Hey, it's almost topical!

Well, we finally got most of those NES consoles cleaned up and repaired today, with only one actually requiring a new 72-pin connector. I now know my way around the inside of a NES pretty well so I think that if I see any other large bundles going on eBay I may try my hand at this again. Depending on whether or not these ones actually sell.

If they don't, then I suppose it's a chance to use them for something else. Odd, that article appearing today.


Well, for the first time in a while, I've started writing something that I have so much to say about that I don't think I can complete the original post in time. I'll have to get that done for tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've got nothing much else to say. In addition to cleaning up the NESi today, I also got round to trying out the CD drive on Lucy, my old Mac. There's not much I can do with it, to be honest, but I still find the idea of a CD Caddy drive kind of neat. I also installed Netscape (1.1, of all versions) on her, though I can't get the network settings to work.

This is due to the fact that she's running Mac OS 7.1, which doesn't have the right utilities. I think I could really turn her into a useful computer (relative to my Amstrad) if I could get the upgrade to OS 8 to work but the processor is incompatible. So, a bit of a triumph leading to a bit of a failure. Could have been worse.

For those of you still wondering, I don't think Skippy has his iMac yet, judging from his lack of email contact and online presence. I feel justified in telling you this because he is still, technically, a contributor to this blog.

I'm slowly whittling down my giant to do list. Next on the agenda is completing Final Fantasy III for the DS. Actually, I think I'll go work on that now.

The elusive house spider is a highly-prized catch for a seasoned hunter...

I really liked The Simpsons Movie. (I never know whether to capitalise that "the"; I know it probably should be like that, it just looks weird). Maybe it could have been better but it had some great moment and that brilliant mix of humour, intelligence and emotion that has kept the franchise running for 20 years.

One thing that's bugging me about it though is that Sam, Erin and I are convinced that there was one line, fairly early on, that reminded all of us of Doctor Who. We don't think it was a particular reference, just a single line, but none of us can recall exactly what it was. The obvious solution is to go and see it again. Or wait for it to show up online, if it even exists.

But overall, a great way to spend a few hours, even if it has its flaws. To be honest, I would have gone just to see Homer riding a motorbike around a giant glass dome, but maybe that's just me.


Despite having two days with which to work on them (at least), Sam and I have made little progress on refurbishing the NESi. This is largely due to the many distractions that surround us; Sam, for instance, is deeply engrossed in writing a BASIC program on my Amstrad that will draw a version of the TARDIS similar to that done in Logopolis. His lack of simple mathematical skill has hindered progress somewhat.

For my excuse, I've been busy... playing Tetrisphere? It's a rather odd version of Tetris (it was originally another game altogether before a swift bout of rebranding led to it becoming the sole member of the 3D branch of the Tetris family) for the N64 that I recently got from eBay, as part of my never-ending quest to play all versions of Tetris in existence.


I feel obliged to have some kind of comedy sketch or something here since I've done very little except these diary style entries over the past few days. So....


Yeah. I've got nothing. I've just spent the last 10 minutes spider hunting behind my bed. I found a huge web and one that had clearly been there for ages but I didn't find the big one that I know fell back there. Saw it briefly but it got away. Caught another in a different part of my room. I'm now going to post this, regardless of its lack of content or coherence, and rekindle the hunt... until everyone else goes to bed and I can no longer suck them up with the Dustbuster.

And the 150th post by Alasdair is... about The Simpsons.

I'm currently waiting for my Simpsonized self to appear while Sam and Erin do a crossword on my bed. Well, the crossword's not actually written on my bed but they're sitting there while doing a book full of them.


It's a bit later now. Erin's gone to bed (a wise decision) and Sam is through next door, trying to run some kind of program that he just made up on my Amstrad. For my part, I've been fiddling around with Linus; I seem to have successfully installed aMSN but it requires something else (TSL, in order to use SSL, I think...L) before it will connect. I need to learn how to install stuff from tarballs. *Eyes Linux for Dummies book that he keeps forgetting about/his ego won't allow him to consult*.

I think we've invented a new game today which involves some charades and all the companions from Doctor Who. I may put up videos if I ever buy this camcorder.


I don't have much to say today, nothing deep, anyway, so I leave you with some humour. On the left, reality; on the right, what simpsonizeme.com thinks we look like. (Behind us is a purple towel that we held up to make the background less cluttered, not that it really matters.)

Sam: Somehow, he looks more normal as a Simpson.



Erin: Erin was the only one who actually edited hers after it was taken, presumably removing her glasses and making it look more like her.

Me: I shouldn't have specified that I had "scruff" for facial hair. Other than that, it's not too bad, other than looking almost nothing like me.

I'll probably do a short review of The Simpsons Movie tomorrow, depending on what I think of it. Gotta wrap this up because Sam is gibbering in my ear about SCSI hard drives and I can't concentrate. Hope the layout format of those images works because I'm not changing it now. (Note: it didn't and now I've had to fire up my laptop to edit them; anyone know some good freeware Mac image editing software?)

Woodle: Alasdair of the Future

Original concept and writing by Alasdair Corbett
Concept ruined by the artistic stylings of Samuel Stafford

Any crazy formatting is entirely the fault of Linus Torvalds

Typing this on Linus, my Linux box. It's sitting on the floor, monitor included, as am I. The only way to control it semi-comfortably is by raising the keyboard up a few centimetres by perching it on top of a pair of NESs and doing the same for the mouse. Which has actually worked out kind of well. Here's a pic, since I have the camera handy.

Also visible is a partially disassembled NES, another NES with some cleaning stuff on it, an Xbox, a Mega Drive 1 (beneath some sheets of paper, the side of Lucy, her monitor and an N64 and various other miscellaneous bits of crap that litter my floor.

I need to clean this place.


On the bright side, I'm getting closer to turning Linus into a functional machine since he now has internet access (haven't figured out how to upgrade from the default to Firefox 2 yet, though), some decent enough word processing software in the shape of OpenOffice.org (again, outdated default version) and, once they fix some kind of crazy problem with the download, I should be able to stick aMSN on him without much fuss.

Current problems to overcome include the fact that I can't install a fair number of programs at my current level of understanding. I've got a Linux for Dummies book that may assist in that. I've got an old hard drive that may be repairable so I can use it to try some other Linux distros, including those that came with the book. Meh.

I've got hooked on eBay again, it seems having picked up two things tonight, both split in costs with Sam. We decided to share Superman 64 so that, if someone asks whose idea it was to buy it, each of us can blame the other. We also bought a large lot of retro stuff which may or may not work or include leads. All we had to go on is a photo, so we know there's a few Mega Drives, a NES and a SNES with a funky floppy ROM-dumping peripheral but little else. We recognised an Amstrad CPC 464 that seems to be in better condition than mine and a quick flicking through the directory of Retro Gamer told us that we had purchased a Commodore VIC-20. There's still one mystery computer left and a couple of Playstations that probably don't have leads or controllers.

On the bright side, I'm now a step closer to my long held goal of owning a Dreamcast, since I've apparently bought a controller and a boxed keyboard for one.

This blog is really turning into something of a diary blog, isn't it? At least, that seems to be my impression. I'll examine this a bit more when I reach TWToday's 200^th post sometime next week but I've really strayed from the original purpose of TWToday, in as far as it had one.

This whole thing is actually the basis for today's woodle, which Sam is drawing right now, as I type this. It'll be up not long after this, for those of you waiting with baited breath. I apologise in advance for the horrific art that is sure to ensure. He's just told me that one character “kind of has an arm”.

As always, more tomorrow. Today's really just been an excuse to fiddle around on Linus. And make use of these NESi in some practical form.

Another comedy sketch, but does he have a woodle for tomorrow?

I am a glutton for information, particularly behind the scenes stuff. It's even better if that information happens to be about my favourite industry, the video game industry. I can't recall if I mentioned it here but I was a big fan of Game Trailers' Zelda Retrospective series. The same guy is now doing one on Final Fantasy and one on Metroid. I found the Final Fantasy episodes a bit more interesting but I suppose I knew more about Metroid to begin with. Both highly recommended.

