Governments the world over have always struggled with crime and the tactics for reducing it. Everything from water boarding to playing poorly tuned banjos for fourteen hours a day has being tried to dissuade reoffenders. Recent research from the University of Clackmannanshire however may have found the solution and it may be smaller than most would think.

Philip Peddelwhacker (head of phycology and needle work) stumbled across the solution when attempting to discipline his own fifteen year old son Franco. Franco had begun the dark decent into cockily swigging whisky on street corners and squawking at passers-by when Peddelwhacker senior made a break through.

?It all turned round when I bought Franco an iPhone and a ten pound iTunes card? states Dr Philip Peddelwhacker PHD ?his behaviour changed overnight?.

On the recommendation of a friend Peddelwhacker junior bought Andreas Illiger?s IOS title Tiny Wings.

?Franco seemed calmer, docile, more pregnant cow than angry teen.? Philip explains. ?His grades got marginally better and even stopped calling me a slut?.

Mystified the good Doctor (of phycology and needle work) set out to find an answer for his sons? drastic change of character. It wasn?t long before he linked the finger tapping madness of Tiny Wings and Franco?s agreeable behaviour.

Instantly the professor knew that the world needed Tiny Wings to calm the most despicable personalities and set about using government funds to purchase and iPod touch for each and every prisoner in the UK.

Within the first six months reoffending has dropped by a staggering 50%. Exceeding Dr Peddelwhacker?s highest expectations. Johnny ?Blood Gurgling? Malone is an ex gangster and took part in the blanket pilot scheme.

?I used gurgle my victims? blood? Highlights Johnny ?Now I just play Tiny Wings?. Malone has enrolled in a cookery course and hopes one day to open a vegan bar and grill.

Although the science is incomprehendable to most the results truly speak for themselves. Playing Tiny Wings may be the most relaxing past time a human can do. The Government hopes to roll out this project across schools and nurseries nation-wide by 2013.

For more on this story follow our reporter @SubjectFletchy or leave your thoughts below.

Been born at the very beginning of the 90?s my life has followed the later part of the evolution of gaming. This story starts with the Sega Mega Drive, finishes with the 360 and has a whole variety of consoles and gaming pc?s in between.

The Sega months

My family is originally from New Zealand so when I was a young wart hog we used to holiday there for a few months at a time. It was during the second home coming that I popped my gaming cherry (creepy metaphor for a six year old I know). Golden Axe and Streets of Rage were the two favourites. Honestly at the time Golden Axe went straight over my head. I remember having a massive beard and wielding an axe. Great fun for a six year old. Streets of Rage on the other hand was a little less confusing. The premise was punch bad guys in the face until they flickered out of existence. Sometimes a big bad guy would come along and you would punch and kick him four times as much until he followed his underlings into digital hell.

The PC strikes back

The next time I played anything seriously was on the Personal Computer. An older game called Master of Orion II: Battle for Atreus. Although I didn?t have my own pc a good friend of mine did. We ploughed a scary amount of hours into the game. Mainly because it was a turn based space strategy and the matches could last for 10?s of hours. If you haven?t played MoO yet get a copy. Days of fun.

Another PC game that stole hours of my early life was Civilisation II. Again at the time I did not have a computer but family friend did. Whenever we visited I would seize the chance to play. My favourite thing to do was go the Aztecs and then bully the French into submission. Damn French.

Dawn of the N64

Christmas time is always special but one of my most memorable Jesus?s birthdays was when I was given an N64. The two games which came with it was some Star Wars game and Diddy Kong Racing. I was still a little young to fully digest the Star Wars title. Unfortunately this left little Diddy. The time I spent trying to 100% that game still makes me sad.

Luckily my parents were kind enough to buy a few more titles for the Nintendo. The three games I spent the most time on were Zelda, Golden Eye and Banjo Kazooie. Most people born pre millennium will be more than familiar with Link?s flute adventure. Golden Eye was the poster child for local death match. A lot of days after school me and three friends would grab some proxy mines and have at it. Banjo Kazooie stared a bear thing called Banjo and his creepy bird buddy Kazooie. Great platform adventure game. You also kill an old green witch so it?s a win win.

I Would Keep her Dungeon

Quickly returning to the PC to highlight a small game called Dungeon Keeper 2. The title was is an RTS set in, unsurprisingly, a dungeon. The player takes the role of an evil overlord hell bent on destroying the knights that live above ground. The reason Dungeon Keeper stuck in my mind was its use of humour. The game never took itself seriously but still managed to be compelling enough for me to finish it more than once. It was also the first game I played over the internet (this was back in dial up days). At the time this was mind blowing. Now we take it for granted.

