In 5 days it will be one year since my first blog entry on Gamespot. This is my tenth in that time. Who knows how many I'll post in the next year?

Anyway, I downloaded and played the tutorial of D&D Online recently as it is free now. I love actual D&D and so far it's not too bad, but I need to get deeper into it before I can say whether or not I'm going to keep playing it. Free, high quality MMO though, always good.

The other day I also bought Saints Row 2 off Steam for only £3.75, and it's well worth it. It is a lot of fun. Need to play more of that too. Unfortunately the ridiculously low price was a 1 day only thing, but it might be worth paying more for anyway. I almost got it when it was new out but was put off a bit by reports of bugs with the PC version. I haven't run into any bugs yet but I can tell why PC gamers were complaining, it isn't ported brilliantly. Anyway, for that price I certainly wont complain.

Been listening to Sage Francis's "Sick of Wasting", which he released for free. The first half is really good, the second half not so good, but well worth checking out if you're at all into hip-hop.

The same goes for Random's "Thanks for supported Random! Volume 2", a free rap album I've been enjoying recently.

Something not free that I ordered but hasn't arrived yet is the Les Kills EP, well worth checking out.

This video is from it and well worth checking out!

Got my results just now. I got 9 A*s, an A in additional maths (highest available) and a B in D&T. Obviously I'm very pleased with my results (I was shocked!). I'm also glad that my mates all did well, some thought they might not get the grades to get into my schools 6th form, but they did well enough in the end

Today I had my GCSE German oral exam. It went much better than I expected, I had been stressed out by the prospect of it for a few days so was really relieved when the bloke said at the end "you really did yourself justice".

In other news, my radishes are doing well, carrots not as well but some sign of growth today, and broad beans looking less leany.

When I got home I realised I had forgotten my key, but fortunately the French student staying with us got home earlier than usual and let me in.

8bitfm.com is back up after a crash from a rush of new users with upgraded bandwidth!

Sorry for the rubbish blog post

Yeah yeah I know I just posted, but I then read an interview and feel like sharing opinion on a topic which is on everyone's tongues at the moment, fuelled by the onlive announcements at GDC.

A couple of links for you:

penny arcade strip

Interview I just read

So basically everyone has been talking about onlive, and the interview I just read talks about a competitor called gaikai. I am on the side of people who say that internet speeds are not up to scratch at the moment. However, I have mixed feelings about the potential for it to become the dominant gaming platform. As an enthusiastic PC gamer and general computer person I revel in the updating of components etc that consolers are always complaining about, so I'd regret my own hardware not affecting my gameplay. I'd also find it harder to justify expensive purchases which would benefit my computing in other ways aswell. I'd also miss being able to buy games myself, I don't like the idea that this suggests about not owning your games. It's a bit like insta-steam in a way. I think PC and console gamers will experience the change in different ways. PCs will become more popular for gaming as you won't have to buy something to plug into your TV, and people wont need to upgrade anything which is what puts most people off. I wonder doubtfully whether it will ever take gaming over completely. We may never hear about it again. I just hope it doesn't kill the hardware industry, gaming is great for pushing processing technologies further and further at great pace, which benefits sciences such as physics and medicine as well as gaming.

Hmmm...

We'll see...

I love chess. I am a member of my school's chess club, where I am about mid-way in the group in terms of skill. For a certain young age group my school is second in the country, so I'm often beaten by kids 6 years younger than me, but for most of them I'm a fair match. I beat most people who don't play regularly, because regular play means as much as overall skill in my experience. I play it on the internet and on my phone. I own about 12 chess books - one of them was printed in about 1896, loads from the 1930s and some more recent. For my 16th birthday a load of friends came round and we had a chess tournament. Although I usually pay attention in school, during a particularly boring English lesson recently I played a friend at chess on his iPod.

It's not like I'm brilliant at it or anything, and it's not even a primary obsession (I spend much more time reading and thinking about programming and games than I do chess) but somehow I love it - I'm compelled by it, I sit up until far too late just playing people on a certain chess website, the same as I do with TF2 and other games. I posed the question of the source of this to a friend over xfire:

[22:42] ♠ace•up•my•sleeve♠حس6; صب♠: Why do I love chess so much?
[22:42] Charming: you're an inter lick dual?

So clearly no use asking him (who I actually beat at chess only a few hours ago).

Anyone else know where I'm coming from with this chess thing?

I don't know why I'm doing this blog post. Every day I get an idea of something to post a blog about and never get round to it, this is one of my worse ideas. Sorry.