At this time of festivity and celebration, in these days of Yuletide happiness and giving, I invite you all to spare a thought for those people on the planet who didn’t get an XBOX 360 with Gears of War for Christmas, such as myself.
Centipede, thou crawly beast,
Fungus is thy midnight feast.
How dost thou know which feet to tread?
Which end’s the bottom? Which the head?
Julie 2005
I have just watched the most amazing documentary. It is about Ram Bahadur Bomjom, a Nepalese buy monk who has meditated for ten months without food or water. No lie, many independent experts confirm it, they even showed a time laps of him not moving for 4 days.
He then one day disappeared into the "jungle", then returned a few days later and said something like, "I will be back in five years, ill be fine"
Mind blowing. (If you have read my first bok of "The Final Chapters" the similarity with Hodi is very close.")
Ram Bahadur Bomjon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Let' not forget that Im the very same guy who fell for 911 Conspiracy belief, so don't sell everything and by tickets to Nepal just yet)
powered by performancing firefox
My wife does not read this blog, nor I guess does anyone else’s wife... or husband or perhaps even ...relative. So this dilemma and confession remains between just myself and the idealized reader of this blog.
This is the situation.
I have been shopping online for my wife’s Christmas presents, she has done well. I started off at high end virtual couturier's and ended up, via a fairly noncircuitous route, on Ebay. I bought her many presents, spent allot of time thinking and planning and watching. This wasn’t an "its her birthday on Tuesday, it is time for ebay" kind of an ebay gift buying session.
So... I pay for the presents with Paypal. Cut and shuffled. Done and dusted. Its all good, daaaaawg. Then something strange dawned on me. And this strangeness lead to a 30 second investigation and the fruits of this investigation had seeds that planted ripe melons of mistake. Namely, that at some at some point recently my wife has set up her own credit card as the default payment method. So, when I pay with Paypal, I pay with her credit card.
So what do I do?
No, I did none of these. As I was writing this post she was milling around and I thought I might as well let her read this post. Its 100% exactly the same as Bono from U2 composing “Sweetest Thing” for his wife, by way of an apology (for having sex with a German shepherd (A sheep specialist from Stuttgart, rather than a dog)).
powered by performancing firefox
love this.
Its like google reader, but optimized for your mobile. But its the same reader. So if you read an article on one, you don't even need to see it on the other. If you add a new web site on one, voilla, its there on the other.
To try it do this:
When I was five my parents took me to
The airport was a shed. The customs was a trestle table. There were no trees and lots of just… crazy statues.
But the key memory I have of this trip, and one that I think has shaped me to a degree, was as follows (I’m going to write the memory down first and then ring up my folks to compare):
There was a kind of cairn thing. A pile of rocks in the middle of nowhere. At the base of this cairn was a cave, a small opening that a child, but not an adult, could enter. I crawled inside and there, in the dim, was a collection of bones. I seem to remember a pile of skulls but I can’t remember how many. I do remember taking a skull and backing off out of the cave to show my parents.
I guess they were a bit freaked out by their little boy emerging from some chthonic nook with a human skull in his hands. That’s all I can remember.
…… I just called my folks.
This is what they remember….
Pretty much as described but. It was an altar on the north side of the island… underneath a plinth. I wanted to take the skull home… they wouldn’t let me… I had to crawl back in and put the skull back.
That’s all they can remember…. To my dad, a far more prominent memory of that trip wasn’t his son finding a skull but him losing his briefcase.
I have spent much of the last 5 years designing news reading and data mining applications. I haven’t really mentioned work in this blog before but our NewsRaider application is a really smart bit of kit. But… its an installed application and so its days are really numbered. Its all going web.
What’s making its days even more numbered in my eyes is a newish service from Google. It isn’t google news – even though that would be the obvious choice. Google news is The Google's attempt to provide news that interests you. Its OK. Its not great. It searches over a trillion news sources (NewsRaider does about fifty) and doesn’t really come up with anything that particular to you.
The real innovation is Google Reader. Perhaps the most underrated of Googles stock. There are just about half as many RSS readers and websites as there are new feeds in google reader. So why anyone would bring out another is anyone’s google.
But google did, and its so much more.You access it from your normal gmail or google account page. And you fiddle with it… explore a bit over a few days. I started adding my fave sites. News. Podcasts. Mags etc. And they are all just there, in this one page, in this really well designed way. Its so easy to add new feeds and change stuff.
