365 Da(v)y(d)s - June

So, here we are, or were more accurately, in June, the start of summer. And it was a true start to summer as Viv and I were both completely done with university for the year. Now was time to chillax and enjoy ourselves. And we got off to a great start, with one of the first days out a trip to the cinema with my Viv. We saw Terminator Salvation which was better than Terminator 3 (not saying much), but not as good as Terminator 2 (again, not really saying much).

On Thursday something happened that I have been dreaming of for years! I saw Blue October live for the first time ever! It was easily one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. It was a very intimate affair with a great set list and Justin built up a brilliant rapport with the crowd. It was also another first, it was Viv’s first live music gig and she really enjoyed it!
I would’ve brought back some pictures from this amazing experience, but I decided not to take my phone (which doubles as my camera) so I had no way to take pictures. This is normal for me as I generally don’t like to risk my phone getting damaged, lost or stolen for the sake of taking some pictures.

The next day, me and Viv made an epic trip to the ice cream paradise that is Morelli’s! Let me make this is as clear as possible. They make the Best Ice Cream In The UK (if not the world!). I will demonstrate with pictures:

I’ll explain what you’re looking at. That is vanilla ice cream. That is chocolate ice cream. That is REAL HAZELNUT ice cream. That is a cup of chocolate hazelnut sauce, with real hazelnuts SERVED IN A CHOCOLATE CUP! And it’s topped with real whipped cream.

Here’s another picture that really gets the point across. This is honestly the only ice cream I would pay £10 for and feel I’ve got a massive bargain. If you ever come to Birmingham, UK, you have to go to the bullring, visit Selfridges, and buy something from Morelli’s in the food court. It’ll be the best ice cream experience ever!

Little note of interest, Saturday the 6th of June this year gone was the 25th birthday of Tetris! Now you have the Tetris theme in your head!

Exactly one week into the year, I got my second semester grades and was really pleased to know I got a high 2.1. For those of you not familiar with the university grading system, it is a bit weird. The highest grade is a 1st, followed by a 2.1, then a 2.2 (known as a Desmond) and finally a 3rd. A 2.1 is effectively a B, which is quite good IMHO.

There weren’t many highlights until the middle of the month, when me and Viv travelled south to the barren wasteland that is Bicester (it isn’t that bad I guess) to visit for my brothers birthday.

OMG Train

We were only there for the weekend, and went to what Bicester passes as an ‘all you can eat’'. Now let me explain the ‘’ marks. You see, in Birmingham, all you can eat means fuck loads of food that you approach with the singular intent of creating a pile as big as possible on the biggest plate you can find. You then proceed to insert said food into your mouth, regardless of your actual level of hunger.
Now in Bicester they do things a little differently. They have a menu of say 20 items (a third of the Birmingham AYCE menu). You then proceed to order up to 3 items each or something like that. Once you’ve ordered, they cook the food and bring it to you, which you then eat in a civilized fashion. Once finished, you may order another serving of different items, should you be so inclined.
Needless to say, me and Viv, who are seasoned AYCE veterans found this all rather quant and amusing. The food was of a better quality than what you usually get in a brum restaurant, but the selection was where it was lacking.
Oh god, now I want Big Wok (the best chinese AYCE in brum, IMHO)
It was quite nice visiting my brother and meeting his girlfriend for the first time. All in all, it was a nice weekend and a bit of break from things.

Viv looked STUNNING for the meal btw!

Apart from a few ‘witty’' tweets and status updates (Animals have rights: Animals have the right to be TASTY), there wasn’t much eventful happenings until me and Viv went to the cinema for the second time that month to see Transformers 2.

Now I want to say something. Transformers has never been the most interlectual of concepts. I can imagine the design meeting back in the day going something like this:

Guy 1 “Well, what do boys like?”
Guy 2 “Hmmm, cars and planes and guns”
Guy 1 “True, but what else do they like”
Guy 2 “Giant robots?”
Guy 1 “So how can we get these two together? Giant robots racing cars?”
Guy 2 “How about giant robots that turn into cars?”
Guy 1 “Brilliant, start designing the toys”

So when it comes to watch a film about giant robots, well nothing goes better than giant explosions and giant boobs, I mean Megan Fox! I really enjoyed the more global setting and the bigger, badder robots. Overall, it was an amazing film and I really have enjoyed both films.

