Demajen Productions™

"The Left Hand of God"

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:28:00 +0000

I picked up "The Left Hand of God" in a half price sale in WH Smiths. It seemed like my kind of book. And thus, a good idea at the time.

Sadly, now I'm not so certain this was the case.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for books that don't follow convention. I'm all for stories that have surprising twists. What I am not for is books that seem to change their tone 15 pages from the end and end completely differently to how they have been set up.

The book was good. I'm not knocking that. It has a dark, brooding tone. Its portrayal of a violent, religion-fuelled fantastical and fanatical alternate history was gripping, and the fact that I read the whole lot in one sitting shows that Hoffman can tell a good yarn.

But there's just something so very wrong with it in places that I actually feel more frustrated than entertained at turning that last page. There are so many things foreshadowed but never explored later on; there are numerous changes in tone in the middle of the book completely at odds with the grim start; important revelations arrive with no actual foreshadowing at all; the final battle is described with a clinical detachment that deadens any sense of emotional investiture in the wellbeing of the individuals involved; and the final betrayal ruffled my feathers considering two thirds of the book is spent cememting a relationship only to have a parenthetical exposition in the last three pages explain why it just wouldn't work.

Anyone who has read any of my previous blogs knows I'm a sucker for a happy ending and relationships that work out - isn't that why we read fantasy? to escape from the harsh, soul-crushing reality that real life usually thrusts our way? - but it is less well known that I actually have admiration for writers that break conventions, throw away our expectations. I fully expected some big revelation towards the end of the novel. Unfortunately, the revelation that I got was one that hadn't been hinted at elsewhere, and there was too much sense, looking back with the book fresh in my mind, that the story had been pieced together from multiple plots, rather that one coherent whole right from the start.

The ending ends with hints that there is a sequel to follow: and I suppose if Hoffman is to follow convention, a trilogy is a likely outcome. It is highly likely that I will pick up a sequel, simply to find out if any of the seeds laid in this plot but not allowed to blossom within its pages are actually of importancw, or merely red herrings designed to throw the reader off which is, in my eyes, poor writing.

While thinking of something more to say on the matter, I googled the book and found this review which I am inclined to agree with.

So yeah, not a bad book by any stretch. I have read far worse. I'm just glad I didn't pay full price for it.

"In Which Jon Tries To Rectify His Atrocious Slacking..." Part #2

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:57:00 +0000

Writing

For a start, there’s that ‘writing’ thing that I, as a writer, do. My first trilogy is now planned out: the first novel is pretty much finished, the second is well underway, and I wrote a couple of scenes for the third one the other day as they were banging about in my brain and distracting me from important stuff, so that is going well. Novel 1, “Chains of Memory” (working title) will be complete by the end of January, so I can then get it printed and sent off to a shortlist (really very short actually) of agencies in the hope one can get me signed up for a three-book detail with a major publishing house like Orbit. I’m expecting “Chains of Time”, the second novel, to take me up until the end of summer, possibly the end of the year (depending on things in the next section) to write, and then “Chains of War” will round out the trilogy within the next eighteen months or so.

Obviously this is writing time. People actually seeing them on the shelves may take many months, even years to pan out, depending on how lucky I am with publishers. Kids fiction is the big thing at the moment, and this is definitely not written for kids in the same way that Harry Potter or Twilight is. Regardless of how long they may take to see the light of day, I am very much enjoying writing them, even despite the sleepless nights having several complicated plots and subplots tangled round in your brain can cause.

Games

The STEAM sale over Christmas was a disaster for me. I was doing so SO well with paring down my Games-To-Play list to something manageable, and then all of these good games were made cheap and I couldn’t resist. D’oh!

I recently finished the excellent “Darksiders” which I really enjoyed for its mix of God of War fighting and Zelda-esque dungeon exploration and collecting (as well as its visually distinct art style and storyline), and finally — a good two years after everyone I know finished it — I completed the main storyline of “Mass Effect”. Just in time, in fact, for the end of January when “Mass Effect 2” is released. “Darksiders” took me about 35 hours to complete 100%. “Mass Effect” took me maybe 12-15 hours, but that was with skipping 80% of the sidequests. As much as I like sidequests in games, I really just wanted to see how the main story played out in “Mass Effect”, and I definitely wasn’t disappointed.

Also on my list of games that I already own and need to complete are:

Modern Warfare 2 (Which I bought hoping I’d like it more than the first one. Wrong.)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (In the STEAM sale, so no rush to play/complete this one. Looks interesting though.)
Jade Empire (Also £3 in the STEAM sale. Not got time for this at the moment.)
Dragon Age: Origins (More on this below)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Finished in storymode. Want to 100% this though.)
Dead Space (Great ideas, but atrocious PC port. Sad. Might get the PS3 version cheap.)
Trine (Awesome ‘hop in and play’ puzzle game when I have little time.)
Uncharted (I got this to work my way up to Uncharted 2. Sadly I suck at it.)
Zelda: Spirit Tracks (almost done with this now.)

That’s quite a few games, some of which I’m barely into. Dragon Age is the prime example. I was really psyched for this when it was announced, and I got the deluxe edition with all the bonus content. Thing is, Spence has been playing it, and after 40+ hours he’s only 45% of the way through the game. Now admittedly he DOES have a thing for sidequests (It’s unhealthy, UNHEALTHY I SAY!) but still... So that number looming over my head and, and I hate to admit this, the unsexy female character models have kind of put me off getting into this one. It’s really a shame, but in some ways I’d forgotten the reasons I never actually completed Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn — it’s just too effing long for a completionist like me to play in a reasonable amount of time.

And, as well as this, there are OTHER GAMES on the horizon. Oh, and Bayonetta, which is so screwed up crazy I just have to get it after already renting it for a week, just so I can see how the ‘plot’ pans out.

These include:

Mass Effect 2 (The continuing adventures of Cassiel Shephard... more alien sex?!) Jan 29th.
Dante’s Inferno (Sure it’s basically God of War, but I like GoW. It’s why I have a ps3). Feb 5th.
Bioshock 2 (As I loved the first one. Not desperate to play this at release though.) Feb 9th.
Final Fantasy XIII (Oh my god, my life, it will disappear...) March 9th.
God of War 3 (It’s like God of War but...oh, wait...) March 19th.

Now you’ll notice something about a couple of those games: namely “ME2” and “FFXIII” — they’re both likely to be fucking long! (See my point above in the Books bit about why I might not finish reading them all by the end of March.) I’ve been looking forwards to “FFXIII” for over two years now, so I’ll definitely be getting it on the day of release and then locking myself away for a week or two to make some headway into the game before emerging to do some actual work. I wasn’t hugely excited for “ME2”, but having now just realised what all the fuss was about with the first one (yeah, I’m a tad slow) it is now high on my list of things to look forwards to.

Art

And finally, I’ve renewed last year’s Resolution to ensure I paint at least one piece of art per month. January’s is actually already done, but I haven’t updated my gallery with it yet. I’m considering changing the gallery format slightly for 2010. We’ll see.

Release the Kraken!

There are also some films I want to watch this year. That’s my excuse for getting a release the kraken reference into this blog anyways.

Next time I’ll possibly talk about tits and fucking, since Spence wants me to. Also, this may help people forget just how geeky this blog has been.

BAI! =^.^=

"In Which Jon Tries To Rectify His Atrocious Slacking..." Part #1

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:44:00 +0000

It has come to my attention that I have been utterly rubbish at updating my blog. There are several reasons for this, chief amongst them being that I am lazy. Really, really lazy.

And, also, not a huge amount has gone on since October 17th, when I last blogged.

Well okay, stuff has happened, but it was all school/work-related, and let’s be honest, it would be pretty unprofessional of me to blog too much about working in a school. Child-protection and all that jazz.

So instead I shall start 2010’s blogging by going through things that are important to me: namely books, music, games and art.

Reading

Back when I was doing my Masters in Creative Writing, I often commented that I didn’t read anywhere near enough. Looking at my bedside table now, I have a pile of books that will go some way to rectifying this for 2010.

I’ve got through a couple of the shorter works already, but currently the list of Books To Read stands at:

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (Read, in anticipation of the upcoming film release.)
Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (Read, because I like sequels.)
Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse (Because I got a boxed set of the first 3. Bite me.)
The Stone of Tears (Sequel to Wizard’s First Rule, which I enjoyed greatly.)
Blood of the Fold (Third in the Sword of Truth series.)
The Left Hand of God (Which was half price and looked interesting.)
Extraordinary Engines (A steampunk anthology.)
The Difference Engine (One of the defining steampunk novels.)
Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance (Book of the game. Sometimes these are good.)
Wormwood (Second hand, 20p buy. Fantasy alternate history.)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Because I’m not a fan of the original.)
The Ghost King (Which I got before Christmas but haven’t touched yet.)

And those are the ones just on my table or at hand. I’m 2/3 of the way through “The Titan’s Curse”, which I am enjoying greatly. Yeah I know that the Percy Jackson books are really for young adults rather than almost-29 year olds, but I’ve always been a Greek mythology buff, and I have a thing about urban fantasy fiction (since, y’know, I write it!) even if it is supposedly for ‘kids’. I’m a big fucking kid and proud of it, alreet?

I actually started “The Stone of Tears” before Christmas but, like pretty much all of Terry Goodkind’s books it seems, it’s about 900 pages long, and I need to invest some serious time in it, which — because I like to read books in one or two sittings — I don’t currently have. I’ll get there. Already it is shaping up to be an interesting follow-up to “Wizard’s First Rule”.

These should last me a good while: probably till the end of February and into March if I decide to read the two Goodkind books back to back as I suspect I might. Saying that, however, there are OTHER THINGS that may ensure this stack of books last even longer.

And those are... In the next part!

In the words of CLAPTRAP, "Ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

The Aion Experience - Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:31:00 +0000

The Aion Experience: My Impressions So Far

A lot of people who I’ve played MMOs with have been asking about Aion, knowing I play it, and wanting to know my opinions of it. As I am a man who likes to talk a lot about things he enjoys, I decided to create this brief summary of my impressions.

Firstly, this is not a review. As anybody who has played Aion will tell you, the game has a hefty PvP-centric approach post level 25. As my highest level characters are a level 21 Elyos Spiritmaster and a level 22 Asmodian Chanter, I cannot comment on the PvP aspect of the game. But bear in mind that it is there, and it is a big chunk of the game’s premise.

Secondly, most of the ‘reviews’ of Aion that I have seen compare it to World of Warcraft. This is inevitable, it having the greatest market share with — at its height — over 11 million consecutive subscribers. Aion does a lot of things better than WoW, I shall say that now, but I don’t just write from this one perspective.

My actual MMO background starts off with Final Fantasy XI, probably one of the most hardcore of all MMOs in its heyday. I still believe FFXI does some things better than WoW and more modern MMOs, but that is by the by. The reason I stopped playing FFXI as much and went to WoW is the issue of time, and how long things take to do in the game, and that is my first point.

Aion is a game that will take you considerable time to play. By level 21/22, I am already up to around 1.6 million xp needed to hit the next level. Bear in mind that the level cap is 50, and the xp per level curve increases quite dramatically per level, and you can already see that it will take a lot of hard time and effort (based on my current experience with the game) to hit the level cap.

One of the things that I both liked and detested alternatively about FFXI was the enforced partying system. Without a party, you couldn’t do a whole lot past level 10. Which meant 65 levels of partying, pulling mobs, killing them, moving onto the next one, and so on. It was grindy. Very grindy. And yet, thanks to this enforced partying system, the community on Pandemonium server where I played FFXI was very tight. You really did feel like you were playing a massively multiplayer game.

WoW had the opposite effect, sometimes. With so many classes able to solo all but the hardest of “group” quests, WoW often felt very much like a single-player game with the odd grouped instance run thrown in should you be bothered. Even then, you never really had to group to get stuff done. This was more casual, and coupled with something as simple as giving xp for quests (something that FFXI has only really recently caught onto), was the main reason why I spent so much time levelling up characters in the game. Nevertheless, I feel that — apart from the few guildies and friends I made on Shadowsong EU — the WoW community is one of the worst communities I’ve ever met. And as a secondary school supply teacher, I’ve worked in quite a few dysfunctional communities.

