Tumblr Doodles 24/12/16

The first of two freshly-posted festive doodles from my Tumblr. Happy holidays, everyone!

For more doodley nonsense, check out jilik1.tumblr.com.

Cooking: JiliK's Pork, Onion and Apple Stuffing

With Christmas now an inevitability, I'll shortly be whipping up another batch of the stuffing I've been perfecting over the last few years, ever since I overthrew the stodgy bread and onion stuffing that had been a mainstay at our family's Christmas dinner since the 90's. This is a much more flavoursome, meaty and moist stuffing, one that tastes great cooked separate from the turkey, which is a huge bonus because goodness knows, there's no way I'm getting elbow deep into that thing. :D

Here's what you'll need:

• 5 large onions
• 5 bramley apples
• 5 large sticks of celery
• 700g pork sausage meat
• 550g breadcrumbs approx.
• A handful each of fresh parsley, rosemary, thyme and sage OR 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons dried mixed herbs
• 5 tablespoons butter
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper

Sorry about the quality of some of these photos. These are all basically spy pics snuggled out of the kitchen while nobody was looking. With it being Christmas, there are inevitably family members hovering around any time I'm making this - ones whose very minds would shattered by the concept someone hunching over food, carefully taking pictures to post on the internet. :D

1. So, first up, dice your onions and celery, making sure to top and tail everything and to peel the skin, and  any tough outer layers off the onions. You don't have to dice these super finely. Not where this recipe is headed anyway.

2. Next, take a generous chunk of butter and melt it in your pan. I'm using pure, salted butter here (the kind you get in 1lb/454g blocks, at least in in Ireland), probably about 2 tablespoons (hey, I never said this would be healthy :D). Any type of butter (or oil) should do the job okay though, but you'll probably need to add some more salt later.



3. Add your diced onions and celery to the pan and soften them over a low to medium heat, stirring regularly. You don't want them to get burned, or even browned if you can avoid it, just soft.

4. Once your veggies are soft, take them out of the pan and set them aside for the moment

5. Next, peel and dice up the apples. Add another 2 tablespoons of butter or so to the pan and let it melt.; then add the apples. Again, cook them over a low to medium heat until they're soft, stirring regularly.

 Pre-chopped. I'm using my own herbs from the garden here. The sage (bottom) I've actually had in the freezer since the summer. Come December, sage leaves are hard to come by but I find this is an okay workaround.

6. If you're using fresh herbs, before you take the apples out, chop up your herbs finely, stripping the rosemary and thyme from their stems before you start. Then add them to the pan with the apples and let them cook for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly.

7. Take your apples out of the pan and set them aside for the moment. Now, add another well, let's say tablespoon of butter this time (the sausage meat will be fatty already so you won't need as much), let that melt and add the sausage meat to the pan.

Tee he!

8. Cook the sausage meat through over a low to medium heat once again, stirring more regularly this time because it'll burn faster than either than the apples or veg.

9. When the sausage meat is cooked, take it out of the pan and set it aside too. It's time to bring everything together...

Look at Me, I Made and Art Book

So yeah, this is a weird thing I've been sitting on for a while. :D To cut a boring story short (it's like, 1 AM on Christmas Eve here), I ended up with this voucher to make a book on Blurb, for free back in late 2011. Immediately I knew that I wanted to make a dumb art book with it, just for myself. So, the following summer I got to work, pulling together just the oddest collection of stuff, from cartoons I'd drawn in primary school to desktop wallpapers to college projects and weird digital art from more recent times. Midway through making it though, happy with how it was turning out and with the eclectic selection of work I had going, I started thinking 'hey, maybe other people would buy this'. Well, maybe as one dollar ebook, anyway.

Unfortunately those hopes were quickly dashed when I looked over the ebook Blurb spat out. It's wasn't that bad, it was just that the level of compression on the images was more than I'd be happy with charging money for. It was very noticeable on a few images especially; kind of a killer blow for a digital art book. I had been thinking, for a while, about modifying the Blurb-created PDF file, swapping the compressed images with my own non-compressed versions and selling that. It seems doable, but I was worried that that would land me into hot water with Blurb (at least in a hypothetical world where anyone bought it in the first place :D). No, instead I decided that, screw it, I'm going to give it away for free. It's a Festivus miracle!

