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Nintendo 3DS - Everything we know so far

2010-09-29T22:30:00.003Z

For those who don't know, there's a new DS coming out. Not a new design for the DS (like the Lite, DSi and DSiXL), but a brand-new console. It's called the 3DS, and it has a lot of cool new things. Earlier today Nintendo held a massive conference and gave us a lot of new information. This is a guide to everything we know so far.

The final 3DS design

So what makes the 3DS different to the old DS?

Lots of things. I'll go into more detail later, but here's a quick summary:

The biggest selling point of the 3DS is that it plays games in 3D (just like you'll have seen in the cinema) but you don't need to wear glasses. It has graphics that are much better than the old DS (I'll let you judge for yourself later in the videos section). It has higher resolution screens, new software and hardware features, and obviously a load of new, exciting games. And yes, it still plays old DS games. Keep reading to hear the specific details.

When is it coming out, and how much will it be?

The 3DS is coming out in Japan on February 26th 2011 for ¥25,000 in two colours: blue/black (shown above) and just black.

For USA and Europe we were told it would launch in March 2011 but we weren't given a price. My housemate Pete has done some fantastic research into the exchange rate and pricing patterns in the history of the DS series and has estimated the UK price to be between £189 and £217, but probably nearer the higher end of that range.
Of course the practical price you'll have to pay for one will only become clear once it appears on retail websites, because buying a console is about finding obscure bundles and bargains. I may assist with that nearer the time...

How does the 3D work?

You don't need to wear glasses, you just hold the DS in front of you. The technology uses an effect known as the parallax barrier. This means the screen has twice as many pixels as normal, and uses precision slits to send the light from the pixels to different eyes to trick your mind into thinking it's seeing something in 3D.

What this means practically is that if you're the person holding the console, you can see the game in 3D, just like the 3D you'll see in the cinema. If you're not sitting directly in front of the 3DS, you won't get the 3D effect. After reading lots of reports from people who've tried the 3DS it seems to be agreed that unless you go out of your way to tilt or turn the 3DS, the 3D effect seems to work consistently without you having to hold your hands awkwardly. People also seemed to agree that there was something slightly magical about seeing 3D coming from a handheld and without wearing glasses. However, some people with certain eye problems were less enthusiastic. If you have an eye problem I'd recommend trying one before you buy it to see if it works well for you.

Of course if you don't want to play the game in 3D (or if you want to have the 3D "less deep") for medical reason or personal preference you can adjust a slider on the side of the 3DS to shift it between full-depth 3D and complete 2D. As with all 3D technology, children under 7 should not use it in 3D as it can damage their eyesight - but since you can turn the 3D off, they can still play with it (probably with supervision).

How much more powerful than the old DS is it?

The precise technical specs are still a mystery, but we've seen a lot of gameplay footage and I must say it's pretty impressive. Judge for yourself by watching some of the videos below.

The screens are higher resolution than before. The touch-screen (bottom-screen) is now 320x240 and the 3D-screen (top-screen) is 800x240, which works out as 400x240 per eye. The old DS had both screens as 256x192.

What other hardware improvements are there?

The 3DS has a "slider" that works like an analogue stick. Reports say that it's very comfortable (unlike the PSP's analogue stick). The d-pad is still there from the old DS, which gives it extra buttons to be used if needed.

The 3DS is roughly the same size and shape as the DS lite. It's obviously a lot smaller than the original DS or the DSiXL. Wikipedia has a comprehensive comparison, if you're interested in the specifics.

The stylus is longer than previously because it extends.

The 3DS has the same 0.3 megapixel (640x480) cameras as the DSi. It has one camera on the inside and two on the outside so it can take 3D photos.

It also has a home button (similar to the Wii's home button), a wireless communications button, and a gyroscope for tilting the console.

The 3DS still has the SD-card slot that the DSi had, and it continues to not have the Gameboy Advance slot from the original DS and DS lite. Whilst the 3DS can play DS games perfectly, it can't do anything that requires the Gameboy Advance slot (so no DS rumble pak or accessories like Guitar Hero).

It also comes with a 2GB SD card and a charging stand.

What about software features?

Below in the videos section is a video showing most of the new features for the 3DS, but here's a summary.

It looks like it has a built-in web browser. You can use the home button to swap quickly between different activities like browsing the web and playing actual games. For example, if you've got a racing game, it might trade ghost data with passers by. Super Street Fighter IV has the option to challenge nearby players to a fight (shown in the videos below).

Even when you're not playing games, the 3DS can connect to the internet to download updates and high scores etc. It can also connect to other 3DS systems as you pass them and transfer data (depending on the game of course).

It can do augmented reality games, which is where you point the camera at real-world objects and the console displays things on the screen that correspond to what the camera sees. It's easier to understand in the video.

It has a Virtual Console for Gameboy games?

The Wii has a shop where you can buy downloadable games. This is split into "WiiWare" for new games and products and the "Virtual Console" for retro games. The Wii's Virtual Console lets you buy games from the following retro consoles: NES, SNES, N64, Master System, Megadrive, Turbo-Grafx-16, Neo Geo, Commodore 64, MSX and Arcade.

The DSi introduced "DSiWare" for new games and products. Now the 3DS introduces a Virtual Console for Gameboy games. It's currently confirmed that Gameboy and Gameboy Color games will be supported, but it's unsure about Gameboy Advance games.

3DS Virtual Console promotional material

Will I need to keep my DS/DSi?

The 3DS will play regular DS games just fine unless they use the Gameboy Advance slot (that slot was removed with the DSi). If you have any DSiWare downloaded you may be able to transfer it to the 3DS. Nintendo have said they plan to allow this but details are sketchy and not all data may be transferable. It hardly sounds as good as the 360 or PS3's system, but it's a step in the right direction for Nintendo.

So what games are coming out for it?

One of the the most exciting things about the 3DS is the games. Not only do they look great with all the new features (3D, better graphics, better control etc.) but it looks like games developers are treating the console very seriously and giving it a lot of support. Here are some of the notable games announced for the 3DS:
[UPDATE 30/09/10: Some games have been marked in red as launch titles]

Resident Evil Revelations (in the style of Resident Evil 4 and 5)
Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D
Super Street Fighter IV (not a cut-down version like the iPhone) [Launch Title]
Ninja Gaiden
Dead or Alive: Dimensions
Kingdom Hearts 3D
Super Monkey Ball [Launch Title]
Sonic
Animal Crossing
Kid Icarus: Uprising
StarFox 64 3D (remake of the N64 game Lylat Wars - it's amazing)
Nintendogs + cats [Launch Title]
Mario Kart
Pilot Wings Resort [Launch Title]
Paper Mario 3D
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [Launch Title]
Bomberman
Pac-Man & Galaga
Ridge Racer [Launch Title]
Harvest Moon
Professor Layton and the Mask of the Miracle [Launch Title]
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory 3D
Driver 3D
Megaman Legends 3
Assassin's Creed
Batman
A Boy and his Blob
Final Fantasy
Metal Gear Solid
A Harmonix game

Videos

Here's some videos to demonstrate some of the many things I just said. I recommend watching the first two in particular.

Video of most 3DS games in action

New features

Super Street Fighter IV trailer & features

Metal Gear Solid 3 Demonstration

That last video isn't an actual game, but a demo of what Metal Gear Solid 3 would look like on the 3DS to show off the hardware. I hear it looks awesome in 3D!

It finally happened...

2010-04-23T01:12:00.001Z

For those who don't know, Farmville is an extremely popular Facebook game. Unfortunately conversations about Farmville usually end up being fanboys or anti-fanboys. To explain:

It tends to be that people love it or hate it, but those who hate it often only do so because it's so popular. They find it socially pleasing to not play Farmville, and will act like those who use it are inferior. That's an obvious exaggeration, but you can see that attitude with a number of other things. Have you ever found yourself looking down on Trekkies or people who collect Pokemon cards? Or have you ever had someone make out that you're stupid because of the computer Operating System you use, or because of something you like?

"Fanboy" is a label for people with a certain attitude towards something they love. Fanboys don't listen to reason, they simply maintain that their favourite is the best and the others are rubbish without due reason. For example: if someone says Xbox 360 is the best games console and the Wii sucks but they've never spent much time with a Wii. Fanboys are prejudice, often rude and usually look down on people who don't share their view. Anti-fanboys are guilty of the same crimes but they dislike the subject, instead of liking it.

So to go back to Farmville, the anti-fanboys say Farmville is rubbish but they've usually never tried the game, but they see it appearing all over Facebook and they want to feel superior by not giving into the trend. This is a dumb, prejudice view. What's the most surprising, is that this same war happens over Facebook itself. I find people here and there who feel they're superior for having not given in and used Facebook. Get over it - Facebook's useful and fun for most of us. I find it staggering that people can be fanboys for Facebook and against Farmville and not see their contradiction.

How do you avoid being a fanboy? Stop being prejudice and investigate something for yourself. You're allowed to like Facebook and you're allowed to not like it. It's fun and useful for some people, but others don't need it. That's not the same as saying "it doesn't matter whether this product is good or bad, someone will find it works for them." Being able to correctly critique the things you like as well as the things you don't like is crucial to not being a fanboy. And this is what this post is about.

A while back I decided to find out what all the fuss was about Farmville, so I started playing. Several months later and I can't stand it. I see the appeal and the good in it, and if people want to keep playing it then that's fine by me, but it finally frustrated me too much and I quit. This isn't an anti-fanboy rant, this is a carefully considered weighing up of both sides, resulting in an informed opinion.

So what is Farmville? It's a farm simulation game. As the player, you plough land, plant seeds and harvest them later to get money. Different seeds need a different amount of time to grow, but in all cases you'll open Farmville, plant the seeds, wait and then return at the appropriate time. The timing isn't strict, there's a lot of latitude, which is good. Clearly the game is designed to be something you can drop into for five minutes and have some fun with before going back to what you were doing. It's a successful video game market - it's what helps make games like Solitaire, Minesweeper and Tetris so popular. So in Farmville you turn up, do stuff, then leave. What's your reward? Money and experience. You get experience for a variety of different activities, and when you have enough experience you gain a level. With the money you get you can buy things from the shop. The higher your level, the more you can buy.

Apart from alternate means of money/experience income (animals and plants), you can buy two types of things from the shop: things that affect gameplay directly (tractors to plough more squares of land at once etc.) and decorations. Decorations are anything from fences and bushes to buildings and lakes. You see, part of the appeal is building your farm and making it look great. The whole game looks cute, and when you finally have a little fenced off area for your ducks with a duck pond, that's pretty cute. But this is really where the game goes downhill.

I've been breaking down the game heavily for this summary, and you may have spotted something - the players are being asked to grind. Grinding is a gaming term that means "engaging in repetitive and/or non-interesting gameplay to gain access to other features in the game." This describes Farmville perfectly. You turn up, harvest your crops/trees/animals, plant new crops and leave. It's repetitive and boring - this is proven by the fact that some of the rewards are designed entirely to make your job easier: the tractors to speed up ploughing/harvesting, and they've recently introduced methods of harvesting all your animals/trees quicker.

Grinding is often an element in other games, for example levelling up your Pokemon before fighting the next enemy, but Farmville's gameplay consists of nothing but grinding. We can even compare Farmville to another farm simulator: Harvest Moon. In Harvest Moon there is a story, an on-going game progression. There's also consequences for your actions, whereas in Farmville it's extremely hard to make mistakes. Farmville is nothing but grinding.

So why do people do it? Well it's a nice little break from whatever you were doing. Sure, I'd say playing Solitaire is better for your mind than grinding (which is by definition repetitive and boring). But I'd say most Farmville players want the rewards from grinding. They want to get to the next level so they can buy the next decoration. They want to get the next building, or the new item. Farmville's creators know this, because they constantly bring out new things to work for. Special items appear in the shop for a limited time, creating a new incentive to keep working. Farmville is the master of coming up with new things to keep you involved.

They say you can visit your friends' farms to grind there for more experience for both of you. You can post messages to your Facebook wall for everything that happens, be it a celebration for levelling up, a notice to let players know of a certain feature or a free gift to them. You can give free gifts to your friends and ask for free gifts in return. Certain holiday-season gift-giving sprees appear where your goal is to collect as many as you can of a certain item in a month or two and then cash them in for prizes, and the only way to get them is to give them as gifts to each other. But at the end of the day, all they're doing is creating a new pretty-looking prize to keep people grinding.

So maybe I'm cynical about it - but this is cynicism through experience, not prejudice. I can't help but feel this way when Farmville asks me to advertise it to my friends. Then they say if I pay them real money I can have a special type of in-game money that I can use to buy special decorations you can't get normally. They say if I play some of their other games I can buy special decorations. They say I can vote for the next new object to be included in the game. They say if I give them my e-mail address I can get more prizes. They say I should install their internet browser toolbar. They've even released gift cards you can buy in stores so your friend can have more of their special money.

What is there to like about a game that is nothing but grind (repetition and boredom) and where the developers' sole job is to keep you interested by giving you new shiny objects and constantly extend their grasp and make more money. Sure, the cuteness is appealing, and having something to do in a quick break is fun, but the more I played it the more cynical I got. I told myself I'd wait for them to do something really appalling to give me an excuse to stop, but do you know what happened in the end? I just got bored. I forgot about it and didn't go on it for a few days. So I deleted it from my Facebook account. It's already proving difficult to make them stop sending me e-mails. Heaven help anyone who downloaded their internet toolbar.

Next time you want something to do for a five-minute break? Don't take up an addiction to grinding, just play Solitaire.

Is art above the artist?

2010-04-19T23:00:00.002Z

Isn't it strange when you've experienced someone's creative works and then you find out a bit about them and they're not as awesome as you imagined. This keeps happening to me, and I often find it quite depressing.

Alan Moore wrote Watchmen (frequently hailed as the best comic ever for its intriguing story, political commentary and mastery of the medium) among many other great comics, but a brief look into his personal life reveals that he's not quite the wise master that I'd like to imagine. Aside from the fact that he's a self-professed anarchist, a practising magician and worships the snake-deity Glycon (which he openly acknowledges to be a complete hoax), he also has several stubborn views about comics that I don't quite hold to. He has a big thing against his comics being turned into films, and whilst I agree it's not the same, I love the Watchmen film. But Moore says people can make films of his works as long as he removes himself completely from the process. As well as dis-owning the film adaptations, he's also retrospectively said he dislikes some of his work, including the fantastic Batman comic: A Killing Joke, the quintessential Joker story. He said it wasn't saying anything interesting. He's also fallen out with various people he's worked for multiple times, and though I'm sure much of it wasn't his fault, some people do tend to find trouble more often than the rest of us.

One of my favourite indie video games of the last few years was Braid. Made by one man (with an artist and two composers), it was a puzzle-platform game that asked you to solve ingeniously time-power puzzles, presented beautifully. It wasn't perfect, but it had so many clever moments and a stunning final level. But then I did some research into Jonathan Blow (the man who made it). He's not a horrible person or anything, but I found he felt a little too arrogantly "arty" and he has many video game design philosophies that I completely disagree with. I just felt a little disappointed that he wasn't the genius I'd imagined.

Then there's occasions when you realise that the creators don't even understand why what they made was so good. George Lucas has famously proved in the Star Wars prequel trilogy that he doesn't remotely understand what made the original films (and their mythology) so appealing.

After making the near-perfect Mario Kart DS, Nintendo tried to change the drifting system for Mario Kart Wii and managed to accidentally break it by not understanding why it worked in the first place.

Sega prove repeatedly that they don't understand why their original Sonic the Hedgehog games got to be so loved.

It's not necessarily that I have anything against these people, apart from George Lucas who's both a bit of an idiot and he's done a few things through arrogance that I really don't agree with. But whilst I don't see eye-to-eye with Alan Moore or Jonathan Blow, and whilst I think Nintendo and Sega could do with thinking a little bit harder before making some of their decisions, I don't have anything against them personally.

When I really connect with a creation, it speaks to me personally and I respect it for what it is. When I find that the creator isn't as perfect as the creation, that illusion breaks somewhat. But it's to be expected. Not all childrens writers are friendly, not all comedians are happy. Though we do put a bit of ourselves in what we create, we're only human - we creators cannot hope to live up to the feeling we hope to inspire in others with our works.

Or do you disagree with my summary at the end? How do you feel about what you create? Or can you remember times when the creator of something you loved wasn't as good as the creation you enjoyed. I'm confident there are plenty of really famous examples that I can't quite remember right now...

Growing friendships - a quick thought

2010-04-16T23:27:00.000Z

We all have lots of friends. We see them every day, at Uni or work, around the house maybe, at Church, at wherever we go. With the friends you see regularly it's far very easy to just interact with them and go your separate ways at the end. Friendships are just there, they just happen.

But what happens when you view a friendship as something that can move forward and evolve? Something that isn't taken for granted, something you put time and effort into growing.

Do your friendships move forward or do they just exist around the rest of your life? When was the last time you just went for it with a friendship? Took risks to move closer, threw yourself into it, gave it your all, made it something special.

This post is just a little thought whilst I work on my short story. I've said this many times in this blog and I say it once again - I want to get closer to my friends! Next time you talk to me, let's trust each other a bit more and really have a great time together.

Misinterpretation

2010-04-13T17:54:00.007Z

Click on the image to see it if the sidebar cuts it off.

I've recently had one of my stories misinterpreted, but I took that to mean that I'd failed at conveying my message. On the other hand, the same person read a different story of mine and shared with me their thoughts on what a character was thinking. I hadn't written that characters thoughts, so hearing someone's interpretation of it was interesting (and always is).
Surviving the World is a webcomic that doesn't take itself all that seriously, yet unexpected truths often arise from his musings. So what do you think of his message in this comic? Are stories (and poetry, other arts etc.) meant to successfully convey your message to the reader, or is art about inspiration and different interpretations show they've connected to your work uniquely? Why did I feel differently about my friends different interpretations?
Discuss!

Should art & creations be updated?

2010-04-11T23:17:00.006Z

Do you ever find it frustrating that some types of art/creations grow out of date?

I used to have a blog where I would review video games. I enjoy knowing things about games - I love collecting the knowledge, and people who realise this will often come to me and ask me for advice or information. The point of my reviews blog was that it was going to be a place where people could come and find that information stored and ordered neatly. Ignoring the fact that this was a task for too big for a single person, the most depressing issue I came across was how fast the reviews went out of date. I've heard some people complain at those of us who review retro games. They say we do this for our own pleasure rather than any practical use, since everyone knows about those games now, they were reviewed at the time. I disagree - most of my friends have no idea what the differences are between the first three Super Mario Bros games, and with the rise of retro services like the Wii's Virtual Console, knowing which games are worth playing is useful. It's especially useful to know which games are still fun today in 2010, as opposed to reading a review from 1985. So that was part of my blog's principle: to give a definitive opinion on each game taking into account factors like that. But within months I was having to go back and update old reviews to take into account new developments. For example: sure a few months back my review took into account all similar games, but when a better game comes out the entire review needs to be re-done. This distressed me.

Other art/creations suffer from this issue as well as reviews. Sticking to the subject of video games for convenience - many video games get re-made, because that one game can be done better with new technology. They update the games much like I updated the reviews, to provide the best possible experience to people in the present. But they're not required to. I was watching my sister play Lego Star Wars earlier. It has a co-op feature that makes the game great fun with a friend, but it has the unfortunate habit of struggling when the players move too far away. The camera often only follows one of them, letting the other player die. In Lego Indiana Jones 2 (the sixth game in this Lego series) they introduced a fantastic feature: when the players move too far apart, the game smoothly draws a line down the middle of the screen and they enter split-screen mode. When the players reunite, the screens join and the line fades out. It's stunning. But now I'm wishing they re-made Lego Star Wars with this addition. That creation is now out of date. It's not the best experience 2010 can offer.

Other creations would not do well to be updated. George Lucas has walked dangerous ground by updating his original Star Wars films several times. Some people felt they were improvements, but some people didn't. He seems to have followed this idea I had with my reviews of trying to make a "definitive" version. Ignoring for a second his improvements to the visuals, one major change he made in the latest release of Return of the Jedi was to remove the actor who plays Anakin's ghost at the very end, and he's added the actor who played Anakin in the prequels. This way when someone comes to watch all of the films in the future they are consistent. Rather than each one being a product of their time, he strives to make all six films work together with the knowledge we possess here in the present. But fans weren't all that pleased.

Is that an issue with the fans, or an issue with the principle? Do people just hate the changes to something they know and love (particularly when those changes reference something they hate), or is art actually purer when left alone. Does it show its place in history more if it's left untouched? Is the retro feel part of the charm? Does the update defy the art its integrity?
Shakespeare used many concepts (social, cultural etc.) that often have to be explained to modern school classrooms, yet we'd be shocked at the idea of re-writing Shakespeare and presenting the new version in the classroom to be studied. But then again people constantly modernise Shakespeare for TV/film.

What do you think? Are art & creations better left how it was originally, or is it better to update it to make it the best it can be in the present day?

Doctor Who and Story-telling Theory

2010-04-09T20:51:00.007Z

Yesterday the BBC revealed the best-kept secret in the UK video games industry. Apparently they have been working on a Doctor Who video game since January 2009. My initial (and expected) reaction was to brush the game aside since almost all video games based on TV or film are truly awful. But it seems they knew people would think that, and have presented a number of good reasons why this won't be the case for their game. They're approaching this idea in the right way.

For a start, they have enough famous people on-board to warrant attention. Matt Smith and Karen Gillan (the stars of the new Doctor Who series) will be voicing the characters, so no awful voice-actors pretending to be the stars. The scripts will be written by Steven Moffat (the new lead writer), Phil Ford (who wrote "The Waters of Mars" from the last series) and James Moran (who wrote "The Fires of Pompeii"). The composer who writes the music for the TV series will also be on-board. The production values should be as high as a real Doctor Who episode, which is co-incidentally what they're going for.

The new TV series is thirteen episodes long, and the four video game episodes (each released separately during the TV series' run) are designed to be part of the same experience. The BBC are well aware that the phenomenon of Doctor Who extends far beyond the weekly episode. The younger fans buy magazines and toys, and probably view content on the website. I gather "Doctor Who Confidential" (the behind the scenes programme, shown straight after the episode each week) is particularly popular. So where should the series expand to? Interactive story-telling.

Just as the BBC understand that most gamers are hesitant with TV/film-licensed video games, they realise that most non-gamers are hesitant with video games. A lot of non-gamers are under the mistaken impression that all video games are about shooting people, or violence, or fast reaction times. I'm sure a lot of them don't see that those games aren't mindless. But as my mother has recently discovered, video games are a vast medium that has something for everyone. The range of interactive entertainment stretches far beyond shooting people on Xbox Live. The Doctor Who Adventure Game is set to show people that.

The game is designed in the style of old adventure games like Monkey Island - but with alterations to make it fit with the audience. Since they're appealing to an audience from the very young to the very old, they don't want puzzles that will have players scratching their heads for hours. They want a game that keeps moving, and whilst it won't guide players by the hand, the goal is to make it so that everyone can complete it with out too much difficulty. The aim is to tell an interactive story, not to defeat the player.

Adventure games are some of the best games for telling stories. They ditch quick reflexes and fast-paced action and instead present the player with a story-driven experience about solving puzzles and making plot decisions. It's entirely intellectual, and about providing the best story possible. This works well for Doctor Who, and could go a long way to convince the series' vast audience that you don't need a trained trigger-finger to enjoy a video game.

One of the most convincing reasons to give the game a go is that it's free. The BBC can't charge for this sort of content, so the episodes will be released for free on PC and Mac during the run of the new series. Hopefully the graphic options will be flexible enough that any Doctor Who fan could download it and give it a go. Of course, the decision to release the episodes for free means that they probably won't appear on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network or WiiWare. Those three industrial giants can't seem to cope with the idea of video games being released for free, which is kind of depressing.

It's mindsets like that that results in the video games industry falling into patterns and becoming the narrow-scoped generic-shooting-game field that the average member of the public thinks it is. Video games can be almost anything, yet the rigid structures of the industry mean that the average video game to appear in your local games store will likely play it safe and aim for an experience similar to what's come before. I am always hugely in favour of people trying to break the mould and understand that the details of price, release style and even game design should be customised to fit the game idea, rather than simply making a game to fit the norm.

And that's exactly what the BBC seem to be doing. They know exactly what this game should be and they're making the necessary decisions to make it work. For a start, the game should integrate perfectly with the TV series. Do you remember hearing how the Tardis has extra rooms now? Well some of them have been designed specifically for the game, such as a museum-style room with items from Doctor Who's vast history. I've already mentioned how they intend the game to introduce people to video games, but they also hope it will be educational. Apparently after the aforementioned "Fires of Pompeii" episode aired, it seems viewers rushed to Google to find out more about the historic city. The game designers hope they can introduce similar historical education into the game.

Of course all this idyllic design theory would go to waste if the game isn't very good, but I'm hoping it will be. The developer's previous project was Sonic & Sega's All-Star Racing - arguably the best Mario Kart copy-cat since Diddy Kong Racing. It would seem an odd choice to give that team a classic adventure game, but it turns out the lead designer on this project is Charles Cecil, creator of some of the most classic adventure games back in the 90s. His best games are probably the original two Broken Sword games. Two of his other games, Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky are now freeware, though they're nowhere near as good as Broken Sword.

Cecil is a designer I can agree with - he sees the vast strengths that this medium has for interactive story-telling and enjoys it when the story is at the forefront of the gaming experience, although of course to restrict gaming to story-telling would be just as narrow-minded as restricting it to shooting zombies. Steven Moffat has his own game design philosophy that I can't quite see eye-to-eye with. Whilst he says many things I can agree with to-do with story-telling and how puzzle-solving is good in games, he then says that shooting people in shooting games isn't fun because you're not actually doing it, you're just pressing a button. He says action-orientated games are just boring. Clearly this is a man who's never experienced the team co-ordination of Team Fortress 2 (a popular shooting game), or the creative strategies of Street Fighter (a popular fighting game). Action in games isn't mindless - it's creative and engaging, and potentially so much more.

But as it happens Moffat's design ideals work perfectly for the Doctor Who game, so it's not an issue at all. He says when he played Halo he was much more interested in the carefully crafted fictional world than the action he took part in. That reminds me of Myst, an extraordinary game that told its story by letting the player make discoveries and infer the meaning for themselves. In many ways its story was more powerful than a dialogue-heavy scripted story. Myst is the extreme example of the old writer's proverb "show, don't tell". In fact, one of the screenshots for the new Doctor Who game brings back memories of Myst, so who knows - maybe the game will attempt a similar experience, at least in parts? The Doctor lost on an alien world..?

I would strongly advise anyone who is interested in Doctor Who to give this game a try when it débuts. It's free, will hopefully run on any PC or Mac, it'll be short enough to not take up much time and it's a custom-designed experience for you, a Doctor Who fan, regardless of any previous experience or feelings towards video games. As for me, I applaud the BBC for thinking outside the box and designing the game to be what it needs to be, and not just another average game following the same formula. The creative arts need more people who understand how to make design choices based on the individual idea they have, not just make something with the usual formula.

Attempted reboot

2010-04-09T20:22:00.004Z

I've been meaning to get back into blogging for a while now. I hoped to start a website with Pete and blog there, but that's yet to happen. Who knows, maybe we'll have time over the summer.

One of the things I like about blogging is being able to share my thoughts and views on certain subjects. So my blog may be less of a journal than it was. That's not to say that I won't be talking about events in my life (I almost certainly will be), but if want to find out how I'm doing on a more personal level or get information to help pray about me (as I know some people do) I suggest getting me on Facebook instead.

I don't like promising things like this, but I'll do my best to keep blogging.

E3 - Thursday Evening GMT

2009-06-04T13:42:00.003Z

Sorry for not posting yesterday. We had a bit of an epic party on Tuesday and a few of us (maybe eight?) were in and out the house until just a few hours ago. So I haven't really had much time to myself to blog, or even to research myself. But in any case, here I am again.
With most of the big announcements out of the way, most of what you'll find here is a more in-depth look at many of the games that have been announced so far. This is just a fraction of the games shown at E3, but I chose the ones that look the most interesting.
If you don't read anything else, I highly recommend you read the section on Scribblenauts, even if you're not a DS owner.

First though, there are one or two news items.
In Japan, the Wii sales have dipped slightly below completely extraordinary and into simply awesome, so Nintendo have decided to finally release the black Wii and red DSi. Much as I go in for the whole buying-products-in-their-original-colours, the black Wii with the blue light looks awesome, as does the new black classic controller. Since the Wii is still selling so well in the UK, there's no coment on when we'll get the new colour.
Apparently Nintendo had a completed design for a successor to the DS, but then scrapped the plans. They're watching the DS and Wii markets carefully and balancing hardware and software releases carefully to maintain sales momentum. They've slowed down slightly because of the lack of releases this Spring, but they've got a strong line-up for the rest of the year, so they're hoping to ride on that for a while. President Iwata's not convinced of the power of a price-cut in the hardware.

