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Nobody else seems to have kicked this one off, so I thought I'd shoulder the heavy burden and bring joy and relief to those of us still idly dossing off at our desks.

I spy, with my appropriately-sized optical orb, something beginning with 'S'.

It's on my desk, to give you a clue.

Anyone else played this? It's shockingly brilliant. Imagine, if you will, a 2d turn-based Elite, with all the trading, bounty hunting and pirating shindigs therein, with a huge chunk of extra minigames bolted on for good measure - there's a passable RTS that kicks in when you take part in a military invasion, a political simulator for when you want to get elected as a planet's president, a shoot-em-up when you enter a wormhole, and even an old-skool text adventure. The only problem is the poor translation from the original Russian, but even that's brilliantly hand-waved away in the manual by explaining that it's not poorly translated at all, but that the characters are speaking some kind of space-dialect removed from modern English. That's showing balls, that is.

Even better, I managed to pick it up for the mad price of three quid from the HMV sale - look for it in the crappy discount software section, as it's on some crappy label over here, more's the pity. Also, quite confusingly, it'll be under the name Space Rangers without the 2, because the first one never got released in the English-speaking world.

Anyway, if you like Elite, buy this fucker.

Anyone else getting it? I have a copy on the way in the post, though I've caught myself wishing I didn't already have some instruments so I could buy the fancy special Beatles-y ones.

Inspired, I'm ashamed to say, by the fact that I found myself thinking of mikegloady as an arrogant arse for a brief period before I realised it wasn't him but his icon Nicolai Dante I though was an arrogant arse (sorry, Mike), my mind went down the path of wondering which of 2000ad's cast I would think wasn't an arrogant arse or in some other way not worth hanging out with. They may have exciting adventures and such, but you wouldn't go for a pint with them. Maybe Johnny Alpha. Or Bec and Kawl.


Which of our star-studded cast would you lot go for a pint with?

Anyone else watch it? I'd recommend you do, if you didn't - it's got all the brilliantly macabre and weird bits of The League of Gentlemen with a quite creepily compelling story to boot.

O wise and benevolent Hivemind, I seek your wisdom. And benevolence. I am in the market for a new personal music playing device priced in the region of £100 - £150. Any recommendations or dire warnings as to what to avoid?

I'm surprised there's not a thread already, as is the tradition, but let me be the first to say: yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Michelle Ryan - Yes

Fly blokes - Yes

UNIT - Yes

Self-referential Deus Ex Machina - Yes

Even LEE frickin' EVANS scores a big yes!

Let this day be forever recorded as the time that new Doctor Who ticked absolutely every box.

As some of you may know, Auntie Beeb's radio comedies are astonishingly hit-and-miss. This bugger, though, is a total hit which I stumbled across during my lunchtime iplayer fun:

//http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007scyr/Spats_Series_1_Science_v_the_Arts/

Anyone else watching this? I saw the first episode last week and the second's on now. It's a really moving, touching and informative sort of a documentary, and a clever insight into the whole nasty experience for those who, like me, don't have much first-hand experience on what it's all about. I'd recommend tuning in.

Well, chaps, much as we all love the cheese comparison threads, arguing about whether a kitkat is a bar or biscuit* and correcting each others' grammar, I thought I'd use the board to prompt some kind of a deep, in-depth but vaguely on-topic sort of a question for us all to think about while we languish behind our desks tomorrow. So, the motion on the table is:

The use of the Tharg identity as editor of the Prog is detrimental to efforts to attract new readers.


Speaking for myself, I do love ol' Green-Bonce, but I remember buying my first prog (1334, if memory serves) and being thoroughly perplexed that this awesome, grownup sort of a comic had for no readily apparent reason held onto the fictional editor idea that all the kids' comics used to have when I was younger, and shedloads of inexplicable slang to boot, which served no real purpose.

So is all this just some secret club by this point, mystifying those who wish to join us with our secret language? Or is it by now just a big in-joke for those who've been reading since day dot and would miss it if it all went? Even if it is, are we putting new readers off by carrying it on?