Download from MediaFire | 11.4 MB, PDF

The actual, psychical book though, I think turned out really well.



Some Junior Cert art business. I'm surprised a border didn't end up around this page somehow, but no, this is freaking cool.



In case you were wondering: Yes, I have always been the best at naming things. :D



Had to get a little creative here. With only the two images of it I captured for DeviantArt back in the day, I filled up the rest of the (left) page with the source code for this (very bad) penalty shoot-out game I made back in college. It did have a cool look though (I should really get that up here someday).

And hey, if anyone's interested in picking up that physical version, it's still available to order on Blurb. Just saying. :D

As advertised, a fifteen year spanning collection of arty odds and ends, taking in everything from subversive primary school posters to striking desktop wallpapers; from lo-fi computer doodling to Flash animations and even a batik.

Arty Stuff by John Keane | Make Your Own Book

But wait! There's more. So, when I decided that I might want to sell this book, I cut some stuff out that might have been problematic copyright-wise, but it can't do any harm to put that up here. Right?

View post on imgur.com

Yep, whenever you're ready, imgur. This is all I'm seeing at the moment. :D

This Holiday I 'Ave Been Mostly Playing...

Saints Row IV

With it being Christmas, it finally felt appropriate to give How the Saints Saved Christmas a spin, 2013's holiday-themed DLC I somehow never got around to. Didn't really dig it much to be honest. I didn't think the missions were especially great (boy, did I have some trouble delivering freaking presents in the sleigh one). I didn't think it felt Christmassy enough either. Maybe it was the music; They certainly throw enough snow and festive lights at you at least. On top of that, I really didn't care for the story. I was expecting Saint's Row to do something a little different, but all you get here is your typical subversive Santa tale where yes, Santa embodies the festive spirit and all things good, but when Santa needs to kick ass he does, with guns. Same as South Park, same as dozens of other things. And, of course the Saints' boss thinks he's awesome. Yeah, no thanks.

Enter the Dominatrix though, was absolutely the Saints Row craziness I was looking for. It's hard to tell what's true and what's fictional, though there's certainly some truth here given the development history of SRIV, but this presents Enter the Dominatrix as this unfinished piece of DLC, abandoned in favour of SRIV that the Saints are being interviewed about making on their ship. That's how each mission gets introduced; the cutscenes are all presented as animated storyboards, property of Volition; and some great use of FMV. It's all super weird, very post-modern and well worth a play-through I'd say.

Mass Effect 3 DLC (360)

After several false starts, I finally knuckled down and played through Leviathan over the break. Gotta say, I found the initial adventure game-y mission where you look for clues in a scientist's house a bit of a chore, which is probably why it took me so many attempts to get started on this. Mainly though, this DLC is made up of two, maybe three fairly standard combat missions. You get some pretty big story bombs dropped at the end, mainly regarding the Reapers, but unless you really like Mass Effect's combat I'd give this a miss and catch the last mission on YouTube instead.

Citadel though, is pretty awesome. It should be too for the price and the 4 gigabyte, two part download (which proved to just a breeze to download with my 360 getting confused as to which part was which *and* freaking Lizard Squad banging at the door of Xbox Live). Somehow I'd gotten the impression that there were no real mission in this one, just a big party in a Citadel apartment, a way of saying goodbye to all the surviving Mass Effect 1-3 squad mates. This isn't the case though. The bulk of the content in this is actually a terrific series of missions across the Citadel (and somewhere else you might not expect) involving every squad member (outside Kasumi and Zaeed, though they do show up later. I'm guessing only if you already had their ME2 DLC though) against quite an unexpected antagonist.

Following that you get to throw the party, which is quite good fun: lots of entertaining situations and some pretty great dialogue. After the party's wrapped up you also get to hang out with pretty much every guest at some location on the new Silversun Strip area of the Citadel, where you get a brief little scene with each of them. You can also invite everyone up to your apartment individually for more scenes and more dialogue. The whole pack's a blast: light-hearted, full of in-jokes, and freaking packed with content. If you like the characters of Mass Effect, this DLC is well worth it.