Onto the games!
The PS3 version of Batman Arkham Asylum lets you play as the Joker for certain challenge maps. It looks like they've had fun giving the Joker his own fighting style, which is good.
Castlevania: Lord of Shadow is a reimagining of the classic series in a God of War style. They've got the voice of Patrick Stewart!
Dark Void is a 360/PS3 third-person shooter with a jetpack. It controls Gears of War style with the cover system, but then at any point you can use your jetpack to float around and shoot people. They're very proud of the fact that the jetpack isn't constrained to only certain sections of the game but can be used at any time. Gameplay I saw included duck & cover shooting, flying around to take out UFOs, hijacking & using the UFOs and an interesting vertical-cover system, where your character uses the button of a ledge as cover (using the jetpack to support him) and makes his way up a cliff facing the sky and using each ledge as cover as he goes.
Just to prove my point in my Ratchet & Clank comments, Echochromo for the PS3 is a download game focused on (yet again) using recorded ghosts to help you solve puzzles under the guise of "time" powers. I liked Echochrome, so this sequel may well be good, but this idea is getting old, especially when nobody takes the time aspect seriously.
Square are being extremely quiet about the details of Final Fantasy XIII. The battle system looks interesting, but I can't get my head around it when half of their talks are the phrase "we can't go into any more detail about that now". What they did say was that there's only one summon per character this time round, and the summon and the character will work together as partners.
Final Fantasy XIV is coming out for PS3 & PC. It takes place on an all-new world called "Eorzea", though it does bear many similarities to the world from Final Fantasy XI, including some of the races. This allows players to recreate their XI character in XIV. It's being made by the XI team as well. Square have promised that XI will keep getting content as long as fans ask for it. XIV will have less of a focus on team-based gameplay, so it'll be more balanced between solo and multi-player games. Levelling up will not be based on experience at all, but Square won't give out anything else about that. The jobs system will be different to XI. Weapons will be extremely important to your character. Apparently choosing weapons for specific tasks one day versus another could affect how your character develops. Apparently the battle in the trailer was in-game graphics. It's set for a imultaneous launch worldwide. Both the PS3 and PC versions will be cross-compatable, allowing you to sign in to either with a universal ID. Chocobos are back, but won't be used in the same was as in XI. The game is set to come out in 2010 after Final Fantasy XIII.
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers follows the Crystal Chronicles world, but it seems very different to the games I've seen in the past. The gameplay I've seen so far has you shooting enemies out of the sky with the Wii's pointer as you fall. When you're on the ground you have some sort of psychic power that lets you pick up objects and toss them around. Story-wise, you seem to be the protector of a skyship during the intro sequence. The technology seems quite advanced too. I'm not quite sure what to make of all this.
Guitar Hero 5 seems to be more of the same. It's probably worth paying for the songs alone, especially when you consider there'll be new downloadable content most likely. But there are a few changes. You don't have to play 1 guitarist, 1 bass, 1 drummer and 1 singer. This time you can have any combination of instruments, though the screen gets crowded with four non-vocalists. Smaller tweaks include giving star power to the individual players, instead of the whole band. You can change instrument mid-song. Career mode will have special challenges for certain songs, such as "whammy every sustain". All songs are unlocked from the start this time. And of course you can expect new venues, cheats, outfits and surprise guests to be unlocked as you progress.
Left 4 Dead 2 looks like it's gonna be more of the same. There's a fair few small upgrades to make it a better experience, but nothing to revolutionise the series.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games for Wii is basically a sequel to the hit earlier this year. Don't expect anything new other than a focus on the winter sports instead of the regular ones. I'm pleased to see Metal Sonic making an appearance as a playable character though!
We have no information yet on the gameplay of Metroid: Other M other than the trailer, but we've been told it's going to be very story heavy. It's set between Super Metroid & Metroid Fusion and will give background character to Samus. In case you didn't realise, as well as Team Ninja working on this, the project is being lead by the guys who made Super Metroid & Metroid Fusion. It's in good hands, don't worry.
I'm almost certain that anybody who watched or read about Microsoft's press conference is eager to know how their Project Natal works in real life, and specifically Milo. Instead of talking for myself, I'll just link to someone who's chatted with Milo himself. Here you go.
New Super Mario Bros Wii looks like it's exactly what I expected. Built on the fantastic controls, graphics and gameplay of New Super Mario Bros for DS, the Wii version takes that and adds the four-player co-op. It'll win many points in our house in comparison to Little Big Planet, which also has four-player co-op platforming but lacks the precision controls of a AAA Mario title. They've put a lot of simple but nice features into it too. You have multiple lives and when you die you float back on-screen in a bubble, so if someone pops you then you return to life instantly. You can get Yoshi and use him just like in Super Mario World. They're bringing back the Super Mario Bros 3 suits as power-ups (with loads of new ones including helicopter and penguin suits) and it looks like the Koopa Kids from Mario World are coming back as well. Despite being four-player co-op, Nintendo are promising everything you love from 2D Mario platformers, including plenty of secret levels. They've added drop-in drop-out as well, so players can join and leave mid-level. It's a small thing but it'll really help. I do wonder why the characters are Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad & Yellow Toad. Why not replace the last two with Peach & Toad?
Pixeljunk Shooter is a 2D PS3 download game that gives you a small spaceship and sends you flying through caves to rescue little people. Apart from shooting people Geometry Wars-style, your main tool is the natural water and lava of the levels. They both flow with beautifully realistic physics, and when they connect they form solid ground. So you need to shoot the enemies and solve the water/lava puzzles to finish the levels. Looks interesting.
Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time is looking every bit as good as the rest of the series. It completes the PS3 trilogy, and apparently is set to answer many of the questions about the overall series. As usual you've got new environments and new weapons. I can't say much about the story, since I'm not versed with the PS3 trilogy (yet), but it looks like they've been making a trilogy story instead of individual stories for each game. One thing I do know is that Clank went missing sometime, so Ratchet is looking for him. He's got some hover boots to make up for the lack of Clank's help in jumping. You do get to play as Clank as well though. When you play as him you can use "time pads" to record versions of yourself doing actions. For example if there's two swtiches you can record yourself pulling one switch and then pull the other whilst you play the recording. Yes, time puzzles are always kinda fun but I'm sceptical for two reasons. 1) It's not really a "time" puzzle at all. There's no travelling through time, it's just creating a robot to do what you want. But more importantly 2) I've never found a game that uses these kinda puzzles to be any good unless it's the focus of the game (Braid or the free flash game Chronotron). Games that try to add these in as after thoughts fail to fully engage with the weirdness and puzzle-glory that is time puzzles, and instead get a half-baked set of puzzles in the middle of the game. I have no doubt Ratchet & Clank will be a fantastic game, don't get me wrong, but they'll have to convince me of what makes them different to all the other games that have added "time" puzzles and been no better off because of it. Apart from that small complaint, I'm really looking forward to this game!
Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles is the follow-up to Umbrella Chronicles. Both of them are Wii light-gun games based on the events of previous Resi games. Umbrella retold the stories of Resident Evil 0, 1 & 3, so Darkside covers 2 & Veronica. Both games have a new, overall story to tell as well, to add to the plot of the entire saga. It's fixed a few glitches from Umbrella, and changed a few things. In Umbrella you had to be careful and share ammo. If you saw an ammo crate for your partern's gun you'd have to tell them to get it, and often the camera would turn away before they realised. This time you can grab the ammo yourself and it'll be sent to your friend. Whilst this is nice, it does mean if your partner's using a shotgun and you find a shotgun, picking it up will just give your friend more ammo and you won't get the gun. Rubbish! One of the main differences with Darkside is the camera movements. Umbrella was very classic light-gun in that you'd mostly have a static screen and once you'd shot all the enemies it would move on. This time the camera feels more light a first-person shooter, in that it's constantly moving about giving you a first-person view of the characters. The camera's constantly moving in a very realistic way, which should in theory make the game feel like an interactive horror movie. My concern is whether it becomes difficult to shoot accurately with the camera lurching about all the time. I found a few people complaining at that, and also at the horrid frame-right and less-than-perfect graphics. Is it a duff demo or a duff game?
Scribblenauts looks like it could be one of those incredible games that most people ignore. The DS game puts you in a small room with a puzzle that needs to be solved, like getting a star stuck up a tree. You bring up a qwerty keyboard and you can type any noun you can think of and it will appear. So you can type in "axe" and you'll be able to give your character the axe and cut down the tree and get the star. Or you can type in "match" and burn it down. There was another puzzle of trying to get a beached whale back into the water. Two methods he tried were "bulldozer" and pushing it in or "fan" and blowing it in. It really looks like they've thought of everything you could ask for here, from "fighterjet" to "waffle iron" and each one functions how you'd expect (you can cook things on the waffle iron). I suspect that some of the harder puzzles could require some serious creativity. After you've finished a puzzle you get more points if you can solve it using different items. There's also a complete level editor so you can make your own levels and send them to your friends via local or wi-fi. In the level editor you can choose goals, objects for the level and even define relationships between objects (like a bear who fears honey). I'm actually very impressed with this game. The reports I've read have been equally as impressed, confirming the difficulty of thinking of anything not built into the game. And yes, the game does attempt to correct your spelling, and even confirm with you what you meant if there's ambiguity (fan as in the object that blows wind or as in the person who's enthusiastic about something?). I've read loads of reports of people playing this game, and they all come up with wildly different things to try. Some people spawn different dinosaurs to get them to fight, some people give themselves wings to fly around. One person even typed in "God" and was given Zeus. They then typed in "death", who vaguely tried to overthrow Zeus before being smited. It seems they've got everything covered. And they make everything individual. Even the Lion, Leopard and Tiger have unique AIs as well as unique graphics. Even the word "lamer" produces a slow moving kid with a dunce hat. Half of the problem now is how to make challenging levels if people can do anything they like. The lead designer says he had the tree level running and somebody spawned an anvil, and then glued it to the star. The star promptly fell out of the tree. The designer says he'd never even considered that, but the game all works by itself. Completely creative. As a last thought, the designer says to go have fun. Spawning a bike and riding around is cool, but then spawning a ramp and attaching a rocket is cooler.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a reimagining (not a remake) of the original Silent Hill game, and looks like it has some clever stuff in it.
Split/Second looks quite interesting. It's a PS3/360 racing game set as a reality TV show, which is a curious story idea. Your goal is to win the race, but your have some powers to help. As you do Burnout-style tricks and drifts your power-meter fills up. When it's high enough you can activate it and something to do with the scenery will change. A bridge might blow up or a tower collapse. This scenery deformation affects the race and can take out racers. So the jist of the game is race fast and blow things up. It looks spectaculat, and they've moved the entire HUD (your position, power-meter, everything else you'd see at the screen edges) to just behind your car, Dead Space style, and it looks lovely. Assuming the driving's up to scratch and there's a good multi-player mode, this could be a good game.
Wii Sports Resort is sounding like it'll exceed all expectations. I love motion controls (when used wisely, which they're often not) and the original Wii Sports was one of the finest examples of them to date. But whenever I hear of a motion control for a game I instantly have a skepticism about whether it will work or not. Wii Motion Plus looks like it'll put a lot of my skepticism to rest. Take for instance the Table Tennis game in it. You move around automatically ala Wii Sports Tennis, and you swing when you want to. It apparently follows your bat's movement completely 1:1. Even when you're not swinging, how you hold the remote is how your character holds the bat, and how you swing is how you swing, to the point of putting on correct top-spin. For the majority of Wii Sports Resort's games, I'm hearing from the journalists that the controls are 100% perfect, no exadduration. Lots of the games have multiple game modes and training versions, so expect more content than this list suggests, but the list of games I have is this: Sword-fighting, Frisbee, Archery, Table Tennis, Airplane, Bowling, Golf, Wakeboarding, Jet Skiing, Basketball and Cycling. That's 11, and I already know there's a few things you can do that don't fit into any of those catagories, like skydiving (it's the game's intro, not sure if it counts as a game). Sword-fighting has one-to-one sword control (the sword follows your hand EXACTLY), as do most of the games really. Frisbee includes the options of throwing a frisbee to a dog and playing frisbee golf. I'm seriously looking forward to the upgraded Bowling. Everyone likes the archery one. The one dud seems to be Cycling, which sounded like it had naff controls. But I fully expect everyone to enjoy different sports, just like in the original. And don't forget, you get one Wii Motion Plus free with the game!

E3 - Tuesday Evening GMT

2009-06-03T03:11:00.003Z

We had a BBQ/movie night/games night and it's now 4am. The others are still playing Risk, so I thought in the interest of getting any sleep tonight, I'd get on with today's blog post. So much new information today, even I haven't processed it all. For now I'll just cover Nintendo & Sony's conferences and maybe a few other things. Later in the week I'll do some more in-depth news on details for particular games, once the journalists have all played them and we have some more gameplay footage, so if you find a game you like getting a small mention, don't worry. Also, at the end of the week I'm gonna do a comprehensive PS3 vs 360 vs Wii comparison, both in terms of how they did at E3 and overall.
Note: Please can you leave a comment if any of my links aren't working?

Nintendo's conference last year was a failure. They announced almost no interesting games for the non-casual player, embarrassed themselves with Wii Music (even if it is a reasonable game) and generally disappointed everyone. This year they realised this, and almost all of the conference was announcing new games. This works for me!
First up, New Super Mario Bros Wii. This is basically classic 2D Mario action based on New Super Mario Bros for DS (based in turn on Super Mario Bros 3), BUT this time it's four-player. I get the impression a lot of people (including some of you maybe?) won't take this game as seriously as it deserves. Heard of Pac-Man Vs or Four Swords? Incredible Nintendo multi-player gems lost in history because they don't sound as appealing as a new Halo game. Listen to me (and the journalists who've played it) when I say that this game will be incredible. Four people run and jump around the Mario level. You can work together co-operatively or kill each other and compete for points. Check out the gameplay footage and try to imagine playing it with your friends. If you've played Pac-Man Vs or Four Swords then you should have an idea already. I'm so gonna get this! Check out this trailer and this gameplay demo.
For the casual player, Wii Fit Plus might appeal? 12 new exercises, 15 new mini-games, custom regimes, a calorie counter and easier navigation. Err.... cool?
Last year Nintendo's only good announcement was Wii Motion Plus. A tiny cube clips onto the bottom of the remote (it still allows for nunchuks though) and hugely increases the Wii Remote's accuracy to the point where it follows you on-screen one-to-one. The technical reasons behind this are complicated, but it should basically remove any inaccuracies you've had so far with the Wii's motion-sensor, and allow developers to do more exciting things with it. Yes, it's doing what the Wii Remote should have done in the first place, but Nintendo maintain it would have raised the price too much when the Wii launched, but is cheaper now.
The sequel to the much loved Wii Sports will be the first to demo this technology. Wii Sports Resort will include: Ping Pong, Basketball, Golf, Archery, Rowing, Frisbee, Jet Ski and Sword-fighting. It's a testament to Wii Motion Plus that Nintendo thought it improved golf so much that it was worth including it in this package too. The archery looked fairly awesome as well. Better built than the version in Mario & Sonic, and I really enjoyed that one. Wii Motion Plus will come free with the game when it launches on June 26th. Here's some gameplay, and here's some more.
Other games to use Wii Motion Plus include Red Steel 2, PGA World Tour (golf), some EA tennis game and Virtua Tennis. All of these will come with Wii Motion Plus free. Yay.
Moving into an RPG trend, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: Crystal Bearers is a single-player real-time-combat Final Fantasy for the Wii. That should be out before the end of the year. Here's the trailer. Square also showed some more footage of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days for DS, which is due out Autumn in the UK. Looks like classic Kingdom Hearts stuff to me. Here's a trailer.
More interesting to me was some more footage of the already-confirmed Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story for the DS. This is the third in the Mario & Luigi series, which is the handheld equivalent of the console's Paper Mario series. Whilst they both differ in style and gameplay, both are Mario-based RPGs with a heavy emphasis on humour. I really like the Mario & Luigi style. This one sees the pair shrunk and swallowed by Bowser. You control Bowser on the top screen and the plumbers on the bottom-screen, often working together for puzzles & combat. This is looking good for Autumn this year. Here's a trailer and here's another.
Just before we leave the RPG sector, there was a surprise announcement of Golden Sun DS. Back on the Gameboy Advance, the previous two Golden Sun titles were very nearly the best graphics for the system, making the Pokemon games of that era (Ruby, Sapphire, Fire Red & Leaf Green) look ancient by comparison (no exadduration). The game itself had rather predictable gameplay and story, but it's retained a certain charm and a reasonable fan-base, who will surely be happy to see the story continue. Here's the trailer.
Mini-announcement of a game called COP: The Recruit, which seems to be a driving/third-person-shooting police game for the DS. Could be good. Trailer.
Continuing the DS focus a little longer is two titles announced for the DSi exclusively. The first is Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again. It's a small game you buy & download from the DSi's online store. It looks extremely similar to the other DS Mario vs Donkey Kong game (and again not at all like the original GBA one). This latest release adds a level editor and level-sharing system. Trailer.
Anybody remember playing the Warioware series and loving it? Specifically the DS one? Well Warioware DIY is a new DSi download game that lets you make your own Warioware mini-games and share them online. It'll also come with a load of mini-games itself. I hear there's a similar Wiiware version, but I'm not entirely sure. Looks interesting though! Trailer.
Returning to the Wii with a bang, Nintendo announced for the first time ever, a second 3D Mario game on the same console. Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks like it's going to be more of the same. Luckily, Mario Galaxy thrilled us with new and exciting ideas at every turn, so more of the same actually means more innovation. Oh, and Yoshi's in it too. Here's the trailer.
The Conduit is a Wii-only shooter. I'm more excited about Red Steel 2, but this looks cool too. Trailer.
Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles is a light-gun-style game for the Wii, following the success of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles. It looks like it will follow the trend of re-making classic Resident Evil moments in light-gun action. Trailer here. Dead Space: Extraction is a similar light-gun prequel to the hit 360/PS3 game. Trailer.

Nintendo did the right thing and hid their biggest surprise until last. Nintendo announced a surprise partnership with Team Ninja working on a big-name Nintendo title with a darker, grittier and more story-based game than we normally expect from Nintendo. I think this looks so awesome I won't even spoil it for you, just watch this video!

Sony's conference was mostly leaked out to the press in the week before, but there were still a few surprises.
First off were a few games. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, is a sequel to Naughty Dog's last hit. I wasn't that impressed with the last one, but it seems to have been big enough to get a sequel. Here's hoping it's good! Trailer and gameplay.
They demoed MAG, which was apparently announced last year. It's a first-person-shooter boasting a massive 256-players in a single match. The demo guy played a squad leader, in charge of about seven people. By the numbers there's 128 people per team, split into 16 squads of 8, each led by a leader. Each squad joins on a huge map to do complete small objectives that will help the overall game, such as a squad on the ground taking out an anti-air cannon to help a squad of helicopter pilots (that double as spawn points apparently). I'm not sure of the details, and I didn't see enough (yet) to see whether it's actually a good game or not, but it certainly looks like fun! Release date's in Autumn. Gameplay.
Next up was the brand-new PSP. The PSP Go is a lot thinner width-wise because the buttons have been moved from the side of the screen and put on a slide-out panel, like a lot of slide-out phones. Compared to the original PSP, it's 50% smaller and 40% lighter (though I've no idea what the middle PSP model was like). It's got 16GB internal memory, built-in bluetooth and no UMD drive. I'm not quite sure what that means for games then. Maybe they're all downloads? There's a PC version of the Playstation store called Media Go, which will help. The new PSP Go launches on October 1st and will sell at the same price as the other PSPs. Neat. Watch this video then this video.
Gran Turismo for PSP has 800 cars and launches alongside the Go.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was also announced for the PSP. There's been two other real MGS titles for PSP under the guise of Portable Ops, but apparently this isn't going to be a spin-off, and will get Hideo Kojima's full love and care. It's being touted as the missing chapter in Metal Gear's extensive story. It's set shortly after Metal Gear Solid 3, which places it in the 70s. I tried not to pay too much attention to the plot for fear of spoiling Metal Gear Solid 4 for me. Trailer.
Resident Evil is coming to PSP in an all-new game, as is Little Big Planet, Jak & Daxter and Motorstorm.
Moving onto the PS3, Sony commented that 50 PS1 games will be added to their growing databases of PS1 titles available to download, starting with the legendary Final Fantasy VII, which hits the store today.
There's a new game by Grand Theft Auto devs, Rockstar Games. Agent will put you as a cop/secret agent/assassin. Not sure of much else yet.
They demoed Assassin's Creed 2 for us. It looked fairly similar to the original but with some nice upgrades. The cut-scenes looked more interesting, and the Venice setting was nice. You're apparently friends with Mr Da Vinci, and you borrow his flying machine when you need to. Once he'd landed he showed off a few of your new abilities. With a concealed knife on each wrist you can now silently assassinate two people standing next to each other, which got large applause. You can also drop smoke bombs, swim, and take your opponents weapons to use (over 30 weapons in total). Looks promising. Here's some gameplay.
A new Final Fantasy XIII trailer showed the story with English voice-actors for the first time, which was nice. As a complete surprise came the announcement of Final Fantasy XIV. The reason for XIV being talked about before XIII is even out is because XIV is the new XI. In other words, XIV isn't a real Final Fantasy, it's online, it's an MMO. Should be good for those who like that stuff anyway. PS3 exclusive & all. Trailer.
Next up was Sony's answer to the Wiimote and Natal. Sony's Motion Controller looks extremely like a Wii Remote, but with a small coloured ball on the top (though we were reminded this wasn't the final design). The idea is that the Eye-toy camera tracks the coloured ball to work out exactly where the remote is in 3D space. Whilst Nintendo's remote focuses on the motion and Microsoft's Natal focuses on what the camera sees of you, Sony's tracks where you are anywhere in the room. They showed a number of demonstrations, including shooting in various directions around the room. The entire thing looked very precise but rather undeveloped. I'll be giving my impressions at the end of the week when I compare the consoles. Here's the first video to watch, and here's the second.
More Little Big Planet costumes coming. Disney ones!
Mod Nation Racers is a new game set to continue Little Big Planet's focus on creating and sharing. It's a Mario Kart-style racing game with some really nice features. For a start you can completely customise your racer and kart, which is nice. The main feature is the track designer. Sure, track designer's not that new you say. You're right, but you've never seen it like this. Watch the video for the best impression, but the tools are extremely nice and friendly, allowing you to create extremely good looking tracks in literally a couple of minutes. It really impressed me actually. Check it out. 2010 release. Here's a video of the game in action, and here's the track editor.
The team behind the incredible and underated Ico and Shadow of the Colossus finally debuted their leaked trailer for their new game: The Last Guardian, and it looks briliant! Can't wait! Here's the trailer.
Gran Turismo 5 got a trailer.
Last of all was a demo for God of War 3, although I gather it'd been shown before. Here's some of it anyway.

Lots of very interesting stuff. Come back tomorrow for a more in-depth look at some of the games and probably some interesting pieces of news. As a teaser, what about the news that Rare's legendary Perfect Dark for the N64 will be re-released on Xbox Live Arcade in full HD? There's plenty more to come, don't worry! And remember to check back on Saturday/Sunday for a console comparison. Thanks!

E3 - Monday Evening GMT

2009-06-01T20:42:00.003Z

Today was the day of the Microsoft Press Conference, so there's plenty of Microsoft news around. Scroll down and pick out the pieces of information that interest you. I've put key terms in bold so just skim through them, and I've included loads of links to videos if you're more interested. Tomorrow is Nintendo and Sony's conferences, so check back tomorrow!

Microsoft started with a number of games, but I'll come to them later. A large amount of their show was to do with small and large upgrades to the Xbox 360 internal software and hardware.
A new idea is to combine Facebook and Twitter with the 360. The system will allow you to manage your Facebook and Twitter, but will also integrate with the your 360 profile and avatar. A Facebook contact will have their 360 profile combined into one page, so you can be searching Facebook and then decide to play a game with a friend. You can also take screenshots mid-game (in certain games) and post them directly to Facebook.
On the audio front, Microsoft have jumped on the Last.fm bandwagon and will be bringing that to the 360 in a new audio section of the 360's menu, which will include the Rock Band and Lips features as well. If you're American, you can enjoy an upgrade to the 360's Netflix service. Movies can now be viewed in 1080p, and if you've got a fast enough internet connection you can stream 1080p instead of downloading the film first.
Microsoft are updating their online store so that anything you can buy can be rated by the community. This will give you an idea of whether a game or a piece of downloadable content is worth the money or not. This will help the Community Games section. Bedroom programmers can release games onto Xbox Live Arcade without spending much money. There's very few criteria the game has to meet to be allowed onto the store (mostly that it's not offensive and that it technically works). Since there's no test of quality before the games hit the shop, a rating system will really help find the hidden gems.
Starting this August, you'll be able to buy full games from the Xbox Marketplace to download instead of buying a physical disc. The service will debut with 30 older 360 games (including Bioshock, Mass Effect, Crackdown, Assassin's Creed, Civilization Revolution, Oblivion, Call of Duty 2, Dirt, Vegas 2 & Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise) but will apparently add more weekly. You can also buy these games with a credit card instead of having to buy Microsoft Points, which is a plus.
Your Microsoft Avatars will soon be getting more clothing and accessories too. There'll be an Avatar Marketplace where you can buy clothes and accessories (though some will still be free). There'll also be game-specific clothes. For example, you can buy a Halo 3 T-Shirt for 80 Microsoft Points. Other exmples included Halo ODST armour and a miniature remote-control Warthog that drives round your Avatar (you can't actually control it). Additionally, some games will be able to give out Avatar clothes as rewards.

Microsoft's biggest announcement came after they talked about their games and software upgrades. It was a brand-new piece of hardware. It's been rumoured for a while that the 360 might be getting a motion-controller, but I think this is a bit more adventurous. Microsoft demoed Project Natal, a camera that combines face-recognition, pattern-recognition, motion-tracking and voice-recognition. The initial video was a lot of showing off without actually showing anything you could guarantee was real. It was when they showed it on stage that it started to shine. Step in front of the TV and the camera works out who you are and signs you in automatically. You can move the menu about with a flick of your hand. A tech demo had a woman standing in front of the TV, which showed a shadow of her on the screen, accurately following her every move. Balls were thrown at her in the game and she could punch, kick or headbutt them back by moving around and interacting with the game physics. It looked remarkably accurate. A second tech-demo involved throwing paint over a canvas for kicks.
After inviting Stephen Spielburg on stage to convince us that it was a good idea, Peter Molyneux (head of Lionhead Studios, creator of Fable, among other games) came on-stage. Apparently he's had Natal for a month or two and his team has worked up something special. The result is an interactive AI called Milo. He showed a pre-recorded video of a woman talking to Milo, who is a small boy. She had a chat with him and it felt reasonably natural. She expressed her concern that this was his worldwide debut. She offered to play football with him if he'd finished his homework, which he hadn't. It was something to do with drawing, and he couldn't draw a fish. She grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and drew a fish. She held it up to the camera (on top of the TV) for a fraction of a second and Milo held up his hand at the same time and appeared to take the paper, look at it and comment on the drawing.
Of course, at this stage it's extremely hard to tell how much of this is showing off for the PR and how much of it works. Controlling a game via motion controls (as was suggested in the initial video, giving examples of racing, skateboarding, fighting and quiz games) work in theory, but often not in practise (as demonstrated by the Wii's remote). With Milo, it's very unclear how varied his responses could be and how particular the inputs needed to be. Thankfully, Milo will be demonstrated to certain journalists behind closed doors later this week, which will provide an un-biased view on Molyneux's work.
Those of us who've been watching the development of technology over the years will know that this technology isn't new in the slightest. Just like the Wii's motion-sensors, we've had the ability to do this for years. What Nintendo did new with the Wii was to create a version good enough to sell and have the guts to market it. What's surprising about this announcement isn't the technology, it's that Microsoft dared to present it as their main annoucnement during their E3 conference. Nintendo wouldn't have dared announce the Wii's motion-sensing controller unless they knew they could deliver. There have been occasions when large gaming announcements have failed to deliver, but in the gaming world if you announce something it's not just showing off something you whipped up that's impressive, it's because you want to release it for real.

Over today there were also a large number of game announcements and updates, both in Microsoft's conference and out. This far from all of them, but here are some of the more interesting ones.

Microsoft opened with The Beatles: Rock Band. It's coming out for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii on September 9th. It's exactly what it sounds like. On the subject of Rock Band, the Lego kids-friendly version is still planned for Christmas this year. Check out the video.
Next up was Tony Hawk Ride. It's available on all three platforms, and the non-Wii platforms will be getting a slick-looking board controller to make up for the lack of the Wii Fit Balance Board. Dated Autumn 2009.
After that was the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 trailer from earlier this week. This was followed by a couple of the developers coming on to demo it themselves. It's exactly what you'd expect from the sequel to the best game of 2007. Interesting new features include a jet-ski vehicle section and a gun-mounted sonar system. The 360 will get the two map packs before the PS3, rats. Coming out November 10th.
Following last year's shock announcement that Final Fantasy XIII will be released on Xbox 360 as well as PS3, this year Square came to debut a piece of gameplay. They cheated at the end by activating a summon you don't get until later in the game, just for the show. The release date is a vague Spring 2010.
Microsoft were pleased to announce that the rest of the games they'd show during the conference are Xbox exclusives. The first up was an interesting title. The guys behind Gears of War doing a 2D Metroid-style game in full HD for Xbox Live Arcade. It's called Shadow Complex, and looks rather promising. Nintendo will be in trouble if they don't announce a new 2D Metroid. Shadow Complex includes many features the last Metroid didn't, include lots of interactive environments. Planned to be out in the Autumn. Here's the trailer, and here's the gameplay footage.
Joyride is a new Avatar racing game, attempting to do a Mario Kart. It's not a direct clone though, it seems to have a little uniqueness. Trailer here.
Crackdown 2 announced. Trailer here.
Surprise announcement of Left 4 Dead 2. Still an Xbox exclusive (on the PC as well of course). No info on gameplay just yet. Release date of November 19th though. Trailer here.
Splinter Cell Conviction shown with a live demo. I've never really got into the older Splinter Cell games, but this one seems to be quite different. It's got a bit of a cinematic flair, which is always appealing. Apparently it's coming out this June. Trailer here. Gameplay footage here.
Forza Motorsport 3 announced. It will include an in-depth car art editor and movie editor. They showed an impressive demonstration video put together with the in-game software. All looks good. Set to be released this October.
Halo time at last. A bungie guy did a very short demo of Halo 3 ODST. The gameplay looks quite subtle in the level he demoed. After a crash-landing, you sneak through a ruined city. After a while you find an object, which prompts a flashback. In the flashback you play as a different ODST soldier. Apparently they'll be a lot of these in an attempt to weave a more complex story. Hope it works. They also suddenly announced another Halo game: Halo Reach. Apparently "Fall of Reach" was a novel prequel to the original Halo game. ODST is set for 22nd September, Reach is set for 2010 sometime. ODST Trailer. Reach Trailer.
Alan Wake was demoed, at long last. I haven't paid much attention to it's development. It seems to be survival horror/action (as seems to be the trend nowadays). The video was too dark to make out much, but you seem to be able to point your flashlight at enemies to stun them before killing them. I couldn't work out what the enemies were. Nice flashlight physics though. 2010 release date still. Trailer. Gameplay footage.
The last big announcement I haven't covered from Microsoft's Conference was when Hideo Kojima came up. After weeks of teasing people about a sequel to Metal Gear Solid 4, he finally told us what we were waiting for. Metal Gear Solid: Rising, exclusively for Xbox 360. The only other piece of information we were given was that it seems Raiden will be the lead character. I get the impression there's a lot left to learn about this though. The biggest clue was in the title. All Metal Gear Solid titles so far have had the subtitle "Tactical Espionage Action", whereas Rising has "Lightning Bolt Action". This suggests a complete gameplay shift, but I'm sure fans of the story will still be catered too. There's also the fact that Kojima's teaser site has turned into an official E3 site, and the main page has enough room for a few more games/annoucnements. An official E3 site lists a PSP title named Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. I'm still hoping for no.5. Stay tuned... Trailer.

There were some interesting announcements outside of Microsoft's conference too. My favourites by far was the announcment of two Monkey Island games. Lucasarts dropped the point-and-click genre when it died out around 2000. However, with the DS, Wii and the onset of episodic gaming, the genre has been revived. Lucasarts have clearly noticed this and listened to their fans shouts and have delievered. First up is The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, which is a HD remake of the original classic. The original was all pixelated and had no voice-acting. As well as redoing all the graphics and music, Lucasarts have got hold of the fantastic voice-actors from the Curse and Escape from Monkey Island (the third and fourth games). This is extremely good news. The game has an added hint system and the ability to switch between the HD and pixel versions of the game at the press of a button. Coming out this summer for PC and Xbox Live Arcade. As well as that, Lucasarts are teaming up with Telltale (who've been hard at work making the Sam & Max episodic games) to create a brand-new Monkey Island adventure that's also episodic, called Tales of Monkey Island. It's to be designed by Dave Grossman (the designed of the originals), which is good news. This is set to be released later this year in five monthly episodes for the PC and Wiiware. The Sam & Max episodes were designed for PC, so when they were ported to the Wii they were too big to be downloaded as individual episodes, so they were compiled onto a disc. Monkey Island is being developed for Wiiware first, so Wii owners will be able to download each episode individually as they're released. Great news! Here's a trailer for the Special Edition.
For those who haven't heard yet, the cult favourite Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is being released on Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network on June 29th. Trailer.
I've been following Batman: Arkham Asylum, which looks really interesting. It's 360/PS3 a darkish Batman game based on the comics instead of any films. The Joker's been admitted to the asylum but then breaks out, so Batman has to take him down. Instead of your generic punch-em-up, this game focuses on playing how Batman actually acts. Instead of running in fists blazing, you hide in the shadows and take out your enemies one-by-one. This makes all the other enemies around more nervous. Apparently the AI engine makes each level different every time. The entire system looks really fun. To compliment it, there's detective mode (which I know nothing about) and the combat, which allows you to create an infinite combo as long as you're not hit. I look forward to some journalists playing the demo to tell us how much is PR talk and how much is good enough. Trailer. Gameplay footage.
No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle has been announced for Wii. It's good to see Suda 51 are selling enough games to keep making their crazy stuff. Release date: Early 2010. Trailer.
The original Red Steel was a Wii launch title and failed to live up to what it promised. Three years later, it seems that's all going to change. With the Wii Motion Plus upgrade (announced last year, enhances the Wii's motion-sensors), Red Steel 2 seems to be an extremely polished game. From the hands-on report I read, the horrible controls from the original game have been replaced with controls similar to the great ones in Metroid Prime 3 (but with complete customization for those who didn't like them), the graphics are stylised and fantastic, the sword-gameplay is near one-to-one (especially when parrying) and the gun-sword combo gameplay is natural and fun. Prepare to be surprised, but I think this could be a big hit. Released end of this year. Trailer. Gameplay footage.

Other games announced or updated:
Lego Harry Potter 1-4. 2010 release date. Trailer.
Star Wars: The Old Republic. MMO made by the guys who did the Knights of the Old Republic series. Check out this trailer. It looks better than any fight scene from Episodes 1-3!
Mass Effect 2. Early 2010. Look for the trailers yourself. I don't wanna spoil the ending of the first game for me!
Crysis 2. Announcement.
Assassin's Creed 2. Trailer.

