I’m a bit late on this, but Firefox are going for a new world record for their downloads of the new version 3. I recommend you give it a try!

I recently came back from my holidays in Skiathos and had a tremendous time. Normally I wouldn’t mention the finest beaches in Greece, the mouthwatering grilled black bream with lemon and olive oil and the smell of pine on those balmy summer nights. These are the things commonly associated with Greece and are to be expected.

Also to be expected, unfortunately, are small, pine effect, mosquito infested, plumbing affected accommodation … Not anymore, the Cape Pounta Villas are the finest on the island, with a commanding view, great pools and little touches such as the Korres products in the bathrooms, state of the art home entertainment and the most comfortable cocomat beds. The owner, Diamantis, has built these villas and furnished them beautifully and I would recommend them to anyone (which I am).

So if you are planning on going to Greece and there are upwards of four of you then it may be worth looking at these. Here is the link and an aerial view is above.

http://www.capepountavillas.com/

An aquatic, flightless bird, the Emperor penguin is the largest of the 17 species.
With its large head, short neck and elongated body the Emperor grows to an almighty 3.7ft.

And thanks to Iceland Foods Ltd, the fluffy grey fellow on the right is supporting their charity efforts for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

Thank you
x

It’s an absolute, undeniable fact (for me anyway) that the 1980s were the golden age of cinema. The Back to the Future trilogy. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Teen Wolf. The Terminator. Monster Squad. The Karate Kid. I could go on. I’m the sort of person that will drop everything to watch Back to the Future 2 when it’s on TV (pretty much a bi-weekly occurrence it seems), even though I’ve owned the VHS box set, and in later years upgraded to DVD, and never, ever get bored. I can recite pretty much every word to Karate Kid, even down to belting out “YOU’RE THE BEST! ALL ROUUUUND! NOTHING’S GONNA EVER KEEP YOU DOWN!” straight after executing a perfectly timed crane-kick to the unsuspecting chin of my younger brother (my parents had to confiscate that video, along with Rocky 1- 3 due to the outbursts of violence that would inevitably follow). You just don’t get films that inspire that kind of brutality that anymore.

Which brings me to Indiana Jones. Arguably the greatest action hero of all time. I dread to think how many hours of my 29-year total have been spent watching everyone’s favourite archaeologist whip-cracking his way through Egypt, India and Germany. If I’d used this time more productively, I could probably be a classical pianist, sculptor, or be fluent in Mandarin. Maybe even all three, and more. Which is why, when a fourth instalment was announced, I regressed to being 8 years old again, grabbed a tie and nearly whipped my flatmate’s eye out.
George Lucas had a lot to live up to. I’ve managed to forgive what he did to the Star Wars trilogy – flexing the CGI muscle of Lucasarts was pretty inevitable with a science fiction series, and the kids that made the original films so successful by shelling out their hard earned pocket money on merchandise in the 70s and 80s now have kids of their own, so they were always going to be children’s films. But with Indy, it needed to be a different story. I’d already made my peace with the dodgy title before the trailer had even come out. And I can accept that Harrison Ford is no spring chicken, so wasn’t expecting to see him doing his own stunts. All I could do was put my trust in there being some truth behind all the clichéd interview quotes like “I’d only do it if the script was just right” and “we’ve gone to great lengths to stay true to the original films”.
Well, it turns out, that they were lying all along. I’m not going to spoil the film for anyone by revealing any of the details of the ‘plot’, but if you share any of the childhood sentiment I’ve described above, you’re not going to like what you see. It’s as if Lucas and Spielberg had commandeered Doc Brown’s Delorian, travelled back to 1980’s Wiltshire, found the young, innocent, short-trousered Rhys, poked him squarely in the eye, and mugged him of his sweets. It’s a clumsy, pointless, poorly written, abysmally acted shambles of a film. It’s not that I’m too old for this sort of thing – I watched ‘the Last Crusade’ the day before I went to the cinema, and enjoyed it ever bit as much as I had 19 years ago. It’s because it’s like an episode of the X Files, but written and filmed by baboons. If I’d know 20 years ago what I know now, I’d have spent all that time more productively and could be putting the finishing touches to my first symphony right now.

You’ve still got to go and see it though. It is Indy, after all.