fizzychicken

The Odyssey2 , branded as Philips Videopac g7000 where I lived, was my first computer, though I only ever used it for games. The joysticks were quite harsh, always gave me a blister between my thumb and index finger.....long before I discovered 'Nintendo thumb'. The noises of these games are burned in my memory, along with the layout of Pickaxe Pete. I also had the glorious box set of 'Quest for the rings' which had a fantastic concept but I never figured out how to play correctly. The box art for these games, and those of systems that followed, always had such imagination compared to the simple blocks that made up the game. I remember when games reached a point where the box art ended up being screenshots of the actual gameplay and thinking tomyself 'The technology has finally caught up with the imagination', yet now it seems we have reverted and only yesterday I watched a trailer for the next Battlefield game that was majority pre-rendered content.....it feels like a step backwards.

I have an aeropress for making coffee at work. It is quick and easy to use and it is very quick to clean but the main reason for me is the process. I get my cup, filter and press from my desk, fill the porlex grinder with some beans, then I stand in the kitchen nearest to my desk (very open-plan large office building) and grind the beans. Every time I grind the coffee people walk by and comment on the nice smell. I enjoy the process, I enjoy the sound of the manual grinder and I enjoy taking the time to perform the task after sitting at a keyboard for so long. I make the coffee (upside down) and watch other people go to the onsite cafe and buy a $5 coffee which takes longer to order than I take to make mine. I find it tastes great and is considerably better filtered than a french press. I have had this a fair few years now but I know I am approaching my 700th cup as I bought it with 2 packs of 350 paper filters and I will soon run out. 5 stars, would buy again. ( At home I favour a Bialetti Moka stove-top. )

I feel like I have bits of my memory and perception that are good and bits that are bad. I struggle with the idea of being asked to help with a 'photo-fit', to describe the person's face and reconstruct the features like you would when describing a suspect to a police officer or sketch artist, I simply cannot recall anyone's face. I can describe build, height, hair and colour, but the face itself is blocked in my mind. I cannot recall the majority of events in my life and most that I do recall are very recent or in some way traumatic or unpleasant, even then I only remember a freeze-frame of the scenario and note the whole event. Being able to remember a sequence of events or a long period of time within the same day is limited to a very small number of memories. I cannot remember most of my childhood or anything beyond a few years ago, just tiny snippets here and there. However... I remember nearly everywhere I've ever been, like a version of map software in my brain is keeping a record. I've re-visited places I've only been to once before many years earlier and been able to navigate the entire area without fault. I can remember the configuration of the shopping malls I've been to and I can even recall where nearly all products in the local grocery store or super markets are.... I can picture these things in my mind with real clarity. This ability also means I have fantastic dreams, often in the same places which only exist in my mind. I often remember dreams by where I was or what I was doing at the time based on which location I was in. I dream in first-person while also aware of what the third person sensation/ experience would be like. I can occasionally lucid dream so I know these dreams involve colour. I cannot remember what anything smells, sounds, or tastes like. If someone asked, ‘what does your favourite food taste like?’ I honestly could not describe it, but I can recall the texture of it perfectly. Yet even though my few memories do not include these details, if I smell something during the day I can easily remember what that is…the same applies to hearing a tune or sound or seeing someone’s face in a TV show. The memories are there but the act of actually trying to recall something simply for the purposes of attempting to remember will result in a blank….passively try and remember something by association of some other stimuli then the memory will come back easy. I worry that now my child is turning 3 years old I can only recall a handful of memories from his life so far, will this get worse? If he ever asks me what life was like when he was just a baby….what will I say?

In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

I get the occasional itch on my head when sitting at my desk at home, only to find a Tree Weta crawling through my hair. It seems that they are not all that appealing to my cats who love catching other insects.

I grew up knowing myself to be a 'Manc' before I found out it was short for 'Mancunian'. When I eventually left Manchester and moved to London I was just known as a 'Northern Monkey' to the locals. Now I live in New Zealand I'm just a 'POHM'. I'll be a Red Manc till the day I die.

I don't know much about any of this stuff but my first though was if it is possible to see if the majority of buys at the low price were to one location or wallet (or however that works) or how many automated buys are set for weirdly low values.

I like what they are doing at that site and some of the options they have available but the ability to use access controls only kicks in at the power user level which is $70 per year and that's a key thing for me.

I've had a Flickr pro account since 2006. I'm not that into photography, I use it as a means to share pictures with extended family around the world. For that purpose it does pretty much everything I need it to, I don't use any of the 'social' aspects of it. What I do hate is having it tied to a yahoo account which I don't use (other than signing in to flickr) and would rather close, and that downloading a dump of all of my photos for my own backup is not a simple task. If I could find something that would cost me the same amount (30$USD ish per year) that offered the same level of privacy control I would probably switch.

I've lived here in Auckland since 2010, being originally from the north of England. I am yet to see a 'winter' in Auckland. Every year it gets a bit more rainy in the winter months and the temperature drops to around 3 or 4C at night...that's it, it's still in double digits in the daytime. Although I am coming from a place where it rained all year and had snowy -10C winters. I remember not long after I arrived in NZ there was one freak weather day where there was sleet in the city for about 60 seconds and everyone lost their minds as it hadn't snowed in 50 years or something.....those who had never left the city were experiencing snow for the first time....it baffled me how much of a big deal it was. I haven't worn a coat for the past year and I've downgraded to one pair of jeans as I'm always in shorts and jandals. This place really is part of the 'winterless-north'.