Sonic the Hedgehog

I've recently been playing a lot of Sonic Rush for the DS. It's a really good game, very similar to the old Sonic games from the Sega consoles. As a kid, I desired a Sega Mega Drive above anything else. I remember not being all that happy when I had to settle for a Nintendo Entertainment System (but looking back with hindsight I'm glad I started off with Nintendo, or else my life may have followed a very different path). Owning a Nintendo didn't stop me from going round to my friends' houses to play on their Sega though. In fact, I remember once making friends with this guy in school just because he said he had a Sega. In the end, it turned out he didn't actually have a Sega, only a Sonic colouring book. I bought quite a bit of Sonic merchandise actually as a child. I remember having a Sonic notebook, there were Sonic branded crisps and I still have my Sonic duvet cover. There was also the Sonic cartoon, which I preferred over the Mario cartoons.

Sonic just seemed more colourful, fast and exciting than Mario, and this rivalry created bitter enemies out of Nintendo and Sega. For this reason I still find it hard to get my head around Sonic being playable on Nintendo hardware. It's certainly a good thing as I get the best of both worlds, but if you were to go back in time and tell any 90s kid worth his Sonic lunch box that Sonic games would one day be available on a Nintendo console he'd have laughed as hard as Dr. Robotnik.

Back to Sonic Rush - like the majority of gamers, I much prefer the old-school style Sonic platformers to the more 3-D adventures that have been released by Sega. It's good to just hurtle round loops and corkscrews at top speed like the old days. And Sonic Rush is very fast, mainly due to the addition of a boost meter which, once charged, can be used at will to send Sonic speeding round the course. There are appearances from other Sonic characters such as Tails and Knuckles, and a new character, Blaze the Cat, has her own world of levels, but playing as Sonic is still more fun. I now intend to download some of the old Sonic games from the Virtual Console when I get my Wii, and I might check out some of the Sonic GBA titles.

Further reading: Sonic the Hedgehog Wikipedia article

Various recent events

Recently I have become involved with a site called Yahoo! Answers. It's a site where users post any question they like and then receive answers from the other members. People ask some really ambiguous and obscure questions on topics from music to health care to language, but that's what makes it all the more enjoyable. Often when I've Googled an obscure or specific search I have been presented with this site, and it's really interesting to read how people answer all these questions, often really well. I believe that Google ran a similar service a few years back, but it was shut down last year. I'd thought about joining in Yahoo! Answers before, as I already have a Yahoo! account, and finally did last weekend. I now find myself voraciously looking for questions that I can answer. I think it's a combination of showing off and a desire to help out a fellow human in need. There are forums all over the internet, but this site reduces the socialising aspect and just enables people to find an answer to their question really quickly.

We got a new piece of wireless technology delivered to our house yesterday. It's called the BT Home Hub, and after setting it up I've realised that it's a wireless router and modem in one box (you wouldn't have been able to tell from the instructions). We were already using a Linksys system in our house, which I invested quite a bit of money and time in setting up, but we now need this piece of equipment to enable us to use the new BT service we've subscribed to. The system was actually really easy to set up, very user-friendly and simple compared to the Linksys equipment, but I feel that my options are slightly limited - there's little room for customisation. Obviously, this has been done so that anyone can set up the system in a short space of time and with little knowledge, but I wonder whether this may limit somehow what is possible. I have no real reason to complain yet though, as everything works fine.

As we had changed our wireless system slightly I tried out Mario Kart DS with the new settings. It still worked, and I managed to sign up for an online game with 3 others relatively quickly. I'm quite surprised that people are still playing Mario Kart DS - it was really cool at first, but the match-up system leaves a lot to be desired, and opponents who often quit has meant that I only play the game online very rarely.

My band and I have recently had to organise a show in our home town for us and a band who are friends of ours. We'd never done this before, but in the end it was actually really easy - we just turned up at a bar and spoke to the guy who owned the place and everything was sorted within 5 minutes. If all goes well, which it should, we'll probably be doing a lot more shows soon.

Internet exploring

The more I use the internet the more I understand the genius of the whole concept. I mean right now we take the internet totally for granted and in the last decade it really has changed how the world works. Everything is accessible and it makes our lives a lot easier and enjoyable.

I remember how excited I was back in the days of dial-up when we first got the internet at our house - I knew it would be an extremely useful and fun tool. Now things have progressed and wireless is just about the norm, which is even better. I find it amazing that we can access so much information and so many services through the air. It doesn't quite make sense, but it's been something that civilisation has been building up to. Humans like to be connected; the internet allows this in so many easy and enjoyable ways. Just look at old science fiction to see that a common perception of the future is as a time when everyone and everything is inter-related in some way.

I spend so much time on the internet now, that it has become more than a routine. It's very rare that I will spend a day without using the internet in some way. So many of my interests are invested in the internet. It's allowed me to do things I would otherwise never have been able to do and I've made some great connections and friends. And things can only carry on improving to the point where the internet becomes as essential or as everyday as eating and sleeping. I predict that the internet will keep simplifying and expanding until practically everything is dependent upon it.

One of the things I love about the internet is that it's so easy to distribute information to other people. Like this blog for instance. I'm just sat at my PC typing out my thoughts, which I can then upload for anyone who wants to read them. And I love web design. I'm not great at it, but I really enjoy the fact that I can type a load of code and then, magically, it's transformed into a hopefully attractive, imaginative piece of work. My life would be so dull without the internet, basically a mass of electronic data which holds all kinds of useful information, all connected together, all 1s and 0s.

Thanks Al.

Further reading: Internet map