grabot

Ha, so possibly the best thing about him is that he is even more irritating to a number of people who I may find irritating. I guess that works for me in a fashion.

"He's the only man in the government with a vision. It might be the wrong vision but he's got one" Yes, I am afraid that doesn't help. In general my experience of people with visions, is that rather having some deep insight they are prone to a solipsistic tendency to ignore the complexities of reality. But then again I would class myself as a gloomy existentialist...

He gets a lot of stick on the East Dulwich forum. I often find myself wanting to develop a contrary line of thought. But I am genuinely struggling to feel anything positive about him. In fact I can't really get past his face, which looks that of an unnaturally aged 7 year old. Anyone got anything positive to give me? I have reconciled to him being around for a while at least.

I agree entirely with StraferJack. We are quite lucky in that respect. As we get older, at least when it comes to gaming, things gets better. It can take time for things to improve though, I am finding the line-up for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One pretty insipid at the moment, but I'm sure it will improve...

Speed ball 2. "Ice Cream, Ice Cream" burnt permanently onto my consciousness.

The Barbarian promo stuff with Maria Whittaker was very popular at school.

Dragon 32. Not great for me I'm afraid. My mother insisted on getting one instead of a Spectrum, she was a secretary and insisted on having a proper keyboard [much later we got a Spectrum 128]. I remember playing Calixto Island. Brtual. It was basically game of guess the exact string that the programmers expect you to enter to get to the next part.

Oh and back on FPS. Unreal Tournament was great fun. A group of us used to go to a LAN gaming bar called Playing Fields for a bit of UT goodness. Good times. Golden Axe was something I used to play in the arcades of Mablethorpe. My parents would give me a stack of 10ps and that would be me happy for an hour. I could stretch 10p out on Double Dragon for quite a while. Then at various points: Willow, Strider, Toobin, Bubble Bobble and many more.

The various Half Life games, Portal, System Shock 2 and Bioshock. All FPS. All brilliant.

I like the COD games for their sheer mindlessness. Gaming anaesthesia. I've had some good times chatting on Xbox Live with mates, while half-heartedly ambling around COD maps. I second Ninja Gaiden. I guess on the snobbery question. Musical taste is part of our repertoire for impressing members of the opposite sex and or wider society, so we take it quite seriously. Getting a triple collateral in Black Ops 2 is a fallow field in that respect. Sorry about the Dworkinsesque reductionism by the way...

I did indeed. I also had fake Nike Windrunner jacket which mitigated things a little.

I'll check it out. I noticed that there is a version of the Lone Wolf books on IOS, but it appeared to lack Gary Chalk's original illustrations, so it was a hollow experience for me. I guess in this spirit of admission, I openly admit that as a child I: Played games on a Spectrum Read Fighting Fantasy books Played the Warhammer role playing game on a few occasions Painted some Citadel miniatures Ahh it feels good to get that out.

I'm not convinced by the idea of Pochettino at Spurs. His famous double training sessions might have gone down well with the young aspirational Southampton squad, but, the likes of Adebayor will be less keen. I guess he could ship a load of players out and bring in a fresh batch; wouldn't that have an element of deja vu for the fans?

Looking back at the old text based adventures, they weren't a patch on the fighting fantasy books for me. The Spectrum version of Warlock of Firetop mountain was a disappointment. I guess that comment doesn't help my street cred...

Thanks EP. I'll check out Head Over Heels tonight then. The group that made it Ocean Software, were great. Together with Ultimate and Hewson, they were responsible for most of my favourite childhood gaming memories. I'm now looking at old editions of Crash when I should be working http://www.crashonline.org.uk/42/index.htm. Oh well...

There's some PC reboots of some of my favourite childhood Spectrum games here http://retrospec.sgn.net/index.php?link=finished . "Head Over Heels" in particular is a game I loved and it looks lovely in its updated form. I'm scared to play it though. Don't want to taint my childhood memories with: "Urghh this is rubbish, back to Titanfall!"

