Posts on Shrieking.net

Steaming: Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Sat, 16 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000

My steam library is comparatively small, but it still contains a great number of unplayed games. The only way out is through. In alphabetical order.

I would hardly call myself a horror game fan. I love horror, but I don’t like jumpscares and I don’t really like being the protagonist: I’d much rather watch someone else have a bad time of things. I do try to keep my hand in, though, because, like other media, when horror is good, it’s very good. Silent Hill 2 remains one of my favourite games.

Board Games I Played in 2022

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000

I haven’t written the full list out this year. I got to play a lot of games, but I don’t have a lot to say about them.

Codenames

Forever a classic. This was my most played game of 2022, and I wish I had counted up how many times I’ve played this over the years because I’m sure I’ve played this more than anything else ever, possibly including chess. Codenames is the best warm-up game - people can join in mid-game, it’s very very easy to teach, games are short, and there are never any hard feelings because it’s always such a team effort.

Board Games I Played in 2021

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

It’s almost the end of 2022 so I know what you’re all thinking: what did Mac play in 2021? Well, here you are, here’s the list.

Wingspan

We played Wingspan online while we couldn’t meet in person. I don’t think it deserves the hype it got but I do enjoy it very much. It’s very relaxed, the player interaction is subtle and the theme is really unique. It’s a shame the online version doesn’t include the expansions, I really want to try them out.

Five Films a Month

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

I don’t always get to watch a lot of films. At some time around March 2022, I realised that I’d watched at least 5 films each month, and I thought to myself, “I wonder if I can keep that up”. I tried, and I did. In doing so I ended up with the most diverse year of film I’ve ever had, and I’ve learned a lot about art along the way. Here are some themes and highlights.

Death Stranding

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In the midst of a pandemic, in a locked down country where we weren’t allowed to see other people, I played Death Stranding. It is a game about reconnecting people who have been scattered across America, unable to go outside, trapped without communication. The invisible threat in the game is rather different to our own virus but the parallels between what the characters experience and our experiences of a pandemic are clear: Kojima imagined a world in which we hide indoors and rely on couriers. Those who go outside wear protective clothing and are made hard by the world.

Junk Food

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In 2020 I played Watch_Dogs, Ubisoft’s 2014 open world game that functions very much like every other Ubisoft open world game. It is generic, and very triple-A, and it’s absolutely fine. The story is bold and basic and predictable. It’s a 6 out of 10. It’s fine. It’s fine. It also isn’t fine in a bunch of ways I’d love to talk about but I don’t know enough about politics or sociology to be educated about it, but that’s not the point. Well, it sort of is the point.

Games I Played In 2021

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In a way I had a year off from gaming last year - I took a lot of time out to figure out what I was actually enjoying and whether or not I wanted to play at all. At the start of the year I’d pretty much planned to get rid of my gaming PC, but by the end of it I’d upgraded it and I’m excited for next year. Its good to take time to evaluate what you do.

Half Life: Alyx

Tue, 25 May 2021 13:08:20 +0000

These days, I’m pretty skeptical about Valve. I’ve waited so long for so much, and I’ve seen so much abandoned and left behind that I try to avoid the hype surrounding them. I love Valve games, they’re free to operate however they like, and I certainly don’t believe they owe me anything, but I always take the approach of believing it when I see it when it comes to their releases. All that said, it was pretty hard not to be excited about a new Half Life game. Hype is a difficult thing: once you get swept up in it, the thing you’re waiting for needs to be everything you expect in order to pass muster.

Blade Runner

Mon, 10 May 2021 19:44:09 +0000

I’ve read a lot of cyberpunk, but I haven’t seen many cyberpunk movies, so I took a look at the Cyberpunk Subreddit wiki’s list.

The list starts with Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott. I watched this a long time ago and really didn’t like it - I found it very slow and hard to follow. Since then, I’ve got a whole lot older, and I’ve seen and read a lot of sci-fi, so I thought it was time to give it another shot.

Asynchronous Film Club, February 2021

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:41:37 +0000

Film Club in Lockdown 2 was a lot of fun, and we’re now in Lockdown 3 so it’s time to do it again. As before, no scheduled Zoom meets (but don’t let me stop you if that’s your jam) and nothing more than suggestions of interesting things to watch.

The theme this time is “optimism”, which is a tricky theme. I’ve tried to pick some optimistic films, but at very least I think they fit into the category of “feel good”. Hopefully they manage to bring some joy to your locked down lives.

Asynchronous Film Club, November 2020

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 20:03:33 +0000

It’s lockdown time again in the UK, which is making me a bit sad, and I want to do something to alleviate the pain. I don’t have a lot of time or energy, and nor do any of my friends, so it has to be something simple. For my birthday this year, my wife made me a schedule of heist films to watch week on week, and I absolutely loved it, so I thought I’d do the same for lockdown and make it public. I’d pick a theme and put together a list of 4 films, one a week, based around it. Everyone’s busy, so there’s no scheduled viewing, no scheduled discussion: just watch the film, if you like, and talk about it, if you like.

Far: Lone Sails

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 09:34:33 +0000

I picked this game up on Nintendo Switch after The Computer Game Show recommended it a year or two ago, and it took a while, but I finally got round to it. It’s a short game, 2-3 hours or so, and it’s pretty simple. It is described as an “exploration adventure” game, which is definitely true, but it doesn’t tell you what makes it special - Far: Lone Sails is a game that manages to be about exploration when you can only move in one direction.

Board Games I Played in 2019

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 10:16:35 +0000

Well, we’re half way through 2020, so this is rather late, but here it is!

2019 was a fantastic year in board games for me. My wife and I got into the habit of playing most Sundays, and I tried hard to get out to the Witney board gaming club as much as possible. I haven’t written about every game I played (there are over 50 in the list), but here’s a selection of things I wanted to write about.

Games I played in 2019

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 09:46:59 +0000

I wrote down all the games I played in my diary this year, so this is a complete list of everything.

I’m sure this is very few games in the grand scheme of things, but it is a lot for me. I completed 8 games, and played quite a few hours of multiplayer games. This year I re-discovered that I’m much happier digging into things in depth rather than playing as many games as possible - I cancelled all of my gaming podcast subscriptions and just got on with playing what I wanted. The Nintendo Switch has been a huge enabler for me - playing on my commute has been a delight.

Sekiro

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 21:06:38 +0000

A long time ago I did a bit of martial arts. The art that I learned practiced pushing hands, which is a very slow, controlled kind of “fighting” - it is a way of being in the moment with another person, focused entirely on their next move and the flow of the battle. It is meditation in motion. My teacher said he grew up reading about masters of the arts fighting for hours and, as a young boy, he believed they were locked in fierce combat, but as he grew up he learned that they were, in fact, moving slowly, pausing to consider their movements, consider each other, slowly choreographing the entire meditation together.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 19:06:44 +0000

I wrote this a long time ago, and only finished it off recently. Figured I might as well post it. I actually played Horizon from March - December 2018.

It’s rare that I play a triple-A game, but Horizon somehow caught my imagination and dropped at a good time: just as I was returning to work after my paternal leave, when I felt in need of buying myself fun things, so I decided to give it a go. I played it slowly, over 9 months, racking up about 30 hours.

Breath of the Wild

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 20:11:11 +0000

I only commute once a week, so I played Breath of the Wild almost entirely on the train every Tuesday, for 40 minutes in the morning and evening. It is a staggering game to experience in a handheld machine: a whole world lives inside that tiny cartridge. I am not a huge open world fan, so my opinion might not mean much here, but I’ve never played anything that feels so much like a living, breathing world.

