Straying from the Point

I’m late to the party as usual and frankly, it was only by accident I even ended up here. I was given this game by my sister after she had finished with it. I’d heard at release that this was worth checking out but I don’t tend to go out of my way to pick up new games unless I'm already a huge fan of the series as with the GTA games. So, it was a few years after release that I finally cracked open the Red Dead Redemption box and slotted the disc into my PS3. Blackwater - The biggest town in the game. I begin my Wild West adventure playing as the former criminal, John Marston, by taking an excruciating train journey. As usual, there’s a loud, self-righteous asshole talking loudly at the lady next to him. This particular asshole has an affinity for the good Lord. There are also two old ladies loudly proclaiming how civilisation is coming to the local savages; I’m sure they're thrilled. At some point someone mentions politicians being corrupt which shows nothing has changed

It's been a few years since my last  post  about my adventures with the Snapmatic camera within GTA5.  The previous entry was all shots from the PS3 version of the game. The subsequent PC release proved to be too tempting to resist and once I had fitted a graphics card worthy of the title I was able to turn the settings at least some way up to really start to enjoy the impressive detail Rockstar put in this game. The lighting, in particular, is outstanding and is one thing Rockstar has done well time and again. This compliments the detail they've put into the cityscape, countryside and people that make up Los Santos and Blaine County. City People

"We’re doing our absolute best to stay on top of Android updates" said Motorola spokesman, Geoffrey Fluffing. Mr Fluffing stated that Motorola "has recently become known for rapid OS updates". This seems to be a knock-on effect of the acquisition by Google in 2011. It seems they intended to continue the trend and get Lollipop into the hands of their customers as soon as possible. Last year the company, who were recently acquired by Lenovo, even beat Google to the release of KitKat on the Nexus 4, and with the recent ‘soak test’ for Android 5.0 on the Moto X 2014 they’re at it again. Now Motorola look to go one better and have actually announced the next Android version before Google got a chance. “We knew that the excitement for the next version of this fabulous operating system would be here sooner rather than later so we just went ahead and got it over and done with" quipped Mr Fluffing. We don’t think Google will mind, stated Geoffrey, after all they

I fancied putting a few thoughts down after reading this article  by Kevin Tofel based off a report from Chitika about  Android platform distribution . The report suggests and Kevin writes about the fact KitKat adoption and uptake appears to be slower than with Jelly Bean according to Chitika's report. My first reaction was that this can't be correct considering a number of manufacturers have pushed KitKat updates to their devices far quicker than previous OS versions, Motorola notably bringing it to their Moto X before Google had it on their own Nexus 4. I had a quick look at the Android distribution numbers from Android Police  and compared initial percentages for both OS versions. Jelly Bean was released at Google I/O on the 27 June 2012 . KitKat was released 31 October 2013  on the Nexus 5. Around 4 months later (121 days for KitKat, 127 for Jelly Bean) we have percentages from the Android developer dashboard. These run to 2.5% for KitKat and 2.7% for Jelly Bean whi

I'm sure you're aware of Grand Theft Auto, the notorious gaming series that is now synonymous with open world exploration and gaming events to make your mother cry. Well the latest version is still all the things it was before, it's crude, crazy and perpetually violent. I've put a good number of hours into the game since buying it, most of these have been spent exploring the world Rockstar created. One of the most impressive things about this game is that they've made it look better than GTA IV despite it still being on the PS3/XBox and not the next generation of consoles. This has been achieved almost exclusively with lighting. When you get right down to the textures they're not all that impressive but the way they light Los Santos and Blaine County is impressive. Panoramic image created in Photoshop and turned into a  Photosphere Snapmatic Something that has been developed well for this game after introduction in previous titles was the mobile p

This is a quick how to so you can load custom themes into Agenda Widget . I spent a bit of time making the Google Cards style one below so you can use that to get started! To get started you'll need to download the XML file from my Drive account:  GoogleCardsUI.xml  (select Download) or Dropbox:  GoogleCardsUI.xml  (long press/right click save link ). I would suggest doing this on the device you intend to use it on as it'll be immediately available to load into Agenda Widget. Once you have downloaded the file, open up Agenda Widget into the main settings menu. Tap the top right icon with 4 lines and a small triangle in the lower right. Select  Import  and  Browse . Now you need to locate the file on your phone. If you downloaded it directly from your device it will be located in  Download Select GoogleCardUI.xml (This may be a random string if you downloaded it from Drive) and OK. Hit Import and exit settings, your Agenda Widget should now be displaying th