As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we bought the Guitar Hero game partly in the expectation that it would become a big hit in social situations.
We were right.
It has become a big hit with everyone who has been around and played it. It’s even fun watching others play it.
For the last about 14 months I have been working on a particular project at work which, last week, finally came to a close. This job has been both the best and he hardest job I’ve had: I’ve learnt a lot of stuff, met some really great friends and I’m now feeling quite burnt-out. Anyway, after some to-in and fro-ing last week, I’m starting in a new job tomorrow in a different area. I’m quite looking forward to it – it’s getting me right into the kind of work I’ve been hoping to do, so we’ll see how it goes. Look for me to start looking less tired and a bit more invigorated again in the near future.
The last few weeks (basically since arriving back at work after our WA holiday) has been the most stressful time at work I’ve ever experienced. Fortunately, now that the Fair Pay Comission has made its first decision, things are a bit quieter and my project is (finally) finishing up on Friday week. While it’s been a great job I’ve had over the last year, I’m now ready for a change and something a bit less stressful.
One bright point this week is that Tegan and I each received a box of Moo MiniCards. This is a cool little company that we discovered via flickr. Basically, they’re trying to reinvent the calling card concept, but make it fun and personal – not like a business card. We ordered our boxes a week or so back when they were offering free international shipping as an introductory offer (and the shipping was really fast, considering they came from London).
These cards are drawn from our Flickr accounts – and they look so cool! The ones in this photo are all mine, but Tegan got some nice ones as well. My cards turned out a bit better than Tegan’s – several of hers were a bit dark and we can’t quite tell iff it was specific to the print run for each of them, or just because I chose photos that were brighter or had more contrast. Regardless, we both think they’re cool and so do the people we’ve given them to!
So, please ask if you want us to give you one/some, or you might just find that we hand them out for various reasons at points in time. And we’re both already thinking about how we can improve on the ones we’ve got when we order the next batch…
I’ve never owned a games console in my life. Despite vastly enjoying computer games, I have always thought that spending a whole heap of money on a computer-like device that serves only one purpose was a waste. And games on the PC are so much more flexible – the mouse is a much better controller for first person shooter, strategy and adventure games (my three favourite genres of game); people make great modifications for some popular titles, which you don’t get on a console; and it’s much easier to communicate over the net when you have a keyboard. In short, I use computers for so many things and while games are a priority for me, they don’t absolutely dominate my electronics purchasing decisions (obviously, since my last three computer purchases (between Tegan and I) were Macs, which are terrible for gaming).
So, it was something of a surprise that I bought a Playstation 2 on the weekend.
There is some context: my Windows PC is starting to die as far as gaming is concerned. I can’t play a lot of games created within the last couple of years and there’s some problem with the graphics card which causes it to over-heat terribly in hot weather rendering the screen un-watchable, shortly before my computer crashes. More to the point though, on Saturday I had just come off the most stressful fortnight at work I had ever experienced and was looking for some pure fun.
Enter Guitar Hero.
Guitar Hero is a game I’d had my eye on for a little while, particularly since having a test-play of it in JB Hi-Fi a month or two back. Even Tegan, while we were watching other people play it, thought it looked like great fun. The game has a really simple concept: the controller is like a miniature guitar, with 5 buttons on the neck (corresponding to frets on a normal guitar and notes in the game), it has a little bar that you move up and down to ‘strum’ and a whammy bar. As a song progresses in the game, you have to hit the right notes and strum in time with the music. The song sounds right and you get points when you hit the notes properly. Sounds simple, although playing it is a bit more complex, and there are lots of little, interesting touches here and there in the game which add to the overall effect – such as watching the antics of the ‘band’ you’re playing on stage and the audience reaction depending on whether you’re really rocking along, or failing miserably (going wild and booing, respectively).
Our rationale for buying it this weekend was to have some fun after a really dreary week, but our greater rationale is that we think it will be a really fun social game. For a number of years I used to whip out a game with friends called ‘You Don’t Know Jack’ (YDKJ). This was a really humorous and fun trivia game – a three player game on the computer which takes place in a TV show-like context. Everyone who played had enormous fun – it was always a hit at little gatherings. However, in recent years my Windows PC has been relegated out of sight to the study and I can’t play YDKJ on the Mac. We still have requests for it every now and then, but tend to play board games instead (like Settlers of Cataan, Puerto Rico and Munchkin). I think that Guitar Hero might well fill the gap left by the absence of YDKJ and provide an interactive game that can be played socially, that you can enjoy watching even if you’re not playing, that has a mildly competitive element and that’s just really great fun. The couple of our friends I’ve mentioned it to have also said that it sounds quite fun and they’re looking forward to playing it as well. And if we get Guitar Hero 2 when it comes out sometime this year, we might well have a second guitar to play it with and can get immersed in the collaborative mode that will be part of the sequel.
