#oneaday Day 135: Patience is a Virtue

I've often been complimented on what is possibly my best virtue — my patience. I've developed this over many long and arduous years, and I attribute my possession of it as a virtue to two things in particular: video games and music.

Music's contribution is obviously (possibly) from the amount of practice necessary to get to a good stage with your instrument playing, composition, singing or whatever. While I don't do as much practice as I did when I was growing up — no exams or anything to aim for at the moment, for one thing — I can still sit down and actually work on something until I get it right if necessary. Sure, it might be frustrating for anyone sitting nearby to listen to the same few bars over and over at gradually-increasing tempi, but that's why God invented electric pianos and headphones.

Video games' contribution is, interestingly, almost the exact same reason — practice. I was playing my evergreen favourite game Trackmania United earlier today and it occurred to me that I was quite happy to sit there and repeatedly attempt each level until I got a result with which I was satisfied. It helps, of course, that Trackmania carries little to no penalty to failure, much like the notorious Super Meat Boy. Hit the "restart" button and, unlike many racing games out there, you're immediately back on the start line, ready to go. The fact it's so easy to restart and try again makes the whole thing a lot more conducive to repeated attempts. And the more repeated attempts you make without your head exploding or a string of expletives erupting forth from your mouth, the more your patience builds up.

Patience has come in useful in many life situations. When I worked as a teacher, I had to make use of it pretty much every day as the more unpleasant children out there have a habit of trying to "push" their teachers as far as possible until they snap. Sure, I did "snap" once or twice, including the time that drove me out of secondary teaching for good and left me on sick leave for over six weeks — I'm only human, after all — but for the most part, I managed to maintain composure even in the face of extreme adversity — including one time when a 14-year old kid threatened to knife me because I'd asked him (politely) to stop talking. Nice, huh?

It's not just teaching where patience comes in useful, though. Waiting in a post office queue is a situation that practically demands patience (and judging by the amount of tutting and sighing that generally goes on in such a queue, not many people have taken the time to hone their skills) and so is attempting to explain to an elderly person how to use a computer. And there are many more situations in which it becomes useful. Mostly, though, if you're patient about things, when the thing you've been patiently waiting for finally comes along, it's worth the wait because you haven't got yourself all wound up beforehand.

So chill out, relax, have a juice. That thing you're waiting for is just around the corner. (Unless it's a taxi, in which case you all know what "just around the corner" really means.)

#oneaday Day 134: Eurovision

I'd say "sorry for the late entry", but looking at the clock it's somehow only 11pm and yet my pissed-up state makes it feel a great deal later, and that going to bed and sleep would be a Very Good Idea right now. In fact, I'd already gone to bed before I realised I hadn't written today's entry, and promptly leapt out of bed to sort out that situation forthwith. Fortunately, my awesome girlfriend Andie has already succumbed to the lure of sleep, so she probably won't notice that I snuck off to write this, at least until tomorrow morning, when she might read it.

The reason I'm so pissed-up is because of the Eurovision song contest. It's been some time since I last watched it, but as I recall, the last few times I watched it also involved a great deal of drinking, even without the use of The Eurovision Drinking Game, the rules of which seem to vary from social group to social group.

Tonight's rules involved drinking whenever you saw someone (not necessarily a lead singer) who was "hot", any time there was a key change (disappointingly infrequent this year) and, as the evening proceeded, a variety of other criteria, including light-up outfits and "if you felt like it".

As I say, it's been a while since I watched Eurovision and the songs on display this year seemed disappointingly short of the usual cheesy nonsense and skirt-ripping usually on display. France, in particular, seemed to be taking the whole thing very seriously, with a quasi-operatic number that seemed completely out of place. I hasten to add we've turned it off before all the voting is over — mostly because the voting goes on for hours and hours and hours but at least partly because of the amount of vodka and Tizer (classy) that has been consumed throughout the course of the evening.

