Diary of an up and coming sociopath

I made it back to Oxford. A little bit of weather can’t keep me back long. Plus, I waited until the snow melted.

Today was a rewarding experience - I mean literally. As reward for finding all the bugs and thus a lending a helping hand in getting the game mastered, I was let off work early, with pay for the whole time. It put a spring in my step and a wad of cash in my pocket (figuratively speaking) and even negated the earlier annoyance of me trapsing through town into the rain to be told “no, you can’t pick these tickets up.”

The tickets were our Placebo ones, for the 1st of March. However - we recently were lucky enough to grab Ash tickets for the Zodiac, which is also on the first of March, so yesterday I bought 2 Placebo tickets for the 2nd of March off eBay - for less than we paid originally. Yes, that’s right, tickets for sold out Placebo shows depreciate in value. You can all laugh now. I was willing to pay £20 more than they actually sold for.

So, that ends my most recent bit of my work, for now. I mean, there’s the possibility that a huge clutch of bugs will be found but I stake my sanity on the hope that there won’t be. It’s not that golf is a bad game, it’s just that I’ve played enough of it for a lifetime, now. The hilarious part is that I’m still shit at it. Chalk it up to my chronic inability to master sports games on anything more than the level of “dunderhead.”

In other news, I finally got to try out my new monitor. It’s everything I ever dreamed. It almost makes me glad that I spent the money, but there’s still a part of me saying “James, the monitor wasn’t great, but it gave you a picture. You’re being unreasonable buying a new one.” It’s bright though. This must be how bright monitors are in heaven. I’m going to gaze into it until my retinas burn, now, and revel in the fact that designing a new website will be easier now that I know what colours actually look like.

Welcome to day 2 of Snow Watch 2004 - I can confirm the rumours that I am stuck in Leamington with no hope of escaping, for now. Food supplies and morale remain at pretty good levels, though I did eat the last of my Chocolate Fingers yesterday, so the boots are looking ever tastier.

I can’t say I didn’t expect it. Aqua don’t need me to work today, so I could’ve braved the drive back to Oxford last night, but it was more than likely going to get me killed, so instead I didn’t bother and stayed here watching Futurama commentaries. It made me glad for my foresight, really; “When stuck at home,” I thought, “Futurama DVDs might be a good idea.” I’m not the kind of person who enjoys crowing about how right I am, but only in the sense that it happens so often to brag about it would be pointless. I’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Yesterday was again, golf testing fun. I found a whole bunch of bugs - so many that there was no reason for me to come in today because it’d require a long time to fix them all. Tomorrow should be my final day, though part of me suspects there’s a chance I’ll have to go back for a day or two next week…

Still, I’m not one to refuse money, even if it does occasionally cause gross inconvenience. I had planned originally, to go back home yesterday, do a lecture and spend some time with Nikki today, then go back to finish the testing on Friday, but between work and weather there wasn’t really a chance of getting that sorted. I suppose, in truth, had I been in Oxford the weather would’ve been too bad to go to the lecture and indeed, too bad for me to come back home and finish off the work. Therefore, this work would not have covered the cost of my monitor, which waits patiently for me to return to it and drink in the shining glory of a new screen.

Part of yesterday’s job was to record myself playing “Retro Games” for the master disk submission. I’m not entirely sure why, but when you send off a game to be mastered, someone, (Sony? The Publisher?) wants a VHS of about 5 minutes of the game being played. I had a quick blast on all the retro games, and to secure immortality (or at least, spread my influence) I put “JRH” in on one of the score screens. I did skip through the others though. I also got to see my “Testing and Level Design” credit which was cool, because now I can add some more lies to my CV!

I’ve spent today recovering from gaming. I looked in the mirror this morning to discover a huge amount of bloodshotness in one eye, which I can only blame on over-testing. I wonder how much compansation I’ll get if I go blind. I watched the new Angel episode this morning, and then considered going to Stratford. In the end, common sense prevailed because even if I lived to get the Stratford and back, and the shop was even open, there weren’t many comics I wanted to buy.