Modern History

I could go on about the games that influenced me but the more recent ones you?ve probably played yourself. A quick list would be Fall Out 3, Oblivion, ME 1, 2, Gears, Skyrim and Battlefield. In fact the later list gets pretty boring.

If there?s anything I should try just comment below.

Diablo III is amazing, engrossing, addictive and superbly made. Blizzard has once again delivered an almost perfect gaming package (bar a few minor server issues). It would be easy to continue to heap praise high like those piles of decapitated heads dotted throughout the New Tristram and beyond.

There is however one small part of Diablo?s pedigree that isn?t so perfect. You begin your adventure on the outskirts of New Tristram. Built on the ruins of Old Tristram (lightning never strikes twice right?) it quickly becomes apparent something awfully terrible is happening. The player knows this because there are humans eating other humans and their not even using a knife and fork! After wading through the corpse party it?s up to you to save the incompetent militia from the hungry ghouls. This is surprisingly easy considering how much trouble captain crap sword was having.

Fast forward a little while and your hero is despatching Skeletor in theDesolateChamber. No complaints so far. Next stop is The Fields ofMisery. A few (well many) clicks later are theFesteringWoods. At this point it is becoming apparent that this world is not a happy one. This is lucky because without these handy verbs it would be hard to see what is so dreadful about the place.

Except from the walking dead, the crawling dead, the immobile dead, the lack of daylight, the animated skeletons with giant blades, the fat men that explode into snakes, a lot of things seem to be on fire, the angry Goatmen who want to chop your hands off, the fat men that explode into smaller snakes, every insect is ten times the size it should be, the insects also want to murder you, there is a dead villager every five steps and an old completely evil witch calls you a dickhead every so often.

Very useful lexical choice on the writer?s part. Fortunately the theme of negatively named areas continues throughout the game. There is The Cellar of TheDammed, TheWeepingHollow, The Cemetery of TheForsaken, TheGet KilledHighway,RapeBeach, TheScaryGatehouse, TheMolestedRiver, TheIf Your Happy and You Know It I?ll Eat Your FeetPlains and TheNothing Here Has a Pulse and Neither Should YouInn.

It?s easy to see that Blizzard was going for an ultra-bleak tone. This is the end of the world of course. The atmosphere created by the music and lighting does a very good job of creating this. Sometimes though it goes too far and becomes a little goofy. The game is excellent and this is a very minor matter. It is nevertheless very easy to poke fun at.

If you liked any of that follow me on twitter @subjectfletchy for more funtastic times.

Apart from been the bain of any parent with a teenage child tattoos are one of those subjects that can divide opinion faster than one of the female stars of Geordie/jersey shore leg's. There are not many people in the undecided bracket. This is possibly due to the fact that apart from undergoing an incredibly painful procedure (doctors shoot the patient with a laser gun) tattoos last as long as their canvas's do.

There is also the issue quality. This falls squarely on the shoulders of the artist. There's always a chance mistakes or just poor skill of the tattooist. Going in for tribal and coming out with the squiggles is not going to get the opposite sex aroused. It also seems that after the turn of the century every Tom, Dick, Harry, Rodger, Frank, Lucy, Mildred and Mohamed has some kind of 'tribal' lines scrawled across their flesh.

Such an amazing doodle...

Which highlights the last problem with tattoos, originality. Unless you go for 'Pedophiles 4 Life' or an image of a headless goat riding a whale almost every combination words and pictures has being tried before. One of the main attractions of having skin cut open and ink poured in is it makes the person more of an individual.

The obvious rebuttal to this argument? Originality died when the world population passed six Billion. Almost everything is recycled ideas just presented in a new fashion. In fact to contradict myself art (and body art) may be one of the last forms of expression that have some new gems to be uncovered. The only flaw with finding a design that is truly unique is the possibility of copy cats ruining your parade. Cheryl Cole and hand tattoos come to mind.

****

Full disclosure I have two tattoos. One in my opinion that is okay and one awful sketch on my lower back which looks like a cross between the SNP logo and the symbol for breast cancer research. It was the product of a holiday to Magaluff.

Slightly less embarrsing Tattoo

Tablet PC's are currently the rising star of the tech world mainly due to Apple's continued ability to brainwash the population into buying what ever gadget they 'need' next. This has prompted other electronic giants (HP, Acer, Asus, Samsung to name a few) to create their own decrepit touchscreen offspring. Now apart from basically being a less useful net book and each model having the shelf life of a gold fish (about one year), tablets are essentially consumerism gone mad.

