Trajectories in Norrath

PS3 Yellow lights of death fix (it worked on mine) - PlayStation.com Forums

2010-06-17T06:38:00.000-07:00

Gonna have to try this...
PS3 Yellow lights of death fix (it worked on mine) - PlayStation.com Forums

Statistical counters

2010-05-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

World clock:

Video Games and Moral Choices

2010-04-17T05:49:00.000-07:00

Epic fail

2010-04-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

I was reading the comments on an article on the expression "epic fail" in the Guardian and it struck me that nobody really knew its origins.

I may be wrong about this, but I suspect it can be traced back to MMORPGS like Everquest and Everquest 2. In these games, monsters are given different labels to reflect the challenge involved in defeating them. Some are "normal" (can be killed by a single player) some are "heroic" (may require up to six players to kill) and some are "epic" (may require up to 24 players to kill).

It's often the case when fighting the epic mobs (creatures or groups of creatures that require multiple groups of 6 players to kill) that a single mistake made by one person can cause everyone in the raid (the collection of groups) to be killed (a wipe). I always assumed that an Epic Fail referred to a seemingly small mistake made by one person in the raid that causes the epic mob to kill everyone in the raid. A small mistake with big consequences...

The meaning of power

2010-04-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

is that everyone wants a slice of Professor Pie, regardless of whether said Professor is an epispastemic peripepticist who seems, at any moment, to be about to combust into a neo-phosporescent haze.

Fucking Hell

2010-04-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

A very detailed review in the London Evening Standard.

Adrian Searle's description.

A video from the Chapman Brothers' website with an option for HD.

A segment from Newsnight.

A Youtube video (use the youtube volume control to stop the music from drowning out the description):

Finally, Mark Kermode pontificates on the Chapman brothers

Becky Mantin

2010-03-31T17:20:00.000-07:00

For me, the most beautiful woman on British television. Something about those bonnie scottish features just really does something for me. It's not something I decided, must just be genetic attraction or something...

just blogging about her because not enough people seem to...

I guess the real way to enjoy the Becky Mantin experience is by watching a forecast:

I dare say I'd be "rattling through" quite quickly too...

The most impressive thing is that she's a Metereological Officer which means she partly controls the weather. She's probably responsible for the Jamaica...

One of the great horror movies

2010-03-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

The chainsaw is not what is so frightening about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is the broom. It is not Leatherface. It is the hitch hiker and the Old Man. It is the fact that these are not iconic villains (TM) and that they don't appear to be played by actors. It is as if the film makers recruited these strange people, told them to "just be yourself" and pointed that handheld, heat-warped camera at them.

The reason that they are so scary is that, if we are extremely unlucky, we will meet one of them on our walk home from work tonight. The hitch hiker will smile and sidle over to us, offer to shake our hand. And if our fear of giving offense overcomes our in-built trepidation at his lank-haired, gap-toothed strangeness, if we reach out to shake his hand, we must watch his other hand very very closely. The truth is that we have met the hitch hiker before, he has recently been released from prison and has asked us for a bus fare before. We have shaken his hand, not daring to smell our palms afterwards, just washing them guiltily when we reach the safety of home.

We may have met the Old Man before two. This charming old gent who means well, who is "old school" and casually prejudiced across every conceivable dimension: gender, race, sexuality... we have heard his views expressed by uncles linked to us by uncertain family relationships, bonds, and commitments. We have bought him drinks in dark and dingy hotel bars in Liverpool. He has shown us the gap between his teeth, how he can capture our sister's nipple in there, his tongue flickering like a rattlesnake's tail.

In my opinion, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 1974 is one of a handful of the greatest horror movies ever made. This was just a fraction of my rationale.

Bayonetta

2010-03-24T18:34:00.000-07:00

Finally completed Bayonetta on "hard" mode tonight, after several weeks-worth of hard struggle. This was a very difficult game, probably the most difficult one I've played in several years so it feels like quite an achievement to have finished it. It was always a challenge but each kill was very satisfying as a result.

The other great thing is that the end-of-game "reward" sequences are long and have a lot of variety, so there is a feeling of getting your just desserts in the end (I'll say no more so as not to spoil things for anyone). The only bad thing, now that I move on to God of War III is that I'm going to miss that perfect ass ;-). Heaven knows how long the developers spent working on that little number...

Hail His name, the Master of Mankind

2010-03-23T02:16:00.000-07:00

This post is just a small nod of appreciation to the milieu created by Rick Priestley in 1988 for the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop battle game. For me, the image below is the one that best evokes this milieu.

This is not a future of bright sophistication and civilised committee meetings. This is brute force and ignorance. If a computer doesn't work, you do not open the case and carefully replace the components whilst wearing a surgical mask. You hit it as hard as you can. If that doesn't work, you call a tech priest who murmurs a litany over it. And for some reason, it works. Technology so advanced that it responds to ritual and percussion.

The weapons. Orbital bombardments, power fists, powered armour, plasma cannons, chainswords, storm bolters, frag grenades, melta-guns, melta-bombs, the manufactories on Mars, the Inquisition, Exterminatus, the bodies of a hundred youthful psykers sacrificed each day to preserve the last spark of life in the dessicated skeletal husk of the Emperor.

Brute force and ignorance. A regime of such brutality serving as humanity's final defence against damnation at the hands of the chaos gods.

Now... playing this game has never held much interest for me so I wouldn't call myself a fan of that. What I am a fan of though, is the incredibly detailed and grim universe that the Games Workshop team invented as background information to the game.

As the years since 1988 passed, a story began to emerge. I'll try to summarise what I recall of the story without looking too much up online. This is what I have in my head.

