The Masters.

Been watching a lot of snooker this week.  Mostly on Eurosport and the like, its got some weird team up issues as well.  The BBC has the pick of the commentators including John Virgo and the dynamic duo of Ken Doherty and Dennis Taylor which is pretty cool leaving the Eurosport guys with the likes of Neal Foulds and the rather flat team of Ronnie O Sullivan and Jimmy White.  There is something up with the likes of Jimmy though, I keep staring at his head for the strangest reasons, I don't know if its a wig or just a really strange haircut, but his head seems to have his hair drawn on, like someones balanced a wig on a turnip its off putting and utterly hypnotic in equal measures.   Also noticed in the background that they had Citizen Khan on, so it looks like Eurosport is running a naughty step for those who are out of line, can't imagine anyone watching this for fun.

Apart from that we have the first non English final I've ever seen in Snooker, we have Neil Robertson an Aussie playing Liang Wenbo from China which is cool.  I've watched a few matches they've played in and they've been quite fun.  Neil has really been crushing all opposition including beating Mark Selby 6-0 in the semi to set up this meeting. 

All I can say about Liang's matches is this (second video down).  Such exuberance, such passion and bad luck to David Grace on the pink, they were some tough old shots he put out on the green and brown only to lose out on the pink but there you go.  Its a funny old game snooker.

UK Championship Snooker.

You were supposed to get an update to Let My Body Exceed Me but both the camera and scanner let us down.  We have a picture but its massive and in PiNGas format, so we won't bother uploading it. 

Thanks to flash being a cunt and not allowing the IFM player on 64bit Vista (yeah we run that so deal with it) you probably won't get inspiring radio from the guys at Intergalactic.fm.  So I'll just have to hot link to IFM directly.

Oh and Freecorder seems to be working with Firefox.  Applians Borderline spyware audio recording toolbar has been a mainstay on my desktop for a while now.  Thanks to my onboard soundcard not letting us do anything but play sounds (really its a challenge to configure music programs, Renoise won't acknowledge our VSTs and its only free stuff like Aodix or tempremental stuff like Psycle that will give us the full DAW experience).

Here are a few tips if you're running freecorder.

Uninstall the Conduit engine, really who wants an app store with a sound recorder, and its works fine without it.

Get rid of the search bar from Firefox toolbars, and scale back in the toolbar options what it displays and has out, oh it'll also grab videos from most places so click the film strip now and again and prune all you don't need from there.

Snooker.
So, the Championships then, not only has it thrown up some good matches and fully showcasing some new talent, but this years looks like to be one of  the oddest yet.  Not only has it thrown up the first black snooker player I've seen, its also seen a lot of the top seeds go out leaving Mark Allen to fight it out with up and coming star Judd Trump for the winners spot. 

Mark came through to the final beating Ricky Walden 9-7 (despite never making it past Semi final in a major tournament before) quite convincingly seeing as he was down 5-3 at one point .

As well as having no real seeds in the main final, its also the first Championship final between two left handed players.  At the moment we haven't a clue what the score is but we will be watching the evening session to see who eventually wins.

2015 Edit.
Massively delayed, but well done to Rory McLeod for winning the Ruhr Open.  I know its a minor title but its his biggest win to date, so once again well done fella.

Mayday

Forgive me if this sucks but its written on my aunts laptop (we're down for the holidays and its the first time I've actually used one).  After last week, a lots happened, Steve Davis is out of the snooker, ironically to Neil Robertson who could be the first non UK resident to win the title in ages, fingers crossed.  We'd also like to thank the Greenwich Unison team for all their help too, well done guys.

As for Mario we haven't actually downloaded it yet so no review, but I will say this it involves some of the most hateful level designs after the first stage, we may believe its actually impossible to complete this without tearing out your hair, or heavy savestate abuse.

Snooker Mario.

First up I'd like to say a big thumbs up to my boss for truly fucking up my life (its such a pity we can't render sarcasm in text mode). However what we'd really like to do is, genuinely give thanks to Steve Davis, who at the age of 53 is currently in the quarter finals of the World Masters Snooker. He was my childhood idol, a consummate professional and a genius on the baize so well done Steve.

Like a lot of folks I have real difficulty when they change the name of things, Opal Fruits, Marathons and Oil Of Ulay oh and Jif don't get me started on Jif. But the biggest one is of course the Embassy World Masters or whatever its politically correct to call it now. I've touched on my love of snooker before but I think its time to fully explain it to everyone whos reading.

Most of the time we saw the snooker it was either at my nans or at my grandads house in west London. They both had small tables probably xmas presents to me, so I could play while I was over there. At my nans place my aunt and uncle lived upstairs and their dog Jet would often lurk under the sofa hoping to snag any stray balls that would fly off the sofa. He would then need to be bribed with biscuits to stop him swallowing any balls he caught. We never really had a proper set either, being as I also had a larger table at home, these motley crew of snooker balls were either beaten up spares or worse beads, you try breakbuilding when the object ball is either half or two thirds smaller then your cue ball. We remember the blue being especially tiny.

Cues left a lot to be desired as well, we never had any tips on them so shot making was largely hit and hope (factor in Jet, still lurking under the sofa to pick out stray shots and you have quite an entertaining game).

Home proved less fraught, the only hazard was Weedle the cat, who would either sleep on the table or if in a playful mood stick a paw up the pocket and assault the nearest ball.

We'd like to think we were any good but the best break we had was about 32, possibly due to the lame cues you had and possibly due to pets. So the best thing was to watch the pros on TV and see how its done properly.

Back then most of the non English players in the mid 80's were mainly Canadians such as Cliff Thorburn, Kirk Stevens and big Bill Werbeunik playing on the international circuit, rather like the current crop of up and coming Chinese players. On the home front, we had Steve Davis, Jimmy White, Tony Meo, Tony Knowles, Terry Griffiths and Dennis Taylor. Add in old school players like John Spencer and Eddie Charlton and 8 ace clone Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins and the stage was set for the Embassy World Championships.

The Embassy Championship was a big part of my life, sitting back with family watching frame after frame and cheering on whoever was winning at the time. Normally, Steve Davis (6 times world champion dont'cha know), but we also had time for Jimmy 'Whirlwind' White and later on Paul Hunter ( who's sadly no longer with us). My nan really didn't like Stephen Hendry (too surly) but I didn't mind him, and when she moved to Woolwich from round the corner to us we would come home from school and sit down and watch TV.

So there you have it, thats what made us like snooker watching it at my nans, oh and as for Mario, well I'm afraid I just liked the pun, to be honest though, if you're reading Nintendo how about that as a regular sports game instead of tennis or golf.

Next time (If I remember,) we'll get round to reviewing a Super Mario 4 for Gameboy. Part of the pirate range.

Its done.

Finally let this be the last of this nazi bollocks.

Oh and as a postscript let there be house. We have explosive (Propellerheads ReBirth). W00t dudes.

Post postscript. That Benson and Hedges Programme actually contains Stephen Hendry's autograph (We have Steve Davis' already).