#oneaday Day 631: Meaty Goodness

A lot of people, both inside and outside the UK, assume that the best TV comes from the BBC. Sure, Doctor Who is great and there have been some great drama series from our publicly-funded friends over the years, but on balance, it’s clearly Channel 4 that has the best stuff.

Spaced, Black Books, Brass Eye, Peep Show — there’s a veritable plethora of excellent shows out there, most of them in the comedy genre, and the vast majority of which involve –and are written by — the same people.

The latest Channel 4 show to be up and coming is Fresh Meat, a new show from the creators of Peep Show. Peep Show is known for featuring that uniquely British brand of uncomfortable humour, and Fresh Meat continues that tradition suitably aptly, though with something of a more surreal edge at times.

The show is based around a small ensemble cast of first-year students, and is mostly set in their shared house where they’ve been thrown together as tends to happen in the early days of university. The setup is perfect for some character-based comedy, and writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain take full advantage of this fact. The characters have some great chemistry between them, and each of them is just bizarre enough to be memorable without crossing the line into complete stupidity. Highlight of the show has to be Howard, a Scotsman of indeterminate age who has lived in the shared house for longer than he perhaps should have. Howard is introduced drying off some chickens (if I remember correctly) with a hair-dryer, while not wearing any pants.

Ironically, throughout the subsequent episodes, it’s Howard that turns out to be, if anything, the most normal, sensible of the characters. Man-eating Vod regularly overindulges in various chemical substances and isn’t quite aware of what she’s doing; Oregon is self-consciously trying not to be lame (and ends up regularly cracking those jokes that no-one ever laughs at); Josie and Kingsley have an infuriating will they-won’t they relationship and Jack Whitehall’s JP character is endearingly obnoxious.

If nothing else, it’s nice to see a show based around a cast of students which doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s all too easy for shows to get caught up in interpersonal relationships and betrayal and whatnot, and before you know it you’re Hollyoaks. And no-one wants to be Hollyoaks. Thankfully, Fresh Meat is not Hollyoaks.

It’s early days for the new show as yet, but early indications are promising. It’s amusing and filled with entertainingly puerile gags in a Peep Show/The Inbetweeners sort of style, but has a good sense of an unfolding plot, strong characters and a pleasing cameo appearance from Robert Webb.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the show yet, UK residents can catch up with it on YouTube.

#oneaday Day 630: Over My Shoulder

I’ve been blogging since July of 2008. Actually, that’s not quite true — I’ve been blogging a lot longer than that, but had a couple of other websites prior to this one. To my knowledge, only one of them is still there, and that was a somewhat abortive effort. This site, then, represents one of the most consistent creative endeavours that I’ve ever undertaken.

For what, though? What is it achieving? I’m certainly not making any great effort to ponce around with anything like search engine optimisation and the limit of my attempts to “drive traffic” consist of auto-posting each entry to Facebook and Twitter as a link for people to click through to. And yet, here I am, day after day, writing something for anywhere between — most weeks — 20 and 100 people. 24 of you readers are subscribed by email, meaning you get a daily dose of nonsense posted direct to your inbox (and possibly don’t count against my views count, you bastards, unless you actually do, in which case you’re not bastards, and I don’t really care anyway) and I have no idea how many more might be subscribed via RSS.

As I’ve said on a few other occasions, though, the main reason I’m writing all this gobbledegook day after day is for myself. I’m not sure if I’ll be looking back on this content in a few years time and figuring out something profound about myself or not, but I certainly like having it all there — and knowing that there are 629 daily posts before this one (and a few more irregular ones prior to that) is quite satisfying.

I like reading back old things that I’ve written. I don’t keep all old pieces of writing that I do, but I have some knocking around that date back to my school days, which are a good few years ago now. It’s sometimes interesting to look back and read your work and consider what might have been going through your mind at the time — or what inspired you to write a particular work.

I think the oldest piece of writing I’ve still hung onto is the Woolworths notebook that my friend Edd and I took on holiday to Gran Canaria. It was 1992, and we were in Year 7. That holiday was memorable for all sorts of reasons — the cockroach attack in the middle of the night, the discovery of Mortal Kombat and X-Men in the local arcade, our first experiences snorkelling. And most of it is entertainingly chronicled in the dodgy handwriting of the 11-12 year old me.

The way you write changes over the years, even if you’re not a writer and if you don’t do it often. Old people using computers forget how to use capital letters and punctuation (except the exclamation mark, which they use with gay abandon) while some develop a clear sense of style and voice according to who they’re writing to. When you’re twelve, however, most of your writing is written in the same register, however many English lessons on formal and informal letters you might have had. My old notebook is a fine example of this, sharing details of stupid in-jokes that Edd and I had at the time, the context of which has been mostly lost to the mists of time save for the written record of the fact that we did indeed compose a short song called “I’m an egg-timer” together and that we found it inexplicably amusing to hum the theme tune from the Whiskas cat food advert while descending a water slide.

Don’t ask. I have no idea.