Aion, then, puts a bit of the massively multiplayer back into MMORPG. I’d say about 80% of the content between levels 1 and 20(ish) can be soloed. Quests give (usually reasonable) chunks of XP, but there are significant benefits to grouping.

For a start, there are no hybrid classes in Aion. Your Templar is the tank, your Cleric is the healer. Rangers, Assassins, Gladiators are your dps. Sorcerers are dps and crowd control. Spirit Masters are dps through DoTs. Chanters are the class with the party-enhancing buffs. Yeah, Chanters can heal a bit. Yeah Gladiators can tank a bit. And yes, you can customise your character a bit through Aion’s Stigma system, which is the closest thing to talent points that Aion seems to have. But ultimately the class you play chooses your role. Don’t play a cleric if you want to frontline dps. Don’t play a Templar if you want to dish out massive damage.

This isn’t to say that you have to group constantly. For Templars and Clerics, it is certainly the case that it is beneficial and faster to kill stuff in a duo or trio or group, but it isn’t forced down your throat. You can solo. You just have to choose your targets carefully.

However, you WILL have to group at points. Around level 18 for both factions, there are a series of group quests: Black Claw Village for Asmodians, Tursin Outpost (I think) for Elyos. These areas contain elite mobs, who have far more hitpoints and hit far harder than your average normal mob, just like your Notorious Monsters in FFXI, or your Elite mobs in WoW. You WILL need a group to bring these down. A trio can sometimes work, but for maximum killing power, a full group of six is needed.

I like this. To the best of my knowledge, it is practically impossible to solo these quests at the level you get them. Now, it IS possible to get to level 20 and move on to the next zone WITHOUT doing these storyline quests but a) you miss out on a huge chunk of xp (the elite mobs give tons of xp, even in a full group) and b) it would mean a chunk of grinding out xp with boring repeatable quests (sure beats FFXI’s system mind you!)

So if you are an unsociable MMO player, Aion isn’t likely to be for you. There are dungeons in the game, and a massive flight-based PvP area which you pretty much need to group up for to survive — safety in numbers as it were.

Moving on. The classes seem pretty well balanced. They all have some interesting abilities, they all get fairly unique combinations of equipment to use, and the amount of visual distinction between them is pretty high. I’ll not beat around the bush: Aion is a beautiful game. Colour me shallow, but I take great joy in exploring a new fantasy landscape and taking in the details. WoW had me hooked on exploring for a long time, and while Aion’s game world is smaller in size that the multiple contents in WoW, its level of detail is breathtaking at times. I have a folder full of screenshots that is rapidly expanding in size, though I will say that many screenshots simply don’t do the game justice. Not only is everything pretty, but the special effects are awesome and the animations are really lovely and fluid. Check out youtube for some examples of that stuff.

The combat system is fun. And it has to be, because it takes slightly longer than you might be used to to solo kill mobs. On average it takes me between 10 and 20 seconds to kill stuff, but I admit I am not playing the main DPS classes so it may well be all over much quicker for others. Unlike WoW where you basically spam abilities as soon as they’re off cooldown, it is actually beneficial in Aion to weave your auto-attacks in between your abilities. Aion’s abilities work on a Chain Skill system. Here’s an example from my Chanter’s repertoire.

Hallowed Strike (level 1 chain) > Heaven’s Judgement (level 2 chain)

Hallowed Strike (level 1 chain) > Booming Strike (level 2 chain) > Incandescent Blow (level 3 chain)

As you can see, using a level 1 skill opens up the option to use one of two level 2 skills. Heaven’s Judgement has a short-term stun effect, while Booming Strike opens up the possibility to add a third chain skill into the mix. This keeps the combat fresh, interesting, and quite tactical I’ve found so far.

Plus with the wonderful animations, I imagine Aion is actually quite fun to watch. Again, check out any HD videos you can find on Youtube to get a better picture of just how dynamic combat is.

The question, therefore, is “Should I play Aion?” and my answer to that will really depend.

Firstly, if you are a big crafter in MMOs, Aion has a very robust crafting system. It is easier than FFXI’s ludicrously irritating crafting system, but no way near as easy as WoW’s. It is, however, more rewarding. It creates gear that is up to 10 levels ahead (in terms of stats) than what you will be getting from mobs of the same level as you. It is, however, painfully slow at times to level, and it will cost you a big chunk of monies.

Secondly, do you like having a well-defined and rounded role for your character? If yes, you might also enjoy Aion (as well as a ton of other games on the market!)

Thirdly, do you like playing games that really push the boundaries of visual experience in the MMO genre? If yes, Aion is definitely worth a look.

I’ve really enjoyed my time with Aion so far, but as I’ve mentioned in past blogs, I’m not really a competitive PvP-style player, so my opinions of the game might change dramatically come level 25 and my first forays into The Abyss, the game’s major PvP hub.

Check back for (hopefully) a followup to this at a later date.

It’s Over Nine Thousa---oh. Hundred. Nine hundred.

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:27:00 +0000

So, the latest school term has begun and my week has been busy busy busy for several reasons.

Firstly there is all the kerfuffle surrounding new timetables and the like. (Also, am impressed that Word’s spell checker recognises ‘kerfuffle’ as a real word...) This week I managed to do the work of about three people through no real fault of anyone in the department’s: that’s just what has had to be done in order to get ourselves off the ground. Now we finally seem to have a fourth member of staff in the department, things will hopefully get a bit easier. Tuesday was especially horrendous given the second item on this list and the fact that I did a full day’s teaching. 5x 1hr lessons with all new classes and one bad lot amongst them could certainly have been worse, but yeah...

The second thing kinda informs number 1 and subsequent items. Several weeks ago I had a flu-like thing that left me really badly roughed up. Horrendous cough coupled with sore throat, runny nose, headaches, and constant tiredness thanks to lack of sleep due to coughing, which took a good two weeks to clear. Unfortunately I passed it on to Dad and, this last week, he managed to pass it back to me. After a seven week holiday in which I did zero shouting of any kind, being back at work has taxed my immune system somewhat and by 4pm on Tuesday I could do little more than croak. I spent Wednesday and today feeling clogged up and coughing and sneezing on a regular basis, making me feel horridly filthy and unwell, but at least it has eased off somewhat by the constant imbibing of water. My throat is still swollen, but I can at least talk now, and I just hope this holds up for tomorrow.

The third thing was the most financially ruinous. While I get paid tomorrow for the two days I did last week, a grand total of probably slightly under £200 after tax/admin fees, I have managed to spend £926 in the last 7 days. This is a lot, even for me, but in many ways it needed to be paid. Several bits on my PC were making noises that I’m certain they shouldn’t have been making, and the machine was starting to stutter and crash more. Having had a good listen in to the case I gathered it was the CPU itself that was starting to go, and if I was gonna have to replace the processor, chances are I’d have to replace the motherboard as well. Rather than wait for the thing to melt, potentially destroying data in the process, I decided to go the preventative route.

Browsing scan.co.uk I managed to snag myself a couple of deals on components, beefing my system up from an AMD 64 X2 5600 processor and 4gig RAM on a 3-year old MSI motherboard with a GeForce 8800GTX to the following:—

Intel i7 quad-core Nephalem processor at 2.6ghz
Gigabyte EX58-Extreme Motherboard
XFX GTX285 graphics card (with free copy of Assassin’s Creed and Batman: Arkham Asylum)
6GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM

The new bits arrived yesterday at around 8am, waking me up from a fitful sleep. In fact, I’d probably only managed a couple of uncomfortable hours, but the thought of tinkering with technology spurred me on.

By 10:30am I’d got the case stripped out, the new motherboard, processor, heatsinks, graphics card et al installed, and I came to connect the final PSU-to-Motherboard connector and discovered that instead of a 4-pin connector, the motherboard needed an 8-pin.

Well shit.

Phoned up our local techstore and enquired about this new-fangled 8-pin whatsit. Apparently the higher end motherboards from the last 8-12 months have them instead of the old 4-pins.

“Do I just need an adaptor?” I foolishly ask.

“No Sir!” they reply. “It actually takes twice the juice as before.”

“So I need a new power supply?”

“Yeah. But we don’t carry the higher end ones in stock.”

Sigh. So in the end I had to phone round all the local stores to get one, and even then the earliest they could get it to me was today. Fortunately it was delivered early today so everything was, thankfully, up and running by about 1pm.

So add 1x Coolermaster M700 700watt modulated PSU to the above list.

In the end I’m very happy with the machine, which is running faster than ever; I’m just a bit miffed that I ended up paying so much for it because I didn’t wanna wait 3-5 working days — no computer over the weekend would have made for a very sad Jon, especially as I doubt going out on the town like this would be a very smart idea. Don’t want to give anyone what I’ve got (apart from the kids at school, but most of them deserve the pain! ¬_¬)

While I may be out of pocket for the next few weeks, I’m happy with my financial security; I’m also happy with my re-mastered PC, as well as for some of my friends who have had positive changes to their relationship statuses over the last couple of days.

Me next, I beg of thee! :-/

~Jon

September

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I recall writing a blog about September last year, though I also vaguely recall I split it into three and it was halfway through October before I finished the segments. This year is different.

September has always filled me with ambivalence, a swirling mix of emotions both positive and negative that tend to leave me a bit spaced out until I get into the swing of things.

Work
This year will be the first year since I had my breakdown that I’ve been working in a school at the start of the academic year. A part of me — the part that values any kind of financial security — is pleased by this. Summer has been a slippery slope of expense, with various bits and pieces I rely on threatening to fail (looking at you, PC) or actually failing entirely (yes, you, Graphire4: though we had a good run, didn’t we!) As well as technical stuff, I spent too much money on alcohol. Sure I don’t really care that I’m spending money on the drink — I’m not in danger of becoming an alcoholic in any way — but my motivation for spending so much time in Chicago’s has been perhaps a bit skewed and, ultimately, foolish. Time will no doubt tell on that one.

Financially, then, things are on the up. 2 days departmental training and organisation this week, followed by 3 days per week until Christmas, and possibly after depending on the state of play at Pensnett in the coming weeks/months.

The downside to this, of course, is the work itself. Already I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get something as simple as a timetable and half-term-plan sorted out. The upheavals at the school are noticeable. There is a miasma of disbelief and an undercurrent of anger at what the establishment is enduring in these last few months of its existence. Shakeups to the established systems of the school are, in my lowly opinion, unwise. But perhaps that is what separates the Senior Management from the lowly grunt on the front lines. Maybe their vision for what the school can be in its final year will be a triumphant swan song. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that splitting a GCSE class between three teachers and trying to get a coherent curriculum going is fundamentally idiotic, and difficult to even try and put into practise. Yet that is what much of today was spent doing. Trying to work the hodgepodge timetable to not disadvantage the students’ learning.

I do go on.

Television
As with last year, part of why September excites me is the new lineup of television. I’m not going to go into a big list like I did last year, but two shows I’ll certainly be checking out this autumn are Supernatural and Castle, both of which premiere within the next couple of weeks. The latter, especially, I find very inspiring as a writer, and hope that the stories will continue to fuel my own imagination and creative process over the next few months.

Writings
Speaking of my creative process, I recently received feedback from a couple of proofreaders of the almost final draft of novel #1, with its finalised title of “Chains of Memory” (assuming a publisher doesn’t change it). I’d say its 99% done now. I’m tightening up a last few scenes and then knuckling down to get it sent off to agencies. Publishing is a fairly arduous and lengthy process, so even if somebody snaps it up, it’s likely to be 12-18 months before it gets spotted on the shop floor. Expect excited blogs/twitter/facebook updates should the unimaginable happen however!

While I’ve been polishing that one with my finest literary chamois, I’ve also been hard at work on the sequel, “Chains of Time”. The second novel is a real change of pace, as well as setting (and time period, as the title might suggest). So far I’m thoroughly enjoying having the creative output, though I admit the going has been slow due to distractions over the summer and the lack of an actual deadline for me: yet another reason why I should try and get a three-book deal signed. Publisher pressure is a great motivator, so I’m told.

