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The story of Spartacus is fairly well known, but here we see a new version, made for TV, although you certainly won’t see it running at lunchtime.

The story is one of Crixus (played by Manu Bennett), and his fall and rise.

A Thracian, Crixus, agrees to join the Romans on a campaign, and all is going swimmingly, if rather bloodily, until the Roman leader goes back on his word. Crixus and his men revolt, and he buggers off back to his home village and his wife.

Yet happiness doesn’t last, and before you can say ‘By the Gods!’ Crixus finds himself in the arena, where, by dint of a nifty piece of swordsmanship, he’s enrolled in a Ludus to be trained as a gladiator.

The screenwork has a washed out look, reminiscent of the film ‘300′, and it certainly helps to highlight the, possibly overly, copious amounts of blood that soon start to fly. Yet I think it works for this.

There’s no shortage of bodies flying about, either on the battlefield or off, and we’re treated to a variety of fairly up front nudity. Those Romans, they weren’t shy folk!

As far as the story line goes, well, it’s warming up nicely, though there aren’t really any major surprises plotwise. Still, it moves along at a decent pace, and is certainly watchable enough, just as long as you aren’t expecting high brow storylines.

Overall, worth watching for those quiet nights in.

Chinaren rating: 5stars.

I’ve had a cellphone for many years now, indeed I was the first person I knew to have one, way back when.

Since they started becoming more than just phones, websites have popped up all over the place with various themes, wallpapers, ringtones and so on.

Many of these are sites that demand cash for something, but one site, which I’ve been a member of for many years now, is fantastic. That site is Zedge. And no, this isn’t a sponsored post! I just really think it’s a great site.

It offers thousands of free themes, ringtones, games and tons of other stuff for a huge range of mobile phones. And it’s all totally free. Just logon and off you go!

Check it out!

Again, this is not a sponsored post.

There’s a whole lot of Online casino’s out there, so how do you know which ones are the best? How can you choose the best deals, or find out the latest news?

Simple, just pop on over and take a gander at this online roulette site.

You’ll be virtually spinning in no time!

Before I start this, let me just state I’ve never used Vista. This in itself is a little unusual, as being a techie fellow I’m usually first on the bandwagon with this kind of stuff. Maybe I’m just getting older and lazier!

I loaded 7 on my laptop first, and then my desktop. Neither machine is cutting edge, indeed my desktop is starting to show it’s age. Still, both are quite good enough for reasonably heavy none-heavy-duty-games use.

Both upgrades were done ‘clean’. I hear there have been some niggles upgrading from Vista, and also using the system Microsoft has put in place to help upgrade from XP, but these won’t be covered here.

When I say clean, I mean essentially I had a blank C drive upon which I thrust W7.

There’s the first thing. Why don’t they check the disk space available first?? Why make you sit and watch five minutes of copying before saying there’s not enough room? Grrr!

Windows 7 needs a bit over eight gigabytes of hard drive, and prefers more. This certainly isn’t a lot in this day and age, but my desktop C drive was a bit small, so I had to do a bit of jiggering about first.

Once I had space it was plain sailing. Now, I’ve been loading Windows since it was version 3.1 on floppy disk. I had a small IT business, which meant I’ve seen my share of installs, and it’s become slowly easier over time, though each generation has had its own quirks. I remember modem drivers in W98 were a nightmare for example.

Anyway, I’m happy to say the 7 is the best yet. You put it in, enter a few details, and away you go! No going away to find it’s stopped 37 minutes from the end for you to choose the language, for example.

When mine loaded, it was pretty well ready to go. On my laptop I had a small issue with the screen resolution, as it’s ‘widescreen’, and Windows put a ’square’ resolution on, which worked, but didn’t look nice. So, old school that I am, I spent several hours trying to load the correct driver on, which should be a simple task, but couldn’t get it working!

The solution was easy though. Just run the Windows update! Gah! Anyway, that did it nicely, and my resolution was sorted. On my desktop I still had to load the sound drivers from my mainboard CD, but that went smoothly.

Essentially then, setup is what it should have been all along! (From W98 onwards at least). Thumbs up!

Once it was done, I was a little disappointed at first. Sure, the overall look and feel are generally prettier, but it’s still the Windows we’ve seen since 98. I mean there’s the Startmenu, the taskbar and so on.

However, I do like the themes you can load, with the rotating wallpapers (should you choose), and the ‘Aero’ translucent windows are nice, if not groundbreaking.

Still, they insist on making Explorer (the disk explorer, not Internet explorer) more cluttered and confusing. I just want to get to the disks on my PC! I don’t want to search for the damned things under ‘computer’ which is hidden in a list of libraries and whatnot! Go back to windows 3.1, or maybe 98. Simple is better!

The next thing I discovered were the Gadgets. These are little… gadgets you put on your screen. Currenlty on mine there’s a calender, a weather widget, a thing to say how long my PCs been on, and two Gmail detectors, for different Gmail accounts I have. On my laptop I also have a wireless detector thingy.

Click for bigger image.

Again, there’s nothing you can’t really find for XP here, but it’s nice to have them in one spot and easy to install.

So, I’ve only been playing with this new version of Windows for a day really, but I’m beginning to warm to it. If you have XP and you’re happy with it, there’s no pressing reason to upgrade. Yet W7 probably is something that you need avoid either.

It’s familiar enough to be usable, and pretty enough to be different. Unless you’re a techie I’d not bother upgrading the software if you’re happy with XP, but next time you upgrade your computer, go for it.

One final niggle, and it’s directed both at MSoft and other application providers.

