do you know where your towel is?
I’m currently sat up waiting for the new Formula 1 season to start. With the grand prix taking place in Australia it kicks off at 3am our time and I’m wondering what to do.
So I thought I’d share with you my new Best Thing Ever: I’m going to see The Police in September, and I’m dead exited. That’s it really; I’ve nothing more to say 
Other than that six months is a long time to wait.
I had an argument with a woman in the supermarket this afternoon. Standing behind me in the queue at the checkouts I noticed her looking me in a way which plainly said she thought I’d pushed in ahead of her, and sure enough this is what I was accused of a few seconds later.
Firstly, let me say that I didn’t push in. Quite apart from the fact that this is something I’d not do intentionally, there was no way this woman (I shall for the purposes of this post call her Loretta) got there before me. She had a trolley (I had a basket) and joined the queue from the same direction I did - quite simply I’d have seen her if she’d been standing there when I arrived.
So after registering on 7 February 2005 I’ve finally started using my flickr account. I guess I should have waited another 72 minutes and made it a full two years…
Anyway, I’ve been having a bit of a play with my new Canon EOS 400D, and have posted a few of my first efforts on flickr. I’m fairly pleased with most of them, although I’m sure there’s plenty of room for improvement!
Comments welcome…
Edit 26.02.2007: I’ve now replaced the shockingly small photos I originally uploaded with some larger ones. There will also be more pictures going up on a reasonably regular basis from now on.
So it’s been a while since I posted. Latterly this has been due to problems over the renewal of my Spatho.com domain, which led to eight days of downtime for the site, the details of which I won’t go into here.
I do however want to say thankyou to my host Sniffhost, for being cooperative and quick to respond to my problems as always, helping me to fix an issue that was mostly out of its hands.
So I would add my endorsement of Sniffhost to that of Andy, who found himself in the same situation with his domain recently.
I now intend to get back into posting on here more regularly, and with my recent purchase of a digital SLR camera I hope to have something interesting to show you guys!
Okay, so I’ve had one for ten days or so now, having picked one up on launch day, but I don’t think there are that many Nintendo Wiis about yet and so I’m still a little smug about it. It’s brilliant.
That’s pretty much all I wanted to say really - it’s just jolly good fun (even Jess enjoyed Wii Sports). Zelda is typically amazing, and in fact is a large part of why I’ve taken over a week to write what I intended to be a post on launch day itself (which was Friday 8th December).
I will just pop in a quick plug for the Bullring HMV store - they’re always very helpful when I go in there, and they worked around a cock-up clerical error they’d made with my pre-order to give me a Wii on launch day with very little in the way of argument from me for them to do so. Thanks guys - and I do mean it about the staff; for some reason I seem to walk out of that particular store feeling like I’ve had good service more than I do anywhere else.
Oh, and all these stories that have caused Nintendo to offer to replace all the original wrist straps issued with the Wii Remotes at launch are a load of rubbish. Half of them have got to be fakes, and you can take it from me that those which aren’t are accidents caused by people being far too enthusiastic with themselves. I’ve not once had the Wiimote slip from my grasp, but should it do so I have no doubt it will be caught by the strap. That’s what it’s there for, as a safety measure - it’s not designed to be stressed every time the remote is swung, the big idiots.
One Monday evening a couple of weeks ago I returned home late from work wanting something quick and easy for dinner, so I slung a pizza in the oven. At this point I realised I’d bought the wrong pizza. I’d stopped off at a Morrison’s on the way home from a client a day or two before and bought what I’d believed to be a jolly nice pepperoni job. It was a fresh one, and said “Italian Style Stonebaked Pizza” on the box above a picture that looked itself good enough to eat (come to think of it, this might not have been such a bad idea).