Jedward were on fine form representing Ireland, exhibiting a song which required them to do little more than shout a bit whilst dressed as homosexual space marines while their backing singers did 95% of the work. The UK's entry Blue was rather weak, with some dodgy tuning issues in the solo singing, but some nice harmonies. As usual, there were conspiracy theories about the UK entry's mixing making it appear worse than it was, which I feel is missing the point somewhat — however much we used to enjoy dancing to Blue in Kaos "back in the day", they were never that good really, were they?

Germany's entry was notable for featuring a spectacularly hot lead singer (the same one as last year, I believe, not that I watched it last year) and a song that was actually quite listenable and a bit Portishead-ish. The fact it was quite listenable, however, meant that it was completely inappropriate for Eurovision.

In fact, the whole thing was disappointingly light on eccentricity this year — there was no Norwegian death metal, and only one group featured a unicycle. Maybe next year it'll get back on track.

Also, it's not the same without Wogan.

Anyway. I'm off my face (and surprisingly coherent despite this) so I'm off to bed now. Good night.

#oneaday 133: This Beat is Spidertronic

I hate spiders. Although I don't hate them as much as when I was little, when the slightest hint of a spider (or indeed a piece of fluff that looked a bit like a spider, or anything with more than two legs that was smaller than a cat) terrified me to such a degree that I always had to go and get someone to help sort it out. And I'd practically shit myself if there was ever one in the bath, because bath spiders are always 1) huge and 2) ninja stealth masters.

I'm better now. I still don't like the big ones (especially the ones that are so big you can see the hairs on their legs) but little ones are no problem. I have no qualms in hoovering them up or indeed going mano a mano with them armed only with a piece of toilet paper and some squeezy fingers.

Of course, the pacifists and spider rights people would say I don't have to kill them, but if I didn't kill them, they'd come and crawl over me and bite me. (I've never been bitten by a spider. But it would just take once to make all those childhood fears justified.) Perhaps they're just being friendly when they come and crawl on you. But I'm not willing to risk that. If I see a spider and it's someplace where it might a) fall on me b) crawl on me or c) fall onto something near me, it has to go — preferably into a Hoover.

Why are spiders scary, though? Is it the fact they have far too many legs? Possibly. Is it the fact they're unpredictable and prone to sitting still for hours at a time then suddenly springing into action when provoked? Perhaps. Is it their colour? So you're saying black things are scary? You racist.

Perhaps there isn't a reason. Phobias are generally pretty irrational, after all. The statistical likelihood of being bitten by a spider is probably pretty slim, unless you — ouch!

Just kidding. I haven't really been bitten by a spider. To my knowledge, there are no spiders in this room at this time (though writing that sentence has, of course, made me paranoid) so I'm safe. There is one of those weird semi-transparent ones hanging in the bathroom, though, which may have to be destroyed at some point in the very near future, just in case it invites its big hairy friends over for a party.

So anyway. Spiders can sod off back down the plughole. They can spin all the pretty dew-covered webs they like in the garden, so long as they don't scuttle across my floor while I'm watching a scary movie or playing Silent Hill.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lovely girlfriend sitting in my room playing Katamari who needs some attention. Good night. Don't let the spiders bite.

#oneaday Day 132: Sleep Tight

(Aside: "Sleep tight"? What the hell does that mean? For one, it implies you can somehow "sleep loose", which sounds suspiciously like bollocks to me. But I digress.)

Sleeping's a strange thing, really, isn't it? It's something natural and instinctive — so much so that it's pretty much impossible to explain to someone how to do it. I know I can't. I know that I can't even explain it to myself, and the more you think about trying to get to sleep, the less able you are to actually do it. "Trying to sleep" becomes "lying in a dark room with your eyes shut trying not to think about anything and failing".

