Tag: player

Engerland.

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Well, it’s the world.cup final. Sydney Australia. I can’t pretend to have watched all the games. I am going to watch this though. I was at Cambridge watching Billy Bragg when we won the Euros. Today, I’m home, snacks at the ready. As ever doing better than the men’s team. If these gals don’t win sports team of the year, there is no justice. BBC are you listening, not ‘women’s team’ just team. Full time professional women playing football. First team in the final since 1966. Speed shopping this morning as women rush home.to watch. Remember it’s the Lionesses who do the hunt while the lions laze around. Many a man is losing that argument this morning.

Sadly, whoever loses that nation tends to see a rise in domestic violence against women afterwards. Perhaps since less men are invested in this the cycle will.not repeat. It’s a sad reflection on the fragile male ego that sports teams losing cause such things but proven again and again. If a person’s self-esteem is so small that a team, in which they do not play, losing causes them to lash out.

Spain 1 – England 0 at half time.

Much discussion on our house about the dodgy yellow card just into the second half. (Heavens open a run to bring in the washing.) More shots this half for England, but still Spain win. It has to be said some dirty play, some yellow cards… what a game.

Mine the craft

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I know it’s ridiculous to play video games in your retirement, but hey, I like ’em. What you forget is that the first generation of gamers is well into their 60 now. Sir Clive Sinclair and the mighty ZX and ZX spectrum. Cassette tapes to load a game… maybe 15 minutes… then it crashes and you have to start over. Oh, the humanity! For those who have a 5 minute PS update or the tedious load screen that’s on for 30 seconds let me tell you back in the day games didn’t even have graphics!

My 8 year old niece was fascinated to see my house in minecraft. For officionados it’s a mixture of cobblestone and glazed terracotta in a right old mix of colours and texture. Even the carpet tiles don’t match. I keep a number of virtual cows, sheep and clucks (half chicken half duck no one really knows) but no pigs, llama or horses (yet). I’m one of those irritating players who transport all manner of trees and flowers from every biome and just plant bamboo next to oak next to tulips next to acacia…. just like a Victorian really. Obviously, being game rich means you can build several homes. Usually a day’s travel apart so the zombies don’t get you … or the skeletons, spiders, illagers (in-game baddies).

But I digress. The thing about this ‘useless’ pastime is that it’s not useless. This is how to train a surgeon or send in an airstrike or calm an autistic child. There are more products associated with games than films or music these days. In face many films (movies for my Amercan chums), and much music is now released based on games. Even TV! TV is dying in its traditional episodic form. Binge watching The Last of Us on Amazon Prime is how it’s done these days. Fortunes have been mad on ‘video games’ even the social media moguls are losing their pull but the games go on. Sorry Mr Z, your Mehtaverse is not going to replace playing Mario Kart and laughing IRL (That’s ‘in real life’) with my friends and family. I can play my own D’n’D adventure alone with an RPG (role playing game … think Tomb Raider) too.

Maybe I should tell you about the board game collection, which fills six small IKEA crates, sometime. Play, in all its glorious forms, is a basic human need. Have fun.

Tuning in again

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I noticed an article on my social media feed this morning (yes, I’m a tea in bed scroller) stating that some folks are able to upgrade lovely old ipods. Now I adore my old beast and music uninterrupted and off grid so, obviously, this struck me as an excellent idea. I fired up the web browser in search of a local ‘modder’ and found one who definitely recommended backing up the music library before having a new disc and battery set in place. Hmmmm… This, of course, meant either firing up the ancient mac or finding a way to put the library onto the windows machine. Given that the mac is buried in the kitchen under a pile of hobby projects I found my way to the ‘store’ where I was delighted to find that it is now possible to log in to my apple account from the laptop after downloading the appropriate software. That was over 5 hours ago.

I mean I understand that the disc on the ipod needs to be formatted to windows and that doing so blanks the memory. It now seems that in order to access the said tunes I need to download the lot, album by album, to the laptop. Hence 5 plus hours…. If this doesn’t work I’m going to be a bit cross. … and I’ll have to dig out the old mac.

Actually one of the joys of watching each song as it slips into my library is that I’ve had a joyous (if unproductive) afternoon listening to half forgotten tracks from way longer ago than I care to remember. I do have most of my music in physical form. Call me ancient but I can still play those tracks deleted from the store on tape (yes, I have a cassette player. 80s style and huge), vinyl or even on CD. There’s been a box of 7″ singles (ask your grandparents) sitting in the living room begging to be played for some time now with all their crackle and hiss.

It could be nostalgia. All the get rich gurus tell me that owning stuff is so last century and I’m sure that piles or dusty old albums are cluttering up my karma somehow but I make no apologies for my love of the physical, hold it in your hands, pleasure of setting a disc or cassette into the appropriate player and sitting back to listen to a whole album, not or shuffle or anything. Very meditative … well, depending on your choice of genre but to each their own.

Its up to R now in my downloads. Next trick will be to upload the new CDs through the external disc drive I bought for the laptop. They don’t have them anymore since no one wants them apparently. I mine for retro gaming with actual games not an emulator. Even after the apocalypse given a solar panel and a battery to store the power I will still have my tunes. Failing that the world will have to suffer my harmonica playing.