Upgrading...

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 15:26:37 +0000

Sorry for the unusual look, I’m tweaking things in the background. Some of it, as you can see, has bled into the foreground.

Games I Played in 2018

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 19:49:29 +0000

I posted nothing last year, apparently.

2018 was a very busy year, but somehow I found time to play some games. Here they are, in no real order. Overall this has been a year of trying to figure out what genres I really like: I’ve put some time into games I didn’t get on with to try to push myself, and I’ve tried games that I think I’d otherwise have ignored. I’ve paid more attention to where I’m having fun and where I’m not.

Games I Played in 2017

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 11:12:08 +0000

I started 2017 with a 4 week old child. I took the first 3 months off to look after her, and the games I played were fever dreams, played at all hours with a child asleep on my chest or while my family slept in another room and I struggled with sleep deprivation. I played bits and pieces of lots of things. Here is a list.

Street Fighter V

I’m terrible at fighting games, but I did really enjoy learning how to play them with SFV. It’s a good game for playing just a few minutes of, although the load times are rather long on the ps4. This version of street fighter is wonderful, a beautiful implementation, and I hope to play it more in future.

Firewatch

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 08:45:12 +0000

Following on from Cibelle in my reviews, here’s another game that doesn’t offer much of a challenge and chooses to focus on story. It seems unfair to put the two together though: while Cibelle offers almost no gameplay, Firewatch is built on it. Campo Santo use the first person view coupled with some chunky animations to put you into the headspace of the character in a way that few games achieve. I’ve been a huge fan of Idle Thumbs, the podcast produced by Campo Santo members, for a long time, so I’m quite biased towards them, and it’s no surprise that I loved this game.

A Dig Through My Spotify Profile, Part 3

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 12:30:39 +0000

This is part 3 of a journey through my Spotify profile. If you haven’t, check out part 1 and part 2.

After albums comes a weird folder named Curated. A while back, presumably bummed out about not being at Glastonbury, I decided to organise an online festival. For a week, I encouraged my friends to make Spotify playlists representing the stage of their choice, and to my surprise, they listened. Spotstock ran for three years, producing wonders such as The Trouser Tent, The Martini Roso Stage, The Dubstep Room and At The Movies. I keep every Spotstock year in a folder. For a long time, I ran a small webapp displaying them all, but that’s gone now. Perhaps I should get it back online.

A Dig Through My Spotify Profile, Part 2

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 16:23:20 +0000

This is part 2 of a journey through my Spotify profile. If you haven’t, check out part 1.

Moving on, I have a folder of collaborative playlists. I can’t link any of these, as they’re semi-private, but among them I have Our Favourite Songs, which a group of us started some time prior to 2010. I have no idea how many people have looked at it over the years. We add things to it now and then. It is now 40 hours long, containing 619 songs. The quality of songs on there is extremely variable. I also have three related playlists from my friend Darren, who, upset at the lack of Boards of Canada on Spotify (mercifully rectified today), asked for our help in finding music that is “Like Boards of Canada”, “Not Quite Like Boards of Canada”, and “Not Like Boards of Canada”. They remain an excellent resource.

A Dig Through My Spotify Profile, Part 1

Sat, 14 Jan 2017 17:41:22 +0000

I’ve been using Spotify for a long time. I’m not 100% sure when I started using it, but it launched in 2008 and when I gave out invites to my friends, one of them took a 2 character username, so I guess it must have been 2008 or 2009. I have been using playlists from the start - I even have collaborative playlists from before they stored the date in which each song was added. Deep in all of this, there are some real gems, so I thought I’d dive through them and dig some up.

Bloodborne: The Old Hunters

Tue, 03 Jan 2017 11:23:38 +0000

I wrote about Bloodborne on this blog a year or so ago, here.

In so many ways, The Old Hunters wasn’t about playing a game. For me, it was weeks of reading wikis, digging up lore, watching VaatiVidya - drinking in an absolutely endless quantity of information. I loved every second. Bloodborne’s story runs deep, deep down, and each area in The Old Hunters draws you into it further and further until you hit the very bottom. Finishing this expansion leaves you with a lot more knowledge, but a lot of new questions to go with it. It is a wonderful execution of the Lovecraftian mythos concept - the more you learn, the harder it is to comprehend the whole idea.

Cibele

Thu, 24 Nov 2016 14:30:38 +0000

Hello folks. I wrote half of this review a year ago and never finished it. Finding it now, I don’t really like my writing in it, but I’m fed up editing it, so here it is.

The negative reviews on Cibele’s Steam page seem to come largely from people who had different expectations, so I think it’s best that we address them first: I don’t think that it’s accurate to call Cibele a video game. While there are game-like elements, it doesn’t really contain any challenges and I wouldn’t really say that it’s something that you “play”.

Steaming: Braid

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 14:58:17 +0000

My steam library is comparatively small, but it still contains a fairly substantial pile of shame. The only way out is through. In alphabetical order.

I’m not sure how I missed it, but somehow, I forgot to talk about Braid. I played through it after Binding of Isaac, I suppose - that’s where it’d be in alphabetical order, so that must be when it was.

I’d heard a lot about Braid. One of the true original indie stars, it catapulted its author, Jonathan Blow, into the headlines and did the same for indie games development. Suddenly, anyone could make a game. It was an interesting time to be into games and the industry. I read a lot about it, but I didn’t actually play Braid. It was released in 2008 and I was catching up on games I’d missed while I’d been away travelling. I think I was knee-deep in Bioshock. Well, it’s time to fix that. This is a puzzle game based around time travel, and the manipulation of time: throughout the various worlds, you gain various powers over the passage of time and the world reacts to them in unusual ways. You must collect puzzle pieces in each world to complete a series of jigsaw puzzles.

BBQ Pulled Pork & Ribs

Mon, 21 Dec 2015 15:06:51 +0000

As Autumn rolled in, I saw a clear day coming up on the weather forecast and decided to spend it in the garden working on my barbeque smoking skills. I wanted to run out my latest bible of meat, the Pitt Cue Co Cookbook, but I’m far from a barbeque expert, so I decided to keep it simple and try some pulled pork. The book says that a full smoker works better, so I decided to whack some ribs in too to keep it busy.

Bloodborne

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:11:51 +0000

Bloodborne is the other game that I absolutely had to buy a PS4 for. The latest in the Souls series of games, it throws out shields, replaces them with guns, and goes all Lovecraftian. I’m all over it.

The first thing you notice, coming from Dark Souls to Bloodborne, is that the game moves a lot faster. It’s smoother, too: I was initially pretty sceptical about the worth of quick-stepping when locked onto a target instead of rolling, but it allows for a rather neat fine-tuning of your position in fights versus the rather long and unwieldy Dark Souls roll. Bloodborne wants you to dance lightly around your opponents and avoid hits, rather than survive the pummelling or get well clear every time an enemy swings their sword. It does away with any kind of encumbrance too, opening up the entire wardrobe of armour to every character. It’s hard to argue with these changes. Sure, they reduce the number of fighting styles available to you in the game, but Dark Souls’ heavy-set warrior build’s slowness was a punishment, not a boon: if you could have had the fast rolling with the heavy armour, you’d have taken it in a second. In Bloodborne, that’s what you get. Sort of.

