Daily Post - Wednesday

I'm pretty sure that I may have alluded to this in elliptical terms on Twitter, but last night's telly really was the BESTEST EVAR.

Firstly was 'Electric Dreams', a sort of reality TV show in which a family was taken back to the 1970s level of technology to see how they coped. This meant no modern gadgets, no mp3 players, no computers, no freezer and no microwave oven, and even central heating was a distant dream until the middle of the decade. New gadgets were delivered to the family, at the rate of one year every day and such simple delights as colour tv and Chopper bikes were greeted with glee and a buzz of nostalgic recollection. Fascinating and hugely enjoyable, although I think that the mother of the family's joy at the family togetherness may have been viewed through slightly rose tinged spectacles when set against the hours of extra housework in the kitchen.

Following on was Charlie Brooker's 'Gameswipe', a typically acerbic and insightful view of the video games industry, looking at the history, the genres, the media coverage and throwing in a couple of reviews for good measure. It was slightly galling to realise that just about the only view of video games presented in the media over the last thirty years that wasn't either 'video games are just for kids' or 'ban this sick filth now!' was an ancient black and white clip of Tomorrow's World looking at a primitive game of Pong which was 'the latest thing from America'. Video games are a bigger industry than Hollywood, but they get slightly less coverage than sheep dog trials from Yorkshire. Go figure.

Work today was fun (if calorific). One of the QA testers is moving to another job within the company, so she brought in the now traditional perfectly hee-yuge pile of buns, cakes, doughnuts and biscuits, and if that wasn't enough she also treated us to pizzas at lunch time. Nom nom nom. I'm stouffered.

Podcast of the day was The Guardian Tech Weekly. I used to listen to this regularly, but it somehow stopped updating in my podcast feed and I've only just got around to re-adding it. Anyhoo, it's always an interesting listen for a news roundup of what's new in the tech world. Recommended if you have an interest in that sort of thing (particularly if you are doing T175!).