Small talk and big monitors

I have a problem, which is this: I unconsciously paraphrase Douglas Adams.

No, it's not that. It's that I don't like writing repetitive things and that I'm often very bad at coming up with things to say if I don't have anything in particular to mention.

This is why I still have to leave feedback for about 20 transactions on eBay. I have this weird desire to analyse each and every one and this strange worry that people will notice if all I ever say is "Good price, as described, fast delivery". I also have a pathological hatred of the phrase "A++ eBayer" which doesn't help matters.

A quick search of blog topics reveals that, surprisingly, I haven't mentioned my hatred of thank you letters that have to be sent after birthdays and such-like. I figure it'll come up again since I haven't actually been doing this blog on my birthday or around Christmas.

It all stems from that same inability to write, or talk about, what I deem to be irrelevant facts. As such, most of the first drafts tend to go something like this:


Dear "Relative X who I haven't met in person since I was 5",

Thank you for £Y.

Yours sincerely, etc.


After some badgering from Mum I can usually drag it out to:


Thank you for £Y. I have spent it on Z.


Where variable Z is something that relative X won't understand and that I probably haven't actually bought.

And that's it. I just don't do small talk. I can't discuss what school's like or any crap like that in such letters because I just don't find it relevant and I hate to repeat myself so much in the various near-identical letters that are shot off to whoever.

It's just occurred to me why this seems so familiar: there's a very good chance I mentioned similar woes in a post about applying to be a prefect. Mystery solved.

This is beside the point, really, since I was originally talking about eBay feedback but I have nothing else to mention and it's set me off one one of my many, many pet peeves... I haven't done a "Things that bug Alasdair" post in a while, have I? That's probably a good thing but I'll reserve my right to vent on this topic further when I actually have to write some of these things.


In other news, you recall my old Amstrad CPC 464? Well, when we split up that retro bundle, Sam made off with his own, probably functioning (so long as all that stuff that fell out wasn't important), CPC 464 and we agreed that he could have my old green monochrome monitor for it if he paid for half of a colour one. Sure enough, the colour monitor arrived today in another of those big boxes that I've become so accustomed to waking up to. As Erin put it this morning "I remember when you used to get small things in the mail".

Here she is, folks:


Uh, that's the monitor not Erin.

Anyway, you can see for yourselves it's pretty bulky, which just makes this thing all the more ridiculous:

That's right, it's a carry handle. For all the carrying that you're sure to be doing. And it's even got one of these:

A plug holder, to stop that big cable flapping about your legs while you're carrying along your Amstrad Colour Monitor. With the carry handle.

Besides that, it's a good piece of kit if I can ever find a use for it.


Oh, and before I go, anybody want an Axim X3?

Virtual buh?

Well, having written that little woodle (Skippy'll explain it in one of his weekly words eventually) you see below, I think I can now officially call myself a webcomic writer. More on that story later.

Have you ever made a really impulsive buy that you know was probably stupid and that you justified with some thin logic like you might be able to turn a profit out of it later? Maybe you haven't, but I have. Today, I bought a Nintendo Virtual Boy for £60, after having bought a copy of Retro Gamer which told me that they tend to sell for around £80. This was enough to convince my parents, with some begging, to return to Gamestation and purchase it.

I have since found that it doesn't appear to work. I'm going to have to see if it's the game or the console by cleaning the game cartridge (a tricky proposition as the connectors are entirely internal and I'll need to open it up to clean it) or getting a new one (pretty useless if it turns out it's the console that's broken). Still, I can always return it so long as I determine if it's working within 28 days, which I intend to do.

Then again, that's not really the point of owning something like this, even for a short time. This is a piece of gaming history, a piece of Nintendo, a company that I am, quite obviously, a fan of, history. Every company has one of these products; it was going to shake up the market, it was going to revitalise and revolutionise the industry, it was going to change the world. But it didn't. It went the way of the 3DO, the Atari Lynx and, a more modern example, the N-Gage. There are plenty of examples in the gaming industry but they're not limited to it. Take a good look at the expression on Steve Jobs face when someone says the word “newton”.

It's nice to just look at it and wonder what could have been. What if those labels warning of possible headaches and blindness didn't need to be so large? What if it had been given a little more development time instead of being pushed out before the N64? What if it had had more third-party support and better marketing?

Would Gunpei Yokoi, creator of the Game Boy and the Virtual Boy, never have been made to leave the company? Could that little change have meant he would be alive today? Would it have changed Nintendo and the gaming industry as we know it?

If Nintendo were to release it today, would Sony have copied it by tomorrow?

Wild speculation and all incredibly unlikely but in an era when “innovation” is a buzzword nearly synonymous with the technology industry as a whole, it's fun to speculate about what could have been.

I suppose two of my three posts thus far have been pretty videogame-related but so are most of the things that I do. And it's probably a good thing, come to think of it. After all, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.


Image: Error messages like this are why I switched to using a Mac.