You can get feed pages and super-feed pages like netvibes, but if you like that interface purity and simplicity that gmail has or amazon shopping and you like news and info sites, google reader is groundbreaking
You know, it might be thought that I am a bit of a googlephile. I’m not in any significant sense - I’d like another company to come and really challenge google. But the extent to which google will effect online life really is astounding. Its getting like they own the roads and the power and the media…. And the literature of the online world. Right or wrong, I think it’s a fascinating topic.
With Google, we don’t know if we are in
powered by performancing firefox
This blog is not art, nor science, nor literature, nor tech. It is growing ever more into a platform for me to show what a duplicitous turncoat I am. Examples:
In February 2006 I posted this review of the Gillette Mach 3 Power Nitro.
And in it I derided the potential for further development in the shaving domain. Then, as I posted I found out about a new Gillette, the Mach 5 Mega Laser Razor. I can’t actually remember the proper name, but that’s not important. So, the new razor was out before I had posted the blog post about the last new razor.
That’s the thought provoking intro over with…
Roll back three weeks. I needed some new blades for my 8 month old Gillette. I went to Ebay. I brought some. They were the wrong kind, these were for the new Gillette that I assured myself I would never get. But now I was trapped. I had inadvertently signed a pact with the close-shave devil, and thus was forced to buy the actual razo.
Yes, I was hoodwinked into this turncoatery but, my dear reader, I am sure you agree it would be wrong for me not to review the aforementioned hateful implement. I may have done my self in the razor ‘rongun, but you guys deserve this self-sodomised review.
If I die today the revelations of this post will be my Magum Opus. This new blade hasn’t only taken me closer, its taken me deeper…. into a very important aspect of my life.
Before we continue…
Ladies, I love you all, but this post is strictly for men. Do not read this if you are easily offended by distilled masculine conversation or references to male grooming. I just found this website, http://www.damegames.com/, so go play some girly games there until the shoe-shops open and leave the rest of this post for the dudes.
The Review (Men Only)
Gillette have skipped the 4 blades and made that evolutionary step into The Fifth Blade. Five blades, aligned so close together - and so sharp - that you can almost feel the cells gracefully part between the metal. It vibrates, as did the previous Model. The vibration feels good but I am still an outsider on if the vibe is actually good for the shave’s effectiveness. It’s a moot notion that will no doubt perplex razologists for aeons.
On the back of the razor head is a sixth blade. The sixth blade, much like the sense equivalent, is very handy if you have it but you wouldn’t expect to need it. It is angled perfectly to get that bit where your nose joins your top lip (Phew! Good job there are no women reading this bit, they would be sooooo lost) and it just does the job.
The blade feels good, looks that weird Alienware spooky but is ultimately a nice objet d’consumption.
I have been using it for three weeks – the shave has stayed nano close and though it irks me to admit it, its great. It really is a bigger jump between this and the last one than the last one and the penultimate
Post review Deconstruction of the previous review’s core premise.
I don’t feel as turncoat in this sense because I like the new blade(s), or because I showed blogbased exasperation at my first encounter with it. The reason for the anisotropy of my opinion is that I am forced now to embrace the endeavor to perfect the razor.
Millions… billions is spent on the evolution of the razor. I have been one of the no doubt millions of people who have seen 3 blades, or 4 or 5 and winced at the ridiculousness of it. And yet, the fact remains that new stages in razor development are self-experimentally better than the last.
And you would expect this, all this investment would not work if the results were not a discernible improvement. I remember when I first had a shave in a mach III and I know many friends and family members - including my wife ;) - who swear by the thing.
This fact is incontrovertible. I wont be there in 40 years with my grandson saying “Son, in my day shaves were closer…”
Millions may be dying of famine and disease. We are rubbing Carbon salt into the planet’s wounds. Even more people, every day, experience their WiFi drop out. These issues are not exclusive. They don’t mean we cant waste at least a few billion squid and scientists brain cells on the perfection of the razor.
The Future Of Humanity
As a baseline for technological evolution I propose the razor, being a device or method for the removal of body hair. The litmus test for the relentless march of the tech. To measure progress by numbers is to overlook progress’s intimate effects on culture.
Shaving is so very human. It is functionally pointless but important. It effects how others see us, how we see ourselves and importantly how we feel ourselves. To shave is to live.
Keep an eye on the shelf and a finger on your cheek
Perfection of the Razor
A task so meaningless it is significant.
