The upcoming Nintendo Revolution next-gen games console has been renamed the Nintendo Wii. Lots of people are knocking this change but I don’t think it matters. I mean the GameBoy and PlayStation sounded very camp when they came out but people still bought them.

For fans of Super Mario Brothers I bring you two treats. First is a live action Super Mario game filmed during a talent show. This is so inventive and they should take it on the road! Secondly you can download the mariosoup artwork. The peice “examines the unpacking of a Nintendo game cartridge, decoding the program as a four-color image, revealing a beautiful soup of the thousands of individual elements that make up the game screen.”

My PS2 only gets used to watch DVDs these days. I play a few games on my PC but my Nintendo Dual Screen gives me most of my gaming action. Sony thought it would trounce the NDS with it PSP but so far the sales haven’t been as high as expected and it looks like the NDS will win the day. Read more about the Handheld Wars at The Register.

The making of computer games involves teams of hundreds of people. Who are the best? Well take a look at the 100 most successful gaming studios of 2005 and find out for yourself.

I’ve also taken a look at mods this week. No, not the ones on mopeds, I mean game modifications. This is where home programmers make add-ons for existing computer games. I own (and have completed) the game Half Life 2 but the mod called Minerva: Metastasis 2 gives you 2 brilliant single-player levels to play free of charge. It’s amazingly well designed for a home modification and its given me a good few hours of enjoyment. Download it if you have HL2 on your system.

Anyway, lets all wish Graeme Dott best of luck in the World Snooker final with Peter Ebdon. £200 for me I hope!

Learn a little more about the geography of Iran for the upcoming strategic missile strikes with this handy BBC map.

Keeping with the politics: The American Empire for Dummies.

The athiest’s nightmare. God invented bananas for man as can be seen in this video. It’s so true. Where’s my nearest church? Quick!

I loved the KLF. And since their demise I haven’t really taken a big interest in pop music. You can check out their old videos at popjustice.com Absolutely amazing.

Today’s game: Keepy Uppy Tennis Ball. I managed 90 but the phone rang and put me off.

Stop buying Heat magazine. Get all your US celeb gossip and pictures from justjared.com

Snooker Update: O’Sullivan 5 - 3 Dott. Play resumes this afternoon.

So much for the FA wanting to appoint an Englishman or a Briton. It looks like Luiz Felipe Scolari is going to be the new England manager. The FA have just offered him the job.

I presume that Martin O’Neill didn’t want the job and they felt that McClaren, Curbishley and Allardyce were not up to the job. I’m a big fan of Sven and think he’s the best England manager I’ve ever seen but I thought that maybe it was time to give an English manager a chance. And Scolari will be a mistake.

The good thing is that he looks exactly like my Dad. If my Dad grows his moustache back he could get lots of work during retirement as a Scolari lookalike. Excellent.

So much has been going on recently. I’m working hard on a couple of web projects that would be finished by now if it wasn’t for Microsoft IIS and Internet Explorer being ‘different’ to the standards. Time to catch up on some posting.

First lets congratulate the Super Hammers for getting through to the FA Cup final and into Europe. With a not very convincing win over Middlesbrough we’ll now face the mighty Liverpool at Cardiff on the 13th of May. That will kick start two months of football madness as I attempt to watch every televised game in the World Cup.

I’ve put another bet on, my third this year. First I put £5 on Lyon (at 20/1) to win the Champions League but they got knocked out in the final minutes of their quarter-final game. Secondly was my big win on the Grand National. Last week I put £5 on Graham Dott to win the World Snooker Championship at 40/1. He needs to win 13 frames to get into the semis and yesterday at close of play he was 10-6 up but he’s currently at 12-11. Is the last minute knock-out about to happen to me again? I could do with another £200.

Brilliant Rolling Stone Magazine interview with Kiefer Sutherland star of 24. Which this season is back to its best.

Some online games. Give them a try:
Lemmings on your broswer.
3D Logic. Starts off easy but soon gets hard.

Great news: “a dose of PT-141 results, in most cases, in a stirring in the loins in as little as 15 minutes. Women, according to one set of results, feel ‘genital warmth, tingling and throbbing’, not to mention ‘a strong desire to have sex’“. Old age isn’t looking so bad after all!

Oh, and hear what one of those middle of London street evangelists has to say over a coffee. Interview at b3ta.

SNOOKER UPDATE:
12-12 all, deciding frame. Dott 51 - 37 Robertson. So close. The games already been going on for 30 minutes.

