Friday Ten - My Ten All-Time Favourite Computer/Console Games

1. Championship Manager/Football Manager (all incarnations since Championship Manager 2) - PC - Not so much a computer game as a way of life.

 

2. Magicland Dizzy - Spectrum 128k (+3 in our household)  - The fourth(?) instalment of the wonderful Dizzy series kept Baby Brother and I occupied for hours on end, working as a team to solve puzzles in a world populated by boxing glove-wearing anthropomorphic eggs. We didn't need drugs in the 1990s. We had Codemasters to create outlandish fantasies for us.

 

3. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - Gameboy - The First Legend of Zelda game on the Game Boy, the first I played and the one I've enjoyed the most.

 

4. Goldeneye - N64 - Quite possibly the world's best multiplayer game. Four players rampaging around hydro electric dam as Oddjob, Bond, Jaws and russian soldiers shooting each other has never yet been surpassed.

 

5. Mario Kart - N64 - The best driving game ever. Beaten only by Goldeneye in the multiplayer stakes. There has never, to my knowledge, been a bad version of Mario Kart.

 

6. Grand Theft Auto III - PlayStation 2 - Not the original, but definitely the best in my opinion. I never really enjoyed the first two games on the original PlayStation, but GTA3 was, and still is, awesome.

 

7. Pro Evolution Soccer - PlayStation 2 - As any fool knows, Pro Evolution Soccer kicks FIFA's ass every time.

 

8. Chucky Egg - Spectrum 48k - Falling into the "simple but effective" category, this Donkey Kong predecessor saw the player manipulate Henhouse Harry through level after level of platforms, collecting eggs and avoiding killer chickens. They don't make them like this any more.

 

9. Sim City 2000 - PC - My second favourite PC game after the untouchable CM/FM series. I've devoted countless hours to building a whole series of Jockvilles over the years.

 

10. Sensible Soccer - Gameboy - Only on the Playstation did Sensible Soccer suck, but on the original Gameboy it was the greatest football game by a considerable margin.

 

 

Square Root Of All Evil

As my office backs onto what, until recently was a massive Aberdeen building site, today myself and two colleagues ventured out at lunchtime for the opening of the city's new shopping/cinema/dining complex, Union Square.

And it was utter bedlam. I've just heard on the news that 10,000 people were through the doors in the first hour.

TEN THOUSAND people. 30,000 in the first three hours. To see shops and restaurants that largely already exist in the city.

The big draw though was the shiny new Apple store. They were giving away t-shirts to the first 1,000 people into the shop, and rumour has it that 100 of the boxes also had iPod Nanos in them. But we took one look at the queue and decided to leave instead.

But even that was hard work, fighting against the flow of 10,000 folk milling around, ramraiding others with buggies, stopping dead with no notice and generally infuriating those of us who are perfectly normal.

Everywhere You Go

The weather at the moment is rather strange. Last week, it rained non-stop for three days, causing flooding and landslides in and around Aberdeen.

 

But now the sun is shining and it is unseasonably warm. Which is causing me some problems.

 

It's too cold, and the risk of rain is too high, to go without a warm and waterproof jacket. But when walking around wearing said jacket, I quickly become too hot and end up sweating like Gary Glitter in a Phuket playgroup.

 

But if I then take my jacket off, I quickly become too cold, and it's really too big to be carrying round.

 

I have neither the funds nor the inclination to invest in a new winter jacket (even though the one I'm currently wearing has been around for a few years now and has the remains of a pen lodged in the lining, the pen having slipped through a hole in one of the myriad pockets).

 

I hate autumn. Cold without being properly cold, warm without being warm enough to stay out for too long. Far too wet. Dark mornings and darker evenings. It's at this time of year that a permanent return to Australia (or a transfer to my employer's Houston or Singapore office) seems ever more inviting.

21st Century Boy

I think the musical pool I've been dipping into over the past few years has shrunk somewhat.

 

Spurred on by a text from a friend, I attempted to draw up my list of my 10 favourite albums since 2000.

 

And off the top of my head, the list consisted of:

 

The Cooper Temple Clause - See This Through and Leave

The Cooper Temple Clause - Kick Up The Fire and Let The Flames Break Loose

The Cooper Temple Clause - Make This Your Own

Elbow - Asleep In The Back

Elbow - Leaders Of The Free World

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid

The Coral - The Coral

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell

The Libertines - Up The Bracket

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

 

So, six albums contributed by two artists. No Oasis albums. No Doves. No Coldplay. No AC/DC, Queens of the Stone Age, Primal Scream, Manic Street Preachers, Verve, Bob Dylan or Ian Brown.