The smoothness of a strangers face.
The muddy roots of the lotus.
The glide. The cut.
The lines that grow until we die.
Shatter shell and Cutthroat angles.
One blade, two blade, three blade,
Five.
I always liked stumbleupon , the website which tells you stuff you might be interested in. But you had to be proactive, you had to say "I want to stumbleupon".
The next generation of this kind of thing had just arrived, and its called Yoono, and it is really good.
If your on a web page about French chateaus, this unobtrusive bar across your Firefox browser will scroll and say other sites about French Chateaus will be displayed. Or Honda Jazz, or anything you are on a web page about. If something on the list catches your eye ever, you just click it and visit the page.
It has a side bar that you don’t really need and a random site feature as well. All in I really recommend Yoono and a nifty way to open up the internet without any hassle.
I use Google calender and have been for since day one in April. Its great, etc. One of the super key mega features for me is the quick add feature where you type:
Tomorrow call join at 14.00
Next march visit peter
Weapons Inspection report by next Thursday
14th April 2009 Sell XBOX 360 on Ebay...
Thats all very good. But you have to be on the Google calender home page to use it. Which is a bit crappy.
But not anymore, this extension for Firefox means you just press Ctrl+; and this window pops up, you enter the quick add and hey presto, its there in your calender.
Because the "downtime" for adding a calender has gone from a few seconds to zero, everything is better. Its a bit like some benevolent creator has taken my life and added just a drop more honey....
Gosh I'm easy pleased.
I would like my email program to scan all outgoing mail for the word "attach" in any setting. If the email does not have an attachment then the email program should ask if the email should have an attachment.
Life would be better.
I'm kind of out of touch with this blog right now. Work is busy and writing is busy and all that jazz. I'm not taking a break. I'm not stopping it. I'm just busy.
Prim Minister: Shami Chakrabarti
This is my prediction. I am taking bets.
I like to drink beer. It’s good. But as I get older I am finding my tolerance for hangovers is decreasing. They seem worse and I seem less able to deal with them. At 25 a hangover was a morning of discomfort but now, at 35, it has the additional "bonus afternoon of malaise".
I drink export lager that is 5% alcohol. The thought of drinking “gay beer”, that wallows in shame at the 3.5% mark, has always filled me with horror. It is a short sip from gay beer to shandy, and from shandy you can see the bitter horizon of failure.
But here is my dilemma. I don’t want a day taken out by the 5%. It’s just not worth it any more. So last night, I went out and I didn’t drink the export larger (well, I had one “starter pint”). I drank 3.5% (normal) larger. And whilst imbibing this lifeless urine of the hop, I had a realisation:
5% beer is nearly 50% more alcoholic than 3.5% beer.
Export larger is essentially a different drink to normal lager, in the same way, and proportion, as sherry is to wine.
I don’t have a hangover today. I feel good. I have exercised and the day is full of things to embrace. But in my heart, I know things changed last night.
I have justed logged into my writley docs and yabba yabba, its all changed:) Gosh it looks functional!
My text docs and spreadsheets are all in one list. It has that pallid/utility/washed out Google appearance but other than that, me oh my, it is dandy.
I think this is the first ever review of Google Docs on the Internet!!!
Which is why its minimal.
Hi Dear Reader,
I have publsihed my eNovella, "The Final Chapters, Book One" in the popular and cross platform TomeRaider format. You don't need to purchase TomeRaider to read this ebook as it "plays for free" on Palm, Pocket PC, Windows and I think Smartphones.
Its set in the very near future and I guess the closest genre it belongs to would be "Tech Fiction with a Thriller/Philosophy fusion against a back drop of geopolitical intrigue and the misuse of both recreational pharmaceuticals and someone else's phone". In a nut shell.
Download it from the Editors Picks section of TomeRaider.com
And the reader here:
If you have any comments on it I would love to hear them, and I'll send you a free signed eBook - I guess that means ill attach Jpeg of my signature to the book:P
Thanks
Mat
Julie has been using firefox for a while, but never in a kind of... progressive sense. But I have shown her Tabs and how they really enhance browsing and now she is getting into their value.
"How do you start a new tab again?"
"Ctrl+T"
"Ohh yea."
Tabs are to interfaces what...
Imagine the planet as a whole system. And that system has a certain amount of effectiveness in any given time frame.
