Highlight of the year - Like last year, it's the birth of a child - my daughter to be precise! The birth itself was a lot quicker and easier than last time (for both my wife and myself!) and we were home by lunchtime the same day. Sleep has been more of a problem this time, though a lot of people have said that girls tend to be worse sleepers than boys - though this is anecdotal rather than proper data. My son's been learning his first words - proper words rather than random babbling. He seems to say "Oh dear" rather a lot though... As for next year, we're certainly not planning on having any more children so I'll have to think of something else for the 2010 review post.

Film of the year - Again, due to the responsibilities of parenthood, I haven't seen that many new films this year. Up is the best I have seen though, and also served as my first proper 3D film viewing, though that felt more like a gimmick than something I'd want to do all the time

Game of the year - Mass Effect. I'm probably cheating by including it here, but I did play the game in 2009 even though it was out the year before. This game has a ton of technical flaws, an irritating inventory system, awkward vehicle combat and other problems that would normally put me off, but the story, character and atmosphere just draw you in completely. I'm very much looking forward to the sequel that's out in a couple of weeks. Assassin's Creed was fun for a while, but ultimately annoyed me to the point where I didn't finish it. Trials HD was also fun, but required too much patience and skill for me.

TV of the year - This year I've really been getting into House, watching all five seasons on DVD, more or less back-to-back! I'm not normally a fan of medical dramas, but the quality of writing in House is exceptional, as is Hugh Laurie's performance. My favourite episodes are the stranger ones, usually the last couple in each season such as the bus crash at the end of season four (though the Amber clue was blatantly obvious to me) and where House becomes delusional at the end of season five, but we don't even know it until the last few minutes - one of the most powerful examples of TV for years.

As for other series', Lost is still really good and I can't wait for the final season. Dr Who/Torchwood took a different approach this year - rather than a full season of each, Torchwood did a rather good five part mini-series and Dr Who did four one-off episodes shown throughout the year - the first two of which were pretty rubbish I did think the return of the Timelords in the final two parter was a bit of an anticlimax, but the final poignant half hour was the best bit of writing Russell T Davies has ever done - shame it took him so long to get there. David Tennant's Doctor was often irritating (and utterly bipolar in character), but I'll miss him.

Book of the year - Ben Goldacre's Bad Science is a great eye opener - not just in terms of how science is misrepresented in the press, but in terms of the danger caused by pseudoscience and bad reporting of medical (or medicalised) stories. The chapter on AIDS denialism in South Africa is completely shocking. One of those books everyone should read.

Technology of the year - Android. I was so happy when I learned that Google were setting up against Apple's over-expensive, DRM ridden, walled in phone system with an open source, open to any application developers, open to any phone manufacturer, free (as in beer and freedom) operating system. My G1 phone is still going strong and whilst not quite up there with the latest models, having a Qwerty keyboard and an unlimited data plan has changed the way I use my phone forever.

Windows 7 is good contender, but doesn't win the award simply because it's what Vista should have been in the first place.

Conclusion - I was wondering whether to do a review of the noughties (or whatever people call em), but the mathematician inside me won't let me consider the decade over until 2011 - there was no year zero in our calendar. Also, I can't remember that far back.

Predictions for next year. Here I can say whatever I like and if it comes true I make lots of noise about it when it happens - if not, I pretend I never wrote it! I reckon Android will become more popular, certainly after the launch of the Nexus One phone, though the iPhone is so ubiquitous that I doubt it'll be buried for a long time (if ever).

I predict I'll still have two children at the end of the year. I have nothing but admiration for parents who have three or more children.

I also predict I'll like Mass Effect 2 a lot! There are a few interesting games that ought to come out in the next year - Alan Wake, Starcraft 2 (at least the first part of it) and Fable 3 of course (pre-order now!!!).

I want to try to lose weight (though being ill for the last couple of weeks has given me a nice headstart) and I also need to figure out an easy way to pay off the mortgage in one go...

As I've already stated on this blog, Torchwood started out as a very silly, but promising show. The second series really showed this potential off with some great episodes. I particularly liked the Owen focussed episodes after he "died". It's quite impressive how much the series has improved over a relatively small number of episodes.