 

I'm wary of becoming one of those middle-aged guys who claims to have their finger on the pulse of modern music, but who can only tell you when the next Rush or David Bowie album is coming out.

 

I do think that most of the music covered by NME nowadays is pish - but I've probably thought that every year since 1998. They certainly lost me for a while around the turn of the century when they shamefully lauded The Strokes as some kind of defining band, when they were nothing of the kind.

 

But maybe I am in danger of losing my knowledge of what's new. Mrs Wife is the one who bought Florence and The Machine's debut album Lungs, while I've instead been spending my money on Beatles remasters and Ian Brown albums. While she can identify the new singles by The Enemy or The Big Pink from their exposure on Radio 1, I spend my morning commute listening to Miles Davis or Abbey Road.

 

I'll be 30 next year - is it time to give up the NME subscription and devote my time and money to Classic Rock instead?

Separated At Birth

Shamelessly stolen from another blog, which I would link to if it wasn't open to invited readers only.

Hey Jude

This reminds me of Baby Brother's A Capella renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody when he was around the same age.

Hidden Gems

The last time I looked, my Magic Tune Box had just under 21,000 songs on it. Most of these tracks are those I've ripped from my CDs, but some are from CDs borrowed from friends and family or from downloads both legal and illicit.

This much music means that to listen to it all would take solid weeks. And it also means that there are lots of tracks on the Magic Tune Box that I've never heard. Not even once.

So, a while back I decided that one way to remedy this would be to listen to all the albums on the Magic Tune Box in alphabetical order. As well as allowing me to hear some of the music for the first time, this also enabled me to keep my borderline OCD in check.

At the moment, I've gotten as far as "E". And today, I heard the Rory Gallagher compilation Etched In Blue for the first time.

I was blown away.

Thanks to my odd desire to listen to everything in some pre-defined order, and to the alphabet, I've discovered some new (30-year-old) tunes.

Take your happiness where you can find it folks....

Season 2009/2010: Match 2: Montrose v Queen's Park

It's now official - I support the worst "professional" football team in Scotland.

A measly two points from the first quarter of the season tells as much of the story as should be necessary - no wins from the opening nine matches.

As is the case with fans of most shite teams, I'm adamant that Montrose are better than this.

Except they're not.

The defence is largely anonymous. Paul Quinn could have stopped and made a cup of tea before scoring Queen's Park's first last night, with the centre backs - Sean Crighton and player/manager/captain/obergrupenfuhrer/king of the world Steven Tweed - nowhere to be seen.

Andrew McNeil was an erratic keeper when he was at Hibs, and presumably that's why he now finds himself slumming it at the foot of Division Three.

And Montrose have no-one who can score goals. All of their attacks were based around long shots from outside or near the edge of the box, or aimlessly lumping the ball into the box and hoping that Tweed or Crighton could connect with their noggins.

It seems a long time since the heady days of Jim Weir, when promotion looked a serious possibility - but it's only been a season and half. Montrose's slide to below mediocrity has been rapid, thanks in no small part to a whole host of managers and a club-wide budget cut.

It's going to be a grim winter.

Rare Photograph From The 1940 Tour de France

 

Gone But Not Forgotten

My granny died early this morning after a long series of illnesses.

If I'm honest, it's a blessing of sorts, as age and illness had slowly and cumulatively stripped her of everything that made her my granny - her memories, her personality, her mobility and, in the end, everything bar her body's refusal to finally surrender.

At the moment, it's hard to put those memories to the side, but I'd much rather remember her for the wonderful woman she was.

She was a woman who loved unconditionally, who was singularly devoted to her husband, children and grandchildren and a woman to whom there was no greater pleasure than spending time surrounded by her loved ones.

I may be biased, but I have never met a better cook, and I would give almost anything to taste her steak pie and roast tatties again.

My memories are all over the place at the moment, but all of them are happy. Images of the whole family clustered around the kitchen table playing Monopoly, my granny always insisting on being the iron; her singing along to Radio 2, always out of tune and always a bar behind the recorded version; roaring with laughter at Some Like It Hot despite having seen it hundreds of times.

I could go on like this forever, but I won't. I'll just sit here with my memories of a wonderful woman.

