Courtesy of Will
1. First thing you wash in the shower?
Hair first.
2. What colo(u)r is your favourite hoodie?
I don’t have one, but if I did it would probably be black.
3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? Yes.
4. Do you plan outfits?
Not beyond the level of wearing a shirt for work.
5. How are you feeling RIGHT now?
Mostly tired. I seem to have hit a low point with being exhausted pretty much all of the time and never really catching up on lost sleep.
6. What’s the closest thing to you that’s red?
The ‘B’ button on an xbox 360 controller.
7. Tell me about the last dream you remember having? An odd dream about driving a left hand drive VW Beatle on a slippery road.
8. Did you meet anybody new today?
No, just the usual folks at work.
9. What are you craving right now?
Food, preferably followed by a cold beer.
10. Do you floss?
Yep. I’m a good boy.
11. What comes to mind when I say cabbage?
Sauerkraut. Yum.
12. Are you emotional?
I get angry at injustice and stupidity. Does that count?
13. Have you ever counted to 1,000?
Yes, but in binary.
14. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it? Lick it into shape.
15. Do you like your hair?
Yes, as long as it is short.
16. Do you like yourself?
Yes, most of the time, apart from when I am tired and irritable.
17. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush? Yes, so I could tell him to his face exactly what I thought of his presidency.
18. What are you listening to right now?
The tweeting noise from Tweetdeck.
19. Are your parents strict?
No, they were very laid back and liberal in the small l sense of the word.
20. Would you go sky diving?
If the opportunity arose, then probably yes.
21. Do you like cottage cheese?
I have vague memories of eating it with pineapple included, a long time ago.
22. Have you ever met a celebrity?
Yes, the very lovely TV’s Emma Kennedy.
23. Do you rent movies often?
I just about get my money’s worth out of Lovefilm.
24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you’re in? Nope.
25. How many countries have you visited?
Ten, if you count a stop over in Turkey on the way to Cyprus.
26. Have you made a prank phone call?
No
27. Ever been on a train?
I used to do a fair bit of commuting by train going from London to Edinburgh on the East Coast line.
28. Brown or white eggs?
Cadbury’s crème Eggs please.
29. Do you have a cell-phone?
Yes, a Nokia E50 that seems to be mainly used for reading ebooks when I am bored.
30. Do you use chapstick?
No.
31. Do you own a gun?
No. I do have an extensive collection of swords and martial arts weaponry though.
32. Can you use chopsticks?
Yes. They are the only way to eat sushi
33. Who are you going to be with tonight?
With the family, watching Supersizers.
34. Are you too forgiving?
I don’t stay angry for long.
35. Ever been in love?
Yes.
36. What is your best friend(s) doing tomorrow? No doubt something artistic.
37. Ever have cream puffs?
Only when somebody brings them into the office for birthday treats and the like.
38. Last time you cried?
Watching the end of Buffy Season Five.
39. What was the last question you asked?
Why is this bit of code in the arrears calculation?
40. Favo(u)rite time of the year?
Late summer, when the days are still warm and the evenings are cool.
41. Who did you last call?
Jan, on my way home.
42. Are you sarcastic?
Me? Sarcastic? That’s the last thing I could ever be accused of.
43. Have you ever seen The Butterfly Effect?
No.
44. Ever walked into a wall?
No, but I did walk into a lamppost walking along a street in heavy rain with my head down.
45. Favo(u)rite colo(u)r?
I’m with Henry Ford on this one.
46. Have you ever slapped someone?
Only as part of a ju-jitsu move.
47. Is your hair curly?
No, it is more sort of random when it grows a bit.
48. What was the last CD you bought?
James Rhodes – Razor Blades, Little Pills & Big Pianos
49. Do looks matter?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
50. Could you ever forgive a cheater?
I would find it very difficult, but probably yes.
51. Is your phone bill sky high?
No, it rarely goes beyond the default minutes.
52. Do you like your life right now?
I could do without being so tired all the time.
53. Do you sleep with the TV on?
I do tend to fall asleep watching TV these days.
54. Can you handle the truth?
Yes. An uncomfortable truth is infinitely better than a comforting lie.