Distractions
As I mentioned during the holidays, I’m prone to hoarding games. I tend to start playing them in a burst of vigour and then peter out after a few hours. I play games for stories, not the exciting and dynamic whatever systems that games these days try and show off. Artificially lengthened games where the story pace is slow and there is, for example, a lot of wandering down darkened corridors, annoy the hell out of me. A game that is 8-10 hours long is just perfect for my attention span, and while it may seem outlandish to pay £35 or whatever for a game that long, I put it into perspective that I spend more than that on alcohol on a night out, and at least I can sell or trade the game in after I’ve finished with it.

During the course of the holiday I went back and finished Half Life 2. I bought HL2 way back when it first came out, and got bored of it about a third of the way through. Since friends very kindly purchased me a copy of the Orange Box via Steam, I decided that I would definitely have to finish not only HL2, but its episodic successors, creatively titled Episodes One and Two. And I’m glad I did. As the games are now pretty old, my slowly dying PC didn’t struggle running them at maxed settings, and the atmosphere they evoked, and the stories they told (while a bit linear) were definitely more in tune with my more mature gaming sensibilities these days. I also finished a couple of other games, made some headway into others, couldn’t for the life of me get Crysis to run for more than a couple of minutes without crashing, and tried out Return to Such&Such MMO offers: Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning all threw freebie time at me, though I admit it took me longer to download the clients and install than I actually ended up playing the games. Nevermind.

I think that is enough on games.

Looking Forwards
As you will know if you tend to read my blogs with any regularity (there’s what, maybe 3 of you?), I’ve been trying very hard since my breakdown and back injury to stay positive and look forwards to a brighter future. This has obviously been fairly difficult recently due to the economic crisis, but I feel I am making some progress into getting life back on track.

Ideally I would like to move out into a place of my own sometime within the next couple of years. As much as I love the free rent of living at my parents’ house, with both brother and sister having now moved out, I feel a bit like the odd one out these days. This is, in many ways, a ludicrous feeling to have since I spent eight years in Lancaster and the North West, but nevertheless I shall be twenty nine years of age in January and I simply don’t like the idea that come thirty I may still be here and alone.

Obviously I don’t mean alone in the sense of people surrounding me. I run into people all the time, it being the very nature of my job, and me being an inherently social person (despite the time I spent chained to the PC or my netbook). But I am committed to the idea (and, I would hesitate to add, probable fact) that if I wish to move out, I have to find one of two kinds of people to interact with.

Either I need to find a small group of friends willing to rent a place together. Or I need to blunder about blindly in the hopes of finding a girlfriend, an endeavour that I continue to be awful at.

I’m still not particularly sure what the problem is in this regard. A lack of confidence and self-esteem may be part of the problem, but recently I’ve been finding it easier to talk and flirt my way into at least friendships with women whom I would consider quite attractive. I suppose my main failing is a complete inability to tell if women are interested in me in that way. I’ve always kind of fallen into relationships, without any real kind of dating process, so I’ve never really asked women out, or chatted them up at bars, or whatever the accepted social norm is (if there even is one).

I’m not exactly a bad example of the gender, either. I’m smart, I’m savvy, I have a certain kind of dry wit that perhaps has limited appeal, and I’m not altogether unattractive, though a couple of trips per week to the gym might help improve self esteem in that department.

I think maybe I get entangled in the “What ifs”. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. The “If I ask her out, what if she’s not interested. Will we still be friends? Will she etc etc” quandary.

My notion of relationships is a bit of a slow burner, I suppose. Taking time. Romance. None of the cheap, quick sex and its over that many of the men I see out and about on the weekend are so obviously after. I’m sure I can’t be too unusual, the this regard, but again, an inability to read if people like me as a friend or as something more is a huge mental and emotional hurdle to try and overcome.

It’d be so much easier if people just told me, but then there may be issues of a similar kind from their point of view, and I am nothing if not cursed with huge amounts of intellectual and emotional empathy for other people (thanks for that legacy, Mom).

I meant for this to be a fairly positive diatribe. Don’t think I quite managed that did I? The message to take away from this, should you care, is that I am getting better with all this. Even so far as to ask somebody out, though nothing has come of it yet. This at least shows an improvement in my confidence. Some would say a huge improvement considering me and my crippled emotions.

(Speaking of which, there has been no improvement in my recovery of so many lost memories from before my breakdown. I find sometimes that fragments of times and events that I don’t consciously remember seep into my dreams, but they always leave me somewhat disturbed upon waking, as you might expect.)

Fin
I think that that will do for me splurging thoughts, feelings and beliefs onto the page for now. I always have a tendency to feel embarrassed about what I write after I’ve posted these irregular monologues, (it’s one of the reasons I don’t spell check/grammar check/read through them) but I am not so easily embarrassed these days it seems, though I sincerely hope people don’t think ill of me for voicing my thoughts and opinions in this way.

We all need our outlets, after all, and when I cannot use analogies in my novel writing, this is the purest option left open to me.

~Jon

British Summer Time

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:28:00 +0000

The very words, 'British Summer Time' conjure up a varity of images, depending on who you are and where you live. For most of us brits, BST is a time where we constantly have to debate whether to take a brollie with us, as it just might rain, even if there isn't a cloud in the sky. As well as the mercurial weather, it is a time for camping, beer gardens, sitting outside on the patio and gazing at the sky, and being assaulted by greenfly and wasps.

Last year's summer is a haze. Not a heat haze, a literal, drug-induced haze. By this time last year I was on full-time tramadol. It's no wonder I can't remember squat about what I did, who I saw, or where I went...if indeed I went anywhere.

This year is different. No drugs except alcohol this year. Having just done a half term of teaching, and having a full term lined up come September, this summer holiday was, nominally, a time for writing; in theory I was going to get as much of novel #2 written as I could during this six weeks as once the teaching starts, its ever so difficult to put (virtual) pen to paper.

Unfortunately, the words aren't flowing very well. I feel bottle-necked, distracted, and it is buggin' me.

One of the key distractions is this pile of games. As well as writing, summertime is oft the time where I try and finish as many of the games I've got laying around as I possibly can. Since I've had a month off WoW, I figured I was onto a winner this summer. Of course, that was before I decided Final Fantasy 12 was one of the games I really should complete - especially as FF13 is due sometime next year. I failed to take into account just how much time FF games eat up though.

Anyway, my list of unfinished or unplayed games stands at:

1) Final Fantasy 12 (36hrs in now)
2) Final Fantasy 4 DS (still haven't quite finished it)
3) Prototype
4) Devil May Cry 4
5) Half Life 2 + Expansions
6) Conan (on the XBOB360 - almost at the end, and have been for 6 months+ >_<)
7) Tomb Raider (the latest one)
8) The Last Remnant
9) Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (GCN)
10) Dawn of War
11) Blood Bowl PC (still need to finish the single-player campaign)

As well as these, I've also had quick bashes on Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and Lord of the Rings Online, all 3 of which have decided to give me free trials or week of free "re-evaluation" time. LotRo has been the most fun of the three, and its very very pretty as always, but none of the three really hold a candle to WoW, which is kinda a shame.

So anyways, really long list of games that need finishing. Might have to put FF12 on hold for a bit, as it really does eat up the time. Very enjoyable though. Not sure why fans of the series hate 12 so much. I like the characters, and the plot seems to be developing well enough - and story is mostly all I play games for after all.

As well as games, I've also been painting a bit. Got a couple of pieces on the go, which is kinda unusual. Haven't worked on them in a few days (see above comment about FF12) but they should both be done by the end of August. Still keeping up with my new year's resolution, which is nice. Hopefully I'll last the whole year.

Three weeks left of the summer hols. I know my parents are going on holiday next weekend, and I too am taking a couple of days off to head up to Macclesfield to see Rick and Tom, but thats mostly as far as I can stretch money-wise this year.

Really am going to try and stick some sample novel chapters up in the next week or so, let people have a read and see what they think of my style and stuff (as well as point out any glaring mistakes I've made :P)

This blog sounded much more organised in my head...

A Word About Fisticuffs

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 03:05:00 +0000

As many of you are aware, as a writer and artist I feel it is my duty - expanding my creative reference base - to watch human beings and to see how they do things; how they behave.

As a supply teacher I often see children at their best and worst, lighting up a room with sharp insight or witty repartee; or lighting up a cigarette in the room and then trying to weasle out of it by telling me they can't smell smoke when their hand is on fire. (True story. Had it happen. Wish I'd got pictures.)

I can understand people fighting over many many things: religion, race, territory, the hot redhead at the bar, etc etc. These are all pretty primal, human urges.

I'm not much into violence, though as several of the LARPers noted during my experimental stint in LURPS at uni, I swing a pretty mean latex-and-foam-rubber-coated blade. I'm a thinker, a talker. I'm sure I'm supposed to add "a lover" to that, but I can't think where that reference has popped into my head from. Of course, even I have been prone to such primal savagery: after my breakdown I was very much into smacking inanimate objects with my fists in order to make myself feel better.

In Chicago's this evening there was a fight. It was quite a big one actually. I missed what started it, but it was the kind of fight where two people argue, one pushes the other, the other stumbles into someone who turns round and joins in, pushing back, and it just escalates from there.

I didn't get involved, but sadly I was stood very close. Close enough, in fact, to get an elbow in the small of my back as somebody flew my way. Unsurprisingly this hurt like hell. Not just because I'd been elbowed, hard, but of course as Sod's Law would have it, they managed to catch me right at the place where my back is screwed up.

I spent the rest of the evening probably looking very sullen and angry and irritated, which is how I always look when I'm trying to disguise the fact my back hurts like hell. Even now, sitting down 3 hours or so later, its still twinging away and it pisses me off.

What the hell was so important that two people felt the need to fight over in a bar on a saturday night out? A spilt drink? Accidentally treading on someone's foot? What ludicrously petty thing could possibly have sparked such a fracas? Whatever happened to just going out and relaxing and unwinding, listening to some music, having a dance?

I mean sure, I can sit on my high horse and tell people that they should probably drink less and have more fun, especially in light of seeing how drink can be pretty destructive to people you care about, but I need to drink less myself so I'm probably a big hypocrit either way.

Tangental blog much?!

So yes, fighting. I don't like it. I've had a year 7 kid try and beat me up - did I write a blog about that one a while back? Might have done! - and that was laughable. I've seen kids of all ages try and beat each other up for fun! And I've seen grown men of thirty or so hitting each other in the face in a bar for something like knocking someone's drink over.

I mean yeah, having someone spill Stella down your shirt is annoying as hell - especially if, like me, the smell of the stuff makes you wanna stick lit matches up your nostrils - but is that really any reason to give someone a black eye?! Whatever happened to a gentlemanly "Sorry mate, lemme buy you a drink to make up for it?"

Or am I just living in my own little fantasy world?

Errr.... ignore the part of me that's, y'know, a fantasy writer, when thinking about answering that question...

~On Reading...~

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:58:00 +0000

That's the verb "reading", not the proper noun "Reading", just so we're clear.

I read a fair bit. I have a huge number of books on my shelves, mainly because our local library never used to have the kinds of books I was into as a kid, and I can't really say I've diversified my reading habits since then either. I wanted to insert a picture here of our hallway bookshelves, full to the brim with all manner of books, but since we're having the house rewired in a couple of months, we've already started taking the books down and boxing them up, which I must admit makes those big shelves look more than a little weird.

I did, however, at least get a picture of my main "bedside reading" shelf. Let's take a closer look at this huge stack o' "literature" and see what we've got:

SHELF ONE

Okay, I'll admit it. The top row of my bedside shelf has no actual reading books on it at all. In fact, its chock-packed with a variety of RPG rulebooks, mostly D&D-related. There are a variety of d20 campaign settings up there, from Arthaus' "Ravenloft" to "Dragonstar" and the "World of Warcraft RPG". There are also some "Big Eyes Small Mouth" books, as well as strategy guides for FFX and FFX-2 ('cos I'm a lazy completist). Tucked just off shot on the top row is a copy of Jim Butcher's "Welcome to the Jungle", my only actual graphic novel, and a copy of the 2009/10 "Writer's Market" which has half a dozen page corners turned to mark agencies that may hopefully represent a fantasy writer based on who else they have on their rolls.

