Undercrank

Making use of the multiple account support in Tweetie on my iPhone, I published a bunch of live goal flashes to the AFC Wimbledon Twitter feed for Saturday’s game against Bognor Regis Town.

I dare say this won’t be a regular occurrence, but given that I managed to delight at least one person, expect to see more of this as and when I get to some more games - or if I can persuade some others to have a go at it in my absence.

To my mind, it’s probably the cheapest and quickest way for small (or even large) clubs to provide this information to their fanbase; with the diverse geographical spread of AFC Wimbledon fans, I hope my experiment sees the idea getting a little bit more traction.

• After fighting through the teeming hordes of shoppers and traffic in Southampton today I’d just like to say “credit crunch, my arse.” #
• Finally got around to uploading a bunch of videos from my flying visit to Japan: http://vimeo.com/album/53188 #
• is saving you an SMS assault and simply saying Happy 2009. #
• Going in to Woolworths today is basically like legalised looting. http://twitpic.com/yy5x #
• is wondering how much of a tax bill you need to have before considering Celebrity Big Brother a good idea. #
• Non-league football is just like league football but even colder. http://twitpic.com/z9ti #
• So many drunk people in my house I need a Rock Band Polyphonic Spree special edition. #

If there’s one thing the Japanese take very seriously, it’s fun.  Amusement arcades seem to be part of everyday life and culture, and I got the distinct impression that dropping by for a quick game of Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna (that’ll be giant flying robots with guns to the rest of us) on the way home was quite socially acceptable.

That said, with the short amount of time I had in the city I took a hint from one of the my wife’s Japanese colleagues and headed over to Odaiba to the Sega Joypolis; a very much weather-proof ‘indoor theme park’.  Even better, being a weekday evening there wasn’t a queue to be seen and there’s even a discount rate of 2,500 yen for coming in at that time of day.

I’d gone in with some reasonably tepid expectations of arcade machines, maybe a few more interactive things along the lines of the content at the old SegaWorld in London’s Trocadero, but what I didn’t expect was this:

Basically, it’s a life-size snowboarding half-pipe simulator, and it’s the single greatest thing I’ve ever seen in gaming.   Yeah, gaming - it’s interactive. As you’ll see in the video, after a few initial ups and downs you get to tap the board with your feet to intiate a spin. Hit the board right on the bottom of the halfpipe and you’ll score three points, otherwise it’s just the one. The winner at the end gets a bit of self satisfaction and enthusiastic clapping from the Sega staff.

I don’t think I can adequately describe it better than my scrappy video capture.  The one thing that mightn’t come across is that it goes way higher than you think, and despite any suggestions that it’s nausea-inducing you’ll want to try it at least twice to double check that it really was that much fun.

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I’ve been meaning to get round to this for a little while now, but inspired by Jason Kottke - and helped a lot by referring to my Dopplr journal - here’s my own year in cities:

• Athens, Greece *
• Barcelona, Spain
• Berlin, Germany
• Bristol, England
• Cenarth, Wales
• Gothenburg, Sweden
• Helsinki, Finland
• Hong Kong, China
• Le Mans, France
• New York, NY
• Oyster Bay, NY
• San Jose, CA
• San Francisco, CA *
• Santa Monica, CA
• Seoul, South Korea
• Simi Valley, CA
• Stockholm, Sweden *
• Tallinn, Estonia *
• Taipei, Taiwan
• Tokyo, Japan
• Toronto, Canada
• Waterloo, Canada

Same rules as Kottke - one or more nights were spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. Click through the links to see some Flickr photo sets for the cities.

It’s rather scary now I see it there in black and white…

• Watching Iron Man with glorious Dolby TrueHD sound might just strain neighbourly relations tonight. #
• I sense a mysterious outbreak of “working from home” will hit our London office tomorrow. At least amongst the 10 of us still here. #
• Time for an emergency fry up to get through the morning after the night before. #
• For someone who used to work for Korn and Rage Against The Machine, I sure do listen to “Pet Sounds” a lot. #
• “Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut #
• Christmas Eve powered by cloudberry liqueur. http://twitpic.com/vzxb #
• Bit of retro pop culture round the in-law’s. When’s the last time you saw a mug like this: http://twitpic.com/x3jl #