Frankly, I Would Have Preferred The Sword

2011-04-14T14:17:00.003+02:00

I'm the world's worst blogger, but I hope I can be partially excused because I've been spending rather a lot of time making a game:

Alone in the Park

In a way, it's kind of like my blog but in game form.

I hope to make more and post them on my site, and let people know about them also via facebook.

Episode 7 � Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

2010-04-21T02:46:00.000+02:00

Episode 7 � Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

Play Eyjafjallajoekull, a free online game on Kongregate

2010-04-18T10:42:00.000+02:00

This makes me laff:

Play Eyjafjallajoekull, a free online game on Kongregate

(Use the mouse to target planes with volcano ash)

MISSION TWO: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? � Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

2010-03-15T01:20:00.000+01:00

Mission two of INVOKE is up: MISSION TWO: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? � Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

2010-03-08T04:25:00.001+01:00

Check out this new "ARG" from Christian McCrea and I:

Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

We made it in celebration of the World Bank + Jane McGonigal's new ARG 'EVOKE'.

Here's a taster of our version:

Facebook | Manifesto of Video Art

2010-03-05T13:19:00.000+01:00

The Australian Centre for Virtual Art released their ground-breaking, game-changing Manifesto for Virtual Art on Wednesday.

I suggest that everyone with an interest in the future of art study it closely.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Manifesto-of-Virtual-Art/354801415968

On the very same day, and by complete coincidence, my friend Christian McCrea and I made a surprising discovery. At the bottom of a box in the dusty old attic of an aged relative we had the luck to unearth perhaps the only extant copy of a very historically important document: the "Manifesto of Video Art", written in 1982. And thanks to the wonders of modern technology we were able to scan and upload the manifesto and share it with the world that very evening.

I think you find, as we did, that the ideas it contains are still very relevant - even after all this time.

We encourage you to join our Facebook group in appreciation and discussion of this marvelous document:

Facebook | Manifesto of Video Art

Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

2010-02-28T13:21:00.000+01:00

My favourite bit starts at 1:37.

2009-11-17T04:09:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I read that Belle de Jour, the famous English high class prostitute-come-blogger has outed herself. As well as her true identity she has revealed some real life details about herself that I find interesting.

Dr Brooke Magnanti took to sex work after finding it hard to find reasonably paid work in London while she was finishing her scientific PhD. She eventually found work as a computer programmer, but quickly returned to sex work upon deciding that whoring was more enjoyable.

I think there's a lesson here for all educated women who want to maximise their earning power. Perhaps you want to save for a house, a car, a holiday, a long-stay visa in France... Whatever your financial need, you have two clear career choices: whoring or programming.

Whoring is the clearly superior option, but it has exacting entry requirements; namely, youth and beauty. I have decided that it is not for me. Unfortunate, considering the 300 pounds an hour Dr Magnanti was able to earn.

Resorting to programming, therefore, I have created a tool for those lucky enough to be able to charge by the hour for their services. Even if you are not a sex worker, you may use it. It's freeware.

Workwerk times you as you work. You can then export timesheets (readable as spreadsheets) to your computer or to your account on Google Docs. There's a little bit of data visualisation in there too. I'm still fine-tuning, but it's usable now, and it works on Windows and Mac.

Workwerk

Install AIR first, if you don't already have it:
http://get.adobe.com/air/

If you find a bug, please report it in the comments of this post.
Please excuse my (lack of) graphic design skills. It's an ugly little beast.

2009-10-19T13:37:00.002+02:00

In his quest to work under legendary game designer Tim Schafer, Craig "Dubious Couture" Duturbure brings out his ukulele:

2009-10-11T16:43:00.000+02:00

"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog."

Where are these robots so that I may battle them? I've dreamed of this moment ever since I saw Linda Hamilton geared up with a rocket-launcher in Terminator 2.

If anyone wants to find me, I've been in the weights section of the Brunswick gym three times a week for a few months now. Uzis don't carry themselves, now do they.

2009-03-04T10:07:00.001+01:00

The other day I had one of those irritating experiences where some other entity is credited it with an idea of my own or that of my friends. Public credit for one's ideas isn't a terribly big deal I suppose, but the more mis-crediting that goes on in print and on the web sort of makes me look like a liar on my increasingly feeble-looking CV.

Some ideas I've had are very silly and therefore don't require me to claim them because they wouldn't in the the least help me to find work. But for edification and historical accuracy I will start documenting them here.

The Seduction of the Saucy Scrabble Player

My friend - let us call him Mr X - and I went away to the country for New Years' weekend with a group of friends and friends of friends. In a rented house we drank, ate and played a good deal of the Scrabble (for people under 25, Scrabble is the board game that Facebook's “Scrabulous” is based on).

One young woman was particularly successful at the Scrabble board, having been brought up in a keen Scrabble-playing family where two-letter words had been memorised as readily as hot dinners consumed.
On the last night of the holiday Mr X accidentally found himself having sex with this woman after downing a bottle of New Year's champagne. The next day we all went back to our homes in Melbourne but my friend was smitten by this new female acquaintance and he decided that he'd have to contrive some cunning way to get to see her again. Of course, loyal friend that I am, I was only too happy to apply myself to the task.

In these situations I take my inspiration from Jeeves, the large-brained gentleman's gentleman and logistical genius, the creation for which the comic writer P. G. Wodehouse was best known. Jeeves could invariably be relied upon to devise clever strategies by which his master might negotiate delicate personal matters.

Jeeves' strategies were based on a study of what he called “the psychology of the individual”. In my case the individual in question – let us call her “Angelica” - was an intelligent young woman with an undeniable penchant for Scrabble.

Based on this scant knowledge I decided upon the following plan of action, which my friend, Mr X, enacted:

Through a mutual friend, my friend obtained Angelica's postal address. Then every day for a period of eight days he sent her an anonymous postcard. Each postcard was cream-coloured and square-shaped with rounded corners. On the reverse side a stamp was affixed and nothing was written there except the young lady's name and address. The front of each card bore a large upper-case letter in the centre, and a smaller numeral in the bottom right-hand corner.

They were posted in this order in these alpha-numeric combinations:

L2, A3, I2, C6, N4, E1, A9, G8

The eighth postcard to arrive on the eighth day was the exception to the rest, bearing a short message on the reverse side where one is normally supposed to write nonsense such as “wish you were here” and the like. Mr X. simply wrote “call me”.

And on the ninth day she worked it out and called him.

We never let on that it wasn't Mr X's idea.

2008-12-13T18:22:00.002+01:00

I am back in Melbourne on Wednesday, a city in which I will be embarking on a grand experiment. The experiment is motivated by my sudden need for money - money that I need to buy my way into French residency.

So what is this experiment? It is this: I am finally going to do the unthinkable, and attempt to find work outside of the game industry.

I've never entertained the the notion before, because I have never needed to. But lack of funds is standing in between me and French residency and I'm damned if I'm going to be shut out of France for much longer.

My decision recalls to mind all those things friends and colleagues have tried to impress upon me over the years. Quite inadvertantly I am now taking their advice:

"If you want to be designing the kind of games you want to make, you have to leave the industry. Yeah, you could stick around to get more experience, but is that going to bring you any closer to your goals? No, it's not."

"The Australian game industry is no place for a woman. The only women who have gotten ahead are the ones who have left the industry or left the country. What makes you think you're any different? Leave!"

"I love my new job. The work is kind of interesting, but not too hard. I work 9 to 5. And the pay is good. Very good, actually."

"People think you're weird - a bit of a curiosity - and they don't take you seriously. In management meetings they brand you a trouble-maker. You have an image problem, and it's not doing you any favours."

"You get paid *how much*? Are you kidding me? So you've been doing this for ten years, right? And when do you expect to earn a decent wage - after another ten years?"

"Do you want me to see if I can get you a job on our IT help desk?"

2008-12-10T19:05:00.005+01:00

I am in Bangkok and now have internet access that occasionally works.

So I have just now created a Facebook group called "I consume internet porn and I have the balls to admit it". Please consider joining it here:

Here is the group's declaration:

NEWS FLASH: People have sex. And not just to make babies. If parents want to try to shield their children from that fact of life for as long as humanly possible that's their business. But it's not mine.
Yep, there are many reasons why the Australian government's plan to filter the internet is patently stupid:

* It will make internet speeds in Australia slower than they currently are. (Is that even possible? Apparently so.)

* It will make Australia -- a country that already boasts arguably the most censorious media classification regime of any country in the Western world -- an object of derision within the international community.

* Like most filtering systems before it designed to "protect children from inappropriate content" it will likely block culturally and socially worthy "appropriate" content by mistake, including the work of media artists, important information about sexual health, and so on.

* We could go on...

Luckily, plenty of people will be ready to come out and champion any of this "appropriate" content caught in the crossfire.

Safely vague statements will be made in defense of the principle of free speech.

Cultural pundits will say lofty, clever things about the right of artists and other creators of high culture to unfettered creative expression (being careful to implicitly distinguish their "Art" from that nasty low-brow commercial porn).

And many of these people, operating within an political atmosphere charged with fear and hysteria around this issue, will qualify their arguments by stating that "of course children should be better protected from pornography, but this system isn't the solution".

Well OK, whatever.

But let's hear from the millions of Australian residents who views or has ever viewed "inappropiate" content (not child porn, but sexually explicit material) and think that's fine.

Some of us are under 18 years of age (shock! horror!) and that's also fine, because the right of young people to explore the world around them should be respected too.

The Australian state, acting through the Office of Film and Literature Classification who's decisions are enforced by the Australian Federal Police, has done its best to quietly remove sex from magazines, cinemas, videogames, bookstores... ostensibly in an effort to protect Australian children - not from poverty, not from disease, not from violence - but from media.

Enough with the children already. Now, won't somebody *please* think of the porn?

I have invited some friends to the group and will be interested to see who's willing to lay their balls on the table, as it were.

2008-12-06T08:15:00.006+01:00

The Thai government has been dissolved. That's a good thing for me personally because it means that things have calmed down to the extent that the airports here are operational again, and I'll be able to leave Thailand before Christmas.

So on that positive note I thought I'd post a few photos I've taken recently that feature unfortunate signage.

First up, here is the charity box I encountered at Hanoi airport. It was soliciting money to help pay for the care of "especially difficult children", and I had to wonder what they'd spend my money on. I'm guessing things like handcuffs, Ritalin and flogging posts.

In Hoi An I was encouraged to spend my hard-earned on a hat that identified me as a tourist.

In restaurants in the south of Thailand customers often pay according to the size or weight of the fish they choose. At Bernie's, however, it's the customers that get sized up:

2008-12-02T07:00:00.003+01:00

An enterprisng crab did this.

This dog is obviously german, sent out by his master to reserve the best spot.

The view from my primitive "office".

So there are some photos.

And here's what I have to say about game sequels:

I often get my hands on a sequel to a beloved game thinking "I have mastered the core mechanic of game X. I'm in the mood for curling up with a warm X-like experience - something familiar, something I don't have to strain my brain over because I know and understand the paradigm that is X." So I buy X.2, start playing, and what do you know - I'm stuck in the first level. I try that first level for an hour or so, wondering what the hell has turned me from an X master into a developmentally disabled X n00b.

Notable examples that come to mind are Knights of the Old Republic 2 (stuck in the tutorial!) Thief 3 (hammered by the AI in the first level!) and a few days ago Lost in Blue 2 (my characters starve to death on the first day because I can't work out where the stove is!). Like I said, in previous incarnations of these franchises it was fairly smooth sailing - right from the beginning.

I assume this is because sequels are frequently outsourced to another team or rushed out quickly to cash in on the popularity of the first game(s). Less time was spent polishing the difficulty curve.

Alternatively, I'm just disastrously worse at everything.

Speaking of getting disastrously worse: the Australian dollar. Its continuing fall in value means that unless I earn bucketloads of money while I'm back in Australia my ability to convince the French embassy to give me a long stay visa is fatally diminished. So how am I to earn bucketloads of money? Ideas are most welcome.

2008-11-29T07:56:00.003+01:00

I am on an island in the south of Thailand called Koh Pipe. The internet is expensive. The food is expensive. The fish are colourful. And tasty.

Being on a deserted(ish) tropical island I thought it appropriate that I get out my DS and play Lost in Blue 2 (Lost in Blue was set on an island just like this). But I gave up when I got stuck near the start.

This experience confirms my theory about game sequels. (I'll explain my theory when the internet is cheaper.)

So mostly I'm just working. I wish there were some kind of desk in my bamboo hut.

We're all kind of wondering if civil war will break out here. Apparently the government has fled Bangkok to the northern city of Chiang Mai. Most of the airports in Thailand have been blockaded by the PAD (the pro-Monarchist People's Alliance for Democracy) and people are having trouble getting out. Getting a bus or a train is nigh on impossible. Damn. Not sure if I want to be stuck on this island forever. That'd be too much like my experience getting stuck in Lost in Blue 2.

2008-11-20T10:11:00.006+01:00

Today I had to wade through (pleasantly lukewarm but suspiciously opaque) water to get to my usual café. The bank of the river have overflowed and half the town is flooded.

In these trying circumstances the locals remain enterprising. Instead of being hassled by people wanting to sell me a ride on the back of their cyclos or motorbikes ("you want motorbike ride?") I was sidled up to by people in row boats ("you want boat ride?").

Hoi An is a very small town. One can walk (or wade) anywhere in less than fifteen minutes. And yet hurtling around everywhere are those blasted motorbikes - the Vespass of Death that I mentioned when I was in Hanoi.
This is because, as I was surprised to learn when I had dinner with some people from an NGO that runs an orphanage here, walking is seen as a low class thing to do.
"Think about it: have you ever seen a local walking on the street? They'll take a motorbike, even if it's only a few metres away. It's a status things. Only poor people walk, because they have to."

