#oneaday Day 117: Super-Pete

One of the most commonly-asked questions from people with no imagination is "what superpower would you have if you… err… had a superpower?" Sometimes they leave out the "err" bit and maybe phrase it a bit better, but it's been a terribly long day and I've written an absolute shitload of content for a number of different outlets today. It's good to feel like I'm working!

But anyway. What superpower would I have? Well, that's a simple one to answer because I've thought it over many a time: shapeshifting.

Come on. Being a shapeshifter would be awesome. You could turn into a cat and sleep all day, or use your agility to escape from assailants. You could turn into someone of the opposite sex and answer that question that's been bugging you all these years. Yes, that one. I know what you're thinking. You could turn into a xylophone and allow someone to play you as a party trick.

Of course, there are spectacular opportunities for wrongdoing if you can make yourself look like absolutely anyone else. The temptation to mess with people would be enormous. Fortunately, I like to think I'm the sort of guy who would be able to resist such base temptations. Except if the opportunity arose to fuck with four particular people, who are the only people in the world I hold grudges against and probably always will. Bunch of bastards.

But anyway, that aside, I would use my powers for good — though precisely how is something I haven't quite thought of, yet. I guess I could get a job as a body double for someone rich, famous and/or important and put myself at risk of being shot. Unfortunately, of course, being a shapeshifter probably doesn't mitigate the damage from a bullet (unless you pull an Odo and liquefy yourself immediately as the projectile hits you, which needs some seriously lightning reactions, although given I managed to catch a completely full pint glass from falling off a table without spilling any once, I think I might be able to avoid a bullet) so that might not be the best plan.

I could make public appearances for celebrities who are too lazy to go out and do them themselves. But then the temptation to do bad and wrong things comes up again. Get hired by Cheryl Cole to take her place opening a supermarket or something, and the natural urge would, of course, be to get one's tits out and run around shouting "Wark! Wark! Cock!" Or something. You know. I haven't really thought it through that much.

I guess it actually wouldn't be that "useful" per se, but it would certainly be interesting to be able to change your appearance completely at will. That way you can genuinely see who is bullshitting you when they say they don't care about appearance.

#oneaday Day 116: Hacked Off

So, Sony fucked up. Pretty bigstyle. And yet I find myself less angry at them and their incompetent handling of the situation and more angry at the fact this situation even arose in the first place.

I'm talking, of course, about hackers. Hacking, despite people not really knowing what it is outside of representations that they've seen in movies, is one of the things people are most paranoid about in the online age — and with Sony's PR disaster in full swing at the minute, it's easy to see why, as people frantically cancel their credit cards and change all their passwords on the offchance that some bearded, smelly loser (not me) may pick their personal details to commit fraud with.

In practice, it seems that a lot of hacks are committed to make a point rather than cause damage as such, whatever Introversion Software's excellent Uplink might have you believe. But for a service as inoffensive as PSN, it just seems spiteful to attack it. Anonymous had its high-profile throwing-toys-out-of-a-pram moment a week or two ago but they claim they're not responsible for this latest incident as they're supposedly "on the side of the consumer". That and everyone was yelling at them for fucking up PSN when people just wanted to get online, play stuff and buy stuff.

I guess it's just like any other crime — crime shouldn't happen, but it does, whether it's in the real or virtual world. However nice it'd be to imagine a Star Trek-esque future where crime and war between humans is a thing of the past, it's not going to happen — or at least, not for a long time. As long as there are people out there who feel a misplaced sense of "entitlement" — whether it's to get their hands on software they haven't paid for, to steal people's personal information or just to fuck everyone else's enjoyment up — then we can never feel completely "safe" and confident.

Which is a shame, really, isn't it? So much of new technology is genuinely awesome when used properly. Were the threat of hacking and other technology crime not present, the capabilities of devices could be even more awesome. But as it is, so much time and money has to be spent on installing cutting-edge security into every single device we own that things are probably held back from where they could be if security wasn't such an issue.

Oh, I know. It's nice to want things, and some sort of Utopia would supposedly get boring quite quickly, but I'd certainly like to enjoy it, if only for a while. But it's never going to happen — the world is full of just enough arseholes to make life less enjoyable for the majority, non-arsehole population out there.

