Files and Records

Category: Stuff that doesn’t fit in another category

  • Tidy? Me? Maybe…

    For your entertainment and edification, I bring you a guest post by one SidneyKidney (you can find him by that name on Twitter and all good Social Media services).  Like me, he’s an island dweller, although his island is significantly less remote.  New to the fine art of parenting, he has but one minion at the moment.  Ladies and Gentlemen, drumroll please…

    I am not a tidy person.

    I have never been a particularly clean person at any point in my life. I used to think there were clean people and dirty people and I accepted my role in life as a dirty person. I leave mugs lying when I’ve finished with them, I dump my clothes on the floor at bedtime and I never wipe my feet.

    But my son is now just gone two years old and something very strange is happening. I am tidying up. And not just because it is my responsibility to take care of him. I think there is something more sinister at work here.

    It never used to bother me that my house was messy. I used to believe that everybody has a tolerance level for mess above which they could not take it any more and had to tidy up. I had a very high mess tolerance level until my son was born. But now mess bothers me. I get very stressed by it.

    I know what you are going to say. I knew children are messy. I expected that but it didnt matter because I had a high mess tolerence level.

    But I sit here surrounded by stickle bricks, duplo and annoying musical toys and have come to an epiphany. It doesnt happen often so pay attention because ‘here comes the science bit’:

    • There is no such thing as messy people and dirty people.
    • There is no such thing as mess tolerence.
    • It is simply a matter of wanting to control the mess.

    I submit the following evidence to the jury; if I leave a mug of finished coffee on the side overnight and come to it in the morning to clean it up that feels fine to me. Even if there is a bunch of washing up I havent done til the following morning thats fine too. Its fine because I know its there, its my mess and I can clean it up when I need to. That time can be any time I feel it has to be done.

    However, if I come into the sitting room in the morning and the floor is strewn with counting blocks, cards, plastic toys and general guff it gets me stressed. It gets me down. This is because it is a constant reminder that I do not have control over this mess. I could tidy it up right here and now but I know that if I did that I would go to the next room where my son was and find THAT room in a complete state. I have no control over that. If I encourage him to be with me then he *might* start helping me put things in their boxes but once its done he will immediately start unpacking the boxes. Thats how you play the sorting game. Didnt you know?

    And the closing argument: at the end of the long day when you have spent all your time looking after your child(ren) and he/she/they are safely tucked up in bed what would you like to do? Personally I am usually so physically exhausted that the last thing I want to do is start tidying up. Sure, that would be the best time to get a control on it. But you cant hoover. And even if the tidying was absolutely silent the very thought of more physical activity makes me collapse in a heap.

    So with this in mind I submit to you the only technique for tidying that I have discovered and PLEASE- no, really PLEASE- if you have any to suggest yourself I would LOVE to hear them.

    Here’s what I have:

    After breakfast I get my son changed and into his clothes for the day and if it is not a playgroup/nursery day I sit him back at the breakfast table and give him a table activity. Something to occupy him which he can do while I tidy around him in the kitchen/dining room. This can be Playdoh, drawing or anything that requires a surface to work on. Then ignore the mess he makes and clean everything else. Once you are done, tidy up said activity and Presto! you will have one clean room.

    For about a nanosecond.

  • The game’s the thing, especially when there’s 2 of you playing.

    This replaces January’s App of the Month with “Game of the Month” instead.  This will be a very, very, irregular feature!

    Got some new games for Christmas – PS3 games – that were chosen very carefully for their 2-player-ability (if that’s a word).  The family all really enjoy 2-player computer games – or games that can be played by 2 players even though they’re only supposed to be single-player.

    Quick flashback to the late 90s.  Playing “Wheel of Time” on the PC.  Single player game but one of us would take the mouse and control character looking around and hitting things, the other would take the keyboard and control spell and weapon selection, how fast we were moving/strafing/ducking/etc.  Made for far more fun than just one of us sat playing the game on the computer and the other watching TV.  More puzzle-based games like Broken Sword are natural multiplayer as everyone bounces ideas and suggestions off everyone else.

    Recently, though, the multiplayer gaming in the house has been limited to either (a) Guitar Hero/Singstar or (b) Lego games.  This is not to put any of these down – the 2-player nature of the Lego games, with their drop in/drop out play and adaptive difficulty are superb, and who doesn’t like hitting 100% on Smoke on the Water?  All this changed this Christmas with the following 3 titles:

    1.  de Blob 2.

