April 2013
1 post
First First.
I have really really gruesome nightmares so I keep waking up about 4/5am and not going back to sleep so I’m waiting for Morrisons to open to go grab some Red Bull.
Yesterday I got my first First grade at University, for an essay I wrote. Whoever marked it said that my use of images and diagrams made my essay feel paced like a comic and I’m like seriously it’s an essay not a God...
March 2013
4 posts
3 tags
1 tag
2 tags
The Soft Cell Institute of Education
My University is asking students to submit new names for it.
Both members of Soft Cell studied at Leeds Met. Soft Cell were undoubtedly one of the greatest English synthpop bands, pioneers of the genre. Their cover of ‘Tainted Love’ reached UK no. 1 and ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ is one of the best debut albums by any British band. As our most notable alumni I think...
February 2013
5 posts
1 tag
2 tags
2 tags
TO MANCHESTER.
I’m going to Manchester to see My Bloody Valentine, it will be the best gig ever. It’s one of like 4 or 5 shows they’re playing and they’re all sold out but I managed to get 2 tickets for £90. I’m going with my ex girlfriend, I don’t think anyone else would go with me and it’s not awkward we’re still ‘together’ but I broke up with her. I...
Tumblr privacy options are weird / non-existent without a password. I did manage to password protect my second in some happy accident, there will be no Yog-Sothothery. It’s not safe here.
Don’t dig, you’ll only find skeletons. With questionable abilities comes absolute truth, with truth comes disappointment.
I can hear people shouting outside somewhere in the distance and...
January 2013
1 post
I made like a Pacman / Snake clone in GM, I drew some awful sprites for it too. Only took about an hour. There’s this thing on at University where people are making racing games, I was going to make a race to the top platformer outside of the contest and then maybe just show it to my Game Design tutor. It would probably help me make the case for using GM. I’m not really interested in...
December 2012
5 posts
Christmas has been nice. We’ve played videogames mostly. I’m about to start cooking our lunch / late tea since someone got up at midday and ate Stollen for breakfast.
I got some seriously nice things from Kristyna’s parents, including some I <3 Prague socks, a fancy box of tea with gloves in it, Czech/English copies of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and some Edgar...
Well being back in Cramlington has been okay. Being away from Kristyna is a little tense, I have no mouth etcetera. She is out drinking with her friends right now as far as I know. Well that’s her problem. I’ll be back in Leeds this time tomorrow, I think I may be a little ill again but I’m probably just stressed and exhausted. I sat awake all last night because Fuck You anxiety....
So like this evening I’ll be getting off the bus in Cramlington. I have pretty much no room in my bag because of presents, I’m essentially taking a quarter and some rips, my tablet and some spare clothes. It’s not like I’ll have time to work anyway. I’m only there until Wednesday lunch time, I should be alright. I pretty much plan on wandering around all Tuesday,...
Christmas shopping is exhausting. I got myself Dazed and Confused on blu-ray and a book on Czech grammar. I got Kristyna tons of things, and my little brother some more things. I got my Mother the ‘Ted’ movie, it’s pretty funny. Probably just going to get my sister some cigarettes and chocolate. My back is a bit sore from the weight of my bag all day, I walked home because I can...
I’ve sort of been programming all night. Deadline soon. I’m kind of enjoying it, haven’t even attempted the other work yet. I think I have a few days to get all that in though. So like 10 drawings and some models. Might be possible. I need to stop starting my work like the day before it’s due.
As a reward for my programming progress and Kristyna’s asset work...
November 2012
6 posts
It was mine and Kristyna’s anniversary like 2 days ago. It was the first anniversary I’ve had, for me it essentially felt like I was high fiving myself for not fucking up completely or becoming so passive it really doesn’t matter. Am I in a prison cell or a nice garden? I got her a book on Game of Thrones, she got me the Sandman collection. I like Sandman, it was very nice. I...
Finally saw Batman. It was pretty good, nothing spectacular. Did they ruin Bane and Catwoman? Probably. I do like how there’s a shot basically taken from Knightfall. That was one of the few ‘Oh neat’ moments I had with the movie. After all the hype, I expected it to be a lot better. Kristyna also preempted that I would love the movie and ordered me the blu-ray collection a while...