720p Video

2009-05-31T19:52:00.002Z

Recently, an unspecified member of our house bought a new camera a while back. It's a Canon IXUS 100 IS. It's really small, pretty camera. It's digital but it's got a viewfinder. The most exciting thing though is that it can record video in 720p at 5 mins/GB and output it with mini-HDMI. What this means is that we can record HD video. We've been taking lots of videos with our respective phones for a while anyway, so being able to film in HD is particularly awesome. We took it down the park today to mess about and then watched it later. We love it.

I haven't been blogging much because I've been extremely busy with a youth event we ran. I'll blog about it sometime, I'm too lazy now. After that I was ill for a bit.
Next week is E3, which is the biggest gaming event in the year. All the major companies make their biggets announcements and we learn a lot of interesting stuff. So from Monday-Saturday I'll be posting with all the gaming news summarised, for those who aren't bothered enough to look it all up themselves. I'm aware this appeals to quite a small demographic, but everyone else keep checking in case I blog about something else.

For those who are interested Monday and Tuiesday are the pre-E3 conferences, so Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony will be giving big talks with their huge bombshells. Then Wednesday to Friday are where all the individual companies let the journalists play their new games, so we get videos and hands-on impressions of brand-new games. Also there's normally some talks by smaller companies and round-table discussions. The only other thing to remember is that it's all in LA, so their Monday starts late-afternoon on our Monday, so my blogging schedule will be Monday-Saturday in the evenings.

Towel Week - Report

2009-05-27T00:06:00.003Z

As was predicted by many and suggested by my lack of posting, towel week became less exciting throughout the week. Pete and I continued to take our towels everywhere we went. Pete had his towel in his bag the whole time (aka Ford Prefect), but I was forced to carry mine everywhere by hand (aka Rooster). It was a bit of a pain most of the time. I design my clothing system so that I don't have to carry a bag. I have trousers with enough pockets to carry anything I might suddenly need: my phone, glasses cleaner, Gameboy, USB stick, earphones & pen. I'm prepared for most things. Clearly a towel is a useful addition to this arsenal, but I have to carry it by hand. This was particularly frustrating on some of the days I went shopping because it was extremely hot and my towel is quite thick.

So sometimes it felt like carrying the towel everywhere was a pain. Other times it was great fun though. Walking around with it stopped being so weird as we became more proud of our mission. We found plenty of random uses for it, including wrapping up warm, a net for catching things and strangling Pete. The best moment was on the very last day of towel week. I opened a bottle of Dr.Pepper slightly to quickly and it fizzed up everywhere, but I could clean my bottle & hands with the towel. That was the one real time that something happened and my first thought was "I need a towel".

This suggests one of two theories. It is possible that our vision of what a towel can be used for is too small. If that was the only event that made me think of a towel, maybe there were plenty of other events that the towel would have been perfect for but I just didn't realise at the time. Maybe a towel is much more useful than we all think. The other theory is that a towel is more useful for a hitchiker than for a student. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of towels:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

Clearly a lot of these uses are helpful for someone always on the move. Very few of these really apply to a student.
Regardless, it's been a fun week. As it happens, an internet search turned up "Towel Day". Every May 25th Hitchhiker's fans carry a towel around just like we did. It was first set up when Douglas Adams died as a commemoration. We missed it this year (although I think a whole week of service makes up for this), but we'll be sure to celebrate it each year from now.

Comics & Mangas

2009-05-21T21:13:00.005Z

In our house we've been going through a comic & manga phase, varying in amplitude from person to person. Shortly before the end of my exams I discovered the Legend of Zelda mangas were being translated into English through 2007-09, so I found the currently released ones quite cheap in the local geek store. A few weeks later, we saw X-Men Origins in the cinema with our minister, David Masters. He's a big comic fan, and in the following conversations we discovered that Pete and I both have always been interested in comics but have never really known where to get into it. David recommended that once we finished work he could lend us a load of comics. So now all my uni work is over, my exploration can continue. I'm going to talk a bit about my experience in both mangas and comics, mostly for anybody who's interested. Feel free to skip to the bits that you're interested in, and I'm really interested in feedback from anyone who's got experience in these fields.

Comics
We all borrowed some comic novels from David Masters. I chose The Dark Knight Returns, which I've finished and I think it's fantastic. It's set in the future, when Batman's retired, and tells a story of him (and some of his friends an enemies) once they've moved on, and when things start to kick off again. I'm also planning to read the books that Pete and Sarah borrowed, which are the original Watchman comic book (which is huge!) and the graphic novel of the movie Batman Begins (which contains some older Batman comics too).

Our local geek store gets in most of the latest comics from America, and lots of the book collections. They sell the individual comics for full price (£2-5), but only keep them for five weeks. Those comics that are more than five weeks old get bundled together in groups of five and sold in a lucky-dip-style "grab bag" for only £1. We've found this is a fantastic way of working out what comics we like and which we won't. For £5 we now have 25 random comics to test out. I've already found one I really like: Spider-man Noir. It's a four-part alternate-reality story which tells a similar story to Spider-man but set in the 1930s. We got issue 1 and I was reasonably impressed, especially with the twist at the end. Frustratingly, the other three issues in the series have already been and gone. I was told by the guys at the store that unless I got the other three issues in grab bags, I'd have to get the compiled book. It turns out the book comes out in June (although I'll wait for the October paperback version - since any other comic books I get will inevitably be paperback).
Can anybody recommend me any comic series' or specific books/novels that are particularly good? Share your thoughts with me!

Mangas
I've got the first four of the Zelda mangas. I've been enjoying them. In some cases (Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask) I recommend playing the game first, then reading the manga. The Ocarina manga makes some scenes more cinematic and greatly improves the end cut-scene, but if you read the manga first then you'll be disappointed in the lack of cinematicness, and fail to appreciate the story that really is there along with the fantastic game. The Majora manga manages to ruin it entirely, although that's not the manga's fault. Majora's story is absolutely sublime in the game, but hinges a lot on the game's crazy mechanics and story-telling devices. However, with the Oracle of Seasons manga, feel free to read the manga even if you haven't played the game. For a start, it's a rare game and most people will never play it. Also, the game's not got much of a story to spoil anyway. The manga writers clearly knew this because the first two-thirds of the manga tell the story of the game's opening cut-scene, brilliantly expanded into a full story. The last quarter is the final boss and resolution, so they took plenty of artistic liberties with it.

In the past I've read the fantastic Battle Royale series. It's a bit on the violent side (understatement - not for anyone under 18 or squeamish) but tells a brilliantly dark and psychological story. A class of thirty kids is chosen at random, and they are kidnapped and taken to an island. They're each given a bag with some supplies and a random weapon (anything from a baseball bat to a sub-machine gun) and are sent off in random directions. Last one remaining wins, and the entire thing is broadcast on TV in a mix between reality TV and government oppresion through fear tactics. I've read the entire series before (it's huge) but I'd like to get it myself to read again. Problem is Mum doesn't really approve, so getting it bit-by-bit for my birthday doesn't look like an option. One tiny bit in the middle has some nudity in it, done for story reasons. It's so not-appealing that I'd forgotten it was even there until Mum mentioned it, but she doesn't really want to get it for me.

I was recommended the manga series Monster by my cousin Stephen, so I think I'll try that out sooner or later. Anybody read any of the ones I've mentioned? Any other mangas you'd recommend? Share your thoughts!

Towels
The towel front has been a little slow after the first few days. Pete and I have taken them everywhere we go, but it's not been as inspiring as our earlier efforts. New uses include: something comfy to sit on, protecting people from spit, wiping up spilt drinks, strangling children, whipping people and grabbing people for hugs. All fine uses, sure, but I've spent the last two days walking around outside in the hot sun, and having a towel over my back hasn't helped in the slightest, so I've been quite frustrated. Pete puts his in his bag, which is probably a more sensible idea. Anyway, I'll give you a full report at the end of the week.

Towel Week - Day 2

2009-05-19T15:28:00.002Z

I like having a haircut for a number of reasons. If I'm bothered enough to get my hair cut then it means my hair is so long it's annoying me, so the main advantage is I don't get annoyed anymore. I also enjoy the fact that each time I have a haircut I show the hairdresser a picture of me soon after a previous haircut and then let them do what they like. Each hairdresser gives me a slightly different haircut, which is kinda fun. Lastly, I enjoy the brief period of time when it's socially acceptable to have a nice chat with this perfect stranger. It's fun talking to people you don't know or haven't met before. The trouble came this time when one of the other hairdressers found my towel on the coat-rack and asked whose it was. I had to own up or they'd throw it out or something. The girl cutting my hair asked: "Been swimming?" I didn't really think about my answer. My subconscious clearly decided that "no, y'see, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...." wasn't an appropriate answer, so it simply said: "yes." Then she asked: "Where did you go?" I hesitated. I've never been swimming in Southampton before, I've no idea what any of the pools are called. The best I could come up with was: "I dunno," followed by: "I just followed my friend, not sure where we went." She seemed satisfied with this answer.

It made me curious though. In Hitchhiker's having a towel is something you're proud of. Rooster introduces himself by saying: "I'm Rooster, and this is my towel." Am I ruining the fun if I don't own up to carrying round a towel for no reason? Or maybe the point is just to display your towel with pride, regardless of why you're carrying it. Rooster didn't explain why he carried his. Pete and I certainly displayed ours with pride in the evening. We walked to Tescos at 9:30pm (got back at 11:30pm), which was quite a walk and was very cold. So we wrapped our towels round out upper bodies like shawls and then tied them at the front. It made us stand out, sure, but we were much warmer.

As a side note, my research has shown that despite initially sounding like a good idea, a towel is not a suitable replacement for a plastic carrier bag. On my quest to find out how many things a towel is useful for this sounded like a good idea, but in order to put your shopping in it you've got to lay it out flat and place it all in, then wrap it up into some sort of holdable position, which takes a fair bit of time. Even once it's ready to be carried, the lack of handle makes it a pain to carry. A towel may be the most massively useful thing you can own but when you're at a shop, get a plastic carrier bag.

Towel Week - Day 1

2009-05-17T16:22:00.003Z

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says "a towel is the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have". It goes on to explain that you can use a towel for an extremely large number of jobs. It makes sense for a hitchhiker to load himself with simple items that cover multiple jobs, and in the world of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy knowing where your towel is is an important factor in what kind of person you are.
So Pete and I decided we want to find out if they are actually as useful as the Guide says. Far be it from us to disagree with the Guide, but "interstellar hitchhiker" and "Southampton student" are two very different things. So for all this week we'll be carrying towels with us everywhere we go. We've already discovered a number of uses for a towel (outside the regular uses), including hitting people, covering people's eyes whilst they play video games, covering babies and pretending you have a cape.

The most frequent job my towel has performed is to draw in nearby church-goers and elicit from them the question "why are you carrying a towel?" Not many people seem to understand why we're doing this, but it all made sense to me on the way home from church when it started raining and Pete and I just flipped our towels onto our heads and carried on walking without a care. I look forward to finding out what else I can do with my towel throughout the week, and I'll keep you updated. Remember to read my post just below this one as well.

I survived! I'm still alive!

2009-05-17T15:45:00.003Z

Finally, after doing nothing but work for the last month and a half, I've finished all my Uni work for this year. I've been really stressed during that time, and suddenly a weight has been lifted and I can enjoy myself again. The story of my year is one of making mistakes and learning. I've finally learnt some really important lessons about life and how to do Uni. Problem is I learnt many of them so late in the year that my grades won't reflect my current way of thinking, they'll reflect the faulty way I now fixed. I'm not sure whether I'll get good grades or bad grades (could swing either way) but after working so hard at the end I'm happy to take a break. I've been putting a lot of my life on hold to finish my work, and now I'm free I can do all the things I couldn't do before. I've got a long list of plans, from tidying & organising my room to making a website, from writing stories to completing games. I've got lots to do and I can't wait to do it. So one of the effects of suddenly having my life back is that I'm gonna be blogging again. And with my creative force rolling with no barrier for the first time in many months, you can expect to see some interesting things.
I'm gonna do a post about my Uni course at some point, because I realise not many people know much about it, but I may take a break from thinking about Uni for a while. Huge thanks to everyone who was praying for me!

Three week prayer please!

2009-04-20T00:43:00.002Z

So it's almost the end of my first year in University. It's been a bit crazy. I wasn't really used to how this lifestyle would work. As my Bargoed friends can testify, I had a fair number of problems I had to deal with (several shades of laziness and more). So this year hasn't got quite how I'd have liked it to. But I gather this is usual. Moving to a new city, being with new friends, living by yourself in a new way (halls or sharing a house), having a completely new lifestyle and workload can throw you pretty easily, so it seems most people don't get the first year right. Luckily the first year doesn't count towards my final grade. As long as I pass, I get to try again next year, and I think by now I've got a fairly good idea of how I'd like to do next year.

So the problem is this year. All my university work for this year will be over in three weeks time. However, I'm not as prepared as I'd like for these three weeks. The plus side is it'll be over quickly, the downside is I'm gonna need to do a lot of work and a lot of praying to make it through. So my request is simple: could you pray for me quite a lot over the next three weeks? That'd help loads. Thank you!

Google me

2009-02-28T21:20:00.002Z

The other day I put my name into Google. It's kinda fun to do from time to time. I didn't put my real name into Google, that wouldn't turn up much. The advantage of the username "djchallis" is that I'm almost the only person who uses it. If you stick it in to Google I can guarantee that almost everything you'll find will be me.

I was pleased to see that my blog is still at the top. I flicked through a few pages, looking at my various accounts on different websites. What I found curious was that my name had turned up on a number of new pages I'd never seen before. On closer inspection, it turns out that these are largely because of my Interactive Fiction story "I Am the Law", which I entered into a small competition between forum members. It seems that the IF community, small as it is, likes to keep tabs on everything that goes on. Since I Am the Law was an official release, it gets noticed, however small it may have been.

The IF Database at tads.org has a general page for it. It says it's a Science Fiction/Mystery. It's also taken a piece of text from the game and condensed it to read like a miniature blurb/tagline:
"I am detective Joshua Kent. Captain Seth was murdered in this remote research space station. I will find the killer, make the decisions, and pass judgment. In short: I am the Law."
I think that's particularly cool!
Delron has a reviews page for it, which is a small collection of reviews from the people who contributed to the competition. I quite like some of them, even if the game's fundamentally flawed by the competition restrictions, so it's not exactly top class work of mine. Both of those pages have a download link, which is nice.

Possibly my favourite of all though is at the IFWiki. It, like all other wikis, is a user-generated database. Wikipedia strives to be a user-generated encyclopedia, designed so anyone can look up anything and learn what it is. Subject specific wikis act like master databases though, striving to cover every detail. Since I officially released an IF game, I get a page for myself. It's recorded my game, along with it's date of release and it's 2nd place in the competition. What's really nice is that they located the links for this blog and my gaming reviews blog and added them to the bottom of the page.

Now I'm not really one for fame. I'd love to be a published author, but I wouldn't like J.K.Rowling's level of fame. For me the best thing about being a published author would be owning a copy of a real book with my name on it. Sure, it'd be fun if someone read it. If someone enoyed it, that'd be great! But if it was rubbish and everyone who read it said it was rubbish then that'd be fair enough. I'm not in this for fame or for people to love me, but I appreciate people who enjoy my work and I appreciate a level of recognition, however small. Barely anybody's going to pass through my page on the IFWiki, but whoever added the links to my blogs had enough care to realise that if someone did want to know more, it'd be nice if they had a link to go to. I have my place in a massive database of IF, which is wonderful recognition for the work I put into it. It feels good to have been recognised for this, unlike my Microstories that circle round my friends and then just sit on my hardrive forever.

It inspires me to keep working on my projects. There's so many of them now, it's quite ridiculous. I think I try to do too much, so most of my projects tend to be in the planning stages. Some are further along than others. I've got two potential novels, a short story, a larger (and better) piece of IF, a couple of youtube videos I'm cutting together, several video game ideas and I'm currently working with Pete on a joint website. It's all rather exciting, but kinda hard to manage when I'm got to do Uni work as well. But that's life. I loved the competition because people were so encouraging all the time. They were all doing the same thing, so they appreciated the difficulties, but they were also excited for me and were looking forward to seeing the final product, which isn't something I get much of when I'm writing regular fiction for myself.

So whilst I'm not in this for fame, having somebody out there who likes my stuff to be excited about it too and encourage me whilst I work goes a very, very long way. But in the end, I just like to be creative and make stuff, regardless of who sees the result. I love to play bass, but most of the other bass players at CU or Christ Church back home are way better than me. I still enjoy it though. A writer who's writing for a reason other than their own enjoyment won't write as a good a story.

The Valentine Report

2009-02-14T00:37:00.005Z

I haven't posted much this week because I've been bogged down with work. Yes, that's right, I do work. I've had a load of work suddenly appear at once, which isn't all that fun when combined with the work I haven't done that's due in soon. Then add to that all the non-uni stuff I've had to do this week (several hours of CU work for playing in their band, leading a children's youth group and a very important trip to Ikea), and I've had a busy week. The Ikea trip was particularly fun. Yesterday (Thursday) the new Ikea opened in Southampton. Alex, Pete and I went along, accompanied by David (our minister) and a couple of my friends from uni (although they didn't stay long). We didn't buy much in the end, which was kinda disappointing. Alex almost bought a chair for himself.

It's curious to read back over my previous Valentine Reports. Last year I made the mistake of saying I might be single for years. Well as it happens this year I have a girlfriend. My streak of (vaguely) early nights was ruined when Sarah arrived back from Berlin at 1am this morning (Saturday morning, Friday night). She's been in Berlin since Monday, so I was excited to see her again! The kind of excited that takes a few hours before I feel like going to bed. But despite the last night, we managed to do fairly well at Valentine's Day in the end. We didn't have particularly big plans, we decided to do things a little differently.

It all started at the start of the week when I was deciding what to get Sarah for Valentine's Day. I went on Amazon and followed the standard link to their Valentine gifts page. I scanned through the list of ideas and I couldn't find anything Sarah would like. She's not really a fan of hearts and cheesy sentimentality. So I decided to ditch the world's idea of a romantic Valentine's Day. After all, I lost faith in the world's idea of romance when people started sleeping with each other and then being surprised if one says they love the other. So I decided to do a Valentine's Day that would be the most fun for Sarah and I, regardless of convention.

I bought her some Yu-Gi-Oh! cards from Amazon for a start. We're both into them quite a bit (despite being a kids thing primarily, the game is surprisingly strategic). But I spent a while hunting round on Amazon and doing lots of internet research to find her a pack she'd particularly like. It seems I chose well in the end, she was very happy. But also when I was in Ikea I bumped into a present I thought would be perfect for her. It's a cushion that can be unzipped into a blanket. It's exactly Sarah's kinda thing.
The plan for the day was to on a walk and do some shopping. Sarah and I love shopping (which is probably a bad thing), and I'd recently tracked down a decent pawnbroker at long last. The plan was to go there, check it out and then come home again. It's a good half hour away, so we'd get plenty of time to chat and walk about together, which is always fun and at least vaguely romantic. As it happens we ended up doing a lot more walking than I'd planned, because the pawnbroker was actually fairly rubbish. I'm beginning to lose hope in retailers in terms of the retro gaming market, but that's a rant for another day. The shop was lovely, but as a gamer it was useless to me. We didn't know what to do for a while, and then decided to go shopping elsewhere.

So our day consisted of an awful lot of walking, with the following shops interspersed: a huge sweet shop, CEX, Gamestation, Waterstones, GAME and Rockbottom Toy Store. Sarah bought me a Valentine's present along the way. She bought me Burnout Paradise for the PS3, which I've been wanting to get recently, so I'm very happy! (and I'm currently waiting for the game to finish it's lengthy update). Sarah also found a copy of The Orange Box for PS3 for only £13, so she bought it. We have it for the Xbox 360 already, but the 360 charges for online gaming, whilst the PS3 doesn't. Sarah and I love a game in the Orange Box called Team Fortress 2, which can only be played online, so £13 sounded much better to her than the cost of the 360's online subscription.
We also had fun poking round Waterstones. I've discovered I can get the Battle Royale manga series at 2/3 the price I originally thought, so I'm planning on collecting it over a long period of time. I'm not sure whether my Mum still disapproves of it, but I really enjoyed it, and not for the violence, for the story. We also had a look around the Toy Store, partly for some Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and partly to see what Lego they had. We paid a visit to the gaming arcade nearby and had a game of Time Crisis 4 (a light-gun game), and finally had a meal at KFC.

Shopping, walking talking, buying games, playing games and eating at a fast food restaurant may not seem like most people's idea of Valentine's Day, but we really enjoyed it. We both got some gifts we really wanted and we got to hang out with each other all day. Today has been an unusual but incredibly fun Valentine's Day!

xkcd is an amazing webcomic!

2009-02-09T04:10:00.001Z

CU Weekend Away

2009-02-08T23:47:00.005Z

The Christian Union weekend away was one of those trips that I was really skeptical of, but then really enjoyed once I got there. I'm generally not fond of trips like this. Apart from them taking a lot of time out of my life (and yes, I did have work to do this weekend!), I don't really like sleeping away from home. I have a miniature phobia of sleeping in places I'm not familiar with and with people I'm not familiar with. It's mostly the people. Probably some bad school trips when I was younger. But there were many Christian camps or New Wines when I'd love it during the day but every night I'd want to be at home again. Lately I've been able to get tents with people I know & like (at New Wine for example) so I've enjoyed it after all. But it's still a general thing. I like to be at home at night. So sleeping in a church hall for a couple of nights with people I don't know all that well and no showers or anything like that didn't sound like a great idea. I was convinced in the end by the idea that Pete, Sarah and I could leave early. I'm still not entirely sure how well that worked out, but here's the story anyway.

Friday late afternoon Pete, Alex and I went to the train station and met up with the rest of the Christian Union. Sarah was coming later with some other people on her course, since they had work until later. I hurried Pete & Alex along because I'm used to missing trains, and as it happens most of the rest of our group missed the train and came on the next one. An hour and a bit of failing to get seats later, we arrived. Our group of seven split in two, one to go to Tescos for supplies and the other to get to the church, where we were gonna be. As it happens, Pete, Alex and I were the ones going to the church. We arrived and were shown round by their youth worker and then left to ourselves. Clearly this was a man who hasn't met Pete, Alex and I. Within quarter of an hour we'd sized up their sound system (very good except the lack of DI boxes. Everything was jack-to-XLR), their book collection (didn't know there was a third Sacred Diary by Adrian Plass), we had an MP3-player hooked up to the sound system in the lobby and we were playing three-player Tetris on our DSes.

Everyone else arrived in dribs and drabs, eventually including my girl, who's got herself a new camera. Being an artsy kinda person, she enjoys taking photos. Of anything and everything. At the most random moments. So she was pretty pleased with her brand-new half-price camera. I had a go too, and apparently wasted half the battery. I've never got a chance to play with a vaguely new digital camera. I take so little photos (apart from my camera's phone) that I still use an old film camera. So I had lots of fun with the camera's focus function, whereby it tracks faces or picks critical objects and then focuses perfectly on them. It was lots of fun.

The weekend was basically a break for us in the Christian union. Seminars, worship and lots of hanging out. We even had a guest speaker. I've no idea where he was from, but he was very good! We had some slightly different views on creation and science (only slightly - he was more sceptical of scientists than I was), but he had some great stuff to say about the Bible. He'd been employed by a church (possibly the one we were sleeping in, thinking about it) to do apologetics, so he was well versed in theology, which was a good change of pace for me. I'm really into the whole super-detailed look at the Bible, whereas an average morning service at Central Baptist Church (where I go on Sundays) has a short talk by the minister. There's nothing wrong with that of course, I like David's talks, and he certainly knows his Bible too, but there's some very different styles of talks, and our church has the usual relaxed, family service with a message talk (but on occasions a tough message). But I also enjoy the type of talk that goes in-depth with the Bible and isn't afraid to take ages to explain something detailed. Summary: he was good.

Friday evening was mostly a talk/worship session, dinner and hanging out. Somehow we ended up in the church's sports hall playing football in teams of four at 1am, which was a surprise, especially for me. I was told I was quite good, but I don't believe them. It was fun though. Football's meant to be played on a huge field, and putting it in a small, walled area completely shifts the balance of play to something more suited to me: reaction times and sprinting. My team was pretty fun to play with. Generally the weekend was fantastic for getting to know people better. I really, really enjoyed myself all weekend. There were enough situations where we were with lots of people that I got to get to know some people better. I valued it all, even with the people I only spent 5 minutes with I still felt it had been worth it.

Sleeping was a pain, since the best arrangements I could come up with was using a sleeping bag on a row of chairs. Not fantastic but it was good enough apparently that I could fall asleep. I got six hours sleep but felt wide awake in no time the next morning, which is a real rarity for me. I sorely missed my shower and wasn't all that keen on having breakfast at 8:30am. Strangely though, whenever I have a really early start (really early for me being before 9am) I always enjoy myself a lot more, and I enjoy the rest of the day a lot more. I have my vicar from Bargoed to thank for reminding me of that. I bought myself some Weetabix today to encourage myself to get up early. I guess writing my blog at 3am isn't a great start to that principle, but I figure you'd like me to blog at some point.

Saturday was mostly about seminars. After another talk/worship session there were two blocks of seminars. We overran hugely, and the later part of the afternoon got squashed up, but I think it was worth it for the seminars. Each block had a choice of two, which was very annoying because I'd have liked to go to all four of them! I chose one on the Bible first, by the guest speaker guy. It was a very good talk, looking at a number of general things about the Bible. I can remember a few things. He showed us evidence of why historians agree the New Testament is the most accurate piece of ancient literature ever in terms of how sure we are that what we have today is what was written at the time. He showed us some really cool examples of bits of archeology that fit in perfectly with the Bible's record of things. He also showed us the verse upon which the conspiracy theory from "The Da Vinci Code" is inspired, and showed that it doesn't say anything like Dan Brown says it does. In the book they quote a verse from a book not in the Bible. They claim the church cut the book it out to hide it, but in reality it was written 500 years after Jesus lived, so we're allowed to be sceptical I think. It's generally assumed to be fake, and lacks the same accuracy and approval that I mentioned the rest of the New Testmanet has. Anyway, they quote this verse:

"And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval."

However, most ancient texts are discovered in small fragments. The parchment degrades over time. What we actually have of that verse is just this:

"And the companion of the [...] Mary Magdalene. [... loved] her more than [all] the disciples [and used to] kiss her [often] on her [...]. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval."

Now, even if the book from which this is taken were in a position to be trusted in the first place (which is a whole different discussion), you can see that the verse could quite easily mean something completely different. Anyway, I'm not the scholar, I'll leave the real debate to those who know what they're talking about. I was just interested to see that.

The second seminar I went to was by Pete, talking on spiritual warfare and keeping yourself safe. It was very interesting, but I'd heard most of it before (we have similar Bible knowledge, I think it's safe to say. Correct me if I'm wrong, Pete). He did it very well though, and I hope people learnt a lot from it. He had a nicely organised prayer session afterwards. The other talk at the same time as his overran, so I caught a bit of that as well. It was about how we as Christians should think about movies, music and games. From what I could tell his basic point was just getting them to think more deeply about what they find acceptable and unacceptable, without actually telling them what's right or wrong. I agree with him that it's different for each person, and as long as you keep tabs on what you watch/hear then you're likely to be ok. I know I keep an eye on what I'm watching.

Part of me wishes I'd stayed the night for the next morning, and Alex (who did say) certainly is pleased that he did. On the other hand it was great to sleep in a regular bed again and have a shower. I also got a little bit of work done and went to the evening service at Central Baptist to hear Jim talk, which was really good. But I also kinda wish I'd stayed and hung out with everyone more, as well as whatever else they did Saturday evening and Sunday morning. On the other hand again, their trains were cancelled so it took them three and a half hours to get home. Oh well, the choice has been made. Before we left though, Sarah and I played a few rounds of poker with some guys, which was really fun.

Another long train journey followed, except this time we had seats, a really quiet cab and I had my girl falling asleep on me. When we got back we had pizza (though it made me ill, but never mind) and watched The Colour of Magic on Blu-Ray. Still, it was a fantastic weekend. I got a lot closer to some friends, learnt a lot biblically, spent some quality time with God and had lots of fun. Now it's back to real life, and I've got lots of work to do now! Prayer would be really, really appreciated in regards to doing work.
In other news, I had my haircut just before the weekend and the hairdresser cut it slightly too short, which is annoying. It'll grow out soon, so it's not so bad. Also, Sarah's trip to Berlin was rescheduled for this week, so unless disaster strikes again she'll be flying away tomorrow morning and coming back Friday evening, just in time for Saturday, which I'll be talking more about soon.

That space intentionally left blank

2009-02-08T00:31:00.003Z

That was a planned lack of blog posts, I just forgot to tell you I was going away on a Christian Union weekend away. Was fantastic. Full post coming tomorrow when I'm less shattered. Part of me wishes I was still there with them, but the rest of me is happy for the warm bed, even if I do feel slightly ill. Oh well, such is life.

Bomb-proof

2009-02-05T18:29:00.007Z

This Gameboy survived a bombing during the Gulf War (1990-1991). It still works as well!

Nintendo are famous for building their products extremely well.

Snow confuses everybody it seems

2009-02-02T21:14:00.003Z

I'm sure everybody's guessed by now, but it did snow in the end. I got to relive the childhood moment of waking up to find the whole world has suddenly turned white. And of course I got the bonus of a day with no Uni, since it shut. We're all hoping the same will happen tomorrow, but I doubt it. I walked Sarah to Uni (where she was meeting people to go to Berlin) so I got to walk through lots of parks and trees in the snow, which was lovely. On the other hand, Sarah's flight later got canceled, so she's staying here another night. So none of us really know how the rest of the week's working out, specifically tomorrow. At the moment I'm extremely tired, so I'm going to go to sleep soon. It was nice to see the snow today. :-)

Weather warnings? Can't wait!

2009-02-02T00:30:00.004Z

Coming out of Church this evening it snowed for about 10 minutes. It wasn't very heavy, but just enough to give the road patches of white all over the place. Apparently there's a 60% chance of heavy snow in Southampton. Something must be up because apparently Southampton never gets snow. But I'm excited anyway. Sarah on the other hand should get loads of snow since she's spending the week in Berlin on some uni trip. I'm excited for her because I've been to Berlin and it was lovely. It also snowed the whole time, so I'm sure she'll enjoy it. I'll miss her though.
It'll be odd whilst she's away. I'm sure she'll enjoy being away from us four guys for a while. We won't be able to watch Stargate (we made it all the way through the first series of SG-1 thanks to our Odeon Direct rental thingie) or play Metal Gear Solid, both of which are things groups of us do together for plot. On the subject of TV and such, I'm enjoying the second series of Pushing Daisies, which has just begun. Anybody who knows me well (my family for a start) I'd recommend not watching series 2 and instead borrowing series 1 off me when you get a chance. You'll enjoy it more that way.

I spent Saturday working on my laptop with Pete (although he did most of the hard work on Friday night). By Saturday evening I'd fiddled with enough of the settings that it was all good. Running Kubuntu in KDE 4 is fun. Everything's slightly different, which is unerving. It's a lot prettier an it has some neat features. Because each KDE release is redesigned from scratch, there's a couple of features that I used to have but that haven't been redeveloped yet, and I miss them, but on balance I prefer KDE 4. When I turn on my laptop I get the choice of either Kubuntu or Windows XP (it boots Kubuntu after 10 seconds if I don't choose, which is handy). In XP things run a lot nicer than they did when I was running a Windows emulator or running XP in a virtual machine. Games actually run, which is really nice. I spent as little time in XP as possible; it's given me loads of annoying complaints already and I had to work hard to get it setup, whereas almost all my time fiddling in Linux have been customisation to make things feel nice. But I like having XP there for when I need it.

At the moment I'm celebrating the whole update by playing Theme Hospital. I've stopped buying games because I've discovered I have a huge number of games I haven't finished, quite a few I haven't started and all the rest I'd quite like to play through again. So I've been playing my new games and re-playing some older ones. But suddenly I have access to my collection of unplayed PC games, and having recently setup the PS2 I've got access to all of them. Those two consoles represent most of my not-yet-started games. Very exciting for little me. I've also started reviewing games again, which is cool. My reviews blog is getting a little cluttered so I want to build a whole website for it at some point. Until then, anybody who's interested can still follow the link over and have a poke around.

