Kids with Phones

It's been a long time since i did anything on this blog, but today i saw a very insignificant bit of news (or so it seems), it seems Jamie Oliver has done something that i think a lot of parents should do and has banned his 11 y/o girl from having a mobile phone.

I think it's about time parents started to realize that their kids shouldn't be getting mobile phones at an early age. Nearly all of us have a smartphone these days, there doesn't seem to be a lot else worth having anymore, smartphone or not however, every phone seems to have the ability to take, send and receive pictures, they also all seem to be able to access the internet via WiFi or mobile data connection.

This for a teenager (and younger) is open to MASSIVE abuse, we all know what you have access to with modern mobile phones and it doesn't matter what measures/filters are in place, kids see that as a challenge, an obstacle to be overcome and more often than not, they manage to find a way. I mean let's face it, it's almost impossible to police the entire internet and every social media website.

Having smartphones at an early age just opens up all sorts of doors to kids that shouldn't be available to them yet, they have access to 18+ material at their fingertips and there's no way to stop that, as well as the adult content available, they also have the ability to send and receive pictures, i don't think i need to elaborate on that, i think we all know what the average teenager is like, we were all there ourselves once...

Aside from all of those problems there is also the simple fact that a smartphone in hand or up to the side of a kid's face is a massive target for thieves, an easy one at that. Is it really smart for kids to be advertising their very expensive phones at school and out and about?

There is however one or two positive points to a kid/teenager having a mobile phone and that is the ability to keep in touch with friends and family and is very good to have in case of emergency (hopefully it wouldn't come to that for most kids) 

This got me thinking...

I remember one of my very first phones when i was a teenager, it was the Nokia 3310 (most of us have probably owned one at some point) and all it could really do was send and receive TEXT messages and phone-calls...

Instead of having to ban kids having mobile phones, why not make newer mobile phones that only have SMS and the ability to speak to people?

There should be some kind of law that permits a kid having a mobile phone with a camera & access to the internet. Let's face it, there are plenty of other things we have to wait to be 18+ to use or view, so why not do it with smartphones too? 


That would mean that as soon as they were old enough they could have a full-featured mobile phone, but up until then they only have the ability to call and text. This would limit exposure to things they should not be seeing or doing yet. 

I know it's probably impossible to enforce, but i think that it's disturbing to see the kinda stuff that kids have the ability to view these days, i mean not so long ago i heard that an 8 year old boy raped a girl! He shouldn't even know what sex is at that age! (well.. not much about it anyway)

I know i sound like an old git saying that kids shouldn't have smartphones, but when you think about what they enable kids to access, it's actually a bit disturbing... give them simple phones that allow nothing but text messages and calls, this will also lessen the likelihood that they'll get their phones stolen.

What do you think? 

Do you think this is a good idea? 

Let me know!

#Skyrim Legendary Collector's Edition Guide!

Soo, earlier this week Prima Games released it's Legendary Edition Guide for Skyrim (4th June 2013) three days ahead of the Legendary Edition of the game's release here in the UK.

I happened to be looking for some Skyrim merchandise or something physical i could display or use when the game isn't being played and was looking at the guides available, i like having guides for my favourite games, it seems a bit silly in one sense because usually i know a LOT about the games I like most. But i like reading different perspectives and seeing if there's anything i didn't know or hadn't thought of yet. Anyway after looking around, i found a few older versions of the guide & didn't know whether to bother with them or not. I sat there pondering it for a while, after a little while Danielle (my fiancé) started asking me about the Legendary Edition of the guide, so i had a look at it on Amazon & before i knew what had happened she told me that she'd got me the Hardback Collector's Edition!

I can't thank her enough!

This Guide is truly EPIC. It arrived this morning via Royal Mail & straight away i could tell it was huge. The package was very weighty & large in size.

The guide is very well put together & the hardcover looks fantastic, the only thing that very very slightly disappointed me was that from the pictures i thought it was a textured front & back cover but it's totally smooth, however it does look amazing & in a way i think it's quite cool that even now it can fool you into thinking it is textured when it isn't.

The guide itself is very, very thick. But then that is definitely expected considering the gigantic scale of the game. On the inside of the front & back covers you can find the extras such as the very large double sided map and the poster of Alduin's Wall and at the back of the guide (between the back cover and the shrink wrap) you can find your code to access the online guide & maps on the Prima Games website, found HERE.

It's too early for me to comment on the content of the guide but i have flicked through it & it looks EXTREMELY detailed, the index itself is about three pages long & there are extensive appendices at the back. I can't wait to sit and read some of the content in it, it's sure to be incredible. Put it this way, reading the guide is a daunting enough prospect so i can't imagine how much time and work went into making this!