Essen Spiel '15: Day Four

Wed, 28 Oct 2015 10:17:43 +0000

The last day! About half of these games were played in the halls and the other half were played in the hotel lobby as we sifted through our purchases.

##Queen’s Architect

Queen’s Architect has fantastic mechanics: your workers are on hexagons which dock into your little player sheet, and as you use them they rotate, changing which point is docked with your sheet. Some workers get better as they work, some get tired. When they complete a full rotation, they retire, but you can rotate them the other way by sending them to the inn. That whole thing is great, but it’s just solitaire - you barely interact with the other players at all. As a result, I felt that this game was missing an important piece of the puzzle. It feels like the next game to leverage this mechanic will nail it, though, and we’ll have something to shout about.

Essen Spiel '15: Day Three

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 13:42:40 +0000

Yes, I’m still writing about Essen. Onwards!

##Artificium

We arrived at the hall as a group of 6, which is a ridiculous number when trying to demo games, but Artificium seated 6 and had a free table, so we played it. I found it ok, but many members of the group were less charitable. It had a bunch of dumb action cards which let you steal from other players, which screwed up the strategy element of the rest of the game somewhat.

Essen Spiel '15: Day Two

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 08:38:06 +0000

##Viticulture

After reflecting on day one’s lack of purchase success, we stumbled upon a free table for Viticulture and solved all my woes. This game is beautiful in every direction and feels deep and intense and well thought out. I want it. The edition on sale was 65 euro, however, so I decided to hold off. I’m not sure I’d ever get to play it, anyway, I don’t have much time for long games like this these days. Still, I was delighted to find a game that felt really, really good.

Essen Spiel '15: Day One

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 16:37:11 +0000

Last weekend Spiel ‘15, an absolutely huge board game fair, took place in its long standing home of Essen in Germany. After years of wanting to go to Spiel but never quite being organised enough, I finally made it. It was a good year for it, as something like 14 of my friends managed to go this year: it was a great crowd and I had an awesome time. Here are the games I played on day one.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 19:37:15 +0000

Arkham Asylum is probably on my all-time top 10 games list. It features no filler, no nonsense, no missed opportunity for comic book brilliance. It set a trend for combat in games. It managed to feel like a complete world without being so open that you get lost, and it managed to maintain a sense of “levels” that made it feel somehow arcadey. It was a wonderful mix of everything that makes a game good. Arkham City threw a lot of that out the window, and, in spite of itself, managed to be a pretty good game, but it never managed to make me care about the side plots: there was absolutely no way I was collecting all those Riddler trophies. The central plot was outstanding in itself though, so I was willing to forgive the sprawling open world aspect that added nothing to the game and only detracted from the beautiful setup it was granted by Asylum. I skipped the next in the series, Arkham Origins, based on its poor reviews, but that didn’t stop me getting all excited for its sequel, Arkham Knight.

Steaming: Dark Souls

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 09:34:06 +0000

My steam library is comparatively small, but it still contains a fairly substantial pile of shame. The only way out is through. In alphabetical order.

I never thought I’d get to write this. I started playing Dark Souls years ago, but due to one thing or another, I’d never been able to put much time into it. Dark Souls is, to the beginner, punishing and frustrating. It doesn’t hold your hand at all and does little to guide you through any part of the experience. It’s hard to bring yourself to spend time on it when you don’t know what you’re doing. I decided, foolishly, to play through it blind. This was a terrible mistake.

Hotline Miami 2

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 17:10:18 +0000

I’ve struggled for a while with what’s worth saying about Hotline Miami 2. The reviews out there cover it quite well, and if you’re trying to figure out whether or not you want to buy it or not, I’d recommend you read Andi Hamilton’s words over at Midnight Resistance - I think he covers a lot of it very well, and I almost canned the whole idea of writing anything about it because anything else feels redundant. I can’t quite let it go, though: I feel like the great bits of this game have been missed by the masses.

Watch The Skies: Actual things that happened

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 12:12:54 +0000

This is the third in a set of three articles about a megagame I ran this weekend. I’ve split it into these parts:

Watch The Skies: Organising a megagame (planning, making)
Watch The Skies: On the day (set up, logistics, event management)
Watch The Skies: Actual things that happened (My view of the game)

Finally, a few notes about actually playing the game and the things that happened from the controller’s end. This is rather fragmented and quite possibly out of order, and assumes some knowledge of the game: if you don’t know what Watch The Skies is, you may find some of this rather difficult to follow. Sorry!

Watch The Skies: On the day

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 12:06:04 +0000

This is the second in a set of three articles about a megagame I ran this weekend. I’ve split it into these parts:

Watch The Skies: Organising a megagame (planning, making)
Watch The Skies: On the day (set up, logistics, event management)
Watch The Skies: Actual things that happened (My view of the game)

On the day of Watch The Skies, set up began at 8:15 for a 9:15 start, and I was surprised to find players already at the venue waiting to get in! We had meticulously planned our get in and it ran like clockwork - everything was ready to run by the time we started briefing. It was a huge boost to see players so keen and it was great to have everything organised so quickly.

Watch The Skies: Organising a megagame

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 12:00:47 +0000

This is the first in a set of three articles about a megagame I ran this weekend. I’ve split it into these parts:

Watch The Skies: Organising a megagame (planning, making)
Watch The Skies: On the day (set up, logistics, event management)
Watch The Skies: Actual things that happened (My view of the game)

I was one of the primary event organisers. You can also try these excellent reports from players:

Steaming: Binding of Isaac

Tue, 17 Feb 2015 16:00:31 +0000

My steam library is comparatively small, but it still contains a fairly substantial pile of shame. The only way out is through. In alphabetical order.

As far as I’m aware, it is impossible to not own Binding of Isaac, so writing about it feels a little redundant, but it was next on my pile of shame, and it was the next game I played, so here we go.

Binding of Isaac is a rogue-like that plays a little like Smash TV, designed by Edmund McMillen, one of the guys behind Super Meat Boy. The story goes that Isaac’s mum receives a message from god demanding the life of her son, so Isaac legs it into the basement which is full of monsters. He battles through until he defeats mom herself. It is quite quick to play through, but being a rogue-like (one of the first in the latest spree of them, I think?) you die and restart a lot.

Cool Stuff My Friends Have Done Recently

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 13:19:01 +0000

I have a lot of awesome friends doing awesome things. Lately there’s been a few in a row, and I want to tell you about them. I hope you don’t mind. If you do mind, you can stop reading now. Sorry to have bothered you!

Small Tales and Fairy Fails - Paul Duffield

Paul’s one of those people who just makes amazing thing after amazing thing, and his latest Kickstarter is for yet another amazing thing: a collection of five of his recent comics spanning from futuristic science fiction to a medieval knights-n-magic-’em-up. It’s less a Kickstarter and more of a pre-order (Plus it’s already funded), it’s got 48 hours left at time of writing, and it looks great. Look at it.

Steaming: Antichamber

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 14:11:27 +0000

My steam library is comparatively small, but it still contains a fairly substantial pile of shame. The only way out is through. In alphabetical order.

Antichamber was top of my steam list. It is an indie, first person puzzle game, with simple graphics and a unique brand of puzzle. I picked it up in a sale a long time ago after seeing a let’s play video, thinking it looked like my kind of thing.