No wonder people think us Westerners are strange for wanting to walk intead of riding a motorbike for 100m back to our hotels, seeing as we can afford to ride.

When I was in Thailand several years ago my friend and I hitched a ride with some locals to a national park. We spent half a day talking with them in their car. When they asked us what we did for a living they were taken aback by our answers (me: a post-grad music student; my friend: a medical student).

"We don't mean to cause you any offence, it's just that we are very surprised because you are not dressed well enough to look like people with a university education."

Even on holiday, casual clothes like shorts, t-shirts and sandals - though comfortable and convenient - are only for "low class" people. Heaven forbid that "high class" people like us be mistaken for "low class" people! Our local friends, of course, were dressed in semi-formal western style suit jackets, despite being on holiday in the scorching heat like us. We found their outfits as strange as they found ours.

It's interesting how these ideas about what signals status is almost completely opposed to way the signs of privilege and affluence for my generation are defined in my own culture:

Cycling and walking walking... (you can afford to live close by to where you work and play)

Wearing casual clothes... (you're not just any old wage slave who's forced to dress formally, or perhaps because you don't need to work at all).

Eating brown rice... (you're educated about nutrition and you have the extra time to cook it)

2008-11-17T19:17:00.005+01:00

River outside the cafe.

Having an ultra-portable PC is like having a dog. It helps you make friends with strangers. They come up to your table in a cafe and start talking to you.

“Ooh your dog/computer is sooo cute! You know, my friend Bill has this breed/model of dog/mini PC too and he says these french poodles/EEE PCs are so good natured/convenient. I'm thinking of getting one too, actually.”

Shop that sells model boats

I have one of these conversations once every couple of days. They generally lead into conversations on more general topics, like: “Can you recommend a good tailor?”*. This evening it lead to:

“So what do you do for work, anyway?”

“Game development.”

“Wow that's so cool! Lots of money in that, I bet.”

“Er, no, actually. What do you do?”

“IT, corporate stuff. Kind of a boring industry to work in, huh.”

“No, not at all. I hear that in your industry they pay actual money in exchange for work. There's nothing boring about that – in fact I find the idea rather exciting. Revolutionary, even. So tell me, Flex applications vs Silverlight vs JavaFx...”

* which makes me feel like I'm in a P.G.Wodehouse novel, and I love that because I quite fancy the idea of spending time in a PGWodehouse novel

2008-11-13T15:10:00.006+01:00

As I alluded to previously, I am now a regular at Cafe Cargo in Hoi An. Anyone who wants to head down to Nguyen Thai Hoc street down near the river is most welcome to join me for breakfast. I'm generally seated outside, so I can steal the wifi from the (inferior) cafe across the road.

The downside of sitting on the terrace is that it exposes me to harrassment from the local hawkers. Small boys try to sell me clay bird whistles. Women in pointy hats try to sell me mandarins and guavas. I think I already mentioned that man with no legs who shuffles over with a copy of the Viet Nam News.

There's also this dog that comes sniffing around, dressed like Audrey Hepburn. I took a photo of it:

On the footpath people play the game pictured at the top of this post. Can anyone identify what the game is?

Note: Yesterday I was contacted by my correspondant to tell me that the problem of the silent flatmate has resolved itself. The flatmate has for some reason decided to
start speaking again, just like that.

2008-11-11T09:56:00.003+01:00

A cry for help in the form of an email crossed my desk yesterday.

My desk is currently a small table outside a french bakery in Hoi An where I am intermittently interrupted from my work by a cheerful man with no legs who tries to sell me a newspaper. I imagine his injury was acqured during what is known here as the American War. And now the poor man reduced to peddling newspapers to the very same kind of people who blew his legs off. That really sucks.

Below I reprint the missive that I received. My advice will appear in my next blog post.

A couple of months ago I moved into a new sharehouse, and about a week ago I discovered that one of my housemates is ignoring me. I don't know why they are ignoring me, and quite frankly I find it very immature, and would like to know what you think I should do about the situation.
I became aware of the situation when I arrived home late one night last week, and noticed on my way inside that the lock on my bike had been broken, and strangely the bike not stolen. I brought the bike in, carried the broken lock in to the loungeroom to discuss the odd event with whomever was about. The only person in the room was housemate X. He completely ignored my story, sitting arms crossed, staring at the TV screen. I repeated my story, tried to grab his attention a few times, even shook the broken lock in front of their face. Housemate X bluntly refused to look at me. I double checked and their eyes were open. They were totally ignoring me. "Riiiigght... " I said, comprehending the situation, and left the room. It's been a week now and they still have not said a word to me, leaving the room whenever I enter it. It's very peculiar, not at all the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a 29 year old.
So over the past week I've been thinking about when this person might have actually first developed an 'issue' with me. I remembered that there have actually been a few times over the previous couple of weeks when they had ignored me as well, which I had put down to grumpy hangoverness.
But there was actually an earlier event which occurred a few weeks ago when I was rolling a joint in the loungeroom. Out of no where, housemate X said "you're not fucking smoking that in here are you?". At first I thought they were joking, but they were not. They were actually being a rude cunt. I have no problem with not smoking a joint in the lounge room if this is a problem, and I duly smoked it in my bedroom. However I don't tolerate aggression of this sort, either abusive words, or passive-aggressive 'silent treatment'. Do you think I should move out, which I don't want to do for any other reason, the rest of the housemates are lovely. Should I humour myself by waiting and seeing how long this person is actually going to attempt to annoy me with their petty mind games? Or should I expose their issue in front of the other housemates? The obvious solution would be to ask them if they have a problem with me, however I can already see them ignoring my question yet again, and leaving the room.
I should note that I made sure to mention at the house interview that I enjoy the occassional joint, and should anyone have had a problem with this you think they might have brought it up then. It was also not the first time I'd smoked in the lounge room, with no complaints on earlier occassions.
Thanks ahead for your strategic reply...

2008-11-03T14:29:00.007+01:00

Everything in Vietnam is flooded, drenched, damp, or at least smelling of mildew*. It's disgusting. It's like growing up in New Zealand all over again.

We finally escaped Hanoi last night for Hue, a small city in the middle of Vietnam. Hue is Vietnam's imperial city; it is where the emperor used to live. We were feeling a bit miserable (for various reasons, including computer issues, and sharing a train compartment with a man who snored all night, but I suppose compared to the problems of the ordinary citizens of Hanoi right now we are very lucky) so we decided to splash out tonight, as it were, and buy ourselves an imperial banquet at a poncy restaurant.

The venue was well posh. My travelling companion phoned in a reservation ahead of time, and when we arrived we found they'd printed her name on a card for our table:

Then the first course came out (there were seven) and it was in the shape of a peacock. (I actually misunderstood the menu and thought that we were going to be served an actual peacock so in fact I was slightly disappointed.)

There was even live music.

Then the refined ambience was somewhat shattered when a large wet rat made a dash for it across the floor of the restaurant. I think he or she was seeking shelter from the rain outside.

It was at that point that my travelling companion expressed her desire to head back to sunny Thailand with the smallest possible delay.

* Anyone who wishes to accuse me of excessive whinging and reckless exageration (or who thinks my comparison with NZ was a little harsh) should cast their eyes over this article. 18 people died in the floods in Hanoi while we there.

2008-11-01T09:48:00.004+01:00

We are trapped in flooded, storm-ridden Hanoi with no means of escape. There are no trains out of here due to the weather.

And what's worse, we are stuck in a hotel near a supposedly famous and ancient Catholic cathedral, where the bells get played on the hour, every hour. I see absolutely no theological reason for this.*

If you were kept up all night by Catholics you'd have a black look in your eye too.

The hotel (our most expensive accomodation so far) appears to be run by an incompetent 17 year old son of rich parents, aided by motley a assortment of his less-talented high school chums.

We sometimes brave the torrential rain to go outside. My travelling companion (the one bitten by the dog), for example, has been going to hospital periodically to receive rabies injections - from a nurse who has difficulty locating an arm, let alone a vein. Occasionally we are obliged to go out to fetch food, which is either joyless or unforgivably expensive**. We can't wait to escape down south to Hue, the former imperial city where reputedly seven course meals (of peacock, among other things) are served on tree branches and cost 8 USD.

* when I was in Istanbul I got woken up at 4am when all the mosques broadcast the call-to-prayer. The reason for this was presumably that 4am was one of the scheduled prayer times, i.e."wake up people, it's time to point yourselves towards Mecca and kiss the carpet". Whereas the Catholic church just doesn't want people to sleep for more than an hour at a time, and we have to assume this is purely because the Vietnamese Catholic church is run by ill-mannered sadists.

** unlike in Thailand. Oh how I took you for granted, wonderful Thailand!

2008-10-30T05:38:00.001+01:00

Today my travelling companion and I feel like this Pony, pictured above.

(Many thanks to Moran for wrangling this Pony.)

2008-10-29T11:27:00.000+01:00

2008-10-29T11:19:00.000+01:00

We have arrived in Hanoi and are, frankly, terrified when we walk down the street.

Death (or serious injury) by Scooter is a common problem here, and one can see why. The scooter is a popular mode of transport everywhere in South-East Asia but the popularity of these machines must have surely reached its zenith in Hanoi. The scooters here are so numerous they swarm at you like hive-fulls of angry giant bees.

Unlike Laos, Hanoi is no place for chickens. In Laos there are many urban chickens that roam freely about town. Street chickens, I suppose you'd call them. They are quite bold (recall, if you will, the rooster that came begging for my steamed bun), and have no hesitation in crossing roads filled with trucks and scooters. (It is well known that The Other Side of the Road is a popular destination for chickens, and that their almost religious compulsion to reach it makes it a sort of Mecca for them.)

The only sign of chicken life I saw on the streets of Hanoi last night, however, was fried chicken feet being chowed down by people squatting between parked Vespas of Death on the footpath (scooters take precedence to pedestrians, even on footpaths!). They were no doubt the feet of pilgrims that had been struck down while on their dangerous pilgrimages.

But it is not merely the Vespas of Death that make the streets of this city more terrifying than a pissing contest in an electricity sub-station. Last night my travelling companion was bitten by a dog. It was one of those small, hairy white and yappy creatures one often sees in the handbags of Parisian bourgeois. The fact that there are so many of these running rabid around the streets of Hanoi sinking their teeth into people's tender calves is yet another terrible legacy of French colonisation in this region.

My poor companion was obliged to visit two hospitals and have injections in her derriere. She is reacting badly to the rabies vaccine (rabies is still common in Asia), and insult was added to injury when she was also attacked by a Chihuahua on the way back from the hospital today.

2008-10-17T16:22:00.006+02:00

I am in Laos, where everyone wants a piece of me.

The main street of Luang Prabang.

This afternoon I took a tuk-tuk to a waterfall, and it cost me 40,000 kip. Everyone else in the tuk-tuk had paid 30,000.

HAD!

I walked up a track alongside the waterfall. A girl nearby started screaming and hopping around on one foot and declared loudly to her boyfriend that she was being attacked by leeches. I rushed to assist and then found that I had several leeches of my own, stuck to my feet, all wanting a piece of me.

HAD!

I got away from the leech-infested track and fast as I could and then decided to cool off with a swim in the waterfall stream. I felt something on my legs and feet. When I got out of the water I looked down and realised that flesh-eating fish had wanted a piece of me. They had made a meal of some skin on my feet.

HAD!

I left the waterfall and walked to the park entrance to look for a meal of my own amongst the food stalls. I sat down on a rock by the side of the road with a couple of steamed buns. Two puppies and a rooster came up to me and crowded around. They wanted a piece of me and my steamed buns (since when did chickens eat steamed buns!).

HAD!

Then I got back to my solitary little room and I was relieved to get back to my computer and my work. Here is the view from my room:

2008-10-11T13:29:00.004+02:00

Travel is supposed confer an enriched understanding of cultures different to one's own, through a constant exposure to foreign peoples and their strange ways, which one greets at first with surprise or even dismay, and at last with acceptance, resignation or appreciation.

But it is the foreign-ness of Australians abroad (Australia being the place where I've spent most of my adult life) that makes me suffer the most from culture shock. Who are these strange-cultured people and why do they seem to think I'm their new best friend?

The Australians I meet outside of Australia make me wonder if I have ever actually lived in that country at all. They are very much unlike the sorts of people I have spent the last ten years associating with in the cafes and share-houses of Melbourne's inner city suburbs.

And the confronting thing for me is that being an Australian abroad (or in my case, simply having a mild Australian accent) seems to trigger an extraordinary sense of fellowship (“let's go for a drink!”) and trust (“could you mind my passport for me?” “let’s go for a drink!” “can I borrow your toothbrush” etc.) based simply on the commonality, presumably, of having lived in the same country. Fellowship between any humans is nice, I suppose, but this nationalism-tinged variety strikes me as rather false. Back in individualist Australia – a very large country, where strangers on public transport resolutely avoid eye-contact with eachother and social cliques rarely mix - there is rarely such a bond, but cross the border into foreign territory and it's Australians shoulder to shoulder together against the Hun.

2008-10-08T05:11:00.003+02:00

We are now in the north of Thailand, in a little place in the hills called Pai. It is so idyllic its main raison d'etre is tourism. My raison d'y etre* is to work in a relaxed setting, and hopefully I'll do a bit of that soon.

My new office. It's beautiful, but I wish my bungalow had a desk.

In modern South-East Asia “eco-” and “ethical” tourism seem to live side by side (or perhaps even hand-in-hand) with hidden and not-so-hidden exploitation. We foreign tourists are wealthy consumers in (and of) the Third World, and as such we enjoy a maximum of consumer choice. There's such a smörgåsbord of activities and companies providing those activities to choose from here it starts to look all a bit “same same, but different” (as they say here in Thailand in response to tourists forever wanting to know the difference between menu items at restaurant).

