Odds on Fergie successor

I am a Manchester United fan. I've supported them since I started paying attention to football. With Alex Ferguson as the gaffer for the team, we're in great form these days and are still on the way to, perhaps a treble? Anyway, I saw this article on Guardian UK saying that former Man-Yoo striker Mark Hughes is keen to succeed Fergie. What caught my fancy is actually the odds of who will be succeeding the current gaffer when he retires. The odds are provided by William Hill and is as follows:

Odds on the succession

6-1 Mark Hughes, Martin O'Neill

7-1 Roy Keane

8-1 Carlos Queiroz

16-1 Jose Mourinho, Marcello Lippi

20-1 Guus Hiddink, Sam Allardyce, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Sven-Goran Eriksson

25-1 David Moyes

33-1 Fabio Capello, Steve McClaren, Gordon Strachan

66-1 Bryan Robson, Paul Ince, Steve Bruce

100-1 Darren Ferguson

I just find it funny that Mourinho is even on the list.

10 Apple products which flopped

Apple may be the golden boy of tech gadgets these days, but they too have had failures. For those wanting a history, the Newlaunches.com site has listed 10 things that Apple released which, sad to say, flopped. From the Newton to Lisa and the more obscure stuff like Taligent, you can read about them here.

Lego-shaped Sofa

This sofa is shaped like LEGO bricks and is called Bekky. I want these! 'Nuff said.

Streaming from XBox360 using TVersity

While the XBox360 can be used as a media player, it can only stream Windows Media files. So in that regard, a modded original Xbox running the XBMC software is still the best solution out there if you want to have a media player that can play plenty of file formats, and watch those media on your TV.

However, I just found out a software that can perhaps make the XBox360 play more file formats. Granted that some transcoding may be required, it could be a possible solution. The software is called TVersity and it is FREE. Some amount of testing and tweaking is probably required as you need to install some codecs to gain certain file support. Great software nevertheless.

Top Freeware Shmups

Shoot-em' ups, or shmups, are basic gaming staples. These games are the foundation of gaming and in a sense, they are gaming in its purest form. You can't beat the sheer adrenaline rush of shoot and dodging blips on the screen.

The Independent Gaming blog has a list of the top 20 shmups available, and they are all freeware. So forget the retail games. Experience gaming at its rawest with these shooters.

A wee gamer on the Wii

I've just got my paws on the Wii and got my first taste of Wii Tennis. It's quite fun. But maybe I'm just a little old and backwards as I saw this clip of a 22 month old toddler mastering Wii Tennis! Imagine, our future generation is gonna grow up perfectly comfortable with the world of electronic entertainment. Check out our future in the link.

Understanding Games

Games are not that difficult to understand. But in the vein of McCloud's Understanding Comics, the theory of games is something one needs to appreciate. In this series of interactive flash videos (four in all), the basic concepts of computer and video games are presented in an interesting manner. Cool and educational.

Make your own Xbox360 achievements

On XBox360 games, you can get achievement points by doing stuff and completing certain tasks in games. Now, you can generate your own achievements on the linked web page. I've generated one achievement for fun and it is probably one that you will never ever find on any Xbox games.

8 Cool Twitter Tools

Twitter is today's big thing. The tool that lets you blog short "bursts" of text is ultra-cool among the tech set. Wired Blogs has put together a list of 8 "Twitter-rific" tools that can help you to make the most out of your Twitter experience. Twitt on!

A wiki for gaming

Wikis have arrived to the world of gaming. There is now a Wikia wiki for games. So if you're into collaborative writing and contributing to info, opinions, and other stuff about games, head there to contribute. For those of the more silent bent, it can be a treasure trove of gaming info.

Text adventures on DS

If you're into text adventures, you know, the kind like Zork and such, you'd be interested to know that someone called Papafuji has ported them to the Nintendo DS. So if you can run homebrew, you can try out some of them. While some of the stuff on the site are suppose to be given free by their respective authors, the legality of other things here are questionable so do it at your own risk. Great to see the ingenuity of the homebrew scene at work though.

LEGO Nintendo Wii

No, I've not bought a Wii yet. While I'm putting that on my next purchase list, someone on Brickshelf made use of the ever wonderful LEGO bricks to build a replica of the Wii. It even comes with a LEGO Wii-mote, and if you open up the box, there're little minifigs playing Wii Sports. Check it out.

Got my XBox 360

The PlayStation 3 was launched in Singapore last week. But instead of getting the latest console from Sony, I went out to get the Xbox 360 instead. Why not get the latest and greatest, you ask? Well, for the simple reason that for now, the 360 has more games that I want to play, take Gears of War for example. Also, the local version of the Nintendo Wii is still... out there, somewhere, with no news of the release. Anyway, here's my photoset of the unveiling of my 360. The folks that I bought it from threw in a special Gears of War faceplate to sweeten the deal and you can see it on the face of the console. Hoo-ya to my first step into next-gen gaming.

Post your ideas for games

Have an idea for a game? Head over to this site to post one, or just read one of the many crazy and possibly "next big thing" ideas folks have posted there.

If you're a gamer, I'm sure you've had many ideas for games before. Maybe it's just a minor change to an existing game, or an entire new concept for a game. It seems these days there's less creativity in game design. We are overloaded with sequels and poor clones. Most of us are not game designers though, so our "perfect game" will most likely never get made. This site is for publishing your game ideas for the world to see. Maybe someday a game designer will be inspired by something they read on this site, and we can be blessed with something creative and original for a change. That would be cool.

Go ahead, browse the ideas, or even post one.

LEGO goes Massive... Multiplayer

I've not really jumped on the MMOGs bandwagon. I would really love to play World of Warcraft or Guild Wars but it's sometimes hard to find time to play those, especially considering that I need to find time to play some of my other PC games, Nintendo DS games, and Xbox gmaes. Anyway, the LEGO fan that I am heard that my fave brick company is developing a LEGO MMOG. Will that be one MMOG that'll get me started? Imagine the possibilities of building a virtual LEGO world. I'm happily dreaming of my own LEGO home online.

Doing The Impossible Quiz Deluxe

Wanna prove how smart you are? Try doing this quiz, which is dubbed the "Impossible" quiz. This Flash-based quiz takes a while to load but once you're done, get ready to tear out your hair trying to finish this quiz. Maybe we're not so smart after all.