I can kind of see where he’s going with this. The Wii is the sweet thing you fall in love with instantly – pretty cute, with a bubbly personality. The PS3 is the little tease who’ll always be late because she can’t get her blu-tinted lenses in. You know it’ll end in tears or rehab.

And while Miss Wii is great fun – all your friends love her to bits – the Xbox 360 is the temperamental, but hot, mistress you keep on the side…

[tags]motley fool, marry, kill, date, xbox 360, wii, ps3[/tags]

Talk about stating the obvious. 

Just go to your local pub and watch two couples at the same table. The women will be talking; they can talk at the same time, about different subjects and hold a conversation that they both understand.

After exhausting the subject of football, however, their partners will sit there not talking, but staring into space and you know they’re both wondering what the barmaid would look like in her underwear.

Does it really take a research grant to conclude that men and women are different? And more importantly, who cares?

[tags]language, communication, linguistics[/tags]

My own Jedi-powers have long been the envy of family and friends, and my mere presence has seemingly breathed life back into all manner of uncooperative hardware. Call it what you like, the Force, an aura, mojo, it’s all the same.

Until last week. First, I hose my my router during a firmware upgrade; then my Xbox 360 refuses to talk to my new router, followed swiftly by my DS Lite and my laptop. Then, my Smartphone refuses to upload new podcasts via ActiveSync – appointments, emails  and contacts; fine. MP3 files? No chance. This morning, the NIC on my desktop PC starts throwing a hissy-fit. Oh, and the cooker-hood in the kitchen – which of course, has a micro processor in it, to warn when the filters need cleaning – flashes an undefined error when I switch it on last night.

I stand and glare at this pile of hardware, willing it to function normally again, but nothing. Is this what it feels like to be a mere “computer user“? I’ve lost my mojo, baby. Major bummer, man. Like, totally.

[tags]life, digital life, computers, mojo, jedi powers[/tags]

The boys had brought an XBox game they’d bought earlier that day and were dying to play it on my Xbox 360 console, so after dinner they took off to the living room to play at being James Bond while us four adults stayed in the dining room, to chat and finish drinking some rather fine South African grape juice…

After an hour or so, the boys came back through, bored of Bond and wanting to play another game. I didn’t fancy letting them loose on GR:AW or Oblivion, so I popped Kameo in for them. I thought I’d sit with them for a bit, in case they got stuck.

They’d never played Kameo before and so didn’t know the controls or the objective, but they figured it out, almost instinctively. They didn’t need to look at the booklet that comes in the game pack – they barely looked down at the controls to see how the buttons were laid out! When the pre-rendered stuff that explains what the buttons are for; or how to attack a certain problem came one, they just scrolled right past it, wanting to get on with the game play!

It was amazing to watch as they played the game, without any preconceived notions or expectations. If they got stuck, they tried something different, talking quietly with each other until they solved that particular problem.

When do we lose that, as adults? When do give up that ability to absorb and adapt without prejudice or expectation. As adults we want everything explained before we interact with it; we expect to know what to expect. I wish we could keep hold of our inner-kid for longer…

[tags]kids, children, learning, development, games, xbox360, xbox 360[/tags]

• Put about 1.5″ of cold water into a pan, and get it boiling under a medium heat.
• Put 1 cup of rice into a sieve and rinse it several times under cold water until the run-off is clear.
• When the water is boiling, throw in a good pinch of salt, followed by the (rinsed!) rice.
• The water will settle down, so keep an eye on it until it starts to bubble again, then turn the heat down a little bit and put a lid over the pan – don’t completely cover the pan with the lid; leave a little space for the steam to escape.
• Now leave it for about 8 minutes. After that, taste the rice and take it off the heat when its done to your liking. (8 minutes gets it just right for me – slightly crunchy on the outside, but fluffy on the inside).

Another tip: always use a metal spoon when stirring your rice. Wooden spoons tend to mash it up.