Thai street buffet

Do we want to play with tigers today? They'll drug the animals for us so we can touch their limp furry bodies safely. And tomorrow do we want to donate food to the local monks at dawn? Then they will sell us food to feed to the monks and take us to them. (Luckily there are no signs here saying “Don't feed the monks”).

On the next day, should we sign up for an eco-trekking of the hills we must be careful to choose one of the “ethical” tours, or else we may be taken to the Long Neck tribe, a society that still compels its womenfolk to elongate their necks (a practice akin to foot-binding) now purely to generate income from curious tourists.

We can ride elephants, some of which are reputed to be mistreated (here again, we can choose from ethical or non-ethical elephant cuddling experiences), but we can equally do our bit for the environment by helping make paper out from recycled elephant dung.

A man pimps his elephant to tourists

We have the option of taking a reiki course and or volunteering at an orphanage in the afternoon. Perhaps with our new reiki skills we could spiritually heal away the problems of these children. And no doubt we will be tired from the day's activities, and have a massage in the evening (with or without a “happy ending”).

An elephant, a motorbike, a young woman, a conscience – all these things can be rented for the day. All same same but different.

*"reason to be here"

2008-10-01T13:28:00.005+02:00

I have recently arrived in South East Asia, with a view to living cheaply here until the end of the year.

Hot and rainy Bangkok through a window.

It has been over ten years since I was last in Bangkok, and my first impression upon arrival is that it has modernised considerably.

Hazadous bus journeys (when I last tried take to public transport in Bangkok a single journey across town involved two bus breakdowns and a bus-on-car accident) have now become a pleasantly air-conditioned whizzing-about on a shiny overhead rail system; I stayed in a guest house last night where not a single rat assailed me in my sleep; and when I walked around yesterday evening I saw no giant cockroaches scuttling around the rubbish-strewn streets - possibly because the streets were rather rubbish-deprived than strewn.

In some ways being in Bangkok isn't as interesting as it was.

I once knew a young man (a young man from a wealthy background who moved in refined circles) with an unusual point of view when it came to the problems of the world: "don't solve them". That is to say, he didn't believe it was too difficult to achieve social and economic equality; he thought it was a bad idea all together. Wiping out the huge divide between rich and poor within the world would make living in it far less diverse and interesting, he told me, and that is why I was wrong to actively try to achieve it. His argument was basically that economic diversity is essential to maintaining cultural diversity.

Perhaps in some ways he was right. If we had universal prosperity numerous species of human creatures from our currently interesting world would become extinct. Gone would be those colourfully-dressed peasants doing back-breaking labour with intriguingly old fashioned tools in order to feed their diversely-diseased families, and we would no longer be blessed with little half-naked pokey-ribbed children sitting on footpaths selling toothpicks to passers-by.

Imagine the disappointment of Opera-goers if Puccini's La Bohème if Mimi had been able to afford warm clothes and central heating, thus destroying the pretext for Rudolfo's chat-up line regarding her "tiny frozen hand". Imagine if the concept of charity became redundant, and along with it all of its associated socialite busy-work; and if no wars, famines nor crimes were available for consumption by the listless and information-hungry. The prospect is terrifyingly ho-hum.

Hence a certain level and concentration of poverty and inequality must be maintained, in order that the bored rich of the world may keep their idle minds entertained by the picturesque misery of the world.

2008-09-27T01:39:00.003+02:00

This time it is I who seek counsel.

My forward slash key, otherwise known as my question mark key, is busted. The 'P' key is also threatening to pack it in.

This is added to the fact that I've been running in VGA mode for the last few months (yes I know, oh the horror!). It's because my motherboard's graphics chip is fried. That's also why I have vertical lines running down my screen. And the aspect ratio is wrong, making people look fat. (Yes, that includes you, if I've had your image on my screen at any time over the last few months.)

You may ask how I have managed to put up with all this for so long, and do Actual Work on this machine all the while. (See, I even had to rephrase that sentence in order to avoid having to use a question mark.) Well readers, that's a fucking good question.

I have, of course, my little Eee PC that I bought for traveling and working light in South-East Asia. But while it has it's decided benefits (its size and weight, the "wow" factor when I whip it out of my handbag in front of awe-struck companions) the mini keyboard isn't so great for long working stints. Also, the left side of the space bar has stopped working (already!). And it's kind of slower than I'm used to, even after all the optimising I've done to the system.

One might argue that I need a new computer. A proper one, that I can spend 8 hours a day doing work on. But that's easier said than done, given that I'm going to cheapest darkest Asia on Monday to live like an impoverished monk(ey) to save money. So if I were to buy a new machine it would a) use up money that I was tryng to save and b) no doubt be stolen by a wiley street urchin or trampled by a jungle elephant.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

2008-09-24T16:02:00.001+02:00

I am saved!!! I saw an electrician working in the stairwell and he tried the lock and then when it still didn't work he went and got a hammer and whacked the end of it and now it works!!

Vive la France!!

2008-09-24T15:21:00.002+02:00

I'm trapped in the apartment! Something is wrong with the lock and I can't lock the door behind me. So effectively I can't leave. I have no credit on my phone so I can't call anyone. I've tried using Skype but the internet connection seems to be too slow for it to work.

I used my last phone credit to text Dmitri (it's his flat) in Portugal and he called back but even with his advice I can't get the lock to work. I've tried asking the neighbours in the other apartments for help but nobody's home.

2008-09-24T12:52:00.005+02:00

Another letter arrived on my desk* this morning:

Dear Aunt Kipper,

I have recently moved into a new apartment and the old lady downstairs has left a note on my door complaining about my boyfriend and I making 'bedroom noises'. We try and keep it down and keep it to reasonable hours but the old bird will not be appeased. Now, said old lady has a very noisy dog who barks day and night. Should I leave a retaliatory note for the dog asking her to stop making 'kennel noises'?

Help!

A Not Particularly Oversexed Reader.

Dear ANPOR,

Have you considered trying Strychnine? Strychnine is a white, crystalline powder that can be taken by mouth, inhaled or mixed in a solution and given intravenously. I believe it could be useful for you and your boyfriend in relation to this problem.

In your case the easiest way to take it (unless you're accustomed to sticking needles in veins) would be mixed with food just before bed time. Strychnine has a slightly bitter taste, so I suggest adding it to a dish that is naturally a bit bitter in flavour anyway. You might want to try dark chocolate, for example.

Dog chocolates are readily available in most pet stores.

Alternatively, if you are one of these vinyl-shoe wearing, meat-is-murder types, you might go straight to the root of the problem and off the old lady herself. In that case you'll need a hypodermic syringe, a box of Lindt dark from the supermarket, and kind note saying something along the lines of:

"Dear Nosy Old Bat (or whatever her name is),

My young man and I were mortified to learn that our "bedroom noises" were disturbing you and your dog Yappy Fucking Little Mongrel's (or whatever it's name is) repose.

Please accept these handmade Belgian chocolates by way of apology.

Yours sincerely, etc"

Once the old lady is found (you might want to tip off the relevant authorities before the smell from the downstairs apartment starts to migrate upwards) the dog will no doubt be sent to a Dog Shelter, where somebody else will off it eventually anyway.

I hope this helps.

There is of course a Third Way, but it is not such a permanent solution because it doesn't involve death:

Make a recording of a barking dog (perhaps even this old lady's dog). Play this recording loudly on your stereo system (preferably a system with a sub-woofer, as it were) whenever you have sex. The recording will drown out your "bedroom noises", and you'll be free to make said noises far into the night without the lady daring to complain about your noisy "barking dog".

* in my new temporary abode on the rue Faubourg St. Martin, from which I enjoy a wonderful view of the rooftops of Paris.

2008-09-23T13:26:00.009+02:00

I have received another request for my advice on a problem. Keep them flowing in, readers.

The Rantolotl writes:

When one takes the lazy option of downloading a 'free' template for a CMS from a supposedly reputable template vendor (who obviously sell a large percentage of their designs as well as offering hosting for said templates), and finds several of the most basic cock ups in html and cms coding, pretty much eradicating the time benefit you were planning on by spending many hours tracking down bugs and fixing them, what should one do?

In short, these bastards managed to waste several hours of my life by sheer incompetence - how should I go about getting those hours back?

Well, Rantotl that's the thing about time: once it's spent you can't just take it back to God's shop* for a refund.

What you can do, however, is take revenge against those who were responsible for the wasting of said time. I suggest a round public shaming of the company via online discussion boards, with scathing insults thinly veiled as helpful warnings and bug reports. For example:

hey there peops, just something to watch out for when you're using template x from company y etc

Translation: These cunts are rank amateurs. Don't use their templates - they're rubbish.

or (on the company's own forum) :

hey company x guys, i've been using your x template (thanks!) and I thought you might want to be aware of these bugs on lines 1, 23, 54, 64, 83, 90, 91, 100, 105 [etc.] of the script

Translation: You cunts are rank amateurs. You cunts.

Arguably, this will use up even more of your precious time, time that could otherwise be spent productively.

But so what? Down with the notion that all of one's time should be spent productively. Up with the concept of "leisure time".

Most people set non-productive time aside to indulge in a relaxing massage, a swim at the beach, World of Warcraft, a visit to a museum, and so on and so forth. I would argue that a vigilante-style flame war against culpable individuals and organisations on the internet is also a perfectly legitimate leisure activity, and one from which it is possible to derive no small degree of pleasure.

And upon writing of the joys of a good ol' public shaming of the iniquitous, I am reminded of some unreconfigured fucktards I dealt with recently. To wit, a French online vendor called Ubaldi. I will be describing my Kafkaesque encounter with this company at a later date.

* by "God's shop" I am of course referring to God and Son's Celestial Bargain Warehouse - "Satisfaction guaranteed - or you burn in hell for all eternity".

2008-09-21T19:21:00.004+02:00

Well, it's desperate times as I outstay my welcome on the various couches of Paris.

With actual couches being at a premium (Parisians don't tend to have lounges; they use each room as a bedroom in order to save space), I'm reduced to the bedroom floors of "so-and-so who I met at such-and-such an apèro", and tonight I sleep in a bathroom.*

Thankfully though, I have just finished the most pressing of my rhyming couplets and associated Pony work and now have time to ponder what an all-consuming abortion of a situation this is.**

Meanwhile, an anonymous reader has come forth with some excellent advice for Mariella and her dilemma (see last Monday's post).

Anonymous sympathises with Mariella, "a victim of deceit trying to put together an incomplete puzzle. "

Anonymous disagrees with me on the point of the level of honesty of Mariella's young man, because he is off dishonestly dallying behind his girlfriend's back, no doubt with what Anonymous evocatively calls a "fuck-focused dick of deceit".

In response to Mariella's question, namely “do you think he will dump his girlfriend for me?”, Anonymous offers this handy adage:

"If it walks like a fuck and quacks like a fuck, it is probably just a fuck."

Please do go and read the fully highly entertaining and informative post here. I do not know the identity of Anonymous, however I think we can safely divine his or her nationality by the use of the word "douche". This is a word rarely used outside of France (where it simply means "shower") and North America, and I don't have a clue what it refers to there, though I've heard it used many times on television.

A "douche" is certainly not a feminine hygiene product that think I've ever used, but then again I see a great many strange and inscrutable products lurking in that area of the supermarket that I dare not try to comprehend.

* Update: I had a last minute reprieve from said bathroom when it was agreed that there was enough room in Xav's bedroom for 3 people.

** A situation that rather reminds me of the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I'm eating people's porridge, sleeping in their beds, (not to mention the fact that I have blond hair), and bound to eventually find myself menaced by a sleuth*** of bears.

*** Yes, that is in fact the collective noun for bears.

2008-09-20T21:40:00.008+02:00

I have never before been paid to compose riddles in the form of rhyming couplets, and I am lucky to now work in a discipline in which I am. (Rhyming pony couplets.)

But even the writing of poetry can become tiresome, and after 8 hours of solid work on the kitchen table at the Hotel Xav I believe I deserve a break.

To those unfamiliar with this poetic form, the rhyming couplet, I wish to introduce that great 18th century writer Jonathan Swift, famous for the rhyming couplet that paired "wits" with "shits". Everyone quotes this naughty couplet, so I will not.

To illustrate the form of the rhyming couplet I will instead quote from another of my favourite Swift-penned poems, entitled:

A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG NYMPH GOING TO BED

It's about a young London woman who goes to a party. But the booze runs out, and she's hasn't gotten lucky, so she returns home alone, gets undressed and goes to bed.

"No drunken rake to pick her up;
No cellar, where on tick to sup;
Returning at the midnight hour;
Four stories climbing to her bower

"Then, seated on a three-legg'd chair
Takes off her artificial hair.

"Now picking out a crystal eye,
She wipes it clean, and lays it by.

"Her eyebrow's from a moose's hide,
Stuck on with art on either side.

"Pulls off with care and first displays 'em
Then in a play-book smoothly lays 'em.

"She dextrously her plumpers draws [cheek pads!]
They serve to fill her hollow jaws

"Untwists a wire, and from her gums
A set of teeth completely comes.

"Pulls out the rags contrived to prop
Her flabby dugs [breasts!] and down they drop.

"Proceeding on, the lovely Goddess
Unlaces her steel-ribbed bodice
Which, by the operator's skill
Press down the lumps, the hollows fill.

etc. "

Alas, three centuries have passed and nothing much has changed aside from the ubiquitous wearing of glass eyes.

2008-09-16T22:59:00.002+02:00

I'm suffering slightly from Pony writer's block. How many ways can a ten year old girl save the planet with the aid of her stylishly-accessorised and well-groomed pony?

