MMXI Week 10–Grand Promises

Okay, I did originally promise something a little special, but due to lack of time (and energy) this will be postponed. What I am going to post instead is a small progress report on my goals and a brief summary of my week (well, mainly weekend).

First up, goals progress:

1) Blog once a week, minimum – Well, kind of obvious here. Ignoring late posts, I am managing to put up one entry per week. Only time will tell if I can keep it up for the whole 52

2) Get a job in Birmingham or Wolverhampton by April – this one has been pushed back until May/June due to going to Hong Kong, but I’ve also expanded it include a job in Guildford, as being closer to Viv would be nice.

3) Get Money for Hong Kong – Done and done!

4) Reach a Gamerscore of 25,000 – Not doing too badly, almost at 21k thanks to dead space. Got Bulletstorm, Portal 2, Mortal Kombat and Mass Effect 3 at the very least to help me achieve this.

5) Complete an Entire Dungeons and Dragons Campaign – This weekend I will be conducting the opening chapter of a small, but complete, d&d campaign. This won’t quite be of the same scope of my current campaign, but I hope it will be none the less fun for my players (many of which are newcomers)

6) Play more Risk and Magic: The Gathering – I’m doing very well at this, having played several games of both, even having a magic build off with Viv. Her Vampire deck thoroughly booted my Chandra deck.

7) Work on a Video Game Project – This one has sadly gone on the back burner for a while now. I have been working on general art work, which can contribute to my portfolio, so not completely frozen.

8) Learn Cantonese – No, not happening, let us not speak of this failure

9) Improve my Blog Design – Again, nothing much really happening on this front. I’m getting by with the current design, but need to work on something more personal.

10) Buy more Books – I haven’t got anything new since Viv got me the first two Discworld books, but I most certainly intend to order the last two Scott Pilgrims very soon, along with perhaps the third discworld book.

Not doing too badly me thinks, perhaps rated at about 60% progress.

As for last week, work was the usual repetition, but the weekend was amazing. I’ll give you a brief breakdown:

Friday: Got train from Bicester to Guildford, arriving late that night. After a change of plans, me and Viv ordered pizza, opened my two Magic the Gathering deck builders toolkits (more on this over at the D Twenty eventually) and watched some stuff on her new TV that I had bought her.

Saturday: After a nice lie in, we headed off into town to get some cables and food for pancakes at some point. We also had milkshakes from shakeaway. Viv had a Dave with cream and I had a Ben with nuttella. Later that day, we went to the cinema to see Battle: Los Angeles (which was very good) and then had take away (again, chicken and chips this time)

Sunday: Woke up fairly early (before 10am) and decided that we would make the pancakes. We used an amazing recipe from the Metro and served them with nuttella, blueberries, strawberries, powdered sugar and butter. There were AMAZING!
Before I caught the train home, we went for dinner at Nando’s, which was gorgeous as usual.

The only down side was my Reading-Oxford train being 10 mintutes late, so I missed the last train to Bicester. Luckily, my brother came and rescued me from Oxford station.

All in all, an amazing weekend. I’ve got to post a few more entries this week covering some magic stuff, time permitting.

MMXI Week 7–Part 2 The Completening

Well, here it is, my late blog entry for the seventh week of the year. There is a good reason for this; I’ve had an amazingly fun and busy past ten days. Thus I will summarise these past few days. These days of awesome began last Thursday (the same day I posted my previous entry). Due to the massive amount of stuff I did, this blog will actually link to several smaller entries, that I will try and post before this entry (so this entry actually shows up as the most recent and links back to the smaller entries.

Thursday
Thursday was the longest day of work I’ve done in what seems like forever. I was counting down the seconds until I would be free. Once 4pm rolled around, I ran off home (well, got a lift) and begun throwing together all my luggage to go down and see Viv in Guildford.
Upon arriving late that night, I had a plate of delicious pasta that Viv had cooked up and saved for me. Sadly, I didn’t take any photos as I was so eager to nom it all up. After nomming the pasta, I presented Viv with her first Valentines day gift;

Bamboo the Panda!