SHELF TWO

Shelf two holds, first and foremost, my Dresden Files paperbacks. As I am impatient, the last two I've bought in hardcover (see shelf four) and thus they do not fit on the shelf. Missing is book 1 of the series ('cos Spence borrowed it) and book 4 (because it is by my computer as reference). These are the kind of books I read over and over again.

Next to them is Brent Weeks' "Night Angel" trilogy, which is probably the most epic trilogy I've ever read (yes, beating Lord of the Rings). I've only read this once (though I've read the last 5 chapters of "Beyond the Shadows" about 5 times now - they're just THAT good!) but I plan on reading them again over summmer.

Also on here is the three Greyhawk "Justicar" novels by Paul Kidd, which make me laugh a lot, "Orcs" (with its Waterstones receipt bookmark reminding me I've still not got very far with it), Greg Maguire's "Wicked" and "Son of a Witch", some Pratchet, my fat-assed copy of "Order of the Phoenix", as well as a whole row of books BEHIND this front line.

SHELF THREE

Now we're getting to the stuff that I either haven't read, haven't read much, or just ran out of space to organise properly. Most of the left pile is Eddings and Gemmell, two writers whose fantasy stuff I've never really gotten into, as well as Ed Greenwood's "Elminster in Hell", which was...okay...I guess...

Next we have Taylor's "Wormwood" which I only got the other day and haven't read yet, as well as Nix's "Abhorsen" trilogy, which remains one of my favourite fantasy series, and another trilogy I plan on rereading over the holiday. There's also a couple of Harry Potters on here, as well as some Dragonlance and Magic: The Gathering novels (which are much cheaper and less addictive than the trading card game). Oh and yes, that IS a copy of "Warlock of Firetop Mountain"... classic!

SHELF FOUR

A delightful mix of stuff on here. First of note is the white paperbook copy of Lord of the Rings peeking out from behind the front pile. I used to read this every single year, but I stopped when I realised that the "Fellowship of the Ring" is mostly dull and boring. To the left of that are the three volumes of LotR individually bound. Not sure why I have both sets.

You can also see the happy dayglow Harry Potters back there, as well as the original Star Wars manga (which cost me about £50 but was well worth it).

Also on there is a copy of Stephen King's "On Writing" which is a very enjoyable read for any prospective author, as well as a variety of Planescape, Warcraft and Forgotten Realms novels (almost all of which have atrocious cover art).

Colin Forbe's "Blood Storm" is decent, plotwise, but very dull reading stylistically (thus I'm only 1/3 through that). Jim Butcher's "Turn Coat" and "Small Favour" are both excellent excellent reads and are only lying on this shelf because I couldn't fit them anywhere else. I *still* haven't read Gormenghast because I suck. I must must must read it.

SHELF FIVE

Okay, so these aren't books. This bottom double-shelf of cubbies is where I keep CDs and old PSX and GBA games. You can just make out a variety of titles, including the awesome "Pocket Fighter" for the PSX, and "Super Ghouls and Ghosts" for the GBA. There's also some pretty bad soundtracks and albums on that shelf. Some of them are Pokémon-related. Don't ask.

WHAT'S MISSING?

Well, there are two or three books/anthologies that I keep at hand which simply don't fit onto the shelf. The centenary edition of Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories is one of them, as are the books I'm currently working my way through, which include Grant/Naylor's "Red Dwarf", Max Books' "World War Z" (yes, I know I've had this a year of so, I'm slack!) and Jonathan Kellerman's "Therapy".

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Well I don't know. It's possible you may just frown at me and say "oh my god, what a geek!" or "This guy calls himself an English teacher when he reads this stuff?! It isn't REAL fiction!" or you may possibly applaud my taste but keep it to yourself for fear that somebody else hears you mention you actually *read* -- because as the kids at Pensnett tell me, we don't need to read anymore because we have films and TV..... ~_~; -- and you don't want to be seen as abnormal.

Anyway, that's a little insight into the Library of Jonathan M Burrage, MA. Hope you've found it vaguely enlightening. ^__^

Book Review - "Turn Coat" by Jim Butcher BEWARE SPOILERS

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:57:00 +0000

“Turn Coat” is the latest book in Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files” series of supernatural detective fiction set in contemporary Chicago. As with all the previous works in the series, it was an excellent read, but it struck me as different, somehow; especially since I’ve been reading one of his earlier novels during the last few days.

If you’ve not read any of the previous novels, and you like a) detective stories, b) supernatural stories, or c) both, I recommend picking up the series from the start and giving it a go (especially before reading this somewhat spoiler-laced review). Hell, even if you don’t naturally read those kind of books, I’d still recommend picking them up. There’s something about them that speaks to you, even if you’re not into books about magic and demons.

Firstly, the tone was different. I’m not sure what it was about it, but it seemed to take quite some time for the first-person narrative to slip into the familiar strides of a Dresden novel. In many ways this was refreshing, but it did offer the opportunity to spotlight some other (not necessarily good) things about the story.

And I really hate to say this, but the events of “Turn Coat” annoyed me in a few ways. I won’t go so far as to say I’m disappointed in how the story panned out, because I still thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but there were some definite parts of the narrative that didn’t sit well with me.

Firstly, the moment the guy who eventually turned out to be the villain was introduced, I had pegged him as the villain. It wasn’t a case of “I think it’ll be him, let’s see...” It was a case of “Aha! That’s the guy! Let’s see what he’s up to!” He was too obvious a character, I think, to have been anything but a villain. Sure, Butcher mixes the narrative up by hinting its other people through the narrative — and I admit there was one “Oh man, he’s not going to throw THAT at us is he?” moment when I really got annoyed with Mr Butcher’s direction with the story (more on that in a moment) — but overall, I worked it out soon. In my opinion, too soon.

It’s possible that I’m simply getting better with detective stories. I have to admit, I’m thinking of having a dabble in the genre myself, thanks mostly to the influence of the Dresden novels, and the “Bones” and “Castle” TV series, so I’ve been swatting up on a fairly limited range of its contemporaries. But for me, it’s all about having suspicions and then having the hood removed from your eyes, and I never really felt I had a hood on in “Turn Coat”. It was too obvious.

Be that as it may, the turns of the story were well executed in this sense, and the pace was consistently ramped up all the way through to the end.

Speaking of the end: I’m very annoyed with the whole Luccio situation. It’s possible that I’m annoyed because I didn’t see it coming. Maybe I didn’t WANT to see the whole mind control thing coming. I mean, Butcher’s played the mind control card a fair few times now in the series — the whole novel introducing us to Molly, for a start, and then Mab’s blanking out of Dresden’s mind when she ensured he couldn’t use his fire magic — and while this certainly reinforces the danger of breaking that particular Law of Magic, I can’t help but feel cheated that the fun writing we had in “Small Favour” has so quickly been squashed by the whole “Luccio was mind controlled into getting close to you” situation. From a story perspective I admire Butcher planting the seeds in the previous novel, and then carrying them through to fruition, but I still can’t help feeling disgruntled about it.

I can draw a parallel when the narrative thread pertaining to Lasciel, the fallen angel in Dresden’s mind for several books, came to a very powerful and poignant ending in a previous story, albeit one that led to Dresden’s new “power of the month” — Soulfire. With her departure there was a very clear act of bravery and defiance and sacrifice, and her character arc was rounded off tightly and emotionally. Perhaps if we’d been treated to more of the Dresden/Luccio relationship then I wouldn’t feel so cheated by it turning out to be a trick of the mind (literally). In some ways I feel almost as if Butcher didn’t really have this in mind when he wrote the previous scenes at the end of “Small Favour”, and the idea came to him after it was published.

I can only hope that, in subsequent novels, the simmering feelings that Luccio has for Dresden will surface once more, because it was a fun relationship to play with, and some of Butcher’s best writing. Besides, Dresden’s luck with women is worse than my own, and it’d be nice to give him some happiness that wasn’t wrenched away by the end of the next novel.

The “oh he’s not going to throw that at us...is he?” moments I mentioned earlier were first when Molly mentions that someone has been playing with Luccio’s mind (At this point it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Luccio/Dresden relationship was going to come crashing down and it was only a case of to what degree); and then when Luccio mysteriously disappears from Dresden’s apartment. I know as a writer you are supposed to chase your main characters up trees and throw sticks at them but come on...

After finishing the book, I immediately felt the need to trawl the internet to find out what other people were saying. A lot of people are concerned about the new changes to Dresden’s brother, Thomas, but I’m not so worried. I felt it was time for the character to take a new direction, and Butcher quite skilfully worked it into the narrative. Its left deliciously ambiguous towards the end at how much/little of the Thomas we have come to know is still there — there are some offhand comments that he makes that don’t fit with his new hard-ass persona, and there are Dresden’s own musings that tigers can’t actually change their stripes, perhaps suggesting that he knows Thomas isn’t in great health, but he’s going to use that to his advantage. That’s a lovely setup and I’m intrigued to know what happens next.

So yeah, overall another excellent novel in the series. There’re a lot of important plot revelations about Dresden, some interesting titbits about his mother, various people get to learn more about his somewhat special relationship with Thomas, and there’s plenty of intrigue and stuff. I have to admit, if it wasn’t for the crap with Luccio, I’d probably have raved positive about it harder and possibly not even written this review. But sometimes a guy just has to rant.

“Turn Coat” : 9/10

On Romance and Comedy

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 05:18:00 +0000

All of my friends are quick to point out that my taste in films, music, and television is questionable at best. I'm not really sure why we differ so much in this regard actually. But as a general rule of thumb, both Spence and Andy can both accurately state within 10 minutes of watching a new show whether it will be a Burrage Show or not. To the best of my knowledge, they've never been wrong.

Sometimes I try to get them both to watch the latest programme that I think is great, but I think they've become so skeptical of my taste that they simply smile and nod and don't give things a chance, which in my opinion is a shame, but for their sakes is probably a way of retaining sanity. Obviously I'm biased so I couldn't say.

I'm a very romantic person. Words used to describe me by female friends include "sweet", "cute", "silly", and "romantic". Yes, that last one is a bit of a giveaway. One of my friends said I came very close to sounding like "the perfect man". Obviously she's on drugs or belongs in a mental institute. ;)

But it's true, to a certain extent. I was brought up on old-world values, immersed in a world of chivalric nights from the tales of King Arthur, and the off-kilter chivalry of Robin Hood, as well as classic stories from around the globe. I've always had this sense of propriety in me. I open doors for people, I stand on the outside of the pavement so that ladies and older folk don't have to risk getting soaked by passing cars. If the pavement isn't wide enough for two-way traffic, I stop and let people through first or, if they beckon me on, I always say thank you. Simple, basic manners I guess, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't take the time anymore for such simple courtesies.

Naturally I have a psychological weakness for films and television shows dealing with the interaction of men and women. I've not exactly had a lot of relationships, and I often feel a bit awkward until I get to know someone much better than perhaps they need to know me. I'm a man of various tastes, and some of them are - perhaps - a little surprising. And I love watching well-rounded characters on the big or small screens who are involved in some kind of romantic daliances.

This is why I love Chuck, my current favourite TV show which I may or may not already have written a blog on... (did I mention I have a bloody awful memory, and I'm too lazy to check >_>) It's especially true to my life in a way as I think of myself as very much the Chuck Bartowski type guy. I'm good with computers, I'm nerdy, I'm sarcastic, I have fairly high ideals but often find myself stuck in a rut for one reason or another. And obviously I hope that at some point a super-hot Agent Walker-type is going to sweep into my life for whatever reason, and that - in the words of Mr Bartowski - I am going to have to win her over again and again (and again!)

