every day is another shooter

I HAVE MOVED.

2010-02-19T00:28:00.002Z

To here. Got a bit fed up with Blogger. Nothing personal, chaps.

Cheerio! x

Lessons I have learned from finally watching Con Air for the first time

2010-02-17T01:38:00.001Z

1. Do not treat women like that.

2. Always put the bunny back in the box when asked.

3. He's got the whole world in His hands.

4. Don't trust South American drug lords.

5. The landing gear is not a suitable entrance to an aeroplane.

6. Colm Meaney is a dick once you take him off the Enterprise-D.

7. Do not open boxes with 'DO NOT OPEN' written on them.

8. Dead convicts are an excellent means of communication.

9. If you've served in the military, you will be unfairly treated by the American justice system.

10. If we knew the truth, we'd call him Johnny 600.

11. If you want the audience to sympathise with a convict but you can't think of a inoffensive-enough crime for him to have committed, simply fail to mention what he did to get himself landed in prison.

12. Drugs will end you, son.

Going out for a meal.

2010-02-16T02:51:00.000Z

I'm a grazer, and always have been. I've never understood people who can eat vast meals and then go without food for about six hours. I seldom manage two courses, and any more than that is just sheer madness to me. And yet only a couple of hours after insisting that I'm totally full, I'll be hungry again.

For the most part, this is fine. I live with my dad and he's pretty much the same as me - we eat small meals and snack throughout the day. But it's a different kettle of fish when you're going out for a meal. It varies between restaurants, but 90% of the time I can't actually finish the food I've been given. And that's just the main course. I always feel vaguely ashamed when pushy restaurant staff are trying to sell me side-orders or desserts or extra drinks, and I have to say no to EVERYTHING - it's not that I'm a cheap bastard, it's just that I'm already struggling to deal with what's in front of me, never mind anything else.

Plus, all-you-can-eat buffets are essentially a waste of time. Because in, say, Pizza Hut, all-I-can-eat is actually about half a pizza. Except if I'd paid the same amount (well, maybe slightly more) just for an actual pizza, I'd be able to take the other half home and eat it later.

Part of me thinks this is something I should deal with, by somehow coaxing my stomach capacity to increase.

But the other part of me thinks I am fatter than I used to be, and I should shut up.

Happy Valentine's day!

2010-02-15T00:54:00.000Z

Actually, I'm about an hour late. But I hope you had a good one. Genuinely, because I am not a bitter husk. Also I have had a lovely evening with my girlfriend. We made shepherd's pie and watched Limmy's Show. After that, she took to making shapes with my mouth, and we photographed the results:

In this photograph she has pulled down the bottom lip, causing the now-separated top lip to rise naturally, and I have incredible voids where my eyes used to be.

In this one, the iPhone has failed to understand that it's on its side. But I'm not really sure it matters.

So, my memories of this year's Valentine's Day look like a series of exotic torture snapshots, basically. I hope your day has been as memorable and beautiful as mine.

No, I don't feel like dancin'

2010-02-14T03:17:00.001Z

Y'know, like that Scissors Sisters song, and it's ironic or whatever because people actually love dancing to it. Hahaha!

Fuck off, Scissor Sisters.

I don't dance. Not with anyone, even my girlfriend. Not even on my own, when no-one's watching. I've never, ever understood the point of it, except for when I was about seven years old and thought it made me look cool. It didn't. Because I was seven years old.

Don't get me wrong, I am well into music. I'm constantly drumming on desks, stamping my feet, air-drumming, whistling or singing along to whatever's currently squatting in my fetid mind.

Oop, heads-up, guys. Google Chrome's spellchecker says 'fetid' isn't a word. Watch yourselves.

...Point is, I still feel music on a physical or rhythmic level just like anyone else. But that thing people do, where they... like, wave their arms, and swing their hips, or whatever... what is that, man? Maybe it's some kind of mental disability I have - I just don't get how what passes for 'dancing' is in any way a reaction to the music. And thus I have, since my early teens, always flat-out refused to dance. For the same reason I wouldn't, I dunno, go fucking fox-hunting. It doesn't look like fun. I don't get it. And any attempt on my part to get involved would only result in embarrassment for all, and me feeling fairly ashamed of myself. I dare say it would help if I was a drinker (with the dancing, not the fox-hunting), but I'm not. And so I am doomed to spend my life telling people that, actually, I don't really dance, thanks, and wondering why it's such a BIG FUCKING DEAL to them that I join in.

They probably want me to 'have fun', or something.

Cunts.

You kind of need to buy Flower, man.

2010-02-13T02:10:00.004Z

Y'know, Flower, for the PS3. Haven't heard of it? That's alright, you're just a bit ignorant. Take my hand. It'll be alright.

Videogames get a lot of shit in the media. Everyone knows that. And while I might wish that weren't the case, partly out of my desperate need for acceptance and partly for other reasons, the fact is that videogames often kind of deserve it. I like blowing people's heads off as much as the next non-sociopath, but there are too many violent games. It's easy enough to see why - combat is something videogames excel at because they represent some or most of the thrill of the activity with none of the physical dangers and, in game terms, 'smashing someone's skull open because otherwise he would've done the same to you' is an obvious victory condition that anyone can get behind. That, and people are stupid, so violence sells. Also, tits.

But what's really important is that you let people know that games like Flower exist. It's important that you tell them that amongst all the violent macho bullshit, there's a game where you play as a gust of wind, and your only real objective is to fly around pollinating flowers and bringing life to a barren, grey landscape. It doesn't make any real sense, but it doesn't have to. It's a fucking videogame. And it's nice.

LOOK. That's what it's like. And that's nothing compared to the later levels. I still occasionally load the game up just to play the second level, get to the last bit, then just fly around listening to the incredible soundtrack and just looking at stuff. Of all the games I've owned for the PS3, Flower is one of the few so far that's made me truly glad I bothered to buy the console in the first place. It is, without a doubt, one of the most achingly beautiful videogames ever made.

And at the moment, it's on sale. For £2.39. That's two pounds and thirty-nine pence.

No, no, don't start. I don't care if you don't already own the console. Go out and fucking buy one. And when you do, hoist it into the air in the middle of the shop, and shout "I JUST BOUGHT THIS £300 CONSOLE OR WHATEVER IT COST ME, AND NOW I'M GOING HOME TO BUY FLOWER FOR £2.39. I PROBABLY WON'T USE IT EVER AGAIN AFTER THAT EXCEPT MAYBE TO PLAY HEAVY RAIN ONCE IT COMES DOWN IN PRICE A BIT, BUT I WON'T CARE, BECAUSE I WILL HAVE PLAYED FLOWER AND LEARNED TO LOVE AGAIN."

Just do it. Please.

My house. Where I live.

2010-02-12T00:42:00.002Z

I live in Tatton Park, which is a bit unusual, because it's a massive park with loads of deer and trees and sheep and a massive stately home and a bunch of other stuff. I get to live here because my dad works as a ranger in the park and needed a place to live after his separation from my mum. There are a bunch of flats in the mansion and a couple of gatehouses, all of which staff can apply to live in should they wish to do so. The rent (which is ridiculously reasonable) comes straight out of your wages, and in return you're occasionally expected to be on-call - although, in reality, that's pretty much never necessary.

Anyway, I'm writing a thing about it because although I'll certainly have left by the end of the year for one reason or another, it's the most incredible place I will ever live.

Here's what the house looks like:

Its original construction took place in the 17th century, and we think it was originally used to house workers for the park. Last year some old plans were uncovered which showed that the room my dad hangs around in was once a pig-sty, which is ace.

This is a photo I took from the driveway as you come out of the back door. We never use the front door, mainly because my bed is shoved right against it, and all the parking's around the back anyway. The pile of rocks you can see was made by my dad - he does a fair bit of mountaineering, so he thought he'd have a stab at building a cairn in his own garden. Cairns are sometimes used to mark burial spots, but also to signpost paths on dodgy terrain, or glaciers. Here, though, the cairn's only real purpose is to look cool and make passers-by wonder if my dad used anything special to keep the rocks stuck together. He didn't, though.

The stuff you can see beyond the fence is the forest where I usually walk my dog. It's also open to the public, so you occasionally get idiotic children running around or whatever. But that's only really a problem during the summer, and while the public do have an irritating habit of disturbing the otherwise peaceful nature of the place (we've had a couple of people walk right into our garden for a look around, not noticing that PRIVATE sign on the gate), you can't really expect to keep an area like this all to yourself, unless you're stupidly rich (I'm not), or a cunt (trying my best).

And that's the view up the drive. On the left you can just see a mad open shed which has all kinds of shit in it, including MICE.

And that's all I bothered to take photographs of today. Might do more tomorrow, if it's sunny. If it's not, you can get fucked.

Difficulties.

2010-02-11T01:53:00.001Z

The trouble with this one-a-day bollocks isn't that I can't think of stuff to write about. In fact I've always got about half a dozen ideas bouncing around at any one time. No, the problem is that I never feel I'm able to do those ideas justice, either through a general lack of faith in my abilities or, in today's case, because it's 2am and I've been confined to my room for two days with acute gastroenteritis. And when you've got an illness so severe that it prevents you playing videogames, you know you're fucked.

I'm meant to be going to a party on Saturday. I hope everyone there likes NOROVIRUS.

Fucksakes.

2010-02-09T23:42:00.000Z

I'm going a bit LiveJournal on you all tonight. Apologies.

Today, it turned out that I've finally caught the stomach bug that's been circulating around my dad's workplace. I found this out whilst having a day in Manchester, and ended up vomiting into a train-station toilet, and paying 30p for the privilege. So that was a new experience.

I got home at about 4pm, went to bed, and didn't properly wake up again until 9:30. I don't feel as sick any more, but I've got a massive headache and everything feels HEAVY. I've barely got the energy to write this, but I already cheated the other day, so here we are.

The best part of all this, is that I have a potentially life-changing job interview tomorrow, and it looks like I'm going to have to ask them to postpone it. I'm sure they'll sympathise, but it still isn't going to make me look great. As much as I'd like to just tank up on Lemsip and hope they appreciate the effort, I'd also like to be able to come across as a halfway-intelligent person.

I will see how I feel in the morning.

Ughhhh.

ALARM.

2010-02-09T00:59:00.001Z

I fucking hate alarm clocks. The key is in the name - ALARM. Every time I'm asleep and an alarm clock goes off, I wake up in a panic, my heart's racing, and it puts me in the foulest mood.

Most people I know claim they're totally fine with being suddenly woken up by LOUD NOISES. I say they're all filthy liars. It's just not how we were meant to be woken up. Our ability to wake up when we hear loud noises is something we evolved to make sure we don't get EATEN ALIVE by TIGERS - every time you wake up because of your alarm, it's because you subconsciously suspect that you're about to DIE.

Still, I've got to wake up at certain times of the morning just like everyone else, and I needed a way to make that happen without putting me on the defensive for the first three hours of every day. Luckily, I've got an iPhone, and have found a number of ways to do just that.

1. iWakeUp - iTunes link

Probably the simplest of the lot, iWakeUp is an app that, instead of jolting you to life, wakes you up gently by fading in a environmental recording of your choice (the above screen is from an old version, there are about eight different settings to choose from) over 15 minutes or so. The cleverest part is that, once those 15 minutes are up and the app reaches the specified wake-up time, it introduces a new noise over the environmental recording rather than simply shoving in a standard HOLY SHIT WAKE UP alarm. And the samples are specific to each setting - so the ocean theme introduces some seagulls, the rain theme brings in some gentle rolls of thunder, etc.

This was my favourite, until it went a bit weird and wouldn't let me use the rain theme any more, and I couldn't be arsed fixing it. 59p, though.

2. Ambiance - iTunes link

This one's a more multi-purpose app, that just so happens to include an alarm clock. It features a massive database of ambient/environmental recordings for you to download, and even allows you to create your own mixes - for example, you could have the sound of heavy rainfall recorded from indoors, with a roaring log fire. IN A CASINO!

