Summon Creature of Habit: my experience with HabitRPG

The past few weeks I've been trying to make better use of my time than simply watching YouTube videos and neglecting to practise my languages. I've already told you how useful I find Duolingo as a tool, but the reason I've been using it daily is because it's one of the habits I've been training myself to pick up, thanks to an ingenious little tool which has been helping me pick up better habits.

It's called HabitRPG, and it works like a traditional 8-bit RPG: you get hit points and experience - you gain the latter by ticking things off your to-do list, and you lose the former by avoiding your daily tasks (for me, that's usually language practice and writing). Okay, so maybe not entirely like an 8-bit RPG. But the principle is the same; if you lose all your HP, I assume you die. I haven't been apathetic enough to try this yet.

The new Robocop: It's good, but it's no Verhoeven...

So, as you might have guessed from the title, I went to see the new, action-packed reboot of Robocop today. It tells a pretty similar story to the 1987 original: rendered comatose thanks to a bunch of criminals, Alex Murphy is rebuilt as the titular Robocop, a robotic police officer who, in between snippets of satirical news shows, single-handedly cleans up the streets of Detroit. But when his human side begins to override his robotic body, he goes on a quest for revenge against those who made him what he is. In fact, the most notable difference is that it is not a ridiculous jab at big-money corporations, but is in fact a serious movie where they try to play the whole "robotic police officer" thing straight.

A Fun New Way to Learn Languages

I remember my school days, spent lounging at the back of Spanish class during my A-levels, idly doodling in my notepad or else trying to keep up with the rest of the class as I desperately tried to recall the Spanish for "Lorca uses lots of phallic imagery in his plays". The thing is, I wasn't all that bad at Spanish; it's just that, compared to the others, I wasn't all that good. Much of that was of course down to me: I rarely took the time to look at the vocabulary or revise until exams came by, at which point it was already too late. I seem to recall doodling during much of my preparation time for the oral exam, too, actually.

But the past month or so has led me back into languages, through a route I hadn't hitherto given much thought. With the advent of smaller, faster technology we have more and more ways to access information, a fact which Muzzy and Rosetta Stone have taken into account with their DVDs and computer software. But me? I've gone for something a little smaller, more... handheld.

Movies, Oscars and a pre-Valentine's Day Apology...

I feel like Inside Llewyn Davis has really drawn the short straw in being out this year. In time for the Oscars this February, it's netted just two nominations (for cinematography and sound mixing - how did this miss Best original score?!), coming up against such giants as American Hustle and Gravity. Which seems a shame, really, given my opinions.