The pope must be the saddest person in the world.
While Momoko was in hospital Tara-chan had my undivided attention whenever I was home. No one ever got in the way between my hand and her fur. Once Momoko was back, however, Tara had to deal with me cuddling with Momoko from time to time, or at least giving Momoko attention when she demanded it. (My wife does require it from time to time.)
Then the baby came.
Now instead of me retreating to my home office for my “cave time” as soon as I get back from work each night - where she can curl up in my lap for 15 minutes or so - I make a straight shot for Akanè (after washing my hands, of course!) and hold her during “cave time”. This is not sitting well with Tara. Between a wife and a baby also needing my attention, Tara is getting a lot less than she likes. But she has been extremely well-behaved, provided you don’t count the “awwwwww” inducing pitiful mews she throws my way from time to time. Don’t get me wrong, I do still love on her, but the proportion is no longer stacked predominantly in her favour.
Well, now that Momoko’s dad is also here for the weekend there are 4 big people all focusing their stares on a cute creature other than her and she has unsurprisingly been bummed about it. Couple this with the fact that one of Momoko’s dad’s older sisters came to visit with her husband and grand-daughter today, and you can guess how the kitty was feeling. As a result, I made it a point to play with her and give her lots of love this afternoon, and she loved every millisecond of it. But that didn’t stop her from crying each moment my hand wasn’t on her.
I like to think that I have a pretty good command of my mother tongue. At more than one job I have had in the past, I was the guy to whom everyone went for spelling and grammar checks. So I thought Scrabble on my iPod Touch would be a swell way to pass the time when I wanted to play a portable game.
One thing I wish the game had, however, an option to stick with only English words. On the second game I played the computer opponent was throwing down some words I had never before heard - or not accepting words that many people have. Pardon me for not know “aa”, the Hawaiian word for cindery lava. Or not knowing that you accepted the “qi” spelling of “chi”, but not “xhi”. Something tells me more people have heard of a karate “gi” than “qi”. And what the hell is an “eth” or “ort” or “zyzzyva”? The rules in regards to what words are or are not allowed seems quite arbitrary to me.
I want to enjoy the game, but it seems I will continue to be penalised for not knowing things like the currency of Vietnam, the name of a Eurasian antelope or rituals performed by Hindu holy men - or not be able to put in words that plenty of everyday schmoes know and use, like “shuriken”.
It’s called BeatMaker and it is out now for the iPhone / iPod Touch (but requires the 2.0 firmware, since it is a legit app). Nt only does it have a touch-pad GUI like the old Akai MPC drum machines for input, but it has a rather feature-ich set of options for sequencing, effecting and - most importantly, as far as I am concerned - the ability to import sounds from your computer. (Perhaps more importantly from my computer, since I have the sounds. ^___^) At only $19, this is a phenomenal deal, given everything it can do. Plus, the developers seem to be keen on making it even more replete. Wicked.
This plus my custom sounds from Reaktor (my staple sound sculpting piece of software) and Battery (my inspiration foundation for drum kits) = look the fsck out.
I have yet to really play with it as I only purchased it today, but suffice it to say, I think you can guess what I will be mucking about with on my hour long train rides to and from work each day. I’ve just been looking for an excuse to do some more booty bass jams lately, and I think I may have found the key to make it happen. Or maybe I’ll be responsible and sketch out some initial ideas for that Nissin branding project due in a couple of months…
Today’s episode was brought to you by the letters M, O and P.
Well, it has been a long time coming and now that I have had time to play around with my firstborn for a bit, I wanted to share my thoughts on what it is like having a baby - in review form!!!
Set-up: First of all, it takes a long time for your baby to get set up. I know am a lot less impatient than most instant gratification people, but 8.5 months is almost too long a time for an initial process for me. It takes a good deal of effort and money from the time you start, and in the end you’re not even sure if they’re going to start up properly once activation time comes. The process can also be very consuming (even going so far as to hospitalise my wife for several months). So if you don’t have much patience, or you have major things happening in your life which would not allow your schedule to be open - you should be consider if this is the right thing to do now.
Activation: This is extremely nerve-wracking. You don’t have much control over which of the two main model types will be offered to you - and there are no returns if you didn’t get the one you wanted or your child has suffered any physical damage during the set-up process. But you will more than likely be focused on whether or not your child activates at all, eagerly awaiting their start-up sound. The sound itself is not altogether pleasant - but you will welcome it nonetheless, perhaps even to the point of tears. Your child’s packing materials make delivery a very sticky process, and they will need a thorough cleaning and screening process before he or she is handed off to you for your enjoyment. The involved woman will also be extremely tired from the activation ordeal, perhaps even suffering some wear and tear, which will potentially require medical attention.