Flashback

A while ago (well, two years ago if we're being accurate) I posted an old account of the time Mrs Wife and I were travelling around Vietnam.

Because I'm lazy and I was a better writer when I was a 23-year-old layabout than I am now that I'm a 29-year-old layabout, here's an account of when Mrs Wife and I first arrived in Australia in late 2003.

Happy New Year from Perth! Hope everybody had a good Hogmanay despite what I hear were hurricane-like weather conditions on the East of Scotland.

For the record, both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day were scorching here. As this is the start of the Ozzie summer, temperature is steadily rising, so although Xmas Day's 32 degrees seemed pretty darn hot, the temperature is now nudging 40 degrees almost every day, so it can almost seem unbearable - at least until I remember that the alternative is driving home from Aberdeen in the dark during a blizzard - then the ice lollies and sunbathing don't seem as bad....

Anyway, life in Perth is good. It's a lot smaller than I expected, especially after arriving from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, but it's a lot more manageable than those three cities, and a lot more chilled out. We've been here since the 20th of December, and in that short space of time I have already had three different employers.

Finding work hasn't been that easy, our visas restrict us to three months in a single job, so employers tend to shy away from travellers. My first crack at employment was in a small cafe in the middle of Perth run by a psychotic Chinese woman called Nancy (that was what first set the alarm bells ringing, Chinese people aren't called Nancy, they're called Ng and Chan and things). The place was staffed almost exclusively by illegal immigrants, from places as diverse as Yugoslavia (the mysterious and suspicious Dragan - potentially evading war crimes charges I think), Ben from Taiwan (has now overstayed his visa by three years) and assorted other Orientals with all the warmth and endearing qualities of frozen vomit.

After a four-hour trial spent avoiding Nancy's death stare as much as possible, I was offered the job for $12 an hour, which Nancy assured me was a great wage. Which it is in British terms (almost five GBP an hour) but the minimum wage for waiters in Oz is $15ph. I also knew that if I had to work there for two months, there would either be a raid by the Department of Immigration, or I would end up knocking Nancy's head in with a coffee pot, so I politely declined her offer.

My second stab at earning some cash was scrubbing campervans near the airport. Although it sounds like a pretty crappy job, it paid $14ph (about six pounds), was outdoors in the sun, and the people were pretty sound. But there wasn't enough work to last all the employees, so it was a case of last in, first out, but I at least got three days out of this one.

And now we're both working for a telemarketing company, trying to sell mobile phones. There's a base rate to ensure we don't starve, but most of the money is made through commission, so we'll see how it goes. We're both looking for better jobs though. Personally, I'm just waiting for the job advert seeking an immediate vacancy for a roving music journalist on $100,000 a year....

Aside from the jobhunting, we haven't really done very much since we arrived, partly due to having nae cash, and partly because our time here has been interrupted by Xmas and New Year. We spent Xmas in the hostel, with a champagne brekky by the pool and then a full Xmas dinner and Xmas supper.

It was good to spend the day lazing round in the sun, and generally mucking round in the pool. We were out in Perth on Hogmanay, our hostel is in the 'trendy' area of Northbridge (imagine Camden in London or The Grassmarket in Edinburgh, but with more pissed British people and no rain and you're getting close), so we spent the night at the street party there, walking between the stages and through the huge crowds until the fireworks.

So now we've moved into a flat with a couple of Ozzies, business student Tim and Journalism graduate Leah, and we're trying to save a bit of cash to buy a car and keep on moving. Hope everybody is fully recovered from the festivities and glad to be back at work.

Panda-ring To The Masses

Should we let the giant panda die out? An interesting debate here between two conservationists.

Sunday Soul: Bobby Womack and Peace - Across 110th Street

Taken from the opening credits of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown.

Season 2009/2010: Match 1: Montrose v East Stirlingshire

We may be almost midway through September, but today was my first live football game of the season. A combination of weddings and work trips meant that I missed Montrose's first three home games - which may not have been a bad thing, given that they were two draws and a defeat.

But today I was back in Montrose in time to get myself down to Links Park for the first time this season. And within 10 minutes of kick-off, I almost wished I wasn't.

Shire were awarded a soft penalty after just five minutes, former Montrose man Andy Rodgers sending Andy McNeil the wrong way from the spot. Then three minutes later the home side was another goal behind, the impossible-to-spell-correctly-without-checking-first-every-time Michael Bolochoweckyj rising unchallenged to head home a corner at the back post.