A Weekend of Risk Legacy

Mon, 19 Jan 2015 13:49:14 +0000

We’re on the fourth game of Risk Legacy this weekend, and we’re a little tired, but we can’t stop, because this game is amazing, and we need all five of us to be in one place before we can play it. Simon has the benefit of placing his troops after me, so he can see what I’m up to. I place my HQ near a city in Australia, which I’m hoping to capture, along with the continent, to set myself up early. There is an advantage to be gained here, he realises. He swoops.

Some Quick Notes on a Wedding

Mon, 22 Dec 2014 10:36:41 +0000

I am, as I’m sure you can understand, a little short on time, but I wanted to jot down a few thoughts about my wedding before I vanish for a bit. I’ll start by saying that I simply can’t do it justice in words and that I am absolutely delighted with how it all went.

I want to thank everyone again. “thank you” is a phrase that unfortunately is a little one-size-fits-all in our language, I think, so you will just have to take my word for it that this is the kind of thank you that comes with the underlying knowledge of an eternal debt - I will spend my days hoping that somehow, some day, I will have the capacity to make you feel as happy as you have all made me feel this weekend. I will thank as many of you personally as I possibly can, but it will take time to get around you all.

What I Played Last Week Stag Edition Pt. 3

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:13:23 +0000

Last, but not least, I wanted to chat a bit about the video games played at my stag weekend. I am so excited by the recent return to same-room co-op that we’re seeing in games, and I can’t pass up an opportunity to mention a few. Well, to be honest, I’m only really interested in telling you about one game: Mount Your Friends. The others are a footnote.

Mount Your Friends

What I Played Last Week Stag Edition Pt. 2

Tue, 02 Dec 2014 10:19:40 +0000

Here are the longer games I played during my stag weekend.

Suburbia

I like boring looking board games. I’m not sure why - maybe it’s that I think they must be so good they don’t have to worry about looking good. Suburbia takes the form of nothing but bits of cardboard: cardboard hexes, cardboard score sheet, cardboard money. There are a few wooden tokens per player to track income and score, but that’s as three dimensional as it gets. There isn’t even a board, as such: you build up the board out of hexes as you go along. Anyone who looks at it would be forgiven for never even giving it a chance.

What I Played Last Week Stag Edition Pt. 1

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 15:12:12 +0000

I played 11 different games over the course of my stag weekend, most of them several times over, so it seems fitting to do a bit of a stag edition of my usual What I Played chats.

I have split this into 3 blog posts for the sake of your sanity. Here’s the first: party games!

One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Every time I introduce this game to new people, I find that it surprises me in different ways. We mess with the roles a lot, we find new ways to lie, we find new tactics to catch people out. This time around, we saw an incredible move from the werewolves claiming masons in a game where there were already two masons, causing much chaos, and an incredibly well played robber into werewolf that no-one saw coming. I can’t wait for the expansion.

Stag Weekend

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 21:33:58 +0000

I have a hard time buying presents for people. I fret and worry about how it will be received, what the present means for the other person, what the act of giving says about our relationship. Will they like it? By giving it, will I reveal that I know nothing about the person I am giving to? Receiving a present puts me in a similar boat. To receive a present you don’t like is to realise that someone else doesn’t know you like you thought they did. Surprises are the same. Stag weekends are the same. When your friends begin planning a weekend for you, you hope, and you pray, that they are, in fact, your friends. That they know how to show you a good time.

I'm Still Dwarf Fortressing

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:51:28 +0000

Another fortress crumbles and I start again. I thought I was building near a river last time, but when I embarked, there was no river to be seen. Perhaps, I thought, it is underground, and my dwarves dug and dug until they all died of dehydration.

I start again, gazing once more upon the world screen where I chose the location for my next little (vast) dwarf house (fortress). This time, I make sure I am near a river. It transpires, through a conversation with Charlie, that I was not near a river at all. It turns out that, when on the embark screen, looking at the world map, the region map, and the local map, you don’t actually embark onto the entire local map. You embark onto a tiny square inside that, lit up, and movable using yet another set of keys that I hadn’t even spotted on the cheat sheet along the bottom of the screen. I was never near a river. My dwarves had dug in vain.

Giving Blood

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 13:39:44 +0000

On Tuesday 30th September, I gave blood for the first time. I’ve always thought about it, but never ticked the box on the form for some reason. Signing up for a new GP this year, I finally decided to bite the bullet and go for it. I chucked myself on the organ donor’s list, too, for good measure.

I forgot about it after that, but a letter dropped through my door a month or so ago with red ink on the envelope, inviting me to book an appointment at the upcoming blood clinic. I was stressed and busy at the time so I skipped over it, and felt bad. I left the letter on my desk as a reminder to sort it out next time they came around.

Board Game Review: Terra Mystica

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:02:54 +0000

“Here, pick a race, don’t think too hard about what they do for now.” says Sina, handing me a thick stack of cardboard sheets. He is unpacking Terra Mystica, rated number 3 on Board Game Geek’s list, behind only Twilight Struggle and Through The Ages on their scale of board-game-ness. It’s a brightly coloured Euro game full of bits of wood, featuring absolutely no cards, plastic figures, or dice. I’m already sold. The groups of people you can choose to play as are on two-sided sheets of cardboard, each piece being themed to one colour. The colours match certain places on the board, marking that certain groups of people have affinities to certain types of terrain. Simple enough. I choose the nomads. They look cool.

Dwarf Fortress

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 12:33:21 +0000

When you start a region in Dwarf Fortress, you set your computer the task of building the history of a world. You wait, and you wait, as it works through the ages. You see empires rise and fall before you in ascii art as your processor creaks and groans for whole minutes (which, of course, is a relative age, when you think about how long it takes for the average game to load), and, eventually, you’re presented with a map, and asked where you want to embark.

Video Games I Played Last Week, 16/09/14

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 07:54:55 +0000

Well, not strictly last week, but you get the jist. I’ve played a bunch of interesting things lately.

Dota 2

Finally back to my old habit. I’ve been playing Dota for about 3 years now, racking up 827 hours in-game. I am terrible at it. Really, really bad. I love it though, and after a few months of barely playing, it feels great to be back. It’s a game that really benefits from a consistent team, though, and I wish I had the time to play with one. Still, I have an amazing group of friends who are great fun to play with, so I’m never too lonely.

Surviving Wedding Fairs

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 19:23:46 +0000

Someone on Twitter recently asked “Has anyone ever been to a wedding fair? Are they awful?” and I made a few comments, but I felt like the 140 character limit wasn’t enough for the topic. I thought could write a bit about surviving (and enjoying) wedding fairs. Fairs (and trade expos too, for that matter) are big scary places full of people, usually crowded, usually noisy. It’s easy to give up all hope immediately, but chances are, there’s probably stuff in there you want, and you’re going to need to go, so you might as well try to enjoy it. Here are my tips for not going completely mad.

Daft Souls Talk Board Games

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 09:48:45 +0000

Hello! Just wanted to drop in this episode of a podcast that I rather like, Daft Souls. It’s a video games podcast but in this episode they kick off with a chat about board game Dead of Winter.

They start with it, so just get listening, you don’t need to skip ahead.

They touch a little on the topic of my last blog post here: while video games often provide a good story, board games provide a framework of rules and narrative moments which allow you to create your own stories.

Narratives and Risk Legacy

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 12:01:10 +0000

There are plenty of games out there, like Ladies and Gentlemen, Fiasco, and even Minecraft, that aren’t about winning, whether that’s baked into the game or just clearly not the focus of it. They’re great experiences and I love them dearly. The goal in those is to create an experience, and they’re a lot of fun. Most games, though, are, on some level, about someone winning and someone losing. And I like that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bad loser - I’m fine with losing. I might be a bad winner - I’ll get back to you on that. I just love it when a game is close and everyone involved cares about the scoreboard and cares about making the right play. I love that moment when the chatter stops and people get serious.