Because that's impossible. You can't think about nothing. It's actually impossible. There is no way you can completely clear your mind of absolutely everything, because even if you're picturing darkness or a black wall or something, you're still picturing something, not nothing. And your consciousness of the fact that you're not clearing your mind, the fact that you're thinking of something, not nothing, that makes things worse.

It gets even worse when it's late and you know that you actually need to get to sleep otherwise the following day is going to be hellish, especially if you have to get up early. Not only do you have the pressure of trying to clear your mind and get to sleep (and inevitably failing) but you also end up opening your eyes every so often just to check how much time you're wasting when you could spend it sleeping.

Then you realise your phone's by your bed, so you figure a quick round of Bejeweled Blitz/couple of levels of Angry Birds/few weeks on Game Dev Story/couple of attempts at Tiny Wings/an episode of Cause of Death is just what you need to make you drop off. And so you play for a bit, and your eyes get heavy, but then you figure "what if someone's said something interesting or exciting on Twitter?" so you check that, then look at your emails, then possibly send an email or two to people you've been meaning to email for ages but never remember to in the daytime. By now, your brain is full of words and jumping birds and Special Agent Natara Williams and so there's no hope of you getting to sleep any time soon, so you go and get yourself a drink and/or a sandwich and/or a jammy dodger and then repeat the whole process over and over again.

I envy those people who can just keel over in pretty much any context and start happily snoring away. Clearly I need to sleep in a sensory deprivation chamber approximately three miles away from my phone and any other electronic equipment.

#oneaday Day 131: Thoughts on Star Raiders

1979's Star Raiders and its 1986 sequel are, to me, two of the most memorable games I've ever played. The original Star Raiders was notable for being a pretty convincing simulation of what it might like to be to fly a spaceship and defend a galaxy that absolutely, 100% wasn't ripped off from Battlestar Galactica, oh no, from the "Zylons". Sure, it had crude graphics and sound, but its interesting blend of spaceflight, combat and light strategic elements made it a compelling example of early gaming that is actually still perfectly playable today, unlike many other retro "classics". It also taught me what "red alert" meant long before I ever saw my first Star Trek episode.

Its sequel upped the ante with better graphics, a wider variety of foes to battle against and more things to do than just fly around and shoot Zylons in space — you got to orbit planets, take on motherships, bomb bases and all sorts of things.

Now, some 25 years after the last Star Raiders game made an appearance, we have a brand new one for both Xbox 360 and Windows (and, if Sony ever gets PSN up and running again, PS3.)

I will preface this by saying that if you are thinking about playing this game on a console, just don't, all right? If you never played Wing Commander III on PlayStation 1, you've never known the horror of having too many controls and not enough buttons on your joypad. Hint to developers: if you need to include a "shift" button in your joypad-based control scheme, you may wish to rethink it somewhat.

Try it on a PC with a proper Giger alien-penis joystick and some not-inconsiderable control redefining, though? Now that's more like it. What we have here is a relatively simplistic space game that, unlike many recent examples, remembers that space is three-dimensional, and that it is, in fact, possible to "loop the loop" in space, along with go up and down, turn left and right and roll around your axis.

A good start. Add a transforming ship to that mix and you have some interesting possibilities. Your all-new Star Raiders ship (called, inexplicably, "Jasper") can transform between "Attack" (constant forward movement, high top speed, poor turning, guns and missiles), "Assault" (mech-like move-and-strafe, lower top speed, excellent turning, guns and heavy laser beam) and "Turret" (rapid aiming, snail's pace movement, super-powerful heavy weapons) modes. When I first started playing, I wondered why you'd ever want to switch out of "Attack" mode, until I realised that I was spending an awfully long time chasing down Zylon fighters that were more manoeuvrable than me. So I switched to "Assault" mode and found that I could kill them rather more easily. And "Turret" mode came in handy for dealing with capital ships.

