Brian's Saviour (A Distracted Journey)

With university deadlines fast approaching it was only natural to make a 1 min zombie flick to be entered into a Good Game competition for a life size zombie called Brian. No-one involved had ever done any video work before and the end product was suitably terrible, but it was a lot a lot of fun to make!
Hoping you can enjoy it over the link too.....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=519U3R6u-DE






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The spectators' paradox; an example

An unfortunate paradox that works equally well for Jackie Chan films and stunts
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The Child Snatching

I’m unsure at exactly what age the following story takes place. And I’m more than just a little afraid that I may’ve been much older than I would be willing to admit, even to myself. But without further ado, here is the story of my time as a child snatcher.

As our family continued to grow in number and size, the house seemed to get disproportionately smaller. When the family finally reached a grand size of eight, everyone was sharing a room. As a little boy growing up, I understandably wanted a room of my own. How I yearned to have the privacy and the grandeur of owning one’s own room. I’m not sure what circumstances occurred, whether siblings left, moved into the garage or something much more sinister happened, but finally my dream came true and I had a room of my own.

The grass was not greener…

I missed the conversations and tomfoolery of a room pal. I missed getting told off by parents for talking too long, and then talking some more.

I first tried to overcome this by being nonchalant, convincing myself I was above such childish non-sense.

It didn’t work. I was still a child after all (Or maybe not – see opening paragraph..).

Next, I would hide as an unknown occupant under my brother’s bed and silently partake in their conversations.

This ended in one of three ways,

I would fall asleep there.

But this happened rarely because:

My parents would discover I was missing and by using their magic child sensing radars, find me from under the bed and remove me.

The third ending however, was my favourite.

I would wait until they were sufficiently tired or asleep and start to push my knees up under the bed, slowly take their covers, softly stroke their hair.

Traumatising their little sleepy minds.

But most often it ended up with me making a BIG sound and running to my room where I would innocently pretend to be asleep, should my parents search. I think they may’ve figured it out though…

Sometimes I just needed a quick talk. It matter little if my brothers were already asleep, I would happily waltz in, grab a hold of their sleeping noses until they woke bright eyed and scared. Then I would joyfully cheer ‘You won’t remember this in the morning, hahaha’. And run away. They never did.

When I wasn’t doing this, I would turn to more drastic measures. I would snatch.

When my brothers were sleeping, I would sneak into their rooms and take them back to my own and slide them gently under my bed. Of course there was no conversation to be had, but I suppose it was the knowledge of having someone in the room that I was after all along.

 
Sometimes they would wake as I was snatching them, or as I was kicking them under the bed or sometimes I would wake to find them gone. Imagine the terror of waking as a child, in a dark, hard, strange environment. You try to sit up, but you are constricted and locked in space. A ceiling close to your head. I imagine it must’ve been similar to being buried alive.

This is what my brothers’ must have regularly experienced, but I cared little because sometimes, and these times were indeed the best, they would sleep the entire night under my bed, completely unaware. It was like achieving a successful mission.

Just in case anyone was worrying, I don’t do this any more. Probably.

My belated apologies lil’ bros….
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Radicool Chemistry

Though probably a whole lot less ups too

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A tour for all

It is no secret that I love watching le tour. I’m up to all hours of the morning, all alone in my house, watching every stage of the race – totally absorbed. I’m not even a cycling enthusiast, but there is something magical and hypnotic about le tour.

Is it the spectacular scenery, the tactics or the athleticism? Perhaps it is due to my poorly concealed love for lycra.

Regardless of what it is, I have noticed that not everyone is so affected as I. So I have come up with a couple of ideas to spice up the tour and make it amazing to all. Race organisers, take note:

Already this year the race organises have taken the initiative and shifted things around with more injures and crashes than ever before –(taking note from the success of motor racing and funniest home video [still awaiting sound effects]).They’re also taken note of the UFC’s rise to popularity: we’ve witnessed fist fights and even head-butting amongst the riders.

Good start.

Now to capitalise:

Mario Kart: No-one cannot enjoy Mario kart, and a blue turtle shell here or there would surely mix things up.

Zombie outbreak: Imagine the riders fleeing all across France with ‘rage-virus’ zombies chasing them down. It would work like ‘gang-tiggy’ – if you get caught, you help catch the remainders.

Night racing: This is so I can watch the race during the day. Nothing more. Although…..I do s’pose that is when the zombies are most active

Performance enhancing drugs: I know they are trying to stop all this, but goddamit I want to see super humans!!!

More lycra: The riders, the crowd, the trees, the cars, the road. Never have enough lycra.

I do apologise for the particularly poor artwork for this post. I am most ashamed …I didn’t quite grasp how difficult it would be to draw bikes and cyclists….So my last picture will in fact be a link. Enjoy.

Spandexman

Viva le tour
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Game Review: Crystal Caves

I’m sure that the title alone would invoke many (and mostly wonderful) emotions to those lucky enough to have played through this platforming ‘gem’ (ahh-Ziiiiiing). CC was released by Apogee Software in 1991 in three parts as Apogee would often do. The first part, Trouble with Twibbles, was shareware (free to everyone) with the next two parts Slugging it Out and Mylo versus the Supernova requiring monetary sacrifice. It was because of this release style that I got to play so many classics (or at least their shareware) which are pretty much the basis for my gaming enjoyment.

The game’s antagonist is Mylo Steamwitz, a ‘hair-brain scheme’ loving dude with his eyes on making a big buck quick. Though never quite getting there. He enters the crystal caves to get the capital needed for these investments. There he will take on all kinds of creatures and machinery, who are determined to stop him taking those crystals back with him.