Following this cinematic experience, I didn’t really do much else during the month. I did though pick up two brilliant photos.

Giant metal Freddy Mercury will ROCK YOUR WORLD

Legs 1, a strip joint for amputee fetishist

So overall, a brilliant and busy month and as such, less status updates. It’s always a good sign when you’re doing too much about to actually comment on it. Here are there statistics.

Number of Updates: 18, that’s almost half as much as previous months.

First Update: “Davyd is looking forward to cinema 2moro and then BLUE OCTOBER ON THURSDAY!!! WOOOOOOO! (Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:47:33 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd can't wait to get the N97 (aka the iPhone killer) (Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:42:10 GMT)”

Favourite Update: “Davyd If you ever think "everyone is shit but me" than you're a double bacon shit with fries, Mr Shit-Face (Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:59:27 GMT)” A tough pick again this month, but this brilliant Yatzee quote wins hands down.

365 Da(v)y(d)s – May

There are two key themes that dominated this month – pokemon and raging at people (and things). I will begin with the evil that is pokemon!

It all started with some left over birthday money and a certain offer on Game.co.uk. Basically they were offering pokemon diamond AND pokemon pearl together for £35. Considering their individual RRP’s were £25 each, that seemed like a good deal. I’d have one myself and give one game to Viv and we could play together
And it started out innocently enough, but soon I was racking up some scary playtime hours. Now this wasn’t a new addiction for me. Several years ago, I got the poke-virus BAD. We’re talking the first six games, all 251 pokemon (including mew), the entire first series of pokemon cards. I had it baaaaad. And now I was relapsing.
But I wasn’t the only one, Viv was also getting into it in a big way, which made me glad. She was more attached to her pokemon than me which was cute. She wasn’t trying to min/max her ‘mons like me, she was keeping the ones she thought were cute or she had grown attached to. It was such a great approach and was pleasantly refreshing to see.

I had another computer crash this month, I can’t even remember how many I’ve had with this system. Luckily when this happened, I had a second computer ready to receive my hard drive so I could back up all my music, videos and documents, so all was not lost. It was a tiresome experience reinstalling everything but it did mean a nice, smooth running computer afterwards. This really made me rage, but not as much as the following:

• People smoking in public. These people are douche bags, and doubly so for those who think they’re so fucking special that they can smoke where it’s illegal to do so, such metro stops, on busses etc.
• Homeless people who have dogs. I’m sorry but where the fuck do they get these animals? Does one come free with their first stack of big issues? “Hi, here’s 20 copies of Big Issue and your sympathy dog….” I think it’s so cruel that these animals have to be subjected to the same conditions as the homeless that ‘own’ them. Sometimes I want to give a can of dog food to the dog and nothing to the owners.
• Knives – I cut my hand pretty badly by trying to be too manly. I was cutting electrical tape, with a box cutter, one handed, while on the phone. It all when badly and I had to bandage my hand with a pair of boxers! Needless to say I now have a sweet scar!

It was around the middle of the month that my two flat mates/close friends; Paul and Aaron moved out. You see, one of my flat mates is frequently a prick. He gets very aggressive, acts like he owns the whole house and barely lets anyone use the living room. This got too much for Paul and Aaron, so they found a nice place really nearby to move into with a third mutual friend. Now this would be a sad situation in anyone's books, but for me it was even more so. You see, apart from Paul and Aaron (henceforth PA), I have no friends in Birmingham. In fact, I’d go to say I have no friends, ie people I share a common interest or interests with and have a mutual exchange of respect with, in the entire west midlands, lol. ‘But why is this a big deal? You said they were moving nearby?” Well it all comes down to the mutual friend they’d be living with, or more accurately, his family. You see, he happens to be the brother of a girl I went out with for a not-inconsequential amount of time, the end of which was quite messy, due to her actions. Now this was many years ago and I couldn’t give a damn about what he or his sister thinks, I’d go hang with PA anyway. The problem would be that if they were handing out awards for maturity and consideration, I doubt this girl would even be entered into the nominations ¬¬ Basically I was banned from even coming over to say hi if she was there, something I could not, and still cannot, comprehend, seeing as it was so long in the past, why would it be a deal? Ah, never mind, I was sure that me and PA would still get to hang out (and if you keep reading the blog, you’ll find out that we did. See, happy ending!)

