• The 2010 World Cup
• My new sense of football perspective
• Podcasts
• My beloved Southampton’s chances of promotion from League One
• My steadily declining opinion of the Premier League
• Whether or not to buy a season ticket for Fulham this year

But this is pub talk. If I tried to cover everything then I’d cover nothing. Plus, this kind of stuff can get really quite boring for those who don’t care about football, they do exist you know, weirdos. With this in mind I have decided to write about a facet of my football life that is at least mildly accessible

My football playing career

Oh yes! and what a career it was. Dizzying highs, sickening lows and bog standard middles. First of all, we should get one thing clear

I am awful at football

Mmhmm. I was one of those kids. Loved the game, couldn’t play it for toffee, not properly anyway. Any skill I had was attained via sheer dogged persistence rather than any natural flair for the game. I was Rock Lee.

The Springtime of Youth!

The story of my career starts (and ends) in Netley Abbey. The village I grew up in. Netley Abbey is a lovely spot, situated in the suburbs of Southampton. Home to the world famous Abbey Ruins, which despite what you might think is actually an old ruined Abbey. And lest we forget the Royal Victoria Country Park, site of the old military hospital during World War II. If you’re looking for a quiet village for a holiday this summer then look no further than Netley Abbey, that’s Netley Abbey. Sorry, I seem to have wandered a tad.

I lived on a middle of the road estate called Ingleside. It’s really quite a charming name now I think about it, kinda took it for granted when I was an idiot (child). All of my friends lived in and around Ingleside so games of football would start ad nauseum. I was very lucky because I lived right next a nice large patch of grass about half the size of a normal football pitch. Now it did have a footpath carving its way through the middle of it, but that only served to make things more exciting. Slide tackles were like Russian Roulette. Well they would be if I did them but being a total wuss I never really commited to a challenge.

The pitch, such as it was, was surrounded by people’s back fences. For us they were actually very robust goal nets. We would regularly smash people’s fences to bits in the name of the beautiful game. It was never intended, just collateral damage. I did a blog a while ago about our adventures smashing people’s property so I’ll refer you to that (link!) and move on.

This pitch was where my fledgling career began. Chasing the ball around, no guile, no grace. But hey, we were 9, bugger off. We spent the majority of our time playing a game I can’t remember the name of, but it involved 1 goalkeeper and a bunch of kids taking shots. We’d set it up so there were two professional teams playing and we’d imagine a game, shouting the names of our favourite players and such. It was brilliant.

As we played we kinda sussed which players we were most like. For example the little kid Stew emerged as Andy Townsend. This was mainly because he just tackled people. He was quite good at it but that was it. Tackle tackle tackle. I don’t know what Stew is doing now but I don’t think he’s an ITV pundit. He could probably do it, the only qualification necessary that I can see is to have a face.

Anyway, for some reason it emerged that I was

Teddy Sheringham

Terry Shedingham

Now our rationale at the time was that I had a tendancy to toe punt the ball and subsequently hit it fucking hard. Now I really don’t why it was Teddy Sheringham. He was quite a cultured player and never one to just lamp it. On reflection I think I’m more like

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink

That's me. Definitely.

That’s more like it. He was pretty good, didn’t do *that* much but in the words of Alan Partridge “had a foot like a traction engine”. On numerous occasions I would get frustrated and or bored and just leather it. It didn’t always (or often) go in but by christ it went somewhere far away. Over a fence normally. Though it’s a do or die mentality, if a shot of that raw brutal power goes in from distance, it’s a thing of beauty. I seemed to be pretty good at crossing too. Well sort of. Not really.

That’s how it was for what seemed like decades, in a good way. We played football pretty much every available second of our lives. Kicking balls over fences and into bushes, scoring screamers and such, happy days. If I gave those years to Peter Kay, he’d get a good 25 minutes of material out of it. But it didn’t stay this way, back off Peter.

Up until now I’d only played casual football. You know, small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts. Rush goalie. Two at the back, three in the middle, four up front, one’s gone home for his tea. Beans on toast? Possibly, don’t quote me on that. Marvellous. But being a football fan you know there is more to it than that. Not much mind, but a bit.

Occasionally we would play on full size pitches, rarely with goalposts and perish the thought, A NET. Once you get a taste for that you can’t go back. We would always have silly knock around football but we all yearned for something a bit more. Something with rules and scores and numbered shirts and oranges and shouting parents. It was time to join a team.

I realise now that this blog is quite a bit longer than I thought it would be, so I’ll wrap it up for now and continue the next chapter (Going Pro) in the not too distant future. If you’d like to go on holiday to Netley Abbey, then go here for more details. You never know, you might bump into me. *

* You won’t bump into me, I live in London.**

** If you do live in London you might bump into me, I’m always looking at my phone while I walk. I’m a danger to myself. Beware.

Dr Rasczak

This blog is a tribute. A loving, heart felt testimonial to a film that gave me so much and asked so precious little. It brought a lost child from the darkness to the promised land in which he now proudly presides. The film I refer to is, of course

My saviour

Yes, it’s Starship Troopers. Paul Verhoeven’s brilliant brilliant brilliant feature film retelling of a book I haven’t read (go figure). I’m sure the book is delightsome. I watched it again recently and felt it prudent to write down why it means so much to me.