Here is the amazon description for the guide i have:

COLLECTOR'S EDITION BONUSES INCLUDE-
EXCLUSIVE POSTER - 24" accordion style poster displaying Alduin’s Wall and signatures from Bethesda Game Studios!
RIBBON BOOKMARKS - Use premium ribbon bookmarks to keep your place in this massive guide!
HARDCOVER BOUND - This keepsake is protected by a stylized protective hardcover for collectors and fans.
UPDATED eGUIDE ACCESS – Use the interactive world map, which now includes Solstheim and additional Dragonborn™ content.


• MORE THAN 1,100 PAGES – Complete, accurate, and Bethesda approved content covering all game add-ons.
• LARGE 2-SIDED MAP POSTER – All Hold Capitals, Strongholds, and important locations labeled.
• MORE THAN 500 ENEMIES and 2,000 ITEMS DETAILED – Exhaustive Bestiary and Inventory chapters detail critical data.
• MORE THAN 350 QUESTS - All possible quests revealed with best outcomes highlighted.
• MORE THAN 250 COLLECTIBLES GATHERED – Explore the main and hidden locations across Skyrim and Solstheim.
• 3,000+ HOURS PLAYED – Expert advice on character creation and tactical knowledge for the most difficult battles. 

Here is the Bethesda Blog Entry interviewing the lead writer of the Guide David Hodgson which gives you a much clearer idea of how vast the guide is and the effort that went into it, i would highly suggest giving this a read, it's informative & funny too! Link: Writing the Skyrim Legendary Edition Guide on the Bethesda Blog

Anyway here are a few pictures of my Guide! I would definitely suggest buying this if you love Skyrim! Truly Epic!

Garden Photography... Again!

I'll keep this post short, the weather has been nice again today but a lot more cloudy, so spent more time indoors today, i popped out a short while ago there (around 8pm ish) and took a few more pictures out the back. If you read my previous post about the Great Tit that is nesting in our Bird House then i have a great update on that! If you haven't read it, check it out HERE, this time i managed to get the Great Tit whilst sitting on the fence so i didn't need to use motion capture, that means i was able to use a much higher picture size and quality. I'm very pleased, although i still worried it was going to fly off so i didn't take time to center all the pictures.

So here are some pictures i took out the back a little while ago today...

Top of the tree you see in the following bird pictures and a very grey, cloudy sky.

Cloudy Sky again, i like how the clouds look though in these pictures.

And here it is... The Coal/Great Tit that's living in our Bird House, perched on the fence!

I zoomed in on the previous picture so you can see it's cute fuzzy head!

Another picture of the Coal/Great Tit.

Nice wings in this one.

Is it a bird? No it's a plane! I couldn't resist it as it went overhead. See all the little bugs in the air too?

Lovely Weather Today **UPDATED**

Hello people!

Aside from dinner, Danielle & I have spent most of the day in the Garden with her father and our little Dog Cocoa. The weather has been amazing today and i think we've both been sunburnt. While we were out there i spent a while taking pictures of Cocoa, Danielle and some other random bits with my new-ish camera.

We've also got a little birdie nesting in our bird house attached to one of the sheds, so i set up the tripod in the hopes of catching the little cutie going in and out of it. I think i tried about 5 or 6 times to capture it going into or coming out of that bird house before i finally got results.

I used the motion capture setting on the camera, which takes around 30 pictures in total at the rate of 5 pictures per second! Which is bloomin quick (there's probably cameras a lot better than this but for me its great), but no matter how quick that camera takes the pictures, getting it to focus and start taking the pictures before the bird disappeared into or out of the house was very difficult. I found i had to try and see it a while before it enters the house and as for exiting, the second i saw its face i clicked the shutter down (it was already being held in focus)

After hours of sitting around i finally managed to get a half decent series of pictures showing it going in the house and another series of pictures showing it coming out. It was going in and out of the house every 15-30 minutes, most likely feeding it's young.

The only downside to using the Motion Capture setting on the camera however, is that the image size & quality is reduced. Most of my images are shot at 4608 x 3456 and are 16 mp. But the images from motion capture are only 640 x 480. (For the sake of putting tonnes of shots on here & to show you how well it works i turned the pictures into two seperate animated GIFs)

Other than the bird, i tried out my Super Macro function to take pictures of a couple of the plants that have flowered in our garden. We're needing more plants with colour but these came out quite nice i think.

Anyways take a look at a few of the many pictures i took today & let me know if you like them!

Hope you all had a great day too!

Note: You need to click the birdhouse pictures for the GIFs to play for some reason.

