After a quick and deadly little campaign I have finished "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" on the Xbox 360. Two aspects of the game really stood out for me. Firstly, it looked awesome, the graphics were detailed and life like. Secondly, moving the Call of Duty series into a modern setting was a very good decision. This allowed you to play through scenarios similar to those you may see occasionally on the world news, as well as the opportunity to give the modern weaponry a run.

The main story takes place in the very near future, during a fictional conflict between the combined forces of the US and England, against Russian Ultranationalists and Middle Eastern rebels. The story itself is an interesting one, and at times takes some unexpected turns.

You play as either a British SAS guy (throughout the European missions) or a US marine (in the Middle East missions).There's also a flashback mission set 15 years prior to the events in the game, played out at Chernobyl.

Gameplay wise, not much has changed compared to previous Call of Duty outings. It's run, aim, shoot, duck, shoot, run, aim, shoot. Lets face it, the Call of Duty franchise is firmly entrenched in the first person shooter (FPS) genre, there's only so much you can do with that set up.

What sets this game apart from countless other FPS games is the attention to detail, the atmosphere it generates, and the "realism". For example, you can't just charge into a room full of bad guys holding down the trigger. You'll last about 10 seconds if that's your strategy. The best way to get through the game is to advance, clearing each area as you go, paying attention to what the rest of your squad is doing.

If I have one complaint with Call of Duty 4 it is that the game itself is a little short. It leaves you wanting more, but then, perhaps, that was the game makers strategy.

Overall, this is the best traditional FPS I have played since I first played Halo 2. I'd rate it on a par with the rock-on awesomeness of Gears of War. Now I'm just saving for Halo 3 to see how that stacks up.

Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare PC DVD Game Limited Stock

1 Bid

US $14.64

2h 5m

XBox 360 CALL OF DUTY 4 COD4 Perfect Condition

6 Bids

US $38.80

2h 35m

CALL OF DUTY 4 Nintendo DS Game

1 Bid

US $.85

3h 1m

Xbox 360 Game Call of Duty 4 Game of the Year NEW

US $51.70

3h 12m

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare English Language New

US $30.15

3h 34m

Well my ShoppingAds trial is over. In 7 days, I made $0.00. I think you'd have to agree, that's not the greatest return.

Granted, I didn't saturate my sites with ShoppingAds, but even so, I delivered 38,768 impressions over the seven day period, with an average click through rate of around 0.50%. Based on that I would have expected to at least make a couple of cents!

I'm sure that there are people out there they do quite well with ShoppingAds, unfortunately, I'm not one of them.

In case you have no interest in making money, check out the Top 5 Car Chases of All Time as voted by me.

Big news on the casting of the Wolverine movie, currently slated for a 1 May 2009 release with the title "X-Men Origins: Wolverine". It's one of those films that I'm keenly waiting for, but at the same time a little nervous about, cos lets face it, if this one goes wrong, it'll go really really wrong!

There were a few high profile actors announced having taken roles in the film, but the biggest part of the casting announcement came when the actors roles were announced.

Obviously the big news for me was the casting of Ryan Reynolds to play Deadpool. Sounds like perfect casting to me. Reynolds has been rumoured to play Deadpool for a few years now, with rumours of a Deadpool film dating back to 2004.

The other big one is the appearance of Gambit, one of my other favorite Marvel characters. To be honest I've never heard of the guy playing him, Taylor Kitsch, I just hope he doesn't play it corn ball.

Here's a shortlist of characters (and actors) from the "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" film:

• Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds)
• Agent X (Daniel Henney)
• Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber)
• Gambit (Taylor Kitsch)
• Silver Fox (Lynn Collins)
• Beak (Dominic Monaghan)
• Kestrel (Will.I.Am)
• William Stryker (Danny Huston)

Looking at that list of characters I'm really scratching my head trying to figure out how they are going to fit them all in to the one story. The film could feature a lot of flashbacks, be set in the past, or just jump about through time. Arguably the strangest character to show up in the list is Beak. If you've read the New X-Men comics then you'll know that he's a bird like guy who doesn't have the ability to fly. Not sure why, or how, he's going to fit in to the whole thing...

Sometimes it's hard to keep up with the increased public demand for the latest scoop on celebrity camel toe sightings. Fortunately there is a crack team of experts (pun perhaps intended) out on the case. These perverts, I mean experts, won't let even the most minor hint of the ye olde camel toe slip by.

