Barfy

What's the best way to keep snails & slugs off grapes, tomatoes, strawberries and other soft fruits :mad:

As my girlfriend didn't seem greatly impressed, I thought I'd share my geeky delight here that I managed to get into the top 10% online for Killzone I know it's not that great, but my last online claim to fame was topping fun with explosives platinum club on Pain for 24 hours

If only I had boots that cool I'd feel more comfortable sat out on the porch taking pot shots at passing cars.

No, it's of good solid German construction (Weihrauch HW90K). The first thing I found out when starting to look into which one to buy was to avoid the Chinese imports... I can probably only manage to eat 10-20 pigeons a month, so the shotgun might be a bit OTT for my needs

What do you reckon to using it to take down some wasps though?

Do you speak from experience here?

Having just acquired an air rifle (at the expense of buying the mrs a load of new clothes) I'm looking to reduce the huge number of pigeons and rabbits that reside in the fields around me (and getting a nice supply of free meat). Apart from the obvious (getting the landowners permission and not using the gun within 50ft of a public highway) are there any other rules/laws that I should bear in mind?

Orange binatone thing ZX Spectrum 16k (which my granddad got olivetti to boost to 64k ) ZX Spectrum 128k+2 Olivetti pc (can't remember make or model though). SNES ex-NHS 386 pc (would only just about run the original version of championship manager) Custom built p3 pc PS2 custom built AMD 3.2GHz pc PS3 Customised AMD phenom based pc. I'm all for sentimentality, and all of the above were great at the time, but without a shadow of a doubt my favourites are my current pc and the ps3.

I've just run the demo on the highest graphics detail possible on the Brandywine Creek battle and apart from a little bit of a slow load, the battle seemed quite smooth, so I've decided to take the plunge and buy it. I was looking at buying the elite units edition through steam, but they seemed to have screwed up the pricing: Empire Total War = £39.99 Empire Total War Elite Units = £n/a Individual price = £39.99 Package Price = £44.99 Cost to you = £44.99 :confused: Thankfully Amazon have it for £34.99

I've been reading through this thread a bit more, and it seems that the general consensus is that dual/quad processors should be absolutely fine, and your setup doesn't look too dissimilar to some of those quoted in the thread. Minimum spec according to Sega:

Apparently there could be an issue with the latest nVidia drivers: http://help.sega.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=517&nav=0%2C6%2C165 Apparently though, the demo doesn't really use the dual/quad core processors either, whereas the full game does. This looks promising: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?p=4524356#post4524356

My girlfriend is apparently tenuously related to a load of people from Armoy in Northern Ireland, does that count?

I downloaded the demo for this at the weekend through Steam (which took bloody ages), and even though I'd consider my pc to be of reasonably good spec (quad core phenom, 4GB Ram & 512MB PCI-e card) it still seemed to stutter a bit and run quite slowly. I would quite like to buy the game, as the demo seems very good and I love the Total War series anyway. But I don't want to have to turn down all of the effects, is this possibly just a Vista issue? or does the game really need a better spec machine than I've got? (I remember not really getting much out of Doom3 when that came out because it needed such a high spec machine to run)

Radec's right at the end, and a right giggle it is too. Though I managed to get a trophy for my efforts I think I managed it without shooting the blue things, though it did seem to take ages. I just tried to stay behind cover and shoot whenever I could, that might also explain why the rocket launcher was so f***ing useless. Has anyone been playing his online much yet?

I didn't watch come dine with me, but did watch Heston Blumenthal deep fry lamprey spinal cord before that.

If you drop down off the roof, there's a covered walkway area (plus more ammo for the rocket launcher), I set up camp there and took pot shots whenever I got the chance. Took a while, but a lot safer than running around in the open! Wait until you come face to face with Radec, that's a laugh too

Thanks St Marco, once the mrs' car is back from the garage, I might look into buying this, if nothing else other than to keep me away from Killzone!

Likewise, I absolutely loved Rome plus the barbarians expansion pack, but if Empire is too much of a pain to run on Vista, I might have to give it a miss until I get Windows 7.

So the verdict on the game? is it worth getting, even if you've got Vista?

Depends how good you are at fps games. Personally I'm a bit of a n00b still so would have taken weeks to get through on one of the harder levels. I've got to say I'm really liking the online system for this now. Having 32 players on some of the smaller maps is funny. Also (and this is very sad) if you login to http://www.killzone.com you can watch top down replays of matches you've been in, and see how genuinely sh!t you've been!

I'm probably wrong, not being mechanically minded an' all, but surely this would go against the environmental policies as most cars run most efficiently when going over 50mph, especially on longer journeys?

Did I hear the commentary correctly yesterday? Has Mushtaq been drafted into the coaching staff? If so, this might be the catalyst for Monty to start really showing some of the potential he has. As for the series, I haven't managed to see as much as I would have liked, but then it doesn't sound like I've missed too much. Apart from the farcical referral system that is. I'd be very concerned if I was a WIndies cricket fan. With pitches either being un-useable or totally benign demand for test cricket there is going to plummet. Without the English fans, almost all of the grounds would have been empty. And now with Stanford out of the picture, there's not even going to be the big Twenty20 tournaments to ignite interest!

This lass had a good run, though lack of tabloid stories about her work probably doesn't warrant a spot right at the top of the list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory

It is a bit sh!t isn't it? A rather underwhelming summary of a truly fine meal.

Not at all, they are quite substantial (usually about 10 - 12 inches long and 6 inches in girth). Half is similar in taste and texture to a pasty, and once you've finished munching through that you get into the sweet end, usually filled with fruit/jam. For liquid refreshment, you would of course accompany it with a pint from the local brewery: http://www.potton-brewery.co.uk/ And a nice strong cup of tea.