I don’t know about you guys, but I’m really liking a lot of the visual wonderment that is going on in the world on Indie / small studio games. It makes me want to get cracking on some cool shiz! Check out this promising video for The Unfinished Swan.
Mmm… monochromatic.
Well it’s finally happened – after an eternity of saving and looking around shitholes we’d never want to live in we have taken that first, bowel shaking step on to the property ladder. Man, that is one shaky ladder – or at least it feels like it. Much like having children (or so I’d imagine), it never feels like the right time. Or at least not for me.
Are property prices going up or down? What is the economy doing? Are we in recession or out of it? Is the bank trying to screw us? It feels like they are, but we can’t do this without them. Wait, was that crack there before? Is our house sinking?! What was that smell?
It’s a weird process, but one that everyone has to go through I guess – ultimately we have been lucky, very lucky and I’m grateful for that. More ultimately, this is the reason there haven’t been many blog post recently. DIY is now my new hobby, and not through choice – though there is nothing that makes you feel more like a bloke than playing with power tools.
Oh, and I’m very much aware that this is rapidly becoming a blog about excuses for not writing blog posts…
See you all soon!
You may or may not have been wondering where I’ve been. Pondering there, in you boudoir, about what may have happened to the regular updates that I keep promising and what ghastly, vengeful fate may have been bestowed upon me.
Or more likely you’ve been getting on with your own life, which – lets be honest here – is waaay more interesting than anything you’ll find polluting the interwaves here.
Pink
Yet here you are – reading this. I feel at this point a thank you is in order, so cheers. I know there aren’t many of you and I appreciate the fact that you are spending your quality time (Or more likely, work’s time) here. It’s not all about the numbers, I tell myself.
Hey, world domination is hard. When the whole world and his Nintendog are dry-humping the digital dream and screaming to be heard in the cavernous hall that is the lair of the ‘online community’, it is difficult to make people listen. Their ears ringing with wail-induced tinnitus, and eyes dry from flickering screens crammed with flesh and ideas, well and poorly executed.
Who knows where this blog lies? All I know is it’s got to be fairly deep as there isn’t a large surface area up there in the warm glow of the public eye and there is an awful lot of shit below. Break the crust however and you may bask in the tepid gaze of the general public for a while before sinking back down to whence you came.
Be under no illusion that this is a moan. I can’t moan about something that I haven’t really tried and neither should you. Not that you are, so lets move on.
Class this as more of a musing brought about by an empty page and a urge to write – an urge that seldom grabs me at the moment. I am busy with other things, which hopefully, if I’m busy enough with them, I’ll be able to share at some point. I’m sorry I can’t offer you more.
You may be wondering about the pink guy. I’m glad.
Since I don’t really have anything interesting of my own to share I just thought I’d share this tasty viral instead:
More on this subject later. Have a good Sunday evening y’all!
Boo!
Gotcha! You weren’t expecting that were you? I don’t blame you for jumping – things have been pretty quiet here on the FingerBlog. Not without due reason I assure you, but then you’d expect me to say that.
Anyway, 2012 looks to hopefully be quite interesting as I’m planning on releasing a few of the things I’ve been working on… If I can get them finished that is…
Anyhoo, as you didn’t hear from me over Christmas I’ll leave you with the card I drew for the festive period. Hope you all had a good one!
Apparently I am a massive liar. A big, fat, hairy liar. When I say that I mean the lie is big, fat and hairy as opposed to myself. I am quite svelte, and due to genes and whatnot, not that hairy at all. This stops me from joining in with Movember .
I am of course referring to the fact that every time I write a blog post I am apologising and saying I will write them more often. I then proceed to do the complete opposite and not write anything at all. I guess that makes me a liar. I am not without the best intentions however. I have been pretty busy at WCRS, not to mention trying desperately to finish a few of my side projects. Remember this guy?
This guy
Keep an eye out, he’s hopefully coming soon in a cracking new adventure. Also, I have a few mobile apps on the go so keep an eye out for updates on those. The first one is a card game you play with friends. I’ll leave it at that for the time being.
Once again, I promise I’ll write more! Keep checking out the FingerBlog!
Jason – out…. how do you turn this off?.. Is it…
As the car pounded out of the chicane, with the staccato click of gravel bouncing across it’s underbelly, something felt wrong. The rear wouldn’t come back in check. I backed off the accelerator and feathered the brake, but it was too late – we were heading sideways towards the trees…
Not to spoil anything, but I did survive. I also had a pant-wettingly good time at the Brands Hatch rally experience. What a birthday treat; driving a rally spec Peugeot 206 around two special stages with the engine screaming and the tyres squealing. Wait… Peugeot 206?! Those are complete cheese-balls! Or are they?
What a beaut....
Apparently not when they have been lightened, squeezed up to 150bhp, with close ratio gears and a hydraulic handbrake. Those things can move! And if they don’t move in the right direction – pull that handbrake. Seriously, I think people should drive like that more of the time. It doesn’t matter if you drive a front-wheel drive car if, when faced with a double scoop of understeer, you can just yank on the handbrake and get that jolly french nose pointing back where you want it.
With talk such as this I’m sure you’re not surprised that I ended up heading sideways towards turgid foliage. However that was all about over-cooking it out of the corner. I seriously did not expect to get that much oversteer out of a Peugeot. It was worth it though to get best time of the day and win… Well nothing really, apart from the right to feel a bit smug.
Who doesn’t like feeling a bit smug though? Bring on the Silverstone rally competion!
p.s. Sorry for the stupid title that has almost nothing to do with anything… It’s a bit late now though, eh?