55. Do you have good vision?
I’m very short sighted.
56. Do you hate or dislike more than 3 people? Hate is too strong a word, but there are plenty of people I view with contempt.
57. How often do you talk on the phone?
Most days.
58. The last person you held hands with?
Jan.
59. What are you wearing?
Long shorts (if that isn’t a contradiction) and a grey t-shirt.
60.What is your favo(u)rite animal?
Cats. Their sheer insouciance makes life better.
61. Where was your default picture taken?
In the lounge, I think
62. Can you hula hoop?
Only on Wii Fit.
63. Do you have a job?
Yes.
64. What was the most recent thing you bought? An Atheist Christmas, pre-order on Amazon.
65. Have you ever crawled through a window? No.
Monday, June 29, 2009
- 00:19 Just watched 'Milk' - extraordinarily moving film. Feeling inspired and angry. #
Sunday, June 28, 2009
For the Sins of My Father by Albert Demeo
For the Sins of My Father: A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life by Albert DemeoMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Roy Demeo was a devoted father, a loving husband and a pillar of the local community. He took his children to school in the mornings, cooked Sunday breakfast for the family every week and organised 4th of July parties for the whole neighbourhood. Yet when his son Albert was asked in class what his father did for a living he was unable to give an answer. The truth was that his father was a mafioso, a wise guy, a car thief, extortionist and a brutal hit man for the Gambino family.
This autobiography is told from the point of view of Albert Demeo as he grows up in a prosperous Italian-American household in the seventies. The comfortable lifestyle is shown to have a darker edge as he slowly comes to realise exactly who his father is as he sees the contradictions between the family man at home, and the man who seems to have an endless supply of money in envelopes collected every week. As the family moves up in society, their million dollar mansion slowly becomes a prison, and Albert's father sinks into depression, knowing that he will never escape the life of a mobster that he has chosen.
Roy's fate is bloodily inevitable, but the question that kept me turning the pages is whether Albert would follow in his father's footsteps or if he would find a way to walk away from the cycle of violence and retribution. The back cover blurb compares the book to a true life Sopranos, and it is very easy to see the similarities in the expansive circle of family, friends and 'business associates', and the sleazy clubs and diners that the mobsters frequent to transact their dealings.
An utterly compelling view of life in the mob, well worth reading. Many thanks to Nancy for passing on her copy!
View all my reviews.
Sunday links
- HOWTO ask good skeptical questions
- Surface Tension Seriously cool photographs
- A computer’s spot in the Sun Hot stuff.
- Dude, where's my iPhone Find My iPhone works, and it is awesome.
- Splendour of Saturn Audio slideshow:
- Twitter in 1935
- ZooBorns: Baby Fennec Foxes Debut at Tokyo Zoo I luvz bebe Fennecs!
- X-relationships Every relationship in the X-Men comics diagrammed by somebody with *far* too much time on their hands
- Quarter Shrinker The high tech equivalent of putting pennies on tram lines
- Careless Tweets Sink Fleets WWII propaganda posters for the modern era
- Demolished! 11 Beautiful Train Stations That Fell To The Wrecking Ball
- Deco-Gundam Gayest. Robot. EVAR.
- Captcha Invaders Type the captcha phrases to shoot down the invaders
Saturday, June 27, 2009
- 17:19 Caturday on the lawn twitpic.com/8kr7f #
- 17:55 Why aren't we getting the directors cut of Watchmen on DVD in the UK? Bah! #
- 17:59 Highly atmospheric radio documentary about ghost towns in the American South West bit.ly/nDWWa #
Friday, June 26, 2009
- 22:20 Alien vs Predator vs Kramer vs Kramer #worstpitchesever #
- 22:41 It's Gone With The Wind remade to highlight the talents of Miley Cyrus and Justin Timberlake #worstpitchesever #
- 22:42 It's Lord of the Rings meets The Wedding Planner ... in space! #worstpitchesever #
- 22:52 Shawshank Redemption 2 - this time they have to break into the prison! #worstpitchesever #
Thursday, June 25, 2009
- 18:30 Hullraiser #northernfilms #
- 18:31 Scarborough Face #northernfilms #
- 23:03 A trail of feathers / Leads to a luckless pigeon / Too large to drag in #
- 06:45 The discipline of / The haiku form is perfect / For Twitter's constraint @zomoniac #
- 06:46 Beyond the garden / A bird lies, now food for worms / A true horror show #
- 13:58 Hand sanitizers / Scarlet heralds to warn of / Flu Apocalypse #
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Victory of Eagles (Temeraire, Book 5) by Naomi Novik
Victory of Eagles by Naomi NovikMy review
rating: 4 of 5 starsThe story opens this time with Captain Laurence sentenced to death for his actions at the end of the previous book and his dragon Temeraire consigned to miserable exile in a damp cave in the Welsh breeding grounds. Things only grow worse when Napoleon uses his new found aerial superiority to launch a full scale invasion of the South of England quickly leading to the capture of London and a humiliating retreat to the Scottish highlands for the routed British forces. Can the British forces rally and mount an effective counter attack in time?