The alarm clock works in much the same way as iWakeUp, fading the sound in over a given period of time (you can actually set the fade-in duration yourself, this time), although disappointingly you can only pick from a bunch of standard alarms to go off when you reach the designated wake-up time.

I used Ambiance for months, until I stumbled across this bastard:

3. Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock - iTunes link

This app is basically brilliant, and waaaay cleverer than the other two. You set your alarm, right (the app has its own set of soft, gentle alarms designed not to fuck you up) and put the phone on your bed before you go to sleep. The app then watches the phone's accelerometer readings, and records your movement throughout the night - the idea being that, the more you're moving around, the lighter you're sleeping. And when it gets to half an hour prior to your desired wake-up time, it waits until you're in a light sleep-phase before sounding the alarm, thus waking you up without shocking you or violently ripping you from your unconscious haven.

Even better, it keeps a record of your recent sleeps, so you can actually see how well you're sleeping. Go for a late night of heavy drinking, and watch it completely flatline. Or, in my case, observe the spike in activity every time your dog decides to share your bed with you at 8am because your dad's just gone to work.

I was skeptical, but it really works - I haven't had a single shitty awakening since getting the app. Easily worth the 59p if you're curious.

Right, that's my second post for today. Bugger off. xxxx

Review: Chime

2010-02-08T23:31:00.002Z

[Originally written for DarkZero - voluntarily, so it counts. Fuck you.]

This probably doesn't really count as a review. After all, the point of a review is to answer the reader's questions - chiefly, "Is this game worth getting, or what?" - but that's not really what's happening here. In fact, I've got a few questions for you: Have you bought Chime yet? And if not, why not?

Okay, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've never heard of it. It was last week's Xbox Live Arcade release, and it's being described by many as 'Tetris meets Lumines'. This isn't totally off the mark, but personally I'd sooner just call it 'a better version of Lumines'. You place shapes on a grid and, once you've built a shape that's at least three squares long on each side, it forms a 'quad'. Quads then have a time-limit during which you can add more blocks to them, increasing your score, before they 'set' and can't be built upon any further. That's not necessarily the end of the world, though, as forming more, separate quads will increase your score multiplier.

As you're doing this, a line is sweeping from left to right, much like in Lumines. As it passes over each block that hasn't been used as part of a quad, those blocks slowly change colour, indicating that they've been hanging around too long. Leave a block unused for long enough and it will disappear, ending your score multiplier in the process. You'd assume that the process of making quads bigger and mopping up stray blocks would go hand-in-hand, but it doesn't quite work that way. Instead, you find yourself engaging in a compelling juggling act between the two goals, trying to expand your quads without sacrificing your multiplier in the process.

Then there's 'coverage'. When a quad is set, it'll hang around briefly then disappear, but the area it occupied is 'covered' - it can be used again, but it's a different colour than before. Covering certain percentages of the grid in this way buys you more time, encouraging you to consider your movement around the grid rather than simply hanging around in one spot.

What helps is that this is all wrapped up in some of the most seamless and enjoyable interactive music you'll ever hear in a videogame. Lumines tried to do something similar, but most of the time you were just triggering rubbish vocal samples that didn't really engage with the music in any real way. In Chime, you really get the sensation that you're building the music yourself - the positions of the blocks determine the notes they generate, while the quads produce different musical flourishes depending on their size and position. Not only that, but the songs are genuinely good. I'm a huge musical snob and will instantly dismiss 90% of the the tracks on your average music game, but Chime's (admittedly pretty slim) line-up is great - aside from Moby's frankly embarrassing contribution - with my enthusiasm being pointed particularly in the faces of Philip Glass, and Orbital's Paul Hartnoll. Oh, and a guy from The Flaming Lips has a song in the game, too. Everyone always tells me I should like The Flaming Lips, but I really shouldn't.

Right, so now that I've told you all that, why haven't you bought Chime? Hmm?

Oh, wait. Maybe it's because I forgot to mention that it costs less than a meal at McDonalds, and all the developers' cut is going straight to charity. Yeah, you heard. They made this game for free. Please, if anyone could tell me what the hell else I'm meant to want from a £3.50ish videogame, I'm all ears. Hell, you even get 50Gs just for buying the game, which is probably great news if you're one of those people. In fact, the only reason Chime isn't getting a 10, is because of Moby.

I hope you're bloody happy with yourself, Moby.

9/10

It is 4am

2010-02-08T04:02:00.000Z

I'll write two things tomorrow, promise.

This is all Mass Effect 2's fault.

Talking to girls.

2010-02-07T02:39:00.000Z

For a long time, I was rubbish at this. I still am, really. I've improved a lot over the years, but I still talk to my poor girlfriend about videogames on a regular basis.

Still, there's the occasional moment where I realise that, compared to some people, I've really got nothing to worry about.

I was at work today, and overheard a man and a woman (I'm refraining from calling them a 'couple'; bear with me) having a coffee together. He must've been in his late 20s, and she a little older. I think - think - they were on a date. They were chatting, but the conversation was too awkward for them to have been friends or relatives. I was working near their table, so I accidentally found myself listening in on their conversation.

Now, they both looked totally normal, and certainly showed no obvious signs of social ineptitude. But as I listened, I realised the guy was talking about The Beatles: Rock Band. And I also spotted that the woman definitely had no interest in it, at all. He was banging on about how it's really great because you can change the difficulty so anyone can play, and the fact that it shows an awesome amount of respect for the source material, etc etc. Then the woman bravely tries to get involved by saying that the only game she's played was one of those DVD quizzes, but none of her friends could read the on-screen text. Amazing.

So then, having not alienated himself enough from this poor woman, the guy starts talking about how he recently rented the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on DVD because he remembered enjoying it at the cinema a few years ago. He then continues to explain the story in excruciating detail, and attempts to show off by mentioning that it's based on a famous graphic novel, but he can't remember Alan Moore's name. Probably because Moore had his name taken off the film, because it was a bag of shit. In any case, the woman shows no interest, and eventually they leave.

It wasn't so much the topics of discussion that baffled me so. It was the guy's total ignorance of the woman's boredom. I'm fantastic at boring people to death, if I want to - but I always keep an eye out for signs that they're losing interest, and react accordingly. Which I sort of assumed most adults did, really. But apparently not.

I then spent the next half-hour or so being pretty much fully convinced that if men were getting away with TOP-QUALITY BANTER like that, then if something should go terribly wrong and I end up single again (and I pray on a regular basis that this does NOT happen), even my minimal social skills should be sufficient to get basically anyone to sleep with me. Right?

ARGH

2010-02-06T00:01:00.001Z

I fucking hate technology, sometimes.

I've got an iPhone, and I love it dearly. It's also jailbroken, so that I can do stuff with it that Apple don't allow, like having a more useful standby screen that displays a summary of all my received e-mails and texts, or a Twitter/Facebook app that I can access just by swiping my finger down from the top of the screen. It's fucking useful, and there's no reason for Apple to disallow stuff like this, other than not trusting idiots to know what they're doing.

A new version of the iPhone firmware came out a few days back, it's largely regarded to be bullshit. It supposedly fixes 'battery issues', and nothing else. And - oh! - it also plugs the security hole used to jailbreak the device. Brilliant. Thanks, Apple. So the hacking community is ignoring this update, and waiting until the next, 'proper' one turns up. Fair enough.

And then everything started going WRONG.

Earlier this evening, I was getting a bit sick of the Facebook app being a bit weird and unstable. So I decided to delete and reinstall it. Deleting it made my phone go a bit weird and sluggish, so I rebooted it, only to find that it wouldn't boot. It just sticks on the Apple logo, then turns off again. I can restore the phone via iTunes - and my contacts are synced with Google, so I won't lose them - but in order to do so, I have to update to the latest firmware. Which will prevent me from jailbreaking. Meaning I can't use jailbreak apps, that I've paid money for, until this theoretical next firmware update appears and I can jailbreak again. I tried one program that would apparently fix everything, but instead it disabled all my USB devices. That includes my mouse and keyboard. So I had to fuck around doing a Windows system restore just so I could use my fucking computer again.

So now I'm going to lose a shitload of functionality, loads of texts, a bunch of really nice photos I took of me and my girlfriend earlier today, my progress on all my games (including behemoths like GTA: Chinatown Wars) and fucking god knows what else.

FUCK.

I went to see Jeremy Kyle today.

2010-02-05T02:32:00.001Z

As in, seeing the show being filmed in Manchester. It was a bit weird. Enjoyable, but weird.

First up: the man himself is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a cunt. While I really don't mind his personal brand of fiercely-realistic counselling, watching him swagger about between takes, taking the piss out of his crew and half-jokingly banging on about how great he is, was a bit much.

For those who've never been to a TV filming before (incidentally, it's free and usually quite good fun), I'll explain the process. First up, upon entering the building they have to check you're not some kind of terrorist - you're searched, and have to show some form of ID. At first, this seemed a bit far-fetched, until I realised that bombing a building with a bunch of Jeremy Kyle 'contestants' in it is... well, it reminded me of the time when it was uncovered that a bunch of guys were planning to blow up The Birdcage in Manchester - anyone who goes there is bloody asking for it.*

Anyway, after the security checks and a lot of waiting around looking at photographs of people who've been in Coronation Street, you're taken through to the studio itself - which is actually fucking tiny, by the way - and sat in a chair. And then you stay there for about two hours while all the impossibly talented telly people do their stuff.

Usually, once you're all sat down, things will kick off with someone coming out to warm up the audience - usually the floor manager, but at some comedy screenings you'll get a rubbish stand-up comedian telling a few jokes. Either way, their job is to make sure you're ready to be entertained until your balls explode, and that you're going to actually make noise when stuff happens. "Remember, we can't hear a smile!!!", they will tell you. Which always irritates me, for no reason at all. In Kyle's case, we got the floor manager making smutty remarks about the attractive women in the audience, and interviewing people who either didn't want to be interviewed, or were too eager to be interviewed and therefore should not have been fucking interviewed. Then Jeremy Kyle himself walks out, and absolutely everyone spunks inside their trousers.

I was sort of prepared for him being a massive bellend, but it was still a little bit sad to see. That he genuinely cares about the people who come on the show, I have no doubt - he was visibly disappointed with himself when it was clear that he hadn't really achieved anything with one of the troubled guests - but he still didn't really come across as the sort of person I'd ever want to... well, meet. Or talk to. Ever.

He made fun of the crew, a lot. I mean, a few jovial remarks would have been okay. But getting the floor manager and some other woman out and making them explain that they used to go out, but then the woman became a lesbo and left the floor manager for another woman, then the floor manager found someone else, and the woman got dumped by her new girlfriend for another man. Or something. Fuck, I don't know. Anyway, they didn't really seem to find it as funny as Kyle did.

Then there was his half-brother, who Kyle constantly took the piss out of, and kept reminding us that it's because of him that his half-brother even has a job. He seemed to take it well, but you couldn't help wondering if literally everybody wearing a black 'CREW' t-shirt thought Kyle was a massive, massive cunt. Never mind the fact that, while Kyle was doing his best to make things sound off-the-cuff, you were still pretty certain that he'd learned the entire thing by rote, including a couple of HILARIOUS anecdotes which were just a bit too funny to be true. You know the kind - a story that was, at some point, based on a true event, but has clearly received a few stylistic tweaks over the years, and the teller has refined the telling a bit too much.

The show started, and some of the stories were pretty laughable, while others were just very sad and depressing. It's not much fun watching an 18 year-old mother burst into tears on-stage because her boyfriend and father of her child is a weed-addicted, physically abusive prick. I was a bit disappointed that Kyle didn't just punch him straight across the jaw, but I guess he's getting soft these days. Although there was one wonderfully bizarre story about a man who apparently cheated on his girlfriend by bringing a woman along whilst running kebab deliveries in his car. They just used to talk in the car, and he once gave her a peck on the cheek, BUT NOTHING MORE.