Oh. No. It's. Gone. So. So. Sad.

This insatiable need for the latest technology is personified by Apple's latest Television (That's the box you used to watch shows on before laptops cemented themselves to your thighs) Advert. The premise of the commercial is that the Ipad 2 is useful to absolutely every segment of the population. In fact it goes further than useful. To quote the Advert "To a C.E.O it's essential". Basically what Apple are saying is that if you are in charge of a multinational firm and don't own an Ipad it's over. No amount of future planning will save the company from failure unless the whole board room are wielding those shiny screens that can go on Facebook. In fact surly an office with out Ipads would be more productive if people didn't have the option to play Angry Birds in HD all day.

Apple goes on to state that "To a child (the Ipad) is magical". To a child a piece of sting attached to a stick is magical, drinking water upside down is mind blowing and inanimate objects (Action man, Barbie) provide endless hours of fun. Why Apple is trying to push another way for kids to get square eyes is beyond rational thought.

Mugs?

Further more the Ipad is apparently "ground breaking to a doctor". A doctor using an Ipad in their practice it should be smashed over their incredibly educated heads. Honestly apart from showing the patients how bad their STD's could get and watching cute animals do funny things to cheer up the terminally ill it has no place in a clinic.

For Apple to try and say that the Ipad is for every one is partly true. This is only due to the fact having a 10 inch window you can watch you tube on and play whatever App is popular on the market is quite fun. Now the real question is is it worth £500?

Unless you won the Euro Millions the answer is probably not. The Ipad is just something else people can supplement their personality's with.

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It would be very easy to start with the fact that Monday is as far from the weekend as Libya is from a stable government. There are however a few things that do make me feel a little bit sadder on a Monday that are not to do with the fact I won't be drinking heavily for at least five days.

Oh God it's that day again.

One of my minor addictions is keeping up with news. If I am not by a TV I'll check a computer. If I am not by a PC I'll check my phone. If there's no signal then I just have to write a little story on paper and pretend that's what's going down. If non of these avenues are available I'm either asleep or staring in the next Hangover film.

Now what makes the news different on a Monday to make me oh so sad? This may sound a bit immature but its to do with the fact Monday is the start of the week and it would be nice to see that world has improved just a little bit. Nines times out of ten however the proverbial hit the fan so many times we're all swimming in fices. It's either X amount of Y people have died in some disgustingly unjust way, the money every one loves so much is all about to dry up or some tosser who likes to dance with dogs got through to the semi finals of Britain's got Talent (for the record the UK does have some talent but it doesn't normally parade itself on national television moaning about how their great great grandad died 150 years ago from natural causes, sniff sniff).

Britain's got Problems

Apart from O.D.ing on current affairs Mondays are for all intensive purposes really boring. Unless you shoot bad guys, shower in money and make love to beautiful people professionally the beginning of the week will consist of planning the next few days. The next few days will probably not consist of shooting many bad guys (unless you happen to be playing Call of Duty) but be more about how your going to finish an essay/job/work by the end of the week. The thought of been bored in the future is nearly as bad as experiencing boredom in the present.

If I have learned anything from the media it's that the only way to have fun is by spending lots of money partying, ending up embroiled in a government conspiracy and going on the run or becoming famous (because that's the only career path worth pursing). Every one in television land has such a great time the average Joe is left feeling his life is about as interesting as a sea turtle with no limbs.

I believe this is a snake not a turtle with no legs.

In fact blaming Monday for my woes is wrong and most of these issues could be addressed by myself (apart from stopping war; its difficult because a lot of the people have really big guns). I suppose the best course of action would be to stop worrying about it and find some fun stuff to hijack. That unfortunately would stop the only thing Monday's are good for. Complaining.

Lulz.