Towards the end of the month, I headed down to Guildford to help my Vivvy get back from uni. And this is were the fun pictures come in.
You see, there is something important you should ALWAYS remember: Never fall asleep in the same room as people who played Buckaroo as a kid!

Ooh, good score so far

Lets Get Serious

Ooooooh, how high CAN we go?

Not any higher apparently. Lol

Seeing as this was the end of semester (and the year) for Viv, everyone was getting excited and there was a lot of drinking. Well, a lot more drinking. And some of it was even at parties.

The end of my time at Guildford was truly epic. We went out onto the beautiful area by the lake, started drinking, and kept drinking ALMOST ALL NIGHT! There was even an all night music performance!

The next day, we made the slightly hung over journey back to Wolverhampton. And so would begin me and Viv’s first full summer as a couple ^_^

Number of Updates: 32 (I seem to averaging this number)

First Update: “Davyd is loving pokemon diamond. takes me back! (Fri, 01 May 2009 15:15:19 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd has his Vivvy back in brum! Shame I have to work today tho (Sun, 31 May 2009 06:54:25 GMT)”

Favourite Update: Okay, straight up disclaimer, I don’t have 1 single favourite for this month, so I’m having 3! Ha!

1. “Davyd In america everybody wants to be the best, and if they can't be the best, then they make some fucking shit up to be the best at (wiki Cupstacking) (Sun, 03 May 2009 17:09:39 GMT)”
2. “Davyd It should be legal to squirt smokers in the face with super soakers (Sat, 09 May 2009 07:26:56 GMT)”
3. “Davyd rose mcgowen, as a one legged stripper, with a machine gun for a leg......guess the film (Wed, 20 May 2009 20:46:20 GMT)”

And that is the month of the May! Woooo

365 Da(v)y(d)s – April

April, otherwise known as Davetober (at least to me) is the month where everyone cool commemorates my monumental birth! Combined with the fact Viv and I celebrate our anniversary on the third of this month, it is pretty much a given that this fact would make April ‘09 a busy and eventful month. Well let us see, shall we?

I started the month playing what most would say is my favourite game; Rock Band 2! I do love this game, simply for it’s replay value. The constant dlc means that game constantly grows and expands. I love waiting for Friday to come around to find out if a song I love is going to be available on my favourite game.

For mine and Viv’s anniversary, we decided to have a nice, hand cooked three course meal. It was a most delicious success! For our starter, we had Thai salmon fish cakes with rocket salad. This started my love of Thai red curry paste as a wonder-ingredient.
For our main course, we had rare rump steak with breaded mushrooms and cheesy-mash potato. The steak wasn’t the best cut seeing as we got a slightly incompetent butcher, but as a meal, it was amazing.
For the desert, we had pecan brownies a la mode! (i.e. with ice cream) I love the brownie recipe that I used for this because it produces beautifully gooey brownies with crunchy outsides! We made a fair bit of brownies, but they were all gone by the end of the night!

One of the amazing random things that happened when we all went into Wolverhampton. There were FUCKING OWLS!

Fluffy white barn owl! Viv wanted to take him home!

Three days later, I heard news that almost literally blew my mind! Blue October were playing in Birmingham Carling Academy later in the year. I was so excited that I even started hyperventilating a little and came running down the stairs!
The following day I was up stupidly early, took the metro into Birmingham from Wolverhampton and bought myself two tickets for me and Viv to see my favourite band on the 4th of June.

As well as purchasing tickets for Blue October, we decided to do some window (and possibly real) shopping. We had a lot of fun as these photo’s are testament to.

Viv found a hat that, in her own words ‘makes me look like a pink jellyfish”

 
Oh yea, I’m so cool

Viv freaking loves giant tea cup!

Am I doing it right?

We even found a place that does Japanese style photo stickers! And in the top right is our Blue October Tickets!