That's just my idea of romance, I guess. Not just sitting back and letting yourself go no you've found someone, but constantly trying to keep things fun and alive and exciting. It could be something to do with low self-esteem I dunno, but part of me really digs the idea that yeah, I should have to work for a decent relationship, and make sure I do everything right.

Of course, Chuck is a romantic comedy action espionage adventure show. With an emphasis on the comedy a huge amount of the time. I truly believe that I have a decent sense of humour. Sure it may be a little sarcastic and prone to innuendo at times, but I at least think it can be sophisticated most of the time. I find a lot of things funny, and if I don't, I won't force a laugh just to appease someone (sorry, I'm a bastard like that ><) People who make me laugh include Alan Davies, Billy Connelly, and Jack Dee. Peter Kay sometimes (but not often) gets a chuckle from me. Every now and again, Russel Brand gets likewise, but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch anything either of them do. I've got a dry, straight man kind of humour about me. I like dry wit, deadpan stuff. Clever jokes. Things you have to think about. Arguably I'm a thinking man. (Yeah I know, lol!)

I think Shakespeare is funny. "What the fuck?!" I hear many of you cry! And yes, based on how it's taught in schools and stuff, I can fully understand why people don't like the Bard's plays (and I still can't stand most of the History plays, sorry Bill!) But there's a lot of funny stuff in Shakespeare if you can understand it.

Some of my favourite films of the last few years have been adapted from Shakespeare. The scenes with the Nurse in Luhrman's Romen + Juliet are funny in both the original and modern versions. Likewise 10 Things I Hate About You is a rather excellent and witty retelling of the classic Taming of the Shrew. And yes, both of them are romances, bringing me 'cleverly' full circle.

My inspiration for this post was the film No Reservations starring Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart. It's not a brilliant film. The plot is formulaic, with no real surprises, twists or turns apart from the one death near the start which I must admit I hadn't expected. From there on everything unfolds exactly as I knew it would from that moment on. And yet I'd still speak highly of the film for a couple of reasons.

Firstly the casting is excellent. I get really really sick of films where they've cast big names stars simply because they're big name stars. If you're gonna have romance in a film, it has to be believable. It has to have chemistry. Say what you like about Mr and Mrs Smith, but when you look at Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in that film you know exactly why they're together in real life. Eckhart and Zeta Jones have chemistry in spades, and the whole film really revolves around the aloof, proud female chef and the dorky, opera-loving male chef.

Secondly, there were some very touching moments in the film. Obviously I'm a big sap prone to crying at emotional things as I'm sure I've mentioned before, but I do like it when a film billed as a romantic comedy has the guts to throw some tragedy in there too. It worked for R+J after all.

I'd give it 4/5 stars just for having the casting, the tragedy, and some pretty damned funny scenes.

Romance and comedy. Two of my favourite, essential elements of life!

Health Update: My Mate Gym

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I'm getting a tad tired of sleepless nights and sleepy days. I'm not sure what's up with me at the moment. My sleeping pattern isn't technically out of whack, but I've been spending too many nights tossing and turning and feeling sick rather than getting any proper sleep. I don't know if it is a side effect of the medical cocktail I'm taking, but it's fracking annoying.

This last week I started going to the gym on my physio's recommendations. The purpose of these visits is twofold really:

1) to exercise the core muscle in my back to improve its strength and thus my overall balance and stability. With a stonger core muscle, I should be back to my normal "on-my-feet-all-day" self in no time.

2) to improve my overall fitness level. It's no secret I'm not a huge fan of how I look. I've always had a bit of a weight problem, but that has been steadily declining since I started uni (apart from a blip during the six months I was off having a breakdown). I'm still slightly overweight, but I'm not hugely bothered about that. I'm worried about my actual fitness level. There was a time when I used to play badminton every week - that stopped when I buggered my ankle up in a night club. (Don't ask!) While I still played after that, it took a very long time for my ankle to heal up - yes I should probably have gone to see someone about it: benefits of hindsight I know. Obviously with a knackered back, running around, twisting and swinging a racket on a badminton court is unlikely to do me a great deal of good currently, but I desperately miss playing badminton (it being the only sport I was ever really good at) and would love to get back to it as part of a healthier lifestyle to balance out all the crap that my sweet tooth demands I eat.

The gym at the local leisure centre is a temprary one: they're in the process of refurbishing the real gym. But it's good enough for my needs. I had a 30 minute induction session with a personal trainer, who worked up a pretty simple regime for me based on the kind of machines I was going to be able to use. Obviously anything involving lifting was going to be right out. It ended up with a simple rotation of treadmill > reclining exercise bike > normal exercise bike. 10 mins on each, and build up in pace as I progress. Easy stuff. I was fine for all 3 machines, memorised how to use them, and was ready to start properly this last Monday.

Monday I got to the gym at around 1:30pm as recommended (it's quiet in the afternoons) and started off with the treadmill. 4.8km/hr speed on a slight incline. Not gruelling by any means, especially as I'd already spent 10 minutes or so walking at a fairly brisk pace to get to the centre through the pretty damned chilly weather. Unfortunately, cold weather + bad back muscle = not good. But I was fine for the treadmill anyways.

Next was the reclining bike. I'd been fine at this on the induction. The seat was relatively comfortable and supported my back well. But my back hadn't been hurting already on that induction day, and sitting down on that reclining bike was agony for the five minutes I gruelled out on it. Not sure I got any benefit at all out of that, and in fact I probably did myself more harm than good. "No pain, no gain" only goes so far in my book.

Finally the upright bike. By the time I got to this I was in a fair amount of pain. My knees were hurting, as were the back of and inner thighs, where the nerves connect from the back down the legs. This has been a problem throughout the last few months. If my back is really bad, my legs start to go weird with it. Not a fun thing at all! I managed about 4 minutes on that bike before I called it and left the gym. No point pushing myself any further than that. Not a hugely successful or beneficial workout, but as I walked round town to cooldown,

I didn't feel too bad. Popping a couple of tramadol obviously helped too.

But the next two days were absolute hell. I haven't felt that bad in months. I couldn't bend at all. Every single twist or slightest movement sent needles stabbing into my nerves. It took me 15 minutes to get my fecking socks on because every time I tried to bend to reach the end of my annoyingly long legs, my back said "Nah, fuck you!"

My regime of Monday/Wednesday/Friday fell apart in the very first week. Tuesday was hell.

Wednesday was less so, but I could still barely walk. No pain, no gain, I kept repeating to myself. I knew something like this would happen, after all. Just didn't expect it to be so severe.

Thursday I was finally feeling better. I got up late though. Crawled out of bed after a crappy night's sleep at about 1:30pm. Couldn't even be arsed showering. Just pulled on my gym stuff, stuck on a hat, and made my way into town. This time I changed some stuff.

Firstly I took a couple of tramadol BEFORE I started the exercises. I don't actually know if this was a particularly good idea, but in retrospect it seems to have at least helped.

Secondly I swapped the two bikes round. The one with the back support, which I had assumed would be easier for me to handle (and was dead wrong about ><) I left till last, while the upright got stuck in the middle of the workout.

I stuck with the treadmill at the start, this time working at it for a full 15mins at the slightly faster 5km/hr. Still not gonna win any medals, and its certainly not an impressive statistic, but for me, it's a start.

The tramadol helped. I didn't manage the two bikes any better than before - they were still pretty painful - but I made it out of the gym feeling relatively good. I expected Friday to be a nightmare though.

Surprisingly, the last three days haven't been too bad. Yeah I've been feeling really sick, my appetite is a bit botched, and I'm still suffering some of the nastier side effects of the tramadol, but I at least feel like I'm DOING something.

Hopefully I'll be able to swing the Mon/Weds/Fri thing properly this coming week. Fingers crossed.

~J

September 3: Revenge of September

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:06:00 +0000

So yeah, I'm writing this on like the 22nd October (would I try and scam you lovely people? Noooo!) and am thus REDICULOUSLY behind on blogs. But anyways, today's blog is about:

GUITAR HERO!

There are several types of gamer. There is the hardcore FPS player. The puzzle game addict. The guy who plays RPGs or Horror games for rediculously long hours in the middle of the night. (This list is not complete :P)

But as well as these there is the casual gamer who only really dives into the electronic world of consoles at social gatherings, and more and more developers are hooking into this party ethos and producing multiplayer games that cater to this type of gamer.

Sure, there have always been multiplayer games. I remember many MANY hours over summers long gone playing Goldeneye on the N64, split screen, with 3 friends. We still regard Goldeneye as the best splitscreen multiplayer of all time, because it was fun, had great graphics for the time, and hell, you got to be your favourite characters from the Bond films. What's not to like.

These days, with such a focus on music and celebrities, games like Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution (and its many clones), and the aforementioned Guitar Hero are all the rage. The premise is simple. Push buttons in time to little coloured dots on the screen which are themselves in synch to your favourite tunes.

The biggest holdup of this genre is, I believe, the initial outlay. You see, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR... all these kind of games... tend to come with special controllers. What's the point in pretending to play electric guitar holding the awkward 360 controller, for example.

So yeah, they all have fairly expensive mini guitars, drumkits, etc etc. While these make for engaging methods of control, prices are indeed a bit steep. I believe Rock Band was currently going at £120 with its full set of drums, guitar and microphone. Ouch.

ANYWAY, Guitar Hero 2 & 3. These are the two GH games that I own, and I will be supplementing them with Guitar Hero: World Tour when it comes out.

I'm not great at these games. I have plenty of rhythm, and I have fairly long fingers and control, but I'm not exactly a god of rock, as I believe I have mentioned in previous blogs.

However, I have recently upgraded my game. Having beaten both games on Medium Difficulty, I've upped my ante somewhat and am now slogging my way through the Hard mode.

Surprisingly, I have made a little progress. The addition of an extra note further up the guitar to hit means that you HAVE to move your left hand up and down the frets to hit them all, and this is difficult. (Obviously. Wouldn't be HARD MODE otherwise).

When I first tried this level of difficulty I was basically aghast. No way was I ever gonna be able to hit any of these notes. No way was I ever gonna finish a song. I was doomed to Medium difficulty forever.

Turns out I was wrong. Sure, I'm probably never gonna be able to complete the game on Hard. By about the third bracket of songs it starts to get really tough, but practise makes perfect as people keep telling me. I'll get better as I go along. I hope.

But what I really wanted to write a bit about was the songs themselves. BOY is there some rubbish on these games. I know getting the licenses for real artists and their well-known tracks is expensive business for companies, but seriously, while I'm definitely no rock officianando, I've literally never heard of some of these bands.

This isn't always a bad thing, mind you. There are some really quite catchy tunes from some less well-known or even obscure bands on here. There's an awesome arrangement of the Top Gun theme, for example, or a rock remix of We Three Kings, and the Halo theme. There's also a version of ETC70's "I Am Murloc" for all you World of Warcraft players.

But I guess my favourite has to be Freezpop's "Less Talk More Rokk". It's barely a rock song, really, but it has an awesome catchy beat to it. Do a search for it on Youtube and give it a listen/watch. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I don't LIKE tea so to be honest that's all good.

I'll continue to update with GH progress as filler blogs at regular intervals.

... what, did I just admit this was a filler blog TO EVERYONE...?!?!? DAMN!!!!!

September Part Deux

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:17:00 +0000

Welcome back to my rundown of TV to watch this season.

We had Monday last time, so we'll leap straight into Tuesday!

TUESDAY

There's only one TV show worth watching on a Tuesday night, and that's HOUSE M.D. starring the ever-awesome Hugh Laurie. Its probably one of my all-time favourite TV shows. A great blend of humour, interesting stories, and attractive female doctors. What's not to like?!

Season 4 ended with a brilliant double-parter involving House, his best friend Wilson, and Wilson's girlfriend Amber. Season 5 opens up with the repurcussions of these events, and how life has changed for all because of them. As far as I'm concerned, it is essential weekly viewing. If I could only watch 1 programme a week, it would be an awkward toss-up between House and Chuck.