Just before writing this entry, I listened to a new CD which I bought online - a Liars EP called “Fins to make us more Fish-Like”. It’s like a headache being played on instruments. I’m not sure I’m loving it as much as their album, to be honest. I’m planning to buy their new single to see where they’re going musically and then deliberate on the new album. A concept album about witches? I’m not convinced. It doesn’t matter though, Easyworld’s new album is finally out next week - it’s been many months since I first heard it so it’ll be a little strange to see it on the shelves, but the success of Til the Day should mean that it does quite well. I played Rob some tracks form it the other day, and even he admitted it was good where we usually have heavily differing tastes, so obviously there’s some hope for it.

Aha! And as if by magic, it begins to snow…

I wonder what this means for my chances of getting back to Oxford this week. Indeed, I wonder what it means for my chances of, er, actually getting even as far as Aqua Pacific.

Still, it’s a pretty decent sight to behold, we haven’t had proper snow ’round here for many years. Maybe the impending Ice Age theory holds some credibility. Part of me expects that, when I wake up tomorrow, it’ll all be gone, though I guess the way to find out is to, well, go to sleep, which I was supposed to be doing before the weather took me by surprise like this ;-)

Imagine my surprise, this morning, after I had hauled myself across Leamington, when I learnt that I was be going to be testing golf.

It’s not that golf is a terrible game, it’s just that 16 hours of it last time really made me glad to see the back of it. Admittedly, now it’s a lot more built up and a lot more working, but still…

Golf…

I later realised the truth: That I was in purgatory and was condemned to test golf until my sins were purged.

Not that I let my perceptions affect my work, though. I tested, by god I tested good. I picked out bugs, I confirmed that older ones had been squashed good and proper, and so help me, I combed through Sony’s ridiculous Technical Requirements Criteria document, so specific and anal in its terminology that I swear there exists somewhere at Sony’s HQ a Technical Requirements Critera Criteria document.

The day went pretty fast, as the first one usually does, when testing. About midway through tomorrow, I expect I’ll hit a wall where my immediate usefulness is at an end and it becomes hard to contribute in any meaningful way. Still, if nothing else, one thought keeps me going - This work, such that it is actually gaming, is paying for my new Monitor. My shiny top of the range Iiyama 17″ which waits patiently for me back in Oxford, free from green tint.

After work, I went to Nan’s for dinner, then to Dad’s to sort out his PC quickly, and then came back home to play MSN games against Si and Nikki. Just now, I’m about ready for sleep, I don’t think I’ll last much past midnight. I’m currently unsure when I’ll be going home, it might be Wednesday, it might be Thursday, it might be as late as Friday, though I doubt that. It depends, really, on whether the weather gets as bad as people keep predicting it will.

So, I’m back in Leamington now, anticipating somewhere in the region of 2-4 days of gamestestage, depending on many various factors. I remain utterly amazed at getting this gig, really, it means that I have a steadyish income, an insight into the industry, and a good talking point at the many, many parties I frequent.

Of course, not all days are filled with such merriment as playing Golf ont he PS2 for 8 hours. Today, to pluck an example entirely from the ether, began with me dragging myself out of bed and attempting to get to Wheatley. I had considered Bussing, but as ever managed to spend just enough time waiting for the bus so as to make myself miss it, and in the end drove up to Wheatley. It’s not a difficult drive, normally, even for somnmotorists like myself, but in this occasion there had been some form of terrible accident. So terrible, in fact, that after a set of traffic lights changed 3 times without me getting anywhere, I eventually decided to find an alternative route and turned left to find the ring road. I did, of course, but at some point between bits of Oxford I know, I managed to end up on a magical mystery country drive, heading out towards some village called Elsfield which, if you click on the name, you will see is nowhere near Wheatley. What happened was that I mistook a very strange turnoff for a sliproad, and after about 10 minutes of thinking “well, maybe I’ll get to a roadsign” soon, I gave up and turned around. Luckily, I hadn’t actually gone far bacause the person in front of me was excessively old and literally found it necessary to drive at 25mph in a 60mph zone. Quite a lot of my journeys tend to end up with something like this happening, either making a wrong turning or going around a roundabout at least twice to find the right exit. I think it’s because I’m of the opinion that you can’t actually get lost unless you don’t know how to get back to a place you know, and therefore I’m a bit overly cavalier about turning down roads that an informed person might avoid. I like to think of it more as a punk style of navigation.

