#oneaday, Day 67: Pre-Flight Checklist

[I appeared not to have published this at the time. Here it is, for what it's worth.]

Well, I'm shortly off. I have the travel jitters. I'm not nervous about the journey itself – I'm quite happy travelling – but I have those last-minute jitters where you're convinced you've forgotten something. And, being me, as my wife will take great delight in pointing out to you, I probably have forgotten something. But I have underpants, socks, T-shirts, shirts, jumpers, gloves, a scarf, a toothbrush, some deodorant, some shampoo, enough wires to make a terrorist blush, a Nintendo DS Fat (old-school fat, not XL), a Sony PSP, games for both, an iPhone, a Nikon DSLR camera (with its memory card in it), an Asus netbook, my travel documents – plane e-ticket, boarding pass, coach ticket to get to the airport in the first place (leaving in one hour), odd US security form, passport, details of where I'm actually staying, cash… Anything else?

If so, I'm going to have to live without it. Or pick one up there. Because I'm not packing anything else!

Currently syncing my iPhone (well, clearing some space on it, anyway) and then I do believe I'll be ready to go. Even with time to pick up some breakfast on the way! How cool is that? It's super-cool, that's what it is.

Anyway, the next post on here will either come from Heathrow Airport (if I get bored) or Boston, MA. See you soon!

#oneaday, Day 66: The Time Has Come

I'm going to write this in something of a rush because I need to go to bed. But I'm not going to default on my blogging just for pesky tiredness' sake! No, it might be a short, crap entry, but dammit if I'm not going to write on right now.

Anyway.

Tomorrow, I fly to Boston for PAX East. It's strange to think that this time has finally come. When I think back to early in this whole "one a day" experiment and the things I said, wondering whether or not I'd be able to go, wondering whether I'd be able to get out of my job, wondering if I'd ever make it to the States to see my friends whom I only know by their Twitter avatars and occasional glimpses of embarrassing photos on Facebook.

Now, that fantasy is a reality. Well, it will be very soon, anyway.

There are two emotions in my head right now. Immense excitement… and nerves. Almost like stage fright.

Anyone who's ever met anyone they've talked to online for a long period of time will know that the first face-to-face meeting is always the hardest. People are different online to how they are in reality, and however much you can protest that the way you write or chat online is your "true self", the fact is that people will judge you when they meet you for the first time – subconsciously in most cases, but they're doing it all the same. It's that that always unnerves me – whenever I'm meeting new people for the first time, not just trusted and beloved online friends, but anyone. It's a side-effect of the social anxiety that I've suffered for as long as I can remember, but I'm determined not to let it get in the way of an awesome time. And it doesn't have to. I met my wife face-to-face long after we met online, after all. And yes, I probably was an awkward twat – still am – but that one worked out just fine.

The fact I've met some members of the Squadron of Shame before will help – especially given the fact that we got on well the last time we met and didn't (to my knowledge, anyway) want to tear each others' throats out with hammers by the end of our time together. I feel like I know a lot of the others very well already thanks to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, podcasts and all manner of other media that makes "Internet gurus" and "online entrepreneurs" drool with glee. So I think it's going to be just fine.

Doesn't stop me feeling nervous, but it's not a sense of crippling anxiety. It's more a state of wanting the "introductions" phase to be over so we can kick back with some beers and then hit the show floor of PAX East running. Because there's an asston of stuff to see, and there's a bundle of people I want to meet. Quite how everything will fit into those few short days I'm in Boston is anyone's guess – but I'm going to make a damn good try of it.

So tomorrow morning at 8:40, I board a coach bound for DESTINY. That's right: DESTINY. (Then I catch a plane which will take me the rest of the way to DESTINY. But the coach trip comes first.)

I'm clearly getting delirious. Time for bed, I think. Good night!

#oneaday, Day 64: Act Your Age, Fanboys

Why does the phenomenon of fanboyism still exist? And more to the point, why does it exist amongst men (and it pretty much is always men) who are old enough to know better?

The simple and easy answer is, of course, that it's always been around. I remember growing up as an Atari-based family and all of the Atari magazines at the time belittling the competition with stupid names like Spectrash (Spectrum) and Crappydore (Commodore 64). Then came the schoolyard arguments – SEGA vs Nintendo. Sonic vs Mario. "We've got Street Fighter II! Hah! …Oh wait, now you have, too." It got pretty silly.

