» Thrown away: The stuff you loved and lost.

If they were truly yours...
I love video games and I mean that in the truest, saddest sense of the word. My memories are inextricably tied to what I playing at the time. Primary School was the BBC B with Brian Clough's Football Fortunes, Starship Command and Elite. Boarding School was Street Fighter 2:CE, the Sonic collection and Micro Machines 98. University was GoldenEye, Mario Kart 64 and Lylat Wars. I've had the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 since their respective launches and my spare room is populated with a Mega Drive, a SNES, DreamCast, N64, Game Gear, Mega CD, Saturn and a few others.

But the very first console I had was the Atari VCS, complete with two joysticks and two paddle controllers. I spent more hours with my brother playing Circus, Tank, Breakout, Space Invaders and Pac-Man than it took to put man on the moon. Then (and stop me if you've heard this one before) my mother got rid of it, donating it to some relatives. Do not be too hard on her, this is one of only two known acts of cruelty by my mother. But naturally the loss of my original console has always left a hole inside that no amount of ultra HD graphics nor violent sadism could ever truly fill.

Flash forward to last Christmas. My aunt and uncle come over with their children and we do the traditional family things, playing on the Wii, falling asleep at inopportune moments. After the meal, my aunt announces she has an extra little present for me. The uncle comes back into the house with a huge box and plays down my expectations, insisting it's just a minor thing. I unwrap the cardboard and there, inside the battered and heavily taped original box is my Atari VCS. I think I managed not to cry.

It still worked and we played it for five, maybe ten minutes before deciding that the memory cheats and the games were awful (especially Pac-Man - I thought it was arcade perfect; not so much) but that didn't matter, I love that machine from its rubber joysticks to its wood finish and even though I let it go, it came back to me.
(Mon 18th Aug 2008, 15:21, More)

» Social Networking Gaffes

Celebrity Stalking
I'm not on Facebook, MySpace or any other "friend me, friend me!" website for the simple reason that I have far too many acquaintances as it is and not enough time to spend with my real friends. However, as I work in IT, this is incomprehensible to a number of people, many of whom seem convinced I must have them on ignore or block or something.

I also feel bad for all the minor celebrities who have profiles on the sites to plug whatever movie/CD/reality TV show that they're doing at the moment. They all have 25,000 friends within a day of joining and there are people out there who will boast about being Nathan Fillion's friend on Facebook. You're not his friend, you're on his mailing list.

What really bugs me about Facebook and the like is that you don't even have to be on them to be stalked. An old friend from Preparatory School (yes, I know) who has become a hotshot lawyer and increasingly successful in his media career has responded to my disinterest in getting back in touch via conventional methods by adding the various members of my family to his Facebook profile. My mother's Facebook friends list consists of him, my sister and my brother whereas he has several hundred "fans" and them. It's just weird.

I know he probably just wants a buddy who isn't some bastard lawyer or luvvie showbiz type but surely two decades is long enough for the "best friends forever" thing to be invalidated?
(Thu 11th Sep 2008, 22:16, More)