Children of Earth felt a little too much like a Doctor Who episode, though perhaps this was to handhold the BBC 1 audience who may have not seen it before. It started out as yet another mass mind control episode and at the end I was half expecting the Doctor to turn up and sort out the mess (thankfully, he didn't, though Torchwood always has this lazy plot device as a "Get out of jail free" card available). However, there were some really chilling moments. There was a section where the cabinet are discussing how to choose the ten percent of children to give up to the 456. After initially thinking a random selection would be best, they eventually chose the completely selfish route of picking the attendees of the worst performing schools on the basis that they were "of less use to society". This came across to me as being scarily plausible.

One thing that's a little off putting about Torchwood is how few of the main cast are still alive. Jack of course can't die (at least not for a few billion years), but Gwen must be cacking herself at the moment, being the only other survivor. Martha Jones and Mickey transferred to Torchwood at the end of the last series of Doctor Who, but they did not appear in this mini-series (only Martha's absence was explained).

Lastly, another little thing I noticed last week is that the Torchwood hub is one of the fictional places you can search for on Google Maps!

Mass Effect: Revelation is a fairly straighforward prequel, filling in the back story between Captain (then Lieutenant) Anderson and Saren. Without giving away any more plot than the back cover of the book, the basic setup is that an Alliance research facility is attacked by an unknown force and Anderson's team is sent in to investigate. It turns out that there is only one survivor, a woman named Kahlee Sanders (I'm assuming her name is pronounced Kay-lee) who left the base only a short time beforehand. She's the obvious prime suspect for the attack, but Anderson sees things differently. There isn't a huge amount of new information in this book that isn't already in the dialogue of the game, but it's nice to see an expanded back story. There is a strange unnatural compulsion of the author to name the fictional manufacturer of every weapon, piece of armour, etc. whenever introduced as though he is simply showing off his knowledge of the Mass Effect universe, but this is a minor niggle.

Mass Effect: Ascension on the other hand, is a much more interesting novel. It is set directly after the end of the game and neatly avoids committing to any of the alternate endings to the game by following Kahlee (now working as a scientist in a elite biotic training school) as she is looking after autistic student Gillian, whose father is a member of a shadowy underground group manipulating the Alliance from within. He is highly conflicted in his dual role as an agent and a father and has become a red sand addict - a drug which gives temporary biotic powers which he uses (or at least started using) to try to better understand his daughter. The book shows us a lot of interesting things only briefly mentioned in the game, such as the Quarian lifestyle in the migrant fleet.

Together the books neatly bookend the first game in the series, and as short paperbacks are fairly cheap and quick to read too!

If you'd like to buy either book in the UK, I would be grateful if you could use the links within this article which will help pay for the hosting and bandwidth for this blog.

I have to say I was more than a little disappointed with this film. The first one was great in my view - they kept the cast to just a few of the more famous robots and concentrated the action to a few huge set pieces - it had good pacing and built nicely to the climax. This time however, they appear to have a higher budget and have used it to increase quantity rather than quality.

There are a huge number of CG driven fight scenes in the new film. Watching giant robots beating the crap out of each other is all well and good, but for two solid hours it begins to wear a little thin. Michael Bay appears to have forgotten that you need quiet moments to appreciate noise.

There are also a huge number of new characters introduced - some of whom appear to be completely new (the constantly bickering twins whose names I didn't pick up) and others seem to be put in for fan service (Arcee for example). Most of the new characters are completely throwaway and get only a few lines at the most. The only really good new character is JetFire - the grumpy old transformer who has spent a long time as an aircraft exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum. Hearing a giant robot grumbling away and shouting "Oh bollocks" when he's groggily bumping into things after being awoken was possibly the highlight of the entire film. It's a real shame he's dead by the end of it. Soundwave was also quite cool - updated from a tape recorder to a modern communications satellite.

The Fallen himself seemed a bit of a lame threat really - he barely appeared in the film and was easily dispatched by Optimus Prime at the end. His giant "sun-harvester" weapon was more laughable than threatening.