Once the Dreamcast came out, it was hard to justify fanboyism because, certainly once SEGA's wondermachine came out, it was so far ahead of its competition – the 64-bit Nintendo 64 and the 32-bit PlayStation – that half-hearted attempts to call it things like "Dreampants" always came across as more than a little desperate.

Things then kicked off again with Sony vs Microsoft, with Nintendo kind of relegated to "background observer" by this point. The PS2 and the original Xbox both had fiercely loyal supporters when, in fact, you'd have a far better experience if you bought both systems, played the relevant exclusives on their respective platforms and played multiplatform titles on the Xbox. That's what I did, and I never felt the need to slag off any of the systems.

And it still goes on today, despite each of the consoles arguably offering a more distinct and unique experience from each other than ever before. The Xbox 360 offers its legendary ease of online play, the PS3 is home to a variety of unusual and interesting games (like Flower, flOw, Linger in Shadows, the Pixeljunk games) and the Wii is the family-friendly bundle of fun.

Still the hating goes on, though.

But nowhere is it more apparent than in the world of smartphones, particularly between the owners of iPhones, BlackBerries (let's pluralise it properly, please) and Android-based phones. iPhone owners are either Apple fanboys who bang on about how great Apple is all the time or jailbreakers who bang on about which ludicrously-named hack they're installing this week – and, of course, which apps they could get for free rather than paying for them on the App Store. BlackBerry owners seem to be updating their OS every night. And Android owners seem to be particularly sore about the iPhone for some inexplicable reason.

The question is: why? When it came to the early console wars, slagging off the systems your friends had was just schoolyard banter. You didn't really think that the systems were inferior, otherwise you wouldn't have gone around to their houses and played those games with them. The fact that this juvenile banter has grown up with people who have been using gaming and other consumer electronics for years is utterly baffling. Even people who started gaming at the same time as me – or before – are still bitching and moaning about how much better their handset is that [x]'s handset, and blahblahblah open source, blahblahblah build quality, blahblahblah BlackBerry Messenger, blahblahblah… You get the picture.

Am I alone in thinking that all of this stuff, without exception, is seven degrees of awesome and we should appreciate the brilliant things we have? Yes, some of them have more features. Yes, some of them are objectively "better" in terms of capabilities, power and technical specifications. But is that really any reason to act like 5-year olds telling each other that their respective Mums smell of wee?

No, it's not. So why does it still go on?

#oneaday, Day 62: Freewriting #4 - I Can Barely Keep My Eyes Open

[It's 1:33am and I've inadvertently forgotten to go to bed just yet. And forgotten to blog. So here is some more musings from the innermost depths of my brain. Clock. Ten minutes. Write. Don't stop. You know the drill. If it's crap, I make no apologies for it whatsoever.]

The city streets were quiet. The occasional whoosh of a car in the distance notwithstanding, it looked like something terrible had happened leaving him the only sign of life in the world. His mind wandered back to that movie – 28 Days Later – and a shiver ran down his spine as he thought "what would I do if that really happened?"

Fortunately, the silence was shattered by a noisy drunk staggering down the street, shambling around a corner like one of the zombies in those films he liked so much. He started singing – an incoherent tune, born from some forgotten memory and sounding for all intents and purposes like a small creature being strangled and/or put through a mangle.

He was secretly annoyed that his silence had been broken by this imbecile staggering down the street with all the flair and panache of a dog turd. He enjoyed the night. He enjoyed the peace. He enjoyed the feeling of being alone, free from obligations, free from worries. Night-time was a pure time, when he could truly be alone with his thoughts and contemplate whatever he wanted.

Right now, he was contemplating nothing at all. He was simply enjoying the feeling of sitting on the roof of his building, feeling the cool night breeze blowing over his face and finding the sensations of the air moving around him rather relaxing. The drunk was staggering away now, and the song had stopped. Either he had forgotten the words, had forgotten what he was doing or, more likely, just got bored.

