I always wondered why Australian TV shows started later than the advertised times. Channel Nine being the worst offender in recent years. But now, thanks to Max Barry's ability to read the truth is now out there:

“Precise start times would allow people to burn DVDs of our programs like crazy and push them out over the internet.”

After reading that paragraph a tiny vent opened on the side of my head and half my brain floated out of my skull in atomised form.

Today it occured to me that a couple of games I have in my rotation have a similar theme: active engagment of the mind. I've found that F.E.A.R. and Brain Training both tend to push and expand my mind in very interesting ways.

With Brain Traning I'm make a conscious effort to expand and improve those parts of my brain that are becoming sluggish and dormant (well that's the theory anyway). In terms of memory recall and basic maths skills I've seen a huge improvement after playing it for just a few weeks, but I'm not sure what else I should be looking for. Brain Training has also cemented the fact that I just plain suck at Sudoku. I tried a few of them and failed miserably.

What F.E.A.R does pull my mind out of it's comfort zone and forces me to face creepy, spooky and unervering images. And it does it all within a linear game mechanic. I'm forced to view and deal with hallucinations and "blink or you'll miss it" ghostly apparitions, amongst other things. The game has you interacting with this visual and auditory input in such a way that I don't think it would've had quite the same effect, had I been given the opportunity to to choose a "run away" option.

I guess it's true. You really do need to open your mind up to new things in order to grow.

I've been having a lot of fun with my Flickr account lately. Most of that fun I can attribute to actually utilising the website's community. Groups like Score Me and Critical Masses have been a great learning experience for me, and the feeling you get when your first photo breaches 100 views is just great.

On the other hand all this learning seems to have made me a lot more critical of my shots. I took 27 shots on Thursday and Friday as I was up in Daylesford on a retreat. I can honestly say that not one is good enough to go up on Flickr. Whether I'm just being too hard on myself is just something to ponder.

I know I've been quite remise in my postings of late, but I'll try to do better.

Rather than do a brain dump (which is what I'd usually do after such a long time between posts) I'll just write about Friday night.

For the longest time I've wanted to try churrascaria: many types of meat cooked on a large skewer. As luck would have it, there's a number of resturants in Melbourne that serve it. The more famous being BlueFire Grill. I went into the Melbourne Central franchise with high hopes (at $50 a head you'd want to), but in the end I wasn't really that impressed.
Service took a long time to get started, but once it was on a roll I didn't have an issue. The meats themselves weren't exactly up to par. i.e. beef should be pink, not grey. The lamb and "sausage" made up for the "too-fatty" chicken and the "what the hell happened to this?" calamari.

With spirits and stomachs hanging low we wandered next door to Hoyts and took in Superman Returns.
It speaks volumes that for two hours after the movie ended I was unable to sleep. After reading a few reviews I'm glad nobody has said "Oh, but Superman doesn't do that", and I'm glad that Bryan Singer was able to create such a good film considering all the on- and off-screen baggage he had to carry with him.