And what's worse, I have recently discovered another one of those problems rather unique to people who work freelance: being too drunk to work. One often hears of the challenges of the freelance life, such as separating work from leisure time, and having to do one's own taxes etc., but there is a veritable silence on the issue of being too drunk to work.

I mean, I came home this evening a bit early from dinner, because I had planned to continue with my Actual Work (as opposing to blagging away on this blog). But in fact, after contributing to the consumption of at least four bottles of Beaujolais (at one of those Parisian bistros where after 11pm the waiting staff start dancing with the clientele in the tiny spaces between tables) I find myself at home (well actually, I should rather say on the floor in my friend Xavier's room, because I've no place else to sleep these days) barely able to write a convincingly professional work email.

So I'm going to sleep now, in the hope that I will be far more sensible about things tomorrow.

2008-09-15T15:13:00.005+02:00

Hoorah. I have received some problems to advise upon.

Mariella writes:

I’m falling for a guy I met on the internet but he’s already got a girlfriend. I know he feels the same about me, but I worry that maybe I’m being stupid.

I’m 25, he’s 28 and from my home town. We met for a drink a couple of weeks ago and got on so well I went back to his flat.

We chatted for a bit and as I was pretending leave he leaned across and kissed me. I kissed him back and it felt so right, we ended up shagging like bunnies.

Since then we’ve talked on the phone or texted every day and we’re getting very serious about each other. It would be perfect – if it wasn’t for his girlfriend.
It doesn’t stop me because I’m single and hurting no-one. He told me about her when we first started talking but she lives about 30 miles away so isn’t around all the time.

He said last week there is no future for them and that he’s not happy. He goes to see his girlfriend every weekend but still finds time to shag me. He sends me texts saying “im so lucky 2 hv u. u’re sngl & cd hv ny bloke u wnt”. (His texting drives me crazy.)

At the end of the day he’s the only one I want and I’m willing to be just his lover as long as I have to, but do you think he will dump his girlfriend for me? Please help, I'm desperate.

Well Mariella, I have to agree with your beau on at least one point: he is indeed "luck 2 hv u". He's thinking: "this jolly nice girl knows I'm behaving like a bit of a cad, and she's still into me! That's pretty sad, but it sure is convenient!"

He's not only lucky, he's clever too. By being honest about his behaviour he's left all the hard moral decisions up to you. He's saying "you're fully aware of getting yourself into, so it's your fault if you get hurt, not mine". "Honesty" can work a bit like the idea of "opportunity" for free-market capitalist ideologues. Women, black people, the poor, etc have, legally speaking the same opportunities as anyone else, ergo if they don't succeed it's nobody's fault but their own.

Some people these days seem to think that honesty gives them a moral license to do whatever the sod they want in relationships. Like Catholics who go around sinning because they know their sins will be absolved next Sunday, or anarchists who think they're at moral liberty to engage in any reckless actions they like during joint street demonstration as long as they "information-share" in a touchy-feely "spokes-council" meeting before the event.

So-called "Sensitive New Age Guys" hide behind their "honesty" all the time. I once had a flatmate called Daniel who asked his girlfriend Angela for an open relationship - but only open on his side because she had more "emotional strength" than he had, whereas he claimed to be far too fragile and "sensitive" to bear the idea of her with another man. Daniel even asked Angela for her permission to have sex with another one of our flatmates late one night, and when Angela said "OK" he immediately exited their room, walked down the hall and woke our flatmate up to ask for sex. But at least he was impeccably honest. Angela was very angry about it and, naturally, felt abused and manipulated. But frustrating as it was for her, there was nothing she could accuse Daniel of having done wrong.

But back to you, Mariella, and your honest lad. One thing you should bear in mind is that just because he's not happy in his relationship with his girlfriend it doesn't necessarily mean he wants a relationship with you. Not unless he explicitly says so. I think it's very revealing - suspicious, even - that he has deliberately stopped short of saying that that he does.

Of course, you're naturally making the assumption that by cheating on his girlfriend with you, and by having these heart-to-hearts with you about his intentions to leave her, that he'd rather be with you than his girlfriend. But see it from his perspective: it's very convenient for him to let you linger under this misunderstanding because it means you'll stick around and give him an easy life, rather than become all "difficult" and offended by the idea that you're just a convenient shag and not what he'd consider "girlfriend material". He may feel a little guilty about letting you get the wrong end of the stick, but as he keeps reassuring himself: he's been totally honest, he hasn't made any promises, nor even admitted any feelings for you (all he's said is that he feels "lucky 2 hv u" - and it's quite clear that he does indeed "hv" you, in a romantic sense). Strictly speaking, he owes you nothing at all, and if at any time he leaves his girlfriend he can always turn around and say "I never said I wanted a real relationship with you, so why are you acting like I have?", and he'd be well within his rights to do so.

And that's the way it is, I'm afraid. Technically it is your fault if you get hurt, and he wants to keep it that way. He's covered all his bases so that he can do whatever he likes in this situation and exit the scene having done, strictly speaking, nothing wrong (unless his girlfriend ever finds out what he's been doing with you, but hopefully she never will because that wouldn't be nice for her). You and I could gnash our teeth about what a cad he is and so forth, but in a court of moral law we'd have nothing to fault him on.

So what to do? Go on what this guy actually says and does, not what he seems to be saying, or appears to want from you. Take the highly pertinent information he's offering you - specifically: "1. When I'm not happy in my relationship with my girlfriends I have no qualms about seeing other women and, probably, 2. I'm only shagging you because my girlfriend isn't available on weekdays" - and consider it objectively. Is this the beginning of a mutually respectful and mature relationship? As things stand, probably not. Are you willing to risk sacrificing your second-class shag status in order to see whether he actually thinks you're worth more to him than that? You probably aren't willing to do this, but it's in your best interests to do so. And if, like this guy claims, you "cd hv ny bloke u wnt" have you considered perhaps finding another bloke who's more into you, and who is less... confused (to put it kindly).

2008-09-14T16:46:00.004+02:00

A couple of wild ponies that I tried to befriend on a Turkish island where the only transport is pony-drawn carriages. I don't speak Turkish, but I believe they said something along the lines of "fuck off and leave us alone".

I am doing quite a bit of work with Ponies at the moment, and I've been listening to music in order to keep my eyes on the trail and my feet in the stirrups.

Here's the playlist I made, in case anyone's interested in listening along in solidarity:

Discover Modeselektor!

Question: How many surprising ideas can one quietly inject into a pony game?
Answer: You'd be surprised.

2008-09-13T19:29:00.003+02:00

I have been correcting English in games for money recently, and now I find that I cannot prevent myself from correcting English at all hours of the day and night, quite randomly and obsessively.

In a high-brow restaurant in Damascus I found myself ruthlessly correcting the English printed on one of their napkins and was caught in the act by a waiter, much to my embarrassment.

Today I recommended a hotel to a friend - the one in Istanbul where I stayed last week (with the delightfully irascible dutch woman d'un certain age who has lived there since last December, and the frisky bar manager that ran off with my friend), and I chanced upon its website:

I was struck by the Hotel's slogan: feel yourself at home. It seemed to me that the management were suggesting their guests feel themselves at home, with the implication that they are exhorted not to feel themselves during their stay at the Hotel Agan.
i.e. Feel yourself at home - not in our hotel.

And just to make it clear to people for whom English is not a first language: telling people to "feel themselves at home" is entirely unnecessary. Generally speaking, most people already feel themselves at home. It is only the brave and the psychologically-impaired who choose to masturbate in the street in full public view.

2008-09-10T18:19:00.008+02:00

Useful things I learnt in Syria, continued:

Saudis are the scourge of the Arab internet dating world.

Within any internet dating sub-culture there are accepted truths, such as the fact that the vast majority of internet daters in Mid-West USA are avowed Christians, and that 99.9% of participants fail to perform a basic spelling and grammar check of their profile text before they post it online.

In the Arab dating world (encompassing all arabic speaking regions of the Middle-East) one accepted piece of wisdom is that whenever there's any funny business going on (a fake profile, or a man pretending to be a woman) the culprit is bound to be a Saudi.

Why a Saudi?, you may ask. Why aren't the people of Jordan or Bahrain running amok on the internet causing online dating havoc? To answer this question we must look at the cultural and economic history of Saudi Arabia:

1) Saudis, culturally speaking, have their roots in Bedouin culture. Bedouins are those nomadic people you see in movies roaming around the desert pitching tents, trading arms and herding bedraggled-looking livestock. They don't like strangers much either. "You don't know me! You ain't from mah trailer park!", etc.

Bedouins (I believe) hanging out in the Syrian desert in that tent.

2) Bedouins apparently regard the idea of work (or what some of us might call "wage-slavery") as demeaning and dishonourable. (I do too, but as I'm not too fond of living in a tent I just have to suck it up.)

3) The Saudis discover oil in the early 20th century. Suddenly the Saudis are rich! (Much like The Beverly Hillbillies, but with less swimming pools and movie stars.)

"So we packed up the truck and we moved to Sa-u-di! Arabia, that is. Segregated swimming pools, no movie stars."

4) With all this new oil money Saudis decide to build a national infrastructure. But they lack the skills to do it themselves, so they ship in people from neighbouring countries to do it for them.

5) These foreign workers may be skilled, but somebody has to order them about. So the Saudis send their sons off to learn how to be leaders (not their daughters, because it's hard to order someone about when you're wearing a ninja costume and it takes you half an hour and a complicated clothing gymnastics routine just to eat an icecream in front of a man). Young Saudi men scatter throughout the elite universities of the world to study management.

6) The sons come back, and set about managing the foreigners who do the work.

7) The next generation of sons are sent overseas for their education. But when they come back they find that all the management roles are already taken. Oh noes! What to do? These Saudis went to Harvard and Princeton to learn how to manage people, not to do skilled work!

7) Luckily, Saudi law says that every company has to employ a certain percentage of Saudis, and pay them significantly more than foreigners. A large caste of "assistant manager" emerges.

8) As these job positions were created for no other reason than to simply to comply with the law, there is nothing for these "assistant managers" to do. Boredom quickly sets in.

9) Some assistant managers keep themselves entertained by popping over to Damascus or Beirut to spend naughty weekends with prostitutes in seedy nightclubs. (The locals tend to avoid nightclubs. "They're all full of whores and Saudis!")

10) On weekdays at the office these "assistant manager" guys are stuck in front of an internet-connected computer with nothing to do. Apparently a popular source of amusement is to go on Arab-world internet dating sites and chat up Arab chicks. Apparently another popular source of amusement is to go on said Arab-world dating sites and pretend to be an Arab chick. This is in order to make a fool of your other assistant manager friends. Not to mention all the other love-seeking souls around the Middle-East.

A love-lorn graffiti artist declares his love (in English), on a wall in a provincial town in Syria. The poor lad is no doubt unwittingly wasting his lustful energies on a Saudi assistant manager.

So what does an internet dater in Syria or Yemen or Iraq or wherever do when he starts to find his virtual "date" a bit fishy? He curses and shakes his fist at those ubiquitous Saudi assistant managers, the Scourge of the Arab Internet Dating World.

(Thanks to Radwan for this piece of internet dating advice.)

2008-09-09T16:01:00.006+02:00

It is an unfortunate side effect of travelling that one can never find enough opportunities for charging one's electronic devices. And when one can neither work, play games, nor read e-books as a consequence, one is forced to opt for whatever low forms of entertainment come to hand*. By this I mean the magazines that one is reduced to buying at train stations and airports.

Turkish Viagra, for when electricity-based forms of entertainment are not available.

Delight, in amongst the Turkish Delight.

My travelling companion and I have read the latest edition of UK Cosmopolitan magazine from cover to cover. Notable was the advice column, which we found to be sadly lacking in good counsel to Modern Young Women. With brain-rotting advice like this being distributed far and wide, it is no wonder that Modern Young Women have had their minds numbed to the point where they waste their time and money on silly women's magazines**.

So in an effort to raise standards I hereby invite readers to solicit my considered advice on any problems they may be languishing under. Feel free to post your questions in the comments section***.

* In saying "low forms of entertainment that come to hand" I was not making a thinly veiled reference to masturbation. Sorry.

** Airport and train station purchases not withstanding.

*** I wish to remain objective in this, so if your problem involves me in some way, I'm afraid I will be unable to answer you.

2008-09-07T10:06:00.006+02:00

I have recently downloaded and watched a number of mainstream Hollywood films, all of which, despite widespread assurances to the contrary, I found to be unreconstructed rubbish. As a result, I feel a bit put upon. I mean, I not only wasted a few hours watching these movies, I wasted several hours downloading them.

Furthermore find it ironic that well-crafted, socially intelligent (yes, intelligent) examples of contemporary culture like GTAIV are currently being dragged through the mud by church-loads of moralising muppets while films like the ones I've seen recently seem to pass unremarked in spite of their immense tone-lowering stupidity.

Take, for example: The Dark Knight, a violent and yawn-worthy film featuring a super-hero who prefers to inflict violence upon his peers by punching them instead of shooting them. Personally, I fail to understand why killing people through hand-to-hand combat is morally superior to killing them with a gun, but whatever.
This movie was supposed to be a Batman film for grown-ups, but its rather lame attempt to create a more sophisticated political and philosophical context for the Batman character only serves to render the premise more politically and philosophically bankrupt than it would've otherwise been. When the Morgan Freeman character gives Batman a lecture about the ethics of his personal Echelon-project-style spy device I almost hit the delete button on the file right then and there.

If I hadn't had to watch The Dark Knight as a badly compressed avi cam, maybe the special effects would've at least kept my attention, but unfortunately I was forced to derive entertainment from the actual content of the film instead. My traveling companion (who bothered to see the film in an actual cinema) also points out that the soundtrack was shite and the sound mix was so amateur that at times the dialogue was barely audible.
Yes, this film broke box office records, but wasn't that mostly because it stars Heath Ledger, who recently went and offed himself with the contents of his medicine cabinet?

