Thunderbozz

This is the sign in the window of Zavvi, Sheffield, this weekend. The store has finally closed it's doors after collapsing into administration late last year. It's a shame to see it go, even if it had lost the history associated with Our Price and Virgin Megastores, but it was also inevitable. Video killed the radio star; iTunes killed the record store. In Sheffield, there's a "masterplan" to expand the city centre with a brand new retail quarter. Construction - or rather, demolition to clear the site - began in the economic boom of 2008. Sadly, with so many shops closing, it looks like a rather silly idea today, and work has been put on indefinite hiatus. USC has closed; The Link shut down; Zavvi is no more; Woolworths kicked the bucket; Barclays have downsized from three branches to just one; the days of seeing Lloyds TSB and Halifax branches side-by-side are surely numbered. The High Street is literally shrinking, because these stores will not be replaced...

I've seen some boring football matches in my time. I've been to games with very little atmosphere. I've been to see games on playing fields and in horrible stadiums. But I've never seen a game quite as bad as Rotherham vs Macclesfield Town at the Don Valley Stadium (last month). It was dire . No soul, no excitement, not even any good football. And it cost me £20 to get in, too. ◊ Last month was a really busy time at work, so I managed to build up quite a bit of flexitime, even after a couple of afternoons off to see the dentist. Unfortunately, it's been all but wiped-out by the snow; it's taken longer to get into the office, and we usually closed earlier than usual during the worst of the wintry snap in the first week of February. C'est la vie. ◊ Dartford have had a few games postponed due to the weather, but we've been unbeaten in the last seven we've managed to play, which has shot us into sixth place in the league. It's a fantastic ru...

Warning You are about to be asked if you would like to read this blog post. Alert Would you like to read the following blog post? Yes/No Notification You are about to read this blog post. This is what Windows Vista feels like. Last weekend I finally got fed up of not having a working computer, so I decided to pop down to Currys and see if I could grab a bargain. Not really wanting to spend more than £300, I was expecting to be faced with the choice of a feature-light netbook (impossible to type on) or a low-spec tiny-screen laptop. As it happens, I was plesantly suprised, and managed to pick up an 15-inch widescreen Advent with Dual Core processor, a good-sized hard drive and decent features for my money. Unfortunately, it also comes with Windows Vista. I'd heard horror stories about Vista, but never actually seen or used it until now. Sadly, this was also the point at which the pleasant suprises stopped. There are countless things I don't like about it, man...

My laptop's broken, which is an incredibly annoying development for several reasons, one of them being the unscheduled suspension of Thunderbozz until it's fixed.

The story The planet has been taken over by the evil INKT Corporation, a corporate military dictatorship hell-bent on draining every last drop of colour from Chroma City. It's not long before Comrade Black has turned the entire town grey and enslaved the population. Enter the Colour Underground, the last pocket of resistance, and their secret weapon... de Blob. The game The game is split into ten levels, where the object is to restore colour using de Blob as a giant, comic paintbrush. Smashing open Leechbots and draining them of the colour they're carrying enables de Blob to "paint" the buildings by jumping on them. Once enough buildings have been restored (in other words, once you've collected enough points), you can advance to the next sector. Along the way, there are four categories of mini-games and challenges, some of which have to be completed to allow you to progress. These include races, painting challenges and battling the Inkies (foot soldiers). T...

I have decided to scrap my one semi-serious new year's resolution (to try and reach the arbitrary magic number of five portions of fruit and veg a day) because it backfired in the most spectacular fashion. After four days of fruit juice with breakfast, fresh fruit in the afternoon, lots of veg with dinner... I was struck down with a cold. They say "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" – well too much fruit can kill a man, too, you know. Despite my severe illness, I managed to battle my way into work... and all this despite the literally freezing temperatures up here in Sheffield, which would have made the journey miserable even if I'd been fighting fit. Actually, that's probably not true. I think the only time you can appreciate cold weather, sub-zero temperatures and snow underfoot is when you know that it's not contributing to the destruction of your immune system. According to reports, it was even freezing cold in the tropical south, where the fi...