I still made it to Wheatley in time, of course, because I left a littler earlier than usual so I could colelct my Hard Drive for the module I’m doing. I also managed to collect it, meaning that I must’ve saved some time on my strange trip to deepest Elsfield. The morning’s work generally consisted of installing windows XP and windows 2003 as a client and server for a network, which, when you’re pretty tired already, is nothing short of mind-numbing. The 2 hours went by pretty fast. When I was driving back, I specifically drove back through Headington in order to see the carnage and ended up getting trapped in Traffic for 15 minutes. Though there was a good view of half of the Oxford policeforce directing traffic (5 cars, 10 officers at least, between Co-Op and the Headington Campus)

After that, I rested, for rest is the key to replenishing the brain. It was also pretty cold in the house. Nikki came home and I started packing, then we went to Nandos and ate using our free Nandos Voucher from the calendar they sent, though we have yet to claim our free Froghurt. (Etymology lesson: the word is a blending of “Frozen” and “Yoghurt”) After that I drove back, experiencing only mild hail this time. THere’s this umour going around, perpetuated mainly, I guess, by the Met Office, that the entire country is aboutt o get Frozen over. I’m hoping I don’t get trapped in Leamington, since should anew ice age dawn I want to be with the people I could most trust to throw off the trappings of the current social order in a post-apocalyptic situation. To that end, I invite anyone reading this to meet us in Oxford, should society crumble this week as a result of impending weather.

Shortly before I left, it his 6 o’clock PM and I was unsurprised to discover that today was not the day my new monitor would arrive, despite what eBuyer’s order age suggested. It will probably arrive tmorrow while I’m not there. I can live with that, I suppose, since I’ll be using my PC less that ever this week of all.

So, tomorrow looms, all games testing and coatless walks through morning Leamington, since I managed to forget to bring the only coat that I own. I’m going to watch a Futurama to wind down, because there’s nothing like a commentary to send you to sleep, even if they are damn funny and interesting. The soothing sound of a human voice. I tihnk at this point everyone shoudl adjourn to Paul Annett’s and/or Relly’s blogs (links are at the side of the screen, people) and see how their lives became the playthings of over-zealous hack writers desperate to get out of the local papers and, seemingly, into the tabloids. Paul’s blog contains a link ot said article. I can’t say I’d ever describe Relly’s blog as “Bridget Jones-Style” (though I can imagine it soon ‘Calories - 400, Alcohol, 1 unit, Journalists dismembered - 3′) and indeed, I thought it was great that this ‘news’paper felt liberal enough with the truth to, er, utterly discard it, really. I urge all bloggers to rise up against the Argus, which has really played us all for suckers and tricked some of our finest representatives into making us all look like geeks without a life beyond electronic gadgets, which, frankly, is a complete half-truth.

It occurred to me I forgot to mention that I finally bought a new monitor. Most of you won’t have seen how badly my monitor looks these days,but if you can imagine what the world might look like as viewed through an entirely green filter, you’re getting close. As it is, the correction makes the colours appear almost normal, but only at the cost of reducing the brightness incredibly, and I’m also pretty sure it’s making the problem worse by doing this. It wasn’t always bad, of course, it’s just gotten that way over time.

Anyway. With the prospect of at least 3 days of gamestesting work coming, I have decided that’ll earn me exactly the amount I need to buy a new monitor. It’s been a long time in the running, I’m quite certain that for as long as I’ve been at Uni, I’ve been thinking of buying a new monitor. I was briefly faced with the problem of whether I should buy CRT or TFT, but the former is much more my price bracket and much more likely to get a better picture for what I can afford.

To seal the deal, eBuyer turned out to be offering reduced cost on priority shipping this weekend only, which meant that I could get stuff delivered in a matter of days for a mere £5 shipping cost. Hence, perhaps even as early as tomorrow, I’ll be the owner of a brand new iiyama. With any luck, it’ll last me until CRTs are more affordable.

Still, it’s a hard choice to have made. If I was willing to accept a shit quality monitor, I could’ve bought 10 new-release DVDs for the price I paid. I don’t even want to think about how many comics it could’ve bought. Or meals. It’s half a month’s rent! It’s a situation made even more annoying to me because I really don’t like replacing things that are working, though in this case I’m starting to understand that okay, maybe there are levels of “working” that aren’t “working” enough to accept.

