Aug/081
Left, Right, Jump
I was wasting time in the office by playing with the Wii and discovered that you can buy & download ancient console games that you can play on your TV.
I got Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog broke ground by adding the element of speed to the standard platform formula and introduced other unique elements as well, such as the loops, springboards, high-speed devices, and the rings now permanently associated with the Sonic game series, which is still thriving)
Strange that with all these amazing Wii games to play I end up spending my afternoon happily beating the shit out of Dr Robotnik again a decade or so since I last played it. The game is so simple. Left, Right, jump are the only controls. It's so fast, so colourful, so addictive; in the way that only something of real genius had to have been in order to open a brand new market back in 1991.
Aug/080
Back in the saddle
After the absolute beating I got the last time I went mountain biking I was a little hesitant to get on the cable-car with my bike again. But I've bought some more body armor now - a full upper body kit with a back plate and arm protection. It's not cheap this stuff. So far I've spent more on protection than I did on the bike. Mind you, I did buy the bike off a mate for a hundred bucks. Obviously body armour isn't going to stop you breaking your neck. Or even your collarbone. But it does stop all those annoying bruises and scrapes. And far more importantly than that, it makes me look properly double-ard.
So I was still feeling a little nervous until the first time I fell off the bike. It's been raining a lot here recently and that means mud. Lots of deep mud. Hard to ride a bike through, especially if you're trying to make it turn a corner. So my first thought when I splattered into the side of the hill was "Damn! I'm covered in mud." My second thought was "Hey, this body armor works - that didn't hurt at all!"
Aug/081
Souricide
I'm starting to really like the French language. It can be beautiful. Here's a word I discovered today which really made me smile. Souricide. I guess it means rat-poison, judging by the cute little critter on the box who is about to meet his maker.
Aug/081
Wii’s ARE good, but iphones……
iPhones are amazing. I've finally got one after a frustrating wait since they came on the market last last year. Now that it's half the price, twice as fast and you can insure the thing against loss or breaking it, my wait is finally over.
The advertising strapline for the new 3G iPhone here in France is "L'iPhone que vous attendiez", which means "The iPhone you've been waiting for". Never a truer word written.
I'm going to struggle to convey just how good it is. I wanted to say that it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I've always found that a bit of stupid phrase. Sliced bread really isn't all that. The iPhone is the best thing since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
OK. Here are the top 3 coolest things about my new toy:
1. Interweb access.
Not only does connect to the Internet via 3G through the mobile network, which is so much quicker than the old GPRS i used to use on my Pocket PC a few years ago, but the device has wireless networking built in. This means that if you happen to be in range of a wi-fi connection, at home for instance, then the iphone will use the that to connect to the Internet, making downloads as fast as they are on your computer. That's all well and good, but the older web browsers on hand held devices were..... in a word..... shit. Safari on the iPhone is brilliant. You see the web as it is supposed to look. Smaller of course, but that's where the squidgy, pinchy touch interface comes in. The iPhone has brought the Internet onto a mobile, handheld device in a truly usable and useful way for the first time.
2. GPS
It's got built in GPS (Global Positioning). Awesome. First the iPhone checks with the mobile network to get your location, then it goes on the interweb and gets the google map for the area and drops a pin on your exact position. It's amazingly accurate. I was hooning down the motorway to Geneva the other day and Sarah had the map application open. The little blue dot was totally moving down the little map of the motorway. So clever. I've even got another little bit of software which allows you to track the route you've been taking over time, then publish it as a google earth file. So come the winter when I'm ski-touring again, I'll be able to create accurate maps of touring routes all over the valley. Or if I need to get choppered off the mountain, I'll just email the helicopter pilot my exact location.
3. More Applications
There's tons and tons of useful/cool or simply crappy time-wasting applications you can download and muck about with on the iPhone. F'instance I've got a French English dictionary which not only finds the exact words I need quickly when I'm talking to the bank manager in French, but also conjugates the verbs so that I can use and learn more accurate French. Numbers are always hard in another language, so I just type in 11900 and read off "onze mille neuf cents" in words. I can use the "remote" app to control my itunes based sound system in my office over my wireless network from the bath. And and and..... well, to be honest I could go on all day.
So obviously I'm getting carried away & perhaps geeking out a little bit, but trust me - this thing is good. This thing is a glimpse of the near future. It's so very close to being able to replace a laptop for people who don't really need the power of a laptop, but just need a communications device for email, Internet and to mess around with photos etc. The only thing that stops it being that right now is a slight lack of processing power due to it's size, and the lack of a good typing interface that makes it possible to input large amounts of text if you were trying to write a long email or type a document on a train or something. Limitations which I have no doubt will be addressed over the next few years.
Aug/081
Och Aye
It's me in a kilt.
And there's also some more photos here, stills from the video I shot at the wedding.
Aug/080
Wii’s are good
So the rest of the wedding went off without a hitch and was a thoroughly brilliant couple of days. From the (very) Catholic, if slightly chaotic church service to the supper & excellent speaches made by my dad & the groom, it was definitely my favorite wedding I've ever been to. I just heard from my sister who finally having a bit of time to relax and get used to her new married-ness, and is spending the time usefully by getting totally into the Wii my girlfriend & I gave them as a wedding gift. They even used a load of the shop vouchers they got to go out and bling up their setup with a Wii Fit board and the skiing game :)
It was great to have the whole family together. Not only my sisters and I all with our partners but also the other family and friends that you realise you see far too little of. Like my indomitable Aunty Carol for instance. It's been years since I've seen her and she's still not sure if I'm taking the mickey by calling her 'aunty'. It's what I've always called her and I guess I always will.
Aug/080
Back in the Fatherland
I'm back in Germany this week. It's my sister Caroline's wedding. I've been looking forward to it for months. I can't remember the last time our whole family were together like this. Caroline's twin, Karen and her boyfriend have traveled back from New Zealand for the occasion and there's family friends I haven't seen for years turning up every few minutes.
We're in Saarbruecken, just next to the French border, an hour or so north of Strasbourg. The civil wedding was this morning, which is the official one. Everyone has to get married officially in the Rathaus in Germany- church weddings are just for show.
So it's official. My sister is now no longer Frau Dorward, which makes one less Dorward in the world, but today I gained a brother in law which I'm really chuffed about. The church wedding is on Saturday. I'm wearing a kilt. Bit scared of it now. Seemed like a good idea at the time. But there's going to be a bag-pipin' geezer at the church to back me & my Dad up in highland dress.
Here's the happy couple
And here's one of my beautiful little sisters and me :)
Aug/080
The silliest sport ever
I bought some mountain biking body armor the other day. And a lift pass for the Les Houches area for the summer. So obviously I was keen to start booting it down the mountain on my bike with it's new brakes & tires. My friend Fred came along to show me some routes and the bastard nearly killed me. There's some steep, technical terrain in Les Houches. It's a better mountain biking area than it is a ski area in some ways.
Downhill mountain biking is the silliest sport I've ever done. It's just so dangerous. I fell off the damn bike a total of 7 times during the afternoon. One of those times at speed. I caught most of the impact on my helmet - good old ski helmet saved me there. But I also managed to do this. 
Some of the bruising I'm sporting on my legs and arms this morning is also pretty impressive. So yeh. It's fun. But so dangerous. And I need to buy even more body armor before doing much more downhilling. I just hope I can get to the start of the ski season without breaking anything.