Things that make you go...

I have no claim to finding any of these items - like all good things on the internet they were prodded or poked in my direction by a friend or stolen from someone I barely know. And now they are yours. Click the links and enjoy.

http://awkwardposes.tumblr.com/



Hundreds of pictures of people posing awkwardly. Fantastic.

GO PRO camera

My life now feels boring. Safe, but boring.

http://www.onecoolthingaday.com/

Again, as simple as it sounds - a cool thing from the internet, every day of the week. Today, it's this:

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

As with the poses. But family poses.

http://mysmelly.com/content/cats/10-cats-on-glass-tables.htm

And finally: Cats on glass tables.

Gears of War 3 review

My review of Gears of War 3 - not the most interesting of reads if you aren't a gamer, but feel free to give it a browse. 

The Beginning of the end...

SIX years after we first revved up our chainsaw bayonet, Epic Games brings to a close a franchise that’s redefined the third-person shooter. Bring your protein shake and prepare for Bro-mance: the boys (and girls) are headed out for one final night on the town. It’s going to be a messy one.

Many moons have passed since the Gears blew a hole in Sera and sent Jacinto to a watery grave. Marcus Fenix and the COG crew are floating safely on their new home, the CNV Sovereign, and life has taken on a decidedly more sedate tempo. Dom has cultivated his sentimental side and started talking to plants. Marcus is visited by dreams about his long lost father. It’s all a bit... comfy.

Never fear. It’s not long before the quiet life of the COGs is satisfyingly shattered. The Lambeth, rising from the deep in their eerie twisting stalks (think Jack and the Bean Stalk, but without a golden egg laying chicken at the top), reigning down destruction on the scene of tranquillity. As a grizzly glowing Leviathan nibbles away at the hull of the ship, we’re thrown in at the deep end. The final stand of the COGs has begun. Oh how we’ve missed them.

Changing Gears

Epic Games left themselves with a stern challenge after the second instalment of GOW. Two impeccable games – one helping define the launch of a console, the other becoming one of the sturdiest sequels the 360 has seen – had earned the producer a fan base of loyal, trigger happy gamers that had come to expect the best. How were they to craft a suitable swansong?

“Give them what they love” seems to be Epic’s policy. More glowing bullets, more gore-heavy executions, and the welcome return of the roadie run, causing you to wonder how you’ve ever survived another game without the ability to thunder across open ground with the subtlety of a comet.

The team at Epic have cut down on the somewhat sequence-heavy gameplay of GOW 2, allowing the combat to flow along like runny hell. A slight criticism of this new outing is the overly familiar boss battles – there’s certainly nothing new for fans to get their teeth into when the baddies get big. Sequences still largely follow the trend of ‘find enemy weakness, exploit, and don’t get crushed/eaten/cut in half in the processes’. It might have been nice to mix things up a bit in the final round.

Another (very minor) gripe that’s existed with each of the GOW episodes is the lack of shocks. Moments of calm are never truly shattered; as you walk around the gloriously grainy environment, marvelling at the scale of the destruction around you, you’re safe in the knowledge that an enemy will never sneak up on you. There’s a temptation to groan aloud when you round the corner to find yet another downed structure has provided more lines of convenient cover. Cue a hoard of murderous foe, a cheesy one-liner from a COG and more roadie running to cover. To slate such tried and tested game dynamics at this point in the series is more than a touch cynical – but it’s disappointing that this formula is very rarely discarded for something fruitier.

But rest assured, despite these grumbles the GOW 3 campaign plays better than either of its older siblings. It’s slick, it’s fast, and it never leaves you frustrated. Experienced players are advised to head straight to the harder difficulty settings though, or you might find yourself walking through the campaign without much of a challenge.

Gear up, load out

As far as the guns go, all the familiar favourites of the series return with some wonderful new additions. The Lancer is still one of the most iconic weapons ever to have landed in the hands of 360 games; what’s as cool as a light sabre? A machine gun with a chainsaw, that’s what.