And that was sort of it, really. I've no idea when the show will be on - they specifically told us not to ask, as they really have no idea, but that didn't stop one twat asking anyway - so don't start harassing me for clips of me looking tight-lipped with minor rage at the back of a TV studio.

Oh, and this one girl came on national television wearing tracksuit bottoms. That was good.

*(fuck, I hope it's clear that I'm joking)

POST YOUR SETUP

2010-02-04T03:14:00.001Z

I've nicked this idea from basically everyone else. Shut up.

Things that are on my desk:

A Cambridge Audio A3i amplifier, kindly donated to me by my brother. I had a cheaper Cambridge Audio amp, but my speakers are bi-wired, and my amp wasn't. This one, however, is.

A PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, Wii, and PC. I built the PC myself last summer, shortly before my bank decided it was time for me to start paying off my overdraft. Had I known what the bank planned to do, I would not have spaffed 550 quid on something I didn't really need.

Propped up against the PS3 are copies of Demon's Souls and Katamari Forever, my two most-played PS3 games.

My TV. A 22 inch LG LCD screen. It has served me well.

My Line6 PodXT. I bought this when I was 18 or 19, and it cost me something ridiculous like 300 quid. It's a guitar-modeling unit, meaning I can plug my guitar into it and, theoretically, recreate thousands of different sounds with it, including the way the guitar sounds in Money For Nothing, by Dire Straits. However, these days it mainly gets used as a USB audio device when I'm editing the podcast, as Cubase doesn't want to be friends with this PC's in-built sound hardware.

A Logitech ClearChat USB headset, for talking on Skype.

An Xbox 360 media remote, seldom used, but occasionally useful when I want to skip music tracks whilst playing a game.

TV remote.

Various train tickets. I don't drive, so I catch a lot of trains.

Bank statements. I never want to throw these away due to fear of needing them one day, or someone else finding them in a landfill and stealing my identity. My stupid, rubbish identity.

A tube of lead-free solder, from Maplin. Lead-free!

A letter from my MP, George Osbourne, sent to me after I wrote to him complaining about the government's proposed Digital Economy Bill. His response was a little disappointing - he seemed to be agreeing with me, but he played it so safe that it was hard to tell.

A GameBoy Micro. The finest hand-held console ever made, if you can use it for more than ten minutes without getting cramp in your hands. I can. Mine usually lives next to the toilet, in lieu of a good book or magazine, but that battery needs charging, so it lives here until I find the mains adapter for it.

Various mugs.

Rechargeable batteries. You can never, ever have too many.

My 'Welcome to Excellence' badges, earned upon completing two customer services courses.

A butane refill canister for my soldering iron. Used to sit on top of the hearth, until I one day realised how fucking dangerous that was.

Two Xbox 360 joypads, one PS3 joypad, two Wii remotes. Most people would keep these in drawers, or on shelves. I have neither.

My keys, including my GTA London keyring, bought from HMV in Manchester over ten years ago.

Cables. Too many fucking cables.

Mass Effect 2 review

2010-02-03T03:13:00.004Z

I've been playing Mass Effect 2 pretty much constantly since I got home from London on Sunday evening. Trouble is, it's a difficult game to write about without ruining stuff for people. Not only are there a whole load of major story moments that you need to see for yourself, but the game itself changes depending on stuff you did and said in the first Mass Effect. So even if I did start mentioning specifics about the plot, chances are you might not even experience the game in the same way I do. It's a bloody minefield.

So, what I've tried to do is explain my feelings towards the game in a way that anyone can appreciate, without mentioning anything story- or character-related. I hope it helps.

HERE IS A LIST OF THINGS THAT ARE BETTER THAN WHEN YOU'RE PLAYING MASS EFFECT 2 AND YOU'RE BEHIND COVER WITH A SNIPER RIFLE AND SOMEONE'S ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BATTLEFIELD WITH A ROCKET LAUNCHER JUST WAITING FOR YOU TO POP UP TO TAKE A SHOT AND YOU STAND UP TO TAKE THE SHOT AND THE ENEMY FIRES A ROCKET AND YOU SHOOT THE ENEMY IN THE HEAD WITH YOUR SNIPER RIFLE KILLING HIM INSTANTLY AND DUCK DOWN BEHIND COVER TO SEE HIS ROCKET PASS OVER YOUR SHOULDER WITH MERE INCHES BETWEEN YOU AND IT:

HEALTH WEEKEND: DELAYED FINALE

2010-02-02T02:41:00.000Z

Today, I'm going to tell you about the fact that I'm slightly harder of hearing in my left ear than I am in my right. I'm aware that doesn't sound massively fascinating, but it's either this or a blog post about the time I suffered from testicular torsion and had to have my right bollock cut open.

No. No, fuck off. I'm not doing that.

I've always suffered with my ears. When most people get a cold or the flu, they're likely to complain about having a bunged-up nose, or a sore throat. But whenever I fall ill, it always seems to be my ears that get the worst of it. I've always been this way, and regularly suffered from ear infections as a child. In fact, a couple of them were so bad that they caused my left eardrum to split right open. I barely remember this, of course - I was about four or five years old at the time - but I do definitely remember waking up in the middle of the night with a terrible ache in my ear and a big blood-stain on the pillow where my head had been. Despite the frequency of my ear infections, my parents always refused the doctors' offers of antibiotics. This seems a little harsh given the consequences, but they weren't to know my ear was going to split open, and I quite like my decent immune system, thanks.

Anyway, the eardrum healed both times it split, but later check-ups at the doctor's confirmed that my eardrum had scarred during the healing process. I was far from deaf, of course - the ear still worked. But scar tissue tends to be a little bit tougher than the stuff around it, and the whole point of the eardrum is that its flexible and can vibrate freely. So, some clarity is lost. I've never actually had a test to confirm what the damage is, but I often had trouble discerning speech as a child - hell, I still occasionally have to ask people to repeat things roughly three times before I can understand them - and if I'm using a one-ear voice headset or whatever, I can have real trouble if it goes on the left ear.

I'm aware plenty of places offer free hearing tests these days, but I'd feel like a bit of a twat doing that. Clearly it's only a service they run in order to flog hearing aids to people with genuine hearing problems, so I couldn't exactly waltz in and get them to find out exactly what I can and can't hear, just because I'm a bit of a sound nerd so I'd find it kind of interesting.

I mean, yeah, alright, I totally could do that. But I wouldn't.

Anyway, that concludes HEALTH WEEKEND. I hope you've all enjoyed it, although I'm sure you haven't. With any luck I'll still be writing this when I go deaf and my liver explodes and I develop skin cancer, so I can write about all that, too. See you then! x

my trip to london

2010-02-01T03:02:00.001Z

hello my name is sean and this weekend i went to london for the weekend with my girlfriend whch was part of my christmas present to her

we got to london euston station on friday and then we went to the hotel but the tubes was broken in places so we had to take a stupdl ong rout but we got there in the end so it was okay

the hotel was nice it had a chinese restaurant in it

then in the evening we went for a meal to gourmet bureger kitchen in canary wharf it was rubbish they took half an hour to serve us and the staff were rude and miserable and it was expensive and after waiting half an hour for my burger it only took me about five minutes to eat it i was so hungry

then the day after that was saturday so we went into town which took a long time again becuase the tube was broken again but in different places so we had to figure everything pout again it was difficult but we went to the zoo and it had animals in it like tigers

otters

also girafe

hello girafef

after that we went into town and i bought a new hoodie and also mass effect 2 tor the xbox 360

then we went back to the hotel and we had dinner at the chinese tesaraunt in the hotel it was really nice but it was quite expensive but it was very very GOOD we had lemon chickenm and shreded beef in sweet chili sauce because what we always do is order that at every chinese we go to and then swap halfway thrtough because they are our favourites there was a fishtank

then on the sunday (today) we checked out of the hotel and as we set off i got a text message from my friend david saying that he (david) was in his new flat with his girlfriend which it tuened our was very near out hotel so went to see him and it was nice i wish i had a flat with abig telly and also my girlfriend in it all the time

then we went to canary wharf again and then we went to nandos for dinner it was good and we went to waitrose where i bought some fnetimans curisotity cola and prawn crackers for the train also we got apple turnovers and ate them they were nice

then we went home

overall i would give this holiday a 11/10

by sean bell, age 6

HEALTH WEEKEND: PART TWO

2010-01-31T01:16:00.001Z

Another post where I discuss the various ways in which my body has failed to perform its duties. Today: Gilbert's Syndrome.

When I was about 17, my mum got increasingly worried about the fact that I'd occasionally go a bit jaundiced, especially when tired or stressed. In particular, my eyes would go a bit yellow, even though I basically felt okay. I'm sure she though my liver was about to fucking explode or something, but the actual reason was pretty tame.

I went off to the doctor's, and one blood test later it turns out I have abnormally high levels of bilirubin in my blood. Bilirubin is the stuff that makes your piss yellow, and my liver isn't so good at filtering it out. So my piss is a bit brown sometimes, and I occasionally look jaundiced. Apparently it can lead to other complications when combined with heavy drinking, so you can imagine the doctor's relief (and surprise) when I told him I'd already pretty much sworn off booze for life. More on that in another blog post, probably.

The condition used to be called Gilbert's Disease, until everyone agreed that 'disease' sounded a bit harsh, since it wasn't really a big deal, nor was it contagious. So it became a syndrome instead.

I actually bored myself writing this. Things will improve when I'm not doing these from my iPhone in a hotel room, promise.

HEALTH WEEKEND: PART ONE

2010-01-29T23:57:00.002Z

Right, I'm meant to be on a romantic break in London this weekend, so I'm fucking phoning it in for the next few blog entries. In order to churn out some easy words, I'm gonna talk about my various biological failings.

Today: Vitiligo. An autoimmune condition I 'suffer' from. It's quite poorly understood, but the leading theory is that it's a condition where the body's immune system mistakes melanin production in the skin for the spreading of an illness. So whenever I spend time in the sun, any melanin is killed off, and so most of my skin is without any pigment.

The effects are pretty obvious - I'm pale, and can't spend more than half an hour or so in direct sunlight without risking sunburn. It also affects the pigment in my hair, making some of it white, and the complete lack of any protection from the sun also makes me highly predisposed towards skin cancer.

To be honest, though, it's not really something I tend to whine about. Relatively speaking, I was pretty lucky. I was already pale to begin with, and developed Vitiligo when I was only three. So, by the time I started caring about my appearance in any way, my tanned patches had all completely receded, and I was pale all over. But there are adults with much darker skin who develop the condition, so they suddenly just start getting white patches all over the place, which is obviously far more distressing (as in, it looks freaky as fuck). In fact, that's exactly what happened to Michael Jackson, which is why he went mental and starting bleaching his skin. The poor, mad, dead, diseased paedo.

So, yeah. Could be worse, eh?

TOMORROW: GILBERT'S SYNDROME!!!

Loss.

2010-01-29T00:16:00.004Z

Don't worry, nobody's died or anything. I've just been thinking about the way people's stuff can just vanish sometimes.

Some people lose their wallets. Some people leave their phones in the backs of taxis, or drop them in toilets when they're hammered. Me? I lose clothes. I don't know where, or how. But I definitely had clothes that I can't find any more, and I sure as hell didn't throw them out.

Off the top of my head, I've absolutely definitely lost a really nice burgundy hoodie I got from Uni-Qlo, a Metroid t-shirt, a Sonic t-shirt, a Kingdom Hearts t-shirt, and THIS:

Actually, if it wasn't for the hoodie, I'd assume someone was systematically siphoning all my videogame t-shirts out of my life. And yet, perversely, they've allowed me to keep my hot-pink Miami Vice t-shirt. I hate the fact that I own that t-shirt, because it's got a pre-faded print on it, and I've never seen Miami Vice in my entire life, including the shit remake with the Linkin Park song on the trailer. Thus, it is a cuntshirt. Yet I am forced to keep that, while t-shirts I like are being whisked away into the ether.

Life, man. It's hard.