I think the main dramatic elements begin 30,000 years in the future in M31... or to use the WH40K date system, something like 1 397 452.M31, with the Horus Heresy.

Little Big Planet

2010-03-22T17:02:00.000-07:00

The Chronicles of Doctor Who

2010-03-21T14:11:00.000-07:00

It's great to hear that Michael Moorcock, author of fantasy books about Elric of Melnibone, Corum, Count Brass, Hawkmoon, and many others has been approached to add a Doctor Who novel to his canon. Here's hoping that at some point in the future, we will see him write an episode for this series.

At times his writing can be quite dark. I always think of two Elric novels: the first, in which Elric watches his torturer, Doctor Jest, at work with a scalpel on one helpless prisoner and another, in which Elric advises one antagonist

"you will look back on agonies presently unimaginable to you with a sense of nostalgia... as a time before the pain really began..."

Aperture

2010-03-18T05:27:00.000-07:00

I must admit, one of the nicest experiences I think a man can have is to be caught in his girlfriends narrowed vaginal opening. That firm, implacable grip that seems to warmly tell your erection

"no... you're not going anywhere

"and you wouldn't, even if you could."

Trailer for Doctor Who

2010-03-06T07:25:00.000-08:00

Sounds as though the new series starts in Easter.

Could good evolve?

2010-02-27T16:59:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure whether you're religious. As Johnny Cash puts it

"I think I understand a little bit how you feel 'bout some things, it's none of my business how you feel 'bout some other things, and I don't give a damn how you feel about some other things..."

I'm not sure whether I'm religious. But I do find evolutionary theory satisfying about a lot of things. A useful tool of such elegance that a deity might beget it.

What do I mean about goodness? I'm basically talking about altruism that goes beyond reactionary preservation of your blueprint. I think that's all DNA is... a blueprint or a recipe instructing each of your cells about how to behave in unison to create and maintain you. They have been described as selfish because they build you in such a way that you will survive. Your cells contain the blueprints and so the blueprints survive.

The blueprints know that you will die, eventually (they should know, they are the blueprint), and they will be destroyed when that happens. So the other thing that genes want, is for this creature they built to reproduce.

It isn't perfect, but the physics of reproduction means that for each blueprint, half will be copied and will escape from you to form a new creature. That half of a blueprint can live on after your death. In fact, when two halves of a blueprint from different creatures combine together to create a new creature, those two halves actually have many more similarities between them than differences. So, by getting your girl pregnant or being made pregnant by your man, the vast majority of your blueprint is copied.

Survival (through life and reproduction) is the only priority of your blueprint. Selfish as a blueprint.

So the question is, would the blueprint include parts to make you good and altruistic? Would those parts be useful, redundant, or an impediment to the priority?

We need to imagine life before goodness. The battle for survival. Everybody living on the brink of starvation and dehydration. Desperate for food, bodies echoing hollowly with hunger, heads banging with heat and thirst. The way lions feel. Are you there yet? OK... good.

Now you find an old half-rotten apple. Do you selfishly eat it all yourself or do you altruistically share it with your mate (interpret mate any way you like)? It's survival calculus. Do you believe that your mate's gratitude and the possibility of calling in a reciprocal favour at some future date is worth the certain loss of half your rotten apple? What does your blueprint tell you? What if the potential payback is sex and the chance to replicate your selfish genes? The helix from DNA, he say yes.

OK, now what if we're thinking of the other interprestation of mate? A friend that you can't ever reproduce with? Altruism can still improve your chances of reproduction. Now you're building reputation. We're a sociable species. What if word of your altruism spreads? You have saved someone's life. Perhaps they speak of your deeds in awed tones when they are next with the tribe before the next hunt. What do the other types of mate think of that? Perhaps your altruism is an impressive quality. The fact that it is someone whose life you saved, someone who is alive because of you, that is telling of your kindness, strengthens your reputation far more than any selfish boasting could.

Everybody wants to be your friend. Those who can want to reproduce with you and have similarly good and caring offspring.

So yes, in my view, it's quite likely that good can evolve.

Bas Rutten's barfight survival guide

2010-02-25T14:08:00.000-08:00

Storytelling in computer games

2010-02-23T15:35:00.000-08:00

Another one by Daniel Floyd:

Computer games provoking learning

2010-02-23T15:33:00.001-08:00

Another one by Daniel Floyd:

Problems and choice in computer games

2010-02-23T15:32:00.000-08:00

Another one by Daniel Floyd:

Sex and computer games

2010-02-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

Another by Daniel Floyd:

Controversy in computer games

2010-02-22T16:10:00.000-08:00

Another presentation by Daniel Floyd

Uncanny valley

2010-02-22T16:07:00.000-08:00

Daniel Floyd and James Portnow presenting...

Ten dimensions explained

2010-02-20T06:36:00.000-08:00

Very nice and comprehensible description of ten-dimensional reality. Well worth viewing before reading some of the later chapters in Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

If there are exotic creatures out there that are able to perceive the ninth and tenth dimensions, then we will be utterly irrelevant to their affairs. We just have to hope that they don't accidentally anhihilate us (and our universe) when carrying out those affairs. I guess this is how Doctor Who and the time lords (creators of the TARDIS) see things

Sunlight in the attic

2010-02-12T13:49:00.000-08:00

and the image I have is of a ramshackle timber house on a hot summer's day. The frame is dark to the point of blackness against the blazing sun. In the attic, a lot of the roof has been neatly sawn away, allowing golden light to pour in and burn away the dust. Dust that has built up over fifteen winters. The attic, and all it contains, exposed. Purified and healed by the light.

