And here I go flying down the steps

And here I go flying down the steps -
Almost in somersaults - as in a dream.
And the day is springlike to the point of madness,
And the yard with its streets is - springlike!
And there is no salvation
From the storming devil in me.
Oh, how urgently I need to go
There where it's bluer than blue -
To splash in the puddles by the faucet
To frighten the pigeons away from the eaves!
How rapidly they change places -
Step, bound, leap -
The cold resonance of the doorway
And the sudden burn of the sky!
And there's a smell of tomcats and hops
From the dried flagstones.
And I pant with April
And shout to my brother - 'You look miserable!'


[Kiev, 1980] - Irina Ratushinskaya

自主制作アニメ 「フミコの告白」

Switch Accessible Card Maker

Help Kidz Learn just keep giving. Brand new is their highly accessible Card Maker, and I like it muchly. It has a beautifully simple interface, including one and two-switch modes. Card types presently include Birthdays, Easter, Halloween and Christmas. It's an experimental on-line activity, and perhaps a work in progress. If you have any suggestions for improvements or other types of cards, do drop them a line.

Over at the same place, they have a basic version of an Atari classic, called Brick Out. It's an excellent game to build tracking skills for users, who will hopefully then be able to move onto more involved games.

Added to the OneSwitch.org.uk Art area.

Switch Curling and the Accessible GameBase

Scott McKay is one of an ever growing army of lone and small-team coders writing accessible games. And thank goodness for them, because I can't see the mainstream doing very much at the moment. Scott's latest highly accessible switch game is the Winter Olympic and Paralympic sport of Curling. I won't waffle on as you can read a review on it over at the Accessible Gamebase with links to the on-line and downloadable versions. I like it lots.

Whilst you're there, you may like to take in these two beautifully surreal one-switch games: Dracula Cha Cha and Dr. Sanjay Gupta's Wacky Adventure Inside a Human Body. And abstract Eye-Tracker and Head-Tracker accessible game: El Beso.

Coming next? Last-gasp efforts to get fit enough to run the London Marathon (have you got bored of me saying - please sponsor me yet!?), Accessible Rock Band auctioned off to help me fund-raise a bit more, and an AT collective podcast including an Audio Gaming segment by me.

Coin Op poster

Fancy a massive pixel-art coin-op tribute poster? $25 USD (plus postage) will get you one. Use http://www.xe.com/ for a currency conversion. All profits go to SpecialEffect, so that's a doubly-good thing! Visit The Poster Cause Project to get a better look.

Genie Genie

Genie Genie is the latest from Shoot Your Mouth Off Films. If you like these, do see Nuts for Pudding, my favourite from them and their Country & Western spoof, 'Life in General'. You can get these on DVD too (top quality visuals) if you contact Karen Sheader at SYMO.

One Switch Commercial Break

Reasons to be cheerful: 1,2,3

1. New images of Earth. Nasa's most accurate yet. I don't like to brag to non-Earthlings, but our planet is very beautiful.
2. The power of Trololololololololololo to make people beam.
3. Just how creative some people are: Bathtub IV.

Consider this happy-filler whilst the OneSwitch Blog takes a bit of a laid back view to updates. Training for the London Marathon is taking up a good chunk of my efforts at the minute. Thank heavens for Add N to (X), bananas and ice-packs. And if you can view it, what an inspiration! Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man on BBC3 and iPlayer. And please sponsor me!!!

1,2,3 Links thanks to the power of Twitter: Reid Kimball, Trabasack and I forget.

New One-Switch Game Reviews

Three mighty fine one-switch PC games just reviewed at SpecialEffect's Accessible GameBase: Pax Britannica a multi-player strategic shoot-em-up. Half PI D Golf five minutes of space-age golf. High High Rocket a one or two-player super-cute happy-house platformer cum shoot-em-up. All of these came about from the Gamma 4 competition, with the winners due to be announced on the 10th of March.