The game has a dry sense of humour, which is particular to this era of gaming. You will even find puns taken at other games (Commander Keen’s helmet in deadly green sludge) and though you won’t ROFL you may chuck (the beginning of a chuckle which is cut short upon realising the joke probably doesn’t warrant a vocal laugh, but will still leave you feeling warm).

This game was great! It was to be said. Though, as a child, I never even approached finishing the game. But I have already accepted my total and utter uselessness as a child gamer, and so wasn’t too surprised to find the game significantly easier than I remembered when I recently played through it. Each episode took maybe a couple of hours, with the third episode amping up the difficulty notch a little.

The sound is terrible (read: awesome DOS sounds), but you have to love it for its simplicity. The jump sound will, however, drive you crazy.

For an early platformer, the controls and mechanics are pixel-perfect. There are also some interesting ideas at play, like reverse gravity, low gravity, and a plethora of switches requiring some basic problem solving.
8/10 – Classic DOS platforming….a little repetitive after three episode done back to back

The game is now freeware, so I’ve decided to post them up here. You will probably need a DOS emulator, such as DOSbox to run it in.

Crystal Caves 1

Crystal Caves 2

Crystral Caves 3

The original download I found was bugged out on a level, where you couldn’t enter the exit. This drove me a little crazy….These files are fine though
Also, a really cool site for more info and even an interview with the creator:
Perilious Crystal Caves Website [no affliation :( ]


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Birth of a Blog

Sit down children and listen to the tale that I have to tell. The tale of how this blog came to life…

(Only two days in and I’m already scraping the bottom of the idea barrel. ‘What to blog about?? Hmmmmm…How about my blog! Now that is a great leap forward in ideas!)

Okaaaaaay…I wish I could include cool things like rockets and dinosaurs or dinosaurs on fire shooting rockets, but this tale is of much more humble beginnings.

I was really, really, REALLY bored.

Not just your run-of-the-mill, ‘what to do? What to do?’ level of bored. I was taking mind-numbing boredom to new face-melting extremes. Not deliberately mind you, but unfortunately my boredom had become a deadly, downward cycle with a life of its own. I was becoming such a pro at being bored, household chores of dire necessity, personal hygiene, things that I COULD be done, things that could SAVE me, were being left aside to rot. Why? I honestly feared that my boredom would rebel against me if I tried to destroy it…I feared that it had grown so strong it would surely melt my brain for so much as having an idea.

But something had to be done. So my first attempt to regain my humanity came by the way of arts and craft, in particular cross-stitch. Now, I don’t care what anyone else says, but cross-stitch is an art to rot the brain away. Which just so happened to be the perfect first step to fool my boredom that I was still an inactive chunk of flesh. It was working; my mind was being released from boredom’s grip.

So, I thought to myself, ‘what other activity is there to fill the emptiness that currently occupies my life, but would not require me to leave my room?’. A plethora of ideas from juggling knives, pen-trix, backflips, holding my breath, even archery (I kid you not) were suggested to me, but these were all overshadowed by a sudden, revolutionary brainwave.

BLOGGING!!!

Yes, I would conquer the world with my mighty interstellar grip. For that is the birth-right of all bloggers and it is a right my broad and ever so capable shoulders must burden. Yes, soon the world will know of me and follow my teachings as religious truths.

Unfortunately, it would seem I’m not really the ‘idea’ kind of person. And the road of a blogger is going to be much harder than first figured and conquering will require a significant reduction in bravado. But if I don’t do it, it’s not like there is anyone else out there to do it………right?

I couldn’t help myself:

What happens when you put a baby in a microwave for 10 minutes??

I don’t know…I was too busy masturbating

I couldn’t bring myself to draw that though…

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Awkward morning

The other day my little brother had his first ‘sleep-over’ with a lady friend, at the latter’s house. Now I am not one to have formed any ideas of what may occur,

but he was adamant that nothing would happen.

Regardless, he invited the young lass back to our house come the next morning. At this point I started to believe him: mostly because they arrived early in the morning and I was still asleep.

Now, there is something you must know about me: I revel in awkwardness. So long as I am aware that the situation is awkward, I can switch my brain to think ‘this is kinda fun, AND will make a good story later’. This gives me the ability, however false it may be, to believe I am above the cringe-worthy moment and somehow its puppeteer. I control the awkward and the awkward will listen. So I revel.

Back to my bro, even though he said nothing would happen, and I’d started to believe him, I still wanted to make sure that his lady friend knew that she had picked the wrong brother. You must excuse this extremely arrogant train of thought. I had just woken and was until recently the hero of some epic battle and full of pride (note, I have never, and probably will never be able to draw animals) and, if you were ever to meet my lil’ bro, you would realise these stick figures are giving him a couple more kilos than he is due.

To achieve this, I timed the exit from my room such that I would meet the young lass. Naked. Except for my under wear. Thinking to impress. And, of course, also to cause a little bit of awkward, sexual tension.

However, my plan was flawed, given I had just woken up…

My somewhat distorted morning memory tells me that the lady was rather attractive. But a more likely scenario was this.

So who was the real winner?

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Welcome!!

Welcome one and all to the newly formed 'The Big Meh'.

This is my first foray into the world of blogging and will (hopefully) be a delicious simmering pot of my past, future and present escapades presented as coherently and pleasantly as I can achieve. Which, in all honesty, will more likely be a poorly updated, random bunch of nonsensical material that I hope you will enjoy none-the-less.
I've decided, most probably due to my inherent laziness, that I won't give you a run down of my entire self from word go, but rather I hope this will become established over time. Kinda of like a game if you will

I promise to be awesome, I mean, look at the cool welcome banner/party I have for you guys..I was expecting more guests :(


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