Real Life Virtual Friends

Today I had the pleasure to showing two friends how far virtual reality headsets have come in the past 24 to 36 months. Both actually own slightly older VR systems, but it is a mark of how the technology has advanced rapidly watching their reactions. 

I've owned the Oculus Quest 2 since early 2021, and I love showing it to people who have never tried a VR system, or even play video games regularly. The shock and laughter of that first experience is already fun to see! Whether they're life long gamers that own a modern PC or the newest console but never had the chance to try VR before, or complete video game novices who's last experience with a game is on the Amiga, the reaction is always great! 

But showing the Quest to two friends who have played VR, and each own their own sets, but admit to not turning them on in over two years, it was really amazing how much they were surprised by this experience. 

The first thing was the freedom the Quest gives. As a self contained, all in one device, not having wires hanging off you of refreshing, and makes setting it up and getting into a game a snap. I could bring it over to my friends place, without needing anything extra, and share it with them in a long as it took me to sign into their WiFi. They were seriously impressed by that. Both lamented that one of the reasons their headsets are gathering dust is the effort it takes to get into a game, when they don't have a dedicated space to leave everything set up. 

Then there's the variety of play experiences. In the past two years, VR game development has lead to some truly astonishing experiences. I got to share a few rounds of mini golf, which is a wonderful introductory experience. People know how to play mini golf, so there is an absolute minimum amount of onboarding. It was so fun seeing my friends just losing themselves in a colourful, relaxing world for a while.

And then I turned on my newest purchase, Iron Man VR, and my friends were laughing and whopping with exhilaration! Flying through the skies, blasting drones is thrilling! But even that first time you suit up, setting the various armour pieces come forward you, instills such a childlike joy, that it's hard not to just laugh! 

In two short years, VR has changed so much, and the next two years look to be equally as huge! Eye tracking and face tracking are becoming standard. The new Quest Pro is just beginning to tease the possibilities of its full colour passthrough capabilities, a system that allows you to see the real world around you, while still playing a game. And the games themselves are just getting more and more imaginative! 

I can't wait to play with a friends headset in two years, and gasp at where things have progressed. 

You Smell Like Pixels!

 For reasons I don't feel like elaborating on, I wasn't feeling great this evening, so I excused myself and focused on trying to do some drawing on my iPad. A friend recently made some awesome pixel art, and I had asked for some tips, so he kindly streamed an hour long tutorial on Twitch. 

Unfortunately, I arrived into the stream minutes after he had wrapped the pixel art tutorial portion, but thankfully, you can save the videos on Twitch, and he kindly did for me. 

I watched the VOD a few weeks ago and had wanted to doodle around with something to practice, but just never set aside the time. Tonight, I decided to check the video again and try drawing a pixel portrait for a brightly coloured character.

I chose Bear, from the Henson Company's extraordinary puppet based series, Bear in the Big Blue House. Bear is a full body puppet with astonishing facial expressions, entirely from control over the eyebrows, nose and mouth. 

So, I grabbed two photos of Bear, one standing tall in a well lit promotional photograph, the other a screen shot of Bear happily smiling open mouth, but his colours are a little muted. 

Using both photos, I built a bright and varied colour pallet from the promo, and sketched the basic form from the screen shot, on a teeny tiny 64x64 pixel canvas. To put that in context, a canvas that is just the size of my iPad screen is 2388x1668 pixels, and my tablet can handle much bigger canvases than that with ease. 64x64 is really, really small. My brush for painting Bear was a single pixel, or as close as you can get on Procreate, the app I use. 

Below are my versions 0.1 to 0.3. 

V0.1 is very flat, just using a very limited pallet to set down the overall colour and form. 

V0.2 adds highlights and shadows, with gradients of colour. I achieved this using a Screen layer for the lighter tones, and a Darker layer for the...well...darker colours. 

V0.3 is where I stopped before writing this post, and mostly just tries to adjust Bear's eyes to less sad out sleepy, and more excited, or at the very least, happy. 

Not bad for a first attempt. 

In The Palm Of Your Hand

When Star Trek originally premiered in 1966, voice controlled, pocket sized super computers were wild fantasy for the far distant future. 

Even in 1987, with the arrival of The Next Generation, handheld touch interface tablets were seen as science fiction, belonging in the 24th century. 

Yet right now I'm writing this very post on my phone, a tiny super computer that lives within my arms reach at all times. This device has access to the entire knowledge of humanity, and has over 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed the first men on the moon (and over a million times the RAM, for that matter). 