Of course, the thing you're all wondering is "what is it like to have brain surgery?" It's a hard question to answer. Let me give you a bit of context. We're late in '88 and I've just seen a cute advert for a new toy, something that sounded like Cabbage Patch Kids, but I seem to think were some kind of appealing, yet plastic looking caterpillars... I went to tell my brother that I'd seen them and that our sister might like one for Christmas.

I think I had caught him emerging from the bathroom, about to go onto his top bunk to do some reading. Then I realised I couldn't pronounce the name of the toy (let's say Cabbage Patch Kids, for the sake of argument). It kept coming out as a sequence of syllables that rhymed (approximately) but the consonants were all wrong. tabakap tabakap and I'd keep giving up, alarmed, unable to pronounce it.

I'd been revising for mock exams all day, and was doing my last minute memorisation routine, so I stopped trying and just concentrated on revising for one of the most important exams of my life up to that point.

It was a humanities subject that I wasn't too keen on, maybe history or geography... I'm thinking... geography. History was a subject I would have done crap on anyway because during a hypoglycaemic reaction on my way home one lunch time, I'd actually thrown my hand written school exercise and class note books away in a fit of frustration and discombobulation. Anyway, the next morning, things seemed OK-ish, at first. I had a few problems pronouncing the occasional word, but no big problem, I was getting by... to a certain extent.

We walked into school, I was still trying to memorise and remember my revision notes as we walked. I got into the exam. And that's when it all came to pieces.

I couldn't write. I was so panicked by this, that I couldn't even begin to answer the exam. There was something wrong with my brain when it came to words. I couldn't pronounce them. I couldn't put the pieces together properly. I would learn years later that these pieces are called morphemes and phonemes. They were a mess in my mind. Well, they weren't. The little pieces were OK, it was my ability to sequence them properly that seemed to have to gone to pot.

I put my hand up to say that I had a problem. What did I say exactly? I can't remember. Why? I don't know. All I know is that my mum came to the school to pick me up. She told me that one of my teachers, an invigilator for the exam, told her that I hadn't been able to write my name correctly on the exam paper. My mum realised something major had gone wrong. We went to the GP and forced a referral to Whiston Hospital (where I was actually born, and as a matter of coincidence, Steven Gerrard was born too).

I spent quite a long time in Whiston... I was in there for a week before the consultant came to visit the children's ward that I was on. The previous day had been immensely frustrating and scary. At one point I had totally failed to converse with one nurse, groping for phonemes, hardly able to pronounce a single sound and she had eventually given up on me, waving her hands in exasperation. Imagine that.

I was lucky to be seen by this particular consultant. She was a woman that my mum and I had met her quite a few times as she had previously been consultant at a different outpatients clinic that I had attended, so she knew my history and also mannerisms to a certain extent (though I was always pretty locked down in those days). Well, this consultant, Dr. Cramp, gave me some neuro-psychological tests: arithmetic, physical coordination, ability to walk in a straight line, etc. I managed most of them and was able to recall words but unable to pronounce them. I struggled with arithmetic...particularly abstract things like carrying the four (for example) when doing additions. Dr. Cramp's comment was "this isn't the Richard we know".

I was then taken by ambulance (and friendly scouse ambulance drivers driving at worrying speed) to the neurological unit at Alder Hay hospital (now closed: thanks Thatcher) for an MRI or PET scan, I can't remember which. Needle in the back of my hand and needing to hold absolutely still for about ten minutes. I did have one false start, but managed to hold still for the duration in the end. Then we went back to Whiston Hospital to await the results of the scan.

I remember the consultant discussing the results with another doctor (a black guy) and my parents. They said there was a bleed in some area of my brain that I didn't catch, and am still ignorant about. Then they sent me away to the play room in the paediatric ward at Whiston hospital, where I could look at old dusty (possibly hallucinogenic) ex-library books and grimy fisher price toys. I can still smell them in my mind's nose.

While I waited, contemplating my bleeding brain and the possibility which had been mentioned already, of exploratory brain surgery, journalists from the local newspaper arrived, wanting to take a photo of some of the children who happened to be present on the ward at that time. I was one of them. I probably couldn't have said cheese, thanks to that tricky affricate at the beginning... and didn't feel like smiling. Still, I tried. When you look at the photo below, try to remember that. One of the kids' brains is bleeding.

There was a CAT scan involved somewhere, but I don't remember which hospital that was. This was quite some time ago. I'm guessing the CAT scan was done first (at Whiston) but it might actually have been later. By the time this whole incident was over, I would have had three: CAT, PET, and MRI.

There was a bleed visible on the scan, it looked about the size of a walnut (the darkness). I was then told I may need brain surgery to investigate it. For that, I'd have to go to the neurological unit at Walton Hospital. I think it was here that they did the CT scan (a cheaper process than the MRI, but anyway). There was a second MRI scan too, I think, just days before the scheduled exploratory surgery. A chance for the doctors to get the latest bulletin from the front line conflict between blood and brain.

I remember the surgeon had very big fingers. He told me about the chances. 10% death, 20% permanent paralysis. If we don't operate, the problem might clear up on its own. It might get worse and kill you.

Basically, as I have heard neurosurgeons say since the operation, it's Russian Roulette with two revolvers. One revolver is surgery and one is doing nothing. Both have risks and the art is to correctly assess which risk is the lesser, and taking it.

On balance, they recommended surgery. My parents would sign for me, but I was there for the conversation... for the decision, and as someone who had been trapped into silence by this problem (this cavernous haemangioma), I did not consider "doing nothing" as an option.

10% and 20% are sizeable risks, but worth taking in my view, then. All I can say is that I had faith. And yes, my views on religion were simpler then.

