I really enjoyed some of the previous Need For Speed titles (I played a lot back in my old student flat), so when I got an email inviting me to a special press event I was psyched to go! Turns out though it’s in the Bay Area, not exactly easily reachable for me. Instead though I can give away two tickets here on my blog, so one of you lucky readers (plus a friend) is going to be able to enjoy this event.

Here’s the info:
Date: Thursday 13th August, 2009
Location: Icon Longe SF
Time: 5p-8p
Food & Beverage will be served. DJ will be on hand.

The event will offer the first glimpses of Need For Speed Shift. Plus you’ll have the opportunity to play the game, ask questions to developers & EA staff, and interact with your fellow gamers from the Bay Area! Here’s a trailer of the game:

If you want to enter this competition, all you have to do is leave a comment below with your name, email address, and which video game is your favourite (and why). Entries are open to anyone, but you have to be able to come to the Bay Area to enjoy this prize.

This contest is now closed.

I’ve been using the Sony Ericsson W595 as my main phone for more than half a year now (but never blogged about it), so when I saw the latest addition to the SE Walkman mobile line, the Sony Ericsson W995, I just knew I had to get my hands on one to try out. And thanks to the guys from 3, I got one on loan for a couple of weeks.

A little bit of backstory: I’m very much a Sony Ericsson mobile user. For the past 5 years I’ve only had SE mobile phones, so this review might be a bit skewed towards those who have had experiences with the SE phones before.

The W995 is literally an upgrade of the W595. It’s got the same basic features and the same type of design, but it’s all more refined and better thought through. For instance, the main buttons:

These are exactly the same layout as on the W595, but the placing and spacing on this phone is much better. The buttons are easier to press, and there’s less of a chance of hitting another accidently (which happened a lot with the W595). On the left side of the phone you get Sony Ericsson’s Fast Port power socket, a dedicated Walkman button and the Memory Stick Micro slot (although hidden beneath the back cover). On the right side you get three music control buttons (forward, pause/play, rewind), a volume/zoom rocker and the camera button (to bring up the camera interface, but also acts as the shutter button). These buttons are again better designed than with the 595; they’re again less easier to accidently press and it’s pretty obvious which role a button has.

At the top of the phone there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack (yay!), although it took me more than a week to discover, cause the phone also comes with the standard handsfree set that connects to the Fast Port on the side. On the back is a 8.1 megapixel lens, LED flash and a small metal flip meant as a stand (I think I’d be using it more as a handy “hang it on a lanyard” clip). Besides photos you can also record videos with this phone. To be very honest, I didn’t really try either of these features out though. If I want to take photos, I’ll drag my DSLR with me. So far I’ve never been in a situation that I felt as if I needed to take a picture or video with my phone, so that’s not really what I’m looking for in a mobile.

However, the walkman side of the mobile is something I really like. I’ve got an iPod Nano, but half of the time I forget to bring it with me, and having your music within your phone is just perfect. The playback is good, and even the headphones that come along with the W995 are great (superb quality, in-ear, no “annoying other people because the headphones are crap”). The music player interface on the phone is pretty straightforward to use, with multiple ways to control your music (the buttons on the front, the buttons on the side and the Shake control, where you switch tracks by shaking your phone). The software that comes with it though for the proper Media transfer is only for Windows; if you’re on a Mac, there’s no quick and handy way to structure and synch your music files and playlists (none that was apparent to me; if you have any tips, let me know).

Besides music, you can also check out online videos on YouTube or the BBC iPlayer. It’s okay for the occasional “show your friend the funny cat video”, but I don’t think the screen is big enough for watching full length TV shows and movies.

The interface for all the “normal” stuff (calling, texting, browsing) is pretty similar to it’s predecessors with no obvious alterations. It’s pretty easy and obvious to use, but sometimes it can be a tad annoying. The fact is is that it isn’t a smart phone, and for some stuff like browsing the internet, it will always be a bit clunky. For small things though, like updating your Twitter or checking your email, I find it works perfectly well.

There are a couple other new features the W995 has (in comparison to the W595, that is), like Wifi and GPS. The Wifi feature is so useful when at events (like conferences, BarCamps, etc); you get a much quicker connection (well, that depends on the network, but most of the time it should be faster). The GPS functionality was also pretty handy (do I even have to explain why?). What I’d love to use it for is Geocaching (check out this blog post) and I still haven’t figured out what is the best way to find caches with this phone.