My phone has a camera capable of recording HD video at 60 frames per second, or snapping photos in almost any lighting condition in the time it takes to get it out of my pocket, and can send them to anyone on the entire planet I have contact with at the speed of light. 

And what do I use all this astonishing power for most of the time? Photographing my kids a dozen times a day, doomscrolling on Twitter and texting my wife. Occasionally, I'll set an alarm by shouting a command at it, which is supposed to feel like Michael Knight talking to his wrist watch, but never manages to feel as elegant. 

Recently, I've been wearing down my battery playing a mobile card game, and I've been known to hunt imaginary pocket monsters on this wondrous device too, but I overall, I think I'm vastly underutilizing this incredible package of microprocessors that just 40 years ago was unimaginable in our lifetime. 

What is to come 40 years from now? 

Kindergarten Kid

Connor started school this September past. Although still only for years old, his birthday is this calender year, so he falls in the 2022/23 intake. We had the option of holding him back one year, but he's ready. If he'd been our first, I certainly would have spent more time debating the benefits of keeping him home another year. He's so sociable and confident, and he's watched Ada for his entire life. 

He's been doing super, as expected. He's making lots of new friends, the first without his big sis. Up to now, Connor has mostly played with kids that we met when Ada was a baby. Covid means that Connor never really got to go to Family Place as a toddler and develop those friendships. 

So far, his only real difficulty with starting school is learning how snack works. During the first two to three weeks, we had to pack him more and more lunch each day, as he would eat everything he had and get hungry again later. Our boy is a healthy, growing Irish kid, who can eat and eat and eat. At one point, we were packing two full lunch boxes with him. Thankfully, things have settled down a bit over the weeks. 

If that's the worst we have to deal with this year, I'll be a very happy dad.

30 Posts For A Buck Fifty Apiece

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again when I post 30 times in a single month, and never again for the other eleven, despite promising to do better this time in the last post! I’d hate to break tradition now. 

I have much to discuss from this year. Life has thundered along at a blistering pace for everyone in my family. Along the way I have made cryptic notes in my phone to remind myself of things that at the time I thought would make for interesting posts. At one time in my life, I didn’t have to worry about that, as I would come home and write up the post that evening. That time, for now, has passed. 

Reviewing those notes, I have factual life stories, funny and fantastical short stories, follow-ups to previous years posts, and at least one post that I am completely convinced I’ve written at least twice already, yet cannot find any evidence of in my searches! 

It’s November. It’s Buck Fifty! An avalanche of typos and spelling errors are coming your way!

Enjoy the chaos. 

Fighting Crime, Spinning Webs

I love Spider-Man. As a kid, he was the first comicbook character I collected. I had a huge collection of Spidey comics. I loved the 90’s cartoon. And when they started selling the US comics in stores in Ireland, the first one I bought was, of course, a Spider-Man issue. Though I was a bit lost, as the UK reprint collections I had been buying as well were about 6 to 8 months behind, so I had a lot to fill in. 

I was incredibly excited at the prospect of seeing my hero in live action in a major summer blockbuster movie with the budget and team to make it look good, and I adored the web swingers 2002 release, starring Toby Maguire. 

The follow-up in 2004, pitting our friendly neighborhood wall crawler against the awesome mind and might of Doctor Octopus took everything to the next level, resulting in a movie that still thrills me to this day. It did, however, get me in a not insignificant amount of trouble with my girlfriend for buying a super articulated 18 inch tall action figure released for that sequel, which I still have to this day, and I bring him to the cinema for the wall crawler’s big events, much to many other fans amusement. 

Although they generally get poor reviews from critics and fans alike, I unironically enjoyed the Andrew Garfield movies from the 2010’s. I still think that while the Toby Maguire had a much better Peter Parker, the Garfield ones captured Spider-Man far more accurately. But both are outdone by the Tom Holland series that brings Spider-Man and friends into the mega blockbuster universe that all began in 2008 with Iron Man. 

Being a comic character, it’s no surprise that I love his animated outings as well. The incredible Spectacular Spider-Man from 2008 is one of my all-time favourite cartoon series, with its gorgeous, clean, minimalistic designs, absolutely rocking theme tune, and top tier character development and story arcs. It died too soon, cancelled after only two seasons, ending on a cliffhanger, thanks to the purchase of Marvel by Disney. Disney! Till all are one! 