The Steam Holiday Sale

Hah! Just kidding. The Holiday Sale has been going downhill for several years now, but this one was the worst in a while. Not that I didn't pick up a few odds and ends and constantly keep checking it anyway. I do miss the days of the big daily sale catalogues and the achievement-based holiday events though. The card and gem stuff they've got going on now couldn't be less appealing.

(But you should totally buy them off me anyway.)



Retron 5!

I still can't believe it, but it finally arrived after over a year of waiting. As for the console itself, it it's not the best-looking machine: quite bulky, and long, and the grey is a fair bit darker than I was expecting. The controller ports are a bit of a pain too, being on the sides. Come on, guys, you could have at least stuck one SNES port on the front, they're quite a squeeze to get into when you've got a Wii U on one side and the wall on the other. I'm using them regardless though because the wireless pad the Retron comes with is fucking HORRIBLE. The buttons and the clicky nub thing feel way worse than I'd been led to believe online. Mercifully though, you really don't need the included pad for anything. The Home menu button as well as save states and the like can be remapped to button combos on a real controller. (I'm using Select and R for save state and Select and L for load state. It's working pretty well so far).

As for the cart slots, much derided for their tightness on release: they're fine. I've used the NES, SNES, Genesis and GBA slots so far. The top slots are a little tighter than the original consoles,but I had no difficulty removing carts, and I've never felt that I was in any danger of doing damage to either the carts or the console itself.

For actually playing games though, it's fantastic. Popping in a NES game and having it boot first time, every time feels like freaking sorcery. Everything looks great too. It only upscales games to 720p, but, at least on my 22-inch LED, the games look great. Like in most cases where filtering options are available though, I find the graphics look much better left as they are.

As for Game Boy games: It's a pity there isn't any Super Game Boy functionality built in to the emulator*, but original Game Boy games look nice and sharp; GBC games too; GBA games, I might need to do a little more experimenting to confirm, but this may be the best I've seen them looking on this TV. I'm going to say better than the Wii U or Visual Boy Advance on my PC.

And a final note: the Master System Converter / Power Base Converter (that I specifically bought for this like, nine months ago) totally works. So, anyone know any Master System games worth getting? Anyone?

* EDIT: Turns out I was wrong about Super Gameboy support. Since a software update last September, it now supports both SGB borders and the pre-defined colour palettes that came built into the SGB (as well as the GBC and GBA) for older games like Super Mario Land and Tetris. Pretty freaking awesome.

Super Mario Advance (Gameboy Advance [via Retron 5)

Here's where the cheating begins. :D After being stuck on Wart since 2012, I busted this out on the Retron and gave 7-2 the save-state-infused business. Actually, the Wart fight, at least in this version, isn't that tough thanks to a set of life-restoring hearts you can go back and grab with the Princess mid-fight. In my defence, I did try and run through the last level again unassisted right after, but just ended up doing in fewer save states. :D Fuck it, I beat this game (somehow) eighteen years ago on the SNES; I'm not going to loose any sleep over it.

Overall: a totally solid port of the Mario All-stars version of Mario 2, but there's really no good reason to get this unless you badly want this version of the game on the go. The additional stuff they added to this port is minor.

Super Mario Deluxe (Gameboy Color [via Retron 5])

Another Mario port that I was stuck pretty far into (this time on 8-2). I didn't abuse the Retron quite as much here though. I set a save state a few seconds into each level and just kept reloading until I nailed each one, leading to the surprising revelation that you can keep small Mario within the arc of the Hammer Brother's and avoid being hit if you just move around a little as they do. (I'm going to thank the epic Rex showdown of Metal Gear Scanlon for the inspiration to try it out.) Also that last level: actually pretty easy, just a bit of a pain to navigate for the first time in many, many years.