I wonder if in twenty years’ time — firstly, will this site still be around or will we all have switched to something like the OASIS platform in Ready Player One? — I’ll still be writing in the same manner. Perhaps I will — in some senses, even though I’m (painfully) aware that I’m thirty years old, in others I feel like I haven’t grown up a whole lot. There’s still a ton of things about the world that I don’t know or don’t understand, and a lot of people seem to have a firmer grasp on them than me — or, more likely, simply do a better job of hiding the fact that they’re overwhelmed by everything out there.

Arguably part of this feeling of “immaturity”, for want of a better word, is writing this every day. When I’m writing some nonsense here, I can just sort of “let go” and channel that twelve year old kid who felt the need to chronicle everything on a holiday with a friend. I’m under no obligations to write in a particular style or follow the AP Style Guide or whatever (though you’ll notice I do make an effort to spell and punctuate correctly, typos aside) so I can just sit back (well, forward, otherwise I can’t reach the keyboard) and type whatever is in my head onto the virtual page in front of me.

This is a nice feeling, and that’s why I do this day after day. I appreciate those of you who keep coming back to read my ramblings, I really do. But the act of writing, of self-expressions, of, in some cases, being able to write things that are difficult to talk about out loud — that’s why I do it. It makes me feel good, makes me feel like I have an outlet and am free to express myself however I see fit. And sure, anyone reading can and will judge me based on the things I write. And that’s fine, because after all, I’m posting all this for public consumption. But more than that, this is something for me. This is me. And if you’ve come along for the ride here and read the last six hundred and whatever posts, you probably know me pretty damn well by now.

If, however, you’re new, the archives are on the right hand side. I’ll see you in a few months.

#oneaday Day 629: The Hypocrisy of Isaac

I’ve posed this question on a couple of social networks today, but I thought I’d discuss it here, too. I’m not sure what the “right” answer is, if any, but I’d be interested to hear anyone else’s thoughts on the subject.

This year, two games have come out that feature gross, puerile humour and content obviously deliberately intended to offend, shock or make people guiltily laugh. Those two games are the high-profile, legendarily-delayed Duke Nukem Forever, and independent developer Edmund McMillen’s latest opus The Binding of Isaac, which I discussed a little here. Despite both featuring extreme gross-out humour, one of them was lambasted as being a smear against all that is good and pure, while the other has been praised and hailed as being daring, forthright and all manner of other superlatives expressing positivity towards its utterly shameless nature.

Those who are gamers will already know that Duke Nukem, the high-profile, well-known title, was the one which got seven shades of shit beaten out of it by the press, while McMillen’s more recent The Binding of Isaac has been hailed — by the same critics who ripped Duke a new one in some cases — as something excellent.

Those readers who are not gamers may not already be familiar with the content of both of these games, so permit me a moment to summarise both titles in an attempt to compare and contrast the type of material on display therein.

Duke Nukem Forever is the fourth in a very long-running series of games which stars the titular Duke — a parody of 80s action heroes with a flat top, an arsenal of bizarre weaponry and a fine line in one-liners. The first two Duke Nukem games were very simple and featured no offensive content whatsoever. From Duke Nukem 3D, the third in the series, the developers let loose and had Duke raising hell in all manner of locations that had not previously been seen in many games — strip clubs, porn theatres, dodgy “rent by the hour” hotels and, eventually, space stations, moon bases and strangely organic alien vessels. Dotted through the bloody carnage — which was all against alien villains — were women. These ranged from strippers in the strip club, who’d flash their pasties at you if you walked up to them and pressed the “Use” key, to women imprisoned by the aliens, who were all nude and typically tied down to something with plant-like tendrils snaking around them, conveniently covering their lady-parts.

The sequel, some 13-plus years in development, featured a lot of similar content, only with the vastly improved graphics that 13-plus years of development will give you. (Some would argue that the game’s visuals don’t represent 13-plus years of progress, but that’s not the matter we’re discussing here.) The game, once again, features the grittier, seedier side of human existence, with one non-violent dream sequence taking place in a strip club. At various other intervals, numerous things happen: it’s implied that Duke is getting fellated by a pair of twins dressed as schoolgirls who may or may not be incestuous lesbians; Duke has the opportunity to pick up a piece of poo and fling it around; Duke can draw whatever he likes on a whiteboard and in the book of a fan who asks him to autograph it; there’s numerous groanworthy puns throughout; there’s a lot of swearing; and one level, dubbed “The Hive” and representing by far the most infamous piece of offensive content in the game, features women very much like those in Duke Nukem 3D tied to things with alien tentacly things wrapped around them, evidently being raped and impregnated with alien offspring. At one point during this level, Duke comes across the twins from earlier in the game, who are caught in this inescapable situation. There’s a wince-worthy joke about them losing pregnancy weight, then they explode as their alien offspring burst forth and attack Duke. (Later in the same level there’s also, inexplicably, a set of tits on the wall, which Duke can wander up to and slap to watch them wobble, giggling as he does so.)

Pretty offensive — or at least of questionable taste — I’m sure you’ll agree. Now, what about The Binding of Isaac?

McMillen’s game is a parody of the ’80s Nintendo Entertainment System game The Legend of Zelda. It features a top-down view of a randomly-generated dungeon which players have to explore, kill monsters, retrieve special items and make their way to the level’s boss and, subsequently, exit.

So far so good. Nothing to worry about here, right?

Wrong.