Needless to say this went down very well! He was taken to bed by Viv that night (after copious amounts of squeals at his cuteness).

Friday
Friday began with Viv rising early for work, as she has to do everyday due to her commute. I got up around the same time, helped her get ready for work and saw her off. I am used to rising around this time (around 6am) due to having to start working myself on a usual day quite early.

I used the rest of the day to do some laundry, cleaning and even a little DIY around the apartment. This was party to keep myself occupied, but also so that it would be nice for Viv when she got home.

Saturday and Sunday
Viv returned from work around half six that night and Valentines began proper for us. We had decided to have a Valentines weekend, as Valentines proper was Monday, when Viv would be working. You can read about what we got up to, including pictures, here.

Monday
Following an awesome weekend together, Viv had to go back to work, gotta earn the pennies somehow. I used this time to do a bit more laundry and cleaning around the flat. Then the intercom went. I was apprehensive as I don’t like answering doors/phones in houses that aren’t mine, but I picked up the receiver and answered; it was a delivery for Viv.

Upon bringing what was the largest amazon box I had ever seen upstairs, I texted Viv letting her know that something had come for her. She replied saying that I could open it! What could it possibly be?

This!

That’s last years nerf gun present at the bottom.

Not only had Viv given me some amazingly awesome fantastic presents over the weekend, she still had a trick up her sleeve! Needless to say many foam bullets flew that day! I will possibly review this item on this blog later on.

Tuesday and Wednesday

The following day, I had another couple of awesome days. Mondays highlight was playing my second game of Risk 2210 AD, this time verses Will.

Will contemplates his next move

I won this game as well, but I put this down to knowing the rules better and having played more games of Risk before hand. It was still a very fun game and proved that 2210 deserves all the accolades put upon it.

Wednesday was another DIY day, this time coming up with a non-permanent way of hanging the notice board Viv and Anne had acquired. Using the string that held my nerf gun in it’s packaging, I created the following rather successful setup:

Is there nothing this boy can’t do???

That evening, me and Viv decided to take advantage of Orange Wednesdays down at the Odeon and see the new Simon Pegg and Nick Frost film; Paul. All I can say is that it was money very well spent! We laughed so much and enjoyed the film thoroughly. The best way to describe Paul is thusly; what Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is to video game culture, Paul is to science fiction. There were some great jokes, brilliant references to science fiction classics and some fantastic sub-plots. All in all, an amazingly enjoyable film that I would certainly see again.

Thursday
Thursday morning I had to catch my train early in the morning back to Bicester. This was a very weird experience as I felt like I should be saying good bye to Viv for another or month or so, when I’d actually be seeing her the following evening, as she was coming down for the weekend.

I arrived in Bicester around 2pm, then promptly jumped on another train, head in a bag, and set off for Birmingham. Head you ask? More on that later.
Once I arrived in Bicester, I made my way to my friend Emma’s place, as we were having a cocktail night. This proved to be quite a potent night, as this video will testify.

Tequila is a dangerous thing!

I was rather fortunate as I was spared the hangover I felt I deserved, instead just blighted by a mild headache and a craving for sugar.

That evening I made my way into Birmingham city center in order to meet Viv off her train and travel off to Wolverhampton. We had an early start the next day, as we had plans involving the head in the bag!

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday morning, we got up early and walked over to Vivs cousins place. Wessie was taking us all to Telford for the MCM Midlands anime and comics expo. It was something I was truly excited about and even had a costume for. You can read all about it right here.

The following day we went out for a meal to celebrate Viv’s mums birthday. We decided to go to the relatively new all you can eat buffet restaurant; Cosmos. It was a pan-Asian restaurant offering a wide selection. And wide is an understatement. I ate until I was almost sick and and probably only sampled a 1/3 of everything on offer. I didn’t even try anything from the live food stations, where your selection was cooked to order.
The only complaints I had were the usual saltiness you get at all you can eats, and the nuts at the desert bar. You see, when you have what looks like peanuts on a desert bar, next to almonds and raisins, between jelly and ice cream, you expect them to be honey roasted or caramelised nuts. Finding out they’re salted can slightly spoil your desert that you happened to have sprinkled them over. But ignoring that, I was a mighty tasty meal that was excellent value.