Also, this film suffers from the same hyperactive camera work of the first. I could understand it a little in the first film, as the fast moving camera meant that motion blur could be liberally applied enabling less detail in the effects to keep the budget down, but this time that excuse doesn't seem to be the case - it's just a poor artistic choice in my opinion.

Still, despite its shortcomings I did enjoy this film and now that the Matrix of Leadership has been introduced we could well be seeing a remake of the 80s cartoon film in a few years time. I think Unicron nomming his way through the galaxy could well be the film that Michael Bay was born to make - so long as he can temper the pacing.

The motherboard change went fairly smoothly. The only hardware issue is that I had to bend one of the aluminium fins on my Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU heatsink/fan in order for it to fit around the motherboard's own heatsink over the chipset. Also, the cooler now slightly blocks one of the memory slots, but this isn't a problem at the moment as I can use slots 2 and 4 and still get dual channel interleaved memory speed. I may have to modify the fan a little more if I add more memory in future, but 4 GiB is plenty for the time being.

After the hardware setup the machine booted fine and I had my Windows 7 RC DVD ready to reinstall (backing everything up before starting any of this of course). Just for kicks, I decided to let the existing Windows 7 RC install try to boot to see how far it got. Rather than crash and burn as I expected, it instead booted into VGA mode, spent a minute or so installing drivers, rebooted and then the machine was fully functional (aside from the damned Abit AirPace wireless card I had to install manually AGAIN - I'll write a how-to post about this in future as quite a few people are arriving at my site via searches for this). I've used the machine in this state for a few days now and it seems to be rock steady.

I don't know quite how Windows 7 managed this trick - Windows Vista 64 certainly didn't do it when I changed motherboards last time (from one 680i to another very similar board) and I had to reinstall from scratch. Is there anything Windows 7 cannot do? Assuming I don't run into problems with this, I'm planning on leaving this install in place until Windows 7 final is released.

The first board, an abit IN9 32X-MAX Wi-Fi (which incidentally was the source of the Airpace wireless card I've had driver trouble with) was rock solid until we went on holiday to Australia last October and on return it simply refused to power up at all. A little light on the motherboard claimed that the power supply for the CPU wasn't connected, but trying two different power supplies didn't bring it back to life. I sent it back to Scan for a warranty replacement (after spending ages trying to persuade them that the board was actually broken and I wasn't just being stupid), who then spent several weeks before sending me a replacement.

The abit board wasn't available so instead I received an EVGA nForce 680i SLI (this board is no longer produced now so I can't provide a direct link on their site).

This board has utterly infuriated me. I'm convinced it wasn't new when they sent it to me as there was dust build up on the chipset heatsink, but mostly what's annoying me is that it has been a fairly unstable board. I've tried two different BIOS updates, all kinds of different settings and drivers for various components and every trick I can find on the internet, but nothing seems to make this board settle down. It's utterly inconsistent too, sometimes it will work fine for hours, other times it will last only a few minutes before a BSOD, random reboot or a lock up. Looking at the minidumps that Windows saves when it endures a BSOD show no recurring pattern, so I can only assume it is a hardware problem.

So, I've decided to dump the nForce for the time being and buy a cheap Intel X48 Express based board which hopefully will be rock steady. I bought it from eBuyer rather than Scan after the way they treated me over the RMA of the first board. I was half tempted to upgrade to a Core i7 processor, but buying a new CPU and DDR 3 memory as well as a top of the line motherboard was going to cost silly money that I can't afford at the moment.

Here's hoping I finally get a stable PC at the end of this - it's 'pooter building time tomorrow evening!

I've been a fan of Star Trek since The Next Generation first graced our screens in the late 1980s. The quality has varied over the years, but most Trek has been watchable apart from the frankly awful Star Trek: Nemesis.

So the new Star Trek film has recently arrived to much hype, and I did find it surprisingly good - perhaps not so surprising given it was made by Bad Robot, the team behind the excellent Lost and Cloverfield. The new flick is the best Trek film since First Contact, but it is also utterly infuriating (like Lost sometimes).