Gah, consumer electronics. It’s best not to think about the cost. On a related note, thanks to my experience at New Year’s, when the monitor eventually arrives I will be thinking about how much I could’ve saved, had they only not bothered packing it in a cardboard box.

Ah, Sunday. The most pointless of God’s multiple days. On a Sunday we all seem to sit around being fairly melencholy about the fact that tomorrow is Monday and we’ll have to go to Uni, Tescos is closed and there’s not even anything on TV. This would presumably make more sense if it wasn’t that most days of the week are exactly like this one, wednesday, for instance, I have to go to Uni the next day, there’s nothing good on TV and, admittedly, while Tescos is open I’ve usually already been on Monday or Tuesday because I couldn’t go on Sunday. There’s no reason to persecute Sundays besides the fact I used to go to Nan’s and have a huge nice meal, and now I don’t because it’s too far away. That’s why I feel most Sundays get off to a bad start.

However, Saturday was a day to celebrate. Tom’s Birthday, that is. Which is today. But what could we do to celebrate on a Sunday? As it was, Rachel and Matt (our smarter friends from Oxford proper) came down and they, along with Ian, Nikki, myself, Tom and his new girlfriend Carrie (who ventured down from Scotland just to see him this weekend - 8 hours across the country) went for a meal on the Cowley Road. I was pleased to see that even Tom has limits to what he’ll eat, when he put a spoonful of stuff into his mouth, despite our warnings, and chewed it a few times before the colour drained from his face and a black expression crossed it.

We ended up hanging around here, because especially on a Saturday, it’s much more entertaining that trying to find somewhere out to go. Not before we went to Tescos of course, which I’ve long since stopped trying to pretend isn’t the social hub of everything we do. We played a few card games, such as the finely-named “Shithead” and the slightly less amusingly-named “Cheat”, which actually involved a lot more swearing than the first. Tom and Carrie played each other at Snap in a dramatic showdown which only ended when Tom achieved a Pavlovian reaction whereby he was unable to bring himself to hit the table for snap because of the pain he was causing himself. I’m pretty sure that the term “Snap” replies to what the bones in your hand will do when you play. As an added bonus, we were playing with Tom’s new “Regime Change” playing cards, which turned this child’s game into a politically relevant discussion. Of course it did. We also played Scrabble, me, Carrie, Tom and Rachel. Not because we’re incredibly boring people, but because… well, I’m not really sure why. I won despite Rachel claiming that it would not be the case many for hours previously - she is studying English at Oxford, after all - but then she was also quite inebriated by this point in the evening, so I can’t be sure whether it was really me or the alcohol that beat her. A rematch in the future, perhaps.

Once the festivities had ended, I took Rachel and Matt back, with Ian along for the ride. It was one of those car journeys that starts off well but about 15 seconds in, it becomes impossible to see out of the windscreen due to internal condensation. Luckily, survival wasn’t an issue because I could navigate sufficiently once I wiped off the window a bit. It’s sometimes hard to convince your passengers they’re not about to be killed. At least it is for me…

I spent more time yesterday reorganising my Comics, DVDs and books. I work out a new system every term, it seems. I’m thinking about taking some stuff back home for storage now, to minimise the amount of crap I have to take home at the end of Uni. I know it’s a little premature, but by now I have a good idea of what gets use and what doesn’t. There’s something much more satisfying about reorganising things above just tidying them. When I tidy something, it tends to mean that lots of things get placed into lots of piles, with no overall cleanliness increase. However, as Relly and Paul have been championing, it’s fun to get rid of stuff that you no longer need or want. So, in conjunction with that ethos, some more of my CDs are going to get sold, and maybe I’ll get around to flogging some of the comics I don’t want too.

Paul doesn’t need the programming done for a couple of weeks, which is excellent news really. I had insane nightmare visions of trying to do gamestesting by day, website programming at night, and somehow trying to fit in seeing Nikki too, but things have eased off and I might even be able to get some dissertation work done (!!) Tomorrow evening we’re going to have a Nandos and use up a free voucher that they sent us, before I drive back home. Which reminds me that I should distribute that information around various family members, now that I think about it.

