You know it's a cold morning when....

..the de-icer freezes when you spray it on your windscreen!

I mean, wow, soooo cold this morning. My car doors were frozen shut. My breath was turning to ice on the inside of the windscreen and it took about an hour to get the heaters to defrost!

Then on the radio they had a news story about how great it is to work at the South Pole! Apparently they're screaming out for plumbers etc!

Well, I'm screaming out for a pair of gloves!

Come on be serious. British people CANNOT cope with -3°c and 6inches of snow, let alone -40°c, 2000+m of ice and the occasional iceberg!

I know the credit crunch has hit me and my family, and my Wife said she'd go to the ends of the Earth to find work - but this is ridiculous! :p

Quitting beer and getting my mojo back...

Mmmm beer....as Homer might say.

And I'd be one to join him. Well I would have been up til today.

That's right folks! I'm quitting beer!

I've not gone much longer than a week without at least a pint or two for about a decade - and it's starting to show.

Here I am, prime of my life, but I feel like a 50 year old.

Now this is mainly down to the beer, but it's also down to the total absence of exercise (is Xbox exercise?).

I mean, I'm not FAT - but I'm not at all in shape. And that gets me down.

After new years, I stopped for a month (although I only did about 10 days) and felt awesome! So, here goes, I pledge that I will be beer free until the start of summer!

It's a way off, but I need to do something to get back in shape. So treadmill and rowing machine replaces pint glass and Walker's packet.

I'll post up how I'm getting along.....

Free Flash templates

Ok, so I'm looking to get my portfolio website up and running. I want an all singing, all dancing flash-based site but don't want to be bogged down in code. I just want to concentrate on the look and feel of it - not the mechanics that make it work.

So, I've been scouting around for some good free flash templates and have been, on the whole, disappointed in the design quality of most.

I guess that's my fault for not being willing to work it out for myself, or for not being willing to pay anything for it.

But then I found this site: AIRTIGHT Viewers and was impressed with the templates on offer.

I could easily use any one of these 'gallery' focused templates to power my portfolio - and all I need to do now is to add in the rest of the page in Dreamweaver (which should be a doddle). And I can't wait to get started!

'Flash! Ah-Aaaaaahhh. King of the impossible!

Stoke City's players must have very sore feet...

It's past 5 o'clock on a Saturday evening and yet again I'm fuming over the on-field antics of Stoke City's so called 'players'.

Another red card and more points thrown away. All because we can't keep our heads!

Against Man U - Wilkinson saw red and we threw away a point.

At West Ham - Fuller was a f@£king idiot for slapping Griffin to get another dismissal which lost us points too!

Just when you thought it had all been dealt with, and all players been given a talking to about temper tantrums - Delap loses his noggin and belts Shaun Wright Phillips! (he DID deserve it though, the prick). OK, we went on to win, but we have no Delap for another 2 matches.

NOW TODAY - Etherington gets a red for lashing out like a bloody idiot and we lose more points!!! Diao had previously gotten a yellow for petulantly not retreating the full 10 yards for a free kick too!

FFS Pulis - sort out discipline at Stoke City as it's beyond a joke! And it WILL be the reason we'll be playing Championship football again next season.

How many times can one team shoot themselves in the foot? With all the injuries we keep getting too, there'll not be a good foot between us!

Aliens Colonial Marine...

It's been an age since I've seen much info on SEGA's Aliens Colonial Marine.

I saw a few previews in OXM magazine last year, but not much since then. And if the official website is anything to go by, we're not about to be hearing much soon either (it's not been updated with anything of value for ages) http://www2.sega.com/aliens//

But how can this be?

As child of the 80s and a HU HU HUUUGE ALIENS fan (I own a replica Pulse Rifle :) this is THE game I've been waiting for. You get to go aboard the Sulaco FTW! Next gen graphics, online co-op and multiplayer, seige-style gameplay and all being overseen by the original art director and prop designer of the ALIENS film!

Anyway, go check out the forums on the link above to find out more!

'Game over, man. Game over!'

Snow, Photoshop and the joys of long weekends...

I live 20mins from work, but thanks to the snow here in the Midlands it took 1.5 hours to get in this morning!

Never mind really, cuz I just listened to Chris Moyles on Radio 1 for longer than I am usually able too.

That, and the fact that I was warm and cosey in my Polo, whilst all about me people were attempting to scramble to bus stops or walk their annoying dogs.

So due to being late in today, I've had to work my lunch and couldn't get on to an advanced photoshop tutorial I wanted to do (mainly cuz it involved a naked lady!).

But but but...I've got a long weekend coming after today and shall therefore be working on photoshop all weekend....actually, considering that's what I do for a living, I might as well turn up at work!