I'm not sure how different Tomb Raider is on the various consoles out there but on the Xbox 360 its got pretty decent graphics and game play. I was originally going to buy the Wii version but was advised against it by the guy at the game shop, however just to satisfy my curiosity I may go and buy the Wii version for a comparison.

Now just as a little help to anyone else who has been struggling in some parts of the game I thought I might just post a few guides every now and again to help people through. At the moment I am still on the Peru - City of Vilcamba trying to get through some more of those Inca doors.

Peru - City of Vilcamba

 Part of this level had me for a while and that was the part with the Inca door that appeared to have two levers that were just out of reach. Other than that this part was pretty simple.

Go into the right had entrance next to the door and follow this all the way through. You'll encounter some bats here so have your guns ready. You'll then get to a room filled with water and some broken ledges. Its pretty simple to workout what you have to do here.

Simply jump onto the ledges and use them to get around the room to the entrance higher up off the floor. Remember Lara can do some pretty impossible jumps and it doesn't matter too much if you miss your hand holds the water will break your fall.  You will encounter a walk way with a divide you will need to jump. Jump the divide and you will see one of the wooden bars above the gate. Now this is the part that through me. You need to jump and catch the wooden bars(or levers) that are jutting out, this will not work unless you have a good run up before jumping. After  catching the bar it will swing around. You will need to do the same thing again but on the entrance on the left hand side which is almost an exact duplicate to the one on the left. After this the gates should open.

Microsoft are again being accused of being anti-competitive by bundling Internet Explorer as part of the Windows operating system by Opera software makers of the Opera web browser.

Opera wants the European Commission to force Microsoft to bundle competitor browsers with its operating system to give people the choice of what browser they would prefer to use. They want Microsoft to be forced to separate the operating system and the browser from each other removing the dependency between them.

To be honest I believe Opera who are the current browser under dogs at the moment with only 2% of the market are feeling a bit left out. Popular browsers such as Firefox are already gaining a large percentage of the browser market and they have done this without reverting to legal tactics like those instigated by Opera. Firefox has used a more grass roots approach to its success, the sudden drop in quality of Internet Explorer has even seen me (a very staunch Microsoft type person) revert to Firefox as my browser of choice.

I don't know if its just me but if you have ever watched the MP Hilary Benn (the Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) talking to John Snow on Channel 4 news he starts every sentence with the persons name he is talking to "John I know  but..." or "John we have to..." (and he does it quite excessively)- it is really quite annoying. I wonder why he does it?

Its rather interesting if you think about it. We all have messenger programs installed on our machines and many of us are members of social networks such as Facebook. We send roughly 10 to 20 e-mail a day and many of us have blogs (like this one) we post anything that amuses us.

It just occurred to me without even realising it. I roughly and subconsciously knew where most of my friends who used the above mentioned applications were at any one time. At about 8:30am to 9:30am you can tell when your friends arrive at work if they sign on earlier they usually wake up early to check their e-mail's and do some blogging. You can tell this by your RSS blog reader subscribed to their blogs bringing up their articles they post early in the morning. Signing in an out of messenger programs can tell you when they have taken their laptops into meetings and set them up again. At around 6pm when they have signed off from their messenger applications and then about an hour later sign back in, you pretty much know when they are back at home. Now isn't that scary?  Now think of this, you will probably know when your friends are on the move if they have a pocket Windows Mobile with a messenger program on it MSN messenger will tell you that they are using a mobile device.

Add social networks such as Facebook and people openly advertise what they are doing each day sometimes up to 6 times a day! We all seem to have a fear of a futuristic big brother world where the government knows what ever you are doing. Well it appears we have created our very own social big brother network and we have the choice wether we turn it on or off.

My wife has been going on for months about how bad our oven and hobs are, I finally got around to doing something about it when after 6 hours of cooking the Sunday roast was still raw. I purchased a brand new Indesit Fan assisted oven with ceramic hobs from Curry's which arrived yesterday. This thing is such a dream to cook on (yes I do cook every now and again) the fan assisted oven distributes the heat evenly so you are less likely to burn the food. I cooked one of my favourite recipes Chicken En Croute (recipe and pictures to follow soon) which only took 45 minutes to cook as opposed to the usual 1hr and a half. The hobs are also great compared to the stone hobs we used to have that took 10 to 15 minutes just to heat up, with the ceramic hobs the heat is there instantly just like gas.

