Winter and whatnot
So I recently invested in a smartphone.
Despite all my hesitation to join a trend I've always been sort of uncomfortable with, and hardly anxious to join the growing legion of social media addicts trying to stand up on a mire of bad tweets and facebook faux pas, it's pretty awesome. The joy of soundboards and that one awesome lightsaber app have worn off by this point, and I find myself involved in some of the genuinely cool free games you can get on the Android marketplace. I hate casual games in most instances because they can only keep my fleeting attention span in check for a few minutes here and there, but there's one I have been indulging in quite a lot, more so than 'harder' games at the moment because I simply don't have the time to sit down and play like I used to. One such game is Wind Up Knight, a charming but challenging platformer with some tight controls, which I found surprising for a touch screen game. It seems like it would be more at home on the DS, but plays very nicely on my Xperia.
What I've probably been reveling in most aside from the marketplace is the fantastic camera. It's not perfect, but it's a gigantic step up from my previous faithful companion, the Sony Ericcson Cyber-Shot (Who served well for several years). And what should happen but the day after I get my shiny new phone? Snow! Lots of snow!
And a very patient girlfriend: I still haven't gotten into the habit of tweeting every half second but I'm fine with that. It's proven extremely useful as a budding journalist, having the internet at my fingertips, and hopefully will prove its full worth over the next few months of being all over the place in London, Brighton, and various other areas of Surrey and Sussex.OH, and before I forget (because I will, and I want to take this opportunity to have a miniature rant) - I saw this local youth band the other night at a tiny Guildford venue that embodied everything wrong with the modern music scene. We're talking flopping black fringes, luminous red skinny jeans and puny Hawthorne Heights style screaming. The entire band might have been about sixteen (between them) and looked seriously out of place. When they got up on stage I thought they'd gotten lost or just bored of waiting and wanted to play at being musicians until the real ones came along. I felt like I was being trolled by the event.
Don't get me wrong, they were... okay. They were definitely musically skilled. Despite a tiny crowd and very few people more interested in them than their pints, they soldiered on without dropping a note. I don't expect instant greatness from youth bands, but what I would like to see is some originality - I thought we'd grown out of that awful kiddie metal trend, but sadly not.
-SZ


