I'm not being flippant or showing off, but for a while when they first came about in the UK papers I was partial to the odd Sudoku and in order to speed up the process of grid filling, I printed out some prepared grids with all the little numbers (the ones you're supposed to pencil in) in every single box.

Then after filling in the published starting numbers it became a simple task to simply black out those small numbers that were no longer possible i.e all the ones of the same number in the same square, row or column). Then almost invariably I'd be left with a number of squares that could be filled and the process repeated. Then, as with normal play I'd find a row column or square with pairs or triples of numbers enabling other numbers to be black out. This would solve most Sudoku, and it didn't even require any thinking.

And that's what ultimately weaned me off the things. I was essentially imitating a computer process, blacking out and filling in numbers as the rules laid down allowed. In other words utterly pointless and boring.

There are puzzles this won't solve, but then there's no actual skill to be employed in solving those ones either. Sudoku guides would bill this as "ariadne's thread", but ultimately it comes down to guesswork. When you're stuck then you have to pick a square and take a guess. If you're right, and it works, you solve the puzzle, otherwise your guess was wrong, you go back to where you were and choose the other number. To give it another name: brute force. No skill, no intelligence, just number crunching. Sudoku puzzles aren't puzzles at all, they're just an exercise in box filling.

Because Google's business model relies on advertising, and it's morally reprehensible to advertise to kids anyway. If they did do it it would have to be as a tax writeoff.

This problem just goes away if you park the correct way around (reverse into the space).

As you pull up to reverse the car you have just checked that the space is empty and clear of obstacles and you can reverse straight in with no delay. Then when it comes to leave you have full visibility around the front of your car.

Reversing out of a space necessarily leaves you totally ignorant of what's around you. By the time you've got in, belted up, adjusted the radio and put the car into gear, any observations you may have made about obstacles before you got in the car are completely redundant. You then have to rely on edging out and hoping that everyone else is going to allow you to complete your manoeuvre.

Of course it doesn't help that (admittedly entirely based on evidence from TV) US car parking lots tend to angle the parking spaces in a way that encourages people to park the wrong way around, presumably because when people first pass their tests they find it easier to drive straight into a space head first, with no thought or consideration for how they're going to emerge later.

I forgot about the similarly awful interface of a DAB radio I've used whereby you can hit the button to scan to the next station and it will play out that station, but if you forget to hit the [Yes I really do want to listen to this station] button it will wait a few seconds and then take you back to the former station you had on.

It beggars belief how designers have completely thrown the established rules out the window for DAB.

I completely agree. AM/FM radio technology became so commoditised that manufacturers were able to stick radios into any random product they desired (pictures the bathroom buddy from Gremlins). I fail to understand why DABs are so expensive.

We have one DAB radio and it required considerable thought before committing to a purchase. Earlier this year we finally decided to replace the 25 year old alarm clock radio with a new DAB one. We took it back a week later, the reasons being too numerous to mention, oddly though not reception issues. But for the price we paid the interface had so many shortcomings we just couldn't live with it.

Why are DABs so overly complicated? On my car stereo you scan to the next channel with one button. If you want to save it as a preset you just hold the preset button down. Most radios have worked like this for years. To retune a DAB you have to hit the scan button until the display shows the name of the channel you want, but then it doesn't change until you hit another button to select it.

So the sequence of button presses if you DON'T know what station you want to listen to is [>>] [SEL] -wait- [>>] [SEL] -wait- [>>] [SEL] -wait-
And if you DO know what you want to listen to you have to look at the piss poor dot matrix display.

...for version 1.1 thanks.

>> With many people typically having hundreds of "friends".

There, fixed that for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFKHaFJzUb4

I can't see anybody pulling this off again. This was a one-off never to be repeated feat. There are lots of good ideas floating around now about what single we should all buy in opposition to the next X-factorbot, the best of which, I think, is to buy this year's X-factor single. But that's the point, there are so many possibilities that no one of them is going to be triumphant and capture the public's (lack of) imagination in the same way. There'll be competing facebook groups campaigning for different songs and it'll be self-defeating.

For the record, I didn't bother with either song. The UK charts have never reflected my preferences.

That reminds me, when are George, Cosmo, Elaine and Jerry getting out?

Probably redundant but it's clear that Usain Bolt is also a genetic 'freak'. No amount of training or branded shoes are going to bring any current 100 or 200m runner up to his level, well have to wait for another freak to come along to ever see such times again.

Unless...we have camps where people are selectively bred for different skills: speed; strength; stamina; intelligence... but wasn't that type of activity universally banned?

I'm getting update fatigue.

I seem to recall it seeming to take years to get from the various 0.x versions thorugh the 0.9.x versions before several 1.0a versions, and since then it's gone almost exponential.

I haven't bothered with 3.5 yet.

I'm a hoarder, although I always called it completionist. I've always wanted to find all the secret rooms and collect all the things I can to get 100% in a game. But the goal has to be attainable. If it becomes a chore then what's the point?

I spent more hours than I care to disclose swimming around all 3 islands in GTA San Andreas collecting those shells, and then thought "Why the fuck am I doing this, it's incredibly dull." and I haven't been bothered enough to finish the game. If I can't complete it then I'm not interested. That's why I'm totally disinterested in setting foot inside WOW, a game that it seems from the outside can never be completed. A game that I've witnessed real people spending every spare minute practicing digital fishing in order to attain some fake skill which will enable them to do something else probably equally pointless. I've got enough chores to get on with in the physical world without setting myself a bunch of other tasks that no-one I know will ever see the results of, or even less, appreciate.

Now, can anybody tell me how to get 100% completion on Fire & Ice for the Amiga. I got 96% and I'm pretty sure I found all the secret rooms but that 4% betrays the fact that I either missed one or the game is wrong.

Sea level rising is the problem that solves itself.

All those people who get displaced by rising water simply get first dibs on the new land appearing in the rapidly warming antarctic.

In the UK, the new iPod shuffle is £59! The old model could be had for between £30-£35, which put it in the easy gifting bracket. With the price now effectively doubled I think Apple are going to lose a LOT of sales over here.

And yes, I know a lot of it is to do with the fact our currency has tanked and our economy is completely screwed but it still seems like there's a little bit more to it than that.

I only hope that these kinds of percentage price hikes aren't seen across the range. I sorely tempted to buy up all the old models left and hold on to them for a few months to sell them at a profit.