Two weeks after getting home in Jan 2001 we got a phone call from his mum. I answered the phone and she asked to speak to my mum. I left the room and sat talking to my brother and dad. My mum came in and said she had some bad news. I remember her words clearly “beck please sit down and don’t take this personally and think its your fault”.

Andrew my friend had been to a nightclub and was waiting for a taxi when an altercation occurred at the rank and he was punched and he hit his head on kerb. He was in intensive care and they tried to save him but he died of brain injury.

Those visions and what happened are still clear in my head as if it was yesterday. My biggest regret was telling his mum what I saw.

Sadly I’m a bit of a geek loner so my perfect night in would be takeaway, fizzy drinks, chocs and internet. But alone? I want my friends to join me, but not at my house!!

I will be having a Twitter party. I want my friends across the world to join in the fun online with me at the same time.  Play some music from the 70s, have a quiz, giveaway some phone apps and maybe one lucky winner will receive something bigger, who knows, anything can happen.

I cannot give away Android apps as gifting is not available yet so apps will be iOS and also due to appstore restrictions the codes will be UK only but I am hoping to arrange something special for international friends.

So the deal is you arrange your own food and drink and be online for between 11pm-11.30pm (UK time) on Friday night 14th June.

Of course this could all go belly up – after all I am sure most people have better things to do with their time but it will be an interesting experiment and I will have fun even if only a couple of people attend.

That week from 10th June I will be an @PeopleOfUK person so my party will cross both of my accounts. Also for purposes of transparency so people know I am not cheating in quizzes and things I want everyone to use the hashtag #Becks40th – That would be funny if I trended, although highly unlikely.

Please do not send in your entry in the comments page here, either send entry via the contact link at the top of the page stating your twitter name for confirmation or send me a twitter DM.

I will announce the winner some time tonight after 11pm when I so desire.

Okay here is the question:

On 19th December I shopped in a supermarket for some goods. I want you to guess how much I spent. The person closest to my guess is the winner.

Here are some clues:

1) I shopped in Tesco

2) I spent something between £40-60

3) among things purchased I bought cheeses, 1 ribeye steak, gammon joint, chicken joint, fairy liquid tablets, mushrooms, spinach, coriander, value peppers, asparagus bunch,but this is not all.

4) Some of the offers I received were meat two for £10, pro-tech toothpaste buy one get one free, cheese 3 for 2

No other clues will be given. Good luck

I’m not a big fan of the Android operating system so I won’t speak about it here. I do want to speak about a few of the phones capabilities though.

Samsung have been creating decent phones of late. It used to be a few years back that their phones were best avoided but a few years on they have released some excellent devices and they are now really the devices to beat when manufacturers release new models.

The Galaxy Note sits in a small niche in between a phone and a small tablet or PDA. A bit too big to be a comfortable phone though due to its long and wide bulk. It is not bulky in thickness thankfully. For a device of this size it is very thin and light which is deceiving as it appears heavier than it is.

This model is 16Gb although most of that can only be used by photos, videos and music. There is a limitation of 1Gb for apps which is odd although this can easily be overcome by using a micro SD memory card for app installs.

The screen is excellent with vivid colours and a decent resolution making photos and videos vibrant. Apple bark on about retina screen displays so you don’t see pixels but in all honesty I cannot see pixels in this screen either.

This bright and vivid screen is also a great aid for the 8 megapixel camera built in. With the larger screen it feels easier to frame photos and so far it does not appear to be affected by glare from the sun, although that is easy in England as sun in 2012 is rarer than hens teeth.

There is a minor issue with this phone that can happen randomly at any time. For some strange reason the battery will all of a sudden have a life of only 2-3 hours standby after working perfectly. It loses battery so quickly that you can see the battery meter dropping. Until Samsung fix the issue there is a temporary fix. All you have to do is turn phone off, take battery out and hold it in your hand for one minute then pop back in and switch on. I had the deleting battery issue a few weeks ago and this trick fixed it for the time being. I have only had to do it once so it works for quite a while. Hopefully this can be fixed with an update.

If someone asked me if I would recommend this phone I’d say definitely as long as you really are happier with a bigger screen as that is the main selling point.

I never had the previous iPhone 4S as I felt it was not enough of an upgrade from the iPhone 4 to justify it.  However,  I was out of contract when the iPhone 5 was released so ordered for release day and purchased it from Three for only £79, excellent price.

The first thing you will notice about the device is that it is extremely light and thin. So thin that you could put a small case on the phone and it will still be thinner than the iPhone 4/S. It is also the thinnest phone on the market right now. Thin may sound uncomfortable but it really is not, it is very comfortable to use.  It is also slightly longer with a 4” screen.  Some may not want a bigger screen but actually it is a good size. I have small hands and still I am able to use it comfortably.