The first few missions were a bit samey, despite claiming to be "recon" and "combat" missions — they all seemed to involve "destroy [x] number of Zylon fighters", possibly against a time limit. But then the fourth "story" mission came along, which tasks you with finding a piece of a secret weapon that will help you deal with a Zylon secret weapon. Said piece of secret weapon is stashed somewhere in an asteroid. And this asteroid is pretty big. So big that when you're flying over its surface, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were conducting a planetside mission. Not only that, but part of the mission involves going inside the asteroid, at which point switching to Assault mode effectively turns the game into Descent, which is awesome. I'll ignore, for now, the fact that the game crashed on me at this point just as I was about to finish that mission.

I wasn't sure what to think of Star Raiders when I first started playing it. Then I looked at the clock and realised I'd been playing for nearly two hours. So something must be right somewhere. It's clearly not the original game in any shape or form — the "galactic map" interface in the game is a glorified mission select screen rather than the strategic overview of the original — but what it does offer is a good, fun, if simplistic space combat game with some nice ideas and a horrendously poor control scheme on console.

At £6.99, though, you can probably afford to take a chance on it, though, right?

Oh, if you're interested, then…

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New (previously-mentioned Descent bit):

#oneaday Day 130: Cats are Awesome

I could write about the whole Brink flame war, but I already did that professionally earlier, so I won't go over the same ground.

Instead, I thought I'd write about why cats are awesome.

This is inspired by the visit I had today from one of next door's cats, who is the very best example I've ever seen of a curious cat. She came in, demanded a bit of attention (which she got, as I have a genetic condition which means I cannot walk past any cat without at least attempting to pet it) and then proceeded to explore the house. She started upstairs, where she climbed onto my desk, wandered around behind my computer and then trod all over my keyboard while I was trying to send an email. She then looked very tempted to leap out of the window, but I encouraged her not to.

Next, she paid a visit to the lounge, where the piano is. Despite my polite requests for her not to, she jumped onto the piano and looked curiously into the inner workings. The lid was down, I hasten to add, and there clearly wasn't space for a cat.

Except there was. She managed to squeeze herself into the gap under the lid and disappear completely, the only evidence that she was there at all the sound of the bass strings vibrating slightly. Then a little head poked out as she attempted to extricate herself with some difficulty. I could have put the lid up for her, but she got herself into the situation she was in so she was damn well going to get herself out again.

You don't often think of animals as having "personalities" but cats very much do. The two cats who used to live in the family home (one after the other, not together, as neither were that fond of other feline company) both had distinct personalities, with Penny, our first cat, being all but convinced she was human and our family doing nothing to dissuade her, even inviting her to have Christmas dinner at the dining table on more than one occasion — and invitation she graciously accepted. Our next cat Kitty, on the other hand, was a bit dim but very affectionate, and made it her mission to make even self-professed cat-haters like her.

I know dogs have personalities too. But they need walking and they poo in the street and are rubbish at entertaining themselves, whereas cats are quite happy sleeping all day, stealing cheese and sunning themselves in the garden, with human interaction only coming when they feel like it, thank you very much.

So yes — given the choice and opportunity to have my own pet? Cats all the way, clearly.

#oneaday Day 129: Professionalism Is

Skills are a funny thing. Unlike in the world of roleplaying games, it's extremely difficult to quantify skills. Sure, you can go and get yourself a qualification, but it's not a simple case of repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again until a chime sounds and the words "LEVEL UP!" appear over your head. (Unfortunately. Because that would have made assessing learning in the classroom a whole lot easier.)

No, the vast majority of skills that you (well, I) have are not quantifiable in any sense. I can write — well — but that's difficult to prove except with, well, writing. I can't point to a character sheet and say "Look! 85 skill points in writing!" when applying for a job. I can just say things along the lines of "I'm excellent at writing" and "I have a strong attention to detail and think people who use the wrong 'your' should be abused with sledgehammers" or the like. I can also correct typos without too many people noticing.