I also suggest that you take a while to watch the embedded video here, showing a presentation made by Will Wright (half-genius video game developer, half-machine) talking about his upcoming title Spore. I really want that game. And I really liked seeing how Wright thought about it and views it. Fascinating stuff.


I've done practically nothing today so I've nothing much to write about. I'm trying to get a camcorder of some sort so that I can record some of these sketches that I write (and hopefully encourage myself to do more writing), maybe as part of a VersusCOM comedy thing, a spin-off of the (currently comatose) podcast.

Anyway, I had an idea for a quick skit a few minutes ago, so here it is.


[A man is standing in front of a whiteboard. The whiteboard is mostly blank except for a few half-erased notes and doodles, some photos stuck to one side and a few other minor items along the edges]

Man: We here at VersusCOM are keen to take advantage of new technologies. As such, we're implementing a new technique called "white screen" technology or CSO, Crap Separation Overlay. What you see behind me is a blank white screen that, through the magic of technology, can make me appear almost anywhere. Such as Paris.

[There is a quick cut and then the board has a crudely drawn picture of the Eiffel Tower on it]

Man: Tokyo.

[The board has an image of Godzilla and a UFO destroying a skyscraper while out of proportion anime characters look on. Parts of the hastily erased Eiffel Tower are still visible]

Man: Outer space.

[A hand holding a pen quickly pulls out of shot after having scribbled the whiteboard mostly black, leaving a few dots for stars]

Man: Or even Antarctica.

[The board is plain white]


Would probably take a while to film but given the obvious poorness of it anyway, we wouldn't need to worry about being in the same position after the cut. Hmmm.... ("he says, looking at the whiteboard to his right.").

Did you know that if you do a full stop, speech marks and then close brackets before the end of a sentence it looks like a bizarrely mauled smiley? It does."). I think that thing's broken my brain.


Alternative opening lines included "We here at VersusCOM are keen to take advantage of...
...loopholes in copyright law."
...drunken women."
...cheap labour in third world countries."
...the space in our home, using the new range of folding furniture from IKEA."

Captain's Blog

It occurs to me that for about the first four hours after I get out of bed (and thus the first six hours after I wake up), I am a useless shambling wreck.


I've just watched Hyperdrive (not a bad show, could be better but has potential and some good moments) so I've decided to have a shot at writing some sci-fi humour of my own for half an hour.


Begin recording.

"Captain's blog for Tuesday the... oh, why do I bother dating these things? It's all timestamped on the index file anyway. Uh, where was I?

Ah, yes. Nothing very much happening today, just the usual interstellar dust clouds amongst vast, bleak emptiness. Commander Darrell requested that we alter our heading to rendezvous with a proto-star system so that he can get some photos for his little niece's school science project. He showed me some pictures of her, lovely little girl. Talented too, according to Darrell, though even he admits he's biased. Heh.

It's a few light years of course but we've got standing orders to investigate scientific phenomenon and nothing much better to do so I've had Minx adjust the ship's heading. ETA is... well, it was 16 hours at... and that was what? Hour and a half... no, two and a... ummm... I was never any good at time.

We should get there sometime tomorrow, is the important point.

Ensign Tarvek is still settling into Engineering. Spanners says she'll be fine after a few days getting to know where everything goes and who everyone is. Poor girl seems a little shy. Spanner's jury-rigged systems probably aren't helping much, they take a bit of getting used to. Doc tells me that it was only a minor electrical burn but Spanners is reluctant to tell me why reactor output has been routed through the data ports. See their individual reports for details, if you must know more.

That reminds me, I need to get one of Spanners' maintenance monkeys to fix that coolant pipe running beneath my quarters. Damn thing won't stop dripping. I've asked twice but it'd be faster if I just trained actual monkeys in spaceship mechanics. I've a good mind to pry up the floorboards myself and fix it myself but I can't find my wrench.

Which leads me to the spate of petty thievery onboard. I have some suspicions as to who's doing it but I don't want official records until I'm certain. Trying to nail it down but someone's taken my hammer, too. Heh.

What else...

Oh! That new safety video from Fleet Command arrived. Scheduled a showing in the mess hall on Thursday evening, should be able to catch most people. I'll have Minx shut down the auto-chefs in the crew's quarters, they'll have to show up. They'll hate it but the regs say that they have to be warned about... where is it... ah, The Many Dangers of Low Gravity Snooker. High Command really are getting desperate, aren't they?

Command input: delete previous sentence.... no that's not it.... Computer, erase previous statement... no, I mean the last three statements. Four!

Oh, nuts to it, nobody listens to these things anyway. Might give a 37th century archaeologist a laugh if we fall into that proto-star and the black box datacore survives.

End blog. Cease. Desist. Cancel. Exit program. Come on, one of these must work. Bloody Spanners and his firmware updates... I don't know why I bother..."

Recording Terminated.

"Cute, Spanners. Real cute."


A slice of space-life with the Captain there. Might develop this a bit further, since I've had some interesting ideas while writing it. Interestingly, it has taken about half an hour, as I predicted.


In other news, does anyone know what causes a problem with Skype that ends calls after 5-8 minutes? Might be to do with the contention ratio of my ISP, which I suspect is rather high. I've been thinking of changing it for a while but no one wants to hear it. Meh.

This sort of thing normally sorts itself out.

Too tired, can't spell check...

Busy day. Spent a fair chunk of time travelling to and from Edinburgh and in between I was chasing around two ever-so-slightly-hyperactive small children. Still, when my little cousin asks me for help on Jak and Daxter because I'm "the best gamer I know", it makes the whole thing worth it.


Other than Edinburgh, I've spent much of he day watching TV. It's weird. We left for Edinburgh at around 9 o'clock, got back at half past 4. By the time I'd got everything settled in and had something to eat and drink, checked my webcomics and done my usual computer rigmarole, it was almost time for tea. Then, by the time that was over, Top Gear had started and then it was two episodes of Heroes after that. I've spent more time watching TV than I normally do.

And it's TV that I want to talk about tonight. First, the aforementioned Top Gear special. I'm a big Top Gear fan, as is most of the rest of my family, and while I don't get some of the car stuff, at least not as much as my car-nut brother, I find it both informative and entertaining, a rare combination.

Today's episode featured one of the races of the "car vs. some other vehicle" style that they tend to do once a season. Clarkson and May, in a specialised Toyota Hilux pickup, raced against Hammond and a specialist on a dog sled to the magnetic north pole. It was very odd to watch as the normally light-hearted team, who made jokes even when Hammond had been in the fastest car crash ever while filming, started to feel the pressure of racing to such an important goal and of trying to dwell in such an incredibly harsh environment.

If you didn't catch it, I suggest you try to find a repeat somewhere.


As the frequent visitor to the TV Tropes Wiki and reader of geek culture webcomics that I am, I've been reading about references to Heroes for months. I've glanced at a few things but tried to avoid reading too many theories and facts so that I wouldn't have it wrecked for me when it finally came out over here.

As luck would have it, the show was picked up by the BBC meaning that a) I can watch it in my room and b) there are no adverts. After seeing just the first two episodes, it's fairly safe to say that I'm hooked. I've seen it noted that, in the whole "loads of people in a mystery"/Lost clone genre, there is often the problem that viewers will get bored if you reveal too little but will lose interest if plot points are resolved and that Heroes seems to have acquired just the right balance. I'd have to say I agree.

Anyway, more on that as I see more episodes. I think it really exemplifies why I like Doctor Who: as long as I watch each episode, I can freely browse the internet without having everything spoiled by someone who saw it months ago. It doesn't always work out like that though; I think we got the end of SG-1 before the States did due to a mid-season hiatus or something.

Like I said, busy day, lack of time, etc., so that's all I can be bothered typing. I'm going to bed.

Is this the way to Resident Evil?

Good luck is: finding the charging cable for your wireless headphones lying on the floor
Bad luck is: losing your wireless headphones.

I'm sure they'll turn up.


I wouldn't say that today's NES disassembly experiment went off without a hitch but Sam and I are confident that, now we're a touch more familiar with the basics, we can repair the remaining five or so and turn a profit for them on eBay. Other than that, the day was spent doing crosswords, kicking ass at Wii Play and lying on hammocks. Boy, do we sure know how to have fun.

I finally uploaded that old video I've been mentioning for a while. Here's the YouTube version, which I think works at a reasonable quality.




