Today I am having a lazy, sniffly day at home. I have plenty of annual leave, which must be used by the end of the year, a head injury and now a head cold. While I’m certainly not too sick to go to work, I’m far too sick to have any motivation for going to work, so I took the day off.

Having got up late despite going to bed early (thus proving that this was a good idea because as well as sleeping lots I’m constantly ravenous, indicating full-on recovery is going on) I pottered around for a while and then realised I didn’t have my eye in my face. Found it on the bedside table, which is remarkably organised for me. Usually when I take it out in my sleep I shove it somewhere stupid like inside the pillow case for safety and then I spend twenty minutes fretting the next morning because I can’t find it and might have accidentally eaten it. I have no idea what my body gets up to while I’m dreaming. Do you know what yours does? Have you ever thought about it? Maybe you should.

I went to the bathroom, soaped my hands, soaped my eye and then turned the tap back on to rinse only for nothing to come out.

Buh?

I found half a glass of water by the side of the bed, which meant I could complete the process of rendering my eye soap-free and thus not a stinging mass of teh nasteh when it went back in the (already abused, see previous post) socket. I then went outside to look for some itinerant tradesman who might be responsible for turning off the water. The only tradesmen on site were joiners and they professed total lack of responsibility. Might be because they’re fixing the mains supply up at Granton Square, they opined helpfully.

Hmmm.

I phoned Scottish Water’s Customer Helpline only to find myself listening to a recorded message about water going off in Leith last night. Finally I heard another phone number and called that. The nice lady on the other end of my phone asked for my postcode and then told me that there is a hydrant that’s being repaired and it will take 1 – 2 hours.

Fine. But here’s the thing: they just turned it off. No warning, no notice. I could have been in the shower. It’s a bloody good job we’ve got a water filter in the fridge, or I’d be forced to drink booze all afternoon (it’s important to take on plenty of fluids when you’ve got a cold) and the only booze we’ve got in the house is single malt whisky…

Update: The water supply has been restored. It’s just as well. I am in dire need of caffeination.

• 10:09 I now has a cold. Have taken tomorrow off to stay home with hot drinks and playstation. Not too sick to come to work, too sick to want to. #

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I currently have a bad head cold and concussion. The concussion is a lot better than it was…

Look. Don’t try unlocking your bike with an improperly fastened messenger bag on wet, slippery cobbles while fairly inebriated at 03:30. What happens is you land on your head and end up with a colourful black eye as the resultant internal bleeding drains down the side of your face.

It’s not glamorous and it’s not clever.

You don’t get double vision when you have concussion and only one eye. You get this weird effect that’s like a crappy webcam with a slow refresh rate.

The other thing that happens is that your distance judgement goes. I don’t have any 3D. I lack the necessary stereoscopic vision. What I’ve got is a lifetime of learning to compensate. It took me years, but eventually I figured out that I calculate distance using minute movements of my head to provide the necessary differentiation. That calculation goes right up the spout when suffering the after-effects of severe head trauma.

I’m going to be spilling things for a while.

• 11:26 Oh dear. yep. It’s about this time of morning my head starts throbbing again, no matter how many painkillers I take. #
• 16:47 Feeling sick and sore. #
• 17:19 For @mbf . I think you might like this. ♫ blip.fm/~bjxk #

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• 13:30 Twitter is eating my tweets. I has a concussion! #

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• 11:53 For @mbf , in honour of his first viewing of one of my favourite films. ♫ blip.fm/~abdb #
• 12:13 For @MarsRovers ♫ blip.fm/~abf0 #
• 12:25 I’m feeling kind’ve metallish myself, today. ♫ blip.fm/~abgf #

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We’ve been fans of the WipeOut series ever since, well, we bought a PlayStation, really. It has always had the right combination of thumping soundtracks, explosions and racing driver skill to make me squee. Frood likes it because he’s methodical and consistent so he quickly gets good. I like it because I process information really quickly and have fast reactions so I start off good and get better (although Frood usually catches up and overtakes because I’m more impetuous).

When we treated ourselves to a PS3 last year, of course we wanted to play WipeOut. Soon, promised the PlayStation Network. We will bring it to you soon and it shall be Glorious and it shall be Good and you shall fall to your knees and weep in gratitude for this Great Thing that we have provided for you.

