X-Men: Days of Future Past - Official trailer

I hope this film is going to be as good as the trailer suggests. I recently watched X-Men: First Class, and really enjoyed it, apart from a rather lame looking Beast. This instalment of the X-Men story looks to sort that out, while introducing a few new mutants, and re-acquainting us with a few old, familiar favourites.

I ordered Call of Duty: Ghosts

I finally gave in and ordered the Call of Duty: Ghosts (Hardened Edition). I realised that I had a gift voucher from one of the retailers offering pre-orders, for a similar value as the difference in price between the regular edition, and the Hardened Edition. So I'm getting a CoD: Ghosts collector's edition, but only paying the price of the regular edition. Score!

Contents of the Hardened Edition

While there aren't a lot of physical goodies in the Hardened Edition, it does include quite a few digital items, including a season pass. Hopefully having a season pass to CoD: Ghosts, will help motivate me to fianlly getting around to connecting my PS3 to the internet. Then I'll not only be able download all the extra stuff (not just for CoD: Ghosts, but for several others titles too), but also play CoD: Ghosts online, as that seems to be where all the fun is to be had.

I haven't played any of the other CoD titles, so this will be my first experience with the series. I wont lie, I'm really looking forward to playing the underdogs in the single player campaign, as well as seeing what all the fuss is about the franchise. I'd also like to see if all the smack-talk from the Battlefield fan-boys is really warranted, although I haven't played Battlefield yet either. If I like enjoy playing CoD: Ghosts, then I reckon it was money well spent, and the Battlefield guys are wrong, if I don't enjoy the game, then I'll know to stay away from both franchises and rather stick to Borderlands for my first person shooter fix

Lastly, in case you are still unsure of whether to pre-order the game, here's single player campaign trailer. And watch those 'south of the equator' comments, I'm from south of the equator...

The vampyre of time and memory

Queens of the Stone Age will be releasing an interactive video for their next single, 'The vampyre of time and memory,' at the end of the month. Here's the teaser trailer which features Josh Homme, a lot of stuffed animals, and a woman in a French maid's outfit. It looks as though the final video could be rather interesting.

 

Will you survive the Extinction?

I happened to be looking at pre-order offers for Call of Duty: Ghosts when I came across an Instagram video from the CoD development team. On the right is the image from the video that caught my attention.

My initial thought was that this 'ghost mask' looked a lot like a chimera from the Resistance series. Turns out that there has been a much rumoured 'Extinction mode,' which as a result of the video, updated profile pictures on Facebook, and an album of screen shots (WARNING: here be potential spoilers!), now seems to be confirmed.

Extinction looks to be Infinity Ward's answer to Treyarch's hugely popular 'Zombies' mode from the Black Ops story arc.

I was considering giving Ghosts a miss, but after this 'announcement,' and after re-watching the multiplayer videos, I may reconsider that decision.

Animated Kurt Cobain interview

Here's an incredible animation by Blank on Blank of an interview that took place between the late Kurt Cobain and Jon Savage back in 1993. After watching this I'm feeling kind of 'happysad,' as my buddy Siam would say.

 

Hundred Million's skull shaped sugar spoons

I was having a quick browse through Kickstarter, when I noticed these quirky skull shaped spoons designed by Hundred Million. I was really impressed to see that the project has already surpassed it's target, and with 26 more days to go. Even more impressive is that Hundred Million has only 155 followers on Facebook, yet there are currently 164 people backing the project. This means they've gotten more exposure through their Kickstarter campaign, than through Facebook!

I'm really tempted to order a pair of these (or perhaps even the mug and spoon set) but at £8 a spoon, they're really pricey, especially with the present exchange rates. Interestingly a set of six spoons costs £40, which equates to roughly £6.66 per spoon. Coincidence? 

The special edition mug, which features a Mexican Day of the dead inspired design is downright rad. As is the catch phrase, 'dying for a coffee.' Sod it, I may just spoil myself with an early Christmas present, although I've already made the mistake of telling Em how much these are, so I may end up paying for these both literally and figuratively. Maybe I should get Em the wood pigeon cutting board...

What is your country best at?

Dog House Diaries compiled the following map of the world, showing which 'commodity' each country is the global leader of. Here's the list of sources if you want to see which countries save the most energy (Republic of Congo), or are the happiest (Costa Rica), or are the most corrupt (Turkmenistan).

Source: Dog House Diaries (bigger)