I do love a beautiful, useful & informative diagram, and I recently found this one detailing how many years worth of raw resource use we have left on earth… fascinating… worring…

There are a couple of great tools I use which may help others;

DimDim : Free, No Install, Registration required to “Host”, Voice, Video (20 people) & Desktop Sharing.

TokBox : Free, No Install, Registration required to “Host”, Voice & Video (20 people) but no Desktop Sharing.

TeamViewer : Free, Install Required, No Registration Required, Voice & Video (1-to-1).

Clearly DimDim is the winner at the moment, I’ll update if / when this changes!

http://www.webtoolhub.com is a useful resource for online tools. I particularly like their;

- Online Text Case Changer
- What’s my IP?
- Online HTML Email Protector
- Free Fonts

Surely the next big thing!

Apple, apple, apple, tut, tut, tut, changes the size, changes the name, but won’t change the control freakery… what a surprise!!!

The worst thing is, is that it will be huge! Cconsumers eh! “Oooooohhhh Shiny! Ooooooohhh Apple!” (*Sound of zombie like opening of wallet*)

Lucky rescue for dog stranded on ice floe (And what a sweet dog he seems too poor thing!)

Commuter Cat (At least he uses public transport!)

Anyone who knows me well will tell you that, amongst my other passions, both cheese & maps are high on my list!

Thusly, I love Cheese + I love Maps + I love the UK =

(As originally found on the good old Beeb website. Which took them from the World Cheese Book, by Juliet Harbutt, published by DK.)

I notice that not all cheeses are placed exactly where they should be, clearly the map is simply a nicely wrought “rough guide” to some major British cheeses, rather than an exhaustively complete or accurate encyclopaedia.

(Click on either map for an, all be it only slightly, larger version.)

Must buy that book ASAP!

Yes, last week I represented the UK at the international, 24-hour, “Dragon Age: Origins Wardens’ Quest“!

(I even have evidence, click this link to EA UK website, to verify!)

This was not only a great honour, but also a great experience. I was equally nervous and excited leading up to the event and with good reason, the competition came from all over the globe and they were GOOD. All the teams really knew their stuff and this made for a tense and high quality competition.

After some 20 hours of hard gaming we came 5th (out of 10 team) having been eliminated in a double elimination whilst we were in 3rd position overall. Whilst we were sad to not stay in all the way to the final, we were pretty pleased we ended up in 3rd place at the point we were eliminated, not a bad show, specially as one of the 2 teams above us were “Team Bioware”, a team put together by the developers of the game!

Anyway the purpose of the event wasn’t just for me to have fun, it was to promote “Dragon Age: Origins” not that it needs much promoting, running as it is at 90% + rating on Metacritic! Suffice to say I personally guarantee that it is THE best roleplay game ever made, and I have played most of them! Do yourself a favour and buy it / play it / thank me later.

On the back of our success, we even took part in The GameSpot UK Podcast 29/10/09 , the podcast for the biggest game site in the UK! Which was again a real honour!

So a big thank you to everyone involved / supporting the event, particularily;

- The other 4 memembers of the team; Jack Payne, Chris Collins, Tom Wallis and Dan Sheridan (EA).
- All the members of the other teams, great competitors, great people!
- The event support crew; from the awesome BioWare techs to the top attentionseekers.tv team. Great job guys. Great job.
- An extra thank you to Dan / EA for making the experience such a great one! Wouldn’t have happened without you, so much love big guy!
- Everyone else from BioWare & EA who made the whole thing happen! Particularily;
- Jonathan Goddard (EA) who was also particularily awesome!
- Chris Priestly (BioWare) who was a real trooper, all the way.
- Also another huge thank you to Guy Cocker (GameSpot UK) for both supporting the team and letting us tag along on his most excellent podcast!