Also gave the Mario Vs. Boo mode a spin, which is surprisingly fun. You race through a set of, I think, specially designed levels against a boo to reach the flagpole. The twist is that boo can trigger barriers to impede your progress through the level that that asshole can just pass through. You, on the other hand, need to hit special blocks to temporally deactivate them. About as frustrating as it sounds, but quite tense and again, surprisingly fun. The type of mode that could have really spiced up Super Mario Advance. I guess we were expected to make do with that port of Mario Bros.. Actually, the care and the amount of extra content Nintendo put in here makes me sad that there weren't more of these GBC deluxe re-releases. Too bad Metroid II apparently got canned. As for the main game here, it's definitely a playable version of SMB, with some nice bells and whistles (a map screen!), but the limited amount of screen width can make things a bit challenging at times.



Assassin's Creed Revelations (PS3)

Wrapped up the last few hours of this on Christmas Night (and preceded to spend a very long time sitting through unskippable credits. Seriously, Ubisoft WTF?). I'd put off trying this out for a long time. While I loved Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, I played through just over a year later and it left me kind of cold. I could certainly see that it was a really good game, but it was so similar in so many respects that the whole time I was playing it, it felt like I was just playing through ACII again. Along with the tepid reviews and the apparent in-game emphasis on how old and useless Ezio was now, I was ready to skip over this entry entirely and give ACIII a shot instead. I'm glad I didn't though. Yes, this game is kind of just ACII again, but it turns out stabbing guys in open world, historical setting is still quite entertaining; turns out I just needed more of a break between games.

Gameplay-wise, pretty much everything makes a return from Brotherhood, with relatively few new additions, the main one being a new tower defence mode that you can be sure I avoided like the plague. :D For a now annualized series apparently worked on by thousands, this is also still quite a lovingly-crafted game. The soundtrack is as fantastic as ever, it still looks good, the location, Constantinople here, still has an air of historical authenticity to it.

I was pleased to see too that Ezio's age isn't the big deal it appeared to be in a lot of coverage of the game: You don't have him constantly sputtering and groaning as makes his way across the rooftops; The cutscenes aren't a constant barrage of ageist abuse. It's occasionally acknowledged by the other characters or the NPCs, but other than that, it's mostly just ignored.

While I'm on the subject of the cutscenes, I really need to give the storytelling some props here. Well, at least the in-animus stuff (I never gave a fuck about the modern day Desmond stuff. Seriously all the people who wanted a modern AC starring that freaking nothing character, why? Not only would that lack the best thing about the series, the historical setting, you'd have to play a whole game as, the entire story would revolve around fucking Desmond.). It feels way more focused and coherent than past entries where I always felt like I was missing huge chunks of character and plot development between leaps in time. I guess that's easier when the story spans a much shorter period, but still. (Actually, to be fair to Desmond, some of the childhood back story you get from him in this game, I found quite engaging. It's only when he moved onto the pre-Assassin's Creed 1 stuff that the urge to hit the mute button became almost unbearable. Seriously, fuck Desmond).

I guess my major criticism of the game is that it feels somewhat light in content. I didn't check but it feels like there are far less story missions here than in the last two games. And I want to say there are less side missions too. I suppose that's to be expected for a non-numbered, annualized sequel though. Still, overall I had a blast. I'm almost excited to try AssCreed III now, despite the gigantic u-turn the internet's taken on it over the last two years. Eh, I might learn a bit of American history at the very least. :D

Christmas Snacks 2010

Ah, Mid-March, what better time to review some of last year's Christmas-themed snack foods. (Festering in a reduced to clear bin near you now!). Just like Halloween, I'm rating everything on the internationally-recognised, five-point Screaming Torres scale. Let's begin!

Pringles Pigs in Blankets

A peppery, bacon-flavoured crisp, with a hint of sausage buried pretty deep down - not terribly well balanced, but tasty nonetheless. I'll give these a festive, four out of five.

/5

Pringles Roast Turkey
These taste far more like chicken than turkey to me, with dash of herbs and a hint of garlic. Not bad, not great either, I'll give these a three out of five.

