Decksanddrumsandrockandroll

Midway Newcastle RIP

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:11:13 GMT

I've kinda been meaning to write something about the end of Midway Newcastle and Mr Pick's excellent write up (http://pickassoreborn.vox.com/library/post/midway-newcastle-rip.html) has nudged me to get around to it. If you read that then there's not much else I can say about what's actually happened, just to say how it's affected me I guess. I was for the most part in the group of people who were fighting to the end, I had my CV updated before everything went down but hadn't actually sent it out to anyone. It's one of those things where you hope for the best but prepare for the worst - that being the chance that our future plans might not come off and we wouldn't get paid what we were due - which is what it turned out to be. I've not been hit too hard by it thankfully, having some savings to pay the mortgage this month, unemployment insurance to cover the next month if need be and got on the dole straight away (I have no shame about that anymore, just treat it as a benefit I'm entitled to).

Job prospects within games are fairly slim around here at the moment, it's been great to hear of good people getting jobs around here but you sometimes can't help feel the pang that there's another open position gone. Personally I'm holding out some hope for a phoenix from the flames type new company with some of the old staff but I'm not sure how likely it is, my other options are to wait around and see if the other places have some positions in a couple of months or to start looking at prospects out of the games industry, which will probably require a bit of knowledge in languages outside of C/C++ now, C# seeming the easiest to transition into.

I don't begrudge my time at Midway Newcastle though, I've worked with some great people in the area that I really wanted to, produced a game that I can be proud of and gained so much experience in the ~2 years that I was there. It's also been a time of great change outside of work, I've learnt to drive, bought a house and I'm getting married in just under 5 weeks! I can put most of this down to meeting Amy, the woman I'm really looking forward to calling my wife, who has pushed me forward and helped me to believe in myself more than anyone I've ever known. Roll on the 5th of September :)

Amazing Scenes

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:51:21 GMT

Probably been posted all over the place by now but this is totally awesome :)

Been a while...

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:05:22 GMT

Thought it was worth an entry for the first time in a while, not like nothing's been happening but this weekend felt noteworthy (plus most people probably have me added on facebook now where I add random photos etc.)

Firstly (though it actually came second), I had my first proper driving lesson ever on saturday night. I've been out in Amy's car a few times beforehand, having varying degrees of success but this was the first one with an instructor. Did pretty well, was a 2hr session of which I spent about 1 1/2 hrs driving, doing roundabouts, t-junctions, dual carriageways, even got up to 70 MPH :) Still had some screw ups, stalled once and had the instructor grab the wheel a couple of times but he still said he was very impressed even if I had been in a car before a little bit.

Second, me and Amy have bought a hamster :)

She's called Cookie, for the colour mostly, though I'll probably continue my tradition of calling any hamster Ham :)

Also picked up some bargains this weekend, in HMV the second volume of Batman the Animated Series is at last on sale for £20 and for some extra nostalgia for a fiver:

Also picked up some more trainers (I think my fourth pair since the last post :s), from a Nike outlet store so only £30 and a pair I really wanted a year and a half ago but had given up all hope of finding:

Nice things

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:32:38 GMT

Sheesh, been a long time since I've posted anything here, pretty much just using facebook at the moment (where this post will automagically be copied to, huzzah). In the intervening time I've been doing alright at Midway (though coming to the conclusion that both Unreal and Fmod are a bit pants), now have a girlfriend (which comes under the nice things header) and have moved into the en suite room in our house :D

I've also spent a rather obscene amount of money recently, you've guessed it more trainers but also Star Wars figurines. Never thought I'd be one for these sorta things but once I saw them in the flesh I was pretty convinced, only took a few weeks of umming and ahhing before I bought them. They're of Leia and Boba Fett but done in the style of the Clone Wars cartoons, the following pictures should speak for themselves really.

The new trainers were imported from America again, I really wanted something green so that I felt I had shoes that went with most colours I would wear (I know, I'm such a girl) and only later found out that the design was based on Tokyo's Taxis. This makes them approximately 17.5% cooler or geekier depending on your point of view. Also got the space for a shoe rack now, which gives a nice indication of how my obsession's going.

St. Patricks Day + general life update

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:16:12 GMT

So if you meet someone randomly that you haven't seen for a while and they tell you "I had a dream about you last night and you had something wrong with you and were gonna die but we fell in love and got married anyway" you should probably run away right? Damn. Still, I guess it's nice to know I'm still in her thoughts when I'd kinda given up on anything happening between us. We had fun and I'm sure at one point she said something like "Behave yourself, or I won't take you home" but she eventually got clobbered by the beer (read wine and vodka) monster and had to be taken home by her flatmate. Still had a good night overall, ended up in the Academy again where apparently 2 of my other flatmates were too and none of us met each other. And I also walked home for the first time since my mugging :) Lots of making sure I wasn't being followed though, in a drunken secret agent impression type manner.

