According to this article karaoke bars in the Philippines have been experiencing a surprising amount of what has now been termed "My Way killings. It seems the Frank Sinatra classic brings out the worst in karaoke lovers as a number of people have been killed after singing the song. The crimes have become so common that they now have their sub-category of crime and many karaoke fans are steering well clear of the song for fear of reprisals. What is still not clear is why this particular song seems to attract such an extreme reaction.

According to this article doing puzzles such as Sudoku can help you burn calories. The claim has been made by mental agility experts cannyminds.com who say that doing puzzles and quizzes burns as average of 90 calories an hour. It is based upon the fact that our brains need 0.1 calories every minute to survive. When we do something more challenging such as a quiz we can burn more calories as many as 1.5 a minute. The bad news, however, is that whilst the brain does use up energy it does not use fat to do so so you might burn calories, but are not going to get any thinner.

If you don’t have much time to exercise but want to keep fit then it appears it is possible to get a good work out at home. According to this article the exercise games available on the Wii are as good for you as real exercise. The article suggests that people use more energy playing Wii Sports or Wii Fit than they would if they went for a brisk walk. Whether the games are a substitute for a morning run, however, is debatable. Still its a good way to get some exercise when the weather is too bad to exercise outside.

According to this article lost golf balls are becoming something of a problem. That’s because they can take take anything between 100 and 1000 years to decompose and are becoming something of a litter problem. When they do start to break down the balls release a high quantity of metals including zinc. When submerged in water this poisons the surrounding flora and fauna damaging the environment. I wonder if there is such a thing as a biodegradable golf ball.

Fans of the Wii might be interested in this new gadget which is due to be released in 2010. Called the Cyberbike it looks like an exercise bike. It comes with a cycling sports game but will also be compatible with Mario Kart. The game that comes with the bike will feature 18 different circuits and have several options including Fitness, Story and Multiplayer. I can see that it might be more interesting than using a conventional exercise bike but I’m wondering if like my exercise bike which lies forgotten at the bake of the garage this might also be a gadget that ultimately ends up gathering dust once the initial appeal has worn off.

I was watching Watchdog last week and was interested to see a feature about a fault with the PS3. The problem starts when a yellow light appears on the console after which it no longer works. Dubbed the yellow light of death the issue appears to affect machines that are just part their warranty date. The Watchdog programme approached three commercial repair technicians who tried to fix a small number of consoles and managed to revive all but one of them, so if your PS3 has the issue there are people who can resolve it for you. What I find surprisingly though is that Sony refuse to acknowledge the problem denying that there is a manufacturing fault. So far my PS3 is still ok but I would be interested to hear from anyone who has experienced the problem and whether you managed to fix it.

I came across this story about a youth football team who have been playing for three years without winning a game. They have played 90 matches and endured defeats of 19-0, only ever picking up a point because the opposing team did not turn up. They finally celebrated their first ever victory last week when they managed a 3-2 win. I admire the teams persistence  in sticking with the game, hopefully this will be the first of many more wins for them.

According to this article Sky has struck a deal with Microsoft that will see their content offered through the Xbox. Under the deal live football, TV and films will be available through the Xbox. It is likely to be available in the autumn although no details have been released on how much it will cost. There is likely to be some deals available for people who already subscribe to Sky offering them content at a reduced cost but once again no specifics have yet been released.

Like many people I had a punt on the Grand National last weekend without success. My tried and tested method of picking horses with funny names evidently failed again and none of them came anywhere. It appears that some people are more lucky then me, however. James Darmody from Swindon selected three horses to finish in the top four of the race and put down a £30 bet. At odds at 11,848 to one it seems to have little or no chance of coming in but he ended up winning £65,000. Perhaps I need to work on my technique or give up gambling. 

This article claims that three quarters of Playstation 3 owners would rather have a night of video games that have sex. The survey was carried out on 1130 British men who have a PS3 with 32% of those questioned saying they would rather play games than have sex with their partner. Many of those questioned also said that sex was not as interesting as playing games. The survey does not appear to have questioned any female PS3 owners but it would be interesting to see those results. Which would you rather do, play games or have sex?

