bookmark_borderBeginner's Guide to Guitar Hero

We got a Wii in January, and Guitar Hero arrived this week. I’ve not played it much but there are a few tips I thought I’d pass on.

The first one is obvious, if you don’t have it (and you like rock music) GET IT! I know it’s hard to find, I ended up ordering mine online. I first played it at about 2am on New Year morning, and was instantly taken with it. It’s quite a straightforward game but is completely absorbing, mind you I’m not sure the word ‘game’ is adequate, it’s more an entertainment experience or something…

The next tip is to make sure you’ve closed the curtains, drawn the blinds, and generally are free to prance around your living room like a twat. Not that you’ll be prancing much but you do want to be…

…standing up. Tip three made a real difference to me, and whilst I’m not entirely sure why I do know that being able to move along to the music really helped me suss out the combinations and rhythms.

And finally have an alarm clock or some method of alerting you of the time. The temptation for just one more song is high and before you know it, you’ll hearing a banging from upstairs as your wife gently yells that it’s TWO FUCKING AM! SHUT UP!! as you shred through some more AC/DC… allegedly.

bookmark_borderToday I am mostly…

He may be a new addition to our house but little Ollie is already well settled. We understand his moods and wants, and he’s already squirmed his way into our hearts.

Which made leaving him at the vet this morning all the harder, doubly so as, when I bent down to say goodbye he stuck a little black paw through the railings of his carrier cage. Bless.

Ahem.

In other news, the Conservative Party plan to make people to ‘community work’ if they have been unemployed for over two years. If they don’t do it, they don’t get their benefits.

I quite like the sound of this, given that the perception is that a fair number of people who are claiming benefits are doing so with no good reason and are quite happy leeching off others and not contributing to society then I welcome this kind of scheme.

Yes, yes, of course there are people who are genuinely unable to work, and I’d hope this scheme deals with such cases, but I like the sound it! Let’s get those lazy buggers contributing to society!

But, of course, this is likely to be an infringement on their civil liberties, human rights, or somesuch. In other words, there will be some way of getting out of this scheme as well.

And finally, I am still without Wii, thanks to Amtrak courier services for not allowing me to specify a pickup time, and as they only allow you to pick it up from their depot after TWO failed attempts, I won’t get it until Wednesday at the earliest.

Still, I’ll have a poor wee cat, tottering about with a cone round his head for the next few days, so I guess I’ll have my hands full as it is.

bookmark_borderForget someone?

No one tells me anything. If I was 13 years old again I’d probably stomp my way upstairs and slam my bedroom door. Twice.

Except I’m now a mature 31, already up the stairs, and if I slam the door I’ll wake up my beloved wife and she’ll castrate me.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes. It’s seems that Meg has decided to ‘come back’. OK, I know she wasn’t ever ‘away’ but I have to admit that her last relaunch didn’t sit with me, all that lovely content hidden away behind a myriad of options. I like things simple me. Anyway, she’s back so you can all stop wasting your time here and enjoy her.. well lists at the moment.

But if you don’t come back you’ll miss TWO posts about Information Design, one post about my first year with the Firefox browser and my attempt at answering the question “Why I write”. Ohh and maybe a bit about “A list” bloggers. I bet you can hardly wait.

In the meantime you’re stuck with the usual waffling as those posts aren’t quite finished yet (and every time I look at them they seem to grow) .

bookmark_borderOh good grief

Microsoft are entering the fight against spyware and that’s fine. That’s their right of course.

However why would I want to pay for this when Ad-Aware and Spy-Bot do such a great job* as it is? Who WOULD pay for this? Well that’s obvious. A lot of people will, and I’ll venture that most will be people who are still wary of their computer and not entirely sure how it all works. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a dig at the ‘technically challenged’, far from it. I’m wondering how (who?) is protecting their needs. Owning a computer CAN be a very expensive business.

* YMMV and yes it’s a pain having to run TWO applications but hey, they’re free! Add in ZoneAlarm (free) and AVG AntiVirus (free) and most standalone computers are happy as Larry. Of course ditching IE in favour of Firefox helps too.

bookmark_borderScottish Blogmeet

Richard and I had a great time. I guess some better planning and advance notice would have allowed some other people to attend, as would the swapping of mobile numbers with those who said they might come along later in the evening if it was still going.

Cos it was. We ended up in the Jolly Judge, a lovely little pub down a close. Discovered Kronenburg 1664 Blanc (delicious), and got chatting to Kurt and Angela from Birmingham. He was an ex-biker, tattoo artist, and she giggled a lot. It was a fun evening.

Wobbled my way back to Glasgow on the train at about 9.30pm, quite drunk and in very good spirits.

As Richard says, that’s 100% improvement on the last blogmeet, one which I originally had said I’d go to but couldn’t, so for the next one we need TWO more people to turn up to keep that trend. Not sure when it’ll be, but I’m already thinking Spring at some point.

We did also ponder heading to Leith to surprise someone in their local, but we weren’t sure if Peter would appreciate the sentiment. 😉

bookmark_borderGladly? Why!

I mentioned a while back that I’d been invited to become a moderator on the Haloscan forum. I’m pretty comfortable with HTML, CSS, Javascript and the way the commenting system works, so I thought it would be a good chance to ‘give back’.

But I forgot that people are morons. No not everyone, and I guess, really, they aren’t morons … let me start over.

I’m not a patient kind of guy. In my line of work the only person I really need to explain things to is me or my team. Now as I hired everyone in my team (yeah yeah it’s a team of one at the moment, but it did get all the way up to 5 at one point!) I know that I can expect a certain level of knowledge and go from there.

I should also remember that back in 1997 I was the one asking silly questions in the ADV-HTML mailing list.

I also realise that there is no such thing as a stupid question, that everyone’s knowledge levels are different etc etc etc this is all stuff I think about during my working day (will x know this or do I need to explain it?)

Moderating a forum is pretty straightforward really. Trouble is I’d forgotten that people are morons. Ohh I wasn’t going to say that was I… OK SOME people are just downright lazy. The instant they get a little problem – off to the forums they go, posting merrily. Now the Haloscan FAQ could be better (and yes I’m compiling one at the moment) but the forum has a SEARCH option… how difficult is it?? Obviously too difficult for some.

But of course this is human nature, again something I study for professional purposes. Everyone is the same. If you have a problem with something what do you do? You ask someone for help. You don’t consult the documentation, you don’t check and see if someone has asked a similar question before. There are a myriad of reasons why people don’t use documentation as often as they should, the main one being that in their experience it’s badly written (incomplete, inaccurate or not context-sensitive enough).

However this lack of using a search function is a new one for me. Maybe it is the case the some people are just so new to the whole thing (a lot of people in the forum have ‘just setup their blog and can’t get x to work’), but even then it’s slightly galling that they can’t even be bothered to search the forum first to see if anyone has had a similar problem (and considering 75% of posts I reply to are “I can’t get the code to work” and are a result of people not following the TWO STEPS it takes…. no no, must stay calm…).

Suffer fools gladly.

Why!

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Where did that phrase come from anyway? Ohh the bible you say?

Related:

“Who, in the history of the world, ever did suffer fools gladly? Well, Shakespeare did, obviously. Since he gave them so many roles, he must have liked having them around. Others, less great, may enjoy fools as part of the human comedy, perhaps bearing in mind that all of us are fools sometimes, some of us fools often. In fact, I live in hope of reading someday an obituary that says: “He was wise and talented, greatly accomplished, and much admired, above all for his ability to suffer fools gladly.” “