Sleep statistics for 30 – 31 Jan
Went to bed / woke up: 01:18 / 08:27 | Total time: 7h 08m

Sleep statistics for 31 – 01 Feb
Went to bed / woke up: 23:21 / 06:30 | Total time: 7h 08m

Can you guess when I woke to tend to our son? Now I *know* when I woke at night…

Jet Set Willy (1984: ZX Spectrum), Sonic the Hedgehog (1991: Sega Megadrive), Monkey Island (1990: PC), Doom (1993: PC), Worms (1995: PC), Abe’s Oddysee (1997: PS1), Grand Theft Auto (1997: PC), Rainbow Six (1998: PC) and many more; they all chart a certain personal view of the evolution of console and computer gaming. And it’s incredible to think how things have changed.

I can mark eras of my life in the same way you might signpost your autobiographical memory with where you were living. Sad but true. It tends to be just the one game as I don’t devote masses of time to gaming – when I find a game that I like, I stick with it.

Recently, I persuaded my wife that a PS3 would be a great addition to our family because “a PS3 is so much more than just a games console – you can use it to view all those digital photos and videos of our son”. And I’m glad I did as I think I’ve found the game to mark the next era - LittleBigPlanet. This game is incredible. It has brought the traditional platform game into the future with a fun, creative and collaborative online world that is constantly changing and ever evolving. Irrespective of what it represents in terms of amazing media and technological innovation, it also represents a return to pure and simple platform based game-play, with a few twists. And, possibly most importantly, it is impossible not to feel happy playing this game. It looks like we’re going to have some fun with this one…

Polka Tables, originally uploaded by markrocky.

From our photography excursion (with Harvest Digital) on the South Bank using “Lomolitos” (mini Lomos), on Wednesday evening…

Vote Ken, originally uploaded by markrocky.

I thought there was something strange about these stencils I saw this morning.

Rumour has it they are part of a campaign against Banksy’s backing of Ken. Subtle. Most people will simply think Ken has gone all street and down with the kids.

[Edit: cycled past this morning and they've now been boarded over]

• Gmail CustomTime – never miss a deadline again
• TrustBanners – incredible mind-altering online advertising.
• Google buys Facebook – a bit close to the truth?
• Microsoft finally acquires Yahoo! – even closer?
• Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars

Lately there’s been a spate of negative blog entries and articles slating Facebook – and the furore surrounding Mr Scoble’s recent quarrel with Facebook pushed things even further. [Although some may argue that this simply served as an excellent PR pre-cursor to last week's announcement that Facebook (along with Google) were to join the Data Portability initiative.]

Is this the beginning of Facebook fatigue? In 2008, will Facebook go the way that Second Life went in 2007? Or is this simply the natural media/ public reaction to “hype”, as described in Gartner’s Hype Cycle, and we’re now in the “Trough of Disillusionment“? I have to admit that the tedious slew of unanswered invites in my inbox from zombies, pirates and vampires has sent me sliding down my own trough of Facebook disillusionment. Although, rather lazily, I do find it handy to have friends’ details in one place on the web – I use Facebook to arrange meeting after work or even to message someone, for example, as it is easier than digging around for their contact details. Will I still be doing this in 12 months? I certainly wasn’t a year ago, so who knows? Maybe Gartner does.

(video for “It’s all Over” by “The Broken Family Band”)

From the busy streets of Brixton, the blood red dot in the sky was beautiful but rather washed out by the orange glow of the street lights. That said – it’s not every Saturday night at 11 o’clock (when most people are more concerned about what club to go to) that you see all the people on Brixton high street looking skyward! Anyway – people in less urban settings got a fantastic show by the looks of it.

These young whipper snappers were watching keenly as an older kid scrawled his tag on a wall along London’s South Bank. It didn’t take long. Let’s hope the pupils of this nursery school of graffiti move on to a higher level of street art sooner rather than later. Am I getting old? These pesky kids. Grumble grumble… I’ll be complaining about uneven pavements next.

Anyway – while I am on the subject, when a particular piece turned up at the bottom of Bristol’s Park Street a few months ago (on the side of a sexual health clinic, I should add for the benefit of the picture), I heard Bristol City Council were debating whether it was public art and should be left. Funny that they start to see the potential tourism benefits of leaving this stuff after years spent cleaning it up. They certainly wouldn’t have even considered the fact a few years ago. Well – they eventually decided to let it stay and it promptly made the Visit Bristol tourist guide.