Iran is clearly evil: it’s a paradise for those most evil of evil people, snowboarders.

($7 a day for a lift pass, eh? Well, that’s next year’s skiing holiday sorted, imminent threat of nuclear holocaust or no)

It pleases me no end that the number 1 search result hitting my website for the last two months is “KT Tunstall”. Proof, if proof be needed, that we are destined to be together. That, and she recorded her new album on Skye, from whence my favourite whisky ever comes. Look, it’s just fate, alright?

Also, if Naomi gets Richard Hammond, I’m allowed KT Tunstall, okay?

The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals.

I’ve read, uh, one of them, and that’s “What’s so amazing about grace?” – and to be fair, it did shake me up a bit at the time, insofar as it prompted me to reassess the important parts of my beliefs and ultimately leave the church I was going to at the time.

Of the rest, I think there’s maybe one – Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis – that I actually regret having not read, although I feel I probably ought to read the Bonhoeffer, too, and I’ve got a feeling I’ve got at least one Corrie ten Boom book on my shelf, unread, somewhere. But other than that, I can’t say I feel my walk with God is any way impeded by not having read toss like “Left Behind” or some godawful poorly informed pseudo-science apologetics book.

Pokemon Diamond & Pearl sold 1,586,360 units in its first four days of sales over in Japan.

I’ll say that again: 1.6 million units in four days in one country. That’s… a lot.

Normally, I don’t like Christians appropriating secular/global events and trends to try and “send a message” – invariably because it’s something along the lines of “Cultural Event X Is Significant Of God’s Love Because Of This Tortuous Analogy And Therefore You Should Give Your Life To Jesus”. But Brian McLaren has written about the sad death of Steve Irwin is a way that’s both a proper tribute to Steve and speaks about how we should view God’s Creation.

I don’t recall Steve speaking of God much. But every time he said, “Isn’t that a little beauty!” I think he was speaking for God, the One who notices and loves the smallest goodness of every created thing. The look on his face when he sat with an orangutan or swam with a green sea turtle or let a lizard perch on his finger – that look in itself was a sign and a wonder.

Amen to that.

So, one of the great things about the XBox 360 is the XBox Live Arcade marketplace: you can download trial versions of small arcade-style games (usually puzzle games, card games, shoot ’em ups and the like) and, if you like them, you can pay a small amount to unlock the full thing.

Wait – did I say ‘pay’ a small amount? Well, actually what you do is you buy “Microsoft Points” and use these to pay for the games. It’s a particularly cunning ruse, because you can only buy these points in multiples that don’t correspond to the number of points required to buy anything.

Well, anyway. You can buy these points online through your XBox Live account – but that way, you can only use your credit card, not a debit card. But no fear! You can go to a high street shop and buy a card with a code on it which you can enter into your XBox 360 and it will charge up your account with 2100 Microsoft Points. The cards look like this:

They’re exactly credit card sized, which is handy if you… uh… routinely keep one-time use credit-card sized things in your wallet, or something. Anyway, apparently Microsoft are concerned that these cards are too small and don’t look impressive enough or something, because rather than just getting the card, it comes stuck to a piece of paper, inside a case that looks like this:

And for comparison:

Yes, that’s a full DVD-sized case, for a single credit-card sized piece of paper with a silvery scratchcard strip on the back. And as if that wasn’t stupid enough, yet – behold! The interior of the case:

Yes, that’s right. There isn’t even a spindle inside, so you can’t use it as a case for a DVD you don’t have a case for. It’s a completely useless, superfluous piece of injection moulded plastic.

Maybe Microsoft and Nintendo can come to some sort of arrangement?

Get “Jump in my Car” by The Hoff to #1. The Hoff Alert has been sounded. Get out there and buy, buy, buy!

Some people shouldn’t be allowed near Photoshop. Seriously, though, if (a) the Apple iPhone actually exists and (b) looks like any of those (apart from the ones that are clearly ripped off existing phones) I will eat my shoe*.

