In three days it will be two years since I joined Gamespot. I was on here reading the stuff and listening to the podcast beforehand, and I think I initially signed up so I could post questions for some E3 interview. It's been a good two years! The site has gone in and out of being my homepage though (I didn't at any point decide to ditch it, but when I upgraded to Windows 7 I just never got round to putting it back). I liked this PvP webcomic strip so much that it is my new homepage.

I have an interview in three hours, and I am nervous! This is why I am posting rubbish on my GS blog that I haven't used for 9 months or something.

In 5 days it will be one year since my first blog entry on Gamespot. This is my tenth in that time. Who knows how many I'll post in the next year?

Anyway, I downloaded and played the tutorial of D&D Online recently as it is free now. I love actual D&D and so far it's not too bad, but I need to get deeper into it before I can say whether or not I'm going to keep playing it. Free, high quality MMO though, always good.

The other day I also bought Saints Row 2 off Steam for only £3.75, and it's well worth it. It is a lot of fun. Need to play more of that too. Unfortunately the ridiculously low price was a 1 day only thing, but it might be worth paying more for anyway. I almost got it when it was new out but was put off a bit by reports of bugs with the PC version. I haven't run into any bugs yet but I can tell why PC gamers were complaining, it isn't ported brilliantly. Anyway, for that price I certainly wont complain.

Been listening to Sage Francis's "Sick of Wasting", which he released for free. The first half is really good, the second half not so good, but well worth checking out if you're at all into hip-hop.

The same goes for Random's "Thanks for supported Random! Volume 2", a free rap album I've been enjoying recently.

Something not free that I ordered but hasn't arrived yet is the Les Kills EP, well worth checking out.

This video is from it and well worth checking out!

Got my results just now. I got 9 A*s, an A in additional maths (highest available) and a B in D&T. Obviously I'm very pleased with my results (I was shocked!). I'm also glad that my mates all did well, some thought they might not get the grades to get into my schools 6th form, but they did well enough in the end :D

Today I had my GCSE German oral exam. It went much better than I expected, I had been stressed out by the prospect of it for a few days so was really relieved when the bloke said at the end "you really did yourself justice".

In other news, my radishes are doing well, carrots not as well but some sign of growth today, and broad beans looking less leany.

When I got home I realised I had forgotten my key, but fortunately the French student staying with us got home earlier than usual and let me in.

8bitfm.com is back up after a crash from a rush of new users with upgraded bandwidth!

Sorry for the rubbish blog post :)

Yeah yeah I know I just posted, but I then read an interview and feel like sharing opinion on a topic which is on everyone's tongues at the moment, fuelled by the onlive announcements at GDC.

A couple of links for you:

penny arcade strip

Interview I just read

So basically everyone has been talking about onlive, and the interview I just read talks about a competitor called gaikai. I am on the side of people who say that internet speeds are not up to scratch at the moment. However, I have mixed feelings about the potential for it to become the dominant gaming platform. As an enthusiastic PC gamer and general computer person I revel in the updating of components etc that consolers are always complaining about, so I'd regret my own hardware not affecting my gameplay. I'd also find it harder to justify expensive purchases which would benefit my computing in other ways aswell. I'd also miss being able to buy games myself, I don't like the idea that this suggests about not owning your games. It's a bit like insta-steam in a way. I think PC and console gamers will experience the change in different ways. PCs will become more popular for gaming as you won't have to buy something to plug into your TV, and people wont need to upgrade anything which is what puts most people off. I wonder doubtfully whether it will ever take gaming over completely. We may never hear about it again. I just hope it doesn't kill the hardware industry, gaming is great for pushing processing technologies further and further at great pace, which benefits sciences such as physics and medicine as well as gaming.

Hmmm...

We'll see...

I love chess. I am a member of my school's chess club, where I am about mid-way in the group in terms of skill. For a certain young age group my school is second in the country, so I'm often beaten by kids 6 years younger than me, but for most of them I'm a fair match. I beat most people who don't play regularly, because regular play means as much as overall skill in my experience. I play it on the internet and on my phone. I own about 12 chess books - one of them was printed in about 1896, loads from the 1930s and some more recent. For my 16th birthday a load of friends came round and we had a chess tournament. Although I usually pay attention in school, during a particularly boring English lesson recently I played a friend at chess on his iPod.

It's not like I'm brilliant at it or anything, and it's not even a primary obsession (I spend much more time reading and thinking about programming and games than I do chess) but somehow I love it - I'm compelled by it, I sit up until far too late just playing people on a certain chess website, the same as I do with TF2 and other games. I posed the question of the source of this to a friend over xfire:

[22:42] ♠ace•up•my•sleeve♠حس6; صب♠: Why do I love chess so much?
[22:42] Charming: you're an inter lick dual?

So clearly no use asking him (who I actually beat at chess only a few hours ago).

Anyone else know where I'm coming from with this chess thing?