The time line of the Napoleonic wars in the Temeraire universe diverges quite spectacularly from our world in this volume with the logical consequences of dragons being used as troop transports radically changing the strategic options available. Sir Arthur Wellesley is also introduced as a character, but now he is having to fight on British soil rather than in Portugal and Spain. It is also interesting to see different battlefield tactics being explored, with the British dragons fighting as a brutally effective guerilla force, and also a new test for the famous effectiveness of the British infantry square formation when faced with a heavy weight dragon.
Another excellent addition to the saga, but the only problem is the wait until next summer for the intriguing sounding continuation.
View all my reviews.
- 07:05 The White with a hint of Apple Stripes #coolbandsmadeuncool #
- 07:05 My Chemical Toilet Romance #coolbandsmadeuncool #
- 07:05 Granny Knot #coolbandsmadeuncool #
- 11:59 Ah, that rare delight! / A fresh pear that is neither / Too hard nor too ripe #
- 18:24 Sleepless in Settle #northernfilms #
- 18:25 Blackburn After Reading #northernfilms #
- 18:26 For York Eyes Only #northernfilms #
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
- 19:03 A peal of thunder / Frank the cat stretches and yawns / Summer storm threatens #
- 20:58 Nearly time for Supersizers - hurrah! #
- 09:10 RT @CollingsA: Check out @Herring1967 dance remix by @nathanjay and @AmberGamblerAV: The Girl Does Nothing bit.ly/girl0 #
- 10:43 No breakfast today / Appointment with a vampire / Results by Friday #
Sunday, June 21, 2009
- 06:21 The world turns again / The cycle begins anew / Good morning sunshine #
- 16:49 Just heard a mix of 'Big Time Sensuality' on my iPod that I could swear blind I've never heard before. Wonder where it came from? #
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. HofstadterMy review
rating: 5 of 5 starsWow, this is a difficult book to review.
It is perhaps easier to start by saying that it is not per se about the music of Bach or the art of Escher, and it only discuss the proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorem as an illustration of a much broader and deeper conclusion. To be sure, the book opens with an introduction to the work of Gödel, Escher and Bach before taking an unexpected turn into the world of formal systems for manipulating algebraic expressions. Each chapter is preceded by a fanciful dialogue between Achilles and a Tortoise from Zeno's famous paradox that touches tangentially on a subject or reprises an existing theme, usually aided and abetted by games of structure, word puzzles and some truly atrocious punning. He also touches upon the paradoxes of Zen modes of thinking with self contradictory and (apparently) nonsensical Koans.
Indeed the first half of the book seems to throw in a huge variety of examples, metaphors and ways of thinking before knuckling down to giving a comprehensible proof of Gödel's theorem and then unpacking the consequences of its demolition of the hope of any formal system being necessarily incomplete. It is only in the second half where Hofstadter begins to discuss the basic structures of the human brain and contrasting them with programming languages and systems of artificial intelligence that he tips his hand and reveals that his thesis is that our minds are formal systems. They are highly complex ones but still governed by the same simple rules of logic and thus necessarily incomplete in the Gödelian sense, in that there must be true statements that are ipso facto impossible to prove.
Woah, dude!