The surgeon, a consultant, Mr. Cunningham, explained about the operation. They would cut a horseshoe shape in my skull. I asked him, and he said that yes, the cut would be angled to create a bevel that would stop the piece of skull from falling onto my brain before it had healed after the operation.

The opening of the horseshoe would serve as a hinge of skin, scalp, and muscle that could be pulled open for the operation. The position of the bleed was under the surface of my brain, so some small cutting through would be necessary. This was all factored into the risk assessment (I guess).

During my hospital stay, various drips were put into my arm. With maybe 24 hours to go, an attractive young female doctor took one out and exchanged it for a higher gauge needle to deliver controlled quantities of both insulin and glucose into my system. It took her six, count 'em, attempts before the needle was in the right place, the crooks of both my elbows dully bruised.

The new drip had an irritating habit of beeping every time it would administer something, something it did every 15 minutes or so. I remember interfering with my sleep. By this time, I was so institutionalised that I'd become like an insomniac - never really awake, never really asleep.

On the day of the operation, I was wheeled on a hospital trolley by one or two nurses and my parents. They did crash the trolley through the push doors of the hospital... the smell of antiseptic must have been everywhere. I usually notice it when I'm walking through a hospital, but perhaps I was so institutionalised by this point and used to the smell that I didn't notice it.

I believe I was naked except for a hospital gown, but not warm and not cold. My parents wished me luck. I looked at my dad and said "I can't believe this is: my first operation and it's brain surgery." Uncannily, my verbal articulation had improved during my time in Walton, though it did still cause me the occasional problem.

My disability had reached its nadir in Whiston hospital near the start of all this, when the bleed was not even a shadow on a scan, gliding through the water. It's always like that when you see a doctor, I guess, the symtoms that have bothered you for the past week suddenly vanishing.

They left me at the elevator, my mum squeezing my hand and wishing me luck. The nurses were with me. They took the brakes off and we dropped at speed down through the lift shaft. And there is descent: long and fast. A sense of consequence.

I'm glad I never saw the surgical saw they'd use. If I had, my fear would have been far greater. Instead, I went into the operating theatre with a sense of acceptance and passivity. No fight. No real fear. Just a heart-felt prayer. One of the nurses put another needle into my... wrist, I think. They transferred me to the operating table where I passed out. I asked them some questions, but they were questions of no consequence. Did the surgeons arrive while I was conscious? I believe they did... I believe so. They asked me to count back... slowly... was it back... from what number? I don't really remember. I fell into the darkness of that first brain scan.

I awoke from the darkness into the gloom of a night time hospital ward. It was winter, and the only windows in sight were the doors to the ward that opened onto brightly lit hospital corridors. The nurse's station provided the second source of illumination. I believe, in a daze of anaesthetic, the person I awoke to was the sister of the ward. In no time, it seemed, my parents were there. I raised my right leg and arm. No paralysis. I felt relief. We talked. They asked me whether I was OK. I said I think so.

The Lockerbie disaster had happened. Hundreds dead. The plane had crashed into the village, a small village that would otherwise never have been noticed or brought to the attention of the world. Hundreds dead and I was alive.

I would learn later, that my mother had asked for a prayer to said for me at the local methodist church one Sunday, and the methodists in the village of Farnworth prayed for me. I'm not sure whether they prayed before the operation, or after it, but it made me think. I did feel grateful. My perspective on reality had changed.

I believed in the existence of God. But not as we know him. It was something abstract, like a law of probability. I believed there were an infinite number of parallel universes. In one fifth of them I am paralysed on the right side of my body, in one tenth I am a vegetable, and in another tenth, I died and no aeroplane fell in a fiery slalom through the small terraced houses in the village of Lockerbie. The conscious I am writing this in the best of my possibilities. I cannot speak for you.

Later, I found that I could hardly open my mouth at all. It would only go as wide as the width of my thumb, perhaps a little more. (Several days later, I brought this to the attention of the consultant surgeon. He explainied that in sawing open my skull, it had been necessary to sever a tendon on that side of my scalp. He expected it would heal in time. It did, though it took longer than I had thought before I could get my mouth fully open again to stuff my face with Tuc biscuits).

Later still, I tried to raise my head, but couldn't. It hurt when I tried. I felt a pulling at the back of my head and pain on the left side of my scalp. Something pulling and threatening to tear? I never saw the tube running under my scalp.

They referred to it as a drain. I suppose it was there to allow blood and fluid from the trauma of the surgery to be released from the confines of my skull where it would otherwise cause harmful pressure. There seemed to be perhaps three quarters of a litre of blood in it when the tube was removed the next day, or maybe the day after.

Taking the drain out was uncomfortable... probably the most painful thing I felt during the whole affair. There was spilt blood and yes, there was a sucking gurgle; at the time, I was sure that that sound came from my skull, but surely it was from the bottle(?); when it was freed.

The cavernous haemangioma itself never caused me any physical pain. Like a girlfriend, the pain it caused was all emotional, about possibilities smashed and futures abandoned. I did have a feeling of grogginess after the brain surgery, but I believe that was mainly a result of the anaesthetic. Were there headaches? There were, there was some pain, but nothing that left me sleepless. Having said that, I was prescribed a few days' worth of pain killers for after the operation. I don't remember any description of their potency from the doctors. They either worked well, or weren't really needed.

Was the operation successful? This is a very difficult question to answer. I'm a single man working as a researcher, umm-ing and er-ing over whether to start a PhD. I got an upper second in my first degree, got my master's.

What if this whole affair from the fag-end of the 80s (to para-quote Bruce Robinson) hadn't happened? Were there universes in that infinite set where I have a first-class bachelor's degree and a distinction for my master's? Were there universes where I am married and have children? have fulfilled my ambition to write a work of fiction (it's a best seller and I am a billionaire)? Am not pissing my time up the wall with this widely read blog?