Work's still going okay, not had too much actual work to do but been researching stuff, writing technical design documents for features while the rest of the company runs around trying to get a prototype together/move to a newer version of code etc. Oh and I've been in a couple of video conference calls now, the last one on friday where I was the only person from the Newcastle office, which are kinda interesting. Been out with people from work a couple of times now, there was a morale day where we all got to go the cinema and a couple of traditional friday night pub crawls too.

The area where I live seems to be becoming the Midway village with this girl Laura who sits across from me in work living just across from me around here. And another guy is moving into the area too but found out that he's going to be a direct neighbour to the head of our studio! Pretty funny - no sickies for him. Also means Laura and I might be able to start getting a lift into work with him, which would be cool. Laura is also very cool, she's from Canada and was in TV before games, actually worked on the most recent 3d Spiderman show. She's also into a lot of the same TV shows as me like Heroes and Battlestar so we've been exchanging the new shows I download.

Oh yeah and I've started going to the Gym as well, what with me saying I would probably since I moved here. Not doing too badly, already smashed some of my school running records (don't let the word records con you into thinking they were fast though ;).

New Job, New Console...

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:52:57 GMT

Well I got the Midway job, after thinking I'd seriously screwed up the interview. What seemed like lots of long pauses and questions on the test I just didn't have answers for. They didn't tell me on the spot so I went away fairly despondant and they called me up an hour or so later to say "We'd like to offer you a Junior Programmer position at £22K a year". To which I of course said "yes please", a significant jump from my official £14K with an extra £3K untaxed which I wasn't even sure I should still be getting. I've not got all the paperwork through yet so I might still go to the other interview I've got tomorrow :)

Don't start until Feb 5th, so what else was I going to do to occupy myself? Yes that's right folks, I went and bought an Xbox 360 today. £320 with 2 games in Gamestation at the moment so I went and got that with Gears of War and Lost Planet, the latter being good so far and I already knew Gears was pretty good. Not on Live yet but looking into whether we can move the position of the cable modem rather than get one of those £60 wireless adaptors. Plugged into the main living room TV so it's at least widescreen and big enough to read the text, know I'll start pining for a HDTV to complete the package though :s

Interview tomorrow :s

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:14:24 GMT

Well I thought my first interview would be with a company I'm not too sure I'd want to join, this thursday but Midway have suddenly got back and said they'd like to see me tomorrow. So with much less time to prepare and having the place I want to go to most first I'm now a little nervous. 10am in the morning as well, as you might guess I've not been up that early lately. Still, everyone keeps saying I should get in there no problem so just have to hope for the best, there is a test but hopefully I shouldn't need to reacquaint myself with anything that might be on it. Wish me luck and all that jazz.

Redundancy Get!

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:04:41 GMT

Well I've just been made redundant (okay, about an hour ago now). I'd heard people were being made redundant the first day back so I was kinda prepared for it though it's still kinda unexpected, there's people who are more surprised than me as I've been here longer than them and have more experience/always worked late etc.

I should get a really good reference, they even said they might have me back if they signed a new contract within 30 days (Hah!). I'm most interested in Midway Newcastle, I'd investigated their current jobs situation last week as well as updating my CV and even though their one listed job might be slightly out of my reach, the boss here reckons there's a good chance they'll take me. If not them one of the other games companies in the area, the boss knows someone from all of them on a personal level. And on the outside chance this friday just gone I spoke to a work colleague of a friend who left here already to go to a web design place called TH_NK. Even though I've done no web stuff (Creativity module 2 notwithstanding) they're pretty keen to take developers from other disciplines and train them up. So not all doom and gloom then.

Some thoughts on the Nintendo Wii

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 23:56:32 GMT

So I wasn't really that bothered about the Wii, though I'm starting to think about it more as launch day approaches. It already seems I've encouraged a friend in work to buy one just by showing him Red Steel (he hadn't heard of it and used to be into kendo and fencing and stuff) so it seems a bit daft for me not to. Whereas the 360 and PS3 are far too expensive for me to buy for one, maybe two games so far, I can see myself picking up a lot of Wii stuff.

Zelda I was already planning to get for the cube and it seems daft to miss out on the extras and/or buy it again at a later date. No doubt the new Metroid Prime will be quite good too, I liked both of them despite the second one being less well received. I'm also pretty hyped about Battalion Wars 2 (BWii) as I'm playing the first one again right now. It's a great game, with some annoying flaws that I reckon could be fixed in the next vers. The tutorial's rubbish and there's some unfair missions I keep failing without really knowing why, plus the controls can be a bit dodgy (Resident Evil style forward and turn stuff, unless you're locked onto something and then you can strafe, plus free aiming only when stopped). The Wii control setup looks like that will be a thing of the past though, with the nunchuck doing forward/back/strafe at all times and the remote aiming and selecting troops from the menu at the bottom.

