Yesterday was the occasion of the bi-annual garage clean / sort.
I found my Sony MiniDisc player complete with several MD’s (AJ – I have a shiny blue disc full of VNV Nation. I’ve learned to smile since so do you want it back? ;) ) and it all appears to be in working order. I have no idea what to do with it though. None. I recall saying to drDave many moons ago that the MD was cool and that mp3 players weren’t that hot. He said that as Japan had moved so would everyone and he was not wrong. Be good to have something to use it for. (I have the same problem with my Psion 5, it too just sits there unemployed.)

I have a couple of boxes of books in there and as I’m down to my last book – De Niro bio – I dug around. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff is excellent. Totally recommended for everyone. Brings necessary perspective to tasks. Another was Generation X. How to get attention – make your book cover bright pink. I’ve read it before, I’m sure I’ll remember key parts but it’s time to read again. In – I think – 2000 I was running a group home on the outskirts of the city and one day on the way in bought a copy of the now-defunct Arcade magazine. With it came an abridged paperback of Game Over. If you are into videogames and you haven’t read it consider this an essential read. It’s also an increasingly rare one – a UK seller has it in for £36.27. Very good book.
Lastly was Microserfs. As I grabbed this and other books it fell open at page 340. And what do we have on there? A tag cloud. Okay so it’s called a ‘subconscious file’ but it looks like a tag cloud. For some reason I found that very amusing. I also thought it was an excellent book and it too is now queued for re-discovery.

And I’ve cleared a section of shelving for the video games. Each system (Megadrive, SNES, N64, Lynx, some GB/GBA/GBC, PS, DC) needs a box of it’s own. Dust is easily removed but deterioration of the boxes and carts due to being moved around isn’t so good. I think I need to trawl ebay for some classics too.