New Toys

I’ll be the first to admit I’m a sucker for a new toy. Be it a gadget, piece of training equipment, even a new pan or something for the kitchen, I love having something new to muck around with. I’ve gotten pretty good in my advancing years at not just buying everything I fancy as soon as I see it (mostly because I can’t afford it any more), but I still fancy stuff in the meantime. For example, I’ve found myself drawn to the PlayStation 3 more and more lately, with varying levels of justification. “I want a Blu-Ray player so I might as well get one”, “There’s games on there I want that I can’t get on anything else”, “It’s black and shiny!”. Despite all these genuinely brilliant reasons for owning one, I still didn’t fancy forking out £250 for it. On this occasion fate intervened in the shape of a co-worker whose boyfriend was getting rid of his barely-used one for £100, and I caved. Yup, I finally got around to getting all of the current generation and added a PS3 to my TV unit.

For me, half the fun of a new bit of technology is setting it up and getting used to it, so the first thing I did was to wipe it clean and start installing the updates. Actually, the first thing I did was to buy an HDMI cable to hook it up to my TV, but that’s nit-picking. I was amazed at how easy some of the updating and setting up was, and I was keen to see how the media streaming worked compared to the 360 (which was in itself very easy). Once it picked up the wireless network it was very easy, in fact I didn’t have to do anything at all. It found the media server and I could instantly browse and play my files. There are a couple that break up, which don’t on the 360, but I’m reserving judgement for now. So enamoured am I with my new bit of plastic it took me a while to realise that I don’t actually have any games for it yet! I’ve got a couple of demos downloaded now though and have my eyes on some of the stuff I still have to catch up on which should be cheap, as well as getting the BD versions of my favourite films.

It’s less than two weeks before I head into the channel tunnel and off to Deutschland now, and I’m getting very excited about it. I need to make sure I have some decent winter clothing by the sounds of it, it’s starting to chill down over there now and they already have snow on the mountains. Before then I’ve got the dubious pleasure of cooking a big meal this Saturday. In preparation for hosting my first Christmas for about ten people, we’re having some friends over (six of them) for a combined Christmas dinner rehearsal/birthday celebration. I’m quietly confident about it, I’m a pretty adept cook most of the time, and I can’t wait to feast on turkey and sausages wrapped in bacon!

Oh, and imagine my disappointment. Because of my duff eye the Channel 4 3D stuff doesn’t work for me :(.

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