The Boredom Blog

Surf's Up

I was young when I first went surfing. It was on a family holiday in Cornwall and I was encouraged by my uncle to give it a go, (he, and my granddad, were both ex-Navy and so had a certain love and respect for the sea). I was always very afraid of the Ocean, and although I don’t think I enjoyed this initial play, it made me a little more comfortable in the water. Over the years this confidence grew a bit and on most holidays I pretty much enjoyed going for a swim and playing around in the waves. My teenage years stopped all this of course, other interests intervened, and it wasn’t until my time at Uni that I got back down to the coast and things kinda went from there.

Knowing people from Somerset and Cornwall got me surfing properly in the early 90s. I took several lessons down in Polzeath (Pete and Jane are still there to this day bless ‘em) and after a couple of years or so we’d have a small group of us who were getting down to the South-West regularly, often every weekend. All my holiday entitlement from work would generally be used to surf, and I remember one time in ’94, when me and a good pal just spent 3 weeks surfing round Cornwall sleeping in a tent, hitting local clubs and bars. It was an amazing time, and both of us improved considerably hitting the beaches as often as possible. Local friends would often stop by and hang out with us for a day or two, and my main memories are beach fires, music, salt water, sun, burnt skin and bleaching hair. All accompanied by the sickly sweet smell of Zog’s Sex Wax. I don’t remember any rain or even a grey cloud, probably just my state of mind.

My first overseas trip was to Biarritz, I think there were 10 of us, 6 guys, 4 girls. That was an insane trip, I don’t think I could cope with those shenanigans anymore. Going in hard as soon as the plane landed was the order of the day. We surfed the habour and the main beaches and by night found all the local dives. Since then I’ve surfed France twice more, including the Hossegor area, and have added Spain, Portugal (x2), Costa Rica (x4) and Morocco to my surf destinations. Costa is my fave place, it’s quite amazing. A couple of years ago I drove my mid-70s air-cooled camper down to Spain (visited Mundaka and Bilbao to pick up my girlfriend) and did most of the Basque area of France once again. A great trip. And my Cornish friend got married this year on a beach on Costa Rica, I was the only invitee, it was a beautiful time, really cool. I even got up for the odd dawn patrol which is a toughie for me. Heh, on my recent trip to Morocco I beat my record by catching 25 waves in one sess egged on by our Australian hosts. Stoked.

I dunno what it is about surfing but it’s occupied my mind every day for nearly 15 years. I’ve not taken a non-surf-related holiday in all that time. There is something deeply odd about the Ocean that I can’t put my finger on. It has a dynamic and sense of life and power that is at times indescribable. And surfing is a sport which never becomes boring, every wave is different and there’s always room to improve and I’ve learned to love wipe-outs whereas before I’d hate them.  I’ve had a few injuries and scares over the years (washed up on rocks, and a pretty frightening experience in Costa where a rip literally sucked me out to sea into very nasty heavy breakers) but I know how to handle myself out there now. Rips still freak me out a bit, especially the ones that prevent you getting back to the beach.

Here’s to more years of board-riding. As age creeps up I’m longboarding all the time now, and I expect to be doing this for at least another 20 years. Looking forward to searching out the spots in the USA over the next few years.

Brian Lara 2005

Cricket is the oddest of sports. Any game that can take five days to play where the venues serve beer from 10.30am has to have something going for it. The few times I've watched one-dayers at Kent's County Cricket ground (the one with the famous oak tree) the atmosphere has been a bit like a massive outdoor beer garden mixed with a picnic site mixed with a bit of sport. I even fell asleep for a couple of hours in the sun sometime after lunch.

So converting this slowest of sports to a video-game is a tough task. And only Codemasters have really pulled it off. With the latest release of their Brian Lara franchise I think we've seen the best ever cricket game, it's just about perfect.

