I’m still feeling a little under the weather. Normally when I’m ill I just sleep it off and I’m fine as soon as I wake up, that’s not working this time but for some reason I haven’t lost my appetite like I normally do. I just feel dizzy and tired all the time, even if I’ve just woken up.

I could moan about it but any awake time I’ve had has been spent watching 30 Rock and creating e-shots – nothing to do with drugs, no matter how many times people make drug jokes about them – to pay the bills. So all in all, I don’t have that much to moan about.

The third thing I’ve been doing is playing through VVVVVV – expect a revvvvvview of this charming game on Nidzumi later in the week. Anyone who has played it, check out the credits – or wait until you completed the game like I did – and you’ll see fellow oneadayer, Jaz McDougall. That freaked the hell out of me.

Anyway I promise I’ll have more coherent posts as soon as I can shake off, what is probably, man flu.

I’d like to sit here and write an interesting post but I woke up last night with stabbing pains near my heart and have felt weird ever since. I’d go on but, this should be brief – Long story, short, I’m feeling a little under the weather at the moment.

So instead of writing something entirely original I’ll simply encourage you to check out the 2nd annual, Top 10 Most Anticipated list over at Nidzumi. Bioshock and Heavy Rain make the list for the second year running and APB, Yakuza 3 and Mafia 2 – again featured in last year’s list – were considered. Hopefully all of this year’s list will come out this year. Honestly though, I reckon that Fallout Vegas and possibly Fable 3 will be pushed back to 2011. Anyway I’ll stop giving the list away.

Here’s the list with write ups by Daniel Lipscombe, Steven Wright, Adrian Marchisio and yours truly.

Enjoy

Last night I, for the lack of a better term, re-connected with a an old friend from college over Xbox Live. After a few pathetic attempts at Modern Warfare 2 we decided that the reminiscing would be complete with a few matches of our go-to playlist, Halo 3′s excellent Team Doubles. I was sceptical to say the least, surely this game couldn’t hold up, surely nobody was playing it any more.

The six thousand players on the Team Doubles playlist alone probably says more about ODST than anything else but I was astonished by how quickly we got into a game. I know my stuff when it comes to games – unless they involve quests and levelling up – so I know how big the Halo community is. Nevertheless I was a little shocked with how quickly we got into the swing of things. The memories promptly flooded back.

One loss at The Pit was immediately followed by a sticky grenade laden affair on Guardian. Ridiculously fun and still accessible after nearly thirty months since the release. I was a little bit disappointed when we hopped back on to Snowbound as they’ve removed a bunch of the shields, a small complaint I know but I loved the standoffs they created.

It’s surprising to see how far we’ve come in just a short space of time – I’m not exaggerating, the frame rate in Halo 3 is awful compared to Modern Warfare 2. Otherwise the game is still as solid as it’s always been.

I’ve been so preoccupied with keeping up with the Joneses that I started to neglect my humongous back-collection of quality titles. I’m not saying I’m going to go back through my pile of shame but I’d like to invite everyone to grab their controllers and a fresh dust cloth – enjoy an earlier release that you once loved.

Despite spending most of my time either playing games that I’ll write about or writing about them, I’ve always dreaded writing essays. I find that the vague thirty word title as a brief and a high word count tends to result in bad writing.

I’ve recently had to write one on ‘a force’ that has affected change for consumers, naturally I went with what I knew and picked communications technology – namely the internet. I always feel like I’m cheating when I’m writing an essay on something I know, especially after my last essay when I conveniently wrote about video games so I could post it on Nidzumi afterwards.

I think I’ll have to take an oath – an internet oath, so you know I’m serious – that for the next essay I’ll write about something I’m not knowledgeable on.

My main reason for hating essays is the word count concept – what ever happened to quality not quantity, that’s what all our other non-essay giving lecturers say. I can understand that it’s just a ‘tradition’ but high word counts lead to ridiculously long and strung out points. A real challenge would be to give us a massive topic to sum up in like 250 words, that way we would have to punchy and concise. I’d happily do 250 words on a different subject every week, hell, I do it here on this blog everyday now.

I just had a two hour experience that just re-affirmed what I already thought – you can’t traditionally teach someone software, trial and error really is the best way.

Today we’ve started an interactive (fancy term for web design) module (fancy term for unit) and everyone has resorted to using the code destroyer that is, Dreamweaver. Now it’s pretty high up here on this pedestal, but anyone looking to seriously learn web design shouldn’t be using WYSIWYG editors and should be looking to know code like the back of their hand. I think fumbling your way through clumsy programs is the worst way of learning something, sure you’ll have something that might work but you won’t understand how. You’ll also have to partake in that clumsy process every single time.

Also, someone throwing barrels of information is the worst way to gather any kind of knowledge. You’ll know how someone else has done something but when it comes to something you don’t know, you’re more than likely to just bail out and ask ‘the source’. This old way of lecturing can’t be applied to high tech software, it’s like square peg in a round hole and people should just learn by doing.

Rant over. I guess I’m just bitter for paying to have two hours of my life… well, I wouldn’t say wasted.

Oh and if you’re wondering about the title, the lecturer muddled up the crime in one of his awfully West London sounding analogies. I spent more time giggling at that. Real mature, I know.

I’ll keep this one short as I’ve got an essay to write.