Must-See Films

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 12:52:16 +0000

After a discussion about films a few months ago, in which it was revealed that I hadn’t seen The Usual Suspects (the situation has now been rectified, don’t panic), Charlie sent me a list of his office’s Must See Films. The creation of the list ran as follows: any time someone in the office hadn’t seen a film, if one of the others was morally outraged by the omission, it went on the list. They kept it within a certain number of years, and there were a few other parameters that kept some classics out of the list, but they ended up with 48 movies. It’s not perfect, but it’s an excellent starter guide for cinema. If you’ve ever not got a movie reference, it’s probably in one of these films.

What I Played Last Week 18/08/14

Mon, 18 Aug 2014 19:55:13 +0000

Fun games this past week! I don’t think one blog post will do them all justice, but I am excited to talk about them, and I think I’ll come back to them in future.

Tzolk’in

Worker placement on steroids, Tzolk’in looks like a euro version of terrible board game classic Mouse Trap. 6 huge gears rotate as the game progresses, moving workers around the board, so when you place them in one turn, you have to consider where they’ll be when it’s time to take them off. What blows my mind about this game is the scarcity of actions available to you each turn. You’re forced to place or remove at least one worker each turn, and quite often, that scuppers your plans, because you were really hoping you could hang on for just one more round while the wheels span. That said, the options open to you for those few actions is usually massive. I think it’s love.

98.8% of people can’t watch this video for more than 5 seconds

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 11:43:12 +0000

Some more clickbait-inspired fiction. I really enjoyed writing this, and I love the premise (heavily Ring-inspired, of course) but I don’t think it came out very well. I present it to you as a second draft, favouring productivity over perfection.

98.8% of people can’t watch this video for more than 5 seconds

“Looks like another one,” said the detective, pausing to inhale deeply from a small electronic device. It glowed in time with his breath. “What does that make it now, 10 this week?”
“At least," said the technician beside him, his camera flash casting the crime scene into bright white light, “It’s the 7th I’ve worked on, and I know that there are more across town.”

Some Pretty Good Food

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 12:09:41 +0000

It’s not hard to find good food in the UK. I met some tourists who were complaining that you can’t get good British cuisine anywhere, which I can appreciate - it’s often hard to find something that is truly “British” and not borrowed from another culture or country - but as long as you’re not too fussy about where the recipe comes from, good food is pretty easy to find. Don’t get me wrong, there’s terrible food out there too, but that’s not what this blog is about. It’s about good food! Be excited about good food!

Board Game Review: Through The Ages

Mon, 28 Jul 2014 09:27:44 +0000

![Through The Ages](https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/1032430/photo-main.jpg?1402001361)

Through The Ages recently arrived on Board Game Arena, which is our favourite website for online board gaming, so we decided to give it a go.

First up, a note about online board gaming. It’s never, ever going to be anywhere close to real life actual board gaming, in my eyes, but it’s worth being involved in anyway. The ability to get a game any time is great, and the computer-enforced rules solve all disputes. Board setup is a non-issue, and with a voice chat system of some kind, you’ll barely miss being in the same room as your opponents. I also think it’s a great way to try out games and learn them. In fact, Gear and Piston debuted on Board Game Arena, so you could try it before backing the Kickstarter campaign. Brilliant. Not a replacement for real board games, but an excellent addition. Check it out.

A Child's First Steps Are Always Special

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 14:07:00 +0000

Another clickbait-inspired bit of fiction. I’m not quite sure why this headline painted such a sinister picture in my head, but it did. Hope you like it.

A Child’s First Steps Are Always Special. His Were Special Because They Weren’t Supposed To Happen.

“So, tell me again why I’m doing this?”

The child was turned away from him, oblivious to his actions. The revolver was pressed to the child’s head.

What I Played Last Week, 14/07/14

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 10:45:19 +0000

Well, in the last two weeks actually. I’ve had a busy few weeks of playing games, finally getting back to Oxford On Board and managing to get to Thirsty Meeples once, so I’ve got a lot to talk about.

Caylus online

I’ve been playing Caylus online with Sina in a play-by-email format. We make 1-2 moves a day. It is slow, methodical, and intense. On Tuesdays we catch up and talk about the game. It’s a totally different board gaming experience, and I love it.

This Young Woman Dances With Her Soul

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 08:55:38 +0000

In recent months, social networks have been filled with sensationalist clickbait headlines. As with the news, the headline is usually more exciting than the story within, so I often make up my own stories to go with them. I realised that this makes the common clickbait sites like Upworthy a great source for writing prompts, so I’ve decided to use them to practice my short stories. Here’s the first one I wrote.

Perturbator

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 09:23:39 +0000

An absolutely stunning video from Perturbator. Reminds me of the good old days!

Board Game Review: Keyflower

Mon, 23 Jun 2014 09:07:11 +0000

![Keyflower](http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1402797_md.jpg)

I like worker placement. I wouldn’t call myself an expert in it, but I’ve probably played Caylus more than any other board game, and while I do lose a lot, I like to think that I “get” worker placement. I also like auctions, being a computer scientist who’s studied them a little, and I like pretty things, being a person, so when Max and Wayne from Oxford On Board started piling hexagons and meeples onto the table and explaining the rules of Keyflower, I knew I was onto something.

What This Blog Is Now

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 09:04:15 +0000

I’ve had a blog on and off since I was 16, and this incarnation of it (shrieking.net) has existed since 2002 in some form or other. Between 2007 and 2008 it was most frequently used, as my public travel diary. In 2013 Posterous closed its doors after being bought by Twitter, leaving me blogless for a while. Now, in 2014, I am writing again.

It’s hard to know what a blog is “supposed” to be these days. A big part of me feels like the blog, as a concept, is dead, and most people writing them these days are basically writing self-published magazines. That’s cool, I don’t mind that at all - in fact, I read many, on and off. I get most of my good recipes from bloggers. The problem is, I have a hard time being that focused. The online diary - the weB LOG, remember - has moved to Tumblr, where it has become a forum for reposting cool stuff you find on the internet. I don’t have a problem with that, but that’s not me either.

About

Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:29:23 +0000

Hello, I’m Mac. I’m 36. I live in Oxfordshire with my wife and daughter. I’ve been blogging for about 20 years in total, with shrieking.net occupying 13 years of those, and I’m working to get the archives back online, when I have time. Over those years, I’ve completed a degree in computer science and traveled around the world. It’s been alright.

I have too many hobbies and I don’t writing about any one topic non-stop, so this blog is about everything, but mainly video games and board games, because I do those most. I also write fiction, so that’ll be in there a bit too. I like cooking but rarely have something to say about it.

Soooooon

Sat, 31 May 2014 10:39:30 +0000

Soon! Soon. It has been a long time since I’ve had anything to write on the internet, but I thought I’d try to get back to it. I’ll put the archives up, too. Hooray.