My only concern is what all this stuff will be like on the 14" or thereabouts TV in my bedroom, as the big TV in the living room isn't mine and I wouldn't want to be disturbing people (though I might have enough housemates interested in games to get away with it at the moment :)

So anyone else here itching to buy one on launch day? T'would be my first launch day console buy if I were to get one :)

Yeeeeaaah Boyeeeee!

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 22:12:17 GMT

Couldn't really title this anything other than that after going to see Public Enemy last night :) What can I say other than that they were awesome and I never thought I'd see them in such a small venue. It was a pretty rocked up set, some versions of songs were kinda close to the album versions but others were unrecognisable apart from the lyrics. And people went just as mad for rocky stuff like Bring the Noise as Public Enemy No. 1, which was fairly unchanged. Being used to about hour and a half sets from bands recently it was quite surprising for this to be at least two hours, missed my metro home though, boo! But seriously, the energy of those guys is just crazy, especially Flava Flav who must have stage dived about 10 times. They must be in their 40's by now - I know they've probably got nothing on Iron Maiden for example but in terms of music that really means something to me, it's a rarity. They were only hampered by this stupid column in the middle of the stage which they kept crashing into - Chuck referred to it as "our new member, the immovable motherfucker".

It sounds daft but one thing I was very impressed with - you know that really annoying bit between the support and the band where people whack drums as hard as possible and continually shout "one!" into the mic? Well that didn't seem to happen, instead they had their DJ come out quite early and swap over from the venue's one and get set up etc. while the person checking the mics was a bit of a warm up guy too, doing call and response stuff with the crowd and plugging Public Enemy wares on sale in a mildly amusing way, plus getting the DJ to do a bit of scratching and stuff as well. All concerts should work like this!

In other news I had a plain clothes police guy round yesterday afternoon to take a proper statement from me, going over it all again in detail still manages to raise my heart rate to a significant degree :s Plus I've found out that the girl I was seeing until Feb of this year is now engaged to someone - what the frak happened there? Yet to hear a full explanation, I don't reckon she was seeing anybody else at the same time but that seems to be everybody's first thought on the matter. I'm not particularly bothered by it, I've probably dodged a bullet by it but it's still... weird to say the least.

In which Matt buys more trainers and generally feels happier

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:10:18 GMT

Yup, new trainers again, the last pair are a little scuffed but nowhere near finished with, oh dear. These are Nike SB Dunks, SB standing for Skateboard, which I'd heard of in many a Hip Hop song before I even knew what they were. I've never been a fan of Nike in the past (they are one of those evil corporations aren't they?) and I still don't like anything where you can see the air bubble at the side but these have really grown on me. I didn't even know these ones came with red laces as well as grey, switched almost straight away, a little OTT but I think it sets them off nicely. They're also dead comfortable from the off and will only get better (as much as I love those Adicolor ones they started off crippling and are still a little tight), didn't even have to get a size above my normal.

Soo, no real repercussions from the mugging, haven't even been down the police station to make a full statement yet. I've been out and about in town since though so not feeling trapped at home or anything, just a touch more paranoid than usual I guess (which is already pretty paranoid). If one good thing's come out of it I've ended up in touch with Becky more again, she's even asked me if I'd like to go out for Tea(dinner) in a few weeks. E-mails flying back and forth in the day too, which makes work pass much quicker (probably not the best thing atm). She's been really lovely about the whole ordeal as well (as has everyone really, cheers - well apart from anyone in a normal retail job, do you think me getting robbed might be a good reason as to why I don't have a cheque guarantee card?!), spent at least an hour on the phone to her on sunday, just talking random rubbish.

Work is sort of crunch tastic but not at the same time, I stayed pretty late tonight but didn't really get much done, having zero art is still the main problem and it ain't gonna change anytime soon. I'd love to have loads of proper tasks that I could do and would stay doing them but it's so hard to have motivation fixing a load of little things that don't really have the impact on the game that it needs. Plus the design still getting changed and the designers not thinking of the consequences of this at all never gets any better.

Bah, I shall be off to bed after some Battlestar Galactica, I finally caved in and started watching it after loads of people told me it was good. And it is mostly, doesn't quite rival Firefly for my favourite sci-fi of recent years but still lots of cool stuff - how they made those old ships seem cool again I really don't understand.

My 1st mugging

Sat, 09 Sep 2006 04:43:47 GMT

Well this might have been a post about a reasonable night out if some little tossers hadn't had other ideas - at about half 3 today I got mugged about 20 feet from my front door.

I was coming home from town when some guy behind me asks the time, I tell him it and he says "What?" so I repeat it, probably about 3 or 4 times, by this point I was thinking something was up. I take a glance back (as he's now infront of me) and spy two other guys a bit back around the corner. I thought there's no way I'm gonna run to my door and open it so I'd rather them not know I live here so I backed up a bit and they all rushed me. For a few seconds my instinct is to fight back but after a good smack in the nose I think "you're not Arnie, lay down and hope they take stuff and fuck off". Which thankfully they did, took my wallet out of my left pocket and as I was lying on my right side they just took that and went, leaving me with my mobile phone and keys.

