Archive for December, 2006
Involved
There haven’t been many good years recently, but 2006 changed all that, in large part thanks to Andrea. I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun throughout the past 12 months, most of which involved her one way or another and I’m hoping to repeat that throughout the coming change of calendar. Normally I’d work my way through all the posts I’ve made and pick out the highlights, but the blog played such a back seat I’m not sure I’d find too many. There always just seemed to be something else to do. I plan to do better in 2007.
I saw lots of films, fulfilled a dream by going to New York, finally released a Chatbear update, met a great girl, paid off some debt, travelled the country a bit… in fact I’d say I packed a lot in.
I said at the end of 2005 that “tomorrow can always surprise you.” How right I was.
Whispering
The sore throat has now turned into me losing my voice. This has never happened before so it’s a very odd experience, I go to talk and there’s just nothing there. I try whispering, but after a minute that just makes my throat feel even more strained than it did before. So instead I say silent and try to communicate via gestures and typing onto my laptop for Andrea to see.
I’m sure there are plenty of people that will be glad to hear I’ve finally shut up.
Panorama
No, not the BBC show. I stitched together a bunch of photos that I took on Liberty Island into a nice panorama. As you can see from the giant watermark placed there by the trial software, I used Doubletake for the Mac, which was simple to use and did a rather nice job. I wish my camera had a proper panorama mode though, I was taking these purely by eye.
You can view it here.
Attack
I woke up this morning with a sore throat. That can only mean one thing. Cold germs are about to attack.
Again.
Sigh.
Career
Hot on the heels of Wargames 2, Val Kilmer has come out and said he’d love to do a sequel to Real Genius, because he’d really like to do more comedy. I love Real Genius, it’s a great, under-appreciated and often forgotten teen-comedy and one of Kilmer’s best moments. Hopefully it’s his fantastic performance in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that’s reminded him how much fun doing a comedy can be and that he’s serious about returning to the genre again. He really is a great comic actor who for some reason decided that starring in a bunch of dodgy dramas and a bad Batman movie was much better for his career.
Probably not a good idea to do a Real Genius 2 however, that’s got disaster written all over it.
Awesome
What can I say about Christmas that hasn’t already been said?
Well it was the first one in a few years that didn’t totally suck, which was great. Our tree looked awesome, the flat looked Christmassy, the presents were great and the food was too. I’d call it a success all round really and I look forward to repeating it with the same variables again next year.
Boxing
Jennifer, Alan and Steph joined me and Andrea tonight for dinner and Wii fun, which then developed into big fun. It’s a whole different experience getting to play with other people rather than just on your own, and after making sure that we weren’t going to break any more lights we got stuck into a good game of bowling, then golf and finally boxing, where we flailed our arms like crazy people and got exceedingly tired. A good time I’m sure was had by all, even those who would not normally participate in any kind of console event. Photo attached for posterity.
Momentous
After what can only be described as an excruciating wait, Chatbear and Bearkey both relaunched today. It’s not all perfect, the user profile pages are a little low on features right now, but as a whole I’m sure you’ll find nothing but improvements throughout the entire system. Plus it all looks pretty, there’s plenty of requested features (finally, a community search function) and gives me a nice, well-written base for future expansion plus a good set of administrative modules for future websites.
The champagne I’ve had sitting in my fridge for the past 18 months will be cracked open in the coming days to celebrate this momentous event and then I’ll start thinking about where to go next. Blogbear is probably the most likely next direction, if only because there’s quite a bit of it already written and sitting around in various states of disrepair. But at the rate at which I’m producing these updates, I wouldn’t expect to see that any time before June 2008.
Sequel
Apparently they are making a Wargames 2, a sequel to one of my top ten favourite films of all time. How can they possibly make a sequel to this thing, surely this is nothing more than a shameless attempt to cash in on the name by attaching it to so random hacker vs. military B-movie. There’s not even anybody from the original involved.
Money grabbing whores. That’s all I’ve got to say. I bet it’s shit.
Reaching
Today is the day I finished all that I had to do on my Chatbear upgrade to-do list. It’s been a long, long road reaching this stage but it felt pretty damn good to delete that last item off today. It’s not quite time to celebrate yet, I’ve got a few things left on the Bearkey to-do list now, but they should only take a couple of days or so then it’ll be time to launch this bad boy.
The new website and new administration system really are a big step forward in appearance and usability, so hopefully people appreciate all the months of work (and over 15,000 new lines of code) that have gone into them.