‘Soon’ turned from months into seasons and Frood and I tried to slake our hunger by revisiting old games. It turned out that WipeOut Fusion, the most recent of the titles we own, is one of the very few games that will not play on the PS3. It’s buggy and eventually crashes. Luckily our PS2 is still part of our sexy black entertainment centre, so we just swapped a cable every time we wanted to play. We’ve been checking the PlayStation Store every so often hunting for the mythical WipeOut HD, our cynicism growing until it became habit rather than anything else. We’d go looking for Guitar Hero downloads and just quickly check, or see if there was anything new in the way of strange games like Echochrome (I shall review that diappointment later) and flick through the WipeOut HD teaser page while we were at it.

Friday nights Frood goes climbing. I fired up the PlayStation to give Echochrome a go (I lasted 5 minutes) and then went to the store, for the first time not even intending to check for WipeOut HD, so much faith had I lost. I was, get this, off to buy the downloadable version of N₂O because PS1 discs (we are loyal Playstation customers) won’t play very well in the PS3.

There it was. Right there. On the screen. OH. MY. GODS.

I DON’T CARE THAT I HAVEN’T BEEN PAID YET. GET THAT BITCH IN MY CART RIGHTTHISVERYMINUTE.

It’s a big game. It was still downloading when Frood got home. When I told him he was speechless. He didn’t believe me that it was really here.

But it is.

WipeOut HD is a totally different gaming experience from the other titles, at least at first. It is arranged differently. No more playing the League, which is a shame because I liked that. Now it’s a question of getting points over a range of different races and race modes in order to progress.

It’s fast. Dear gods it’s fast. The on-board computer has changed. Now it sounds like a female primary school teacher. The weapon system is also different. No more pit stops: now you can choose whether to deploy a weapon (although I have to say that weapon deployment appears fairly random as to whether it works or not) or absorb its energy. All the old favourites are there, except for black hole (shame). I don’t miss the flamethrower. The new proton cannon actually seems to have some meat to it.

The graphics are amazing. There is a real sense of acceleration from inside the cockpit when you hit one of the turbo pads. Yet they are also weirdly disappointing. They don’t have the jaw-dropping luscious near-reality of MotorStorm and the colours are very dark. If it turns out that all the tracks look like Katmoda 12 or Vohl Square I’m in trouble, because I’m slightly colour-blind in just the wrong part of the spectrum for those tracks to be clear.

As you can see, one of the new options is the photo mode — at any point in a race you can press pause and take a screenshot, including options for changing which ship you are viewing, from where in the ship you are viewing it, whether or not the HUD is in shot, plus contrast and exposure and other goodies.

Another new feature is the ability to create your own custom playlist. In the past we’ve nearly always resorted to turning the music volume down (even if the soundtrack is great at first, it gets a bit samey) and chucking some CDs in the stereo. Now you can make a playlist in the music section of your PS3 and import the playlist to the game. Wowzers. My only issue with that is that it’s impossible to skip to a preferred music track — maybe a feature for a future version. I’d like to think “Right, I need this race, so we’re going to have Hellsonic,” and choose that track.

It costs about twelve quid, which isn’t much when you consider how much Guitar Hero will set you back, although it’s quite a lot considering the usual price of downloadable games (Echochrome was £6.99). Worth it? Not sure yet. I think it depends on what the other tracks have to hold. I haven’t seen an equivalent of the glory that is Mandrashee, yet, and I’m not convinced by the colour scheme appearing to have come straight out of XG3 — never did get on with that.

Having said that, we were still up playing it 4 hours after it finished downloading, so maybe that tells you all you need to know.

• 10:30 @andygates Well, come up and play some more. I’m considering downloading it for the PS3 cos PS1 discs don’t play at all well in the PS3. #
• 10:34 @andygates That’s not Mars 3.0, is it? That’s Oppy. #
• 12:34 @andygates Ahhh. Right Error on page so tweets weren’t displaying properly. I was confuzzled. #
• 16:57 This is so *bad*. ♫ blip.fm/~a2zj #
• 23:46 I HAS WIPEOUT HD!!!!! WOOT WOOT AROOGA!!! #

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• 10:21 So very, very, VERY tired. #
• 17:34 @splinister I’m trying not to feel guilty about the carbon footprint. I’m not swimming to Galway! (waiting for @andygates to say HTFU…) #
• 18:05 Time for some MotorStorm. ♫ blip.fm/~9rxw #
• 20:38 @andygates I think it’s the first one after the training run. #

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• 17:14 is finally cracking on with the Chronicles and having mulled cider to stave off a threatening lurgy. #

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