While out and about, we visited Urban Outfitters, a store that in my opinion, tries far too hard to be hip and alternative, and just seems fake. Their worst flaw is that everything is OVERpriced! I’ve seen headphones that are £30 in Dixons being sold for £50 and £10 necklaces for £20. But this is what made me rage the most. I was almost incandescent with tangible WTF-ery

 

In case you can’t quite make it out, that price tag says £50! That’s £50 for a watch that looks exactly like the kind you can get out of £1 toy vending machines in supermarkets. I spent about 5 minutes looking at trying to decipher what made it worth £50, but I failed. Sure, it had an alarm and told the time and pretty much the standard features found on watches 1/10 the price, but nothing else. It didn’t set the time automatically by radio. It didn’t have a pulse monitor or gps for sport tracking. It didn’t have Bluetooth (Bluetooth always makes things better). I just couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t even stylish. I mean, if it WAS in fashion to wear watches like this, why by fake overpriced ones? Why not buy the real naff watch for a literal fraction? Davyd’s brain hurts!
Overpriced watches aside, me and Viv had an awesome time in town

There was more rock band playing as the month progressed towards my birthday, and as it did, I grew more and more ambivalent towards the idea of celebrating. This was partly due to the fact I found no significance in my 23rd birthday and partly due to the fact I felt the actual fact it was my birthday was being sidelined. I know this sounds selfish but everyone was like “oh, it’ll be a great chance for you to do this” or “I can pick this up and do this”. I am aware of how selfish this sounds, but I didn’t just want people to sit around and praise me, I wanted people simply to come together with only the intention of having a good time, not thinking about running errands and the like.

In the end though, things worked out well for everyone I think. I had a quiet day which was what I was more hoping for to be honest. I believe everyone is allowed to throw one birthday wobbly every once in a while, and that was mine.
I spent my birthday with Viv at her place and there was cake. Not just any cake, but Chinese cream and fruit cake, the best cake in the world IMHO. For lunch we had fish and chips, with me having a really nice fishcake! It was a nice day in the end.

 
Nom Nom Nom Nom cake, it even has my name in on it!

I want it now!

I need no spoon!

 

 

 

 

I even shared some!

Three days later, me, Viv, Vince and Wessie decided we’d try something amazing and possibly suicidal. We would attempt the get the Rock Band 2 achievement ‘Bladder of Steel’.
For those of you who haven’t heard of this achievement, I shall explain for you. Rock Band 2 features something called the ‘Endless Set list’. While not actually endless, it does involve playing every song that comes on the Rock Band 2 disc. That is 84 songs ranging in difficulty from “playable on expert with your eyes close” to “on easy but is still raping my fingers”. There is an achievement for completing this, depending on the difficulty at which you do it; Silver Artist for Medium, Gold Artist for Hard and Platinum Artist for Expert. Bladder of Steel takes this and turns it up to eleven! You must do the endless set list, on an difficulty thankfully, but you cannot take any breaks at all! No pausing, no pressing the Xbox guide button, no disconnecting instruments, no having instruments run out of battery, no failing. If you do anything that interrupts the continuous set list, you fail the achievement. That’s over 6 consecutive hours of fake plastic rocking out. This would be epic. This would be hard! And so began the first attempt!

And we failed a song! In the first 20! OMG. I threw a big tweeted wobbly, but thanks due to the awesomeness of Viv and her family, we attempted again.

And failed again. This time a guide button got accidentally pressed, meaning we wouldn’t get the achievement. But seeing as a couple of us were hyped on energy drinks, we went for a third try.

And failed for a third time, due to me striking the drum kit guide button with a drumstick. It was at this point, realising we wouldn’t finished until midnight if we restarted here, that maybe we should leave it for another time. It was probably for the best as there’s a good chance it would’ve been very bad for our health! Lol!

Later that day, I came to a funny revelation. My dad had actually forgotten my birthday. Now I’m going to cut him some slack with this because my Gran was very ill with cancer at the time, and in all fairness, it took me a week to realise that he had forgotten, so we’ll call that even.

The next day, Viv went home and I was left all lonely with work to do. So I did what anyone would do, I sat down with some ice cream and Jack Daniels and got to work. This proved to be a surprisingly productive combination and within a week and half I had all my work done and submitted! There was some Rock Band 2, computer crashes, printer smudges and even a bobble head of Viv in the intervening time, but it all got done.

Overall I think April was really good looking back on it. I do regret being so immature with regards to my birthday, but we’ll forget about that. Shall we look at some statistics?