The most interesting and refreshingly different of the new toys is the Digger Launcher. Is your foe encamped behind a wall of impenetrable substance? Never fear. Best described as an ‘underground’ grenade launcher, the weapon fires a small creature strapped with explosives, which burrows its way toward your cover-grabbing opponent. It’s immensely satisfying to watch the trail of soil disappear behind an obstacle before hearing the resulting explosion and splatter.

Another new gun that really highlights just how much careful consideration Epic have put into the new weapons of GOW 3 is the Vulcan Canon – a gun that actively encourages teamwork. One player carries the ammo feeder (no doubt screaming directions like a back seat driver), the other carries the business end – directing an utterly terrifying hose of bullets that will rip through anything unfortunate enough to be standing in front of you. Well done Epic. Well done indeed.

The essential timing of reloads has had the slightest of tweaks as well, resulting in even more satisfaction as you nail that reload bar in the midst of a fire fight. Your primed rounds now glow with a more fluorescent zeal than the series has seen before, raising the badass-o-meter a killer inch.

Story Time

All of the new bells and whistles shouldn’t distract from the fact that GOW 3 is a very capable story teller – not just in respect to the series, but amongst most shooters in general.  It gives you one last chance to play as your favourite muscle-clad antihero, be it Marcus or Cole Train or several of the other COG crew. Each opportunity to play as a different COG member allows you to gain a new perspective on the character, fleshing out their back story and allowing you to feel more emotionally attached to them. And by emotion, I mean a deeper sense of satisfaction when you use the player to cut an enemy in half – you know what it what it’s taken for them to still be alive. 

The voice acting and one-liners are still as hammy as we’ve come to expect from the series – and several scenes will tempt you to emit a groan. Without wanting to spoiling anything, you’ll get sick to death of Marcus shouting “Dad” after about 30 minutes of play time.

Four’s a Party

The multiplayer has also seen a great deal of treatment from the Epic team, and their work has paid off by the gore-filled bucket load.

There’s a new four player online co-op, which brings a wonderful sense of team play to the campaign story. When tackling the campaign in single player, your computer AI pals are often a touch too ‘super-soldier’ to make you feel like you’re in a team, and hence the new online co-op lets you feel like you really are part of a crew that have to depend on each other to survive the stickier situations.

The Horde makes a welcome return, seeing you and four others pit yourself against wave after wave of Locust lovelies, all begging for their heads to get stomped on. The new Beast mode is a wonderful inversion of the same format, allowing you to play the part of any Locust beasty you can think of. Ever wanted to know what it’s like to be a Ticker? Or wondered just how badass it is to be a Berserker? Both of these game modes feature a reward system, as you earn cash-for-kills to spend on upgrades and new toys in the downtime between waves of foe. It’s an inspired addition, allowing the gamer to become even more engrossed in an already deeply satisfying game experience.

End of an era

GOW 3 brings everything to the table we’ve come to expect from this well loved series, and Epic Games has provided a true feast for the fans. The story line is satisfyingly rounded off and there are hours of replay incentive on offer, both from the challenging campaign difficulties and vast multiplayer variants.

Battlefield and COD will steal most of this year’s shooter headlines, and it’s my concern that GOW 3 might be forgotten about in the list of significant 2011 releases. It deserves your attention, and will certainly earn your adoration. Give bro-mance a go. Get Geared up one last time. 

Craig Campbell at The Glee Club, Nottingham

19th October 2011

“Ever been to Mexico? No? Okay, ever had diarrhoea? It’s like that”. After a somewhat apprehensive opening 20 minutes, this was the moment Craig Campbell cracked his audience.

You’d be forgiven for never having heard of the Canadian-Scottish comic, having had some limited screen time on various UK comedy shows. On meeting him though, you would struggle to forget the man.