I can't remember exactly what made me do this. It was about two years ago, probably not long after E3 where I saw this Resi 4 trailer, and when the Comic Relief version of Amarillo was still fairly recent

The two just sort of came together in my head and I started fiddling around with Windows Movie Maker and the above is the result. I didn't really do much editing; I had to cut the song off a bit early and I think I moved the title from the end to the beginning. I only yesterday added a brief credits bit to the end but other than those things, any cool synchronising of music and video is sheer coincidence incredible skill.

It's kind of a cop-out from making a real post but Erin's been bugging me to put it on the internet since I made it and I'm kind of proud that I finally got round to it after two years. I suspect it will now replace Bill Bailey's Love Song as the Flash thing on her Bebo page.

For my next trick, I shall require a Halo 3 trailer and a copy of The Smurf's Christmas Party.

A summary of a good day

I have had a good day. I've played video games. I've written. I've played video games and written while on my hammock. I really love that hammock.


I finally got some finalised work done on scripts for my proto-webcomic. I had to rework some stuff but, thanks to the magic powers of my thinking-hammock, I think the intro worked out better as it stands now than before. I'll have to type them up (you didn't think I'd used a laptop while on my hammock, did you? I know I'm a geek but I'm not that bad) and I may even post them here.

Another thing I'll have to post here is that video I've mentioned. I was meaning to have it uploaded for tonight but some stuff went crazy with the formatting and now I can't get it done in time, based on previous experience of uploading to YouTube. Anyway, I'll link that tomorrow. Or maybe we'll have TWToday's first ever embedded video. Exciting.

As I said earlier, today has been a good day. Even the weather's picked up. As I remarked to Skippy (whose thoroughly fried iMac has been taken away for servicing, just so you know) via email earlier, I keep expecting dead cows to rain from the sky just to maintain the balance of Scottish weather.

Scottish weather is remarkably like the Force.

Only crap.


Tomorrow, I'll be examining the innards of a large number of old games consoles with Sam, from whom I recently received this email:



Wish me luck.

Actually, forget luck. Wish me a suit of bomb-proof armour.

Short, yet dull

Well, having just added Amazing Super Zeroes to Bookmarks Toolbar Folder > Webcomics > Current, I can now say that I read 100 webcomics on a regular basis. I really ought to get round to writing my own, like I've been saying I'll do for, oh, over a year.

I'm serious. I've been refining characters and planning plot arcs in my mind for this webcomic idea of mine for more than a year now. It started out as a Penny Arcade/Ctrl-Alt-Del clone with some characters based on myself and some friends and then it evolved rather rapidly into something with a decade's worth of stories and about 20 characters. In fact, it pretty much underwent Cerebus Syndrome entirely in my head.

My total lack of artistic talent has hampered any real progress, as well as my laziness in all things.

That's it. I'm writing the first gorramned script tomorrow.

Or maybe I'll turn it into some kind of prose and write the first chapter. Or the first paragraph... frak, the first sentence would be a major improvement. But I really shouldn't set my sights so low. I'm gonna write something about this tomorrow, and I don't mean another blog post apologising for not having done anything.

I don't need to apologise to you people.

Anyway, that's about it. I seem to be running out of specific topics pretty fast, probably because I'm doing nothing at all other than sitting around all day reading loads of webcomics and watching DVDs. Things may liven up in the future. Or they may not. We'll just have to wait and see.

Woodle: Stick Guys Again. Sorry. Please don't hurt me.

This comic was produced in under 30 seconds. You'd never guess, would you?

"Boy writes blog" says Shocking New Government Report

There's something of a tradition in our family that whenever a bunch of us happen to be in the same room and there's a new programme on TV, we are obligated to mock it to the best of our abilities. Well, except for my mother who generally tries to make us be quiet by yelling at us loudly after we open our mouths. But that's a different story.

Tonight's edition of the Channel 4 news gave us some real opportunities. The first story concerned recent flooding in England, focusing particularly on a small village which had been hit particularly badly. Now, flooding is a serious problem and presents a large number of hazards, not to mention the loss of property, damage to homes and huge problems incurred by families that have to evacuate. I understand that. Channel 4 apparently doesn't, making a point of mentioning that some gerbils had been saved from a local pet shop, thus making everything better. After the piece, viewers were asked to send in videos and photos of flooding in their areas. Way to save on cameramen and travel expenses, guys.

But that's just the beginning and the end. The best bits, as with a sandwich, were in the middle. The presenter, standing on a bridge above an overflowing river, noted that the bridge was out of use for fear that it might collapse after a caravan smacked into while being swept downstream. Beneath the bridge, we were given shots of gas canisters from the caravan site being lodged at the base briefly before being swept along.

We suspected that the producer was secretly hoping that one of these would explode as the crew were on the bridge, thus securing him an award of some kind.

The presenter, having explained that she was a suicidal nut, told us that the army had been called into the area to assist in securing the bridge. Why we couldn't see them at all is anybody's guess. Maybe it was a one way bridge and the they were all at the end behind the camera.

Or maybe the army weren't securing the bridge at all. Maybe they were busy flying helicopters to rescue people. Yes, that's what they were doing, struggling against strong winds that had apparently started to plague them recently. Strong, magic winds that only affect low-flying helicopters, not trees, such as the large group of tall, and perfectly stationary, ones that were clearly visible in the background.


The other two stories of note definitely said something about the modern media's attitude to what constitutes news. Two people got hit by golf balls during a tournament today, a fact I happened to catch the aftermath of both events. Ignoring the more serious injury, the focus (indeed, it was the only accident even mentioned) was upon the woman who was hit by Tiger Woods, the golfer that people who don't know golf know.

The second minor story concerned a British racing driver, Lewis Hamilton, who had been in a high speed crash. We saw footage of the crash, a video of him wriggling his toes from his POV camera immediately afterwards and everything indicated that he had no serious injuries and was fully conscious the whole time.

Why is this even news?

Crashes are surprisingly common in a sport that involves hurtling very fast cars around very tight tracks for hours on end. The fact that he wasn't hurt is good news in one sense, but it isn't actually news. What kind of headline would it produce? "Man Completely Healthy"? "Nothing is Wrong with Racing Driver"? "Nothing to Read About Here"?

Still, he was English and winning at something, which makes him newsworthy. And anything that's newsworthy is an acceptable target for Corbett mockery. (BBC article about the crash)


I really didn't expect this post to be so long. Ah, well. Nobody's going to read it, I imagine, since everyboody who can read is totally engrossed in the new Harry Potter book. According to the news.

This post is dull. You have been warned. You will be exterminated.

Update on Skippy's white screen o' death: he found a few fixes none of which he could get to work owing to a lack of necessary equipment (which, in one case, was owing to his own lack of common sense) so he's contacted Apple and they're sending a repair guy out to see what can be done. The bonus here is that this has prompted him to do a few more posts at the MacTake, where you can find the full story. It's also reminded me that I need to deal with my malfunctioning Mighty Mouse, either with an even more vigorous scrubbing or with a call to Apple for a replacement.

Speaking of things I need to do, you remember that to do list I made last Friday? Of course, you don't. Neither did I until right now, therefore I've done practically nothing on it. I've handled some minor stuff like cleaning up Deneb's hard drive, finding my old PDA's software discs and writing some sketches but beyond that...

Oh, well. I guess stuff has just kept coming up and so on and so forth. I've already written at length about my habit of procrastination and I'm not going to do so again.


I've got nothing much to say. Still reading through all the stuff on Agony Booth, which is taking a while. Got to catch up on Girl Genius now that the 101 section has caught up with the Advanced Class section (it's complicated; read the comic). I might manage to convert a video spoof I made a couple of years back into a decent format and upload it for tomorrow's post.

Nuts to it. I'm just going to label this as a "crappy post" and go get some sleep.

I think I'm growing a beard.

Can you imagine what it would be like to play Cluedo with Sherlock Holmes? You'd just sit down, set everything up and then he'd immediately announce who had done it, what you had for breakfast and that your girlfriend is having an affair with a chartered accountant from Chichester.

