Has been released! Go get it NOW!!!!

Go to Sky1 (106) press red, press A-Z press 9 select XBox 360, when the advert is showing press 344, that’s level 1 of the hidden game…. Have fun

German newspaper Bild am Sonntag is saying that Toyota are looking at signing up Kimi in a five-year 100 million euro deal. Tsutomo Tomita (Toyota team boss) is looking at bringing the Fin on board for 2007, adds new fire to the Ferrari whisperings going round.

Just a friendly warning that Topgear is on today (27th) at 8pm, I only warn you as I forgot to set the Sky+ for DrWho (downloading it off the net, I love the interweb). On that topic, is it me or has the telly been rubish this christmas?

There are a few news topics for this evening and I am just lumping them all together as it’s the wife’s birthday.

There has been unoficial ‘confirmation’ that Takuma Sato will be one of the two drivers for the Super Aguri Honda team in 2006. Now this is no suprise, the only real reason the team exists is to give him a seat next year. Who the second driver will be who knows, but Honda have a lot of talent in the wings.

Talking of Honda the ‘main’ team are launching the AR106 in Barcelona on Wednesday the 25th of January. Third driver is thought to be Adam Carroll from GP2.

An apparent hack for the Xbox360 is shown of on video; Personally I think it’s fake, but hey who knows.

PSP News, the first homebrew Shell is out, called PSP-OSS (Download), it looks good, give it a go. In other PSP news, PSPDual Boot is a project I’m looking forward too, TeamEmergencyExit is the Team behind that.

As I have a lot of searches for the word ‘Naked‘ end up coming to my blog, here is a link to a not work safe set of Santa’s Helpers

GMail has gone mobile, if you want to use GMail on your phone then point your phone browser to http://m.gmail.com

That’s about it, have a great Christmas and a good New Year!

Team Red Bull Skoda have announced there driver lineup for 2006, they are Andreas Aigner and for the first race in Monte Carlo Gilles Panizzi with Matthias Ekstrom taking over in Sweden. Rumour still has it that Duval could then take over the second seat after the first two races.

Just to say the few issues I had with the previous beta builds are gone… I recomend everyone to download the RC3 build (linked below).

No you read it write, I didn’t mean King Kong. I went last night to watch what was possibly the biggest waste of three hours of my life!

I cannot be bothered to go into too much detail as that would mean I had dedicated more of my life force to Peter Jackson’s worst movie ever!

The special FX where rubbish for the most part, especially where live action and digital characters where on screen at the same time (i.e. most of the movie), the script was very weak, Jack Black was for the most part completely miss cast in the role.

The one (and I do mean only one) good point to the film (apart from the credits at the end) was the sound FX. If Weta studio’s had put as much thought and effort into the visuals as they did into the sound then it may have worked. Some of the Visuals where inventive and good, the bugs where alright also the V-Rex vs. Kong fight scene was animated great, but that scene was let down by being faaaaaaar toooooo looooong.

Possibly the biggest problem (besides being 90 minutes too long) the movie had was the audience had no emotional involvement in the movie at all and really did not care when characters (including Kong) died!

So, sorry Peter, this movie is officially now ranked as a turd along side Batman and Robin.
For another opinion on the Pong (sorry Kong) subject check out Dan’s review.

Keith Duckworth the designer of possibly the most famous F1 engine of all time the Cosworth DFV!

The 3.0ltr V8 engine won everything going in F1 for years (154 victories over the various generations of the engine) and some would say the ‘new’ V8’s in F1 for next year owe a lot to it’s existence.

Keith was an engineering student at The Imperial College of London and then joined Lotus as a transmission engineer under the tutelage of Colin Chapman no less; at Lotus he famously joined forces with Mike Costin and Cosworth was born. 

The company started to make a name for itself when Ford asked them to build two race engines, these where the now famous 1.6ltr FVA (F2) and the 3ltr V8 DFV. The DFV was not however used solely by Ford as teams you now know all used it to make there names, these include Williams, Brabham and McLaren (The engine was also used up until the 80’s in IndyCar to great success). Ford also asked them to build the Cosworth BDA for use in F2, however this engine actually came to fame in the Ford world rally cars of he era.

The Cosworth business was sold in 1988 and is now in the hands of Audi and Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerald Forsythe, Audi owning the road car section and Kevin and Gerald bought the race engine section from Ford.

Cosworth have brought many of the great British engineers up through the ranks (Mario Illien and Paul Morgan, the founders of Ilmor) and as such should be commended on the work they have done over the nearly 50 years the company has been in existence.

With a little luck the might of the DFV can be brought back into F1 next year as Williams will again be powered by the Cosworth V8.

More on Cosworth Heritage

I have had the HDTV over at home now (Panasonic TX32LXD5) for the weekend, so here is my initial thought’s on the whole HDTV thing.

HD Source - 9/10 (xbox 360 at 720p) Sharp clear an full of detail I did not know existed before trying it, brilliant

SD Source - Sky+ standard scart cables in RGB mode - Watchable but not really impressive enough to show off the new toy, my wife actualy sid it’s not a very good picture!

SD Source - Denon Progressive scan DVD player - Lovely picture, clear colours and nice picture, better than my CRT (using RGB Scart)

So then should you upgrade? Yes Sky+ HD is coming soon I have also ordered some good quality scart cables (QED P2110’s) so hopefuly that will improve the pictue from Sky dramaticaly. I’ll let you know.