So, arseholes, a big fuck you, and I hope your cock falls off. Into a fire. Which someone then douses with acid, mistaking it for water. And then feeds you the remains. And then jams a really sharp spike right up your bum-hole.

Yeah.

#oneaday Day 115: What a Headache

There are few ailments more infuriating than a headache. Actually, most ailments are particularly infuriating, especially ones which don't just go away. But headaches are the kind of ailment that seem to steadfastly resist any attempts to make them go away.

And we, being inventive, resourceful humans, come up with a variety of methods to attempt to make them go away when we don't feel like gorging ourselves on pills and potions which often don't work. There's the time-honoured "bury your head in a pillow and wail" approach, which doesn't work. There's the "hold your head and moan softly and/or grunt a bit" approach, which doesn't work but usually attracts the attention of anyone in the same room as you enough to go "You all right?"

There's the "I heard this thing on TV once" approach, where you decide your headache is the result of dehydration/starvation/withdrawal from caffeine/withdrawal from nicotine/withdrawal from chocolate because of something you heard in passing on a medical drama once, so you decide to drink several gallons of water/eat lots of cake/drown yourself in coffee/smoke yourself into a miasmic fog/cover yourself in chocolate. That doesn't work, either.

In fact, very few things seem to work. Attempting to kill the headache by dulling your senses with alcohol doesn't work. Hitting yourself in the face with blunt objects to distract yourself from the dull thumping behind your forehead doesn't work. Cutting off your own arm doesn't work (and then you're missing an arm, which is just inconvenient).

In short, you're probably going to have to resort to those pills that live in The Pill Cupboard. Everyone has a Pill Cupboard of some description. It might be part of your bathroom cabinet. It might be in your kitchen. It may share its purpose with something else. It may be a drawer rather than a cupboard. But it's still a Pill Cupboard.

You then have to proceed through the Krypton Factor-esque puzzle that is choosing the correct pills for your ailment and hope that you don't inadvertently sterilise yourself or anything (unless, of course, you want to sterilise yourself, in which case, go ahead, and what are you doing with sterilisation drugs in your Pill Cupboard anyway?) Said puzzle is made all the more difficult by the fact that by the time you decide to resort to pills, your headache has probably reached the point where it feels like an alien is going to burst out from behind your forehead, leaving your lovely clean walls splattered in blood and brain goo. (It probably won't happen. But it feels like it.)

Then you have to actually swallow the damn things, which always proves inconveniently difficult when you really need to swallow them, and you end up half-choking yourself with a pill lodged halfway down your throat and no amount of water-guzzling shifting it. You resign yourself to the fact that you're going to have a literal lump in your throat for the rest of the evening, and you climb into bed to have a sulk before passing out from sheer boredom.

In other news, I have a headache.

#oneaday Day 114: Easter Promise

Happy Easter everyone! And we all know what Easter means: chocolate. (Balls to Jesus, the only thing he ever contributed to my life was delaying lunchtime and hometime at primary school by insisting we pray to him before we could have our sandwiches, which is just a bit needy for my taste. Also, the "zombie Jesus" gag is overdone, much like zombies themselves.)

With that in mind, along with a suggestion from my leading lady (who doesn't believe I ever use her suggestions) I thought, in that case, I would talk about chocolate. Who doesn't love chocolate? Aside from people who are allergic to it or any of its ingredients, of course. And even then that doesn't necessarily stop them.

Chocolate is fairly universally loved, but it's interesting to see the cultural differences between confectionary. Here in the UK, we tend to be terribly proud of the fact that we have Cadbury's, who may or may not have invented chocolate and have a factory in a place with the same name as one of their bars. But there's far more to life than Cadbury's.

American chocolate, for example. American chocolate is a breed on its own and they don't always get it quite right. Take Hershey's Kisses, for example. Sweet name, little individually foil-wrapped rabbit droppings of chocolate that end up not really tasting quite as nice as they look. Plus you'll be finding those foil wrappers for months afterwards, since despite the fact that it's not especially great chocolate, you'll find yourself snacking on them throughout the course of the day, particularly if it's Christmas and there's a big bowl of them on offer.