WEDNESDAY

As I've explained in previous blogs, I am a big fan of crap TV, and also of the "Bad is Good" phenomenon, where something is so unbelievably bad it actually holds your interest to see if it can ever actually get any worse. One of Wednesday's programmes holds my interest because of this. If someone had asked me last year, which one 80s-90s classic TV show would I remake and update for a modern audience, I'd have probably gone into some kind of spasm and said "None of them! Don't you dare do it! Don't you dare spoil my childhood memories!" I mean, can you imagine what a modern day TV exec would do to something like the A-Team?! Update it for the war in Iraq or something? No! Just NO!

But sadly I'm not the boss of TV, and thus this year we've seen a remake of Knight Rider hitting the screens. Now, everyone knows which two things made the orginal Knight Rider a success: a super-cool car with lots of gadgets and special effects; and of course the Hoff!

Now I watched the pilot for the remake, and I was kinda intrigued. I mean, it was poorly paced,but the special fx were kinda cool, and it at least had a cameo from the Hoff in it. It ventured dangerously close to the absurd a lot of the time though, and since my general weekly line up doesn't really have any shows that fit the Bad is Good category, I figured I'd make it my mission to watch Knight Rider and see how long it takes before they cancel it for being pap.

Only good thing about it so far is that the female lead is very pretty. Not sure how long she will be able to distract me from the actual content of the episodes, but since they got her in her undies in episode 1, and in a bikini in episode 2, they're doing well so far!

The other show to hit the screens on wednesday night is the Tim Burton-esque "Pushing Daisies".

Its funny, it has cool dialogue, an interesting premise, and soooo many bright colours and interesting characters you feel that some of them could easily hog the show if it wasn't so well-balanced. Its a difficult show to explain, but the basic premise is that Ned, the main character, can touch dead things and bring them back to life for sixty seconds. If he does not touch them again within that time, something else has to die to balance everything out. If he touches them again, they go back to being dead. Of course, his childhood sweetheart dies and he brings her back to life, but while they are in love with each other, they can never actually touch. This provides all manner of awkwardness and hilarity.

THURSDAY

I constantly argue with people about "Smallville". I'm still unsure if it should go into the "Bad is Good" box. Certainly there have been a lot of bad episodes, but I still watch it, and this is one of the Bad is Good criteria. The latest season has seen 2 of the main cast leave (Lex Luthor and Lana Lang) but as I think I mentioned in a previous blog, I thought that might not be too bad a thing. Seems I was right. Season 8 has started strong, with interesting pace, some cool, well-rounded characters, and a fair bit of action. The last episode which was essentially an origin episode for the Green Arrow was a bit weak, but hopefully the season won't slide down into rubbish now that they've shaken the dynamic up so well by having Clark Kent finally move to Metropolis and become a reporter!

FRIDAY

Disappointingly, there's nothing on Fridays that I could see. Gives me a day to catch up anyways :P

SATURDAY

Nothing on American TV on Saturdays either, so I've had to scrape the barrel a bit and watch BBC1's latest attempt to fill the Doctor Who-shaped hole, "Merlin". Now, I studied myths and legends as part of my degree. I also studied them as a hobby before that. I like Arthurian myth a lot. But I'm not above people changing classical myth and legend to create an entertaining TV show. It kinda worked with the BBC's "Robin Hood" and its kinda working with "Merlin" too.

Sure the 'established' timeline of the legend is all out of kilter, the characters are kinda different, etc etc, but over all: its reasonably entertaining, it has Anthony "Giles from Buffy" Head in it, and the girl that plays Morgana is really quite fit. Obviously for a more discerning television viewer, this might not be enough, but for me this does quite amicably.

So that's my TV week. Hopefully there won't be any other cool programmes coming out soon, as I don't really have any more time to watch stuff now ><

~Jon

September Part #1

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:18:00 +0000

I realise I’m behind on blogs, but in keeping with the spirit of my new year’s resolution I’m going to write 3 and backdate them to the appropriate date. This is blog #1 of 3.

This blog is about September, the month thereof. This particular month means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but to a good percentage of the British populace this means Back to School.

Back to School is a fairly important part of the British calendar. Stationary stores and clothing stores tend to have special sales on; and teachers, children and parents alike prepare for the end of the summer holiday and the start of the new term. Some teachers look forwards to it (especially the supply teachers who don’t get paid over the summer holidays), others do not. A lot of parents look forwards to having their children out of their hair for most of the daytime. And even some kids look forwards to it because it means they can see their friends more, and their parents are out of *their* hair. Works both ways that. Instead everyone gets to be a headache for the teacher. Sigh.

September also sees the degradation of the already piss-poor British weather. Yes it rains most of the summer, but at least it’s usually warmish rain. September things get chilly fast, rain turns cold, and if you’re unfortunately enough to have a job outside like my Father does, then the Weather Gods play an important role in daily life and must be appeased with ritual sacrifices and offerings of beer. Or maybe that’s just an excuse to go to the pub on an evening...?!

But neither of these things are particularly relevant to my actual topic for this blog, for today I wish to state my love of September for one thing and one thing only. While I will never say “god bless America” in any kind of unsarcastic tone, I will state “god bless the US television season”.
Yes, September sees the start of the latest season of all the US TV shows. After a summer of reruns and quirky programming (some of which is actually quite good), the US networks bring the big hitters out to draw in maximum ratings/viewers for the winter months.

Now, I’ve often stated that I don’t really watch TV. This is, or at least was, true to a point. Most of my TV watching while I was in Lancaster consisted of series I bought on DVD well after their air date in Britain, let alone the US. But as the internet has evolved, and I’ve begun sweeping my creative nets far and wide for sources of inspiration, I’ve gradually come to realise that I *do* watch television. I just don’t watch British television (apart from Doctor Who and other oddities). That means no soaps, no sports channels, no quiz shows (though I occasionally watch something that another family member is watching).

There was a time when I would catch maybe one or two American TV shows per week, but *now* times have changed. This season I’ve had to make a frackin’ *LIST* of what is on on what night.

So here’s a rundown of my televisual week.

Sunday (Yes, the week starts on Sunday. Don’t argue with me, I’m a teacher.)

Only one programme (so far) worth watching on a Sunday, and that is True Blood starring Anna Paquin and some other people I’ve never heard of. It’s about vampires and a psychic girl set in the Louisiana (I think) swamps. It’s a late night, post-watershed show. There’s a lot of blood, a lot of swearing, and considerably more nudity and sex than I would ever have expected. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s an awesome show, but it’s intriguing to see where they’re going with it, and the chemistry between the male and female leads is very good. I shall keep on watching.

Monday

Monday is the heavy-hitter of a season of heavy hitters.

Firstly season 3 of Heroes is on. Season 2 was a step backwards from the awesomeness of season 1. It was a bit slow-paced, and it was cut short by the writer’s strike and not really allowed to reach any kind of decent conclusion. Hopefully season 3 (Villains) will change all this. Having seen the first couple of episodes, I have to say they seem to be on the right track, even if the actual formula isn’t all that different from previous seasons.

Secondly we have Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Yes, I hate the name too, just like everyone else, but I have to admit I was expecting the first season to bomb and yet was pleasantly surprised. The acting was strong, the special effects were very good for a small screen venture, the tension was there, and while there wasn’t as much gunfire and action as the Arnie movies – no surprise really, that wouldn’t exactly translate well to small screen – there was nevertheless the Terminator feel about it. Again s1 was cut short due to the writer’s strike, but it certainly ended on a cool cliffhanger, and s2 started up seconds after s1 concluded so there was no continuity jump or suspension of disbelief needed...if you can even use the term suspension of disbelief in a TV show about robots from the future being sent back in time to terminate the future leader of the resistance.

Thirdly, and probably the biggest draw of any programme of the week for me, is Chuck, now into its second season. It’s a romantic comedy espionage action drama series that pretty much defies any real convention. The premise is simple enough. Supernerd Chuck Bartowski has an entire supercomputer worth of government secrets downloaded into his brain, and now when he sees someone or something with possible shady background, he tends to get flashes, images of stuff in his brain. In a sense, he IS the computer now, and while he can’t control these flashes, they are important enough that he be kept around and alive. Thus he leads a dual life – computer repairman at the Buy More, a walmart style affair, and super spy analyst person type (at which he isn’t great, unsurprisingly). He’s looked after by two real spies, Casey (played by the ever awesome Adam Baldwin) and Sarah (played by the ever hawt Yvonne Strahowski – who the writers try and get into her underwear as often as possible. It works. Trust me.)

s1 ended with the revelation that the new Intersect computer was almost finished, and that Casey has orders to terminate Chuck when it goes online and he is no longer needed. S2 begins with Chuck finding out about the new Intersect, and how the last few months have changed him as a person, and what he’s going to do to move his life forwards. Of course, nothing is ever easy in TV world is it...

Look for the second part of this blog to conclude my rundown of Television goodness for the new season. ^_^

Yes I know this is cheating. It’s my blog. Sue me.

Moonbuggy.org & Funnies!

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:56:00 +0000

Now, normally I don’t rave about other peoples’ websites. I’m not the kind of guy who says, “Yeah, man, I love *this* site or *that* site!” but I am a tad behind on the blogging, and I actually DID wish to discuss my love of the random stuff that comes up on the internet, so I decided to combine these things into a blog.

I am a big fan of the lolcatz internet phenom. Sites such as http://icanhascheezburger.com/ rank highly on my Giggleometer*. This and http://www.weebls-stuff.com/ were a mainstay of my week until a couple of weeks ago when Amanda linked me a rather hilarious animated .GIF file of a manatee slapping into a glass wall. (http://img.moonbuggy.org/manatee-bumps-into-glass/)

You see, moonbuggy.org has a Random Image button. I dunno about you, but if I see any link with the word RANDOM in, I have to push it a few times, just to see how random it actually is. Randomising between 10 or so images is not really all that random. In fact, it’s a bit dull. But moonbuggy pleasantly surprised me, not only with the fact that it seems to have bajillions** of images, but that some of them made me almost wet myself with laughter too.

To this end, and to showcase the rather large number of random images I’ve collected over the years, I’ve decided to open up the FUNNIES directory of my website. It’s not a fancy-pants gallery or anything. It’s a basic server directory. Clink on one of the links, open up the image. 99% of them are pretty self-explanatory from the image titles. Not all of them are Safe For Work so don’t open them while your boss is hovering around.

You can find the lot at http://www.demajen.co.uk/funnies

Hope you get as much of a giggle from them as I have ^_^

~Jon

* not a real device. Requires two AA batteries.
** not a real number. Probably.

Social Who?!

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:42:00 +0000

A couple of weeks back, Spence was chuntering on about some application that he’d added on Facebook that he was having a laugh with. It’s called “Social Me” and the premise is very simple. You click through a series of photos of other Social Me users, and next to each photo there are a series of “Tags” which you choose one of to click on that you think best represents this person: examples include “Pretty”, “Sweet”, “Cool”, “Rediculous”, “Cheeky” and so on. Some are nice. Some are not. There’s also a form box that you can fill in for a custom tag if you prefer. As well as showing a picture, you can also upload More Pics, or write an About Me, so if creative people want to do a custom tag that’s not just based on your looks or one pic, then they can get a bit more info about you in order to do so. It’s quite a lot of fun, seeing what people can come up with.

You can filter people in a few ways. The first is simple: Male/Female/Both lets you pick which gender you’d like to look at. Since there is a “Flirt” button and an “I am interested in ...” button, this opens up “dating” (lol) possibilities. The second is more by area: My Friends/Network/Country/Everyone. So if you want to scout out “hot British chicks” you could do, for example.

Now I like this kind of thing, and get easily addicted to them. I like paying people compliments, as well as calling people silly things. It’s a character flaw. So I’ve been playing with it quite a lot, and made a few new friends in the bargain, which is always nice.