SNOOKER UPDATE:
This is getting too intense. Robertson is now 23 behind with 18 on the table. He needs snookers. Come on Dott!!

SNOOKER UPDATE:
Excellent! The tiny Scot did it! He may have to beat Ronnie O’Sullivan to get to the final though so I can’t celebrate yet.

Busted Tees presents:

Links to re-sampled old records, a la Jive Bunny, T-shirt with slogans. Its the 80’s all over again!

Check out The Best of Bootie 2005 CD. You can download or torrent it for free (around 65Meg). It features some well known classic tracks mixed together to create new ones. Good party music. My favourites must be “Hot Rich Girls Dropped in a Grange” which mixes Gwen Stafani with Snoop Doggy Dog and ZZTop’s La Grange. Incredibly I was a huge ZZTop fan when I was 11 and 12.

Others good tracks on there are The Killers vs The Clash with “Somebody Rock Me”, vocals by The Killers and music by The Clash. There’s Kraftwerk Vs Coldplay with “Computer Talk”; The Cure vs Ying Yang Twins with “Badd To Me”; a trance version of “Do Ya Wanna” mixed with Run DMC and the insane “My Other Car is a Beatle” which mixes Gary Numan, The Beatles, Armand Van Helden and L’Trimm. You have no excuse not to download this.

Oh, and my latest image on b3ta.com:

I’ve re-arranged the righthand column a little bit. You won’t have the animated Flickr java screen anymore, the new one just returns three random images. Gone is the Netsounds link. Unique Visitor statistics are still there (i broke the 20,000 individuals mark!). The Amazon link has been changed from The Comic Strip Presents box set to the new Crazy P album. And the ‘get Firefox’ badge has been made smaller. It should improve load times.

On the left we have the new Search Blog field. This does what it says on the tin. Visitors can use it to check out all the Real Hustle posts (so far this year 500 people have come here from typing “jessica-jane clement” into Google, although Google sometimes completely ignores me). Please let me know if you have any problems with it. The Blogroll bar has also been spring cleaned with a few removals and additions. Enjoy the new ones!

If you have 20 minutes spare then play the Name The Album game, from the Cool Blue Shed blog. You’re given an album cover and you have to guess the artist and album name from four options. I scored 70/100 which was higher than I thought I’d get. Let me know what you score.

Play the original Commodore 64 version of Rick Dangerous on your browser. Playing this now is so frustrating but I loved it as a kid. I think we’re spoiled nowadays with save points in games. Also on that site is an extremely violent animation which is worth checking out.

Introducing the Moscow Cat Theatre:

I really want to see that!

Bought my first album in ages. Crazy P (formally Crazy Penis) with Night of Earth. Sounds like they’ve gone a bit Goldfrappy of late but still perfect deep house jazz musings going on in the background.

I’ve been listening to the Secret Stealth album “Ssshhh!” all week. Brilliant stuff made by Jim Baron (Crazy Penis) and Bob Sadler (Fug)

And you can listen too by going to the Bocajito Records website. Select the Bocajito Jukebox - Secret Stealth. Track 2, ‘Dream of You’, is my favourite. If you like it you can buy the album from the site.

And catch the new Crazy Penis video of Lady T.

Just heard on Radio Five Live:
Presenter: “Tiger Woods has received condemnation from charities after saying he ‘played like a spaz’ during last weekend’s play at Augusta. On the line now is a ten year old boy with cerebal palsy…”

I also see that Dave Morgan, the “former fiancé of Jessie Wallace”, has sold another story to The Sun. He must be hard up. The headline is “Coke used like After Eights”, which is odd as I always thought you put coke up your nose. It’s just sad to see an “ex-PC” making money off selling three year old stories to the press. I just remember seeing a clip from The Farm (Five) where Flavor Flav asks him what he does and Morgan responds by saying “I dated a soap star” - the look on Flavor Flav’s face, ha! I would like to point out that I read the free online version of this paper.

Popped into the new British Bookshops & Stationers today on Western Road. It’s the new version of Sussex Stationers but bigger, cleaner and the products were actually labelled with their price, take note Woolworths and Robert Dyas (the price slackers of Western Rd). All the staff were really friendly and helped me find a few bits and bobs I was looking for, apart from one. The security guard was casting a shadow around me the whole time I was there. Occassionally I looked at him and he didn’t even look away that quickly. It was so full on though that if he does it again I’ll complain. I’m paying your wages, Sunshine! (Well £4 of it anyway).