Then there's unusual stuff like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I like these, and they're pretty much unlike anything the UK has to offer, so it's nice to enjoy them if I get over to the States. They're almost cake-like in shape and presentation, but they're chocolate. Wonders will never cease.

Canada has the Coffee Crisp, which I can't remember a great deal about aside from the fact that I enjoyed it very much when I had one.

And in the interests of balance, non-UK types, may I educate you in the finest British chocolate has to offer (in my opinion, anyway.) Some of these may be available in your neighbourhood, but I thought I'd share them anyway.

The Mars bar is pretty universally known, but it's actually not that nice when you get down to it. Sweet chocolate with bland nougat and gooey caramel. Not bad, but far better with the inclusion of peanuts to turn it into a Snickers, formerly Marathon. Snickers is also notable for being the only chocolate bar advertised by Mr. T. Mars, on the other hand, is notable for people battering and deep frying it in chip shops, producing a snack which would probably kill you of heart failure after about two bites.

Cadbury's chocolate, as previously mentioned, is generally a good bet. You can get Dairy Milk bars in enormous 1kg sizes, too, which is more chocolate than you'd ever need unless you're the sort of woman who swears period pain can only be cured by ludicrous amounts of chocolate. Or indeed the partner of a woman who swears period pain can only be cured by ludicrous amounts of chocolate.

Fruit and Nut takes the Dairy Milk formula and adds two extra ingredients which you can probably guess. "Fruit" is a bit of a stretch, since it's just raisins, really, but it adds some interesting variation in texture. And if you want to eat something that's basically a Fruit and Nut bar with different, slightly inferior chocolate, you should try a Yorkie Biscuit and Raisin — somewhat oddly marketed as being "not for girls", a campaign which to this day I'm not quite sure how they managed to get away with.

If you have a sweet tooth, then Galaxy chocolate is difficult to beat, particularly if you manage to encounter the Galaxy Caramel or Truffle varieties. It's pretty sickly-sweet, though, and will probably make you feel rather ill if you eat too much of it.

Bournville, too, another Cadbury's product — this time dark chocolate — will definitely make you feel sick if you eat too much of it, as I discovered to my cost one day at university. Turns your sick black, too, which makes you feel like a swamp monster.

Boost bars used to be tasty, chocolate, shortbread and caramel type things. Then, at some point during my fourth year at university, they decided that turning them into the chocolate equivalent of a can of Red Bull would somehow be a great idea. My friend and I were passing by the promotional ladies in the student union concourse, so we gathered a few of the new-school Boost bars — now with added Guarana, whatever that was — and tried them out. Of course, we'd had some of the Union coffee bar's famous quadruple espressos just moments earlier — it was early in the morning and we were expected to go and talk meaningfully about Dido and Aeneas, after all — so adding a caffeinated sugar hit to that probably wasn't wise. As it turned out, it wasn't. My friend and I spent the course of the seminar looking around like startled squirrels and suffering from severe cases of the hand-shakes. And not in the greeting way. Generally speaking, if you have a come-down from a chocolate bar, it's trying too hard.

There are plenty of other pieces of chocolatey goodness on the shelves of UK newsagents — I haven't even started on chocolatey things that come in bags rather than bars, for example — but those were the first that sprung to mind. Not necessarily the best — and certainly not a patch on stuff from actual proper chocolatiers such as Hotel Chocolat and Thornton's — but comforting, pleasant, chocolatey.

Happy Easter. Enjoy your chocolate, and stop just before you're sick. Please.

#oneaday Day 113: Colonel Gaddafi's Chicken

Very often, drunken conversations simply degenerate into "I love you, I do, you're like my best friend and totally awesome and we should totally do this more often like, y'know?" And that's fine, and to be expected.

But sometimes, if you're with the right people, something magical happens. Fortuitously, the people I was attending the wedding with yesterday happen to be the right people for something entertaining to happen when discussing things.

We were sitting out in the garden of the wedding venue gazing up at the sky and getting frustrated at the security light that kept going off and coming on every few minutes if we sat too still and then made a sudden movement. Some shooting stars were making an appearance every few minutes and all in all, it was a thoroughly pleasant evening.

