There’s been a lot of news reports about the global credit slump etc, but it really can’t be that bad if I can be approved for a credit card.

Since getting my DS, I’ve noticed that a lot of interesting games seem to be released in Australia anywhere up to a year after they are released in the US (the less said about the lag behind Japan the better), and often cost twice as much. Happily, the DS doesn’t bother with the ludicrousness that is region coding, so I can happily import them from Hong Kong based online shops.

One I’m particularly looking forward to is DS-10, essentially a software synthesiser made in conjunction with Korg. Its currently only planned to be released in Japan, but given that all the dials etc are labelled in english, I can’t imagine the language barrier being much of a problem.

A friend of mine recently got themselves a nice shiny new MacBook, well as shiny as a black matte finish can be in any case. Seeing how he didn’t need his old notebook any more, he kindly passed it on to me over the weekend, so thanks a bunch Alex. Its roughly twice as powerful as the crummy 5 year old desktop I have, so apart from being able to write whilst on the move, I can catch up on some of the games I’ve missed out on over the last couple of years that would have caused my poor old computer to have the digital equivalent of a nervous breakdown.

I received the results of the Course Experience Survey for my class last week at well. At first I was a bit disappointed until my coordinator assured me it was actually a decent score, but from the break down of the individual questions I think the key thing I need to work on is explaining things more effectively.

I didn’t get much writing done last week, as in addition to the public holiday on Monday, I was busy preparing for my candidature review on Friday. Returning to writing this morning it seems that I’ve completely forgotten the tack my argument was taking, though to be honest It had gotten bogged down last week as well. The crux is a synthesis between the concept of affordances and Merleau-Ponty’s conception of habits, but the argument itself seems to be stuck in a kind of vortex, spinning around repeating itself whilst being sucked into the void, or perhaps rather a knotted piece of string that needs untangling.

The review itself went well, though there were some important issues with structure and scope that were raised by the panel, so I’m not really sure if its worthwhile pushing on with the chapter I’m writing as it stands, as it will most likely have quite a different form within a few weeks, but move on to another area instead to at least get my thoughts clearer. Of course that might just add another string to the tangle as well.

Haven’t got much writing done today, as I’ve been distracted trying to glean whatever information I could from forum threads about the Australian release of the iPhone. So far I’ve learnt that:

1) It may cost a lot, or it might not
2) It may be sold prepay as well as on contract, or it might not
3) It may be available on my preferred carrier, or it might not
4) It will be released on 11 July.

An afternoon well spent so far then.

Boing Boing gadgets has a fairly extensive historical list of ‘exergames’, made more extensive by the commenters.

Apparently the Come Out & Play 08 festival is on this weekend (thanks Boing Boing), focusing on the idea of ‘public play’. It features a bunch of Augmented Reality games amongst its mix, I’m kind of too far from NY to go along to any, but Competitive Picnicking already sounds like a winner with its ’sandwich round’.

Feel a bit like a wreck today, I’m not sure what’s going on with my sleep patterns, but yesterday I woke up at 4.30 and couldn’t get back to sleep, then last night I couldn’t get to sleep until 2.30. Of course this morning I woke up feeling exhausted, and it didn’t really help that I had crazy dreams all night as well. I’m having some friends over for dinner tomorrow night, so hopefully cleaning up the house tonight will wear me out enough to get a decent sleep.

Except now I’ve made myself hungry thinking about the lasagne I’m going to make.