At this point you might start to wonder where Hofstadter is going with all of this, but don't panic because he does calm down a little, discussing Turing's famous test for deciding whether a system is intelligent or not and looking forward to the problems that might surround the operation of such systems.
This is a fabulously dense book and it is no surprise that it is taught at degree level (there are some good lecture videos from a course at MIT here). The themes are complex, but one of the benefits of its scattergun use of examples from music, art and mathematics is that most people will find something that they can get a handle on, conceptually speaking, to be able to follow the arguments and ideas under discussion.
View all my reviews.
Sunday Links
- Christopher Hitchens on the Ten Commandments Hitch fisks the supposed basis of all moral law for your theological pleasure
- Skeptics Mix Tape 2009 Some footstompingly rational songs for your skeptical pleasure!
- The world's first Twitter comedy gig Transcribed for your comedic pleasure
- Steampunk radio The spirit of old time radio dramas recreated for your podcast pleasure
- Bulletproof "tactical" corset A bit of heavy duty va-va-voom
- Lego Zombies I *really* want the people at Lego to make a set of these!
- Who can save us from the zombie apocalypse? The Zombie Christ, that's who!
- Rare recording of James Joyce reading Happy Bloomsday!
- Holy Crap! Radioactive Wasps Swarm Out Of Former Nuclear Test Site
- Atlas Obscura Wondrous, curious, and bizarre locations around the world
- Mandelbrot Applet A lovely browser based implementation of the Mandelbrot set
- Hunch A personalised search engine. Just answer a series of questions about yourself and then ask Hunch a question ...
- Mini-schwein This little piggy was on zoo borns ...
- Cats getting stoned on catnip Like, purr, dude ...
Saturday, June 20, 2009
- 19:29 Just rescued another little mouse from Daisy and released it into the field #
- 10:37 Today I was brave / Climbed the ladder and cleared the / Leafy detritus #
- 12:30 12seconds - 12 Second Caturday tiny12.tv/X6STF #
- 12:52 Oh FFS! I mention the word 'hot tub' and that seems to be an open invitation for hot tub spammers. Might as well say NASCAR and WTC as well! #
- 17:01 Just finished reading Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Wow. I feel like I've run a mental marathon. #
Friday, June 19, 2009
- 06:58 I'm as tired as tired thing that has no energy for thinking up clever metaphors #
Thursday, June 18, 2009
- 18:50 The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Liver #nastierfilmtitles #
- 18:51 Replacement Bus Service to Yuma #nastierfilmtitles #
- 18:52 Milkshake #nicerfilmtitles #
- 18:53 Frosties/Nixon #nicerfilmtitles #
- 19:28 Bring me the hedge fund of Alfredo Garcia #nicerfilmtitles #
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Empire of Ivory (Temeraire, Book 4) Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik
Empire of Ivory by Naomi NovikMy review
rating: 4 of 5 starsReturning home at long last, Captain Laurence and his dragon Temeraire find to their horror that a deadly disease has spread through the British dragon population. A cure must be found, and quickly, before Napoleon realises that the UK is undefended and launches an invasion across the channel. The only hope is travel to Africa where a rare mushroom may provide an answer.
This book really ups the ante, with yet another view of a very different dragon society in another continent. The themes of slavery and suffrage, both human and dragon, that have been alluded to in previous books also come very much to the fore, as well as the ruthless nature of war which leads to a shocking and gut wrenching conclusion to the book.
All I can say is that I'm glad I've got book 5 ready to pick up next!
View all my reviews.
- 20:13 Sat outside with a nice glass of wine, enjoying a pleasant summer evening ... and relax ... #
- 17:39 RT @giagia Yes! Yes! Yes! @ApolloPlus40 is Tweeting the Apollo 11 Moon Landing as it happened 40 years ago. Follow them, damn it!! #
Monday, June 15, 2009
- 18:15 RT @MitchBenn EVERYBODY follow @azarnoush - he is in the thick of it in Tehran right now. Let him know we're watching. #iranelection #
Sunday, June 14, 2009
- 19:24 Mojito time! twitpic.com/7awcj @redsmartie_ Cheers! #
- 12:30 Just rescued a bird from one of the evil cats #
Sunday Links
- Cracking the Code An astonishing puzzle house
- Steampunk Flash Drive
- ZooBorns: Ophaned Pangolin Baby Cute and strange
- Goths In Hot Weather Staying pale and interesting ain't easy!
