Everything Must Go

Testing my CLK-GTR around La Sarthe, Gran Turismo 4

One of the less realistic elements of racing games, particularly ones that brand themselves as simulators, is the short length of races. Two or three laps are common, whilst five or more is a rarity - imagine how long it would take to complete a real F1 season and how quickly the publisher would get sued after someone sits in front of a screen for hours until they have a seizure. These things are necessary limitations, balancing realism, accessible difficulty, and convenience. It's why you can set the length of play in Football games and the reason few racers feature a clutch.

Into The Nineties and Beyond

Around this time eight years ago I was sitting my Higher English exam (first of two tries). For the writing segment you're given a booklet with roughly a dozen topic sentences to pick from. I can't remember what topic led me to write an embarrassing China Syndrome knock-off - in fact I'd like to forget it entirely. I disliked it enough that I put an apology at the end. However, in the preliminary exam a few months before, I wrote an A+ story I really wish I had gotten photocopied - it was probably one of the best things I had then written. The topic I chose in that exam was "Write about a time you went to hospital". When I saw it I immediately thought of the time I broke my arm in primary school, but I realised that the topic did not necessarily mean 'write about a time you were admitted to hospital' allowing me some room for genuine on-the-spot creative writing. Soon after I intended to rewrite it from memory (it was a single page at most) for my old website, but I never got round to it and the following is therefore an extremely loose reconstruction. I also can't remember how it ends.

My Favourite Game

My Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR 98, Gran Turismo 4

What's that old Douglas Adams quote?

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

At least Adams' were set by his publisher - mine are all my own making and I was much better at meeting them last year. I was hoping to complete a lot of draft posts this month but I dropped everything to play Gran Turismo 4 for three weeks. I know I'm an instalment behind, but it got neglected in favour of Metal Gear Solid 3 at the time.

There'll Be No Doubt In Your Mind, You'll Believe Everything I'm Saying

X-Files Title Card (Season 1 DVD)

Contemporary events sometimes create a cinematic zeitgeist. After Hale-Bopp passed, Hollywood simultaneously gave us Armageddon and Deep Impact - both films about large objects from space on collision courses with Earth (but only one was any good, which I'll get to at some point). Looking back at the 70s we see a slew of thrillers about political intrigue, paranoia, and conspiracies all borne from the fallout of the Kennedy assassination, Watergate and the involvement of the military-industrial complex in the Vietnam War. Since the 70s, doubting the official line has never been more popular. The X-Files, inspired by those thrillers, prominently tapped into notions of government cover-up concerning UFOs and the existence of alien life. Today doubt knows no bounds, having mostly transformed into full conspiracy theorism. From 9/11 truthers to the birthers who continue to contest the validity of President Obama's nationality, these doubts form more of a dis-belief system than healthy scepticism. And yet in these incredulous times the incredible is accepted so long as it's from an alternative voice.

Play To Win

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
-Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1947

When You Walk Through Me

I wanted to see Source Code last week in the cinema but I was ill and I was becoming desperate to avoid spoilers so I viewed it by other means (you know the means I mean). Make note that I will of course pre-order the DVD because I liked the film and wish to ensure more like it get made.

'Inception meets Groundhog Day'. I hate these descriptions that paint everything as a mashup of two existing works. That's not to say that there aren't similarities to other works, which I'll address in the spoiler section, but these comparisons used to market films to preconfigured audiences make little sense under any kind of scrutiny.

Ready Let's Go

Beyond The Infinite, Prij, 2005 

Every year I forget to write something on the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, and judging by the lack of material here this year was no different!

I remember when I was around nine, and hardly anyone in my class could name the first man on the moon, my dad had told me about the first man to go into space. He and the others that followed him were mortal men and women, but they have and will find themselves amongst the heroes in the sky. I'd rather kids want to be like Yuri Gagarin or Neil Armstrong than one of Simon Cowell's puppets because it's exactly what needs to happen in order to regain the future that should have been already.

One of the earliest releases from the original Human League was a tribute to Gagarin, but also a tribute to the people of the Soviet Union that made it possible. The Dignity of Labour chronicles the miners digging coal to make steel with which engineers construct the launch pad and craft that propel Vostok 1 and its occupant upward into the void.

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