So this marks the end of this somewhat delayed blog. On the topic of goals, I haven’t any major progression, except that my passport has now arrived, so I am 100% prepared for Hong Kong in a few weeks. It’s so bizarre that it’s so close it’s not even measurable in months any more. I haven’t made any progression in learning Cantonese, I may just rely on Google Translate, lol.
Hopefully my next entry will be much less tardy. Until then, TTFN

MMXI Week 7–MCM Telford 2011

So Saturday morning we woke up early, threw ourselves into Wessies car and begun the drive to Telford for MCM Midlands 2011. I had my costume in tow, which you may have already seen in parts. Here it is before I put it on:

And here I am wearing it outside the International Center:

The convention was an amazing experience, especially as it was my first time in Cosplay. Everyone was so nice and it was so weird having people ask to take my photo! I saw some amazing costumes including a Sonic team;

Some amazing Bleach cosplay;

And one of my favourite outfits, cardboard storm trooper;

There were so many awesome costumes, so I’m going to have to do awards for three categories; video game, anime/manga and film/comic book. First, best video game cosplay:

Third Runner Up

Medic, Heavy and Scout from Team Fortress 2

Second Runner Up

Desmond and Two Altairs from Assassins Creed

First Runner Up

Link and Midna from Twilight Princess

And First Place

Faith from Mirrors Edge

I liked the Faith costume the most because of its simplicity and accuracy. She just looked the part naturally.

Now for the best anime/mange costumes:

Third Runner Up

Giselle from Enchanted

Second Runner Up

The Flash

First Runner Up

The Goddamn Batman

And First Place

Kick Ass from, well, Kick Ass.

Just an amazing costume that looks like he walked off set.

Finally, the best Anime/Manga cosplays.

Third Runner Up

Grimmjow Jaggerjack from Bleach

Second Runner Up

Sajin Komarmura, 7th Division Captain, from Bleach

First Runner Up

Nappa, Goku and Frieza from Dragon Ball Z

And First Place

Super Sayan Goku from Dragon Ball Z

I loved this costume simply for the wig, it looks so perfect. He could have done without maybe so much foundation, but that’s just a minor complaint.

Aside from the costumes, there were some great stalls, including two Nintendo stands, one for the somewhat underwhelming 3DS, and another for various Nintendo games, which I didn’t really interact much with. The retailers were quite homogenous with a lot of the same stuff on sale at each stand. The two that stood out the most was the Spit Like This/Smell Your Mum t-shirt stand and the Magic the Gathering card stand, where I found these amazing cards to complete my Myrcraft deck:

Can you see where I’m going with this?

That’s 3 Masters Call from Mirrodin Besieged, 2 Palladium Myr, 1 Myrsmith, 2 Myr Propagators and 4 Myr Galvanisers. I’ve been dying to get hold of these cards and they make for a devastating combo of infinite Myr tokens.

All in all, it was a fantastic day and I’m so glad I went. I enjoyed it even more that I was with Viv, Vinki and Wessie. Being in costume gave me a sense of belonging that I’ve not had before. I’m totally planning on going to MCM London in May, with some additions to my costume, I may even try my hand at the masquerade!

Here’s a youtube video of the pictures I took:

And you can see them all here on my Flickr stream.

MMXI Week 7–Valentines Weekend

The valentines weekend began late Friday night, when I presented Viv with a choice of two of her presents from a selection of three. The selection was two of her books and the Magic The Gathering Phyrexian Poison deck I had bought her. Much to my pleasure, she chose one book and the deck, the latter of which she was very surprised at. It was her first deck of Magic cards and she liked the selection and was happy to have a deck all of her own. I hadn’t bought myself a corresponding new deck, so I tried my luck using one of the older decks I’d brought with me. Needless to say I was trounced by Vivs plethora of poisonous creatures. Poison is an evil ability in magic that I have yet to find an effective counter to. After getting my ass handed to me and then watching a film, we decided to get some sleep as we were both quite tired, Viv more so as she had been at work.