Long chats such as the group of us had are often called "setting the world to rights" but I'm not sure the vision of the world we ended up painting was in any way "right". Here's the most important things we came up with:

You can wish on bats as well as shooting stars, but bats would rather get on with doing their own thing than grant wishes.
It's easy to Photoshop in a shooting star — in fact, you can do it in Paint.
Mishearing "spy satellite" as "spice satellite" leads everyone to the natural conclusion that there is a madman somewhere in the world planning to release a selection of herbs and spices into the atmosphere, let them burn up and effectively curry the world.
This didn't sound like such a bad thing.
Because it was a secret blend of herbs and spices, "The Colonel" came up.
"The Colonel" was not intended to be a reference to Gaddafi, but the image of him cooking chicken and attempting to curry the world was too amusing to pass up.
Ergo, Colonel Gaddafi is now in charge of KFC.
Gaddafi would use cumin as his weapon of choice to release from his spice satellites — ground, not seeds, to allow for greater dispersal.
Gaddafi also uses bats as spies, and they report back on the wishes people are making.
The bats are somewhat embittered by this and just want to be left alone to get in people's hair and stuff.
Coming soon to iPhone: Colonel Gaddafi's Angry Bats.
The bar was shutting at midnight, so we should get another round in.

There was a twisted kind of logic to the things we discussed. Though it was more "twisted" than "logic", really. Still, it gave us all a good giggle at the time, and that's the important thing.

#oneaday Day 112: Standing on Ceremony

It was the wedding day of my friends Ben and Amy today. It's been a long time coming and they're going to have a very long and happy life together, I'm sure.

One thing that struck me during the ceremony, though, was how odd ceremonies as a concept are. Very formalised and based in tradition, they're a far cry from the way you act in regular day to day life.

And I guess that's the point; a wedding ceremony isn't something you do every day (hopefully) so it stands to reason that something should make it extraordinary. So why not infuse rings with meaning and symbolism, and why not insist that people are facing each other at the correct time, and why not delve into Old English when necessary?

It's all about tradition. Concepts such as marriage and the like are almost as old as society and civilised living itself. To modernise them after they've been the same (or at least similar) for so long would be to break with years, decades, centuries of tradition.

That doesn't mean people don't do it, of course. Unconventional weddings are great fun to be a part of. But there must be a reason that so many people choose to do things in the "traditional" and apparently antiquated manner. For all the trappings of modernity we have these days, it seems that there are some traditions and ceremonies that we still respect.

I wonder if we'll still be theeing and thouing in two hundred years time? Smart money's on yes.

#oneaday, Day 111: Chaos, The Battle of Wizards

It's a sad but true fact that returning to the games of your youth usually ends in disappointment as you realise that gaming has moved on a lot, and those games never got a re-release on Xbox Live Arcade or the like for a very good reason — they're not very good.

But there's a few exceptions. Specifically, anything made by Julian Gollop is still just as fresh as it was back then.

How do I know this? Thanks to the Elite ZX Spectrum Collection app for iPhone. This app features a decent Spectrum emulator and a selection of games, most of which can be bought via in-app purchase in packs of six. One such pack is a Julian Gollop pack, which contains five fantastic strategy games and one utterly awful bouncy-ball atrocity, the less said about which the better. At least — hopefully — after that, Gollop figured out what he was good at and what he wasn't.

The games included in the pack are Chaos, Lords of Chaos, Rebelstar and its sequel and Laser Squad. I can't remember what the bouncy one is called but it involved catching balloons and wasn't fun at all.

The strategy games, on the other hand, are another matter. Chaos is the simplest of the bunch, with Teletext-quality graphics and feeble beep-and-fart type sound effects, but it's an immensely competitive game that supports up to eight players. It works well as a "pass the phone" game, too. And casting a Gooey Blob that gets out of hand never gets old.

The remaining games are all fundamentally very similar, featuring the same basic gameplay mechanics and gradually-improving graphics. In fact, if you've played the X-COM games, you've played these games too. That's no bad thing, though, because X-COM is awesome. Featuring turn-based multiplayer action, they're, in many ways, virtual boardgames that don't demand any throwing of dice or getting out a billion pieces or avoiding bumping the table or spilling curry on them or anything like that. And the Spectrum controls, while a little clunky, manage to work pretty effectively on the iPhone app. It helps that the keys are labelled, rather than my first experience with Chaos on a PC based emulator, where my friend Sam and I spent a good half an hour or so attempting to work out by trial and error what keys did what.

