infoxicated – Page 151 – Digital infotainment from the life of Rob Foxx

A glimpse of the future

Tuesday May 17th 2005

Like an excited kid at xmas time, I sat up last night waiting for the information to trickle from the Sony press conference in Culver City, where the PS3 was being revealed for the first time. After last weeks launch of the XBox 360 before the assembled hipsters on MTV, I wondered just how Sony would respond.

By quarter-past midnight I was beginning to think they wouldn’t reveal anything concrete, as sites like GameSpot and Engadget gave the impression that all we were getting was a technical fact sheet.

Then suddenly, Kaboom! – the information came thick and fast, as everything from details of the system architecture, to images of the new console began to hit the net. Joystiq went down, Engadget struggled under the load, and GameSpot and IGN seemed slow with their updates.

By one in the morning it had calmed down to a relative frenzy – GameSpot had an early report from the press conference up, and IGN had a good amount of PS3 information on offer by then.

I would have gone to bed at this point, but then details of PS3 games started pouring out too, and in my excitement I had to read each scrap of info before I finally hit the sack at close to two.

It’s probably going to be a year and a half before I get my hands on one of these things, and I’m going to be counting the days. Roll on the next generation.

The backwards diet

Thursday May 5th 2005

I need to lose a few pounds before sister Hazel’s wedding in mid-June, and I just found this report of a really natty diet idea: The Backwards Diet.

You eat your dinner for breakfast, your lunch for lunch, and your breakfast for dinner, which gives your body the whole day of activity to burn off those calories from your main meal. It sounds so logical it’s almost hilarious nobody has thought of it before, written a book and gotten rich selling it to all those folk who seem to lap up diet fads but don’t want to exersize.

Now, the question looms, can I be assed cooking my dinner as well as having a bath every morning?

One in the oven

Wednesday May 4th 2005

We found out in the last week that Fliss is pregnant, and we’re going to be parents come christmas. The realisation of this is the mind job that I always thought it would be, so at least I was semi–equipped to cope.

After Fliss told me of her positive test, I was so taken aback that I kind of pretended it wasn’t really happening. I suggested that “Maybe you’re just really good at tests? I mean, you got 100% in that driving theory one, so maybe it’s the same with pregnancy tests?”

Wishful thinking on my part, I suppose, but the reality is that we’ll have a son or a daughter by the end of the year. Wow. A whole ‘nother person to look after besides ourselves. It seems kind of daunting when the latter is something I’m only just getting the hang of.

The funny thing is that I always hoped we’d have to try for a baby, you know?

I wanted it to be like “Right, we’ve bought all the electronic consumer goods we’ll need for a few years, lets get making babies!” and then we’d be banging away like rabbits on viagra until it happened.

I was looking forward to that bit; it was going to be my reward in advance for all the nappy changing and barf I’d have to deal with. But no, there was no trying – turns out it just happens when you least expect it.

Ah well, no use crying over action you didn’t get. I’m actually really happy for Fliss, as she’s always been the more maternal and wanted kids quite young, so if you balance it against all the stuff I’ve gotten that I wanted then I think the sacrifices are a small price to pay for how being parents is going to enrich our lives in the years to come.

It’s going to be quite an interesting year, though. Who’d have thunk it?