A thing about World of Warcraft being shit, and that.

2010-01-28T01:53:00.001Z

I know there are a fair few non-gamers reading this, but still, there's a pretty good chance you've all heard of World of Warcraft. It's an online role-playing game (or MMORPG, whatever) with 16 million billion players and it's got elves and dwarves in it and shit. And, as a gamer - even one who doesn't really play online RPGs, generally speaking - it's something you get shoved in your face on a fairly regular basis. It pretty much owns its entire genre*, and it's okay for SEXY CELEBS like Vin Diesel and Mila Kunis to talk about it on chat shows.

But, personally, I don't really get it. I mean, I did. But I don't.

I used to play WoW, a lot, about five years ago when I started university. Back in the day when I had the abundant free time to really get into an MMORPG, and commitments like work, my girlfriend, and the desire to eat semi-proper food hadn't yet materialised. I mostly played after midnight, since my housemates used to leave fucking Limewire or BitTorrent clients running pretty much constantly, making the game unplayable - and they left them on overnight, too. So I'd wait until they went to bed, logged into our router, and blocked their PCs' internet access for a bit. I regularly stayed up until four or five in the morning anyway, so having to wait until midnight for my WoW fix didn't seem too horrendous.

So I played for a few months, enjoyed it, and got myself well and truly hooked. I rarely teamed up with strangers, because they tend to get on my nerves, so I mostly played on my own or, occasionally, with a friend. Which is sort of missing the point of a game populated by so many people, but pfft. I got to level 36 or so and planned to keep playing pretty much forever, until something utterly horrifying happened that would put me off the game for life.

I logged in at around midnight, as usual. And I was doing my routine, skipping around a forest, murdering bears and making off with their hides, and enjoying myself in that weird, comatose way that only really repetitive games are capable of. The next thing I know, I find myself at the edge of the forest, overlooking the sea, watching the sun rise. Now, in WoW, the sun rises and sets according to the current time in the real world - so if you're playing at night, it's night-time in the game, too. And I'm watching this sun-rise in the game, thinking how nice it looks, and feeling uplifted after a entire night spent hunting wild animals in the dark.

Wait, I think. An entire night? What fucking time is it?

I turn to my right, look out of the window,** and there's ol' Helios himself, in all his glory. It's about 6:30am, and I realise that I've been so engrossed in this fucking game that I've marvelled at its artificial sun-rise, and failed to notice the real-life one happening right next to me.

Fucking hell.

Maybe this is something I should have welcomed, rather than shunned - after all, I'm an advocate of videogames' ability to allow players to become immersed or emotionally invested in environments or locations in a way that no other medium can, since they allow you the freedom to explore at your own pace. Whereas films, on the other hand, have to keep pushing forward at a certain pace - not necessarily fixed, but always controlled by the director and no-one else. And you can't really interrupt a story just so the camera can move around and show you an environment, no matter how wonderful it is. Although Avatar certainly tries its fucking best - but I'd still rather talk to you about my experiences playing Far Cry 2 than discuss the ins and outs of what James Cameron thinks passes for a story these days.

Anyway, as much of an unrepentant nerd as I am, I was pretty appalled at how far I'd been sucked into the game, and after that day I never really went back. Yet to this day the internet is still stuffed full of people who are utterly obsessed with WoW, and who welcome it to dominate their free time.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to claim that I've got better things to do than play videogames all evening, because that's very rarely the case. But one of the things I love most about videogames is that, in the course of an evening, I can play a bunch of different games, each with its own experiences and way of thinking. It's one of the things that makes it such an exciting medium to be involved in. And so, to me, it seems utterly bizarre - and a little bit sad - that there are people who spend all their time on one game, all others be damned.***

And that, ladies and gents, is why I'm not a huge fan of World of Warcraft.

Cheerio! x

*(alright, there are some excellent contenders, but face it; in terms of numbers, they're relatively niche.)

**(I never really closed the blind, as my window was miraculously blocked from the general public.)

***(There are exceptions, of course, who manage to play WoW and still play other stuff. And I salute every one of you.)

I'm just a boy with a new haircut

2010-01-26T17:43:00.001Z

For the last four or five years, I have cut my own hair. Before that, my dad did it for me. I haven't visited a hairdresser's/barber's since I was about five, because I'm not some sort of VAST ponce.

It's not that I'm above spending money on things to improve my appearance. I'll happily spaff an unreasonable sum on a nice jacket or pair of kicks.When I've got the money, anyway. But there's something about paying for a haircut that rubs me the wrong way. Like, you're paying for a service that your own body is spending valuable energy to undo. That ain't right, man.

Of course, it helps no end that I've never suited anything but a number three all over* or, if I'm feeling fancy, a bit of short back and sides. But go easy on the back and sides, please. This is because my genes have blessed me with awful, curly hair. I've only let it grow once, about six years ago, and this happened:

So, I won't be doing that again. And I'm not bloody straightening it. Thus I am basically confined to short hair, forever. But that's fine by me - it saves me money on haircuts, and cutting my own hair makes me officially well hardcore.

I just wish I didn't have to wear my reading glasses constantly for a few weeks after each cut, to make sure I don't look like a racist thug.

*(I once had a number two all over, but I had to clean up afterwards)

Fancy bloody t-shirts.

2010-01-26T01:50:00.002Z

I do try not to be too much of a ponce when it comes to clothes, but I am well fussy about my t-shirts. I've got a bad habit of judging people far too quickly based on their appearance*, and if they're wearing a t-shirt there's a 99% chance I will write them off as a tosser. I don't have anything against t-shirts in principle, it's just the SHIT that people INSIST on PRINTING on them.

The t-shirts on Zavvi.com are a prime example of what I'm talking about. I mean, have a look at this cunt:

Fucksake. Look at that. Look at him. And look at the shit on his fucking t-shirt:

OH HAHAHAH. WHAT A GENT. YOU'RE SUCH A NICE GUY THAT YOU'LL LOWER YOURSELF TO FUCKING FAT WOMEN. THE JOKE BEING THAT, IN ACTUAL FACT, NOBODY LIKES FUCKING FAT WOMEN DO THEY. HAHA. YOU HANDSOME STUD. WHAT A FUNNY T-SHIRT. FOR FUNNY, FUNNY, HANDSOME, CARING, FUNNY MEN.

Then there's this:

Yes. It actually says "I went to Mexico, and all I got was swine flu". That's at no. 3 in the Zavvi clothing chart. Number three. Number fucking three.

What's the point? In anything, I mean. What is the point in anything when there are people walking around in that t-shirt and thinking it's funny. People who have the right to vote. People who can raise kids. Wearing that t-shirt. That fucking t-shirt.

Still, it's not all bad. I buy most of my t-shirts from the excellent Threadless, an island of taste in a sea of idiotic shit. For those who don't know, it's a community-led site where anyone can submit t-shirt designs, and the ones that get enough votes get made into t-shirts. The designer gets a cut of the money, and the community gets the excellent t-shirt they voted for.

Truth to be told, they have their fair share of duff designs. In my opinion. But nothing as offensively shit as the stuff you'll find on Zavvi. And if you can wait for one of their many sales, you'll often be able to get some awesome t-shirts for about the price you'd pay for a plain one in the UK.

Design By Humans are also pretty great, but their t-shirts cost more, and the models they use tend to look like the sort of people I'm trying to avoid by spending time on the internet. Whereas Threadless, on the other hand, have the decency to use models who look more-or-less like real people.

The best thing about these sites, though, is that most of their t-shirts are done in fairly limited runs. So you'll never meet anyone who's got the same t-shirt as you, unlike all those bellends who bought their WHY SO SERIOUS? t-shirts from fucking HMV. In fact, if you notice someone else wearing a Threadless t-shirt, it almost feels like a good enough excuse to strike up a conversation with them.

But you never would, obviously. Because that would clearly make you a mental.

*(not in terms of attractiveness - more in terms of how they choose to present themselves)

PANT STATUS: SEVERE

2010-01-24T20:15:00.001Z

So I've got no fucking money this month, right. This hasn't been a huge issue, as there's nothing I've really wanted aside from videogames. But I'm starting to get a bit worried.

Over the last three weeks, I've been forced to abandon no less than three pairs of trousers. That's two pairs of jeans, and one pair of black cords which I wear to work. What's worse, is that they've all suffered the same fate - a tear on the left inner-thigh, leading around to the back, about an inch or two from my beautiful genitals. The same tear. On all of them. That's not normal, is it?

I've always been led to believe that jeans typically start to wear away at the knees first. Maybe that only applies to people who actually do things, like... I dunno, carpentry. Whereas I spend a lot of time sat shuffling in my chair. Still, whatever the reason, there's something considerably less manly about having holes in your jeans that aren't a million miles from your crotch/arse, as opposed to knee-holes which are a bit '90s but basically fine. Right?

And I'm worried that this trend is going to continue, and I'm going to be left sans trousers, and with no money to buy any new ones either. Then I'll have to start wearing shorts, in fucking February. And what happens if they fall apart, too?

When my boss inevitably complains that I'm coming into work without any sort of leg garment, I'll just have to calmly explain that if I was given more than one or two shifts a week, I might be able to afford some new ones. And I can't see myself winning that argument, to be honest.

Fucked.

Producing a hugely successful podcast for fun and profit. Without the profit. [PART ONE]

2010-01-23T22:55:00.001Z

I'm about to settle down to edit this week's podcast, and I'm going to tell you all how I do it. Well, the audio side of things, anyway. Not so much as a flawless how-to guide, but more a SHITTY STICK in the collective eye of those who think it's just a case of hitting a record button, chatting on Skype for an hour, then uploading the results to the internet. I dare say that's how some other, more 'professional' sites might do it, but that ain't us.

I'll mainly aim this at people who know very little about audio editing, so apologies to those of you who do.

Step 1: Recording

We all talk on Skype, as Andi lives a good 180 miles or so from me and Ian. Now, while there are loads of programs available for recording Skype conversations, we choose to each record our individual direct mic feeds. This means that instead of having one, Skype-compressed audio file* with all three voices on it, I have three audio files, one for each participant, which sounds a fair bit clearer and makes editing a lot easier in a number of ways which I'll describe later. It also means we're not at the mercy of any connectivity issues - if one person's internet connection goes a bit funny, their voice will distort, and a Skype recorder would record that. But if you record the mic directly, it makes no difference. On top of all that, we start each recording by counting to three in unison, to make it easier to sync up the recordings later.

If anyone cares, we all use this headset. It's served us well, and the only complaint I could make is that it's a bit too sensitive, and tends to pick up noises other than the user's voice. But, more on that in a minute. Oh, and we all record with Audacity - it ain't clean, but it's cheap. Free, in fact.

Step 2: Editing

Once Ian and Andi have sent me their individual recordings, I can get on with the editing. I use Cubase SX, not necessarily because it's the best, but because I was taught to use it in college and have seen no reason to change. So, suck it.

Over the months I've settled on a standard setup (helped by the fact that we now all use the same microphone), which has made things a lot bloody quicker. Once I've imported the audio files, it looks a bit like this:

So that's the three recordings, each on their own track, with the top track being reserved for the intro/break music. Now, if we were lazy, we could just cut out the bits we didn't want (i.e. the bits at the start before the show kicks off proper, and the toilet break in the middle) and export that. But we can do a bit better than that, mm?

Since we all use the same mic headset, I only need one set of parameters which I can then copy and paste to the other tracks - and now that I've got a setup I'm happy with, it's saved and ready to go each week. I had to make a few minor alterations after copying the settings to all the tracks - Andi's audio tends to be a bit louder than the others, for example - but they're basically the same. Here's the config windows for all the processing I use on my track:

But what the fuck is that all for, eh?

