Well I certainly got my wish for some colder weather this past week. It’s been great, sunshine, clear evening skies, and I get to wear my new winter jacket from Christmas.

When it’s especially clear at night, we can see an impressive amount of objects in the sky for being relatively close to the perma-noon of central London.

We popped along to a talk by the Norwood Society on the history of Anerley Hill – a short, but jam-packed with history, stretch of road very local to us. It was the first time in a while I had been to a history talk (last one being by a friend of mine at Guildhall Library back in November). It’s always nice to get excited about new stories and objects that are pretty much right under your nose. I ended up with a long list of notes of things to look further into – always the sign of a good talk.

Gaming wise, I’ve been on my iPad the last few days of all things. That’s because one of the absolute best sleeper games on the Nintendo 3DS has been remade for iPad OS. What is this game you wonder? What if I told you how much fun you could have horse racing by playing solitaire. Yes it sounds bonkers, it kinda looks bonkers, but holy smokes is Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! fun to play. The original game came out on the 3DS in 2013 and since has been on many eShop ‘you need to download this game’ lists (especially with Nintendo shutting down the eShop for 3DS and Wii U very soon).

I’ve also been playing some Super Paper Mario on the Steamdeck (👀). It’s the Wii’s entry for the Paper Mario series, and though it has its flaws, it’s not without its charm and fun. I keep putting it down and picking it up again; I don’t recall ever just blasting through the entire game like I did recently with The Origami King on the Switch. Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to actually complete the most questionable of the Paper Mario games – Sticker Star. That sticker mechanic didn’t really get thought through. To jump on an enemy Mario needs to have a jump sticker in his inventory does shift the gameplay from action/rpg to inventory management.

Oh and work has been BUSY! But still good busy. Hoping I’ll have some inspiration for a new post over on my Mac admin blog soon.

Finally, on Sunday Liz and I went and had a look around the new Battersea Power Station configuration. It’s a ‘trying to be posh’ shopping centre now, but It was still really nice to get to see the insides even if it’s now lined with boxy shops.

It got me thinking about how lovely it would have been if it could have been a spiritual successor to Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre and be used for shops that were less so ‘destinations’ and more useful for local folks, as well as offering space for small local business like at E&C. Have a big supermarket, and also that small African fabric shop, and a Polish café, and an Asian supermarket, and anything else a trader can think of. Alas, it’s full of single word named clothes shops, a handful of food places trying to ‘upscale’ your usual ‘street food’ offerings and expensive watch shops. At least the bar looked really neat, housed in one of the old control rooms.