Say scientists who have found that puzzles are better for the brain than vitamins or workouts. A study looked at 32 trials involving 25,000 healthy patients aged 65 or older. Studies of drugs, hormone therapy, vitamins and supplements ginkgo, omega 3 and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) showed no positive effect with the evidence of the benefits of physical activity being weak only mental training showed benefits every time. Perhaps all those Sudoku puzzles I do, are not wasted time after all.

If your favourite Monopoly piece is the iron then you may soon find yourself having to pick something else, at least if you buy a new board. The iron is being phased out and replaced instead with a cat as pictured. The change was announced by toymaker Hasbro last week after fans from 120 countries voted for it.

A full sized Angry Birds game has been launched at a theme park in China. Like the ever popular game people use the slingshots to launch the birds, in these cases large stuffed toys towards the structures which contain the pigs. The unlicensed attraction is part of a month long stress reduction festival. There have been rumours that Rovio are intending to licence a high budget Angry Birds theme park so more of the same could soon be opening.

If you want to lose weight but can’t drag yourself to the gym then you might find this article interesting. It claims that visits to virtual gyms in games such as Second Life can be as effective as shifting the pounds as visiting the real life alternative. A study looked at participants in a two week weight loss programme. Half followed a real programme whilst the other half followed an online one. Surprisingly all the participants lost a similar amount of weight, an average of 10 pounds. When looking at the overall behaviour of the participants, however, the online group appeared to have made more changes towards healthy eating and physical activity suggesting they might continue to lose more weight in the future.

This is an interesting video regarding colour blindness and the impact it can have on video gamers. Personally I aware of the issues as my husband is colour blind, however, it seems many people have trouble distinguishing between different colours on screen. Whilst I can only imagine, how this can affect daily life, with video games opposing terms are often distinguished by using colour. This in many cases can lead to a colour blind gamer shooting his team mates by mistake because he cannot see the difference between the red and green labels for example. Some games appear to be moving to correct the problem by giving their games a colour blind friendly option but it would be good to see this more widely available amongst the popular game titles.

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.