Anyway, that's enough ranting for today. Tomorrow I've got lectures solidly from 1pm to 6pm, which is a pain. Hopefully I'll be able to relax with Pete & Alex in the evening though. We might play poker with Alex's new set.
Hope my rant wasn't too boring. It seems I can do this blogging thing now. I'm guessing when I slip back into the mind-set I'll find it easier to think of what to write, but at the moment I'm just doing some ranting posts. But those of you who still read this: What would you like me to tell you about? Post your answers in the comments!

Downtime

2009-01-31T01:24:00.003Z

Actually I'm not referring to my lack of blog posts. I'm referring to my laptop. Today and tomorrow my it's having some upgrades. I've moved to dual-booting with Linux (Kubuntu) and Windows XP. This means when I switch my laptop on I can choose which I want to run. I can run Windows to use Windows-specific programs and play PC games (at last!), and then I can run Kubuntu for regular use. But it's also exciting because with the new install of everything I've upgraded from KDE 3 to KDE 4, which is very exciting. Linux is set up a little more complexly than Windows. Ubuntu is a distribution (version) of Linux, and it happens to run using the desktop environment (or manager) GNOME. Kubuntu is a version of Unbuntu that runs KDE instead. So Kubuntu can have upgrades, and so can KDE. How each version of Linux makes use of their desktop environment differs. Put simply: upgrading to KDE 4 is very exciting and gives me loads of new things to play with.

Anyway, apologies for not blogging more. I've been trying to work out how life works, and I can't quite settle down with it. So I've given up on waiting until I'm comfortable before blogging and I'm going to attempt to blog in spite of life being complicated. I'll probably try small posts first and you may not get detailed information about my life for a while, so I'll give you a summary of my life since the summer.

New house. New living. Fun housemates. Happy. Great system. Huge TV. Surround sound. Games. Xbox 360. PS3. Watching movies with housemates is fun. Blu-ray Dark Knight is amazing. University's tough. Work-relax balance is hard. Enjoy some things, not others. Prayer would be nice. Got some good friends there. Have some over lots. Currently working on designing a game with a cool partner. Fun but hard. Like writing. Not done much of that. Hard to write when I feel like I'm struggling with the same things everyone else is. Feel a lack of uniqueness in my moaning. Might be why I haven't blogged much either. Church here is lovely. Minister's lovely. Running a youth group. Hard but rewarding. Love my housemates. Love my house. Love my life, just need to work on some (ok, a lot of) things. Tired.

Hope that'll do people for a while. I'm gonna try for a post every day or two, but don't complain if a few of them aren't all that detailed or personal. Prayer's always nice, especially about any issues outlined above, but could you also pray for a couple of my friends (who I shouldn't name). One of them knows who they are, if they read this anyway.

Codename Bedtime

2008-12-14T14:46:00.003Z

The problem: My body clock is set to late nights and late mornings, which leads to tiredness and low productivity.
The plan: Pete drags me to bed when he goes to sleep and wakes me up when he gets up.
The issue: One of us ends up failing and causing one or both of us to have a really late night.

Day 1: I fail. I take my laptop with me when I go to bed.
Day 2: Pete fails. He gets distracted by reading me articles on uncyclopedia for hours whilst I'm playing a game and can't see the time.
Day 3: Pete fails. He decides to go to bed, then when I decide to follow he decides he's awake and wants to play cards.
Day 4: I fail. I just play games too late.

Now I'm home, so maybe Mum and I can have more success.
On the other hand, Pete and I had a great week!

Daydreaming's more productive than you think

2008-12-07T22:49:00.003Z

You can thank my girlfriend for this blog post. Her wonderfully simple-yet-effective blog post the other day reminded me how much I enjoy writing & reading blogs myself. Hence why you find my big unsimple blog post here today!

What of life? I'm actually feeling a lot better about life than I was a few weeks ago. Uni is the largest thing in my life it seems. I was finding it very easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of work I had to do, and the worryingly similar ratio of work set and work done didn't help. The longer it takes to do the work, the more work piles up and eventually I'm behind because I'm behind. In comes a sudden burst of enthusiasm. It hasn't made much difference practically, but it's lifted my spirits a bit. Then in comes Christmas. I get a whole three weeks off (my biggest Christmas break ever!) and I get to go home and see my family! So I'm planning on using the time to catch up on work and get me ready to do a better second term.

Anyway, work's boring, so what else has been happening? Life's been trundling along. I've been really enjoying living with friends and having fun with them. I think it's partly that they often think like me. It's kinda like hanging out with Darren at Bargoed. I don't like him any more than I like the rest of the people I work with; he's by no means a favourite. But on the other hand anybody who saw us together could see there was a connection there. I get that with Sarah, Pete & Alex, so it's great fun! Talking of Bargoed, I've found myself wanting to go back for a visit an awful lot recently. I really miss everyone there. I really wanna go back and see all my friends there.

I've been doing a lot of creative daydreaming recently. That is, daydreaming about my various creative projects. The ones high up the list are Disruption (my super-ambitious time-travel video game idea), Clone (sci-fi novel) and Clocks (IF piece like I Am the Law but better). Then there's a few random ones like Combo (arcade shooter game), Yellow (short story) and Switch (innovative 2D platformer). Haven't put anything down on paper in a while, but then I tend not to until I'm ready to do really detailed work. So far I've solved paradoxes for Disruption's time travel and thrown around a load of ideas for Clone and Clocks. I'm so looking forward to writing/making all of these!

Prayers? If you could pray I survive my last week of uni, that I keep close to God & don't waste my holiday the I'd be extremely grateful. Thanks.

Anybody seen this one?

2008-12-01T00:58:00.002Z

I've just watched Cloverfield, which I think warrants a blog post. Thankfully I'd managed to miss the film's viral marketing campaign, so when it turned up at our house it was just a name to me. We got it via LoveFilm, which we all seem to really like at the moment. You pay a regular subscription fee and you can rent infinite movies for as long as you like provided you never have more than three out at once. They're all posted to us as well. It's perfect for lazy students and we've been watching loads of movies as well as mowing our way through various series' of Stargate Atlantis. Since we rent TV series' one disc at a time, it was fairly simple to rent out the final disc of Heroes Season 1, having watched all but the last four episodes with my family over the summer.

Cloverfield is an interesting film. I'm not quite sure what I think about it because I'm really tired and am about to go to bed (an early night for me!). I really enjoyed watching it, but that's not the same as thinking it's a great movie. I was fascinated by the film's style and innovation, which is very similar to my writing style in many ways (the innovation in the film medium is obviously different to innovation in the writing medium, but they similarly focused on their new idea, and the ending felt like my kinda thing). On the other hand I can see where the people who didn't like it are coming from.

I know that's all very cryptic, but I think I'll leave this post spoiler-free, and instead let the comments section become a spoiler zone. If anybody's seen it, please post your thoughts in the comments. You can all make up for your lack of commenting on my evil plan (with the exception of my fellow evil geniai, Anna & Sarah.
For those unable to join the discussion, you can rest safe in the knowledge that I'm still alive and well. Can people pray for me getting a balance between uni and everything else, because I really need that. And some of God's famous peace-that-transcends-all-understanding wouldn't go amiss. Thanks.

My evil plan

2008-11-28T02:28:00.003Z

There's a lot of sites where you pick multiple choice answers or fill in the blank in order to create an amusing story. Normally I have fun filling them in but the end result is too long and too boring to be much entertainment. However, this one peaked my interest with some funny options, and the end result was really good. Have a read below, and then take the link here to the page if you wanna make your own.
And remember, it was Pete, Sarah and me and it; was quite late...

Congratulations on being the creator of a new

Evil Plan (tm)!

Your objective is simple: Destroy the Earth.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: Sadistic pleasure

Stage One

To begin your plan, you must first incinerate a pope. This will cause the world to slaughter a sacred calf to appease the gods, paralyzed by your arrival. Who is this despoiler of all that is good and nice and true? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good in classic black?

Stage Two

Next, you must vaporize the moon (ooh, tides!). This will all be done from a air fortress, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will wet their pants, as countless hordes of cultists hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three

Finally, you must tauntingly wave your unholy weapon, bringing about the destruction of the masses. Your name shall become synonymous with dear god no, and no man will ever again dare make you clean your room. Everyone will bow before your mind-boggling insanity, and the world will have no choice but to restore your credit rating.

Cats are awesome

2008-11-20T17:17:00.001Z

To celebrate seeing my parents yesterday, have some funny.

I am the Law

2008-11-17T02:47:00.003Z

Things have been going ok at my end. I'm slowly improving on my variety of personal troubles, worries and issues. God is being extremely nice to me, as per usual. I'm still finding I want more time in life, but I'm surviving and having a worryingly large success rate at life, despite the feeling that I'm not really in control. So, in other words, life's as it should be. It's just taking a while to straighten things out so my life runs smoothly as I want it to. Eventually blogging will be a habit and there'll be time for it, but until then you'll have to bear with the occasional posts you get.

This post is very special actually. You guys remember the Odd Competition?
The following text is taken straight from an old post, so skip down to the sentence in bold if you already know all this. Feel free to catch up on the details though.

Old stuff
Some of you still won't be aware that for the last year the story I've been working on isn't a normal story. That is to say it isn't static fiction. It's interactive fiction. Static fiction is fiction that you just read. Any regular story. Interactive fiction is fiction where the reader also becomes the player. It's important if you haven't heard of it to remember that it is still fiction. My interactive fiction works I treat exactly how I'd treat a real story. If you like my stories, you'll love my IF (interactive fiction, keep up).
IF is a cross between a story and a video game. The computer shows you the story (the introduction, how everything starts) and when it's time for you to do something it's up to you. The computer tells you where you are and what's around you, then leaves it up to you. It's not the same as the choose-your-own-adventure books, where at the bottom of each page you can choose on of threeish paths, and turn to the right page. IF is so much more. You can type in whatever you want to do. "Walk north" will take you to the room to the north. "Examine table" will tell you more about the table. "Open box" will open the box. All your sentances are constructed in the form "verb noun", with scope for more ("Unlock door with red key"). Every time you type something in, the computer tells you what happens and your story continues.

(In the above picture "x" means "examine" and "i" means "inventory". Apologies for having to cut off the side. Click the picture to see it all.)

As I said, I treat my IF just like I treat my stories. The picture above feels very game-like, and doesn't show much story. For a start, I work hard to make sure the story is the most important part of my game. I also make sure anyone can finish the story, although I like to make people think occasionally. But I also invest a lot of time into making it read more like a novel, despite the player choosing what happens. For example, instead of the bland description of the plate (from the above picture), I'd add bits to the effect of "Bob leant in to take a closer look at the plate..." etc. I also try and make sure the text that appears changes based on what you've done before. Characters moods shift based on your actions, conversations don't repeat themselves and take into account what you've said previously, etc. You'll have to trust me, but even you non-gamers will enjoy the stories I write in IF. I haven't finished one yet, but my current work-in-progress, Project Clocks (not it's final name), is the best story I've ever written.
The community I write with occasionally hold mini-competitions. Someone came up with the Odd Competition, which basically restricts your programming on the game. It takes the fundamental parts and limits how many of each you can use (for example, you're only allowed a few rooms, objects & characters). This means the games end up naturally being quite short, and under-developed, but the goal is to see who can make the best game under these circumstances. When I heard about it I came up with a good idea about how to do the programming under such restrictions, but I had no story to go along with it. Then one came to me.

So what's new?
Well I finished the game and entered it into the competition, after many late nights and working on little else for a week or two. It was stressful but I managed it. The problem was that everybody else had a real life as well, so voting took a long time. But it's finally over! My game , "I am the Law" came in second place (out of 9), which I'm really pleased with!

If you're interested, feel free to give it a try. Remember it's not my best story by a long shot, and due to the limitations of the competition it's also not my best IF game. But it is a short (half an hour max) piece that you can either think of as a story or a game. It's a whodunnit where you have to work it out. People seemed to enjoy it anyway. It came second after all!

How do you download & play it?
Follow this link here.
It's only about 2.5MB so don't worry about it. Unzip the file and run the setup.exe.
Download this file here. Unzip that too.
Then open the Adrift Runner (it could be a shortcut or on your start menu, I'm not sure. If you open it right you should get a huge black screen with a few menus at the top. Once it's open, go to the "Adventure" menu at the top and click "open new adventure". Then find where you unzipped the second file and find "I am the Law" from the folder.

(Note: If you're not using Windows there are ways of playing my game, I'm just not sure what they are, sorry!)
(Note 2: If you still don't understand what to do, sorry for being all techie. Post a comment and I'll bug Mum into writing a more people-friendly set of instructions)

Ending thoughts
I'm really pleased with how it all worked out in the end. I've written better stories, and I will write better stories, and I will write better text adventures too. However I'm attached to it in the same way that we authors get attached to everything we write. Hopefully the positive feedback will help bully me into finally writing Project Clocks, which is a text adventure to show off my writing and game-making skills for real. I'm also working on another project called Clone (for the moment), which is regular fiction. And I'm writing a short story called "Yellow".
Once again, thanks to everyone who's been praying. It's helped so much!

Pray for more

2008-10-28T01:44:00.004Z

You can probably work out that if I haven't blogged in 20 days it means I could do with some prayer, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to remind you.

Life's crazy here, and I've been struggling to adjust to a new way of life. God's been being absolutely fantastic to me though. It's been one of those months where all along you think God's been ignoring you and then you suddenly realise He's been doing exactly what you asked Him to all along. He's just incredible. I love Him.
So I think I'm slowly getting there with learning how to cope with my new life. Once God and I have solved my biggest problems we'll work on the next biggest. So prayer would be extremely useful. If you want specifics to pray for, pray that I'd stay close to God, that I'd get some sleep and that I'd do lots of work.

This week's an extremely busy one (compared to the weeks I've had so far) so the prayer will be extremely useful. If everything works out ok then I should get some time to do some sort of "proper" blog post Thursday or Friday. However, don't be surprised if it doesn't happen that soon though though. Blogging's not my highest priority when it comes to putting my life back in order. On the other hand I'm clearly a hypocrite because I just spent an hour talking to Alex about time travel for a story of mine. In my defense we solved the problem! Time travel works now. You can't say I've wasted these 20 days since I last blogged!

To summarise: "pray for more". That doesn't mean pray for more blog posts like you'd pray that it doesn't rain on your way to work. I mean pray for more blog posts as in "push button for free sweets". You push the button and after a chain of events, you get sweets. Pray for me and the chain reaction of God helping me will lead to more blog posts.
Pray for more.

Catch-up: Fresher's Week

2008-10-07T23:11:00.004Z

I'm starting to settle down into uni life now. I'm half way through my second week in my course, third week doing stuff with uni and fourth week in Southampton itself. It's a completely different lifestyle here. I'm still trying to find the balance between friends, work, play, rest, God, and probably a few other things. Money. Pah.
In any case, the fact that I consider myself able to blog despite having recently bought an Xbox 360 (to go nicely with our 42" HDMI TV & surround sound) says a lot about my state. I'm still struggling with a load of small things that all pile up in my mind occasionally and have a go at me. So general prayer would still be good, but I won't use this post as a rant about negative stuff, especially since I'm sure a lot of it will just vanish with time and experience. No, this post is going to be a catching-up post telling you all about my fun time during Fresher's Week. Then maybe I'll do one about my course so far, a photo blog & some other stuff. We'll start small though, yeah?

Fresher's Week was the first uni activity I had to/could do. After a week of doing nothing and becoming even lazier than I was (if that's possible), suddenly having to get up to be at uni at 9am and work most of the day was a bit of a shock. However I reacted extremely positively. Once the intial formalities were out of the way and it became clear that my place at Solent was 100% secure and the last piece of paranoia was driven from my head, I relaxed. To have work and a routine forced upon me was a blessing to my lazy self in many ways. Whilst I'm still stuck with too many things to do with my time, routine is helping me to a certain extent. Changes to my lifestyle still need to be made, but that's complicated talk for another day.

Monday
There was a welcome talk at 10am that basically outlined various support networks we could call upon if we need help. They're fairly irrelevant to me, since I have my loving housemates, family and church. After much ranting by my "transition tutor" it's clear that any course-related issues can be brought to him and he'll either solve the problem or find out who can.
After the welcome talk I found I had nothing to do until 12 noon. I'd foolishly assumed uni life was going to be like school in that I was in for blocks at a time, but it turns out it's like Sixth Form in that I go in for certain slots and then can do what I like with the rest of my day.

At 12 I met a few lecturers who'd be teaching me. In the room with me was the whole of the games course as well as the people on the software engineering, computing and web development courses. Despite the non-games students being split across three courses, the ratio of games students to non-games students was about 3:1. We met Andrew (the head of the gaming side) as well as a few other lecturers. They were all really nice and quite funny. The meeting set the scene for the rest of Fresher's Week, and indeed for the rest of the course (as far as I can see anyway). It was very relaxed, friendly and fun. It's everything education should be. The parts of school or Sixth Form I really got on with, expanded to their true potential and with added maturity.

Enrollment was when I eventually settled down. Having a little piece of paper in my hand confirmed that this was the place I was supposed to be, and that they hadn't lost my files and it didn't turn out I should have completed a long lost form months ago. It was all ok, I was in.
I took a break and came back in the afternoon for an IT introduction, which turned out to be a miniature powerpoint explaining how to log on to the uni computers and various rules/advice.

Tuesday
First job was to get our campus cards. I got their reasonably early so I could get away with enough time to relax for the rest of the morning. We had our photo taken and due to indecision and pressure to give an answer, I didn't opt for a retake of my horrible photo. Oh well, it's a conversation starter at least.
Tuesday afternoon consisted of several 10-20 minute lectures explaining briefly what each of the six modules we do this year are. I won't go into much detail about them now, because I'll be explaining them all much clearer in my next post (hopefully). It was really interesting to learn something about what we'll be taught all year.

Wednesday
Had to make it into the uni for 9am on Wednesday. I've found that I can get to uni in 10-15 minutes, depending on how fast I walk, but I try to leave half an hour before I need to be there to compensate for slowness in getting started and navigating the uni to the room I need to be in. Frustratingly, many of my lectures are on the 6th floor and the lift's always too busy. By the end of the year I'll either have super legs or I'll be dead.
The 9am start was just for a tour round the library, which wasn't all that interesting, though I would like to check out what books they have for my course. We had some more time with our lecturers-to-be (we had lots of this general chat-&-question time in our large group).

Then was the Fresher's Welcome Fair. I didn't really want to go to this, especially since I got out 45 minutes before it started. But I'd promised Sarah I'd go, so I waited. As it turned out, it was great! There were loads of companies who'd set up stalls in the sports hall and were trying to get us to sign up for things by giving us freebies. I literally came home with five bags full of goodies. Sarah sorted through all of it and discovered some interesting items. There were plenty of adverts and special deal tokens. Most of the bags I carried things back in were new bags I was given, and one of them is now my regular uni bag. I managed to get two free 1GB USB sticks, which I'm amazed at. I also managed to get about 50 teabags. I think they were meant to give me one but accidentally gave me the bag they were using to keep them all in. There were plenty of other interesting items that have now bonded with my unpacked bags on the floor of my bedroom to create an even larger mess.

In the afternoon we had a Q&A session with three second-year games students, which was really helpful. They addressed a lot of our questions, but also brought up some negative points. I'll explain my thoughts on the session in more detail at the end of this post, as I'll do an overview of my initial impressions to the course.

Thursday
In the morning the non-games students were moved to another room and the rest of us were joined by the Games art students. There are two games courses at Solent, one aimed at programmers and one aimed at artists. As most of us know, the majority of games are made up of huge teams, just as in film-making. There's producers, directors, artists, animators, designers, physics programmers, AI programmers, level designers and many, many more. The artists are learning the design and animation aspects, whilst we're mostly learning the programming. Since the games industry works in teams, we'll be doing many group projects over the years in our course, so co-operation with the artists is handy. They can't program and we can't draw, so a trade is helpful.

More importantly though was a talk we had by one of the Games art lecturers, who had been involved with the gaming industry earlier in it's development and had managed to be involved with most of the major development roles. He outlined various roles and gave some advice on how the industry operates and how to get into it. Again, I'll summarise at the end of the post. It was a very interesting talk though.

Whilst we were all together, we did a video games quiz to test our knowledge. We worked in groups of four or five. We were shown a piece of artwork from a game and were asked to write down the name of the game, who made it and who the lead character was from it. There was a huge selection of different types of games, but a severe lack of Nintendo stuff. Despite that, my team came 3rd or 4th (I forget exactly). We got most of them right. I was pleased to see a fair few people knew the Oddworld games, and found it amusing that I had to correct the lecturer about Myst.

Around lunchtime was the Fresher's Lifestyle Fair, which was where we could sign up to the various clubs and societies. Sarah was in for the fair to help out with the CU's stand, so I managed to drag her off for the hour I had free and we wandered round together. I didn't see many societies that really interested me. Most of them seemed to be sporting or be specialist interests. The only specialist interest I have is making games, and that's my course. I couldn't find a writing group (though I may need to look again) and most of the rest of my talents are more all-purpose. I guess I'm more of a people-person than an activity-person. I did at least get to meet a lot of people whilst wandering round, including a few of Sarah's friends and a few of the CU people I'd met already (they had a lot of planning meetings at our house prior to the Lifestyle Fair). Oh, and I got some more freebies. Woo!

The afternoon was important, because we did a team-building exercise. I'd spoken to a few people before this point, particularly during the gaming quiz, but this was really helpful for meeting people. We were split into four large groups (15ish in a group) and given a task to do. To our surprise, it wasn't the usual build-a-freestanding-tower-out-of-newspaper challenge, but instead an intellectual one. Each of us in the team was given a piece of paper with a piece of information on. The information made no sense whatsoever. I think mine said: "Groganday is a religious holiday and no work is done on it." We were given the basic information we needed to get started. Apparently the Sprogs want to build a tower, and we have to work out what day they finish work on. We were allowed to talk all we liked but not show our pieces of paper to other people.
In the Sprog world, everything has different names. After some information gathering we found the names of each of the eight days in their week, as well as deducing relationships between various alien units of time and size. For example, one piece of paper might say that 2 length-unit-As = 1 length-unit-B. Another might say that a Sprog can move 4 cubes with volume C in one time-unit-D. Once we pieced it all together, it was possible to work out how long it would take them to build the tower, based on how much work they can do in a day, what days they can work on and a load of other factors.

As we realised when it came to present our findings to the rest of the group, the actual maths involved was extremely simple, and if any one person had been given all the pieces of paper they could have found the correct answer extremely quickly. Since we could talk about our information but not show it, the task became an extremely effective test of teamwork. In our group we debated how to go about solving the problem. We made notes on paper, asked questions to the group to find out who had the piece of paper with the answer on it. In the end no group got the correct answer, but we were all observed by the lecturers and given feedback. It seems most groups had some really active people and some people who hid at the edges, not helping. I helped a fair bit, so I thought I did ok, though I guess the whole "team" thing means maybe I should have been helping the rest of the team more.
Either way, I made quite a lot of friends that day. When the course actually started, our huge gaming group was split into three groups and given slightly different timetables. I later found that many of the people in my group for both the team-building exercise and the gaming quiz would be in my group for the rest of the course.

Friday
Almost nothing happened on Friday because some scheduled tests in the morning were cancelled and the afternoon was the Fresher's Sports Fair, which I predictably skipped. We received our timetables, which I'll share with you in a later post.

So what of my thoughts on the course? The many talks by the many people gave me lots to think about. In terms of the course itself, independent learning seems to be key. Going away and working on what I've been taught in lectures sounds good. Disappointingly, I found we won't be making any real games until the second year, unless we want to in our own time.
What was more interesting (or worrying) was the information on the games industry. Apparently it's near impossible to get into. It's almost guaranteed that nobody will go straight from our course into the industry. Common routes in include becoming a games tester (not as great a job as it sounds) and then being discovered via your knowledge or becoming a regular software engineer and working your way in. Either way, both methods are hard and long-winded. The guy in charge of the games art course at Solent has the highest count of putting people into the industry out of all the games courses in the UK. He's put six in so far. Do you want to know how hard he drives his students? He asks them to give up playing video games entirely.

Whilst all this sounds scary, there's good news. It's extremely easy to get a job as a regular software engineer following on from our course, so provided I don't fail there's no worries about not getting a job. But all this makes me think. The amount of commitment that was being described at various points sounds above what I think I can give. It's not too much because I'm lazy (although I am) but it doesn't sound like the kind of life I'd want. Sure, working in the industry would be my dream job, but it doesn't come above God and friends. I want to have time for people, because they're far more important to me than making games.

At the very least I can use the skills I'll learn to work on small games in my spare time. In fact it's very tempting to get a regular software engineering job and be an indie developer on the side. Indie's work away from the financial backing of publishers. They work in small groups, often with extremely low budgets. But recently indie developers have been given more opportunities. Online games have been a key audience for a while, but it's possible for indies to make games for Xbox Live Arcade (the Xbox 360 online shop) and Steam (a PC games distribution and multiplayer manager). Indie's often get to work on the best games because they have no publishers limiting their imagination. Indie's make the games they want, how they want. A good example is Braid, a 2D platformer where you can manipulate time in a slightly different way in each level. It was made by one guy and an artist (+ three composers). Admittedly the guy in charge of it but in $180,000 of his own money into the game over its three year development, but a less pretty version could probably have been made with less money. The game's been released on the PC and Xbox Live Arcade and has been getting extremely good reviews.

Life's far too complicated for me. Prayer please?

It's Odd to work so much...

2008-09-29T21:50:00.003Z

I'm not talking about Uni. The only work I've been given so far is to make a list of all the games I own. I'm talking about the Odd Competition. You may remember I said I was entering a piece of interactive fiction into the competition (see here for details on both interactive fiction and the competition's nature). The deadline was pushed back three times in total, so I ended up working on it quite a while. In fact, all of fresher's week (Monday to Friday last week) I spent all my time either working on the game, at Uni or sleeping/eating. It was such hard work! Hence my lack of posts last week.

This week I don't have such a convincing excuse. Uni took up a lot of my time today, but also friends do as well! I'm living in a house with my best friends! Add to that the fact that you know I have more things that I want to do than I have time to do them. My latest cool idea was using Alex's PC connected to our new 42" TV to install my new Myst games on. However, playing Myst IV in front of everyone in the lounge would spoil it, so I've installed all five on the PC and the four of us are gonna go through them all in order. I won't be helping out with the first three, which I've already finished, but Alex, Sarah & Pete have made a good start on the first one.

There's more I want to do as well. Obviously there's Uni and the work I do at home. I also want to play all the other games in the competition, vote and review them. You can guarantee I'll be posting about it soon. In fact I have a few posts I want to do soon. One about the competition (more details, my work for it, some of the chaos involved), one about fresher's week, one about uni now, and I need to do a photo-post about our new house. I may do lots at once soon, I'm not sure. I want to do some more reviews as well, and play some of my games I haven't finished. Oh, and work on some of my random projects & hang out with my friends. Pete & I are gonna bully Sarah & Alex into watching Alien with us late one night, possibly at the weekend.

And all the while there's chaos looming over my head in the form of things I don't quite understand: Am I spending too much? How much money do I actually have? Are there any huge consequences for having put off certain jobs I need to do? Have I missed something about uni? Should I be doing some piece of work I haven't realised? Will I get everywhere on time tomorrow?
And then all the general worries: How's my relationship with God? Is everything ok with me & Sarah? Am I being a good housemate and doing jobs? Should I help out more with community things (CU & church) or should I let myself acclimatise first? Am I doing ok at life?

There's just too many worries, too many things to do and not enough time. It's quite overwhelming and it's easy to see why I don't get to blog. Yet most of the time I feel happy about things. I look forward to telling you about everything in much more detail, hopefully quite soon. If you could pray for me based on what you've read here though, that'd be great.

daves being dave...

2008-09-29T21:45:00.002Z

...and thus he's gone off playing resi 4
*wanders off to pester him*

The line between confidence and arrogance is very narrow...

2008-09-18T21:43:00.001Z

Deadline extended

2008-09-17T13:51:00.002Z

Those of you who've been paying attention will remember that the deadline for the Odd Competition (mentioned in this post) is this evening. I've been working hard on it, but it's still quite far from being finished. Thankfully, three other entrants are in a similar situation, and so it's been agreed to extend the deadline to Tuesday next week. So those of you who said they'd beta-test for me, don't fret, you'll be getting it in an e-mail in the next few days. Those of you waiting to play it after the competition will need to wait a little longer.

Ninja Cat

2008-09-17T00:36:00.000Z

Scary.

Southampton - now: Home

2008-09-15T00:56:00.003Z

Mum and I worked so hard last week to get ready for me moving to Southampton. I'm incredibly satisfied with last week, because of reading Ben's book, the amount of productive work Mum & I got done and in terms of a good end to my holiday at home. The last night at home with my family we had Dominoes pizza and watched Hot Fuzz. Good times.
After all Mum and my frantic shopping, bank-switching, paperwork sorting and prolonged packing, everything was finally finished and done. After playing with Space Band (I posted twice today, make sure you read the other one) and some more packing, we were ready to go. Mum & I crammed all my stuff into the car, grabbed the new Coldplay album and some chocolate and hit the road.

I gave a description of my house in Southampton in this post, and I'll do a photo-post soonish hopefully. Arriving there we found Pete, and the three of us carried by bags in and then sat down to have a chat and watch some Tripod videos. David Masters (the minister of the Baptist church we go to here, and a really great guy - he gets mentioned here and here) and family came round and donated us a large box of food. Thanks guys!! It was also good for Mum to meet them.
Just before Mum was about to leave, Pete brought up an issue with the fusebox. It seems the previous tenants had blown the fuse for the landing and hall lights, and some fool had put a 500mA fuse in, when it clearly says it needs a 3A fuse. No wonder it blew again so soon. This time they fixed it with tin foil. So the three of us went off on a search for a 3-amp fuse. We found several, but none the right size. However the journey worked out great because we passed a McDonalds and convinced Mum to buy us students one last expensive meal! We got Sarah some as well, and thanks to all our fuse-hunting, we arrived back at our house at roughly the same time that Sarah did, so we could all sit down & have dinner together.

I began unpacking. Since I'm going to be living in this house for at least two years (hopefully more), I packed everything I would want at some point. I really wanted to claim this place as my own home, by having everything here. But with so much stuff packed, unpacking was an issue. I began with the important stuff, which meant setting up my TV, sound system and games consoles downstairs. When Alex arrives in a few weeks he'll be bringing the new 42" TV and his huge speakers, but until then my meager system will have to do. We've set it up so we can play Wii & PS2, and also watch freeview, DVDs and VHSes. I then started unpacking into my room. At first it was extremely stressful, because there were so many bags everywhere, and so many options of where to put everything. Thankfully, the more I did the easier it got. I'm really pleased with the way I did things in my room. It's all about little touches. The layout, the position of my lamp, having all my chargers plugged in at once (instead of having to swap them in and out), having my blanket, pillow and cuddly toys in the window seat and having my bass set up permanently, so I don't have to get it out of the box when I want to use it, I can just pick it up and play. I've still got quite a bit of unpacking to do, even after Sunday, but I'm really happy with how it went. On Saturday I quit unpacking at 1:30, gave Sarah a few late-night races at Mario Kart & went to sleep. It was really nice to be lying in bed with everything in order and just tap my lamp as the last thing to plunge my room into darkness.

Sunday's been fun. We just about made it to church in the morning. It was good fun, though I was tired and didn't have the energy to start making friends. I do feel a bit left out, since the other four (in my house) know loads of people and places around here. Hopefully I'll start making friends soon though. After church we picked up a few basic food supplies & had noodles for lunch. It's been a fairly uneventful afternoon really. David.G turned up, so there's four of us here now. We did some gaming, various bits of unpacking, cooked a more substantial meal for dinner (fish & chips) and watched a couple of episodes of Pushing Daisies together.

I'm incredibly happy here. There's a lovely feel to living with close friends, and I'm really loving it. Sure, I still need to unpack, we need to do some more shopping and I need to get round to writing that IF game (which is currently a maybe), but I've got friends here, I've got Sarah & I'm having such an amazing time!

Space Band goes big!