So, Saturday morning, me and Viv rose after a reasonable lie in (until about 9am, when you get up at 6am everyday, 9 is a veritable luxury) and set about the important task of having a thoroughly awesome valentines day. We started by swapping gifts, starting with me giving Viv the remaining book and earrings. She loved the earrings especially as she has developed somewhat of an obsession since getting her ears pierced. But the apex of her present pyramid was contained within this box:

Oooh, shiny

For as long as I could remember, Viv had been wanting a bottle of Diesel Fuel for Life Unlimited. So imagine how happy I was when i found a gift set containing a bottle of said perfume and some skin lotion? She absolutely loved it and promptly spritzed herself. I even got a little something out it in the form of a tester of Fuel for Life for men. It was quite a nice fragrance that I could see myself wearing in the future.
Here’s the sum of what I got Viv this year:

Not pictured are the earrings, which I believe Viv was wearing at the time.

But what, you may be asking, did I get? Well, I’m so glad you asked imaginary person. Viv knows me all too well and got me three things I’ve been dying for for a long time now.

Risk 2210 AD, The Light Fantastic and The Colour of Magic

The books were the new cover prints of the first two discworld books, starting my collection proper. But the masterpiece was a copy of the out of print board game Risk 2210 AD. This futuristic adaptation of Risk was first published ten years ago and is very hard to come by, but Viv found me a new, sealed copy and I couldn’t have been happier!

Viv then suggested that we wander into town to check out a comic book store a friend had mentioned. Unfortunately this turned out to just be a Games Workshop, but the trip wasn’t a complete waste, as I managed to pick up Myr of Mirrodin intro deck, to complement and compete against Vivs Scars of Mirrodin deck. I was very excited to try out my new deck, but we had more important things to attend to, namely our 8pm reservation at TGI Fridays! Om nom nom!

As you can see, Viv looked absolutely amazing for the meal;

And the meal looked almost as good!

Just the starter! Soooo good!

Proof of how amazing the meal was lies in the size of Vivs ‘food baby’

Thoroughly sated, we decided to change into our comfiest of jammies and break in my copy of Risk 2210 AD.

First I will wipe out the browns, then the reds will fall

It was a damn fun game, I was so happy that Viv got it for me. I am planning to do a full review over on The D Twenty asap.
I do think my prior knowledge of the rules helped me win the game, but it was still very enjoyable for both me and Viv. The two player rules worked really well, and invading the moon was a lot of fun! Afterwards, we decided to let the urge to hibernate after eating so much take over and crawled off to bed. Snoooore!

Sunday was a very quite lie in kind of day, not doing much except just enjoying not having to do anything. We played another game of Magic the Gathering and in the evening, we ordered pizza and watched Community.

Mozzarella makes for amazing nachos!

That marked the end of our valentines weekend, but we still had loads of time together over the coming week. I couldn’t say this was the best Valentines I’ve had, as every one I spend with Viv is amazing! But it definitely was a weekend I will treasure!

MMXII Week 7 - Part 1 The Beginerning

I am exceedingly disappointed in myself for being this late in posting this entry. In my defense, I have been having too much fun (I never said it was a good defense). But I decree that, UK recompense for my laxity, I will blog twice this week. The send blog to follow this will also be supported by no less than 3 game review entries over on the d twenty. Now I must be going as blogging while crossing roads is far from safe. Watch this space.