The theatrically released animated Into The Spider-Verse movie from 2018 left me utterly stunned in the cinema, sitting jaw wide open, gapping at the unique visual touches, the masterful characters and plot and the unexpected twists and turns, all wrapped in a genuinely touching story about family, love and loss. I consider it to be one of the finest superhero movies ever made, and certainly the best Spider-Man movie to date. 

All this to say that I’m very excited for the upcoming third instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man series, No Way Home. 

Earlier tonight, I got my tickets for the preview screening on Thursday, December 16th in downtown. I would have preferred to get tickets for my local theatre, but all the good screenings (Read: Not 3D) were sold out by the time I learned they were even available. 

Friday morning had lots of space, so I’m also going to go see it then.

And maybe once more over the weekend. I haven’t decided yet.

Of course I’ve decided. You know me too well. 

The Spirit Of Christmas

Since she was born, we’ve taken Ada to visit the same Santa every year, and gotten our annual Santa photo with him. This has sometimes required some travelling, but it’s important to us. When my brother Stephen was visiting for a year, Santa made sure to not only include him in the photos, but also get one of just us two brothers with the man in red.

Ada and I visited the mall the year Connor was born to say hi to Santa in late November, but told him we’d be back in a few weeks to get our photo, once our newest family member arrived. When we came back in mid December with a two week old Connor, Santa welcomed Ada with open arms, giving her a big hug and telling her what a wonderful big sister she had become. He held a tiny Connor and took extra time to get some extra special photos. 

Now, obviously, last year, we couldn’t visit Santa due to pandemic travel restrictions between Canada and the North Pole. Instead, Santa sent us a beautiful photo of him and his wonderful wife, Mrs. Claus, holding our annual family portrait. It also turned out that Santa needed a rest, and while it’s hard to say that the pandemic was ”good timing” in any context, it did mean he could take a break to rest and allow his new heart time to heal without feeling guilty that he might be disappointing anyone[1]. 

This year, with Santa, Mrs. Claus and all the wonderful elves vaccinated and rested and healthy, we got to visit in person again. He was as jolly and joyous as ever. Mrs. Claus was delighted to see us back, and it was wonderful to talk to them both. Santa made sure we all felt special, both kids and parents. And grandparents, with Claire’s parents here too! They were included in a set of group photos, as well as getting ones with just the kids and them together. 

A true Spirit of Christmas.

See you next year, Santa. 

[1]- Which is obviously ridiculous. If Santa needed a year off to recover, we’d all send him love and best wishes, and look forward to seeing him the following year. No disappointment, only respect for our Santa. 

The Perfect Crime

Claire gets emails for every transaction on our credit card, which is great for security, but terrible for surprises. In the age of Covid, most of my gift shopping is done online. It’s kinda frustrating to order the perfect gift, only to have my darling wife ask if I know anything about a transaction from “Gifts For Claire dot com”.  The best I can hope for is explaining away a purchase from Amazon. 

But, I have recently discovered the perfect solution! Related, I also recently discovered that my darling Claire doesn’t read my blog. 

And so, dear Reader, I am free to explain my cunning plan. 

You see, I got a reloadable Visa card from Safeway and loaded enough to cover Claire’s gift on it. Genius! She’ll never suspect a thing. It’s not like I’ve posted it publicly online for anyone to read…

Okay. Not that cunning, but I’m pretty proud. 

I’ve now ordered the bulk of Claire’s Christmas gifts online. Next, I just need to make sure I get to the post first when they arrive. Apparently, opening mail addressed to another person doesn’t count as a federal crime if you’re married to the other person.

Lawnmower Man 2021

During the after-Christmas sales last year I managed to gab myself a virtual reality headset. Specifically, I got the shiny new Oculus Quest 2, an entirely self contained, wire free VR headset. No need for a beefy and expensive PC to process the games. Everything is done on board the headset itself. 

There are limits to this freedom. There is a curated storefront, so I can’t simply buy games on Steam to play on the Oculus right away, though with a link cable and a built in feature, you can use the Oculus as a pass through headset and play the greatest VR game ever made to date, Half Life: Alyx. But that would require the afore mentioned beefy and expensive PC, which I do not have. 

It’s also made by bookFace, and intrinsically tied in to the Facebleag infrastructure, requiring an active Facebukk account to log in and start using. 

