Category: diary

it is that “quickly running updates on your computer before you nip off to bed” never ends up being quick.

Before I get going, I noticed that todays post is number 701 on here. I’ve also had 298 comments. Nowt compared to a lot of bloggers, but still a lot to me.

Anyways, I want to tell you about my dream last night. Wait, before you go, it’s good. It was basically a mix of Groundhog Day with Life on Mars and a few other things. I think it was set in the 80s. The premise of the dream was that I had to stop a man committing a murder, and I couldn’t. When he killed, the day went back to the start again. However, like Groundhog Day, only I had awareness of the repitition, so I gradually investigated what led him to murder, until I could figure out a way to stop it happening. In the end, I had to accept that I couldn’t stop them, and persuade someone else to intervene, which they did by attacking them with FA Cup final memorabilia from the 50s to the 70s. After that it got a bit dull and Freudian, so I’ll spare you of that, but in summary, that is my idea, I can’t be naffed to write it, and I own all primary and subsiduary rights to the idea.

Which is a good start. I bought Wii Play and Big Brain Academy this weekend, none of which involve any violent movements or simulation at all, as I felt this to be a wise move. According to Big Brain Academy my brain is now starting to get weighty, which is a good thing. Unless it makes me even more top-heavy, of course. Nice weekend, S&J came over with S (complex naming system) who we thought had left Oxford, but happily she is staying. Then a nice mellow Saturday with some wandering around town, followed by a lazy Sunday. Feeling very relaxed and ready for the week now. Don’t know if motivated is the word, but I’ve certainly got it on the list of things I could potentially be this week.

I’ve pulled a muscle in my shoulder. Playing Wii Bowling. The irony being, that I was due to go actual bowling with work today, and had to sit on the sidelines aching due to playing the faux version. Ouch.

I’ve always been clumsy. I believe it is a matter of genetics, and given similar evidence from my mother on how frequently she injures herself, I think I know where I get it from. It seems to manifest itself in major incidents once ever 6-12 months, but also in a series of smaller ones on a regular basis.

Major incidents on my side include falling on gravel and ripping my knee open, tripping over a very low fence and ripping my knee open, and falling over whilst walking on level ground, tumbling forwards about 15-20 yards, hitting a concrete dustbin, hurting my shoulder, kicking myself in the back of the head, cutting my face and elbows, and of course, ripping my knee open.

My mother, sister and I all seem to suffer from “weak ankle syndrome”, a condition where our ankles will collapse for no apparent reason when we least suspect it. We all also have a prominant heel of bone that protudes more than most from the back of our heads. I believe it to be a permenant bump that our ancesterors had from their clumsiness, that over generations has formed into bone.

The reason I mention this in particular is that I’ve got a scar on my arm, which I acquired when I bashed into our wheely bin outside the house. It was a few weeks ago, and has now healed. Into an inverse exclamation mark. Every time I look at it, I feel like I’m expressing my extreme clumsiness in Spanish. I wonder if it will heal up, or if I am now to carry this mark of my inability with my limbs…

Not been up to a whole lot lately. Nice weekend mind, our friends J&S came over for drinks on Friday night, where a conclusion was not reached on what the best band-in-a-wardrobe video was (I still hold that The Cure’s Close to me is clearly such for being based entirely on a wardrobe, and that S’s choice of Rain or Shine by Five Star deviated into several other non-wardrobe areas). If you can think of one that is better, please let me know in the comments, this is important.

Saturday we rose late, and went into Reading to see our friends R&J, had a few drinks in town then travelled onto Cavisham for a very pleasant meal in a pub. A good time was had by all.

If you look up to the top right, you’ll see that I’ve had more comments on the last P.Wyndham Little Project post, more people have had similar letters. I’m hoping that they might send me more of what they’ve had, and I’ll put them up if so.

So I’ve now got myself a Wii, and very nice it is too. However I feel I’m missing something, namely the sense of pointless achievement I get with playing the Xbox 360. If you haven’t seen the online side of the 360, as a player you get points for achieving certain tasks in every game, and built up an overall score, your gamerscore. It is your personal badge of how seriously you take your gaming, how far you’ve got in all your games.

And it goes deeper than that as well, you can compare yourself to your friends, see down to the individual achievement how far they’ve got in a game you both have. I like this, it spurs me on to try and outplay my friends. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, but I feel it just adds an extra little purpose to gaming.

This I find lacking on the Wii. I don’t know what games my friends have, I can barely play them on any games at the moment (only one, Mario Strikers, and I don’t fancy that), and I don’t know how they’re getting on. In this day and age, you also tend not to be told how far you are through a game, so I don’t get the same sense of progression. As far as I understand it, PS3 has a similar system. I hope Nintendo are going to start to rectify this somehow, but at present there doesn’t seem to be any enthusiasm from them to do so. It’s a shame.