/5




Cadbury Snow Bites
Round balls of chocolate surrounded by a crisp shell and dusted with powdered sugar. I really like the look of these and I'll take Cadbury's chocolate over that of Smarties or M&M's any day, but the harder shell, and the larger size of these makes it harder to chomp through handfuls of them at once in the same satisfying manner as the aforementioned candies. I'll give these a three out of five.

/5

Galaxy Mistletoe Kisses
A caramel/truffle combo covered in Galaxy chocolate. Rich, delicious and definitely the pick of the bunch here, I'm giving these a very merry five out of five.

/5

Cadbury Wishes
A truffle-filled chocolate star. Good, but not terribly exciting, I'm giving this a three out of five.

/5

Steam Holiday Sale 2010

An actual train of thought from a few weeks ago: "I wonder if I should try out FlatOut 2? Hold on, do I own FlatOut 2? Didn't I buy it during the Steam sale? Holy shit, yeah, there it is! Fuck." Time for a little holiday sale recap, maybe?

This year's sale kicked off on December 20th with more daily deals than ever, a bunch of crazy-cheap indie bundles and publisher packs galore, all presented in a nifty flash-based sale catalogue. This year I was hoping to grab Oblivion and Super Meat Boy for cheap, keeping spending to about €40. So, how did that all go?

Day 1

Super Meat Boy €3.50

I grabbed this one before the store front was even up, worried that such a deep discount on a pretty recent release could only be a mistake. I'm on World 2 at the moment, really digging the look and the music and it's nice to see my investment into a wired 360 pad is finally paying off. Much like N+, which I've played a fair bit of lately, it's hard as balls, but super-addictive. Finally figuring out the strategy for getting through a seemingly impossible level and then pulling off is the most satisfying thing in the world.

F.E.A.R. €2.24

I think the first I heard of FEAR was through a Quicktime trailer on a PC magazine cover-mount in 2005. It looked pretty cool, but there wasn't a hope in hell it'd run on the shitty Packard Bell I had a the time. Better late than never.

Peggle Complete Pack €4.79

After playing both Peggle Extreme and the free WoW-themed version, I was confident I had had my fill of Peggle; It was fun in a mindless, casual kind of way, even a little addictive, but there was no way I was forking out even €10 to get more of it. Dammit though, Popcap got to me somehow; As soon as I saw both games for less than a fiver, I was thinking "Hell yeah, I want to buy Peggle!". Bastards.

Magnetis €0.50

Originally a €5 WiiWare, that I was kind of interested in, how could I pass it up for 50 damn cents?

Day 2

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light €3.60

Who'd have thought that that unplayed Steam copy of Tomb Raider Anniversary would have come in so useful in the end? Thanks to owning that already, I was able to nab this for €3.60 instead of €5.10. Another sweet deal on a pretty recent game.

Puzzle Quest €1.50

When everyone was ranting about how awesome this Bejewelled-fuelled RPG was, I thought they they were insane. Since then though, I've come to know the joy that is match-three gameplay and I'm quite eager to try this out.

The other deal from Day 2 I was strongly considering was The Witcher for a paltry €3.99. Knowing that in all likelihood, I wouldn't get around to playing it before next year's sale, and trying to stay within budget, I took a pass on it in the end.

Day 5

Overlord II €1.35

In a continued (and rare) showing of self-restraint, I managed to resist any purchases for a whole two days until I snagged a copy of Overlord II for a little over a Euro on Christmas Eve. To date, I've only played a few hours of the original, but it was pretty damn fun. No way I could pass up on the sequel for that price.

Day 6

FlatOut 2 €1.00

Having bought it in 2009, I've only got around to playing the first FlatOuta bit of it in the last few months. What better time than now to add the sequel on top of a backlog so immense that the games on the bottom have formed into diamonds? :D Eh, the first one seemed like a pretty solid racing game and I'll buy pretty much any thing for €1 or less. Speaking of which...

Caster €0.89

I was planning to buy this along with a bunch of other cheap, non-daily deals to round out the sale. Seeing as I was only spending a Euro on FlatOut 2 though, what was the harm in another eighty nine cents?

More reckless fiscal policy after the jump.