Now, I treasure this film because it taught me something, something I needed to be taught. All of Verhoeven’s great films have a core message, they’re a sci fi tilt on an underlying idea. Robocop, Total Recall et al were very idealistic films which complimented his visceral style with a strong commentary on a given subject, I thought so anyway. Whilst Starship Troopers has a great commentary about the folly of human’s brute force approach etc, it wasn’t about that for me, not when I first watched it anyway. Let me take you back…

When I was a kid, I had a problem, something I could not overcome and lead me to miss so many great things growing up. Now this wasn’t any kind of depression, anger issues or any of that stuff. My childhood was a delight. No, my problem was something a lot more silly and baseless.

I was terrified of gory movies

I could not stand them. They very idea brought me out in cold sweats. I would avoid situations when there was a chance people would want to watch them. Terrified.

A good example I distinctly remember would be a Cub Scout 24 hour charity darts marathon. How could you forget something like that? It’s the scene, man. During this event the Cubs had conspired to watch Nightmare on Elm Street {insert number here}. My gore alarm went off big time and I fled like a fleeing thing. I’d never seen the Elm Street films but I’d heard enough to know that it wasn’t for me. I only remember seeing a bus teetering on a mountain. I now know the key to the problem could be found in this sentence

“I’d never seen the Elm Street films but I’d heard enough to know that it wasn’t for me”

I’d never seen it. None of it. I had no experience to base my opinion on, so the idea I had formed in my brain was that if I saw some gore I would die the death of dying. This is how the irrational fear, a phobia if you will, was built. It was the product of an overactive imagination.

I’m ashamed to say this quite daft situation I found myself in lasted till I was about 14-15. I would take steps to avoid seeing anything remotely gory, I even shyed away from playing Mortal Kombat II. It was a sorry state of affairs.

I also remember looking at a book in the library about cinema, in particular a picture from Robocop. It was Alex Murphy just after he had been shot to bits. I was looking at it, it wasn’t very gory but I was thinking, “I can never watch this, ever”. Even films like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park were a no go. Looking back now it was all very very silly.

My lowest point came when watching the film Glory, a 1989 film about the American Civil War starring Ferris Bueller (Save Ferris!).

My lowest point

It was a school History class and there were roughly 40 of us sat in a small room on a blazing summer’s day. I was already a bit shaky when someone’s head was blown up by a cannon when it happened. A man was having his leg amputated, screaming and shouting, the whole shooting match. Then it happened, as a shower of blood hit the curtain there was an very loud *bang* in the classroom.

I fainted

The bang was the connection between my head and the desk. Oh what a silly billy I felt. Imagine feinting whilst watching a film about the American Civil War. It still shames me now, but all was not lost. From my squallid pit of baseless fear, I had a presto chango revelatory moment.

I remember it like it was yesterday. My dad, my mate Rich (who was the complete opposite of me gore wise) and I settled down one evening to watch Starship Troopers. I’d never seen it, heard of it or about it before. Little did I know my self respect was going to rise like a Phoenix. The film started and after the first little propaganda splash, this happened

The Moment

Suddenly everything, everywhere, was gore gore gore. The thing about Starship Troopers for those that haven’t seen it (shame on you) is it, so gory, so quickly that you don’t really have a chance but to watch it. Well I say ’so gory’ it’s not that bad really. But that’s kind of the point, I saw it for what it was.

As the film went on. I learned what movie gore was all about. Moments like this

Sunshine

this

Lollipops

and this

Rainbows (they sucked out his BRAINS)

I think it’s Verhoeven’s visual style. It’s quite exaggerated but and feels almost comic like in it’s application. Moments in Total Recall and Robocop are quite the same, it’s really fierce but so overblown that it makes it hard to take it truly seriously. The brain sucking bit still creeped me out but hey, dolly steps.

The main thing was the immediacy. It was as if someone had strapped me down like Alex in A Clockwork Orange and forced me to face this thing. When I saw it in the clear light of day, saw the limbs flying everywhere, I realised there was nothing to be afraid of. It’s just effects. I was free. Free as a bird who’d just watched Starship Troopers. I think we can all agree, that’s pretty fucking free.

I equate the feeling to like having just had a really good vomit. It is such a load off. You don’t feel great but you know everything is going to be ok.

It was the beginning of a remarkable transformation. I now find all that I had feared as completely hilarious. During the Devil’s Rejects, I laughed like a loon when the woman got hit by the truck. Sweeney Todd, I was crying with laughter every time someone’s lifeless body crunched in a heap when dropping into the cellar. Most recently watching Kick Ass I guffawed as the gizzards flew. I might have a problem.

A good one to look out for is

Dead Snow

Dead Snow, a Norwegian film about Nazi Zombies and the glorious gory dispatch thereof. It’s not so much a film as a showcase for new and innovative dismemberment. Suffice to say I laughed more than I should have done. You know it’s going to end well when a guy has his head torn in half.

I still shy away from some gore, but it’s all to do with context. I’m not interested in films like Hostel and Saw which equate to torture for me, it’s uncomfortable to watch and tend to avoid it. Though saying that, I’ve been forced to face it in films like 28 Weeks Later and Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and I’ve come out the end having enjoyed it. So I guess I should learn from my own experience.

The point is, a whole new world of cinema was opened to me by Starship Troopers. I watched it a couple of nights ago and whilst the violence seemed a bit tame compared to some stuff I’ve now seen, I still loved it to bits. It shall stay with me forever. It opened my eyes to the glorious fountains of corn syrup and red food colouring, showing me that it is nothing to be scared of and for that I am forever thankful.

