Dave and Lucy Wedding

On saturday I went to Dave and Lucy's wedding. I missed the ceremony but joined them for the reception. They looked good -- Lucy's dress is fabulous -- and very happy. Congratulations!

I met up with a crowd of Daves I used to know, which was nice, but strange to see where I used to be compared to where I am now. I described the infinite sand puzzle to Dave and he worked out the answer immediately, making me realise I don't do enough thinking at the moment.

Jane was there (my exⁿ-girlfriend, who knew Lucy from school), which was weird. She looked wonderful, was back in essex being a lawyer. I missed her, we did mean a lot to each other, and went out a long time, and it was good, and I felt lucky to have had her. On the other hand, we still had nothing to *say* to each other, which makes me think it was probably right to let it go :( I think our lives matched well, but we didn't have much in common on a day to day level, if you see what I mean.

It was nostalgic, though, for instance having someone to roll their eyes if I say a mathmo-like sentence :)

Delta Yowai!

This week I have been addicted to an action-solitaire game (Every Extend, but it might as well have been any other I think :) ).

Only maybe one or two games a day, and each takes only a few minutes, but it's worrying: I always see the images from a game whenever I play too much, but now even when I sneeze, when my eyes close, the image hits me in the face. When I went to bed, I suddenly had the impression a large green hemisemitransparent cube was waiting in the dark to eat me.

The other game I was considering writing, way down the pipeline, would be of this mode. Can anyone think of a better description of the genre than action-solitaire? I mean, things like Tetris (except that tetris is a whole genre by itself by now, with millions of clones, some of which vary the idea and some which, well, don't) where the gameplay is random but getting more complicated, you need a small amount of strategy played out over a large time.

What other games are in this category? Things like "drop pipes into a square grid to keep something flowing through them and score points the further it goes" whatever you want to call it, though I don't like that one. Or asteroids, though that doesn't really have any strategy, just blasting.

It's the frustrating sort, where you always want one more go, but you know you need to concentrate, so it's boring to just keep playing, unlike progressive games where if you keep playing you get somewhere, or you face one bit you can't do and have to try later. But it's pleasing to keep improving and working out ways to keep scoring higher.

The ranks granted were all badly translated Japanese things, I think my favorite was when I bust 1000000 and was "Delta Yowai!" (Update: the next two were "MADAMADA ikuyo-" and "A++-", followed by, according to the internet: "OMEGA tuyoi" "MECHA MECHA" "UCHU- yabai" "YOU ARE GOD" :) )