Merry Xmas Card

Dammit! I really meant to post this on Christmas Eve, but I totally forgot. This is a photocopy of a Christmas card I drew in art class when I was in first year at secondary school (back in 1998). As far as I can recall it was an entry to some competition back then. I really love how it says "Merry Xmas", despite depicting a Nativity scene, almost as much as love how the hills that appear to be made of Christmas pudding.

Feel free to print it out, colour it in and give to loved ones next Christmas. :D

Christmas Cooking: Christmas Pudding

So, this year I decided to try my hand at making a Christmas pudding. With a 13 minute cook time in a microwave, this recipe had "bad idea" written all over it, which only made it all the more intriguing to me. I made a few minor changes to the recipe, swapping apricots for dates and using golden syrup instead of treacle. I put it all in a microwavable bowl, covered it with cling film and cooked it as instructed.

While I was sure the cling film on top of the bowl was going to explode at one point, thankfully it didn't and the only problem in the end was that the centre of the pudding turned out kind of gooey. I remedied that by putting it back in the microwave for two minute spurts, checking it after each one. I think it took about three to get the middle of the pudding nice and firm.

The resulting pudding definitely had the consistency and texture of a Christmas pudding, but the taste was quite different to what I was used to; It was much more fruity, with the booze and spices taking a back seat to the citrus flavours. It was quite nice though and I'd certainly consider making this pudding again for next Christmas.

Christmas Cooking: Christmas Cake

It may be mid-January, but the Christmas spirit lives on here in the form of some stuff I meant to post over Christmas, but didn't. To kick off, here's there recipe I use every year to whip up a Christmas cake. To be more precise, it's actually just a porter cake with icing, but damn it, that's close enough.

Ingredients:

8oz Sugar
8oz Butter
1lb Self Raising Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Mixed Spice
1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
3 Eggs
1/2 Pint Porter
2lb Dried Fruit
2oz Ground Almonds

For Icing:
Strawberry Jam
1 Bag of Icing Sugar*
1 Pack Marzipan

*Plus whatever ingredients the icing recipe on the bag of icing sugar requires.

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar (I'm sure there's a YouTube video on this :D)
2. Mix the spices together with the flour.
3. Beat the eggs.
4. Start adding the eggs alternatively with the flour to the mixture, once the eggs run out start adding the porter instead.
5. When all the eggs, flour and porter are added to the mix, add the ground almonds and fruit. I usually add a small carton of mixed peel, a small carton of glance cherries and make up the rest of the 2lb with a combination of raisins, sultanas, currants and dried cranberries.
6. Preheat your oven to 150C and transfer the mix to a 9 inch cake tin. I usually line the cake tin with cardboard (from a cardboard box) wrapped in greaseproof paper - a round disc of cardboard at the bottom and a strip along the side (a few inches higher than the tin). That may well be a fire hazard (Do it at your own risk!), but I find it makes it easier to remove the cake once it's done.
7. Start checking the cake once it's been cooking for 1 1/2 hours.
8. When it's done, the top of the cake should be brown and a knife/fork handle/knitting needle inserted into the centre should come out reasonably clean and not covered in wet cake.
9. Once the cake is done, leave it cool before taking it out of the tin. I usually leave it overnight. Wrap it in tin foil to keep it from going hard.

Icing:

1. Put a few desert spoons of jam into a mug and melt in a microwave. It should only take a minute or so at full power.
2. Brush the melted jam onto the outside of the cake with a pastry brush.
3. Roll out the marzipan with a rolling pin until it's big enough to cover the top and sides of the cake. Use some of the icing sugar to stop it from sticking to the rolling pin or the surface underneath.
4. Cover the cake with the marzipan, smoothing it down with your hands.
5. Make the icing as per the instructions on the pack of icing sugar.
6. Cover the marzipan coating with icing. I find a kitchen scraper works well for this.
7. After a few days drying, the icing should be solid enough to decorate or alternatively, to re-wrap in tin foil.

