Old Dream

I'm standing outside of my exam, waiting for it to start. I haven't revised at all. Everyone else there is frantically trying to stuff a few extra bits of information into their heads, and I'm frantic, because I haven't been to a single lesson the whole semester.

We go into the exam, and I sit down and stare at the paper, with no idea what it means.

And then I wake up, and I realise that I have to get up and go to that exam now, and I really do have no idea about anything that's going to be in it.

And then I realise that I graduated over 7 years ago, and that I never have to take another exam ever again. And I feel about as happy as it's possible to feel.

New Dream

Last night, I dreamt that I had a major falling out with Erin. We were exchanging emails that were so angry that the background behind the text was turned a deep blood red.

I could hear her screaming at me, as if the sounds were somehow being released from behind the words, indistinctly.

And I had no idea what we were arguing about, or what I'd done to deserve this.

And I woke up to her phoning me (at 5am, because she'd misplaced something I packed, that she found as I picked up the phone), and everything was ok, and she missed me as much as I missed her, and I felt pretty much as happy as I ever have.

Except for having watched the Eight Legged Freaks trailer yesterday evening, because since then, my skin keeps tingling.

Wow!

Dave called me up yesterday and said "I've got three gorgeous film stars here, and I was wondering if you'd be up for them coming round, covering you in whipped cream and then repeatedly bring you to orgasm. Is tomorrow or Monday ok?"

Well, not quite. What he actually said was "I just bought an XBox and I was wondering if you fancied me popping round with it. Is tomorrow or Monday ok?"

The effect on me is much the same, which probably says quite a lot.

He'd bought Halo, which, when we got the hulking beast plugged in, set up and turned on, was duly started up.

About 10 minutes later I picked my jaw back off the ground and grabbed a controller. It wasn't perfect to start off with, my reflexes are very keyboard/mouse oriented and it took me a while to get the hang of the aiming. But once I did, I was happily cutting a swath through the alien hordes, leaping into escape pods, piloting buggies (frequently off of cliffs) and generally being a complete hero.

Myself and Joe played for a fair while, egged on by Dave, who leapt into the fray himself later on. It's quite an experience. The controllers, despite what I'd heard, were actually perfectly good, and the colours helped differentiated them perfectly well. Being able to press down on the control sticks to duck was an inspired idea, and the graphics are non-stop gorgeous.

In fact, come to think of it, you can keep your filmstars, I'm going to persuade Dave to move in.

Further thoughts on XBox

Well, not entirely further thoughts. Many of these thoughts occured to me before I got to use one.

I'm not paying £300 for an XBox. I'll happily pay £150 in a couple of years. £300 is just too big a chunk of change to slap down. It does a chunk of what I'd want for £300, but not quite all.

I would pay £300 for a box that played games, stored music, played DVDs, recorded TV and acted a a file store. The XBox does the first fantastically (although there's not enough games available yet, I'm sure there will be with time). It does the second, but only in its own format. This is fine for a non-connected box, but no use at all for something that's networkable. It plays DVDs, but only region 2 ones (my actual DVD is regionhacked, and has been since 12 seconds after I first plugged it in). It doesn't record TV at all, which is a great shame, because a combination XBox Tivo would worth selling a kidney for. Maybe one of Joe's. And it's not a file store, which considering it's got a hard disk and a network socket, is a great shame.

If you could combine an XBox, a Rio Central and a Tivo in the one box (and they're all basically PCs, so it wouldn't be impossible), then I'd be queuing up to buy one.