Cocoa Looking rather content in the Garden

Cocoa being playful (This picture was cropped, guess why lol)

Knackered Cocoa

Finally Realised that she can rest like the rest of us & not run around the whole time.

Tried using Super Macro on an Ant, showing you the original & zoomed in picture

One of the flowers in a small basket on our back steps

Flowers at the side of the Garden, i love the beauty of the flowers next to the bricks. Kinda works.

GIF 1 - Bird Entering the Bird House.

GIF 2 - Bird Leaving the Bird House 

**UPDATE** Thanks to Andy Moore on twitter, who left me a comment about the pictures above, i now know the type of bird nesting in that house. It's called a Great Tit. Just so that you can get a better idea of what this bird looks like standing still (which mine didn't seem to want to do) i found a picture on the web of one that looks almost exactly the same! (See below) 

**UPDATED AGAIN 03/06/13** Managed to get a picture of the actual Great Tit standing still on our fence, check HERE to see it!

Final Fantasy VII - Vincent Valentine - Play Arts Vol.2

At Last!!

I've been looking for Vincent for a while and kept coming across nothing but Advent Children Versions, don't get me wrong i like Advent Children but i would much prefer to get the original game versions of each character first, plus the packaging for the Advent Children characters is pretty poor looking. Anyway other than the versions i mentioned, the few times i did come across this figure, everyone always charged rediculous prices for him. So i either couldn't afford to get him or just refused to pay that much.

Anyway, i struck Gold the other day and found an amazing seller who sold me this figure for a mere £14 and that's incuding the cost of posting!

This has to be one of my favourite looking character figures. Just like the rest of the Play Arts series this is a vinyl figure & is fantastically detailed! I don't think i could fault it at all to be honest. Everything about the figure just looks stunning. It is highly accurate and replicates the game version of Vincent. As with the other figures made by Play Arts/Kotobukiya, he comes with a different hand & a gun. It has a good weight and feel to it & doesn't feel like it'll be easily broken (i wouldn't risk it however) this definitely feels like a quality figure. To be honest I think that all of the figures I have (with the exception of the smaller Bandai ones) are exceptionally beautifully detailed and well made.

He is around the same height as the other figures i have, which is probably around 8-9" and comes with a stand to be able to keep him in the pose of your choice. As i have mentioned in previous reviews about these figures, i love the stands that comes with the figures. It has an adjustable clip which slots into a black oval base, this holds the figure very securely and allows for you to pose the figure still, the only drawback is that if you want a more outlandish pose or something a bit more extreme looking, the base won't allow for a whole lot of movement in you're figure. I tend to use blu tac on the bottom of their feet to hold them in place, but this is mainly to save space on my shelves.

The packaging is very nice, it is a matt black colour and the lettering on the front is silver coloured and is reflective. It looks great. The box itself is quite sturdy & definately not cheap feeling. I wish they had kept this packaging for the advent children characters. It's a lot more professional, clean and sturdy looking. As with the other figures, there are pictures on the back of the box. Funnily enough the pictures on the back of this box are of the only 3 figures i need to complete my Vol.1 & 2 set. So if anyone is feeling generous.... haha.

Anyway as usual, words are one thing, seeing the figure is another.
(i think my picture taking is getting a little better with my fancy new camera, let me know!)

    

 

Definitely Recommended Content

Hi there people,

For once this post isn't anything about me really. This time I'm going to be making sure you guys check out some wicked talent. For those of you who don't know, haven't noticed or haven't bothered, I have a "Definitely Recommended Reading" Section at the side of the screen and directly underneath is "Quality Youtube Channels"

These sections are fairly self explanatory and I've not just put them there for fun or recognition. They are there because they have a lot of VERY good content and things that most of you would be interested in. My fiancé's (Mallynista) blog is the only one that would be considered an exception, but there are many girl gamers on my twitter friends so i think even that is relevant, plus she does awesome reviews and tips for makeup.

I aim to get more and more content in those sections over the coming days & months so PLEASE make sure you check it out regularly.

I'll not go into each specific link but they are ALL worth checking out.

As of this moment the two that are updated most regularly are:

Mallynista's blog
Chris Brennan's blog & Youtube Channel

Things like this don't need to happen #Woolwich

My thoughts and prayers are with the victim of yesterdays vile, disgusting attack and i hope they get all the help and support they need right now.

After reading a few articles and watching a few videos about the attack, also after watching a video of the attacker speaking to someone's smartphone, it got me thinking. Things like this should NOT be happening to our brave and loyal soldiers, these people follow orders, there's no two ways about it, they do what they are told to do. Soldiers are tools (not in the nasty sense, the literal sense) for governments, soldiers are ordered by governments to do their bidding basically, so in no way should a soldier, who is back on his home soil after surviving what was most likely a brutal tour somewhere be getting attacked/killed.