Endings

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:32:08 +0000

Beginnings are hard to catch. I couldn’t tell you how this all began: perhaps it was when I was sick of university and wanted to get away, perhaps it was when I decied to go to Australia, perhaps it was when I cancelled that trip and got a tattoo, perhaps it was when I booked my tickets, perhaps it was when I got on the plane. But endings? Endings are definite. It’s always easy to work out where something ends. The journey ends here, just where it began, and the world seems so much bigger, and I feel so much smaller, and my brain feels lost and damaged and full of useless anecdotes where my degree used to be. I couldn’t tell you the finer points of web service programming these days, but I do know the average annual rain fall in London and I can compare it to the amount we had in one day out in Franz Josef, when I was out hiking on a glacier in the middle of a rainforest. I don’t know much about agents any more, but I sure as hell know what sun stroke feels like, because I got it, drinking Fiji bitter on the roof of a boat somewhere in the middle of the Yasawa islands. Endings are not sad times, they’re just changing times. Endings are everywhere. One good thing about them is that you can almost guarantee that where an ending is found, there’s a beginning lurking just around the corner. Of course, it’s hard to track it down, because beginnings are hard to define. A lot of things are just beginning in my life, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Full moon

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:19:24 +0000

Ko Pha-Ngan is something amazing.

I’m not quite sure if you can call it beautiful. Bits of it certainly are, but the onslaught of the tourist has ruined it somewhat. Somehow it has resisted the urge to become westernised though: no MacDonalds, no Burger King, no Starbucks. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before it all goes wrong. Instead you have rows and rows of restaurants with Family Guy on repeat and bars lining the beach serving up absolutely lethal buckets of alcohol and red bull to the up-for-it party goers of the night. The beach itself is pretty amazing, discarded bottles and buckets aside: it’s a crescent shape with gorgeous soft sand and jungle on either side. The sun rises over it so at 7am the remaining dancers are treated to quite a view.

Islands

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:42:52 +0000

Just a quick update for you so you don’t all think I’m dead.

I’m out on Ko Pha-Ngan right now, which is basically where the party happens. All the time. It’s pretty crazy and I can’t seem to escape a hangover: there’s really not much to do here apart from drink lots and sleep. I suppose there’s diving and stuff too but for a poor traveler like myself it’s not financially viable.

Bangkok

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:03:15 +0000

I found myself in much better spirits by the time I got to Sydney airport. When I said goodbye to all my friends, something clicked and I got all excited about traveling again. My flight and the day surrounding it was mercifully uneventful and I met a couple of travelers at the airport who pointed me at a good place to stay, so I got myself settled into the country really easily, even if I was confused by the time difference, not sure that my watch was right, and running on 2 hours of awkward plane sleep.

Leaving

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:53:19 +0000

I usually sleep uninterrupted but today I had a bad dream and when I woke up all that was in my head was the realisation that I was leaving Australia in 3 days. For some reason it never hit me before. I feel sick, and scared, and sad. It feels different this time around: when I left the UK I knew I was coming back, I knew that I had all my things there, waiting for me, some kind of investment in the country that kept me feeling like it wasn’t goodbye. When I leave here I’m cashing in my chips and leaving nothing, and that feels strange.

Why Are You Here?

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:22:51 +0000

Last night, while I was cooking a rather delicious vegetable curry, my housemate asked me,

“Why did you leave your career and travel thousands of miles from home, just to work in a bar? You’re not using your education, you’re not advancing your career, what’s the point?”

She’s right to be confused, of course. Why on earth would anyone leave a career they’re trained in to earn roughly half their annual wage doing unskilled work on the other side of the world? I’ve often asked myself the same question, and while I can answer it with the simple statement “I was a bit bored”, it’s not quite that simple and I think that it’s a fairly interesting story so I thought I’d use words and punctuation to tell it.

Autumn

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:17:53 +0000

Autumn is rolling on into Sydney now and it’s caught me by surprise in many ways: so far, it’s been warmer and drier than Summer, and

in a way Summer never really seemed to start in the first place. My sleepy little suburb, Kensington (home to a sign saying “Smile, you’re in Kensington, and very little to smile about) is now slowly being covered in brown leaves and I find myself wondering what happens to the tropical plants over the road at this time of year. I’ve never seen a tropical plant outside of Summer. I kind of assumed it was always Summer anywhere they would grow.

Unusual Events

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:03:12 +0000

Last Saturday at work was an unusual one.

I work in a fairly classy bar. It has a dress code of sorts, and the drinks are pretty pricey. Our clientele is, largely, the rich and those pretending to be rich. While it’s quiet, the bar is extremely civilised, but when it gets busy, the place turns a little more interesting. Despite the appearance, people can get a little feral there.

Hangover

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:56:57 +0000

What really gets me about hangovers is the way that my thoughts work as I move through the morning after the night before. Normally the important thoughts, like “I need to do some shopping” or “If I don’t eat something, I’ll die” float in and out of my daily random musings, such as “I wonder if sharks will ever learn to walk on their tails” and “I wonder if cats know that humans aren’t cats”, leaving me more or less at the whim of my poor, broken brain as it tumbles around in its chaotic way. On any given day there’s a good chance that I’ll forget to eat for a good few hours, then realise that I’m out of food, and then I’ll fall asleep hungry and tortured by unanswered questions about animals.

Mythbusters

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:57:00 +0000

One memory from my travels that sticks in my mind is one particular evening when I was in a rather unusual hostel on a backstreet of New York, somewhere around 55th and 8th. I was sat on a couch that looked like it had been saved from extinction by an enterprising tramp and subsequently abandoned once more, only to be picked up by this place and made useable with the addition of a throw-over, which was, as is traditional, bunched up around the corners of the sofa and not covering much of the sitting space at all.

Hotels

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:58:11 +0000

The concept of a hotel in Australia is an interesting thing. I’m not talking about your traditional bed-and-breakfast type situation, although they do of course exist, I’m talking about pubs and clubs with some kind of restaurant function, which are known in Australia as hotels for some reason that I don’t fully understand.

The concept is reasonably basic: have a bar, offer food, satisfy the RSA regulations. Food is considered a good way to combat drunkenness, you see. Given the Aussie diet, this has led to just about every bar pasting up large signs outside offering “The $7 steak! (Conditions apply)” or “The $5 steak! (Conditions apply)” or, sometimes, even “The $9 steak! (No conditions!)”. Most bars then provide an eating area, often to do with their licence.

RSA

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:29:42 +0000

In Australia, it is illegal to be drunk in a bar.

It’s true. I swear.

Much in the same fashion that anti-smoking measures are creeping in all over the world, anti-alcohol measures are slowly edging into Australia. All employees of any place that serves alcohol are required to take a one day course called Responsible Service of Alcohol, which covers such topics as how to spot drunks and the hefty fines that you may receive if you serve them. To the customer, what this means is drinking in Australia becomes some kind of secret service operation: you can get drunk provided that you don’t look drunk. Staggering, fumbling with change, and slurring your words are all instant tickets out the door. The bar staff become your enemy, all eager to remove you and save their arses from the inevitable police visit. And the police will visit; the bar I work in is sometimes invaded twice a night by uniformed officers, talking to customers, looking for drunks, and sometimes even demanding to see proof that all of the staff have undergone the all-important RSA training.

Aussie Christmas

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:43:28 +0000

[I know I’ve written about the events of this Christmas before, but I wanted to turn it into a slightly more journalistic piece of writing, so here it is for your reading pleasure.]

The Australian Christmas is a strange event for a pasty white British guy like myself. For me, Christmas has always meant bitter cold, the kind of rain that soaks you to the bone in 10 seconds, huge dinners, and wishing you had an open fire. For Australia, however, Christmas happens around the beginning of Summer, so it marks the first trips to the beaches, the firing up of backyard barbeques, and the donning of even more extra-strong sunblock to ward off the obscene amounts of UV light that pour through the hole in the ozone layer.