2009 has well and truly arrived, a point hammered home by the number of times I had to type the date on letters at work today. January is traditionally the busiest month where I work, and there was a huge pile of papers sitting in the "in" tray this morning. Fortunately, it would seem that most of our clients decided to take the day off, because the phone barely rung all day. I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year's Eve. We were out in a surprisingly quiet Sheffield city centre for the first few hours of the latter, gradually working our way towards the Cavendish on West Street via the marvellous new Players bar (barmaids in cheerleading costumes + great music + Sky Sports News = marvellous) and 'Spoons. The plan was to move on to my friends' flat down by the riverside to see in the new year itself, but there was a bit of a snag. The lock on their front door failed, despite numerous attempts, to actually unlock the door. Faced with the pros...

Happy New Year, everyone.

So, 2008 is nearly over, and it's that time of year between Christmas and the new year – wittily known as "Old Year's Week" by one contributor to The Daily Telegraph 's letters page this week – when people look back at the events of the last twelve months. For me, this year will probably be remembered as The One Where Quite A Lot Of Stuff Changed. I finished university back in the spring, putting an end to nearly fifteen years of full-time education (and, to be frank, fifteen years of keeping the Real World at arm's length). Now, I have a full-time job, and with it, the right to moan/worry about grown-up things like the Credit Crunch, the threat of recession, politics and interest rates. The culture of British life has undergone a huge shift in the last decade; caution was thrown to the wind as people began to live beyond their means. Getting hold of cash – cold, hard money – became so easy, that today's generation have come to accept the ability to...

The story It's classic Sonic as far as the story goes: a really fantastic looking video at the start of the game explains how Dr Robotnik manages to trap Sonic with a special new ray, harness the power of the Chaos Emeralds he was carrying and use them to crack open the planet. This not only unleashes "Dark Gaia", a mysterious beast within the planet's core, but also turns Sonic into a Werehog when the sun goes down. Sonic must travel around the world, repairing the planet by collecting rings, defeating enemies and returning the Chaos Emeralds to a series of temples. The game The game is split into two: during the day, you race around at blindingly fast speeds, collecting rings, running round loop-the-loop tracks and smashing through blocks. The game mode switches between classic side-scrolling mode and "3D" gameplay. By night, Sonic transforms into a much slower, but far more violent beast: enemies encountered along the way have to be defeated before...

One thing you'll have noticed being advertised heavily on television recently is games consoles. This is interesting for several reasons. For one, it demonstrates the fierce rivalry between the manufacturers to be number one. For another, it's that each console is being sold on different merits. The XBox 360 is selling itself as the cheapest option. Every single advert ends on the price ("consoles start from £129.99") because Microsoft are desperate to make their mark. They should do very well out of this because - although it lacks the very useful hard drive - even the cheapest XBox is a phenomenally good piece of hardware, with a great selection of games and features. Faced with this threat, Sony are pushing the PlayStation 3 as the home of a range of exclusive games (like Little Big Planet ). Oddly, the most unique of the PS3's Unique Selling Points is never mentioned in the ads: its Blu–Ray drive means that the PS3 is the cheapest high definition DVD pl...

You might have seen an advert on television recently featuring Ronan Keating's wife and daughter playing (New) Super Mario Bros. on a Nintendo DS, during which Mrs K says "I used to play this when I was a little girl, you know". It would appear that the DS is this generation's Werther's Originals. That comment got me thinking. Nowadays of course, it's possible to play the whole game on a games console of roughly the same physical size as the original version's cartridge . Kids these days would have no idea what to do with one, and they'll probably be looking back at MiniDisks, cassette tapes and VCRs in a few years time (if not already) as if they're from another planet. Technology is progressing so quickly, that cutting-edge developments can become low-tech overnight. This is a little bit frightening in itself, but perhaps more worrying is that an entire generation of practical knowledge could also be lost. As anyone who owned (or owns) an...

Bernie Ecclestone has announced his intentions to introduce a new scoring system into Formula 1 motor-racing. In response to critics (me included) who say that modern safety regulations, dull circuit configurations and restrictions on car designs have led to "processions" instead of races. In response, Ecclestone wants to introduce a medals system to encourage drivers to attempt overtaking manoeuvres: "If you're in the lead and I'm second, I'm not going to take the risk of falling off the circuit or doing something stupid to get two points. If I need a gold medal to win the championship, I will overtake. It's just not on that someone can win the championship without winning a race." Bernie Ecclestone. What he fails to realise is that rather than encouraging everyone to try and claim first place, it will create an unworkable league in which the top five or six drivers will be the only ones able to compete for the championship. After a few...