The Binding of Isaac‘s protagonist is the titular Isaac who, as in the Biblical story, was about to be offered up to God as a sacrifice from his apparently insane and abusive mother. Isaac decided not to stick around to find out if God would stay his mother’s hand so instead escapes, naked and crying, into the basement of the house. Said basement is inexplicably filled with monsters, most of which resemble Isaac to one degree or another, all of which bleed copiously when attacked. Most of these monsters have a degree of “body horror” about them, with swollen heads, growths, body parts such as eyes missing, blood dribbling from places that it shouldn’t dribble from, and all manner of other things. One boss monster attacks you by pissing on you, while others bleed, vomit, bite and shit on you. Isaac attacks his enemies by firing his tears at them.

Isaac can upgrade his abilities by picking up special items which randomly appear on each level. Each one of these has an effect on Isaac’s appearance as well as his abilities. For example, taking growth hormones causes his head to swell up with tumorous growths, while finding a wire coat hanger (a possible reference to abortion) sees Isaac jam it through his head to make him cry more. He gains health by eating dog food, as he is obviously used to it from his abusive mother, and special weaponry on offer include a suicide bomber vest, a sanitary towel, the Anarchist’s Cookbook, a glass of lemonade which immediately causes him to piss himself and numerous other items.

The eventual aim of The Binding of Isaac is to kill Isaac’s mother. By the end of the game, the crying infant of the outset is usually unrecognisable, clad in the random combination of special items he has picked up on his quest — on one occasion he might be wearing his mother’s pants, have horns growing out of his head, be crying blood from his bleeding eye sockets and have a beating heart strapped to his chest. On another, he might have made a pact with the Devil and turned completely black. On yet another, he might have cybernetic implants and vampiric teeth.

The main point is, though, The Binding of Isaac is pretty consistently horrifying and amusing at the same time. Like Duke Nukem Forever, the offensive, horrifying content is in there quite deliberately to provoke a reaction — to attempt to provoke a guilty laugh, or if not, to offend and repulse. If anything, I’d argue that Isaac’s content is more repulsive than that of Duke Nukem Forever, but this fact seems to have been totally skimmed over in many critics’ appraisals of the game.

Note that I’m not arguing in favour of censorship of either game here. I have played and enjoyed both, and found both amusing in a very dark sort of way. Duke‘s humour was mostly lowbrow and silly, with the exception of the Hive level, while The Binding of Isaac consistently mixes the lowbrow poo and fart jokes with sadistic body horror elements.

So, then, given that these two games are arguably on a par with each other in terms of “offensive” content, why did Duke get his ass handed to him by critics? It can’t surely be because of the quality of the game, can it?

Well, perhaps it can. Duke’s gameplay was regarded as too little, too late by many critics, and roundly panned as a result. (I liked it precisely because it was like old shooters, but you know me, ever contrary.) Smelling blood, said critics decided to denounce it as The Worst Thing Ever, drawing particular attention to the Hive level and declaring it morally bankrupt, seemingly losing their black senses of humour in the process.

Along comes The Binding of Isaac, meanwhile, and it can do no wrong. It’s a potent allegory, say the critics. It’s refreshingly brave. It’s up-front and honest. That’s as maybe, but those things you’re laughing at — poo, wee, farts and some gross bloody violence — are pretty similar to those you denounced Duke Nukem for. But The Binding of Isaac is a good game, they argue, meaning that the questionable content can be taken in your stride.

To that, I say simply this: one of the most common reasons Duke Nukem was panned was because it felt dated. However, as I said earlier, The Binding of Isaac takes inspiration from The Legend of Zelda, a game from 1986. It couples this inspiration with material from roguelikes (Rogue itself also appearing in the mid-80s) and Gauntlet (1985). Hmmmm.

As I said at the start, I’m not sure there’s a right answer to this, as your take on both games’ content will be largely subjective — and, like it or not, will seemingly depend on how much you like the game as well — but to me, it certainly smells like there’s more than a whiff of hypocrisy about the whole thing. Do indie developers get a free pass to be more gross and offensive/”daring” simply for being indie developers who aren’t tied to a big publisher?

Oh well. I shan’t worry too much. I have played and enjoyed both games and, for me, that’s the important thing.

#oneaday Day 628: Roleing Wit Da Players

Reading a little about Corvus Elrod and Zakelro’s innovative storytelling game Bhaloidam over on Kickstarter brought to mind my past experiences with tabletop roleplaying. I haven’t done as much of it as I’d have liked to over the years, but the few experiences I have had were excellent ones.

I was a member of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign at university for a while. My character, a thief named Singol Nithryan, was something of a cheeky chappy and there was some excellent banter and rivalry between him and my friend Tim’s character, who was a pompous prig who thought himself better than everyone else. The characterisation of the rivalry between these two characters was completely unscripted, but with each session the plans to outfox each other (well, mostly for Singol to outfox the other chap, whose name I have sadly forgotten) became more and more elaborate. Most times the party settled down to camp tended to end up with Singol cutting his compatriot’s purse and “borrowing” some money — the absence of which his companion often didn’t notice for some time. They weren’t enemies, though — it was good-natured friendly rivalry for the most part, and it made for a fun inter-party dynamic.