2008-09-15T00:04:00.004Z

Saturday wasn't just about moving to Southampton. There was something really important that had to happen first. Space Band were playing in Abingdon's town centre.
First question that needs to be answers: Who are "Space Band"? In my home church in Abingdon we have multiple bands to play in the various services. One of these is called "Space Band", named after the youth group the members are chosen from. Space Band covers 14-18 year-olds. It's a large, open group, where anyone who plays an instrument/sings can come along on every other Tuesday and just worship. From that large group, those who want to can actually play in public church services. Members switch in and out interchangeably as people grow up and move on and based on who's available. I used to play bass with them and it was incredible. Ed, the band leader, is so amazingly talented, it's ridiculous. He plays far too many instruments and plays them far too well. There were also loads of talented musicians my age as well, who I ended up playing with me. Add to that the fact that Space Band played together more often than any of the other church bands, thanks to our Tuesday sessions. We were a great band, and I say that without any personal boasting, but out of great admiration for my fellow musicians.

Over the years Space Band have played some performance pieces as well, including the Desire concert we did and the Space Band EP we made, which you can still buy from Christ Church Abingdon. Today, however, was a first for us. Being able to play in Abingdon's town centre in front of whoever was walking by at the time. It was part of an Alpha advertisement. If you don't know, Alpha is an opportunity for anyone to explore the Christian faith in a relaxed setting over ten thought-provoking weekly sessions, with a day or weekend away. It's designed to be a place to learn about the Christian faith, but also to discuss and debate it in a pressure-less setting.
One of the interesting things was that it wasn't the Space Band I remember. Most of the people I'd played with when I was younger had moved on as well, so I was playing with the current band, full of young & surprisingly talented teenagers. We got to play for a 40-minute slot, as did two other bands from out church.
Everything went a bit wrong, with Morris dancers turning up unexpectedly and demanding a period of time to do their own thing. Eventually we got to play though, and it ended up being better than I expected. Despite massive blister problems (an issue with playing bass with your thumb), my plasters won through. The songs went really well, even the ones I was nervous about. But best of all, I had friends there. Shelley had come down, which was really lovely, because I haven't seen her much in the last year. Hannah was there too. Even Ben came down to have a listen. Best of all, though, was that Sarah made it down. She wasn't sure if she'd have time to come (since we were both moving that day), but it was actually thanks to the Morris-delay that she got to hear the entire set. We hung around and ate donuts for a bit afterwards.
I told Mum afterwards, the best thing wasn't that she was there to see me, but that she was so excited to be there to see me.

A tale of cakes, bad map-reading and paperclips

2008-09-12T23:03:00.004Z

It was only this evening that I fully realised that moving to Southampton means moving back out of home & away from my family again. Suddenly had a shockwave of being sad to leave again. Really gonna miss my family & home. It's sad.

I had such a fun day today with Mum! We drove Pete to Southampton for a start. He wanted to move in today (I forget why exactly) so Mum and I got all his stuff in the Volvo (and a bit of mine) and headed down. Southampton's only about an hour from Abingdon, which is really handy. It was awesome to catch up with Pete. We'll catch up properly over the next few days, but spending some time together was so fun. Somehow I've managed to see barely any of Pete all summer, which is really odd. We got to have a good chat today though, so it's all good.

We picked up our room keys & headed to the house. It's actually only the second time I've been in there. It's true that my initial high impressions of the house and then the long time away from it meant that how it appeared in my imagination was better than the truth. But it's still a fantastic house. The lounge is so big compared to any of the other houses we saw. The kitchen's lovely, as is the garden. At the moment it looks a bit bare, and the carpets aren't great, but on the whole I'm still extremely happy with it. I can guarantee that I'll have photos up here in a few posts time.

I got to see my room for the first time. Since my four housemates were living in Southampton when we first got ownership of the house, they got first choice on rooms, and so I'm stuck with the smallest. But I'm actually quite happy. Alex's room is far too big and echoey. I'd never be able to make such a huge room feel cosy. My tiny room on the other hand will be simple. Also since it'll be a limited room I'll be forced to spend more time in the lounge with other people, which sounds good. Best of all though, my room's got a window-ledge thing. It's awesome.
Mum, Pete & I hung out for a bit and investigated some of the house's nooks & crannys. After a while Mum and I went home; and got lost.

Then we did some last-minute shopping for the kind of things you take for granted, but I don't actually have for myself. Things like a stapler and paperclips. For me, this was amazing. I love little things like this, and having my own stapler is so much more awesome than borrowing someone else's or using the family one. And since it's all small stuff you can get them really cheap! I also got elastic bands, folders, a pin-board, another extension cable and some other stuff. My favourite was a bedside lamp that's touch-activated. You just hit the base and it comes on! I love it!

We then went on a packing-spree and got a lot of work done. By 8pm we'd packed loads. We worked all day, had a lot of laughs, ate too many cakes, were completely exhausted, but had had a great day. I had so much fun hanging out with Mum. Gonna miss home.

To leave my blog post on a cliff-hanger, I've just been informed that we've managed to pick up a 42" HD TV for £400, which is just £80 per person. Sweet.

Tripod

2008-09-12T00:58:00.003Z

There are times when I stay up too late and regret it in the morning, and then there's times when I feel it was worthwhile. I guess to communicate the worthwhileness of this evening I should describe it as "enjoying some quality comedy" and not "kicking around youtube".
But regardless of time wasted, time on the clock and time I have to get up in the morning, I can fully recommend to you "Tripod" as some actual quality comedy. They're a team of three guys who do comedy songs. I've become instantly hooked, and haven't laughed so much in ages. It seems they're only good live though.

Really do check out at least one of these:
Maryanne - My favourite on balance. A little long and a couple of swear words, but it's fantastic.
Comic Shop - Taking the mick out of geeks. Love it.
Lonesome Gregarious Cowboy - Failing to retell a cowboy story.
Oasis medley - Only funny if you're an Oasis fan, but if you are then the last 50 seconds are so funny. It's a lot older than the others though...

Time-management correction program initiated

2008-09-10T22:47:00.007Z

This might be a fruitless attempt, but I reckon I've got a good plan here:

Step 1: Make a list of everything I want to get done.
Step 2: Identify the items on the list that have time limits.
Step 3: Do those things.
Step 4: Get up-to-date with daily things.
Step 5: Get into a routine.
Step 6: Work on other projects bit by bit.

I did step one last Saturday, or somewhen like that. It was easy, although the list is huge. I spotted three things with a time limit. First obviously was packing for Southampton, since I'm leaving this Saturday. Secondly there was Ben's book, which I'll come to shortly. Thirdly was the Odd Comp, which I'll also come to shortly.
Most of the rest of the stuff I want to get done, like making my Bargoed video, writing some stories or playing one of the many games I have, can all be put off. These three things couldn't be.

Packing in this context doesn't just involve putting things in bags (although that's my job for tomorrow). Mum and I had a lot of things we needed to sort out. We worked out my money situation (it could be worse, but it's not great), we sorted out some forms and online stuff, and we did lots of shopping! We've bought all sorts of things, from deodorant to duvets, towels to drinking glasses, clothes hangers to selotape. You forget how many things you take for granted until you're faced with the prospect of being in a house with so few of them. It's been fun though, Mum and I have had a laugh. Tomorrow, as I said, I'm gonna start putting things into bags, or at least into piles.
Pete's moving in on Friday, then Sarah, Dave (the other guy) and I move in on Saturday. Alex comes a few weeks later, but I'm glad at least most of us are moving in together, so we can organise the house sensibly and with group decisions. We're still gonna have a whole-house chat once Alex has arrived though, and we'll think of him as we organise everything.
On Friday Mum and I are taking Pete and his things to Southampton, which gives us a chance to look at my room and see if there's anything basic that's not there that we missed. Like a bin. On Saturday I'm playing in Space Band in Abingdon square to promote the alpha course. It's the newer, younger Space Band, but I should fit in ok because I've played with Ed so many times. Then I run away to Southampton in the afternoon. Wow.

Second job was to read Ben's book. Ben Jeapes is a great friend of mine, and most of you reading my blog should know lots about him. For the benefit of those newcomers/Welsh people, Ben used to be my youth leader and we also ran a youth group together (though I was still technically youth too). The two of us have loads in common, so we find it great to meet up, even though there's 24 years between us (you can't complain, Ben, you put that info on your own blog!). Apart from both being Christians, our biggest common denominator is that we both write. Ben's a published novelist, and I can highly recommend New World Order.
I always e-mail my stories to Ben before anyone else, because I really trust his advice. He's really helped turn some of my stories around, and the ones that just crashed and burned he's still helped me learn loads of lessons. Ben also sends his work to me, which I've always be honoured at. Before the summer holiday began he sent me the latest copy of his hopefully soon-to-be-published novel The Grey People (though the name will be different if it makes it out there) so that when we met up over the summer I could critique it for him. I managed to fail spectacularly though, and still hadn't read it by the start of this week: my last week.
So I started reading and mailed Ben, asking when was the latest I could meet up with him. We decided today (Wednesday) in the evening. Then I just read and read. If I wasn't working on packing/shopping/Southampton stuff, I was reading it. Ok, so I took a few breaks, and I'm not exactly a fast reader, but I managed to finish it at 5pm this afternoon.
We went to The Fox (pub) and had a great chat. We discussed The Grey People, and he seemed really happy with my feedback, and even managed to get a couple of good ideas. I told him about my work, or rather my ideas. Ben's optimistic, but I guess only I know what's in my head until I've written it. He seemed vaguely impressed by my working style and method, which have developed loads in the last year, despite me doing so little actual writing. Meeting up with Ben again was so fun. We try to do it three times a year since I've left home (Summer, Christmas & Easter) and it's great every time. Very nostalgic and never less than entertaining, helpful, insightful and fun.
And of course, having read it, I can fully recommend you check out The Grey People when it comes out. I'll be sure to remind you nearer the time, not least to tell you the new name!

So what now? Task three: the Odd Comp.
Some of you still won't be aware that for the last year the story I've been working on isn't a normal story. That is to say it isn't static fiction. It's interactive fiction. Static fiction is fiction that you just read. Any regular story. Interactive fiction is fiction where the reader also becomes the player. It's important if you haven't heard of it to remember that it is still fiction. My interactive fiction works I treat exactly how I'd treat a real story. If you like my stories, you'll love my IF (interactive fiction, keep up).
IF is a cross between a story and a video game. The computer shows you the story (the introduction, how everything starts) and when it's time for you to do something it's up to you. The computer tells you where you are and what's around you, then leaves it up to you. It's not the same as the choose-your-own-adventure books, where at the bottom of each page you can choose on of threeish paths, and turn to the right page. IF is so much more. You can type in whatever you want to do. "Walk north" will take you to the room to the north. "Examine table" will tell you more about the table. "Open box" will open the box. All your sentances are constructed in the form "verb noun", with scope for more ("Unlock door with red key"). Every time you type something in, the computer tells you what happens and your story continues.

(In the above picture "x" means "examine" and "i" means "inventory". Apologies for having to cut off the side. Click the picture to see it all.)

As I said, I treat my IF just like I treat my stories. The picture above feels very game-like, and doesn't show much story. For a start, I work hard to make sure the story is the most important part of my game. I also make sure anyone can finish the story, although I like to make people think occasionally. But I also invest a lot of time into making it read more like a novel, despite the player choosing what happens. For example, instead of the bland description of the plate (from the above picture), I'd add bits to the effect of "Bob leant in to take a closer look at the plate..." etc. I also try and make sure the text that appears changes based on what you've done before. Characters moods shift based on your actions, conversations don't repeat themselves and take into account what you've said previously, etc. You'll have to trust me, but even you non-gamers will enjoy the stories I write in IF. I haven't finished one yet, but my current work-in-progress, Project Clocks (not it's final name), is the best story I've ever written.
The community I write with occasionally hold mini-competitions. Someone came up with the Odd Competition, which basically restricts your programming on the game. It takes the fundamental parts and limits how many of each you can use (for example, you're only allowed a few rooms, objects & characters). This means the games end up naturally being quite short, and under-developed, but the goal is to see who can make the best game under these circumstances. When I heard about it I came up with a good idea about how to do the programming under such restrictions, but I had no story to go along with it. Then one came to me.
So my next story will be a short story for the Odd Comp. It'll be my biggest officially released (and finished) piece of work ever, which is quite scary. It's not the best story in my head (and is so easily outdone by Clocks), but it'll be fun. I won't be able to make it read so much like a normal story (like I was describing under the picture) but it'll still have a good plot and some cool characters. I drew inspiration from somewhere (can't say where or it'll spoil it!) and I'm ready to get to work. The issue is that the deadline's next Wednesday night, so I don't have much time.

Time to stop blogging and get to work then! I'll keep you updated and let you know how everything goes. If you want to pray for me, then you could pray for my money situation, and that these last few days in Abingdon goes well. Also, could you pray that I'd grow closer to God? Thanks.
And of course in my next post I may tell you about the rest of the steps in my plan.

London visit, games and musings

2008-09-04T00:09:00.004Z

Sarah's bullied me into coming to blog. I really don't know how I end up with so little time. I haven't read anybody else's blogs, let alone write my own. I've gotta see if I can get everything I wanted to done before uni, and I'm not sure I'll make it. Karen says it's because I've spent so much time with Sarah, which I think sounds likely. That at least means I've been spending my time doing something worthwhile. Apologies to everyone who's been let down by my recently not making enough time for them.

This week I've been at my cousin Stephen's house in London, along with Grayman. This seems to be a summer tradition with the three of us, since we did it last year as well. This year's visit has been similarly games-filled. If you're not that interested in games, feel free to skip to the last paragraph. We get up late, go to sleep late, and spend lots of time in the middle gaming. The big debate is which is the best Smash Bros game. Stephen & Gray have spent a lot of time playing Team Fortress 2 on their PCs, whilst I've been hiding with my laptop and my copy of Phoenix Wright 3. I've tried some of their games though, allowing me to review Portal and give Worms Open Warfare 2 a decent hands-on. I've also played a bit of Bioshock, Sonic Rush, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Half-Life 2 Episode 2 & probably lots more.

Yesterday we went into central London to a place Stephen discovered about half a year ago. It's basically a LAN centre. You have to pay to get in (and it's really not cheap), but they have top-of-the-range computers there, pre-loaded with the best PC video games around. I finally got to play Team Fortress 2 with the guys online, and it was fantastic. We played against some easy people so I could get to grips with the game, so the three of us were always top of the scoreboard, which was fun. I can't wait to get it on 360 (as part of the Orange Box), even if it won't be as good as the PC version. We also played Call of Duty 4 multi-player with just the three of us, and Unreal Tournament 2004. I tried 20 minutes or so of Viva Piñata, and I'm unsure whether I think it's great or boring.
Half way through, we took a break from the LAN centre and wandered over to the nearby arcade. It was an enormous arcade. It had most of the classics & an awful lot of rubbish I'd never seen before. Tempted as I was to spend loads of money there, the one part that really caught my eye was the fighting section in one corner. I've become really interested in the fighting genre recently, so it was cool to see a load of games I knew. What caught my eye was a copy of Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, which was a game I'd been interested in for a while but hadn't tried yet. I gave it a go and really liked it, so I may pick up a copy soon, since I know where a few really cheap ones are.

We haven't spent all our time playing games. We've had a huge amount of fun just hanging out with each other. We've shared stories, shown each other videos, watched movies, read comics etc. I've almost decided to swap my games magazine subscription to a different mag.
Tomorrow we're going games shopping, which I'm looking forward to. Sarah and I are clubbing some money together to buy Stephen's PS2 off him, so I'm hoping I can find a couple of cheap PS2 games in the shops. We already have a nice collection though, in anticipation of this buy.

I think this summer proves that I have more to do in my spare time than I imagined, so I think it's safe to say at this point that doing a video-thing this year is a bad move. I'll finish the Bargoed video and send it to people via e-mail or something, but I think I'll stick with blogging this year. It's kinda sad, but I guess it's the best move. I am getting kinda upset at the way I've got so many things I want to do and can't. I'm hoping living with Sarah this year is going to mean I feel able to hang out with her whilst not always doing things together. That might give me some more time. I think she and I are gonna work on getting some of my stuff done though.
Dunno what else to say. Hope this post hasn't been as boring as I imagine it is. Maybe I can use moving to Southampton as a way of rebooting my life. I can get some stuff right, fix some bad habits and take a bit of control. Or maybe it'll just fly by like everything else. Dunno. Prayers?

Short update

2008-08-28T23:04:00.008Z

*Apologies for lack of blogging.
*I need to discover a way to get an extra 20 hours out of each day.
*Now actually concerned that even when I have nothing to do all day I still can't get done all I want to. Is there a trick to life that I'm missing?
*Annoyed that real bullet points don't work for some reason.
*Annoyed at Daily Mail for saying bad things about games courses.
*Holiday Club going well. Post coming after New Wine post *sighs*.
*Sarah still amazing.
*Remember the "Last week in Bargoed" video? It didn't get made because my video editor didn't work. Only now it's suddenly decided to work for no good reason. I've done the first two days out of the week. I aim to have it done before Southampton so I can review the situation.
*Reminding myself that I love blogging. Comment lots on this and I'll see if I can blog again soon.
*Apologies.

All in one

2008-08-18T23:03:00.002Z

I can tell I haven't posted enough in the last few months, because when I came to do my last post, the blogger dashboard had been changed and looked weird.
I think part of the issue is that the longer I don't blog, the more there is to blog about, so the longer it would take to get back on track and thus the less likely I am to actually blog. So I'm trying to get back into the blog-every-other-day habit, no matter what I have to rant about. Regular, short posts will put me back on track, and one day you'll get to hear about all the stuff I haven't got round to blogging about.

Today a book came for me. Mum had ordered me one of the books on my reading list for my course next year, and it came today! Not only that, but it's huge! Seriously, it's over 1000 pages, and they're pretty big pages. This link will show you it on Amazon, in case you're interested.
Interestingly, the guy who wrote it is in charge of the Game Art & Design course at the Art Institute of Toronto. He said he gets so many e-mails from people asking how they can learn to make a video game, and since he can't reply to them all, he wrote this book. The book was written as a reply to those people. It's designed so you can pick it up, read it through and know how to make a game.

It's a little bit limiting, since it's mainly focused around 3D games, specifically online multi-player first-person shooters. It also has a few omissions because of that, such as details on AI programming, which is a shame, since I'm a big fan of that. But it doesn't matter too much, 'cos I've got a university course to teach me everything I need to know. Hopefully reading this now might get me ahead of the game though.

I deviated from my trend and posted again

2008-08-17T00:16:00.004Z

My apologies for my lack of blogging. My life seems both extremely busy and very quiet all at the same time. It's been that way since I got home. With all this free time I have just too much to do with it. A lot of my time's spent with Sarah, my new girlfriend. I've also played guitar with Dad a bit, helped him with some gardening, had a family trip to Oxford & watched a lot of movies/TV with my family. But whenever I do get time to myself it still vanishes in an instant. I have so much I want to do with my free time. Here's a list of a few of the things I'd like to get done:

Play the games I got for my birthday, finish some of the other games I haven't finished, replay many of the games I've already finished, replay and review some of my retro games I can only play when I'm at home, clean up/add to my reviews site, build a real website, work on one of the two stories I'm planning, make notes about some games I'm planning on making next year, clean up my laptop a bit, clean up/add to various documents I use, find a video editing program that lets me use the video clips I have so I can make the video of my last week in Bargoed, mail all my friends I haven't spoken to in ages, read some of the books I've been meaning to read in ages, watch the bonus features on my new DVDs, tidy my room, finishing ripping CDs to my SD card, go through a bag of official-looking letters in my room, get hold of a book I need for uni next year, learn to play bridge, learn to cook, read my latest magazine, blog, write in my diary, continue typing up my old diary, find photos to go in my phone's address book, add all my contacts into my mail program so I don't have to look up their e-mail address every time I mail them, read other people's blogs, watch some videos I downloaded a while ago, download the new videos that those websites have made since then, read a few game development articles my course-person pointed me to, work out my finances for next year, read a friend's story he sent me ages ago and I haven't touched yet (you know who you are, apologies, mail me regarding meeting up) and so on.

I'm not kidding, the list really does go on. Now, recently my birthday present have taken priority over some of the other things, which is partly why none of that's been getting done. I blame Sarah too. But there is one thing I've been doing recently that isn't related to my birthday or Sarah, and that's to do with wallpapers.

I'm a fan of the strangest art forms, and this is because I believe everything is an art form. Writing a story, painting a picture and playing a song are all considered to be art forms by the general public, but I think smaller than that. Writing an interesting blog post is an art form. How do you take what's happened in your life and convey it in an entertaining way, given the constraints and freedoms of the medium in question? As a writer I find that interesting, as does Ben. But I think smaller than that. Adverts on TV are art forms. What message to they convey, what strategies do they use, given their medium? E-mails, posters, DVD cover art, novel blurbs and new reports are all art forms that someone has to produce. Even talking to your friends is an art form. You show your personality, vocabulary and articulation every time you talk to someone. You can use their words to make people laugh, cry, smile, feel sympathetic, and pretty much every emotion. Therefore if you choose your words carefully you can create your own art by talking.

The art form I've been interested in for a few months now is desktop wallpapers (as in the background on your computer). I'm sure many of you still have the windows green hill with the blue sky, but lots of people search the web for pictures to use as their wallpaper. Often these pictures don't fit or have to be stretched to fit and look awful. I've started finding wallpapers that are HD, like my HD widescreen laptop. I've been finding video game wallpapers and I've set my laptop to pick a different wallpaper every hour. My collection's been growing steadily as I've found more and more. Without showing you a lot of examples, it's hard to describe how it's an art form but suffice to say that like all the examples I gave in the previous paragraph, desktop wallpaper has enough variety to be critiqued like any painting or piece of prose.

So now that my collection has recently passed the 450 mark, I've decided to make a few of my own wallpapers. Obviously I lack the photoshop skills that many other people have, but I've made a start. I've been taking existing pictures and making them into a suitable wallpaper. I've done two so far. One required me to copy and paste a repeating background to make it fit my HD desktop, an the other I just placed in the corner of a white field, because the image itself faded to white. I'm pleased with both of them. Since I've been nicking wallpapers from DeviantART for a while I thought it'd be fun to return to my aging DeviantART account and post my wallpapers. So follow that link if you want to see what I've been up to, and if you want to take a look at a few silly pictures I made in MSPaint when I was 14. Either way, I'm quite enjoying DeviantART and my wallpaper creations.

Thanks for reading. I've still got many posts planned, so if I ever find the time to write them, you'll have plenty to read. A post about New Wine is coming, don't worry.

Forgot to mention...

2008-08-04T23:05:00.000Z

I forgot to say, you're not gonna get any posts for a while 'cos I'm at New Wine all this week. We left on Sunday & we're getting back next Sunday; & soon after you'll get a full report.
It's been really good so far! I'm being a leader, so I'm using Peter's phone with GPRS to write this (he gets it free somehow). There's been some good teaching so far, but I'm really looking forward to hearing Adrian Plass on Wednesday. Can't wait! But I'll tell you more when I get back, Pete wants his phone back so he can go to sleep.

Oh, & it's my birthday on Sunday. And seeing Sarah every day is amazing! :-)
I'm having fun!

Free service

2008-07-30T14:39:00.003Z

Today I helped my Mum clear out some space in our dining room (otherwise known as our Church-work store-room) to make room for some New Wine supplies. We went through a load of stuff that hasn't been touched in ages. I had to throw out six or seven boxes of chocolates from Christmas that hadn't been eaten! So that this shocking and upsetting event doesn't have to take place again, I'd like to announce that Sarah and I are now offering a free service to relieve you of any chocolate products that would otherwise go to waste. We're happy to be able to make your life that little bit easier.

Back in Abingdon

2008-07-27T12:23:00.003Z

I'm still here!
Coming back home was meant to give me more free time, but I've had even less. I haven't even had time to unpack. My room is filled with bags of all my clothes and junk. There's just about enough room to squeeze over to the bed.

What have I been doing all this time? Seeing people! I assume most of you have heard the big news by now. Sarah.p and I have been going out since Tuesday. I am so extremely happy/excited. Long-time readers may be surprised to find I haven't written some wonderfully (attempted) romantic post about it and made a big deal out of it all. I was planning on posting all about it on Tuesday when it happened, but in the end I figured it'd be more fun to actually spend the day with her. After then I just got more busy, and in the end I figured most of you readers had heard about it, & Sarah doesn't like to shout about it too much. So there we go.

So I got home Monday lunchtime, Tuesday I spent with Sarah, Wednesday I spent with Kat (post covering that coming soon), Thursday I spent with Sarah, Friday I spent with Nick & Pete and Saturday I had a party... and spent the rest of the day with Sarah.
The party was great fun. Like the one at Christmas, it was a general gaming party. I got to see some more people I hadn't seen since Easter, including Simon, Lydia, Hannah & PJ, and of course Alex, who I hadn't seen since half term. We enjoyed hanging out & playing games. PJ was far too good at games he'd never played before. Most of the games we played were pretty close. Sarah, Kat, Nick & I were pretty level at Soul Calibur II and Excite Truck. Pac-Man Vs. was good fun until my cable failed again (I really need to look into that). We had a little bit of co-op Geometry Wars, Donkey Konga and some Mario Kart Wii as well. Lastly of course there was quite a lot of Smash Bros. Brawl, where Nick and I tied for the top.
We also just hung out and chatted a lot. Alex has been planning his third-year project, which sounds awesome. Was fun to catch up with the girls (Hannah & Lydia) who didn't stay long. We bought pizzas Budgens across the road, watched some Ross Noble on DVD and, apart from an extremely drunk guy who wandered in and tried to take his trousers off, we had a good time.

So what now? I've got a busy summer.
Week 1: See above
Week 2: Similar but hopefully with more productive work stuffs
Week 3: New Wine
Week 4: Dad's off work so we're doing family stuffs
Week 5: Hopefully I'm gonna get a job for this week
Week 6: Holiday Club
Week 7: Visiting my cousin Stephen
Week 8: Getting ready for Uni

I've also got a lot of non-work things I want to get done. I've got plenty of blog posts I want to get done & loads of reviews to write, it's just finding the time to do them. There's also the question of the video of my last week in Bargoed (see here & here for details). I hit a problem with my video editing software not liking the videos from my phone. There's a chance I can fix it with some help from their forum (since it's just a bug), but just in case, does anyone know any good free video editing software for either KDE or Windows XP?

So yeah, I'm having a busy time. You can expect to learn about some of the things I've been doing in more detail in the coming days when I get round to blogging about it all. On the whole I'm having a brilliant time relaxing and seeing friends. And of course I have a wonderful girl.

Leaving Bargoed

2008-07-22T00:01:00.003Z

I'm back in Abingdon now, which is good news for all you who live there! I'm back for 8ish weeks I think, which is plenty of time for us all to meet up and have fun. On the other hand, it's terrible news for all you who live in Bargoed. I've been told many times already that I'm being missed. I myself am split between the two emotions. So let us all unite under one common piece of good news: regular posting is now resuming.

Yes, being home again grants me wi-fi access from my laptop, which will make posting a lot easier. I've promised a few people a post today (yes, my Monday doesn't end until I go to sleep) and one tomorrow. Hopefully we'll continue from there. So today's post? It could be anything from the last 11 days. Luckily a lot of that time will be covered in my video. Readers foolish enough to continue reading through my post-drought will know that I'm planning on making a video of my last week in Bargoed as a test for videos I plan on making throughout the next year at Uni. I've taken almost all the footage (obviously since I've left - just a little bit of insert work to do) and once I get my video editing software to behave I'll put it together. So this post is going to be focused on my last weekend, which was rather more difficult to put into film. It's going to be fairly hard to put it into words.

Saturday evening was a leaving party of sorts. My family had turned up at this point, so they got to come with me. It was an evening of people doing different acts on-stage as it were. There were people playing music, reading poems, doing dramas etc. The general theme was taking the mick out of me, which was what made it so funny.
Some of the highlights include the Diary of Dave, which was a mock diary of mine (presented as if it was real and had just been found somewhere) in which I describe my year in the form of a video game. It was really well put together, as well as being extremely funny. There were plenty of songs by different people, which was really cool. There was a few other performances, including a ballet by little Ana. There was a mini drama showing the day in the life of Dave. Most of these acts took the mick out various character traits I have, such as lateness, my habit of always saying I'm tired, late nights of gaming etc. It was so funny to watch/listen to, but not only that. It was also extremely complimentary to feel that these people have got to know me so well over the year. It was also very releasing to know that we could all have a laugh about some of my more unhelpful habits (such as the aforementioned lateness) and not have them hang over us all as a negative issue.
There were a few acts that involved me as well. There was a brilliant mini-drama that involved me sitting at a table and having someone put their arms under mine and act as my arms, attempting to brush my teeth or feed me breakfast etc., often resulting in me getting very messy. The messiest of them all was of course my second flanning, done by the guys who'd seen my previous flanning on youtube. They used less cream but more force. Great fun. There was also a quiz on the subject of me. Of the 15 questions I was surprised to find that my family could answer only 13 of them correctly. Of the Bargoed groups, the youth won with 11 points I think. Admittedly, some were really quite hard.

As well as all the comedy elements there were plenty of serious moments. Quite a few acts ended with some sort of serious message, usually that they'd miss me. There was also a series of thank yous where I got some gifts and I gave out some gifts. I got some fantastic gifts. I got several cards, a substantial cash gift, a DVD & a student cookbook. I'm actually really excited about that last one, but I'm sure you'll hear more about that soon...
The whole evening was a really weird experience. Being the centre of attention was really quite strange. I felt extremely loved, and the evening easily ranks as one of the best of my life. I remember being on a huge high until very late that evening. My inability to reproduce that high is partly why I'll have to omit that section from my video. But it really was incredible. So many friends saying so many nice things. I can't thank them all enough for such a perfect send-off.

The Sunday was really strange, since I had to say goodbye to so many people. The church services I went to felt fairly normal (except that my parents were there as well). I enjoyed playing bass for the last time as well. But saying goodbye was really sad. It was easier with some people than with others. I think Jeff took the correct approach by refusing to say goodbye, maintaining that with electronic communication it's never really goodbye. I got plenty of hugs, which is always good. But really I didn't think I could say how I felt. I found it hard all weekend to put into words how thankful I am to everyone. I tried frequently, but just failed. Hopefully in heaven God'll give me a hand expressing it properly. Until then all you've got to go on is this post, which isn't much to be honest.

I'll miss Bargoed and all the people there so very much. I'm missing the community already. It still feels like I'll be back in a few days. To those Bargoedians reading, I thank you once again for a fantastic year and an incredible last weekend, and I apologise that once again my attempt at wording how I feel has fallen far short of the truth. I can at least blame this partly on the fact that it's 2am. Time to go to sleep methinks.

What kind of example?

2008-07-11T12:16:00.003Z

A little while ago I asked for feedback for a new idea (read this post if you haven't already). Of the two people who replied (shame on the rest of you!) both requested examples so you could see how it would run.
The project would be based around my life in university, with a slight focus on my course itself. So I'd be updating you on what I learn/make, showing you stuff I've done. Some of it would be kinda technical, but I'd try to make most of it interesting to everyone. There'd also be stuff about general life in uni, my house/housemates and certainly any special events that happen. It wouldn't be a blog in it's own right, because it'd always be about things that happen, never just random ranting. But it would certainly be a strong supplement to my blog.
Thing is, since most of the content is the brand-new uni life-style, an example I do now isn't gonna have that. I can make an example to show how I might film it/put it together, but what would I do it on? Mum suggested Bargoed? Other ideas? If you want one on Bargoed, you're gonna have to comment on this post and say so pretty quickly.

Hopelessness got lucky

2008-07-04T11:43:00.004Z

How come everyone complains at me to post but when I finally do, and actually ask for some advice, suddenly everybody goes quiet? Please can I have some more feedback for me last post?

I've been ill, so I'm tired, stressed and completely out of energy. So I think today's post is going to be a moaning one. It's on the subject of Nintendo of Europe. Hey, where do you think you're going? This isn't a gaming-related post. It's a post about companies, deals, marketing, business, hopeless websites and stuff like that. The fact that it's Nintendo makes no difference.