May be there were, but maybe you had such possibilities too, yet here you are, reading this ballocks. Fuck it, OK, I say it was a success.

I was warned that they'd monitor me for six months after the operation because there was a chance that I'd suffer from epileptic fits. I'm now in the second year of the third decade post-op, and I still haven't suffered from one... I sometimes forget to keep my fingers crossed on that and maybe that's a good sign in itself.

I have no regrets about the decision I took to have a horseshoe shaped cut made in my roof and my attic opened up to the light and the breeze. Who knows, maybe it cleared out some of the cobwebs.

Supplies!

2010-02-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

You remember the scene in Kingpin where Woody Harrelson has to pay his rent by fucking his landlady? How the next morning he was crouched over the toilet, gripping the edge of the bowl and retching in horror at the memory of the night before? My one and only blind date was like that.

I blame the bloody internet. Jules and I had got chatting via love@lycos and things had progressed quite rapidly to phone calls and enjoyable phone sex sessions that she used to participate in while in the bath (it was true, I could hear the splashes. Incidentally, the best phone sex I ever had was with a scottish girl called Kirsty who told me "I wanna peel your foreskin back and stick my tongue down your Jap's eye", still one of the two sexiest things I have ever heard... anyway, let's get on with the original anecdote...). Jules was a nurse, which had my imagination running. I'd tried to ask her about her body, without being too specific. She told me she had strong legs as she needed to heft patients in and out of beds, and she had good lower body strength. Put that way, it still sounded good. We were getting on like a house on fire, liked similar movies (Fight Club) was one in particular that we both talked about liking. Anyway, one time she invited me down to Reading to meet up. I agreed readily, and made the three hour train journey there. She told me I'd recognise her because she was wearing a monkey-shaped ruck sack...

So, I get off the train and see her. I actually walked past her once, refusing to believe that the girl with the rucksack could really be her. It was when I walked back to see her again, that I suddenly realised "oh... this is a blind date". If it hadn't been, it wouldn't have happened. I was angry at God for playing this little number on me. Remember David Brent's reaction to one of his dates in the final episode of the office? "oh for fu-" I thought that several years earlier, on this sultry evening in Reading. My problem was, it was so late in the evening and I was not ready for another 3 hours or so train journey home, so I committed, and we met up.

Overall, it was nice, though it felt said. In her photos she looked like a woman ten years older than she really was. She didn't smile much in those photos. We talked, we got on great. We ate badly, I can hardly remember what. Night came and she was expecting, demanding sex. Demanding the rent. I fingered the fuck out of her. She was incredibly wet... a sodden square metre of mattress. I still wonder whether she had pissed herself, I'm still not sure... it didn't smell like that, but then where else had it all come from? Did I mention I was a virgin at the time, and remained one for several years AFTER this trip to Reading. She asked me to put my dick in her. I said no. I'm gonna lose it to the right person. I DID lose it to the right person. Several years later. Anyway, Jules sucked my dick. It felt good, especially when she was sucking my glans... I didn't realise that sensation of suction could be so nice. I say I didn't come in her mouth, that she mistook pre-cum for a full ejaculation. She claims I came. Fuck, at least it stopped her.

The next morning, looking back on the night before, I couldn't get the image of the pale fat... turkey... out of my mind, I felt truly nauseaous, I was actually dry heaving. Seeing that scene on Kingpin a couple of years later brought it all back to me. We saw Evolution at Reading's nice cinema complex on saturday night, after a day spent walking along the river... Thames? Is it the thames? It was beautiful really, traditional English riverside, a place where regatta would be held on glorious summer afternoons. Possibly a little way upstream from where the Oxford-Cambridge boat race is held. I just wish I'd been there with the person I love now, but I met her several years later. I spent the rest of the weekend trying to avoid sex with her, trying to avoid paying the rent. I pretty much succeeded by tactical tiredness although there was a little more on the sunday morning. I left by train later on the Sunday, promising to call her again. I never did, to my shame, I dumped her by text on the train.

Blind dates... I don't recommend them.

More games than one person can handle...

2010-02-11T17:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I succumbed today and decided to purchase Sega's Bayonetta for PS3. The problem is I already have Assassin's Creed 2 that I'm working through for the second time after a corruption in my original save game (I'd completed it, but hadn't got around to checking out Chapter 12 that I recently downloaded and installed).

I'm also playing Bioshock 2 on the PC (and loving the immersive atmosphere, though worried that even though I have no skill at the game, I'm still making progress with it). I undertstand that next week an expansion is coming out for my biggest time sink of all, EQ2. And not just any expansion, but an increase in level up to 90 and a graphics upgrade too (so finally, as my brother put it, EQ2 will enter the 20th Century. Yes, we know we're now in the 21st, but progress is progress...)

A pictorial history of my computer games

2010-02-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

I didn't write any of these... I may not even have bought some of them... but I certainly "copied" them. "Copying" is a bit like "pirating" but for people who go to Sunday school...

Females and games

2010-02-07T08:07:00.000-08:00

Just forwarding this video I found posted at Sexy Videogameland:

How octopus suckers work

2010-02-06T17:19:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to cite this cool description of tentacular fixing apparatus (19th century marine biologists used to refer to it):

How octopus suckers work

Kane&Lynch

2010-02-05T16:31:00.000-08:00

I'm quite looking forward to this.