However, this phone does have a large downside: the battery life. If you’re using it quite intensely (for email checking, twittering, listening to music), the battery quickly drains. Without charging it fully the night before, the battery will die before the end of the day. For some this might not be much of a problem, but for me this turned out to be really annoying.

All in all, I find the W995 a great phone. I don’t have the budget to upgrade to an actual smart phone anytime soon, and this could be a good solution. It does all the things I want a phone to do and more (although I know compared to some people I don’t expect my phone to do that much). However, the battery life isn’t great, so you might want to invest in a second battery if you’re considering this phone. For the full specifications, check out the Sony Ericsson website.

Sony Ericsson W995 – Available at the 3 Store

This just looks awesome! When Heath Ledger died, I was dreading what would happen to this movie. Ledger had only shot a couple of scenes, and they had to abandon the entire project or they had to reshoot all the scenes with him in it. Or so I thought. Instead Terry Gilliam chose another route: Ledger’s character enters three magical “worlds” and instead of recasting Ledger, in each of the different worlds this character is played by another actor. Johnny Depp. Colin Farrell. And Jude Law.

Here’s the description:

In the present day, immortal 1,000-year-old Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) leads a traveling theatre troupe—including a sleight of hand expert, Anton (Andrew Garfield), and a dwarf, Percy (Verne Troyer)— that offers audience members a chance to go beyond reality through a magical mirror in his possession. Parnassus had been able to guide the imagination of others through a deal with the Devil (Tom Waits), who now comes to collect on the arrangement, targeting the doctor’s daughter (Lily Cole). The troupe, which is joined by a mysterious outsider named Tony (portrayed by Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell) embark through parallel worlds to rescue the girl.

And of course the trailer:

Wow. The four actors surprisingly look pretty similar, and even though I was expecting it, it took me a while to realize who I was looking at. This looks pretty amazing, don’t you think?

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – Release Date: 16 October 2009 (UK)

Episode 131: “Snickers”

Another short film from Cannes, this time about an office worker who finds a mysterious black hole:

[Watch on MissGeeky.com]

It’s not even that long since I last posted about Threadless, but at the moment they have an awesome sale going on. All tees are part of the sale, with some of them going for $8! The slightly more newer tees are going for $10 and $15, but it’s still a pretty good discount. The sale is till Monday 17th August, so you’ve still got a week to order some amazing t-shirts!

I couldn’t resist and seeing that I had a couple of streetteam points to spend, I bought the following two tees:

The Gaming Revolution

Shoot The Baddies

You can see why I couldn’t resist, right? I think these two tees are perfect for me!

Interesting links for July 28th through August 9th:

• How Different Groups Spend Their Day – Cool interactive graph of how americans spend their day.
• Shooting Stars: 71 Portraits From Comic-Con 2009 – Ooh, pretty famous people. Love some of these pics.
• 25 Various Styles of The Wizard of Oz Illustrations | The Design Inspiration – I especially love the one on the second row.
• Melancholia – “I didn’t say she stole my money.” A sentence with 7 meanings.

The Lovely Bones: Centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal. This is directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), and while somewhat controversial I think it looks amazing. Release Date: December 2009 (US), January 2010 (UK)

Check out the video on the official website

The Vampire’s Assistant: Based on the Cirque du Freak novels from Darren Shan. Pulled into a fantastic life of misunderstood sideshow freaks and grotesque creatures of the night, one teen will vanish from the safety of a boring existence and fulfill his destiny in a place drawn from nightmares. Release Date: October 2009 (US, UK)

I Sell The Dead: 18th century justice catches up with a pair of grave robbers. With only a few hours to go before his date with the guillotine, Arthur Blake (Monaghan) tells his life story to Father Francis Duffy (Ron Perlman). Before long, Arthur spills the beans on how he got started in the grim corpse peddling business with seasoned ghoul Willie Grime. This just looks so unusual and fun; definitely going on my “to-see” list. Release Date: 7 August 2009 (US)

The Other Man: Starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney, this is the story of a husband who suspects his wife of adultery, and then sets out to track down the other man. I’m not too sure about this, although Liam Neeson might be enough for me to want to see it. Release Date: September 2009 (US)