I adore Nintendo, but Nintendo of Europe (the european marketing branch) are hopeless. For example, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released in Japan in Febuary, but was released in Europe in June. Also, Nintendo supporters over there get all kinds of cool junk as free goodies, but we get nought. In fairness, they're improving hugely. They used to be hopeless at advertising, but since the Wii/DS came out they've re-invented the gaming advert and won the battle they lost with the N64 vs. Playstation. They've also started giving us more cool junk.
The way Nintendo of Europe work is that whenever you buy one of their own products (console, game, accesory etc.) you get a piece of paper with a code on it. Put the code into their website and you get "stars". These stars can then buy stuff in the stars catalogue. The stars catalogue used to be the epitome of rubbishness. You could collect all these stars but you could only spend them on desktop wallpapers or screensavers. Every now and then they'd put up an actual physical game, but it'd be sold out in seconds. Thankfully it's improving. Slowly.

Recently they've added slightly cooler stuff. A Wii Fit sports bottle is quite cool, especially since it fits the idea of the game. A Mario Kart cap? Ok I guess. T-shirts are fun. The retro design notebook and pen is definitely nice. No match for the Japanese junk, but it's a start. Wii Fit incense sticks? What?
The real bonus was when they opened the Wii Points shop. The Wii has it's own online shop that lets you buy retro games (from Nintendo's past consoles), new games (that aren't big enough to be worth full-price in a shop) and random stuff Nintendo releases. It's an amazing shop. You have to buy things by buying Wii Points though. It's about £7.50 for 1000 Wii Points, which then stay on your Wii and can be spent. So when having run the stars catalogue since 2001ish, they finally give people the chance to spend the stars on something useful, the people rejoiced. My 11005 stars (the equivalent of about 40 games and a few consoles) could finally be converted into 2751 Wii points, or about £19.25. My first complaint is obviously that that's a pretty small amount of cash to reward 7 years loyalty with. But oh well, it's better than nothing.

But then it got worse. The stars-to-points conversion shop doesn't work that well. Instead of being directly linked to your Wii, the conversation shop simply gives you a code to then type into the Wii to redeem the points. The code is 16 digits long, which gives you a total of 10 to the 16 different combinations. The issue is of course to stop people just guessing codes, they can only use significantly less than that many at once. The practical upshot of all this is that, against all reason, they managed to sell out of a virtual product almost instantly. They restock occasionally, but not nearly fast enough. If you visit the shop it's almost always out of stock. But I figured I could live with this. Eventually the rush would die down and I could get my £19.25.

But then they announced that stars would begin to expire a year after you got them, presumably to prevent stock-piling, but I've no idea why. So all my stars that had been accumelated before a previous date would expire. It was still a while away, I figured I'd have time. Problem is that whilst they warned us of this new expiration idea when they first invented it, they didn't warn us when it got any closer to the deadline. By co-incidence I was passing their website on the 27th of June only to discover that they were going to expire on the 1st of July. Thanks for the heads up NoE.
So I had about four days to get some Wii Points. But of course the shop was always sold out. I discovered that there was a rule that said you could only make one transaction per day in the shop, which meant that if you say on the website and refreshed every few seconds, you stood a chance of getting some. On the other hand, it meant you could only make one transaction yourself per day, and the amounts were small. I managed to convert 2000 stars into 500 Points, but come June 30th I still had 4700 stars to spend. By chance, it was then (as I was refreshing every minute or two) that they put a real game into the regular stars catalogue. I did a quick google search to make sure it got positive reviews (which it did) and then bought it for 5000 stars, thus covering the rest of my would-expire balance.

So whilst I got away with it in the end, I'm generally fed up with Nintendo of Europe. Hopefully my boring post conveyed some of that. You want a less moany, less boring post? Give me some feedback on my previous post!

On a serious note, thanks to everyone who's been praying for me.

Feedback for new project idea?

2008-06-26T09:50:00.003Z

Anybody who knows me well should be able to tell you that I enjoy setting myself projects. It's just how I work in life. These projects can be to absorb something (complete a game, read a book), they can be to learn something (learning to play piano, researching things that interest me) or creating something (writing stories, making games, my blog, my website, and so forth). The list is huge. But it seems to be the way I enjoy to live.

So I've come up with a new project idea, which would start in September if I go ahead with it. I'm interested in your thoughts. The idea is to make an episodic youtube documentary of my time in university, with a focus on my course. I've worded that carefully because I don't want it to be labelled as a video blog (or a vlog), because they seem to me to be people sitting in front of their camera ranting for ages (Anna can correct me if I'm wrong). I'd make each episode by recording things as they happened. I'd show you what I'd been working on in my course etc. I can imagine showing you a variety of things. You can think of it like a blog in the sense that it'll update you on bits of my life, but it wouldn't cover the same range of topics as my blog. On the other hand, it wouldn't be restricted to those who like games and/or programming. I promise I'd make it accessible to lots of people.
I have a decent camera on my phone now, so I could just film random things here and there and then cut them together into a new episode. They'd appear on youtube but I'd also stick each new one in my blog so you guys would know. It wouldn't be a blog in itself, but a supplement to my real blog. I've also asked for permission from my housemates to film them. It'd be a bit boring if it was just me the whole time. Peter, Sarah, Kat and my cousin Stephen gave the idea a general positive, but Alex said something to the effect of "I don't know why you'd want to do it", though he agreed to letting me.

So what do you guys think? Would it be fun? Or would it be silly or boring? Are there any catches I haven't thought of yet? Feedback time!!

Bonnets of the Earwigs

2008-06-21T22:02:00.006Z

Before I begin this post I should make it clear that I have never once considered giving up this blog. Just bear with my irregular posting for four more weeks and then when I'm home I hope to get back into the swing of it properly. I think it also might be worth a miniature update on how I am, since this post is about something I've done. I'm doing well on the whole. Four weeks feels a bit scary to be honest. It doesn't feel like every loose end is going to tie up nicely like in a story. I think it's going to feel like leaving home, in that there'll be so many things I'll wish I could have done, only more so because I've only had a year. I'm trying to remind myself that that doesn't prevent my year from being a success. I'm just being over-critical on my year's work. In any case, if you want to pray then peace would be a good thing, and that God gets His way with my life. I feel like I'm trying to hold a number of things together for just a little longer before I can relax. That doesn't mean I'm looking forward to going, I'll miss everyone so much, but there will be a certain level of relief. So prayers that things would stay together for four more weeks would be very welcome.

Today Darren and I went to a Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror conference called "Space, Time, Machine, Monster." I was thinking of it largely in terms of writing, but as you'll discover we did some other things too. It was brilliant fun though. The basic structure was workshops/lectures would take place at certain times, with a choice of which to go to throughout the day. Here I've described each one so you can see what I got up to.
I hope you enjoy reading it. There's so much in here that you must be able to find something worth commenting on! Your thoughts on the videos in the first session? Or on some of the wacky stories in the third? Or maybe just on the Doctor Who ending note. You'll be able to fill up the comments section with paragraphs. Go on, you know you want to. In return, I'll do my best to blog again soon. :-)

Pauper's Guide
"The pauper's guide to making low budget Sci-Fi films" was more a viewing of several that had already been made than a technical guide. But you know they always tell writers to read first. Well it's hard to come across low-budget Sci-Fi films done well, so most people (I'd imagine) would use high-budget Sci-Fi films to learn from. In that sense, watching these was a great guide. The films we watched were all submissions to a recent competition, the Sci-Fi London 48-hour Competition. The idea is that all the teams meet together at the start and are given a random title, prop requirement and dialogue requirement. For example, the 4th place film "Water's Edge" had that title, the prop was some croissants on a plate and the line was something else I can't remember. The idea is this meant people couldn't just bring films they'd made earlier. 48 hours to script, costume, location, film, edit and return to hand it in. You can see a documentary by the Sci-Fi channel on how it all went here, or you can follow the link above for a more detailed written explanation. You can also watch all the entries online, and I highly recommend it. "Water's Edge" was great, but pales in comparison to the quality of the others. Third place was "G.L.I.B.", which is shot really well and has a lovable little story-line, despite some weird moments. Second place was "Until further notice", which made no sense at all but was again shot brilliantly and had some great acting in it. First place however, was extraordinary. "Factory Farmed" is very confusing but is filled with imagination, is shot brilliantly and has so much high quality effects work done. If you don't watch any others, watch this one. It's just stunning. Afterwards, if you didn't already, ask yourself how they did the shot on the train. Don't know what I mean? Look at the window. 48 hours.

On the Edge
Whilst this was essentially a horror-writing workshop, it was geared towards a younger audience and so I took it as a suspense workshop, since suspense comes into most stories at some stage. We were read the introduction to a story in which a boy finds himself outside a warehouse. The atmosphere is piled on until eventually he hears a scream from inside. We were then asked to come up with three options for what the scream had been. We were allowed one rubbish one, so I added "an old lady breaking a nail" for good measure. My first idea was of someone who'd been killed, but it was a bit cliche. However I had in the back of my mind the nagging idea that (for some reason I didn't know) it had been a recording of a scream. That just set my curiosity going. Why would someone record and play a scream? After sharing a few ideas back he then asked us to write the rest of the scene, feeling free to take it in any direction we wanted. I found this quite hard, because once I got going I found I was writing plot events rather than atmosphere, but when I started just writing atmosphere I got bored, since I cared little about this boy and his cliche warehouse. I convinced myself I could do atmoshperic description if I needed to, and I hope I'm right. The other reason I found it hard was that it took me ten minutes to think of what might happen when the boy finds the tape. Eventually it hit me.
Imagine if you will that the boy had ventured nervously into the warehouse. Insert whatever creepy warehouse description you feel is most appropriate, I don't care at this point. He gets to the top floor, where the scream had come from and finds himself in a huge, empty room, except for a small box in the middle of the room, with the tape recorder on it. The boy (being nervous, and cautious, yet curious this whole time) presses rewind and then the play button and jumps at the sound of the scream. Before deciding to leave (atmosphere + cassette tape of scream = scared at this point), he takes the tape out for a closer look. It contains a name and a date/time stamp. It's his name, and the time is five seconds from now. At which point he hears the door behind him creak slowly open...

OuLiPo
This was probably my favourite lecture. Know what OuLiPo is? Thought not. It's a French thing apparently, and it roughly translates as "workshop of potential literature". It's the idea of imposing (often mathematically based) restraints on you (the writer) to create something original, if only occasionally readable. To explain: Writers often find it hard to start writing if presented with just a blank piece of paper. The possibilities are endless, and this creates a form of writer's block. (I don't get this because I develop ideas long before I consider writing them). So by setting yourself a small restraint you can force yourself to write something you didn't think you would. It's experimental in the sense that it often produces nonsense. On the other hand it often produces high-quality pieces of work. It can both be used in an art form in itself and as a way of freeing yourself into new styles and discovering new imagery and structures.
Some examples then. Queneau's "Exercices de Style" is a re-telling of the same short story (in which a man takes a bus trip) told in a radically different style and tone, from Sci-Fi to done in a Jamacan accent. The same man also wrote a book of sonnets (14-lined rhyming poems) in which he wrote ten different sonnets and put them in a ring-binder-style book in such a way that each line could be turned independantly. By making sure the rhyming pattern was the same in each of the ten sonnets, he basically created a book that contained 10^14 unique, perfectly readable sonnets.
N + 7 is the technique in which you take a previously written work and substitute each noun with the noun seven nouns on in the dictionary, and read the result. Apparently it's often nonsense but can occasionally give you some brilliant metaphors. The title "Bones of the Earth" becomes "Bonnets of the Earwigs" for example. A lipogram is a story in which you refuse to use a certain letter (or more).
I particularly enjoyed this talk for some of the real-world examples of OuLiPo novels. For example, "Dictionary of the Khazars" by Milorad Pavic is a novel that takes the form of three cross-referencing mini-encyclopedias. The plot (once you've worked it out) revolves around the Khazars, who have decided to convert to a different religion. The king-figure invites a representitive from Christianity, Judaism and Islam to try and convince him, and eventually chooses one. However, each of the mini-encyclopedias are written by the representitives, and so their accounts of the events differ. Add to this the fact that they are not of course chronological stories, but cross-referencing mini-encyclopedias. In the introduction, the author says:

"No chronology will be observed here, nor is one necessary. Hence each reader will put together the book for himself, as in a game of dominoes or cards, and, as with a mirror, he will get out of this dictionary as much as he puts into it, for you [...] cannot get more out of the truth than what you put into it."

The conflicting opinions don't help at all. If you weren't curious enough already, apparently the novel comes in two editions, one male and one female, which differ in only one paragraph. I want to read it!
As one other example, "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino opens with a chapter on art and the nature of reading. The second chapter addresses "you" and tells a story of what is happened to you, the reader of the book. "You" find the book to have no other chapters, just reprints of the chapter you've just read, and so "you" go to the library to complain and come away with a book that turns out to be different altogether, which then develops into a loop. The book alternates chapters between telling you what you're doing and telling you what you're reading in the latest library withdrawal. The second-person narrative sections build up into a fairly coherant novel, whilst the literature segments contain thematic pieces that link into the story. As well as trying to lure the reader into an existential crisis, the book covers many themes, although the main one is definitely the nature of reading a book itself.

Tolkien's Science Fiction Experients
This was essentially a history lecture, but not one I'd ever heard before. It seems that C.S.Lewis and Tolkien set each other challenges to do Sci-Fi at one point. C.S.Lewis was to take on the challenge of writing a story about space-travel, which became his Ransom Trilogy. Tolkien was to take on the more ambitious challenge of writing a story about time-travel. Ultimately, both his attempts at this failed to get published, but the written segments and planning notes can be found in the collections published by his son after his death. Tolkien's idea was to have modern-day people travel back in time to his Middle-Earth land of Numenor (where Aragorn came from) during it's downfall via dreams and visions. His first attempt ("The Lost Road") saw a system of time travel by reverse reincarnation, though his second attempt ("The Notion Club Papers") digressed from this a little. In the second attempt the dreamers meet as part of a club, which also spends time debating Tolkien's personal dislike of using machines to travel through space and time, preferring to use magic (completely inexplicable) or real-life technology (completely explainable) instead of something inbetween.
The most interesting point was that Tolkien was fiddling with The Notion Club Papers whilst he was meant to be finishing off Lord of the Rings. His son has said that if Tolkien hadn't been pressurised into finishing Lord of the Rings, there's a chance he would have retold the entire story in this time-travel form.

Copernicus and the Wild Goose Chase
This one interested me the least, although I still enjoyed it. A simple talk on the history of Sci-Fi in the Welsh valleys. The highlight was the speaker, a vicar, who seemed to be able to make some ridiculous Christianity-based jokes and yet get the whole crowd laughing at them.

Doctor Who and Beyond
Our last session was an interesting panel debate about Doctor Who, containing the vicar, a BBC screenplay writer and an old Doctor Who writer (he wrote from just after Tom Baker til the series' cancellation). There was some interesting thoughts and points, including tips to get involved in the business, changes that were made in the writer's time (he wanted to stop the writers lazily throwing the lead characters into a jail every episode), the use of special effects (complaints at the new series' lack of imagination and of the old series' way of ruining good scripts with rubbish aliens) and thoughts on the future for Doctor Who. There was a good mix of praise and reprehension regarding the new series', and the unanimous decision was that a good way forward for mainstream TV Sci-Fi would be a non-Doctor Who post-watershed Sci-Fi program.

Long time no see!

2008-06-10T15:25:00.003Z

Recently I've had the pleasure of meeting up with a few friends I hadn't seen in agesot counting my half term (see my last post) where I saw loads of amazing people.

On Saturday I travelled to Birmingham to see my Careforce Area Group! We've met up once before like this, and of course I saw them at both the Careforce conferences (see here and here). They're good friends of mine, and always a laugh to meet up with. Of course, with them all being around Birmingham, I had to make quite a journey. Three hours either way in fact. And of course I wanted to make it back home in time for Doctor Who, which meant I'd have to leave there by 3:30pm. Worse still, I had to get up to catch the train at 8:30am! Surprisingly (even to myself) I made it ok. I took a book to read with me like last time. This time I took Foundation's Edge, the first non-original Asimov-written Foundation book. Despite Ben's complaints at the series going downhill after the originals, I think it's ok so far. Maybe it'll get worse. Or maybe Ben's just been ruined by the non-original non-Asmiov-written ones. Who can tell. Either way, I'm enjoying the book.
When we met up we spent most of our time just hanging around and chatting. A lot's happened to everybody since February, and everybody knows what they're doing next year now. I'm going to Southampton Uni, Nathan's getting a job in his hometown, Ruby's doing some more youth-based work (in London? Can't remember) and Fiorella's doing another Careforce year. Thom and Ginny didn't turn up, but I hope they're well. The four of us ate ice cream & donuts, got some dinner (at Pizza Hut again) and wandered around some random shops having a laugh. It was great to see them.

It was a similar story for my other friend-meeting, though the friend in this case was someone I hadn't seen in even longer. Long-time readers will remember my friend Anna. She's now got a boyfriend who lives in Cardiff and she's moving up there to live near him. Whilst that's all lovely (and it really is, they're a brilliant couple!) it's quite frustrating that we're swapping ends of the country over the summer. Luckily for us, there's a brief period of time when we're both in Wales, and we decided to make the most of it!
We met up in Cardiff one Tuesday a few weeks back. We had a meal, wandered around some shops and eventually ended up hanging out by a river in a park. It was beautiful. It was so good to see Anna again as well. She's so much fun to hang out with, and I haven't seen her in ages. One of the real bonuses was of course that the last time we'd met we liked each other (as in "liked" each other), and clearly now things are different. So it was really good to spend time with her in our new state of relationship.
It was a brilliant day, and I really wish it could have been longer. I'm hoping to meet up with her some more before I leave Wales in six weeks time, but I've been having difficulty getting in contact with her so I'm not sure. Either way, thanks Anna! :-)

Too many late nights, movies and expensive takeaways. Yeah, you know where I've just been...

2008-06-06T10:00:00.003Z

It's very hard to put into words quite how much I'm looking forward to next year. I get to live with three of my closest friends in an awesome house with far too much expensive technology, studying something I find extremely interesting. Even that description's summarised, there's plenty of other things I'm looking forward to that I could list. The point is that it's going to be amazing, and my regular half term visits to Southampton are a little taster.

This was the shortest visit but probably the best. My journey down was quite rubbish due to trains being cancelled because of floods. Also Alex and Sarah weren't in Southampton til later the next day, which was rubbish. But Pete and I had fun. We played games and talked about life. It's gonna be great having him around next year just to chat to. Plus he fixes all my laptop problems, which is handy. I'd managed to break my laptop again (though technically I think it was Pete's fault, lol) and Pete was gracious enough to fix it for me.

The next day (Tuesday) Alex turned up and the three of us plus David (the minister of the church we go to there) and his kids went to the cinema to see the new Indiana Jones film. I agree with Ben, it was a great film with a disappointing ending. I always enjoy the cinema though, and this time we got introduced to two of the funniest adverts I've seen in a while, which you can find here and here. I tried out Wii Fit at Pete's place, which was good fun, though I'd like to spend some more time with it before trying to judge it. It says I'm underweight. Pah. Pete, Sarah, Alex & I relaxed for the evening after that.

On Wednesday Pete, Richard (friend of ours) and I had a mini Bible study, but not much else happened. I lost to Sarah at some games, we watched another movie (and a lot of Road Runner cartoons!) and generally hung out and relaxed.
Thursday was more productive. Pete and Alex were busy so Sarah and I went on my regular shopping trip round Southampton. This half term we found quite a bit. I picked up some old Gameboy games for a pound each and found Geometry Wars Galaxies for the Wii for just £8. Sarah did well too; she found Pikmin for the Gamecube for £4. We wandered round loads of different shops, including stopping at Borders for a snack and to read some funny books in the Cafe. We also went to the games arcade and I gave her a race at Mario Kart Arcade, but lost because my item button didn't work!
We spent the afternoon/evening just relaxing and playing games.

On Friday we just relaxed some more and I left in the afternoon to go back home for the weekend (which will likely be my next blog post). It wasn't a long stay in Southampton, but I just really enjoyed being with such good friends. And having Wi-fi. And getting cheap games.
Yeah, next year's gonna be fun!

Things I've noticed

2008-06-03T21:36:00.002Z

1) I need to blog more. This will be rectified.

2) An awful lot more people confuse "your" and "you're" than I thought!

3) I seem to be in a ragtime mood recently.

4) I want to learn to play the piano. Possibly because of no. 3.

5) I have seven weeks left before I finish my gap year and go back to Abingdon for the summer. Scary.

6) People are nice.

7) I need more sleep.

8) Smash Bros. Brawl is coming out in just 25 days!

9) More people read my blog than I'd thought!

10) If I get more than five comments on this post it'll convince me to write a proper post this week.

Weekend chaos - or "A walk and a banana"

2008-05-19T11:26:00.002Z

Er... not last weekend. The weekend before. Last week was exceptionally busy (for me) and just as my schedule cleared up, the internet went down. I've only just got it back today. So I'll do my best to blog lots now, but I can't promise anything. Either way, this is the story of my weekend of the 10th-11th of May.

The big event was that on the Sunday I was to lead the All-Age Worship in the morning. This was completely new to me and was just as scary as trying to do my first sermon. I spent the week before working out what to do. It was Pentecost (the celebration of the day the Holy Spirit came to Jesus' disciples after Jesus had left them) so I figured the Holy Spirit would be a good topic to talk about. I spent some time googling "all-age worship pentecost" but didn't seem to get much I thought I could use. On Friday 9th, Jeff was amazing and gave me a few books and internet print-offs with just what I was looking for. That gave me Saturday to prepare it.
Problem was that Saturday was also a Churches-together walk thing. As part of a Churches-together week, people from all the different churches in Bargoed were going to go on a walk together and then have a BBQ at the end. I decided that I would decide whether I'd join them on the walk based on how much preparation I'd got done. So I spent the morning flicking through books, doodling ideas and scribbling notes.

For a break I decided to call home. I'd intended to ask Mum something about uni but she wasn't in so I chatted with Dad instead, which was really lovely because I haven't seen him since Christmas. I told him I was preparing my all-age worship and his first question was: "are you doing something wacky?". Now, I know that he said it in a relaxed, jokey way because back home it's extremely common-place for Dad (and the resk of the Godzone team) to do very wacky things in childrens work or all-age worships. Dad didn't mean his comment as a challenge, it was just an off-hand remark, but it got me thinking nevertheless. This was my chance to do an all-age worship and to use some of my gifts/imagination to do something different. It'd be a real waste if all I did was take other people's notes and added nothing of myself to the service.
So I got thinking and eventually came up with a clever, wacky idea that I could use (tho I'm sure all the credit should go to God for it). With that under my belt I decided to go on the walk. It was 2pm until 5pmish so I could finish off everything in the evening, no problem.

I spent the walk talking to Darren, Robert, Luke and Rhiannon. Darren and I planned some stuff for some various games concepts I have (yes, I'm getting ahead of myself with my uni course!), which was great fun. When we reached the end of the walk we sung some songs and ate some BBQ. Once we'd eaten, a small group of us young'uns (Darren, Luke, Robert, Liam, Ana and I) headed down to the nearby river, whereupon I had the amazing idea of playing Pooh Sticks! I hadn't played Poot Sticks in an extremely long time, so well all got well into it. I got into the habit of videoing the games on my new PDA (which I still haven't blogged about yet). I don't think I won any games, but it was so much fun!

By the time we realised people were packing up and leaving, it was 6pm, later than I'd thought. Rather than bully someone into giving me a lift back I decided to join Robert and his Dad, John, as they walked back. Rhiannon came too and I persuaded Darren to join as well. About 10 minutes into the walk I saw a path leading off the main trail and asked where it was. Relying on John to be able to direct us home via any route, I decided we should take it. And so ensued a long walk over mountains and all over the place. Darren and I had fun filming comedy pieces on my PDA, including a mock self-video by walkers on an expedition and a mock documentary on the walkers behind us. John played along when we approached them for the "first contact with the species" bit, adding an amazing ending to the video. We also had fun when Robert, John and Rhiannon dropped behind without us noticing and then called us to say we'd taken the wrong route, only to tell us they'd been lying when we walked all the way back to them.

After a total of 8-9 miles walked throughout the whole day, we arrived at Robert & John's in time for drinks. Cath lent me some card for my preparation and I eventually left to go home and finish, arriving back at 8:15, hours later than I'd expected. I watched Pushing Daisies (TV-themed blog post coming eventually) and then Shaun of the Dead (which followed it) whilst I worked, making endless notes, cutting out card, drawing pictures, writing the song list, writing up a final notes sheet etc. I didn't stop work 'til late but it was ok. Sunday morning I got myself ready and, after a detour to Woolworths to get some supples (blue tack, post-its & pens) I was ready.

The service itself went really well. I had things I wanted to improve, but I really enjoyed it and got some positive feedback from people afterwards. The service was split into two sections, with songs either side and in the middle, and a recurring question. The question was how you want to finish the prayer: "Holy Spirit, please come into my life to..." The first section was about the day of Pentecost itself. I read the Bible passage, talked a little about it and asked people to write prayers on post-it notes & stick them on a (bad) drawing of a flame. The second section was about the fruits of the Spirit: a biblical list of personal qualities that the Spirit can help you develop. I read snippets of the passage, cutting them together to flow slightly differently. Then I turned round the big sheet with the flame on to reveal a picture of a tree on the other side, with cut out shapes of fruits on (correctly coloured) card, with the names of the fruits of the Spirit on them.
The wacky game was a quiz. I split the congregation into two groups and selected two volunteers from each group. On each group's turn the two volunteers had to do a form of charades based on one of the fruits. I allowed them to act and talk, provided they didn't actually name the fruit. By having two volunteers I basically enabled them to do three-second double-act sketches to illustrate the fruit they were describing. For example, Jeff kissed his wife's cheek, and the team guessed it was "love". Once they guess correctly, they take the fruit off the tree and check the score on the back!
I thought it was a great idea and they seemed to get into it really well! It was quite funny really. With nine fruits they did four each (leaving a choice of two for the final team) and one fruit spare. The scores were then added up. I'd written the scores randomly on the fruits in the pattern: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, making a total of 250 points. By a staggering co-incidence the teams got exactly 120 points each. Oh well. At the very least, nobody will ever forget the banana of self-control.

Its not all Dave's fault

2008-05-14T12:48:00.003Z

Dave sends his apologies for his lack of blog postage. Apparently he has been really busy lately and then today his Internet cut out. The lack of Internet is affecting him in a rather negative way...

Anyway, he sends his apologies.

Below is a photo I thought was rather interesting which was taken on the way back from a Lord of The Rings Day (watched first two extended films). Its the way the animal has no fear:

The hierarchy of shops

2008-05-07T14:35:00.006Z

Tuesday 8th of April I suddenly realised (by way of a TV advert) that Mario Kart Wii was due out that Friday. For me that's badly organised. So I did some scouring of the web but found it was sold out everywhere. After much frustration I just walked down to Woollys and asked them to keep one for me. This is a miniature town, they're not going to sell every single copy. So I got my copy on Friday morning! It's brilliant fun and I've enjoyed racing Peter (in Southampton) over the magic of wi-fi.

I don't usually buy games from high street stores. This is because I have my own mental hierarchy of shops. It goes something like this (with the best at the top):

Car Boot Sale
Pawnbroker
Market
One-of-a-kind obscure shops
Chain Stores

The issue with chain stores is that everything's over-priced, but also that whenever things are reduced below RRP they're reduced into price brackets. Gamestation, for example used to be good for second-hand games, but nowadays it simply puts them into price brackets (something like "£7 or 2 for £10", "£12 or 2 for £20" etc.). What this means is that even second-hand and reduced items in chain stores are over-priced.
One-of-a-kind obscure shops (hereafter referred to as ooako shops are great. They tend to be the ones you'd walk past if you didn't know they were there. They often specialise in certain areas and pride themselves in doing thinsg their own way. Because they don't have shops all round the country, they don't have to adhere to company rules regarding pricing and they use their own intuition to price things themselves. If they become popular enough they may set up a few more branches around the UK, at which point they're still cool. Eventually they become chain stores though, and it's hard to tell when that happens. I deemed Gamestation to have become a chain store once it started focusing more on main-stream new games instead of having huge sections for obscure own-priced second-hand games.
Markets are great because they're a place where people sell things if they want to run a ooako shops but can't afford it. So you get all the benefits of the ooako shops but things are even better. In the same way that commercialism turns ooako shops into chain stores, market stalls have even less commercialism than ooako shops. Market stalls tend to be run by one or two people, and the lack of a shop building and publicity means they're even less commercial. Therefore the people running it are likely to be even more enthusiastic about the actual product (instead of focusing on sales) and the pricing will be even cheaper.
Pawnbrokers come in two catagories. You get chain pawnbrokers and ooako pawnbrokers. Both of them are good, however. The advantage with both is that they buy things off the public for very little and so sell them quite cheaply. Even the chain ones tend to have really good pricing. Both versions are good for different things. Chain pawnbrokers then to focus on technology, and you can find all sorts of junk piled up and labelled. Yes, they often use price brackets, but they're so cheap you won't mind. Because of the focus on technology, if you're looking for that you can guarantee you'll find something you want there. On the other hand, ooako pawnbrokers tend to take anything. Whilst it's harder to find tech stuff, you're much more likely to find something you never realised you wanted. No price brackets either (due to the variety of things to buy) and the shops themselves remind me of the L-space bookshops you can get lost in.
Lastly there's the car boot sale. These are the best and the cheapest for the simple reason that if you're looking for something inparticular (in my case: games) the people selling it usually don't realise what they're worth to you. They just don't want them, assume nobody else will and so sell them for next to nothing. You do get market people in car boot sales, but that's good too.

So what does this all mean? It means it's worth investigating the shops in your area. All the different types of shop are useful. I buy from chain stores when I want a brand-new game right now, or when they happen to have something cool in their reduced section (like a Road Runner DVD I found recently). I also made use of the price bracket deals (like 2 for £20) and Martin and I bought a game each in a shop to get them cheaper. I got Ikaruga, which is now the hardest game I own, but it's absolutely brilliant!
Robert and I hunted down one of Cardiff's pawnbrokers, which turned out be a chain one. It had loads of great stuff in it, but Robert wasn't used to spending an hour looking round a single shop, so I didn't have time to find something I wanted. We hit similar problems with the Cardiff market. Either way, it was a great trip, as was the one with Martin. Eating at Subway and hanging out with friends is always fun.

My main shopping excursion recently was when Jeff and I went to a car boot sale. It was only the second one I've ever been to, but it was incredible. I bought:

Sliding Doors (DVD) - £2.50
Shaun of the Dead (DVD) - £2.50
Monkey Island 1 & 2 (PC Games) - £1
Curse of Monkey Island (PC Game) - £3
5 Garfield books (Comic books) - £1
Simon the Sorceror (PC Game) - £1
Tetris (Gameboy Game) - £3
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (DS Game) - £4

Tell me that wasn't worth it.

So that's the main reason I haven't blogged in half a week (the other reason being that Beth's computer got some spyware). I've had great fun playing all my new games and reading Garfield books. Just as I've started blogging again, I've started reviewing again, which is something I hadn't done in even longer. I've got a lot of catching up to do, but I'm back into a reviewing mood. Expect reviews soon for all the games mentioned in this post, as well as Riven and Myst 3: Exile, which I've recently finished.

Long time no see

2008-05-01T14:08:00.002Z

One of the best things about my trip home over Easter was just being able to see all my friends again. After that last blog of mine I managed to see a load more of them. I had Nick round on the Friday and he got me addicted to Guitar Hero. Alex and Simon came over Saturday morning and we played games and Canasta (once Simon had left), which was really good. But the main event on Saturday was Alex, Claire, Lydia, PJ, Hannah and I at my place playing Monopoly, which I hadn't done in a while.
I single-handedly decided the fate of the entire game. I bought any property that I landed on, and ended up with three that Lydia wanted (I think a green, a yellow and a train station). I promised to give them to her if she could secure me with some smaller sets (the light-blues for example). If we both got sets, I'd have the advantage with the cheaper ones because I could develop them quickly and bankrupt her before she'd got anywhere with hers. So I put the pressure on by reminding her she could be getting double-rent if she had my green every time somebody landed on one of hers. Eventually she cracked and, with a little suggestive help from me, managed to organise a mass-trade session to get her the cards I wanted so she could get the cards she wanted. As I expected, she quickly went bankrupt, but I hadn't forseen that in order to get my cards she'd given Hannah, PJ and Claire their own sets, and so I quickly went bankrupt as well. Lydia and I were the most influential figures in the game, despite going out quickly.