I don't know why I'm doing this blog post. Every day I get an idea of something to post a blog about and never get round to it, this is one of my worse ideas. Sorry.

As usual I don't have much time to write this, as much as I want to spend ages on it, so just imagine this blog post to the power of 5 and you'll have some idea of my feelings.

Some of you may have noticed a newish appearence in my sig, a Nerdcore Rising banner. If you have clicked the link you will have found the website of a documentary which follows nerdcore hiphop artist MC Frontalot on his first national (US) tour. Here are my thoughts on the film:

I really loved it, it is full of humour, interesting interviews, the odd emotional moment, and great music. If you are a fan of nerdcore, or just a nerd, or are a friend of the world wide nerd community I implore you to buy the DVD, it is well worth the buy.

If you don't know what nerdcore is, the best advice I can give is to see this film. Otherwise, the explaination I always give is that it is hiphop and rap with geek culture references in the lyrics. For a better idea check out beefyness.com and see the recent post with a video on it - the intro is in Dutch but soon it is English.

I would love to talk more about it, but have to do 3 hours worth of work in the next 40 minutes. Check out MC Frontalot, Beefy, YTCracker, MC Lars

AND ESPECIALLY....

I have loads of school work to do. School work ina babylon. Argh. Gotta think of something interesting to write...

I can't so I'll just talk about my mousemats. I am a big PC gamer, but also don't have much money, so don't bother putting much money into buying any sorta special mousemats. However, since I spend so much time at my PC, I like to have something interesting to look at. I'll give a quick rundown of just a few of my many mousemats, past and present:

I used to not use one at all. That was boring.

I then got a second hand tomb-raider mousemat, because I liked tomb raider way back in the day on the PS1 (which I still have). I loved that mousemat, it had about 3 pictures of Lara Croft if I remember correctly. It got bent, which basically killed it, and I have since lost it.

I bought a Liverpool FC mousemat, because I support them and needed a new mousemat. It's an interesting shape and comfortable to use. I still have it. Wait - I just dropped it behind my desk. I'll pick it up later.

Then in Berlin last year I bought a new round one. it's got a picture ofone of these walking men:

My one is actually walking in the other direction but I suppose that's irrelevant. Anyway, I like it quite a lot, it's nice to use and looks good on my desk, especially as the green looks good next to the green LEDs of my case fans.

Anyway, at the gamesindustry.biz career fair last October I got a free banjo-kazooie nuts and bolts mousemat. Although I have never played banjo-kazooie it was free so Im using it right now. I might go back to my Berlin one soon.

There, now you know how we roll.

I was born in and have lived for most of my life in England, renowned for its terrible weather. In the words of Cousin Avi from the film snatch:

"Yes, London. You know - fish, chips, cuppa tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary ****ing Poppins...London!"

As a result of this I am used to cold weather. In fact, I have something of a reputation for not being too badly affected by weather (although I personally believe that I just go on about it less and feel it just the same).

And yet, I am bloody COLD!!!!

I am wearing socks AND slippers, trousers and t-shirt and dressing gown, the heating is on, and yet my hands are almost too cold to type and my feet feel like theyre about to fall off. It snowed on Monday, and although you can still see the snow on the ground, it has been too cold to snow since. Aaargh.

Anyway, related but different, I have a theory. People always go to me "well, you're alright - you've got insulation!". Often accompanying this remark is a poke in the larger-than-average belly. However, I believe that although fatter people are at least risk of suffering serious damage as a result of cold, we feel colder. This is because we have a greater surface area of skin through which we can lose heat, and we feel cold because our skin is cold.

The title of this blog post is slightly misleading, as it is actually drawn from my thoughts about the best time to make (and eat) hot cross buns, but it applies probably better to sandwiches. I am at the moment revising for my mock GCSEs. Revision is a {insert expletive here} as anyone who has seriously tried it will know. After an hour of frustrating chemistry revision, I embarked on what should have been an hours history revision, but as time is drawing short until the exam it turned into a 2 hour 21 minute revision session. Aaaargh. Anyway, Im having a break until I must go back to my revision for an hours (supposedly an hour anyway) physics. My plan was: put up a poster, go on here, have a hot cross bun. I looked for blue tac (an adhesive used loads in britain, don't know how widely used it is abroad) but couldn't find any, and decided to skip the poster. I was quite eagre to get on here and check out the GOPCG union board, but also hungry. I decided to put off the hot cross bun until later, leading me to my conclusion about the best time to make a sandwich.

When you are procrastinating. If I had something to do which I wanted to do (eg come on here) I wouldnt have put the effort into timing the toasting of the hot cross bun perfectly, I would have rushed the buttering, rushed the eating, and overall not enjoyed it as much as I should. But, if I do it when I should really be starting physics revision, I will take a long time to do it properly and really enjoy it. I will still do the whole hour of physics, Ill just finish later than I planned. Anyway, the thought just occured to me and I thought I'd put it down for any passers by to take a look at.