Now imagine version A of the planet, in which people use the mouse to perform tasks like cut, copy, past... and version B where they use shortcut keys.
I have calculated that Planet B has an productivity gain and reciprocal mean energy saving of something over 0%!!!! That is a shocking statistic.
If you care about your planet, use shortcut keys for common tasks.
I signed up with this site http://www.thingstodoifidie.com. It costs a pound or 2 dollars/euros.
The idea is that you write messages and set instructions just in case you die, unexpectedly. Then if you get "hit by a bus" the site has a number of smart and esoteric ways to find out if you are dead and it will action your messages and instructions.
So for example, I can write a letter to my wife, upload a video for my kids and send postmortem emails to friends and other family. But it raises the question, how far do you go? I would quite like to send a message to some old school friends, but would they be freaked out? I have a friend from uni called Toby who I aint seen for years but I could probably get his email. He lives far away and we were always more "real time".
But imagine if on a Saturday morning he got an email or letter:
"Hi Toby
Its Me, if you are reading this then that means I have died unexpectedly and, I hope, dramatically. So I just wanted to say that....
.... I wish you a good life and it was great knowing you...
etc"
Would he be happy? I think probably. Not happy that I was dead but that he got a little personal message from me, after death. I would like one from him.
But then it gets sinister. I have another friend from my childhood who turned out to be a racist bigot homophobe who I no longer speak with. Should I mail him postmortem and call him mean names?
This site is weird in that extends ones possibility to have an effect after death. I love that concept.
In the FAQ onsite there is a big description of how they will prevent what would be horrendous false positives. At the end of the day they are hedging their bets that ,in their savvy net-using demographic, not many members will die relative to user numbers. This way, they claim, they will be able to afford to not action any postmortem instructions until a human has confirmed the death. I guess its true that they dont want their members to die because it costs them. Not a job I would like, but in a site like this, someone has to do it.
In one of the sections you can specify songs for your funeral. I won’t say the ones I have chosen, but one is "Peaches En Regalia". So, If I die and that is not at my funeral, please hunt down this site's owners and sue them for my pound back.
I have just this moment moved 133 of my Writley documents to my Google Account. Work stuff, Blog stuff, writings, notes, my book, short stories, legal contracts, CV, poems and top secret recipes for inedible foodstuffs.
There is probably more, stuff I don’t even know about me.
Should I be worried?
This is the relationship, I think, in a nutshell:
“You let us manage and analyse all of your information. We will advertise to you more effectively (for both parties) than if we didn’t have this information. In return, we provide a system that increases the benefit to you within an integrated whole.”
The SPV M3100 is the Orange badged version of the latest HTC Smartphone, and its is a beauty.
I had the XDA Mini S a few weeks ago and took it back because of call quality. But this phone is awesome.
Last night Mark and I were Drinking in a pub. A bad punk cover band was on. (This is two punk references in this blog in less than a week. I am SOOOOO not punk...) .
I was standing at the bar waiting to get served. Mark pops up and asks the question, with volume and clarity:
"Would you ever wear a wig?"
I thought about it..... for a second or three...
"No." I replied, and turned back to the bar.
Then we both noticed him starring at Mark. The guy besides us. The guy who looked angry but unsure what to do. The guy with the most obvious and ill thought toupee this side Elton John's worst bad hair day.
We didn't say sorry. We didn't say anything. We walked back to the stage area and hid behind a pillar to laugh like naughty school boys.
News Year's Eve in 1992. I was 21 and I had my girlfriend of the time staying at my parents house. Tina. My first ever girlfriend.
My parents were out at a bash. We were expecting them back late.
So... there we were. Young lovers under the duvet of my single bed. Kerrrrnnnnoooodling. Naturally, I had just taken her way past 7th heaven and into the high echelons of total sexual bliss when there were lights in the drive. PANIC!
I got dressed so fast into my jeans and shirt, I guess forgetting underpants and socks. Slightly flushed, I led the way. Descending the stairs just as the front door opens. I am at the bottom of the stairs. Tina is behind me.
"Happy New Year Mum!" I say, kissing her on the cheek.
"Happy new Year Dad!", I say, shaking his hand.
The immortal words (Thanks to blogger.com's eternal backup policy) follow from my father:
"Happy New Year Mathew. I think you had better put that away."
The four of us looked down to see the glistening shaft of my all consuming embarrassment.