As for the game itself (and note, we own no other PS2 games) – it’s so much fun! It’s a great feeling when you hit the notes properly and feel yourself rocking along to great classics like ‘Smoke on the Water’ and ‘More Than a Feeling’. In fact, playing ‘More Than a Feeling’ (originally by Boston) for the first time last night was just about the most fun I’ve had in a game for a long time. Of course, when you completely stuff up a song it feels terrible – especially when you miss enough notes and can’t quite get yourself back on track or your fingers working properly and you fail the song entirely – as happened to Tegan last night (although she did recover the next time round and do quite well). Overall, I think the game still appeals to me more than Tegan – she never really had the aspirations to become a rock guitar god that I did, and even though it has been years since I played guitar, I find I still have some residual muscle memory in my left hand and I find it easier to move it into position over the ‘notes’ than does Tegan, therefore I find it easier to pick up new songs and therefore the whole game is more fun.
To those friends and family who find themselves at our place from time to time – we’re looking forward to sharing the fun with you.
On Sunday morning we went to the local Anglican church near our holiday house. It was a delightful little place. At first we thought we had doubled the size of the service we attended, although more people arrived later and it turned out to be a bustling little country church. The people were uber-friendly and sang with real gusto – more than in any other church I’ve been to for some time.
Now, before I go on I need to put one thing on the record: I’m not an Anglican. I’ve been to Anglican church services not much more than about half a dozen times in my life, of which only about three used the Prayer Book explicitly. The third of these times was yesterday morning. This reminded me of what I both love and hate about services that use the prayer book and have the congregation follow along in it. [1]
What I love is that the service is largely conducted as a prayer to God – almost everything that is said is expressed as a prayer. And it’s so theologically excellent – even though the ‘sermon’ we sat through was so bad and really just used the passsage as a jumping off point into what the priest wanted to say, the congregation afffirmed many biblical truths during the course of the service. [2] Sitting in on a prayer book service always makes me realise that we could do better in the way we conduct services in less traditional protestant churches – we could do much better at affirming biblical truths in even the normal things we say during the service. And prayers in particular were very good – even the prayer offered by a member of the congregation was theologically excellent, was full of praise to God and affirmation of who he is, and covered so much ground as well – I was quite challenged to improve my praying at church after listening to it.
On the other hand, the service as a whole was utterly inaccessible. Even Tegan, who grew up in an Anglican church and who followed along in the prayer book better than I, couldn’t quite understand some of what was going on in the communion – the difference betweeen kneeling and standing, and whether you ate the wafer and then drank from the common cup, or whether you dipped your wafer in the wine and then ate that.
And following along with the prayer book is, I assume, meant to be easy – but it is absolutely not. There was nothing in there that told you which parts to sing, which lines to repeat while you’re singing, it’s hard to know which parts to skip and when to turn the page when the priest could choose from several options in the text of the book, and then there are lines here and there which the priest and congregation say which aren’t in the book – all very confusing. Having been to a couple of these things before, I could follow along reasonably well – not perfectly though – but one of our friends who had never been to a prayer book service before found it extremely difficult to follow along.
Now, we were all Christians who were there – and if we found it that hard, I really wonder how an outsider who is checking out Christianity and the church for the first time must find it. I imagine that it must feel as though you have entered some kind of sect – it’s that different than anything else I’ve observed in modern society. One of the congregation members said to me that it was good seeing so many young people (there were six of us there) in church, and mentioned that they had troble attracting young people to church. Now that I think about it, I’m not surprised.
The sign at the front of the church said “Visitor’s Welcome”. While the people were certainly welcoming and warm and friendly, perhaps the sign should have read, “Visitors Welcome – But if you’re not Anglican, don’t expect to understand anything about the service.
1: The church we were at was quite High Anglican, so I guess that’s a factor as well.
2: Of course, this raises the question of how you know that they’re biblical truths if the preaching plays, in my opinion, fairly fast and loose with the Bible itself. I guess you would hope that people are reading the Bible for themselves and can evaluate whhat they’re reading against that. And I trust that the authors of the prayer book considered the Bible very carefully and wrote only things that the Bible affirmed to be true.
