Dec 31, 2009 0
Apr 5, 2009 0
I spent last weekend watching my first ever ice hockey game – San Jose Sharks vs. Phoenix Coyotes. Whilst I’ll get round a more detailed write-up some other time, I think it’s quite easy to find one of the reasons for the popularity of the game in North America right here:
Note that the the referees only get involved once the donkey punch comes into play. As a football fan, it’s absolutely mesmerising to watch the drama unfold live – pull this sort of stunt on a Saturday afternoon in the Premier League and you’d have points deducted and the police involved.
Dec 31, 2008 0
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:
http://www.vimeo.com/2672016Basically, 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.
Dec 30, 2008 0
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:
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…