To be honest, I can’t remember a lot about the campaign itself and I’m not sure we ever finished it — but we certainly had a blast along the way, and that’s sort of the point. While computer RPGs are all about powerlevelling and reaching the cap as soon as possible, a tabletop experience is all about the storytelling, the interacting and the emergent gameplay that results from cutting loose and improvising a little bit.

The best example of this came with what our mutual friend Will called his “freeform” roleplaying system. It was a system he’d come up with by himself, and it was very simple, requiring, as I recall, only three stats: attack, defense and power. According to the situation, points from each of these stats were spent on various actions, with more points (usually from the power pool) meaning a greater chance of success.

Again, though, it wasn’t about the mechanics, which were almost irrelevant. In fact, the simplicity of the mechanics meant that it was possible — and indeed encouraged — to play bizarre, leftfield characters that simply would have no place in a traditional, say, D&D campaign. As such, our adventuring party — whose backstories we each provided to Will beforehand for him to weave an improvised campaign around — was not your typical RPG lineup to say the least. No, it was a wildly disparate group of… things, that I’d hesitate to call “adventurers” even.

Probably the most normal of the bunch was my character, Rush Hurin, who was born from my wondering what might happen if you combined traditional fantasy tropes with sci-fi. Rush was the last of the elves, and he came from a futuristic Deus Ex-style setting. As the last of his kind, he was a highly sought after commodity. People wanted to do research on him, in other words, but he had absolutely no desire to submit to the demands, prods, pokes and scalpels of some scientists. Consequently, he spent a lot of his life on the run, but, being an elf, had immense agility and was a badass with a sword.

Alongside Rush came Tyrael, played by my friend Tim who was (is) somewhat obsessed with Diablo at the time. Tyrael was a fallen angel in human form who had the ability to, I quote, “go all big and flamey” and also suffered from something of a lack of self control. In one memorable sequence, Rush was fleeing from a skyscraper while Tyrael was turning into his full, multi-storey “big and flamey” form in order to cause some chaos and allow me to escape. That was interesting.

Next up was Arryth (I don’t know how you spelled it), who was an animated suit of armour. Was he a ghost possessing the armour? Was he a sentient suit of armour? We never quite found out, but he proved to be a valuable ally on more than one occasion.

Not as valuable as the Luggage from Discworld, however, who had a predilection for devouring our enemies and, occasionally, spitting them back out again, somewhat confused, into the midst of a tricky situation. He also proved useful for carrying our gear.

Finally came a character I can’t remember the name of, and who was simply an amorphous cloud of pink gas. It didn’t talk much, but it made a good spy and also had the useful ability for flying down opponents’ windpipes and choking them from the inside.

Together, we endured some bizarre adventures which Will was clearly making up as he went along, placing signs in rooms he wasn’t ready for us to visit yet which said “come back later!” and getting his mental challenges from one of those massive puzzle books your parents would buy you on holiday to keep you quiet — before handhelds and smartphones came along, of course. To call our adventures chaotic would be an understatement, to say the least.

But you know what? Those are some of the fondest memories I have of my few sessions roleplaying. It wasn’t about grinding for experience points, making use of my abilities or powergaming — it was about improvisatory, collaborative storytelling, and it was one hell of a lot of fun.

The reason that Bhaloidam has given me such cause for curiosity is that it sounds like something strangely along the same lines to Will’s system. It’s a little more complex, sure, featuring a system to determine how much players influence the game world (and each other) prior to “performing” their actions, but at heart it’s, like our experiences, designed for freedom. It has the scope for telling interesting stories that move far beyond traditional fantasy and RPG tropes and into something that’s not quite roleplaying and not quite improvisatory theatre. It’s a highly interesting concept, is what it is, and I’ll be very curious to see how it turns out in the final project.

If you’re interested, too, check out the Kickstarter page for the project here — you can even help fund its first production run. If you’re a Google+ user, I also strongly recommend popping designer Corvus Elrod and his amazing moustache in your circles.

#oneaday Day 627: Hashashin

Finally started playing Assassin’s Creed again tonight — yes, the first one, and yes, I know the later ones are much better, but I want to know the story from the beginning.

Assassin’s Creed is a story whose premise intrigued me immensely as soon as the details of its now well known “meta plot” leaked out. I mean, sure, simply leaping around various cities and stabbing people in the neck is fun, but having a context for your actions that went beyond just Altaïr’s story was a cool idea — and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with the upcoming Revelations.

Assassin’s Creed the first has its problems, sure, mostly relating to the “investigation” segment of the game, which tends to get a bit repetitive. (Also, the sheer pointlessness of the flag-collecting, which needless to say I shan’t be bothering with.) But it does so many things right. It has a wonderful sense of scale and height. Freerunning across rooftops and nimbly hopping from beam to beam never gets old. And the combat system, though relatively simple, is cinematic and satisfying.

I’m not sure why I didn’t finish it first time around — I think something “higher priority” came around and I never got around to returning to it — but I’m looking forward to seeing how the series pans out. I know Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood are better, for example, but I don’t know how. Since I’ve managed to find super-cheap copies, I will shortly be finding out.

The thing that’s struck me the most from playing this first game though is how much you can forget that top-tier games can feel truly “alive”. When you spend all day reading the marketingspeak that publishers of said top-tier games spout in press releases (coupled with utterly meaningless quotes from their VP of Talking Nonsense In As Many Words As Possible) it’s easy to forget that these games are exciting creative works, and the teams who work on them treat them as such.