Now I am not a wise person. I hope to one day have some degree of wisdom. It’s easy enough to gain perceived wisdom, this can be obtained by smoking a pipe and rocking a rich, full beard. That’s not to say those with pipes and beards are not wise, this is usually indicative of wisdom. But wisdom can be faked with these trinkets also. I wouldn’t want to betray people’s trust by adorning myself in such a manner until I am wise enough. I digress, I apologise. As I say I am not wise. I have not travelled far, I haven’t met many people, but if I have learned nothing else I have learned this

Estate Agents are weasels

Vile little beasts they are. Slithery, pointy faced, contemptible vermin. Writhing across the land in a Smart car with a twatty haircut and ego that can be seen from space. Providing a front for house owners obviously too evil to conduct business with us blameless, lovely, superstars of, well, pretty much everything.

I find it’s no coincidence that of all the land lords/ladies I have had in my time, all of the cool ones have either cut estate agents out of the loop after we moved in or didn’t use them at all. Only those of questionable valour used the Confederacy of Weasels to do their dirty work. Together they make quite the allegiance of douchebaggery.

Allegiance of Douchebaggery

In summation, they have a WKD side. Anyone with a WKD side is an intolerable, unbridled wanker.

Our particular pack of weasels were a company called Roberts. They have the monopoly on student housing in Bournemouth which gives them the ability to be completely feckless mugs at all times and get away with it. A shower of cockholes. All my housing woes have involved them in some way. I was convinced Robert was a vampire, I called him Count Robert. Count Robert and his horde of leathery skinned goblins.

I’m sure we all have our own horror stories, I have a few of my own. Some of the fun things encountered during my time

• Inexplicable “Admin Fees”
• Leaking bath causing a bedroom ceiling to cave in
• Double charging the deposit for a broken bed
• Leaking bath causing porch to cave in
• Washing machine that blocks if you use washing powder

Oh the fun I have. Maybe I’m being too harsh on Estate Agents. Not all of this is really their fault directly, but dealing with them to get it fixed is always such a chore. Helping you get this stuff sorted is always the last thing they want to do. After getting you to pay staggering amounts of money to move in they just don’t care anymore. When the guys bedroom ceiling caved in they replied “well we’ll call the Landlord and let you know…” and that was it. We went for a few days without anything being done about this gaping hole in the guys room. Useless turds the lot of them.

I realise at this stage I haven’t told my story yet, but part of the story hinges on another story which I will tell quickly as it also sets the stage for the main tale. This is going on a bit. Anyway. The story concerns the last house I lived in whilst at University. I won’t tell you the address as you’ll all be going there with cameras, knocking the door and annoying the current tenants. You’re a nightmare you are.

The guys I was moving with are my best friends to this day and we all go under the collective noun of “The Sandcastle”. This derives from the house they lived in before we moved into a house together. The house as you can see

The Sandcastle!

Looks like a sandcastle. What? course it does. Shut up. It was in the actual Sandcastle that my friends and me by proxy (I watched) experienced the true wrath of an Estate Agent and their evil dickhead overlord.

During their time living in the Sandcastle there was a leak in the kitchen the guys weren’t aware of . When they came to claim the deposit they got back precisely fuck all and the Estate Agent/Landlord wanted extra money on top to completely refit the kitchen. Now the guys admitted some liability but they were being made out that they’d done it on purpose, which they clearly hadn’t. It all got quite messy with courts and things. Our brave heroes eventually lost and had to cough up. But they fought the law and that was enough, honour had prevailed.

Now the main thing we learned from this was to report problems as soon as you see them. They might not get fixed but at least you’re not liable for prolonged damage.

This brings us to the Fantasmical Sinking House. The guys time at the Sandcastle was coming to an end as was my time in my house at the time (too many times in that sentence, ah well, must press on). The guys asked if I wanted to move in with them and I was all for it. We had a look and found this beauty

Spooky house!

This night shot looks a bit creepy doesn’t it? Here’s a daytime picture

Lovely house!

Isn’t she pretty? We tried for some time to find a new name as good as the Sandcastle but it just wasn’t happening. It became clear that the Sandcastle is more than a house, it’s a collective noun.

We are the Sandcastle.

A group of sexy heroes, battling for honour in a world of Estate Agents. The actual Sandcastle wasn’t the Sandcastle anymore, it was merely an orange house with a new kitchen built on lies. Fuck them.

With this established we moved in the new Sandcastle HQ. The Sandcastle’s ranks were as follows

• Me
• Chris (@quii)
• Dan (@shinyhappydan)
• Shaun (@Mr_Sands)
• Mike (@mikehjapan)
• Ming (@mingkliu)

Not pictured: Shaun

Pictured: Shaun

We settled into our new home, learned the houses ways, sussed out it’s nuances. Slugs visit in the night, the washing machine clogs the drain in if you use washing powder (call back), those cracks were here when moved in. Yes, you read that right, cracks. The front half of the house, my room especially, had more than its fair share of cracks running across the ceiling. The Estate Agent assured these were normal and for some bizarre reason we accepted this as perfectly reasonable. The Sandcastle is quite notoriously lazy and therefore we tend to let shit like this slide somewhat.

So we carried on with our lives. Getting up at 3pm, watching the Ashes and making mid to low quality cheap meals for each other with the agreement that the meal will be reciprocated. These were the general happenings of the Sandcastle at the time. I remember around that time the craze in the Sandcastle was Caesar Salad. Annoyingly our closest supermarket was Waitrose so we were compelled to go there due to it’s unquestionable promixital benefits. The frightening prices didn’t sway us for some reason, so we spent many a meal sampling the various different Caesar salad dressings they had on offer. We’re so cool.

