Mike Jennings.co.uk

Went into HMV last week - Thursday I think - because I wanted some new CD's. Wasn't sure which, but I'd just been paid and felt like some spendage.

Avenged Sevenfold

Is probably the unexpected CD of genius that I found in the metal section. They're a metal band, you see, and I did like the single but do get a little wary about buying potentially loud CD's. I don't want to hear a single that's quite nice and melodic, and then find that the album is one melodic song and ten more tracks of instrument torture.

I'm so glad that I invested. It's a huge, loud, fantastic record that kicks off with a violent, screaming diatribe against people who complain about things but never do anything about it. It's centered around the Iraq war - which has been something of a musical bugbear of mine, Green Day - but the taking of a different viewpoint is intriguing. It's not moaning at political figures: it's defending the rights of the band's friends who, I've been told, are serving in the armed forces at the moment. Complaining about the people who complain. I'm not sure if there's much logic in that, but it's a stunning song.

There's a fair few other tunes and a half on there too. Single 'Almost Easy' is brilliant, but getting quite familiar. Luckily, the self-titled album has plenty else to occupy the mind. Several genres are explored. I'm sure that I detected some country influences in there, and there's the sort of theatrical leanings, especially later in the album, that I might expect from Panic at the Disco. Except slightly more hardcore. Awesome.

Other CD's haven't got much of a look in because of this album. The new Panic record, incidently, sounds quite good but, like the first album, a little lightweight. I haven't yet manage to listen to the new Feeling album, or Killswitch Engage - but that does have their superb cover of Holy Diver, and so will be brilliant. The new Counting Crows CD is good, but I've only sampled the first section of it so far - the rockier first few tracks give way to some country-tinged acoustic, apparently.

Also, tonight is Wrestlemania. I've ordered it from Sky Box Office and am recording it, but it's just a pity I can't stay up to watch it all unfold live. I don't really want to go into work tomorrow morning and stagger around all day like a zombie, and nor do I want to hook myself up to a drip of Relentless either. There's just something about watching the events live that adds a little sparkle. The danger, perhaps, that niggling feeling that this hasn't been recorded, edited and tinkered so that it's suitable for a TV audience. It's happening right now, and the performers have to be on top of their game and get everything right for the biggest show of the year and, for a fair few of them, the biggest show of their careers.

No doubt that I'll enjoy it when I get to watch it, though.

Passed my theory test! Even with a stinking, horrible hangover! Sat down to be confronted with a few tricky questions. I knew most of them, but you can only get seven wrong - so there's that danger of getting one too many incorrect because you hesitate between a couple of answers and click the wrong one. Thank god, then, that I scored 47/50 on the questions and 65/77 on the Hazard Perception, even after voiding one of the clips. How I managed to pass with quite a good score, I don't know.

Oh well, I won't argue now that it's done.

So, Team Fortress 2. Like World of Warcraft, it's the elephant in the room that it's impossible to ignore at the moment if you're talking about online games.

I got The Orange Box for Christmas but didn't play it much; work was busy and I didn't think the PC in my room could handle it. But a reformat and some optimisation later - and playing with everything on low settings - and, well, there ya go.

It may look simple on the surface, like a playable version of The Incredibles, but within it has depth that humbles the original Team Fortress - and does the same to bleeding-edge online titles, such as Unreal Tournament 3 and Call of Duty 4. Those games may look more realistic, but in terms of gameplay - where, when it boils down to it, the real victories are won - Team Fortress 2 trumps them.

I favour the soldier class at the moment, but I think this is only because I'm relatively new to the game. An all-rounder with a rocket launcher and shotgun isn't entirely foreign ground to me, and coping with that is far easier than learning the many nuances of, say, the Spy, that I see in PC Gamer every month.

No doubt I'll get round to the other eight classes eventually. At the moment I'm having too much fun rampaging around the brilliantly-designed maps, employing the skills I learnt many years ago, during CTF and TDM games in Unreal Tournament at school. It's not as if I'm even doing that well yet - most games end with me being killed more times than I vanquish foes - but the odd bit of magic rears its cartoonish head: a hopefully volley of rocket fire will connect, the perfect merger of anticipation, aiming and ping, with someone's head. They explode with a ferocious energy that wouldn't look out of place in a Pixar film, and I rejoice for a second.

Then I'm gunned down by a bloody sniper, all Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin, gloating at me from some far-flung ledge.

I also like the use of statistics: seeing exactly how I'm doing eliminates much of the guesswork that older games made you use just to figure out how you were getting on. I like to see the gap between kills I've made and times I've been taken out getting smaller.

The balancing is perfect: equilibrium on a knife-edge. It makes team games a total joy - a group of you charging forward always feels like it has a chance at taking the next control point because you know that there's a change you'll do well because of the varied skills in your team, how they compliment each other, and how there's some players on the opposition side who your character can take down. Similarly, there's no huge mantle of responsibility on your shoulders: there's enough scope to be able to go on a gung-ho, charging run to the top of a control point as you know there will always be your team backing you up, or at least holding their ground until you respawn.