Clunked
I read about all the Wii related accidents online, like people putting their remotes through their TV because somehow they managed to let it go while playing tennis or whatever and I think they must be totally retarded or something. How could they be so stupid as to let the controller fly out of their hands like that?
And then I smashed my living room light.
The controller was firmly in my hand at the time though, I’m not completely stupid. I swung it back to take a good hard shot in the Power Shot bowling training mode and clunked the glass lamp shade on the ceiling, smashing it into many pieces and scattering them all over the floor. And my head.
OK, so maybe I am completely stupid.
Tactile
So I’ve got my Wii and I have to say on first impressions, this is pretty cool. The packaging is clearly very Apple inspired and very different from previous Nintendo consoles (I can especially remember the very colourful SNES packaging with the game screenshots all over it), all white and minimalist. And yes I know the DS packaging was similar, but that’s a handheld, not a console.
To be honest the remote isn’t quite perfect, it dances around the screen a little more than I’d like, and when you lose that on-screen hand pointer it can be quite a challenge to get it back again. I like how when you turn your wrist the hand on screen turns with you and I also like the little force-feedback it gives when you roll over the on-screen buttons, giving it a bit more of a tactile feel. Sony are so wrong when they think that rumble doesn’t matter.
Wii Sports is heck-of-a fun, although so far I’ve only managed to play single player. I especially liked the bowling, I really feel in that one like I’m in control and could really get good at it. The tennis seems a little too flaky, I’m really not sure how I’m meant to hit the ball back in any particular direction and the boxing is just completely useless, I’m doing nothing except flail my arms about wildly and hope that makes some sort of difference to my avatar.
Speaking of avatars, the Mii’s are just fantastic, I spent a good long time playing around with all the different faces and noses etc in there. I think there are some odd choices in some of the pages, especially noses where almost all of them are completely useless, but I’m really proud of the Andrea Mii that I managed to create. I’m pretty generic however.
All in all, the hardware is nice, small, quiet, discreet. The remote works probably as well as could be expected and given time, I’m sure we’ll see some interesting games. For now I’m looking forward to playing with some friends.
Deafening
It’s really odd to be back in Hamilton again. I’m looking at the walls in my flat and they all seem so bare and different. It’s also really, really quiet here. I can’t hear anything right now apart from the faint hum of WOPR at the other side of the room. I didn’t really spend a lot of time thinking that NY was noisy, but now I can’t believe how deafening the silence is.
I want to go back.
Breathtaking
The flight home wasn’t quite as perfect as the flight out. We got stuck on the tarmac at the airport for what must have been over an hour because if the queue of planes in front of us, something that the pilot claimed he didn’t know until after we had left the terminal. When we finally did take off however, it was a marvellous sight out the window to see New York at night disappearing behind us.
Speaking of New York at night, I must tell you all about being at the top of the Empire State Building at 7:30pm and looking out over the city. Absolutely breathtaking. Sitting writing this and thinking about it now, it just makes me want to go back again. It was really windy, so one side of the viewing platform was closed because it was too dangerous, but there was still enough of it open to allow you to stand there and more than admire what was laid out in front of you. I’ve been to the top of the CN Tower in Toronto before, but this exceeded that experience on almost every level. There are simply not the adjectives to properly describe just how majestic the view is from the 86th floor and I highly recommend that anybody wishing to experience something wonderous makes sure to take advantage of the opportunity should they ever find themselves in the city.
I really enjoyed my time in the Big Apple. People were generally friendly enough (although they seemed to either be really friendly or really dour, and never somewhere in-between) and it totally lived up to my expectations. I’d come again.
For more photos, go here.
Ferris
The Toys R Us here has a ferris wheel inside. A full size, theme park style, working, put your kids on it and let them have a ride, FERRIS WHEEL.
This is a good metaphor for everything here, it’s all at a scale larger than you would get anywhere else. The idea of a store in Glasgow putting a Ferris wheel inside would just cause people to thumb their noses in disgust, it would just be too ridiculous, too over the top, but here it’s just accepted as normal. Just like the M&M store that was next to the hotel, a three floor large retail space selling nothing but M&M’s in every colour imaginable, next to every piece of merchandise you could possibly slap the M&M’s logo onto.
Nothing is done on a small scale, nothing is subtle or subdued. But then if you wanted that, you wouldn’t come to New York.