I was one of the few people who actually quite enjoyed the humour and mania of Kane and Lynch: Dead Men. The game mechanics were very dodgy in places, but overall there was enough character and charm to keep me hooked until the end. I loved the romance of those madcap characters... the desperate ex-SAS guy with the plaster across his nose (was it broken, or was he wearing it just to make sure that both nostrils were well aerated?), the unselfconscious psychopath with his pills and unfashionable haircut. Two losers bumbling their way through a world of pain.

Of course the creators of that game made a critical error. Reading that gamespot had given Kane and Lynch: Dead Men no more than an average review, fairly pointed to its technical flaws... the games creators contacted gamespot and demanded a re-write of the review. News of this leaked and

the shit hit the fan. The internati lost all objectivity and started a universal hate campaign against Kane&Lynch. Zero stars or less were awarded to it by a trillion blobs of uncoordinated acne-ridden mouse rolling blubber and the game was finished. A financial disaster and bad investment. It was a shame overall. In terms of character and its adult humour, similar in sensibility to 2009's barnstorming Crank : High Voltage, the game deserved at least 50% as a rating.

The sequel is coming soon and I for one want to see it. I admire their courage for releasing it, and just hope everyone else reflects on the over-reaction last time and tries to look at Kane&Lynch 2 with fresh eyes.

Farewell to a good doctor

2010-02-05T04:44:00.000-08:00

The part that moved me most, and set up emotional momentum that carried on through the rest of the End of Time, was the close-up of Bernard Cribbins (from The Dalek Invasion of Earth) staring out at us in a combination of regret and loss while the powerful, slow metronomic grind of the Tardis fades away. While his voices have been inconstant, this is how the Doctor has always really said "goodbye".

I'm thankful to Russell T. Davis for resurrecting this show from the heap of dereliction that Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and others had left of Doctor Who. From the final fascist boot in the face from Michael Grade that was intended to stamp the series out forever.

Michael Grade. Russell T. Davis shat long and hard on your useless head.

There's a nice history of Doctor Who presenting the show as a series of music videos to various tunes and music from the sixties, seventies, and eighties (I love the use of "Vienna" for Logopolis and Tom Baker's regeneration).

Liberty City twinned with my apartment

2010-02-04T16:13:00.000-08:00

Grand Theft Auto 4 reminds me of my flat. My empty flat. Moving in... one 32" LCD TV (1080i, not p), no aerial, one radio, one PS3. Flat pack furniture being assembled by day, buying a kettle, carrying a fucking microwave home from Sainsbury's (made in China like everything from that place, including the paring knife whose blade snapped thanks to poor quality workmanship). By night... adventures in Liberty City. The rain. That incredible rain. The realisation that they had finally cracked rain.

This screenshot doesn't really do the game justice... for that you need the movement and the shifting patterns of light. The combination of droplets, lighting, and haze.

The game model seemed amazing, so full of features that great moments could occur as a matter of pure chance. I have read reports of people who, by chance, heard New York Groove on their car radio right as they drove across the Liberty City Bridge thing modelled on the Brooklyn Bridge into "Manhattan". My moment was of realising that I was out of money and was going to have to do my first contract hits to pay better weapons for the bank job mission. I made the decision at night. It started to rain in the darkness. As I walked from my stolen (thieved) car to the phone kiosk, lightning flashed and thunder rolled while the rain exploded from the sky. Unforgettable.

Pop Goes the Weasel always seemed to be in my head. It always seemed to be playing in the Perseus tailors. I had it in my head as I did my own shopping for clothes and household items at Beatties, my local department store. I actually included New York Groove on a compilation CD I recorded for my girlfriend who was living at some distance. The first time I ever put computer game music (I know, I know, it didn't originate in GTA4, but I heard it there first) onto a CD. I didn't receive any negative comments about it either. My girlfriend didn't comment "well... the CD was OK, but what was that computer game shit on it?" Well, OK she's my girlfriend so maybe she wouldn't say that. But then, she lives in a capital city, so maybe she would... Ha, in time, with subsequent CDs I went on to include David Whittaker's Alien Syndrome music... just 2 minutes of it... And still no complaints from her! Love.

Divine doublethink

2010-02-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

I pray when I fly. I don't believe in heaven or hell or life after death (though perhaps I should believe in reincarnation, after all, you only live once). I don't really belive in God and I certainly think there are a lot of wholly ridiculous people associated with the whole Belief thing

but

it was a comfort to me to believe that my grandad, who I loved and who was a superb person, had moved on to a better place when he died. In fact, after years of fairly disappointing fishing trips my uncle and my grandad went on one to remember their recently deceased father. They got 8 BIG fish and brought them home, 4 for each family, for a few dinners. My dad commented that perhaps grandad had "had a word upstairs". It's funny. It's true. It's comforting to think of that.

But I'm a scientist. I always wanted to be a scientist, right from the earliest prospective creative writing pieces I wrote as a kid in primary school. Stories in which the hero was an open-minded scientist. I always wanted to be that. Maybe 10 years ago I suddenly realised, fuck, my ambitions came true! Unconsciously... as naturally as tears or laughter, as Stephen King has put it before. So science and religion... difficult to reconcile?

Not really. Science (well look, there are only two kinds of science: physics and stamp collecting) so physics... the laws of matter and space and the forces around them. Physics are the laws set by God. They are the True commandments. The laws that cannot be disobeyed. The laws of physics are the commandments, the Ten Commandments are "more what you might call...guidelines..."

So when I fly, I pray. That God will guide us with a steady hand in accordance with the laws that He, in His infinite wisdom, has established within this world of wonders. I thank Him for the physics of flight, the air channeled by the flaps rushing over the upper surface of the wing, reducing the pressure there. Thank Him for the need of the air to equalise the pressure and as a side effect, to lift the weight of the plane and allow us to travel safely, in His love.

