Dave's Place in Space

I woke up this morning and thought to myself: "I wonder who invented Table Tennis?". This may sound like a strange thing to wake up thinking about, and the last time it happened I asked myself "Who invented the stapler?". I wonder about a lot of things. Life is full of questions, and I ask myself a lot of questions (not out loud, of course, because people would think I was mad).

As I walked to work this morning, I wondered about a lot of things. I wonder what the snatched conversations on mobile phones as I walk past people are about. I wondered about a joke shared by some guys on a building site. Was it really funny? I wondered if a young boy who was being taken to school by his mum noticed me and wondered about the man with the long hair? I wondered about the routine of the Scotrail woman I see every morning parking in the same place and buying her parking ticket. I wondered how people that wander up the street absorbed in their newspaper or texting friends don't end up walking into other people or even traffic.

The mundane routine walk to work becomes quite interesting if you take notice of your surroundings and the things that are going on that we never notice.

I bet you the next time someone asks "anything exciting happen today?" that your reply won't be "hmm.. same as usual".

Oh.. James Gibb and E.C. Goode popularised Table Tennis as we know it in 1901.. in case you were wondering :)

Until next time...

I've been going through a bit of a retro phase recently, and I've been spending a lot of time with my old Xbox (the original black fellow, not the new 360 variety). I'm surprised at the quality of some of the games- some, of course are looking a tad dated, but there are a few stand out games. Doom 3, Black and Burnout Revenge spring to mind. Even Sega GT 2002, which came free with the Xbox, manages to look great.

See, I'm one of these strange fellows (my best pal Aidan is of the same mindset) that thinks games don't have to look gorgeous as long as they play well. That's the reason I still play Atari 2600 games to this day!

So, having scoured ebay, I was thinking: what games would I really like for my Xbox? Games that I didn't want (or more likely couldn't afford) to pay £45 for? Well.. here's a few:

• Black - top of my list for purchase. Looks like a 360 title- amazing. 'Nuff said :)
• Batman Begins - I love Batman. And a Jolly good fighter to boot. Had it on my PS2 before I sold it.
• Fight Night Round 3 - still looks the part, even if it doesn't have the sweat trickles of the 360- great fun to play.
• Steel Battalion - came with its own 40 button control deck with dual joysticks- woohoo!
• Forza Motorsport - looks beautiful, and customisable to death.

On the plus side, I found out how easy it was to connect to Xbox Live, on both the 360 and the original Xbox. Basically, if you have a laptop with wireless, you can connect in seconds using one cable. The 360 uses a standard Ethernet cable, whilst the original Xbox needs a crossover cable. Plug it into your laptop, hook up your Xbox of choice and it should pick up your network. Easy peasy.

So, the moral of the story? Don't get rid of your old consoles just because there's a new shiny one on the market. Go back and play the games- you might just find you enjoy yourself!

Oh- and if you live near Edinburgh or Glasgow and have old Xbox games or peripherals to sell, drop me a line!