According to this article the Nintendo Wii has now become the fastest selling games console in history surpassing even the Playstation 2. Since the launch of the Wii in 2006 Nintendo have sold more than 50 million consoles. The Wii seems to be doing well because it appeals to families and casual users who perhaps are not your average Playstation or Xbox gamers and if this article is to believed figures suggest that 20 per cent of Wii owners in the US have no other games console in their home. I find this quite interesting, I own a Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 and like all the consoles for different reasons. I do, however, play the Wii considerably less than the other two, it seems to only be used when we have friends around and want something that does require conventional gaming controls. I prefer my Playstation 3 for my SingStar games and for Tombraider and my Xbox 360 is used for more serious games such as Gears of War and Splinter Cell.

According to Camelot £7.2 million of Lottery wins remain unclaimed. The prizes includes three jackpot prizes of more than a £1 million. If you have a lottery ticket lying around gathering dust it might be worth checking it to see if you have won. Unfortunately for me although I do a line of number every week mine are not winning ones, I must just pick rubbish numbers.

I recently got Rockband and Rockband 2 for Christmas with all the instruments and have been having a lot of fun playing over the past few weeks. One thing that I initially found a little odd was that not all the songs advertised on the back of case were actually included on the game. It took me a little bit of searching around on the internet to find out that to access all of the songs you first need to complete either the game or the challenges to unlock them, there is however, no mention of this in the manual that comes with the game.

I went through Rockband on a solo tour as a vocalist and unlocked all the songs this way. There is a cheat that allows you unlock all of the songs by entering a sequence on the start screen but this apparently does not allow you to save your progress so I decided to do it the hard way. I later discovered that for $5 you can purchase a license key that allows you to import all of the Rockband songs onto your hand drive, so if you are buying both games together and want to access all of the songs from within Rockband 2 then this is quite useful. Since then I have been busy working my way through Rockband 2 unlocking the songs on this disk and now have quite a collection to choose from. My only problem now, is that I want to play in a band and my husband is always too busy to join me, so my band which I named Bunny Foot only has the one member, still it means I get plenty of practice.

I have never really spent long enough on a Rubik's Cube to try and solve the puzzle but I have seen stories about people that can solve them in minutes. This one is slightly different. It's about a man called Graham Parker who finally solved the puzzle after 26 years. He started it in 1983 and since then has spent many sleepless nights battling to solve it. In all it has taken him around 27,400 hours, I'm not sure I would have that much patience.

After completing Gears of War some time ago I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Gears of War 2 but had put off buying it, in case I received it for Christmas. I did receive the game as a gift from my husband and we tried it out for the first time today. We like to play in the co-op mode as we find it makes for a better game. So far I am not disappointed. We have successfully avoided mortar attacks to go underground to try and defeat the locusts and most recently have managed to survive being eaten by a giant worm. This game is more challenging then the last but it looks like it will provide many hours of great gaming, I better get back to it, whilst I have some holiday time to spare.

One of the presents I received this Christmas was Rockband for the Xbox. I have wanted this game for a while and it was a real surprise when my husband appeared with a huge box on Christmas morning. After putting together the instruments I had a go at the drums and Rory tried the guitar before switching over and trying the other instruments. Both instruments took a little bit of getting used with the singing being the easiest and least challenging part. After a little practice, however, this game gets really addictive. I haven't quite mastered the guitar but I am starting to get quite good at the drums. This is a game that appeals to all ages as well. Rory's parents spent Christmas with us and we formed a band with me doing the singing, Rory's mum and dad taking turns at manning the drums and Rory on lead guitar. Despite it being quite an expensive game I can see we are going to have hours of fun with this. Once we have exhausted the songs on the original disk I will be off to the music song to download more.

I got an invitation to download the beta version of Playstation Home a few weeks ago and after a good 45 minutes I had managed to install it. I was then prompted to install some further updates which the Playstation apparently requires in order to run Playstation Home. After around an hour of installation time I prepared myself to enter the virtual world and explore. First I created my avatar which despite my best efforts didn't look much like me but I did my best with the limited range of hair and features available. On entering the virtual world I then found myself in my virtual apartment and spent a few minutes looking around to see what I could do. I quickly found out that there there was not a great deal to do here. I could move the furniture around so spent some pointless time moving all my furniture out of the apartment onto the balcony before getting bored. Then I tried to throw myself off the balcony and found that I couldn't. Having exhausted all the possibilities of the virtual apartment I decided I would go outside and look around, so I approached the door expecting to be able to walk straight through. The system then promoted me to install the next section so that I could move on. I spent another 15 minutes in my apartment moving all my furniture back into the apartment and trying to stack it in the centre of room whilst I was waiting for the installation to finish.

