Why iOS gaming is great

Because you can download a game that's already pretty good, frequently for nothing, and then for no good reason a few months later it gets made enormously bigger and better at no extra charge.

The shot above is of a complete new mode that's just been added to Donut Games' rather spiffy Traffic Rush (currently 59p). It's just one of a whole slew of improvements made in the latest update, including an upgrade to shiny Retina graphics, native iPad support and the replacement of Donut's awful web-based leaderboards with proper Game Center ones.

WoSblog goes to the Royal Wedding

But don't worry, chums – you can rely on your super soaraway WoSblog to do these things in its own bravely iconoclastic style, rather than just falling back on cheap and lazy mockery of easy targets.

Dammit.

Sometimes I walk sideways

And stumble across something I really wasn't expecting. Wandering around the former Virgin/Zavvi record shop in central Bristol last week, I spotted this sitting unassumingly on a rack in a corner:

From the ultra-mint condition and the surroundings I had to assume it was a brand-new vinyl pressing of the most important 7-inch single of this writer's life, coincidentally being displayed in circumstances eerily similar to the first time I ever saw it. Which begs the question: Huh?

How many chickens is this?

I don't know, because I'm not going to count them. But if the latest opinion poll is correct (and it's a big "if"), the electoral map of the Scottish Parliament is going to look rather different in two weeks' time:

65 seats are needed for a majority in the Parliament, and the Greens support an independence referendum, so if these figures are accurate the possibility of Scotland seceding from the UK will suddenly get an awful lot more real. And a Tory-led government in Westminster has already seen support for independence surge by almost 50%, to level pegging with those opposed to it.

Four years on

Many, many caveats, of course. And a long spoon is clearly required.

But it's hard to class this as anything other than a significant victory. The Sun is the biggest-selling newspaper in Scotland, and while it's unlikely to have much direct influence on how people vote, it changes the atmosphere of the election considerably. Game on.

Who are the Tartan Tories?

It's been called the "me-too" election. The Scottish media is full of the widely-repeated wisdom that three of the four main parties contesting the imminent Holyrood general election (the other one being the Tories, who nobody votes for in Scotland anyway) have triangulated/stolen each other's policies to such an extent that there's almost nothing left to choose between them on ideology, and the election is now basically a personality contest.

(Which is tough on at least two of the parties, since their leaders in Scotland have no detectable personalities.)

But is it true?

An unexpected result

Not least because I essentially don't give a shit about the environment.  (The result below is from Scottish Vote Compass, and my non-Scotch chums might find it interesting to take the test too.)

I do believe human activities are causing global warming, and that we're rendering the planet incapable of sustaining human life at a terrifying rate – via greenhouse gases, pollution and overpopulation – to the point where mankind could in my view have under 100 years left of anything recognisable as our current lifestyle. It's just that I think that's a good thing.

My God, it's full of stars!

We live in the prettiest galaxy, I think.

(Via @jimrossignol)

Waking the dead

Or Why Videogame Programmers Hate You, Part 956.

Appropriately enough, with Easter coming up, it turns out that resurrection is a lot easier than you think.

Why I could never vote Labour

Pictured below: Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls and the leader of Labour's MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, Iain Gray, at a campaign event earlier this week.

Have you spotted it?