little bits of everything

We borrowed Kirby's Epic Yarn for Wii over half-term. It's a delightfully inventive game and I'd recommend it for children of all ages. It's quite forgiving, but that doesn't make it easy. One of the things that struck me was the variety of music on the soundtrack. Before I cover that though, some thoughts on computer games music generally. Because gaming doesn't occupy a high place in popular culture compared with its turnover, and because it's mostly background, I think it doesn't generally get thought about. Recently, though, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra  played a concert to mark 25 years of Legend of Zelda. Mostly it seems like it's pretty generic stuff, see Exhibit A - the music to Da Blob. However even the music on that is cleverer than it appears as the melody only plays while you're painting, but cuts in and out at the right moments. The World of Goo music is quite distinctive and I think it sounds like a film soundtrack. Yo

When I started riding a scooter 11 years ago I looked at a few scooter forums to see what people were talking about. Some of the people there looked down on those with "plastics" as they called the modern scooters that have become so popular. Then a bit later I got a motorbike and hung around on the Usenet group uk.rec.motorcycles. There everyone looks down on scooters, but the proper bikers look down on "power rangers" as they call those who wear one piece coloured suits and ride when the weather is nice. So we've got a hierarchy growing here. Anyone with a motor powering their two wheels looks down on those who have unpowered two wheels. So I wonder what hierarchies there are amongst cyclists. I don't know  but I imagine people with  fixies  look down on other cyclists as theirs is a purer form of cycling. Maybe the shiny road cyclists look down on the muddy mountain bikers. Or maybe the world of cyclists is tribe-free. Maybe not. Who's at the bo

My money tree photo got included in an article on thisiscolossal.com .

You can see some of my photos as part of the Utata Colour Story 2011. I chose a blue theme.