In which I discover they still make videogames

It's kind of embarrassing to admit but my game of choice on my fancy new hi-tech iPhone 4 hasn't been some flashy God of War type digital extravaganza, but instead a rather charmingly poky 20-year-old Sega videogame, Sonic The Hedgehog. I stumbled across an app download that exactly duplicates the 1991 version of Sonic, spent my $2 and was hooked, drawn in again into the land of spinning rodents and magical gold coins where I whiled away much of a summer away from college playing. Perhaps age 19 is the perfect time to spend a summer playing videogames.

I've got to admit the videogame revolution of the past two decades has mostly passed me by, and my joystick skills pretty much ended with Sega Genesis and Nintendo games in college. We don't own a PlayStation or a Wii or a Kinext or whatever they're called; I've thought about it, but I get kind of addicted to these things and I *know* 7-year-old Peter gets hooked on 'em, and it wasn't until the last couple of years I really had the spending money to buy big videogame setups anyway. The iPhone is giving me a chance to check some of the newer games out (go Angry Birds!) but, well, I tend to find stuff like Mortal Combat IV kind of... boring. I've just never been a huge fan of the shoot 'n' kill lots of things school of games.


Now, my true videogame addiction days peaked around 1983 or so with the beloved Atari 2600, which was in every '80s child's home. These games were hopelessly clunky by today's standards -- a square red dot is a knight with a sword? But your imagination filled in the technical limitations marvelously, turning "Yar's Revenge" into a sweeping galactic struggle or the hopelessly primitive castles and dragons of "Adventure" into a derring-do epic. My brother and my friends would crouch around the Atari for hours playing stuff like "Raiders of the Lost Ark," as it bleep-blooped away.

Maybe that whole recapturing childhood thing is why I'm enjoying going all retro with Sonic The Hedgehog, as the little Sega critter, while more advanced than the Atari 2600, is still pretty crude compared to some of the other slick modern games I've seen. But he's familiar, and while it may not quite have 3-D reality, the goofy little world of Sonic is still pretty exciting by my undemanding videogame standards.

Days of future shock

Y'know, the Internet is kinda cool. I know, I know, this is self-evident, but honestly, sometimes I think we get used to technology so quickly we tend to forget how swell it can be. Sometimes you need to just stand back and go, "Whoa." This came to me yesterday as the boy and I tested out Skype for the first time -- video-phone calling my parents on the other side of the world, being able to see and talk to them in real-time video, which was amazing. Then after that I sat down and watched the second US presidential debate streaming on The New York Times web site, all the while of course checking in on various live-blogging reactions to it. Even four years ago, I couldn't have imagined doing any of this so easily. Video has just exploded online in the last year or two. It wasn't all that long ago that video-phone calling was the realm of science fiction. The web has so thoroughly entangled itself in everyday life that it's hard to imagine being completely cut off from it anymore. And I don't even own a Blackberry or iPhone.

Even say 15 years ago, moving to New Zealand would have been a lot more isolating proposition than it is now. Back then, Avril and I only communicated by letters and the rare phone call. "Instant" talk was rare. If we'd lived a century ago, we would've basically been saying goodbye to everyone we knew in America for good when we moved Down Under, with perhaps an occasional damp long-delayed letter. These days, thanks to email, Skype, Facebook, and the like, some days I practically forget I'm living in New Zealand and not just in a remote part of America. As Thomas Friedman puts it, the world is flat these days -- and getting flatter all the time. If only we could get teleportation figured out, life would be perfect!

LIFE: Thinking different as they say

LIFE: Thinking different as they say

Old and stodgy

New and sexy!

Yep, the new MacBook arrived yesterday (just a week after I ordered it!) and it now replaces the cat as my favorite material possession, because it doesn't have fleas and can be wireless. Still working out a few bugs (the USB modem is not working real well, but I think that's the fault of the 40-year old phone wiring patched together by retarded chimpanzees in our house), but it's a beauty, about a zillion times faster than ol' Betsy the iMac. Technology is cool!

Update: Fixed the modem issue it seems, thanks to a little advice. Hoo-hah!

LIFE: Random ramblings

LIFE: Random ramblings

ITEM! Tuesday was primary Election Day here in Oregon, which is kind of like Christmas without the presents when you're a journalist. Lots of anticipation and stress; little payoff. I always sleep badly on election nights, because my idiot brain can't stop wheeling about the results; even if it's not a race I'm particularly invested in. Call it the journalist's disease. The county commissioner election here was particularly brutal this time, with lots of low-down, nasty feelings between supporters of the two main challengers. All politics is ugly, but this was particularly unpleasant. At the newspaper, you get to bear the brunt of the mudslinging, which kind of wears you out on the whole process. You're "biased" to everybody, which is code for "you're not catering to my biases." Ah well. Personally I felt we did a pretty good job of fair coverage. We're through this cesspool, and there's a few months of peace before the November election bickering begins...

ITEM! Man climbs Mount Everest without legs. Seriously, I couldn't do it on two legs. Kiwis are tougher than the rest of us.

ITEM! Have I mentioned yet that it's 5 months until we move to New Zealand?

ITEM! If you're looking for a good, morbid beach-blanket summer read, check out Kevin Brockmeier's novel "The Brief History of the Dead." A solid piece of end-of-the-world science fiction with a literary spin. Intricate plot and a page-turning prose style, juxtaposing the tales of the residents of a mysterious city with the survival story of a stranded Antarctic researcher. Moving and thought-provoking stuff.

ITEM! Want to hear me ramble on more about The Pixies? Go check out my review at BlogCritics of "Fool The World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies." Good readin'.

ITEM! Finally, Apple has announced their oh-so-sexy new Mac Book laptops, a more affordable version of their pricey Mac Book Pros. The baseline model starts at about $1,100, and I'll be first in line to get one. We've been talking about getting a new Mac for a year or two now, but I wanted a laptop (easier to take to New Zealand) and kept hearing rumors about the new models, so I waited... and waited.... Glad I did. These look fantastic. It'll be a quantum leap for us from our battered 1998-vintage iMac at home, which emits disturbing groans and wheezes now every time it's asked to do anything too difficult, I have to constantly delete files to make sure I don't run out of space and it boasts a barely-functioning CD drive. Yep, I'm getting ready to boldly leap into the 2000s! Figure on buying one next month sometime. Stay tuned for updates. Soon I will be hip!