Dripping with blood I get back in the house, call the police and they send out an ambulance too - no idea what a broken nose feels like and I guess having a few drinks might have cushioned the pain. Ambulance arrives first, take my blood pressure etc. and say they can't really tell if the nose is broken right now. To be honest I was glad of not having to go to hospital, just wanted to be in my house, they say if there's dizzyness, blurred vision, headaches and/or vomiting to go to hospital. Police turn up a bit later, don't really have anything to tell them, cunts were wearing hoodies closed as far as possible. They take a description of the wallet, a Nightmare before Christmas one with a chain so it's kinda unique at least. They also say there's CCTV cameras in the area so they might have got something, it's pretty much that or nothing though.

I was feeling kinda morbid so I went out and took a pic of my pool of blood, behind a cut for the squeamish:

Don't think I've ever seen that much of my own blood before.... will be a nice surprise for someone coming out of their house tomorrow. I've put some plasters on now so I look a bit like Marv from Sin City (I wish). I've already cancelled credit cards, drivers license I'll do something about tomorrow - thankfully it's still registered in Liverpool so I don't think they could know where I live. Was only a maximum of a tenner in the wallet anyway, stupid fucks.

I should probably be sleeping right now but I seem to be running on (rather useless) adrenaline, plus still not sure my nose has stopped bleeding completely, my mouth is all dry too. Ho hum, in conclusion - the world is full of cunts.

Creamfields 2006

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 22:01:18 GMT

Was pretty much a fun time, was a bit disappointed that Gnarls Barkley weren't on due to illness - more as it meant I waited an hour and a half for the Zutons to start when I could have possibly caught Coldcut instead. I was there with my little sister, who pretty much wanted to see the same people as me which is cool. Here's a myspace-tastic high angled photo of us (she's a master at these sort of things):

Here's a couple of the Zutons, not my favourite band in the world but they have some catchy choruses I suppose and it was easier to just stick around with my sister:

Next up were Goldfrapp, and where my photo taking skills pretty much fell down as it started to get dark. I dunno if you can take good night photos with my camera, they come out rubbish if you use the flash as it doesn't reach far enough and without it, it seems to go all blurry due to me moving and it trying to take in more light I think. Goldfrapp themselves were really good, probably the best sound of everyone that day, everything was just so clear and like the records basically:

Trippy stuff eh? That last one is probably the best, you can just about make out the mirrorball horse head dancers. Next up was DJ Shadow, who I only saw half an hour of as he clashed with the Prodigy. Still good though, my sister said afterwards how odd it felt that the whole crowd loved him basically, not something she's ever seen with a DJ before. Played some stuff off his new album and had a few guests too, I was a bit disappointed I couldn't see his whole set but he's coming to Newcastle in November I think so I might go see him then.

Didn't get any pics of the Prodigy, were too far back and couldn't be arsed taking more anyway. They were pretty sound too, though I thought the electronic stuff was really drowned out by the live guitar and drums. Didn't matter on stuff like Breathe but the older ravey stuff kinda suffered a bit. Thousands of people singing along to Out of Space still sounded pretty good though :) I think it was a fairly croud pleasing set, nothing much I didn't know, I figured a couple of songs were off the newest album but it all sounded good. Was surprised at how little singing/shouting Keith did though, from hearing live recordings before I'd always assumed he was their main hype man but I think that was Maxim really, he has a foul mouth, hehe. Glad to have seen them, one of those bands I've had on my list to see for a while now.

"I must be emo"

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:30:41 GMT

Stolen from rllmuk but was a good point: does anyone feel like the Daily Mail must be a satire? Read this and then after you've stopped laughing, can such a badly researched, ludicrous article actually be serious? Highlights include quoting a comedy song about 'emos' and thinking it's a real song about slitting your wrists etc. and making a list of dark haired (well apart from Debbie Harry), pale skinned female celebrities and commenting on how they have a "touch of the Goth about them". Amazing scenes.

Still can't really be bothered with a proper life update, it's not really been that interesting. Work's been a bit stupid but I've stayed away from staying in late whenever I can, just don't really see the point. I am genuinely worried about the future of our company and the fact that producers seriously think our current game will be finished in 5 weeks (for some perspective, it's been going since about March and we have 3 out of 21 cars, none of which are truly finished and one city district out of 5). I've had a couple of weeks off at home, no proper going away holiday but they're not really my thing, especially on my own. I'm going home and to Creamfields this weekend, should be good hopefully.

New digital camera

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 10:13:05 GMT

I've taken my second attempt at moving into the 21st century and finally bought meself a digital camera that should hopefully be pretty good (I bought a cheap one before and it died in a week). I suppose I didn't really have a definate reason for it but just thought it was something good to have - managed to get some interesting photos on the first day of having it anyway. There's this art installation thing near here where they're floating 6 cars in the river Tyne - I don't know what the point of it is but I was quite amused by the fact that when they first tried it they apparently sank.