The six-foot-something stand-up, in board shorts and hiking boots, literally bounded onto Nottingham’s Glee Club stage, with a wrist full of festival bangles and a hair-beard combination last sported by the invading Saxons – he even refers to his own look as that of the ‘Crazy Jesus’. It’s possible that the audience spent those first 20 minutes working out if this was really it for their evening’s entertainment – an impossibly vivacious tree-of-a-man telling us tales of his extensive tours around the globe. But once we shed a giggle, there was no looking back.

The core of Campbell’s material is that of “A funny thing that once happened when I was in...”, but rather than ploughing the same predictable furrow with each joke, a tangible warmth radiates from each and every one of Campbell’s anecdotes.  From his run in with an Icelandic psychopath who punctured his own lung laughing at Mr Bean, to his experience of the ‘Schnell’ train of Holland, every story feels genuine, and pervades a sense of Campbell’s obvious passion for meeting people. And getting drunk with them.

Just as with his appearance, the performing style of Campbell is far from subtle, and there were moments when he lost his audience. An over enthusiastic impression, or an inexplicable increase in volume resulted in the crowd of 70 feeling a touch bewildered, such was the irregularity of his timing. This seemed largely resolved by the second half of his act, and it was a credit to the comic that he had more than regained the audience’s favour by the close of the evening.

His two hour set contained only a smattering of tear inducing punch lines, the true skill of Campbell lies in his ability to keep his material fresh. Campbell is without doubt one of the hardest working comedians you are likely to witness. Last year saw him support Frankie Boyle across a staggering 120 date nationwide tour, and his current road trip started way back in February 2011. Nine months on and he’s finally turned up in Nottingham – having spent the whole day on the cold saddle of his motor bike driving down from Edinburgh. Every single night of October will see Craig Campbell in a different UK city, continuing in similar fashion throughout November, before rounding off his tour at the back end of December. Travelling is certainly his ‘thing’.

I hope we get to hear more from Craig Campbell. He is thoroughly entertaining and a joy to behold in full swing, yet you can’t help but wonder if those long days on the road result in the odd stutter on stage. See him when you can. It’s not like he’s shy. 

Also published on Platform Magazine - Trent University's Student Magazine

1 John 2:15

15. Do not love the world or the things in the world.

THE LOVE OF THE FATHER IS NOT IN THOSE WHO LOVE THE WORLD; 16. for all that is in the world - 

the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, 

the pride in riches -

comes not from the Father but from the world. 

17.And the world and its desires are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever. 

Cash Challenge

My housemate recently spent a rather alarming amount of money on the essentials of life - those expenses which in no way reward you with the usual capitalist cause & effect of 'I spend, therefore I improve, and thus I am happy'.

Roughly £600 was split between content insurance, car insurance, council tax, and a number of other achingly burdensome non-consumables. Her response was a very understandable one; "Had I spent that amount of money in Asos, I'd be feeling a whole lot happier right now".

Rather than challenging the way in which consumerism has plagued us with a love affair for stuff - or more importantly, new, current, fashionable stuff - I wish to challenge the concept of easy spending. My housemate managed to spend £600 in a way which would baffle an Western individual from three, perhaps even two generations ago. She didn't actually touch the physical, corporeal cash that she was departing with for any of her transactions. The only reality it ever had was numbers on a screen - flowing from one account to the next, as service was exchanged for monetary reward. Which is fine when it's for the essentials, but a touch terrifying if it were to have occurred at Asos.

For most of us, money = plastic. It's one of the most essential components of our daily lives. Number 99 of The History of the World in 100 Objects (best coffee table/toilet book EVER) is the credit card - a rather monumental statement on the part of the British Museum; the single item which might best define our modern era, which would allow future generations to look back on us and understand us from a single tool, is an object which turns currency into a transaction of data and numbers rather than physical wonga. 