However, although I only ever otherwise use it for messaging my local Pokémon Go friends, I do actually have an EffBee account. So, good to go, I did a little research. 

VR is a total body experience. Most games have you standing up, moving about, looking around, ducking, dodging, and swinging arms and hands about. This is a lot more than pressing joysticks and buttons on a traditional console. I have a full body tremor, mostly centred on my arms and legs. Would I be able to get into VR at all? 

It turns out VR, and VR exercise in particular, is really great for Parkinson’s. Basically something, something, something, distraction, something, blood flow, something, something, music, fun and tah-dah! It has been shown to have overall positive mood and health benefits. 

So I got in to the VR space focusing on that. All my first apps were fitness forward, such as the phenomenal boxing simulator Thrill of the Fight, and the rhythm action games Beat Sabre and Pistol Whip, my personnel preferred gmae in that genre. I really enjoyed playing all of these, but they were exercise games, and kinda started to become a chore to turn on. Over time, with a narrow focus on just those games, I lost interest in VR entirely. 

It didn’t help that I had no one to share the experience with, both in person and online. With Covid being very much an ever present threat, I couldn’t have friends over to show of my shiny tech to and share challenges with. And I made no effort to find friends online, largely because last year the Oculus was difficult to get hold of, so very few of my friends had one. 

But now a few of my Twitter buddies have one, and I’ve broaden my library thanks to discounts throughout the year, most recently the Black Friday sales. I now have a wonderfully fun, stunning looking, very real feeling mini-golf game, Walkabout Mini Golf. I’ve been having a lot of laughs with that one, and it allows online multiplayer with avatars and in game voice chat and sounds like a whole lot of future fun, because several of my friends already own it! 

Virtual Reality is here, now. Yes, unfortunately the cheapest, easiest entry, beginner friendly, expert featured machine is owned by a very, very evil mega corporation that willfully pushed lies and mistruths and corrupted millions of users opinions on governments, elections, science, vaccines and more. Sigh. But they really are the only horse in the race at this level. 

It is a thrilling experience to put on a wireless headset and discover you can freely move about within a generated environment, interacting naturally with objects and characters. It is equally thrilling to watch a friend try it for the first time and wave at a robot friend, then pick up a can and throw it at the robot, entirely without formal tutorials. 

I’m really enjoying my time in VR. My tremor rarely causes me any issues while I’m exploring my digital world. I can’t wait to see where this goes. 

I also can’t wait for the first time Ada and Connor try it themselves. There will be video. Dear Reader, I promise you, there will be video.

Order Up!

As the pandemic wore on, the alure of home cooked meals began to wear off, and with the rise of meal delivery services, such as DoorDash, UberEats and Skip the Dishes, new and varied meals were available at the touch of a phone screen. 

After a friend suggested a fancy burger place, and I started craving fancy burgers, I decided to try ordering from them. When I found them on my delivery app of choice, I noticed they also offered fancy deserts, so I ordered one for me and one for Claire. The kids wouldn't appreciate it, and there was ice cream in the freezer. 

The burgers arrived, nicely packed, and, packed in individual little plastic ramekins, fancy dips for my fancy chips (fries to my North American friends). I tried the watery yellow honey mustard with a chip. It wasn't very nice. I tried the thick dark orange peach sauce. That was too sweet.

But my kids loved dipping their chips in the fancy sauce, so I left them enjoy it. 

Dinner done and the kids in bed, I cracked open the fancy deserts for Claire and myself. Key lime pie for Claire, sticky toffee pudding for me. The pie was delicious, the pudding was...fine? It kinda lacked something. A little dry. You know, now that I think of it, I'm sure the description mentioned something...

I checked the app. In house fresh made custard and warm caramel sauce included.

I looked over at the sink, piled with the plates and leftovers of dinner, topped with two, barely touched ramekins of honey mustard and peach sauce...

I'd made a horrible mistake.

That sticky toffee pudding was delicious, with just a hint of potato chip.

The Visitors

Once again, my morning started at 6am, but I definitely looked at my watch at 4:45am. 

I got dressed and went out to the living room to find Connor sitting on the couch, in the dark, playing Switch. I might have snapped a little bit too harshly and sent him back to bed. Checking in on the Switch, the battery was only down 4%, so he couldn't have been there long. As soon as the kids I was caring for arrived, I went in and got Connor up to let him play. But not on the Switch. We have a strict "No screens" policy while friends are visiting. 

Once Ada got up, plans got into gear. 