And this appears to be someone making some kind of house out of that expanding foam stuff:

Not really much else to add at this point, work's work and I'm off to watch the England match with some people from work later on (providing the pub they're going to is actually where I think it is). Oh and there's some house party for two of a workmate's flatmates that I'm going to tonight as well. Sky+ is all set up to record Doctor Who tonight of course, gotta get things prioritised right :)

"Fre-Fre-Fre-Yo that's fresh!"

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 15:21:58 GMT

So I finally picked up a pair of those trainers I mentioned in the last post, they're pretty much as smart as I expected and keep making me want to drop into late 80's Hip-Hop slang to describe them (see the title :)

I've currently got red stripes on one and yellow/gold on the other just to see how they look and I think I might go for green regularly. It's a bit of a pain to change them as it requires unlacing them completely pretty much but it's not too bad given the freedom of choice it gives you.

I got them from JD Sports in the end who randomly had some 12's in, after discovering that Foot Locker are stupid Americo-centric wanks. They actually refer to everything in US sizes, which are half a size smaller, I did wonder why they would come to have an 11 1/2 in store. Then when I asked to try ordering a pair of 12 or 13's they said they'd look for a 12 1/2 and that they only came in half sizes.

Oh and thanks for the birthday replies in the last post by the way, they were appreciated :)

Some shit I wrote...

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 01:27:06 GMT

Well for the first time in two years I'm making a post around the anniversary of my birth that will actually make reference to it, I felt really sad that last year the nearest post I made was about being told to tidy up the house :(

So anyway, back from a not entirely unsuccessful night out, though only 3 people turned up, boo! Still, had a dance to some 70's and 80's funk so not all bad. And will be out tomorrow night which I reckon will be more enjoyable despite having a much higher geek factor - seeing an Xbox 360 hooked up to a proper HDTV and playing some multiplayer Guitar Hero, woot woot! I've ordered myself a DS lite from Aus as a present, which may turn up tomorrow and I've got my eye on some new trainers if I can get to try them on somewhere. They're these rather funky looking Adidas ones that let you change the colour of the 3 stripes on the side, possibly even to your own designs, I reckon camoflage would go quite well.

Work's still a bit slow at the moment, though I did start messing around with our cutscene editor which was mildly interesting as well as a completely illogical pain in the arse. I also went full circle and was asked to give a couple of people coming in for interview the guided tour of the place, nice to see some fresh faced individuals unaware of what lies ahead of them, muwah hah haaa! Ahem, anyway I didn't think I did to great a job of it actually, partially because we've got builders in doing windows, radiators and eventually decorating and nobody seemed to be quite where I expected them to be. They've messed us around a lot with the builders too but I don't have the energy to go on a big rant about it right now. Oh and I'm dying of a sore throat as well, think it's my gorramn flatmates fault *shakes fist*

Begin at the end

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 22:38:37 GMT

Since I've just watched Memento I guess I might as well start from there and work backwards :)

I went back to look at what Steve wrote about it and I'm pretty much in agreement, superb film. I think it will be strangely affecting too, I got thinking about what are my regular habits and how I'd use them to help me in the same situation and also had the very odd experience of forgetting that I'd cut my hair this morning and glancing in the mirror and totally not seeing who I expected :s The probability of reverse dreams is also quite high I would expect.

Last night I watched Aliens Vs. Predator, don't worry I didn't pay money for it, downloaded and deleted already. That sounds quite harsh as I did kinda enjoy parts of it but once it descended into a Predator/girl buddy movie my WTF meters were overloaded, particularly by it arming her with a makeshift shield and spear made from an Alien head and tail respectively. Exactly. Were a few nice touches at the start though, like a shot that looked like an Alien Queen head shifting to show it as a satellite and a split second of Lance Hendrikson doing the stabbing between his fingers thing with a pen. Plus it untensed me suitably from what I'd watched before. Which was...

...The Descent, something I never got to see in the cinema but given the amount of times I jumped half out my skin I think that's probably for the best. I can barely think of any phobia that film doesn't play on in some way, plus the first real scare comes from something that seems to bug me particularly, where you can see something but it takes a split second to realise that it's something scary when it moves. All that said though I don't know how many times I'd watch it again now that I've had the initial scares, maybe a rental would have been better but it made up a 3 for £18 so I'm not too fussed, I'll normally spend the best part of an hour trying to find the last thing in these deals and that sprang out fairly quickly.

Also picked up Cee-lo Green - is the Soul Machine at the same time, after buying the Gnarls Barkley record and really liking his voice. I think so far I like the GB one better though, it has more variety both musically and lyrically. I think I'm in the odd position of hardly hearing Crazy before it went to number one so I can still pump it quite heavily and I'm not getting bored yet (it does get stuck in your head like a motherfucker though). There's virtually nothing else like it on the album and though I think that's been a dissapointment to some I see it as a good thing really, helps each track stand out on its own once you get to know them.

