Well first things first, it was my birthday yesterday. It was a pretty quiet affair, went out for a meal and a couple of G&Ts, and I got some very nice Logitech Z4 computer speakers for my iMac. If anybody is looking for a set of high quality affordable speakers then I would strongly recommend them. The subwoofer is pretty powerful and the tweeters are sharp. I was listening to Vivaldi's four seasons earlier and it has never sounded better.

I have just finished Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. My interest in Thompson and Gonzo journalism began only a few months ago after watching a BBC 4 documentary about the man and the movement. I watched the film of Fear and Loathing last year, without really understanding it's context. Having spent the past few weeks doing some light research on the history and key players of the movement, along with reading one of Thompson's books, I am eager to chew my way through some more literature in this vein. If anybody can suggest the next book I should read I would be beholden to you.

I don't want to go all Hotspot on you and neglect the subject of gaming altogether (no disrespect to the podcast team, as I actually think the tangents and movie reviews are the most entertaining part of the show). I just watched the new Dante's Inferno developer diary, and it peeked my interest. I am an avid fan of European history and art, especially the late medieval andrenascence period. The developer diary gave me the impression that Visceral Games is treating the source material with the respect it deserves. Instead of taking the approach that was taken by SCEA in the development of the God of War franchise, Visceral Games appear to be far more faithful to Dante's poem. The GoW story is only loosely based on greek mythology, taking characters and scenarios mainly from the work of Homer and tossing them together in am entirely new story. In a way it was a lot like the TV program 'Deadliest Warrior'. This admittedly makes for a great series of games, but the clasicist (I know that isn't how the word is spelled that way, but for some reason the first half of the word is blocked) in me couldn't help but notice the discrepancies between the game and the source material. Visceral Games appear to be translating the structure of the Dante's poem pretty faithfully, a move that will surely keep my pedantic side quiet. The team also claim to be taking their art from renascence depictions of hell, and it defiantly shows in the gameplay videos that they have shown. Brojgel is one of my favorite artists from the period, so the mention of his work by the developer made me very excited. I just hope Visceral can build solid gameplay comparable to GoW.

Finally I would like to once again thank Kevin VanOrd for his generosity. I was lucky enough to win his 'Inspire a Spore Adventure Contest'. The prize was a copy of Spore and the Galactic Adventures expansion pack. In my brain history occupies only a minor recess; biology is my real passion (as a biology student I suppose it should be). Certain people, including reviewer Tom McShea complain that Spore is misleading in it's claim to depict 'evolution'. It is true that the game is not an example of vertical evolution, the proses explained by Darwin. Instead the development of ones Spore species has more in common with horizontal evolution, a proses by which bacteria exchange DNA to adapt to environmental changes. I won't bore you with the details, but if you are interested I would be more than happy to explain it further. God I'm a geek, but the way I see it it is best to unload the majority of my geekiness in the safety of Gamespot; that way I can operate in mainstream society without anybody knowing the terrible truth!