First off, I mentioned earlier that our headsets are a bit too sensitive - the main complication here, aside from it picking up unwanted noises from our bedrooms like PC fans, mouse-clicks, and so on, is the fact that it picks up the output from the headphones. So, when one person is totally silent, you can still hear the others talking - albeit very quietly - on his audio feed. And that needs to get filtered out. So, I use a noise gate - in this case, a free one called Floorfish from the excellent fish fillets package. This means that when the volume on the track falls below a certain point, the audio is cut out completely. And since my normal speaking voice is a lot louder than the feedback from the headphones, it's easy for the noise gate to distinguish between the two.

The second one, Blockfish (from the same package), is a compressor. You'll remember I mentioned the distinction between data and dynamic compression - well, this is the latter. Dynamic compression is where you 'squash' an audio sample so that, in this case, whenever someone speaks, it's more-or-less always at the same volume, whereas the volume of natural speech tends to change a lot. This gets used a lot on radio stations and pop music, because it makes sure things can be heard when you're listening on your shitty car stereo. Some radio producers don't like it because, by its very nature, it will rob recordings of their subtlety; but we don't really do subtlety on our podcast, so we use shiteloads of compression.

Another problem with dynamic compression, though, is that it can introduce excess sibilance. Basically, that means it sounds fucking annoying when people use 'ess' or 'shh' sounds. To fix that, we use a De-Esser, which does pretty much exactly that you'd think, and stops us killing people's ears.

The bendy line in the middle is the equalisation - what you can see there is that I've pulled out some of the lower frequencies, as the headset we use sometimes produces a very low hum. It doesn't always do it, but a low-frequency cut like that has very little effect on our voices, so it stays in, just in case.

What comes next sort of depends on how busy I am. If I haven't got an abundance of free time, I can scan through the whole thing, delete the 'break' bits, and get Cubase to export the MP3. But if I'm not in a hurry, I'll listen to the whole thing and tidy up any awkward bits where, say, I laugh too much at one of my own jokes, or two of us talk over each other - having each participant on a separate track means I can just pull bits out from one track without messing with the others.

As a final tweak, I do a bit of stereo panning - I put myself over to the left speaker, Ian in the middle, and Andi on the right. People often accuse us of all sounding the same, so this helps them to differentiate between us, since the voices are coming from different directions.

And that, my darlings, is basically it. Until I do the follow-up post to this, where I'll talk about the process of actually tagging and publishing the audio file. It'll be a bloody riot, I promise you.

Ta-ra! x

*(that's data compression, not dynamic compression. I'll explain the latter further on, but in this case we mean an audio file with loads of information taken out, to make it smaller)

Am I mental?

2010-01-23T02:14:00.000Z

Well? Am I? I think I must be, because I'm about to write a short blog post, for the whole world to read, about the fact that I have a fascination with audio or video clips involving people doing things with their hands. Feel free to leave jokes about handjobs in the comments below.

Videos involving the manipulation of paper or cardboard are a personal favourite. Origami videos are brilliant, and I'll occasionally stretch to those videos that absolute mentals put on the internet of them 'unboxing' their new phone or whatever. Tutorial videos on how to modify portable games consoles are also good.

This YouTube channel is a particular favourite. Hit the link and watch some of the videos, ideally with headphones if your PC speakers are rubbish (and let's face it, they are, you philistine). I'd embed some of the videos here, but they DO NOT ALLOW IT. It's just a load of origami demonstration videos, and I swear that I could watch the whole lot in one go, despite having almost basically no interest in origami - although some of the designs are ridiculously clever. Still, I've no idea why, but I just find them incredibly relaxing to watch.

I really don't know where this fascination came from, either - maybe some kind of nostalgia, as I used to watch a lot of art shows when I was a kid. I say 'art shows', I mean programmes where overly-enthusiastic TV presenters made stuff out of cereal boxes and yoghurt pots. But still, those were good times, man.

God, just watching those origami videos again has got me so sleepy, I'm not even going to need a bedtime wank. N'night, internet! x

Podcast.

2010-01-22T02:58:00.001Z

I feel like I'm cheating by doing this, but I'm really fucking tired and Andi did it the other day, so fuck it.

For those who don't know, I do voluntary work for a videogames website called DarkZero, and have done so for a few years now. But over the last year, the bulk of my contributions to the site have revolved around the podcast. I record it with Andi and Ian more-or-less every week, and I handle the audio side of things while Ian does the artwork. We used to have a fourth regular member, Seth, but he seems to have vanished. Which is a shame, because he often played the part of the 'straight man' who helped to stop us talking shit. Still, one of the problems with doing stuff for free is that you can't really complain when somebody stops helping you, I guess. The podcast basically involves us talking about videogames for up to 90 minutes each week, with a few vague attempts at being funny or interesting along the way.

Anyway, it's come a long way over the last 43 episodes. We now have a few hundred regular listeners, and the very early episodes we did a few years back are now a bit of an embarrassment to listen to. We've still got things to learn, mind - we had SPECIAL CELEBRITY GUEST Michael Pachter a while ago, which went well, but we all basically shat ourselves at the notion of having a guest on the show, and you can definitely hear it on the recording. Plus we forgot to properly introduce the poor guy at the start, for the sake of people who didn't know who he was.

Producing the podcast is usually pretty straightforward, but I sometimes do some fancy editing, like the intro to our Modern Warfare 2 special where we did a spoof of the game's infamous 'No Russian' level. It's bits like that which make me begin to fantasise about doing something like this for a living - I genuinely love getting the opportunity to really put a bit of effort in (and actually put my Sonic Arts degree to some use), but it takes too much bloody time to do something similar every week in my spare time. Sucks, man.

The feedback we get about the podcast is almost unanimously positive, and there are few greater feelings in the world than a stranger telling you that he enjoyed something you created. It is a lot of work sometimes, and doing the editing can certainly drag, but on the few occasions we've allowed ourselves a 'week off', it feels really bloody weird. As in, we actually miss doing it. And no matter how much of a chore it can be at times, the feedback we get from our listeners drives us on.

Give it a listen. You might like it. Everyone else seems to.

And if you thought this post was boring, just wait until I write an exhaustive guide about the entire process of creating a single episode.

Kind of like prostitution, but with less sex and more free food

2010-01-21T02:46:00.002Z

So, this one time, I took part in a clinical trial. That's one of those deals where they pay you for the opportunity to pump chemicals into your body, and see if you die or not.

It's also nowhere near as scary as people make it out to be.

Admittedly, the study I took part in was relatively tame. They were doing research into a nasal spray form of a painkiller that's used mainly for post-operative pain - the issue being that, at the time, it could only be administered via injection, and so anyone seeking pain relief from their operation would have to stay in hospital in order to receive the painkiller. The nasal spray, on the other hand, can just be given to people to take home. The patient gets to go home earlier, and a bed is freed up. Victory.

Now, they already knew the painkiller worked (so, no hilarious jokes about them repeatedly punching me in the face and asking if it still hurts, sorry), but where my study came in was to see if administering the painkiller alongside a second nasal spray that opens up the pores in your nose would increase the intake of the painkiller into the blood. During the screening process prior to the study itself, I impressed the doctor by being the only person to have remembered all of this.

Oh, yeah, the screening process. Dead easy. You go in, wait around for about an hour, then give piss and blood samples (so they can check you haven't got AIDS or, I dunno, piss disease), and lie on a bed while they measure your heart-rate and blood pressure. It actually took a while to get my heart-rate down, because it'd been about six hours since I'd last eaten, and I always get agitated when I'm hungry. Brilliantly, the nurses had seen this before, and had a box of Mars bars ready for the occasion.

The study itself involved two separate overnight stays, with a series of morning visits inbetween them. On each of the overnight stays we were woken at 7am in the morning, and given the two nasal sprays. The first was totally fine, but the painkiller was pretty monstrous - basically, it felt like inhaling acid. I laugh about it now, of course - but never before had I seen a room full of grown men with tears streaming down their faces. Could've been worse, mind - another ward had a load of volunteers trying out a new anti-anxiety pill, and you could tell when they'd had their dose upped because they'd be running around the hallways shouting and laughing. Which doesn't sound so bad, except they were halfway through a 28-day residency, and therefore definitely didn't have much to laugh about.

But aside from the nose-burning, it was basically fine. The food was pretty good, I met some genuinely interesting people (and one genuine nutcase), and I spent most of my time playing X or watching The Armando Iannucci Shows on my laptop. Plus I got paid 700 quid for it.

Would I consider doing another one? Maybe, but only if it was equally 'safe' as the previous one. But I got lucky - the majority of studies are for far more serious things, like preventing degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's, and they involve much longer residencies. All noble causes, and the money's really good, but I'm not risking my precious internal organs on stuff as invasive as that, nor am I pulling myself away from real life for a whole month.

Overall I would give the experience an official Sean Bell rating of 8/10.

I used to be in a band, y'know.

2010-01-20T02:13:00.001Z

It's true! We were a bit shit, though. We formed in 1999/2000-ish, we were all 15 years old and we didn't have a clue what we were doing, except that we wanted to copy Mogwai. Well, I did.

The band was called Nipples & Drumsticks. Pretty funny, hey?

We started off with four members. Me on rhythm guitar, Phil on lead guitar, Chappie on bass, and Chris on drums. We didn't have a singer, because we were totally alternative, an' shit. We had to kick Phil out pretty quickly because he kept trying to add widdly solos over all our songs. Plus we'd often arrive at his house for band practice at about 1pm on a Sunday, and find that he was still asleep.

I'm not totally sure if any of the recordings we did (using a single Shure SM58 hanging in the middle of the garage, attached to a MiniDisc player) have survived, but if they have, it'll be Chris who's got them. Our songwriting approach was pretty much to seize on one half-decent riff, then repeat it for six minutes but make it louder and louder and louder as we went, culminating in a bit where we all hit our distortion pedals and start having more fun than anyone unlucky enough to be listening.

After a bit, we renamed to Hair Fraud. Can't remember why, other than the realisation that nobody was going to take a band called Nipples & Drumsticks seriously.

We played five gigs in our entire 'career'. The first was a 'talent night' at our high school - we played one song, and didn't win. Afterwards, one of the judges came over for a chat with us (we were the only band who played all night, the rest were shit 'novelty' acts) and started going on about how we should try to be more like Status Quo.

The second gig was at some seedy old-mens' club in Knutsford, and I can't think of a single interesting to say about it. NEXT!

The third gig, a couple of years later, was at a pub somewhere, and we played alongside our friend Graeme's band. I'm pretty sure no more than 30 people turned up, but it was fun as fuck anyway. This gig was also the first time we unveiled our comedy metal side-project, skrote_hed_alien. It was named after a fictional alien with a massive scrotum for a head. We only had one song, called 'Bike With A Spike', which was about a bicycle with a massive spike instead of a seat, which you can hear on the skrote_hed_alien Myspace page HERE. The best part was that nobody really noticed that it was a joke, and several members of the audience even approached us afterwards to say how cool it was that we switched styles so seamlessly.

The fourth gig was a college band night, and we decided to split the set more evenly between Hair Fraud and skrote_hed_alien. To be honest, we probably put more effort into the skrote_hed_alien stuff than our 'proper' set. All the Hair Fraud stuff we played just prompted people to ask if we had any songs with singing in them, or songs that people could dance to. To which the answer was no, obviously. But they fucking shut right up when we started the skrote_hed_alien stuff.

Basically, Chappie worked at an outdoor paintball site, and knew where they dumped all the old boiler suits that they no longer used. Just, on the floor. In a forest. So, we decided to nick them all and use them as costumes, as some kind of hilarious Slipknot parody. We took a bin-bag, ventured out into the woods at night, and stuffed them all in the bag. They were damp, covered in soil, and they fucking stank. We tied the bin-bag up and didn't open it until several days later, when Chris took his out to paint the word 'POO' on the back in massive letters.

When the day of the gig came, we hid the bag backstage, and played our Hair Fraud set. When the time came, we ran off stage without saying anything, got changed into the filthy fucking boiler suits (we also got a few friends to join in this time), then ran back out. Some of us added a few extra touches to our costumes - I think a couple of us had masks, and I wore an Action Man baseball cap I bought in Woolworths a few days before.