- African Wildlife Photography Stunning
- Zombie wedding cake topper
- The Greatest Lunar Scenes From The Movies Fly me to the moon ...
- Apollo 11 Haynes Manual do want!
- Alice and Kev Homeless Sims
- Orphaned Tweets People who sign up for Twitter, post once, then never return
- Please Say Something A strange and oddly affecting piece of animation
- Scale How big are you? Not very ...
- Real life Gundam I want to go to Tokyo just so I can see this.
- A history of Monkey Island How appropriate - you fight like a cow!
- Atheists or believers -- who's funnier? There's only one way to find out ....
Saturday, June 13, 2009
- 08:10 twitpic.com/79o3e - Imperious caturday #
- 14:16 Making a twit of myself doing the Lindyhop in the Winter Gardens! #
- 14:51 Gauchos strut proudly / Senoritas swoop and sway / Mexican hat dance #
Sharpe's Story by Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe's Story by Bernard CornwellMy review
rating: 4 of 5 starsI first picked up a Sharpe book in a public library, sometime in the mid 80s not long after they were originally published. I think it was probably the third or fourth book in the sequence, and after devouring that one I went back to the start with "Sharpe's Eagle" and then followed the rest through in order until I had caught up with the author Bernard Cornwell's prodigious output, to Waterloo and beyond. I also watched and enjoyed the TV adaptations, although it is tempting to wonder what they would have been like if the original choice to play Sharpe, Paul McGann, had not been injured on set necessitating his replacement by Sean Bean who really has made the role his own.
Sharpe's Story is a brief account by the author of the genesis and progression of the series, with excerpts and examples to illustrate the horrors of battle in that time and the nature of Sharpe's own ruthless brutality. While some readers would apparently prefer Sharpe to be noble and honourable, Cornwell relishes having Sharpe fight dirty, as he fights battles for those that cannot fight for themselves.
The book closes with an autobiographical essay, describing the author's early life with his adoptive parents who were members of a strict religious sect called the Peculiar People. Out of five adopted siblings, one sadly committed suicide, one remained a Baptist and the remainder did not follow the beliefs that were forced upon them. As the author puts it bluntly, God, one; The Devil, four. This early experience informed the author's atheism and his natural preference for cakes and ale rather than virtue!
A slim volume, and probably one for fans of the series only, but interesting and informative nonetheless.
View all my reviews.
Friday, June 12, 2009
- 21:31 Just been to @cerebralpig 's exhibition show at the Burton Street Project - absolutely stunning and lots of very positive feedback! #
Thursday, June 11, 2009
- 06:53 RT RichardWisemanJust posted: Twitter Experiment – Results! tinyurl.com/m6dzhm #
- 09:23 Last night's storm abates / Troubled dreams banished by the / Bright morning sunshine #haiku #
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
- 19:06 RT @disappointment: What people who want rid of Gordon Brown don't understand is, we need more headlines like this twitpic.com/6yocg #
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
- 19:36 The world's first twitter comedy gig starts in 25 minutes - follow @tweetcomedyclub for instructions on how to join in the fun! #
- 23:02 The @tweetcomedyclub gig was excellent tonight - some inspired stuff, particularly @MitchBenn 's musical interlude #
- 23:05 Headline on the BBC news page "Balls : Majority back Brown". Fair comment, I would say ... #