So if you're jonesing for more X-COM and don't object to playing on a touchscreen, then grab the Elite ZX Spectrum Collection and the Julian Gollop pack. I can guarantee that you won't be disappointed, and you'll be surprised that retro gaming can still be fun, deep and rewarding rather than vaguely upsetting.

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#oneaday Day 110: Private Hysteria

Earlier today, a story broke which caused a fresh round of privacy concerns, as it was revealed that the iPhone is, in fact, recording where you've been and storing that information in its backup file that it transfers to your computer every time you sync it. Here's the story from the Telegraph's "Technolgoy Consultant" (a typo which doesn't immediately inspire me with confidence) — judge for yourself.

Here's my take, and I understand completely you may not feel the same way: I don't give a damn. Why should I? What possible use could that information serve? What could people find out that I haven't already made abundantly clear via other means of social media? That I like to drive to Southampton a lot? That I tend to prefer Costa Coffee as my coffee outlet of choice? That I have been known to drive to Tesco in the dead of night for groceries and snacks?

"But, privacy," people bleat, without really explaining what they mean. Well, what about privacy? The minute you connect a device to the Internet, you're putting yourself on display. The minute you use your GPS-enabled phone to find out where the hell you are and where you should be going, someone knows where you are. The minute you search "oily lesbian midgets" on Google, someone knows what a complete pervert you are. If you're that concerned about privacy, you should reconsider your decision to carry around a constantly Internet-connected device with satellite tracking in your pocket. Or at least turn the fucking thing off.

Most of the time, though, the hysteria over privacy seems to be worry for the sake of worry. Take the app Color which came out a while back, for example. Color is, in theory, a clever way for people in the same place to collect the candid mobile photos they snap of an event — and possibly meet new people. It does this through a variety of means — GPS tracking if possible, then Wi-Fi identifications, mobile phone base stations and even recording the background noise when you take the photo and comparing it to the noise print taken when other people take photos. My first reaction on hearing how it worked was "Jesus Christ, that's clever," followed by "but ultimately unnecessary as most people I know with iPhones will just immediately upload their photos to Facebook anyway." My immediate reaction was not "Shit! My iPhone is recording me without telling me! Bastards!" — which was the reaction of a few people I spoke to about it.

Why, though? Why the panic? It's just sound. Are you a secret agent? Probably not. And if you were, it's unlikely you'd be using social media to share photos on your iPhone. Again, what possible sinister use could the recording of background noise have? Could advertisers figure out that you like hanging out in noisy places and start providing you with targeted AdSense ads for earplugs and ear drops? Perhaps. But again: so what?

The main objection seems to be that the device is doing this without the user's knowledge. But I even can't see the problem with this, really. If you're going somewhere you shouldn't be or doing something/one you shouldn't be, then don't take an Internet-connected GPS-enabled device with you that — shock horror — might know where you are. And for fuck's sake, don't check in on Foursquare while you're at your bit on the side's house. It's always your choice. If you want to be part of the digital revolution, then you have to get used to the fact that your information is out there for as long as you're connected to the Internet.

Potential spoilarz for Don't Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story ahead.

If you've played Christine Love's Don't Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story, you'll know that the culmination of the plot deals with this very issue — the supposed "erosion of privacy". The young characters in the game have grown up with this attitude to data, and as such are not surprised to know that other people are looking at their theoretically "private" information — and indeed take full advantage of this fact. I'm starting to feel like I can understand their attitude somewhat. I'm not sure if I should be pleased about that, or if I should be more worried than I am that my iPhone knows how many times I've been to public toilets in the last year.

Ah well. Can always turn it off. At least until The Machines take over.

#oneaday Day 109: Selfish Gawper

The TV is one of the most ubiquitous items of consumer electronics, but it's also one of the ones I use for its originally-intended function least frequently. Oh, sure, I watch DVDs and use my consoles on it pretty much every day. But watching actual, proper TV on it? No.