Woolworths. Remember them?

We played Bike With A Spike, plus our new song 'Rape Room', which was primarily about Saddam Hussein's tyranny over Iraq, but also referenced the 'Five Balls of Dictatro' - the combined testicles of Hussein, Hitler, and Stalin. We hadn't actually figured out how the song went prior to going on-stage, aside from some vague ideas about the lyrics, but by this point it didn't really matter, so we made it up as we went. The audience was utterly baffled by the whole thing, although a select few got the joke.

The fifth and final gig was at the Winsford Sailing Club. Our good friend Ian begged us to do it, as they were having some summer barbeque thing, and they desperately needed entertainment. Despite being together for about three years by this point, we still only had about 20 minutes' worth of material, and had to pad our set out by playing our interpretation of the James Bond theme. I'm pretty sure the audience fucking hated us, but hey-ho. I think we got free burgers out of it. I hope we fucking did, anyway.

This is how we looked when my then-girlfriend put make-up on us on new year's eve. 2003, I think. Chappie, on the left, was dressed like that as a joke. I hope. I'm the cunt in the middle with the shit hair. We are doing 'the horns', but in our attempt to convey MORE METAL, it stretches across six hands instead of the usual two.

After that, Chris went to uni and it all collapsed accordingly. In hindsight, we achieved precisely fuck-all, but the band-related areas of my late teens are the only bits that make me nostalgic for that whole period of my life.

Although that's not saying much when the only competition is college-related stress, being unable to talk to girls properly, and endless, sorrow-filled masturbation.

Fentimans.

2010-01-19T03:18:00.000Z

See that? That's my hand, holding a bottle of the finest beverage ever created, last summer.

For those who don't know, I'm teetotal. And in a desperate struggle to still come across as an adult, I tend to make a point of being fussy about my soft drinks. For a long time this just meant preferring Pepsi to Coca Cola, and having an occasional soft spot for Virgin Cola. But, as with most things you're into when you're a teenager, I later realised I didn't have a clue.

Fentimans produce a whole range of botanically-brewed soft drinks but, for me, the real jewel in the crown is their Curiosity Cola. I fucking love it, to the point that it's probably a little bit unhealthy. Mentally, I mean. Most people can spout the usual trivia about how Coca Cola once had cocaine in it, or how Pepsi once tried to copyright the colour blue, or whatever. But I can tell you how Thomas Fentiman first kicked things off in 1905 by securing a ginger beer recipe that was offered up as collateral for an unpaid loan, or that the German Shepherd on the company's logo is in fact Thomas' dog Fearless, who twice won the Crufts obedience test. I even had an iPhone case made with the company logo on it, and I've only half-jokingly talked about getting a tattoo of it on my arm on several occasions.

It's hard to describe what's so great about Curiosity Cola, aside from the fact that once you've tried it, all other colas taste like the artificial, chemical-filled shite they are. Indeed, a few companies have attempted to copy the Fentimans approach, with the likes of Pepsi RAW and Red Bull Cola both taking the 'nothing artificial' route. And yet both drinks, as preferable to the 'normal' Pepsi/Coke as they are, don't quite stand up to Curiosity Cola, with Pepsi RAW in particular tasting like someone's watered it down.*

But it's not just the drinks that are great, it's the company they come from. The Fentimans business is a relatively small but profitable independent company based in Hexham, Northumberland. Call me a snob if you like, but when I buy stuff, I tend to lean towards companies that aren't regularly accused of human rights violations, and who don't turn a blind eye when bottling plant union representatives are routinely murdered just for taking the job.

Fentimans drinks can be hard to track down, but for most people the easiest source is your nearest Tesco. I urge you all to check them out if you haven't already, because they're the best fucking thing in the world. GO.

*(YEAH I KNOW ALL COLA IS WATERED DOWN YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN FUCK OFF)

CHEAT

2010-01-18T02:50:00.000Z

I've been struggling somewhat with my one-a-day entries over the last week or so, and I'm going to be really lazy and spend today's entry telling you why that is.

Basically, due to climates both meteorological and financial, I've only been in work once in the last week. And while I wouldn't exactly list 'WORKING' as one of my top 5 activities*, I need a bit of a routine to keep me sane. Booking time off work is different - that's something I can plan ahead, and make sure I stay busy during the time off. But this was a week I was unceremoniously 'given' off, and thus, I have done fuck-all.

It only takes two or three consecutive days off before I slip into my old student sleeping pattern, where I stay awake until 4am every night, and sleep in until noon. This is even less fun during winter, where the sun tends to bugger off by 4pm. That's not really enough daylight to fight off the constant threat of madness, and I spend most of the day feeling a bit groggy and shite. I actually get more done and feel a lot better during summer, where I work longer hours and get less sleep. I'm aware of the biological reasons for this, before you start. But it still bothers me how much the seasons affect my behaviour.

Anyway, so this stupid sleeping pattern and the grogginess it entails mean I only remember to do my blog entries at about 3am, by which point I'm really fucking tired. Now, I actually work better when I'm a bit tired - around midnight, say - but not so much when I'm pausing about five times per paragraph to have a massive yawn.

And then there's the fact that, as seemingly dull as my job is, it gets me out of the house and talking to people I wouldn't normally come into contact with, be it the customers or my co-workers. Sure, there's a lot of people there who I wouldn't have chosen to be friends with had I not worked with them, but that's exactly why it's a really good thing that they're in my life. I might not come home with a hilarious work-related anecdote every day, but being around people gets me thinking, and without them I haven't got a clue what I should be writing about.

I'm back in work on Tuesday, though I've got no idea how many shifts I've got after that. If they're doing a repeat of this week, I suspect it won't be long before I completely forget how time even works.

Oh, and if anyone knows any good tips for sorting one's sleeping pattern out, let me know. I reckon I'll be needing them.

*(FUTURE ONE-A-DAY IDEA: TOP 5 ACTIVITIES LIST)

Hey, do you want to see something really fucking horrible?

2010-01-17T02:48:00.001Z

Yesterday, I saw The Book of Eli, and didn't really like it. But even more horrendous than the film, was this advert I was forced to sit through before it:

I've resized that manually because YouTube's embedding code wouldn't go small enough. Fuck knows if it'll work.

Anyway, as you can probably guess from the preview frame, it's not very pleasant, and certainly NSFW. It's a thing about motor neurone disease. If you don't want to watch it - and I'd really recommend giving it a miss, to be honest - I'll describe it for you. A young, attractive woman walks into an empty room, and the door locks behind her. And for the next 60 seconds or so, you watch her as she essentially looks like she's being attacked by an invisible rapist. She's pushed to the floor, all her clothes are pulled off, and she screams and moans as her body twists, contorts and generally gets all kinds of fucked up. In the end she's left a drooling wreck, and her now atrophied frame (still in her underwear, boys!) sits in a wheelchair, and then advert appeals for your help in battling the disease.

First up: yeah, yeah, I get it. Motor neurone disease is horrible, and I'm sure this video, as shocking as it is, may well be an accurate portrayal of what it feels like to suffer from the condition. Except people usually get it when they're older, not when they're attractive young ladies, but whatever. Point is, I do sympathise with the advert's cause.

But it can still fuck right off.

Now, I'm sure we can all agree that the advert's aim is to shock and/or horrify its audience. But why, exactly? Is it our fault that people get motor neurone disease? Of course not. So why do I have to watch this horrible advert that shows a woman being tortured by her own body, then has the nerve to essentially say YEAH MAN, SEE THAT? THAT SHIT IS ON YOU, MAN.

On top of that, I've gathered that the advert was banned from TV. Y'know, for being totally and unnecessarily horrible. Yet, apparently, it's okay in cinemas. Can someone explain that to me? I mean, normally I get wound up at people who feel the need to complain about stuff on TV - at the end of the day, they've got a remote control and the freedom to use it as they see fit. But what about the cinema? Am I meant to cover my ears and run out of the room until the advert is over? Alright, I was seeing a 15-rated film and the advert falls into the same age category, but it's a bit of a fucking stretch from seeing Denzel Washington mess up some bad guys with a knife.

I don't mind these heavy-handed adverts so much if they're trying to shock people out of potentially idiotic decisions - that is, things they have real control over. But motor neurone disease is something that just kind of happens, and that's nobody's fault. Plenty of awful things happen to people all the time, but we don't want to be confronted by those things when we've coughed up six quid for a bit of daft entertainment, do we?

I'm hoping to go and see The Road next week. I'm sure there'll be an advert about a man who loses his job and then his mum dies of cancer and then he finds out his wife got raped and knifed to death by a gang of thugs and then his electricity gets cut off because he forgot to pay the bills then his dog dies and the boiler in his flat explodes and his insurance won't cover it because the boiler hadn't had its regular 12-month service.

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The Book of Eli

2010-01-16T04:00:00.000Z

I saw this today. For those who don't know, it's a MOVIE FILM about the titular Eli (Denzel Washington) walking across post-apocalyptic America, carrying a book that is said to contain all the secrets of restoring humanity to its former glory. He guards this book with his life, claiming that he has to deliver it somewhere where it'll be used properly. The concept is solid enough, and the trailers basically made it look like Fallout: The Movie, so that's more than enough to get my interest. And now that I've seen it, I'm going to bore you all with my thoughts on it.

Those of you who've not yet seen the film, hear this: feel free to turn up and watch the first half an hour or so. But once Eli reaches the town, you get the fuck out of that cinema, man.

To begin with, the film is basically incredible. Everything is beautifully shot, the soundtrack is amazing, the landscapes are perfectly desolate, and Denzel does an excellent turn as the badass wandering adventurer as he runs into the various kinds of ugliness you'd expect in a decent post-apocalyptic setting.

Then, Eli reaches this town. And from then on, the film's only redeeming points are Tom Waits' appearance, and Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers getting his fucking face smashed into a bar.

Prior to seeing the film, I'd joked with friends about how shit it would be if it turned out Eli's book was, in fact, just a Bible. Well, guess fucking what. A brief glimpse of the book relatively early on in the film reveals a crucifix on the front cover, which I don't think anyone else in the audience spotted, because they didn't all start laughing, sighing, or screaming in unison.

Now, let's be clear - I'm far from one of your militant anti-theist types (although, don't worry, I wouldn't describe myself as 'spiritual' either), but I've very little time for most of what passes as Christianity. So I hope you'll understand when I say that I really couldn't give a rusty fuck whether or not the Bible survives the apocalypse. So, not too far into the film, I've pretty much lost interest in Eli's noble quest.

Then, it gets even worse. The Al Swearengen-wannabe who owns the town (Gary Oldman) wants the Bible too. Why? Because it's a tool for controlling the idiotic masses who are unable to find their own purpose in life. And I'm not doing a whole lot of rephrasing there, that's pretty much what he actually says. He wants the book so he can use it to control the town's inhabitants, and make them do whatever he says. So why the fuck are we meant to care about Eli's mission when the story is telling us that this Bible is a terrible, terrible thing? Never mind the fact that, at one point, Eli explains that his Bible is the last one in the world because all the others were burned, and that some people claim the Bible what caused the apocalypse in the first fucking place.

OH BUT THEN IT ALL BECOMES CLEAR, BECAUSE ELI EXPLAINS THAT WHEN HE WAS A KID HE HEARD A VOICE IN HIS HEAD THAT LEAD HIM TO THE BIBLE, AND THEN IT TOLD HIM TO TRAVEL WEST WITH IT, AND THAT HE'D BE PROTECTED BY THE LORD AND OH FUCKING HELL THAT'S WHY THAT BULLET JUST FUCKING BOUNCED OFF HIS SHOULDER EARLIER AND NOBODY WAS ABLE TO SHOOT HIM. FUCK.

In the end he finds his way to Alcatraz where, miraculously, a group of seemingly government-affiliated men are archiving everything from 'the old world'. The Bible gets stuck on a shelf somewhere, Eli dies from a bullet-wound, and that's that.