Transparent Coffee skins are pretty weird. French vanilla is awesome. I also didn’t realize Suda51’s No More Heroes came to PS3 so I’ve grabbed that. Suda51 is awesome, Killer 7 was amazing. Lollipop Chainsaw is apparently also hilarious, but it’s a marmite game with some pretty awkward design flaws I’m sort of looking forward to play. No More Heroes is a game about how awful gamers are I suppose....
Today I had a nightmare where a mental crackhead from Condemned burst into my room and stabbed me in the chest. It was so vivid I made like a choked inhale and jolted awake to Kristyna looking at me all like ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DYING?’
It only took the university about 13 months to actually talk about game design. They gave really poor explanations of a handful of basic game design fundamentals and didn’t really go anywhere. Kind of glad I didn’t bother going in today. I think I would have just gotten annoyed. I sort of think this is what University is supposed to be, this course was designed to be a let down so...
October 2012
9 posts
Went to see The Twilight Sad last night, they were really good. I want to see DIIV soon, they’re supporting the Raveonettes but I won’t stay for that. I had my tutor interview the other day, we talked for about a minute about my grades and he told me that I’m currently at a 2:1. I think it may have been our first conversation. I told him I wasn’t interested in the grade and...
Finished our work at about 6am this morning. I think I put everything into the design document I needed. I ended up writing a lot about puzzle design, and I discussed the limitation of the top down viewpoint. Ended up wrapping up the animatic in about half an hour. I just opened Renoise and layered some weather sounds with a bass synth running through a random filter to create some OH SCARY...
So I’m writing mine and Kristyna’s design documents for tomorrow. Totally forgot they were supposed to be in soon. So far I’ve only done 9 pages for each, but I’m going to throw in a few Renoise screenshots in a pointless add-on section called ‘Voicing the Creature’. May get me some extra marks. I can pretty much say anything about sound design. I wrote a page...
Kristyna finally told her Mother that we were engaged. We we’re going to do it in person but things came up. Her parents seemed happy, her Mother somewhat shocked when she saw me, but from what Kristyna translated she’s happy et cetera. I said ‘Ahoj’ which is pronounced AHOY! and means Hello. Her parents are only about half as shocked as I still am. I’m sort of a...
Unity is broken.
So I wiped my laptop clean and reinstalled Unity on it. Same Monodevelop error over and over. Had to find an older version for now, it works and it’s just more stable. Kristyna has started making sprites, so I’ve got a few days to figure it out. I’m going to spend a little while rewriting my our design document, it’s the most pressing deadline. I study game design a lot...
Productive yay.
Yesterday I programmed the movement and collisions for mine and Kristyna’s game. I added a basic sprint ability and I was going to start working on programming the spriting but Unity decided to die and now Monodevelop is just not working. I reinstalled everything and it still crashes when I create new scripts so I’m reinstalling Windows and wiping everything. I love and hate you...
Today I did some more programming. One of the things I’ve been following on C# gave deliberately broken code and made me fix it, which was quite neat. I’m not sure I solved it in the way they wanted me to, I just set another public string and simplified. I understand C# in Unity a little better now. Tomorrow I’m probably going to revisit what I’ve learned, then do another...
University is again proving uneventful and unorganized, it turns out there was no actual deadline for the work I did last week, and today was relatively useless. A lecture on GUI Design was interesting if not just a rehash. I learned some limitations of the GUI on portable devices and how to get around them if I ever decide to go mobile. We also asked about writing our design document, for some...
I feel an awful lot better about the quality of my work once I look at the other submissions. A lot of them were awful. I did 2 different character drawings and ended up just speed painting because it’s easier for me. I even made the deadline, it’s possibly the most I’ve ever made a deadline. I also did some planning work today with my fiancé and read a little more of my C#...
September 2012
11 posts
Got a book on ZBrush today, it’s like a digital sculpting program. It’s quite neat and we’re learning the basics at University, but without outside resources I’m not going to learn anything more than that. I have a pile of textbooks on everything I need to know to do well, this will be handy reference for both me and my fiancé. I’ve pretty much got the Unity engine...