Then I eventually stepped out into the virtual world. Once there I found that was not an awful lot I could do here either. I spent some time exploring before trying my hand at a game of draughts against another player in the square. After beating him soundly I looked around for more amusement. I found there was a bowling alley which always seemed to be full so I was unable to try this, a cinema where you could watch movie trailers and a shopping centre where there were lots of shops but with nothing to buy. All of these sections also require further downloads to access them. I tried some of the games in the arcade and played a rather poor game of pool whilst trying to avoid the other male players who seem to cluster around the female avatars like flies. After spending a couple hours in the virtual world the majority of which was spent downloading new sections of the world I took my avatar back to the apartment and went back to the considerably more interesting real world. In some ways I can see where Playstation are trying to go with Home, but it could certainly use a little more excitement.

This article is interesting, its an initiative to try and get elderly people at an Age Concern afternoon to go a little exercise. After the tea and biscuits that you would expect the group then get to try their hand at the Wii. There are two teenage instructors to help teach the technique but it appears the bowling goes down really well, with one lady called Doris proving to be a natural. Darts has also proved popular. The trust is now looking to get a Wii balance board so that they can do some real exercise. It just goes to show the universal appeal of this console.

I found this flood game the other day. Basically it allows you to make decisions about what flood defences to implement in the UK and how much money to spend over a three year period. You can do things like build a flagship project, plant trees and repair the drainage system. You also need to choose which regions of the country to protect and how much to spend on each project. After you have made your decisions it then shows you exactly how much of the country gets flooded based on your choices. I didn't do badly but I managed to keep flooding Scotland.

I always loved going to the doctors surgery when I was younger because it was one of the few places around that had a rocking horse. This gadget has been described as a rocking horse for the wealthy. It is in fact a simulator which lets people ride in their own home. The virtual reality riding machine includes a mechanical horse with electronic sensors and a screen. It allows users to trot, canter and perform various dressage manoeuvres but unlike a real horse produces no mess and does not require feeding. Its an interesting concept but personally I think the real thing is much better. For me part of the joy of riding was building up a mutual relationship with my horse and of course the fact that you can never predict what a real horse will do, no matter how well you know it. Its an interesting variation on the rocking horse, though but not cheap at just under £40,000.

According to this article you might have a long wait for PS3 movie downloads if you live in the UK. Although the service has just been launched in North America the European market is unlikely to get it until sometime next year. Apparently the issue is that Sony needs to sort out its country specific content before they launch it in Europe. The exact dates for specific European countries will be announced later this year.

Northumberland FA is introducing barriers at its junior football games after problems with over zealous parents. The barriers are designed to put a distance between the spectators and the action with the aim being to stop attacks on referees and reduce pressure on the young players. As someone whose father was the manager of a youth team for nearly ten years I don't find these measures surprisingly. Unfortunately the parents, and that's mothers as well as fathers often take the game much too seriously. I can remember several incidents where parents of opposing sides nearly came to blows and many more when they took their frustrations out of the referee. Our referees were always volunteers and after a while we ran out of people who would offer to do the job, often having to rely on one the parents themselves so that the game could go ahead. Much more common were situations were young boys ended up in tears because of abusive comments from parents who really should know better. Perhaps banning abusive parents from the games altogether might have more effect. What do you think? Have you come across bad behaviour at junior football games?

We went to see our friends Dave and Anita this weekend and after having a nice meal at a restaurant in Maidenhead we spent the rest of the evening at their place. We had packed our Playstation 2 along with our Singstar games and after a few drinks we decided to give it a go. This was not our first time playing Singstar but we have always found it goes down really well at parties. We finally stopped playing at around three in morning after working our way through most of the songs on our six Singstar games. I do have videos but due to the fact I am tone deaf will not be posting them.