My Dad's musical taste pretty much stopped at the White Album. They had a slight augmentation when my cousin Adjoa brought him Bob Marley's Exodus on cassette at some point in the 70's. Nonetheless there has never been much diversion from the "movement of Jah people picking up the rice in a church where a wedding has been" sphere, ever since.
In 1978 I was 7 and my sister was 9. The tune of the year was Ian Dury's "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" which my dad loved. It had the quirky out of the blue quality that dads and pub punk rockers the world over were digging.
So, My Dad though it would be a great idea to take me and my sister to see him in concert at The (local) Coliseum.
Like most major or first events in ones life, I can remember this well. the excitement, the anticipation, the weeks long build up (I seem to recall it being an Xmass pressie). We got there way too early. We hung around amongst the punks and the rockers and a bunch of people who knew my dad but didn’t expect him to be there. Equally they didn’t expect two gappy kids to be there; getting primed for the mosh pit. We checked out official Ian Dury merchandise (I can picture to this day an analogue square wristwatch with "Blockheads" written on the watch face).
Perhaps there was a band before. I can’t remember. But I do remember the moment when Ian Dury And The Block Heads came on. At the time I didn’t appreciate that the lead singer’s punk swagger was the result of childhood polio but, with backdrop of smoke and the lights and the crowd, this was momentous.
He didn’t start with "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick". He didn’t start with a song. He started with a story. A long drawn out diatribe. I just did a quick lyric search for it but couldn’t find the song. So, to paraphrase five minutes of live punk rock and roll into one paragraph of typo-laiden Blog:
He came home from somewhere. He walked into his house. He looked around. He went into his bedroom. There was a woman on his bed. She shouted - I don't swear in this Blog so this is a quote – She shouted, "Fuck Me!".
I remember looking up at my dad. He looked concerned. This wasn’t what he was expecting and it certainly wasn’t what me and my sis were expecting. Where were the comical references to
We didn’t stay much longer. We definitely didn’t stay to hear my Dad’s favorite song of the decade.
That night held the moment that I knew there were things and events outside of the adult world
I was familiar with.
I have had more handhelds than the most dedicated Onanist.
The first I ever owned was a little Casio clock/calculator that I brought in Ocean Terminal in
After that I was hooked on the handhelds... Psions… Psions… Palms… Pocket PCs, Smart Phones and then last week I got an XDA Mini S.
The specs of the device were pretty fricking funky. The Slide out keyboard, neat WiFi, Tocuh Scren, Windows Mobile 5 operating system, in theory all you need for your mobile life.
But tomorrow I'm taking it back to the shop because, much as it is feature packed and well designed and nice on batteries and OK on the eye the quality of the phone calls are DIRE.
DIE with an R in the middle.
I have ordered a SPV with the same formfactor and sliding keyboard and that comes Monday. I hope the call quality is not in the two-tin-cans-on-a-bit-of-string quality.
Do not ever get an XDA Mini S, unless you are deaf and mute, then its great.I haven't been much of a one for Blogging about other websites, but this is just really freaky. I have no idea where they got those clothes from or who dressed them but I think its pretty fair to say that they are all in need of a makeover BIG STYLE.
Since the collapse of comunism there has been much in the way of fashion-schism, but I never ever thought it could get this bad.
When will they learn that you can NEVER mix NYLONS.
God save us.
http://englishrussia.com/?p=251
The Final Chapters
Book One: Chapter One
Hikkaduwa
Mary was tired. She wanted to be flying back home. She wanted to be glued into a movie. And most of all, she wanted out of the heat.
The driver was giving her some respite from the afternoon furnace with his aircon, on full blast. An icy-dry wind that would only make the outside's heat more of an ordeal.
She had been in
On her right the
A message came in confirming her flight change. She knew there would not have been an issue but a confirmation was always... reassuring. More so out here in the tropics with its pumping sun and inherent unreliability. She texted a message to her husband.
Two hours south of
Hikkaduwa was an old tourist town that had sprawled inland and along the coast. Every space selling suits or clothes or carved elephants. Restaurants and hotels and guest houses with names like “Happy Suns” and “Waverider Lodge”. Mary had no intention of staying here but, looking at the time, it was getting less likely she would be back in the capitol, its good food and its luxury hotel.
Slower than walking pace. A constant crawling throng of people and cars and three wheelers and bikes all trying to get into the town that was building up around them.
