Hapz Newz Yearz 2011 to all uber geeks, ultra gibbers, uncanny rpers and under-appreciated gamers !

I start this new year off just getting back from a nice celebration, back to work at the supermarket and trying a new persistant web based game called Neptunes Pride . This game seems ordinary enough, but ranked 3rd best indie game of 2010 in Edge Magazine so was worth trying out. Ranked 1st was Minecraft and 2nd was Meatboy. Neptunes Pride is a sci fi genre game, where you control an alien race in a small universe and build and send out spaceships all in a persistent web based browser. You can log in with your google acount and its quite quick to pick up and play, if you spend 5 minutes reading the tutorial. It seems there are many games to enter, with a variety of game rules from beginner to newbie killer. Its worth just playing though, careful it doesn't control your life though...

Submissions for gamespaces without banners is closed, and there were still gamespaces such as the DLC for Red Dead Redemption (Gamespots GoTY) left unsubmitted. Its a shame! But I did get to submit over 50 gamespace banners for various old and new games.

I'm also seeing quite a few blog posts, and forum posts scattered across the internet whilst I surf that open the new craft of cross stitching

Here are some randomly selected examples I acquired from google...

If you are interested in spending a few minutes a day for a couple of weeks to produce a nice cross stitch fabric patch then it is a reasonably simple craft to learn with lots of interesting creative posibilities. Once you get going it remains quite cheap, with the most costs probably being buying the individual thread colours needed for your perfect stitch.

You will need (in no particular order):

• Needle
• Scissors
• Grid Paper
• a DMC* Thread colour chart
• Some Fabric (aida 16 or aida 14 is popular) search on ebay for this
• a design

You will want to copy a design, perhaps a pixelated image of Mario onto grid paper, noting the colours and picking the DMC Thread colours using your chart to match the colours from your source image (ie the colours in the picture of Mario

Once you have finished your Grid Paper and know where to sew the stitches you will want to start buying your threads and start sewing onto the (Aida) fabric. Perhaps half an hour a day will give you 20-50 stitches depending on your experience.

Once you have got the hang of it. You can start preparing your next design and buying more coloured threads. Beware because this hobby can be quite addictive, but extremely therapeutic, social and relaxing.

*DMC is a sewing business and is the most popular maker of threads and probably has the most easy to acquire threads and colours. The also sell fabrics, and give useful hints and tips on their website. You can buy individual colours on ebay.

You can also play around with a piece of software called PCStitch, which will change jpegs into cross stitch patterns and supply you with the correct colours and DMC threads to use. I would recommend to not fully rely on this software but its a great tool.

Good Luck and see you in my next blog post !