A little before 8am, someone knocked on the door.

You see, dear Reader, Claire’s parents flew in from Ireland last night, arriving after the kids bedtime. They went straight to their accommodation, and crashed hard. However, jet lag is a cruel master, and they were up early, waiting for a text. 

Connor ran to answer it, as he loves to do. He checked the window to see who was there, and shouted "What are you doing here?!?!" The last time they visited was for his second birthday, two years ago. He's only ever known them through Skype.

Ada jumped up from her breakfast and hugged Nana. It was really nice to see that neither kid had even a bit of shyness around their grandparents, even after this isolated time. 

Technology. 

Amazing. 

Who Watches The Watch?

Technology is amazing. 

My alarm on my phone went off this morning at 6:10am, to have me up and ready when the kids I was caring for arrived at 6:30. Without even taking my arms out from under the covers, I silenced it with a tap on my Watch. 

I wear an Apple Watch, which connects to my phone and tracks my general heath, though I haven’t referred to it much. But I did recently start the sleep tracking feature, and now at 11pm I get a gentle pulse on my wrist to remind me that I should be heading to bed, and in the morning, at 7am, I get a gentle musical call to start my day on, if I’m not already up at crazy-o’clock for work. My Watch can monitor my heartbeat too, and tells me that I dropped to a steady 48 beats per minute around 4:30 this morning. I guess it can track blood oxygen levels too, because it somehow tells me that I dropped to a mere 12 breaths per minute around the same time.

I also know that when I go for a run it triggers the Watch to offer to track the run, and although it takes a few minutes to register that I’m trying to stay fit, and not, say sprinting away from a rampaging rhino, the Watch knows enough that it will post-date the run to roughly the actual start time, not the time I agreed to register the activity. 

I’m very grateful to have this technology available to me, even if I probably only use 10-20% of its features to their fullest. 

There are two features I love the most, though. Tap to pay lets me tap my Watch to pay almost anywhere. It’s just so convenient and secure not having to get out my wallet all the time. 

But the feature I use more that any other on my Watch is Find My Phone. Ever since I got a Watch and discovered this feature, if I have put my phone down anywhere and I can’t see it in a five second glance from exactly where I’m standing, I just tap my wrist and ping my phone, setting off a sonar-like ping sound, telling me exactly where my phone is. The fact that this feature works even when the phone is on silent or sleep mose is amazing. This one, simple feature has literally saved minutes of my life. 

Technology. 

Amazing.

The Trouble With Streaming

I loved DVD’s when they were a thing. The higher image quality and the ability to jump to my favourite scenes instantly were neat, but the thing I loved most about DVD’s was the extra storage space they provided, allowing studios the freedom to bundle extras like blooper reels, behind-the-scenes documentaries, commentary tracks and making-of featurettes.

I adored seeing the magic behind the curtain. It never robbed me of the beauty of cinema, but made it shine even brighter. I watched those bonus features more than the movie they came with. 

But as DVD’s and physical media transitioned into the streaming services, those bonus feature became more and more difficult to track down. Netflix never had making-of specials included with the movie for the longest time, and still doesn’t for most of it’s content. Neither Prime nor Apple TV seem to make a habit of it either. Occasionally, someone would upload such content to YouTube, and even more occasionally, it would an official source.

In their defense, Netflix does have a series called “The Movies That Made Us” that looks back at an ever increasing catalogue of classic movies and the trials and tribulations that went into making them. I find every episode fascinating, even the ones on movies I’ve never seen, like classic slasher Friday the 13th. They get wonderful stories from costume and set designers, scriptwriters, producers, and actors and more. The documentary series highlights the less often heard voices compared to studio produced making-of features, and getting far more gritty and truthful confessions on what it was like to create my favourite, and not so favourite movies. 

Most recently, Disney+ has embraced it full on though. The recent Marvel movies and series all have additional content to support them available directly on the service, and I love them! As soon as I finish the movie or show, I jump into the making-of stuff, because it’s right there! Often linked in the end screen. 

I hope this trend continues and we see a return to the overloaded content that used to be included on DVD’s. Netflix does have some great features up for it’s recent high fantasy series,  The Witcher, so, I live in hope. 

Red Sky At Morning

Over the last few months our province has had a bunch of very unusual weather. 

