Scary Biscuits

Well I have been playing with rabbits the last couple of days, and not in a weird way. Its just my graphics coursework has been working with rabbits. Here is an example of the rabbit not playing ball:

So I decided to shrink wrap it:

Anyway enough of that, oh my Xbox has arrived at home, only 15 days now till I can get my hands on it to play. Looking forward to it, and if Gears of Wars ever arrives (bloody Amazon) is supposed to be stunning.

I have been using Xbox 360 accessory shopping as a distraction from preparing for my nightmare 30 minute presentation on the “Issues of Testing Object Orientated Systems”.

So probably should get back to that……maybe

I finally made a decision about which console to get, and settled on getting a Xbox 360 with Gears of War. Can’t wait to play it but unfortunately I was sensible and got it delivered to home so I can not get distracted by it till the holidays.

In any case its been a rather busy weekend mainly because I have been going to a bunch of lecturers for a special testing module which I am taking. Its been a bit different, I have had the equivalent of half a terms worth of lectures in the space of a weekend which is a bit intensive.Not been all bad though since yesterday a group of us (5-6 students, and the lecturers) went to Pub on the Pond for lunch which was plesent, and today we had Dominos.

Anyway going to go play some unreal on my Xbox to prepare for playing on the Xbox 360.

As suprising as it may be we don’t actually have a right to fair use of digital media in this country, so for instance ripping (copying) your CD to your MP3 player is actually illegal. Personally this seems to be a rediculious situation, when you buy some music or a film you should have the right to transfer it to any format you should wish.

I would point out that by this I mean for personal use only, I don’t think you should be able to copy media to give freely to anyone you want. But you should be able to transcode, or convert any media for personal use, for instance transcoding a DVD film so you can play it on your iPod.

Anyway in support for such law in the UK you can sign this Number 10 petition:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/privatecopy/

Well anyone that knows me will know that I can’t make a decision to save my life. I find it hard to decide what to have to lunch let alone figuring out if I want to buy something expensive. Well I have been thinking about getting a console recently, and I was thinking about getting a Nintendo Wii.

Well I thought I had made my mind up so I went ahead and pre-ordered one from Game in town, but then I started thinking about it. This was because although you pay a deposit you can get a refund if you decide not to buy one. But when I considered the amount it costs to buy a Wii with a game it costs, it is only an extra £79 for a Xbox 360 which in some ways I would prefer because I am really into the online gaming stuff. Plus with the Xbox 360 you can buy an adaptor which allows you to plug it into your PC monitor, which would be cool in my case since I have a bigger TFT monitor than my TV is. The other thing is that I have looked at the games that I could get with the Wii but at the moment although the initial gameplay looks fun with the Wiimote I can’t help thinking that there are more games on the Xbox 360 that I would prefer.

In any case I have some time to think about it, oh plus I just found out that Sainsburys will be employing me over the summer so I should be able to afford either as long as I stick to my budget (which I might add I have been).

Well I just got back from our departmental trip to Gregynog which if you don’t know is a conference centre ran by the University of Wales. In any case my computer science department takes the whole 3rd year out to perform their presentations, and to listen to some lecturers from some people from industry and other interesting speakers.

Well after we got over the pain of the presentations we had some interesting lecturers, one of which was by an ex-Swansea student who now works in Citrix doing testing which was very interest. It gave a nice insight on how things work in a large software development company.

In any case the whole thing was a great laugh, apart from having to give a presentation in front of some students and our lecturers. We had to share rooms so I shared with Gareth, Dafydd and Helen, which was a good laugh.

Oh on the last day one of our lecturers (Markus) played some music which was a bit different, but it turns out that he is pretty dam good at it. Very impressive, and certainly showed us a different side of the lecturer.

Of course you can’t forget the food either, which despite advice to the contrary from previous years seemed fine to me. It was not exactly fine cuisine but it was definitely edible. Just a quick sample of the stuff we had, one night we had roast lamb and veg, and another night we had salmon (again with veg), and of course the obligatory full English breakfast. On top of the meals and lunches we had there was a stream of coffee/tea breaks, which had the oh so important cake…

Oh and here is a random pic of some us (Ian, James) in front of the place we were staying.

Well in case it is not completly obvious from the title I went to go see the brand new James Bond movie tonight, and what can I say it was one of the best if not then best film of the entire series. The critics where way off with their initial comments saying that Danial Crag was a bad choice to be Bond, he does an excellent job and certainly has breathed some fresh life into the role. I would recommend everyone should go see it now since there ain’t else much to see at the cinema at the moment, and this is definitly worth it.

Anyway need to finish some presentation prep for next weeks Gregynog trip with the computer science dept.