Then the silence was back. He looked up and down the street and once again, all was still. A slightly stronger breeze than before blew and caused the few trees and bushes there were in the area to rustle, swish-swish-swish. It was a sound he enjoyed, and brought back memories of his childhood, lying on his back in the summer sun, eyes closed, feeling the heat of the sun on his face and listening to the rustling of the trees while his peers played somewhere in the distance.

He always was a dreamer. He wasn't sure what he wanted to dream about, so he dreamed about anything he could think of. He dreamed of far-off places. He dreamed of things he could never do. He dreamed of things he probably could do but was too scared to. And he dreamed of where things might actually go in the near future.

No-one knew. He didn't know. No-one else was going to be able to tell him what the future held, not his friends, not his family, not his horoscope from the paper, not whatever Facebook app was spamming him with promises of what his lucky colour was this week. The only person who would be able to tell him what the future held would be him, once it had happened. And by then, it would be too late.

He lay back on the roof and closed his eyes like he did so many years ago. The concrete on the flat roof wasn't nearly as comfortable as the soft grass of the playing fields at home, but it did the job. With his eyes closed, the silence seemed even purer. Devoid of any visual distractions, his imagination began to wander – a fleeting image here, a passing fancy there. But none of them stuck. There was no clear path. It was a fog, a mist, threatening to swallow him if he would let it. But he wouldn't. He was strong. He knew that he could make it through all the uncertainty, the lies, the nonsense, and that somewhere on the other side of it all there would be something good waiting for him.

Exactly what form that "something good" would take was what he was most curious about. Would it be a person? A thing? Some money? Winning a prize? Appearing on television? Becoming famous?

He didn't really want some of those things, but they were things that people commonly referred to as being "good". A programme he had seen on the TV earlier that evening featured a series of teenage girls all proudly proclaiming that their life's ambition was to "be famous". For what, exactly, they were never exactly clear. When pushed, one or two of them came out with "well, modelling, innit?" but nothing more than that.

He didn't see himself in that position. But maybe there was something there waiting for him.

For now, though, it didn't matter. For now was the night, and it was closing in.

He closed his eyes tighter and let himself drift away slowly into the darkness, unafraid of where he might wake up.

#oneaday Day 61: Call me Gordon

I'm a free man! Yes, my contract finished today so as of right this moment I am unemployed. At least as far as that pesky full-time work goes. I'll tell you one thing I won't miss, and that's the 40-mile commute with the immensely predictable traffic around Winchester. I don't know what it is about that place, but the M3 slows to a crawl and all of the roads in and out of the city also slow to a crawl, so it's impossible to win whichever way you choose to go. I let fly with quite a few obscenities on the way home tonight as all I wanted to do was get home.

I'm not going to be sitting on my ass doing nothing, though. I have plenty of things lined up. I have some music pupils starting this week (and, of course, if you know anyone in the Southampton area who is looking for a music teacher, kindly point them in the direction of http://www.pjedmusic.co.uk) and I am shortly to put up a site advertising IT tuition services. Then I'll be doing some writing, too, for a couple of different sites: Kombo.com and DailyJoypad.co.uk, both of which are going to be a great way to get some exposure for my writing, along with the stuff I've done for Good Old Games and WhatTheyPlay in the past.

Right now, it's late, there are drunken morons shouting incoherently outside my window and I've just finished recording an episode of the Exploding Barrel Podcast with the ever-awesome Minotti brothers. Just looked out of the window and the noise was being made by two… I hesitate to call them "men" because they were acting like the kids I've been teaching. Two of them. It sounded like a bloody football crowd. And this after Southampton was (apparently) voted "most welcoming and friendly city in the UK". (I call bullshit on that, by the way, in case you hadn't guessed).

Tomorrow is the first day of a new beginning, or something. I'm meeting one of my (potential) new pupils, I'm getting some stuff sorted ready to do my website writing and I'll have the chance to kick back and actually relax a bit for what feels like the first time in months. It's like a big weight has gone from my shoulders.

I feel bad for my colleagues I left behind as they are without exception awesome people that I will miss a great deal, and they're in a tough situation that is going to be hard work to get through. What I won't miss, however, is the stress of that job, the (8-year old) kids who climb walls and get brought in by the police, the reams and reams of ultimately fairly meaningless paperwork, the finger-wagging "official" people telling us that we don't know what we're doing and… well, you get the idea. Here's to a more positive future, but I will spare a thought for those great people I worked with regularly.