A Blog-style blog

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:25:34 +0000

It’s been a while since I wrote one of those boring livejournal-esque blog posts that doesn’t contain any interesting information but tells all you readers what I had for breakfast, so here we go.

Lately I’ve been eating muesli for breakfast every day without fail. Work is going ok; it’s not the best job in the world but it’s certainly not the worst. There’s a good crowd of people there, I enjoy being on nights and the pay is decent, although it’s only now, after Christmas and New Years have taken their toll, that I’ve managed to start saving any money. I’m saving enough though; I reckon I will manage to avoid starvation and malnutrition through Asia. Thanks to all this money coming in and finally having a kitchen that isn’t shared with 200 people I’ve got back into cooking and I’m absolutely loving it. I’ve finally, after all these years, learned to make omelettes, and I’ve been trying to eat healthily, which has resulted in me losing about an inch off my waistline.

Aussie Chrissie

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:56:16 +0000

G’day mates! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. It was a real pleasure to chat to all of the people who I phoned and who phoned me: you made my evening, and morning!

My Christmas, like all good Christmasses, started in a supermarket, with James and I running around trying to buy anything we could find that featured reindeer or santa while Hamish showed his age and followed us around like a disappointed parent. We eventually left with very few ridiculous purchases (although we did get some reindeer-adorned napkins) and a full Christmas dinner, along with plenty of wine, beer, and port.

Working

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 04:24:27 +0000

And finally, after a month or so of wasting time and faffing about, I’m employed and I have a flat. I’m living in Kensington, which is a rather nice suburb of Sydney, about 10 minutes bus ride from the city centre and 20 minutes from the beach, and I am working as a barback in a place called Establishment, which is incredibly classy and pretty awesome. Merivale, the company that owns the bar, also owns 7 other extremely cool venues around Sydney and is about to open the largest hospitality joint in the Southern hemisphere, called Ivy, which I am hoping to move into. My first shift was on Saturday, and was supposed to be 6pm-12am, but I ended up working until 4:30, then the staff all went to the club downstairs until 6am. All in all, a pretty good night.

Sydney

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 01:34:42 +0000

IMG_2869, originally uploaded by shrieking.

Simon and Sina have left now, leaving me all alone in Sydney. I’m just starting to get my head around the fact that this place is my home now, for maybe 3 months, maybe 6, maybe 12, depending on how well it all goes. I’ve been sorting out things like a permanent mailing address and a tax file number and it’s all starting to seem very real indeed.

I'm not dead

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 06:34:59 +0000

Big post on Australia to follow sometime, but Sina and Simon are here visiting at the moment so I’ve been staying off the net a bit to hang out with them. I’m good, Australia is amazing, and I’ve moved to an Australian phone so my mobile will be off from now on: if you’d like my Aussie number drop me an email at puresock at hotmail dot com, y’all know.

A Summary of New Zealand, Pt 2

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 03:56:25 +0000

We left Taupo on day 6, again without skydiving thanks to the rain, and headed to River Valley. We stayed in a tiny little lodge miles from anything, where the dorms where made up of one giant bunk bed which slept 8 above and 8 below. We killed an evening there drinking and playing chess and cards, and awoke in the morning on day 7 hoping to go rafting, but surprise surprise, the rain stopped play again and we spent the whole morning playing more cards. The game of choice was knockout whist. We rolled on to Wellington disappointed.

A summary of New Zealand, Pt 1

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:19:28 +0000

Ok, so, as I mentioned, I took the Kiwi Experience bus right the way through New Zealand, stopping in all the good bits along the way. I took 24 days to do the whole country, which isn’t much time at all, so I spent most of my time on a bus and I woke up in a new place pretty much every day. It all started in Auckland, which is probably quite a nice city if you get to know it, but as a tourist with just a few days to see it, I couldn’t find much of interest, it reminded me of Southampton, and I just wanted to leave. I did, however, get out to Minus 5, an ice bar, where everything, from the bar to the seats to the glasses you drink out of, is made of ice. I thought it was awesome.

New Zealand n' that

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 03:17:21 +0000

Right, so, 3 days of contemplation in Auckland (2nd most boring city in the world) later, I ended up on the Kiwi Experience bus which will take me through New Zealand in 18 days. At the moment I’m changing city every day and I spend my days on a bus full of travelers running between awesome stuff. I’ll write it all up when I get a chance in Australia. So far, though, I’ve been to a beach where hot water bubbles up from the sand, and I’ve seen rabbit shearing. Awesome.

Fiji

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:19:06 +0000

Fiji is, without a doubt, the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I could tell you all about the miles of perfect beach, the clarity of the water, the lush green leaves of the coconut trees that even seem to curve _just right _and how I spent days lying in a hammock writing my journal and listening to the soft sound of the sea, but I just don’t think I’d get close to portraying how utterly unbelievably perfect it was. Instead, I’ll tell you that I got sunstroke on my first day sunning myself on the boat out to the island, then spent 3 days in bed feeling rough. During this time, Sarah managed to catch some kind of stomach bug, and so did a guy named Paul that we ended up traveling with, while Helen got bitten by every mosquito in Fiji. All in all, we had a lot of bad luck with our Fiji trip. Oh yeah, and it rained. A lot. Not every day, mind, there was still enough sun for me to get sunburnt again (honestly mum, I was wearing loads of sunblock), and I still don’t have a decent tan. I went swimming with sharks, we snorkelled in underground caves, we partied on Beachcomber (THE party island in Fiji), we failed to understand Australian Football, and generally had an amazing time doing very little.

USA

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:23:55 +0000

Well then, that’s it, tomorrow I get my final Greyhound bus (good riddance) to LA, and then I leave for Fiji on the 20th September. America has been a lot of fun, it really has, but I’m happy to move on too: I can’t wait to be in another country, somewhere really new and exciting. Fall is just starting to edge in here. We got cold on the beach before the sun went down on Sunday, and the leaves on the trees are starting to fall. I won’t get to see it hit in full force but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a season change in another country and it’s made me feel quite poetic.

Vegas

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 18:13:42 +0000

Well well well, where do I start? Las Vegas is a pretty tough place to describe. Take all the pictures you’ve seen, and double it. The whole place is like one big cartoon: everything is over the top and everything is brightly lit. I stayed on the Strip, right in the middle of everything, and spent a hell of a lot of money on nothing in particular. I played some craps, I avoided poker because playing poker in a casino is way too intimidating for me, I saw Cirque Du Soleil. I pretty much achieved all my Vegas goals.

Awesomes

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 00:40:34 +0000

Let me tell you about the awesome night I had last night. As regular readers may know, I met a whole bunch of cool people in New York and had loads of fun there. One of them, a Scottish girl named Sarah, is doing pretty much the same trip as me, and it just so happened that we were flying to Fiji at almost the same time so we said we’d go together. I hadn’t really given it much thought until I got to LA when I emailed her to see if she was still up for it, and she said yes, and gave me her flight details, so I could change mine.

PAX

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:21:38 +0000

Hey all you out there in Internets land!

I just got off a 30 hour train journey from the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle: a 3 day celebration of all that is exciting about computer games.

I want to tell you all about it in detail but I’ve already written about 8 pages in my diary and I really don’t want to write them all again, so here’s some snippets:

Venice

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:16:57 +0000

Anyone who doesn’t like Los Angeles hasn’t been to Venice Beach.