I rate this film PathETICK and award it -5 stars.

Wanted is another violent, juvenile film destined to fill young minds with nonsense. The lead actor is undisputably hot, which is why I initially became interested in this film. He is quickly rendered unattractive, however, by playing a character that is unarguably annoying.

The central idea of this film is identical to that of all those other films designed to appeal to 20-something male losers: a humourless white-collar soft-cock who gets screwed around by everybody until one day he discovers he's “special” (yawn). I suppose if I were a spiritless young male whiney-pants myself, like the vast majority of people who went to see this film, I would have identified with this guy and cheered him on a bit.

"You can't hide my coffee cup - I'm a ninja/the Chosen One/the Son of God/a Jedi Knight/etc! Waaah!"

But far from finding him to be a sympathetic character, I began to feel that he deserved all of the bad treatment meeted out to him. I even felt sorry for his cheating beyatch of a girlfriend, and if I were her I would've fucked his best friend too.

The final scene is less than tasteful, featuring the hero asserting his manhood by blasting people away indiscrimatedly, with a rifle mediated by the corpse of one of his victims that he was dragging around with him as a sort of a shield-come-rifle-holder. It is an image reminiscent of Postal - a much maligned game starring Gary Coleman - where you had to shoot people through the arse of a cat. To their credit, at least Running With Scissors (the game's developer) puts that kind of unsavoury silliness in their games in an effort to make them funny.

Postal's "cat silencer"

And as I watched this final, cruelly ludicrous scene, I had the unpleasant sensation of just knowing that man-children in cinema audiences around the world would have been thinking: "Yeah! That'll show them all for pushing me - er, i mean, that guy - around!".

I recommend this film be retitled Unnecessary , and award it -7 stars.

2008-09-05T22:49:00.005+02:00

Today I feel like this Turkish Pony, pictured above.

Because I am in Istanbul. Being in Istanbul, I went to T-box (it's Turkish) and purchased tardis-like accessories with Asus Eee sized pockets:

And looked at clothes that imply nasty things about one's mother:

Oh yes, and there are some Byzantine churches and Ottoman palaces and things like that here too. We went to see a Harem today and it was very nice, if insufficiently sordid.

My travelling companion has taken to running off with the attractive hotel bar manager of late, which is fine by me because I have had bits and pieces of Actual Work to do. Actual Work has also prevented me from posting the stories I promised about Saudi internet dating and Syrian game development. Expect them over the next few days (though I am not sure exactly where I will be living next week because I am slightly homeless).

2008-08-26T19:57:00.004+02:00

I cannot access the comments section of my blog because blogspot is blocked in Syria (while, paradoxically, Blogger is not).

But yes Naseer in the comments, you are right, and I am a deplorable dislexic (meaning no disrespect to genuine sufferers of dislexia.) What I should've written was in fact "ya halu", which means "hey sweetie", a phrase that apparently only men use to women, and one often employed towards women walking innocently down the street minding their own business.

I am in an irritable mood, having been mildly ill during these last five days with an intestinal problem. My digestive system currently feels, and no doubt appears, much like the digestive system pictured below.

How my internal organs ended up being sold in a Souk in northern Syria I'll never know.

This pair of sheeps' guts caught my eye because they look rather like a pair of cute alien fetuses that some evil enemy alien has murdered by hanging.

And yes there were bags of eastern spices and women in ninja hijabs in the market as well but everyone knows what that stuff looks like so I didn't take pictures of it (I did, however, wish to take a picture of a Saudi ninja woman trying to eat an icecream but it would have been impolite to do so).

2008-08-25T17:31:00.000+02:00

I tried to post some photos to Facebook, but the URL got redirected to Syria Telecom's welcome page which is inviting me to read news items about baby pandas. So I'll try and post photos here instead.

I have already learned many useful things in Syria, such as:

* Saudi women tourists have to eat very slowly in public. They to lift up a little flap in their hijabs and carefully spoon the food into their mouths. This must be very good for the digestion.

* To sexually harass a man in arabic in a belittling way (saved up for when I return to Paris and visit the 18th arrondissement): one would say "ya allahu"

I will be dedicating a future post to what I have learned about Saudi internet dating.

2008-08-23T19:32:00.001+02:00

2008-08-20T00:00:00.000+02:00

In a few hours from now I'll be leaving Paris to embark upon a pilgrimage to Damascus.

I have said previously that I would go on a pilgrimage to Damascus, and it was no mere slip of the pen. Well it's not only a pilgrimage, it's a holiday too for I have the extreme good fortune of being taken on a road trip by a friend.

A note to Western imperialists: please refrain from invading Syria while I am there. I would not like to have to take up arms against you during my stay.

Our roadtrip through the Syrian desert will probably look a bit like this:

I have my straw boater at the ready to brave the rays of the desert sand, for in Syria one can pretty much wear what one likes without being hassled, apparently...

For example (click to zoom):

This was drawn by a Syrian blogger who goes by the moniker of "Puppeteer". Her site appears to be offline (does anyone know where it went?)

...unlike countries like Saudi Arabia and France, for instance where they make annoying laws about how one is allowed to dress.

2008-08-19T00:30:00.003+02:00

Many thanks to friends who have been sending in photos of obscene-looking vegetables. Keep them coming - every legume helps.

My friend Kylie is a keen gardener and was kind enough to email me a photo of one of the potatoes she has grown, all the way from Sandringham in Auckland, New Zealand.

She writes:
"It's a potato. It is also a prize-winning entrant in the Sandringham Country Women's Institute
Grow Your Own Dildo Competition."

Thank you Kylie, and I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that your potato is now featured in my Suggestively-Shaped Vegetables application on Facebook.

I have named it "The Nun's Repast" after consultation with my flatmate.*

* Ca ressemble une bite, non? "Le repas de la religieuse" - ca va ou pas? Ok bon alors

2008-08-18T15:58:00.004+02:00

In this post I conclude the case notes I began yesterday regarding:

The Vexing Problem of the Beardy Albino

Yesterday left our heroine Rose in a compromising position with our hero Barry, the beardy albino virgin who bore no small resemblance to Santa Claus.

Before I describe what happened next I would like to remind readers of what I described as Barry's remarkably openness regarding his potentially off-putting personal defects. Recall also my friend Rose's remarkable lack of prejudice regarding the peculiarities of her suitors. Frank confessions on one side and unparalleled openness on the other - it was a happy coincidence, a canny combination that just might have worked.

But it didn't. Because there was one fatal flaw, a flaw that revealed itself as our two would-be lovers began to take their clothes off.

Upon attempting to unbutton Rose's shirt Barry drew his hand away and shuddered as if in pain.

"What's wrong?!" Rose said sharply. A woman does not want to feel that her physical assets are painfully received by her suitors. It is extremely unflattering.

Barry broke down. In a state of apologetic anguish he confessed that unbuttoning Rose's shirt made him feel unclean. (I need not point out that a woman does not want to feel that her physical assets are regarded by her suitors as "unclean".)

It was at that point that the ugly, despicable truth came out. This half-blind, beardy albino virgin was a recovering Christian. And he had lied about it.

Let us recollect that that the only requirement that Rose, our oh so open-minded Rose, had ever specified on her internet dating profile was that her date be not the slightest bit religiously-inclined. It was the only point that she was not prepared to compromise on. She had not wavered at the prospect of deflowering a virgin of advanced age. She had not even faltered at the prospect of a bit of "how's your father" with Father Christmas. But Rose, like any other reasonable woman, is compelled to draw the line somewhere, and for her that line is unquestionably crossed at the point where a man puts his hand down your top and finds Satan in your cleavage.

My friend summarily stopped the proceedings, ejected her gallant, and cut the weekend short. As she wrote to me afterwards she "can't be doing with that sort of thing", and I whole-heartedly concur.

As I prepare to put down my pen and close this case file I cannot help but pause to reflect upon the value of moral consistency in human relationships. In matters of romance one should be either a lying cunt of an individual, or a perfect paragon of veracity. But on no account should one adopt half measures of honesty, for it gives a false impression of one's integrity, rendering one guilty of being dishonest about honesty itself.

And with that thought I conclude my case notes for the Vexing Problem of the Beardy Albino.

2008-08-17T03:23:00.003+02:00

In my time as an Internet Dating Consultant I have come across many curious cases. I have decided to recount some of the more interesting ones here on my blog.

Notes from my casebook:
The Vexing Problem of "Barry" the Beardy Albino

My friend Rose in Vancouver is open to dating men of all cultures from all walks of life, and doesn't exhort that they conform to any particular norm of physical beauty. In Rose's professional life as a doctor she's pretty much seen at all, and I would describe her as a very tolerant and forgiving person. The internet dating site she is subscribed to allows one to enforce one's prejudices by filtering out the short or tall, black or white, skinny or fat, young or old, etc. But the only thing Rose filters out is the religious, for she is a fervent atheist.

So when Rose was sent a message by a man on her internet dating site - let us call him "Barry" - , a man who's photo depicted a severely myopic, slightly chubby albino man sporting a long beard, she saw no reason not to reply and they struck up an online conversation. Barry bore a striking resemblance to the image below:

Best approximation of Barry's internet dating photo

I think my friend's remarkable tolerance in the face of... well... Father Christmas, amply proves her open-mindedness and generosity of spirit. While nobody could be blamed for being born with a congenital melanin deficiency that results in snowy white hair, rosy pink cheeks and vision impairment, the cultivation of a long bushy beard is however a matter of personal choice - a choice that indicates a remarkable lack of aesthetic judgment, given the resulting festive-themed appearance. And where appearances are concerned, a long white beard is an unfortunate thing indeed.*

But when it comes to the dating decisions of others I am not one to impose my anti-festive prejudices, so when Rose asked me for my approval on the matter of going on a date with Barry I was glad to give it. "Yes," I texted her, "provided that he doesn't make you sit on his knee and ask you if you've been a good girl."(Or something to that effect.)

Then another matter came up. During online discussions Barry confessed to being a virgin. It seems he was determined to be up front about every one of his personal defects that might put Rose off. For a man of many (strange) faults, it was hard to fault the man on honesty.

But was it still OK to date this man - a self-confessed mature-aged virgin? I was dubious. Rose's other Internet Dating Consultant, however, is a great believer in the human spirit and her feeling was that men, like dogs and performing seals, can always be trained. I deferred to my rival's superior knowledge of dogs and seals, and Rose arranged to spend a weekend with Barry.

I think that if Rose had been a Girl Guide she would have surely received a Guide badge for agreeing to this weekend, which in some ways could be described as an act of charity, if not bravery. She was embarking on the task of deflowering a mature-aged half-blind albino virgin who looked like Santa Claus, a challenge that presumably no female before her had ever dared attempt.

Hypothetical picture of Rose, had she been a Girl Guide

It is unnecessary to recount the exact series of events that during the first half of this séjour but I am informed that it consisted of some not unpleasant meals and light conversation. Let us fast forward to the critical moment of the weekend. The moment when Rose and Barry found each other in a room together and began the process of disrobing.

TO BE CONCLUDED**

* unless you are a LARPer
(shudder)

** As this is already a long post I shall defer the conclusion until tomorrow in the interests of pandering to the short attention spans of typical blog readers

2008-08-17T01:15:00.003+02:00

I have a terrible habit of getting distracted.

For example, today I should have been working. Instead I found myself obsessively Photoshopping images of vegetables that look like penises.

The result is my Facebook App called Suggestively-Shaped Vegetables. It's a gift application. Collect 'em all, etc etc.

I am also composing a Facebook Quiz (with pictures) entitled: "What serious medical condition do you deserve?".

This is so that my friends on Facebook who seem to be obsessed with filling out the most endlessly banal quizzes such as "Which Seinfeld character are you?" and "What's your movie compatility" may have at least one quiz to do that has serious moral and philosophical implications. And hilarious images of diseased body parts.

Speaking of which, this reminds me of when I was a child my mother worked in a photo laboratory. She drove to work at 6 in the morning, I used to grab a lift in her car, and I had permission to do my homework before school in her workplace.

The benches and rubbish bins were always covered with photographic prints of all kinds - some amateur, some professional. I used to like looking through them for strange images. I made things out of them. One year I made Christmas cards for my friends out of a batch of medical images - small boys in body casts, amputated limbs, strange skin conditions and the like. I thought it was most amusing, but my mother thought it was disgusting and was worried that it would get her fired.

2008-08-15T14:20:00.002+02:00

Can someone get me some of these for Christmas please*?

littleBits intro from ayah bdeir on Vimeo.

* or for Ramadan, which is sooner.

2008-08-11T11:04:00.005+02:00

One of the tragedies of being a game developer is
a) having technical limitations that are beyond your control come up during development,
b) seeing those limitations totally munt your work,
c) getting resented for it by your publisher, who secretly believes that technical limitations are a fiction purposely devised by developers to weasel out of delivering features, then
d) at the end of the process getting slammed by game reviewers who shame you publicly all over the interwebs for being an incompetent dipshit.

(Needless to say, this is a frustration shared by all types of content developers within game development: designers, artists and sound designers.)

To give one example, character limitations shit me. If I ever met a character limitation on the street I would go up to it and punch it in the face.

I worked on a game once where the character limitations were such that every single word in the UI text had to be abbreviated and to the point of incomprehensibility. It didn't help that these words were English words that were abbreviated by French UI artists.
"Cha. the bra."
"Fl. tr."
etc.
To which my reaction was "wh. th. fu.?!"