I don't wish to suggest that we should snap all our plastic cards up at once - far from it. They are a natural evolution of currency, and bloody handy. What I suggest is that they hold an unaccountable amount of power over our spending habits. When I was young(er), I used to flipping love counting my pocket money. I would stack all the little coins into neat piles, enjoying the concept that these little pieces of metal could actually be exchanged for far more useful things, like Lego. But I used to hate spending it. I would agonise over exactly what it was I wanted to spend my little piggy bank on - did I want the action figure from Biker Mice from Mars or the Power Ranger? (That decision was actually made for me - Argos were out of Power Rangers). Once the money was gone, it was gone. Were I a child with a debit or (God forbid) a credit card, such a decision process would have been far less of an ordeal. "I'll have both". 

It's incredibly hard to form a feeling of responsibility when using a piece of plastic. Chip and Pin it. Swipe it. Scan it. Something goes beep, and you've got the thing you want in your hand. Staggeringly simple, and life-changingly brilliant. But it can be so easy to pick up that extra thing you don't need with a piece of plastic. Another magazine. Another belt. That new ice cream flavour. The album form that band you kinda liked that's now on offer on iTunes. Pay for the none essential with a physical stack of cash and you realise what you're spending. Pay for it with a card and it's oh-so-easy to blow out on something you didn't really need.

The point stands with holidays. Foreign currency is just that - foreign. It's a weird shape. It's heavier/lighter/papery/collapsed (Euro banter). Unless you have the keenest of interests in exchange rates, you can spend it like it's Monopoly money. But not, if is often the case for most holidays, you're budgeting. You have to think about what you'll be spending that week. Do you get your Mum the nice necklace and miss out on the paragliding, or do you just get her a fridge magnet? If it's plastic, you possibly do both, but when you feel your wallet/purse get increasingly empty, it doesn't half weigh you down in a different way.

So my challenge is this. To cut down on the easy spending, budget a week's essential purchases. Food, the new shoes you need for work, stamps. Stuff you definitely need to have (we'll ignore bills as it's almost impossible to pay those with cash these days). Now, work out exactly how much that will cost you - say £46. Go to a cash point and take out £50. This is all you are allowed to have in your wallet/purse for the week. Your pocket is to be a plastic free zone. Money suddenly becomes real again - a commodity you have to deal with responsibly. 

I was forced to do this when my bank failed to send me a new debit card and cancelled my existing one. I nearly broke down in the first 24 hours, but having borrowed some money from my girlfriend, I existed very contently for the next 2 weeks. I under spent considerably. I wouldn't suggest I became happier or more pure because of it, but I did worry less about the amount of money I had and what I was spending it on.

If you are a natural budgeter, then this won't make a difference. But if you worry that your bank account has a small leak or an open tap on it, chances are it's from the plastic in your pocket. Give it a go. Save yourself (some money). 

Death of Reality TV

The death knell has finally rung out for the giant of reality television. Or rather, we might well be tuning into (I hope/pray/wager) the beginning of the end.

This Saturday (15th October) saw 9.9 million reality-relishing viewers tune into the opening of BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing, beating the 7.5 million of ITV1's X Factor. 


X Factor has now had to settle for second place two weeks running in the national viewing figures - yet this report from the BBC is a tad harsh on its commercial rival - the stats are only about the viewers who tuned in to the start of each programme:

• 18:25 BST: 9.9 million tuned into the opening of Strictly. 
• 19:45: X Factor kicks off with an audience of 7.5 million.
• 20:15: Strictly ends, and X Factor gains another 3.6 million viewers, totaling 11.3 million.

2.2 million - the difference between the viewing figures at the start of each show - is quite a hard number of people to quantify, but essentially it's the combined populations of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds - the 2nd, 3rd and 4th largest cities in England.

However, when Strictly clocked off at 20:15, X Factor viewing figures spiked at 11.3 million (a little over the estimated population of Greater London). In a wonderful moment of accidental synchronisation, 3.6 million people fumbled about for the remote, looking under coffee tables and down the backs of millions of sofas, and flicked from 1 to 3. China might have got several thousand of its people to 'do stuff at the same time' for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games, but English reality TV gets 3 million to do the same thing every Saturday at 20:15, without the threat of relocating your family if you mess the timing up.