After reading articles about Sony cutting the price of the Playstation 3 in the US, I was hoping for similar cuts in the UK. However, Sony have stated they have no plans to cuts its prices in Europe and have instead decided to offer free games and accessories to try and entice people to purchase the console. The new deals will include two games and two controllers for the same price of £425 which means you get £115 of games and accessories for the same price. I think I will wait for the price cut.

I read this article which claims the Wii is currently outselling the PS3 six to one in Japan. Its amazing that even now when you look for a Wii console most places are still out of stock and any new stock seems to be snapped up straight away. We were lucky enough to buy one a month after it was launched and I can see why its so popular. Nintendo have now sold around 2.76 million Wii consoles in Japan since its launch whilst Playstation have sold 970,270 PS3s. Playstation are promising some exciting new titles for the PS3 but for me its just too expensive. I will stick with my Wii for now.

I came across this balloon game. Just hold down the mouse button and choose what direction you want the monkey to fire his arrows.

I found this cute sheep game that tests how fast your reactions are. Basically you need to hit the tranquilizer button whenever you see a sheep trying to leave the flock. You have five sheep to stop and it comes complete with sheep noises. I managed to score a Bobbing bobcat which is not great but is still better than a sluggish snail.

Want to find out which Star Wars personality you are? Then you need this quiz. I was Lando Calrissian.

Further to my post about Wii Sports being used as part of an exercise regime it appears that playing the game for too long can result in cases of what is now being dubbed as "Wii Elbow". This article on The Times website higjlights cases where people have suffered aching backs, sore shoulders and elbows after playing the game. It suggests that the game needs to be treated as a real workout and that you should warm up before playing it. The following warm up exercises come from the same article and are suggested by the British Chiropractic Association.

1 Shoulder shrug — slowly shrug your shoulders towards your ears. Hold for two to three seconds, then relax. Repeat three times. Because it is easier to relax a muscle after you have tightened it, you will relax the muscles in the shoulder and allow the blood to flow into the arms.

2 Wrist stretch — slowly stretch the wrist backwards, hold for two to three seconds, then slowly stretch it forwards and hold for two to three seconds. Repeat three times. This exercise prevents tightening of the wrists.

3 Make a fist — hold the arm at right angles from the elbow. Make a fist and tense it, and the whole of your arm. Hold for two to three seconds, then relax and let the arm flop to your side. Repeat three times. This will help the blood flow and tone the muscles.

4 Neck muscle stretch — try to make a double chin, to stretch the muscles at the base of the neck. Hold this position for two to three seconds and repeat three times. Always stretch very slowly.

5 Lower back loosen — standing with your feet a shoulder-width apart, slowly circle your hips five revolutions to the right and then five revolutions to your left.

How many Post-It Notes does it take to recreate a scene from Donkey Kong? 6400 apparently as these students found out.

I came across this interesting article where a guy tries using Wii Sports as part of a fitness programme. After 6 weeks of using the Wii as his only form of exercise he has now managed to lose 16 pounds. This seems like a good excuse to play more computer games.

Want to turn your Wii Remote into a gun? You need the Wii Sharp Shooter. Basically it’s a device that connects your Wii Remote and Nunchuck to make them into a gun. I don’t have one of these for my Wii yet but it certainly looks really cool.

Tired of not being able to hit those shots on Wii Bowling? You need this cool Wii Playing Robot. Made of Lego and including two motors it is able to bowl a perfect game every time.

The Playstation 3 is launched in the UK tonight at midnight. As someone who has owned a Playstation and currently has Playstation 2, I was eagerly awaiting the launch of the Playstation 3 until I read that it was going to cost £425. Although there appears to be the usual hype surrounding the launch and the usual queue of people waiting in line to be the first to own a Playstation 3, I can’t help wondering if Playstation have finally priced them selves out of the market with this new console.

Stressed at work? You need Virtual Bubblewrap. This site has all the stress reliving properties of popping real bubble wrap and comes complete with a timer to let you know how you doing. See if you are quick enough to get onto the scoreboard.

It was Rory’s birthday this weekend so Tamsyn, Brad and Jim came over for a Braai (BBQ). We spent much of the evening playing on the Wii console on Wii Sports having tennis and boxing tournaments. Although I proved to be fairly rubbish at the Wii Tennis I managed to emerge as the ultimate champion of the boxing knockout.