If you're trying to make a game that features story and character, text limitations that mean you spend 10% per cent of your authoring time on story and character development and the other 90% of the time cutting your text down to a size that can be rendered on screen, thereby screwing any semblance of character or story or nuance out of the game entirely. Your game text becomes so terse and ugly that the player walks away from the game convinced that its designers are heartless bastards who talk in incomplete sentences and torture kittens in their spare time.

For example, supposing you wrote a piece of text for your game like this (it's not from a real game, I just made it up now):

"The Fairy Queen of the Midnight Glen needs your help! She has lost her five magical Fairy Wings somewhere in the Dark Forest! Wherever could they be? She asks that you ride your Enchanted Fairy Carriage to the forest to search for her wings. Once you have found all five, return them to the Fairy Queen so that she might fly once again and light up the midnight sky with her luminous fairy magic!"

After cutting this down to meet your technical limitations you're left with something like:

"Go to Dark Forest and find 5 Fairy Wings. You Cunt."

It is extremely depressing.

Well, that's enough whinging from me. I have kittens to go torture.

2008-08-04T18:52:00.005+02:00

On Sunday I went on a surprise outing. I didn't mean to go out; I meant to work, but in the morning I received this phone call:

"Hello?"

"Hi - is that M?"

"No, M's not getting home until tonight."

"Is S there?"

"No, S is away too."

"Oh, well can you tell them I called?"

"Sure. And your name is?"

"I'm B. Actually, you've answered the phone before, haven't you? Are you in Paris visiting?"

"Sort of, yeah."

"I'm going around the 18th arrondissement today to look at architecture. Would you like to come with me?"

"Sure."

So an hour later I went up the road to Montmartre to met B, a French lad armed with a "Cultural Promenades of Paris" guide book.

"Why are you going about Paris with a guidebook? You live here in Paris, don't you?"

"No, I don't live in Paris. Can't stand the place."

"I see."

"I live just outside of Paris, in the suburbs."

We walked down the street and stopped in front of buildings that we contemplated while he read cultural factoids aloud from his book.

"And number 7 of this street we have the house of [insert name of famous painter - Picasso, Braque, or Renoir, etc] where he lived from [insert year] to [insert another year]. Note the mural on the top-left side of the wall depicting the sculptor [insert name of famous sculptor], painted in the year [insert year]."

"Hang on, I don't see any mural."

"Neither do I. I guess it must've been painted over after this guide was written."

Several minutes later...

"And now we come to street number 45, Montmartre's first town hall, constructed in 1790."

"It seems very small for a town hall."

"Yes, it does, doesn't it. Well, Montmartre was little more than a village at that time, you know."

Some time later...

"And it was on this very spot, outside number 72, that Monsieur Renault drove the first motorcar."

"It says on the sign that it's a doctor's surgery."

"Yes it does. How curious. You'd expect that at least they'd have made mention of Renault somewhere on the sign. It was the first motorcar, after all."

"Yes, one would have thought they would have."

"You know what? I'm getting a bit suspicious about the accuracy of this guide book. It seems to be giving us rather strange historical information about these buildings. Well anyway, on we go."

Still later...

"Oh no."

"What's wrong?"

"We're on the wrong street."

"Huh? You mean we were looking at the wrong buildings the whole time??"

"Er, yes. These street numbers are actually for another street entirely. This is terribly embarrassing. I'm extremely sorry. You must think I'm awfully stupid."

"No, I don't think you're stupid. I just think it's a very good thing you are not, strictly speaking, a Parisian. Because if you were you would be a disgraceful one."

Following this moment of ice-breaking embarrassment we did our tour all over again on the right street, but our new "correct" tour was disappointingly predictable compared to our mistaken tour. The town hall looked just like how one would've expected a town hall to look, the mural of the sculptor was merely a picture of a man as described, and the sign on the wall saying "this is where Renault parked his first car" was no more than a sign on the wall.

We ended our outing by sitting on the steps of the Sacre Coeur arguing about the principles vs practicalities of using open-source software.

2008-08-02T12:32:00.003+02:00

Can I just clarify something: I am NOT internet dating.

Holy mother of Jesus, people!! How could you possibly think that?

Internet dating is like being gay: there is nothing wrong with internet dating, and some of my best friends are internet dating. But it's Truth that's at stake here, and in the name of Truth let it be known that *I* am not internet dating!

Some of you, however, are clearly languishing under the misconception that I am.

"How's your internet dating going?"

"Where did you get the idea that I'm internet dating, ffs*!!!"

"On your blog."

"The post where I said that I'm the Cyrano de Bergerac of the internet dating scene? Good God, man - do you not know who Cyrano de Bergerac was?!"

"Yeah, but he did actually get some dating action at the end of the story. So I thought you were-"

"You mean when Roxanne found out it was him at the end? But that hardly counts! It's not as if they *dated*! They were all old and dying!"

"Well..."

"Are you saying I'm old?!"

etc.

I am not internet dating. I am merely volunteering in the capacity of an internet dating image consultant. Honestly, people - get a grip!!

Cyrano de Bergerac would defend my honour on this question, had he a time machine

* that's IM short-hand"for fuck's sake", for the benefit of the acronymically-challenged

2008-07-30T05:18:00.000+02:00

I posted the other day about being approached by a group of young women when I was walking down the street, and how I was so surprised to be approached by women that I actually stopped and talked to them.

So now I'll put that in context. The streets of Paris (particularly in the residential, non-touristed areas) are lined with men who sit at tables outside bars or lean against the walls of buildings, for apparently no purpose other than to observe and evaluate women as they walk down the street.

These men - these young men, old men, apparently perfectly normal men who may not even have a psychiatric disability - murmur their assessments of us under their breath so that only we can hear them. Sometimes they leave their vantage point to sidle up to us to say it in our ears. They want us to know - not the whole world, just us - that they have found our appearance pleasing.

Unlike that breed of men in the anglophone world who make comments to women on the street - construction workers - there is no laughing, whistling or yelling. The Parisian men pass their comments quietly with a straight face, with a demeanor that is deadly serious.

Why do they do it? I have never once seen a man successfully initiate contact with a woman using this tactic. It is the biggest mystery in Paris. I have asked several Parisian women if they know what these men are trying to achieve, and even they don't know. I asked one how to respond. Can I flip them off or tell them to go fuck their mothers? I was told no, they would be highly offended. Because, as I mentioned above, to these men it is a deadly serious business.

Don't they do it where you come from?, a friend asked. No, they don't. To me this phenomenon is truly a foreign custom. And as someone who is usually more than happy to adopt French customs, I'd like to try it myself.

So I am attempting to get together a group of Parisian woman to join me for an afternoon or two of leaning against walls, sitting outside bars, and making comments about (attractive) men as they pass by. It has not been difficult for me to compile a list of the things I think we should say:

"Vous êtes charmant." (you are charming)
"Beau cul." (nice arse)
"Mignon." (cute)
"Joli." (pretty)
"T'as une amie, toi?" (do you have a girlfriend?)
etc.

There will be no pointing or giggling; we will be quiet and deadly, accompanying our murmurings with smoldering looks. Our efforts will be recorded and shared with the world viaYouTube, and in so doing it is my fondest hope that our example will inspire other women to get out on the streets of Paris, and express their feelings about the hitherto unappreciated male arses in our streets, neighbourhoods and parks. Women of Paris, unite! We have nothing to lose but our afternoons.

2008-07-29T11:53:00.000+02:00

I've been meaning to make myself a new set of business cards for a while now, and I've only recently realised that the cheapest solution is to make them online (duh!).

I'm using this London-based company called moo. It's pretty cheap, they have some interesting shaped cards, and they let you put a variety of different designs on the top side of each card within a single set.

So that's what I did - I made some business cards and here they are.

So businessy business cards all done. But then I went back to the site and thought: what the hell, I'll make some more cards because it really is very cheap.

But I had to think about what I wanted to communicate with this new set of cards. The first set clearly says "hello look at me, I'm a wanker", but what else would I want to say to people when I first meet them?

I concluded that what I want to communicate really depends on who I'm giving the card to, and why. Every new meeting is different. So what I really need is a set of context-sensitive cards; a cards bearing a variety of different designs customised for the various kinds of people and situations I routinely come across in everyday life.

So here are a few of my designs, prefaced with what I want to say with each card:

1)
I don't hand out my contact details to just any old numb-nut, you know.

2)
I may be giving you my contact details because think you're a nice bit of totty. Or I might find you interesting to talk to. Or maybe I think you're a good business contact. But you'll never really be sure, and that's the way I like it.

3)
You want my number? Sure. But if you don't call me by the end of the week don't bother calling at all.

4)
I'm a wanker. No actually, take a closer look. *You're* a wanker.

And finally,

5)
Oops. Sorry about that.

2008-07-27T00:27:00.003+02:00

Shame on you, ABC. Next time get someone like Margaret Pomeranz (or David Marr, or anyone who's ever played a videogame) on the show to provide some balance. Or even law-makers who actually know what the law is would be a start. (More details here)

2008-07-26T16:48:00.004+02:00

I'm living just around the corner from the Piscine des Amiraux, designed by the famous architect Henri Sauvage. Quite aside from the fact that our local swimming pool is a famous Art Deco marvel, it's very convenient living next door to a public pool. We swum there today.

It's like being inside a cross between a 1920s cruise ship, where the cabins line the walls around a large central atrium where the pool lies. Each cabin is small individual changing room which also serve's as a locker for one's belongings.

To reach the pool one must descend a staircase via a shower room (showering before bathing is compulsory) before passing through a corridor in which the floor is a shallow basin of water (ensuring clean feet before entering the pool.

A very tile mosaic warns swimmers not to run along the "beaches", so as to give bathers the sense that they are not in fact in the 18eme arrondissement of Paris, but rather at a seaside resort like Deauville.

2008-07-23T16:36:00.002+02:00

This is a video that takes the piss out of people like... er.... well, people we know. It's rather funny all the same.

(For some reason the embedding code snippet doesn't work, so go here to watch it)

"Wake Up Games is sort of my brain child. I remember waking up one morning thinking: What did I just do? I woke up. Did I wake up? Woah!"

"I keep hoping that we do the apartheid game. There's still a lot of material to mine there. In particular the mines."

2008-07-22T19:54:00.004+02:00

Foreignerspotting in Paris: it's like trainspotting but foreigners are the trains. Kind of.

Today I was accosted on the street on my way home. Being accosted while walking along the street around where I live is not unusual, but this time it was a girl who accosted me so I stopped.

"Excuse me!"
"Ah, yes?"
"Do you come from France?" (this is more or less asking me if I'm French, but it's subtly different from "are you French" which I think also implies a question of nationality and identity)
"Er, no, actually I'm a New Zealander."
"Oh OK. Thanks."
"Why do you ask?"
The girl looks worried, as if she's done something very rude and I'm about to tell her off. She points towards a group of girls sitting on some railing nearby and replies:
"My friends and I were wondering if you were foreign or not. I told my friend - that one there - that I think you're foreign because we've seen a few other women around with your "look" and they turned out to be foreign too. But my friend thought you were French and I thought you were foreign, so..."
"So you won the bet, right?"
"Er, yeah."
"Well then, congratulations!"
"Er...ok thanks!" and she went back to her friends to hang out some more.

I told my flatmate about it when I got in the door. She said, "these girls, they were ethnically North African, yeah?" (It's a fairly African quartier, the east of the 18eme arrondissement).
And then she pointed out how cool and modern it was that now it's girls like these who have the "French" look and people who look like me (pale, blonde) seem foreign or exotic.

2008-07-19T13:15:00.002+02:00

Check out this recently discovered fragment of techno-like electronic music created in the late 1960s by Delia Derbyshire (of Doctor Who theme tune fame).

Note the way that at the beginning of the track she says "Ah, forget about this. This is for interest only", downplaying her work in characteristic female fashion.

When I was a child, watching Doctor Who after school every day and completely entranced by the opening theme, I assumed this music had been made by a man. Who wouldn't? Hadn't everything around us been made by men?

2008-07-18T13:09:00.003+02:00

I've done a bunch of embarrassing things over the last few days.

Here is a summary of the week's events:

1)
I was staying on the Cote d'Azur (that's the French Riviera to you heathens) with a friend of a friend. In conjunction with my friend, who like me, erroneously thinks he's all that when it comes to things technical, I offered to put WEP encryption on our host's home wifi network. Piece of cake, we said. No worries. Until we broke the modem.

Moment Of Embarrassment.

So we said look, we broke your modem so the least we can do is go down the road and buy you a new one. So we went down the road and bought something that wasn't a modem and plugged it in, and of course it didn't work.

Moment Of Embarrassment.

2)
After coming back to Paris I found myself mostly naked in bed with an also somewhat naked male friend and we had a nice 3-hour long chat about the weather as if being in bed naked together was the most normal thing in the world.

Moment Of Embarrassment.

3)
I played at a music festival with a friend and we were totally disorganised and hadn't really worked out what we were going to do beforehand. Today I find that there is a video of us up of YouTube zoomed right in on us and recording us saying stuff like "is this thing working? I can't hear it. Maybe the whatsit isn't plugged in. Really? I thought it was" etc.

Moment of Embarrassment.

2008-07-16T01:45:00.004+02:00

More New Zealand music from my youth discovered on YouTube. This time it's "Computer Games" by Mi-Sex. Check out the vector graphics.

2008-07-05T16:40:00.000+02:00

I have been in Paris for the last couple of weeks.

While traveling from the airport to my temporary home in the 18th arrondissement I came across several "signs" in the landscape that affirmed my views on why Paris constitutes the last corner of tolerability within a mad, mad world.

The first of these signs* was a fight on the train.

