The first round was two groups of 5 people, i came second in my group, behind over-the-top-good ‘Slinky Dog’. He’s normally one to take his game seriously, but we’d talked about how we wanted the tournament before, and he played in a relaxed fashion and told me afterwards that he enjoyed the FFA more that way. Mission Accomplished there then. Also in round one, i feel the best matchup of the tournament happened; MCSPARXYDEE and grandmastertyke, only a single point put tyke down into the playoffs. I feel he deserved the Finals alot more than Sparx did, especially with tyke’s two triples.

In round 2, there were also two groups; a winners bracket, and the 7th to 10th place playoffs. In the playoffs there were meant to be four players, three turned up, so a 3-man-FFA was played, until near the end, where the current winner; cheesepimm lagged out. Leaving a 1v1 between tyke and Gilpin. All Gilpin needed to do was get another 4 kills that game to beat cheesepimm. So he did. And so did tyke.

In the winners bracket, there were meant to be 6 players, 5 turned up. We of course played anyway, but I was having a very under-average day for Halo, and played very poorly. Also so did Miqual, but fortunately around 5 mins from the end I sorted out my mental game and managed to pick myself up and burst from joint 5th to 3rd. At the end of the game however, I discovered why i had so few kills compared to normal anyway; 30 assists. Sparxy however had only 10. He was incredibly lucky to even get to the finals, let alone 4th place. But at least the stats show it. If i had even 5 to 10 less assists I could have made an easy second. The person I feel most sorry for though is Miqual, he was propa robbed maet!

You can view the final standings of the tournament here: http://z4.invisionfree.com/Team_Crumpet_Forums/index.php?showtopic=127

These surprising results bring me onto an important point, in a competition such as MLG, you only get one chance to prove yourself, piling the pressure very high. Whereas in TC, we are of course a social clan, and the tournament was just a bit of fun. This is the magic of a recreational clan, at the moment no one minds that they were unlucky or got lucky or whatever, because we play with eachother daily and know eachothers TRUE skill level.

Thanks for entering everyone who did, and I hope to see you in future tournaments and around the community. We also have a CoD4 doubles tournament currently being organised, you can sign up for that here: http://z4.invisionfree.com/Team_Crumpet_Forums/index.php?showtopic=125

In brief summary;

• They still insist on having twice as much crust on stupid shaped bread than needed
• Drive horrible tinny cars
• Drive Renault twingos
• Like garlic
• Talk from a part of their throat that the british just seem not to have
• Have awkward stumbled French-English dialogues with tourists

But one nice thing which i noticed was that they do not swear and get angry at cyclists, they seem to be alot more adapted to having bikes around. And of course theres the nice weather, or the mixture of it in my case. On the 1st day we had half an inch of snow, and by the last day it was t-shirt and shorts weather, around 20°C

So yeah, it was typical Northern France, and i’m off again in the Summer for 3 weeks.

The Xbox ambassador program is entirely voluntary and we get no benefits except a small image under out gamercard on the Xbox.com forums, and of course the nice feeling you get when you help someone out. For more details on how the program works look here.

I am writing this after reading an article about Chernobyl, 20 years later in the most recent article of the IET magazine. It opened my eyes as to the damage that the disaster caused and how risky the area still is.

On the 26th of April 1986 the Chernobyl atomic energy plant in Ukraine exploded. Sending huge radiation clouds over eastern Europe and even reaching parts of the UK. One of the first measures was a temporary concrete ‘sarcophagus’ around the reactor, this was only meant as a temporary fix. The structure still stands today, 22 years later. Since1986 donors have spent millions of dollars trying to stabilise the sarcophagu, but no lasting solution has been made.

Today in 2008, the sarcophagus still contains 95% of the radioactive material from reactor 4. 95% . All the damage and long term effects have been caused by that leaked 5%. We cannot possibly imagine what would happen to Europe if there were to be another accident, much of Europe would be full of Caesium 137 for a very long time.

In the IET article, Vitali Vitaliev writes about his experience revisiting Chernobyl and what he saw, he writes; “The workers were getting of the ‘dirty’ zone bus and boarding an uncontaminated bus to take them to the neighbouring town for some rest. They literally fell out of the bus, drunk out of their minds. Many reactor workers started, it seemed, started working in a state of mild inebriation and continued drinking throughout the shift in the mistaken but officially encouraged belief that alchol could fend off radiation.”

Just think about it, 200 tonnes of radioactive fuel under the control of some drunk Ukrainians. Are we still in the same danger as we were 20 years ago, or perhaps more? 90% more?

I looked at the hit counter this morning to discover a rather nice looking number of 10,029.

So after about a month of this blog being set up, the site has recieved just over 10,000 hits.