This place is paradise, I’m lost for words. The beach is endless (I’ll get my photos up soon), the only chain store nearby is a Subway, which I consider to be the least offensive of fast food, the place is all surf and skate shops, and everyone here smiles and talks to each other. Even the hobos ask me how the water is instead of asking for money. Apparently skating was invented here, and I believe the recent Romeo and Juliet adaption was set here. That pretty much sums the place up quite well. I’m going to go to Santa Monica tomorrow because my favourite band, Everclear, wrote a song about it. Hooray.

First leg down

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:59:23 +0000

IMG_2092, originally uploaded by shrieking.

This isn’t what I expected from Chicago, but it’s what I got. I had a few down days in Chicago, where I wanted to go out, or at least hang out with someone, but no-one was around, and for a while I felt pretty low, but then I finally got chatting to a few interesting people, then went out for a quick pint with some Irish guy which turned into 9 or 10, and felt a lot better. I went to the zoo whilst hungover and saw loads of cool animals. I’m not really into zoos but it was free and penguins are awesome. Afterwards I laid about on the beach and decided that all hangovers should come with a free beach.

Washington!

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:35:47 +0000

Washington was hot, hot, hot, and extremely humid. I sweated 24 hours a day and generally felt icky. The place was pretty cool though: I saw all the necessary sights to call myself a true tourist. Sadly I didn’t get to go out and see the nightlife much but I made it out with a bunch of people from my hostel on Saturday night into Adams Morgan, which is the cool part of Washington where all the good bars are. I met a guy named Trevor who is motorbiking around the US alone, which sounds all kinds of awesome.

Quiet Times

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 19:03:18 +0000

A couple of weeks off from hosteling and sight-seeing makes for boring blog posts, I’m afraid. I’m heading to Washington in a few days so I’ll have more to talk about when I get there, but in the meantime, I’m just hanging out in Lancaster, PA, with some friends of Beth, playing video games and avoiding expenditure for a while. I’m still alive and well though, don’t worry!

While I was in Philadelphia I went to the Eastern State Penitentiary, which is scary and ruined and awesome, and the Mutter museum, which is full of dead babies in jars, and as such also scary and awesome.

Conshohocken!

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:45:56 +0000

That’s right folks, it’s pronounced how it looks: I’m in Conshohocken, PA. That’s somewhere outside Philadelphia, and it’s a lovely little place where real Americans live, away from the tourists and the crazyness of the big cities. I’m out here staying with my friend Beth while she pet-sits for her aunt. Our days are mainly spent pampering the dog, Sally, and the two baby birds, Flounder and Chuckles. All three of them are beautiful animals. Shortly before I spent a few days with her family who were far, far too nice to me and fed me well (Thank you so much!). It was really great to be in a real US household in a real US place, because it has occurred to me that I haven’t really spoken to many Americans since I’ve been here. This weekend we went to Otakon, a huge anime convention in Baltimore. I don’t really know what to say about it: thousands of beautiful people (as well as plenty of nerds) all in costume, lots of mucking about and people watching, staying in a swanky hotel room, lots of anime to watch (I missed most of it), and a generally awesome time was had. I met some people from Glowsticking.com and talked juggling and dancing for a while, and I finally got to have a decent dance thanks to the Otarave in the evenings. Over here glowsticking is far more common and I got to see some really superb dancing going on.

Boston

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 20:39:20 +0000

Woop, I’m in Boston. It’s a really cool city, much nicer than NYC. I can’t really afford to do anything after the extravagance of the last few weeks, but I’ve been very happy just wandering around the city or sitting in the park and reading. Boston has a massive Irish population, which is weird - last night I went out with some Dutch guys to check out the Irish bars. I miss the pubs back home.

Week 1

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:39:18 +0000

Phoar, it’s been a busy week. On Monday morning I met a couple of girls, Romi (Australia) and Sarah (Scotland), who were awesome. Sarah and I ended up going to the Natural History museum and later we met up with Romi to generally run around and eat and suchlike. In the evening we got drunk and played a card game called Spoons with some others from the hostel, including 2 new guys, John (Britain) and Dave (Ireland). We decided that everyone would be known by their nationalities at that point and I’m struggling to remember real names.

New York New York

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 17:18:29 +0000

Hello from sunny New York, blog fans! I’m currently sat in a Ben and Jerry’s bar somewhere near Times Square, which is the only place I could find that would sell me net access.

I arrived at my hostel last night after 15 hours travel, soaked through with sweat and utterly running on empty, but feeling good. Harlem is a really exciting place and it looks exactly like the movies said it would. New York subways look just like the ones in Silent Hill. Basically, modern culture has prepared me for life here.

Tickets, Leaving, etc

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:59:51 +0000

Well, believe it or not, I’ve finally got round to organising myself, and I am now in possession of a rather expensive collection of flight tickets that will take me around the world. My flights are as follows:

London - JFK, New York 30th June 07
New York - LA Airport, Los Angeles 16 Aug 07
Los Angeles - Nadi, Fiji 30 Sep 07
Fiji - Auckland, New Zealand 10 Oct 07
Christchurch, New Zealand - Melbourne, Australia 30 Oct 07
Cairns, Australia - Singapore, Malaysia 5 Jan 08
Bangkok, Thailand - Heathrow, London 15 Feb 08

The last 2 flights are subject to change depending on how long I work in Australia.

Amsterdam

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 23:27:20 +0000

Imagine a festival, a big one, perhaps Glastonbury. Take away the bands. Pave over the mud. Turn the tents into hostels, turn the market stalls into shops. That’s Amsterdam, more or less.

I was out there for the weekend to visit my World of Warcraft guild, which may well be the geekiest thing I’ve ever done, but in my defence, at least I was going outside to see them rather than just talking to them on Teamspeak. We were supposed to meet them at 6pm and go to a restaurant, but our flight was delayed by four hours, so we blew our compensation refreshment vouchers on beer, got drunk, and eventually left the plane feeling hazy in a totally unknown place with no-one to meet us or help us get to the meal. We set about trying to find our hostel but the directions that they gave us were extremely poor, so we ambled about looking like lost tourists with a bad map. Seeing our obvious confusion, a rather odd gentleman who smelt of weed asked us if we needed directions, but rather than pointing us in the right direction and carrying on, he walked with us and talked to us. At first I thought he was just being friendly, but it rapidly became obvious that he expected money. Eventually we convinced him that we only had English money and pressed a two pound coin into his hand to get rid of him. We took a long detour before turning around, for he had led us right past our hostel and to the other end of the street. We checked in, headed out, met up with the others, and sat in a bar for the evening drinking beer out of very small glasses.

Following on from last entry...

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 15:11:25 +0000

Today, while we were waiting for our presentations to begin, two people opened the door to the room we were in, whispered to each other, pointed at me, whispered some more, and then closed the door.

My Last Exam Experience

Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:42:21 +0000

Last Friday I faced the final exam of my university career. It was the kind of exam that creeps up on you, hiding in the shadows until a week before it happens and then revealing itself in all of it’s 60%-of-a-double-module glory. I was prepared in the way students often are: as long as three of the four questions I had revised for came up I would be fine. This, however, was my final exam, I had nothing to fear. Even if it was the worst I ever had to sit, it would be the last I’d ever sit. I was invincible. That’s what I kept telling myself. Everything was going to be fine.