I got into the carriage with my luggage, in which there happened to be a busker (not in my luggage, but in the carriage). He was crooning light muzak along to a badly synthesised backing track that he had playing on a tape deck beside him on the floor. His presence served to create an impression that you were not a passenger on a train into Paris but in fact an involuntary guest at an old-age pensioners' dinner dance. And as the man was non-descript, obese and middle-aged, he was so thoroughly forgettable in appearance that he might expect to send an entire town hall full of old-age pensioners to sleep at the very sight of him.

At length, a young man (someone to whom President Sarkozy would undoubtedly have given the moniker racail), got up to confront the busker.

"You! You're on this train every day annoying everyone with your terrible music. I can't take it anymore! You're driving me mad! I insist that you stop with this fucking awful music!"

But the busker shook his head and refused to stop singing, a decision that I found not only uncharitable but ill-advised. The young man got up to physically confront the busker, and pushing and shoving between the two ensued. And yet throughout la scandale, the backing music from the tape deck kept playing and the busker kept trying to sing, in spite of the imminent danger to his person. I found this feat impressive, if not musically satisfying.

I must say, the incident on the train lifted my spirits considerably. It was with exceedingly good humour that I got off the train and wheeled my suitcase along the street to my new apartment. And while doing so, I walked past a few schools and I noticed that each one of them is currently occupied by parents in protest against government's education reforms. That was sign number two, I think, that all is well in Paris and that I was right to come back here.

"Let's not let Mr Darcos, with his new programmes, tranform our children into docile parrots who are without culture or imagination.
Let us support and encourage teachers to make free-thinking, intelligent active citizens of our children.
Parents: you have the right to be informed, to express yourselves and make yourselves heard.
Take action!

Signed: The parents currently occupying this school."

* sent to me not by God, because he doesn't exist, but presumably by some fairy godmother or other hangs around me from time to time.

2008-07-04T00:08:00.002+02:00

I am the Cyrano de Bergerac of the internet dating scene.

Make of that what you will. I just needed to share the truth with someone (or rather, the entire online world).

2008-06-28T21:00:00.003+02:00

Now that I'm kind of a freelancer working on multiple projects, I've started using this thing called toggl* to track my time spent on various projects.

Toggl is one of several web tools designed to function like a virtual "clocking in machine" - a machine that manual workers have traditionally used to clock on and off from work.

Several of you being seasoned freelancers, I wondered what tools or techniques you've found useful for keeping track of your billable hours(?)

* being yet another one of these irritatingly "e"-less domain names

2008-06-23T13:22:00.002+02:00

I may not be French, but I find this headline highly offensive:

Getting the French to Work

and the implication highly inaccurate.

2008-06-20T01:58:00.004+02:00

Some film producer has just spoken at a game conference, warning the game industry to "move away from the current trend toward slavish emulation of the movie industry". He also said some stuff about putting "soul" before profit, and so forth. You can read about it in the Escapist here.

That's great and all, and I totally agree. My only problem with this stuff is that it's piss easy for him as a film producer to say all these things and get some feel-good quotes in the press. The guy doesn't work in games and doesn't have to put his money where is mouth is. He can say anything he likes from a safe distance, and nothing's going to change.

And even if he were some game industry executive with real power he could probably *still* spout all sorts of comfy, idealistic rhetoric in front of the games press and get away scot-free.

After all, let us remember how at a similar conference not so long ago some suit from EA (Electronic Arts, to the uninitiated, our industry's corporate culture-recycling machine) paradoxically got up and made a speech about the game medium needing less lowest-common-denominator drivel and more high art (from whence the infamous "where are the Tarantinos of the game industry?" quote came). Again, all one sees is a big mouth with money conspicuously non-adjacent to it.

And speaking of EA and unseasonably large orifices, that reminds me: I still haven't posted about one of the greatest mysteries of our time, specifically,

who *actually* designed this game? (cover art below)

A Stephen Spielberg game MY ARSE.

More tomorrow about EA (and Stephen Spielberg) and what cynical, lying cunts they are.

2008-06-17T13:53:00.003+02:00

I have purchased a new straw boater in London and I am looking forward to wearing it in Paris.

Once you see this boater (you can view it below) you will agree that it needs to be worn in Paris as soon as possible, and therefore that accommodating its wearer in Paris is a matter of urgency.

Bref, I would love to hear from anyone who knows of someone who is going away for the summer (or part thereof) and would permit me to occupy their room in exchange for me paying their rent.

Boater worn by the girls at Marist School in London, and by me.

2008-06-15T02:17:00.006+02:00

Walking home in Belfast today with bags of shopping, one was assailed with hoards of loyalists marching down one's suburban street. It was all rather horrifying. I asked Mary to take these pictures with her phone so that you might all share in my discomfort.

On that union jack banner is a photo of the Queen, and the motto reads "In memory of those who gave their lives in defence of the crown."

2008-06-10T18:21:00.005+02:00

I forgot to mention that I went to a samba festival in Helsinki on Saturday. It was a most incongruous thing to see, hundreds of Fins samba dancing down the streets of Helsinki.

I then took a boat out to an island. There were doors in the sides of hills, like this one. I think Nordic gnomes live in them.

It just occurred to me that Finland is in the Schengen zone. I must've been granted a Schengen visa at the border! I will go and check my passport.

2008-06-08T19:37:00.003+02:00

I have just been savaged by UK customs at Heathrow Airport. My nose is bleeding so typing is difficult; I will be try to be brief.

I was taken aside and interrogated for over an hour. They asked me questions about my travel itinerary, and then existential questions about my life. They rang Sarah and interrogated her too.

The questions came thick and fast.

"You don't appear to live anywhere at all."
"Do you own any property?" "A car?" "Any assets at all?" "Why not?"
"Do you have a family?" "No siblings? None?"
"Why did you leave your job?"
"Why are you always travelling?"
"You overstayed your visa in France - no don't argue, you did. You are an overstayer."
"What exactly is your plan in life?"
"You can't expect us to believe what you're saying. Any reasonable person would do x, y or z - not what you're doing."
"You haven't been honest with us. We know you're lying, so you might as well tell us the truth."

Near the end it felt like I was in a really hostile session with an unusually aggressive life coach. Or a disappointed older relative.

After it looked like I was going to be forcibly put on a plane to New Zealand they finally let me through, upon concluding that I was not conducting my life like a reasonable person because I am not a reasonable person. "Free spirit" was the term they used.

But I feel a bit down in spirit as a result of this afternoon. It's not the UK authorities I mind about - it's the French. I now know that the fact that I overstayed my visa is registered somewhere in the system (I thought, because of a certain technality, that it was not). Will I be turned back at the French border?

2008-06-04T17:09:00.007+02:00

Today in Hong Kong I caught up with a former colleague (a game artist) who is now living in Macau. He was kind enough to take the ferry over to HK to meet me for a few drinks. He also showed me his favourite shop sign, which I photographed to share with you here:

If you were that well-hung you too would make yourself a big neon sign.

So we had a few drinks, and then a few more, until we came up with a genius idea for a game. Namely, a cunnilingus game for the DS. And here's why it's perfect:

Our game features the art of cunnilingus as its core game mechanic. The player trace lines on the touch screen with a custom oral peripheral (his tongue) and is evaluated on speed and accuracy. So basically, the gameplay would be similar to that of Trauma Center (the game where you perform surgery with your stylus) or Cooking Mama.

As for game progression, I'm not really sure.
Orgasm, obviously, unlocks the next level.
Should an "easy" woman translate as easy in terms of gameplay difficulty?
What would be the game end scenario? A boss fit with Margaret Thatcher's bits?

* Cooking Mama for the uninitiated, is a cooking game where your stern, matronly "Mama" teaches you how to cook. Make a mistake and Mama gets mad, and while her eyes blaze with fury she reassures the player, in a classic passive agressive manoeuvre, "Don't worry. Mama will fix it."

As most players would be uncomfortable with the idea of their mothers teaching them how to perform oral sex, we're limiting the stealing of ideas from Cooking Mama to its line-tracing mechanic. Even I am not prepared to argue that the world needs a Cunnilingus Mama.

2008-06-03T18:08:00.003+02:00

I am in Hong Kong looking for noodle.

And an Asus Eee PC 900. It is an ideal device that will meet all my convergent needs (in the way I thought the Nokia N800 was going to).

Speaking of convergence devices, my hotel room is a convergence device. In the room I have terminal to a computer through which I can control everything from the air temperature and lighting to movies and music. The room is decked out with wall-mounted 5.1 surround speakers. To unlock the room I use my fingerprint. It is truly a hotel room of the future.

If only the bed weren't so tiny and the walls so thin. A good night's sleep ought never to go out of fashion.

2008-05-08T05:06:00.000+02:00

Today I feel like this Pony, pictured above.

2008-04-25T09:35:00.003+02:00

Call me Pendantic Penelope, but I would like to take a moment out to correct the entire planet with regards to the usage of the verb "to damn".

As previously mentioned (see sentence above), the word "damn" is a verb.

Example: Damn your eyes!

To "damn" someone is to condemn them (or in the above case, their eyes) to the fires of hell. Or at least to something unpleasant.

Its past participle, damned, may be used as an adjective for things infernal - things that are presumably already sullied by the fires of hell and are beyond redemption. In fact, damned is synonymous with the word accursed:

"Get this accursed duck out of my shed" = "Get this damned duck out of my shed"

But if I were instead to say "Get this curse duck out of my shed", would you assume that I was either a retard or a foreigner? Yes you would, and fair enough too.

And that is precisely the assumption I make when anyone uses the verb damn as if it were an adjective.

"Get this damn duck out of my shed" is a sentence that is profoundly ungrammatical. Anyone who constructs a like sentence should indeed be condemned to the fires of hell.

Follow this link for a list of organisations and individuals who are, in my opinion, unreconstructed retards.

2008-04-22T14:08:00.004+02:00

A friend emailed me in response to my last post. He writes:

"I can't post comments on your blog, because I'm too stupid to remember my username. So I email it to you here:
http://www.xxxnightdrive.com/sites/mixwrest/"

It might not be work safe, but enjoy.

And while we're on the subject of the strange world of The Gym, I would like to make several observations.

First, the weights room of a gym is a relatively female-free zone. Being a chatty female gym n00b in such a zone has the potential to upset the testosteroney vibe.

Me: "Every time I come to the gym you're here, and when I leave you're still here. Are you addicted to weightlifting or something?"

Boy: "No no, I'm training to get stronger."

"You're already pretty damned muscle-y. Why do you need to be more muscle-y?"

"It's useful for, you know, life and stuff."

"What part of life? You work in an office, don't you?"

"Well... like moving house."

"Like moving house. Uh-huh..."

Beware the man who picks you up in a gym. It is highly likely that he is a kind of man who goes to gyms.

Boy: "So you're going back to France in June, right? In that case you'll need to practise your French. Let's go for a drink sometime, and you can practise your French on me."

Me: "OK. You'll help me practise my French. Thanks."

Never believe a French guy who says he wants to help you practice your French. Never.

Me: "We can't go back to my place tonight. Seriously, I live in a shed with ducks. Let's go back to your place instead."
Boy: "No, we can't. My place is a mess."
"Yeah maybe, but I live in a shed. With ducks."

Always believe me even when what I say seems implausible. Always.

Later:
"I don't know how you can find stuff in here."

"Hey, come on, I warned you I live in a shed, OK?"

Still later:
"Look! Look at those ducks tapping on the window and staring at us!!"

"Yup. I did say there'd be ducks."

... ...

Boy: "Why are you poking me?"

Me: "I'm trying to find some fat. It's amazing. You don't seem to have any fat anywhere on your body. It's all rock hard."

"Yeah, well I work out."

"I know, but it's weird. It's like being in bed with a surfboard."

"I've got to go now. I've got a 80km bike ride this morning."

"I can imagine. OK, have fun!"

2008-04-20T07:58:00.003+02:00

I have been spending some time in the gym of late, in the weight-training section amidst bulbous men preening their muscles in the mirror. It has opened my eyes to a lifestyle sub-culture that has hitherto remained outside my realm of observation.

The other day I was in the gym with a friend, who was spurring me on to lift increasingly heavier weights. Her sadistic zeal was such that by the end of the session I was calling her "Mistress Moran" (her name being 'Moran'). It was then that it occurred to me that a personal trainer is not dissimilar to a dominatrix and that a gym is not unlike a torture chamber.

After all, a personal trainer is someone who is paid to induce physical discomfort in her client. Her dungeon is a gym, usually a spartan, windowless room, containing an assembly of tools and contraptions designed to inflict pain on various parts of the human body.

Many of these devices bear no small resemblance to popular torture devices.

A fully equipped gym from the 14th century

But so what?, you may ask. Well, I just wondered if there was an untapped market somewhere in our fast-paced modern world for a two-in-one sort of service. A sort of "one-stop shop" for masochism where one could get fit and get off, as it were. I'm sure this is a thoroughly unoriginal idea, and that some enterprising soul has already established such a business on the underground scene and is doing rather well from it.

2008-04-18T14:43:00.005+02:00

Today a friend and I were having a discussion about the eternal problem of luggage. Namely the backpacks vs the suitcase. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and neither is perfect. Bugger.

Backpack
Pros: Can be carried up stairs. Can be used as a makeshift pillow.
Cons: The amount of stuff you need to pack to go traveling for more than a weekend is cripplingly heavy to carry on one's back.

Suitcase
Pros: So what if it's heavy? It has wheels.
Cons: Try getting those wheels up stairs and over curbs in a place like Mexico City.

So we were discussing the suitcase-backpack dichotomy as described above, and my companion bemoaned the fact that there was no such thing as an all-terrain, four wheel drive suitcase.

It occurred to me that what one needs is a sort of dog-robot-suitcase with hybrid wheel-legs like the Mars Rover.

You'd push and pull the Suitcase Rover along on a stiff leash, like you do with a normal suitcase with wheels. When you tried to pull it up stairs or over any obstacle like a street curb or a small street urchin it would use its clever robotic wheel-legs to negotiate its way up and over.