Liberty
A trip to NY wouldn’t be complete without a visit to The Statue of Liberty, probably the most recognisable symbol of the city. It’s probably smaller than you expect it’s going to be, but it’s no less impressive. Unfortunately despite getting there reasonably early in the morning, all the passes that would allow you inside the statue were already gone for the day. I think you must have to be there at opening time to stand a chance.
What I particularly enjoyed was the ferry ride that takes you over to Liberty Island, it seems designed to give you the best vantage point of the city itself, rather than just going the most direct route. This means that you can stand on the boat, look back at the financial district or over to the bridges and giggle like a schoolchild while you think about where you are.
Artificially
They really go all out here when it comes to Christmas. From the giant baubles on the fountains across from Radio City Music Hall, to the giant toy soliders, to the incredible set of decorations in Macy’s - things here get done on a grand scale. But it’s the tree at Rockefeller that’s most impressive of all. At first it’s hard to believe it’s real, it’s so ridiculously huge that it looks like it must have been created artificially. At 88 feet tall with 30,000 lights, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever see one bigger and it’s only a shame that any of the photographs I took don’t do it any justice.
The streets of New York are also busy, really, REALLY busy. While walking back to the hotel tonight after 11pm it was almost impossible to move, even on the wide pavements that border each side of the streets on Times Square. We’re talking bordering on crush mentality here, enough space around you so that it doesn’t feel too claustrophobic, but not enough that you could stick your arms out to any distance. It’s the amount of people on a Glasgow street on Christmas Eve multiplied by ten. I found it strangely addictive, probably because it was so easy to lose yourself in it.
Beacon
Out of all the stores I saw in New York, from the outside at least, the Apple Store Fifth Avenue is the most impressive. The location is just perfect, right across from Central Park, just along from Tiffany’s, and it’s nothing short of spectacular. It’s an almost ridiculous concept, a giant glass cube with no visible structure holding it up or together, with the Apple logo floating in the middle, lit up like a beacon. The sweeping glass staircase that leads down into the store itself is equally over the top, huge panels of curved glass with a no expense spared in order to limit the number of joins.
The actual store underneath can only be a let down in comparison, it’s very much like all the other Apple stores, light woods, lots of light, clean lines - and it really doesn’t live up to the entrance above ground. I’m not sure what you could do in order to raise it to the same level though, short of filling the place with lasers. Lots, and lots of lasers.
Yellow
If there were ever a perfect journey from one country to another, then this would have to be a good model for designing it. Got checked in fast at Glasgow Airport, bags away on their carousel ride and me travelling as light as possible, carrying no hand luggage at all. Boarding the plane was on time, into the emergency exit seats organised by a contact at Continental I got. Flying time was boring as always, but the food was OK, the staff were friendly and the extra leg room afforded by being right at the main door made all the difference. It also made a difference when we landed, first off the flight into a strangely quiet Newark Airport and into an immigration hall with not one single other passenger. The man at customs was quiet, precise, and asked me no questions other than where I had just come from and before I knew it my passport was stamped and it was off to get bags.
The queue for the toilets at this point was too long to stand in, so eschewing that privilege and instead feeling a little uncomfortable, it was a nice sight to see the bags be one of the first ones to come out. A hot foot towards the exit, handing over customs declaration cards and then outside and onto American soil. Cross the road, speak to woman to get a taxi, into taxi (disappointingly not a standard Yellow Cab, but a Yellow Jeep - close, but not quite the same) and whisked off into the city. One nervous but uneventuful cab ride later (I’m sorry, he was perfectly nice, but I just don’t trust anyone) and it was into the hotel for an early checkin (smooth and pain free) and down to the hotel bar for nibbles and cocktails. Looking out the window to the street below, everything looked exactly as you would imagine it, yellow cabs everywhere, a huge amount of traffic, sidewalks full of people… this was New York baby.
Packing
The packing for New York has begun in earnest. I’m a pretty quick packer, I have a reasonable idea of how many clothes I’m going to go through and just remove them from the drawers and put them straight in the bag. What I do have though is a total fear that I’m going to forget something important and this is something that will continue to grip me from the moment I leave the house all the way to actually getting to the hotel at the other end. I’ll constantly be checking my pockets to make sure everything is still there, to make sure I haven’t dropped any tickets or my passport, wallet, etc. I always make sure and put the important things in my trousers rather than my jacket because I think I’m far less likely to lose the latter. Although if I happen to read an article about people having their trousers stolen in airports, I may just stay at home.