Flash games have been around since the scary days of dial up internet. The sheer amount currently on the web is slightly daunting. Luckily there are also many different websites that host these time syncs such as addictinggames, miniclip, notdoppler etc etc. One of the first flash games I remember is an enjoyable game where you repeatedly punch osama bin laden in the face. It came to prevalence around 9/11 and the Iraq war. Kids everywhere could do there bit for the anti terror movement in a very small and useless way. Personally I clocked around fifteen hours online military service. Which brings me to the main content of this post. I enjoy a flash game as much as the next lay about student but some of them are really starting to take the proverbial. Last night (01/04/2011) before bed I decided to visit one of the sites mentioned above and found a game called Space is Key. On the face of it this game is your usual very basic (by basic I mean less complicated than those creepy stick figures you drew aged four) 2D side scroller. How this game differs is by tricking the player into thinking it's not that bad. It uses one key (its the space key if you didn't quite catch that from the title) to make a block (yes a square block) jump. As it only uses one key the block moves all by itself at a reasonable rate. Space is Key has fifteen level which doesn't sound too ridiculous+. I guessed it would take about half an hour. Before I continue it should be mentioned that the sound track to the game is quite good. A nice musical scale with a duck being strangled in the background. Rather soothing, if you hate ducks. My guess of half an hour completion time was a little tame. Two hours later I was I was on level 13 and ready stop pressing the space key and start pressing a gun, to my head. The dying duck music that had got me pumped for 2d side scrolling fun times had turned into a repetitive loop of endless wailing. To make it worse hitting the mute button and watching the Satan block waltz mockingly across the screen was like been slowly sucked into a particularly cheeky black hole. The game had started with easy jumps over small blocks. Then the speed increased and 2d self scrolling fun times started turning sour. Finally when the jump height increased it gave me hope that the game was taking its spiky block heel off my back. Infact it just made the leaping sequences taller and more complex. Why didn't I just stop? Space is Key had me by the balls. Giving up would have voided the past two hours and ten minutes of the night. Failure would have left me an empty shell of a time waster. Then, like most moving stories, when all hope was lost I beat the last two levels. I expected my reaction to joyful, high five some close friends, hug my parents, maybe find a baby and kiss it on the head. Insert emotional victory scene here. Instead the room grew very quiet. Space is Key told me the block had died 1500 times and it defiantly was not a high score. My back was sore from leaning over the key board and my eyes gave the impression I'd been smoking a rather large pipe of cannabis rather than sacrificing the past few hours of my life to a moving block. If you can beat Space is Key in a more reasonable time please be my guest. The links below. It may have just ruined flash games for me. (You will probably beat the block easily and then laugh at my awful flash abilities) DBfletcher http://www.notdoppler.com/spaceiskey.php

Religion has a long history of inspiring people to preform acts of brilliant generosity or extreme violence. Unfortunately the latter seems to happen more often than not. When used as a tool to promote well being and kindness the power of an organized religion is impressive and can genuinely make a massive impact on many peoples lives. Where evil creeps into the equation is through the uneducated and hate filled mind set of extremism. The definition of extremism is 'any political (religious) theory favoring immoderate uncompromising policies.' At the moment in the west the idea of extremism is heavily linked to Islam. Mainly due to the past decades terrorist attacks on most notable America but also European countries. This view however is fueled by the mass media's extensive coverage of absolutely any story that could be linked to terrorist activity. Going as far as informing the population when the danger alert changes from red to pink. To be perfectly honest I've no idea what they even mean any more. Normally red means very bad but apparently that is just the tip of ammo dump. Each color has different levels and the more the government changes it the less the population care. The authorities comeback to this is that people need to know when they are in danger but according to their system we've been in grave circumstances for about ten years. With the exception of the London underground and bus bombing, attacks on the UK have been so few that you've more chance choking on your chips and cheese that your ramming down your throat than experiencing a terrorist's wrath. If you believe these warning the only item of clothing you could wear would be a Kevlar jacket combined with green and black face paint. This does not mean that there is no danger but polluting the headlines with which scary Arab man is going to murder your girlfriend first is not helping the situation. Looking back at the west reveals that we have some real dedicated extremists ourselves. Most recently Harold Camping told his thousands of followers to sell everything they own as the rapture was fast approaching (21st of may, tonight in fact) which was based on some sums he did in the back of the bible. Funny thing is that those good folks listened to him. If that is not an extreme reaction I don't know what is. Before Camping there was Terry Jones the nice priest who burned Koran and made some already angry people slightly more enraged. Did these men do any harm? Yes, yes they **** did. Using expletives is not usually the best way to convey your point to an intelligent audience (that's you) but Camping, Jones and fundamentalists the world over have a funny way of making cool headed citizens want find the biggest stick possible and beat these lie peddling animal molesters around the face until they cannot spread their filth any more. Which ironically is an extreme reaction. By telling people to sell up because god was coming Camping made their lives poorer. When Jones burned Islams holy book it provoked a group of extremists to ran sack a UN compound in Afghanistan and kill around 12 people (no of which were American nationals). Their actions had real consequences and they will answer to non of them. How would I handle Fundamentalism? Lock each sect that disagrees with each other in a big dirty cage, see which side is killed first and let the other starve to death. Unfortunately that wouldn't solve any problems and would be mirroring the extremist behavior. If I did know how to solve all the hate and violence around the world I would be a very rich man. Until then I'll keep moaning about it.