Finally, that’s not ironic, it’s just stupid!

At this moment, what is your favorite…
1. …song?
Hmm. Depends what could be classed as “favourite” - were I to load Winamp right now and choose a song to start with, it’d be Straight to Video, the Easyworld B-Side, because it’s funny and rawk and entertains me while also amusing me. Were someone to ask my favourite song ever, I might still say Airbag, by Radiohead. Were someone to ask me my favourite new song, I’d say Drive by Easyworld, because it’s an impressive track. I dunno. one song? It’s too hard. There are many others I might choose, it’s likely to change from hour to hour.

2. …food?
Chicken of the roasted variety. Easy, that one.

3. …tv show?
If it still has to be on TV, I’d say Angel. If it doesn’t matter that it’s long gone, at the moment it’s Futurama, though I think out of everything, Buffy is easily my favourite TV show of all time, I’ve just seen so much of it that I’m not watching it at the moment, until Series 7 is released on DVD.

4. …scent?
I don’t know. Smells don’t bring a great deal of pleasure to me alone, they’re normally attached to food. If the question means “scent” as in perfume/deoderant, then again, I don’t hold an opinion either way. I like the stink of clean.

5. …quote?
Ah, so many to choose from. Recently, we spent a lot of time reiterating that “TUNA IS WORTH NOTHING!” but right now I’m unfortunately going to have to go with a Lowtax original, because nothing else springs to mind: “Also, I like to hit women during sex, and not during sex.” Obviously without context it’s not very funny, but the parodical nature of the statement is what makes it funny rather than the words themselves.

The programming was finally completed yesterday. Anyone interested in what I’ve been doing can go to the easyworld site and visit the “Links” section (bottom left) where you’ll find the script I wrote in working order. Obviously there’s a load of behind the scenes stuff that the user doesn’t see, but that’s basically it. Thanks go to Paul Annett for giving me that work. I haven’t done any programming for someone else before, so it was good to see that I was able to fill the requirements without turning it into a huge horrible mess. He seemed pleased with it anyway.

Yesterday we had the normal morning lecture congregation in the kitchen where Ian, George and I stand around bleary-eyed and semi-coherant before making our way up to the Bus Stop. Once we got on the Bus, we were again presented with the mind-numbing choons of Fox FM. More on that in a bit. After the bus got going, it moved a stop onwards, and then ceased movement for upwards of ten minutes, leaving us to postulate that Public Transport should be renamed Public Storage. During the intervening time I was wondering that, were there an apocalypse or war of some kind, would buses be used to evacuate of cities? Would it be a good idea to steal a bus to use on your nomadic trek to a safe part of the country? I decided that I’d probably stick with the fiesta, if only because I know how to drive that and it wouldn’t use as much petrol. Unfortunately for us, the world didn’t end and the bus deposited us at Wheatley. Regadless of what anyone might tell you, this is a terrible, terrible way to start the day off.

The lecture was presumably interesting. I don’t remember falling asleep which tends to imply there was something good said. I don’t remember anything specific from it so that means it wasn’t great, but I was definitely awake. We left a little early, and got the bus back. While sitting at the front, we noticed that we couldn’t actually see out of the windows due to condensation, so we decided to opt for the next best thing you can do to windows, and wrote stuff in the mist. I opted for “BUS” in mirror-writing, where George drew a smiley face. Ian had just finished writing “BROOKE2 SUCKS” (because he got his mirror-s backwards) when a guy came upstairs and asked to check our passes. They were unrelated matters, of course, but he did mention the window writing, prompting Ian to make an excuse and wipe it off. Such adventure.

When we got back, I watched the new Angel episode which was great, and Ian and I watched the new Enterprise episode, which was a vast improvement over recent episodes, though being kicked repeatedly in the crotch would be a vast improvement over recent episodes.

