In which I take a photo every day that I'm 50, and post it here on this blog, with a bit of related blurb.
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| the man, the machine |
Today I was reminded of a promise I made way back near the beginning of this blog (week one in fact), to explain who Jonny Hendrix is (and why!)...
To those brave souls who venture past this second paragraph to the murkier depths below, I did also point out that it's not that interesting...you have been warned!
So way back in the day (probably around 2002), a couple of friends and I started dabbling in a PC-based F1 Racing Simulator, Grand Prix Legends.
Within the GPL programme, you have to give yourself a Driver Name, and this was the name you raced under. We decided to try to come up with names appropriate to 1967 playboy Formula One drivers...
And so the dashing Wiggy Harris, the uppity Quentin Fortescue and the legendary Jonny Hendrix were born!
GPL is known to be one of the most realistic driving sims available, and on top of that, Grand Prix cars of 1967 were very hard to drive...they had big, powerful engines, and hard, non-sticky tyres...and it was the last year before aerodynamics started to be used.
The result was a car that was insanely fast in a straight line...but could neither brake nor turn very easily at all.
It's perhaps not surprising that half of the drivers who competed in 1967 were killed in motorsports accidents.
Here's a video that gives a bit of an impression of what it was like (ignore the music!)...
Anyway after much practise, Wiggy and I decided to join an online league, and so we joined the GBGPL scene and started racing competitively on the internet.
As my character in the game was called Jonny Hendrix, and all my car setups, lap times and whatnot were logged against this name, I had to continue to use it in races...but it quickly became clear that the other drivers were confused by me using one name in race, and another in forums and chatrooms.
So I created an email address for Jonny, and started using it as my online persona.
I met some of the other drivers in RealLife(TM), and it struck me that there was a whole social group that only knew me as Jonny.
I did quite well in the league, winning the championship for two consecutive seasons, before taking the slowest car available for the following season, and coming second overall.
I think I still hold one or two world records (for particular cars at particular tracks - very obscure tracks, obviously...).
Anyway, after two or three years of regular competition, I retired gracefully...and without competition I quickly lost motivation and gave up driving almost entirely.
But the Jonny Hendrix alter ego persists to this day, and being inclined to privacy online, I use it as my main online identity.
In fact, if you looked up the RealMe(TM) you'd struggle to find anything at all, except for an Engineered By credit on a single track on an equally obscure Cozy Powell tribute album...
Good luck finding that!
I consider it one of my biggest achievements - to have spent 20 years heavily using the internet, since the very early days of the World Wide Web, and to have virtually no online presence...
The great Jonny Hendrix is alive and well though, and these days can usually be found on a rock somewhere, or otherwise pretending that he really is a young playboy...
Hey, I can dream!
:-p
PS no I didn't really use the helmet when sim-racing online!
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| rock the room |
Today is the greatest day I've ever known.
That's a fairly bold statement to open with, isn't it? To be fair, it's not my line, but the opening line of Today by The Smashing Pumpkins.
Anna was up to something in the lounge to which I'm not privy, so I took the opportunity to put my Rock Band Xbox back together upstairs, and have a bit of a play on the drums.
The way it works is that you choose a song to play along with, and a difficulty level, and then play along with the song, following on-screen prompts. I only play drums with this game, because it is very much like actually playing the drums.
A scrolling display on the screen tells you which drums to hit, and when. Mostly what it tells you to play is very simplified, to make the game accessible. But you can choose Expert Pro Mode, in which case you have to play pretty much everything the original drummer did on the track in question.
I only play Expert Pro Mode... B-)
The drum kit and Xbox haven't been used for a couple of months, as it all needed wiring up after some reorganisation of the Rock Room...
Climbing gear, guitars and drum kits...do you see what we did there?! ;-)
Having set the kit up and got all the various parts talking to each other, I decided to test it on Today, a song I know fairly well.
First thing I've played in months....gold starred it! To get a gold star you have to play it almost perfectly, hitting every note on every drum in perfect time with the track.
