As I write this it is the 9th of May, 4pm on the dot. The countryside of the English Midlands is shooting past at 125 miles per hour, the Virgin Trains Pendolino eating up the hills and crests like a particularly hungry steel caterpillar.
Things have been quiet on this blog as of late, and for this I can only apologise if you're in the habit of checking in on here every day or two (and if you are, thank you). The past few days have been an extraordinary cluster of events and new information and my mind, as such, hasn't been able to comprehend the concept of putting words to paper during this particularly busy time. But I have a moment to share with you now my current plans, and invite you to join me in some of them.
As of today, I have began discussions with my current employer, Hamleys Glasgow, in order to terminate my contract. I have been offered, and have accepted, a job with an independent games developer in Edinburgh in a community and social media role, the details of which I am not ready to discuss yet. It’s with a very heavy heart that I resign from the toy store, and would like to share some of my experiences in another post on another day - but hopefully my new work will be just as exciting, fun and satisfying to do.
I write to you on board this tilting train because I am en route to a hopefully sunny Brighton on the south coast of England for The Great Escape independent music festival, which takes place from Thursday 10th through to Saturday 12th. I am, truth be told, extremely nervous; 7 Bit Arcade has seen fit to outfit me with a rather important-sounding delegate pass, putting me on par with record labels, promoters and other companies and persons of note in the music business.
The key theme of The Great Escape is to essentially keep an eye out for The Next Big Thing: Adele, CSS, The Fratellis and countless other notable music acts have cut their teeth at the festival before moving onto bigger and better things, giving the event a very good reputation for hosting tomorrow’s big music stars before they even know it. But as I have done nothing of the like since last year’s Eurogamer Expo, I am excited to be back in the world of what I hate coining ”live journalism” - but you'll have to forgive me, because I can't think of better terminology at this point in time. To be in the midst of something as exciting and as promising as a music festival without the persistent air of shrink-wrapped record producers and forced party atmospheres is perhaps me of the greatest treasures the UK music scene currently has to offer; 30 venues in a fairly close-knit area of Brighton will keep the surroundings varied, and there’s no stigma attached to opting for a smaller act over someone more mainstream and popular - because such a scenario doesn't really exist.
The majority of my writing will be found at 7 Bit Arcade for the next few days and I expect it to be fragmented, hard to understand and ultimately of a lesser quality than you’d like. But hopefully It entertains and informs in equal measure, nd points you towards the next big music acts you should be listening to. And if you do read what I do and like it, please drop me an email, or a tweet, or anything - it’d be good to know if I do anything right. The train’s bing-bong announces an imminent arrival at London Euston. Catch you over on 7 Bit for the extended present.
It's 2012, and apparently live TV is the new big thing. Whether it's Stargazing Live or yet another sodding talent show - or something I'm told is called "football" - everything is live, live, live, and if it's not, then it's not live. And if it's not live, it's not good enough.
And so enters Planet Earth Live, which combines the BBC's award-winning series of Planet Earth with, um, a live television format. And replaces David Attenborough with someone called Richard and Her Off of Countryfile. The good news is that it's not all bad, but for every bit of Planet Earth good there's some Live bad.
The above image is what greets Virgin Media customers who attempt to access infamous torrent database The Pirate Bay. This past Monday, the High Court has ruled that all ISPs block the website at its root in order to prevent their customers from accessing the site and potentially downloading movies, music and games illegally, and for free. So far Virgin, Sky, Everything Everywhere, O2 and TalkTalk have complied, with BT still considering their position on blocking the site.
Personally, I'm not bothered by the loss of the site - rather, I'm worried about the precedent it sets for similar rulings in the future. Serial downloaders will simply turn to another database for links to downloads, but the question remains: why do they have to?
What happens when a man runs out of blogging ideas? The answer, apparently, is that he hands his girlfriend’s mum an iPad and asks her to play Grand Theft Auto for fifteen minutes. The results, it turns out, are amusing.
Whilst travelling inboard a Virgin Trains Pendolino to London in Feburary, I had something of a thirst come over me. I'd long drank the fizzy whatever I'd picked up with a sandwich and a bag of crisps, and the litre bottle on a two-for-one offer - split with Lou - was long-gone. I'm one for thirsty drinking, usually, and the train’s overpriced store was my only hope. Getting off at the Cape of Forlorn Hope of Preston wasn't an option.