After a few weeks of living in the house, something quite odd was happening

The front door was becoming increasingly difficult to use

What started with a tug to open, culminated in using a network cable through a hoop in the top of door to pull it open like a mighty Trojan army. We’re nothing if not resourceful geeks. Closing was similarly grief ridden. A solid shove eventually became a Street Fighteresque ULTRA SHOULDER BARGE. We knew there was a proper problem when Shaun managed to break the window when closing the door.

Now the lessons were had learned from the Sandcastle debacle were fresh in our minds. There was obviously a big problem as it was we all knew doors don’t get bigger, you tend to pick this stuff up quite quickly.  Therefore it seemed the hole the door lived in was clearly getting smaller. With this in mind we fired off a chain email to all our guarantors (our parents) with Roberts in the loop. I was able to rummage in Gmail and find the email, how exciting!

Dear Sir,

Please be advised that recently we have noticed some changes to the building which are of concern to us and feel they should be brought to the attention of the landlord and an early inspection by a qualified surveyor is, in our opinion, necessary.

The front door and the door to the first bedroom have become increasingly difficult to shut and open. The doors are jamming against the beam above and scraping quite considerably. There are cracks in the wall around this area where the doors are jamming, but they were detailed in the inventory before we moved in.

We have sent copies of this email to all guarantors involved for their comments and have also sent a copy of this email in the form of a letter to your office.

Yours Faithfully etc

Seemingly as a relief I also sent this to the Sandcastle, no idea why. As I have said, we’re so cool

the email I sent to roberts, have also sent an email to everyone but roberts explaining the situation

on another note….

O LRY?

YA RLY

Indeed. That was us free and clear. No matter what happened, we were not liable. Fuck you Count Robert and your goblin army. This doesn’t address what was actually happening to the house. Now it wasn’t really our problem beyond making the door work. The whole situation became quite funny really.

Our wise (pipe and beard wise, thanks Dad!) suggestion to get a qualified surveyor was taken up and a surveyor of qualification was sent round to inspect the problem. You can probably guess what the problem was…

The house was sinking

If we inspect the picture of the house again (not the spooky one of course)

We're going down captain!

You can see the pipe going over the front door. This was the drain from next door’s upstairs bathroom. This drain was blocked. I’m not 100% sure of the logistics but the blockage was causing a flood under our house to the left of the front door, by that little green bush (weed). Long story, long, it was washing away all of the foundations from this corner of the house. The house was sinking into the ground on this point meaning the door was being squeezed shut by the weight of the entire house. Fun!

The surveyor chap priced the damage into the hundreds of thousands. That’s a lotta dosh. From our position as blameless casual observers, this was all hilarious. For the amount of times we’d been fucked over by twatty land lords and their Estate Agent brood this was glorious to watch. Karma’s a bitch. We urged them to get it sorted as believe it or not, we like opening our front door, it’s something that until now we’d kinda taken for granted. Luckily the landlord paid up and the house was fixed.

Now I say it was fixed, they didn’t sort out the foundations. That’s a lot of money and having never met the Land Lord of that place we can only assume he was a penny pinching, smelly, greasy rat face. Their solution was something a little more cost effective and lot more amusing. The cleared the drain block obviously and…

They planed down the top of the front door

That was it! The master plan! A greater expression of an Estate Agent/Landlord’s shitness I have not found. But as I say, we weren’t liable and the door now opened so we laughed about it.

I don’t know if the house was still sinking after they *fixed* it. I don’t know if it’s been fixed now. The spooky house picture was taken by a friend so at least we know it hasn’t been swallowed up by mother earth just yet.

I feel I should finish this by addressing the Estate Agents. Now, you maybe an Estate Agent (god forbid) reading this thinking I’ve given you an unfair crack of the whip. You’re there, drinking a WKD blue, adjusting your Jamie Redknapp tie, saying

“Hey now Jason, I’ve not shafted people out of there money this week”

or

“Cmon Jason! I helped someone once and only asked for a modest fee”

or

“I gave them some of their deposit back once!”

What can I say? I calls em as I sees em. I have never dealt with an Estate Agent who didn’t annoy me.

So I say to you, twatty Estate Agent, this is your chance. Now is the time. Stop being a twat, be nice and helpful. It doesn’t take much and we will notice. Who knows, we might stop praying to Odin to slaughter all of you (though I wouldn’t count on it).

This blog was brought to you by the League Against Estate Agents. For just £2 a month you can equip one of our storm troopers with a crossbow, they’ll do the rest. Please give generously, praise be to Odin.

I have a new job!

And what a job! I’m soon to be a web developer at one of my favourite games companies in the world ever!

Booyah! I’m working for the company who made bloody Final bloody Fantasy bloody VII!

Strictly speaking it’s the offices of Eidos Interactive, but they were bought out by the macdaddys a year or two ago and they are now known as Square Enix Europe, which is nice.

The whole procession was quite a testing time as it usually is. The interview went very well though the life sized statue of Kane & Lynch having a fight scared the crap outta me. It was then a 3 and a half week wait for the answer. I’ll remember the day I got the offer for the rest of my life. This is mainly because the lovely HR lady at Square led me a merry dance with a series of unintentionally cryptic emails.

I was sitting around, ambling through an uninteresting lunch when the first email came in.

No subject heading and nothing in it

This baffled me. Is this it? Is this a yes? Is this a no? What is this? WHAT’S GOING ON!!?!??!

5 minutes later the next one comes in.

Heading saying “Good News” and again, nothing in it

Now this is encouraging, but again totally mystifying. Did it go to the wrong person? What’s good? HELP ME! This time an agonising 20 minutes pass. I am climbing the walls, unable to tell anyone about the situation I’m in. So I distracted myself by chucking a stress ball around the office and furiously pacing about the place like a mad thing.

