Sunday 21 January 2007

life is a game we play...

Evening.

I'm just back in from a lovely weekend in London. I'd post up some pictures of the gathering of the blogging tribes at the Game On Exhibition at the Science Museum... but sadly my camera appears to have malfunctioned (and I had some brilliant pictures of Princes Street Mews, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and of the Zetland Arms to show to Des and the rest of the posse of being 17).

Luckily though, lots of other people took lots of photos, and you can see some of them here.

It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon, so a big shout out to the blogging massif - Mr. Mark Reed (together with Ellen and Mr. X), Lordy B, Hen, Pynchon (and Lorraine), Graham and Stef. It was fun and we should do something like it again soon.

After everyone else had drifted inexorably back towards their computers, C, Hen, Bargs and I headed out for moules, frites and lots of Belgian Beer at Belgos. Then today, after kissing C. goodbye as she made her way to Heathrow, Finland and the start of her working week, I spent a happy few hours pottering about the West End, eating Square Pies and browsing the Apple Store with two of the loveliest people in the world.

What a great weekend.

---

2 other things to report:

1) The Brit Award nominations for this year were announced last week. Brilliant music blog, The Auditorium, is playing a little predictions game. Make your way over there now and put up your guesses for the eventual winners....

2) For some reason, I find myself slightly intimidated by many of the more popular or famous blogs... in the main they are famous because they are funny, well-written and all of that... but I still labour under some kind ill-thought through inferiority complex about them. Take those "post of the week" type things you sometimes see around the place: they are all about the same people nominating the same old blogs, aren't they?

But are they?

I've just volunteered to form a part of the judging panel for the re-launched Post of the Week blog. It's pretty simple really --- anyone can nominate any post, and a rotating panel of judges will read them all and vote. I won't be judging every week, but I will be doing my utmost to find some stuff worth nominating, and I urge you to do the same.... You lot write pretty well, so I'm hopeful at finding some good raw material for nomination every week. I hope you'll do the same.

---

Aw crap... I look up from this to see that I'm watching bloody Big Brother again! Gah!

6 comments:

  1. I missed moules and frites and square pies? Arse!

    I'll have to make sure Sherry isn't working next time we meet up so I can stay out longer!

    Was good to finally meet you all although a little intimidating as you'd all pretty much met each other before. Good job you're all lovely people really :-)

    ---------------

    My word verification thingy is stknttp ?! Is that some new type of M-B personality type just for you, ST? I wonder what K stands for...

    ReplyDelete
  2. A bit late for the Game On Exhibition aren't we? It was posted in October!

    Anyway, what was the favourite game of the exhibition for you and the others?

    Wish I was still in London, I would have jumped to meet up too...instead of spending 14 hours playing World of Warcraft's expansion, The Burning Crusade...

    Honest...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think the best game I played was probably the classic star wars arcade game (the one where you sit down and control multiple assaults on the Death Star). I was also reminded how rubbish I was at asteroids (and that you should just stay still – if you use the thrusters, then you are doomed). The best game I didn’t play was the Guitar Hero game for the PS2 – the one where you have a guitar and have to play along to the likes of “more than a feeling” and “smoke on the water” and stuff. I also had a go on things like centipede, space invaders, ISS, some golf game, pong, donkey kong…. It was a great exhibition, and it would have been even better if you didn’t have to spend all the time jockeying with packs of kids and older geeks who were hogging all the good games!

    ST

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Game On Exhibition did appear before in 2002, at the Barbican Centre. That time, there were more arcade type games and less console based games but there were less people jockeying to get a spot on the great games. That time I spent around an hour in one corner of the exhibition playing Tron.

    This time in October, I guess it was much more popular as it was based at the Science Museum.

    It's a pity because there are some really great retro games there worth looking into but after 2 hours in an area full of hot people all trying to queue up for their spot, I couldn't hack it.

    My favourites are, of course, Tron, Tempest, Galaga and Galaxian.

    ReplyDelete
  5. If Post of the Week ends up merely bigging up the same old blogs that always get bigged up, then it will have failed. If it draws attention to some great content that people might otherwise have missed, then it will have succeeded...

    ReplyDelete
  6. mike - some of those blogs that get bigged up tend to get bigged up because they are good, to be fair! But I agree... I'm hoping to discover loads of great writing, ideally some from just off the beaten track.

    ST

    ReplyDelete