I so wanted to say "Nailed it!" in the style of Archer, but in truth I didn't nail it. I did hit more than 99% of the notes, but in musical terms that basically means I also hit a bunch of bum notes...amateurish!
Today is moderate difficulty level, so not too challenging...but I was pleased to play reasonably well on my first track in a while.
And I like the sentiment!
Today is a great day, because it's the only day. Yesterday is long gone and Tomorrow will never arrive. There is only Today...
Spend too much time dwelling on the past, or eagerly awaiting some imagined future, and you're missing Now, which is the only time it's possible to live.
Now is literally your only option...
Why are you still here, you should be off living your life...
Today is the greatest day you'll ever know!
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| I know, right?! |
It was definitely a boys weekend this weekend. Computer games, good food (or bad, depending on your perspective), and beer. More or less in that order.
Oh, and bank robberies. Lots of lovely bank robberies...
I didn't have the most physically comfortable weekend. Between a heavy, strenuous climbing session, an unfamiliar bed, a somewhat un-supportive seating arrangement for gaming, and not forgetting, just plain old being 50, pretty much everything hurts now.
Not in an intense, distracting way, I'm just vaguely feeling tired and a little battered and bruised.
Dave had it worse, having tweaked his back at some point during the weekend. Hope it improves soon, Dave!
Others have it worse still, such as my colleague from work who's now in hospital, hopefully getting the relief he's been needing.
Surveying the scene in the lounge, however, it's clear (to me, at least) that time's, they are a-changin'.
Back in the glory days of the LAN Party (say, the mid-late 90's), the scene above would be somewhat different.
In those days, the screens would have been small, cubic CRT's, and the gamers would be hunched over a mouse and keyboard at some sort of makeshift desking arrangement. Even in game, the players would have been bunny-hopping everywhere, in the sometimes mistaken belief that you can move faster whilst jumping.
Today's gamers? They just lounge back on their comfy armchairs, lightweight, ergonomic controller resting lightly between their relaxed arms and fingers, and in-game they just run everywhere because pressing that jump key is just too much effort.
As do we, I realised, somewhat depressingly. We've devolved from hardcore PC gamers into over-glamorised-console consumers.
It's all so easy now. When ah' were a lad, you had to put some effort in if you wanted to just play a game. Installation alone could be a daunting technical nightmare.
If you wanted to play a game with somebody else, well, that was a challenge of relatively gargantuan proportions. It took much planning, research, experimentation, tweakage, acquisition and configuration...not to mention the hefty sacrifice of blood, sweat and tears that the gaming Gods required before they'd grant a miraculous connection established to host message.
Tell that to't kids of today, they'll not believe you!
Still, Back on topic, bank robberies!! We've been playing a game called PayDay, where you play a team of bank robbers on a heist. You have to case the joint, then put on these freaky clown masks and hold it up. You have to do some crowd control, get the access codes from the Bank Manager, locate the vault and drill into it, steal some bags of money and raid any safety deposit boxes. Finally, once loaded with loot, fight your way out (assuming the alarm was raised and you're now surrounded by Police and SWAT teams), and get to the getaway vehicle.
Brilliant Cops and Robbers fun.
Late last night, a little heisted out, we decided to watch a movie. We casually flicked through our options, and settled on a film called 2 Guns, which looked (at a glance) like some kind of Mafia crime drama.
And so we found ourself, much to our surprise, watching a story of a pair of criminals involved in a heist.
Throughout the course of the film, they decided to rob a bank, and so had to case the joint. When they went in, they wore freaky clown masks, did the crowd control, got the key from the manager, stole the bags of money...fought their way out, escaped in getaway vehicle.
It was eerily similar. It felt like we were still playing the game, but it had gone onto auto, so freeing our hands up to stuff more sugary indulgences into our pale faces.
Funniest thing was, we were all so much the worse for wear that it took us until about half way through before we really twigged. I'm sure that up to that point, some part of us thought we were still playing PayDay.
I feel as though the universe is trying to tell me something...
Something about bank robberies...
Hmm...
;-)
