Saturday, 23rd June, 2007

I've been fiddling around with some of googles things and reckon I can spin a post or two out of my findings, first, and possibly most interesting is that I've discovered that you can make custom maps on Google maps.

A friend from back in the day sent me a bebo message (bebo-mail? beboed me?) saying that she's going to Japan, could I advise on interesting things to see and do? Well, of course I could, so off to the internet I went, to look some things up. And what's this? I can put pins in google and share them with other people, that's cool! Most of saturday morning was then spent with me trying to remember cool things in Japan and then stick them on some maps, this: Things to do in Japan, is what I came up with. It's a work in progress, I keep remembering other cool things and sticking them on.

I'm tempted to expand it to be Cool Things In The World, and mark down all the cool things I've been to/done everywhere. That made me think, surely there must be some sort of social networking website to let people do this, and share their boring stories of the adventures that they went on!? If not, there should be, but that's a journey that I'll maybe write about another day. How about that? That's almost a promise that I'll write something else!

Tuesday, 19th June, 2007

Golly, It's been a while since I did this. So I guess a lot of stuff's happened since then.

Most importantly Crush is out! and in shops now! In fact, it's been out for almost a month now, and seems to be liked by lots of people on the internet. That's all good, if you haven't already, go and buy it, if you're good at it, you can even unlock a photo of me!

Almost as importantly, we've got a new ferret! To go along with little girl ferrets Poppy and Pickle, we now have big boy ferret Ozzy, they're all sans bits of course, since we don't really have the space for any more little ferrets in the flat. He's HUGE, like I dunno, six times the size of the others! Well, maybe not that big, but If you could squash Poppy and Pickle together into one ferret, they still wouldnt be quite as big as Ozzy is. Despite his massivce hulking frame however, he is a complete softy and hasn't even threatened to bite anyone yet. He sqeaks and bites Poppy a fair bit, but she does insit on dragging him across the floor by his face...

Ok, that's enough updating for one day, I'm off to think about how to make this website even better than it already is!

Thursday, 1st February, 2007

First update in months, but there's some BIG NEWS to accompany it. Last week (I'm fast!) was the announcement of the game that I'm working on, Crush. It's a PSP game, being made here at Kuju Brighton, to be published by Sega and you can read all the blurb about it on that there Official SEGA page.
Basically it's about a guy with insomnia and some hypnotising and a big machine, although that's not really the interesting bit, the interesting bit is the gameplay. It is, as far as I'm aware, a completely original idea - which is a rare occurrence in games these days. Well it's completely original if you avoid the fact that Super Paper Mario has a similar mechanic, although it's hard to tell exactly how it affects the gameplay (it's not a major part of the game it seems) from the videos that I've seen, however in Crush, it is the gameplay.

The game involves a chap called Danny, running about little 3D levels - in this respect it looks kind of like something like Kula World or PQ, but you can Crush the levels from any side down into a 2D version. This means that far away things and close by things look to be all on the same plane, so you can move to places that were previously inaccessible. It's probably much easier to watch the video than for me to try and describe what's happening...

So that's what I've been doing for the last however long. I've also been making half an attempt to send emails to people, and it worked for about 2 days, then I re-lapsed back into having a big list of things to send and people to say hello to, but I'm getting better I think.

In non work time I've been doing a little bit of geeking around and actually playing my PSP now that I can run PS1 games on it, hmm, that's about that.

Wednesday, 16th August, 2006

There's a black helicopter circling above right now searching for something, or someone... Well it's probably black, it's too dark to tell, but it has a very bright light shining out of it sometimes, although it's been turned off now that I've made an attempt to take photos, perhaps it's gone into stealth mode. Unfortunately without stealth engines you can tell where it is by sound alone...

I've not updated for a while so before I go to bed, I might at least write a thing or two.

For those of you out there in internet land that don't know already, I've moved, with Yasmin, to Brighton on the sunny south coast of England (some photos).
I'm now out and about in the real world of men (and women) working for a living at Kuju Entertainment Ltd, and working on a game which is a bit top secret so there'll be no more mention of it, at least until it's no-longer top secret.
So now that I'm in the industry, I can call myself a Professional and do all sorts of things like write a blog, pretend that I personally know people like Ron Gilbert or Peter Molyneux, and assume that my opinions on games, and the world, (of which I may write something someday) count more now than they did 2 months ago!

So far Brighton seems like a nice enough place, quite expensive, but there's somehow an excess of hippies and shops selling interesting shaped glassware and pottery. Not that there's anything wrong with hippies, of course.

We have a little house here, and in it we have a little ferret, Poppy, she's adorable, if a little manic. Conveniently, she seems to be a 2-bit state machine: Asleep, Pooing, Hyper-as-anything and Eating - these loop in that order throughout the day, so she's quite easy to live with (if a bit smelly sometimes)

I'll finish off for now with a few photos of interesting events since we've ben here, I doubt I'll ever get around to giving more complete reviews or discussions on any of them, so you can just look at the images and make up a story yourself!
Brighton Kite Festival - Lots of people sitting in a field having picnics at the bottom of bits of string.
Kuju Summer Event - Lots of people in fields in various vehicles and growing as a Team.
Brighton Pride Parade - Lots of men in hot-pants and feather boas, who would have thought that gay people would like to parade!

Thursday, 10th August, 2006

News

"Environmentalists and fishermen in northern Norway are warning of a Russian invasion of alien crustaceans which are threatening to ruin the local sea fauna.

They say the giant red king crab is spreading with alarming speed from Russian waters along the Norwegian coast, destroying everything in its wake. "

Tuesday, 13th June, 2006

Well, is I am in leeds, just in from a night of beer and talk with friend steve. Much fun was had by all parties, well, by me anyway - steve always has interesting ideas whenever i talk to him and today is no different. Due to a gentlemen's agreement it's tip top secret though. leeds seems pleasant enough, i feel there's a great fal let to explore though, such is the way with large places. For now though, I think I'll stop because typing on a phone is enough hassle without trying to think of interesting content too.

peace out.