Howdy folks. I'm taking a bit of a break from blogging, for a few weeks. Nothing serious, just inordinately busy with family, work, and that hectic seasonal round of activity that always happens at this time of year. Think of it as a blog holiday. Happy Chanukah.

Mixed feelings about Revolutions. The action scenes and the graphics in general were, as expected, completely mind-blowing, but I left the cinema with the nagging feeling that the scriptwriters could have done a hell of a lot more with the fantastic conceptual material that they had to work with. Not as imaginative as Reloaded, and not even really in the same league as the original, it nevertheless manages to grip the attention through brilliantly-visualised set pieces, and avoids most of the Hollywood clichés into which it could so easily have fallen. The ending, however, left me feeling as though there should be more to come, and unfortunately I don't think there is. I did enjoy it, in the end, but methinks it's really one for the fans.

Have shanghaied one of The Missus' friends tonight for babysitting duties, so that we can go and see The Matrix: Revolutions at the local movie house; it promises to be a top evening. Several reviewers have panned it but I'm firmly of the "suck it and see" school of moviegoing - one man's meat is another man's raw sewage, as they say. I'm rather expecting to enjoy it, as the same reviewers said that Reloaded was a pile of dingo's kidneys, and I thought it was great.

P.S. I wonder: if (as is stated in the original film) the machines could pop you back into the Matrix after you'd escaped, with no memory of your time outside - thus saving them the time and effort of growing a fresh human from scratch - would you be described as "Plug and Play"? Just a thought.

Quick reader poll: when this blog loads in the browser window, is anyone else getting "Done, but with errors" in the status bar at the bottom? Just curious - I think I've got a dodgy bit of DHTML in my code somewhere and I'd like to know if other people get the same error. Thanks.

SSX3 update: I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms already. Of course, The Missus wanted to see what all the fuss was about, insisted on keeping the game for an extra day so she could have a go, and promptly got hooked herself. We spent several very enjoyable hours doing backflips over the edge of 500-foot cliffs and pushing each other into large rocks (ah, the joys of matrimony).

I'm going to have to buy this game, aren't I?

Following my promise to have a good look at SSX3, the latest in EA Sports' line of chuck-yourself-down-a-mountain-with-your-feet-strapped-to-a-plank games, I formulated a plan so cunning that the local Foxes' Union has made a formal complaint. I waited until an evening arrived when I would be on babysitting duty - last night, as it happens, when The Missus decided she could do with a night out with her mates down the pub - and procured a rental copy in advance. Once the Wee Person was safely ensconced in the arms of sleep I settled down in front of the PS2, a bottle of Lucozade at the ready. The plan was to play for a good hour or so, to get the hang of the controls, then have a spot of dinner, then watch a particularly interesting-looking programme about archery, then play the game a bit more.

It was a good plan, and it failed spectacularly.

If you are a snowboarding enthusiast like me, and you have any sort of pretensions to owning a life and wish to continue doing so, do not buy this game. I sat mesmerised in front of the damn thing for almost five hours, my digits smacking the controller buttons frantically like small pink disco dancers, without realising what the time was, what that strange rumbling noise coming from my stomach could be, or why the oven was on fire. Okay, I made up the bit about the oven. But the rest is true.

It is a creation of utter genius. There are basically three entire mountains, throughout which you have near-complete freedom of movement; each one boasts a plethora of courses through which you can race, do style tricks, run a halfpipe, get some serious 'big air', or just ride for fun. There are also multifarious challenge areas, with mini-missions to complete. You can play as one of ten or so pre-set boardriders. Winning a medal in an event, completing missions, picking up hidden collectables and just pulling off impressive tricks earns you hard cash, which you can then convert into more speed/agility/toughness for your rider, or use to buy improvements to your trick repertoire, or a better snowboard, or a range of customised head/hand/footgear, or to unlock extra riders, and so on. The controls are slightly simpler to handle than those of the game's predecessors, but this is a welcome development as the difficulty of the courses has gone up a fair bit - to be honest, though, that doesn't matter in the slightest, because the real thrill is the total immersiveness of the game. You really don't care if you lose the event, because you're just having such a damn good time going down it in the first place.

Graphically stunning, with edge-of-the-seat action and vastly varied gameplay (I reckon 100 hours, at the very least) which will keep giving you that 'new game' feeling for weeks, SSX3 is close to the best game I've seen on any console. I'm going to be gutted when I have to give it back to Blockbuster tomorrow evening. On the other hand, The Missus will be delighted, as she won't have to cook her own dinner again.

Have just spoken to my dad, who informs me, in a tone of voice containing an unwarranted dollop of blasé, that he has picked up malaria from somewhere (I keep telling him not to wear that cheap honey-flavoured suntan lotion when he goes on those Botswana swamp-safaris, but he just won't listen). Luckily it's not a serious strain, so he's not suffering particularly badly with it, and apparently these days it's curable. But still.

That probably explains my constant sense of vein-bursting frustration. Link via Shelley.

This is inexplicable. Those crazy Belgians, eh?

So The Missus went back to work today, at the end of her period of maternity leave. Not full-time, of course; we're having enough difficulty leaving the Wee Person with a nursery - even a very good one - for two-and-a-half days a week as it is, without needing to increase our nagging sense of guilt by ramping it up to five. Preparations for the big day have been somewhat intensive. The house was at Defcon Three all weekend, with an "All Noses To The Grindstone" sign posted on the driveway in the hope of attracting any passing workmen.

This morning, I awoke blearily to the unexpected sight of various items of professional clothing throwing themselves en masse out of the wardrobe like lapel-infested lemmings, while the wardrobe itself muttered quietly, "Trousers, trousers," as though this was some arcane mantra which would cause trousers magically to spring into being. The Missus in closet-rooting mode is not a creature to be disturbed lightly. I did so, undeterred, with stoic groans of "whassortatimeyoucallthisthen". My rash outburst led to a prompt demand for the immediate production of a gallon of tea, which is her normal breakfast, and the readying of the Wee Person in preparation for her trip to the nursery. I leapt heroically from my place of repose and produced a nappy-changed, bottle-fed, snugly-clothed and slightly dazed baby in fifteen minutes flat, plus two slices of toast, the requisite vat of tea, a box of nappies, a shopping list and the car keys, just in time for a passing tornado to snatch all of the aforementioned from my grasp, yell "Thanks" and exit the house at approximately Mach Six.

I realised, as the tail-lights of the car faded into the distance, that I was still naked.

SSX3 is out on the Playstation 2! A must for all snowboarding enthusiasts. Now, just let me go and check the piggy-bank...