Earlier in the summer we got trapped in a heat dome for a few days. Temperatures soared to 40° Celcius. It was too hot to just go outdoors. We had all the doors and windows closed, which is a bit counter intuitive, but when it’s that warm outside it’s easier to try to trap the cool air in. We had fans going almost all day, and I filled the bathtub with a few centimetres of cold water and let the kids come and go as they pleased throughout the day. It was nothing to joke about, though. There were a lot of deaths associated with the unexpectedly high heat, including a family member of a friend. 

More recently, the aurora borealis was visible twice over a fortnight from Vancouver, far further south than it comes usually. We didn’t see it ourselves, but apparently it was pretty cool to see. 

But then, most recently we got hit with a huge wet weather front from Hawaii, dubbed the Pinapple Express. The first sign that something unusual was happening was videos of an honest to goodness tornado showing up just south of where we live!! Last week, it poured rain for a solid three days, causing widespread flooding and mudslides, damaging roads and highways, and effectively cutting Vancouver off from the rest of Canada by road and rail for a while. 

Thankfully, where we’re located, we had very little disruption at all, without even any noticeable flooding. But there were parts of British Columbia that fared much worse, in particular, the town of Merritt, where all 7,000 residents were evacuated, and as of writing this post, some seven days later, they are still not able to return to whatever is left standing. 

It is not hyperbole to say that we have caused global climate change on a scale that has never been seen before. But I want to be very clear who I mean by “we”. Humanity has polluted the planet, over-fished the oceans, burned millions of acres of forest, created mountains of garbage that will be around longer than us, buried nuclear waste, and much, much more. But, reader, there is little chance that you or I did any of this. I don’t think my blog has that wide a reach. A tiny percent of humanity is responsible for this, scarificing all our futures for their present financial and political gain. They are the ones that need to enact real changes. Instead, they point their finger at you and I and tut-tut about straws or plastic packaging.

We are swiftly reaching a point of no return, a tipping point of cascading catastrophes that will decimate the planet. The changes the vast majority of the population can make are tiny. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, of course, but even if every person on the planet stopped using straws tomorrow, it wouldn’t be enough. 

Think of that when the next election comes up. Don’t ask what they can do for you, ask what they intend to do for the future, for the entire planet. Unfortunately, only those at the top have any power to force those mega corporations to make real change, but us here at the bottom can influence who sits in those top seats. 

Choose wisely.

No Spoilers!

Back in my day, we had TV ad breaks and pre-show cinema trailers, and we liked it!

Actually, we hated it. I recall trying to download tiny pixelated 480P trailers on the college computers at UCC just so I could watch Spider-Man web a helicopter full of bank thieves between two iconic buildings in New York. 

There was a time, however brief, when people would pay to see a mediocre movie just to watch a new trailer for a major upcoming release, such as The Matrix or Lord of the Rings. 

Today’s standard deluge of endless previews and promos and extended scenes and “first five minutes” were unheard of. You got a few trailers in the months running up to release, all made up of broadly the same footage, with maybe one or two unique shots to justify it’s existence. 

If feels like these days you can piece together 75% of a movie from the promotional material. In fact, the inspiration for this post was a clip from the soon to launch Hawkeye series for Disney+ that I watched just before starting to write this. I didn’t mind because the clip was short and while I’m looking forward to the series, I’m not super worried about light spoilers. It’s not like an official promo piece was going to spoil the ending or anything before the series even airs, unlike all those “What the Last 3 Minutes of the Big New Movie That Only Came Out Today Means” that are all over YouTube for every major release. 

On the other hand, I am already 100% sold on the upcoming Spider-Man Marvel Universe movie, No Way Home. If I don’t see a single frame, set photo, news article, rumour or trailer before I see the movie in theatres this December, I’ll be delighted! I have a bunch of keywords muted on Twitter in the hopes that they won’t show up on my feed. 

However, last Tuesday a new trailer dropped, with loads of new footage and new big plot reveals. I had long before decided that nothing would get me to watch it, but as soon as it was online, YouTube helpfully pushed it into my suggested feed. Not an issue, I can just not click on it. But there was a new character reveal right there in the thumbnail. Worse, while I had gathered enough rumours in the months previously that I expected this particular character to appear, I now had their new look spoiled on me. 

I miss going in to movies blind, being totally shocked by every twist and turn of the plot, every reveal and cameo. It feels like the only way to achieve that today is to swear off the internet in the months before the release. And as much as I love you, Spider-Man, I love the internet more. 