So i’ll give you a further breakdown of the stats for this month, they are pretty interesting to look at;

Thats right, on the 15th of January I had 1,546 views in one day. Lets have a closer look at that day;

In total, my post on the BBCi Player has had 8,663 hits. wow. Another thing that surprised me about this post is apparently Google likes me better than the BBC. If you go to google and search for “BBCi Player” my blog post turned up above any official BBC links. This has now changed as i think the BBC re-submitted some of their pages. But I am still 3rd in the list.

This is Suzuki’s new Xbox 360 Concept car, totally inspired by the xbox 360, and most likely a large cheque from MS.

Looking at the images it has 2 360s, 2 projectors, 2 LCD screens. Oh, and it’s a car!

God knows the price on this thing, but I doubt it will ever be sold

More images here

Religion. Its really starting to piss me off.

Now first off, as this is the Internet and there’s always some idiot who insists on making themselves known and complaining, i will just say my quick disclaimer; “I am not racist, i do not discriminate against other because of their religion, colour or creed.” Now then, on with the rant.

First of all Islam and Muslims, every comment made about your religion is not an attack on your holy book or the prophet. People are merely stating an opinion, and as a religion that believes in peace, finding an argument in every comment seems a little hypocritical. Also, when people will refer to Islamic terrorists as ‘fundamentalists’ this makes me feel rather sorry for them. As the term ‘fundamental’ means the basics or the foundations of their belief, and im pretty sure that killing yourself and other innocent people is one of the basics of their religion.

Right, that’s 1 box ticked.

Next, Christianity. Many major governments such as the one in the UK and the American government are heavily christian. Now, once again bear in mind that christianity has the aim of peace. The last time someone came into their country stating or doing what they believed to be true, not a word was spoken of peace to the opposing country and they sent thousands of men into Iraq with a mission of ‘peace’ which as far as i can see, means shooting anyone who dosent do what you like. So that’s what this peace thing is, is it? Also, arguing that they were trying to bring democracy to the country was hardly an assured argument. If someone came into America claiming to try to change their government policies and the way the countries run, i’m pretty sure the Americans wouldn’t be too happy. So what makes America think that shooting people that don’t help them, and making their opinion on how things should be done appear as fact, a sensible way of bringing ‘peace’ to a country? Wel, it must be the chrisitan way.

Now, before i get the angry e-mails flooding in, which they undoubtedly will, i would like to address another issue. What IS racism? Because as far as i can tell, its become very confused. If someone were to say something along the lines of “I’d never become a -insert major religion-”many people would claim they are being racist. In the 70s era of Britain many people were seen as being racist, which they really were. They were looking down and frowning upon other because of their religion. Then by the 90s people started to realise that everyone was entitled to their own opinion no matter how absurd it seemed by others. Now ‘racism’ has reached the other extreme. People are becoming scared of talking about religion as they are so worried about offending anybody. Now, if everyone is entitled to their own opinion, yet we are scared of voicing it in case people saw it as being wrong, then people would look down on you. Oh, look, we’re back to square one. It’s a mixed up world isnt it?

So my message to all major religions and governemts around the world; after you’re done with your hipocrasy and general squabbling about whos opinion is fact and whatnot, do you think we could kind of, well, have our planet back?

A bit too deep for you? Well heres a SMILEY FACE!

Well yesterday i posted about how i started submitting my posts to digg.com, to see if it would increase my readers or just site hits, i thought i might get an extra 10 or something at most for the first day.

So i turned my computer off last night, just as the people in america turn theirs on, with my blog at 31 Hits. I turn it on this morning, as the americans go to bed, to reveal the new total hit number standing at 429!

So thanks to Digg.com, and a bigger thanks to everyone and anyone who is reading this and any of my other posts! And also, i recieved my first comment on a post yesterday from ‘Chris’ on my review of the BBCi player. So thanks everyone, as its knowing that people are reading this that drives me forward to write more and better.

But i guess thats the internet.

Clicky to watch

Somepeople have some serious time on their hands.

He can has Recon maybe? But theres rumour (as always) that this could be faked.

Edit: Just looked on this guys fileshare and he’s got the video there too. Craaazy stuff, but not fake. He can has some recon plees?

Dugg.

Don’t feel you have to laugh at my slightly funny joke. But the point is that i’ve started to use Digg.com to submit my blog posts to. Hopefully it’ll help see an increase in traffic and spread the word of the Blog. If you already have a digg.com user account you can just click “Digg it!” at the top corner of each post. If you don’t have a digg.com account visit their site and sign up, it takes less then about 3 minutes!

Also, I’ve started adding tags to the posts, i’ll have to see how they turn out

Comments on what you think of the Digg service or tagging?