Poirot would be worse, I suppose. Twiddling his moustache and speaking in broken English so that nobody understands him. Any of the CSI lead characters would be worse still, constantly doing one-liners and trying to spray the little dagger with glow-in-the-dark magic blood-detecting Dettol.

Picture the scene: our heroes are having a simple game of Cluedo. With Horatio Cain from CSI:Miami.


Player 1: I suggest it was Colonel Mustard, in the drawing room with the revolver.

Cain: Sounds like someone [puts on sunglasses] drew a revolver on the good Colonel.

Player 1: That's not what a drawing room is for. Can you disprove it or not?

Cain: Not yet, but I know you're lying. [takes off sunglasses] The evidence will tell us all we need to know.

Player 2: Uh... right. Miss Scarlet, in the billiard room with the candlestick.

Cain: As the old saying goes, [takes off sunglasses having put them on while no one was looking] you can't play billiards with a candlestick.

Player 2: ...

Player 1: What the hell?


I've never actually played Cluedo, with or without fictional characters. I haven't watched CSI in ages either but now I'm inspired to, merely so I can mock it. Not Miami though. I lost interest in that show after I saw the episode where a tidal wave or something is used in a robbery and the whole thing ends with the chief scientist (and I, along with the CSI production staff, use the term loosely) driving through an exploding building in a Hummer trying to rescue a hostage who's been put there because... I can't remember if there was a reason.


That's all I've got for today. Tomorrow, I'll tell you why it's a bad idea to play Monopoly with... I can't think of a fictional character who's renowned for business skill. Ideas, people? Also, ideas for New Word Thursday would help since Skippy seems to have dropped it. He's busy redefining the paradigm of the Intertubes or something.


Corbett's log, additional: I just got an email from Skippy saying that his iMac has died, "literally". While the apparent misuse of "literally" bugs me, this could be a major problem for various reasons. I'm getting details now. I'll relay them tomorrow, if needs be. It will also likely come up on the MacTake.

Tales from Behind the Controller

Today has been a day of gaming and so I choose to offer you a few paragraphs detailing this planetary rotations gaming tales.


There is a risk that every gamer takes and understands. They can take precautions against it, paranoia perhaps being the only possible defence. We spend hours, days, toiling away at our endeavours, the possibility of utter failure ever looming over our heads. Worse still, our undoing is often at the hands of none but ourselves; the heinous act that is our downfall is not for which malicious others may be beholden. The sole culprit is most often our own foolishness and inattention.

Yes, accidentally deleting your best save file is truly a right pain in the ass. This afternoon, my little sister overwrote the Harvest Moon DS file she had spent months working on. She was in tears for a while but I think she'll get over it with time. Or perhaps not. I still kick myself for starting a new save file on Pokemon Blue because I thought I was trapped in Victory Road.

On a note tangentially related to comforting her, did you know that the average price for a copy of Harvest Moon 64 on eBay is a pound of flesh? It's true.


Speaking of eBay, my second gaming tale of the day has to do with an eBay purchase. Sometime last week, I was scanning through some retro gaming equipment when I spotted a job lot that I thought I could turn a profit on. Suspecting that the initial investment and work might be too much for my cash strapped self alone, I enlisted Sam's aid and wallet. Thus it was that I was woken this morning by the news that a large box had arrived for me. Everyone knew it was one of my eBay purchases but nobody could guess what it was. Erin thought it might be a computer but I had to tell her that, though I had been considering it, I hadn't bought one. A few more tries from all and sundry led to no answers and all were mystified.

Until the 7 non-functioning Nintendo Entertainment Systems lay upon the breakfast table.

Once Sam returns from a short trip to England for his god-daughter's christening or some such trivial matter, the plan is to open up the NESes (NESs? NESi?) poke around and then replace what needs replacing and sell them at a profit. I shall keep you updated on the outcome of this plan.


My third tale of gaming relates to my love of RPGs, my inability to bring myself to complete many of them and my habit of picking up old games again during the holidays. A few years back, I picked up the excellent Skies of Arcadia Legends for the Gamecube and never completed it. A few months ago, during the Christmas holidays I think, I started a new file and got even further. I recall that a combination of reaching a rather tricky point and mounting pressure to revise for my prelims led to me giving up again.

I started playing that second file again today, continuing from where I left off at the request (lit: demand) of Erin, who tends to enjoy the stories of a lot of RPGs, even if I'm the one playing them.

I just realised that I have no idea where I'm going with this story. I guess I'd just like to point out my habit of trying to replay old RPGs. I guess I'd also like to needlessly extend this blog post so that I have more than just two stories, neither of which are particularly interesting. On a final RPG related note, go buy a Fire Emblem game. Seriously.


So.... anyone want to buy a NES?

Too many links, too little activity

Apparently, Britain has terrible internet services. I could have told them that. What I want to know is, what the hell are they going to do about it? Maybe we'll hear in a few days. I'll keep my eye out, I guess.

Remember a few days back when I linked to the Joyboard, an old Atari controller, remarking the coincidental similarities to the Wii Balance Board? Seems the professionals have caught up with me. The site that Joystiq got it from even leads to more notes about those Guru Meditation errors I mentioned. Nah, I'm not gloating or anything, just kicking myself for not thinking to email them.

While I'm on a linking spree here, I'll point you at Agony Booth, a site named for a Star Trek mirror universe torture device. It specialises in long, rambling, hilarious rants about crappy movies. I've so far only partly read one recap but the number of times I've been laughing during the reading period appears to indicate the possibility of large reserves of humorous content held within.

That sentence kind of got away from me.


Today has been one of those slow days, filled with DVDs, ice cream, hammocks and replays of Fire Emblem. I've done practically nothing constructive and I'm fairly happy with how the day went.

The problem with doing nothing is that I have nothing to write about at the end of the day. The fact that I'm doing the writing at the end of the day is probably something else I need to work on and doing nothing every day will probably lead to bigger problems than being unable to update my blog but that's not the point here.

Nothing is the point here.

This is a circle.


I'm too tired to think or write coherently. Doing nothing all day is apparently more exhausting than I had previously assumed. I'll have to try doing some stuff tomorrow.

This is incredibly boring.

I have a nasty habit. Guess what it is.

No, not that.

Or that.

That's disgusting.

Okay, I do do that, but not very often.

Given up? Good. My annoying little habit is scribbling random, disjointed notes on pieces of paper then forgetting about the pieces, shoving them away on some shelf or in a folder and then just grabbing a new sheet when I think of something else.

I tried solving the problem by getting a little notepad that I keep on my desk but sometimes I feel the need to write a big list or draw a diagram so I get a piece of A4 from the pads of it that seem to accumulate on my desk. These pieces just keep building up and up and I have no idea what's on the bulk of them. I don't want to throw them out because some of them have some useful stuff on them.

Today, I decided to sort them out. I picked up a bunch of them from my BS folder* and started paperclipping together bundles of webcomic stuff, comedy sketch stuff and general odds and ends. Tomorrow, I plan to sort through these bundles individually** and rearrange them, copying what needs to be copied and disposing of anything that's unnecessary.

This is a process that I call "filing". Other people's definition of filing varies but seems generally to involve putting my stuff in locked cabinets and then refusing to give me the keys.


That was a post about filing. This is what happens when I start off bored then something happens and I end up angry. That happens way too often for reasons that I suspect my future therapist will be interested in.

Oh, well.***




*So called because it has a large picture of Bart Simpson on the front.



**Not strictly true; tomorrow I plan to use several rolls of masking tape to secure some cables to various structures within the house, such as floors and walls, because my Mum is incapable of looking where she's walking.



***Made you look.

TWToday 4.0 (Live Free or Die TWToday in the US)

I'll start by pointing out that Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free or Die Hard in the US) is a very good film. It follows the standard pattern of "terrorists attack - terrorists piss off Bruce Willis - Bruce Willis kills everybody". Stick with what works, I say.

In between all the explosions and the jet fighters and the exploding jet fighters, they actually have some semblance of a plot. The way that they treat computers bugs me a little but that's more a general gripe with the film industry than with Die Hard alone. There was one particular point where, when a large data storage facility came under attack, it was said that the bad guys could copy financial data on to a portable hard drive and take all the money they wanted. Now, I'm no computer expert, but I reckon that if you have a giant server farm large enough to require cooling towers, you can't copy all the data on it on to a portable hard drive.