Do The Robot

After over a year and a half of not being able to play board games, this is the third Friday in a row I’ve had friends over for an evening of laughter and fun around a table. Goodness, it feels good to see friends again. 

Tonight I decided to inflict the 2005 Avalon Hill edition of RoboRally on two of my neighbours. RoboRally is a notoriously long game among my college friends, but that’s mostly down to playing “Monopoly Rules”. That is to say, no one checks the actually rules and goes with the decision of the person who owns the game, in this case, usually in relation to maps and victory flag positions. RoboRally comes with a bunch of suggestions at the back of the book for maps that cater to Beginners to Experts, Short to Long games. We played a Short Beginner suggestion, and including rules teach at the start the game was finished in a hair over two hours. That might sound long still to readers outside the modern board gaming hobby scene, but remember that a lot of the time was just us chatting between resolving turns. 

However, Claire did comment upon seeing us start “Are you sure you have enough time?”

An early burst saw me reach the first flag a solid two full turns before my friends. Highlights along the way included a friend messing up an early game turn that resulted in him travelling in a big circle to end his turn in exactly the same space as he began it, and the time that I forgot that rotating right by 90° four times would put me back in my original orientation, not, as I needed, facing to my left. I failed the RoboRally Dance big time there. 

But the true highlight of the night was the final turn that saw my robot push one of my friends robots out of winning, only to immediately have my other friend reverse onto the third and final flag. In the end, all three robots were beside each other around the flag, but only one was sitting atop it as the victor. We all burst out laughing. 

A wonderful way to end any game. 

Eating My Greens

My mum is an incredible baker. She makes, hands down, the best apple tart I’ve ever eaten. Any time I’m out at somewhere for a meal and apple pie is on the desert, I tend to order it, just out of curiosity, but it never even comes close enough to make me sad it isn’t mum’s. And it’s not just apple tart, though that will always be my favourite. Buns, sponge cakes, trifles. She bakes Christmas fruit cake for half the village. She’s even done wedding cakes for cousins and neighbours. 

When it comes to desert, I grew up well fed and spoilt for choice. 

But I also grew up hating broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I thought steak was dry and chewy, made slightly more palatable when fried with onions. We had weekly boiled ham and cabbage until we were old enough to rebel.

As a kid, I hated potatoes. I hated them boiled or mashed. Roasted was acceptable, but they only got made for Christmas or Easter dinner, and I adored mum’s turkey and ham special dinners. 

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that you can cook steak to varying degrees, and medium was delicious, until I had medium-rare, and it was even more delicious! The joy in discovering you can roast broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and that they were flipping delicious like that! Imagine my cognitive dissonance when, as a grown man in his late 30’s (or possibly shortly after…) I cooked sprouts for the first time and ate most of them straight off the oven pan with a spoon, just horsing them into my mouth while I waited for the rest of the meal to finished cooking. 

Potatoes are delicious boiled with a few cloves of garlic, and mashed with a lot of butter!

In the Before Times, I made broccoli for some friends who very clearly accepted them with the polite side-eye glances of people who did not like broccoli at all, then asked for more five minutes later. Roasted, with soy sauce, ginger and garlic. 

I love my mum. I love her deserts and Christmas dinners. 

But I love my roasted veggies, and so does Claire. What about my kids? Not subjected to boiled mush, do they enjoy crunchy veggie flavour bombs?

Not a fucking chance. The little bastards won’t touch them, and scream if they find any on their plate. 

I’d be upset, except, more for me! 

Boy Racer

Connor was keeping up with his big sister and her friends when they went biking, even when he was just running along on his toddler bike last year. He could race along in the middle of them all up the gentle slope of the nearby Greenway. 

Of course, at first, he couldn’t go all the way up the 1.5 kilometres, and we did make the mistake of stopping early for him and breaking off to go get a cookie in Starbucks. That became all he wanted to do, resulting in a few tantrums. 

But pretty soon, and with a bit of bribery, he was doing the full distance, and with less complaining than his big sister some days. He’d zip up the former railway line, and on his way home, he’d lift both legs off the ground and cruise quickly down the hill. He could easily stay ahead of the rest, never took a fall, and always stopped well away from the roads. 

This spring he graduated to a pedal bike. The fact that there was a noticeable hole in his old bike’s tire letting the rubber inner tube poke through was a bit of an encouragement. At first he was just running like he did with his toddler bike, but getting frustrated with bumping his ankles off the pedals. Then he progressed to cruising downhill toward home again as he got more comfortable, testing out the pedals while safely rolling freely. 