Assassin’s Creed, for example, is awash with gorgeous details in its graphics and sound. Its cities are satisfying to explore and climb all over, even if there’s not really any incentive to beyond “woo, look at that view!” But if all the information you had on the game came from Ubi press releases, you wouldn’t know it, because they describe it as a product to be sold, not a creative endeavour to be enjoyed. And that’s kind of sad — though somewhat inevitable given the times we live in.

I shall be romping through the Assassin’s Creed series alongside Xenoblade at present. Maybe I’ll finish all of them before Revelations comes out. Or perhaps if I take my time a bit I can finish them all by the time Revelations gets a bit cheaper!

Oh, and if you spoil anything about any of the series, I will kill you dead.

#oneaday Day 626: Farewell, Mr Jobs

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do,” said Steve Jobs to a group of Stanford University graduates during a commencement speech in 2005. “If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”

Wise words from a great man — who sadly passed away yesterday, aged just 56. I’m actually quite sad about this because, although I obviously didn’t know the man personally, he’s had a profound impact on my life. I’m not the only one, either — this morning various social networks are filling up with tributes to Jobs, his life and the influence that his company Apple’s products have had on their lives. My good buddy AJ Minotti, for example, noted that he’s been podcasting with his brother for four years now — and this is longer than anything else he’s ever committed himself to in his life, whether that’s work, school or relationships. Podcasting defines him, and although podcasting may well have come along in a different form with a different name had Apple not pushed it as a publishing medium, in his mind it’s inextricably associated with Jobs and Apple as a whole.

For me, my exposure to Apple products began with an early stint as a freelance writer for the Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK. I was putting together walkthroughs for Turok 2, Star Wars: Battle for Naboo and Banjo-Tooie. To take screen grabs from these titles, I had to play the game through a video capture card linked to a Mac and take shots from the video feed as I played through. I’m not sure exactly why they used the (then-OS 9 sporting) Macs for their office work, but I guess it was due to the supposedly common knowledge that Mac software was good for creative and design work.

Subsequently, I got myself an iPod with a 20GB hard drive. At the time, I couldn’t imagine ever being able to fill it — but having graduated to it from a 32MB (yes, really) MP3 player it was a revelation to be able to carry that much music around with me in my pocket. I took it everywhere with me, and it lasted a good few years, too. It moved house with me several times, remained an almost permanent attachment to my car stereo and joined me at the gym on many occasions. I came to know and love the music on it and, to this day, that first iPod is one of my favourite pieces of technology I’ve ever owned.

After joining Apple back in 2007, I got my first exposure to the modern OSX Mac, and I was instantly smitten. Here was a system that ran smoothly and efficiently, did what I wanted it to do with minimum fuss and yet still remained powerful enough to let you tweak it as you saw fit. The online community agreed, too, and Macs remain a great platform for independent publishers to release awesome and useful applications, utilities and — to a lesser extent, admittedly — games.

It was the creativity side of things that really grabbed me though. Apple’s iLife suite was excellent, allowing you to do things that many inexperienced users who came through the doors of the store assumed to be difficult, challenging or demanding on their computers. Things like editing and organising photos; editing video; making a DVD; or producing professional sounding music — all of it was within reach of the average user, and all of those applications gave users a firm understanding of the concepts they’d need to be familiar with prior to graduating on to more advanced, professional software.

When my role changed from the in-store “Mac Specialist” salesperson position to the in-store “Creative” personal trainer position, I got to spend all day every day working with these applications, teaching people how to use them, presenting workshops and tutorials on them with genuine enthusiasm — I believed in these products because I’d used them extensively myself — and even training new members of staff on what they needed to know about the computers and their applications. It was, for a very long time, absolutely the best job I ever had, and I felt very much what Steve described when he was addressing those Stanford graduates in 2005. I’m sorry that I had to leave — but, without going into too many details, poor in-store leadership that seemingly rejected many of the core values of the Apple credo meant that I, and several others, saw little choice but to move on to pastures new. In my case, this pretty much marked the “beginning of the end” for me, as from that point I was to only have one more short-term teaching job before a year of unemployment and the collapse of my marriage — along with my life as I knew it, of course. I won’t lie — I regret some of the choices I made back then, but what’s passed is passed, and you can’t change what’s already gone by.

Besides, nowadays things are seemingly back on track, of course. In Apple terms, I still use my Mac every day for work. While it’s getting on in years a bit and, like a faithful old dog, is a little sickly and decides not to do what it’s told at times — Apple products don’t break, you know, yeah, right — it’s still my weapon of choice for all sorts of things: browsing the web, working on documents, working with photos, making music. While I have my PC for gaming, now, Macs will always be a part of my life, as will my trusty iPhone, which never leaves my side.

In short, Steve Jobs has — at least indirectly — had a profound impact on my life. As an employee, he was an inspirational leader with an obvious vision for where he wanted the company to go, and even for those who aren’t Apple “fanboys” it’s difficult to deny that he was a figure in the tech industry who commanded — demanded — respect. He will be greatly missed by all — whether they knew him personally or not.