It was great to be back in Godzone again on Sunday. I helped set everything up and chatted with the rest of the team. I'd prepared the session for Green group the night before, but due to a mix-up I ended up doing Mum's session for Indigo group instead. The story for the week was the road to Emmaus. During the upfront session (band, drama, quiz etc.) Mum injured her leg running back to Jerusalem. My group won the quiz so we got mini-eggs to eat. :)
In the evening I got to play bass with Ed. For a start it was brilliant to see him again, but it was amazing to play with him. He's such a musical genius, and I've played with him so many times that I instinctively know where he wants to take the song, and so despite straying hugely from the plans we made in the practice session before the service, I could keep playing with him. He works hard to adapt the song based on the way the worship's going, and so being able to go with him on that is important. It helped of course that we were joined by Lydia and Dave, two brilliant singers. Ther service itself was fun, with a talk from Andy about ~~Narnia~~ Jesus.
After the service I had a miniature hug-fest where I got to see Shelley, Mike, Anna, Joe and many others for the first time in months on end. It was good. I went to my old cell group after the service, which is now being run by Lydia. An amazing day. I also got to play with Space Band on their Tuesday practice/worship session. It's so fun.

At some point (possibly Monday) I went to the pub with Ben! Ben Jeapes, my writing mentor, published author, semi-youth leader & close friend. We've known each other for years and have some sort of odd friendship. After leading a youth group together (with Tom too) for two years he left to get married, so I saw him less. I see him even less now I'm in another country. But we try to go to the pub once every time I'm back in Abingdon. It seems to be working out so far, and it's so worth it. We chat about a load of nonsense and bug each other into writing some more. Not really much else I can say about it, but I thought it deserved a mention.

On the Thursday Mum and I drove to Southampton to visit Pete. I'd seen Sarah and Alex already but Pete had been rubbish and gone home early, so we went to visit him. It was good fun, since we got to geek around with PDAs as well as play Wii, chat, watch Futurama & eat his Mario cake. It was also great to do it with Mum. As you'll discover in posts over the next week, Mum and I ended up spending loads of time together in the second week, which made up for my complaints in the first week. The journey to and from Southampton was a good time to just chat and enjoy being together.
As we came home I began to get worried that I'd feel really lonely back out in Bargoed, and that haunted me over the last few days at home. But when I got back to Bargoed and got to see everyone on Sunday I fell right back into normal life and loved it. I have friends here too. :)

I'm back but he's gone.

2008-04-30T11:28:00.005Z

A little over a month later and I think it's worth kicking this blog back into action. There have been reasons why I haven't blogged, and many of them, including work, tiredness, life-confusion and a variety of video games and creative projects. In the end I guess I was just out of the habit, but I'll get back into the habit now. :)

Thanks to everyone who's been checking here regularly, hoping for an update. Even greater thank to those who've been praying for me, despite the lack of knowledge of what's been going on in my life. What has been going on in my life? I think only God and I know, and since I'm not completely sure myself, I won't try and explain everything. Life's been complicated (like usual) but I think I'm getting somewhere. If you want something to pray about, I guess just praying that God and I would connect and move forward together would be good. If I work out exactly what's been going on I might be able to give better information.

I think writing a series of catch-up posts to take you from my last post to here would be a very long-winded and tiresome way of doing this, so I think over the next week I'll write posts on certain themes, bringing in events from the last month as they fit. Hopefully I'll keep writing them.

Before I finish this slightly odd post, I'd like to pay my respects to the late Humphrey Lyttleton, who passed away on Friday, and convince you all to watch this short new report to learn something about him. Ignore the repeated headline at the start, the video editor clearly wanted to get everything they said about him.

Thanks again for reading, and stay tuned for more posts soon!

Home, Sweet Home, Sweet Freedom!

2008-03-28T03:16:00.004Z

This post follows on directly from my previous post. Turning up at Didcot Parkway I met Mum and Kat, who took me home. Being home again is a little odd. I don't have all my stuff with me and I've living in essentially someone else's house. The fact that Dad's not here makes the family a little dis-jointed anyway so it feels less like Christmas (when I felt like a guest) and more like it's family but with some oddness going on. Yeah, annoyingly Dad's away for the two weeks that I'm home for. He's in America or something on a work trip. He sent me an e-mail though, which was nice.

One of the oddest things about being home is that there was no long sit-down-and-chat-about everything that's happened. We haven't done all that much catching up, we just slotted into regular life. Unfortunately regular life has Kat at school, Mum off doing work and the like and me doing whatever takes my fancy. I've actually seen very little of either of them, but that'll make more sense when I actually explain what I've done with my time so far. Monday evening we watched the previous Thursday's episode of House. Yes, series 4 has begun, but I was without internet so I couldn't warn you. It's all on youtube anyway. I highly recommend you follow the series if you can because, having watched two episodes, I can safely say that it's amazing. Also on Monday evening I had great fun playing Excite Truck with Kat and helping Mum collect the first 3 stars in Super Mario Galaxy, which I was very impressed with.

Tuesday I met up with Sarah.p. She was planning on going back to Southampton on Thursday so we thought we should squeeze in a meet-up during the overlap. Sarah and Peter's holiday seems to have been the two weeks before my holiday and Kat (& the Abingdon lot) have their holiday the two weeks afterwards. And Dad's away. Hopeless! Alex's holidays are slightly better, so it's not all that bad.
Sarah and I made the most of our day though. After I helped out at church early in the morning, Sarah met me there and we took a bus into Oxford. We went games shopping. Frankly, I'm disappointed in Oxford's games shops. We used to just have a GAME and then over time we got the brilliantly retro/second-hand Gamestation and then a smaller-but-still-better-than-GAME shop "ePlay". However it seems ePlay has shut down and Gamestation has ditched the retro and grouped the second-hand, making it the same as GAME really. The mark of a true second-hand shop is when each game is priced individually. GAME and Gamestation (and most high street stores of any nature) group the second-hand stuff into catagories. For example, they had a £7 or 4-for-£20 deal (or something like that). It ruins the second-hand stuff because buying individual games becomes expensive and non-relative. On the other hand, it can be good if you manage to satisfy the deal requirements, as Sarah and I did.

It's been long assumed that next year we'll get an Xbox 360 for our house. I've managed to convince Peter, Sarah and Alex that having one would be worthwhile and splitting the cost brings it down to very little indeed. However, Sarah and I decided we should get a PS2 as well. That way next year we have access to games for Wii, Gamecube, Xbox 360, Xbox, Playstation 2, Playstion, DS, GBA, Gameboy and the Virtual Console games (N64, SNES, NES, Megadrive, Turbographx, Neo Geo, MSX, Master System and Commodore 64) whilst only owning two expensive consoles, our DSes and a PS2. I think this makes sense. We have the Wiis and DSes already, the PS2 costs nothing and the 360 costs very little when split, and we get access to almost all the major consoles of the last three decades. This satisfies my gaming desire to have the best-of-the-best without me having to collect lots of expensive retro tat like previously.
As it turns out, getting a PS2 from mainstream GAME costs just £50 (£20 more than an average game), which split will cost even less. With Sarah bent on getting GTA I figured we'd take advantage of the PS2 4-for-£10 deal. We got Metal Gear Solid 2, GTA Vice City, Stuntman and Max Payne for £10. That's £5 each. Yes, it's true we can't play them much until September (though we both know people we could borrow PS2's off), I think it was a great deal and makes sense. Mum doesn't believe me though.

We also bought loads of cookies, but barely ate any of them and I ended up eating them all myself on Wednesday (and whilst writing my previous blog post on Tuesday night). Lastly, Sarah and I discovered Donnie Darko on DVD in HMV. Not just Donnie Darko (it's everywhere), but the Director's Cut. A little explanation is needed for you who are not Donnie Darko fanatics like us. Donnie Darko is close to my favourite movie ever. I first saw it with my cousin last summer and I introduced it to Sarah, Alex & Pete during my first Southampton visit. It's not a horror movie but is definitely very creepy in places (15-certificate). I refuse to give away any plot details and I forbid you to look anything up. You need to watch it for yourself. The story it tells is deep, complex and confusing. I guarantee that when you get to the end, you won't be sure exactly what happened. It's one of those films that makes you work to understand it. Sarah, Pete, Alex and I have watched it loads of times and we still don't understand it all, although we keep making progress. But don't let all the confusion put you off watching it. Even as a one-time viewing it's really, really worth watching. The story is great, the acting is brilliant and the directing is incredible. My cousin describes it as an art film. The camera-work and use of music is simply stunning. It's just an incredible film on all fronts. It's not an easy film, you have to think (like many of my favourite films) but if you ever get the chance to see it, don't turn it down because the confusion-stuff puts you off. Accept that you won't understand it all and enjoy it as it is. I promise you won't regret it.
In any case, the four of us have been watching it often and picking up on as many new things as possible. After hunting through wikipedia I came across a three-step guide to understanding the film. Step one was to watch it as many times as possible. There was a warning saying not to do step two until you were sure you wanted to, because you could never go back. Step two is to go to the website, where there's a series of riddles and puzzles that give you more information about what happened. Finally, if you still need help, step three is to read their complete Q & A about the film. We've decided to view the website eventually, but we'll all go there at the same time. Until then we'll just keep watching it and enjoy theorizing. One of the extra interesting things though was the Director's Cut (which is what Sarah and I found). It was released three years later and has some changes. A lot of deleted scenes were added back in, the soundtrack was switched around and some excerpts from the book "The Philosophy of Time Travel" (a fictional book that Donnie finds in the film) are shown occasionally. The exerpts provide huge hints as to what's really going on, whilst not giving away the actual answers. They allowed our theories to become a lot more stream-lined, which was extremely exciting. The added scenes didn't change our view so much, but rather expanded on it. The story wasn't changed, just some blanks were filled in, which helped make more sense. There was one scene where it was changed enough to warrant an alternate theory, but I think both versions of that scene fit in with my current theory anyway. Lastly, the soundtrack changes make a huge difference to the films' presentation, if not to the plot. Scenes take on a completely different atmosphere, and extended and shortened scenes set a different pacing. It's very interesting to watch when you know the original so well. I think some of the changes worked really, really well, whereas others just made me wish they hadn't changed it. It's a mixed bag. I consider the original to be the definitive version and you should see that if you haven't watched the film yet, but those interested in looking deeper into it should check out the Director's Cut for the extra information and for the improved scenes.
Frustratingly, neither of the copies of the film I own have any special features, though I suspect that might be a good thing in order to hide the film's secrets. Sarah and I now have a lot of interesting theories, and I look forward to showing Alex and Pete the DVD as well. You two should look forward to it as well. We know so much more now...

When we went back to my place, Sarah and I played Smash Bros. Melee for ages, as well as Soul Calibur II, and we ate Chinese takeaway and watched Donnie Darko.
Wednesday was a bit calmer. I had a lie in after my late-night blog (I sense a repeat tomorrow morning, since it's just gone 4am again). I played N64 for most of the day. I think I'm back into a reviewing mode, so I've been playing Donkey Kong 64 ready for a review soon. In the evening Mum and I were going to watch The Passion Part 3 when an off-hand comment I made sparked a radical change in conversation. You remember me complaining that my PDA was dying? The screen was going all out-of-sync with itself and not working. Peter theorized that it was the screen-protector's fault and that replacing it would solve the issue. However, when Mum took it off it was still broken. So now my Palm TX is officially dead. However the situation has change a lot since that post I just linked to, and I think I'll dedicate my next post to my PDA musings. Suffice to say I've been doing a lot of thinking about what to do now.
Eventually Mum and I did watch The Passion and thoroughly enjoyed it and the theological discussions that came with it. That's good family time if I ever had it. I also helped Mum put the new cover on the ironing board. So there.

Thursday (today, I don't care if it's technically Friday now) was a busy day. For a start, Mum's gone away. She's been gone all of today and she's not getting back 'til Friday evening. She's visiting my Dad's parents because my Dad's Dad is in hospital. I was put in charge and Mum left notes everywhere instructing me on how to look after the house. Today I've cooked dinner and done a miniature bit of housework, so I feel quite grown-up. I'm an adult really, I just forget sometimes. I didn't forget this morning though. I had to go to the dentist.
I'm terrified of the dentist. Most people are, I think. For me, my Dentist (a guy named Peter) bullied me about how bad my teeth-cleaning skills were and threatened to evoke the secret laws of nature that would rip the teeth from my mouth. As I grew older I went through phases. After being just plain terrified I became terrified but rebellious, then terrified but negotiable, and finally terrified and prayerful. I'd spend the couple of weeks prior to the Dentist brushing and praying like crazy. I think it worked. Peter was nice to me on my previous visit, saying my brushing had improved (for the first time ever). However that was about seven months ago and I left home. One of the effects for me from leaving home was my sudden mass-increase of sugar in my diet. I bought far too many sweets and so went lent came around, God wisely advised me to lower my sugar intake. Not give up on chocolate and sweets altogether, but just stop buying them every time I passed a newsagents (which was often). Even so, as the day of my dentist trip approached I was increasingly terrified. It doesn't help that I suffer from paranoia. Occasional pains in my teeth and lack of self-confidence in my teeth-brushing ability meant that I was confident I'd need at least one more filling, if not six more. I prayed all the way to town and attempted to calm myself as I waited for my turn. I felt like I was going to do it in the way I'd have gone to see a teacher who'd ask for a talk, almost certainly about the coursework I still haven't done. There would be complaining, telling off, the whole "it's your problem, I can't do anything but tell you" line and subsequent punishment (fillings). I decided to do what I'd do in the teacher situation: be diplomatic. Own up to having eaten too much sugar. You can't hide it, just tell him. It may help. You must think I'm being extremely childish here, and it's true. The nostalgia and memory-driven fear brought me back to being a child. However, as soon as I spoke to Peter I remembered I was an adult.
Peter and I are both adults. We talked about things sensibly, we had a pleasant chat about how life had been going. I mentioned the occasional pains and the too-much-sugar thing. He told me, again, that my teeth cleaning was very good and assured me there was nothing to worry about. Fiona (who did the follow-up) assured me that the pain I'd felt was caused by something else, not something that needed a filling, and it would go away soon. I felt so happy, not only because God had seemingly performed a miracle (whether He did or not) but also because I'd been an adult in there. Mum not being with me really helped. As I stepped out I realised I'd regained my adulthood and hopefully ditched the child clinging to my dentist memories for good.
I celebrated by buying a Status Quo CD from a charity shop.

I spent most of the rest of the day on the phone to Pete, discussing PDAs (which I will rant about tomorrow). I also went to visit the Nashes, which was brilliant fun. The boys were overjoyed to see me again and we talked for ages. They also showed me their new Wii game, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, which I've now given a hands-on report. I borrowed Big Brain Academy for Wii as well, and so with myself back in games-reviewing mode you can expect a review soon. I watched the second episode of House with Kat this evening and did some more phoning and researching. It's been a long but fun day. We've got a lot of work done on the PDA thing and I've managed to organise some social activities for the next few days. Tomorrow I can spend the morning doing some jobs I didn't do today and then the afternoon/evening I'm going to spend with Nick playing games. On Saturday I'm seeing Alex, Hannah, Claire and Lydia, which should be awesome. Then there's Sunday, which is bound to be busy. Next week is still a little uncertain and, as you'll find out next post, what's going on with my PDA is also very uncertain.

Life's crazy. You can see why I've said I've barely spent any time with Kat or Mum. Whilst Monday was good, I was with Sarah all of Tuesday, Wednesday Kat and Mum were working and today Mum was away and Kat was working still. I hope I get to spend more time with them soon. On the other hand, one of the things I've enjoyed the most has been the freedom. Over Christmas my time here didn't feel entirely free because I was sticking to a very tight schedule to get my University application sorted. This time I have very few actual responsibilities and jobs. I can truly rest and relax, and it's really lovely.
It's been a long, rewarding day. My next week looks exciting but uncertain. It strikes me that God approves of these kind of days. I think I'll have a chat with Him before I drop off to sleep... at 4:30am once more. Do make me blog earlier next time!

Super-mug saves Easter!

2008-03-26T03:13:00.010Z

I spent most of Thursday panicking. Easter was almost upon me, which meant one last stretch of work before a two week holiday. We'd arranged for me to come home on the Monday straight after Easter. The problem was that Beth and co. wanted to go away early. It was arranged for me to spend a weekend with Jeff & Sue. This was wonderful, but I had to pack and I managed to waste my day doing other things and time was running short near the end. Al helped my giving me an extra 45 minutes before dinner at his that evening. I packed in all my un-ironed clothes, various games and controllers, a selection of DVDs, plenty of charger cables, my Wii/DS and anything else I thought might just come in handy. Eventually it was a massive, heavy but packed bag. I cheerfully left it at Beth's as I wandered to Al's for dinner and then on to church for the Maundy Thursday service.

In my life so far Easter hasn't been much of a big thing. I went to church, like every Sunday. I was told about Jesus, like every Sunday. I even got chocolate, like every Sunday. However, I did get a little bit more chocolate, but that was about the only thing that separated Easter from any other day. Thus a Maundy Thursday service was a bit alien to me. What did it mean? What happened? What persuaded so many people to come to church on a Thursday? As it turns out it was the Last Supper, the special name for Jesus' last meal with his disciples before His death. This was the one where communion (or mass or whatever you like to call it) was first done, as Jesus handed out bread and wine to His friends as a memory-trigger for Jesus' body and blood that was sacrificed for them. The service predictably involved communion. I have to admit it felt like a normal service to me, though I liked the end. To prepare for the next day's reflections (Good Friday, the day Jesus died) the altar was stripped of all it's items and we were to leave in silence. I must admit again I didn't understand exactly why we were doing everything, but there was something atmospheric about everyone leaving in silence, the lights being switched off as we went. I got the impression there was more to Easter than I thought.

My luggage to take to Jeff & Sue's was pretty much doubled since I needed my bass guitar for various services over the weekend. We managed to get it all in the car though.
Those who remember my last stay at Jeff & Su e's should guess that it was fun to stay there. They are a wonderful family. Jeff & Sue are both teachers, but also have a variety of extra skills that they put to good use in the church. They also have three daughters. Ana, the youngest, is a bright, cheerful, bouncy girl who's fairly bossy but never in a way that makes you stop loving her. She swooped into the lounge with a small mug with a makeshift cape made from a kitchen cloth and demanded that Super-mug wanted tea. Emily is my age but unlike me is lucky enough to have an enormously active social life. Due to this I don't see very much of her, but it's great when I can. Mary is a few years older than me and I've only bumped into her twice before the weekend because she's in University. She was home for Easter though so I got to spend some time with her. She brings a freshness and cheerfulness to wherever she goes that's quite addictive. It was a great weekend with the five of them.

Friday morning was a Good Friday service with hot-cross-buns afterwards. It was a good service and had some particularly moving poems about Jesus' sacrifice. Due to convenience of travel it made more sense for me to stick with Andy & co. than with Jeff & co. between this and the afternoon service. I spent the time with Darren coming up with ideas for a game I've been thinking of designing. Since I'm taking this uni course next year I've been day-dreaming about ideas for games I could possibly make, either as coursework, in my free time or as part of a possible future job. I've got a couple but I think I've hit the jackpot with this new one (currently going under the working title of "Project Disrupt"), and Darren was more than happy to help me flesh it out a little.

After the afternoon service I went back to Jeff & Sue's. I played DS with Ana, which was great fun. I beat her at Big Brain Academy, she beat me at Sonic Rush and we drew roughly on Super Monkey Ball. We played Mario Kart DS as well, but I was horrified to find that my save data seemed to have vanished! How could it have happened? I guess some kid could have erased it and been too scared to tell me. I doubt it though. A cartridge fault? Not sure. I've reluctantly started re-collecting the various characters, courses and trophies that can be won, but it'll take a while to return to where I was. Very frustrating.

In the evening we had music group, which was fun, but we cut it short so everyone could get home to watch "The Passion". For those who didn't see it, it was a series of four episodes showing the story of Jesus from his arrival at Jerusalem to his resurrection. I've managed to catch episodes one and three so far, which is awkward. I enjoyed them both thoroughly though. The Jesus in them is a very friendly person who I naturally gravitate towards and enjoy seeing on-screen, which is clearly how it would have been there. People couldn't resist spending time with Jesus. I connected with the program quite well through their Jesus, and really got drawn into the story. The episodes were being shown on the correct dates to fit the events they were talking about, so I already had an idea in my mind of how long Jesus had been in Jerusalem for. Over Saturday I'd get an impression of how long it was between Jesus' death and resurrection.

In the room I was sleeping in there was a bookshelf packed with CDs, DVDs and books. Since I naturally stay up late (not normally this late I'd like to point out) I figured I could watch some DVDs on my laptop after everyone had gone to bed. Between Thursday and Friday evening I watched the entire first series of Extras, which I very much enjoyed.
Saturday was a very relaxing day. All day it snowed on and off. It would suddenly strike up a blizzard for twenty minutes and then vanish in an instant, melting everywhere and making it even less likely that the next layer would stick. Mary, Ana and I decided to make an Easter garden, so we scoured the garden for the various bits and pieces and built this fabulous garden. Clearly the best one ever made.
Relaxing at Jeff & Sue's is a very enjoyable thing. I frequently read or played Mario Kart DS (to re-claim my accomplishments). We also occasionally played one of many board games or sat and watched TV. Meals were impressive as well. Across the weekend I had a full cooked breakfast, a bacon sandwich, a mass-late-night snack of toast, far too many nice snacks, a buffet dinner and a few very well cooked main meals. The buffet dinner was for Saturday evening when we had a few guests round. A couple came to see Jeff & Sue whilst Luke (an old friend) visited Emily and Mary. Emily wandered off after a while and I admit feeling a little young and out of place around them. Pete called anyway though, so I got to chat to him for a while.

Despite the insanely early start we were planning for Sunday morning, I stayed up far too late chatting to Sue and reading. I'd regret it of course, because Sunday morning was the sunrise service. I was up at 6:15 but still managed to make us late by taking too long in the shower. As Jeff, Mary and I (the only ones brave enough to face the early start) drove up the valley mountains it began to snow. The further up the mountains we got the more it snowed until eventually we were surrounded by a perfect winter wonderland. Standing on top of a small mountain in the middle of the snow at 7am for an Easter morning service is painful in many different ways, but rewarding in so many more. It's a morning I'll never forget, which is just as well. You can check out the pictures to see for yourself. We sung a few songs, shared some shivering conversations and made our way home.
We just about had time for some pancakes before we were out again for the next service. This one was also brilliant fun, especially since Creme Eggs were given out during communion. After and impressive lunch I had an afternoon's rest and watched the Pink Panther remake with Ana. The third service was a little more regular but was still great fun. All through Easter day I seemed to make some sort of connection with God. Hymns that previously made me check my watch were instead a joy to sing, and I was inexplicably happy for the day. After the evening service we went back to the vicarage for refreshments and Darren and I worked on my new game some more. I also recieved my third Easter egg. A big thanks to those who were kind enough to get me them! :)

Since I didn't have to get up so early on Monday, I spent Sunday late-night watching "The Importance of Being Earnest" (the Colin Firth version), which I still adore. Monday was simply a case of re-packing, eating Jeff & Sue's wonderful food, grabbing hugs off people and going back to Bargoed station to catch the train. Despite one or two cases of paranoia, the train journey ran smoothly, and I finished reading "Bacon Sandwiches and Salvation", which was good. Eventually I made it to Didcot Parkway and saw Mum and Kat once again.
I would go on to tell you all about what it's like to be home again, but in all fairness it's now 4:20am and I kinda need some sleep. Thanks for reading, and check back real soon for a lot more blog posts! My final thoughts on Easter? I got the excitement and a little bit of feeling what it would have been for those there at the time. I felt I connected with God, which was always good, and I got lots of chocolate too. Success all round!

The owner is digitally unavailable

2008-03-23T09:04:00.003Z

Apologies for any difficulty you have had in contacting the owner of this blog.

The owner wishes for all to know he will not be online until Monday evening when he will have returned to Abingdon. The owner looks forwards greatly to meeting up with all those who live in Abingdon over the coming few weeks.

The owner would probably appreciate this lolcat so it goes online here:

I have an excuse!

2008-03-19T15:17:00.003Z

Thursday night I fell ill. I haven't been able to blog since. There, can I go now?

Fine, I'll tell you what's been going on with me.
I've been having a very weird time because my mind's been buzzing around lots. I've had varying degrees of pain and illness, various friends and relationships going well/badly/oddly and a lack of focus on my free time. I can't decide whether to write, play games or something else. I've been reading instead. As I said previously, I'm sure you'll get one or two book-related post if when I'm completely better I don't find another excuse not to post.
Friday was me feeling rubbish. Saturday I was feeling better but still ill. Sunday I wasn't sure, and this was an issue because Sunday evening was the Hope Service. Apparently the Hope Services used to be regular, but died shortly before I turned up. They were entirely youth-led evening church services. We'd been attempting to plan one for about a month and it's chaotic coming together had stressed me out a little. I admit it was relieving to not have it on my shoulders for Friday and Saturday, and I highly commend Helen and co. for their impressive work on it. Regardless of who drew the final draft, I was still written down as being the main service-leader as well as bass-player and drama-extra. I had to decide whether to go or not.

The choice was basically asking whether I was still ill or whether I was just weak from lack of food. After calling Mum and some various tests I decided to go for the Hope Service. The rest of the team were extremely supportive, which was lovely, and I just about dragged myself through. I lost concentration at times, messed up a few lines (and bass sections) and generally felt rubbish for most of it. Still, it went ok and I'm glad I went. Andy and Helen gave me Monday morning off and I proceeded to spend the rest of Monday as if I was better. But since I was still feeling rubbish in the evening I had my doubts. I'm now convinced I wasn't better on Sunday evening and that it's not just me failing to eat. At the moment I'm still recovering, but I'm well enough to blog at least. I've discovered people are still nice to me and don't treat me like I'm skiving work, which is good. As long as I'm completely better by Sunday I'll be happy. I feel quite a bit better today at least.

There you go. A rushed trip through my last few days. I still have numerous blog posts I want to get done eventually, but I'll try and leave gaps between them so no more for now. Hopefully my mind will return to being a bit more normal and I'll grab the handlebars of my life again. Everything seems to just go on hold when you're ill, so I now need to recover it all. Feels like I'm in a dream. Anyway, enough whittering. Thanks to everyone who prayed for me recently. I'll be back to blog soon.

My left ear feels weird...

2008-03-12T16:11:00.003Z

I've been in a weird mood recently. I've found I haven't been wanting to review games, which means I've stopped myself playing games until I do review the ones I've recently finished. I've been reading books instead, and you can expect some book-related blog posts soon. But I guess this lack of wanting to review could explain why I haven't blogged much either. That in turn explains why I'm now writing a post about Saturday.

After a much-needed lie in, I got up and enjoyed my day. I relaxed with Beth & co and then finally went out to get a haircut. This is particularly important because when my hair gets too long at the front it begins to annoy me and can really bring my mood down. So I was all happy for the rest of the day.
Later on I went down to church. We'd decided to do a sponsored read of the whole New Testament, with people taking different shifts (multiple people at a time though, not one person for a whole hour). We started at 8am, but my shift was 4-6 in the evening. I arrived minutes before we started Acts and I deliberately overran my shift by 20minutes so that I could hear the end. The whole of Acts in 2 hours 20. Good stuff.

So I was even happier when I went round Robert's house in the evening. It had been his birthday and so he had organised a bowling trip. There were loads of people there I knew, plus a few I didn't. It was an awesome evening to spend with people. I was one of the three (out of twelve) who was brave enough to play with the barriers down. I won out of those three, but lost compared to most other people. Darren perfected his technique of bouncing the ball off the barrier to get strikes, and duly won the second round and came second in the first.
It was one of those evenings that was fun just because I got to spend time with awesome people, and if I tried to explain each little bit it wouldn't work. One thing I can tell you though was that I managed to have a minute on an awesome arcade game before the mini-bus turned up and I had to leave mid-game. It was a flying-a-jet-aircraft-shooting-missiles-at-things-game but you sat in a chair that tilted around like in a simulator, and you had a fun joystick to aim with. I have to admit it was an amazing minute.

Back at Robert's house we chatted and snacked for a while, and then listened to John (his dad) tell us about his college pranks. I managed to snap the left arm off my glasses, but didn't mind too much because they stay on my head just as well. I swore everyone present to secrecy and nobody else noticed it was missing until monday evening when a kid in my youth group finally saw. I found that quite funny. If you read this blog post, don't tell anybody either. I want to see who notices and who doesn't.

Robert himself has been ill recently, and I'm sure he was going down with whatever-it-is at his party. Hope you feel better real soon, Robert, and thanks for an awesome party! :)

The only other thing I wanted to say was I watched "What Lies Beneath" on TV late at night the other day. It's a supernatural horror film, and I have to admit it was brilliant. None of the plot ideas were that original, but the acting was brilliant and the way it was directed must have been incredible because for the first time ever (nearer the end of the movie)I was on the edge of my seat with the remote in hand and would be willing the characters not to do something when I could see something was going to make me jump any second. For those of who you like horror and don't have a Christian objection about supernatural stuff in films, I highly recommend it!

I have a couple of more themed posts planned, but I won't do them just yet. Something to look forward to, eh?

Lolcat videos

2008-03-04T11:22:00.000Z

This is clearly the way forward.

Take me back!

2008-03-03T15:13:00.004Z

On Saturday Robert & family took me out to Abergavenny for the day with the promise of the best sausages in South Wales. Having previously been taken to "the best ice cream in South Wales", I was beginning to wonder if this wasn't just a polite phrase they used for their local food shops. But another long car journey later I was convinced either they were enthusiasts or these sausages really had something going for them. As it happens, it was the latter. The shop's walls were lined with award after award. The sausages weren't too bad either.

Aside from the sausages and the most spectacular view I've ever seen (by parking on a mountain-side road in the middle of the valleys), the attraction of the trip for me was the shopping. I think most people know I dislike chain stores by now. Chain stores price everything highly and strictly. Even second hand video games in GAME are priced into catagories. You should know I loved the old second-hand bookshop I went to. Charity shops are good. As are car-boot sales and (my favourite) pawnbrokers. But if you can't get either of those last two, a market is the next best thing.

Stalls were everywhere and were selling loads of stuff second hand. I found a second-hand book stall, CD stall, DVD stall and some games. I even found the geek stall, with comics and sci-fi/comic action figures. The games were fairly rubbish and although I could have spent hours sifting through the DVDs, Robert was hurrying me away by that point. What I did get a good look at though were the CDs. After a length discussion with the stall-owner about whether Jools Holland counts as Jazz or not (and subsequently some playing of Jazz music on his CD player) I settled with an actual Jools album, just to be safe. It's an interesting one though. It's Jools and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra playing with famous singers. Each song is in Jools' style but with hints of the other person's style, which can be interesting. It's one of the highest qualty albums I've heard in a long time, and I've printed the entire song list below to make Mum and Dad jealous!

Track Number: Guest singer (Guest's old band) - Song name
1: Sting (The Police) - Seventh Son
2: George Harrison (The Beatles) - Horse To The Water
3: Paul Weller (The Jam) - Will It Go Round In Circles
4: Sam Brown - Valentine Moon
5: Joe Strummer (The Clash) - Return Of The Blues Cowboy
6: Dr. John - The Hand That Changed Its' Mind
7: Ruby Turner - Nobody But You
8: Stereophonics - Revolution
9: Mica Paris & David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) - I Put A Spell On You
10: Suggs (Madness) - Oranges And Lemons Again
11: Eric Bibb - All That You Are
12: Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) - Mademoiselle Will Decide
13: Van Morrison - Back O' Town Blues
14: Chris Difford (Squeeze) - Town And Country Rhythm And Clues
15: John Cale (The Velvet Underground) - I Wanna Be Around
16: Steve Winwood (Traffic) - I'm Ready
17: Marc Almond (Soft Cell) - Say Hello, Wave Goodbye
18: Mick Hucknall (Simply Red) - T-Bone Shuffle
19: Paul Carrack (Ace) - It's So Blue
20: Taj Mahal - Outskirts Of Town
21: Jamiroquai - I'm In The Mood For Love
22: Eric Clapton - What Would I Do Without You

Content Aware Image Resizing

2008-02-28T23:05:00.003Z

Not wishing to take the emphasis off my last two posts (go read them now if you haven't already), but Anna sent me this video and I thought it was amazing. We all know that if you resize an image then the proportions go all off. This technology allows you to resize it without making it all look rubbish. First it shows some examples, then it shows how it works. It checks for various properties of the image (colour changes for example) and draws faultlines along it, where it will stretch or compress the image to keep the important bits in perspective. You can assist it by telling it to keep certain areas completely normal (like faces) and you can even use it to erase things off photos, since it stretches the background to re-join around the deleted section.
Prepare to be impressed. Unless you're not as geeky as me. Pete only said "cool", so maybe it's just me and Anna. Come on, who else is impressed?