If you are interested in a new oven and hobs Curry's offer free delivery on the Indesit FI31MK64 Ceramic Hobs and Oven package for £329.99. For an extra £54 they will also install it for you and take away your old one for you. Its worth noting however if you do not have the proper electric sockets available they will not be able to wire them in for you and you will need to hire an electrician to put in a plug socket near the oven which takes a standard 3 pin fuzzed house plug. Also note that when they install the hob (and they will warn you), the formica work tops are likely to crack as they pull out your old hobs. This in many cases can't be helped if you are lucky enough to afford granite,stone or real wooden work tops this shouldn't be a problem.  

I had a look at my friend Owen's Christmas present (to himself I think) an MP4 Watch! And thought "I really want one of those!" (envy). But I was stuck with a bit of a dilemma, I had to get to a friends place for a get together and I had to go by car and I really wasn't sure of the route. So ... I could purchase a Tom Tom (poor excuse I know) or an MP4 watch (because its so cool!).  

Quite a lot of my friends know that I only have a provisional drivers licence, that means I can only drive a car with L plates and a supervising responsible adult  with a full drivers licence in the passenger seat (my wife). What this also means is that I can't go on any Motors Ways when I am travelling anywhere (bummer). As you can see the TOM TOM is becoming more and more attractive hey? And yes to cut a long story short I did purchase the Tom Tom and it is soooo cool!

I was able to put the post code of my destination into the Tom Tom and then revise the route excluding all motor ways and it automatically re-calculated the route...sweet! What was even cooler was when I was on my way through Windsor I didn't turn off at an exit when it told me to and the Tom Tom just recalculated the route on the fly telling me where to go to get back on course again. Another interesting part which I had no idea these devices had was the speed camera warnings (defined by Tom Tom as "Safety Cameras").  I know many people have had these devices and I am only just discovering how really cool they actually are, as a backup however I did have my wife map reading next to me but we soon discovered we didn't need a map. This is one of the new entry level Tom Tom's available from Halfords for only £149 which I think is a real bargain. The only complaint I actually have was the customer service in Halfords, they don't really seem to have anyone around to help you out and when the till is busy they leave one poor girl struggling with a long queue while other staff members seemingly seem to be doing stock checks. If you do find someone in the store you are lucky if they get back to you as they sometimes seem to have forgotten they were checking something for you. Its not only my local Halfords where this has happened, a number of friends have complained about various stores where its the same problem. Great advertising campaigns on TV guys just get the service in stores sorted and you could be making a lot more money, instead of people leaving long queues at your stores annoyed by having to wait so long.

If you've been reading my blog you will have noticed my fascination of trying to stream content via my Xbox 360 for services provided by the BBC iPlayer, SkyAnytime PC  and now Channel 4's 4oD service (TV and Film on demand). Basically the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 all provide separate services for which you can download content off the Internet. This could be an episode of Star Gate SG1 you may have missed (Sky), Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (Channel 4) or East Enders (BBC and no I don't like it but my wife does).

What all of these technologies have in common is they all use Microsoft's DRM (Digital Rights Management). What this means is that the content provider (BBC, Sky or Channel 4) can control how long you are able to watch this content until it expires, this also controls who can watch it. All this is taken care of in the background where a licence is downloaded to your machine enabling you to watch the content. While all of these providers may appear to have different innovative interfaces, under the covers they are all really using Windows Media Player which supports DRM. The BBC got a lot of flack for not using an open source platform for doing the same thing. The truth is this method has probably worked out cheaper, as so many other providers are using the same technology its tried and tested (until someone cracks it of course).

One of the let downs I found of these services was there was no way of watching the content you missed on your TV. You had to watch it on your computer. Unless you were a bit computer savvy and knew how to plug your computer into your TV (not all TV's support this) there wasn't really much of an alterative. That was until the Xbox 360 started to be able to stream content from your Windows Media PC. I found the Xbox 360 proved to be a cheaper alternative than having a dedicated PC for watching content from the Internet on your TV. I have also found it also works well with content from Channel 4's service 4oD. The only problem I have found is that 4oD's videos are not as higher quality as those provided by Sky (this may probably change), it gives the impression of a pixilated image on my 1080i LCD screen. I think Microsoft can provide a lot more upgrades for the Xbox 360 to take advantage of this place in the market. Although I suspect they may be keeping a bit quiet about the potential because they may be thinking of a separate content deal they want to put together, so they can charge Xbox Live subscribers for the privilege.  

It looks as though no one has really taken advantage of the potential for a TV Over Internet Provider (TOIP) box that could pull all these providers together maybe even including Joost?

Having finally gotten around to taking some of my holiday time off work I've noticed just how annoying the cats can really be. I found the best solution to the problem when they run around in the morning knocking things over is just to put them outside every time they come inside. The cats do get a bit annoyed but the benefit is that around noon you let them back inside and thy fall fast asleep on their bean bags.