    Presumably there was a “de Blob” once upon a time, but I’ve not seen it.  This is a real brain-off-the-hook game for kids and adults.  Enough quests, puzzles and hard-to-reach items to keep the collector in me happy (I won’t leave a level unless I’ve got as close to 100% as I can without spending days searching for that last Inspiration Point or Brush).  Problem is, it’s not really a 2-player game.  You can go split-screen head-to-head on levels that have been unlocked, but the main story game is primarily single player.  Player 2 gets to control a cursor-like thing that can shoot and not much more.  It is very, very, useful for grabbing those hard-to-reach collectables, though, and for painting those hard-to-reach posters.

    The game itself reminds me a lot of Spyro (including the background music).  8/10, great fun, 6/10 as a 2-player.

    2.  Aragorn’s Quest

    Hacking and slashing your way through locations and stories from the Lord of the Rings movies – stories that have definitely been embellished to add to the action.  I’m using the Playstation Move controller here and man, does my arm ache!  Player 2 comes on-board as Gandalf (which leads to a rather amusing scene in Fangorn forest when Gandalf the White returns – despite having been with you all the way to that point).  Gandalf, in this game, is what every Dungeons and Dragons wizard aspires to be – fireball-slinging, sword-wielding, killing machine.

    So far, after several days of play, we’ve gone through Bree and the surroundings up to Weathertop, Rivendell and it’s surroundings, the Mines of Moria (including running away from a Balrog) and Fangorn forest.  At the moment we’re on the plains around Edoras, cleaning up the final quests in that area.  Each area has main quests and side-quests along with 3 power-ups for each party member (Aragorn, Gandalf, Gimli and Legolas).  Gimli and Legolas are actually very useful, killing their share of creatures – but those kills provide neither health boosts for Aragorn nor magic top-ups for Gandalf.  Artefacts and the Palantir (which reveals the entire map along with collectable locations) round off the pick-ups.  Excellent game, even if their is a fair bit of back-and-forthing as you pick up side-quests.

    A solid 8/10 for both single- and 2-player.

    3.  Borderlands.  Rated 18

    Another world, another post-apocalyptic environment to kill things in.  And the 18-rating is for gore and, quite possibly, language.  I’m not sure.

    I’ll state for the record that I suck at this game.  Fortunately, the New-U system in the game regenerates your character, along with weapons and armour, at strategic points around the huge maps.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve died in this game, but we’re getting better.  It might be easier as a single-player game as apparently the number and strength of the opponents is increased in the multiplayer game (2 on a console, 4 over the network – a friend of mine is looking to pick up a copy so we can try this out).  But is it fun?  Hell, yes!

    9/10.  Didn’t think I was going to enjoy this one, now my fingers itch because I’ve not killed Skags for a few days.

  • Back to Normality – ish…

    Phew! What a blast NaNoWriMo was! I know regular visitors here will have seen the protected posts kicking around, they’re the temporary storage for the project now formally known as Script WIP. NaNo didn’t so much provide me with a novel as 50,000+ words of basics for a script that I now want to polish up as a TV series for CBBC. There’s a ton and more of work to do on it before it’s anywhere near ready so if I’m not around as much as I could be, that’s what I’m working on.  On top of that there’s still 2 of us doing the work of 4 at work, split across 2 sites and the usual chaos that Christmas throws our way.

    Christmas, in fact, is now taking up a lot of time.  And it seems to be taking up more time the more the kids grow up.  We’ve got our eldest in her Primary 7 pantomime on Wednesday, somehow having to juggle 6 of us into the 3 seats allocated – and knowing the space they’re putting on the show, this is going to be interesting as most of the other families going will be doing the same.  Last weekend we had 3 parties in 2 days, just about getting the kids tired of seeing Santa.  And if I hear “Merry Christmas, Everybody” one more time I’m going to hang the DJ.  Aaaaargh!  And all of these parties required presents!  Not content with the pile of stuff we’ve already bought, we needed an extra set of presents for each kid for each party!  Man, our local toy shops do well out of these things!  I’d love to say that we’ll be more organised next year and get some presents in advance but my better half hates having stuff clutter the house – and pre-bought presents apparently fall into the category of “clutter”.  I’m seriously considering going completely Sheriff of Nottingham next year and banning Christmas.

    Several of my favourite Apps have had upgrades whilst I’ve been more offline than usual.  Tweetdeck has gone all blue and shiny and I don’t like it.  Fortunately, the CSS hacks I wrote about previously still work and I’ll be posting a complete CSS file to replace the one they’ve given us here as soon as I’ve worked out how I’d like my Tweetdeck to look.

    Anyway.  Stuff and things are happening.  I’ll be back to the usual rounds of Galleries, Silent Sundays, Recpie Sheds and Reasons to be Cheerful for the forseeable – doubly so if I can get ahead of myself and write some stuff to go out automatically over Christmas.

    Meanwhile, kick back, open a home brew and put on the new Arena album.  It’s very, very good.