Farewell, Mr Jobs — and thank you for the good times.

#oneaday Day 625: Communal Listening

I’ve seen a fair bit of negativity floating around surrounding Spotify’s new (optional) integration with Facebook — for those unfamiliar with the changes, Facebook now has a new Music dashboard which broadcasts the details of what you’re listening to from services such as Spotify in real time and provides links for other people to go and listen for themselves.

I’ve seen several people on several social networks decry this as some sort of gross invasion of privacy, but I can’t help feeling they’re missing the point in a number of different areas.

Firstly, the whole “Facebook privacy” concern thing is something of a moot point when you consider the point of the site — it’s a social network designed to let people connect with each other and share things, whether that’s a banal status update, what album they’re listening to or the fact they unlocked an achievement in The Binding of Isaac. What you share on there is, ultimately, up to you, and if you’re worried about your details being online then — there’s no simpler way to say this — don’t put them online. Facebook doesn’t belong to you. It’s never claimed to be a private network and, in many ways, locking yourself in a walled garden when using a social network defeats the object somewhat — if you just want to use it with close friends and family then you might as well just use email.

Taking the music thing specifically, Facebook integration is an excellent idea. Consider how we used to consume music in the pre-Internet days. We’d listen to the radio, watch Top of the Pops, talk with our friends. We might have friends over and listen to a particular band’s latest album together — we’d certainly talk about it the following day at school, in the office, wherever you happened to be spending most of your time. Buying a new album was an event — these days, music is just “there”, it’s just something to have on in the background and people don’t think twice about buying a track here, a track there without any thought of its context as part of a larger album. As part of this evolution, the whole real-world social aspect of music has been somewhat diminished.

Which is why embracing online socialisation is a good thing. Your personal musical tastes — key word personal — are your own individual thing, and there’s very little reason why you shouldn’t want to share them with fellow listeners. In fact, Spotify has always been set up to encourage the discovery and sharing of new tracks thanks to its Spotify URLs and ability to share on Facebook, Twitter and other services. The automatic broadcasting of what you’re listening to right now is simply an evolution and automation of the process. And, if you’re embarrassed about your musical tastes, then you can always turn the facility off.

Facebook is guilty of many things — pointless interface redesigns, a bizarre definition of what “Top News” is, fiddling around with settings behind your back without telling you and gradually building up a near-monopoly on the social Web — but one thing it has always done over the years is do exactly what it set out to do — provide an online social network with which you can communicate and share with your friends. The precise definition of what you can (and what is worth) sharing has changed and grown over the years — but why shouldn’t music be a key part of that? And why, if the infrastructure’s already there to do so, shouldn’t that process be automatic?

You’re very welcome to look at my Music page — here it is.

#oneaday Day 624: Genre-Bending Hogs

These days, there’s a whole lot more game genres than there once were. Whereas in the “olden days” we had shoot ’em ups (which no-one would dream of shortening to “shmup”), platform games, beat ’em ups (which no-one would dream of referring to as “fighting games”, and which had not yet begat the distinction between “fighting game” and “brawler”), adventure games and, occasionally, RPGs. Nowadays, the growth in gaming amongst people who aren’t white spotty nerds with malodorous armpits has meant a corresponding growth in genres which aren’t quite so rooted in gaming convention.

We’ve had the “match 3” puzzle genre — itself an evolution of earlier puzzle titles such as Klax. We’ve had the “time management” game — itself a super-super-super lite version of the real time strategy genre. And we have the “hidden object game”, also known as the “HOG”. (For some reason this annoys me. I’m not sure why. Call me irrational. [You’re irrational. — The Audience.] Thanks.)

I hadn’t tried a hidden object game prior to tonight, but since my BT Broadband account comes with three free months of OnLive’s PlayPack I figured I’d try some of the obscure titles on offer. A game called Elizabeth somethingorother M.D. caught my attention, so I jumped in, not knowing quite what to expect thanks to OnLive’s not-particularly-good job of describing what games are in its catalogue. I was hoping for something more like Trauma Center (itself an example of a new genre) but instead I was confronted with a rather bizarre experience.

If you’ve never tried a hidden object game, here’s how they work: Plot Happens, like in a point and click adventure game (or, more accurately, like in a visual novel, since your interactions in the story are typically fairly limited.) Then, suddenly, for no discernible reason whatsoever, you are tasked with finding the aforementioned hidden objects in a scene, sometimes against a time limit, in order to advance the story.

Now, this sort of “puzzle book” gameplay would be absolutely fine if it made any sort of sense whatsoever. If I was looking for items to use in an adventure game style I would have no problem with suspending my disbelief while Doctor Elizabeth thingummybob faffed around trying to work out why she’d left her forceps on the bookcase. But instead you’re tasked with finding completely incongruous objects that have no bearing on the scene whatsoever.

I’ll give you an example: in the first interactive scene of Doctor Elizabeth Investigates or whatever it was called (I’d look it up, but I can’t be bothered — there’s your journalistic integrity for you right there) I was tasked with taking the patient’s heartbeat using my stethoscope (fair enough, good start) and testing his reflexes with a hammer (similarly doctor-y). However, I was then challenged to find — in a hospital ER, I might add — three beetles, two statues, a club symbol, a gift-wrapped box, a plunger, a dinosaur and several other bizarre items which, oddly enough, vanished as soon as more Plot needed to Happen.