However, I began to notice a bizarre trend. Underneath your picture on the main Social Me page, you can set a headline. I tend to use mine for quoting silly things, or making witty and ironic statements about myself with my typical self-deprecating wit. However, I noticed that a lot of girls were writing “Please, no more sexy or drunk or happy or nice tits or fuckable tags please”, and the irony of this just shouted at me. See, a lot of the girls that had set this kind of comment were either smiling at the camera (“Happy”), holding a bottle of booze (“Drunk”), in a bikini (“Sexy”), taking the shot straight down their cleavage (“Nice tits”), or in more elaborate states of undress (“Fuckable”), and it occurred to me: do they not THINK that the subject matter of their photo might be inspiring particular comments about them?! Most people aren’t going to read the About Me for each person. They’re gonna focus in on a huge pair of boobs in a lacy bra and say the first thing that comes into their head, protected by the safety and anonymity of the internet. Duh!

So I changed my headline to something along the following lines: “~If you have a problem with people saying you're Hot or Sexy or Happy or Fuckable or whatever, think what it is about your photo that might lead someone to say that!~”

Fair enough, I thought. Consider it satire, if you will. And if I’m honest, I got a lot of people using the Send Note function to send me little notes about this. It inspired a fair amount of conversation between myself and various people I’d not met before. I was quite chuffed about the whole thing.

Until one person sent me the following note:

“I dont actualy have a problem with any of the above! wots your problem??”

Now I’m not generally an antagonistic person, but that riled me. Had she completely misunderstood the point I was trying to make? I felt I should at least reply to try and explain what I’d meant, just in case I’d come across as an ass. So I wrote the following reply:

“Good for you; I don't either!

I just find it amusing when people with no About Me written moan on their headlines for Social Me-ers to stop tagging them as Happy or Hot when all their photo has is a them smiling or showing their breasts. What do they THINK people are gonna say?!

I'm just being satirical. I'm allowed. It's part of my job :)”

Bit of humour, I thought, would lighten up the mood. Politeness goes a long way. Figured that was self-explanatory enough... right?!

She replied again:

“you know wot i find amusin?? ppl like you!! take your full of small minded shity attitude somewhere else pleas now, iv laughted 4 long enuf”

I chuckled at this on several levels. First of all her spelling is fucking atrocious, and while online I know the rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling are relaxed – hell, I’m lazy when I type too – the amount of effort put into this was great! Now I know I should take my “full of small minded shity attitude” somewhere else. Full of small minded. What the hell?! Either way, it was another insult, and since I was in a conflictory mood, I decided to send her another reply, just to prove how much of a jerk I was, and how right she was. Etc etc:

“Obviously you didn't get the joke. Never mind :)

And if I was small-minded I wouldn't have been able to see the irony in your words:

At the end of the day, I wasn't insulting anyone - except you obviously. I was simply pointing out that people expect too much creativity and imagination from the world at large. Okay, so YOU don't have a problem with people calling you HOT etc etc. That's fine. But I've seen a lot of people who DO moan. I was just pointing out that maybe it's the way that they've presented themselves on the application that provokes such a response.

It's interesting actually though. You're the first person in two days who has actually whined and moaned about my comment. Lots of people seem to agree with me.

But nevermind eh! You go reassess your poorly-spelt insulting attitude, and I'll go reassess the reasons why I'm even bothering to try and be polite. :)”

As you can see, I DID try and be polite and congenial, but she did rub me up the wrong way so I figured I’d have a dig at her. She’s the ONLY person, still, to have made a negative comment about that quote. I’ve actually just put it back on, to see if it inspires any more commentary over the next few hours. Maybe I’ll be able to write an addendum to the blog.

Anyways, if you’re on Facebook, check Social Me out. It’s good for a laugh!

Music Is The Weapon

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 06:14:00 +0000

Okay okay, yeah I lose points for even daring to quote that, but I needed something at least a little bit catchy and dramatic.

I’m a musical person, always have been. There’s nothing like a sweeping symphony or a crackling electric guitar solo to inspire a man. I did GCSE music back in high school, played the violin to grade 6 standard, tried my hand at a variety of different instruments too, from flute, to saxophone, to guitar to piano. I was never brilliant at any of them. I was never gonna be the next Vanessa Mae or anything. But I enjoyed performing, and still regret that I hadn’t put more effort into learning the more difficult instruments – namely guitar and piano – though I know there is still time.

I don’t look back on my GCSE with fondness, unfortunately, because of what it did to me. Basically, I realised quite near the start of my final year of school – second year of GCSE music – that I was outgrowing my violin. I’d already got the full size one – largest you can get – but it just wasn’t big enough. My arms were too long, and I was finding that I had to twist my wrist in an odd way to hit the notes properly. It began to hurt when I play for too long, and my violin tutor noted that I should probably change instruments to the slightly larger viola, or to something even bigger like the cello.

In retrospect, I was an idiot. I didn’t want to do viola or cello because I’d have had to learn new clefs, and it had taken me long enough to get treble clef sorted. Also, if I had to give up violin now, it would completely screw up my final year of GCSE. I wasn’t really any good at the flute – grade 2 standard at most – and thus couldn’t switch to that and hope to get a serious GCSE result. I didn’t actually want to DO anything with music back then by the way. I just liked the class and wanted to do well in it.

I got a C, in the end. By the time the final practical exam came round, the muscle at the base of my left thumb, and my wrist itself, was so screwed up by repetitive strain injury, that I was never going to get the B or higher that I wanted. I’ll probably not be able to play a stringed instrument again, sadly, though I still do want to at least give guitar a try.

Until I can earn enough money to get myself a cheapo guitar and some lessons, I’ve been sating my music-playing desires and building up the muscles in my left wrist again, by playing Guitar Hero on the 360. And yes, I know I know it’s not a REAL guitar and it doesn’t require the same skills and motions etc, but for someone with a knackered wrist not even used to holding an instrument at that angle before, it at least helps me get some mobility back into my sore tendons.

Now, I’m a big fan of rhythm games. Ever since Spence first introduced me to the Dance Dance Revoltion series of arcade machines down in Torquay, I’ve always picked up the odd game for whatever console I have handy. Now, I’m a big man, so I don’t use the dance mats. There’s NO WAY I’m jumping around in my study trying to hit notes – I have size 12/13 feet and the chances of me being precise enough to hit the pitifully small squares on the mats are low. So I’ve always used the normal controller for these types of games. And because I AM musically-minded, and have a good sense of rhythm (apparently!) I tend to do very well at this type of game. I can kick ass on most DDR games on the PS2, usually on the Hard difficulty while my friends compete on Easy or Medium. Which is fine. It’s all about having fun after all! I just like a challenge.

I first tried the Guitar Hero games round at Dave’s house, and I will admit to being sold on it. It was a lot of fun, and while it seemed to be pretty darned difficult on Medium mode (where you have to hit FOUR frets rather than the first three on Easy mode) the mini plastic guitar controller and a great selection of tunes including Guns n Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” and Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” inspired me to get it. Was just a pity about the rather expensive price.

Fast forwards twelve months and a fair bit of supply teaching work later, and I found a second-hand copy of Guitar Hero III with controller for £50 in Gamestation. I snapped it up on a whim, and have been making steady progress. I can now kick ass on medium mode, and play the odd song on Hard, which forces you to use all 5 of the fret buttons. I have to be careful though, it seems. Yeah I’m musically minded, good sense of rhythm, know how the songs go... But I can’t overcome the RSI in my wrist just yet. Try and play more than a couple of songs on Hard and it REALLY begins to hurt. Not as much as my back hurts on bad days mind you, but enough. Sometimes I push through the pain, hoping that it’s just the muscles protesting at the exercise. Other times I’m sensible and take a break. But either way it’s good stimulation for my poor knackered hand, and it feels good to get it moving again. So much so that I splashed out on Guitar Hero II as well, which is the version I played back at Dave’s last year. I may never be able to complete either game on Hard or Expert, but I enjoy at least giving it a go, and as Rick tells me – with these games, practise is just as important as it is on a real instrument.

Can’t believe I quoted that as the title though.... >.>

THE MRI EXPERIENCE

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:20:00 +0000

Magnetic resonance imaging is a medical imaging technique used to visualise the structure and function of the body (paraphrased from Wiki! Let it do the work, so You don’t have to!)

Due to me having a k-nackered back, and the physio and Orthopaedic specialist not being 100% sure of what’s actually wrong with it, I got to have my first ever MRI last week. I wasn’t looking forwards to it.

I’ve seen MRIs done on TV before, most noticeably on HOUSE MD., my favourite medical drama. They’re basically a big magnetic tube that they slide you into on a table, make you hold still for fifteen minutes or so, and then tell you all sorts of wonderful things about your internal makeup.

However, you know what they say about TV? That everything looks a little bigger?

The MRI machine was not big. After I kitted up in my incredibly flattering surgical gown, I walked into the room and did some basic maths. I’m quite wide-shouldered, and obviously pretty tall. The MRI machine didn’t look like I would fit in fully either way. I was right. I had to be shunted up halfway through the procedure, and I spent the entire 15 or so minutes I was in there with my shoulders compressed slightly together ‘cos I wouldn’t have fit in otherwise! Yay for modern medicine.

Now I don’t know how many people know this, but as well as being afraid of heights, spiders, and having vertigo and hayfever, I’m also claustrophobic. Not VERY claustrophobic, but enough. Only in REALLY cramped spaces, when I imagine most people would get a little edgy. I have real issues with sleeping bags (I know I know, laugh all you like ><) and have to leave the zips undone so I can stretch. I got very little sleep the night before the MRI, because it’s a big enclosed tube, like a big plastic and metal sleeping bag. But, I told myself, it can’t be TOO bad. They look big enough on TV.

But as I’ve already mentioned, they’re smaller in real life. The top of the tube was about four inches from my nose. I felt like I was in a coffin, and if it wasn’t for the cool breeze drifting over me, I’ve had probably had some kind of panic attack and completely freaked out. In fact, I almost did  It was utterly terrifying. I hated every moment of being in there, but I made sure I barely moved, because I knew that if I did I’d have to go through the whole process again.

As well as being afraid, I was also in a lot of pain. Some days my back is almost okay. Other days its hideously painful. The MRI day it was fine, until they got me laid on the table. They propped my legs up on a cushion about 4 inches thick, and this — unhelpfully — left almost all of the weight on exactly the spot on my back that hurts. I was in UTTER agony for the first ten minutes, until my body started freaking out from everything and went almost completely numb.

Now, when my back spasms in pain, I twitch. Twitching isn’t good for MRIs. So I had to fight that, as well as my claustrophobia.

Add all this up and I think you have a pretty good impression of my MRI experience. I hope, I PRAY, that *something* shows up after this, because I would gladly never go through that whole thing again!!!!

Even if I DID look pretty good in the surgical gown...:P

Data Disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:29:00 +0000

I had this blog all planned. It was going to be a happy, shining blog, reminiscing about the evolution of television from the mid-90s. This would have perhaps shown my age, and how I’ve dated as badly as a mobile phone in a music video, but I wouldn’t have cared. Mid-90s TV formed the foundation of who I am today!

But alas this is not to be, as other stuff happened before I got to write it. Let me explain.

I’m sure any of you that use computers as much as I do run out of space eventually. Hard disks can only store so much data, and they start to slow down — or “chug” — the closer to capacity they come. Now while TV show release dates ARE changing so that the UK is getting new series closer to their US releases, I still prefer to watch the shows I like straight away. So I download them. I also tend to watch them when they finally do air on British TV. I also tend to buy the box sets (the collector’s 5-series DVD set of Andromeda is sat right behind me, for example. Yes, I plan on watching it in a marathon of poor special FX and Kevin Sorbo-ness.) This is my thinly veiled defence against “zomg he is pirate! Yarrr!” or something.

Some of these TV shows I like to store to watch again and again until the DVDs are released. Things like the Dresden Files pilot episode, which — at approx 2 hours long — was very cool, but not out on DVD and only available in the US on Sci-Fi. I watch it now and again to remind myself what it is about the series (and the books) that I love so much. But it’s over 1gig worth of file. These all add up. So I store all this kind of stuff on an external HD to save myself from a chugging computer fate.

All was going fine with this plan, but now DISASTER has struck.