My gaming time has been almost exclusively devoted to Guitar Hero this month, barring a bit of flirting with Lara Croft - a reasonably good game, some nice acrobatics and puzzles but some very crappy (but easy) combat sections and put simply, just not enough raiding of Tombs (d'oh!). Guitar Hero is amazing though, everyone should really play this, even if it's just a quick go in a game shop or something (though I'd guess most people wouldn't fully be able to rock out in that environment). It's highly bloody addictive, I don't think it's possible for a session to last less than an hour and a couple of them can slip by no problem, there's just always one more song you feel you can make a better attempt at. Never thought I'd say that More than a feeling is the best track in a game either, mental!

Not much more of interest has happened with Becky, we went to see the Ringer in the end, stupid cinema schedule put V for Vendetta on at stupid times, the stupids! Ahem, well we had a good time I think, still in touch with her but haven't had any big chats for a while, which I'm kinda missing to be honest. Ho hum (I should search and find out how many entries I end with that...)

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 15:03:43 GMT

I almost posted entries a couple of times last week, I think I'm glad that I didn't though as I would have looked back on them and thought they were stupidly whiney now. I think Stu's announcement put me in my place a little bit, shows you how insignificant your own little worries are. Hope you're still feeling upbeat about that dude.

So anyway, what would I have been moaning about? Pretty much just this girl Becky and my inability to stop over-analysing everything that's going on at the moment. Every delay in her sending me a text or excuse for not being around seemed to make me think that she was just using "I want to be friends" to mean "I don't like you and want to have nothing to do with you". Sigh, some may say that's my better judgement talking but I have a feeling it's more likely to be my bitter and cynical judgement (I've been wanting to use that all week). I think last night confirmed that we definately want to be friends after spending about an hour and a half on the phone to her and about 3 hours on MSN. As for the relationship side of things, I'm trying my best not to think about it too much, we're still flirting and that - guess I have to leave it up to her to say when/if she's ready. We've made semi concrete plans to go and see V for Vendetta next friday and were talking about going to this Japanese restaurant in town sometime, which she seemed quite enthused about.

Other stuff, well I've been watching Firefly over the last two weeks and have now seen all of that and Serenity too. A pretty damn good bit of Sci fi/Western if I do say so myself (when you describe it like that you wonder why it wasn't every kids dream show). I don't think I was expecting the western style stuff quite as much and was a little offput by it and the country and western music to start with but it all starts to make sense somehow. Infact I think I missed the music a little in Serenity, that seemed to have more of a generic-ish sci fi theme to it. The whole thing is very refreshing, virtually no lasers and space fights, all real guns and honest to goodness punch ups :) It also must satisfy a lot of nerds for once as it has no sound for the ships in space, I think it works quite well. I think the film does quite a good job of existing on its own, though I was glad that I watched the series first, both only 12 quid now so well worth a look.

And for more cheap entertainment I picked up Psyvariar: Complete Edition for PS2 for a fiver the other day. It's a vertically scrolling shooter, which seems to have somehow stolen an idea I had for a shooter (even though it came out about 3 years before I thought of it), where you have normal fire and a more concentrated fire which restricts your movement a lot. It also has a levelling up system, which makes your ship transform and power up your weapons. You do this by destroying enemies or by having near misses with bullets, which it calls 'the BUZZ System'. There's only a tiny part of your ship that can be hit (which is hard to tell as you ship starts to transform), the rest allows bullets to pass by harmlessly, building up your level gauge and buzz count. There's some absolutely mental bullet patterns though, there's always a way through but you need to be pretty hardcore to pilot it. I really like it though as it doesn't totally punish you when you die as your ship will be at the same level, same goes for Ikaruga and to some extent Gradius V. I really can't stand old shooters now where you build up a huge collection of weapon upgrades only for them to be gone in one death and after that more deaths swiftly follow as you can't take on everyone with the standard pea shooter anymore.

Not that much of interest at work or anything, still working on shared net stuff for leaderboards, which frequently don't make it into our games anyway...

Oh shit son!

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 01:11:43 GMT

I have a date tomorrow, with a girl I've never met in real life. I think it's just hitting home now. Been chatting to her online for quite a while now and she seems to have put up with a lot of my weirdness so far so signs are good. To be honest it's probably my first real date (outside of a relationship), we've both said to go with no expectations and have fun and get drunk no matter what happens. There's probably some female code words embedded in all of this but for the moment I'm quite happy to go along with it.

I'm actually doing some overtime this weekend so it will be a good excuse to leave work a little bit early tomorrow, hehe. I've just about done what I was told to for this milestone so I can get that sorted and just help out with whatever for a bit. And hopefully get free lunch again as well :) Life isn't all that bad this week to be honest.

