"End of an era"

I started the Call of Duty 4 beta on the 360 yesterday, and it's great. The first real awesome factor is the return of the death cam, which after you die replays about 5 second of footage from the perspective of the person that killed you as they killed you, which is good because you're never left feeling like you've been cheated and if you pull off an epic shot you can rest assured that the person at the receiving end of it's going to see it in all its glory. The customization system is very well done, you start off more than well equipped enough to compete, but as you rank up and complete challenges such as getting a certain amount of kills or headshots with a certain weapon you unlock many more attachments and explosives.
It's also great to have what looks like a really good middle eastern FPS coming up. But as anyone that knows me will know I much prefer an eastern European setting, and much to my delight I got just that as the second map loaded, and then to get me even more pumped it placed me on the Spetsnaz team, freakin' Spetsnaz! I didn't think it could get much better than this, but I was wrong.
After running around for a couple of minutes and dropping a few of people I got to see one of the enemy soldier's bodies up close and saw he was wearing an extremely familiar gas mask, but it couldn't be... The round ends and I get moved to the other team andOHMYGOD SAS! Running around dressed as the worlds best and listening to British voices shouting all around me was absolutely brilliant and such a welcome relief from G.I. Joe on the first map.
I was temporarily tempted to get this game for the 360 with the ranking and unlocks system guaranteeing plenty of fun challenges to get a lot of achievements, but as I play it I find myself in countless situations where I die and think to myself, "I would've blown them away if I was using a mouse and keyboard." Running around with a pad is fun for a while, but it's just going to have to be played properly. And this was completely reinforced when I played the third map, a large outdoors affair that is just ridiculously difficult to play on a console.

After spending the night at Andrew's we watched a bit of the British Touring Car Championship in the morning, which was awesome and I'd definitely be up to going to watch it with Andrew and Paul sometime, and Harry if he gets some time away from uni.
I really wouldn't mind getting into the Touring Car Championship, but it's definitely no WRC, I might have a look at it to tide me over between the '07 and '08 Rally Championships.

Really sucks to come home to find out Colin McRae has tragically died with his son and two other people in a helicopter crash, an absolute loss.
But if there is an afterlife, you know he's tearing it up with some of history's finest down some heavenly dirt roads right now.
A salute to you Mr McRae, you showed us what was possible.