Christmas Decorations: '08 Style

Man, I really didn't pick the best time to start that weekly gaming thing, partially because it's almost Christmas and, much to my dismay, those decorations had to go up sometime. This does, however, give me the perfect excuse to post a few pics I took of my jolified gaming room last year, like this one:



First up is this finely-crafted, flat-pack bookshelf, which plays host to my (boxed) game collection circa January 2009, two Halloween figures still full of candy from 2007, some VHS tapes, The Bible Part 3 and an old copy of Arcade I'd bought on eBay earlier in the month. What better way to enhance this fine collection of stuff than by Sellotaping a set of LED lights to it?



Rave time!



Tinsel - a tasteful addition to any entertainment cabinet. It's my TV, complete with a variety of consoles. Outside we have some clear fairy lights attached to a wall via a creeping cotoneaster and on the window there's a lighting Merry Christmas sign.



A close-up of the sign and the lights outside.



And finally, it's another window-mounted decoration from a different room. This one's Santa sitting on the moon and why wouldn't he?

Christmas Shopping Round-up

A bit late, but as far as I'm concerned the Christmas season isn't over until all the mince pies are gone. I'm sure there are still a few around here somewhere, so let's take a look at this lot...

Batman Begins/The Dark Knight

I've always wondered who bought these types of packs - a couple of regular DVDs in a new cardboard box. Now I understand. While everyone else was raving about The Dark Knight during the summer, I was only watching Batman Begins for the first time, rented admittedly a result of all the raving. I wasn't really expecting much, but I enjoyed it a lot and I knew I was going to have to get hold of TDK when it came out. This package was a handy way to get both for a little less, even if a single touch covers the shiny box in smudge marks. TDK was great, especially Heath Ledger's performance, but I've got to say that I still prefer Batman Begins.

Firefly

When forum chatter turns to favourite cancelled shows, Firefly inevitably comes up a lot. I never saw it before, but I spotted it on sale on Amazon.co.uk for about £8 on Christmas Eve. I wasn't sure I'd be into it, so I sneaked away from proceedings on Christmas Day and had a look at the pilot on the internet, which was infinitely more entertaining than listening to family members drone on and on for a few hours. (SPOILERS) When Kaylee got shot and I was thinking "You shot Kaylee, you asshole!", I knew I was going to love the series. I got the box set in the post on New Year's Eve and watched two or three episodes every night until it was over. A fun, well written show with a superb cast, wonderful characters and an interesting setting, cut tragically short.

Wonderfalls

I adore Pushing Daisies and after watching the whole first season again before Christmas, I decided to seek out one of the creator's earlier shows, Wonderfalls. It's not quite as surreal and quirky as PD but it's charming, funny dramedy with a cracking cast. Like Firefly, it was axed far too early by the boneheads at Fox. Not only that, but it didn't even get a Region 2 release. I picked the Region 1 box set from a UK seller on eBay to avoid any nasty customs charges.

Portal

I've had my eye on The Orange Box on Steam since I finally got a decent broadband connection in the Autumn and Portal was certainly the part of the package that I was most anxious to play. So I was in GameStop before Christmas, kind of in a rush and I spotted this on the PC rack for €19.99. I knew it wasn't great value but I was determined to pick up something and I went for it. Little did I know that it would be on sale for a pittance on Steam a week or so later. *grumble* *grumble*

Christmas Hits

I think it's been established that I have a thing for cheesy pop music and it doesn't get much cheesier than Christmas music. For some reason, radio stations have a habit of not playing any after about noon on Christmas Day, you know when I actually want to listen to it. I've been meaning to pick up one of these compilations for ages and I finally took the plunge this year. On the surface, this looks like the ultimate treasure trove of festive favourites (Yay alteration!). With four CD's how could it not be?

Sadly though, this compilation is rather like a tin of luxury biscuits that's been bulked up with cheapo custard creams and chocolate digestives. There's a lot of filler here, plenty of long forgotten (for good reason) songs and poor covers and the fourth CD consists entirely of carols. However, there are quite a few nice but less well known songs on here and it does have "Last Christmas" by Wham, which the clearly superior Now Xmas didn't. Obviously, the smart thing to do would be to download the songs you want instead, but it is nice to have them all together in one package.