Updatemotron

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 08:52:43 GMT

Well I've just recently done my half yearly 'Shave all my hair off after getting bored of waiting for it to grow to a reasonable length'™ thing, I always forget how much better it makes me feel and that I really don't have the patience to let it get long again. I think I might have caught a case of Goth too recently and it seems to have combatted it quite well (worth a try Steve if you're not already shaven), I think that was related to my last entry and it annoys me that I've still been thinking about that recently. I know for sure now that when people criticise me about things like that, which I wouldn't normally think about, that it hinders me much more than it helps. I constantly find myself thinking in conversation "Is me being quiet now making this person uncomfortable" and makes my conversation feel more awkward anyway.

Bah, I didn't plan to have a whiney emotional section to this entry, damnit. In other news I picked up a boxset of Batman the Animated Series, though I think I'm going to exchange it for a more complete one today, it's one of those ones that's quite cheap but actually doesn't have that many episodes and they're scattered and out of order. It's still pretty good though, I was expecting to possibly need some rose tinted glasses to watch it but I might even like it more now. There's still a few kiddie friendly episodes that aren't too great but there's some ace ones too, like Two-Face's creation. The title sequence is so iconic too, it makes me think of Killer 7 a lot, the way the characters are in silhouette but there's a smooth gradient on the backgrounds, the explosion at the start is gorgeous too. And the fact that there's no sound effects too but it makes you think there are with little orchestral flourishes and cymbals. Totally great, a trip down memory lane to watching What's up Doc on a saturday morning and a piece of art at the same time :) I didn't even realise that it was the cartoon that invented Mr. Freeze's more tragic background which is now taken as kosher, he was always a comedy villain in the comics. I'd really like to read some of the first comics, I'd always assumed that it'd started off a bit like the TV series but reading the wikipedia article on it says that Batman started off pretty dark, with him letting a few criminals die and they had to tone it down as the series progressed. Is it even possible to get reprints of those first issues though?

Meh, other than that I'm just plodding along, most interesting thing that happened in work last week was getting distributed building for PS2 (a bit of a godsend for speed really though it still takes aaaages to link at the end). I spent some of the week pulling out code from Ford Vs. Chevy that had been copied over needlessly, including a define that was specific to me that made the race finish after 20 seconds. I had no idea it was there and just assumed that was how long this little test race took as it was giving the wrong results at the end, saying it had taken 3 minutes :s Kinda looking forward to getting off FAF and onto PMR (only just), though I do seem to be getting on slightly better with the lead on this than I have before, just takes time sometimes I guess.

Warning, whining within

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 09:37:05 GMT

Someone managed to upset me quite a bit last night, though I'm still not exactly sure what it was that set me off exactly (yes I was already 'tired and emotional'). A mate's girlfriend started going on about how my body language was really off putting or unfriendly or something and how it was really difficult to have a conversation with me (nothing to do with the fact that we were in a really loud club room). She made it seem like there was something wrong with me and that I should get out more and make some friends outside of work (probably true) and try and get a girlfriend. I told her that I had one until recently and it was perhaps thinking of this and sorta of my ex-ex-girlfriend saying something similar once was what upset me really. She then sorta said sorry and said I should get up and dance with her to cheer up, then when we did she pointed out some girl behind me and tried to tell me some line that I should say to her and then wandered off again. I just felt totally patronised by this and I couldn't have given a fuck about talking to this girl - I think that's the odd thing, I feel very conflicted about how people view me sometimes. I can be worried about whether people think I'm unfriendly or weird etc. but at the same time I mostly don't give a shit what people think and I don't want to do what other people say if I don't feel like it. I don't really think I'm that difficult to talk to, I'm just quite reserved and I don't make the first move in talking to new people but I'll always be willing to listen to people who talk to me, which makes it seem that I take a long time to warm up to people.

Hmm, I actually feel a lot better after writing that down, livejournaling is strangely theraputic sometimes. Sorry to everyone who ends up reading it ;)

While I'm here, I'd like to recommend that everyone should buy Common's latest album, Be. Okay so I haven't actually bought it yet, have it downloaded but I definately intend to. It's largely produced by Kanye West but you shouldn't let that put you off if you're not a fan, it all works so well, a very smooth album and it's working quite well as my Sunday morning listening so far. It also has a couple of tracks produced by Jay Dee who died on friday, he's someone I've only heard of recently but it seems he had fairly legendary status for creating a sound that's influenced many Hip-Hop producers. Only 32 as well :(

Bugger

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 11:28:04 GMT

I was meaning to write a lj entry today and it seems to have coincided with me splitting up with Gill. To be honest I've half been expecting it, her life just doesn't seem to be very compatible with mine right now, she says it's the distance that's made her do it. I don't actually feel that bad about it, which is making me feel kinda guilty as she seems much more upset (and I know I shouldn't but there's not much you can do about how you feel sometimes).