The next thing you will notice is how fast this phone is. It is incredibly fast and apps load in the blink of an eye. It has a new A6 dual core processor which is double the speed of the previous processor used in the iPhone 4S and the new iPad. Through some magical engineering it also is the highest scoring phone in test benchmarks on the market even beating quad core processor phones including Samsung’s flagship phone the S3.  Everything runs so fast and smooth, from bringing up the phone app to loading the biggest of apps like games.  Multitasking and switching from app to app just flows as it should with no stutter or lag.

The camera is the same 8 megapixel as the previous model but now it has a larger and improved lens –  proof itself that megapixels are not the important factor in cameras, it is the quality of the lens which matters.  Another improvement is in the colour saturation, the 5 has the same retina screen as the 4S (albeit slightly longer) but has higher colour saturation so everything looks brighter and more colourful.  I found this was quite noticeable in the regular games that I play.

Battery life has seen an improvement although not a vast improvement, the improvements are more inside – a faster processor would require a better battery to keep up. I still get through the day with about 80% battery left over. Not bad for a phone range where people think the battery is poor – that is just a myth.

I welcome also Apple’s new earphones which are bundled. Apple spent 3 years designing and developing these new earphones. They are shaped like a weird aliens head but fit perfectly in the ear lobe like they were moulded for everybody.

The one let down which must be mentioned is that they have changed the connector port for charging the phone so if you have old cables or docks you wish to use you would need to buy an expensive adaptor. Bad Apple, the connector needed changing so they could fit in the new components but they could have included an adaptor with the phone, it is not like they cannot afford it.  I want an extra cable for my PC but I am not spending £15-25 on one.

Now the iPhone 5 has been announced I wanted to dive in and get one, not because it has amazing features because it has not but I felt it had enough to justify missing out on the 4S model.

The next decision would be do I buy the phone sim free (£529) and stay out of contract or do I pay a lot for the phone still but sign a contract. I expected the contract price to be a couple of hundred pounds at least.

My current phone plan is £17 a month which is non contract – over the life of a 24 month contract that would be 17*24+529 which is £937

Woke up to an email this morning from my current provider Three. They are offering the iPhone 5 on a 24 month contract – 500 mins, 5000 texts and all I could eat data for £35 a month with an upfront cost of £79 which by my calculations is 35*24+79 = £919

So really the contract price does work out a smidgen cheaper over two years than buying outright but the downside is being tied to 24 months.  The plus side is I do not have to find £500 straight away to fund my geekiness.

Product ordered: 16Gb black iphone 5, should be here next week

Check out all the network offers at Tech Digest

Great game, very much like GTA which is the normal comparison these days for any game with a free roaming world.

The main character was likeable and the sub characters were awful which is how it’s meant to be. Took about 20 hours to complete and had a huge amount of fun. This is not a review, just a comment.

But as one gets older, attitudes to hobbies and goals in life changes.

Four years ago I started being unwell.  Lots of pain and fatigue and other symptoms really ruining my days. Not just any old fatigue like wanting an early night but fatigue from waking – all day with arms and legs so heavy that is feels like you are carrying a huge sack on potatoes on your back. Oh and the pain – all sorts of random pain that could be there one day and not the next only to bite back the day after.

Four years struggling to get an idea from my Doctor about what the hell was going on. Test after test revealed bugger all. Until finally I saw a rheumatologist
who diagnosed Fibromyalgia – it is apparently like an arthritis of the muscles but without the degeneration of joints.  Some think it is an imaginary disease and poo poo the idea, others know it is real through long term research. Lets face it, 30 years ago Doctors thought Multiple Schlerosis was imaginary and look where they are now through research.  The World Health Organisation recognises it as a real disease as does research and I know it is real and to the naysayers I will just say think yourself lucky it is not you.

Of course while there is no test for it, there is also no cure. It is not a terminal disease that will kill me but it impacts my life every day with some form of disability.  The funny thing is every day is different, every hour is different and sometimes even every minute.  Somebody said to me the other day “why are you suddenly limping?” in an accusary way -  I was not limping a minute before. But that is the nature of the beast – it randomly hurts at any time, any moment.

You may be asking yourself why I am writing about this on a gaming blog?  Well the days of my gaming blog are over. I have decided that Sprites & Bites will no longer be a gaming only blog but a blog for absolutely anything I like, whether it be world news, commenting of every day things or just having a moan about my daily symptoms, I don’t care now. This blog is mine and I dictate what goes into it.

If my long term readers do not like this then I am sorry, but it has to be this way to try and keep this blog alive. It cannot run itself when I have no interest in the content I am posting.

My life has changed and so will this blog.

Beck: Who are you, where are you and what do you do?