MMXI Week 6 - Blogger On The Run

This blog is going to be considerable more brief than my usual affair, as I'm am not at my computer, or any computer for that matter. I am spending the Valentine period with my amazing girlfriend and therefore don't have access to my usual blogging setup. "But Davyd" I hear you cry "how are you writing this?" Well I'm glad you asked. I am writing this entry using the Blogger app for my HTC desire hd, and I have to say its a surprising painless experience.
You see, I'm never one for writing huge amounts on phones (contrary to what the length of my average text would indicate). But with a solid app, responsive on screen soft keyboard, intuitive auto correction and, most importantly, a gorgeously large and clear 4.3" screen, the desire hd is more than adequate for the task.

"But enough of your phone, what else has been happening in your disturbingly mundane life?" Well, nothing much to be honest. I've been thoroughly enjoying dead space 2, an excellent game, and adding the finishing touches to my cosplay. More pictures will come either next entry or possibly the one after.

Well, gonna keep this brief by wrapping it up. I've expanded on my game design goal bf coming up with a secondary concept, which I'm going to work on from an art/narrative/gameplay angle. I don't want to give anything away, but controversial would be the best way to describe it. Not learnt any more Cantonese, and the Birmingham job hunt has been unproductive. I have made a few games design applications which I'm waiting to hear back from and I'm also expanding my search radius to Guildford.
Finally, I'm debating refocusing my goal to buy more books into focusing on buying a kindle and joining the ebook movementn
Well that's all for this week, until later.

MMXI Week 4–The Customer is Always Right

Today has been a pretty fantastic week, especially in the area of customer service. No, I haven’t been working to my very best providing a fantastic experience for customers, thankfully I am free of dealing with that horrid rabble. Instead I have had two exceptionally pleasant customer service experiences this week.

First off, I had positive dealings with Cross Country Trains. Anyone unfamiliar with them should know that they’re a train company that operates primarily out of major cities and I travel with them whenever I visit Viv in Guildford. Their website is better than most as it doesn’t give stupid connection options. For example, when travelling from Birmingham to Guildford, you should just have to change once at Reading, but Virgin Trains and many other sites insist on only giving you routes through London, involving three or four changes. Not the case with Xcountry. So, in preparation for valentines day, I purchase my tickets plenty in advance. So imagine my face when, a week after collecting them, I glance at the details and realise that rather than holding an open return for the 10th of February, the ticket says 18th of January, a date 3 days in the past. I have no idea how I managed this, but this pretty much sums it up;

I had to hold back the rage against my self for what I feared was a waste of over £25, but I resolved not to give up. On my lunch break that day, I rang their customer service line and the following conversation, paraphrased somewhat, took place;

Me – Hi, I was hoping you could rectify a mistake, that in all likelihood, was made by myself, but I obviously have no desire to pay for it.

Customer Service Rep – Sure, what’s the problem?

Me – Well, you see, I’m a ragging idiot and booked my tickets for the wrong date. Not only have I already collected them, but the train their for has gone, so the reserved seats were never used.

Rep -  Well okay then, send us the tickets and we’ll refund you in full.

Me -  ………….huh……….okay……awesome……..

That quite succinctly covers the exchange, the moral being that Xcountry trains provides a great service.

My second customer service wonder tale regards T-Mobile, my mobile phone providers. In the next few months, I would be looking at a phone upgrade as my contract was up for renewal. As I have mentioned, I have an interest in upgrading to the HTC Desire Z, the keyboard equipped phone. But resigned to the fact T-Mobile would never stock it, I was quite happy with the idea of the Desire HD. Imagine my surprise when T-Mobile called me to offer me an early upgrade! I told the representative that I wanted the Desire HD for free and asked if he could help me. Not only did he offer me the HD for free, he then offered me either a £5 discount on my current contract, or a down grade to the next tier, saving me £10 and also meaning less wasted allowance. I jumped at the chance as it was an amazing offer. A £400+ phone plus a yearly saving of £120! Then he said that would get the phone sent out to me for Saturday, three days later! How’s that for service?

My new baby!

I was so happy with both of these experiences and I now have a fabulously shiny new phone!

Pay day rolled up on Friday, the first of my weekly pay cheques. I was miffed to discover that I was still on tax code BR. What this means is that I’m not getting my tax free allowance, an amount of income you can earn before you start paying tax. I’m going to chase this up as it is costing me something the region of £60 a month in excess tax, but I believe it will be resolved soon enough.