Anyway, I removed it from its packaging to find this:
What kind of a disgraceful excuse for a pizza is this? There is a distinct lack of topping of any kind - what there is consists of about three square inches of spectacularly thinly dolloped tomato sauce, four shavings of rather bland cheese and ten slices of pepperoni. While they’ve been easily the most generous with this last ingredient there’s not an embarassing amount of it and what has been provided is somewhat unevenly spread. I hardly need add that I grated about half a loaf of my very own cheddar before throwing it in to cook.
On another, sadder note, the famous Scissors have bitten the dust. This happened a few days before the aforementioned pizza incident, and so I had to use the Pizza Cutter to slice this one up. Which was probably a good thing since to ask the Scissors to cut food as shoddy as that would have been downright indecent. So here’s to an old friend: you did us proud.
I just read an article exploring the successes and pitfalls of the Nintendo 64 a decade on. Turns out I have rather fond memories of said console, and while this is far from a surprise to me (nor to many who know me I suspect) it has brought on a wave of nostalgia, and I can’t help posting a few thoughts on here.
The N64 was the first console that Nick (my brother) and I had. Bought through the local free-ads paper, unboxed and with two controllers, it cost us £40 in (I think) April 1998. It was tremendously exciting, and I’ve been a Nintendo man ever since - they simply make the best games, no question as far as I’m concerned.
With games like Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64 and of course the staggering Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time I was occupied for hours. I still play Zelda today and it’s still fabulous, a truly brilliant game despite its age. In fact, let me be clear: the phrase “despite its age” perhaps implies something of a patronising, rose tinted accommodation of a fine game that is still fun to play, but doesn’t quite match up to modern games. This is absolutely not the case. It’s beautiful.
So, the ‘64 had some great one-player games, and was good for multiplayer fun too - my personal favourite party game being Mario Kart 64, with popular opinion understandably going for Goldeneye (though I’ve never really enjoyed shooters myself). It was also a trendsetting machine, introducing true 3D games, analogue control and rumbling control pads, all of which are now standard features in today’s home consoles.
So here’s to the Nintendo 64, which probably didn’t get the recognition it deserved due to its utter defeat by Sony’s PlayStation, but was home to some of the best software ever seen. That last, at least, seems to be recognised by most.
Look on for a few more pictures of my favourite N64 games…
Continue reading ‘Nintendo 64′
So what has seemed increasingly likely over the past weeks and months has finally been confimed: Michael Schumacher is to retire from Formula One at the end of this season.
Normally I try not to post news stories as there’s not really anything I can add to them, and as far as I know there aren’t many people who turn to Spatho.com to keep current on world issues (if you are one of these people, then I apologise for not keeping you properly informed and may I point you to the BBC). However, like Jenson’s win a few weeks back, I felt I couldn’t really let this one slip without making some comment.
While not exactly a surprise (a phrase one can band about freely once safe in the knowledge that something is certain), this is still a disappointment for many, and I include myself there. It’s not what I wanted to hear - I was still hoping to see Michael vs. Kimi at Ferrari next year.
I thought this was really cool - supposedly the result of combining 1000 replays in Trackmania Sunrise. If you've not played the game, I wholeheartedly suggest you try out the demo. It's terrific fun and very addictive.
I also found what was perhaps the inspiration for this movie, the 1k Project on YouTube. Check it out if you want more, however it's not as cool and so I didn't embed it here.
My first post in a while! I’ve been on holiday for the past couple of weeks, going first to Edinburgh, and then to Tenerife. Much fun was had 
Now I’m busy preparing for a couple of exams I have in two weeks, so it may be a bit quiet here until they’re over - however, in the meantime I’ve found the new Best Thing Ever:
It’s called Tantrix and it’s a kind of strategy game you can play on your own or against others. There’s a free online version - try it out! You can play against other people or against a robot, but I suggest you find out how to play first. I like it so much that I’ve ordered the proper (non-computer) game and everything.
[EDIT 10th September 2006: I've been meaning to add (but kept forgetting to) that I wanted to thank Kathryn for bringing her Tantrix set to Edinburgh so that we all were able to experience its wonder. Otherwise mine would still be a Tantrix-free existence. So um, thanks :D]