I'm back to normal a few minutes after take off, and return to fawning when the pilot starts his descent.

I do believe in science. In my opinion, it is a belief because in the end, it will run out of answers if you just keep on asking "Why?" It has the advantage though that at some point, it will lead to the answers that are currently unanswerable. In this way, it's not as intellectually lazy, helpless, and... infantile as religion which seems to give up the quest for answers very early in the investigation, resorting to God's will. The curse of belief in science is that it makes me objective enough to feel guilty about my occasional abandonments of rationality, which I realise are all motivated by self-interest in one way or another.

Now, go and do unto others as you would have done to yourself. Amen.

Tower block of commons

2010-02-03T16:48:00.000-08:00

I saw this show on Monday 1/2/10. A handful of MPs went to live for a while with the inhabitants of various grotty council flats. It was pretty satisfying to see these wealthy politicians forced to come face-to-face with what I'd call "reality". The methadone addict and the buggered toilet. The gyro. The social, etc. Naturally it made me think of Edinburgh.

I'd been in a Prince's Trust volunteers programme, as part of a group of employed and fairly long-term unemployed people doing various bullshit across Edinburgh. I met Shaun there, not "Sean with an accent", but plain Shaun... Shaun what? Murphy? I can't remember, this was 1997/8. I went drinking with him one evening at a pub on Cockburn street (when I first started work at High Riggs Job Centre as an intermediary arranging interviews for people of varying aptness with employers looking to fill vacancies), I used to mispronounce that. Like it was a symptom of excessive genital dryness or eating too much English mustard. I was lucky that pretty early on, one client, rough but kind hearted, explained that it was pronounced like James Coburn's surname.

I was impressed to be drinking with a chronic alcoholic. You'd think he was just the same as you. I saw nothing to suggest a gluttony on his part for booze. He bought me a round, I bought him one, maybe we did three or four altogether. He selected bagpipe music on the pub jukebox, and told me how much he loved bagpipes... That admission was, I suppose, the biggest indicator of the seriousness of his drink problem. In time, I left him alone to drink. He must have had hardly any money, but there were no hard feelings. It had just got weird. No real conversation or connection. Just the pints going down.

Before that session, he'd told me how he lived. His accommodation was some kind of flat in a shared house or terrace or something. He wasn't paying for it or renting it and I don't think it was his official address, and that makes me think he wasn't in receipt of housing benefit, but maybe he was, cashing it and bullshitting about what it was really being spent on. He told me he used to collect his gyro from somewhere... the house he was squatting in? a friend's place? the job centre? was it Wester Hailes?... on a Tuesday. I guess that'd be about £48 a fortnight in those days. He'd drink the lot in one day and wait for the next gyro. How did he live? St. Catherine's convent had a charity kitchen for the homeless. He'd eat canned hotpot that looked and tasted like dogfood (he said) from the EC hotpot mountain . He'd squat in his house. He'd wait for the next gyro and drink that too.

That's a part of the reality that these politicians were finally being forced to see. One of the MPs on the show had previously been "done for all them rent boys" as one passsing youth in a group of four told him. "You've got AIDS" he was told. The MP later went outside onto the barren fields around his council flat, lay flat on his face, desolated, and began to weep. Yeah, I think they're feelin' it.

Best man

2010-01-29T03:17:00.001-08:00

I'm the quiet one who sits in the corner and can't think of anything to say. When my brother asked me whether I'd like to be best man at his wedding, I agreed pretty quickly. ("I thought I'd ask you because you've always been quite... literary," he said). For all my quietness, during the preceding 8 years I'd slowly learned how to make presentations without drawing cries of "speak up!" from the audience. For me, the key is to deliver the speech enough times that it enters my vocal muscle memory, rehearsing for an imaginary audience, in a voice loud enough to fill a room. I always find those rehearsals very useful for learning exactly how incoherent the first draft of the speech is, and for learning where the stumbling blocks and embarrassments are. Then it's revision revision revision until they have been (mostly) cut out or adjusted.

Having made my first (moderately) acceptable presentation at a conference in 2005, I was in the right place, mentally and with regard to confidence, to accept the task of making the best man's speech at my brother's wedding. Having accepted, the work really started. I thought about it for weeks before even writing anything, serious under-the-shower alpha-wave thinking. I was going to include anecdotes, as many as I could, like a CV of our relationship as brothers. It would need to be entertaining. I also learned it needed not to offend him, his wife, or our severe in-laws to be. That was one half of the speech. An introduction of the groom and the groom's family to the bride's family.

The other half was about marriage. Its history and significance. What was a bridesmaid? What was a best man? Why were these rituals important? And so I read about the history and tried to bind it to the day and present the wedding as a part of this age-old tradition. I wish
I'd read about the symbolism of the rings. The fact that in medieval times, whenever people made promises or drew up business contracts, they would offer a ring as a token of the promise. The ring was the promise. In marriage, it still is.

One source of motivation for me in giving the best man's speech was that a few years earlier, a cousin had got married and had told his best man that he didn't need to give a speech if he didn't want to. His best man was so shy that he couldn't bear the thought of it and managed to avoid giving any speech. When the day of the wedding came, he regretted that decision and knew it was an opportunity missed. I didn't want to have the same regrets about my brother's wedding. The more I learned, the more privileged I felt to have been asked. The best man is like the groom's minder. His defender and assistant. The one who brushes off the dust, makes sure that lapels are straight and ties are fixed.

While I was preparing the speech, I actually attended another wedding, and made sure to pay special attention to the best man's speech there. It was a great help... well structured, short and sweet (quite a bit shorter than my final one). It made me realise that short speeches are much better than long ones and much less boring to listen to. I decided to adjust mine from roughly 20 minutes to roughly 10 minutes in length. There were some hard cuts, but nothing I regret now.