Then the final email comes in.

Hi Jason!
Sorry not sure what I did BUT we want to make you an offer
Are you still interested?
I’m out on a course but will try catch my emails
Lesley

The best bit of that email is “Are you still interested?”. I was overjoyed. A bit like this

This was a company whose games had played a sizeable part in defining who I am today. My love for games was only reinforced by such triumphs as Final Fantasy VII. Be it Square or Eidos, they have released so many games that I have loved to bits over the years.

When I was a growing up I’d always harboured desires of working in the games industry and now I am. It really is a dream job. It’s a web development job, so I’m not making games, but I don’t really want to. Certainly not coding them anyway. It doesn’t feel quite real at the moment.

I’ve finished work with Tripleplay now and it’s a shame to go, but I feel the time was right. I’d been there for nearly 4 years and an opportunity like this just feels right, the next big step. I learned loads at Tripleplay and it pretty much got me the job so I’ll look back on the time fondly.

I felt I had to leave something behind to remember me by. All software development teams use a thing called source control. Source control is a repository of code which controls versioning and such, it’s basically an organised back up of code. So I added an image to the product I was in charge of with this source control comment

Author: jason
Date: 2010-03-19 17:19:04 +0000 (Fri, 19 Mar 2010)
New Revision: 27383

Added:
   giftfromjason.jpg
Log:
For what is a man what has he got, If not himself then he has not, To say the things he truly feels, And not the words of one who kneels, The record shows I took the blows, And did it mmmmmmyyyyyy wwwwwwaaaaaayyyyyy. See ya! J

What is giftfromjason.jpg? well it’s the best picture on the interweb of course

Isn’t it brill?

So here we are. I have a fortnight off now to mooch about, clean the house, play some games and get some out of work work done. Then I’ll be off to Cosmo Canyon to begin my plan to rule the universe.

I’ve done an artists impression of how I’ll get to work. Excited!

Are the sunglasses a bit much? Didn’t think so.

• The colour must be red
• It must have 4 doors
• It must cost less than £30,000

The keyword here is MUST. I learned the true value of the word must in university doing requirements engineering. You have to strictly define what the software must and must not do.

I realise this has been quite boring up until now but we need context people!

I was having a chat with TheFagCasanova about the possible middle name of the Ski Jumper, Andreas Wank. We decided Alan would be best and then we moved onto good cat names and reminded me that I have strict rules for potential cat names.

Before I lay out my rules, I decided to quiz the Twitterati about their cat’s name to see if any subscribed to my strict naming policy. They didn’t disappoint in their diversity

• Big Dave Jeffries
• Fattie
• Thinnie
• Bumble
• Velvet Moon
• Hector
• Bill
• Fluff
• Bob
• Other One
• Lola
• Hamble
• Chloe
• Flower
• Twinkle
• Milo
• Ghandi
• Darren
• Saucepan
• Lao
• Raspberry Watkins
• Bootsie
• Oscar
• Tiger
• Flying Tiger Fury
• Smudge

Aren’t they marvellous? But! as marvellous as they are, only one fits the bill as defined by me

Darren

The splendiferous magicnose nailed it with the only one that truly subscribes to my rules.

So what are my rules? I hear you shout as your spit your fish supper all over the screen (you should really clean that up). Well I’ll tell you, the rules are as follows

MUSTS

• It must not be traditional cats name (Fluffy, Marbles etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to a comedy horse (Colin, Charlie etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to an WW2 army general (Archibald, Wilberforce etc)
• It must not be a name that could be attributed to troubled Anime character (Azrael, Jiro etc)

DESIRABLES

• It should be a name that can be attributed to a man who works in a garden centre
• It should be a full forename (Don’t care for Bob, for example)

EXAMPLES

• Darren
• Liam
• Alan
• John (possibly Johnathan)
• Simon
• Richard
• Robert (not Bob)
• Ian
• Paul
• Matthew (not Matt)

As an example, I went on holiday to Spain with my dad and sister a couple of years ago and I explained these rules to Sophie. We spent a fair chunk of time, a good hour, walking across the big rock of Gibraltar in complete silence save for

Sophie: “Stephen?”

Jason: “With a ph?”

Sophie: “Yeah”

Jason: “Perfect”

We built up quite a list, great fun.

Now I must stress these are my rules, this is my system. I would never begrudge a Cat name you choose, I just personally wouldn’t choose it. I’m not going for a world domination here, no thanks, too much hassle. I just have my own system for naming cats, you can call yours what you like, live and let live. But if you ask me what you should call your cat, then its game on.

This mainly extends to Male cats. Because the ladies have two X chromosomes they are twice as varied and thus harder to define. Us males only have one X and the Y is redundant meaning we’re a lot easier to pigeon hole, it’s a pleasure.

Naming female cats is like plotting a ladies drinking timeline, the typical male drinking timeline is a lot easier to nail down. There are obviously some deviations from the mean but this is a good indicator of where a man is in his life

Cheap Cider/Alcopop >> Cheap Lager >> Stronger Lager >> Proper Cider >> Stout >> Real Ale >> Real Ale with a Handle >> Whiskey Straight >> Whiskey with Water >> Death

Women? I’ll be buggered if I know. Female cat names? Same story.

So there you have it, my hard and fast rules for an acceptable name for a Male Cat. Hell why not? female cats too. To be honest it would be quite funny to own a girl cat called Andrew (not Andy).

This is a story about how I destroyed a friends goalkeeper top when I was a weeun.