Now, I wouldn’t call the experience “bad” as such, since hunting for the objects on the screen had a certain addictive quality to it similar to that which kept you fumbling around in puzzle books before anyone knew what handhelds or iPhones were. But it’s the sheer bizarreness of interspersing a fairly serious-sounding plot with the complete flippancy of hunting down bizarre objects against a time limit — and that’s not even beginning to consider the hospital’s cleanliness record if it’s letting that many giant beetles into its emergency room. That said, I guess the combination of elements is no more bizarre than Puzzle Quest.

I’m not sorry I tried it, but the genre’s apparent popularity is somewhat bewildering. Hidden object games are seemingly only slightly less prolific than match-3 puzzle games with the casual market — which suggests that people are buying them. This means that they either don’t notice the incongruity of the gameplay and the narrative — or they don’t care. Which is fair enough, I guess — it all depends on what you want to get out of your gaming experience.

#oneaday Day 623: Crime and Punishment

It’s been a while since I told a story from my past life at the chalkface, so I feel it’s about time we fixed that with another real-life tale of What Teaching is Really Like.

I worked in three schools (not counting those I did supply teaching in) during the course of my teaching career — two secondary and one primary. One of the secondaries and the primary were in what could politely be termed “somewhat deprived areas” while the other secondary was right on the border of an aforementioned “somewhat deprived area” and a very middle-class town — the sort of place that has shops that sell nothing but fabric, and tearooms rather than branches of Starbucks, that sort of thing.

All three of them, regardless of location, and regardless of age group, had Problem Children. You could often preemptively tell a Problem Child from the names on the register — generally speaking, if a child was male and called Jordan, female and had some obscure misspelling of a relatively normal name (Kaylee, Abbygale, Rooth) or of either sex and in possession of a completely made-up stupid name (Peaches, Infographia, Cubblers) they were likely to be a Problem Child. Sometimes you were pleasantly surprised — girls named Jordan often ended up being quite nice, and when you got your hands on a new class you often didn’t know the sexes of the pupils, particularly if they had stupid names — but more often than not you’d run into a Problem Child sooner or later.

One particular Problem Child I encountered in the primary school in which I taught had a relatively normal name and, ironically, was one of the brighter kids in the class. But my God he was an asshole. He’d answer back, he’d yell at the teacher, the teaching assistant and his peers, and he’d frequently storm out of the room if he was pulled up on any sort of inappropriate behaviour. When parents’ evening came around, I spoke to his parents about his behaviour — particularly the violent side of things — and I was told that they had simply told him to react to anything he saw as “unfair treatment” by striking back. “If someone hits you,” said the dad, “you hit them back.”

There’s not much you can say to that, really, even with all the Anti-Bullying Policies and Zero Tolerance Initiatives in the world.

Then there was a Problem Child I came into regular contact with during my time at the first secondary school at which I taught. He, too, was an asshole, and this time with no redeeming features whatsoever — i.e. he was a dimwit as well. Again, he’d be aggressive, sweary, belligerent and completely resistant to authority. And again, there was no support from the parents.

“My mum says I don’t have to come to detentions,” he told me upon receiving a detention for being a cunt (obviously not the exact wording I used on the form recording said inappropriate behaviour). “So I’m not coming.”

He didn’t come.

With many of these children — particularly in cases there was no parental support for whatever reason — it was pretty much impossible to instill any sort of discipline in them. There was nothing that they feared. They didn’t fear detentions because they just wouldn’t turn up. They didn’t fear the wrath of the teachers or senior staff members. And they didn’t fear exclusion because that just meant time away from the school they hated so much. There was little to nothing that could be done to discourage these little grotbags from acting like complete bellends.

The teacher training guides would say that punishment is not the way to go — that positive reinforcement is, in fact, the way in which they best learn what behaviours are appropriate and which are not. The trouble is, taken to the extreme, you end up with the ridiculous sight that many schools indulge in — primary schools in particular — which is the weekly Celebration Assembly. Here, the whole school gathers and a selection of children from each tutor group are called up one by one to come to the front and receive a certificate. These certificates aren’t necessarily for academic achievement — and, indeed, usually aren’t. No, these certificates are frequently awarded for “playing nicely with the other children” and “sitting in a chair for over half of the lesson” and “not hurting anyone”. All of those are genuine examples, by the way, unlike the names I gave earlier, most of which were made up.

Now, while it’s nice to celebrate the fact that little Cockbag, who never sits in his chair for more than 5 seconds and loves punching everyone in the neck, actually sat down and completed two maths questions in the last week, it completely devalues the entire concept of “rewards” for everyone — teacher and pupil. When I was at primary school in the late 80s and early 90s, we were rewarded for good work in class or special achievements. Go and colour in a square on your rocket. Have a gold star. Show the class what you’ve done. No-one got a square on their rocket, a gold star or the opportunity to show the class what they’d done for successfully sitting in their chair for more than fifteen seconds at once.