- 09:05 Old cat in the wars / Fresh duelling scar on his face / He stretches and sleeps #
Monday, June 08, 2009
- 08:37 Just sworn at radio 4. I'm not starting Monday morning listening to a fat fuck like Griffin spouting poison. Gordon, I hope you're ashamed #
Sunday, June 07, 2009
- 18:58 Just watched Prince Caspian - should have been called Prince Kasabian. Surprisingly brutal and yet also mawkish. #
- 19:21 Ooooh - nearly time for the season finale of #primeval - hurrah! #
- 19:22 Is it too early for a glass of beer flavoured drink? #
- 19:30 Yay - time for Britain's Got Tyrannosaurs! #primeval #
- 19:40 Oooh - there's an unxpected plot twist! #primeval #
- 19:44 Mmmm, beer! twitpic.com/6rfs1 #
- 19:46 Now that's what I call a bug zapper ! #primeval #
- 19:51 Ooooh, shiny! #primeval #
- 20:01 I *really* want a #primeval first person shooter adventure game! #
- 20:02 Fly you fools! #primeval #
- 20:25 Nooooo! They can't end it like that! #primeval #
- 20:41 Listening to the Coverville take on Led Zep IV - excellent! bit.ly/sAszW #
- 20:46 Is it wrong that I want to go and see this film because it might have some Bartitsu in it? bit.ly/U3wYH #
- 20:51 A blues version of Stairway to Heaven - fantastic! #
- 11:08 Latest kill deposited in kitchen. Feathers all over the floor in lounge, hallway and kitchen. Looks like it's hunting season. #
Sunday Links
- Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions
- The 7 Most Bizarrely Unlucky People Who Ever Lived
- Face Search find face pics with this people face search
- Spinal Tap - Saucy Jack A Free Exclusive Download of a Brand New Track Fresh from the Studio
- Super Candid snapshots of off duty super heroes
- CARDIAC A working cardboard computer
- Life size blue whale on your computer screen
- Boisterous Rhino Baby Zooborn of the week - make sure you watch the video!
- Pygmy Jerboa Cutest rodent evar!
- David Lynch's Interview Project A new interview with a random person every three days for a year. Fascinating
- 50 Movies Hidden In A Painting Intriguing on-line quiz
- Stabbing pen This pen really is mightier than the sword
- My Little (Zombie) Pony
- Japanese battle underwear Do want!
- Abandoned Religious Buildings Reclaimed by Nature
Saturday, June 06, 2009
- 10:24 twitpic.com/6qfeh - Caturday boxhab #
- 11:30 Just dug out The Secret of Monkey Island - still acebest after all those years. Roll on the new games! #
- 11:51 One of the cats has left a very big, very wet and very dead rat on the mat. Lovely. #
- 13:46 There's a rat in da kichen ... twitpic.com/6qmtc #
- 16:00 Time to dodge the showers and take the dog for a walk ... #
- 16:40 Watching "Prince Caspian". It's a bit dark. Seriously, can't see a bloody thing on the screen. #
Black Powder War by Naomi Novik
Black Powder War by Naomi NovikMy review
rating: 3 of 5 starsMore hot dragon action in the Napoleonic era, and very much a book of two halves. The first section involves a lengthy overland journey from China where Captain Laurence and his dragon Temeraire finished up at the end of the previous volume before getting involved in a convoluted conspiracy in Istanbul where they had been ordered to collect some dragon eggs.
This plotline sort of fizzles out and doesn't really get explained, but the end of the book really picks up the action with the logical and intriguing addition of dragons as infantry support to the battle of Jena with the Grand Armee of Napoleon pursuing the shattered Prussian forces to a denouement at the siege of Danzig. Along the way Temeraire and Laurence realise that they have a deadly and unexpected enemy to face ...
Good stuff, but marking time in the series I think.
View all my reviews.