There was a big field in the middle of the suburban estate on which we all lived, circled by the back fences of the enclosing houses. All the kids would gather and play football, more often than not smash the ball against their fences, they presumably loved it.

One guy in particular was this large Italian chap who didn’t particularly care for us smashing his fence to bits everyday. So when the ball inevitably went over his fence he would very much enjoy not giving it back. Though one day he was shouting at us over the fence and a friend of mine sang the lyric “Golden brown, texture like sun” and he shouted back, “Yeah! Golden Brown!” and threw the ball back. I digress.

A friend of mine had a Man Utd goalkeeper top with Schmeichel on it. This was back in the early premiership years when Utd were unstoppable. For a reason I don’t remember I was wearing it and we were playing hide & seek.

A prime spot was hiding in the Italian man’s garden and I had disguised myself there. I climbed onto his fence (about 6 foot high) and sat on top to survey the surroundings. A momentary loss of balance caused me to slip from the fence catching the top on a jagged edge. I heard a horrible tear and I was left hanging like some hoisted cartoon villain. The head hole had come to the front and I was there with my face poking out unable to get down.

Besides being caught out I’d also ruined my mates favourite top. Ah well he was a United fan and so could obviously afford it.

I will read a book for at least 20 minutes a day, for 100 days

Well…ummm…yeah…it didn’t go as planned really…

I hit the floor running with great enthusiasm. The first week or so passed without incident and the pages were flying by with gusto. The book (which I shall come to) was a joy to read so there was no feeling of it being a grind.

The first sign of trouble presented itself one day in mid December. I had been at work and I was due to attend Popcorn Comedy that night with some friends near London Bridge. I decided to get the bus which would give me a good 20 minutes to get my bit done for the day.

I got on the bus and there were 2 problems:

1) The bus was full
2) The lights didn’t work

I had a conundrum. I didn’t have room to read my book and even if I did it wasn’t light enough to see the pages. As soon as I got to London Bridge I was due to meet up with some friends and sitting there reading a book would be massively rude and just a bit shit. I didn’t really know what to do so went on with my evening.

I had a lovely night as it transpires and met some fantastically cool people (off shoot of living in London) but there was a problem, I hadn’t read my book! It finally reached 11:30 and I had to make a dashing exit for fear of breaking my vow. So there I was, walking across London Bridge, intently reading a book. So absorbed was I that I almost walked into a lamp post. That night I started reading at 11:39 which turned out to be a signal flare to the monster of my wavering commitment.

The spectre of my rubbishness appeared again….the next day. I was due to attend a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig in the city of my uni days, Bournemouth. I love Bournemouth, it has loads of trees and everything is just generally nice. It also has a balloon.

Anyway, that morning I had arranged to get a train to Poole for work, the perfect opportunity to get the 20 minutes done. Problem was the train was quite early and I was very tired. When I’m tired my brain becomes massively unipolar. Sleep is all I want and sleep is all I get. So I snoozed my way from London to Poole and the chance was gone. Long story short, the gig was great but I arrived back at my lodgings at…11:35. Again just enough time to get my task completed. Too close for comfort again.

With these scrapes avoided I reached day 19. It was a day of no particular note, to be honest with you I can’t remember a single thing about it. Everything muddled by like it does, I fondled moonbeams and such. I was lying in bed at 1am considering the averageness of the day when I realised something

I’d forgotten to read my book

I was distraught. 19 bloody days. That’s it. My brain is useless. I couldn’t remember to do this little thing. Ugh it stills annoys me thinking about it now. So with that failure did I give up reading my book? OF COURSE I DIDN’T! It would take more than this to stop me, I thought one missed day wasn’t a massive deal really and I was enjoying the book too much to care. So I persevered with the 100 days challenge with the intention of catching up the missing 20 minutes.

This leads me to review the book. I’ve never done a book review before and I’m not really good at reviewing something with any degree of analytical prowess. People go on about writing style and such like but more often than not it passes me by, same with camera shots in films, I’m usually too absorbed with the story to notice. So I’ll give it a whirl, making what I can of the way it’s written and such.

I bloody loved this book. I swear blind Nick Harkaway asked for a requirements document from my brain before writing it. When asked on twitter what the book was about I replied:

It’s a post apocalyptic story of friendship, love, fear, loss, dream, pirates, ninjas and apple cake.

It really is a fantastic story which I got completely swept up in. I was told by the friend who recommended it that I would struggle with the first 200 pages as it’s a grind. I completely disagree. It was a bit slow but it’s all necessary. I have nothing but time for story tellers who aren’t afraid to take the time to establish their characters before they set them off on a journey. It’s important, to me anyway. It’s the same reason I enjoyed the Wire, all the characters were allowed time to grow and express themselves so when it came to changing them or throwing situations at them, you felt the weight of that sufficiently.

The characters in the Gone Away World are all joyous people from all regions of the human spectrum. I don’t want to tell you about them as it would tarnish the process of learning about them. Rest assured there’s someone there for everyone, all described in affectionate detail so by the time the story kicks off you feel though you’re among friends.

I’m always a bit edgy when it comes to things like pirates and ninjas. They have become diluted as talismans of awesome for some time now, same with monkeys. I tend to find them a little obvious now and tend to gravitate away from them. That said they’re appearance in this book are subtle and carefully considered. The pirates aren’t stupidly over the top, just piratey enough. I’m not too fussed about that really, I was more fearful on the use of ninjas. Luckily the ninjas were very narutoesque which is the way it should be. There are some stock ninjas but they don’t figure as much as the true ninjas, give it a read and you’ll see what I mean.