I'm just rambling now, clearly. I think it's time to go to bed. Up and at 'em tomorrow morning… and PAX is creeping ever closer. I can't wait.

#oneaday, Day 59: Social Mobility

So social games are here to stay. So say the people in the know, particularly the outspoken Brian Reynolds from Zynga who has commented on the subject at great length. Understandable, really, given that his company are behind some of the most successful social games in history.

I have to say, though, that I don't understand them. And it's not through lack of trying. I've played Mafia Wars. I've played Epic Pet Wars. I've fired up Farmville a couple of times. But the elephant in the room seems to be that these games are dull, uninspiring and boring. People used to joke that Championship Manager on the PC looked (and played) like a spreadsheet. Mafia Wars looks like an Access database – and plays like one too. I haven't done much with Farmville but from what I've seen (and heard from others) it's not much better, just a little more "visual".

These games market themselves on their "social" capabilities. They call themselves "MMORPGs" and they clog up the iTunes App Store RPG section something chronic with their various denominations of microtransaction space dollar bundles. But, from what I've seen, there is little to no socialising involved. You add people to your friends list to let them "be in your mafia" or "be your neighbour", but besides increasing your stats or occasionally sending you an item they can't use (not one that they don't want, it's always one that they can't use because it's set aside as a special "gift" item) there is no interaction with others. Sure, in Mafia Wars you can attack another player but there's no strategy or interaction there, either – whoever has the best stats wins.

Brian Reynolds commented to developers at the GamesBeat summit that "shame" is a powerful motivating factor for players. "No one wants to be caught letting their crops wither and die," he says. But does it really matter when you have four thousand people on your friends list, none of whom you've ever spoken to? That's not socialising, that's MySpace-style "friend" collecting. It doesn't help that anything even vaguely related to these games – iTunes reviews, Facebook reviews, Facebook groups, comment threads, blog posts – always degenerates into a swarm of several hundred people all going "ADD ME! 9932569!" with absolutely no conversation going on whatsoever. I would mind it less if the "social" aspect of these games was something more of a metagame, where people actually talked to each other and then added each other. But the amount of friend-whoring that goes on by people is just ridiculous, and it strikes me as completely against the spirit of what these games are supposedly trying to achieve – bring people together to play.

Maybe I'm missing the point somewhere. Maybe these social games really are the next big thing. It's true that some games get the whole thing absolutely right – PopCap's wonderful Bejeweled Blitz is a fine example – but for every little gem (no pun intended) there's a billion and one identikit Mafia Wars clones. And they're all devoid of any gameplay whatsoever.

Games for people who don't like games. I guess that's something – bringing the medium to the masses and all that. But is someone reared on Mafia Wars and Farmville ever really going to graduate to games that are actually, you know, good? I'm not so sure.

#oneaday, Day 58: Bullshit Bingo

The school I work at (until this coming Friday, fact fans) recently had its updated OfSTED report published. For the uninitiated (and/or American) amongst you, this is the report on how "good" (sarcastic air quotes mine, not theirs) the school is. At the last inspection, shortly before I arrived at the school in November, the school was judged to be "inadequate" and in need of "special measures" for various reasons that I won't bore you with now. The most recent report claimed that we were making "satisfactory" progress towards making the "required improvements" put forth in the "action plan".

The crowning glory of the report, though, was the phrase "stem the tide of falling underachievement", something which apparently we are doing. Now, I don't know quite how many negatives are in that statement but I'm sure there's the wrong number. Surely "falling underachievement" is a good thing, so you wouldn't want to "stem the tide" of it? Perhaps they meant "stem the tide of falling achievement", but that doesn't sound quite right either. And I'm pretty sure it's not "stem the tide of achievement", since that is how the school got into this mess in the first place, albeit not intentionally.

There's only one response to things like this: "BULLSHIT!"

It astonishes me quite how much people get away with peddling this nonsensical use of language under the pretence of it being "formal". Those of you who follow me on Twitter may remember what I did to the company that supposedly "manages" the estate of apartment blocks that I live on. I went through their letter and corrected it in red pen, then posted it back to them. The results are here, if you missed it first time:

I think I was quite generous with a D-.