Montrose were dire throughout the first half, and there was a real danger that the Falkirk-based visitors would put them to the sword.

They were marginally better in the second half, but created little of note. In all honesty, they were pretty dire.

Steven Tweed continues to select himself at centre back, but lasted only 26 minutes today before succumbing to injury. New goalkeeper Andrew McNeil looked erratic, but he made some good saved and looks like he could be a decent signing. Marek Tomana, who reminds me of Georgi Kinkladze in the way he runs and passes the ball, but he looked short of match fitness and drifted out of today's match. Fraser Milligan was another who got pass marks today, but needs to have points deducted for wearing pink boots.

There weren't many positives out there today, and Montrose are now firmly planted at the bottm of the bottom league. I think it's going to be a long season.

When Driving Lessons Go Wrong

This is what happens when a learner driver takes a corner too wide in Springbank Terrace, Aberdeen....

....when the driving instructor grabs the wheel to stop a collision with an oncoming car....

....and when the learner panics and accidentally hits the accelerator instead of the brake....

Running Man

A colleague and friend of mine has done what I consider to be a very brave, and very foolish, thing - he's signed up for next year's Edinburgh marathon.

I know for a fact that I couldn't run a marathon - my knees are agony after an hour of football, never mind four or more hours of running on concrete.

And there's no way I could be bothered to train for a marathon - I'm just too damned lazy.

Please head across to Kevin's blog and show your support for his madness....

Are You All Sitting Comfortbold Two Square On Your Botties?

Then I'll begin....

So starts the second half of Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, one of the greatest albums ever made.

As well as having the Small Faces at their peak, mixing mod, musichall and rock stompers together, the second half of the album is a concept piece narrated by one of my stranger heroes, Stanley Unwin.

Unwin famously jabbered in his own language, Unwinese, and his utterances on the second half of Ogden's are wonderful.

I can't accurately annotate his contributions, but this comes from Wikipedia:

Unwinese, also known as "Basic Engly Twentyfido" - probably a reference to Charles Kay Ogden's 1930 work "Basic English", which strips the language down to 8509 words, was a special, ornamented and mangled form of English in which many of the words were corrupted in a playful and humorous way. Unwin’s performances could be hilarious yet disorienting although the meaning and context were always conveyed in a disguised and picturesque style.

Unwinese was very poetic in the way it alluded to its subject – e.g. Elvis Presley and his contemporaries are described as having ‘wasp-waist and swivel-hippy’ – and it was often punctuated with moments of clarity and directness to accentuate the ‘nonsense’ – e.g. ‘Deep joy!’ ‘Oh yes’.

Unwin claimed his gift came from his mother, who once told him that on the way home she had "falolloped over and grazed her kneeclabbers". This phrase eventually turned up in one of Unwin's monologues, Goldiloppers and the Three Bearloders.

I've just purchased Unwin's first album, Rotatey Diskers With Unwin, and it's fabulous. And available from Amazon for less than £3. At that price, it's a steal.

Unwin's website can be seen here.

And my favourite piece of Unwin trivia: He is buried in the churchyard at Long Buckby, with wife Frances, who pre-deceased him. Their gravestone has the epitaph, "Reunitey in the heavenly-bode – Deep Joy".

Friday Ten - My Ten Favourite Beatles Songs (At This Precise Moment In Time)

1 - Strawberry Fields Forever

 

2 - A Day In The Life

 

3 - While My Guitar Gently Weeps

 

4 - I Am The Walrus

 

5 - All You Need Is Love

 

6 - Dear Prudence

 

7 - Come Together

 

8 - Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

 

9 - Twist and Shout

 

10 - Please Please Me

Birthday Wishes....

....To my Faither, who turned 50 today.

The Sixteenth Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge

It's been a VERY long time (eight months to be exact) since the last instalment of the Groanin' Jock Lyrical Challenge.

Neepheid was the winner on that occasion, correctly identifying two of the tracks. Answers are now on the comments on that post.

So now, here are the five mystery lyrics for you to identify. Simply name the artist and track - answers in the comments, no Googling!

1. Well your railroad gate, you know I just can't jump it.

2. "Look out the left," the captain said, "The lights down there, that's where we'll land."

3. I got the pulsating rhythmical remedy.

4. Temperature's rising, fever is high, can't see no future, can't see no sky.

5. The pack on my back is aching, the straps seem to cut me like a knife.