I also got my letter from the passport office asking me to attend an interview. It seems nowadays everyone getting their first passport must prove they are themselves and not a terrorist. I’m very happy about this as it confirms that my application has gone through all fine and I’m in the last stretch.

This Saturday I decided to visit Birmingham, primarily to do some valentines day shopping, but also to catch up with all the lovely brummy people that I love! And it was a great weekend!
It started with me meeting Vivs cousin Wessie and browsing a few shops in the Bullring. We then met up with Emma, who I used to work with, and her flatmate James. We hit a few more shops then decided to go grab some food (Nandos, naturally) and then saw the Green Hornet (in the 3D). It was a surprisingly good film that I thoroughly enjoyed watching, although it suffered from the usual tacked on 3D.

After the film, we headed back to Selly Oak to catch with another former colleague, Steve. We all headed over the road to the Gun Barrels, where me, Steve and Emma had first met, and got our drink on.

From left to right; Emma (obviously), Steve and James

After setting the world to rights in the slightest of tipsy fashions, we all retired for the night around 3am.

The following day, I rose up around 9am and made my way in to Birmingham to get the train back, but not before picking up some more valentines day presents. I can disclose what I bought, as I suspect Viv may actually read this blog!
Looking back, it’s been an amazing week that I totally enjoyed. The only thing I regret is that I can’t spend more time with the great people in Birmingham.

On another topic, you may wonder how I am progressing on my goals? Well let us tally them off, shall we?

1) Blog once a week, minimum - Well, yes, so far I am blogging once a week. (7% completion)

2) Get a job in Birmingham or Wolverhampton by April - I’m holding off job hunting in Brum/Wolvo until after April when I get back from Hong Kong, which leads to my next goal….(0% completion)

3) Get Money for Hong Kong - I most certainly have the money for Hong Kong and am definitely going, So excited! (100% completion)

4) Reach a Gamerscore of 25,000 - I haven’t bought or played any new games recently, the next one most likely being Dead Space 2. GTA IV isn’t really sucking me in, so it’s probably going to rest on Dead Space 2, Portal 2, Mortal Kombat, Mass Effect 3 and possibly Bulletstorm. (0.4% completion)

5) Complete an Entire Dungeons and Dragons Campaign – This one is currently a huge failure as I haven’t even started a campaign yet, they’re all notes and sketches. Bad dungon master! (0% completion)

6) Play more Risk and Magic: The Gathering – Unfortunately I don’t have my Risk game with me (I’m hoping to buy another version so, 2210 AD) and no one I know likes playing MtG, so this one is a bit hard to achieve, but we still have the rest of the year. (0% completion)

7) Work on a Video Game Project – I got off to a great start with this, but I’ve stalled somewhat in the sketching phase, I need to get back to work and knuckle down. (~5% completion)

8) Learn Cantonese – Not a sausage. Nothing. Nada. I have made no progress. Moving on (0% completion)

9) Improve my Blog Design – Well it’s no longer offensive red. I need to consult with my graphic design friends, but it looks a little better (15% completion)

10) Buy more Books – I haven’t bought any new books yet, not for myself at least. But with more pay cheques coming in, this should all change. (0% completion)

Overall progress.

 

As a little side note, I have a few short term goals I want to complete:

- Finish my minecraft cosplay. I’ve ordered the ink to print the design out, so hopefully this week.

- Post a review of Transformers Risk and MtG on my DnD blog

- Post a review on this blog of my new phone.

- Record an HD video tour of my minecraft world.

MMXI Week 3–Working 9 to 5 (or In My Case, 8 to 4)

Oh boy, this has been an draining week. I started my temp assignment on Monday working for Capita Total Documents Solutions. What they do, in simplest terms, is back up ‘analogue’ documents; paperwork, celluloid film etc. into digital format. I had my induction at nine thirty am on Monday morning, where they gave me a quick tour of the facility. The first thing that struck me was that it smelt like a pig sty. Not the proverbial sty, but a literal pig sty, with a ever-present odour that reminded me of my Granddads old farm.