[Michael] – We are Pixelocity Software (www.pixelocitysoftware.com), a Texas based independent game company started by my brother Tommy and myself [Michael Bean]. We’ve been in the game industry since the late 90s, working mostly on large PC and console games like Age of Empires and Halo Wars. Having worked on really big projects for a long time, we had a growing desire to make smaller games and the emergence of the iPhone presented a great opportunity. So we started Pixelocity in 2010 and got straight to work on our first title, Disc Drivin’.

Beck: I love Disc Drivin, what on earth gave you the idea for the game?

[Michael] – Disc Drivin’ has several inspirations. First, there’s a physical board game called Pitchcar with a similar theme of sliding discs around a track that is a ton of fun with a lot of people. We’re also huge fans of the Mario Kart series, so we really wanted to incorporate a lot of obstacles and powers to keep the racing exciting. And finally, the inspiration for making it turn-based came from friends and former coworkers of ours at Ensemble Studios, who went on to make Words with Friends. Tie those together with some creativity and polish and you have Disc Drivin’!

Beck: Are you working on versions for other platforms like Android or Windows 7 phone?

[Michael] – We aren’t working on Disc Drivin’ for other platforms at this point. We would rather concentrate on updates for iOS and on making new games rather than porting to other platforms right now.

Beck: Lots of tracks to play already but are there plans for new tracks or maybe even a mirror option to flip over the current tracks?

[Michael] – Yes, there are plans for new tracks. We’re working on an update now that will have new tracks plus a few other surprises hopefully.

Beck: Sometimes I film with my phone my crazy or weird shots to YouTube for others to laugh or cry at. What would be great is an option to upload a previous shot to YouTube. Would this be hard to implement?

[Michael] – It’s not impossible to implement. We actually started on that feature when we first released the game and got it partially working, but had to shelve it for higher priorities. It would be cool to revisit if it bubbles up on the wishlist.

Beck: Do you have any other new games in the pipeline?

[Michael] – We’ve started several prototypes and have a massive list of games we want to try making, but we don’t have anything far enough along to talk about yet.

Beck: I have a personal statistic of 866 gold medals, 544 silver medals and 17 bronze medals. Are you as good as me?

[Michael] – No, I am not nearly as good as you. But you knew that and just wanted me to admit it in print. It’s incredibly common in the game industry that developers are “the best” at their own game for a brief few weeks after first release.

Check out these two Videos of my favourite shots by me. The first is a weird shot that went wrong, the second is just a good shot.

Weird shot at Disc Drivin

Disc drivin jumping the big gap

Now that all the big players have released TV catchup service apps for the iPad it is time for me to take a look at them all and give you a rundown of the best.  All the apps are free and work via wifi internet connection.  Apps all tested on an iPad 2 with an 8mb internet connection. All apps work with original iPad. Your internet connection may vary.

ITV Player

ITV Player has a nice black, blue and white design with sections of Most Watched, Don’t Miss and channels ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4. Programmes are available for up to only 7 days after airing. Also offers an A-Z listing of shows and a search function.  The quality of the TV stream is not the best and occasionally you may get buffering problems and also the picture sometimes is not as clear as it can be and can appear pixelated and blurry.  Some shows have a parental guidance on them but there appears to be no parental lock.  7/10

4 OD Catchup

This app is the offering from Channel 4. It has an easy on the eye blue design and the app opens with a selection of recommended programmes to watch from channel 4. E4 and More 4.  It offers an excellent 30 day viewing window so you are not rushed to watch a show. The quality of the stream is excellent and I experienced no issues with the app.  This app has an optional parental lock with use of a pin number if you wish to lock your childs viewing.  9/10

Demand  5

Channel 5’s offering started out as a test app for viewing Big Brother and has now become a fully fledged catchup app. It covers an excellent 30 days of viewing shows with a simple purple and grey navigation which like the others easy to use. The app is sponsored by Currys PC world with a small banner in the app, there is also a PC world advert prior to some shows viewing but really it is not intrusive at all. It also has some older shows broadcast months ago. The app description says shows are viewable for 30 days but I found some shows were viewable for up to a year. Channel 5 does not have a lot of content which is why I think it has some back episodes of shows to bulk it out a bit. Good quality internet stream 8/10

BBC iPlayer

The original and best of the catchup services, the BBC iPlayer by its very nature of TV and Radio has the most content of all apps. It covers catchup programmes from BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, CBBC, Cbeebies, BBC News and BBC Parliament plus all of the available digital BBC radio stations.  Internet streams are of excellent quality and the app has a nice design in both portrait and landscape modes with channel listings and a search function.  Oddly, and unlike the desktop version it does not appear to have a parental lock but it does have a favourites function to add a series so a new episode will be automatically listed in the favourites section.  Excellent stream, best content but no parental lock, also shows generally are available for only up to 7 days which is a bit disappointing  9/10