The difficulties in translation are many. Like America's favourite sport Baseball, the nucleus of the fun is in batting and bowling (or pitching). Get this gameplay mechanic wrong, and the whole thing is a pointless waste. In addition to that, these games require depth and this is derived from giving the player multiple game modes and providing enough tactical and strategic options in-game to enable you to make a difference. Plenty of players, stats, history, and 'environments' only add to the whole experience.

Lara '05 really does provide all of these in one classy package. The bowling is handled subtlely in that it is quite difficult to master good line and length. As in real life, you'll also get it wrong a few times and expect those looseners to be smacked away. You can vary the line, length, turn, swing and pace to try and confound the batter. It's also possible to bowl around the wicket to those pesky left-handers. There's a confidence bar too which means you're rewarded for good spells by increased chances of bowling a stormer. Likewise batting is an equal exercise in patience and concentration. Here the essence of the game is timing. You need to try and read the line and pace of the ball and select the correct shot. Time it wrong, get your player out of position, or choose the wrong shot and you're in trouble. The top-end batsmen give you a bit of leeway for error so it's possible to get good scores, but with low-order batsmen or tail-enders expect to have rough time. Again confidence can be built by defending properly, timing things nicely and generally playing well. It really does feel like a bat-bowl dual going on and is immensely satisfying.

There's plenty of options including Tests and One Days and you can customise matches whichever way you want. A quick ten-over blast is good fun. Different pitches offer different challenges (slow pitches, variable bounce etc.) and weather also plays a part. You can also customise fielding positions which is nice, especially when you want to try and get wickets or defend a decent score to see out the overs. Nice graphical presentation of batting performances and bowling lines just adds to the polish. I'll end here, but there's so much more in the way of unlockables and it includes a custom player mode too for you to take a player through a career. Overall, an excellent sports game in its own right, and a great achievement given its cricket.

Right, back to watching this Test Match. Looks like another England collapse. :-)

Blog He Is Back

Well my Powerbook has effectively been out of action for three weeks which explains the lack of updates round here. Quite worrying how much I've missed it, especially having to use my PC and WindowsXP as my daily driver. Not that either are particularly bad, but they're just not as nice as OSX. And I've missed my iTunes library so much it hurts. The screen crapped out on me so it went back to Apple. Only the new screen had a single dead pixel bang in the centre. So I discussed the situation at the Regent Street Apple Store and the good folks there agreed another replacement free-of-charge. So here I am with a shiny new, pixel-perfect display. Chuffed.

July was a mad month. The first wave of bombings in London have changed the city quite noticably. One of our friends was on the Circle line tube that got hit, he was just one carraige down. The second bombing attempts that mercifully failed shocked everyone. Nobody looks at lone bags on buses and tubes with the same nonchelance any longer. The police and community support officers are everywhere now. And the killing of that poor young Brazilian man by plain-clothed armed police has just embedded the sense of crisis. It's not pleasant at all but city's have their own dynamic that's kinda unstoppable. Londoners will essentially carry on as normal.

I'm also gearing up for my move to the US. Had my VISA approved and now have a house out there. Just need to get through a final interview with the US Embassy and I'll be away. It's an insane but nonetheless exciting situation.

Gaming has taken a slight lull although I did get round to buying San Andreas on the PC. Superb game, love it. Also got back into World of Warcraft after two months of not logging in. Luckily my character was still alive and well resting on the servers waiting to be booted up. Despite the somewhat unsophisticated game mechanic (3rd person view, icon driven interaction), I think WoW may well be the greatest game ever produced. It just feels like a living breathing world like nothing else I have ever experienced. And currently technology brings the whole thing to life with wonderful environments and almost endless objects and skills to learn. Also got Brian Lara's Cricket 2005 which plays a good game. It's a love or hate thing though. Currently I'm re-visiting F-Zero GX on the cube and Super Mario64 DS on the, er, DS. Enjoying both.

More updates soon hopefully, check the album covers opposite for my current faves.