I like to think (or rather, I think it and shake my head in loathing) that somewhere, in a mansion of  solid gold, lying on a bed of spun silver, Simon Cowell dips into the viewing figures for X Factor before he slips into a peaceful slumber, dreaming dreams about money, and sports cars and white t-shirts. Not this year. 2011 has seen a drop in viewing figures for Cowell's cash cow, both week on week and year by year:

• Only 5.5 million people watched the final 15 minutes of this Saturday's X Factor. Over half had switched off. Advertisers will not be happy to get lumped into the final ad slot if half the audience have buggered off for a night cap.
• Average viewing figures for the 15th October were 10.1 million, down from the 10.9 million of the previous week. In other words, the entirety of Glasgow didn't bother to tune in. 
• 13.5 million had tuned in at this stage last year. 2 million people have found something more interesting to do with their Saturday night. Like licking a wall.
• It's not like the potential audience has shrunk. Yes, the weekend saw the 'Occupy Wall Street' protests take to the streets of the UK - but they're hardly overlapping demographics; "I want the banks to act more responsibly!... who got voted off? Nooo, they had such potential." Furthermore, over 1 million young people are now unemployed in the UK - that's a massive potential audience with nowhere else to be come 19:45 on a Saturday night. Apart from Wetherspoons. 

It's been reported that Simon Cowell went a bit nutty at the numbers from the weekend. He's losing out to Strictly, and losing the battle of keeping the public coming back for more X Factor goodness. But the reality-panto-villain probably isn't losing any sleep.

We've seen reality TV behemoths go extinct before. Big Brother has never recovered the glowing numbers it once received back in the glory days of reality TV - when a normal person on camera was as captivating to watch as any Oscar winning Spielberg epic. But BB died. Countless reinventions and twists didn't help. You can tune into Channel 5 (or 5* - no, I hadn't heard of it either) to watch it flopping about in its final death throes. Is X Factor slowly heading in the same direction? Is this the beginning of the end for Simon's freak show? Has the public finally got bored of watching an absence of talent get paraded around with the same pomp and ceremony as the second coming of Christ? 

My title is a mere wish. This isn't the death of reality TV. The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent make an absolute packet from being sold around the world to other countries with less reputable programme making skills. So long as there's money in foreign markets, and more than a couple of million Brits tuning in week by week, the reality machine will keep on turning out the nobodies. Every now and again some genuine talent might be found. But the formats are creaking, and even a new judging panel can't cover the cracks. It's still generating news stories, but the trash mags and tabloids are taking an increasingly negative tone with this series. 

What I propose television needs now is a new era of entertainment; a new wave of dramas that see people falling in love with narrative twists and character developments. HBO seems to churn out two golden series a year, but Cowell can't be bothered to splash his cash on a similar venture. Downton Abbey and Spooks are seemingly alone in flying the flag for good old fashioned British drama. We'll get some decent documentaries, lifting the lid on the real world like 24 Hours in A&E or Educating Essex. Perhaps the death rattle of X Factor will see more inventive programmes fill the gaping slots left behind. 

Or perhaps we'll get another game show with Ant & Dec. 

X Factor: The Results by Numbers

My second X Factor by Numbers summary:

8 - NUMBER OF MONTAGES 

10 - Number of times Dermot O'Leary hugged someone

9 - Number of people who cried ( of which 2 were male)

2 Ties were worn

11 - USES OF THE WORD 'HARD'

8 - USES OF THE WORD 'TOUGH'

3 - Times the audience failed to join in the sing-a-long with Cee Lo Green

2 Songs were performed                                             Total duration - 60 mins

12 MINUTES and 20 SECONDS - Total time spent in Advertising

8 - Perfume, Hair & Makeup Ads 

3 - Supermarket Ads

2 - ITV Ads

Silences

Based on the time it takes a judge to announce their decision having said "is..." 