{revise two lines above – rather confusing!}
She still had her info message pops on from her time in the north and one popped in: "During the 2004 Tsunami a Train carrying.....". She looked around but could only see trees and buildings. Mary turned her pops off, too tired to really care.
“Here miss?” Said her driver, pointing at an enclosed hotel called “Coral reef.”
“No No. The monastery please. The
“Ahhh.
The driver obviously had no clue where it was and stopped the car (which wasn't moving much anyways) in the middle of the street. He wound down the window. A blast of molten air rushed in and the driver shouted to a passer by on the other side of the street.
They spoke in the incomprehensible Singhalese. Mary had given up trying to use her state of the art translator on her first day in the country. She waited until the driver turned, “There are two temples, which one do you need Miss?”
“Uhhhh.” She expelled. “Hold on please.” Mary spoke into her phone and read the screen, knowing that she had the message sent to her by Sumith, the guide who had taken her into Tamil Elan. It was he who had told her that she should come and check out the boy. She read Sumith's words off the phone's screen, “
The Sri Lankans gave each other genuine nods of farewell and off they drove. Mary, desperate for the window to be closed, lurched forward and pointed at it. The driver smiled and pressed the button. Down a side street they went, and across a railway track, and through some alley-ways that made them bump and jolt until, a couple of minutes after getting directions, they stopped.
Mary looked around and saw wide steps leading up to a walled enclosure that she knew held the temple, though she could not make out what it held.
“I will wait here for you Miss?” Asked the driver. Mary had no idea how long she would be, she didn't care about the cost of the car and so, without thinking, said “Yes, please.”
Ohhh…. the heat was hot even though the sun was drowsy! She felt her sweat glands seem to spring into action before she had even started up the steps. It was maybe thirty steps but to anyone who saw her ascend, dripping like a rag, they might have though she had scaled
Mary walked up to him and gave a small bow with her head, as she had been shown by her guide last week. He made the smallest of smiles and turned to sweeping the dusty sand smooth. She walked around to the shade of the tree and flipped down her phone, the message from Sumith was still there, as were the autolinks to the wikis and sites. Mary got the sweeping monks attention.
“Yes, can you help me, I need want to see the boy. Hoddi.” It was clear that he spoke not a word of English. It was also clear her pronunciation of the boy's name didn't help matters at all. But the monk knew what to do, and pointed to a building, on two levels, that occupied the corner of the temple enclosure.
She looked back at him.
“Yanna yanna,” he said, motioning with his fingers that she should go.
Mary thanked him again, a tad over-the-top in her enthusiasm, and walked towards the building.
There were some Monks sitting in the entrance hall who looked at her as she approached. They seemed embarrassed and continued whatever it was they were doing or .... not doing. Either way, the monks seemed to be doing something that involved doing not much at all, save reading or staring into space.
She slowed her pace and stepped closer… the entrance room becoming more visible. Its back wall stacked high with a wide menagerie of objects and artefacts. Broken plastic dolls, books and big old computers.
Printed portraits of monks, smiling serenely. Black and white or faded colour. As if expecting her, a monk walked from an adjoining room, stopped in the middle of the hallway paused for a tiny moment when he saw Mary. He then walked out into the sun to greet her.
He was strikingly beautiful. Maybe forty but maybe older. Perhaps younger.
“Hello.” He said, tilting his head ever so slightly. Mary bowed again, this time clasping her hands as if in prayer.
“My name is Mary Potter, I work for the BBC. I am a journalist.”
“Ahhhhh…. British Broadcasting Company. Very good...very good.” Mary felt no need to correct him. “Welcome to
“Thanks you. You have a lovely country,” He didn't look so sure. Mary found it hard to apprehend how arrestingly gorgeous he was. She felt guilt for the way her heart fluttered over a man of such a cloth.
“Please please come in. You look hot.” He turned to a young monk and said something in Singhalese. The monk scurried off. “Have a seat.”
Mary sat in the old wicker chair and the monk, who Mary later found out was Amila, the “abbot”, sat besides her. She cut straight to the chase, “I was told that you have a young monk here who… is special.”
Amila smiled but said nothing for some time. The monk who had been sent on an errand returned with a stainless steel tray that had a plastic jug of water on it and a glass, scratched opaque by years of dusty hands holding it. Mary hadn't drunk the water here for a week but felt there was no option but to drink this. She was parched and felt the need to be ultimately polite.