The Blind Side: A poor, oversized and under-educated teenager is recruited by a major college football program where he is groomed into an athletically and academically successful NFL prospect. Based on Michael Lewis’ book. Apparently most of the movie is about football, but the trailer barely shows any of that. It could turn out fine, but Sandra Bullock seems horribly miscast. Release Date: November 2009 (US)

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell: A guy tries to patch things up with his soon-to-be-married pal after botching things up at his bachelor party. Based on Tucker Max’s best-seller. This just looks horrible (plus I can’t believe it’s based on a “bestseller”, who reads this type of thing?). Release Date: October 2009 (US)

I’m slowly making my way through most of the Comic-Con panels, but as I’ve said before a lot of the ones that were uploaded straight away though are crappy mobile phone type videos. However, I love that most studios are beginning to realise that it’s much better to edit the videos themselves and make it available for fans. What better way to attract more people to next year’s event than showing how awesome it was this year?

One of the surprising new shows this year was Fringe. When I first heard about it, I thought it was a bit of rip-off from X-Files. It’s got some similarities, but I love the direction it has taken, and the characters are just adorable. There are two videos from Fox of the Fringe panel at Comic-Con, but they both get pretty spoilery (so if you haven’t seen the first season of Fringe yet, don’t watch this):

The second video is of the fan questions:

I always find it a bit surprising to find that certain actors have a completely different accent in real life (both “Walter” and “Olivia” are Australian), but it only epitomizes how much actors put into their characters. I’m really curious to see where the next season is going, especially with the character that was revealed at the end of the last episode.

A master of subterfuge, a rogue thief with a noble air, Seregil of Rhiminee has taught his young protege, Alec of Kerry, his greatest secrets of the trade. Together they’ve made their way with thieving jobs large and small, winning friends and enemies, their lives in constant danger and yet charmed by an aura of magic, friendship, and trust. But now, as their adopted country prepares for war, Seregil is called away by an ancient wizard Nysander to face the ultimate challenge of loyalties, and entrusted with a deadly knowledge that, if breached, could cost both Seregil and the unwitting Alec their lives. And as Alec learns the shocking truth of his own shadowed heritage, he, Seregil, and a handful of loyal companions are catapulted into a tumultuous conflict with the ultimate evil – in which magic alone may no longer shield them from harm…

Stalking Darkness is the continuation of Lynn Flewelling’s Luck In The Shadows; these two books are clearly meant to be read together. The book picks up where the other one left off: Seregil is helping Nysander with his very secret mission, yet still doesn’t know exactly why and what he is risking his life for.

Again like it’s predecessor this book is very character driven, focusing mainly on the friendship between Alec and Seregil, and the other characters. Slowly the relationship between the two main characters evolves into something more, and while not every reader might like this development, I adore the way Alec and Seregil interact with each other.

My only annoyance with this book was when I read it the first time, I was expecting this to be a trilogy. I thought the third book would finish the main story line, but it doesn’t. The main plot from the first book is completed in this second one, while the third book is pretty much standalone (still with the same characters). It’s not too much of a complaint; it’s just annoying when you’re expecting one thing, and get something else.

Stalking Darkness is part two of The Nightrunner Series by Lynn Flewlling – £7.50 on Amazon.co.uk, $7.50 on Amazon.com

Last Tuesday to celebrate the release of the Watchmen DVD, Paramount arranged a special art exhibition. Below the Southbank Centre in the skate park, graffiti artist Chu showcased his artistic talents, as he and the Watchmen illustrator, Dave Gibbons worked alongside each other giving fans a one-off Watchmen experience to remember.

I arrived during Chu and Gibbon’s break (of course), so I didn’t get to see them creating anything. However when I got there most of the graffiti mural was already done:

It was pretty cool, although I would have loved to see the artists actually at work. I still managed to grab some pics of Dave Gibbons, when he was posing for one of the other (official) photographers:

Check out this Twitpic for the finished product. I don’t think there’s that much difference; most of it was done already, except the polaroid photo in bottom left corner. One thing I’m not too sure about is what was done with the graffiti after the event. I was there during the past weekend for the Hide & Seek fest and I don’t remember seeing it (or was I just blind?).