Over 25s: 18 seconds

Boys: 4 seconds

Groups: 7 seconds

Girls: 3 seconds

32 SECONDS - Total time spent in silence

For future reference, each ad break lasts approximately 4 minutes and 14 seconds - easily enough time to make a cup of tea/coffee, go to the loo, or cook and eat a pot noodle. You're welcome. 

As an old hand of the show, it's unsurprising that Louie Walsh dragged out his reveals. Kelly Rowland only paused for a total of three seconds, with no delays for her final three decisions - I was under the impression that she, along with Tulisa and Garry, actually gave a damn about the emotions of their proteges. Louie remains a soulless puppet master, fully aware of what his audience producers want from him. 

No huge surprises as to who went home - I scored both 2 Shoes and James Michael 1/5, whilst Jonjo Kerr, recevied a lowly 2/5. I'd expected Sophie Habibis to leave, but the axe fell on Amelia Lilly. Never open the first X Factor show - no one has an attention span long enough to remember anything you did. Do you recall that Dermot was pulling one of the backing dancers during the opening number yesterday? No. Didn't think you did.

No where else can you watch a soldier, pregnant woman, and 16 year old all have their dreams crushed before a nation. Oh X Factor, you cruel mistress. 

X Factor by Numbers

A brief summary of tonight's first live X Factor show, by numbers:

16 Live Acts

15 - Louie Walsh's use of the term, "I/we/they loved it!"

8 Minutes 33 Seconds - the amount of time between the start of the show and the first song of the night

                                 10 BOOS from the live crowd

TOTAL DURATION - 2 hours 30 minutes OF WHICH - 37 minutes and 42 seconds were spent in advert breaks (including the sponsorship videos from Talktalk). 

8 - Total number of advertising breaks

An average of 1 song every 9 minutes and 12seconds 

2 Minutes and 9 Seconds - the length of the first, best and longest advert of the evening: The Yeo Valley singing farmers. 

1 - person to cry

2 - the number of camp cheerleader moments from Louie Walsh

The Acts:

Amelia Lilly - 4/5: Sung like Pink. With Pink hair. In Pink-inspired 'rock chick' gear.

Johnny Robinson - 2/5: Looking like a wet Blade Runner, we can but hope this guilty pleasure will be killed off by tomorrow night.

Rhythmix - 3/5: Representing the 'Ladieez'. Or something.

Franki Cocozza - 2/5: So *huuuu*. Much *huaaaa*. Breathing *huuuuaaa*. Covering a lack of singing talent.

Sophie Habibis - 3/5: The best name of the night for screaming in mock 'X Factor announcement' style. SOPHIE HABIBIS!!! She needs to stay in for this purpose alone.

Jonjo Kerr - 2/5: Did anyone mention he's in the army? Because he's in the army. He's definitely a better soldier than a singer, and I haven't even seen him in a fight.

2 Shoes - 1/5: Essssssssssssssssiiiiiiccccccccccccccccccxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The performance ran like a bad Shelia's Wheels ad.

James Michael - 1/5: NEVER cover The Beatles. This is also true for Elvis, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Prince, and other singers of genuine style and talent.

Misha B - 4/5: She "put it down". Whatever the hell that means.

Nu Vibe - 3/5: Despite struggling to master the multitasking act of running, leaning and singing all at once, Nu Vibe were solid.

Marcus Collins - 3/5: Bland. No one will remember him.

The Risk - 4/5: Best band of the competition. But they won't win.

Craig Colton - 2/5: All over the place, despite what the judges said.

Kitty - 3/5: Suitably, she looked like one of the Thunder Cats. A Thunder Cat that's been snorting cat nip. And has just seen the bigger cat from number 34. Utterly nutterly.

Janet Devlin - 5/5: The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A bold performance of an iconic song. Yay Janet/Diana Vickers the 2nd. 

Possibly the worst X Factor line up for several years. It's a tired machine, which the new judging line up hasn't managed to cure. Yet it's still worth more money than any other commercial TV show made in the UK. Will it die of old age, or will something else kill it off? Or, heaven forbid, will we all find something more purposeful to do with our lives, and discuss politics and current affairs in the office rather than 2 Shoes' make up disaster? Probably not. 

iPhone 4S. Like the iPhone 4. But with an S.

