I rock!
Work is a little bit up-and-down at the moment, for various reasons, but most pressingly including a general danger of "We're doomed! Doomed I tell ye!" syndrome around the entire university, and a specific plan to split my department up which threatens to cause a local outbreak of the same disease. I don't think we are (necessarily) doomed but it's all pretty unsettling. (I won't go in to details here but will be mentioning it soonish on my work-related blog, which is trivially findable if you know my real name since it is very imaginatively titled.)
But! There was a very good bit this morning. Basically, on a not-totally-spurious pretext, I got to play console games with colleagues on work time. I beat our head techie guy at Mario Kart, but lost quite spectacularly badly to one of my PhD students. And I played Guitar Hero III.
Why did nobody tell me about this?! It's fantastic. I mean, I did know about it, but I didn't know about it. It's like a guitar version of DDR. If you miss a cue or flub, the guitar riff does the same, so it feels a lot like you're actually playing. Our head techie guy put it well: it's not a very good simulation of guitar playing, but if you can play guitar, you'll probably be quite good at it. It's great fun.
My wise time allocation policy as a final-year student (I chose to learn the guitar instead of advanced quantum mechanics) paid off yet again. Some colleagues had a go but missed too many notes and their on-screen avatar guitarist threw down their guitar in despair. And then I had a go, and did much much better. I got to the end of The Who's The Seeker in front of a crowd of workmates and had the screen flash up the verdict: YOU ROCK!
I so do. But when am I ever going to find enough time to play all these cool games?
But! There was a very good bit this morning. Basically, on a not-totally-spurious pretext, I got to play console games with colleagues on work time. I beat our head techie guy at Mario Kart, but lost quite spectacularly badly to one of my PhD students. And I played Guitar Hero III.
Why did nobody tell me about this?! It's fantastic. I mean, I did know about it, but I didn't know about it. It's like a guitar version of DDR. If you miss a cue or flub, the guitar riff does the same, so it feels a lot like you're actually playing. Our head techie guy put it well: it's not a very good simulation of guitar playing, but if you can play guitar, you'll probably be quite good at it. It's great fun.
My wise time allocation policy as a final-year student (I chose to learn the guitar instead of advanced quantum mechanics) paid off yet again. Some colleagues had a go but missed too many notes and their on-screen avatar guitarist threw down their guitar in despair. And then I had a go, and did much much better. I got to the end of The Who's The Seeker in front of a crowd of workmates and had the screen flash up the verdict: YOU ROCK!
I so do. But when am I ever going to find enough time to play all these cool games?