Rio Bravo

Listening to: the sound of my skin wrinkling with all of these lovely hot baths - you haven't lived until you convert from coal-fire water heating to a combi boiler. Seriously.

Watching: the busy traffic rush, rush, rush outside my - brand new double-glazed - window.

...so I've moved out - I am now officially on the road to skintsville by way of a beautiful, 2 bedroomed flat in a studenty suburb of a generic northern city.

So, strangely, I have nothing in particular to blog about, despite being knee-deep in popular satirical-commentary style topics; council taxes, television licenses, snooping landlords, tescos... In fact, life is so strange and even and mellow that I've found little to seriously complain about. Which is what a blog is all about, right? Well, ok, not necessarily. But often.

While I drum up some blogspiration (ho, ho), amuse yourself by leaving me a witty comment. Go on, don't be shy.

Gender: queer.

Damn, damn, damn.

I've squandered my way through £30 this weekend buying and re-exchanging games.

The first game in this saga was Prototype, for the Xbox 360. The purchase was a bit of a blow-out as I'd wanted it since it came out, but after I'd spent a few unsatisfying hours running up buildings, and jumping really really high, I realised I just wanted someone to tell me how the game ended instead of finding out for myself. [Wait a moment, did i just subconsciously review a game? No. No, I couldn't have. Hm.]

Normally, I'd just sit it somewhere out of sight where it could wait for my fickle game-moods to swing back to a state of being interested, but I know money will be tight real soon (thanks, moving out!), so I thought I'd like to spend the money on something I know I'd enjoy. So I hovered around for 30 minutes in GameStation, drifting listlessly between Ghostbusters, Fuel, Blue Dragon (I came to xb360 gaming late, and have the privilege of thinking older games are still fun and fresh), The Darkness, Fuel again, Saints Row, Saints Row 2, the one with the cowboys, Fuel for the third time, and back to the bargain wall once more.

I plumped, in the end, for Fable II and a collection of umd videos for mam, who by the way is really loving her beautiful, slimline psp.

But here's the crux, the basic, central, or critical point or feature, of this blogpost (and mighty blogworthy I thought it, too - full of pseudo-angst stemming from the pseudo-world of my budding digital-media neuroses):

Do i make my Fable II character a girl or a boy?

Most games default to a boy character (aha! the notable exceptions: tomb raider, fighting games involving jiggly boobs, urban chaos, resident evil), so I reckon I'm not alone in the Girl Gamer World by being entirely, 100% comfortable playing as a laddo in a platforming, running-jumping-climbing-Eddie-Izzard-quotes sort of environment. But as far as rpgs go, I feel I need to look to my inner self to balance out the issue of "with which gender do i identify strongestly?":

- I'm not a boy

- but if there's a heterosexual love interest in the game, I will be moderately more involved if it's a girlfriend

- I'm more used to identifying as a more masculine presence in The Real World

- I can't shake that weird feeling that stems from playing Streets Of Rage as a child, where playing as the woman was faster

- boy characters are often cooler, and make me less intimidated physically in The Real World

- it would be awesome if I could be a girl character who is some sort of Matrix version of me (because all lesbians secretly long to look like Trinity, or that blonde girl who died, in the Matrix, apologies for the spoilers to all people reading this from 1998)

- but then, I would be more vulnerable to people seeing my Self as i wished to see me - thus, a boy character is a better disguise for my real Self (as People are not to be Trusted and should be Shunned and sometimes Beaten when appropriate)

of course, i think we all know what the real issue is here.

I have too much time on my hands to think about stuff like this.

The Strange World Of Beth Monday

more iPod calamities for the anguaji household - my chunky monkey white 20GB iPod started emoting at me again the other week, this time it was the "Sad iPod" face - my mother thinks it's hilarious that an iPod can be sad - so i've sprung for the largest capacity flash-based-memory iPod i can afford, which is to say - a 32gb iPod touch off've (yes, again) eBay. some day, i'll have enough money to buy something decent first hand. until then, there's always eBay.

so i ran once again into the problem of trying to work out how much space there'd be on on a 32gb iPod. doing some quick maths in my head, i estimated that there would be a 6gb drop-off in the actual available space.

this calculation was unequivocally WRONG and it should be iterated over and over that i shouldn't be allowed to Do Maths by myself as it is DANGEROUS and MISLEADING and will probably result in WORLDFAIL. personally, i don't trust the art of numbers - everything in the world has a feeling to me, or a colour, or an abstraction. although working out 20% of 32gb felt right to me, it proved mightily, heart-achingly, wrong.

maybe i could usher in a new era of abstract mathematical expressionism. (myheart * 2 = ?/ life)

but i digress. here's the formula to work out the difference between theoretical hard drive space and actual hard drive space:

capacity * 0.93

dead easy. for drives over 1tb, it's * 0.91 which to me feels like there should be more available space, but i refuse to trust my almost non-existant maths instincts.

...you know, i had to study differential equations at Geek College. i remember the equation fine:

dy/dx = nax^(x-1)

it has a lovely rythym to it when you say it out loud. regardless, i got a different answer every time i did it, and actually can't remember what it was even calculating. but i do like to drop it into conversations that i studied Differential Equations.

i studied them in the same way that the ancients studied the stars, the gods or the birds in the sky, ie - from a great distance and mostly with a bemused expression - that is the knowledge that i keep to myself.

--

incidentally, i'm thinking of switching to serif fonts for blog posts now that browsers treat curls with a hint of anti-aliased glee. thoughts and comments welcome.

--

decided to revert to Trebuchet as Georgia is just too grown-up for my witterings.

Poetry In BASIC

10 my heart is an infinite loop
20 I hate you
30 goto 10
END

# inspired by friend's boyfriend
# looking for IT section in
# poetry bookshop

Readybrek

had a gig in a bra shop yesterday. nothing else this week will seem interesting.

on the subject of performance and lingerie, i need to sort out which laundries to do before the next mini-gig on Saturday. it will, of course, be a black t-shirt and baggy jeans affair, but which colour underwear to sport? i'd hate to be creatively stifled by my smalls.

can anybody tell me why men think following a woman's recipe is beneath them? what years of fabulous meals have they got under their belt to fuel this arrogance? i'm looking at you, dad.

Have Emulator, Will Travel.

got project64 again - playing zelda properly for the first time in years. it's wonderful. i forgot how much i hated the gorons though - yes, i'm only *that* far into it. i'm a very slow gamer. like a slow reader. only with problem-solving skills and spatial awareness. as with my misgivings about the lad-robot in innocent life, i can't help but feel the whole world is placing too much emphasis on a fairy boy. but that's just one girls opinion.

i just wish i could play all this on my aspire one. but my netbook won't look at my gamepad, which is in fact only a psp running fusa gamepad. it's a shame, as mupen (stupid name for emulator, or am i missing something?) runs fine an mostly non-glitchy as far as i can tell. ah well. i might shell out a fiver for a cheap gamepad and see what happens.

me - part with cash? for gaming? no, thank you. i like to wait until things go entirely out of fashion and then buy them up for pennies, just before they turn "retro".

in other news i have taken to anthropomorphising* that my dog wears pince-nez and has a gay crush on my friend nick. it's not so far from the truth. considering this sort of alternative life story that i could be telling, aren't you glad i only seem to talk about games now?

anyway. i'm off to blow shit up with bomb flower thingies.


* i only got one letter of this word wrong before the spell checker. ossum.