They’re watching you… watching… or at least I hope they are as otherwise this is all a bit pointless.
Now the wedding is over and done with I suppose I’d better give this blog a bit more attention – before it becomes like a neglected child and starts smoking and kicking in the roundabout at the local park. With that in mind I decided to try and add it to Technorati, a blog search engine. You know, to get it out there. To get in peoples faces and minds. To just get some people to read the bloody thing.
They have a bit of a strange process for submitting your site though; where you have to prove you own the blog by posting a… post with a specific code in it. Something like this: PB948969QTAR. Is that my code? Yes. Yes it is.
In a way, I feel that it’s actually just a clever way of getting lots of bloggers to link back to their site. The number of codes out there that are cunningly disguised as ‘How to sign up to Technorati’ posts is ridiculous.
It even worked on me.
“As a number between one and ten, when one is normal and ten is agony, how bad is the pain?”, the nurse asked before shooting me up with morphine. This was not how I imagined my month ending – in a post-operative haze of general anesthetic and opiates.
What Em & I might look like if we were poorly made cake decorations (Yes, I made them...)
So I’m now a married man and people ask me if it feels any different. The honest answer is no, not really – why would it feel different? Em (my wife if you haven’t met her) and I have been together for years. Plus we’ve been living in the same tiny flat for over two years. Maybe it’s too soon to tell; if things change I’ll let you know.
The main thing that I noticed is how many wonderful friends and family we have. Not that I didn’t know that before, but having them all there in one place really helped illustrate the point. I don’t think the actual wedding could have gone any better – it was the perfect day. The only thing was it would have been good to be able to afford to invite all the people we wanted to. There were quite a few people who should have been there had our credit cards been able to take the strain. Alas, they couldn’t, and to the lost – I apologies. I’ll buy you a drink.
Better than Kenya Airways...
Kenya Airways (who are crap by the way) KQ101 deposited us in Nairobi where we caught a light aircraft over to a dirt runway out in the middle on the Masai Mara. What a place for a honeymoon; staying in a luxury tent next to a river teeming with crocodiles and hippos. The latter of which liked to pass the night wandering through the camp, which explained the armed guard who had to walk us to and from out tent after nightfall. The fact that he was armed with a stick didn’t fill me with confidence. In fact I’m pretty sure the bastard could run quicker than us too…
What do you think of this post? Oh...
I had always thought that we, as a race, had killed off most of the animals in Africa. If our three nights of safari are anything to go by, I couldn’t be more wrong. It seemed almost impossible to travel more than 10 meters without falling over a gazelle, or stubbing your toe on a warthog. I even think it was less than a minute after we left the camp that we saw our first lion. Either these things are more common than the X-Factor contestants, or we were just very lucky. What a fantastic experience though, and what a beautiful country.
Look at them - lion about... sorry.
I don’t feel like we fitted into the whole safari scene entirely. A world full of exorbitantly priced, phallic zoom lenses balanced on protruding bellies-straining at their canvas-shirted bounds. People with money, funny accents and no style. Friendly people, don’t get me wrong, but just a little… well, weird. Maybe this feeling of not quite fitting in was compounded by our safari driver telling us about his ‘English friends’ who had given him a three hundred dollar tip just after we’d given him our (considerably smaller) thank you. Or maybe when I said goodbye and thanks to our hosts, their farewell consisting of “Well make sure you come back when you’ve grown up a little”. I’m sure they meant it in a nice way, but it just came off a little – as I said – weird. Still, I would recommend the experience to everyone.
Cut to: a run line crawling across a map of Africa as the Indiana Jones theme plays. Our journey then took us to the bleached sands and azure waters of Diani Beach for the relaxing part of our honeymoon. Dear God, we needed that! The days consisted to deciding what to eat, when to go in the sea or the pool and when to get a Tusker. Or a passion juice if you’re Emily, which you’re not. Amazing food and drink and romantic walks along the beach, flanked by beach boys. No, I don’t want to buy that crappy necklace; now piss off!
My favourite chair - near the bar
What an amazing honeymoon though, I enjoyed every minute. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end – or so people keep telling me. Holidays are never long enough, and we left Kenya feeling happy, but with a tinge of sadness that it was over and we had to go back to normal life.
Four days later I’m in A&E. I always thought appendicitis came on slow, where you had about a week or so to work out what was going on and get your arse to hospital. I felt completely fine until Tuesday lunchtime and I was in hospital at 10.30 that same night.
The Doctor gave me a couple of shots and got me to remove my boxers before clamping a mask over my face and telling me to breathe deeply. No counting back from ten or anything. The first shot she said would make me feel drowsy – it didn’t. The second she said would knock me out; when did she give it to me again? It feels like its been a while. I feel fine. Oh God, I’m somehow immune! They’re going to operate and I’ll be wide awake! I’m going to see the knife cutting into…
I woke up forty-five minutes later to the morphine I mentioned earlier and to two weeks off work. I was supposed to finish at TheTin and start my new job at WCRS&Co. Apparently, the doctor said, that would have to wait. What a flat end to an otherwise amazing month.
Devon, friends, family, wedding, wife, wine, planes, Africa, Lions, Cheetahs, warthogs, booze, beach, cuisine aaaaaaand… surgery.
What a month…
Two weeks to go! Time feels like it’s… gaining momentum if you will. The days are passing quicker the closer we get to W-day and it feels like there is more and more to do. Anticipation; only matched by the weird feeling we know is imminent when it’s all over – after so long. Before that though…
It’s going to be epic.
I’m planning on getting back on the blog wagon after we get back from honeymoon – trust me!