Baa, Humbug

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. This has been down to me not having any 'me' time. Why?? I've been busy with work, putting together a special video for the school which will be entered into a national competition (I've done it for the past two years and both entries came 2nd place in the whole country!)

Anyway, as you can see from the picture, we have decided to put our Christmas tree up, much to the delight of Kieran. I've never been a festive person - infact, I cant stand this time of year. For me, its a very depressing period (not forgetting to mention how much I feel Christmas has become more commercialized). Infact, if it wasn't for Kieran, I doubt I'd even bother with it. I mean, if there is something that myself or Michelle wants to get during the year, we will get it - we wont wait until Christmas - I mean, whats the point?

Still, it's all about Kieran. Thats what I keep saying to myself. Its important that he enjoys it, and that has a great time! We've already done the Christmas shopping, and I think Kieran is going to be pleasantly surprised with what he gets on the 25th.

OH CRAP!!!!!!! Don't forget to backup

As a Network Manager, I am always telling the teachers and staff at school to make regular backups of the work they bring into school from home on a USB flash drive. Well, I should listen to my own advice because one of the worst things possible happened last week - 1 of 3 hard-drives in my home computer packed up, causing me to lose over 20Gb of MP3's, and over 10Gb of pictures (including personal pictures such as our Wedding day, honeymoon, and Kieran's birth pictures).

Fortunatly I did backup my music collection in July on one of the servers at the school, so I have only lost a couple of albums (which I am sure can be downloaded again if I can be bothered to look for them), but the pictures are a different story. After frantically searching through all my old backup DVD's in our bedroom, Michelle did find a backup that I made in mid 2006. Thankfully, I was able to restore the Wedding, Honeymoon and Kieran pictures, but it does mean that I have lost all pictures that I took between July 2006 and November 2007 - including last Christmas, and Kieran's 2nd birthday photos. Bugger!

Suffice to say, I am now backing all my data up - The original copies on my desktop PC, one backup on an external drive used only for backup purposes, and a copy on each of my 2 laptops.

So there you go.... A message to everyone - REMEMBER TO BACKUP YOUR VALUABLE DATA.

Unfinished Business

I've been going through my harddrive these past couple of days deleting old stuff that has basically been using up valuable megabytes, and I found a couple of things that I thought I would share with you :- A couple of unfinished games that I'd been working on.....

In an attempt to get back into game design, a couple of years ago I started work on a remake of an old Commodore Plus 4 game called "Treasure Island". I got quite far in the actual development of the game (the entire map, the sprites, tiles, collisions, enemies, coding), but for some reason I just gave up - actually, I think it was when we had Kieran, and I just didn't have the time to work on it.

Well, I figured I'd upload the game AS IT IS for all of you to see. I doubt anyone will find it interesting except those who perhaps had the original game. You can wander around the entire island, and a few baddies are present at the start of the game (including some big blue trigger objects that would be invisible in the finished game but are visible in this release for debugging purposes). I WILL finish it oneday as I got so far with it and it would seem such a waste not to complete it. One of the many things that I liked about my remake was that the landscape is completely made up from tiles, therefore it would be extremely easy to make different island layouts (perhaps even include an Island Level Editor at some point) - but in this version you just get the map that was in the original game. Anyway, enough of my waffling on about it..... Take a look at the screenshots below to compare my version with the original, and when you are ready CLICK HERE to download Treasure Island

And when you've finished that one, try out another game that I started but never got round to finishing....

"LANDER". Yep, its such an original idea this one.... Guide your spaceship across a rocky landscape and land it softly on the landing pad. (Hmmmmm, why hasn't anyone else thought of that one?) It was my attempt at recreating a typical 'Mastertronic" style 1.99 game from the 80's (remember those?)

Again.. don't expect a finished game....... I was working on this one about the same time as Treasure Island, and stopped work on it because I just didnt have the time to spend developing it. The first level is easy, but I'd like to see anyone try and finish the second level!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can download it .

My first (and probably only) Musical Monday!

I just had to post this since Dan over at http://www.0ddness.co.uk/ posted the fantastic "Star Trekkin" as the choice for his Musical Monday.

I present to you my choice - Raumshiff Edelweiss by Edelweiss (an Austrian Electronica/Dance group) from the the early 90's. I remember first hearing this on MTV when Star Trek Generations was just coming out in the cinema... Ijust had to get myself a copy soon-after!!!

