After my rant of a few weeks ago (about the difficulty of getting into games jobs) I have news...

From Jan 2010 I will be a Senior Developer for Traveler's Tales - the guys behind Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones. Will be living in Cheshire during the week, and at home in Cardiff for weekends.

All change. :-)

Muppet's Bohemian Rhapsody:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY

Just a quick reminder that if you're looking to improve a kid's vocabulary for Christmas, you can't do better than My Worst Words.

Just imagine the happily drunken hours around the Christmas tree, watching the grandparents' faces as their little cherub pipes up with exactly what they see on the page.

G'wan -- you know you want to. ;-)

Dragon Age is the new Baldur's Gate.

Highly recommended...

Confirmation on Sean Bean in Game of Thrones...

http://grrm.livejournal.com/95840.html

Along with Mark Addy as King Robert...

So, two weeks in the land of cheese and wine.

After struggling down the Gorge de Galamus in a wetsuit, climbing up above the clouds to revisit Peyrepertuse (and into the fog for Montsegur), trailing down into the bowels of the earth for the Grotte de Niaux and the 14000 year-old paintings, driving through thick night-time fog with no roadmarkings on the way back from Andorra, swimming in the lakes at Montbel and Puivert, relaxing in the hot springs at Ax-les-Thermes, standing goggle-eyed outside the incredible Fortress of Ultimate Evil which is Amiens Cathedral...

I'm back to find the boiler isn't working, the roofer hasn't arrived, it's raining, and I've got a pile this long *gestures* of things to do.

Bah.

Edit:
So by 4.30 today, my day has consisted of:
- The boiler not working (and the plumber being on holiday 'til the 27th)
- The roofer not turning up
- HSBC telling my my credit card has been used fraudulently
- 6 inches of water in the floor of my car (dodgy doorseal)
- And at least three other irritating things that I can't discuss publicly.

Double bah! Or even triple...

So, would it expand to an entire musical? ;-)

( Demons are a Girl's Best Friend )

Mysteriously, our book seems to have turned up on Amazon.com.

Which is nice, if surprising.

Although, given that it's targeted at UK English speakers, it might have made more sense for it to be on Amazon's UK site...

Excellent weekend.

Sai and Caroline hitched without a hitch... if you see what I mean. And completely undampened by the damp, except physically. :-)

(I'm sure blokes are supposed to be unaffected by wedding ceremonies. *sniff* No, no - hayfever, honest.)

I still have bits of Andi and Juliet's song bouncing round my head. (Not, not that song, scrofula!)

And all plans and schemes seemed to work out fine. :-)

Really good to see everyone...

Extensive piccies from greatbigshowoff when the dust has settled...

Read the last 5 xkcd comic strips, if you haven't already...

Back from Pisa and Florence.

We saw lots of Renaissance art - hence the title.

Which prompts me to ask - why is it that up until the Renaissance no-one could really draw? I mean, in lots of cultures, all over the world, all separately, no-one could get people right.

Why?

You'd have thought someone would have looked at the rock they were drawing on, looked at the person in front of them and gone "You know - he looks nothing like this at all. Why don't I just capture the light and shade with this piece of chalk and this piece of charcoal?"

Was it all about the heresy? Were ancient cultures forbidden from capturing images in case spirits were captured? All cultures?

I'm not meaning that there wasn't good art, in some cases exceptionally intricate art. And I'm not meaning they couldn't draw images of people. But the real three-D capturing of light and shadow doesn't seem to happen until Michaelangelo, Giotto, Leonardo and co. Even amongst Eastern cultures. I may be totally wrong about that, in which case I blame my art teacher...

I would have thought it could evolve just by someone, somewhere, looking at what was in front of them. Surely some kid, somewhere, who didn't have an art teacher going "that's right, just draw it as if he was a cardboard cut out - it works for South Park, so it'll work for this triptych, okay?"

I don't get it.

Looks like Brütal Legend is really shaping up:

Preview (and trailer) here.

If you haven't played the Xbox game Psychonauts, then get it - it's on Xbox Live as a downloadable game.

It's by Tim Schafer, the guy behind Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle and a lot of the first two Monkey Island games.

It's sort of a platform game. Ish. The main character, Rasputin, is at psychic summer camp; he must enter the minds of other people to foil a sinister plot. And that's the least outlandish bit of the whole thing...

Well worth the money. :-)

Oh, and all sympathies to Mickey Rourke (who I thought was amazing) but I'll just briefly wave an 'I told you so' flag.

Home at last, and far more mobile and alive than I expected.

The scar is almost disappointing - nice and long, but just doesn't look like I could pass it off as a result of a desperate knife-fight against Thuggee cultists in the alleys of Grand Fenwick. And although it does boast an impressive set of metal staples, unfortunately no cyborg powers have so far developed.

Thank you for the huge selection of cards and messages. I feel a bit undeserving - it was, after all, only appendicitis (although I can assure you that at the time the word only doesn't figure highly on your list).

And thank you for the stream of visitors - apologies if I was too morphined-up, dazed, or just plain exhausted to say anything coherent. :-)

What is this 'snow' of which you speak?

(As reported here...)

Nice. :-)

I've always had a soft spot for The Company of Wolves.

Mostly for thewhitespider and carnaaki...

Lego Steampunk on Flickr.

Anyone know where I can buy a half-silvered mirror? (You know, one-way glass)

Doesn't need to be too high-quality. Either glass or perspex would be fine.

Probably.... *thinks about it* ...2-3ft x 2-3ft.

For anyone who still owns this brilliant game:

Planescape Torment Gets A Facelift