I thought it would be nice to annotate it so you know what everything is…

There are 3 things in there which aren’t tech… can you spot them?

This is kind of bad, is Grand Theft Auto 4 on the Xbox 360. I have had the game since very close to when I bought the Xbox last year. I got stuck though, and haven’t played it for a long time. But recently I thought what the hell and got it out to see how it looked on the new TV.

It looked good… and played good… and I got through where I was stuck. I have now completed the entire story, with just the additionally activities to go. You would think this means I can spend less time on it, to the contrary I spent around 12 hours on Saturday doing the 50 stunt jumps. Completing all 50, and being told there was one more to do didn’t help, meaning I had to go back through and check them all again. Who would of thought it would be the last one I checked that was the missing one? Well almost everyone in my house thought that would be the case… smug buggers. Luckily exactly the same happened to one of my other housemates who had his TV lined up next to mine playing the same game doing the same jumps. Sunday, was spent on the car thefts and vigilante missions…

Anyone would think this is the end of the insane geekery, but no, it potentially gets worse. The other thing I am spending my rare home time doing, mainly the evenings when in bed, is watching Doctor Who. I’m not talking about Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant, I mean William Hartnell, the first ever doctor. It is very different but exactly the same all at once. Obviously the production quality is poorer, this stuff was filmed in the 60s, where ‘retake’ was an unknown word. There are a number of funny vocab slip ups which the cast correct themselves on, its quite realistic really. The Tardis makes exactly the same flying noise, the music is the same, the bad guys are more rubbish and the Doctor isn’t as genius. But you can see the building blocks for what turns into one of the greatest long running series ever.

The adventurous plan is to watch ever episode, which is approximately 600 over 26 series, there are some which I wont watch, as the BBC don’t have them anymore. Apparently an old protocol meant they threw away films from over 30 years ago, there are a few of the old episodes which I have which are simply the audio with still images and some annotations. These ones are painful and I will not bother watching those!

So call me a loser in the comments below if you must…

+ =

This is the Xbox which I FINALLY plucked up the nerve to buy on Sunday! YAY ME! Along with it a couple of games and I’ve liberated a 30inch TV from downstairs to add to my bedroom powerplant.

This post is however not about the games or the Xbox itself, it’s about the way that Windows and the Xbox integrate. Admittedly this is my own fault for not reading up on it before hand, but I have a friend who always used to play his computer downloads through his TV (things like TV shows, PAID for films etc nothing illegal *wink wink*). Little did I know that you either need a top version of Vista to do this or you have to pay some extortionate amount of money for what is known as the Windows Media Center. There are otherways of course, you can buy a classic Xbox and chip it, then there are customised programs which work the same as Media Center. This has not been developed for the 360 to date.

So now I have a couple options:
1) Take the free upgrade to Vista I have sitting on my desk and convert everything to Vista
2) Download and install the pirate copy of Windows Media Center, including a safemode boot up and install of the crack (dodgy much?)
3) Buy a classic Xbox and chip it (£40 + £20)
4) Get over the desire to watch things from my PC on the 30inch TV and settle with the 19inch monitor I have

Thoughts?