There are plenty of reasons for this. The first is the fact that there's just not a lot of stuff on TV that I'm that interested in watching. Related to this is the fact that of the stuff I am vaguely interested in on TV, I feel a bit of resentment towards being tied towards the arbitrary schedule of the TV channel. I of course don't have to worry about it, as most of the stuff I am interested in watching is available either on iPlayer or the awesome YouTube Shows. And for lengthy series, I'll tend to wait until the DVDs are available and then watch the whole lot as it suits me.

This is very much a symptom of the modern age. People want what they want, and they want it when they want, dammit. It's a wonder the Tube hasn't yet been replaced by individual passenger carts that you call by pressing a button on the platform when you're quite ready to leave. (Actually, that'd be kind of cool, if terribly impractical.) It's pretty much only travel where we have to be tied down to someone else's schedule these days—and even then, if you've got money to burn, that isn't an issue.

The trouble with this, of course, is that it indirectly makes people more selfish. People get used to being able to have what they want when they want, and when they are put into a situation where they might have to wait their turn for something, some people get a bit stroppy about it.

Let me use one establishment in which I used to work as an example. Said establishment worked on an appointment system for technical support, and with good reason. Several hundred angry customers with broken computers or generic multimedia playback devices (some of which incorporate telephony features) all bearing down on the desk at the same time would have been completely unworkable, so customers had to book appointments. I lost count of the number of times people got in a strop over this, however you positioned it to them. They just didn't seem to understand the fact that they weren't the only person in the store (not by a long shot) and that there were—shock—other people who'd got there before them.

Perhaps, then, everyone would do well to tie themselves to the TV schedules once in a while, just to remember what it's like. And if you live in an area which hasn't had the digital switchover yet, spend a couple of days getting your news via Ceefax instead of the Internet. People actually used to live with, you know, waiting around and having to be in the right place at the right time. And they did all right.

So take the time to think of other people once in a while. The world doesn't just revolve around you, though the world of social media and the Internet might make it seem that way sometimes. Be a bit less selfish. And if you say you'll be there at 8, be there at 8.

#oneaday Day 108: Fun with Portals

So everyone's going mental about Portal 2's imminent release. And with good reason—Portal was awesome, after all, and evidence that a good quality game that tells an interesting story doesn't have to be long and drawn out. Many called it a "gaming short story" and no-one seemed to mind the fact that it was maybe just 3 or 4 hours long.

The fact that it used the first-person perspective to make something that didn't involve killing things was perhaps the best thing. It was a genuine bona fide puzzle game that used some creative game mechanics to get you thinking about things in ways that you probably hadn't done since the days of Spectrum games where you fell off the bottom of the screen and reappeared at the top.

I thought I wasn't that interested in the sequel, but everything Valve's been doing with their ARG and the Potato Sack Pack nonsense has got me pretty fired up about the whole thing. So I guess their marketing works. Kudos to them for both being clever, and double kudos to them for highlighting the great work of today's indie developers as part of the marketing effort. The fact that I apparently accidentally set my phone alarm to be Still Alive from Portal probably hasn't helped matters. Have I been viral-marketing myself? Apparently so.

Trouble is, of course, that Portal 2 is a new game and, as you know, I have an enormous backlog to get through that wasn't helped by the fact that Dragon Age II proved to be just a little bit too much to resist. But then Portal 2 is short. And it has co-op, so it's sociable. Also, it is Portal, which despite being from one of the most successful developers in the universe has the feeling of an indie title about it and therefore feels like it should be supported whenever possible.

Dilemmas.

Also, my birthday is coming up. It's on the 29th. I will be turning 30. If anyone is looking for inspiration for exciting presents to buy me to celebrate the survival of three decades, I certainly wouldn't object to a copy of Portal 2 on PS3. Just tell me if you're doing that, though, so I don't feel the inexorable draw towards my nearest game retail establishment to procure my own copy in the next few days.

In the meantime, I will be sitting here listening to Jonathan Coulton music and singing along. And possibly replaying Portal. Several times. And each time wishing that I was actually playing Portal 2.

I'm really not helping myself here. GLaDOS is in my brain. Singing.

Day 456