I won’t say anything about the story, which is handy in a book review, as I feel again that it’s there to be enjoyed. The whole thing is a magical journey which doesn’t need to me explain. I so want to gush about it but I won’t, I wouldn’t dare spoil the chance for someone to enjoy it like I did.

That said, we must remain even handed, it can’t all be roses and I do have one gripe. By the end I felt too many masks had fallen to the floor. It reminded me a little of Mission Impossible 2 in this respect. I could see why it was necessary but I felt a bit of a diminishing return as they fell, you’ll probably see what I mean. This is a very minor problem in the face of what is a fantastic reading experience.

You’ll notice I have said “I won’t say anything” quite a lot which makes for quite a thin review but I don’t know how to articulate what’s great about it without spoiling it so I’ll leave it to you to trust me, good luck. It really is a great great great great great (yes, 5) book. It has heart, soul and balls. Enough love to melt a grade A pencilneck’s* heart and enough fight to kick a grade A pencilneck’s* head clean off.

Read it. Please (I need more people to talk about it with).

So where does this leave us? I missed a couple more days between the 19th and finishing the Gone Away World. I’d finished it by the 28th of December and I’ve not read another one since. I chalk this up to the void week between xmas and going back to work where no one really does anything. I guess this was the real test and I have well and truly failed. Truth be told I’m not that bothered as I got to read this wonderful book and all I truly needed was a kick to start it.

Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to have completed my 100 days, but I’m not overly surprised that I haven’t done it, I’m just not that good at sticking to something like this, my attention wanders so easily. The aim was to read more and I think  I’m more geed up to do so. I already have my next book lined up, in fact I’m about a third of the way through it. It’s the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I have his Sandman comic series in first print and loved it to bits and the Graveyard Book is of a similar quality.

The main aim for me was to become a habitual reader and that is still my quest. I don’t have the attention span to stick to something on the day to day but I will definitely have a book on the go so to speak. I’m gonna get the bus home more too as it feel it is an environment I’m more likely to read in. The tube is the same but I’m only on it for about 20 minutes and it’s too disjointed.

So what have we learned? Reading is good and my attention span is crap. I think we all knew that anyway. Ah well. *shrugs*

* Read the book to find out what a grade A pencilneck is like

Gaz and I had been playing Rock Band for quite some time when Activision announced the impending Guitar Hero: World Tour. Rock Band had set the new standard with the full compliment of instruments and it was pretty obvious Activision weren’t gonna take that lying down. So what do all big companies do when faced with a good competitor? They copy them of course.

Now this in itself is an understandable gesture. Harmonix once again showed them a gap in the market, as they’re unable to spot em themselves and they made a competitor. Competition is a healthy thing in this environment as it only inspires people like Harmonix to do something better. And they did, Rock Band 2. Harmonix had obviously gotten wind of Activision’s plot (if you can call it that) and used the time to make a beefed up, polished off , leaner, meaner competitor. The stage was set.

Guitar Hero: World Tour versus Rock Band 2

GH:WT came out before RB2 (them’s your abbreviations) and Gaz and I were umming and arring on whether or not to buy it. For a long time it wasn’t immediately clear whether the GH:WT instruments would be backwards compatible and the RB ones would be forwards compatible. We didn’t wanna shell out more cash (and it was quite a lot) for a set of new bits and bobs that wouldn’t work with all the other games. In a move of frankly mind boggling sensibility, a governing body whose name I have forgotten ruled that Activision and EA should play nice and make their peripherals cross compatible. Hurrah! This enabled us to gauge our options safe in the knowledge that whatever we used would work on everything else.

As good as RB1 was, the drums were very loud and my GH3 guitar was really quite small. Gaz and I were a bit flush at the time and decided to upgrade our weapons to the latest and greatest. This decision lead us to the full version of GH:WT with new drums, guitar and microphone. In spite of whatever I might think about GH:WT now, I will still stick by these controllers as they are fantastic. The guitar was solid and reliable, so much so that I still use it now. The drums were a lot quieter and a lot bulkier which is quite handy when you’re bashing the shit out of them on a regular basis.

So with the arrival of GH:WT we stopped playing RB1 for a bit. Mainly because the instruments were great and we’d played RB1 to death and back. The new songs in GH:WT were a breath of fresh air with a couple of inspired choices among a large contingent of indifference. We’d been playing it for a while and something just wasn’t right. The nature of the problem became clear when RB2 came out.

RB2 isn’t really RB2. It’s more like RB1.5. A toned, polished version of Rock Band designed to bring that little bit more to the table in the face of competition. It worked. To be playing Rock Band again was a joy. It was when playing Rock Band 2 that we saw just how far GH:WT missed the point. It highlighted the fundamental difference in the core purpose of the respective games. RB (1 and 2) were designed to be multiplayer first and catered for single player whereas GH:WT is the complete opposite.

Everything about Rock Band was designed be as inclusive as possible. When playing a song in Rock Band, band members have the ability to help other members through a song. Pulling everyone together, fostering a group experience, helping you to feel like a band. Overdrive was implemented in a group fashion as well. Sections of the song had synchronous overdrive sections where everyone would get more overdrive if you all completed a section perfectly together. When overdrive was used, it counted towards a band multiplier, again encouraging group play. You were a band.

GH:WT had none of that. If one person failed, you all failed. You had one joined Star power (overdrive) pool allowing people to be greedy. There was no co-operation. You were almost fighting against each other in what was supposed to be a co-operative experience. It completely missed the point. You weren’t a band, you were group of people forced to play together. Some people may suggest thats what most real bands are like, but it certainly wasn’t Activision’s intention when it was made. It showed they didn’t get it at all. It was a one player game.