Anyway, I've little else to say for tonight so I give you a short sketch that I wrote earlier, fulfilling one of the requirements of my to do list.

[our hero has won the fight but his mortal enemy is about to escape]

Enemy: You'll never get me now, hero-boy!

Hero: You can run, but rest assured, I shall chase you to the ends of the smurf!

Enemy: You can try- [realises what's just been said]. Wait, what?

Hero: I said, I'll chase you to the ends of the Earth.

Enemy: No you didn't. You said "smurf".

Hero: Smurf? I never said that!

Enemy: Oh yes, you did. You stood right there and said "I'll chase you to the ends of the smurf".

Hero: Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean? "ends of the smurf"?!

Enemy: You said it not me. Maybe it was some kind of Freudian thing.

Hero: How could it be Freudian? There's no such thing as a smurf.

Enemy: Yes, there is. They're the little blue guys on early morning TV. It's an old kids show.

Hero: Is it? So when I said I'd chase you to the ends of the smurf, I must have meant...

Enemy: That you'd hunt me until your favourite show was over?

Hero: No, if it was my favourite show I'd hunt you until it began, take a short break and then resume my course of vengeance. I was just talking nonsense.

Enemy: Well, that's what you get for not paying attention. And you've ruined it now, you know. The drama of the moment.

Hero: I know, I know. But, really, "ends of the smurf"... ridiculous.

[short pause]
[our hero shoots his mortal enemy]

Awesomeness and Doctor Who, not linked in my mind for once

I spent most of today watching a Doctor Who marathon. I have a few comments and gripes about that but I'll keep them to myself until tomorrow, when I've watched the last two serials I want to see.


You know what's weird? How people started using "+" to represent "and" and then other people started writing "plus" instead, which is actually longer than the word it was originally meant to be shorthand for.


So, I've had an idea. I think it might work well as a web cartoon but it's been kicking around in my head for a while, possibly as a film idea. I don't know why I let film ideas stay in my head. Probably something to do with hopeless optimism and rampant egotism.

The basic premise is that some guy has super powers that let him do anything, so long as it's awesome. If it's not ridiculously over the top and cool, he can't do it. Shooting somebody is outside his range. Shooting somebody with a laser gun is getting there. Lasers coming from his eyes is closer still. Shooting someone with a laser-chainsaw (somewhat like a light sabre) launching sniper rifle at point blank range would qualify.

There are a few secondary characters, most of whom have far more depth than the titular Captain Awesome but none of whom are as interesting.

So, I've compiled a list of things that Captain Awesome has to do at some point.

• Ride a dinosaur through the sun.
• Slam dunk a planet into a black hole.
• Repair a starship's faster than light drive while teaching someone how to dance, including moonwalking.
• Coding a piece of software to stop a virus that is about to detonate a nuclear bomb in an orphanage. This is made yet more awesome by the fact that it is done in binary and to the rhythm of Bohemian Rapsody.
• Have a gun that fires chainsaws. This may be in the style of a machine gun but a revolver would really be better.
• Surf on molten lava. The surfboard should be a Transformer.
• Break a dentists drill on his teeth. They may also stop bullets and/or bullet trains.
• Be able to breath and cook a light breakfast in space.
• Win a staring contest with a snake*.
• Never make a footnote like the one denoted by the above asterisk.

So, there you have it. Some of the adventures that Captain Awesome always has in my head. The two other characters are an evil guy and a damsel in distress type. Their mutual lack of interest in Captain Awesome may well bring them together in a touching love story. Until they explode.



*Snakes have no proper eyelids and thus do not blink. Instead, they have an immovable lens called a brille which evolved from a fusing of the upper and lower eyelids. Biologists believe that this was to combat either marine or subterranean conditions, the exact genealogy of snakes being a matter of debate. Both theories also explain the loss of external ears. The word "brille" is actually the German word for glasses.

Planning, planning everywhere but not in the Sony PR department

Sony really hates their customers, don't they? They denied a PS3 price cut for the longest time then, just when everyone was hating them for that, they announced a price cut in North America only. Just as fanboys and analysts started patting themselves on the back for predicting it (and Europeans got even angrier still), Sony announced that the reason for this price drop was that they were fading out the 60GB model in favour of a new 80 gig one at the original $599 price point.

Then they tried to placate Europe by adding in a couple of extra games and controllers to the bundle over here, though that's still only the 60GB version, it seems. They keep changing their story but it seems like they've really stuffed this whole thing up.

Can they do anything right this generation? It's just been PR disaster after PR disaster for them.


Still, enough of my Sony bashing - got to save some of it for when the podcast relaunches. It's past 22:00 and Skippy's still emailing me with updates about his various projects. Kind of makes me think that I should complete some of the stuff that I keep meaning to do.

To that end, by this time next week I intend to have the first arc of the VersusCOM webcomic scripted, a plan for relaunching the podcast and an eBay seller's account so that I can start getting money in place of all the crap that litters my room.

Secondary goals include some form of progress on the VCOM website itself, even if it's simply early designs, finding the software disc for my old PDA, rearranging my room (which will also require me to sort out that pile of Mega Drive games) and making Lucy's CD drive work. And getting something done about Linus, such as learning how to install programs on him. My iMac, Deneb (try to work out the logic behind that one), needs a bit of cleaning up done to his hard drive, particularly since I intend to fill it up with yet more pages of Naruto manga that I've been meaning to catch up on.

You know, a lot of those aren't really secondary goals.

And there's a Doctor Who marathon on UKTV over the weekend.

I'll figure it out somehow. And since this isn't a proper post, just one of my mind sorting things, I'll point you in the direction of this, the most misleading headline I've ever read.

Coincidences which segue into codebreaking

There are an awful lot of strange and lucky coincidences in life. I'd like to relate two of them to you, if I may. Not that you can stop me.

Today, I received an email that told me that my account on a website would be cancelled if I didn't log on before Sunday. I tend not to use this particular account (I won't tell you the details because it's the Nintendo of Europe VIP site and I don't want to seem geeky... damn) very much but I wanted to keep it going. If I hadn't fiddled around with the settings on Thunderbird so that I could get my ISP email account on Deneb (my iMac, a task I've been delaying for a long time and only performed for eBaying-purposes), I would have lost my account, a real inconvenience.

The Wii balance board having been announced just yesterday (damn, I still need to download the Nintendo press conference) and having attracted my interest, I was surprised to find, while thumbing through Retro Gamer, a mention of the Amiga Joyboard, a similar idea for a controller, though obviously less effective due to more primitive technology.

Actually, the Joyboard has an interesting history, which I've cobbled together from Retro Gamer and Wikipedia. It was created to work with the Atari 2600 and a handful of games that Amiga made to fund their plans to make a 16-bit computer with the Motorola 68000 processor. As a random piece of trivia, the original funding for the company came from a trio of dentists. Project Lorraine, named after the company (then called Hi-Toro)'s wife, eventually produced the Amiga 500, one of the most successful computer of its era.

The Joyboard was a favourite toy of the ex-Atari engineers who founded the company and they used to play a game where the object was to sit cross-legged and completely still for as long as possible, in the manner of meditation. This led to the "Guru Meditation" errors, an in-joke that became AmigaOS's equivalent of a BSOD.

I'd talk more about the 500 but I have to confess, I haven't finished reading the article yet.


If I were in a whimsical mood, I'd wax lyrical about the fact that coincidences must pass us by every day and that there are so many possible coincidences that could happen, those that do are extremely insignificant.

But I'm not in a whimsical mood, so I'm just going to do a few notes.


StreamK (I'd link it but there's not much at the website) has pretty much entered the early beta stages now and I guess my major part in the work is just beginning, Skippy having already put in tremendous amounts of effort. Speaking of which, I promised to set up some email stuff for him by... uh... yesterday. Oh, well. He hasn't done a New Word Thursday today so if I don't get it done tonight I'll accuse him of that and hope the whole thing goes away.

I'm close to getting Lucy, my old LC 475, online, so if Blogger is compatible with Netscape 2.02 (which I believe is the version I'll be using), I might just post something from her in the coming week. Or maybe I'll use Linus. Probably won't use my Amstrad though.

