Tom Charman

An update to Xbox 360s everywhere has been pushed out today, which brings the thrilling ability to buy more hats for my teeny little Xbox person. Woah, you might say, that’s pretty exciting right there. And I say to you; hold your horses. This thing’s not over yet. We can now buy entire Xbox 360 games online! Not this pissy old Xbox stuff we used to get.

And of course, because these are games which have been out for years, and they don’t have to sell them to retailers, hold stock in stores, make cases for them, make books for them, or transport them anywhere, obviously they’re… more expensive. I haven’t seen value this good since Village Cinemas started charging me a dollar extra for doing my own ticket-booking online. Mass Effect, an excellent game which you can get for $89.98 on JB Hi-Fi Online right now, is $99.95 through Games on Demand. Phwoar.

I’m done being sarcastic now. Maybe I’m just out of practice, but I’m finding it quite difficult to maintain. Perhaps you can get nasal injections for that.

Anyhow, it turns out that the prices are much more reasonable if you’re not in Australia. Which of course makes sense; the tubes to Australia are much longer and clearly Microsoft’s Australian division will need extra money to suck the content all the way to us.

But I reckon they don’t need it, because as far as I can see, they’re sucking pretty good already. Ba doom tish. Oh yeah.

There are actually some good, if subtle changes, like better sorting in menus and a rating system for content which could get very handy. I feel I should point this out in the interests of balance. Also, some games are only $49.95 and much much better value. On reflection, it’s almost not worth writing about, but there hasn’t been anything posted here for over a month so I’m hardly going to go around slashing perfectly adequate paragraphs now.

Not dead. Just resting.

I’ve said before that I’m not sold on buying TV from Apple. Mostly because the DRM sucks, partly because of inconsistently offered season packs and generally being rather pricey.

But there’s two bright sparks on that not terribly enticing horizon now, and that’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, both now available in Australia for the first time digitally. I’ve been addicted to them ever since discovering them on free-to-air Canadian television, but suddenly I can actually get them legally without subscribing to Foxtel.

And the deal isn’t too shabby. $9.99 for 16 episodes (four weeks’ worth), which you pay up front and have downloaded for you automatically as they arrive. The DRM of course is still about and annoying (I mean, you can’t even burn them for god’s sake), but for more disposable shows like these, that’s not nearly as irritating to me.

And, I can watch them on my TV, because while I don’t have an Apple TV, I do have a MacBook Pro. Ahem.

10:43:55 AM: One hour late. Good start. I wants me some food. And wine.

11:13:14 AM: I’m live blogging the good food and wine show by the way. If I ever get in. The queue is long.

11:26:44 AM: Tasty pies! Get out of my way fat people!

11:37:23 AM: This yellow pancake is a bit stringy. Ew! It’s a shammy! Uck.

11:48:07 AM: There’s a big penis on the wine show screen! This is filth!

12:26:50 PM: What evil genius invented Ginger wine?

12:35:40 PM: 2007 Woodhenge is yummy. Mmmmm.

1:25:14 PM: Roast potatoes in chip form: Thomas Chipman rosemary and thyme.

2:12:27 PM: Honey doughnuts > non-honey doughnuts.

2:54:01 PM: My feet hurt and I’m a little tipsy. Time to leave.

Here at atypicalreview, we’re putting ourselves on the line every weekend to find out which cafes in Melbourne you should be getting your breakfasts at. We’re just selfless and wonderful that way. We were going to review them but we were too busy being selfless and wonderful, so instead we’re making a map.

View Melbourne Breakfasts in a larger map

Much easier. If you’ve got a google account, you should be able to keep that in “My Maps” section, and refer to it next time you want to eat somewhere. If you want to add content yourself, just let me know.