And then one day, just like his sister did, he was off! He never used training wheels, going straight from the toddler bike to the pedals. He started cycling at less than three and a half years old! 

Connor loves to cycle. Ada loves it too, but only if friends are going, and often has to be coaxed into joining. Connor will run to get his bike helmet at the merest hint of cycling. He zooms up and back, and can even do the longer rides without issue or complaint. 

Next spring we’ll get him a big bike like his sister. 

And then walking along behind won’t be good enough. 

I’ll have to get a bike too.

To Do Or Not To Do

My list of tasks to get done had started to get the better of me this weekend. Thinking about the ever growing mountain of small tasks that sat at the top of a huge mountain made of a few big tasks, I just couldn't bring myself to start anything, and just watched YouTube or board games streamed on Twitch instead.

The weather wasn't helpful either. This weekend had been wretched, with three days of non-stop rain that has caused the complete evacuation of one town of 7,000 residents, washed away roads across the provence and blocked railway lines. As of Monday evening, it was officially declared that Vancouver is cut off from the rest of Canada by road and rail. 

We made it out Sunday from the weekly big shopping trip to Costco, and that was the only time we stepped outside the door. I watched Enchanted and Marvel's Shang-Chi on Disney+. 

This morning was no better. The rain was still pouring down. We walked Ada to school and in the way back I went to Safeway to buy some supplies. I got home and made brunch for Claire, Connor and myself and decided to make a concrete list of what I needed to get done over the next few days. 

At first, it was a list on my phone, but I realized really quickly that it was just as easy to ignore that. Instead, I grabbed a stack of Post-Its and a Sharpie. Not sponsored. Other brands are available. But, if anyone reading this works for either company, call me. 

I wrote one task, or group of related tasks on each Post-It, and stuck them to the fridge. Once I had all the ones from my phone up, I stood back, looked upon my work, and did a random unimportant task that wasn't at all on the list. 

Instant failure. 

But with that out of the way, I went back to the fridge. 

I vacuumed the entire house, washed the kitchen and bathroom floors, cleaned the oven top, sent three important emails, wrote and sent invoices, started the paperwork to register Connor for kindergarten next year and took out the compost, to name just the tasks I remember, because as I completed a Post-It, I ripped it from the fridge, scrunched it up and threw it in the (recycling) bin, where it now belonged. And all while listening to board games being played on Twitch. 

There see still, at this moment, eleven Post-Its on the fridge. But that's a lot less than this morning. And there'll be a lot less tomorrow evening. 

Note to self: Buy more Post-Its. 

Objects of Power

Objects have power, but not all powerful objects are fancy or powerful looking. It’s the classic ending to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the chalice of Jesus was a simple wooden cup. Because he was the son of a carpenter, you see. Look, if you didn’t get that reference, I really can’t help you. 

When we left Ireland in 2011, we stored a lot of stuff in our families homes, and our amazing friends held on to a bunch of my board games. Each time we’ve travelled home since, we’ve come back with a bit more of our past lives in tow. Books, games, figures, objects that we hold dear and that are important to us. 

But those objects were placed in safe keeping for that reason. They were important to us. 

Before we left Ireland I working in a preschool with a wonderful group of kids and their family’s. Before leaving, I received some lovely gifts in thanks, and while I’m certain there were lovely chocolates, wine (I know, but, whatcha gonna do?), deodorant (long story) and other very thoughtful things, one would become and unexpected Object of Power that endures to this day. 

One of the girls I worked with took a little more work to connect with. An only child, she had some minor behavioural issues. I’m no trained child psychologist or behavioural therapist, but I think she might have had some mild autism, or ADHD. She had difficulty controlling her emotions, and rarely made eye contact. But with love and patience, we became good friends, and I really enjoyed working with her, and I like to think, she enjoyed her time with me. 

My parting gift from her family was a wonderful, warm, woolen sweater. They knew I was Canada-bound, and had apparently spent time there before their daughter was born. 

I still have that sweater. I still wear it every year when the cold starts to creep in. Every time I go to my closet in late autumn or early winter and push back the t-shirts and light hoodies that take up most of the space to pull out that sweater, I think of that family. 

I hope they’re doing well, where ever they are. I hope they occasionally think of me. And I hope that some day, some how, I can tell them how much their gift from eleven years ago still means to me.