Stretching the definition of "tomorrow"

2008-02-27T16:14:00.003Z

So why was I so late posting about Southampton? Come, hear the story of my week and a half back in Bargoed and why I neglected my poor blog. If you haven't read my post about Southampton yet, it's below this one. Read it first.

Sunday 17th was a fun day. Mum was in Cardiff visiting her mother and so decided to take the opportunity to come and visit my church here in Bargoed. It's been proving difficult for the whole family to find time to come and visit, but hopefully they will at some point. So Mum sat through the morning service whilst I did sunday school, and then I introduced her to loads of people during the tea & coffee afterwards. However, during the course of the morning someone told her the news that I would be preaching at the evening service. I'd been given this task before half term with the assumption that I could use all that free time to plan it. Who can guess whether I planned it or not?
In theory it should have worked, because Pete would have been a great help, but unfortunately time vanishes quickly, and when Sarah and Alex weren't leaving til gone midnight most days we found the need for sleep a bit overwhelming. I was also in no mood to write a sermon nearer the end of my visit because as I said I was really quite emotional over my friend having their crisis-thing. My only option really was to write it Sunday Afternoon, which was by no means a sensible option. During Sunday I painfully dragged my constant prayer away from my friend for the day (trusting God to look after them) and prayed non-stop about my sermon instead. As it happened, Mum was able to help. We sat in the car for a while discussing ideas and eventually settled on a passing thought I'd had. Long-term readers will remember at my initial Careforce conference I heard a fantastic talk about grace that really spoke to me. Since I still had the (very rough) notes, I decided to base a talk on that.
After Mum's help, I got to work, hindered only by the fact that soon after Lunch I started feeling quite ill. Still, I eventually got it done. I took the notes from the talk and in my mind expanded upon them, adding new ideas and getting the phrasing right in my head. I put post-it notes in my Bible to bookmark all the passages I'd needed but then forgot to bring it. Oh well.
I was incredibly nervous when I got there but once I'd got 5 minutes into the talk I really settled down. It was twice as long as it should have been (half an hour instead of quarter) but I've heard nothing but positive comments since. Of course, they could all be being nice to me, but I'm fairly sure it worked. When God rescues me from calamity, He rescues me with style.

So Sunday I'd been too busy to blog. Monday and Tuesday I was still very stressed out over the situation with my friend. After huge amounts of praying, God saved the day wonderfully on Tuesday. I needed the rest of the day to rest and regain myself back to full emotional strength. Wednesday was a very busy day catching up on the work I'd been too drained to do on Monday or Tuesday, although the highlight was Gigabites. At long, long last we have staff members! We appointed a new techie (the previous youth worker from Paul's parish in Lisvane) and sometime after this particular Wednesday we got another staff worker, who I'll get to meet tonight. The new techie (Lee) was cool. It was good to be back in Gigabites after so much craziness with it being off. We have staff back and Diane's back to full health (without Diane, the project collapses). It's so good to see them all again and it was a fun evening, despite some kids throwing cups of water over cars and then jumping the counter to refill them.

Thursday I had more work to do. Andy and Helen (vicar and wife, keep up) have been having an extremely busy time since half term. Helen told me today she finally made herself stop and have a long bath just to rest. The two of them are inredible, and I have no right to complain about having lots to do, so I won't. I will say that because they've had so much on, they've given me a little extra work to do, which is a good idea. However I haven't been managing my time all that well. I've got a hundred things I need to do, most non-church related, and I just can't seem to remember them all. Sooner or later I need to remember to put my dirty washing in the washing machine, I need to buy some more shampoo, pay the deposit for the house in Southampton and many, many more things. I need to write them all down on a list.

Friday is a busy day anyway, though we'd almost moved another meeting to Friday morning. Q Group at the school really frustrated me because the kids were being so noisy and dis-respectful. It's one of the few times I've had to try to keep a lid on my temper. JAM club later was a lot easier and dinner with Jeff & Sue and then music group was very relaxing. At music group we were practicing for Sunday and it was my turn to choose the songs from the evening service. I chose about 13, which kept us up way too late and then got cut down to 8 on the actual night, based on how the service was going. I taught them "Holy moment" by Matt Redman.

Saturday was an interesting day. Robert, a good friend of mine here, had decided a while back that my Linux was far better than XP, and had asked me to put in on his laptop. Whilst in Southampton Pete put it onto a CD for me and instructed me on how to install it and things that might go wrong. I was all set and made an early start (left at 9:30) on Saturday to Robert's house. We went through the process, slowly. I don't think I'd explained to him quite how long it would take and how boring it would be. Installing a whole new operating system takes a long time and isn't all that fun. But the real problem was that it hit a point in the install where it wouldn't continue. I called Pete who reccommened we just try it again. We did, which took ages, and it failed again. Pete couldn't work out what had gone wrong but suggested we try the alternative Linux CD, which apparently is less user-friendly but has a higher success-rate. Unfortunately we wouldn't be able to that on Saturday because it would take too long. So I was in a bit of a hard situation. I'd just come round to poor Robert's house, wiped his hard drive, made him sit there and wait for hours and failed to produce anything. My answer was "we'll have to try a different CD on another day". It was made all the worse when I remembered Robert had lost his XP CDs and claimed he needed a working laptop by Monday. Oh.
Thankfully the XP CDs were found, XP was re-installed and despite me wasting his morning and frustrating him hugely, he didn't hold it against me and was still keen to get Linux working (instead of deciding it wasn't worth the hassle, which many people would have done). So getting hold of the new CD and installing Linux is another thing on my list of jobs to do. I was so pleased that the situation hadn't ended up as bad as it could have done.
In fact, we then went out and got ice cream. Except that that's an understatement in almost every respect. "We" means me and Robert's parents, who are also good friends of mine. "Went out" means drove for an hour and a bit across the mountains to Brecon. "Ice cream" means the best ice cream in South Wales. They said they regularly make huge detours on their journeys to pass by the ice cream parlour here. I have to admit I was feeling a little car-sick at the time so I didn't appreciate it fully, but I got the impression that this was somewhere I'd want to visit again. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around. We went in an L-Space Bookshop (one of those really old ones that seems to be much bigger inside that it is on the outside). It was incredible, and I decided to buy a book I found on Canasta strategy. Canasta is a card game that Pete, Alex, Sarah and I are addicted to. It's an advanced form of Rummy. The book was written in the 50s, when the game was really popular. I've read it all now and I thought it was pretty good. It hasn't made me a master, largely because they play slightly different rules to what we do. They play the standard 13-card, single-canasta game. We play 15-cards and often at least two canastas. We also require natural canastas quite often. This makes our version a lot harder than theirs, but I think actually less strategic because capturing the discard pile (if it's reasonably big) weights the sides too much. I think there's a lot more strategy to be had in a single-canasta game, even though each round itself would feel shorter and simpler. Even so, I picked up a lot of good tips I should be able to make use of, and I look forward to trying them out.
As well as the bookshop we looked round a nearby chapel, which was quite fun, and examined the gravestones on the floor, trying to piece together a picture of the family and re-discover words lost in the erosion. I went back to theirs for dinner and then went home for the evening. It was a really fun day, and I pass my thanks on to them all.

Sunday was a usual busy Sunday but with one twist. The potential next Careforce worker (i.e. my replacement after the summer) made her weekend visit, similar to mine back in July. Like on my visit, she stayed at the Vicarage, had a look round, met some people and went to some services. I was told her name was Emily and that she'd come out of University and was considering this kind of line of work. She also has some experience of the valleys, I hear. I was told at some point I'd get to have a chat with her. I realised of course that when I visited, Mugai (my predecessor - apologises if I spelt his name wrong) had already left, so I didn't get to see him. If Emily was to chat to me, what would I say? She's older than me, has lived away from home before (which I hadn't), already as lots of experience. What could I possibly tell her?
When I did get to chat with her for a while I think I was pleased to see that she was a little nervous about the whole thing. She was a lovely girl and I enjoyed chatting to her. She fired questions at me, which helped make up for me not knowing what to say. I found I could answer really honestly, partly because I'd just met her (I often find it's easiest to jump in the deep in with trust when you've just met someone, whilst it's harder to work your way up the pool with someone you already know), but also partly because I felt it was my duty to give an honest impression. I mean, if you asked me how my year's going I'd say it was brilliant! I wouldn't be lying, but it's obviously not perfect. I decided to be honest about where I was with life and what things there were to look out for. I may have over-done it and made Bargoed look like an awful place, but I got the impression we were talking on the same wavelength.
The evening service and my songs went well by the way.

Monday and Tuesday were busy again. I feel as I'm writing this that actually I didn't have as much to do as I've felt I had. I think that's right. Andy and Helen are working non-stop, and I've got very little to do in comparison. I think the reason I've found my time back here so busy/stressful/got nothing done is because of the way everything adds up. I've made a few bad calls when it comes to time management and all the jobs just spiral out of control. There's so much that could be done and it's hard to work out which I need to do and when to do it. It's why I think I need a list. So I'm not saying I've been overloaded, but just that I haven't coped with it as well as I could have done.

My last bit of "excitement" was last night and this morning. With all these jobs that I should/could be doing it's very easy to lose track of one or two. Last night at 3am I discovered a letter from UCAS that had been posted to me whilst I was in Southampton. I'd been given it by Beth as soon as I got back, but I'd "put it to one side for now". It contained a "confirm your university choice" slip, and said it needed to be sent to my chosen University within 14 days of the date shown or my place could be given to someone else. I checked the date and the deadline was Monday. Oh no. What if they hadn't got this and looked for other applicants to give the space to? What if they'd cancelled the application altogether? Is that why I got an odd e-mail from UWE on Tuesday talking about applying to them? How could I find out what had happened? How best to get in contact with them? What would I do if I'd lost my place? Apply somewhere else? Not live with my amazing friends next year in our amazing house having the best years of my life?
I discovered a phone number on something Solent had sent me that said I could call it if I had any questions about my application, but predictably enough nobody was answering the phone at 3am. I forced myself to go to sleep, despite the fact that I was quite frankly more scared than I've ever been in my life to date.

Of course I could pull the drama out longer, but you should have guessed already that it worked out. It was extremely scary though. Wednesday morning I practiced talking to get my voice to stop shaking and then called the number. The number took me straight through to the faculty of technology (who I knew would be in charge of my application directly). I pointed out in my question that I'd given them photocopies of my A Level certificates whilst I was in Southampton because I figured that was proof enough that I had accepted their offer. The nice lady on the phone said she'd actually looked through them this morning and assured me that my place was completely secure, saying the UCAS slip was "just another bit of paperwork they avoided". I was relieved.

So today, despite feeling ill at lunch-time, I've been doing ok. My day's got lots on and my gaps of spare time have been quite small and so I decided instead of settling down to a big job I'd instead write my blog posts for you guys! Of course I forgot how long it'd take, but never mind.
Thanks so much for reading these two massive posts. I hope to resume normal posting now. Hopefully God'll continue to look after me and help me through my slightly chaotic life. Prayers would be appreciated. God bless.

Catch-up: Southampton Visit No.2

2008-02-27T11:04:00.005Z

Blog posts are here! Everybody party!
I apologise for my sheer hopelessness when it's come to posting over the last month. All will be explained, although most of the explanations of lateness will be in the next post, so you'll have to wait. For now I'm going to take you back in time to Monday 11th Feb (ignoring the fact that I only got round to blogging about the previous week on the Tuesday). I was two and a half weeks younger, I'd just finished my last Careforce conference and I'd had a few days work before finally leaving for Southampton.

This immediately requires some explanation because I haven't said anything on here about my university place yet. For those who don't know, I've been applying to do a Computer Games Development course in Southampton Solent. You can find the relevant blog posts here, here and here, but I've been pretty quiet about it all. I guess it was because I was so nervous, I didn't really want to go around talking about it like it was fact in case it fell through. However I've known Solent have given me an unconditional offer since Feb 1st and I replied to it and confirmed it on Feb 8th, so I have no excuse for not telling you guys. I'll tell you now. I'm going to Southampton Solent next year!

This of course made visiting Pete, Alex & Sarah all the more fun because we knew I'd be with them next year. I could relax a little. However we still had the tough job of finding a house. The four of us were planning on living together next year, along with another guy I hadn't met at this point. Living with my best friends could only be amazing, but the issue was that houses were going before we got a chance to look around them, and I'd only recently been able to confirm I had a place in Solent. I'd been told we'd be house-hunting on Monday afternoon (Monday being the first day of my half-term holiday), which meant I needed to wake up extremely early to get the train from Bargoed to Southampton and arrive before lunch. Well, I woke up at 8am, but that feels extremely early to me.

I'd packed the night before so I could leave quickly and soon I was on the train reading a book again. This time it was the fourth Foundation novel: Foundation's Edge. Ben (in all his sci-fi wisdom) has told me that the original trilogy was brilliant but the other ones are rubbish. Unfortunately I didn't get far enough into the book to tell because, despite having about three hours, I'm a slow reader and the book starts slowly.
When I arrived in Southampton I was told, frustratingly, that the house-hunting had been cancelled and had been re-booked for Wednesday. So I didn't need to get up so early. Grrr.
Monday was pretty fun though. We hung out at Pete's place. Whilst Sarah and Alex live in halls, Pete shares a house with some random guys who go to Solent as well. Some of them come and spend time with us (Pete's mate "Fonzie" got heavily addicted to my copy of Elite Beat Agents on DS) but most of the time they keep the themselves and they keep out of the house, meaning the lounge was pretty much ours 24:7. It's not a big lounge. We can just about squeeze four people onto the sofa if you don't want any personal space and there's a single-seater chair, a table (for a TV when we get it out of Pete's room) and a very thin pathway to get through to the kitchen. It's useable but it's not ideal.
I convinced Pete, Alex & Sarah that we need an Xbox 360 next year with a collection of trailers I'd made, though I think Pete and Sarah were already sold on the idea. I played Sarah at Elite Beat Agents (hence the beginning of Fonzie's addiction) and we were pretty close all the way through, despite it being a hard difficulty. Sarah's getting worryingly good at games...
Alex discovered Mercury Meltdown Revolution, a Wii game I'd got free with my gaming magazine subscription. It's an addictive stage-based puzzle game that anyone can enjoy. Alex got addicted and proceeded to spend most of the week playing it. I lent Sarah Phoenix Wright and she got addicted to that. Pete seemed to avoid getting addicted to any game, which was impressive. In fact he didn't play many games at all. Strange...
In the evening we went to a Bible Study group, which was quite fun. I like the church there (which is good since I'll be going there next year). I particularly like the minister, David (Baptist; have to remember not to say vicar). We later went back to Pete's and kicked Alex and Sarah out at 2am.

On Tuesday I remembered that whilst this was my week off, everyone else had lectures. However, Pete had managed to get out of every lecture but one throughout the week so he could spend time with me. Alex and Sarah spent the morning & early afternoon out and then joined Peter & I (who'd only just got up) at Pete's house again for more gaming/socialising. In the evening we went out to Solent's Christian Union, which was quite fun, and was followed by a meal at the pub. An uneventful day in all.
Wednesday was house-hunting. After forcing ourselves to wake up, the five of us met at the house-renting-place-thing. The fifth guy is called Dave & he's a friend of Alex's. He's a Christian (from what I hear) and he was good fun to spend time with. The house-hunting was surprisingly successful. We'd been getting frustrated because every time we had some houses to look at they'd be stolen from us (like on Monday). We finally got to look round three houses, all five of us. We were driven around and had a look. The first two looked just like Pete's house, which was ok. But it was the third one that impressed us. It seemed to have been neglected by the majority of students because it was slightly further away from the University.
It was a wonderful house! It was so much bigger than all the others. The bedrooms were of a decent size and the lounge was just huge, bigger than my lounge back in Abingdon probably, completely with sofas & chairs, sky-lights and the room kinda curved round to a Kitchen that wasn't quite part of the lounge but wasn't quite another room either. It captured me the minute I laid eyes on it. We walked back from it as well and the difference in distance was only 5-10 minutes more than from Pete's current house, so we signed up immediately on the way back.

Alex and Dave left Pete, Sarah and I to ourselves and, after Pete decided to skip his only lecture, we went games shopping! Southampton looks good for my game-shopping needs. It has a Gamestation and three Games as well as a CEX. CEX is a proper second-hand games/dvds/tech-hardware store, so it was naturally my favourite. Gamestation came second, with lots of second-hand stuff, leaving Game last, where it deserves. I pointed out some good games to Pete and Sarah as we went but I was generally unhappy at not finding anything. I decided a while back that when walking into a game shop I could buy most of the store if I had the money, so I've gotta stop myself buying things for the sake of it. However I walk round game shops often enough that if you told me a game I could make an educated guess on how much it'd be new in a shop, second hand in a shop or online. It's just experience. So when I go game shopping I look for anything that I know is a good deal. I pass many games I want, but I only buy them if the price is good and if I honestly want it instead of just wanting a new game for the sake of it. Besides, I don't need any new games. I have an awful lot of games I haven't finished, and even more that I'd love to play again if I had the time. So game shopping has become a little dull in that my resolve is strong enough that I rarely buy a game. However, this time was an exception.
Sarah found me the Myst Trilogy box-set in CEX. She must have an incredible memory, because I swear I've only mentioned Myst to her once or twice, and I probably only mentioned the name once. Yet she obviously listens to me with care, because I missed it and she found it. I'd discovered Myst not long before because a DS port was coming out but people complained it wasn't as good as the PC version. I read up a little about it and learnt it was the best-selling PC game until The Sims came out. I also learnt that it was a truly unique and strange game, and that if you knew all it's secrets from the start you could finish the game in less than three and a half minutes. My imagination was captivated. What could you possibly need to know that would shorten the game to that? Well now I know, because I've finished it. Evidently, I bought the Myst Trilogy for £10.

As well as game shopping we had fun looking round the other shops. We found a lovely Christian Bookshop, and I found an arcade that not only had a copy of Soul Calibur II but also had the arcade Mario Kart game. Peter and I had a go at it and I think he beat me, overtaking me on the finish line. It's hardly gameplay perfection, but it's a fun game with some innovative features.
We eventually wandered over to Borders and spent ages in there. I persuaded Pete that the Foundation trilogy was worth reading, Sarah and I looked through the fantasy section and we all had a good read of some of the comic collections upstairs. We got some drinks and I looked through the Gamer's Guinness Book of World Records, which was quite good.
We met Alex in PCworld where Sarah bought a printer and Alex argued over a TV.
In the evening we met with David (the minister) to go to the cinema. We planned on seeing the latest Alien vs. Predator monstrocity but it turned out the board outside had lied about the date and it wasn't showing yet, so we saw the sequel to National Treasure. Most of the guys seemed to think it was rubbish, but I quite enjoyed it. It was a high-quality easy-watching movie. That's not saying it was a high-quality movie, just that it was high-quality easy-watching. Easy-watching movies stick to Hollywood traditions and make no real attempt to take a toll on the viewer. You just sit, watch it and come out with a smile. Most of my favourite movies include clever tricks on the viewer or particularly emotional/scary/thought-provoking scenes, but the easy-watching genre is fun here and there. I think my Mum calls them ironing films.

Thursday was valentines day, and has somewhat been covered in my report. In the morning David and Alex came round. We discussed the idea of next time I'm in Southampton holding a games day. I was pleased that Pete seemed to have placed me in a position of authority here. I was also pleased that David was thinking big. He wanted a number of different multi-player sessions set up around the church with games ranging across genres and decades, and to record the score of each player (who'd go round in groups) and have a finale at the end. We went through a number of different thoughts and eventually settled on quite a fun list of retro/modern multi-player games. I'm hugely looking forward to this.
The rest of the day was a bit odd. David and Pete went, then Alex went, then Sarah turned up, then Pete and Alex turned up. I think at some point we went and got food, but I might have got the days wrong. We watched The Green Mile in the evening, which was fun.

Friday I had to get up early (before 12pm) to go with Pete to some church meeting thing. We took a taxi there and I found it very funny when the taxi driver went off on a rant about airports that almost exactly mirrored the one found in the half-finished Dirk Gently novel at the end of Douglas Adam's "Salmon of Doubt" book. After that I met Alex at Solent and he showed me some of the stuff he gets to work with. He showed me an enormous Mackie sound desk with two touch-screen controls that did cool things like allowing you to save your settings and then when you load them the sliders all move into place. We played some Jools Holland very loudly and looked at the quality of all the equipment. After heading back to Pete's we relaxed for most of the day and watched two DVDs in the evening (Insomnia and The Butterfly Effect).

Hopefully you'll have gathered by now that I had an incredible week with my friends. The socialising, activities and available technology were wonderful. It makes me want next year to start straight away! However, the week didn't end well for me. Friday evening one of my close friends had a fairly major crisis that impacted me hugely and put me in quite a bad mood for the last day of my trip. Saturday was a bit rushed and I was a bit on edge for most of it, but it wasn't too bad. It was a bit of an anti-climax, but the wonderful time we had together and the promise of next year more than made up for it. Thanks guys for a really incredible week with me!

Blog posts coming tomorrow...

2008-02-24T17:40:00.000Z

I promise.

Oh, Hello Doctor

2008-02-19T16:04:00.002Z

It's common knowledge around here that the two girls in the family I'm staying with are big fans of Doctor Who, but it didn't detract from the momentary feeling of wonder that occurred just now when I heard the sound of the Tardis materializing in the room next to me, before I realised the cat had stood on the sound-effect button of the plastic toy.
Oh well.

The Valentine Report

2008-02-15T01:27:00.002Z

I'm well aware that I'm two posts behind, and the reason I'm so behind on my blog will be explained in those two posts, but I'm going to have to put them to one side for a minute to deliver my annual report on the population-dividing day. Though strangely I barely noticed it was valentine's day this year. There's been no hype and I've barely seen it mentioned in any shops. If I hadn't picked up on the peculiarity that I'd be spending valentine's day with Peter for the second year running I'd barely have noticed at all. As it was, I didn't feel that bad about being single. No romance movies making me cry, no adverts of too-happy couples. Today I felt reasonably about myself.

It helped that I had a brilliant day. I did a load of cool stuff that'll all be covered in two posts time, but basically I loved spending time with my friends. Of my three friends here in Southampton I got to spend a little bit of time alone with each of them and it just served to remind me how awesome the three of them are. I owe an enormous thanks to everyone who spent time with me today (and that's not just limited to Peter, Alex & Sarah). Thanks guys!
Of course, this isn't to say I don't wish I had a girlfriend. I do, very much at times, but I guess when you feel loved by your friends you don't mind quite so much. Still, let's hope God engineers something in my love-life soon... It's not gonna be whilst I'm in Bargoed, but I've got a summer and then four years in uni. What's the worst that could happen? Well the worst that could happen is God decides I should be single for ages, or that I jump the gun and make some mistakes. In fact, most of this is outlined in my last microstory. I feel no obvious calling to stay single other than the annoying voice in the back of my head that tells me God doesn't want me to be happy.

I could be single for a great many years and still end up married (as Ben has proved), so I'll have to trust God on it all. But the facts of today still stand: I would love a girlfriend. I love God. He'll work it out. And today He gave me three amazing friends to make me very happy. I'm gonna miss you guys when I go back. Good thing on Wednesday we found ourselves a house for next year... You wanna read my next two posts, don't you?

Careforce Refresher Course

2008-02-12T12:16:00.000Z

Yeah, I'm rubbish at this whole up-to-date posting thing. As Ben kindly pointed out, I was due to post about my week on Thursday... and it's now Tuesday. I've discovered, to my surprise, that my life is far more interesting a busy than I thought. Either than or I'm far lazier than I thought.

If you check my last post you should find that I was just about to leave almost-late for the Careforce Refresher Course. Despite having overrun slightly, I made it to the train fine. It was at this point I remembered how much I love reading. This seems to happen every train journey, when I don't have all my technology to distract me. This time I was going to read "Second Foundation", the third book in Isaac Asimov's legendary trilogy, which is largely considered the greatest work of modern Science Fiction, and even beat the Lord of the Rings in an award at some point. It was a superb work.

When I got to Shrewsbury Train Station I went outside to meet everyone. Last time I was at Shrewsbury I had no idea who anybody was, so sat by myself until the coach turned up and I discovered who was from Careforce and who wasn't. This time I saw a crowd of familiar faces, and was particularly happy when Rachel called out my name so I could go chat to people. I spent the coach journey chatting to Chrissy, another friend of mine. One of the first disappointments of the week though was the lack of my old friend Amanda. In the last conference we kinda latched onto each other since we were both quite shy and didn't know anyone. I couldn't find her anywhere this time, and after asking around a bit I discovered that she'd left her placement, though nobody would tell me why. Quite a few of us were very sad about that.

The place itself is called Quinta, and I presume it's some sort of Christian conference centre. It's well kitted out, with table-tennis, pool and table-football tables. Obviously it needs bedrooms and such, but with the amount of time we spent sleeping they're less important than the social rooms. After the evening meal we were introduced to the guy doing the talks for this week, who was a cool guy with a lovely, thick Scottish accent. Hot Chocolate and cake in hand we proceeded to stay up to 3am playing a variety of different card games and chatting randomly. In the absense of Amanda I found myself at a bit of a loss of where to go and who to talk to, but I quickly found that I had lots more friends then I thought I did. The group declaration of insomnia was a friendship-strengthening event.

Whenever I pack to go somewhere for a while I always forget something. It's just a fact, especially when I packed as quickly as I did. The only question is what it is I'd forgotten. This time it turned out to be my pyjamas, which was actually less serious than last time, when I'd forgotten my sheets. Luckily I'd overstocked on shirts so I just wore one of them at night.
I usually aim to get 7.5 hours sleep, which I'm told is quite reasonable actually. Thus getting into bed at 3:30am and being asked to get up at 8am for breakfast wasn't really going to work. I got some more sleep by sleeping through breakfast and making it in slightly late to the morning session (which started at 9:30).

The Scottish guy did a good talk and we got into our area groups to chat about it. My area group's from Birmingham (since there's only one other worker in South Wales). As I said last time, I love them. They're a crazy group of completely unique characters, and we gel together quite well.
Having missed breakfast and having had very little sleep, I was headed for a burnout (my term for when my body gets so fed up with me treating it badly that it fights back). Since the shop had just opened at this point I made the stupid mistake of then buying lots of chocolate and sweets. Mass sugar on an empty stomach with no sleep was not good for me, and by the time I'd finished the first talk-shop (seminar, of which you can choose which one to go to) I was burning out completely. We had lunch and I drip-fed myself water until I was feeling slightly better, and Chrissy persuaded me to come on the walk-to-Wales, which would get me fresh air and help. She was right, and I started to feel better.
The walk was good fun, and I found myself chatting to some people I hadn't spoken to much before, which was awesome. New friends are brilliant.

Before the conference we'd all been sent a little e-mail asking us questions about who we wanted to share a room with etc. One of the questions was whether we wanted prayer about our future. At this point I didn't know if I'd got into Southampton or not (I have, more on that in the blog post after this) so I said yeah, why not. When it came to Quinta I knew and so was slightly less enthusiastic when I was told by a slip of paper that I was to arrange a meeting with a guy I'd never met before to pray about my future. As it happens, it was the guy who did the first talk-shop, and I took an instant liking to him. Somehow I manage to trust him quite a lot, and we could talk about a lot of my life and not just about Southampton next year. Having someone else to tell my thoughts to meant he could work out which of my thoughts were sensible and which were the nagging voice inside my head (like the idea that God's plan never includes something you love, which is clearly nonsense, but we all think it from time to time). It was a real help, and I'm very grateful to him.

In the evening we were all upset to find we weren't given pancakes, but we did get to watch the DVD of "Amazing Grace", which I quite like. Something in it inspired me somehow. I can't quite describe it, but I suddenly felt the need to get in contact with God. The Refresher course was aptly named in that it was a chance for us to put ourselves back on track, and this was exactly the spontanious (not forced) moment of connection with God I'd been praying for. I put on my iPod to a good worship playlist and it turns out I was there for two hours.
As well as just having fun praising God, He gave me two good ideas. Firstly was what to give up for lent (which started the next day). Nathan and Ruby from my area group were going to give up coffee (which meant they spent Tuesday drinking as much of it as they could). I'd decided to give up buying chocolate or sweets for lent. Not give up eating them, just buying them. People have seen this as a bit cheap, like I'm not strong enough to give it up altogether, but I think it makes more sense. It isn't a goal of mine to stop eating chocolate altogether, but it is a goal of mine to reduce my sugar in-take. If I stopped buying chocolate every time i passed the corner-shop then I'd be much better off. The second idea was for a way of increasing the success of my quiet-time (prayer time) in the evenings. As well as reading the bible and praying I'm gonna listen to three random worship songs from my iPod. This is a commitment that takes very little time from my evenings but is, as I've discovered, very effective.

The highlight of Wednesday (the next day) was the talk-shops. You may remember the infamous "Grace talk" from last time (that I still haven't written up for you guys). It pretty much changed my life in that it gave me a level of security I'd not known before, which helped me cope with much of this year so far. Well the same guy who did that was doing a two-part talk on radical discipleship. It wasn't as relevant to me as the grace talk was, but it was good fun all the same. I also enjoyed getting to know the guy a bit more. We chatted more about his talk over lunch (again) and before the second part we played cards with him, which was good to kinda break down the spiritual barrier between teacher and student.

For the last night I stayed up late once again to chat with friends. The highlight was probably playing table-tennis where, to my great surprise, I did quite well actually. I played one-on-one and then doubles, and it was fairly equal all the way. Funnily enough in the morning I couldn't play in the slightest.
We packed our bags, hugged everyone goodbye and left on the coach. I caught the train back, read some more of my incredible book and got home to rest. A good week by any standard.

Not as late as last time...

2008-02-04T12:14:00.000Z

This is a short post because I'm almost running late. I may not have mentioned, but today I'm off to the second Careforce conference. You should remember the last time I went on one of these. I woke up incredibly late and you can read my epic story in the blog post. This time I've given myself a load of extra time, so whilst I'm cutting it close I should make it ok. The conference itself should be awesome. A week-long hug-fest with awesome friends, plenty of talks and worship and sweetness. Can't wait.

Hope you all have a good week! Talk to you Thursday!

Anybody want a race?

2008-01-31T16:08:00.001Z

Shortly after I first got my DS I got Mario Kart DS, the first Nintendo game to support internet play, so one of the first things I wanted to do was race online. Unfortunately we didn't have wi-fi at the time, and neither did any of our neighbours. Nintendo brought the solution to us though, in the form of a USB stick that you plug in the back of your PC. It then broadcasts wi-fi to Nintendo devices and comes with its own firewall so that only the ones you choose can get through. It was brilliant, and worked for all of two days. It seems it doesn't seem to like complex firewalls. Mum got wi-fi and the problem was solved.

Out here in the valleys I can't even get wi-fi for my laptop, never mind my DS. But then I remembered the USB stick and thought it might be worth a try. Mum posted it to me and voila, I'm online. My DS connects and so does my Wii. If I'm on MSN and you're bored, challenge me to a race of Mario Kart (or Zelda or Starfox). All my DS and Wii friend codes are on my Facebook profile, so add me to any games you have.

Frustratingly, the computer needs to be on during this time, and I don't feel comfortable just leaving their computer on all day long. But as I said, look out for me on MSN. Hopefully next year I'll have better wi-fi. Either way, this is exceptionally good news, if only because it means I'm all set for the end of March when Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes out!

SUMMARY FOR SEMI-GEEKS: I can play video games with Peter in Southampton.
SUMMARY FOR NON-GEEKS: I am happy. Be happy too.

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