Negative points? There's not enough hours in the day.

Oh well. One more match won't hurt.

Football fans can't have missed the earth-shattering amount of hype that Sky have been dribbling out of their sports channels for the past three months: today is Grand Slam Sunday - the day when, thanks to the happily coincidental fixture computer, the top four teams in the league collide on one day.

Nothing to do with TV schedules, you understand.

So we're watching Manchester United v Liverpool - United are (one of) my teams, so we're all very eager for them to win. It was a competitive match, although not particularly aggressive, like past encounters have been. There was one flashpoint, though: the sending off of Liverpool midfielder Javier Mascherano.

It revolved around an incident where scouse striker Fernando Torres was booked. Mascherano had been booked earlier in the match and had been complaining about every decision to the referee ever since - and then jogged 20 yards to him just to complain and ask about the decision to book Torres.

He walked over and appeared to argue - or at least disagree - with referee Steve Bennett who, after being heranged by Mascherano for much of the first half, gave him a second yellow card for his continuing dissent - and sent him off.

It's interesting to note that, at this point, Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez had made his way down to the touchline; at first to complain about the decision to book Torres, but then to scream at his midfielder to leave the issue and walk away - he could see that a potential second yellow card was coming. After the red was shown, Mascherano appeared to see the red mist descend - Roy Keane would have been proud - and continued to argue his case. A few Liverpool players surrounded the referee and pleaded with him, but eventually they - notably included captain Steven Gerrard - and most of the coaching staff had to physically remove him from the field and down the tunnel.

His behaviour was petulant, disgusting and abhorrent: exactly the kind of thing that the FA would like to stamp out in a week where Ashley Cole was just as guilty, and exactly the kind of thing they didn't want to see in one of the flagship games of the season.

Plenty of ideas have been floated about how to stop this sort of behaviour and, potentially, ingrain into the game the kind of respect shown to the officials in Rugby. It's been mentioned that only captains should be able to talk to the referee - a practise which John Terry already habitually engages in - and that dissent and increased backchat should result in harsher penalties, just like the one we saw today.

But, if the players are going to react like that, what will happen? It's no good if Benitez will come out after the match and defend his player, even though he may give him a dressing-down in private. It's been proved that this doesn't work: for all their public defences and private ranting, this behaviour continues. Perhaps a public humiliation is just what these pampered professionals need.

Fines also seem pretty ineffectual. It seems that Robbie Keane was fined a huge sum of money a couple of weeks ago - £120,000 - until you realise that he'll be able to pay it off in less than a month from basic wages, not counting any bonuses or endorsement deals.

It's true that something needs to be done - because Mascherano's behaviour today was just as bad as John Terry trying to grab a card out of the referee's hand, or Ashley Cole turning his back on an official and then offering the most pathetic apology I've ever seen. Worse than this, though, is the affect this will have on football up and down the country. Players I've named today are role models, and their actions on the field filter down to the grass-roots: kids will copy them, and the tiny percentage that make it to the professional game will have learned that this is the right way to behave - and no amount of Fergie-esque hairdryer treatment or badgering from their fathers will be able to make them revoke behaviour that their heroes endorse.

It's a sad state affairs and one that, like diving, continues to undermine the sport. Let's hope that the FA - perhaps led by Fabio Capello, as it looks like he actually has a pair - can do something about it.

Another week since my last post. Every time I write in here I think that I'll force myself to write more often, and yet I don't. It's a shame because once I start, I find myself enjoying it.

I've downloaded a brilliant little game off Steam called Audiosurf - it's been garnering a huge amount of press, both in print and online, and a score of 85% in PC Gamer is always impressive, not least for a game that cost me just over £5 ($10 and VAT) over PayPal.

Like so many other critically acclaimed titles recently - like mega-stars of gaming Rock Band and Guitar Hero - Audiosurf revolves around music. Controlling a small space-ship, the mouse or keyboard moves the little craft down a track split into several lanes. The basic aim of the game, like casual title Bejewelled, is to group together coloured blocks into trios or more, scoring points for larger groups of combos. Choosing different crafts unlock different criteria for point-scoring.

It all sounds pretty conventional until you come to the point where you pick an mp3 before beginning a level - and then the game analyses the file and uses it to create the track. The shape, camber and direction of the circuit is determined by the music, as is the placement of blocks on the track, and the surrounding world. 'Sin City' was fast, twisting, black and neon - very reminiscent of Las Vegas. Happier songs are given white backgrounds and less undulating circuits.

It's brilliant, giving you a way to connect with the music - picking up little patterns in the audio that you just didn't before because of the arrangement of blocks. I'm only just scratching the surface, I'm sure - and the only thing I wish the game had was a random track-select option, as at the moment I resort to selecting a song before I begin. Adding in an element of surprise would only improve things, I'm sure.

