30 May
Forza Motorsport – My Cars – Chevrolet Corvette C6
This style is taken from “Gran Turismo” but with a different body colour (the original was yellow) and my racing number.
The car itself took ages before it became drivable but I got a good deal of satisfaction from winning my first race in it.
30 May
Forza Motorsport – My Cars – Aston Martin DB9 Coupe – World Is Not Enough Bond theme
Probably the best artwork for any Bond movie of recent years is the Flame Girl / Bond motif used for “The World Is Not Enough”. On the left is a silhouette of Bond in a classic pose. On the [...]
30 May
Forza Motorsport – My Cars – Ford Mustang Boss 429 – Flames theme
Flames. Should be a piece of cake as Forza helpfully supplies a few flame decals. And it was. I was going along merrily with my white-yellow-orange-red fade into flame pattern on this really nice metallic rainbow dark purple / black background when I [...]
27 May
Forza Motorsport – My Cars – Nissan 240 SX SE – Motorstorm theme
Motorstorm features a simple racing mask for a logo and bold, chunky gold text thickly outlined in black.
Aware that my last two designs had featured symmetrical patterns, I decided to place a large Motorstorm logo massively off-centre and wrapping slightly over the wing. [...]
27 May
Forza Motorsport – My Cars – Pontiac GTO Hardtop – Dukes of Hazzard General Lee theme (2)
For my mind, the only reasons giant American muscle cars exist in racing games is because one of them might be a “Starsky & Hutch” Ford Gran Torino or a “The Dukes of Hazzard” Dodge Charger. I’d just recently [...]
26 May
★★★★★ ☆☆☆☆☆
First impressions are bad for this offroad racer with an alarmingly choppy frame rate and inaccurate controls. If the developers had finished the game, this could have been quite good.
26 May
Should play on PlayStation 3 with no known issues.
★★★★★ ★★★☆☆
Completely thrilling and highly challenging racing game which features a great idea with the Shox zones (timed section of the track that reward you with cash for getting a certain time through them). Perhaps the greatest praise is that you will never ever have a dull or unexciting race in this game. Sad to [...]
25 May
Forza Motorsport – My Cars -Lancia 1992 Delta Integrale EVO – Red Martini theme
Lancia Delta Integrale EVO – Red Martini theme: Obviously the first paint job you think of when someone mentions the Lancia Delta Integrale is the iconic Martini red-blue-blue stripe on white carried on their world rally cars. While that looks terrific, [...]
24 May
As an owner of both Xbox and PlayStation 2 consoles and over twenty games for each, the pre-release news that both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 would be backwards compatible (in the same brilliant way that PlayStation 2 was fully backwards compatible with PlayStation games) was good news indeed.
PlayStation 3 updated their system firmware to [...]
23 May
After returning my projector to Superfi, Panasonic dragged their heels in collecting the unit (it took them nearly two weeks). Over a week later and Panasonic still haven’t offered any resolution at all. Somewhat fed up, I called Superfi and strongly requested a refund.
To their very great credit, they took this request seriously and immediately [...]
23 May
My Cars – Acura – 2001 Integra Type-R – Star Wars Jedi Knight theme.
The artwork for LucasArts “Star Wars Jedi Knight” games is one of the strongest yet devised for a video game. It is reminiscent of a lightsaber but is split in two (reflecting the games choices between the light and the dark side) [...]
22 May
Should play on PlayStation 3 with no issues.
★★★★★ ★★☆☆☆
Slick and satisfying arcade racing game which, thanks to rock-solid graphics, is the ideal way to show off your shiny new PlayStation 2.
22 May
★★★★★ ★★☆☆☆
Most people would be put off by the ugly graphics, anyone who can see past that will probably throw the controller out the window when trying to drive the cars in a straight line. Me? Well, I got past the graphics, I handled the handling and was rewarded with a consistently thrilling and challenging [...]
21 May
My Cars – Toyota – 1995 Border MR2 Turbo T-bar
Originally uploaded by Mister Slimm.
Went for a Superman motif and tried to emulate the darker feeling of the 2006 “Superman Returns” movie promotional material. While the customisation didn’t have exactly the colours I wanted they did look much better on the car while racing than they [...]
21 May
My Cars – Volkswagen – 1995 Corrado SLC (6)
Originally uploaded by Mister Slimm.
The coolest thing about Forza Motorsport is the ability to customise the paint job on your car to an extent never realised before.
This is my first custom paint job on my first car in the Career mode. It is a 1995 Volkswagen Corrado [...]
20 May
At the risk of making myself sound slightly less brilliant than I surely must be, I managed to get myself into a right pickle yesterday with my dual monitor setup.
Using Nvidia dual monitor mode Dualview you have your Windows Start bar on one screen with a clear second screen. Like so:
However, I was setting up [...]
14 May
★★★★★ ★☆☆☆☆
Despite a difficult first act, Owen Wilson provides enough of his Owen-ness (good-natured, honest charm) to make this a decent good-natured rom-com. Everyone steps up their game in the second act – the writer and the stars – and a clichéd but fun third act ends things on a sweet-natured high.
PEOPLE CREDITS
• Director: Anthony [...]
12 May
★★★★★ ★★★☆☆
Getting off to a bad-tempered start with Jon Finch as a drunken, charmless soon-to-be ‘wrong man’, this penultimate Hitchcock movie finally settles into a first-rate chiller with the onset of the rape and murder. The film is grippingly paced at any rate and directed far better than it is written (by “Sleuth” scribe Anthony [...]
10 May
Time for an infinite wisdom post now.
On my system and in Microsoft Access 2002 the following VBA command:
?WeekdayName(vbSunday)
yields the result
Monday
Awesome!
Why does this happen? Well, it turns out that the help file is right but the actual command in Access doesn’t do what it says on the tin.
DescriptionReturns a string indicating the specified day of the [...]
10 May
Well, I’ve made comment about Liam’s somewhat questionable public displays as the loading mascot for Yahoo Mail but even I wouldn’t want him to get squished. Poor old Liam.
9 May
Logitech LX5 Cordless Optical Mouse
★★★★★ ★★☆☆☆
A comfortable ambidextrous wireless mouse with at least one significant flaw in a harder-to-use-than-it-should-be middle mouse button.
Things I Learned From Dropping My Mouse Onto a Hard Surface
Never drop your mouse onto a hard surface. You can quote me.
I had been the satisfied owner of the Logitech Cordless Desktop for Notebooks [...]
2 May
My replacement Panasonic AX100 projector has become faulty. I’ve only had it three months. I’ve returned it to Superfi today for repair. I also asked them to ask Panasonic to provide me with the option of a replacement or refund. It will be interesting to see what transpires with that request.
Regarding Superfi, I sent them [...]