Brad and Jim playing Wii boxing.

From the left: Rory, Tamsyn, Me, Brad and Jim tired out after the Wii Sports tournament.

Want to know how English you are? Try this English Test from the bombardier website. I managed to score a rather poor 52 per cent.

It was my husband’s birthday yesterday and as one of his presents I gave him these cool mini tanks from iwantoneofthose.com. The tanks have infra red guns and when you hit your opponent their tank spins around before becoming invincible for several seconds. Each tank has five lives, once you have been hit five times you need to reset the tanks before starting another game. After playing with the tanks for nearly a day and recharging them several times (battery life can be a little short) we discovered it was very hard to hit your opponent. We eventually realised that we had forgotten to remove the covers over the sensor points on the tanks although the instructions supplied with the tanks don’t appear to cover this. Anyway sensor covers removed and we were happily shooting each others tanks on our improvised terrain made of CD boxes.

Sony is going to introduce its own 3D universe for the Playstation 3. Apparently it will allow people to chat and share content within a 3D universe as well as purchase furniture and clothes similar to Second Life. Personally I don’t really see the appeal of these virtual worlds, if I want to buy a pair a trainers I would rather have a pair that actually exist not a virtual pair within a game. It does also make me wonder whether the increase of these sorts of worlds is partially responsible for the breakdown of social skills we see in many children/teenagers today. I mean what’s wrong with actually meeting up with your friends and having a conversation rather than interacting through a virtual world. Perhaps I am just missing the point?

When my parents came to visit this weekend Rory set up the Wii to show them how it works. I don’t think my Dad has every played a computer game but before long he was trying out the tennis game and hitting the ball like a pro. After several games of tennis Dad proceeded through the other games, trying out the bowling, golf, boxing and finally the baseball which was his favourite. Within a short space of time he had learnt how to play all the games and it was difficult to tear him away even when we suggested going to the pub. It occurred to me the real appeal of the  wii is that people such as my Dad who may have never played computer games before can pick up the remote with no knowledge of how it works and within a few minutes can be happily engaged in playing a game. With most other games consoles this is not really possible.

Research has been conducted by BSM that suggests playing computer games make younger drivers drive faster. The survey on the BBC website suggested that a third of young drivers are more likely to drive faster after playing a computer game. Whilst 34% of the drivers questioned thought that computer games could help improve driving ability. A quarter of drivers also imagined that they were driving for real when playing a driving simulation game. If we believe these statistics it could go some way to explain the high number of road deaths caused by and involving younger male drivers in the 17 to 24 age range. However I do think that other factors probably influence younger drivers more. Younger drivers are more likely to be more influenced by peer pressure, driving faster to look cool in front of their friends for example and playing music so loud that they are less aware of the dangers surrounding them. As someone who plays a lot of computer games myself I used to be very fond of destruction derby on my Playstation (on which the main aim is to destroy all your opponents cars) when I was learning to drive and would often play it directly before going on a driving lesson (my driving instruction didn’t really see the funny side when I mentioned this). Whilst I loved the game and enjoyed smashing up all the cars I was able to draw the line between the game and the reality and I think perhaps we should credit other younger drivers with a little more common sense

I recently brought The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess for my Nintendo Wii. After nearly 80 hours of game playing I have now just completed the Temple of Time and am well on my way to starting the sky level. I have always been a fan of the Zelda games having owned A Link to the Past on my SNES. I think its the problem solving that appeals to me most. Twilight Princess has many new features such as the ability to ride a horse which you can call to your side using the special horse grass and later in the game the horse calling charm. I also like the feature that allows you to switch between wolf and person. This adds a new puzzle element to the game as there are certain things you can only see when you are in wolf mode such as the diggable places and the Poes souls.

The game starts off quite simply but as you collect more and more weapons from the various creatures you kill it becomes quite complex and can be puzzling when you have to switch between several different weapons to kill a particular creature. Whilst so far I have managed to go through most of the game working it out for myself I must admit to a few sneaky peeks at this particularly good walk through guide http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6162248/p-2.html in moments of dark despair at three 0 clock in the morning (yes this game really is that addictive). In all I am so far very impressed with game and as I estimate I am half way though it probably have many more enjoyable hours game play ahead of me.