Number of Updates: 33 (That’s more than 1 a day)

First Update: “Davyd is playing ROCK BAND 2 (Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:02:58 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd HAS HANDED IN EVERY BIT OF WORK! (Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:39:50 GMT)”

Favourite Update: “Davyd "chinese people don't dunk their babies in water unless they're making soup out of them!" - Viv's responce to being asked if she's been baptised (Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:30:12 GMT)”
That is an actual quote and how could it NOT be my favourite for the month? There were some close contenders but this one wins out!

365 Da(v)y(d)s - March

This month started off with me feeding my current SF IV addiction, starting with my love of the Hadouken! I don’t know why I developed such an adoration for this game over other beat ‘em ups, but needless to say, I was hooked (I’m really looking forward to to Super Street Fighter IV in spring 2010).
At the start of this month was the release of Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, an arcade/sim combat flight game from the Tom Clancy series. Technically the game was a sequel to the 2008 title Tom Clancy’s EndWar which was a 80% voice controlled RTS game. H.A.W.X toned down the focus on voice control, using for key functions such as weapon switching, missile launching and activating the HUD guidance system know as ECS. It was a very fun and fast game, featuring an ‘assistance off’ mode which enables intentional (and unintentional) stalling of your craft.
I found this game really fun and addictive, especially the online multiplayer which has a system of weapon and plane unlocks. The dog fights could get really hectic and overall, it was a good game for the month of march.

A few days after getting HAWX (I’m dropping the full stops), I headed off to Vivs for some love and attention, and to go her chemistry society ball. It was a most awesome chance to doll ourselves up and have some posh nosh.

Viv looking stunning as usual

I look equal parts surprised and menacing

I was only down for a few days, which makes the fact that I took my Xbox all the way there all the more ridiculous! I almost got Will addicted to HAWX!

After coming back to Birmingham, I settled down to do some uni work while enjoying the new Blue October album, Approaching Normal. Looking back now, I cannot understand why I was so apprehensive that it would be a good album. Currently it’s my most listened to album in my whole music collection.

It was also in this month that I got my first internet connection that was ALL MINE, MWHAHAHAHA! I did share it with one other flat mate, simply because I couldn’t be bothered to make up a reason why not. Looking back I really should have, seeing as how frequently he slowed it down by downloading porn. What was worse was when he would constantly ask me why the porn was slow downloading. I was not impressed so eventually I changed the password and kept him off!

I finally got round to some serious guitar practise. I had managed to procure off my mum a nice acoustic guitar, which I had finally figured out how to tune. You see, the problem is that I’m tone deaf, so tuning by ear is a real pain. But using a piece of PC software that records and analyses the string you play using your pc’s microphone, I was able to tune it properly, and thus begin so practise. I actually practised to the point my fingertips stung. Come on those guitarists callous’.

Only ten days after coming back from Viv’s, I was on my way back. I was understandably annoyed that while trying to sleep in the quiet zone of the train, an area I had specifically booked, I was being kept awake by a child that could only be described as noisy as sin! Why anyone would bring a winey child into the quiet zone I do not know. ‘Oh, I wanted a quiet place for my baby to sleep, but if he doesn’t sleep and decides to cry instead, well fuck everyone else!’

The highlight of this month had to be the epic phail on my part in booking the return ticket to bring Viv back to Wolverhampton. You see, there are two routes from Guildford to Wolverhampton. Either you change at Reading, or you go through London. Guess what I did? I bought Viv a single via the London Route, but my return ticket was via Reading. We didn’t realise that we were travelling through London until we actually crossed the Thames. I spent the next few hours panicking that I’d get my ticket checked and get a huge fine. Fortunately for me, no one checked my ticket and we made into the travel west midlands railcard zone with no trouble. I have never been so paranoid and nervous in my life! Lol.

Overall I have to say this was a busy little month. Travelling to and from Guildford twice (that’s almost 400 miles travelling overall) and managing to take the exactly wrong train is lol-worthy. A good month me thinks. Now for the science part!

Number of Status Updates: 24

First Update: “Davyd HADOKEN!!!!! (Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:11:34 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd half 6 ish fine, we can meet you at new street, pick up some drinkies then head back? (Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:37:57 GMT)”
This one makes no sense at all. Maybe I tweeted something by mistake. lol

Favourite Update: “Davyd wasn't supposed to get a train through london. Well crossing the thames might be a giveaway that i've got the wrong train. (Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:46:05 GMT)”
Kinda says it all, doesn’t it? lol!