Analogue to Digital Piggy Back Up

The smell was actually coming from the ammonia they used to clean the film in the restoration and back up area. I was grateful to be shown the document processing rooms away from the head ache inducing smell.

Work at Capita is broken down into four stages for normal document processing; Prep, Scan, QC and Export. Prep (sort for preparation) is just that, preparing the documents for scanning. This means aligning all the pages in same orientation, flattening out creases, taping down small pieces of paper, moving post it notes that obscure text and, most importantly, removing staples.
Or as I have come to know them, little shards of metallic hell.

Oh these little bastards task me!

Scan is fairly self explanatory and simple. Documents are fed into industrial automated document scanners, with the operator fine tuning the settings for best image quality. The main responsibility appears to be keeping the machine clean, as I frequently hear the hiss of compressed air ever few minutes.

QC, or quality control, is where the scans are inspected to check for errors. This can be anything from a folded corner, to a missed post it, to a whole page scanned far too dark to read. Any batches that fail QC are sent back to scan and so the process begins again.

Finally, you have export, where the scanned files, in Tiff format, are prepared to ship back out to the client. The files have to be converted, compiled, compressed and encrypted to the clients specifications, the transferred onto the media of their choice. This could be a single, multi page PDF document on DVD Rom, or a folder of hundreds of bitmaps on an external hard drive.
On a related note, I am not sure if Capita offers the WWF file format as an option. For those of you not familiar, WWF is a digital document format similar to PDF, with one key exception; you cannot, under any circumstances, print or convert it. This makes it a truly paper free format, preventing people from falling into the usual habit of printing a digital document so they have a hard copy to read, thus saving paper, therefore trees.

No, it’s not the World Wrestling Format; piledriver 2.0 compatible

I’m unsure how I feel about WWF, as I can see the sense in making a format that doesn’t lead to unnecessary use of paper, as PDF often does. But on the other hand, sometimes you need to print a document off, say if you’re going to use it in an environment where there’s not computer, or maybe you want instructions for fitting your water cooling system, which just so happens to need your computer to be switched off while you fit it. But then again, with the proliferation of portable devices capable of reading digital document formats, maybe this will become a moot point.

But back to my first week at work. During the first two days, I was on QC, sat at a computer wearing out the down arrow key. I would basically browse through documents looking for mistakes in the scanning process. Rapidly I learned to apply my knowledge of keyboard shortcuts, reducing the amount I used the mouse to an absolute minimum. It was almost painful to watch people who had been working there much longer than me using the mouse to rotate an image when you could use Ctrl + R to do the same job in a fraction of the time and with much less effort. But that’s probably just a matter of preference. It wasn’t too bad work, very similar to scanning through the hundreds of photos I’d take as reference images for uni work. Good, good, good, rotate, delete, rotate, good, good. You get the idea.

For the rest of the week I was working in prep, which was marginally more tedious than QC, and left me with sore fingers from using the staple lever. The only interesting part was nosing through the various documents. You see, if you put text in front of me, I can’t help but read it. So here I was, reading about bilateral breast enhancements, anti social behaviour in council houses and various other snippets of what I presume to be fair confidential information. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t ‘intentionally’ reading these documents, it’s just my brain can’t help but pull every bit of information from text in front of me.

I got a really great bit of news at the end of Thursday that at the start of the next week I would be trained up on scan. This is the department I have the second greatest interest in after export. I will make sure I have a note book to hand as I’m absolutely petrified of breaking what I presume to be a very expensive piece of equipment.

In parallel to my work, I’ve been trotting along on two side projects. one of which you already know about. I've done a couple of pages of concept sketches for my level design project, but more importantly, I’ve done a mind map of the ships systems. I reasoned that if I was going to produce a plausible ship design, I would need to include ever possible element of ship systems, from life support to sensors to crew quarters. I did this using a very esoteric method. I lay down in my bed and closed my eyes, imagining I was the captain of this ship on a simple cargo haul that went wrong, narrating what would happen and every time a new element of the ship came up, I noted it down. I then listed all these sections on my mind map.