It's even worse with IT skills. I can use computers, and I have a knack for being able to find creative solutions to problems if something's behaving strangely. When putting my new PC together the other day, I found myself frustrated with the woeful instructions that came with it and just worked things out for myself. Sure, it took me a little while to figure out that you can actually unscrew and take out 3.5" drive bays in order to fit a hard drive in them — I thought it was a bit stupid to expect Eugene Victor Tooms levels of contortion just to screw in a storage device — but I got there in the end. (Also, bonus points if you know the reference.) However, the ability to "find things out" isn't quantifiable in any way, and short of someone plonking me down in front of a broken computer and saying "fix it!" there's no way I can prove that I'm "good with computers".

I guess this is where all those lessons you had in Persuasive Writing back in school come in handy. It's up to you to convince people that you are The Right Person for the Job by using suitably flowery language and/or carefully referencing things you know about the person in question. And it doesn't always work, as my year's worth of "we have decided to pursue another candidate" emails and letters will attest.

But oh well. Some good has come of my skills and abilities — I'm writing for sites I like on a freelance basis, and that in itself is giving me a sizeable portfolio of experience that I can point at should I find myself in the running for a full-time position somewhere. While it may not be a character sheet with 85 skill points in the Writing skill, it's the next best thing.

#oneaday Day 128: That's Not Very PC

I just bought a new PC. Well, technically, I bought a case with a motherboard, processor, RAM and PSU pre-installed along with a graphics card, the wrong wireless adapter, a hard drive, a DVD drive and a few other little bits and pieces. Technically speaking, it cost a lot of money that I don't really have, but while I can at least "sort of" afford it (that's the closest I'm going to get for a while) I figured I'd take the plunge as a birthday treat to myself.

I have it hooked up to my HDTV and it looks glorious at 1080p. Naturally, the first thing I did was download a bunch of stuff from my Steam account that used to run like ass on my Mac and see how well it works on the new machine. Here are my findings so far:

Mass Effect – Silky smooth, character models are blurrier than I remember from the Xbox version, but the gorgeous framerate makes up for that.
The Witcher – Super-sexy hi-res, though the frame rate chugs a bit if there's a fancy magical effect taking up a lot of the screen. It otherwise looks great, though.
Crysis – Bought for £2.50 in the EA sale the other day even though I have been fairly anti-Crysis in the past — granted, I haven't played it and was ready to dismiss it as a shooter. But by God that game looks fantastic. Am actually intrigued to play it, too — it seems to be rather different from your typical corridor shooter.
Left 4 Dead 2 – Silky-smooth. Hi-res. Actually playable rather than borderline unplayable.
Borderlands – My God why did I ever play this on a console? (Although the PC interface is a bit crap in the menus.)
Magicka – actually runs and looks like fun. Bit juddery at times though I think that is more down to its questionable programming than performance issues.
TrackMania United – Looks great on a 40" HDTV and is just as fun as ever. Looking forward to TrackMania 2 now.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent – Had a copy of this for ages, just started. Looks utterly terrifying. Looking forward to it.

So. Looking forward to playing some games the way they are meant to be played. And of course, if any of you want to add me on Steam, you can feel free — Steam community username is, as always, "angryjedi". Say hey and feel free to send me a message or send me an invite to a game.

Now I'm off to go and shit my pants at Amnesia. See you in the morning. Maybe.

#oneaday Day 127: You Checked In

Gamification pervades our mobile, Internet-connected society. The concept has been around a lot longer than the buzzword, of course, but it's in recent years that it's really taken off thanks to all manner of applications that while in practice are mostly pointless, somehow manage to be fun. I guess that's part of the point.

Take Foursquare, for example, primarily a service to do two things: to tell people where you are, and to find things that are nearby. But add in points, leaderboards and collectible badges and somehow it becomes an incentive to get out and about and explore places. Same with rival app Gowalla, which has a whole other set of things to collect.