First Play Test: The first thing you may notice when you receive your child is how small and fragile they are. It may be a bit daunting, but you will come to learn that they are really quite durable and resilient to damage, as long as you provide a modicum of care. Some new babies may not come equipped with all the accessories you wanted, like a full head of hair, eyebrows, etc. - but if they are not delivered with your child they should follow shortly. They also won’t be too interactive at first, as their systems are still initialising and require some time before they can understand your requests - or even make requests of you properly. Consequently, they seem to be in sleep mode most of the time. This won’t actually be too much of a concern for you at first because you will be quite content to just hold your baby in the beginning, marvelling at the beauty of such a small thing. The joys (and frustrations) of interaction will come soon enough.
Maintenance: Your first chunk of time with your child will require an extreme amount of care. Input and output – along with general cleaning – will need constant attention, as your child will need several years of development before they reach any semblance of self-sufficiency. They will also regularly require new peripherals and casings as they will be upgrading themselves constantly - thereby making themselves incompatible with the majority of their earlier accessories - for the next two decades. However, do not let this dissuade you from purchasing proper gear for your child for each stage of their life cycle. Poorly crafted kit can lead to damage or embarrassment for both you and your child.
Enjoyment: If you have put any serious effort into any of the afore-mentioned steps, then you will assuredly consider your new baby a sound expenditure, and hopefully an even sounder investment. On top of the things you had thought before-hand would be entertaining, you will also be surprised on a daily basis how things you once considered mundane and trivial could become precious and beautiful. In fact, some people are so enthralled with their decision that they contemplate going through the set-up process for another unit shortly after receiving their first. Regardless of how many you want, there is little question that if you are serious about having a baby then you will enjoy the experience more than you imagined.
PROS
CONS
FINAL VERDICT
Buy - but only if you plan to seriously invest the time it requires.
MS: “We still have more units in anyone’s homes - even though we are being consistently outsold in every territory, except the US - and losing our lead there faster and faster every week. We have fewer exclusives than anyone else, so after we show off the paltry amount of exclusives we have this year we’re going to show off a bunch of cross platform titles and make them appear as if they are only going to be on our system. We got Netflix, which is super awesome for at most 25% of our customers - partly because we still have yet to do jack shit for anyone outside the US, but mostly because broadband still sucks ass from a molasses tree in the lower 48. And Japan,even though we just recently called you “one of our most important territories” you get no content. Still. We’ve introduced yet another SKU, with a bigger HDD unit, which is still proprietary. Oh, and we managed to convince Square Enix to make Final Fantasy XIII cross-platform, arming legions of 360 fanboys to all yell in unison ‘There went my sole reason to buy a PS3!’.
Sony: “I can’t stand still and must rock left to right for every fucking sentence - and I look a bit like a cross between Uncle Vinnie and Uncle Bill and probably some other Ruddy uncle. We’ve lowered the price on our 80GB unit, but we’re still not going to do anything to re-institute backwards compatibility - most likely because we still push countless units of our last generation system, not because of ‘hardware issues’. Our initial marketing spiel was presented by a customised Little Big Planet level - which made the rest of our marketing spiel appear as boring as it really is. We didn’t show off Killzone 2 because we finally realised that 4 consecutive years of pushing one game may potentially get old. Oh, but we will show Home again, for the trillionth time - with no release date mentioned. We aren’t going to show any of the big cross-platform games - for some dumb reason, thereby leading many to assume some games which we will have soon won’t be coming to our system. We’re also releasing our own TV / movie download system - which is available today – ah, but only in the US. And we have got a ridiculous amount of ezclusives coming out for this holiday. Oh and God of War III is coming, but our trailer will just be CG.”
Nintendo: “Remember how in the 80’s we thought that we did enough that we don’t really need to impress you anymore? Well, we’re bringing them back - and we have countless bar graphs and charts to prove it. Seriously, we aren’t going to show you a slew of cool new games - we are going to smother you with charts. No big titles are in the works. We’ve also finally got a headset which you can use on our overwhelmingly inadequate online system - which we have no plans to improve. We also still don’t really have any big new titles that everyone is going to be talking about this year, either, so if you expected any of those… Sorry. Oh, and we have a modification to our current controller which makes it more sensitive, so now you can do a few more Wii sporting events, or pretend to play on the drums. But no really exciting breakthrough games, like we have had every year for the past few years. I’m not kidding. No big surprise games. Please leave.”
My next few posts will be about the games I want to play. Many are cross platform, but overall I think Sony took it this year. It’s all about the content, and they really had the most to offer this year. But you’ll see what I mean soon enough. Except from Nintendo, who didn’t have anything to show in the games department, save for a few ho-hum titles. And I do mean, FEW.