The government are a bunch of idiots, Alistair Darling is a fool, and the Prime Minister is a class-A doofus.* To paraphrase Frankie Boyle as Gordon Brown, "If you thought Tony Blair was a c***, watch this ". The reason I hate them all this week is the Pre-Budget Report. Everyone knew that very difficult decisions would have to be made in an attempt to lessen the impact of the global economic slump on Britain. Everyone knew that the numbers involved would be staggering. But no-one wanted what we got. The government want us to spend our way out of the recession. It's the most effective way of overcoming a downturn in an economy that trades on confidence. The paradox of thrift, the vicious circle of recession, the economic gloom... all these can be overcome by encouraging people to spend their money. But rather than leading Britons on with the carrot, the government have merely waved it under our noses. The stick will follow shortly. Instead of taking one brave st...

I'm giving the blog a rest for a little while. So if you'd like to keep up with me (Lord only knows why), I'd suggest you follow my Twitter feed (which is updated whenever I publish a new blog post anyway). There's lots I'd like to write about, but I haven't really had the time to devote to it recently. Consider this brief note an explanation and a half-baked apology.

As a kid, Sunday afternoons were all about the Grand Prix. Formula 1 had everything: fast cars and fast crashes, the exquisite mixture of danger and sporting excellence, the exciting combination of pure speed and tactical nous. The sport had character and characters - the battles were personal, the storylines of every season were more captivating than any TV drama. Having Brits leading the way helped too. In recent years, F1 has been a massive disappointment. The death of Ayrton Senna ruined the sport*, as tracks became safer, the performance of cars was artificially capped, and the opportunities afforded to drivers to manoeuvre and overtake drastically reduced. Years ago, if you missed the first two minutes of a race, you'd have missed the inevitable first-corner crash: now, you'd probably catch the Safety Car carefully guiding a procession of cars around a few splinters of carbon fibre. Which is why it was fantastic to see a genuinely exciting race on Sunday. The w...

I went to see the new James Bond film last night. Quantum o f S o lace is the second movie of the Daniel Craig era, in which all the titles have to have two "O"s in them so that they can be used to make up the number "007" on the poster. I thought that Casin o R o yale was a fantastic movie for several reasons. As well as being a good film in its own right, it also made a very good job of reinventing the Bond franchise. All the best bits were maintained (car chases, gadgets, puns) but the story was started afresh and the hero still looked more like Mr Bond than Mr Bean by the closing credits. Unfortunately, the makers of Quantum must also have loved Casin o R o yale , because they based 50% of the new film's storyline on it. If, like many people in the audience last night, you haven't seen it (or can't remember what happened), you will get lost at some points. It's great to have continuity between films, but the level of assumed knowledge...

They say you should spend your first pay-packet on whatever you want, rather than using for anything boring and practical (like food or rent), so that's exactly what I've done. I'm not sure if they mean every first pay-packet, but that's how I've interpreted it – and to be honest, it was only for two weeks' work, so I've not spend as much as I could/probably would have done. I'd only played on one a few times before buying one of my own, but the Nintendo Wii has always had a massive appeal for me. I don't like games where you have to think too hard ( Timesplitters is the most strategic game I enjoy playing); where you have to concentrate for too long (Ten-minute games of PES are just about right); or where the story gets in the way of the action (I watch with astonishment at anyone who enjoys playing Final Fantasy ). The Wii's philosophy – that games should be fun first and foremost – is fantastic. The control system is a stroke of gen...

As I've mentioned previously, writing updates to this blog is becoming increasingly more difficult because I simply don't have enough time during the week to dedicate to it. I'm considering a return to a Story of Bozz -style weekly update. Starting... erm, next week. ▫ Many of my favourite radio stations over the years have all suffered from an annoying tendency to not last very long. I could name at least half-a-dozen which now no longer exist, and several more which have been reduced to shadows of their former selves. It's very pleasing, therefore, to see one of them make a phoenix-like return to the airwaves. Jazz FM relaunched this week, after being replaced by Smooth Radio and after 'rival' replacement theJazz was closed earlier this year. I wish it the best of luck. ▫ England eventually ground-out a result against Kazakhstan yesterday, but unfortunately Dartford couldn't turn over Margate earlier in the afternoon. We lost 1-0, but remain in thi...

* Note to taxman: I don't really get paid like this.