The lack of true core differences between RB1 and RB2 made lead you to question what the point of RB2 was. But aside from the polishing and tweaking there was another thing Harmonix did which showed the difference in the ethos of the two franchises. They allowed you import the songs from RB1 into RB2. This immediately doubled the track list and showed a desire for you to enjoy it. They knew they weren’t making a completely new game, so they gave you enough to make it worth it.

When you take it out of the game mechanic itself, RB2 was still eons better. The tour mode from RB1 was improved with different gigs in different locations. Giving you sense of moving forward as a band, again breeding a feeling of co-operation, a proper multiplayer experience. GH:WT just had a list of songs and said, go on, play that and fuck off.

Rock Band 2 won this battle by a country mile. I still play it today as it was designed from the ground up to be a enjoyable group experience. GH:WT is a single player game with the trappings of a multiplayer game.

The Decision

This brings us pretty much up to the present and due to comparatively recent events I have come to a fork in the road. New versions of these games have come out since then and I’m fairly sure GH5 has addressed some of the problems I have highlighted above. I say fairly sure because I haven’t played it. After GH:WT I wasn’t that interested. The track list was forgettable and I wasn’t convinced they’d ever get it.

My apprehension was vindicated when news hit of a flurry complaints directed at GH5. Guitar Hero (since version 3) has placed an disproportionate amount of value in their rock star cameos and GH5 was no exception. During development they had secured the rights to include the late Kurt Cobain as a playable character in GH5. When the game launched it became apparent that you could use Kurt on any song on any instrument, effectively trampling over his memory. I thought this was a shame but no more than that. I didn’t expect any better from them thats for sure.

I thought this was isolated slip up until Activision released their new game Band Hero. A game designed to appeal to a broader spectrum of people with more poppy songs, fair enough, whatever. I wasn’t fussed until I saw they’d done it again, this time with the band No Doubt. Again I’m not overly fussed about No Doubt but it was the nature of Activision’s statement on the subject that hit me, I quote:

“Some of the world’s most popular and iconic artists have been featured in Guitar Hero as playable characters, and we are proud to count No Doubt among them. Activision has a written agreement to use No Doubt in Band Hero – an agreement signed by No Doubt after extensive negotiations with its representatives, who collectively have decades of experience in the entertainment industry. Pursuant to that agreement, Activision worked with No Doubt and the band’s management in developing Band Hero. As a result, Activision believes it is within its legal rights with respect to the use and portrayal of the band members in the game and that this lawsuit is without merit. Activision is exploring its own legal options with respect to No Doubt’s obligations under the agreement.”

This is a formally worded middle finger to anyone who values music beyond the almighty dollar. We’re doing what we want. Fuck you. I had intended to show a video illustrating this but Activision’s intervention has gone further to prove my point. A while ago I found a video clip of Band Hero showing Cobain and Johnny Cash (another legend fucked) being depicted singing YMCA. It truly shows how little Activision care about music. The fact they’ve had it pulled shows they care even less than that.

You may think I’m naive for thinking they should care. This is a valid point but I don’t expect them to care. I don’t expect anything from them, they’re twats. I only highlight this because I’ve seen how good it can be when they do care.

Harmonix had been working for some time on Beatles: Rock Band (BRB). I wasn’t a massive fan of the Beatles at the time but for a long time I’d meant to have a proper look at what they were like. I was stunned. BRB is something of true beauty.  Everything about it was made with a true understanding of the music. Building on the solid foundation of Rock Band and placed into the magical world of the Beatles, a world I didn’t know before I played it. Here is the best example I can find, funnily enough not removed from the web. Maybe they’re proud of it.

Look at it. The use of colour, the gorgeous animation, the song itself. It’s an unbridled joy, a triumph. This is better than anything in any Guitar Hero game and it will stay with me forever. It’s probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in a video game, it shows what games are truly capable of.

Beatles Rock Band is a game made with real warmth, charm and respect. Made with love. Harmonix should be applauded for making something like this and it leads me to the decision and the grand point of the last 3 blogs on this subject.

I am never buying another {insert name here} Hero game again.

I rarely make vitriolic statements like this but on this one I feel I should. This whole thing has showed me what can be achieved if we invest ourselves into what we make. Marvelous things can happen. If Harmonix can be bothered to respect the people they portray in their games, then I can be bothered to buy their games. Equally if Guitar Hero and it’s ilk can’t be bothered to respect those they portray, then why should I buy their games. It doesn’t take much and they don’t even want to do that for no other reason I can see than to not concede they made a mistake.

I might be wrong but Harmonix seem to make their music games with a heartfelt appreciation of their subject matter, Activision couldn’t give two shits, so fuck them.

I do wonder if I’ll extend this to anything released by Activision. Dolly steps I guess, I’ll be a fully principled human being one day.

I’ve broken it down into 6 separate sections, here we go!

Shaun’s House

This is my tour of Shaun’s house in Japan.

1st Day

My 1st proper day in Japan we went to Kamakura which is like old school Japan, Temples and all that caper

Bright Lights, Big City

This is a montage of all the obvious touristy sites of Japan, gorgeous place

Mad Japan!

A breakdown of some of the oddball things I did and saw

Ramen Queueing

A video diary of my Ramen Museum queueing experience

The Last Supper

And finally, a short video of our last meal in a restaurant somewhere in Tokyo, I forget where.

And that’s it! safe to say I had an absolute riot and recommend everyone go.

Here’s my flickr gallery of Japan pictures

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8512511@N05/sets/72157617778158407/