms of media, if so what are they? [multi] - TV - Film - Books 10 What is/are your preferred genre/s? [multi] - Action adventure - Sci-fi - Fantasy - Classical - Documentary - Reality - Crime / Detective - Mystery 11 Are you male or female? [M/F] Male 12 How old are you? 22-30 13 What is your ethnic background? - CaucasiAn