Glastonbury 2004
Review - Football, Sleep. Babyhead, Badly Drawn Boy, Grove Armada, Missed Minuteman :(, PJHarvey, Kings Of Leon, The Chemical Brothers, Glade, Groove Rider, Glade, Sleep. The Subways, Lost Prophets, Ben Harper, Joss Stone, DJ AFX, Amp Fidler, Paul MaCartney, Glade, Lost Vagueness, Sleep. English National Opera, James Brown, Super Grass, Morrissey, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Orbital, Pack up, Flat battery, Eight helpful coppers, Three push start attempts, Eight slightly muddy coppers, one set of jump leads, One long drive home, Sleep. - Review.
.18:55/02/06/2004/zebra3
Weekend Away...
This weekend I left Michael, Zac and Abbie to fend for themselves while I went to Prague to join the fun on Suzanne Collins' hen weekend. It was well worth the (very) early start on Friday morning. A few hours later and 10 of us were enjoying a long and boozy lunch in the Palffy Palac restaurant.
Later that evening we got Suz suitably attired, and went to see what the pubs and bars of Prague had to offer. We found plenty of cheap drinks, and entertainment , although we were told off in one bar for singing and generally making too much noise!
On Saturday we had a wander round Prague's old town, follwed by a boat trip, which was a very relaxed way of seeing the city. Then it was a fantastic dinner at the Kampa Park restaurant. We carried on the eveining with a visit to one of Prague's many strip clubs, feeling that we ought to find out what attracted so many stag parties to Prague. For many of us this was a first, (and probably a last) visit, but we all enjoyed the confused and slightly embarressed looks we got from the bar's other customers.
We all made it home on Sunday morning, a little the worse for wear, and not helped by a bumpy flight home. I took a few photos throughout the weekend - I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures everyone else took, and meeting up again at Suz and Jason's wedding in May. Thanks for a great weekend.
.22:19/22/03/2004/Amanda
Rumours of my demise...
Well after a few weeks of contacting the best developers around the south east I landed myself a few interviews. These on the majority went well except for a bizarre case where rather than interview me the interviewer set me a three hour examination of his own devising. He said in a surprised voice that a number of other candidates had walked out half way through... I stuck it out but more as an interview exercise than any thing else.
Any ways a couple of the interviews in particular went extremely well and I have taken a position at Rebellion in Oxford. I Started last week and they seem like a good crowd right up to the top. Commuting from Guildford is a bit of a pain but hey I now have four hours a day to catch up on my reading.
I'm in on the start of a unannounced project so I can't give you any juicy details except to say that it may well be based on a rather excellent 2000ad story. Rebellion own 2000ad if you didn't know.
So that's me sorted for a bit. Thanks to all for your messages of good wishes and the like they have been great to read and listen to.
.22:05/15/12/2003/zebra3
Back in the DSSR
So after a two-week wait I got to have a ten-minute chat at the job centre. They said "Yes you can sign on but you have to be actively seeking work". No trouble I said, I've had lots of interesting leads and even may have an interview coming up abroad. Oh dear they say that means we will have to close your claim down.
Yep that's right, go look for a job but don't look too hard like else where in the EU or rest of the world, as that means no dole, sorry job seekers allowance, for you.
The system in place seems oh so very unhelpful. Now it is not any one governments fault just the slow steady creep of bureaucracy through our blighted country. I have been sent between five different agencies and on average 50% of the information that I've been told, on where to go and what to do, has been wrong. The only correct information I've had is off the net so thank goodness for broadband... Just a pity I can't sign on over it.
Don't get me started on the 23-page council tax reduction form that will get me a massive £10 reduction in council tax with between 300-600 question for you to fill in dependant on your answers. Unbelievable really really unbelievable I rather lose the money than sit there and spend the half a day it would take to complete it. Oh and it can't be back dated obviously "so you have to do it NOW", I was told late on a friday afternoon, "or you'll miss this cut off period".
Boy you should have heard the "TUT" I got from the disgusted lady who profered the form when I said I'll get around to it next week. It was almost worth the £10. :)
.23:12/17/11/2003/zebra3
26 things...
Got a digital camera? Fancy a project rather than just snapping away over the next couple of weekends? Tracy over at sh1ft has a wonderful eye for photos and is a bit darn good about getting others out and taking them to. Her idea is simple there is a list of 26 words on her site the idea is you use these words as kicking off points for 26 shots then in a months time you create a web page and publish your shots for the world to see how you and everyone else interpreted those words and what photos they egged you on to take. Bad news is it's halfway through the month already :)
This is the second time Tracy has done a 26 things list. The earlier one is there if you want an idea about what others have done. You'll quickly see there is no right or wrong and people of all types and talent have been posting which adds to the fun. Thanks go to Snowcat for telling me about this site and though I've been flat out job hunting (and trying to get cash out of liquidators, NIF, etc) I hope to get some time out and about with the camera next week.
.17:12/13/11/2003/zebra3
Mucky Foot RIP
Well how unfortunately prophetic my last posting was. Mucky Foot Production Ltd. went in to liquidation last week putting thirty odd people in Guildford and Newcastle out on the street and looking for dev work. It is especially hard to take after the extra hard work we've put in on this project to implement the new features and design changes our publisher wanted.
Anyway, I find myself applying to a few choice development companies that I've always wanted to work for and we'll see what comes back from them and I'll be appearing a lot more regularly on the web cam ;)
Drop me an email or leave a comment if you want to be added to my ICQ contacts and help keep me sane over the coming days.
.12:28/05/11/2003/zebra3
We've never had it so good!
Tough times are here for the game developers worldwide. As the industry is repeatedly referred to as bigger than Hollywood we lock onto the same linear rails that delivered "films" to the creative desert that is tinsel town. Is the UK fairing worse than others? Well here's a list of some of the closures in the last year or so and an awful lot of them are UK based:
IG
KAboom
VIS ent
Silicon dreams
Attention to detail
Crawfish
Rage
Runecraft
Hotgen
Software Creations
Hammerhead
Small Rockets
Red Lemon
Curly Monsters
Creature Labs
Binary9 Studios
Lost Toys
Pocket Studios
Computer Artworks
From hung heads and tails of woe told at ECTS this year it looks like there are a fair few more to follow. Meanwhile industry magazine MCV sings out that "We've never had it so good!" as it reports on the same ECTS. I felt sick as I read that headline.
Publishers are tightening belts but are generally not doing too badly for where we are in the console cycle. In the end it will be them and the super developers left. Not a terrible thing in itself. For example it should mean some games will get very large budgets, extensive staffing and a great marketing push. However many innovative or more demanding titles will not make it through the marketing screening of what they can successfully forecast for.
I keep ending up looking in the direction of Hollywood and the pop charts and wondering if that's the future or where we already are. Lots of people are happy with those systems and I must say I always seem to have too many films I want to watch and CD's I want to listen to so they can't be an unworkable systems but it still makes me worry as I see companies fail. Oh the curse of interesting times...
.18:01/20/10/2003/zebra3
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