I wonder what on Earth the solution could be. It’s pretty clear from what I saw that the one and only thing that the Problem Children feared was humiliation in front of their friends and peers — something that undermined their “authority”, for want of a better word. So perhaps some sort of Inverse Celebration Assembly would be warranted, where the headmaster solemnly called out the names of the worst offenders each week, brought them onto the stage and forced them to do the Dance of Shame while everyone else pointed and laughed. Anyone who refused to do the Dance of Shame would be fed to the goldfish kept by Class 2, who had developed a taste for human flesh ever since Barry Jenkins kept his hand in there for an entire period for a bet.

But then that’s probably some sort of human rights violation, isn’t it?

#oneaday Day 622: Party Smart

I may be voluntarily indicting myself into the “I am an old man now” club but I have come to the irrefutable conclusion that You Do Not Need Alcohol to Have a Good Time.

Well, duh, you might say. We’ve been told that for years. But how many people really believe it?

I’m speaking purely from my own perspective here as I’m more than aware that plenty of people use booze as a form of social lubricant prior to slipping their conversational penis into the Vagina of Meaningful Interactions. I’m saying it doesn’t really work for me.

I thought it did for a while. At University, as most people tend to do, I drank a lot, mostly out of a desire to be sociable and fit in — even with seeing a close friend suffer from (and, thankfully, subsequently beat) a drinking problem. I quickly confirmed my early suspicions that I didn’t like beer at all, which precluded me from most Student Night promotions, and instead opted for spirits or alcopops.

Even with those, however, I found I had an obvious “line” which, if crossed, would switch the night from being “entertainingly blurry” to “unpleasantly blurry”. Sometimes I crossed this line by accident with just one sip too many; others I was goaded and cajoled into it by the company I was with at the time; others still I, like a child in some ways, wanted to “test my limits”. The result was always the same, however; a kebab on the way home, a longer-than-average dump during which I’d often almost-but-not-quite fall asleep, a night of disturbed sleep wondering whether or not I’d be sick (to which the answer was usually “yes”) followed by a morning of being sick, barely being able to move and always taking a bin into the bathroom with me in case disaster struck while I was the wrong way around to puke in a manner which didn’t require cleaning up.

Despite the inevitability of the above scenario, I still continued to do it. Drinks of choice changed — vodka and Red Bull being a favourite for probably the longest, despite its ludicrous cost — but the presence of social occasions did not. Drinks down the pub after a session with a club. Monday nights at the local grotty nightclub following Theatre Club rehearsals. And, of course, the occasional house party.

I used to hate house parties, but I’d still go. Most of them tended to devolve into me finding my “line”, stopping just short of it and then spending the rest of the evening looking longingly across the room at some girl I’d arbitrarily decided that night that I fancied, and then didn’t go and talk to for fear of her thinking I was a dick, a perv or quite simply just someone she didn’t want to talk to.

In short, then, in a good 8-9 cases out of 10, alcohol didn’t particularly work as the social lubricant it’s sold as. A few half-hearted “woo, I’m so drunk!”s do not make for meaningful friendships and relationships, and as such I’m pretty sure that most of my aforementioned meaningful relationships and friendships started and were best cultivated when sober. Sure, there were times when I’d gone out, got drunk and had a great time with said people — but as time passed, these got less and less frequent, and the booze became less and less important.

When I finally left university and started work as a teacher, the demands of the job meant that for the most part I didn’t have time to drink, let alone the inclination. I dabbled with having a stiff G&T upon coming home from the first school in which I worked — which was a nightmarish shithole conjured up from between Satan’s very buttocks — but it didn’t particularly help with the growing feelings of stress and depression I had, and nor was I expecting it to. I had an occasional G&T because it was a nice drink in the summer, and it happened to be one of the few alcoholic beverages which I didn’t hate the taste of.

Fast forward to now and I haven’t drunk for quite some time, and I don’t miss it. The last few times I drank wine or vodka or gin, the taste was not something I enjoyed, and it felt like it “burned” on the way down, leaving me with a slight lingering feeling of unpleasantness after just one sip in many cases. Certainly it was enough to put me off a university-style binge, but it’s also pretty much enough to put me off it altogether. It’s unnecessary for me, it doesn’t particularly help me open up to people — though it does help me act like a dick, but then, I’m in no hurry to be the butt of everyone’s jokes for being wasted — and, in more cases than one, I’ve seen what it can do to people, and that’s not pleasant.

In short, then, I think I’m knocking it on the head. This isn’t a strict teetotal policy or anything but I’m certainly not going to seek out alcohol or feel pressured into it on social occasions.

I’ve been away this weekend and heard the phrases “you need to be drunk” or “you need to drink more” uttered several times. No you don’t. Or, more accurately, Idon’t. No-one needs to be drunk. No-one needs to drink “more”. You should be free to enjoy a drink if you enjoy it, but it should not be a necessity.

If this has come across as in any way sanctimonious, that certainly wasn’t the intention and I apologise — I’m simply saying how I feel about it and what works for me in this instance. I’m certainly not judging those who do enjoy a drink and know their limits — and equally, I’m not judging those who have a genuine problem and are taking steps to deal with it. Everyone’s different, after all. All I’m saying is this: if you’re socialising with me or at a party I’m throwing (haha, yeah, right) then have a drink or two by all means — just don’t expect (or, worse, demand) than I join you.

And don’t throw up on my carpet.