I have a very simple, 250gig external HD, which I’ve used to back up pretty much everything from the last 7 years or so. In fact, when my sister was moving out, and I was having the big overhaul/tidyup, I actually went through many of my old backup CDs and tried to consolidate the data I have onto the external HD. And now, via an application of Sod’s Law, the external HD has decided to screw up. Connecting it in Windows makes explorer hang. Trying to access anything on it makes explorer hang. Interacting with it in any way (except one, more on this in a moment)...you guessed it... makes explorer hang.

There is 232 gig worth of data on this drive. Granted more than a bit of it is TV programmes that I haven’t deleted yet (I’ve got the DVDs now). Some of it is Anime. Some of it is Doctor Who. I think some of it may have been the Sarah Connor Chronicles actually. Either way, a huge chunk of it is TV and I would in no way miss any of this stuff – well, apart from House S4, but that’s out on DVD this month so that’s fine.

What I will miss, if I can’t retrieve it, is photos, work, silly things that — retrospectively — I should have backed up elsewhere instead. I never even thought about it. That annoying “What if the external HD fucks up?” question. I certainly didn’t expect to have any problems with it only 6 months after I bought it, but considering my run of luck with external storage devices, I should have known better. The sad fact is that, while I have plenty of copies of a lot of the older stuff knocking around on CD — I didn’t throw ALL of them away in the clear out — there’s a lot of stuff that I simply don’t have backed up elsewhere. This IS my backup device, after all. It was a purchase designed to ensure I didn’t have to spend hours backing stuff up onto DVD.

But now it seems I may pay for that error of judgement with the loss of a considerable number of irreplaceable items. This makes me a very sad panda.

This is not to say all hope is lost, however. I currently have a programme scanning every single sector of the drive in the hopes of retrieving as much of my data as possible. I started this scan at 6:05am on 9th August 2008, and at 2:22pm on the 10th August 2008 as I write this very sentence, the scan is 39% done. It’s a slow one, and I live in fear of a powercut, or the cable to fall out, or something that will cause me to have to start the whole process all over again.

I’ve pondered if it’s worth it. How much of the crap on that drive do I ever actually look at?! But that isn’t the point, really, is it. Because I know that as soon as I give up on attempting to retrieve this data, then I’ll need some of it. This, really, is the problem with the digital era. Nothing exists “for real” until you make it real. Photos are a collection of pixels until you print them out.

A big chunk of the backed up stuff — probably 5% or so — is PSD files. My artwork, in the many stages of work-in-progress. I save all of those just in case I want to go back and change things, or steal elements for another painting, or use portions of them for something in web design. There’s several gigs worth of these, as PSD files are pretty damned hefty, that I don’t have backed up elsewhere. I COULD have burned them to DVD, but I didn’t. I relied on one device.

Never again! It seems I will have to add even further to the clutter that is my workspace by adding a second external backup drive to the mix. A smaller, more robust one, for critical backups of stuff. I may also need to add a third HD into my PC itself. All to ensure that, if I have critical data, if I do manage to recover the stuff that is important to me from this buggered HD, then I’ll have multiple copies of it just in case another Data Disaster happens again.

Let this be a lesson to me, and to you too!

August 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Ladies and Gents, loyal readers, August is upon us already! To say this year is going fast is an understatement. I put the speed down to me measuring time as intervals between appointments with various NHS-related people trying to "fix" my back.

So what have I been up to recently? Well, a variety of things really.

1) I've had some fits of guilt and nostalgia and have taken it upon myself to try and get in touch with friends from years gone by, see how everyone is, and get up-to-date contact info for everyone on the off chance that they want me to visit. Some of these people I haven't heard from since I left college 10 years ago, so its really good to know that some of them are doing well, and I must confess to taking a guilty pleasure in knowing that some of them are as undecided about their futures at 27 as I am.

2) I've been reading books. Mainly re-reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books, in completely the wrong order. I've also been dipping into the world of Graphic Novels, working my way the the Watchmen in preparation for the movie release, as well as catching up on Slaíne.

3) I've been continuing to work on a particular painting. I've kinda got into a bit of a rut with it. Turns out it was a bit TOO ambitious for my current skills (and attention span), but it IS progressing slowly.

4) I've also done some writing, albeit not a lot. I'm currently working on a big fight scene towards the end of the novel and, unfortunately, its not going well. I'm finding it difficult to visualise the scene. I blame this on the painkillers which I'm currently taking too many of to block out the big spikes of pain that are happening (fortunately) infrequently.

5) I've been playing too much FFXI. As you might have gathered if you actually check my main site, a lot of the blogs/updates recently have been FFXI-related and thus not written about on this here Life Blog. Toddle over to the FFXI blog for updates on that.

That's about it for now. Not the most exciting of updates, but I did feel I was bending my new year's resolution a bit by counting the FFXI blogs as part of my "one blog per week" thing. Updates to this blog, and my website, will continue. Have a gander at the updated art gallery if nothing else. Some newish pieces in there from this year that most people haven't seen. ^_^

~Jon

Summer Holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:04:00 +0000

This last week was the final week of the academic year for most schools in this Midlands. As such, this means its time for six weeks of sun, relaxation, and drinking.

Or would do, if I didn't live in Britain, where there's rarely any sun, and I can't really drink due to the painkillers I'm taking.

The folly of drinking with a bad back was exemplified yesterday. Went out for a meal with the Waterhouses down to the Ruby Cantonese, my favourite local Chinese restaurant. I knew it was the last day of term, and that they don't have the chance to go out and enjoy themselves all that much as they're both teachers, so I figured I'd make sure I didn't take any painkillers during the evening so I could join them in a few beverages while we ate.

Good plan right?

Wrong!

See, while my back hadn't actually been all that bad during the daytime, by the time I'd spent 15mins in the restaurant, it had started playing up. Didn't bring any painkillers with me, thinking that the alcohol would numb the pain. Well, it did. But only as I downed three glasses of red wine in a row. Not my smartest move ever, especially as my alcohol tolerance is practically zero at the moment, but still...

Eventually - ie by the time we were walking home - the effects of the drink kicked in and pushed the pain to the background, but I must have looked like a right alcoholic in the Ruby, downing wine. ~_~; It's the kind of thing a guy with pride and/or a reputation would think twice about. Fortunately I have neither. :D

So that's how I started my summer holiday off. Full of food, drunk on red wine, and sprawled on the bed spasming in pain. My how fun my life is. I'd say "start as you mean to go on", but I'm not sure that's a good idea this year.

Still, my appointment with the spinal specialist is on Wednesday morning. Hopefully they can give me a better indication of what's wrong.

~J

A Day in the Life of a Teacher on Prescription Painkillers

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:08:00 +0000

I have a bad back. It hurts. The NHS physio isn't sure what is wrong with it, so is referring me to a back/spine specialist. That appointment is on the 23rd July. Until then I am stuck trying to do stuff on co-codomol painkillers.

Or, as the box clearly states: "Omg Caplets".

I had a day teaching today. I haven't done a great deal of teaching recently due to it being the end of term and year 11 having left for their exams - thus not many supply staff needed. This is probably a good thing, as too many days like today would be bad for me.

The basic outlook for today was fairly straightforwards:

Yr10 French (top set, small and nice group. Enjoyable lesson.)
Yr7 English (large set, no work left, but enjoyable blagged lesson.)
Yr7 French (low ability, real headache of a lesson)
Yr7 French (higher ability, enjoyable lesson)
Yr8 French (top set, nice group, fun stuff)

Not too bad a day. My french is hella rusty, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was the atrocious year 7 group. It's the kind of group that there's just no recovering from. As a supply teacher, its difficult to know what to do in awkward situations, and the one thing I've noticed about the school is that it has narrow corridors and you can't leave kids out there if they're being pricks. So I had to put up with two obnoxious HORRIBLE children for almost the entire lesson.

The lad was a pain in the arse, rude, disruptive, and had the misfortune to be caught out in the corridor by a senior member of staff on call. Therefore he got taken away with little fuss. Turns out that he wasn't the main problem I was going to have that lesson.

The girl, on the other hand.... NEVER have I actually physically wanted to strangle a kid before. Sure, I might have moaned that I wanted to, but it was only through intensive physical restraint that I actually managed not to shout in her face and physically push her out of the classroom and slam the door on her. She was so utterly putrid in terms of her attitude and outlook. She had to be the centre of attention, and was so disruptive that she simply couldn't be ignored. She moaned when I wasn't paying attention to her. She called people names. She lead the class in some bullying. She threw pencil crayons. She called one girl a "fucking bitch" right under my nose. She insulted me. I sent her out several times but she kept coming back in when my back was turned, then offering a pathetic "I'm sorry. I won't do it again." each time. It made my skin crawl, she was truly horrible.

Eventually she was caught outside by another member of staff as I tried to keep her away from this other girl she was bullying as well as deal with the rest of the class as well as organise the lesson. Said member of staff thankfully said she'd take the girl for a walk until the end of the lesson. I was relieved, said many thank yous, and closed the door on the kid.

For sixty seconds I was free to get on with teaching French.

Only who should turn up at the door but the girl again, barging in, grabbing crayons, and going outside to work in the corridor...

I could have stabbed her eyes out with them... There was just nothing I could do. I don't know the name of the teacher that took her away, but I'm really not impressed. :(

By the time I'd got home, I'd got through 6 co-codamol tablets. That's 6 out of my 8 total for 24 hours. That's quite a lot in a short space of time. I was actually rather dizzy and feeling a bit out of it by the time I got back, and went pretty much straight to the bed for a lie down. I dunno if I fell asleep or what, but it was suddenly an hour and a half later and Mother was asking if I wanted dinner...

Sweet and sour chicken with light and fluffy rice. At least SOMEONE knows how to cheer me up ^_^

Sat at the PC typing this blog I can't really feel my back now. Can't really feel my fingers hitting the keys either, so please excuse any spelling mistakes.

That was my day on prescription meds. How's your day been loyal reader?

July Already?!

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:38:00 +0000

What the...?!

Seriously, how is it July already? What happened to June? Where did it go?!

July is always a patchy month for me, as it tends to mark the end of the academic year. When I was a student, it was the time that I had to say goodbye to my social life and return home. Now that I'm a "teacher" it's the time that I have to say goodbye to any regular work, as towards the end of term there's very little supply work available. So I need to tighten my belt and look ahead to the summer months and consider my options.

That being said, there's a lot to look forwards to in these last couple of weeks of the year, and the summer holidays in general. None of these things are actually academic though.

Firstly, the new iPhone 3G is released in a couple of weeks. At £100 on a £35/month tariff, it's not cheap since I only got the last iPhone in March, but with its promise of much faster internet speeds - which is mostly what I use my iPhone for anyways - I don't see the point in not upgrading. Thus I have set some pennies aside for it.

Secondly, season 4 of Doctor Who is coming to a close this Saturday evening. The series has had some patchy moments - as any Doctor Who season does really - but the penultimate episode was rather over the top and a little bit surprising/shocking. There are gonna be a lot of people sat down on Saturday night to see what becomes of the 10th Doctor's regeneration sequence that started at last week's cliffhanger - I know I'm certainly intrigued by what they're going to do.

Thirdly, I am still planning on going somewhere over the summer months. It has been ten years since I actually went on a proper holiday somewhere and I figure it is about time I got a dramatic change of scenery. This will depend on finances, obviously, but again I have a few pennies set aside for it.

Finally there are a few movies out at the cinema that I want to watch. Some of them may not be very good, but I want to watch them anyway. These include: The Dark Knight, Hancock, Wanted, The Mummy III, and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. This probably tells you a lot about my cinematic "taste", but I care not.

The summer months. A time for BBQs, beer in the garden, friends getting together inside and outside, hoping for the best weather. Let's hope this summer is a good one.

(As I'm sat writing this it's raining heavily outside....)

~Jon

More Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Demajen) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:56:00 +0000

So yeah, I reset the blog layout back to a faster, default template, changed it to blog.html instead of index.html, and linked it through from the new index.php main page. Hopefully this won't throw everyone too much, not that I imagine many people visit or read this anyways. \o/

~J