365 Da(v)y(d)s - Febuary

Well I have to say, February was one of my most eventful months and probably one of the best. The month got off to a great start with some most awesome snow! Now in my infinite wisdom, I didn’t photograph any of it, but I assure you, it was worth of this status update:

“Davyd has snowsnowsnowsnowsnow (Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:40:53 GMT)”

The following few days of Feb were a mixed bag. I dyed my hair a nice mix of red and blue/black which I have to say looked quite good (oh, those days before I shaved my head). But following that day, my computer decided to through another EPIC wobbly. Starting with problems with internet explorer, which I personally have never experienced before, things just went down hill :( But I had more important things on my mind than unstable computer tantrums. I was going to see my Viv! And see her I did, for we had most epic Valentines Day plans; we were going to London!

I arrived at Viv’s dorm on the 11th of Feb, Xbox in tow. We wanted to catch up on some Left4Dead and I wanted to show her Tom Clancy’s HAWX. HAWX went down well with Will and he was suitably distracted!

Before our trip out for valentines, me, Viv and Anne went into town where Anne found something like, hard, made of metal and covered in bumps that she found absolutely amazing!

I think if they actually made a sex toy in the style of a Dalek, Anne would own it regardless! They could call it a DilDalek!

After this little diversion (I think Anne may have bought a book between fondling the poor things plunger) we headed off to some clothes shop, I think New Look. This is where Viv found the only hat I’ve ever seen her like!

It looks so good on her, so cute! Following this amazing purchase, we all headed home

The next day me and Viv went to scavenge for food. We came across a place we had never been before; Wagamama! Here we ate noodles and drank peach tea! Amazing!

After we were sated, we ventured back to the university, where the evening held more food, some work, and more Xbox (Left4Dead is a great distraction)

The next day was the big day! V-day! London here we come!

It was quite an experience for me seeing as I had never really been round London properly before, only ever on school trips etc! So we just went wild! We did museums, the Trocadero, Forbidden Planet, manga stores and CAMDEN FUCKING MARKET! That was where Viv bought me my favourite jacket EVAR!!! I had crab claws and we saw loads of cool gothic/alternative stalls. It was amazing

OMG LONDONING

Awesome London Escalator (I was easily impressed)

In Tokyo Toys I made Viv wear silly hats!

Big Spider at the Tate Modern!

Picadilly CIrcus
(pretty crappy circus if you ask me, not even any clowns)

Me sporting the new jacket Viv got me! Woo

A few days later, while cooking, this guy was born:

Happy potato is happy!

Following Valentines day, me and Viv prepared to head back to Wolverhampton. There was a pleasant convergence of events as Viv had a reading week at the same time as her mums birthday, so we headed back to celebrate in the best possible way, with food!

We went to Around the World in 80 Dishes, a well priced restaurant that serves dishes from India, China, America, Italy and Mexico, all of which was all you can eat! Me and Viv had been before and knew that due to how salty the food could be (to make you buy more drinks) that we should steer clear of the lasagne! But that didn’t stop Viv from eating so much that she needed to ‘purge’. Even Viv can eat too much!

Three Lee’s and a Pang on the way to EAT!

Viv with sexy black hair enjoying her meal.

After the meal, we all headed (very slowly) home, where more food awaited, in the form of the best type of cake ever. CHINESE CREAM CAKE OMG OM NOM NOM NOM!

They were all telling me to hurry up with the damn photo so they could eat the cake!

That was the end of a very fun day! The next day we were planning to go to Telford so Viv’s younger sister Vinki could go to a craft fair. I’m fairly ambivalent to craft stuff so I was up for it, something different.
When we arrived, me and Viv immediately thought something was weird when we saw a girl dressed as a fairy heading into the exhibition centre. Weird, but maybe she always goes to craft fairs in fancy dress. Then we saw someone dressed as Link, and then a Narutard! Me and Viv looked at each other, both thinking the same thing, and I said it “If there’s an anime convention going on, we are SO FUCKING GOING!”
And omg there was! It was the MCM midlands anime expo, which while not an amazingly huge event, was still a brilliant anime convention with a Tardis, the DeLorian from back to the future and loads of anime, manga and video game stalls. Viv even bought me an Evangelion NERV mug! Unfortunately I didn’t have my phone with me as the battery had died so we couldn’t get any photos, but it was still awesome and there were many good costumes, my favourite being Chell from Portal!

