Category Archives: Personal

Personal

Garfield, Sir Bob, & Me

I normally don’t find Mondays too distasteful, but have woken up this morning feeling slightly like a small freight train ran into, and then over me, repeatedly. Just one of those mornings, I guess… I’d like to crawl back into bed and go to sleep now; but sadly the responsibilities of adulthood beckon.

Damn, I wish I was still a kid. I know how Seth feels.

Personal

Love the Summer

Even though its raining, its still light when I get back from work and today I even mustered the enthusiasm to go on a bike ride, rain notwithstanding. Feels pretty damn good.

Miscellany, Personal, Technology

Debateamongous

Was involved in a debate at work a couple of days ago. Idea was to get people thinking about tech issues, and it worked. The content of my argument – justifying Google’s self-censorship in order to gain access to the Chinese market – was fairly unoriginal, but had fun piecing it together nonetheless. Cheers to Rach for organising.

I really thought I’d had it when SK popped out with “The Great Firewall of China” to close his case – a good pun always impresses me.

But the rhythm of the thing reminded me v. much of my debating days (before I was completely put off the notion of intellectual debates by the Cambridge Union) at school under good old PASF. Peter (who is one of many Mr Miyagis I’ve had the good fortune to encounter), he taught me well – even though in my debating history at school I never once convinced the audience that my case was worth voting for.

Meme, Personal, Technology

Should I, or shouldn’t I?

1 Comment

I need to be saving for a house, really, but there’s a few goodies I want and being the materialo-centric person I am I feel like I really should satisfy this craving. Here’s the list, and some pros and cons. Help me out.

PSP

Probably the device I want least. But it is *damn* cool, and I hear there’s a way you can read comics on it. Which is exciting to me. So, pros…

    It’s sexy looking
    It reads comics

And cons…?

    The only game I want to play on it is Lemmings… oh, and maybe Worms
    It costs too much money
    I don’t really have the time for it

Next up, Xbox 360

Very tempting.

Pros:

    Looks a damn sight better than my gen1 Xbox
    Damn sight cheaper than the PS3
    Available *now*
    Oblivion

Cons:

    I barely play on my current Xbox
    Can’t think of any game other than Oblivion I’m hungry for
    GTA4 and Halo3 aren’t out for a long while
    The price will go down when the PS3 launches, just to spite them
    My TV’s not HD-compatible
    The time thing
    It’s also too expensive
    I have more productive things I should be doing with my life

That last one probably applies to quite a few of the things I’m talking about.

Batter up, Pocket PC

It’s possible these have been branded ‘Windows Mobile PDAs’ now…

Pros

    Gil’s lent me his and it’s really cool
    I have bought a Bluetooth keyboard which will let me use it for writing my novel (if I can ever get it started…)
    They let me log on to free Wifi everywhere…
    I’ll look like someone on Star Trek tapping on one
    I get to fly the flag for Windows Mobile, which I really do like

Cons

    It really is expensive – £250-£300 ish for a decent one
    I’ll look like someone off Star trek tapping on one
    Do I *really* need one?

Ooh. This one is winning so far. What’s next?

New PC

Ok, I’m not even going to argue the case for this one. Can’t afford it, or at least one that would be significantly better than this beast. But Oblivion will not run on my PC and the demo of HOMM V was just rubbish. I can’t face swapping out the graphics card, either, it just seems purposeless.

What else could I possibly want, being the greedy greedy man I am?

Well, a ukelele. And a banjo. And a 12-string guitar. But given that I have barely strummed a tune on my other instruments of late… hard to justify.

So I probably shouldn’t buy any of these things. I might keep playing with Gil’s PocketPC until I really have to give it back and then think about buying one, if I can get the keyboard set up. I’ll let you know how it goes…

I wonder if this material craving is worth a meme? I’ll tag some people and see if they play: Tom, Chris, Ben, Simon B (come on, you know you want to ;) – list four things you want and talk yourself into/out of buying them).

Personal

Bye, bye Miss American Pie

Ok, slightly misleading headline: have spent most of my free time in the last week with Gem, who’s off the the US for a four month stint in the New York office. Will be v. exciting and is a great opportunity for her, but was impossible to avoid sadness seeing her off at Heathrow today.

In any case, I will catch up here… lots of exciting things to, erm, soliloquise about.

Personal

Silence

Building in additional functionality into this blog and engaging in the blogosphere is taking up time! Not to mention work is insane atm.

So apologies – I will do some catch up posts this weekend. Have muchos to talk about.