The Star Trek theme with a good thumping beat... It has never sounded so good.....

Great stuff!! If you like it, I'd check out some of their other stuff as well. They did a great song called

"Bring me Edelweiss" - <---- Click the link!!

...and yes, they are on my current MP3 playlist!!!!!!!!!

Star Trek XI - and so it begins.........

I need to get this off my chest..... so here goes.....

With filming of the new movie starting last Wednesday, and with all the talk about the new Star Trek movie all over the web, some saying how bad it's going to be, others saying its going to wonderful, and others saying to just wait and see until it comes out, I just want to say that I loved the original series. I loved the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and enjoyed Voyager. I even found Enterprise an enjoyable series. I like Star Trek. I like to think of myself as a true fan (something Michelle and Kieran have to put up with with amazing dedication!!!!). I don't let it take over my life, but I am just so pleased that they are even actually making a movie.

I hear from so called 'true fans' that Star Trek is about going forward and not backwards and that they shouldn't be doing this movie in Kirk's era and stick with the Next Generation or a new crew in the Next Gen era. What made Star Trek so special were the stories and how they managed to show current events within an exciting sci-fi format - I loved the drama, the action and the fantastic characters that populated this wonderful universe that Gene Roddenberry created, no matter what century they were in, whether it was the 22nd, 23rd or 24th. There are so many stories that still need to be told in the TOS era. Afterall, why are all of those web-based fan movies like Starship Exeter and New Voyages so popular?

As much as I'll miss William Shatner and the gang in the new movie, at the end of the day these actors can't live forever. For Star Trek to survive and last another 40 odd years it needs film-makers like J.J. Abrams and his team to do radical things like this. Good luck to them.

I'm going to remain optimistic about this movie. I haven't been this excited about a Star Trek movie since Star Trek VI : The Undiscovered Country back in 1991/92, and eagerly look forward to any news and gossip that comes out with each passing day up until the film opens on Christmas Day, 2008. I'm sure that they can pull this off. I just dont understand why there are so many people who feel that the film will suck when they don't even know what its going to be about. I see and hear rumours all over the internet about possible storylines, but these are just rumours.

There will always be those individuals who think Star Trek is for geeks, and that all Star Trek fans are single men, sad nerds with no life - Hey.... I'm married to a wonderful, gorgeous woman, I have a lovely son and have a wonderful job and most of all - I'M HAPPY!!! - that doesn't sound too sad to you does it?

Anyway, back onto the subject at hand.... Star Trek has always been about showing an optimistic view of the future. Come on, lets be optimistic about this film... You may all be surprised.

Oh, by the way - In case you don't know, my favourite Star Trek was the original series.... and I am more than happy that although the actors will be different, I'll be able to see my favourite crew do one more adventure on the big screen.

Oh.. and incase you're interested..... Here's the cast!!!!

Chris Pine (Kirk), Zachery Quinto (Spock), Leonard Nimoy (Old Spock), Karl Urban (McCoy), Simon Pegg (Scotty), John Cho (Sulu), Anton Yelchin (Chekov), Zoe Saldana (Uhura)

I hear you knocking..........

Uh oh... Its that dreaded time of year again - Halloween! I hate it. So far we've had none of the little s**ts knocking on our door yet - That might have something to do with the big sign that I have attached to our front door telling people to (basically) piss off and not knock!!

Anyway, I've been busy working on another 3D render - Here's an early shot. Its not quite finished yet, but it's coming along rather nicely. I still need to finalise the lighting and add some furniture and things just to spruce it up a little bit.

And finally... Many years ago (1999 or 2000 I think), I watched a really good program on Channel 4 called Spaced. I usually hate sitcoms, but this show was different. I loved all the references to Sci-Fi, computer games etc. Not only that but it also stars one of my favourite actors, the fantastic Simon Pegg (who just so happens to be Star Trek's new Mr Scott in the forthcoming Star Trek movie). Anyway, I decided a couple of days ago to order the complete boxset from Amazon and it arrived in the post this morning. Now I can't wait until the weekend when I will be able to sit down and watch every episode in one sitting..... Yeah... I'm sad I know!!

One last thing before I go.... Here's a nice panoramic image that I took with my camera for you to admire. I took when we visited Essex last week.