I'm also losing my flatmate Mark as he's moving out to somewhere closer to work, which I'm a bit down about too. We seemed to get on really well and we were both in the house at the same time most frequently. I hardly ever see Kevin and Ryan is about a fair bit but we hardly ever talk much. Guess I'm feeling a bit lame for being here a year now but hardly knowing anyone outside of work but at the same time not really knowing how to go about meeting new people and whether I'm actually that bothered most of the time.

In work I've been moved again, Hummer has pretty much been signed off and doesn't require a full time team for any more bugs that might come back. I'm now going onto Fast and Furious for a month, which is with the first lead I worked under who I never seemed to be on the same level as exactly. He did pay me a compliment about work I'd done previously though, which was nice, I'd always felt like I wasn't quite doing what he wanted. I seem to be getting a reputation as 'results screen man' which I'm going to be doing - as long as we get some art for it. I think I made a good start on friday though by setting up scripting for the screens so that we can easily put stuff on and off the screen given the current plan for the artwork. Might be a pain in the arse should that plan change though, damn I hate (our) artists!

After that month I should be moving back to the same place I was in to work on Pimp my Ride. I don't have much to say on that front, it's really a game that I wouldn't care about when working on at all. Hummer I thought could have been good if certain things had been done, even Fast and Furious looks like it could be good too, it's set in Japan and is supposed to have pretty realistic drifting to be used in races snaking down or up the mountainside. PMR though I'd just always be doing what I was told and not trying to do anything to make the game much better unless it's a really, REALLY stupid idea that I know the higher ups will change their mind about later. Still, I might get some more money after seeing a project all of the way through so I should just shut up about it.

Nudge, nudge...

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 21:11:01 GMT

So.. livejournal nudges then, what I strange concept - I still find it hard to believe that anyone's that bothered about the frequency of my livejournal updates. Didn't quite realise I hadn't updated since before Christmas though, that was alright as Christmasses go. Got new Prince of Persia game, Doctor Who TARDIS Boxset and a little bit later got an mp3 player, which has turned out to be a rather ace investment so far I think. It makes my work journey much more enjoyable even if it's only half an hour or so, just being able to walk freely and have a ton of non-skipping music to choose from (or more often for the player to choose for me), it's great when something you haven't heard for ages comes on or just something cool and you imagine you're in a movie or something - y'know where they'll have someone purposefully walking down the street to a smart backing track :D

I have been naughty and downloaded a few things for it though, some stuff that I like but I've never bought albums by like Linkin Park and hed (pe), some that I've been recommended like Ghostface's solo stuff - my discovery of last year by loads. Still get the age old problem of not being able to find stuff at all even legally though, atm I'm after Edan's album Beauty and the Beat - Virgin and HMV don't have it, Play are sold out, no legal download sites have it and it's not even on torrent sites :( Using torrents a lot for TV too, still downloading the newest My Name is Earl and Family Guys and have recently started getting Lost as well - watched season 2 1-10 over a very short period, was dead good not having to wait a week for some questions to not be answered, back to one a week now though... Picked up some UK TV too, second half of that Root of all Evil thing (which I'm yet to watch) and first two eps of Hyperdrive (watched one, has promise I suppose, just not too sure of the space salesperson angle and the 'fat girl secretly in love with the lead character' thing is always annoying).

We're into the final stage of Hummer at work, in fact we've submitted our first master candidate today, though we know we're still quite a way off. To be honest I'll be quite glad to get shot of it really, it had promise I suppose but it's been fucked over a lot and the Physics etc. for it are still as shit as day one (Hummers don't leave the ground with the greatest of ease!), guess that comes from doing too many arcadey games. Plus we're into the crazy publisher and producer changes (producers have been worse to be honest), which can be pretty annoying changing things around. Hopefully I might go onto Cartoon Network after but I reckon Fast and Furious is more likely. This is cos we got a new guy after Christmas (also from Liverpool strangely enough - he's faaar to enthusiastic ;) and I'd guess they'd want to move him onto a project that's not been going as long (he's done remarkably well considering he got thrown straight onto fixing bugs).

You've won the jackpot!

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:18:51 GMT

Since I won't be in Newcastle for a week or so I let my Metro/Bus pass run out on monday and was faced with the prospect of paying for my travel this morning. Had fivers and tenners which are of no use to the metro ticket machines so I made up the 2 pounds from a pound coin and 10 10p's. Go up to the first machine and get it up to 1.90 when it decides to reject my last 10p and for some reason also spit out all of the money I'd put in so far like a one armed bandit. Thinking I'd maybe done something crazy like hitting the cancel button by mistake I try again with the same results. Pick up all my money and try the machine next to it and again still spits it all out as I put in the last 10p. By now I've missed one train and am starting to feel mildly stupid, people are probably thinking "aww look at the special guy that can't use the machine" so I say fuck it and get the train anyway. Thankfully this story doesn't end with me getting caught by a ticket inspector and getting a £20 fine as that would be the absolute limit. I'm just glad I do have my pass most of the time, these totally automated stations with no staff (unless they want to catch you for fare dodging) are rubbish!