Anyway. Radio. Let me tell you, morning DJ of Fox FM - “Fly By” by Blue(?) is not the kind of music that warrants being played so long after its release. I’m increasingly disappointed with the state of all radio, really. Radio 1 maintains a consistent level of unlistenability, and I find Chris Moyles is nothing short of awful these days. I admit, back in the days when “My Name Is” was first released and he would tune ot “Slim Shady” and fill it in with things like “Captain Hollywood”, I found him quite funny, but looking back the time I heard him doing that was coming back from Stratford with Josh and Sam, and Sam was driving, which means we’re talking about about 5 years ago now, and the jokes are much less funny. Sarah Cox was even close to listenable, and Zoe Ball was only marginally less annoying. Virgin’s presenters aren’t bad, I admit, but since they got rid of their no-repeat 9-5 day it’s a quagmire of repeated songs over and over and over, usually interspersed with either Queen, U2, the Stereophonics and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I’s probably written into the charter that any half hour period must contain one of those artists. XFM used to be the closest I could do to a good radio station, but even that is a bit crappy nowadays, though Lauren Laverne being on in the afternoon means I sometimes listen to it. My current station of choice is BBC’s 6Music. The shows are quite distinct in what music they play, but the ones I like have a bizarre mix of the very latest bands, and some very old bands, people from the 60s and 70s who didn’t play rock or disco, for instance.

Anyway. I just discovered that next week I’ll get the chance to do some more testing at Aqua, and likewise, I should have some more programming to do for Paul, so it’s looking like I’ll be set financially for the rest of the term. It’s amazing, I’m almost 3 weeks in and still in the black! I can’t remember the last time that happened. Admittedly, the rent is about to come out and that’s going to tip the monetary scales firmly in the direction of “overdraft” but that new monitor that I keep claiming I’m about to buy looks likelier than ever.

Another day of little accomplishment besides programming. Earlier I was just attempting to find a new monitor to buy when a power cut struck and thereby made me lose all my windows, the calculations of cost I’d done, and some code to boot. Then it happenned again, and I lost interest in the whole affair. Maybe tomorrow.

I’ve been feeling more opinionated about the new recently, so in a break from tradition I’m going to do some current events commentary.

Sperm Donors to lose anonymity Is a particular grievance with me. I think it’s a completely backwards way of doing things - if you’re donating sperm you shouldn’t have to worry that in 18 years that sperm’s going to come looking for you and two decodes worth of support payments. Similar restrictions are to be made for women who donate eggs. I wonder, can it be long before organ donors have to give up their anonymity to do it? That’d be an amusing thing, the guy who now wears Billy’s lungs turning up on your doorstep to thank your son for being in that fatal car accident a few years back. But I digress. This move will alienate potential sperm donors, I’m damn sure I wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t do it anonymously, the point of donating sperm is because you DON’T want a child to be responsible for, whatever the reason. There’s this popular opinion held that everyone has the right to know their biological parents, but I’m unconvinced. Maybe it should be an optional thing, that seems the fairest way - to let donors choose if they are anonymous, and likewise, let recipients choose if they take anonymous or identified genetic material.

CD Settlement Forces Prices Up. This is just nothing short of obscene. Whatever happenned to the free market? The BPI has this strange idea that the way to stop people buying CDs from abroad is not to lower the prices in line with those of abroad, but to try and make it illegal. Everyone is well aware that CDs cost peanuts to manufacture and that the bulk of the profit goes into advertising and developing new crap to sell back at us at inflated prices. It’s a simple equation - if people are buying things at cheaper prices, lower yours! Shops have been doing it for fucking centuries. I hope the whole music industry collapses pretty fucking soon, though I heard CD sales are actually UP this year. I wonder how they’ll claim piracy is harming them now. I have to admit, while I’m sickened this ever happenned, I find it mildly ironic that the oft-ignored copyright laws were used as an excuse to ban the import CDs. I guess I’ll just have to pirate music more to compensate.

Finally, let’s all celebrate the Year of the Monkey! Who doesn’t like a good monkey? Monkeys are one of those very rare things that are automatically cool. Monkeys, Pirates and Ninjas. If you add Robot to any of those, you get something even cooler, however it should be noted that robots alone aren’t cool. Speaking of cool monkeys, the coolest I’ve seen recently is the Humanzee. Surely he and his bretheren will soon destroy us all. Perhaps an even cooler monkey is the Smallest Monkey Ever. I know I want one, he would be trained to unwrap Celebrations chocolates and ring them to me. Also, he would ride in my pocket and attack the eyes of my enemies.

So there we have it, the news of the day through my eyes.