When you install something you shouldn’t install to the C drive!! The reason for this is that this is where Windows system stuff sits, and if you need to reload, there’s a good chance you’ll need to wipe the C drive. So why do most apps try and install stuff to the C drive still???

I can’t remember the last time I saw a PC that didn’t have multiple partitions. It’s about time the default for applications was the D drive or something. It’s not hard to detect.

K, that feels better.

Windows 7 Initial score: 5/6:

I latched on to Chuck fairly late in the day, after season 2 had finished in fact, but that allowed me to take in the whole two seasons in a massive orgy of Chuck watching.

Chuck is a light weekly comedy featuring Zachary Levi as the ultra nerdy Chuck Bartowski. Chuck is a minion at the a large computer store called Buy More. He’s probably the only intelligent employee there, which is why his standing in the store, amongst his coworkers anyway, is high.

Chuck used to go to Stanford before he was kicked out for cheating, a fact that, as the story progresses, we realize he’s been framed for. As we begin the first show we see superspy Bryce Larkin (played by Matthew Bomer who stars in White Collar) being hunted down. Trapped, he sends an email to his old buddy Chuck before being shot.

Chuck opens the email, which must use the best compression techniques ever, and immediately thousands of pieces of information are downloaded into his brain.

Thus he acquires The Intersect, an uber database of all the known goodies and baddies from the intelligence world and the ability to ‘flash’ whenever he sees someone or something stored therein.

The CIA and NSA quickly track Chuck down, in the form of Major John Casey (Adam Baldwin) and Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) and declare him a national security asset, to be protected at all costs. Both agents go under cover in and near his store, and from thereon he’s thrust into a world of espionage and danger.

The plotlines aren’t going to surprise anyone here, but the show isn’t designed to be ‘realistic’, in pretty much any way. However you can turn the brain off and generally enjoy the whole ‘fish out of water’ experience, as Chuck struggles to maintain his secret from his family (Sister and fiance) and his best friend and coworker, Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez) whilst trying to woo CIA agent Sarah.

The show’s not without its flaws though. A sidekick should be likeable IMO, such as Sock in the much missed Reaper, but Morgan is simply annoying for the most part, and doesn’t really add much to the show in enjoyment, though he does start to develop a bit in the second half of season 2.

The usual sillyness is also in the ’spy world’ which is apparently very active around Chucks’ work area, as hostile agent after agent passes through his sights at times.

Also the concept of their enemy, a secret organization called ‘Fulcrum’ is a little childish, and reminds me of some kids cartoons. The Intersect, is initially is one of a kind, but as we go on suddenly everyone and his dog starts to get a version.

And the coincidences are pushed when Chuck learns who is father is.

Still, all that aside, it’s an enjoyable show, and when season three airs next January, I’ll be tuning in!

Chinaren Rating: 5 stars/6:

This is about as exciting as it gets.

No, I’m not talking about that damned vampire ’story’ New Moon. I’m talking about the movie starring Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, man in the moon, at least for a three year contract.

So, what’s it all about then?

Well, it’s the future, probably about a hundred years or so, and, as the title suggests, we’re on the moon.

The film starts off, and continues with, a guy who’s about to finish his three year stint as the sole (human) supervisor on a H3 mining outpost. As we move on he starts having strange visions and feeling funny which causes an unfortunate lapse in concentration when driving his moon truck.

When he wakes up unharmed, back in the base, he starts to suspect something is going on. After all, there’s no one else there, and his only companion is an AI robot, who isn’t capable of going and digging him out.

Things just don’t add up, so he tricks his robot friend into letting him out.

From there on, it gets both strange and not strange, in a strange way. The plot isn’t too difficult to work out early on, and even our hero figures it out quickly, which makes you wonder why you’re bothering to watch the second half of the film really, ‘cos pretty much nothing happens for most of it.

This movie is not an all action event. It’s reminiscent of 2001 in pace and feel, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing really, as I wasn’t too fond of 2001, though it’s a classic of course.

Anyway, this film is never going to have a happy ending, and you know that early on too. In general it’s actually depressing, so don’t watch it if you’re in a down mood. I had to rewatch and episode of “Big Bang Theory” to cheer myself up afterwards.

I also have a bit of a problem with the actual logic of the film, but I won’t discuss that here, as it would contain spoilers. Though frankly not much of one.

Chinaren rating: 3 stars:

In my search for various funny photos for Lethargic Friday, I stumbled over www.thoughts.com website. It’s not really just a photo site, but a social networking kind of deal as well.

In their photos area is a wide range of images, ranging from the really quite nice, to the strange, (such as the one below), to the downright bizarre. They’re submitted by various users, which may explain the variety.

There are other things on the site though, from blogs to videos, polls, surveys a news area (rather out of date), a forum and groups area.

I’ve signed up because it looks like it may be a bit of fun, but also because I think it might be quite a good place to add my links and generally advertise my blog etc. Not that I believe in splashing my blog name all over the place, but if you put your links in a forum signature, and then actively and suitably join that community, people will click on them.

These can also be picked up by search engines, which is good for your pagerank and so on and so forth.

I have to say some of the blogs on the site are rather… meh, but there are a few good ones. The videos mostly consist of the usual ‘YouTube’ kind of tosh, though there was one that made me laugh.

I think the key areas here are the forums and groups though. For a bit of promotion, and a bit of fun. It’s not as big as the larger social networking sites, so you stand more chance of being noticed if you contribute well. I’m a member of numerous forums, and they’ve provided a decent amount of traffic over time.

I wonder how much they paid for the URL though?