Speaking of ancient computers, there's a museum of them opening up at Bletchley Park, famously home of the Colossus computer (computers, I should say; ten in total were in operation by the end of the war), the first ever digital computers, best known for breaking German codes during World War II. An original model has even been rebuilt by volunteers, working without documentation and with the same kind of Post Office exchange components that were used in the original. It will be the centrepiece of the new museum which will also hold other working examples of computers from 1945 to the present day.

More information here, here and here.

I never though I'd say this, but I really want to go see that museum.

On downloads and small pieces of wood lodged in one's finger

So, it's 12:54 and I just woke up. I'm gonna got get some breakfast/lunch and then make a start to the day. This is what happens when I stay up to 3am talking on Skype.

Incidentally, I have another email paper trail that tells me that Sam was up for at least another hour after I left.


Hey, E3 started. And I didn't notice. I guess I'll just download all the press conferences from somewhere after I've done various more productive things. Started getting the Microsoft conference, Nintendo's should go live in a few hours. Might try streaming that since this is the first year I'll actually have a decent enough internet connection for it, even if I'm still not convinced about the speed.

Okay, that was going to take 12+ hours. I think I'll just cancel that until the servers are less overloaded. I guess I can try it out on a different system since Gamespots download manager promises a faster download, if you have a compatible system. It's worth a shot.

Nuts to that. Couldn't find the video on their system. I'll try it with a download accelerator of some kind and see if that helps.

Not quite sure what the point of this running commentary is. Bear with me.

Well, it's started. I may pause it later to get something else, the main advantage of download managers as I see it.


An aside: I hate splinters.


The download's finished now. This whole waking up after noon has completely thrown off my internal clock. It feels like I should be having lunch soon but it's almost four o'clock.

This has turned into another blogging over the day thing, hasn't it?

So, yeah. E3 looks promising and there are some really nice videos and games popping up all over the place. I'm just going to round this off here. There's not been much of a topic but I want to do some work for Skippy on StreamK and then do some other, unrelated writing.

Have a nice day.

Bullet points are a blogger's best friend

My eBaying continues. I downloaded an add-on for Firefox yesterday that notifies me of watched items that are ending soon and lets me check My eBay and so on. Very useful, actually.


Just doing this quickly on account of being tired. Thus, bullet points.

• Doctor Who is awesome.
• Little kids are funny, especially when they don't know how stuff works.
• Sam is creepy.
• My iMac is called Deneb, my Linux box is Linus and my LC is Lucy. My Amstrad, Axim and busted laptop still need names.
• Their personalities (such as they are in my head) seem to fit into the Five Man Band trope pretty well.
• Sam's computers also have names which I can't be bothered recounting in their entirety.
• His LC is called Lucas and many jokes have been made about it's ability to hold two hard drives. Innuendos have been made about Sam borrowing Lucy's floppy drive for the purpose of booting Lucas. Try not to think about this too hard, it doesn't really make sense.
• When reconstructing a SNES, it is important to remember to put all the compnents back in place or else you'll suddenly discover that the Eject button is no longer attached to anything.
• I quite like 2 hour car journeys.
• I thoroughly dislike 2 hour car journeys spent sitting next to bicycle wheels and with a sore toe.
• I also dislike stubbing my toe on seaweed covered rocks.

Anyway, more tomorrow. My whole schedule has been thrown off balance by some stuff I don't want to do so the next few days may well be very dull. Meh. Still got a bunch of that to-do list to finish.

Another day in the dull life...

I'm going to try another blogging throughout the day feature. This is partly because I've woken up to find several emails covering the progression of Sam's attempts to install Windows 95 on Shrinkwrap's hard drive throughout the night, inspiring me to try something similar (the noting, not the ridiculous IT), and partly because it's easy. More later.


I've just spotted on Joystiq (which has only recently had a redesign) that Sony has lowered the PS3 price to $499. They'll also be introducing another package at $599, just to keep the meme alive. While this is good news for consumers who want one and it may lead to higher sales for Sony, the fact that they've denied such actions before make them look a bit hypocritical.

There might be a similar price reduction over in Europe (where the damn thing was already more expensive than everywhere else) but I suspect that, in accordance with Sony's "Fuck Europe" marketing strategy, the price will in fact be raised and 50% of the consoles will be rigged to explode.


I'm just watching an eBay auction for an old Axim X3. I've got one that I'm planning to sell so I figured it might be worth checking on prices. So far, they all seem to have gone for £50-60 but this one has some extra peripherals so it looks like it'll sell for more. I'm hoping the keyboard and spare battery that I got with mine will put the price up to about £70, allowing me to buy a second-hand PS2 from a friend (with games, controllers, etc.) with some cash to spare.

This isn't really relevant to anything but it should give those 27th century historians some idea of just how big a part eBay played in my life.


Hmmm.... the one I was watching went up to £85 but it's got Bluetooth and Wi-fi support, which mine doesn't. Still, I'll need to register that seller's account today. It's on my to-do list. And I have to do everything on the list. Or else.


I've just been going over IT plots with my brother. Pretty much every computer in the house, with the exception of my lovely, lovely iMac, is dead or dying. Seriously, closing the lid on the newest laptop leads to an instant BSOD. Anyway, I've been looking at refurbished desktops on eBay and I think one of them might do as a replacement for the family desktop.

Also, this blogging throughout the day method really is very easy.


The weather's really changeable around here. I think the sun just went behind a cloud and my room went dark in under a second. Even with the lights on, it's not back to where it was.

The light levels keep changing. Damned high altitude water vapour.


I forgot to update this thing for a couple of hours and it felt bad. This must be what Bebo addicts fee like.


Coverage of E3 seems to be mounting in anticipation of the July 11th start for the new, smaller version. E3 is traditionally like information Christmas for gamers with rumours being shot down and every kind of surprise under the sun from the industry giants to independent groups. My favourite part has always been the pre-E3 press conferences held by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony before the main event where they unveil all kinds of new gadgetry. I'm not sure whether this has survived into the new format but we shall see, come Wednesday.


You know what I want? A shelf on the wall behind my desk that I can use to rest my feet.


I think I'm going to pause here for a while because I'm leaving the house and shutting down the computer. That would make it hard to continue.

I suppose I could leave it in sleep mode, I often do for similar lengths of time, I just don't want to while I'm not here. Irrational fear, I guess.


I'm thinking about bidding on an Amtrad Mega PC, a sort of combination of an old Amstrad computer and a Sega Mega Drive. Just a few minutes to go. I probably won't buy it because it's too expensive, has no monitor and, most importantly, is completely useless to me. But then again, so's most of the rest of my stuff.


Nah, didn't get it. I think I had a sudden and unexpected attack of sanity there. Happens every so often.

Fortunately, it's passed now and I can consider trying to find a colour monitor for my Amstrad CPC 464 (top of the range tech, there) since all I have is a green and black one. Problem is, all the monitors seem to be going with other systems and postage is a pain. The irony here is that the extra C in "CPC" stands for "colour". Green is a colour, I guess.

Incidentally, I got that Amstrad from my local GameStation which now seems to be winding down an awful lot of stock. When I was in there today, they had no retro stuff and not many good new games, lots of second-hand PS2 stuff and the like. Shame, it used to be quite good for that sort of thing.


I'm going to call this the end of the post now because nothing interesting ever happens to me after 8 o'clock. I may read this over before posting it to check spelling and such but that sounds too much like hard work, so I might not.

More than enough crazy to go around...

Why do we put pepper on the kitchen table along with the salt? The only time anyone in our house has ever used it was when I grabbed it by mistake. I suppose it's just one of those things that's done because it seems right.


The advantage of being friends with a crazy person is that you get emails like this every so often:



And you get to send replies like this:



After a short bout of Gmailing, I ascertained that Sam had been fiddling with Shrinkwrap, an old computer of his, named for the fact that it looks like it's been shrinkwrapped. It hasn't. It's partially melted. That's not hugely important but it does foreshadow events to come.

Sam had discovered that Shrinkwrap wasn't starting up and decided to investigate. By plugging it in and poking stuff with his screwdriver. A similar strategy led to the destruction of his old VCR. Fiddling with the variable input (the difference between this and variable output is a very important one, as Sam has now learned) produced the above result.