I think the most annoying thing for me was that this was billed as a reboot of the franchise - a clean break to tell new stories with the same characters. This would have been fine, but instead they felt it necessary to write in the old Spock (presumably to keep the die hard fans happy), so it became a clich�d "person travels back in time, changes some key event and creates a parallel universe" story, which is indicative of lazy writing to me.

There was also some very dodgy and inconsistent physics involved. A black hole was able to safely transport both the Romulan ship and old Spock's ship back in time, but destroyed the planet Vulcan and then destroyed the same Romulan ship at the end of the film.

Another unexplained oddity is the redesign of the Romulans themselves. In the older series they were very similar in appearance to Vulcans (which fitted in with their shared ancestry), but with ridge on the forehead and bridge of the nose. In the new film they're all bald and covered in tattoos. Also the ship design has radically changed. Far from the iconic birdlike green ships of the past, the Romulans now seem to fly around in metallic black spiky ships that looks like a strange cross between a Borg ship and a Shadow vessel from Babylon 5. If the film had been a pure reboot this wouldn't have mattered, but because of the nature of the "alternate universe" type story, this Romulan ship ought to have been from the Trek universe we're all familiar with.

Transporter technology seems to be capable of a lot longer range than in the past. Previously in Star Trek it has never been possible to transport from much further than from orbit to a planet's surface, or between ships within visible distance. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual quotes transporter range at approximately 40,000km (from memory - I'll check when I get the chance). However, here in the new film is is somehow possible to transport from a planet to the Enterprise travelling at warp some unknown but huge distance away, and also from Titan's orbit to a ship orbiting Earth.

Regardless of all this, it is still a good film that's worth seeing. Funny and fun is a hard thing to pull off in an action film, but this manages to press all the right buttons if you can switch off your "WTF?" response.

Also, it was recently updated to Android 1.5 and I've had a few days to play with the new features and UI improvements therein.

The Good

• Google Sky Map - This is similar to the Google Sky website, except it uses the compass built into the phone to adjust the view in real time depending on where you point it. If you want to know where a particular star, planet, constellation, galaxy or other stellar object is, you simply search for it and it'll show you which direction to look in. Beautifully simple and wonderfully executed. It's also a cool thing to show off to people, especially jealous iPhone owners.
• Video Recording - another thing the iPhone can't do. It works, but it's not particularly great quality. I haven't tried the integrated YouTube uploading, but then I don't upload videos to YouTube regardless.
• UI Improvements in Android 1.5 - The contact and email updates are very welcome and certainly streamline things, making the phone that little bit more usable.

The Bad

• Battery life - This phone chews through a battery charge quite quickly. At first I had auto sync turned on, but quickly turned it off when it ran the battery down from full charge overnight (it apparently checks email every five minutes, which is a bit excessive for a mobile device). Now I sync email manually, have wi-fi off and the screen brightness as low as it will go, though the battery still only lasts three days or so.
• Contact syncing - This seems to be totally broken. I synced my contacts, thinking it would back them up online, but actually it deleted lots of contacts and reverted my phone's contact files to a much earlier state. Grrrr!!! That's the last time I do that!

Told in the first person, which seems to be fashionable these days (or at least I've ended up reading quite a few first person novels lately), it tells the tale of an unnamed drug addicted porn actor who crashes his car and is horrifically burnt in the resulting fire. Much of the early part of the book is spent describing in vivid and almost painful detail his burns and the agonising treatments he receives in hospital. Rather understandably, he spends his time between treatments planning his suicide.

He is constantly tormented by a snake which has taken residence in his spine which is only quieted by large doses of morphine.

He then meets a rather strange woman who wanders in from the psychiatric ward who claims they first met centuries earlier. Intrigued, he allows her to keep visiting and she tells him the story of their medieval life together. Things progress and without spoiling anything, by the end of the book the last thing the last thing on his mind is suicide.

The edges of the pages are printed black to fit in with the burn theme, which forms the only problem with this novel as the black ink transfers onto your hands as you read it.

I'm not really doing the story justice in my description as it probably just sounds a bit odd, but I've really enjoyed reading this book which is even more amazing for being Andrew Davidson's d�but novel.