As you can see, it’s full of a lot of techno-babble and pseudo-science, but I like to think that using bad science is better than using made up science. My plan is that by the time I’m finished I will have created such a complex and in depth level, you’ll be able to spend ages walking around before you realise it’s not actually a game. One of the key aspects I’m really focusing on is variable gravity. There are currently three main gravity wells I’m focusing on. 'Standard’ gravity (one unit of earths gravity relatively downwards), cyclic gravity (one earth gravity towards the center of a toroid) and zero gravity. This will create very different environments, and I may even include areas of inverse gravity or even multiple gravity zones, say in the engineering sections where it would more useful.

My second project is something fairly new, my cosplay project for the MCM midlands anime expo in February. If I showed you this image, would you have any idea?

How about now….?

 

If you haven’t guessed it, I’m planning on going as the ‘Minecraft’ guy, otherwise known as Steve.

I was heavily inspired by this previous cosplay design, partially due to it’s simplicity, but also because I own a t-shirt of that exact colour worn by Steve the Minecraft Guy

I’m currently waiting until I can order some more printer ink so I can print off the artwork to cover my ‘head box’ with. I’ve also got a fairly large diamond pickaxe to print out and make, so hopefully I’ll have a really good costume. I’m just worried I’ll get people coming up behind me at the convention and going ‘ksssssssssssss!”

This blogging week finished in Oxford, as I was on the never ending gamer pursuit of the ‘special edition’. This time I was questing after the Dead Space 2 Collectors Edition. What makes this edition so collectable you ask? Well, apart from the steel book case, art book, soundtrack and dlc code, it comes with this:

Pew Pew Pew

For those of you that haven’t place the original Dead Space, that’s a full size replica of the plasma cutter, the most reliable gun from the original game. Now I have a pretty bad weakness for collectors editions, but when it comes to life size props, I get a little silly in the head. But this tale does not end in joy and rainbows, as you see, retail is often filled with incompetents.
After phoning HMV Oxford twice the day before to confirm that yes, they are taking pre-order deposits for Dead Space 2 and yes, that is the collectors edition, and it would be a £10 down payment, I arrived at the store to be told that there was a suspension on pre-orders, but I could call on release day to get one set aside.

Fortunately that wasn’t my only objective for dragging myself and my good friend Amanda into Oxford. I also visited T-mobile, to be told that they wouldn’t ever be getting the HTC Desire Z in stock. As my phone contract is coming up to its renewal, and I have a thing for both Android and physical keyboards, the Desire Z is ideal for me. It’s the keyboard equipped version of the Desire HD, which T-mobile do stock.

It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine!

Having been defeated twice, me and Amanda set of in pursuit of culture. That’s one of the things I love about being older, I can appreciate museums finally. It also helps that I act like a little kid around anything dinosaur related! I wouldn’t be telling a word of a lie if I told you that on more than one occasion I interrupted my own sentences with the exclamation “ooooh! Dinosaurs!” When me and Viv travelled to London to see Blue October, I used up all the battery I was saving to take photos at the gig in the natural history museum dinosaur displays. Not event the whole museum, just the dinosaurs.

Terrible thunder lizard he may be, but that doesn’t change the fact he looks cross eyed!

On several occasions during mine and Amanda's visit to the Pit Rivers museum I embarrassed/impressed myself with my ability to recognise the more obscure dinosaur species on display. Then again, I successfully recognised cuneiform script, which I think made me look pretty erudite.

Well this has been quite a long blog entry, I’m certainly impressed with myself. I’m undecided if my next entry will be early (Friday) or late (Sunday or Monday) as I’m planning on spending the weekend in Birmingham and as such, probably won’t be able to blog on Saturday night as I usually like to do. Until then, switches and ores!