* shoe may be same bread-shoe that will be consumed when the White Rose Movement fail to have a top-ten single by next March.

RAINBOWS ARE WHAT HAPPEN WHEN ANGELS SMILE!!!!! PASS THIS RAINBOW ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE AN ANGEL SMILE AT THEM TODAY!!!1!

100 %TRUE STORY a woman passed this picture of a rainbow on to her friend and THAT VERY DAY her friend didn’t catch cancer or get HIT BY A BUS!!!! ANOTHER woman DIDN’T pass this picture on and TWO DAYS LATER ALL HER BEST FRIENDS STOPPED TALKING TO HER AND HER DOG EXPLODED!!11!! YOU MUST PASS THIS ON! OR, BAD THINGS MAY HAPPEN!11!!

Yes, it’s a pretty rainbow over Manchester city centre; it cheered me up, anyway.

Okay, played a couple more games since the last post:

Rockstar’s Table Tennis is pretty much the best hitting-a-ball-backwards-and-forwards-over-a-net game I’ve played since Virtua Tennis. And given that, having played VT to the point of almost insanity whilst we were doing the PC version, I still rate VT as pretty much the best sports game ever, that’s saying something. It’s perhaps a little less accessible than VT – the controls are a little overwhelming at first – but it’s got the same surprising depth to it given the apparent simplicity of the game mechanic. Each opponent has a distinct play style with their own weakness to exploit – and in turn, they will exploit weaknesses in your own play style. Graphically, obviously, it’s lovely, and there’s some really lovely touches in the animation (like the movement of the players’ clothes, and their facial expressions – the Japanese girl is irritatingly smug and self-satisfied when she wins a point). But ultimately, it’s that punching-the-air sense of satisfaction you get when you win smash home the ball to win after a 45-shot rally that really makes the game. Brilliant.

I downloaded the demo of Prey and had a quick run through. Mini-rant: Games developers, there are colours other than black and dark red; please use them as it otherwise means your games are impossible to play during the hours of daylight. Prey opens with probably the best choreographed intro ever – after a minute or so of chit-chat and beating up hicks in a bar, the emergency broadcast system suddenly comes in on the TV talking about “lights in the sky”, the jukebox kicks in and starts playing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and all hell breaks loose as a massive alien spacecraft appears overhead, rips the roof off and starts beaming all the contents of the bar on board. It’s a shame, therefore, that after this it turns into a fairly typical first-person shooter, albeit one with a couple of nice twists – the ability to leave your own body and solve puzzles in the “spirit world”, and the playful manipulation of the level geometry by use of portals and gravity operating in directions you wouldn’t normally expect. Probably worth picking up, but I don’t think it’s a full-pricer.

The demo of F.E.A.R., on the other hand, left me a bit cold. It just didn’t click. Apparently, it’s hugely terrifying and atmospheric and that, but the demo is pure FPS-in-a-warehouse by numbers: the only terrifying thing in the demo is just how spectacularly derivative it all is. Disappointing.

Another disappointing demo was – and I’m going to get crucified for this – Lego Star Wars II. I’m sure it’s just because the demo just dumps you in a level without explaining what’s going on or telling you what you should be doing, but… well, it looks nice, sure, but it didn’t really grab me particularly, and I seem to have missed what everyone else in the world loves so deeply about it.

On the other hand, the Kameo demo – which didn’t receive the best reviews in the world on release and was a game I was hugely sceptical about – turned out to be really rather good. First, it looks really, really good: yes, it’s all uber-bright primary colours and cartoony design and it’s a bit cheesy, bit I defy anyone to watch it for a few moments without going “Okay, alright, it does look really bloody nice.” Obviously, looks aren’t everything, so it also helps that it’s a decent, solid platform adventure – it’s not going to set the world on fire in terms of originality or anything, but it does what it sets out to do well, and looks very pretty whilst it does it, and that’s good enough for me, and it being £19.99 in the Game sale was enough to secure a purchase. Lovely.