Then, of course, you get anyone who talks about social media "professionally", or at least likes to think they do. They use words like "monetization strategy" and "leverage" to mean "how they are going to make money" and "use". What is wrong with "how they make money" and "use"? We've been using language like that for years. Why does the technological age suddenly have to bring in a bunch of new and meaningless jargon? And, while we're on, since when did the word "product" – without a trailing "s" – become a plural?

Politics are no better. Listen to our less-than-illustrious boring fart of a leader Gordon Brown speak and all you'll hear is string after string of meaningless waffle – so utterly devoid of actual content that by the time he reaches the end of his speech you've completely forgotten what the question was and you'll agree with him just to shut him up. The Tories aren't any better. Listen to Cameron in all his shiny-headed glory and all you get is repetitive catchphrases, empty promises and a slightly larger urge to slit your wrists than when you started. If I had to pick one of them to listen to, I'd pick Cameron, but it's a close-run thing, and with either of them I'd be chewing down on the cyanide capsules if I didn't have other things to distract me with.

I like plain speaking. The last few jobs I've applied for I've taken this approach and communicated with the potential employers or clients as an actual human being. I'm not "passionate" about things that I'm not really passionate about. I'm not "confident and enthusiastic". I'm not "a team player". I'm not… you know, all the other idiotic things that people only ever write when applying for a job and eventually get found out as being a liar. I'm Pete. I'm a human. I speak English. I don't speak jargon.

#oneaday, Day 57: Look into the Eyes

Jane and I went to see Derren Brown's "Enigma" show at the Mayflower in Southampton tonight. We'd had tickets for ages – since shortly after Jane went to see the same show in London in the summer of last year, in fact – and the time had finally come around to see it. It was also my first visit to the Mayflower, so I was curious to see how our local theatre actually was inside. (Quite nice, as it happens.)

I won't spoil any of the show here, but suffice to say it is his usual blend of different types of "WTF?!" moments. By the end of the show you're left so dazed and bewildered by the whole experience that you can't help asking yourself (and anyone you happen to be with, and anyone who will listen) a whole ton of questions for which there are no easy answers. He certainly has the art of the magician – of making the impossible seem possible – even if what he does isn't exactly "magic" in the traditional sense – it is a blend of, as he puts it, "psychology, hypnosis, suggestion and showmanship".

Jane and I have been fascinated with Derren Brown for many years now. He has a compelling, likeable style to his shows with just the right balance between cheekiness and seriousness to draw you in and keep you there. He doesn't take himself or his hapless victims too seriously, but nor is he too flippant. He's also more than willing, in some cases at least, to share the "trick" with you – though as last year's The Events TV show (where he correctly predicted the lottery numbers) clearly demonstrated, sometimes explanations raise more questions than they answer.

It's certainly a pretty unique, impressive and intellectually stimulating form of entertainment that he puts on show, and I'd encourage anyone who's not familiar with his work to explore it for yourself. His "Trick of the Mind" TV series is available on DVD now, as are a number of his one-off "specials". Plus, if you're in the UK, you can check out Derren's shows on YouTube thanks to their agreement with 4OD right here.

I won't say anything else as it will be far too tempting to get into spoiler territory. Suffice to say, though, that the Enigma show is well worth checking out if you get the chance.

#oneaday, Day 56: Phhhwwwwwweeeeeeooooooowwwwrrrrrr...

I watched a Formula 1 event all the way through from qualifying to the end of the race this weekend. And I enjoyed it.

Sport on TV is a funny thing. Lots of people watch it, yet sitting staring at it on TV seems to somewhat defeat the object – particularly when it comes to physical activities that anyone could have a go at, like football. Admittedly, your average lads' kickabout in the park doesn't have quite the finesse of a Premiership match, but at least you don't have ten thousand braying idiots in the crowd to contend with.