The attacker did make me think, i mean he did have a point (don't all start attacking me because i DO NOT agree with his actions and i am disgusted by him and what he did) but if our government stopped sending our troops to other countries and interfering with their own internal problems (probably for our own gain in some way) and or just pulled our troops out of these countries, innocent people here and in America would possibly stop getting killed. Our government has ordered bombings and attacks on places and it is allowed to get away with it, you'd be a fool to think that innocent people in these countries aren't getting killed because of our government's actions. But in this point my previous point comes into play, if you have a problem with our government, aim your attacks at the government! Don't slaughter innocent people in the streets! Don't kill soldiers who have no choice but to follow orders. Or even better than any more blood being spilled at all... Stop all the terrorist attacks, here and in your own countries and maybe our government will feel like the countries are stable enough and pull our troops out! Peaceful resolution.

I despair at the state of the world when innocent people are getting caught up in political chess games involving real people and real countries. I think it boils down to a few things:

• We should stop getting involved in other countries problems
• We have enough problems of our own, sort them out first
• Let our troops defend our own country, not die needlessly in other countries or over here because of the actions of a government.

I really feel like we would be better off dealing with our own problems as a country instead of getting involved with other countries issues. I feel really sorry for all the innocent people on both sides of the coin who have died needlessly because of the actions of governments or terrorist organisations & i feel for their families.

Why in this day and age do we still need to slaughter each other?
Why do we need to get involved in other countries business?
Why can't we all just sodding well help each other to survive what is already a tough enough life for a lot of people?

I know i have written on a very sensitive subject and i am in no way agreeing with what the people in question did yesterday and i will say yet again that i think it is disgusting and it should never have happened. But at the very same time i don't think innocent people & families should have to die in other countries either. We need to stop getting involved in other countries affairs and maybe things like this won't be brought back to our own doorstep, poor innocent people dying for some asshole's idea of justice.

What a world.

#Gamers May end up bringing "Big Brother" into their homes... #XboxOne #PS4

I'm going to try and keep this fairly short, because i could go into this for hours and hours likely. Basically I've spotted something that i find a little bit disturbing about both the Xbox One and the PS4. They both (well at least one of them) seem to be adding cameras to their consoles (not built in obviously) but they seem like they may be necessary to actually use the console. Which i find just a little bit strange, i can understand that things move on and technology moves on, but what happened to the cameras being an accessory? Something you don't have to use if you don't want to? Now both Sony and Microsoft, at the same time, are almost making it compulsory to have a camera. (I can't say for sure about PS4 because it's yet to be revealed properly)

With the Xbox one, not only is it a necessary thing, the console itself seems to "require" an internet connection & it's been said that it needs to be connected to the internet at least once a day... WHY? Can we not just get updates as and when we need them? Why once a day? Not only that, but i've read that the camera doesn't actually go off, it's in a "standby" state waiting a command... I'm sure!

I'm not one of those people who think that absolutely everything is a conspiracy, i don't think reptiles are taking over the planet, but i do my research into things that really happen in the world and i know that it's a dark place.

 Has nobody else noticed that nowadays nearly EVERYONE is on Facebook or Twitter? All advertising their daily doings, their likes, dislikes, information is put on these sites either without realising or because it is necessary that people can gather about you and build a profile. Nowadays if the government want to find something out (or police), they'll probably look for you online first, see if they can build up a picture.

I find it funny just how many people have fallen into the trap of airing all their business to the world. All because most people are sheep.

You may be thinking "yeah but you have twitter" or "rich coming from someone who blogs" but i think you'll find I'm very careful about what i let people know about my private life. Funnily enough I have nothing to hide, i don't do drugs, i barely ever drink, i don't do anything illegal to my knowledge. But i still don't like the idea of people knowing more than i want/need them to know about me.

Now, with the mandatory cameras with the new consoles and at least for the Xbox, the mandatory internet connection, oh and just as i type that another thought about the PS4, a mode where you don't turn the console off and it "gets updates" while you're not using it... that just screams to me that someone wants the majority of households to have cameras, what is stopping Microsoft, Sony or whoever they're in league with from tapping into the cameras on our consoles, especially since they're aiming at our consoles being constantly connecting to the net...

I know I'm going to get called all sorts and people are going to think I'm just another conspiracy theorist, but just think about it for a little while, stop thinking stuff like that is impossible or stupid and just think about it... it's quite a creepy prospect.