So begins the last year of my 20s. I'm really not looking forward leaving my 20s behind, so I guess i'm going to have to make the best of the year ahead.

My birthday yesterday went really well for the most part. I stayed up late the night before and kicked off my birthday watching Arsenal pummel Blackburn 7-1 with the cherry on top being a Thierry Henry Premier League goal. It's been a long long time since Arsenal won big like that (at least a season or two ago), so it was a really enjoyable game to watch. It's quite sad that these type of games are really the rare exception for Arsenal nowadays; in my rosy-tinted history glasses it seems like they used to do that at least once a month back in the glory days of the early 2000s.

As my birthday was on a Sunday, it also meant a game of indoor. I actually scored a birthday goal in the game, which unfortunately we ended up losing by a few goals.

Yesterday also saw me play BF3 online for the first time properly. It's a fair bit different to BC2, some of which I understand and can get used to but other parts of which had me seething with rage.

The little things like the weapon/equipment ordering being different which seems illogical to me I can get used to, but other things like the complete inability/bug to be able to 'spot' with a mouse button even though you can bind it to other keys in the settings is really inexcusable.

To be able to spot with a mouse button I've had to resort to running a separate program with the game which is in effect a key-interceptor, so that when I press the appropriate mouse button the program intercepts the command and then virtually presses the default spot button for me instead. It's quite astounding that I have to go to such lengths to do such a basic thing in the game.

Now here's a thought: a movie with dragons and vampires in it. How come nobody's done that yet? When it happens just remember you read it here first.

Continuing on with our cinephilic year last year, we've seen a couple more in this past week.

Last week we went and saw the US version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I haven't read the book nor seen the Swedish film, so I can't comment on how faithful it is to its source material or not, but I did enjoy the movie. It was very intense and confronting at times, but after all the talk and hype about that part of it, it wasn't to the extent that I had anticipated.

Rooney Mara was exceptional in her role (and very deserving of her Oscar nomination), but I didn't buy Daniel Craig's Swedish accent: for me it drifted from him making an effort at it, to him talking in his normal British accent. In the end I was confused as to whether he was supposed to have an accent or not...

Last night we saw Underworld: Awakening in 3D. I'm a huge fan of the first two movies (and also of Rise of the Lycans to an extent), and I was thus very apprehensive of them making another movie with Kate Beckinsale after so long.

Overall it wasn't as bad as I was fearing it to be, but it was only ok-ish without being that great. The plot felt very half-baked and thin, and the movie really missed characters like Bill Nighy's legendary Viktor. They wrote off characters from the previous movies for convenience, using the old sleep/time-travel/cryogenic-freezing technique as an explanation of shifting the whole plot and setting elsewhere from the original movies.

The action was very good and the 3D a bit average, but overall the movie was a lot more action-oriented than the previous movies, largely at the expense of the plot. Kate Beckinsale, whilst still in very good shape, for me was visibly older than in previous movies (unsurprising considering it's been five years since her last Underworld movie), and that sort of ruined the illusion of her character being an immortal un-aging vampire.

It's definitely worth a watch, but overall it's largely forgettable, which is unfortunate when I remember how I felt after watching the first two movies.

Like most people I really dislike the chore of cleaning, but it probably shows how much of a geek I am when I admit that I really don't mind, heck even partly enjoy, cleaning my computer.

Most people don't bother cleaning their computers, but I like to run a well oiled machine (minus the oil of course). Typically it involves at least pulling out the dust filters and giving them a vacuum, but if I'm really in the mood i'll get an anti-static cloth and wipe down the fan blades (there are four fans in the Antec 902 I own), as well as wipe down all the internal surfaces to get rid of the finer dust that manages to get through the filters.

In my opinion, dust and the associated implications for fan efficiency and consequently heat build-up, is one of the bigger causes that affect hardware longevity.

It's been raining here a lot in the past few days, and it's hampered applying the final finishes to the exterior of the house. Things are coming along though, so hopefully it shouldn't be too much longer...

I haven't blogged much about Arsenal (the English Football Club) in recent years, and I guess the lessened amount of blogging of the club that I support reflects their drop in the footballing hierarchy in the past five or so years.

However every now and then something special happens. This morning it was the return of Arsenal legend Thierry Henry on a short-term loan during the American football off-season. He hadn't played for Arsenal since 2007, and the hastily organised loan is meant to fill some of the striking deficiencies temporarily.

In watching the game on my computer this morning at the hour of 6am, the stage was set for him to come on as a substitute and score the winning goal. I'd be lying if I expected it to happen, but I was buzzing when it did!



When Henry scored (in that trademark way of his too), it was like time had been wound back ten years. I was eating breakfast whilst watching the game and almost spat out the cereal I had in my mouth all over my monitor and keyboard.

It's a bit like dreamland for Arsenal fans at the moment; the club's all-time top scorer and legend comes back after four years and increases his goal-tally by one to make it 227 goals and counting. Here's to a few more over the next 6 weeks.

So we enter another new year! Hopefully it'll be a good one, and if tradition is anything to go by, it should be for me: In my family's belated new year's get-together I scored the coin from the vasilopita. It's been at least 10 years since I last got it, so it was quite a surprise.

The coin itself was a pretty fancy specialist vasiloptia coin that was bought from Church (shown below), which is a first for us since we previously used general currency coin(s).