In his own words:

yeah, i switched it to like 60V, because that was the most anything actually needed... plugged in 240V... and.....
KRAKKASLAM-BLAMMA-BOOM!

It's now a couple of hours after the event and he tells me that his room (henceforth known as "Ground Zero") still smells of smoke and that there is a grey patch on the ceiling directly above the epicentre.

The weirdest part? He's now thinking of starting a small custom PC building business.


I got the woodle up, though it's not quite the one I had planned. Eh. Now, if you'll excuse me, my brother just tossed me series 2 of A Bit of Fry and Laurie. It's a sad thing when I turn to absurdist comedy for a bit of sanity.


Epilogue: at my request, Sam has kindly provided us with an artist's rendition of the whole episode:

Woodle: Stick Guys II: Because neither of us have anything better to do!

No comment.

In the case of Sony Corp. vs. God, the court finds...

I've definitely been bitten by the retro-gaming bug again. It happens every summer. I've spent the entire day poking around eBay auctions. I'll be completely broke and surrounded by tat by the end of the week, just you wait.


Those of you keeping up with video game news will be aware of the storm that the Church of England is kicking up over Sony's inclusion of Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man. Sony has apologised, twice it seems, but the Church still isn't fully satisfied. Well, they never are but that's not the point.

Headlines always amuse me. I can't look at newspapers without laughing these days. The local papers are often the best (the Troon Times and the Ayrshire Post, the former usually more so than the latter) with their hugely melodramatic phrases printed in some randomly changing font. The national papers generally make some sort of sense but their habit of putting a headline next to an unrelated picture, separated by a tiny line, can lead to some interesting suggestions.

Anyway, to tie back into my original topic, there have been some great headlines on this affair. I saw one yesterday, "Sony says sorry in cathedral violence row" (paraphrasing a bit), which seemed to imply that Sony had actually started some form of riot in the church. Today, BBC News give us "Sony 'sorry' over cathedral game". I love the implication that the entire game is based around cathedrals.

On a related (you'll see) note, the woodle for today is delayed owing to a brilliant idea. More tomorrow.

Steering away from the headlines, I've just read some of the articles on this. Turns out that the church has decided that an apology isn't enough and they are still demanding that the game be withdrawn from sale and that all developers adhere to strict guidelines for the treatment of religious sites in future games.

I could've sworn there was something in the Bible about forgiveness but these guys are the experts. Or maybe they're just money-grubbing, publicity-seeking zealots jumping on the gamer hatred band wagon. But, hey, judge not, etc.

The term "virtual desecration" has been bandied about a lot. It looks like a lot of pressure is being brought to bare on Sony over this. They've issued an apology but the Church of England is still demanding the withdrawal of the game (do they have any idea how hard that would be?), that Sony give a substantial donation to the community groups nominated by the cathedral and that they sign up to new "Sacred Digital Guidelines" which have yet to be finalised.

Withdrawing a flagship title from shelves would be extremely bad for Sony, which explains their reluctance on that front. Giving to charity is a very worthy and noble thing. Telling someone "give money to charity or we'll sue your ass" is not. The idea of "Sacred Digital Guidelines" makes me laugh. Just how widespread is this epidemic of exact CGI clones of real-life religious structures being used in violent video games? I can think of this case and no others. Plus, "Sacred Digital Guidelines" just sounds ridiculously pompous. It sounds like they should include rules about not formatting floppies on a Sunday and cleaning CDs with holy water.

I don't mean to demean the church or anything (I have to say that in case I get sued). I just hope this doesn't spiral out of control and reach the levels of "game burning" events at churches up and down the country.

And so, I leave you with a question.

If Sony have truly desecrated a religious monument then they should technically be spending eternity in hell. Why rub it in with litigation? That's just mean.

A brief summary of my day (for the benefit of 27th century historians)

You know what sucks? When you've just watched the first episode of a really good anime series and the second episode's been pulled from YouTube because it's illegal or some such nonsense.


Not much time or energy tonight (not that I ever have either of those) so I'll make this quick.

I tried proper driving for the first time today, doing some simple lessons at an off-road place. Nothing hugely interesting but it alleviated some fears I have had ever since I tried go-karting and utterly failed. To be fair, my nervousness that time had some justification: the boiler suit I was given had a large, singed hole at the elbow.

I also watched Genesis of the Daleks for the first time today. I've not finished it yet but it seems to be living up to its reputation as one of the finest serials of its era. Unfortunately, I saw most of it with Sam and Erin and the whole thing devolved into a series of fights, sparked by their desire to fiddle with all the stuff on my desk and Dymo label everything and my desire to stop them.

Also, the downward scroll on my Mighty Mouse has gone again. I suspect that whatever dirt is in there is either to tightly wedged to come out with a simple clean or that the mechanism is faulty and prone to easily failing. Either way, I want a new mouse and I'm not stopping until Apple tech support give me one.


That's pretty much everything that's happened to me today. It has, all in all, been rather enjoyable. I will definitely have a woodle up tomorrow since the first week of the holiday is over. I define this as the "goofing off period" and thus, after it, I can no longer justify goofing off.

In theory.

Tiptoeing late into a lecture hall.

Trying not to be noticed. Everything is just fine and normal. Shucks, I'm always around here. What are you all looking at? I just took a day off from blogging, for two months.

Life is good. Work is hard but enjoyable, sleep isn't really well acquainted with me and according to an article in this week's New Scientist: I'm not responsible for my actions, the environment made me kill those flowers and also convinced me to sign that lucrative business deal with an X.

I saw Ocean's 13 yesterday. Danny Ocean, Rusty, Jason Bourne, the Mexican kids and Buffalo Bill go to save Reuben from a myocardial infarction - the work of the infamous Al Pacino.

Okay so I may have got lost along the way with the plot, but these four kids in front of us kept getting up at regular intervals and leaving/re-entering the cinema. Dad thought they were doing a drug deal and I just thought they were incontinent.

So anyway, I never actually saw right to the credits. We left at the point where Reuben is celebrating with the Young Guns while the confederates are shooting colored rockets into the sky. So what happened to Danny's previous heist victim, the guy who bought the French-channel-digging-drill for them? Email me, leave a comment. I'm dying to know.

That is that for today. More tomorrow. But by the way, try out Vendetta Online. It's a great game available for most platforms out there, including OSX, Linux and Windows. It's a tasty space sim, and when you sign up for your 8 hour free trial (8 hours of gameplay) look for me. The name is Bauer.

Oh man. Don't ask me why, I got it a long time ago, and may have created the account whilst watching an episode of 24. Don't judge me, Kieffer Sutherland has his ways of convincing people to join his fan army. We will enforce global military time, no more PM for you!

Lastly, there is also a wiki for the game at http://www.vo-wiki.com/ which is worth a look if you're confused, otherwise just ask in-game.

Also, bring back Ace.

First, a complaint. I have, in my room, one of those light fittings with four bulbs that you can move independently, altering the light in a particular part of the room. They can be very useful for getting the lighting just right and it provides more illumination than a regular light fitting.

It is also im-frakking-possible to get the lights pointing in the direction I want. I have two options: go blind from light shining right in my eyes or go blind from scrabbling around in darkness.


Anyway, on to lighter (pun entirely unintentional) matters. I've just discovered that the character of Donna Noble (played by Catherine Tate) from last year's Christmas special is to be brought back as a regular companion on Doctor Who. I have mixed feelings about this. Catherine Tate is primarily a comedian and I'm not convinced of her acting talent but she did well enough in The Runaway Bride. Donna Noble may certainly be an interesting character with a bit of expansion and I suspect that I'll take Tate more seriously when she doesn't spend the entire episode in a bridal dress.

Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) will also be appearing in the new series, along with some Torchwood episodes. I think this could be interesting because, other than with Sarah Jane Smith and due to Rose's means of departure, we've yet to see what life is like for a companion after travelling with the Doctor. I guess we'll be getting some of that from Donna as well, but Martha's certainly had the more interesting Time Lord experiences.

There's always a particular view of Doctor Who from the viewing public. A Time Lord (often infuriatingly referred to as "Dr. Who") and his female companion roaming the universe in a police box, fending off aliens with a sonic screwdriver and, when things get to tough, that Time Lord can just regenerate.

