Insanity Crash: A Decade of Unsociable Socialising

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace." - John Lennon

2007, is at it's death, for all the time it took, and this year marked an important moment in my life, that went slightly unnoticed by almost everyone I know and I don’t think I made a big deal about it at the time, but over the last few days the implications of the milestone started to impact upon my mind and thoughts, and it is thus:

10 years ago my family got their first Personal Computer.

In years to come this will be as significant as our parents’ first colour TV, our grandparents’ first Radio, our great-grandparents’ first sighting of a car, all most interesting and shocking moments. I remember going to get it from PC World. I remember it getting set up for the first time on the coffee table and running the PC for the first time. The PC was a Packard Bell which ran Windows 95 with the Packard Bell Navigator running on top of it. This was an “environment” that ran every single time you switched on the computer, and gave you a home styled desktop with filing cabinets, a playroom and other such useless trappings that made the PC run so slowly. The specs were astonishing for its time – a 166MHz processor, with 32Mb of RAM and a 2Gb Hard Drive. The Intel Pentium had MMX technology – it was able to play music and run videos at the same time, which was a leap beyond leaps. Now, my mobile phone has a larger resolution screen relatively and has the same amount of memory as my hard disc. My sisters laptop right now has the same amount of RAM that the original PC had in total.

My first experience of the internet was also in those halcyon days. My father, ever ahead of his time, got us Cabletel Online within a few months of it being available. We were given a family email address: shields@edgmont.cableol.net (or as near enough) and I can remember with a smile and startling accuracy the dialling chimes the whiney 33.6k modem made. We used Netscape Navigator to surf the internet and the value of bookmarks was the funest thing about the internet. Yahoo chat pages were at the bleeding edge of contact, and I was only allowed about half an hour a night to go online – remember that there was no Bebo, no Myspace, and most interestingly, no Youtube or Wikipedia – what did I do?

In fact I remember when my dad installed Internet Explorer 4 for the first time. It became the default browser for the internet and opening of web pages like it does today when you install a new program. This threw my father, and myself, as it had seemed that our trusty Netscape had been erased. I only realised the truth as it probably really happened a few months ago while trying to get rid of Realplayer and stop it opening mp3s.

The ages of 20 to 30 are the last generation of people who truly know what it was like to live without the internet. I can just remember coming home and having to phone my mates, hoping they would be in. I used to just turn up on the doorstep asking if they were about – now it is arranged via Bebo or text. I remember also just watching telly rather than Youtube for silly clips, You’ve Been Framed will never be the same again.

Now we have a generation of children who know nothing but the internet. They grew up with it, and it will always be there – they will not understand what it was like without it, when information was fed to people rather than led by people.

Technology will hit a roof of what is possible at some point, but I suppose we set the height of the roof.

Jonathan, you are the only person I know that does not have the internet.

Muchness Dump: Super Mario Galaxy et al

All your base belong to us.



Since the dawn of time (3D gaming) the platformer has been slightly out of reach. Where, in the early 90s jumping from floating ledge to floating platform was a common sight, with the dawn of the 3D arena platformers have had a little bit of a rough ride. There are a few glaring problems with doing the traditional platformer in 3D. How best to translate the "always go right" into "always go into the screen" and the Einsteinian "time travel is possible" type problem of the camera views.

The first game to manage to blend this seemingly impossible mix was the revolution it should have always been. Super Mario 64 is a landmark game. It is the mediums Gone With the Wind, the James Joyce novel, the Philips Compact Disc. It really is that big a deal.

And since then, nothing. Platformers were stale. No movement forward and some considerable steps backwards. Even Nintendo couldn't hack it - the sequel to Mario 64 came and went without so much as a skim on the waters of computer game-dom. Until Super Mario Galaxy.