In other news, I keep thinking a little about those Scientologists. It seems strange that they're normal people, possibly with wives and children who they go home to in the evening. They have favourite TV shows and bands, sinful comfort foods they prefer and football teams they watch. But they're outside that building most days, handing out leaflets imploring people to join what is, essentially, a cult. And they believe in that more than they believe in their footballs teams or TV shows - and they don't even know the situation they're in, such is the strength of their indoctrinated feelings and beliefs.

Emotions are weird.

So, went into work today to finish off my group test that I'm doing on the side for Computer Buyer magazine. I've been at the office til 8:30 the last three nights of the week as well as today but it's good money, so I can't complain.

It also meant that I got to go to an anti-Scientology protest.

I'd known that they were going on, vaguely, around the world - the 'anonymous' masked folk turning up. But I had no idea it was today until I stumbled upon a video on YouTube talking about it. I looked up the protest page and discovered that the London event was starting at the Church of Scientology and then moving down to the Dianetics Centre near Goodge Street Station - about three minutes from the office - at 2.

So down I went. Get there, and there's barriers on the other side of the road, across from the centre - with about 1,000 people behind them, plenty wearing the 'anonymous' masks. Police are all over the place, but it was a peaceful protest - the most they were doing was telling people to keep walking who were stopping on the pavement to take pictures of the slightly bizarre scenes.

I crossed the road to where the main body of protesters were - they were holding up plenty of signs and banners, and chanting things like 'It's a trap!' when members of the public went inside the Scientology Centre. They were also handing out plenty of cake - it was a friendly protest, after all.

I crossed back to the other side of the road again and joined the reams of people taking pictures of the odd scenes, and nervously hovering around the Scientology Centre and wondering if I should tell them how much of a cult they were. There were three people handing out pro-Scientology leaflets - one, an older man, I felt quite sorry for. He looked quite sheepish and put-upon, and more than a bit reluctant. Another, a woman, seemed a bit more tenacious - she was hovering around distributing leaflets and taking pictures of the protestors. I did read that they'd sent people out to take pictures of them and of the people buying masks for security purposes. It's all very shady.

The third man handing out leaflets is one I've seen out there before. His eyes were permanently narrowed in suspicion, and he thrust leaflets towards anyone who came near. He looked incredibly driven and, dare I say it, a wee bit brainwashed. But, then again, I suppose they all are.

And that's the sad thing - the 'anonymous' group put it very well when they say that they don't oppose individual Scientologists, but the organisation itself. They were all - and probably still are, if you weren't aware of their quasi-'religious' views - normal people. But the organisation itself isn't a religion. It's an voracious money-making machine that tricks and fools gullible people into parting with their hard-earned cash for so-called spiritual enlightment, via some aliens and a man who professed, when he was alive, that the easiest way to make a million dollars was to found a religion.

I guess he was right. Real religions don't charge you for membership and persecute people by fear and intimidation like the 'Church' of Scientology does. It's just worrying that their legal team is strong enough to seemingly halt any challenge to their undoubtedly dubious, and probably illegal, methods.

I've begun to do some work on the side for a wonderful site called Den of Geek that specialises in TV, movie, game and cult news and reviews. I've done a couple of games but then an email went around last week that offered a seat at a press showing of the new Sky One adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. I jumped at the chance - I love the books - and, instructions in hand, set off to Mayfair and the cinema.

I get there, and it's very busy. The path each side of the entrance is blocked off with barriers covered in film posters, and the other side of the road is similarly adorned. Fans line each barrier - one the Cinema side of the road, they're several deep. Around 50 cameramen are lurking around the red carpet.

An actual red carpet!

I walk up to the very large and beefy-looking security guards on the carpet and introduced myself as a member of the press who was there to review the film. Once they'd checked out who I was, they said I was ok. And I got to hang around on the red carpet! So I did until it got a bit busier and I headed inside.

Indoors, there were a few big models - a couple of Rincewind and Twoflower, and one of the Octavo - and an area prepared for interviews. Limosuines drew up, out stepped Astin and Jason. Pandemonium: fans scream for autographs, photographers yell for pictures and poses, and a thousand flashbulbs go off at once, illuminating the road in front of the cinema. It was like a real film premiere, oddly enough.

Then they came inside and said hello to all the people from Sky they knew. I almost introduced myself but bottled up and headed indoors.

For my thoughts on the show itself you'll have to head over to my review at Den of Geek, which you can get to by clicking here. Suffice to say, it was pretty damn good.

After the showing, everyone stuck around: there was a promised Q&A session with Sir David Jason and Sean Astin. Also attending, to our delight, was legendary author Terry Pratchett - and it was hosted by the director, Vadim Jean. My thoughts on this and a full transcript will be going up over at Den of Geek in a couple of days - but it was funny, hugely entertaining and very illuminating, as couple of interested facts that hadn't been previously known were revealed.

I've never been to a film premiere before. But I'll tell you this - I really, really want to go again.