My PS4 has landed, bring on the future (Part 2)

I did a bit of research on the cheapest offers and there were a few which were the same so it came down to preference. It just so happened that one of the options was a large supermarket chain which I had loads of vouchers for, so I’d be paying even less out. Oh my god PS4 with Destiny bundle ordered, now all I had to do was wait, how hard could that be. I was expecting to wait until after Christmas to buy one in case Sony dropped the price, that was until my PS3 died. A few weeks would surely fly by (yeah right).

The order confirmation said Saturday 13th September, that couldn’t be right. Destiny was being released on the 9th and I had pre-ordered well in advance. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a good thing, after all I wouldn’t really have time to play it in the week anyway and I had a free weekend coming up. I came home on the Tuesday and saw a delivery note with all of my other post saying there was a package next door with my neighbour. I didn’t think much of it, as there was no name I assumed it was something for my wife. I got on with my workouts as usual and jumped in the shower. When I came down my wife had collected the package and said confused “it was a big box for you…?” apparently my face was priceless while I tried to remain calm and said “it could be my PS4”. Oh my god it was! It had arrived and had been sat next door this whole time while I obliviously carried out my normal routine.

My PS4 has landed, bring on the future (Part 1)

The time has finally come, I am now a proud owner of a PS4. For some people this will not be a big deal, but for others, especially those who know me, the fact I have lasted this long will seem impossible.

I don’t have a lot of expendable outcome so I don’t really buy many things for myself. So for me it was hard to justify randomly buying a PS4 for myself. Obviously I knew the console was coming out well before it was released, so I started putting a little money aside every month. This way when the time came I wouldn’t have to worry about if I could afford to get one.

I thought I had a full proof plan, taking £10 here and £20 there and putting it in my PS4 fund. It wasn’t until my wife asked me where I was planning on buying the console from that we spotted a hole in my plan. I now had enough cash put aside to cover the PS4 and realised I’d be buying it online. Even if I ended up buying it from a high street retailer the likelihood I’d use cash was very slim. Oh well, I had reached my target amount, might as well pay all the cash back into my account.

RIP PS3 – Time To Move On?

At some point last year I had the house to myself, so I settled in for what I thought was going to be a mammoth session on ‘The Last of Us’. About 5 minutes into the game it froze during a cut scene. My PS3 had frozen a few times before with other games and it was usually just a case of getting up and doing a re-set on the console. As I got up it made a couple of beeps as if it was starting up, then turned itself off. I knew this couldn’t be good. I went over to the console still expecting it to just turn back on, but nothing happened other than more beeps. I couldn’t even get my disc out. It had finally happened, the yellow light of death!

 

My PS3 is one of the original 40GB monsters, so it’s had a lot of use over the years. I managed to get it repaired and it seemed to be working fine. I even invested in a laptop cooling stand, in an attempt to get more life out of it. Everything was going fine until a few months ago when I started having difficulty getting it to turn on. Sometimes I’d be lucky and it would come on at the first attempt, but other times I’d lose count of how many attempts it took. At that point it would always come on eventually and work fine, that was until this weekend. I went to turn it on and it took a record amount of times to turn on. Finally when it did I put in a DVD and sighed with relief. As I sat down I heard the dreaded beeps again and off it went, it had finally given up.

 

I am able to get it on, but any attempt to get it to actually do anything, like watch a film or even play a downloaded demo, causes it to turn off. I always thought it would last me at least long enough for me to upgrade to a PS4. I’ve had countless different consoles over the years and never had a problem, I even still have an original Gameboy which I got for my 7^th birthday! The fact that Sony haven’t made the PS4 backwards compatible means I was planning on hanging on to my PS3 so that my collection of games didn’t become obsolete. The chances are that once I do upgrade they won’t get played anyway especially once a newer version comes out on the current gen, but if my PS3 remains faulty then they definitely won’t get played.

 

Review: The Firefly Sport recovery device

The Firefly device* is labelled as an elite sport recovery device, and according to their website it has several key benefits. The main benefits which interested me were; Reduced Muscle Soreness (Doms) within 24 Hours and Optimising Recovery, Improving Performance. But enough of the sales pitch does it actually work?  When it comes to working out, I am always able to push myself a lot harder with my lower body, than I am with my upper body. This has massive benefits when it comes to progress, but it also means that I feel it a lot more afterwards, especially with new routines. 

Initially I thought that the Firefly might not be suited to the particular workouts I am doing at the moment, because they are not heavy weight sessions where you wake up the next day and can’t sit down without help. They do however leave my legs feeling constantly fatigued because I am doing some form of either cardio or plyo workouts involving my legs. I was curious to see whether or not the Firefly would have the same positive effects on my legs, and mean that I was able to start my next workout without already feeling a burn, similar to a lactic acid build up. The first thing I noticed was the simple design and minimal packaging the device comes in. I liked that there wasn’t loads of unnecessary bumf. I think that if a product is good enough, then it should sell itself.

Book Review: Bird Box by Josh Malerman

 

Most people ignored the outrageous reports on the news. But they became too frequent, they became too real. And soon, they began happening down the street. Then the Internet died. The television and radio went silent. The phones stopped ringing. And we couldn’t look outside anymore. Malorie raises the children the only way she can; indoors. The house is quiet. The doors are locked, the curtains are closed, mattresses are nailed over the windows. They are out there. She might let them in. The children sleep in the bedroom across the hall. Soon she will have to wake them. Soon she will have to blindfold them. Today they must leave the house. Today they will risk everything.

 

Bird Box* is a present day dystopian novel, and this happens to be my favourite genre! I wasn’t sure how I would get along with the horror/thriller element, but I honestly found myself really enjoying it.

The events that take place are a strange phenomenon which started in Russia, and slowly moved across the world. At first, most people doubt that anything is really happening, believing it just to be fear mongering. But as more stories appear of people turning insane, and attacking people nearby, everyone starts to get a bit rattled.

No one really knows what’s happening, only that you need to keep your eyes shut. It’s only when people see something, or even someone, do they go insane. So, people start boarding up windows and doors, and covering their eyes with blindfolds.

This book follows the protagonist Malorie and her two children – ‘boy’ and ‘girl’, who are 4 years old have only lived in this broken shell of the world that once was. She has been training them since they were born to be super humans, with acute hearing, attuned to any noises around.

The story begins with them making their way to the river behind the house, to make a journey to where she believes will be a safe haven for them. It relies on a continuous dual timeline, so it alternates between Malorie and the children on the river, to how they arrived in that situation.

I think what makes it tenser, is that because Malorie and her children are blindfolded, so are we. We live through each tense moment with them, because we, the readers also can’t see what’s happening outside. We can feel how petrifying it must be to have to navigate blind, to try and be strong, to try and ascertain danger.

I really enjoyed this novel because it had the right amount of suspense and tension, without the whole ‘ARGGHH, IN YOUR FACE’ kind of gore and scare, which you normally get. For example, films like ‘The Grudge’, ‘The Ring’, or ‘Paranormal Activity’, who rely on in your face horror to get a reaction. This book was more subtle, much more clever with the way it displayed the situation.