Inside the store car - itself just one half of a full passenger car - the meals in offer included microwave chicken sandwiches and something that was, according to the packaging, not a deflated foetus but a beefburger. I was glad I wasn't there for the food, and the price of the drink was enough to set me panhandling on Tottenham Court Road in the days following in order to ensure my continued existence.
Flying back from Cologne, Germany last August, the post-security resources included an overpriced bar selling cans of Coke for two euros apiece and a shop selling the same cans for twice that. On the plane, the drinks range included a bag of salted cashews.
Mid-flight, I was bombarded from both sides by a hyper-aggressive macho pairing of middle-aged drunken football fans, loudly exchanging repartees about goals and fouls and all those other things the rest of the cabin couldn't give a shit about. Attempting to silence them was rewarded with a stare-off, and that one of them had problems at the security desk post-flight is about the only thing satisfying during those two long hours of travel.
The traditional image the movies and television paint of travel is a romantic one, free of cashew nuts and cattle class and drunken middle-aged sports fans boozing their way out of the denial of their impending shrinking and spiral into saggy skin. I'd like to be in that age. I'd want to travel on the 20th Century Limited, ride the dining car and enjoy the cosy drop-down sleeper bunks. Back when travel was a privilege rather than the right of the squawking masses.
There's a risk of sounding snooty here as I write, and I'm as grateful for the man who pushes the snack cart up and down the Aberdeen service each day as I am for what I'm hoping for. But there’s an indescribable connection I hold with travel, as often as I make it - despite the limited destinations I usually pick and choose from. It's something of a novelty - step on the hulking metal machine, sit for a few hours, step off and be somewhere new.
Having the chance to eat real food, rather than a pre-packaged processed sandwich or a microwaved foetus, can't be too much to ask, can it? Perhaps I belong in the Fifties.
Today's blog comes to you from a train, as many of my blogs do. The train in question is the 13.41 service from Glasgow Queen Street to Aberdeen, my ultimate destination being the early stop of Perth. The sun’s shining, I'm listening to the debut album of folksy artist Jason Myles Goss and I'm doing my best to keep a pretty heavy stomach bug at bay.
I'm not one to get ill, built with the immune system of a biological tank, so the early-morning shock to the system today was something of a surprise. I'll spare you the details, but needless to say it isn't something I've encountered for a while.
I'm not really a fan of "bucket lists", the sort of thing a miserable person compiles when they're looking for some sort of escape from the fact that they will, like everybody else, eventually die. People with bucket lists are the type of human being that is terrified of death and casually admits to themselves that they've not really done anything productive, imaginative or memorable with the years they have spent on the planet Earth.
With that in mind, I've been thinking of things that I'd like to do because they're fun, rather than because I'd like to do them before I die. And today I've been pondering about a little town at the western edge of Germany called Nürburg, population 159 as of December 2010. It's a humble little place, with the usual little shops and bars - oh, and a 13 mile race track connected directly alongside.
You can rest assured that Salmon Fishing in the Yemen isn't completely about salmon fishing in the Yemen. In part, it's a pretty okay romantic comedy starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt and a criminally underused Kristin Scott Thomas, and it combines fuddy-duddy Britishness with something that resembles a tight-knit storyline. It also features fish.
Note: The following is a short story concocted after absent-mindedly sketching the picture above whilst trying to think of writing ideas, using iPad app "Paper". It's a bit different from the usual content on here, but if it gets any kind of decent reception I'll probably consider more creative pieces like this in the future. Without further ado, here goes nothing.
Tonight's blog is one about mobile games, or to be more particular about it, one very notable title which stands apart from the rest. I could've spent tonight writing about Grand Theft Auto III and how its conversion to mobile is a sublime work to art. I could've even spent six hundred words waxing lyrical about Jetpack Joyride and its amazing Retina display update being a brilliant showcase for the new iPad's razor-sharp screeACTION POTATO.
But no. Mobile Pie's Will Luton has tonight been singing the praises of ACTION POTATO, a high-intensity adrenalin rush of an action game about potatoes, available for both iOS and Android. I beckon you to follow me into this post and enjoy the treasures withiACTION POTATO.