The water tasted warm. Irony. It quenched her with a slight bitterness. Mary didn't think about pre-emptive antibiotics. She had no concern about spending the next week in bed in an amoebic sweat. She didn't feel like worrying. It might have been tiredness or the quiet. it might have been the monk or the monks. Whatever it was, Mary was conscious of being unusually relaxed. Aware of the moment as she sipped warm water.
After a passage of time in which nothing was said Amila sent the water monk off on another errand. His voice and manner wasn't commanding. It had an authority but not devoid of dominance. Something to a western mind was seldom scene. {Did you meen seen or serene?}
The water monk returned. A young boy following, robes flapping with each stride. Short cropped hair as black as coal. A face that seemed to have been frozen and melted myriad times, but now was made anew.
"This is the song boy."
*****************
(c) 2006 LJT, All rights reserved
The Final Chapters
Book One: Prologue
The Book of Abraham
The last time a game made my heart really race, my wife was a Teutonic dominatrix and I had the blueprints to "die speziellen lesbischen headquaters". That was until today, when I started re-playing Quake.
Quake is one of the best computer games ever made; it might not be quite as exciting as licking your way out of the Saphist Coliditz, but in terms of game-play and challenge and excitement, Quake is hard to beat. What is especially exciting about my recent foray into Quake is that it all took place on the little-portable-open-source GP2X, powered by two AA batteries.
It doesn’t stop there. Not only does the GP2X (Powered by 2 AA batteries) play Quake, it does much more, and that, my dear reader, is what this post is about.
What is it?
Its a handheld gaming device weighing 161 grams and made in a place called
It runs a version of Linux and has two 200MHZ processors and its own Video processor so it can do things that no other device on the planet, powered by two AA batteries, can do.
Where you get it?
You can get it from these people, http://gp2x.co.uk/, who are the global distributors and are based in
What does it do?
In order of importance:
1) Fractals!!!
OMG have you seen these things! They are patterns that are made mathematically out of component parts of the same patterns, and it gets better.... they go on for ever. Ot at least that’s what the manufacturers claim. I don’t know if that’s true but without doubt they go on for 6 sets of AA batteries. You can just zoom in and in and in and in. It never stops.
Unfortunately the Korean version 2's didn’t put this in the GP2X so you need to download it and install it on the GP2X.
Download it here: http://archive.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,8,1088
2) Drum Machine
Most people who buy this in the early days will be pretty geeky. Using Shoemaker's G-F translation it is pretty clear to see that geekyness is inversely proportionate to funkiness. However, to compensate for this you can install a drum machine on the GP2X and, through practice, actually increase your funk without decreasing your geek. This is the best of both worlds and IS NOT available on the Sony PSP or Nintendo DS Lite.
Download it here: http://archive.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,8,1088
3 The Graphical User Interface
The GP2X comes with its own "graphical user interface". This consists of small pictures ( or "icons") that represent the various aspects of the device. For example, the part of the graphical user interface that runs games has a "joystick" picture to guide you. If you get lost the pictures also have descriptive names associated such as "Games", "Music" and "Settings".
I found this graphical user interface very easy to use and navigate but some people may find it easier to actually go to a DVD store or an amusement arcade.
Because everything is open source there are other graphical user interfaces that can be put onto the GP2X to replace the one put on it by the Korea Version 2.0 team. I haven’t tried these others because the default one is just fine, thank you.
One other point of note is that the graphical user interface complies to the NORTFM. This means that though there is a manual you don’t need to read it, instead press a few buttons and you will pick it up, pronto.
4 Video Player
Once you have blown your stash of AA's cruising deep into the Mandelbrot set you might need a break from that math’s rollercoaster.
I suggest a good sojourn from such an excursion is to watch a movie. There are many movies available from an online video store called Bittorent, which has a great rental policy and the GP2X will play most of these (allegedly etc etc) and it will play them really well.
I like things that make you go "wow". Like when you go camping out of the city and look up to see the milky way. Or you walk in on your mother in the kitchen and she is juggling three apples and you have never seen her juggle before. Not even two.
The video quality of the GP2X has this wow. Maybe not as much as the Milky Way but at least 3 times more than Andromeda (the Galaxy not the TV Show and with the naked eye, not Hubble). Its clear and bright and with good contrast. The playback is smooth... so smooth (because of the hardware video) and all powered by two AAs.