The last time I saw a film that started off so well and then spend the next hour and half pissing all over itself and giggling wildly was the film adapation of Max Payne, which also co-starred Mila Kunis. Thus, this is probably all her fault.

FILM-MAKERS: BEWARE THE CURSE OF KUNIS

GIZZAJOB

2010-01-15T02:59:00.000Z

Nearly forgot to write this again, having spent most of the evening toiling over my CV.

Man, CV writing is fun, isn't it? It's like normal writing, only you have to write it in an awful, formal style, and 'big' yourself 'up' as much as possible without it looking like you've gone considerably out of your way to do so. I've not needed a CV for about eight years, so I've had to do this one from scratch, and it's a bloody nightmare. I'm no stranger to pumping out readable prose, but it took me three years to get my head around academic writing, and this is almost as bad.

I also can't decide whether or not to mention the podcast. On the one hand, I edit and produce the whole thing, almost every week, in my spare time, for free. Thus, it demonstrates my ability to commit to things (even if I'm not getting paid for it) and my technical competence at putting the whole thing together, including a bit of fancy editing to make things sound nice, or when I decide to put a special intro together. People regularly tell us they had no idea we record the podcasts over Skype, and I smile a little bit every time they do.

But, on the other hand, it features jokes about racism, sexual assault, and Madeleine McCann. Which I'm not strictly ashamed of, but I'd wager a fair amount on my potential new employers not really 'getting' it.

Time to update the privacy settings on my Facebook profile, at least.

Bustin' makes me feel good

2010-01-13T23:45:00.003Z

Have you ever seen Mythbusters? It's an excellent TV show. It's about these two Hollywood special effects experts who put their knowledge to use by putting common urban myths to the test. It's probably just as well, since the introduction of CGI probably means they don't get a lot of work these days. Anyway, they test stuff like, does using a mobile phone really SET YOU ON FIRE if you're on a petrol station forecourt?* Or, when a ship sinks underwater, does it really suck everything else nearby on the surface down with it?

Alright, you might have no real interest in such matters. To be honest, I don't either. But what's interesting is how immensely fucking clever and practical the two guys are. Now, television often comes with the not-always subtle implication that everyone on-screen is either pretty or talented or clever or whatever. But the Mythbusters guys are the only people I've seen on TV and felt genuinely humbled by the amount of shit they can do. One Macguyver-themed episode sees them breaking out of a room using a lightbulb filament to pick the lock on the door, then later building a massive kite out of a tent using their bare hands.

It's almost enough to make you look forward to getting older, really. Older people KNOW stuff, man. There are things in life that you just can't be particularly good at until you're about 40. Or maybe I'm just saying this because, as a 24 year-old trying to figure out where his life is going, it's heartwarming to know that I don't really need to achieve anything for another 20 years. But another bonus of being old is the ability to get away with looking a complete tool. One of the Mythbusters (I'm posting this on my phone, otherwise I'd just show you a picture) has this awful moustache, a beret, and a pair of red Converse hi-tops. I actually fucking loathe Converse, but the guy's in his late 40s, so I'll let him off. He's also pretty fat. But none of this MATTERS, because his age means you just view him as a bit of an eccentric, rather than the showy cunt he would clearly be were he 20 years younger.

With any luck, I'll still be writing this blog in 20 years, and I'll be able to quote this post and talk about what a cunt I was and, most likely, still am.

See you then!!!!

*(It doesn't, at all, by the way. Fuck knows why petrol stations still have signs out telling you not to use your phone, because it's total bollocks.)

Fucking hell I was about to go to bed and realised I still need to write a thing

2010-01-13T03:13:00.000Z

My copy of Bayonetta arrived in the post today. I pre-ordered it last week to make sure it would be waiting for me on Friday evening, then SNOW happened, and the game didn't turn up. And I did what most avid videogamers do - I got in a massive strop because I didn't get my precious videogame on day one and all my friends would be playing it without me and waaaaaaaaahhh.

I know it's completely pathetic and childish. It really made no difference if I played it last Friday or next week - it'd be just as fun. Yet it's a mentality you see quite often with videogamers, to the point that even large online games retailers have to put apologies on their websites about snow-induced late deliveries, "because [they] know how important it is that you get the latest releases on time" - in other words, they're trying to pre-empt the torrent of abuse they're about to get from irate gamers. Makes a pretty convincing case for the vast majority of us being fucking mental, really.

But here's the thing: I think I kind of feel sorry for people who don't have at least one thing in their lives to get that excited about. Sure, you'll get teenage girls obsessing over actors or musicians or whatever, but that doesn't count. That's an infatuation with people, not a medium. You don't see film buffs kicking down cinema doors when a major film release is underway, do you? Maybe because they're well-adjusted adults. Or maybe it's because their medium just isn't quite as interesting, mm?

God, I'm tired. Stupid blog.

What's that blog title about, then?

2010-01-12T02:16:00.001Z

Not to be confused with "What's the blog URL/background image about, then?" - that's another post for another time. I've been trying to make an effort to write about stuff other than videogames on here, but fuck it, it's 2am and I need something.

"Every day is another shooter" is the tagline for the videogame Everyday Shooter. It's a really fucking good game that most people haven't played because it's on the PS3, and no cunt's got a PS3, have they?* The game's hook is that while it's a 2D shooter where you move a dot around and shoot other dots and shapes, it completely changes between each level. Not just the visuals and the music, but the game mechanics themselves change, and whenever you come across a new level, you have to figure out its quirks and the behaviours and responses of all the enemies - not just so that you can kill them, but so you can exploit that level's 'chaining' system in order to rack up extra points. So, every day is another shooter. See?

What also helps is that rather than plumping for the usual dance music that seems to be the staple soundtrack of most shoot-'em-ups, Everyday Shooter features a guitar-led soundtrack, with each level's sound effects featuring an array of guitar samples played in the same key as the music, so as to represent on-screen events whilst sounding like they were probably meant to be part of the music all along. On top of that, the levels are designed to go through different patterns and behaviours as the music changes between different sections. To get some idea of what I mean, check this video of level four:

Beyond that, the tagline just seemed like a vaguely appropriate name for a one-a-day blog, that was related to something I like.

So, there's your fucking answer.

*(Yeah yeah, it's on the PC and PSP as well, I know)

Thanks, but get the hell away from me

2010-01-10T19:39:00.001Z

I was at work today, and Vanessa (who is old, faintly irritating, and makes sandwiches) starts talking to me about how our co-worker Becky is "looking very well at the moment, isn't she?"

It wasn't really prompted in any way. I almost never talk to Vanessa, nor she to Becky. Plus, our workplace is basically stuffed full of attractive girls - Becky is certainly one of them, but why did Vanessa choose her specifically? I've known her for about four or five years, and she looks no different than normal.

Actually, maybe that's it. Have you ever noticed how your parents or siblings never seem to age? Hmm.

Anyway, the point is that I started going mad trying to figure out Vanessa's behaviour. I mean, God forbid that she was JUST BEING NICE. And it got me thinking about our general distrust of people who are nice to us for no particular reason. One of Oliver Burkeman's Guardian columns a few months back confirmed something I'd always thought to be the case - while we're often encouraged to engage in random acts of kindness, the fact is that people frequently don't really appreciate being on the receiving end. If the act appears to have been motivated by nothing but sheer kindness, that's not good enough - we want to figure out what the person's real motivations are and, specifially, what they hope to get out of us in return for their efforts.

There are tonnes of occasions where someone has been kind and it's completely fucking creeped me out. A favourite of mine was when, at a friend's birthday party which she held in her garden, it began to rain, and straight away her dad (who previously hadn't had any involvement in the party) burst outside with a huge basket of fleeces and blankets that he'd gathered from around the house, and offered them to all the teenage guests to keep them warm.

In hindsight, that's a perfectly nice thing to do. But at the time, there was something just a bit too keen about it, and it came across as totally fucking weird. I bet he'd spunked on everything first.

I've forgotten where I was going with this.

TODAY'S LESSON: NEVER BE NICE TO PEOPLE

BEARD CHAT

2010-01-10T01:02:00.000Z

Today, I am going to talk about beards, because they are weighing heavily on my mind.

I never really thought I'd be able to grow a beard, as my moustache is a bit thin and patchy (which I blame on my French genes), while the actual beard itself is thick and beautiful (for which I thank my Scottish genes that survived the trip to France and then to England). It took several years for me to realise I could just shave the shit moustache (and the soul patch, because soul patches never look good) and leave the rest to grow, so now I look halfway between a sailor and a fellow of the Amish Mennonite church. Or so I like to think. Behold!

This is what my beard currently looks like. It's getting too bushy, and it needs to come off, or at least get a trim. As much as I like my beard, it's starting to make me look like a tramp, and while this is a look I intend to fully explore when I'm in my 40s or 50s, right now I'd like to hang on to whatever youth I have left.

Trouble is, as you're probably aware, it's really fucking cold at the moment. So cold, in fact, that the mere notion of any kind of hair removal seems like sheer madness. And I keep looking at my hair clippers (there's no way a Bic razor is going to do the trick here, after all), knowing what I have to do, but I can't bring myself to go ahead with it. Imagine if you were a bit suicidal, and there was a loaded gun on your desk. It's EXACTLY like that.

It's worth noting that, considering I work in catering, I really shouldn't be allowed any facial hair at all. Nobody ever tells me I need to shave, yet I feel faintly ashamed whenever I'm dealing with food. If you don't know why that is, grow a beard, shave it off, then check out what's underneath it despite your best efforts to keep it clean.

Oh, fuck it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to trim my beard, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.

BANG

Thought vomit

2010-01-09T00:01:00.002Z

I want to play Bayonetta but it hasn't been delivered because the local postpeople have been ordered not to deliver to rural addresses and I am furious - while I respect the postal workers' right to a safe working environment, I feel as if some kind of notification would've been helpful. The man in front of me on the train has a peculiar moustache and an iPhone, which I think may be jailbroken. We have no hot water because the pipes have frozen, hopefully the freezing will not cause them to burst. While I respect the work of both Derren Brown and David Blaine, were I to meet them in person Derren would get a handshake and David would get a punch the face. Having installed Windows 7 on a second machine, I am still impressed by how smooth the installation process is. The rice we got with the Chinese takeaway we ordered was cold upon delivery - this is understandable given the current weather, but I wish there was a microwave at my girlfriend's house. Hot chocolate is a good thing. The Book of Eli and The Road look almost irritatingly similar, yet I will see both on the suspicion they will conjur fond memories of the Fallout games, regardless of how good (or bad) they are as movies. I could live off prawn crackers. The pipes are fine.

Baths!

2010-01-08T02:19:00.000Z

Most people like having showers. I used to. It's easy to see why - they're the only thing in the entire world that you can wank in, and actually feel cleaner afterwards. But over the last year or so, I have found myself becoming fully converted to the shower's fat, decadent cousin - the bath. Allow me to talk you through this wonderful process.

While I like to think that I've shown some signs of maturity in the last 24 years, my attitude towards hygiene has not changed since I was a child. Despite evidence to the contrary, I get pretty self-conscious about the way I present myself, and if I think my armpits (for example) are starting to whiff a bit I'll avoid as much human contact as possible before finding the nearest can of deodorant (or, ideally, my own bathroom so I can have an actual wash). But that doesn't alter the fact that I've never seen the need to wash as anything but a total fucking chore that I have to put myself through purely to avoid unpleasant or awkward interactions with other people, as well as complications with my own health. Which, come to think of it, is strikingly similar to my attitude towards masturbation.

So, you can see why I might prefer showers. After getting over my childhood fears of being blinded by the water if it gets in my eyes, showers suddenly became a much quicker and more convenient solution than having a bath. LESS FUSS IS GOOD FUSS.

Then, I finished uni and moved back in with my dad, because I'm a failure. Currently, we have only a bath, and no shower. "But Sean!", you cry, "Can't you get one of those admittedly faintly rubbish showers that attaches to the taps?" - well, not really. The taps on the bath are too big for any shower-contraption we've found. And we can't change the taps, because we live in a grade two listed building (no, we're not rich; dad gets to live here because of his job), and any stuff like that has to receive permission from the council or the English Heritage or Christ-knows who else. So I suppose what I really mean is that we could change the taps, but we can't be bothered.

