Richard Hobbs

I’ll start this post with “Minstresers”…

As you can see, this is a photograph of a Galaxy “Minstrel”, and a “Malteser” (made by Mars, I think).

Individually, they are great. Let’s not forget that fact.

However, together, eaten at the same time, they are amazing! We discovered this at University and decided to call the combined treat, the Minstrel-Malteser.

Obviously, this will never make an official product, but if you can get hold of both, I strongly suggest you eat them together and see if you like it!

OK, so next on my list is popcorn… My Aunt and Uncle gave Sarah and I an instant popcorn maker, which since Christmas we have used twice so far, so thank you for such a great present!

I have even realised that I actually do like popcorn, after many years of somehow assuming I don’t like it!

There is only one problem with it (which is more user-error than a problem with the machine), which is that it always seems to produce 1 million times more popcorn than you think it will!

The problem is that once you’ve turned it on, and it’s started producing popcorn, it just never stops!

The photo above is from our second attempt and trying to predict the amount of popcorn more accurately than the last, and as you can see, we failed dismally!

I think the problem is partly pasta syndrome*, and partly the fact that you never know how much of the corn will “pop”!

Nevertheless, this is a great present and I’m sure it will get lots of use over the years!

Now onto Christmas… doesn’t it seem like it came and went within minutes this year? It does to me, anyway. Even so, it was still enjoyable, and having 2 weeks off work has certainly helped me to become calmer and more relaxed generally in life!

Seeing all the family together was, of course, good, and among the gifts received were the helmet/bike camera (which I actually started using 2 months ago), a headset mic for my Xbox 360 console (to talk to other online players), a chocolate fondue set, various games, vouchers, cash and the usual selection of chocolates. I should also thank my Grandparents for the rather generous gift I received from them too.

So anyway, this year, despite it seeming like it’s been and gone in an instant has been rather good.

On to 2009!

* “Pasta syndrome”, by the way, is what I call the problem whereby you can never judge the correct amount of pasta to cook – you always end up with not enough or way too much.

Last Monday night, I attended the monthly AJS & Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners section meeting and among the various things discussed and announced was the “Clubman of the Year 2008″ award (shown to the right).

Just so you are aware, this award is exclusive to the Fenrunners section of the owners club, and although I’m sure other sections of the club have equivalent awards, this one is for the Fenrunners section only.

As you can see, the award has been given to various people over the years, beginning in 1990. The more recent names are engraved in a plate on the back, due to a lack of space on the front.

So anyway, as you may have guessed from the fact that I’m writing this post, I’ve been given the award!

There are actually two trophies associated with this award; the trophy with everyone’s names on, which gets handed from person to person each year (shown above, on the right) and the trophy with just my name on, which I get to keep for ever (shown on the left).

From what I can make out, all of the people who have been awarded this trophy in the past have contributed to the club in some way, and although I don’t personally feel as if I’ve had a chance to contribute a great deal yet, I guess I have!

The reason for the award being given to me, I think, is a combination of two things…

First of all, I was told at the trophy handover, it was due to me basically being so young, so enthusiastic and for basically attending every single event since I joined the club! I guess I’m exactly what the club needs, in the sense that the average age of club members is relatively high, and the club therefore needs people like me to keep the whole club going in years to come.

The other reason, possibly, is that all of the people who I think have contributed a lot more than me this year have already been awarded the trophy at some point in the past, and therefore can’t be awarded it again, so by some token, it was possibly awarded to me by default!

Nevertheless, I am honoured to have received the award, and given that I don’t remember ever having been awarded a trophy for anything in my life ever, it’s quite a nice surprise to suddenly have two, so thank you to all voting members of the AMOC Fenrunners section!

Wasteful packaging is something that kinda bugs me. To put it into perspective though, I don’t lose any sleep over it, and I don’t find myself thinking about it at random times during the day, but when I see an instance of wasteful packaging, it is slightly annoying.

The other day, a work colleague ordered a 1.8″ hard drive for a laptop from an unnamed supplier. Admittedly, hard drives need some packaging to protect their internals, but I feel this particular one was packaged perhaps a little too much…

Needless to say, the hard drive went into the laptop, the cardboard box was recycled, but the foam will end up in landfill because it cannot be recycled!

What a shame!

There are two things I’d like to talk about in this post… my Xbox 360 games console (which broke on Friday!) and the new(ish) game “Dead Space“.

As I’m sure you know by now, I’m rather addicted to my Xbox 360 games console (see NXE and my addiction to gaming!). On Friday night, however, it broke!!!!!!! What a disaster!

I was happily playing some Halo 3 videos, when the TV suddenly had red noise all over it, so I turned off the console, turned it back on again, and was greeted with this:

On the plus side, it was the clearest error message I’ve ever seen, mainly due to it being displayed in 1080p high-def of course!

I also had one red section of the “ring” on the console itself:

This was frustrating… although I tried to keep telling myself “it’s only a computer games console”, I kept thinking how frustrating it was that I now had to get it’s original box out of the loft, disconnect all the wires, box it up, post it back to Microsoft and wait 2-3 weeks before receiving it back, hopefully in time for Christmas when I’m sure I’ll be getting various Xbox games/accessories as gifts!

So I could share my disappointment and frustration, I sent an SMS message to a couple of friends, one of which responded stating that I could return the console to the shop I bought it from because it was under 1 year old, and this was a known fault. This, apparently, means they have to replace it, so Sarah and I spent 20 minutes digging up the receipt, I then clawed the box out through the loft hatch using a long piece of wood with a nail in the end (I don’t have a ladder at the moment!), boxed up the console and took it to our local game store. They spent a couple of minutes testing it, and promptly replaced it there and then!

Minutes later, much to my overall surprise, I was walking back to the car with a brand new Xbox! So, despite my initial disappointment and frustration, I ended up being without an Xbox 360 for less than 24 hours… which leads me onto my next topic – “Dead Space“!

I’ve wanted the game, which goes by the name of “Dead Space“, ever since I saw the first trailer video (see below) for it, so despite adding it to my wishlist, I went out and bought it today! I then, of course, removed it from my wishlist to save any Christmas awkwardness!

Anyway, here’s the trailer I saw…

As I’m sure you will agree (if you watched the video), it looks kinda scary, but in my opinion, quite a lot of fun as far as computer gaming goes!

Well, I’ve played the game for 4 hours this afternoon, and I have to say, it’s arguably one of the best computer games I’ve ever played! The entire 4 hours was spent in utter suspense, the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, quite genuinely not knowing when the next “necromorph” was going to leap out from nowhere to try and dismember me! That is until, of course, I manage to predict or react and get the better of them, as shown below:

The suspense is, of course, helped by having the curtains shut, the 37″ high-def TV 2.5 metres away, and 5.1 surround sound coming through four 4ft high speakers, a 2ft wide centre speaker, and 14″ subwoofer!

So anyway… all in all, a pretty good weekend, despite the initial “panic” about the broken Xbox!

Oh, and everyone should go out and buy Dead Space immediately!