What difference would it make to sales, morale and the overall feel of the comic if next Prog there was no Tharg's intro but rather a little note from Matt explaining that he's done away with all that stuff?

Discuss.


* - it's one of these. But that's not the matter at hand!

What ho, chaps! It's another one of these, I'm afraid.

I'm currently trying to help my mum get her new Sky internet sorted, as it's presently functioning in a non-ideal way, ie not at all.

To explain: The bloke's been round and poked around and suchforth and she's got the router connected up and such, but there are two distinct problems;

1) of two routers Sky have sent her, neither seems willing to transmit a wireless signal as far as six inches - I'm inclined to put this down to shoddy equipment on their part.

2) They're also both unwilling to connect to the internets - the test light is flashing constantly (or, indeed, constantly lit) on both, which to me indicates they're trying in vain to find something to connect to - could Sky have failed to connect her house to the network.

Their tech support seem so far to have been as much use as a chocolate teapot, having spent much of their conversations claiming she can't have plugged it into the master phone socket, and that a house she's owned for 26 years must have some other socket around there somewhere that she doesn't know about.

The two routers, incidentally, are the usual cheapo ISP-supplied jobs, with no model info other than one being marked a Sagem and the other a NetGear.

Anyone have any experience with Sky broadband on this kind of an issue? I'm given to suspect shoddy router merchandise, but it's seeming a bit suspect that they've sent out two different-make routers that are having identical issues.

Morden.

Anyone else seeing some crazy horrible colour scheme where the old background picture used to be?

Since there are a good few typewriter monkeys of one kind or another on the board, I find myself wondering how many other Squaxx will be taking part in this year's National Novel Writing Month, or, indeed, if any had heard of it.

Simply put, it's an astonishingly mad sort of a challenge. The aim is to write a 50,000 word novel entirely from scratch within the month of November, which works out to just over 1667 words a day. On top of which, there's all the rest of one's day to day life.

Succeed or not (and the best I've ever done is 37,000), it's awesome fun involving a lot of late nights, swearing, and writing whatever crap flows through your head in order to get your word count up. Also, for those who need to save their money for the Christmas season, it's a good excuse for not leaving the house in November.

Anyhows, there's a link below for those interested, and I may well start a blog thingy this year, that I may post my progress for all and sundry to see, which I'll probably link to later.
//http://www.nanowrimo.org

I have my copy of Spore! Hooray for me, for I am ludicrously excited and took time off work specifically.

Anyone else joining me in getting their mitts on this as soon as they can?

It would indeed seem to be the case that we are, as it were, back. Don't know about anyone else, but my working day has really dragged these past few weeks.

So... anyone done anything interesting in the down time?

Title says it all, really - there's a blog on the Guardian with some chap wondering why nobody's bothered to make anything good on the screen with the prog.

I'd not heard anything about a Button Man film before now though, I'm sure...

Link: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/05/catch_of_the_day_why_are_there.html" target="_blank">http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/05/catch_of_the_day_why_are_there.html

My mind is weak, and it cannot hold. I'm thinking about buying one of them there 360s today just for GTA goodness. I'm somewhat confused by the whole Arcade/Pro/Elite business. Since I already do a lot of Wii/PC gaming, do I really need to buy one of the good ones? Does the Arcade version have anything hugely missing I may pander for later?

Advise me, hive mind, advise me!

Not that exciting for those who don't care about my ramblings, but those interested may wish to peruse my new tellyblog in which I'll be talking all kinds of inane drivel about TV past and present and why we ought to subject ourselves to the misery.

It's a bit visually rough at present, but the words will always be a wealth of joy:

Link: http://goodsandwichgreatclock.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://goodsandwichgreatclock.blogspot.com/

Thanks to the economic power of the Orange Box, Valve have kindly given me a free license for Half-Life 2 and Episode 1 apiece. Any boarders who haven't got round to playing either yet, let me know your Steam ID and it'll wing its way to you.

If you haven't played any Steam games yet, you'll need to download the software and sign up first, below:

Link: http://www.steam-powered.com" target="_blank">http://www.steam-powered.com