You can push the output to the TV and its just as good as a desktop with TV out or Freecome Media Player display. I can imagine being around at a friends house and the chat has got a bit dull. They are talking about "friends of friends" and the beer is warm and its still so early. So what do you do? Get out the crack pipe or say this:
You: "Hi, I have my media player on me, how about we watch Zoolander 2?”
Them: “How?”
You: “I can plug it right in to your telly."
Them:"Really?"
You:"Yes….. but have you got two AA batteries?"
As a final parting a very neat feature that could be in any video player but isnt, is that it remembers your position in a movie. So, I was watching a film in bed last night and when I was sleepy turned the device off. Tonight I'll continue watching it some more right from where I left off (assuming I don’t play Quake or "Frauline was is das in der leiderhossen!!!").
If you just want a portable movie player with TV out then that’s enough reason to get the GP2X.
5 Music and Podcasts
Some people find it enjoyable to listen to sounds aranged with a certain order or sequence and the GP2X has more than enough OOOOPH to satisfy these people.
It does MP3 and WMA and OGG, but lets be honest, we can forget the last two. The MP3 player is simple and effective. It doesn’t support play lists, in-song bookmarking or lyrics but it has all you really need for most cases. I wish it would have bookmarks like the movie player does but it doesn’t. It does have real smooooooooth in track navigation, so you can zip anywhere in a 50 meg podcast in seconds.
I’d like to make a special mention of the sound quality. I have had a zillion MP3 players over the years- stand alone, in Palm , PPC, phones etc and this, to my ears, is the best I have heard. It is clear and loud and a nice range and just ...good. It doesn’t have Dobly.
6 Games
This part of the review is only here so I don’t get accused of being nonquakeaphobic. I’ve seen the youtube.com vidos of people playing many games at full speed. Ultima 7, Sonic, Duke Nukem’ etc etc etc.
Other Applciations
This baby runs Linux at the back end and has two meaty processors doing the work. In theory it could run Open Office, or Gimp (Like Photoshop) or contacts/calendar applications... really anything that can be done without internet on a desktop.
What I think will make or brake the trajectory of this side of the GP2X is peripheral support. It has a USB port so can it take a keyboard? Or a mouse? Can it cable via this to a mobile phone’s port to go online?
Because of the open source nature of this system and the fact it has port access the sky really could be the limit if a significant surge of developers get behind it. (We are going to try this at work, I think)
Any Downers?
There is a moment as a child when you realise that adults are not perfect. Maybe its when you ask one a question and they don’t answer right away. Maybe it’s when Uncle Derek looses the key to the tool shed and you both have to spend the night inside it and its cold. So cold.
For the GP2X this moment, the reaslisation that gadgets, like adults, are not perfect, comes when you try to change the batteries. The GP2X build is good, apart from the flimsy little metal tongue that pushes the negative into the positive. Its a spring that doesnt seep to ahve much spring about it. I am guessing that most of the send-backs for the GP2X will be because of this. It will break. I can that little thing now and it is saying... "I am the weakness."
There are other gripes......
Power Outage
In the middle of a game of Quake and suddenly the effects became awesome... better than an Xbox game. It was as if a white light nuke went off and I was starring at ground zero, my world imploding and melting at the same time.
In fact what had happened was the batteries died on me and that was the LCD's Swan Song. Being a life long battery fetishist I know that rechargeables live fast and die young; often without any warning. But this white out seemed really dramatic. I don’t ask for much... but 30 seconds of warning that the GP2X needs a change would be a start.
The Worst Accessory Ever
I got the official GP2x carry case and it is pants. It really is the worst designed case I have seen for any device, and I have seen many many.
This is the worst case ever made for anything. If you can imagine taking the spongy excrement of a camel and smearing the GP2X in that excrement you will not be into the land of metaphor, but reality.
Conclusion: The Future
The review is coming to and end. I have been working on it for two days and I feel we need a dramatic conclusion to keep you happy. The GP2X review equivalent of blowing up the Death Star or (come out) Kevin Spacey loosing his limp. Where should I go? Try to be funny and zany? Or serious and resolute?
I think all good reviews of portable gaming and media devices should end with a quote that encapsulates what has gone before. And so I will end with a quote that achieves just that. And yet achieves even more.... spreading not just the scope and flexibility of the GP2X but also its community and potential.
I will end with a quote from a Korean (Version 1.0) Shin-Jok play that translates as follows:
"In the cusp of your fingers you may hold the many worlds and many things until power fails and all is dark".
out of 5
Posts
All Comments
