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Today is Wednesday 30th April. The day after GTA IV’s launch. And I’m not happy.

Having pre-ordered the PS3 version from Zavvi I was quite miffed when it didn’t turn up yesterday, particularly because pre-order titles from Virgin’s online retail presence normally get delivered the day before launch to ensure it arrives on time. Not this time.

So just before heading for bed last night I thought I’d take it out on Marvin Haggler in a few virtual rounds of Fight Night. Booting up the PS3 my worst fears reared their head again as my beatiful console failed to recognise the disc… Again, and again.

This is the second Blue-Ray drive to die on me now; Sony replaced my console only two months ago and now all faith has gone.

I originally chose the PS3 last June over the XBox, for a number of reasons, but the main one being the failure rate of 360 consoles: overheating and bricking due to poor cooling. But, having received one for Christmas, it’s Microsoft’s contender that’s behaving itself.

But even then, I can’t help feeling that it’s only a matter of time for the XBox to throw a wobbly. I’m left feeling like I’m treading on egg-shells… Not playing for too long, or leaving it on to download content.

Even my Wii will kill my wifi connection if left on.

I feel so old saying this; but they don’t make consoles like they used to.

Manufacters are understandably in a rush to get the latest thing out the door, but in the old days extra care and testing was essential because once a product was out the door it was gone for good. I just hope the new generation of manufacters haven’t misplaced trust in the possibility that they can fix what they didn’t test with firmware updates.

I remember, growing up, one of my older brothers having a darkroom. We were both huge special effects fans, idolizing the likes of Ray Harryhausen and George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (I Know, I’m showing my age now). My brother would spend days in his darkroom under the stairs developing photos and sinking into the time consuming coma of stop-motion animation. Back then it was more practical to have your Cine-8 movie films posted off for development. After an agonizing five working days the fruits of your labors will be returned for eager inspection.

I was around six or seven at the time and it wasn’t even ten years later till it was my turn; I would spend hours on my Amiga A600 modeling 3D scenes in Imagine, cursing the fact that I had to wait all night for the animation to render.

I’d click “go” then turn off my screen before jumping into bed. And I remember thinking at the time, “At least I don’t have to post it off”.

As time went on, computers got faster and rendering times shortened, (Well, a bit. Until you just ended up making the scenes more complex) and with that boost in speed came fantastic opportunity to see results render in real time. No agonizing wait. No crushing of motivation when you spot a fingerprint in the plasticine or realise you didn’t click “okay” on the “Are you sure” alert box popup.

When you mention technology, people tend to think of their computers or MP3 players, but for me one of the most important things technology has done is saved time. And while it’s unlikely that any of us today will be leaping down wormholes into the future in our lifetimes, Technology is at least working to bring certain futures closer to us shrinking learning curves at an incredible rate.

So next time you switch your camera into full auto, why not take a look at some of the manual settings… It’ll tell you right away if you’ve done something wrong.