I've always had a certain interest in motorsport, though. I wouldn't call myself a petrolhead by any means since as far as I'm concerned, cars run on black magic. But I appreciate the aesthetic of a nice car, I enjoy driving and I've always enjoyed the vicarious thrill of a driving game on the consoles, particularly as they have got more and more realistic over the years. Formula 1 is motorsport taken to its natural extreme, and to watch it on TV is probably as close as most of us will ever get to actually taking part in it.

Critics of the sport say "it's just people going around in circles". To them I say "No! NASCAR is going around in circles. Formula 1 has wiggly bits."

Yes, most motorsport by its very nature involves completing circuits. And the competitive nature of racing teams sometimes means that the cars are so evenly matched that it's very difficult – if not impossible – for any overtaking to happen, barring driver error. However, today I saw that this is clearly not the case. Firstly, the qualifying sessions were done with the cars optimised for getting the fastest possible lap times. That means minimal fuel and the best tyres for the job. The race itself, though, demanded that 1) the cars be fully laden with fuel and 2) they started on the set of tyres they qualified on. This meant that success in qualifying was by no means a guarantee of success in the race itself – and indeed, the first few laps of the race were a good five seconds slower than the fastest qualifying laps thanks to the extra weight of the full petrol tank, meaning that as the race progressed, any slight differences in weight between the cars could mean the difference between holding on to a position and losing it to someone slightly lighter.

Where things got interesting was, inevitably, when things started to go wrong. Sebastian Vettel, the German driver for the Red Bull team who took Pole in qualifying, had his car develop some sort of difficulty partway through the race, meaning that his comfortable lead he had built up for many, many laps suddenly disappeared and eventually he dropped way back into fourth position. That must have been heartbreaking, but damn, if it didn't make it interesting to watch as he struggled to maintain his lead with two Ferraris snapping at his heels like angry red dogs.

There have been criticisms of this year's new rules in F1. I haven't followed the sport enough to know quite how much difference they will make, but I'll be interested to see how the season develops. I'm also secretly satisfied I've found a sport I'm happy to sit and watch on the TV and will be able to talk about with other people. My long-standing distaste for football means I'm often left out of sporty conversations – as at times here in the UK, it feels like there is no other sport – but I know for a fact that at least a few friends and acquaintances follow F1. Plus if I want to be all nationalistic about it, I only have two names to remember instead of the bajillion monosyllabic gorillas that make up the England football team.

Anyway. Today's Grand Prix was most enjoyable. I'll be in the States while the Aussie one is on, but I feel that I'll be following this season with some interest now.

#oneaday, Day 55: Communi-what?

A while back, I wrote a post about communication online. If you're extra-good, I'll link to it tomorrow when I'm not typing this on my phone in bed because I forgot to earlier.

Anyway. The gist of it was that I was rather pleased with how my then-early Twitter addiction was proceeding, with the service making it particularly easy for me to keep up with my numerous buddies from around the world. Prior to this, Facebook had fulfilled a similar function.

Here's where the paths of the two services diverge. While Twitter has remained relatively "pure", with little in the way of gimmicky new features, Facebook has taken the opposite route, adding more and more noise to the mix until it's almost unbearable.

Of course, there is the flipside to both services – Twitter has its spammers (bad) and Facebook has Facebook Connect (good) – but I know where I have most of my online conversations these days. Twitter may have its own noise, but it is WAY easier to avoid.

Facebook's problem is that it wants to be everything to everyone, so it added the applications, and the fan pages, and the various redesigns… and now I find myself wishing it was back the way it was when I first started using it. Simple. Clean. To the point.

It's certainly not that any more. Now, one's news feed is likely to be as full of notifications from applications and announcements that Bartlebas McFartington has become a fan of "Not Being Able To Sleep Because Your [sic] Thinking About Crap" (yes, that was real, and no, no-one knows how to use "your" any more) as actual things that people have written themselves.

The ironic thing is that all this sharing is taking away from the original point of the service – communicating. When people would rather copy and paste "Bob" into your comments box so he can "travel around Facebook" than actually write a message to you, one can't help but think that the point has been lost along the way somewhere, (While we're on, people who just say "First" in an attempt to get the first comment – without actually commenting – can go to hell and sit on a spike, too.)

So next time you hover over that "Like" button, why not take those extra few seconds to actually write a message? The recipient will probably appreciate it, and time isn't as precious as you think it is.