Well, about the only part of that that's been true for the series run is the police box. The concept of the Time Lords was not introduced until 6 years into the series run and the sonic screwdriver had only appeared the year before that. Admittedly, in the long run of Doctor Who 6 years isn't all that much time but it's strange how it isn't the origin of the program that has stuck with people.

11 years is a comparatively longer time and that's how long it took for the concept of regeneration to truly take hold, at the transition from Jon Pertwee to Tom Baker. It had happened before but it had never been called "regeneration" and it was only some time after that that the "renewal" of the First Doctor into the Second was explicitly identified as an actual regeneration.

The whole "one female companion" thing is what bugs me. The Doctor started out with three companions. Then, a pattern of two companions was established: a girl to scream and a man to fight and do manly things. That's not even going into the various UNIT characters who hung around during the Third Doctor era. Throughout the series run, the Doctor had several companions at least as often as he had one.

That's something I'd like to see more of in the new series, a group dynamic in the TARDIS. While there have been groups of characters, Mickey Smith and Jackie Tyler with Rose in series 1 being the most obvious, it's always presented as the primary companion and the hangers-on. Jack Harkness shows up to do a variety of bad ass things when needed but he seems to be more of an ally than an assistant.

I would really like to see two companions on an equal footing, joining at more or less the same time, though without knowing each other prior. It would create an interesting dynamic if done well, in my opinion.


This, ladies and gents, is what happens when I have no topic, The Discontinuity Guide lying on my desk and a lack of time for the post. I'll be doing two things for the first time tomorrow, driving a car and watching Genesis of the Daleks (not at the same time, for safety reasons), so I should have something interesting to mention.

It's the central theme of the play, people!!!

There are a lot of misconceptions about Shakespeare and his work. I'm no expert and I'm sure I've misquoted him at various times. Some people get angry over the misinterpretation of words and phrases. Try telling an English teacher that Juliet is just trying to find her boyfriend when she says "wherefore art thou, Romeo?". It'll hurt. A lot.

But there's one thing that bugs me more than anything else, or at least it has since I thought of it this morning. It concerns one of his most famous plays, the origin of the line above. Romeo and Juliet, that famed tale of star-crossed lovers. It's a tale of happiness and woe, love and loss that has become the archetypal love story in modern culture, defining a genre.

To this day, young men are called Romeo by joking friends as they attempt to woo the love of a beautiful woman. New couples, so very much in love, are oft compared to those erstwhile lovers. To compare a pairing to that of Romeo and his Juliet is to say that they are suited for one another, that it is destiny that they meet, fall in love and be happy for the rest of their lives.

Romeo and Juliet died.

It's no big secret. Shakespeare even says that they're going to kick the bucket in the sixth line of the play. They're lead characters in a Shakespearean tragedy, for heaven's sake. Most of the supporting cast don't make it through those things alive.

And yet everyone forgets it. Sure, there are some people who, when calling someone Romeo, do so because they honestly believe that he's going to fall in love then commit suicide in an act of tremendous stupidity and that his father is going to have a party with his girlfriend's father afterwards.

But then there are those who write adverts with little logo people scampering around saying "ye" and "wherefore" like their lives depended on it. I hate those people. I hate advert writers in general but that's a complaint for another time.


On a tangentially related note, I've finally found a use for something I learned in Higher English classes. Several months too late, but, hey, I'll take what I can get. My sister, reading a book of Poirot short stories, asked me to explain the plot of Othello, since so many references were made to it. While doing so, I got to use the quote "my ancient, a man he is of honesty and trust". I feel so proud of myself. And glad that I dropped English.


Damn it! I forgot the woodle again!

What to do, what to do

I'm still here and still eBaying. I still haven't done last Saturday's woodle, I promise I'll do it tomorrow when my wrists stop hurting like hell.


I had a topic for today but I've just realised that it really isn't a very good one. That made me realise just how few topical posts I'm doing lately. I've kind of gone into "diary" mode where, amidst a little bit of philosophy and humour, I'm setting down interesting events and thoughts that occur in my daily life. This has no real use to anyone, save a young historian in the 27th century who's doing his thesis on "Boring Geeks in the Early 21st Century". I wish him the best of luck.

But that doesn't really solve my problem of how I can do some more creative stuff with this blog. I say "more" but I'm not convinced that I've done anything creative yet. That's probably something I should work on, along with many other things. In fact, let's do a list.


Alasdair's TWTo Do list

1. Fewer bad puns
2. Get scheduled posts done on time
3. Do posts earlier in the day (dual advantage of being awake and not being able to talk just about the days events)
4. Re-read a lot of the earlier posts to see what I like and what I don't
5. Try writing some fiction stuff, it's not like anybody reads it
6. Kick Skippy until he gets off his ass and starts posting both here and at the MacTake
7. Have some better topics ready and roughly planned out
8. Don't do anymore rubbish cop-out posts, like this one
9. Get some more frikkin' sleep! (Not entirely blog related, but good advice all the same)


There you have it. Alasdair's plan for improving his blog in 10 easy steps, give or take. We'll see how that goes, I guess. A phrase the general sentiment of which I use far too often. Oh, well. I guess that if no interesting things happen I can always try to make them happen. It might spoil that guy's chances of getting his doctorate but he sounds like a bit of a tosser anyway, so I don't care.

The ramblings of a demented eBay buyer

First, I ought to note that Pre-Order Pushers is updating again after a brief hiatus. I feel I ought to point this out because it's an amusing site and because Nathan Smart, one of the editors, actually left a comment pointing out that they were updating on a post that I made a while back, when they had stopped briefly.


I have a love/hate relationship with eBay. I love that I can get all kinds of stuff, no matter how obscure. I hate that, once I start buying, I find it nigh on impossible to stop. Everything that I've bought on my recent little spree has been in some way justified, though the justification keeps getting weaker.

A while back, I bought a big lot of Sega Mega Drive games which have been taking up shelf space ever since. I'm currently in the process of sifting through all the stuff, taking out what I want, and looking into selling what remains on eBay. I can't remember precisely what the whole bundle cost me but I think it was around £30 if that is the case, then I may be able to make back about half of that from these other games. Could be interesting, could be a waste of effort and money, only time will tell.

I suspect that I'll have more eBay experiences to relate over the coming weeks since it seems to have become a bit of a summer holiday habit for me over the last couple of years.

On a completely different note, I introduced Sam to Firefly today and I think it says something about why that show was a success when, every time a new character came on screen, I had to say "they're a badass". I really like that show.

Speaking of Sam, he and I finally got round to doing something about VersusCOM. It's not much, just some Proboards forums but it's a start and maybe, just maybe, it bodes well for the future.

I'll end where I began, talking about eBay again (I'm not counting the first paragraph, primarily because I don't want to). While on an eBay spree, particularly one where old games consoles are the purchase of choice, looking at the back of Retro Gamer magazine is a very bad idea. You are liable to come across such items as this.

On rain, the internet and poor blogging techniques

Ah, the Scottish summertime. One moment, it is but a little cloudy, the next, the heavens have opened and the gutters are overflowing.


It's getting kind of late now. The rain's gone off and I doubt I could have talked about it for a whole post anyway. I present instead, a mercifully (for all involved) short section on something that has been bugging me.

Trailers are a common thing in the world of video games. When a trailer is released, flame wars will erupt over whether it is pre-rendered or not (interestingly, if there is enough doubt to cause such a war, the footage is almost certainly in-engine) and people will either praise or insult the game based on a few minutes of footage and a tag line. But something else has cropped up now and again, which truly gets under my skin, as people make a snap decision and refuse to admit that they are wrong.

Videos on the internet, particularly embedded, streamed ones, tend to be low resolution, for obvious reasons. However, upon seeing a low resolution video of a game, many people will judge the whole game on the poor quality footage. They make quips about the graphics and try to turn it into a reason to hate whatever console or platform they are already biased against.

Then, when a better quality video appears, they either continue to complain or fall silent.

I don't know how widespread this problem is but I've seen it and it just serves to remind me that people are, on the whole, idiots. Especially on the internet.


Forgot the woodle again. Oh, well.