Today we had the opportunity to get annoyed at the one who set us a task, gave us eight minutes to complete it, and talked for four of those eight minutes, thus making it rather hard to concentrate on the activity.

To be fair, I would hate to train my colleagues and would do a far worse job.

Besides, that’s not the point of this post. It is, indeed, just the preamble to explain why I’m currently at home playing Mario Strikers Charged and celebrating the fact of having finally won a few games— two of them against online opposition. I play a passing game (this is a euphemism: it means method of play in which one player keeps losing the ball to the opposition but sometimes mistakenly gives the ball to a member of his own team) thus my possession averages at around 28%.

Defensively my playing style leaves a lot to be desired but I’ve been learning the advantages of the shoulder barge as a means of winning the ball.

He did, after all, spend much of the 1980s playing its BBC Micro equivalent.

In other news, I had a premature attempt at an online game of Mario Strikers Charged this evening. Someone somewhere on the internet is wandering around with a broad grin having beaten me 83-0. I’ve now finished the training and had my first victory: it was against Kate, who hasn’t finished the training yet.

I was quite taken aback at how responsive an online game can be. I assume the programming involves all sorts of jiggery-pokery and other technical stuff to get it to run so smoothly.