Overall, I'm happy with the speech. It's personal and true. I tried to make it light but at the same time to reflect the seriousness of the institution. It was fairly well received and I think that's all a best man can really hope for. You can see it (split across two youtube videos, a ten minute one and a two minute one) below:

A storm-lit sea

2010-01-28T17:37:00.000-08:00

and the image I have is of the wild sea at night. It would be slate grey and impenetrable by day but in the moonlight it is as dark as a British winter's night, foam and spray glowing like phosphor in the occasional flash of lightning. It is terribly cold and terribly deep. It could be Baltic, but you and I know it is the English channel, but it is not there. It lies between the reefs of my mind. Thoughts and ideas tumble with the waves. But they are not there. Lightning is the occasional flash of inspiration. But it is not there. I am swimming amongst the surface of this sea now, tossed and turned.

Shortly, I know I am drowning. Breaths taken above the storm tossed surface are as watery and as aery as those taken beneath it. Beneath is tranquil. Not difficult. Easy. I am struggling but the struggle seems hopeless. In this dream, I know it is vital to stay alive. Not for the dream, but the dreamer. I never had a dream so important. This is something I know. My last image is of my pale clawed hand clutching at the air above the surface of the sea. I have hauled myself out of the dream into bed. I am drenched.

Too much insulin.

Black Death

2010-01-27T16:44:00.001-08:00

I guess it would have been in 1985 or 6 when I read an article in Scientific American about the influence of foreign trade, rats, and fleas in the spread of bubonic plague in medieval times. The front cover of the issue showed Pieter Bruegel's painting:

and the article itself mentioned (in passing) the outfits worn by physicians in medieval times that included protective "beaks" filled with petals to attempt to filter noxious vapours and spirits and attempt to stop the wearer from catching the plague.

The article served as the inspiration for an English assignment I would write a few weeks later (as it happened, I wrote the story first and submitted it opportunistically and far too long in page length for that assignment). The story was about two priests who believed in science and wanted to do what they could for the inhabitants of a plague stricken town (religion and science going hand in hand... the way God intended it to be). In their way was a charlatan witch doctor who believed that wearing that creepy attire would save him from the plague. In the end, a sanctuary house for plague victims burned down "accidentally" but actually thanks to the charlatan, killing everyone in it. One of the priests died tragically of the plague, the charlatan's belief in evil spirits brought an incarnation of the plague into existence. It possessed him. Finally, the last remaining priest and the charlatan have a fight outside a cottage in the snowswept village. The priest vanquishes the charlatan by smashing his head through a window and puching down so as to sever the charlatan's throat on the broken glass. The charlatan died with a scream gurgling through his lips.

Well, this memory of the mid-80s was all brought back by playing Assassin's Creed 2 on the PS3 (I completed the story part of the game a few days ago). It was great to see those renaissance physicians in their birdman regalia, but strange to have them as friends rather than foes in the game. They always did (and continue to) look quite creepy to me.

Still, Assassin's Creed 2 was a great game, great fun to play and so audacious in having you break into the Vatican and assassinate the Pope in the end. One of my favourite quotes from the game is a Venetian city guard telling his colleagues "take this man very seriously..."

Script

2010-01-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I attended a weekly script writing workshop. To be honest, I would have preferred a novel writing workshop but there were none being run in my locality, so script writing it is. I did learn quite a lot about the differences between the script and the novel. At first it was frustrating realising that film makers don't care about characters' thoughts. For them, it's speech that's important. I've always considered dialogue to be the weakest part of my writing, so it was valuable to be forced to practice it. The document embedded here is my third script, a little experiment whose title, participants, and structure were generated automatically (to a certain extent) my a randomised plot generator. Let me know what you think: Last Bus 2

An Unfathomed Sky

2010-01-27T14:19:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I was in the final week of a summer holiday, shocked by how little I'd managed to accomplish in that time. It occurred to me that it was a good opportunity to begin realising my lifetime ambition to complete a piece of creative writing. An opus. It seemed I had two options:

One was to write a season of Doctor Who, though Russel T. Davies seemed to already be doing a great job on that. The more I thought about it, the less confident I became. It's a show with a massive history spanning back to the 1950s... there was too much established lore to consider.

The other option was to write an adaptation of a computer game, a MMORPG I'd been playing for some time, called Everquest 2. Particularly the quest line known as "The Claymore Quest". I imagined that it could be written within maybe 150 pages (if I stretched it out) and then I could move on to what I really wanted to do.

But

I didn't want to write this FOR fans/players of Everquest 2, I wanted to write it for the literary critics at The Times. I wanted a high level of authenticity, research, detail. I also wanted to remain faithful to the history and lore that has been established for EQ2. There is a LOT of it. More than I ever knew during that summer holiday. I wanted an emotionally satisfying and well motivated tale. Those wants of mine are difficult to realise all at once, but all I can say is that I am trying. I expect the final page length for this tale to be more than 1000 pages. For that reason, I am planning to divide it into at least two and maybe three volumes. What you see below is my first draft of chapter 1.

I already don't like the first 3 pages and I intend to make extensive cuts to them. The chapter itself will change as themes develop over subsequent chapters. I am almost ready to start writing chapter 2. I will almost certainly change the chapter titles as I go. Right now, they share the names of the quests within EQ2 that you play through in order to complete the Claymore quest.

An Unfathomed Sky

Reading aloud

2010-01-27T14:15:00.000-08:00

Here, I'm reading from Justin Pollard's "The Interesting Bits", a diverse collection of small historical stories. The author is a researcher for BBC's QI.