Oxygen Not Included, a game so deep you can drown

I have a problem, you need to help me…  I can’t stop playing Oxygen Not Included.  It’s a game where you start playing, have a goal in mind, then three hours later you’re wondering why it has got so dark around you and where everyone else has gone. It has a wonderfully simple premise, you…

Two aspects of human behaviour that I find fascinating

We often forget it but, as a species, the human race is amazing.  We are so inventive and creative, just look around you, at this moment you are surrounded by clever technological marvels that make your life easier or enrich it in some way. Even things we take for granted and see as mundane are…

Stop with the self-driving cars, I want an electric car

I don’t know where you live, at least not until I complete “the device”, but petrol (gas to those in the US) is far too expensive in Australia.  What gets me the most however is not  the price, it’s the price fluctuations, one week it will be $1.10/litre, the next it will be $1.30/litre and…

Netflix and their ever changing pictures for programmes

I quite like Netflix, despite it being set up so that you must give it your credit card details before it will tell you what it offers, an extremely dubious set up if you ask me.  This is akin to a shopkeeper demanding your credit card before they will let you into their shop.  But…

The problem of super heroes, super villains and their amazing inventions

When we tell a story we are reaching out our hand to the reader and asking them a question. Will you come on an adventure with me? It’s the grand conceit of writing, we want you to switch off certain parts of your brain for a while and come for a ride with us while…

Questions that get the little grey cells firing

Apparently Google has over 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs in its index. Of course not all of those URLs correspond with pages of information and the 1 trillion figure was quoted in 2008, the amount of information on the web in 2019 must have far surpassed that. It’s important to remember that Google only indexes…

Spam/scam emails are weird

If you have an email account then the chances are high that you’ve received a spam or scam email.  Whether it’s an enticing offer to enlarge your penis (go for it girls!) or there is an African prince who’s just desperate to give you millions of dollars but needs your account details first, everyone has…

The wasteful immorality of (Canon) printers and printer ink

Like many people I have a printer at home.  It’s a Canon 3660, it’s simple, easy to use and was cheap to buy.  My kids will be returning to school in a couple of weeks (at the time of writing) and the printer has run out of ink.  Not wanting to have to rush to…

My feature wishlist for (PC) games

I have a confession to make, I’m a gamer and I play computer games. In fact I spend a substantial fraction of my free time playing them and have done for over thirty years. From Pong to Fallout New Vegas I’ve literally played thousands of games spanning every genre you can think of (well nearly…

I propose a new citizenship test

So another Australia Day has rolled around and as I watched the groups of people frolicking and enjoying themselves down at New Farm park it got me thinking about the citizenship test that all wannabe citizens must take. As full disclosure, Rebecca and I became citizens about five years ago. It was pretty simple, we…