Soy Un Perdedor

I'm quite concerned that, in the past couple of weeks, my behaviour has shown signs that I am becoming more geeky as time wears on and I edge closer to 30.

I've written in previous posts that I feel the need to have my vast CD collection stored in alphabetical order - but I'd argue that that is chiefly through necessity, otherwise how would I find the CD I was looking for from a library that now runs into the thousands?

And I've never hidden my love of StarWars, Thundercats, He-Man and Transformers - but again, in my defence, I grew up watching the shows and movies and playing with the toys.

But in the past fortnight, I seem to have slipped further towards the point of no return in my geekdom.

The first indicator was the concert that Mrs Wife and I attended in Glasgow two weeks ago - Video Games Live. Held at the Royal Concert Hall, the event saw the Royal Scottish National Orchestra perform music from video games, while a video screen showed footage from the games.

I never thought I'd be in a room with a full orchestra playing the theme tunes from Super Mario World, Sonic The Hedgehog and Tetris, but it was a fantastic concert. Although the audience was formed primarily from men in their mid twenties, many of them wearing video game-related garb.

So, does that count as geeky? Possibly, but it may be redeemed by the novelty of the concert and the fact that the venue and performers are undeniably of the highest standard.

But the next day, with time to kill and most of Glasgow's shops exhausted of entertainment, I took the next step towards giving in completely to my inner geek. I visited Forbidden Planet, the chain of stores that sells, as its primary range of products, comic books (or graphic novels as geeks who pretend they don't read comics call them).

Initially, I only went in for a look and to kill some time. But Mrs Wife offered to buy me something as a present, and I ended up coming out with the "graphic novels" (comic books) of The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Which meant that, at the age of 28, I could be seen sitting on a train later that afternoon reading Batman comics.

Is that a step too far towards geekiness?

The third incident that suggest I may be on an irreversible spiral towards becoming a regular contributor to sci-fi forums came last night, when Mrs Wife, myself and some of my work colleagues attended a performance of Charles Ross' One Man StarWars Trilogy show.

Ross does exactly what the title suggests - single-handedly re-enacting the original StarWars trilogy. Without props. In an hour.

Obviously, a good grasp of the plot of the movies is a pretty essential requirement if you're going to understand One Man StarWars. And, from first glance, it seemed that the audience fitted the bill.

Geeky? Perhaps. But the show was highly amusing, and performed with an obvious affection for the films.

So now, having laid all this before you, I have to ask - am I an irrepairable geek?

Fecking Computers

I'm in a frenzy of excitement here in the Dungroanin' sitting room at the moment.

The reason for this excitement? Sega has released the demo version of Football Manager 2008, which I am currently downloading.

Only there's a problem. My steam-driven laptop is notorious for freezing completely, leaving no option but to turn off the power and reboot.

And, having reached the 30% mark in the 523MB download, this antique piece of crap decided to take a rest, forcing me to switch it off and back on. And cancelling the download in the process.

So I've started again. And at a download speed of less than 30k per second, it's going to take a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.

The download manager is estimating that it will take a further five hours to finish downloading. So, from 6pm tonight, you can expect no further communications from this humble outpost of the worldwide interweb for a while....