I crashed earlier, so much for fixing my sleeping pattern. I called in back up, blueberry kush save me, it’s quite nice. We started watching this show called Community, it’s hilarious. I’m making egg fried rice, it’s amazing. I might make coffee cupcakes tomorrow, I bought a mix. I can’t recall ever actually seeing a blueberry, I don’t know what they smell or...
Couldn't sleep.
So I’ve sat all night listening to Municipal Waste and written a fairly detailed plan of all the things I need to get done for my University project, in order of importance. There’s about 30 40 different things for me to work out, code, get frustrated at, recode, breakdown over and delete. I keep adding more and more things to the list. The example game only has 3 of these things and...
Faith: 0
I went to nearly everything in the first week of University, and nearly everything I went to was pointless. Apart from the 5 minutes where we explained that giving us a project that is the same as what we did last year, putting us in large groups centered around programmers, and giving the group two months to reskin what’s been given, is stupid. Plus since I’m into programming...
Launchpad Love
Spent… a long time playing with my Launchpad that came today. It is brilliant. Using some follow commands in Live I turned it into a tone matrix. I initially wasn’t happy with the way it worked in Renoise over Ableton, but someone has essentially made a plug in of the Live view for Renoise and it’s excellent. Renoise is better than Live in every way apart from the live aspect,...
Back to University
Tomorrow I go back to University and get told my tutor and group and other not really useful things. The classes are however smaller now since half of the students were apparently mentally retarded and managed to fail first year, we’re down to like 60 students now.
I also get my Launch Pad tomorrow, it’s a 64 button controller, but I may end up with 2 of them. Which would be amazing...
Some really nice Circle Takes The Square shirts and stickers came today, as did the new sofa for the inventory. Some assembly was acquired, the living room is caked in packaging beans. I stayed up all night waiting for it.
I ordered this thing called a Launchpad, it’s a 64 button midi matrix. I’m going to rip the audio from some of our movies, put different samples of Cameron on one...
Sleep Party People.
Went to see Sleep Party People play last night, it’s the best gig I’ve ever been to. I’ve never seen anything quite like that before. They signed a copy of their first album for me. I’m sort of in a crisis of feelings, so I need to throw on an animal mask and grab a synth. In a DON’T HATE, MODULATE affair. I’d probably be happier in solitary.
My tattoo is healing nicely
I thought I would get an infection and die. Now I want another one, very soon. I’m going to get a sort of band of Darwinians around my right wrist with SAVE US in Bitlow on the inner side. It was supposed to be my first, but after many revisions I think this is the best. I’d also like a set of feathers, from Vurt. Maybe just Curious Yellow, but I like the blue one also. I’d have...
3 tags
August 2012
22 posts
Today I got a book by Harlan Ellison called Approaching Oblivion. Harlan Ellison is a brilliant science fiction writer. I also got a Czech phrasebook, and a book on Czech grammar. I’m probably going to need to learn a few things before I meet Kristyna’s matka and tata. Things like, ‘Ahoj, jak se mate?’
Learning another language will be hard. Especially Czech, it’s...
Harlan Ellison slid on his stomach down an executive table and punched this Censor in the throat, the guy then fell into a 16ft model behind him which then fell on him and broke his pelvis. He essentially said writers are worthless pawns of television, and Harlan climbed upon the table, ran down it, and slipped on some paperwork. This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard.
When...
Letting someone drag a needle through my skin.
I’ve decided on what I want to be the main part of my inner wrists. I’m getting ‘I Have No Mouth. And I Must Scream’ separated to a sentence each wrist. I want it done in a way so that if I’m ever nailed to a cross again it’ll read naturally as intended, and maybe someone will get it and feel slightly better about the situation.
Broke up with fiancée, reconciled with fiancée, got comics and Circle Takes The Square shirts. Unrelated though, that’s not how we sort of saved our relationship. I wouldn’t mind some more comics, I’ll casually mention the new Sandman set comes out just before our anniversary.
I rescued my Darwinia things so I can do my tattoo design, and I’d like ‘Your messed up...
Sort of want to try writing comics.
I love comics, I used to like to write, and I know how to write a script. I bought some books on comic writing, read one of them, it was really interesting. I learned a little about the idea process. I’ve did little but watch documentaries or read the past month. 2000AD has open script submissions, as do a few other magazines. Nothing to lose really, may as well.
My ABBA shirt and Anthrax...