2008-04-15T08:08:00.002+02:00

Today I feel like these Ponies, featured above.

(Are these marketing meanies trying to mock our magnum opus? Oh well, I suppose they're just jealous...)

2008-04-11T14:08:00.002+02:00

David Perry keeps trying to friend me up on LinkedIn.

For a while I thought this was odd (not being a friend, ex-colleague or even an admirer of ex-Shiny boss David Perry), but then a friend told me he'd received a similarly bizarre request. We concluded that David Perry is currently on a linking spree, attempting to link to pretty much everyone in the games industry. So chances are if you read this blog, you're being friended up by David Perry. Fairly creepy, wouldn't you say?

David Perry (for those outside of the game industry) is known for founding the studio that created games such as Messiah and Earthworm Jim, and abandoning this same studio after burning his team into the ground to create such over-hyped mediocre shite as Enter the Matrix (a game made in collaboration with the Wachowski Brothers, in the proud tradition of film directors who have tried to "write" games and failed dismally).

Now David Perry seems to be some sort of one-man brand (see www.dpfiles.com and www.dperry.com) spreading his David Perry wisdom around the gaming world as a consultant.

"Link me baby, link me..."

David Perry is one of many industry "personalities" around whom adoring hoards of hungry young game design wannabes flock, clamouring to be told the magic formula to "breaking in" to the game industry.

My favourite bit of advice about getting into the industry is probably Chris Crawford's essay,"The Education of a Game Designer". Crawford advises maturity, indie projects and a well-rounded education. I think it's pretty sensible advice.

But sensible is boring; let us return to David Perry and his advice. Namely, the David Perry Challenge!

Recently I came across a clamouring hoard ("plz plz i would do anything to break into teh game industry") who proudly asserted that he had embarked upon this "David Perry Challenge". Complete the challenge (or all 3 challenges, because reportedly there are of these challenges, though I haven't seen any details of the other two yet) , and you will be royally dubbed worthy of becoming a game designer by the great David Perry.

The challenge is a "test" whereby Perry will measure your worthiness by the amount of "passion" you demonstrate.

"I keep getting asked how to be a game designer... Many people don't realize just how much passion it takes. [...]

"I'm going to issue THREE MAJOR CHALLENGES to you all one by one. It's a PASSION test..."

And how is your PASSION tested? By playing the top-rated 100 games and documenting and reviewing them according to the David Perry formula.

That's a lot of PASSION.*

So there you are, wannabe game designers. Play and review 100 games, eat 100 pies, slay 100 dragons... or something. You will thereby demonstrate sufficient PASSION to be certified by the David Perry system for spotting game design talent.**

The really excellent thing about his Challenge is that if you spend 1,000 hours and $ to complete the Challenge, and submit the resulting doctoral thesis-length tome of a document (the quality of your analysis doesn't seem to matter - it's all about showing PASSION through doing it), David Perry promises to "put you at the top of [his] personal list for hiring".

And this inspires me (arguably a much lesser game designer than David Perry, but then again where would the future of the world's leading Pony game franchise be without the genius of moi) to launch the Kipper Challenge.

The challenge is this: adopt a developmentally disabled orangutan and groom it for hiring by David Perry.

And actually, the hardest bit about this would be finding the orangutan because orangutans are a protected species only to be found in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra. I could've made it easy and specified a hearing-impaired cocker-spaniel, but procuring such an animal wouldn't require as much PASSION.

So I call upon wannabe game designers the world over, complete my Challenge and I will dub thee - with my mighty sword-come-pen - worthy of becoming a game designer. Once your urangutan is hired by David Perry you will sky-rocket to the top of my personal list for hiring. I will even add you on LinkedIn!

* One could view that as a PASSION test, sure. But it may equally be classified as an AUTISM test.

**Or, looking it at another way, you will demonstrate sufficient PASSION to be certified insane by the Kipper system for diagnosing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

2008-04-08T02:26:00.002+02:00

Today I feel like this Pony, pictured above.

2008-03-21T12:00:00.002+01:00

It is the end of summer, and everyone seems to have gone to the beach except for me. I have given up trying to find someone to go with, and am going, finally, on my own on Sunday.

I don't mind doing things on my own, but why does it have to be so many of the pleasant things?

2008-03-11T06:16:00.003+01:00

Every time you play a game it kills a kitten.

In today's Age:

"I don't care, we're all going to die anyway," says 17-year-old Christian, to laughs* from his friends as they play video games at the CeBIT IT fair in Germany.

What he does not care about is the environmental impact of the games console he and his mates are playing in a giant exhibition hall crammed full of other teenagers playing the latest shoot-em-ups, driving games and the like.

...

Gamers in CeBIT Hall 22 meanwhile carried on playing.

"This doesn't stop me gaming at all. The fun factor is very high and you think first about the fun factor of the games," says Sebastian, a 22-year-old soldier and gaming fanatic.

"Most people who play games don't really think at all of the environment, they think about the fun factor," he says.**

Seventeen-year-old Geld from the Netherlands shrugs as the sound of music in the windowless hall pumps louder and louder***.

"A washing machine uses more energy than a computer," he says, turning to get on with his game, fingers working madly on the buttons.****

* What a heartless little shit. Re-headline this article as "Gamer Laughs While Globe Warms"!

** No wait, make that "Youth Has Fun at Expense of Planet".

*** "...as the time left until the lazy journalist's deadline got shorter and shorter."

**** Still better: "Teenager Unbuttons Trousers, Masturbates at CeBIT Fair Following In-Depth Interview With Foxy Journalist"

2008-03-10T14:36:00.003+01:00

Today I feel like this spider, pictured above.

2008-03-07T03:16:00.004+01:00

Today I feel like this Pony, pictured above.

2008-03-06T10:48:00.004+01:00

I am writing this post this evening by our campfire, under the watchful eyes of Ducky Harry and Ducky McFiend

You will all be pleased to note that the Australian Centre for the Moving Image will not be closing their gameslab (dedicated space where one can go and play interesting games that one wouldn't see on the shelves at KMart) after all, thus removing the requirement for me to firebomb ACMI. This is just as well seeing as I am speaking at the "Game Girls" event at ACMI in a couple of weeks.

The other day I saw the publicity for said event on the ACMI website and on sumea and was alarmed to note that I will apparently be "demonstrating the interactive nature of games" as part of an "entertainment-packed day". I read it and naturally felt publicly humiliated.

Today when I had lunch with Eve Penford (the brains behind the event, and the Women in Games initiative) I politely inquired as to what the fuck. She informed me that the ACMI marketing department would've written the Game Girls press release. Hence they are responsible for the part about me giving a lesson to these apparently ludically-retarded females on what a game is ("Games are interactive! Here, let me show you by pressing this button labeled start on this plastic phallus we call a game controller. Any questions?").

I have never played a game on a digital computer that was not interactive, that is to say a non-interactive game. Call it an inexcusable gap in my game literacy if you like, but there you are. Being the naturally lazy person that I am, however, I was rather enthused to learn that there is an entire genre of games out there that do not require actual player participation. Can anyone suggest one for me to play?

2008-03-04T03:45:00.003+01:00

The designers at my place of work have a sort of informal "Weekly Design Challenge" on the go. I have decided to post my contributions here.

Last week's challenge was to design "a game that empowers women".

Shove over GTA, this is:

STREETWALKER
Urban crime fantasy for women

Begin as a 13 year old “sweetie girl” (doing hand jobs for small change) and work your way up to modern courtesan. Save up enough cash and gifts to fund a comfortable retirement as a middle-aged sugar mummy.

Genre: 3^rd person action/adventure with management sim elements.

· Use self-defence techniques to deal with violent clients and defend your patch from rivals

· Sneak around evading roving police patrols

· Manage your budget to purchase clothes and accessories, condoms, furnishings, pepper spray...

· Upscale your work premises from city parks, to rented dives, to a mistress’s condominium

· Maintain your market value and health with STD checks and urgent medical attention after bashings

I have started writing for playthisthing.com
(OK well that actually means I've written *one* thing. Here it is here).

2008-02-29T08:15:00.004+01:00

I'm doing a guest spot on the radio tomorrow morning, on Solidarity Breakfast (the show I used to be on before I buggered off to France).

I have a few things I'd like to get off my chest publicly about Australian populism and Cate Blanchette, so you know...

Anyone who wants to listen to said rant can tune in on 855AM or go here to listen online.

Summer programming is over, however, so there will be no reading of the weather report in a *sexy voice. I give you my personal guarantee.

* facetiously

2008-02-26T07:48:00.004+01:00

Today I feel like this Pony, pictured above.

2008-02-21T03:05:00.006+01:00

Today I am in Australia being pissed off. About things of which I am not yet at liberty to speak (but hopefully will be next week).

But let us consider this lesser, interim irritation for now:

I have never been friends with the Australian Film Commission.

From the moment their "producers" made me wait in reception for half an hour while they had a cup of tea and a bikkie, through to the phone conversation where their manager of New Media told me they'd already funded "an online multi-media piece about refugees" so there wouldn't be much point in them funding something "similar" (ie Escape From Woomera), to my friend's background as a game producer being sneered at ("oh, so you make CD-ROMs do you?" "No, I manage multi-million dollar game production budgets...").*

But even failed filmmakers-come-bureaucrats find themselves having to move with the times *eventually*, so it's great that the AFC have got behind the ABC's very worthy initiative to fund a "crowdsource" designed game, based on the game design ideas of the ABC's Good Game show. Yay. God only knows how that's going to work, but "yay" nonetheless.

Except for the fact that the AFC are cunts.

It's probably not their fault that they're cunts. After all, their stated mission is to fund projects that help filmmakers in some way, and this means they are constitutionally unable not to be up the arse of the film industry with their funding guidelines, even for a project that is unambiguously for and by the games community.

"* Teams that include screenwriters working with experienced game developers are encouraged."

Er, why?

Why the fuck?

"* The writer must have writing credits on at least one produced and released digital media project (game, mobisode*, etc), or have a screenwriting credit for a project that has been released, broadcast or screened at a recognised film festival."

The writer? I am sitting at my desk (having lunch) at a medium sized Melbourne game development studio and I don't see any writers here. Sure, game studios sometimes contract writers to write dialogue etc for some game projects, but shouldn't this funding body be more concerned about the credentials of the team's game designer, of which I see absolutely no mention in these guidelines?

Oh, unless they mean to imply that a game designer "writes" a game, and that having screenwriting credits on a film that was screened "at a recognised film festival" () qualifies someone to design a game.

* A mobisode? Jesus H. Fuck. La la la la let's all dance our way to fairy land! Wheeeee!

2008-02-11T13:48:00.000+01:00

2008-02-04T08:23:00.000+01:00

In less than an hour's time I will be sinking my teeth into juicy kangaroo flesh in a pub in Brunswick, Melbourne.

Happily, Brunswick has changed little in appearance since I saw it last. Melbourne is world-famous for its graffiti, and Brunswick boasts its own special politically-charged brand. For instance, I note by looking at the walls of Brunswick after almost a year's absence that the war between clerical fascists and the local left still rages on.

I documented our little part in it here.

You may also recall the Legend of the Naughty Cheesecake: the story of 'the little meme that could' that I posted about a very long time ago. Well, I have a story update for you.

But let us first recap the story to date:

The Legend of the Naughty Cheesecake

It started when, after a year's absence, I came back to Melbourne and noticed some graffiti on walls around Brunswick that was downright eccentric. Furthermore, it seemed to reference the nicknames of certain people I knew. I posted the images here. The most striking piece I photographed involved the depiction of a so-called "naughty cheesecake":

I had suspicions that a certain friend had sprayed these walls - suspicions that were later to be confirmed.

Shortly after this, a copycat artist, inspired by the genius of the Naughty Cheesecake, responded on a wall further up the road with a "Noisy Cheesecake":

The original author of the "Naughty Cheesecake" was, naturally, flattered by the imitation. Thus, the "Flattered Cheesecake" was born. I documented these events here.

And now, as you may have noticed in a previous post, the Cheesecake meme is still going strong one year on. It has blossomed into bigger and brighter things, as you can see in this photograph I took last week:

Behold the mighty meme of Brunswick's Naughty Cheesecake.

2008-02-01T11:27:00.000+01:00

I sleep at the bottom of the garden, like a fairy.

Last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up screaming. I was having nightmare in which a white ghost-like shape was trying to break through the window into the shed where I sleep, presumably in order to attack me.

I woke up (as I say, screaming), only to find that it was a bloody duck.

Even the dog is terrified of the ducks. If he's left outside alone with them they peck him until he yelps, steal his Pooh (his teddy bear) and drag it through their pond.

Cats from next door like to jump up and down on the roof while I'm trying to sleep. Fucking cats.

On Monday night I am rounding up some friends to partake of the Monday night Roo (as in Kanga) steak special at the pub up the road. Man must conquer his fear of animals by feasting on the flesh of his enemies.

2008-01-26T05:18:00.000+01:00

2008-01-19T10:20:00.000+01:00

My new pink DS. Because it's pony time!

It's that time again: Pony time! We all know what that means for your humble horse-loving correspondent*.

And while we're on the subject of hilarious cruelty to animals, do go and check out Harpooned, Conor's excellently newsworthy japanese whaling simulator that has been causing a bit of a stir in Australia:

Play a Japanese scientist 'performing research' on whales around Antarctica

* Well really, we all need to do our bit to revive Eidos/SCi's flagging fortunes. I, for one, am thrilled at this opportunity to aid Tomb Raider producer, soy-milk powered Sarah Van Rompaey, in this endeavour.

2008-01-15T06:17:00.000+01:00

2008-01-13T03:51:00.000+01:00