When the whole "check-in" craze first started, it looked like it was primarily going to be a location-based service. But no — services like GetGlue popped up, allowing people to check in to the entertainment they were enjoying as well as discuss it with others and find out new things that they like.

Whatever you think about the applications and their uses themselves, all of them contribute to building up a large, mostly user-generated database of Interesting Things, whether those things are places, pieces of entertainment, beers or whatever else you can check in to these days. Would people take the time to put these collaborative databases together if they didn't feel like they were being "rewarded" for it?

Well, perhaps. Look at Wikipedia — that represents a repository of a considerable amount of human knowledge on topics both important and utterly asinine. There's no experience levels, badges or anything else there, just the contributors' knowledge that they have helped with a worldwide effort to collect humanity's knowledge.

What the "gamification" side of things adds, though, is enough incentive for lazy people to take part. People who write and edit Wikipedia entries are, in all likelihood, interested in their topic enough to be able to write at length about it — not to mention putting up with the seemingly-endless community criticism. Someone who checks into a Foursquare venue and leaves a tip saying "try the beef curry, it's fantastic and only costs four quid on Tuesdays" is helping out other people who may be stopping by the same beef curry-selling establishment and also feels like they're having a bit of fun while doing it.

Perhaps the education sector should take note. There's already an element of gamification in schools, what with marks and grades and so on, but perhaps children would be more engaged with things like reading if there was more of a game-like "incentive" for them to get on with it? Perhaps schools should set up their own GetGlue-style social network to allow kids to check in to what they are doing and earn "rewards" for things like reading books, completing homework and the like.

Okay. You shouldn't need that sort of thing to get kids engaged — but having worked as a teacher, it's clear that something should be done to get kids interested rather than apathetic. Perhaps gamification is the way forward for education?

#oneaday Day 126: Bleurgh

Being ill is rubbish. There is no kind of being actually, genuinely ill that is good, whether you've got a bit of a cold or your cock has just dropped off from leprosy. (And don't even think about correcting me about bits dropping off from leprosy. I don't care because I'm ill and therefore grumpy.)

I'm not talking about pulling a sickie. No, that's always awesome if you get away with it. That phone call in the morning, the exaggerated coughs and tired-sounding voice, perhaps flushing the toilet to imply you've just been vomiting and/or pooing or, in the case of truly serious cases of fake illness, getting someone to phone on your behalf because you're "too sick to come to the phone" or you've "lost your voice".

No. I'm not talking about that.

Specifically, at the moment, I'm talking about the kind of being ill which just lingers a bit like a bad smell (sometimes literally) but doesn't actually incapacitate you completely. This is one of the most frustrating kinds of mild illness (I say "mild" because I imagine having cancer or AIDS is probably a lot more frustrating than almost anything in the universe) because you feel like you should be doing things, and that you're being lame for just wanting to snuggle up under a blanket and watch Battlestar Galactica* all day. But then your body promptly corrects you the second you try to do anything by reminding you that — surprise! — you're full of snot and therefore can't breathe or do anything without gasping for breath, mouth-breathing or doing old-man grunts.

This is, of course, rubbish. It's doubly rubbish if you're by yourself and have no-one to moan and complain at and look pathetic and hope they bring you chicken soup and bacon sandwiches and mop your fevered brow with a cold flannel or whatever it is that people do for an ill partner. Although the temptation to milk it somewhat if said partner is present is always there. "Oh! I ache so much! I feel like I'm going to die! The only thing that could possibly save me is a packet of crisps and a big cup of coffee! Who will save me from a fate worse than death?"

I'm actually not that bad, really, though I woke up feeling like a newly-reanimated corpse this morning, and my throat has spent the day feeling like I swallowed a tennis ball made of sandpaper. I was all set to go away this weekend, but have decided for the sake of my mildly ill self to give it a miss and try and recover a bit. Hopefully that will work, so I don't have to proceed through the following week in similar misery and mild illness.

For now, I feel it's time for Lemsip and Soothers. G'night.