So, I started having baths again, because I didn't really have any bloody choice. Then I realised that bathtime is also totally ideal for listening to podcasts, if you've got a loudspeaker that you can safely keep in the bathroom without risking ELECTROCUTION. Suddenly, a whole new world was opened up to me. No more listening to podcasts whilst sort-of doing other stuff and missing out on half the jokes! From now on, I will immerse myself in warm water and PAY ATTENTION and it will be brilliant.

And thus, my life was transformed. Sure, I spend up to three or four hours a week just lying around in the bath, but it no longer feels like a waste of time. Now, I am regularly entertained by the likes of Adam and Joe, Podtoid and the lovely mens at GamerDork while the filth slowly shuffles off my body. If the talented chaps behind all these podcasts knew that I listened to their work whilst my own penis is entirely visible to me, I'm sure they would be just as happy with the situation as I am.

Although that reminds me of the one problem with baths because you sort of start thinking about having a wank but the podcast is still playing so you need to stop that first or else it would be weird but your hands are wet so you need to dry them first so you find a towel and dry your hands then stop the podcast then have a wank and forget to get out of the bath quickly and it all sticks to your legs :(

A thing about Nicola Roberts (Or: Fuck the lot of you)

2010-01-06T21:53:00.006Z

Nicola who?

Y'know, the ginger one from Girls Aloud. Or the ugly one, if you're especially mean. Which, it seems, most people are, because for some reason it's totally acceptable to talk about how unattractive she is, as if she somehow deserves it for daring to interrupt the otherwise flawless stream of beauty that is Girls Aloud.

The thing is, I think Nicola is by far the most attractive. And it's something I always get thoroughly mocked for whenever it comes up in conversation (ALL THE TIME OBVIOUSLY). Responses range from "What, the ginger one? Really?", to "Hahaaahahahahaha!", and I don't really get it.

An ugly woman, yesterday.

Maybe there is a faint whiff of desperate chivalry about it ("DON'T WORRY NICOLA I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM THE BAD MEN"), or it looks like I'm just sticking up for the underdog in order to make myself feel more discerning than my fellow man ("Nicola Roberts - the thinking man's Girl Aloud"). But it's actually a bit more simple than that - she's the only fucking member of the group that I would stand any chance of recognising in the street. Maybe it's a result of my own lack of exposure to shit pop music, but I really couldn't even begin to conjure up a mental image of anyone else in the group, let alone describe them, because they're a bunch of 'perfect' cookie-cutter* mannequins. Mannequins that smoke pot and deal verbal and physical abuse out to fucking toilet attendants.

OH BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ONE WITH SHORT HAIR. SHE'S DISTINCTIVE, WITH HER SHORT, BLONDE, SHORT HAIR. YOU CAN TELL HER APART BECAUSE THE REST HAVE LONG HAIR. BUT HERS IS SHORT. AND ALSO BLONDE. SO SHE TOTALLY STANDS OUT. CHRIST.

And now I've made myself so angry that I need to go and masturbate over one of my many carefully-constructed Nicola Roberts sex fantasies. This time it will be the one where I save her from the pirates and we have sex at the end. Although I suppose I didn't need to mention the sex bit because that happens at the end of all the fantasies because that's the whole point, idiot.

Bye!

*(I am aware that mannequins are not made using cookie-cutters, but the term "injection-mould" makes me feel ill)

Questions about centaurs

2010-01-05T22:27:00.002Z

The Chronicles of Narnia was on TV earlier, and it got me thinking about things. Important things. About centaurs.

My friend Pete started asking if they have two sets of genitals. That's clearly nonsense, because you'd see the human genitals. Unless they were covered by a bit of hair. But that seems unlikely.

BUT. What about internal organs? Do they have two sets? And if so, what happens if a centaur takes a bullet to, say, his human or horse heart? Would it kill the entire creature, or just the relevant half? Or would it be able to get by with just one heart, but it'd feel dizzy every time it stands up quickly? And if it has a horse stomach, where does it get food from? Can it siphon it from the human digestive system? Or does it stay hungry, forever? Imagine that. Doesn't bear thinking about, man.

The good news is that Pete also mentioned one time when he did some research into mermaids, and found out that originally they were drawn with human crotches, which turn into a fish tail a little lower down. So it's okay to fancy mermaids, because they've got human fannies.

I hope this helps.

How to make Dragon Age: Origins EVEN BETTER.

2010-01-04T12:38:00.003Z

HEY. You've played Dragon Age: Origins, right? Of course you have. It's GREAT. But there was one thing that bugged me throughout the entire game, and I'm going to tell YOU about it, RIGHT now. Hopefully without any spoilers.

And for what it's worth, I did genuinely love the game, and this isn't a rant masquerading as a review. It's just an idea I had. I'm not Yahtzee.

So you're a Grey Warden, sworn to protect the land from the Blight, which is essentially an army of evil monsters rampaging across the land, led by a big evil dragon. In order to do this, you spend most of the game traipsing around, trying to get everyone to swear that they'll lend a hand when you go to fight the big evil dragon. Inevitably everyone you come across has some ordeal of their own to sort out, so you have to give them a hand in order to get their help with the Blight.

Now, Dragon Age is a big game. It took me over 50 hours to finish, and hardly any of my friends have finished it because they're all fucking useless and have jobs and lives and stuff. And yet it has six different 'origin' stories to choose from, each of them giving you a dunique perspective on the game's events, characters and situations. It's a really cool idea, but am I really going to do another 50+ hour playthrough just to see how a human mage might feel about certain things as opposed to the city elf rogue I first played as? Fuck no! I've got other games to play, man.

Another important thing about Dragon Age is that it's all sort of hinged on a series of big decisions that you're forced to make during the course of the game. Most of the time, there's no obvious 'good' or 'evil' answers - it's just clashes of different groups of people with their own backgrounds, perspectives, feelings and needs. For the most part you won't know if you made the right choice in a given situation, even long after you've made it - which, if you ask me, is the hallmark of an interesting moral quandary. Real life rarely gives you an obvious pat on the back for doing The Right Thing, after all.

But here's the thing - the game's dialogue frequently mentions the ever-present threat of the Blight, and talks about how it's slowly making progress across the land and will fucking ruin any town it comes across. Similarly, when you're making choices about where to go or what to do, your party members will chime in with comments along the lines of "Get a move on, son. The Blight's coming, and we don't have time to fuck about". The trouble with that is, you do have time to fuck about. In fact, you've got all the time in the world. Because until you choose to trigger certain events, the Blight doesn't actually do a fucking thing. Oh, there's a sort of creeping blood-stain on the world map that represents the Blight and cons you into thinking it's making some kind of progress, but in fact it only really moves once or twice, in sync with a few major story events. A few map locations are rendered inaccessible by the Blight, but they're absolutely fine until you decide to leave and trigger their destruction.

This all seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity, and got me thinking about Hour of Glory. It's a board-game where a team of Allied soldiers have to infiltrate a Nazi base, and the Nazis have to stop them. The clever bit is that the game has a timer - not a real-time one, but one that depletes when the Allied player makes certain choices. For example, when trying to open a locked door, a soldier can 'spend' several minutes to take his time and carefully pick the lock, or simply smash the lock open, thus saving time but running the risk of alerting the guards. And if the Allies run out of time, the Nazis win. Thus a fairly simple boardgame suddenly becomes clever and tense as fuck.

Now, imagine if they did something similar with Dragon Age.

Say it had all the same content, all 50+ hours of it (some people have reported spending over 80 hours on one playthrough), but seeing it all in one playthrough was simply impossible. Because the Blight is definitely moving, and it will devour anything in its path if you don't get a fucking move on. Suddenly, the game is made a lot shorter, but also a lot more replayable. If you could finish one playthrough in, say, 15-20 hours (which is a much more attainable goal for most people), they've then got the closure of having 'finished' the game and are free to stick it on the shelf or take it to the nearest Gamestation. But if they want to try again, the next 15-20 hours would be completely different to the first playthrough - after all, they've only seen a fraction of the content, so far.

Then there's the moral choices. Imagine if you not only had to deal with the clashing attitudes of different groups of people, but you also had to worry about time. You might see a clear way out of a situation that results in everyone getting what they want, but what if it takes too much of your precious time to sort it out, and allows the Blight to crush another few hundred/thousand innocents? What the fuck do you do then?

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are countless reasons why something like this would be a total headache to implement. The game really is compelling and interesting enough as it is. But the main thing that saddens me is that people are (quite rightly) put off by its length. And shoving in an Hour of Glory-style mechanic would not only make it more accessible, but increase its tension and give people more reason to aim for multiple playthroughs, instead of dreading another 50-hour slog.

That said, maybe BioWare just decided that people are too stupid to get their heads around the idea of a game that you're meant to play through several times in order to see everything, and would whinge all over the internet about the game being too short.

That's probably it, actually. Fucking people, man.

Today, I met my primary school headmaster

2010-01-03T19:19:00.000Z

for the first time since I left primary school. So, over 13 years ago. His name is Mr. Manning (I'm not sure I was ever told his first name), and he looked exactly the same as he used to, and he also recognised me straight away, so apparently I haven't changed since I was 11.

I always assumed it'd be nice to meet him again. As the only male teacher in the school, pretty much all the boys looked up to him. It was always a cause for celebration when your regular teacher was ill, because you'd get Mr. Manning for the day, and he used to teach you about, y'know, science an' shit. Certainly preferable to the usual guff about the fucking Tudors.

So, today he walks into the restaurant where I am continuing to hide until I find a 'proper' job, and pretty quickly I started to find the whole thing entirely awkward. I mean, if your job was to essentially prepare kids for LIFE, and you found that one of your less idiotic students now serves tea and coffee for a living... that's got to be a bit depressing, no? So he says hello, asks how I'm doing, and I struggle to think of a reply along the lines of PLEASE DON'T JUDGE ME I'M NOT THICK I'M BASICALLY A NICE GUY AND I HAVE A DEGREE AND I GET PAID TO WRITE SOMETIMES AND IT'S PARTLY BECAUSE YOU TAUGHT ME HOW TO CORRECTLY USE APOSTROPHES WHEN I WAS NINE. But I somehow managed to stumble over the whole lot.

I mumbled something about this being a shit time to have an arts degree, and he didn't really seem to know what I meant. Then I mentioned the writing, and he asked what sort of writing I'd been doing, to which I responded "Oh, a couple of articles for a videogame magazine". It was at this point that I realised the conversation was essentially over.

Basically, imagine that feeling you get when talking to an intimidatingly attractive woman, but replace the woman with an old man who once showed you how to make a self-propelling vehicle out of a used cotton reel, some elastic band, and a stick. That's what it was like.

Holy fuck.

2010-01-02T20:06:00.003Z

Hello. I'm Sean, and for as long as possible I am going to write one thing a day on this stupid blog. I love writing, but I love being lazy and fucking around playing videogames, too. The latter requires less effort, so I end up doing less writing and more fucking around, and soon I'm failing to get stuff done on time*, and cursing myself for not being more productive. So, it is time for some fucking DISCIPLINE.

I've nicked the idea from my friend Andy Kelly, and here are the rules he's set out:

– Write one thing a day, every day, until the end of the year
– The thing in question must be at least a paragraph of text
– No midnight deadline – each ‘day’ is from the moment I wake up, to when I go to sleep
– And no recycling old articles or blogs, because that’s just lazy

I might bend that last one a bit, as I do a fair bit of voluntary writing for DarkZero. So, any work I do there will probably be posted here too. It's unpaid and I do it off my own back, so I reckon it counts. Right? YEAH.

So, here goes nothing. Wish me luck.

*(I currently have a review of Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising that's about two months overdue, for example. Sorry, Ben.)