One of the problems with society and politics is the sheer complexity and unpredictability of it. In many siutations newspapers are left in a difficult position, they can offer a perspective and seek to engage the readership through fear or bias, but are limited beyond that. Where does it leave us? I do not know. The media looks like Ouroboros, something external, creating unease, consuming itself. Where can we go for informed opinions? The answer is probably nowhere, maybe the East Dulwich Forum :-), at least it has some plurality. Does it matter? I think that that is question for the individual, but it's good to count our blessings and avoid expressing opinions on complex and highly contingent topics at family gatherings (speaking from a recent bad experience) whereas a public internet forum is a great place for such discussions!

Interesting Mustard. I didn't realise, until you pointed it out, that Artex can contain asbestos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artex. Scarey, there's a lot of that stuff around!

Loz: "My prediction for the future: they will separate Euro elections from any other election. The Euro effect on last nights council elections was pretty obvious." Yes, I hope so. Am I alone in feeling that local councillors have been let down by their European Parliament counterparts in this election? I can't recall any contact from any candidates for European Parliament, but at the same time I have had some interesting discussions and received some interesting information from council candidates.

As discussed in previous threads. Attempts to discourage people from voting UKIP have generally been accompanied with: insults, sarcasm and patronising language. I think that it is wrong to assume that UKIP voters are ignorant and stupid people who should be treated as such, I know a number personally and they are anything but that. When the debate becomes more rational, the reasons for not voting UKIP are convincing, but in that respect the mainstream political parties have failed to get their message across effectively. I do not support UKIP and I would not vote for them. But, in my mind the time has come for a more reasoned debate about Europe. Can it expand indefinitely? Does a one size fits all political and economic model work for all European countries? I suspect that the success of UKIP has been driven by the desire of a number of people to create a dialectic, one that has been generally denied to date.

Pokertime. Some interesting points, but was it necessary to start by insulting Villager? It should be noted that import tariffs are something of a relic and are generally regarded as economically damaging. The EU and US are currently negotiating the removal of almost all tariffs and both parties expect substantial gains as a consequence. Why keep them at all after that point? Some might argue to keep poor countries poor. We have certainly done substantial damage to various commomwealth partners through EU membership.

EP, a good post, more balanced than most, although I would argue that all political parties have their fair share of oddballs: Marxist heritage is tolerated in Labour MPs without reference to Stalin and his purges. Questions of whether UKIP voters are open to persuasion have to be balanced against the relatively rabid response that they get from opponents. Immediately branding someone racist, or carrying out acts of criminal damage are not likely to provoke a calm and reasoned debate. My perception from speaking to UKIP supporting folk is that they plan to vote for UKIP in the European elections, largely as a protest against loss of sovereignty, and then revert to the mainstream parties in the national elections. The press are guilty of prodding UKIP supporters. Google "lazy British workers" and see how many hits you get from sites of all political persuasions, is it not feasible that these kind of attacks could engender a certain level of insularity? This give an interesting perspective http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100271887/our-political-masters-are-horrified-by-ukip-trouble-is-the-voters-arent/. I have been harangued by individuals telling me that I absolutely must not vote UKIP because to do wo would be to cede control of Europe to the Russians. Madness in my mind. Incidentally, I have no intention of voting UKIP, but the tactics that are being employed to deter people from voting UKIP are likely to fuel contrarianism in many people.

I quite like this thread. Initially a person expresses outrage at a person's behaviour in the physical world. LD then expresses outrage, in the form of a parody, at the defilement of a public internet forum with what she considers a triviality. So, we have ever decreasing circles of outrage rippling from the real world to the internet. And then I post. And like all of my recent posts, my words fall into the void and the thread no doubt ends. I miss the aeroplane thread for its I'm outraged that your outraged circularity. They were a bit noisy this morning. Can someone bring it back?

I second Trinity Church Square and Great Suffolk Street. Trinity Church Square is particularly nice and there's sometimes something interesting going on there to break up the norm; a couple of days ago filming was going on for what I was told is the sequal to 28 days later.

I would have thought that increasing the complexity of the instruction set would reduce the need for cycles and threads for that matter. Edit. I have almost certainly got that the wrong way round. Oh well. All the better. Increase the number of cycles I say.