Jessica Simpson is one of the more regular exponents of the camel toe.Obviously a lot of that goes down to wardrobe choice. Some people often miss the Jessica Simpson camel toe as their attention is drawn to some of her higher profile assets. Take this picture below, fresh from the Swollen Pickles Camel Toe Scientific Research Institute (S.P.C.T.R.I).

Close inspection reveals Miss Simpson brandishing a rather hefty camel toe, although that fact seems to have been missed by the young bloke sharing the frame with her. It's seems he has failed to spot the camel toe in question. He's also failed to maintain eye contact.

ads from Shopzilla

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Japanese TV shows are funny. Both "ha ha" funny, and "funny" as in when you find that tomato in the bottom of your fridge and it's 12 months past it's used by date and you turn to your housemate and say "Gee, that tomato sure does smell funny".

From what little I understand, Japanese TV is chock full of game shows, and from what little I've seen, they do a game show much better than any other country in the world.

Truly bizarre, yet truly captivating.
Check out this little entertaining nugget, 'Human Tetris'.

How do you follow up Human Tetris? With this soon to be classic, and oh so very wrong, televised sport. The object of this game is for the dude to with stand submerging himself in extremely hot water for long enough to make the girls "boobs" jiggle. Sounds complicated? Luckily they also provide a computer animation so you can follow the rules when the action starts.

Yes, that was wrong on so many levels.

Whilst we are kind of on the topic of old school video games, check out this Japanese live action interpretation of the classic Pac Man game.

When I first started using Project Wonderful, my intention was to place a few of the 125x125 pixel ad spots in the top section of my sidebar. Initially I thought this would simply be a case of copying the code supplied by Project Wonderful, and pasting it into the appropriate spot within my WordPress theme. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. Pasting the Project Wonderful code directly into the theme resulted in the ad blocks failing to display.

After emailing Project Wonderful tech support, I was told that the only way they'd found to have the Project Wonderful ad blocks display properly on WordPress powered blogs was to paste the code into a text widget. Apparently there was some issue with php stripping out line breaks within the Project Wonderful code when returning the page, or something equally as technical sounding.

So, why didn't I just paste it into a sidebar text widget you ask? Whilst the theme I'm currently using is easy to "widgetize" I have preferred to hard code the sidebar so that I have more control over what sits where and how it displays. Hard coding has also allowed me to display different menu items and/or ads on different page types. Whilst I may one day fully widgetize the theme, I currently have no intention of doing so. This meant that if I wanted to use Project Wonderful on SwollenPickles.com I had to find a solution.

So, in case any one else is scratching there head, trying to figure out how to hard code Project Wonderful ad blocks into their WordPress blogs, here is the solution I found to get things up and running. If you aren't familiar with editing WordPress themes then what follows may be next to useless, for everyone else, I hope it makes some sense!

Step 1.
Create a straight html file and paste your Project Wonderful ad block code within it. Here is an example of what the code in that file could look like.

Within the body tags you can also include any styles and sub headings you'd like to display with the ad block. Save the file with the html file extension. For the sake of this example, lets call the html file "project-wonderful.html".

Step 2.
Upload your html file to your server, taking note of the location you upload it to.

Step 3.
Modify your WordPress theme. Make sure you back up you blog and theme files before proceeding, just in case something screws up. It's unlikely, but then again, sometimes unlikely stuff happens, I mean, just look at the Spice Girls Reunion. Now figure out where you want your ad block to show up. Not all themes are the same, however a majority will have the following template files, header.php, sidebar.php, footer.php, index.php, single.php, page.php. Depending on where you want the ads to show up will depend on which file you'll need to edit.

For the sake of this example, we want to display the adds at the top of the sidebar, so open up the sidebar.php file in a text editor (eg. Notepad). Find the appropriate spot where you want the Project Wonderful code to appear and insert the following code:

Change the section within the quote (") marks to reflect the location you uploaded your html file to.

Save your changes and go visit your site. With any luck you should now see the Project Wonderful adblock.

If anyone knows of a better solution, I'd be glad to hear it!

There are those people that walk among us that possess gifts. Talents beyond those of the average person.

With their voice, and their voice alone, they are able to transform the most stale, putrid, dull and/or lifeless movie trailer into something that may just be worth watching.

The Voice Over Guy does indeed possess mysterious mystical powers.

Check out voice over guys at their best...

As we all know, with great power comes great responsibility.

Whilst some of the gifted choose to use their golden vocal cords for the powers of good, there are also those who occasionally drift to the dark side, using their powers to breath life and promise into such wretched films as Crossroads (the one with Britney Spears) and Big Mommas House 2. Let's take a look...

Exhibit A: Crossroads

Exhibit B: Big Momma's House 2