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Friday, June 05, 2009
- 20:59 Keep libel laws out of science! Read this article about chiropractic quacks bit.ly/PJjgq and sign the petition bit.ly/M2aEU #
- 21:00 Incoming! #BB10 #
- 21:04 What's with the crates? It's like Half Life. Wonder if they'll get a crowbar? #BB10 #
- 21:05 Oh. My. Fracking. God. #BB10 #
- 21:06 Looks a bit like Derren Brown. #BB10 #
- 21:09 What are the odds of Lisa killing Freddie in the next five minutes? #BB10 #
- 21:16 I want a Terminator as the next housemate #BB10 #
- 21:20 "Visual Merchandiser"? Is that a shop assistant? #BB10 #
- 21:38 The crowd is looking very sparse. #BB10 #
- 21:40 Confusing changing hair colour! #BB10 #
- 21:43 Scarily like a young Vanessa Feltz #BB10 #
- 21:45 Snikkt! #BB10 #
- 21:55 She's tidgy! #BB10 #
- 21:57 Is that her own language of squeaks? #BB10 #
- 22:00 It's Donny Osmond crossed with a lumberjack #BB10 #
- 22:02 Mr Gay Newcastle? He must be the toughest Geordie EVAR! #BB10 #
- 22:10 Only 120% - that's rubbish #BB10 #
- 22:16 It's the anti Justine Lee Collins! #
- 22:27 He looks like he is going to cry #BB10 #
- 22:31 FIGHT!!!! #BB10 #
- 22:34 Rubbish tache - he hasn't done the curly bits #BB10 #
- 22:37 MAWKISH! #BB10 #
Thursday, June 04, 2009
- 11:48 Email from big boss / Sorry - no pay rise this year / Economic gloom #
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
- 18:40 Hurrah - my mix cd from @divaschematic has arrived and is importing into iTunes right now! #
- 22:07 "The Ow Show" - minor injuries made fun #radio4minus1letter #
- 22:09 "The Ood Programme" - All the latest news on the squid faced aliens #radio4minus1letter #
- 22:11 "Ook at Bedtime" Go to sleep with a friendly orangutan #radio4minus1letter #
- 22:13 "Cross Incontinents" Bladder weakness can really make you angry #radio4minus1letter #
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
- 18:35 RT @RichardWiseman: First scientific experiment on Twitter to explore psychic ability. Join in, please RT. bit.ly/MoAir #
- 21:11 Just voted, returned a dvd and sent a birthday card to my dad ... #
Monday, June 01, 2009
Well Played by Drew Davidson
Well Played by Drew DavidsonMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
A literate person is said to be 'well read'. Is the equivalent person with similar wide experience of video games 'well played'?
Video games are a nascent art form, with examples more complex than trivial bat and ball manipulations only appearing less than twenty years ago. The film critic Roger Ebert has said that games will never approach the emotional power of plays or films, and will not produce anything comparable to 'Citizen Kane'. Given that it took nearly fifty years from the invention of moving pictures to the debut of Orson Welles' masterpiece, this is perhaps a slightly premature comparison. Watching a film is an essentially passive experience, whereas a video game has more complex considerations of the way that player interacts with the intentions of the designer in terms of game mechanics and story. Thus a critique of a video game is a more complex affair than a comparable analysis of a film or a play, but this book is an attempt to bring academic rigour to the subject.
This is a collection of essays, each analysing a game, or several similar games, looking at various aspects of design, story and technology. Some chapters look at a particular element of a game in detail, such as the control structure of Super Mario Bros or the haunting melancholy of 'Ico', whereas others consider a game as a whole such as the historical complexity of 'Europa Universalis' or the perfect combination of puzzles, combat and exploration that make 'Zelda : The Ocarina of Time' such a highly rated game.
Other essays compare the dramatic necessity of the death of Ophelia in 'Hamlet' to the tragic inevitability of the protagonist of 'Shadow of the Colossus' and consider 'Silent Hill 2' as a psycho-therapeutic process. One particularly interesting essay considers the ludonarrative dissonance of 'Bioshock' where the game designer's critique of Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy is undercut by the linear constraint that prevents the protagonist from acting in a purely selfish way. In contrast, a possibly apocryphal story is related of the design of 'Portal' where a story meeting trying to come up with ideas for an underlying philosophy for the game ended in an uncomfortable silence which was broken by the suggestion that 'A lot of people like cake'. If you've played the game, you will understand ...
Some chapters fall a little flat, with a brief essay on Guitar Hero being little more than the writer bragging that he has completed the game on expert and a description of the game 'Tempest' as seen from the perspective of the author HP Lovecraft. Another chapter points at the difficulties inherent in playing a translated version of 'The Secret of Monkey Island' where Spanish speakers would likely miss a sly clue referring to a literal red herring and this can be contrasted with the considerable effort made in producing an English language version of the Japanese legal drama 'Phoenix Wright : Ace Attorney' to include relevant pop culture references and jokes, and even the punning possibilities of the protagonists name.
Well worth reading if you have any interest in the question of whether video games should be considered as a valid art form. Available as a free download from here.
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