This is why. It is truly 3D. The levels go X Y and Z, Mario jumps every direction, and most importantly, the camera has been sorted. It is pure computer gaming fun, and the first game in a long long time to make me smile with almost every play. The levels jump at me, and graphics are so solid and cartoon like I forget I am playing a game, and then something reminds me, like the ping of a coin, the "Yahoo" of a triple jump and the "Ya shitting little bastard..." when I hear "Oh Nooo" and the world famous "Doo Doo Doo do da dum" when loosing a life. (That is a long and grammatically confusing sentence).

If you have a Wii, you must play this - this is why Nintendo made the console. i really hope that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is made, just for more levels, but I have a sinking feeling it might not - the length of time Nintendo tend to make over these games means we might be waiting till Wii 2.

But all of this reminded me of why I love computer games. Why they have been such a part of my childhood, and why, now, it is okay to enjoy them. A few people, like my parents and girlfriend, will still find the time to complain that they are geeky, sad and childish - but then they forget I am all those things. I am a geek, and always will be, after being brought up parented by one. My father is a geek on Chris Rea, 87th Precinct, and football pre 1990s. This has rubbed onto my self and my sister in more ways than one.

I can actually remember the first time I ever saw Sonic the Hedgehog. I saw it at my Uncles, on a Mega Drive I, and I was afraid to play it for fear of killing Sonic. My dad bought a Mega Drive after that, but he had owned a ZX81 Spectrum before that, so he was no stranger to the gaming world.

Last week, I had a look through the Virtual Console library on the Wii - this is where a lot of older titles can be downloaded in their traditional form and the first game I downloaded was Sonic the Hedgehog 3, my favourite all time game, and it still makes me smile when I play it today. Will we say the same thing about Halo 3 in 2020? I don't think so. Super Mario Galaxy?

Yes.

Insanity Crash: When 4 years ago feels like yesterday.

“Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess.”
Juan Ramon Jimenez

On Monday I took my headphones and my 250Gb hard drive into work to listen to music as I knew I would be doing a calculation, which means I would be sitting on my lonesome wondering “How the hell do I do this.”, but more on that will come later. I decided to do the crazy thing and listen to some music I have not heard in a very long time, and started riffling through the collection. The first band was Razorlight, whose first album is full of freckly charm, but upon embarking on the second album I decided they were rubbish, and switched to System of a Down. For a few minutes I struggled to concentrate, with Serj shouting PIZZAPIZZAPIE in my ears at 100dB, I decided to switch again, this time to Snow Patrol.

It took less than 5 seconds before this feeling came over me, and the feeling was something I have never felt before. It was a whooshing, rush of memory, so vivid and sharp it caught me off guard, and the little backwards piece at the beginning of Final Straw tugged my heart strings. I was thrown back into 1st 2nd year university, when I was walking along in the cold George Square, with the Christmas lights on and the carousel music annoying my ears. I remembered my Minidisk player, the endless lectures of Maths, and the wonder of doing actual Chemical Engineering labs. I remember new years over at Hazels, trips to the Union to play pool, and ultimately, to the Garage when it was not socially frowned upon.

I remembered hundreds of things within a few seconds, and then came the crushing blow. They were all gone. For the 3:22 minutes that How to Be Dead lasts for, I was stunned, sitting in a melancholy daze, when I became suddenly very sad and slightly worried.

I was past that part of my life, and it was over. I have never felt such a “death” in my memory, and it really hit me full in the face.

Now, I spent a while trying figure out whether or not this was worth blogging about, but I feel that it is probably something that some will find interesting, and another that I have found to be really easy to write about.

But, back to the first line of this post, calculations. They are my bread and butter, my whisky and sherry, my Sonic to my Tails. They are important, and I worry every time I get given one. Can I do it? Will they laugh if I ask a question? Will the answer be right? Will it take me too long? What if I convert a unit wrong? What if my answer is so stupid they realise I have no concept of any Chemical Engineering?

These questions race through my mind. Luckily, the one I am supposed to be doing right now is not important; it is only a pressure relief valve on a HP/LP (High Pressure/Low Pressure) interface – which, for those who don’t know, are the most important calcs I can do.

At least I know how to do it. Kinda.