After spending many hours at the convention and meeting back up with Vinki and Lychi (my nickname for Viv’s mum) we decided to head into the town centre in order to do some shopping. This is where I made a purchase that my thumbs would hate me for! STREET FIGHTER IV!!! I had been thinking about getting it, as I’ve always preferred the street fighter series over other beat ‘em ups, perhaps with the exception of Super Smash Bros, and when I saw the limited edition cheap in HMV I had to get it.

The next day, we went out and had some dim sum at a really nice resturant in china town in Birmingham. For those of you that don’t know where china town is, let me draw you a map!

It was nice to have a good meal out, because the next day I had to see Viv off home, which I wasn’t happy about, but I knew I’d see her soon!

To console myself, I decided to play some Street Fighter IV. It went from a short play to TWENTY TWO CONSECUTIVE HOURS OMG! It took me 18 hours alone to beat the end boss. By the end of it I literally had blisters on me fingers!

February was definitely MOST AWESOME, and here are a few statistics from said month.

Number of Status Updates: 28 (average of 1 per day!)

First Update: “Davyd has snowsnowsnowsnowsnow (Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:40:53 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd dreams of making his own SF IV arcade stick, from sanwa parts and steel, and brawn! (Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:59:20 GMT)”

Favourite Update: “Davyd is disgusted at himself for playing Street Fighter IV for TWENTY TWO HOURS! (Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:01:45 GMT)”
I really can’t believe I let myself commit that much consecutive time to one game, to the point of actually injuring myself!

365 Da(v)y(d)s - January

Okay, well the obvious starting point would be ‘what were my new years resolutions’? Well, this can answered with my first ever update of the year:

“Davyd is going to eat healthy, learn catnoses [sic] and develop his AR game! (Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:58:42 GMT)

Now, I only managed one of these three, which was eating more healthy. I now enjoy more fish, more veg, less sugar and I also watch my calories, which has helped so much. Unfortunately, I haven’t mastered CATonese, nor Cantonese neither. The AR (augmented reality) game plan fizzled out early on for two reasons. Firstly, my work load meant I only had time for one director project, my uni assignment. Secondly, all the AR plug-ins and tools for director suck ass! But I’m very glad that I kept to the important one.

Talking of food, it was in this month that me and Viv made an epic trip to woktastic in Birmingham, a sushi bar with real conveyor belt. What lured us in was the all you can eat for £10 a head. We set ourselves a challenge to each enough to make it £1 a bowl.

Viv makes a good start

I’m a dab hand with chopsticks

£20 and two full bellies later, twenty empty bowls.

In terms of video games, the big hitters keeping my Xbox warm were rock band 2, CoD 4 and Mirrors Edge. I really enjoyed mirrors edge and I think it gets unfairly trashed because people can’t appreciate that it was a new IP that tried to innovate, even thought the usual game ‘polish’ suffered.

The high and low point of this month was going with down to Guildford. It was a high because we got to spend time together seeing all of her friends and having some catch up fun, but a down because I had to say good bye to her at the end of it. There was a spontaneous trip to visit Viv in the middle of month which was really nice.

I also celebrated my mums birthday on the 14th at a VERY posh Italian restaurant in Coventry. I say posh because the menu was DAMN expensive (but tasty)

One major downer for the month was my computer crashing and me having to recover every file and reinstall it all. This wouldn’t be the last time this happened, but in the end, the damage was minimal and it only took me a short while to fix it all, as a rather triumphant update will testify:

“Davyd has fixed his entire computer in less than 4 hours! Record time! Woo! (Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:45:22 GMT)”

Overall, it wasn’t too bad a start for the year of ‘09. Here are some statistics for the month:

Number of Status Updates: 17

First Update: “Davyd is going to eat healthy, learn catonese and develop his AR Game! (Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:58:42 GMT)”

Last Update: “Davyd is playing Rock Band 2 (Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:03:53 GMT)”

Favourite Update: “Davyd is going to eat healthy, learn catonese and develop his AR Game! (Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:58:42 GMT)”
- Gotta love the lol-worthy spelling mistakes. Me confusing Viv’s second language with the dialect of cats!