Ta-Dah

When Apple launches a new piece of hardware, the internet usually explodes like the pants of a 13 year old boy engrossed in his first ever lad's mag. There was a time when the sight of Steve Jobs in his tight black turtle neck (rumour has it Jobs has a White version of his wardrobe, it just costs more and isn't coming out for another 6 months), standing in front of a big glowing presentation screen, was of genuine significance for the landscape of popular culture. An iPod. An iPhone. An iPad. A game changer. The success of Jobs & Apple is a spectacular, and yet over analyzed, phenomena of our generation. 

But the launch of the iPhone 4S seems to have dented that legacy. And not because it lacked Steve Jobs and his neck hugger, but because the iPhone 4S has been universally slagged off in the few hours post-launch across blogs and Twitter accounts of the world for being... well, just a bit naff really.

Yes, it's better than the iPhone 4, but it isn't new - which Apple is pretending it is. The world was wanting an iPhone 5 - the iPhone 3GS was followed after a year by the iPhone 4, and we've waited more than a year for the-phone-after-the-iphone-4. Those five extra little months worked the rumour mill into a spinning frenzy: it'll have a sliding key pad; it'll have less buttons; there are going to be two different models. We wanted new, we wanted slick, we wanted 'iPad levels' of  excitement that got us wanting to touch something without really knowing what it was or why we wanted to touch it. But we didn't get that. As with the iPhone 3 to 3GS, we got the technical improves you would expect to be made in a year and five months. We got an S.

What the iPhone 4S brings to the table:

• A new, quicker, smarter processor (the think that makes it think). As the Apple website is keen to emphasis, it's quicker. 'SO SLIPPERY FAST YOU WANT ONE' quicker. Never thought the iPhone 4 was slow. I'm sure the S is quicker, but the point should stand that no one with an iPhone 4 ever complained about the speed.
• An 8 megapixel camera, with a snazzy aperture. Essentially, it's a much better camera. But still not as good as a proper camera, because it's a phone pretending to be a camera. Naked photos sent to that boy from the office will just look a touch more real, and that probably isn't a good thing.
• HD video recording, so you can take really high quality videos of your drunken friends as they attempt to sit in a bin/kill a pigeon/kiss a tramp after a night out, watch once, and then forget about.
• Siri, the voice command feature that seems to be the only new aspect worth raising an eyebrow over. Click here to get a demo of it, and then click here to discover that Google introduced the same thing months ago, and no one gave the tiniest poo about it. Predictive Text made texting a lot easier, but it brought with it a whole new world of frustrations as a machine tried to correct us. Siri is bound to encounter the same wonderful problems. By the end of the year there will be a website dedicated to Siri fails. I'd bet my house on it (I don't own a house). 
• It has a new hole slit thing... just above the ear piece... that wasn't there before. And now it is. So there's something. 
• It has the new iOS5 (the operating system), which will be downloadable for the iPhone 4 and 3GS at some later point. This will allow you to enter the wonderful iCloud (store everything in the floaty air) which again will be accessible to anything with iOS5, so neither of these things are really unique to the iPhone 4S. 

Other than that, the latest stats are saying it's slightly heavier, and gobbles through the otherwise unchanged battery at a slightly quicker rate, and you can use it in pretty much any country you can think of. And that's it. 

We wanted an iPhone 5. We wanted a laser keypad, or a battery that was charged via the heat of our body, but we got a phone we can swear at when it doesn't understand our slightly slurred questions; "Ey wan' ah KEBAAB!" "I've found you the number to the Spa you wanted" "NOOO..." etc. It will dominate the web for a few weeks, everyone will get one, and we'll forgive Apple for looking like a bit of a tit for declaring that the iPhone 4S is 'Picking up where amazing left off'. Picking up and flopping down again a couple of meters further up the road to the next 'big' thing.