Officially speaking the last activity I had on these forums was in February 2015, five months ago. This activity coincided with a life changing event for me, in the form of a new job - the starting rung on a career - an opportunity as a designer at a AAA game studio, one which I won't name here to prevent any unfortunate paper trails - however I have a feeling a fair proportion of you already know. This exciting opportunity had the drawback of having to move to what is technically a different country - where I find the people peculiar and the language strange. England is like that.

I'm in two minds about whether or not my absence from a forum that has had something of a lasting impact on my life is excusable or not. For the most part I've managed to remain in contact with many of the same people that I had been in contact with on these very forums through other aspects of the Internet. And the place has been in a slightly inactive state. On the other hand if it wasn't for these forums it is unlikely that my career path would have had the same trajectory, I wouldn't have met a lot of lovely people, and I likely wouldn't waste hours a week playing Final Fantasy XIV - at the very least not with the same people since this site was the sole deciding factor as to which server I was going to play on.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm back. Perhaps. I'll try to stay back, and I hope that me being back has a positive impact on the forums. All I can really ask is that I'll be accepted back and find a reason to stay beyond familiarity. In a good way. Not in the negative way. Nope.

It's becoming a habit of mine to take a relatively simple topic and stretch it out into several pages of writing that is of no interest to other people. This is why I will make an excellent academic.

Trailed thought. Let me start over.

It's becoming a habit of mine to take the time during the winter holidays to reflect upon the year that was, and unless I'm mistaken about my commitment to such a process this will be the seventh time I do so on TFF, to coincide with my eighth anniversary as a user this coming January (which is a sad, sad 'achievement').

It's been a hectic year. Perhaps even more so than 2012; which as you may remember featured the highlights of a trip to Tunisia and a stabbing. Consequently I won the award for Most Interesting Journal that year - well in my head anyway, since the awards didn't happen that year.

I had a lot of firsts this year, my first permanent (by which I mean a non-temporary contract) job at the Co-Op was a wonderful experience. Being the guy who who has to deny the potentially underage the opportunity to purchase alcohol reinforced the my belief that every adult should be forced to participate in National Service. I don't mean in the army (of course I don't - I'm an insufferable bleeding heart liberal), I mean at a cash register. It was most certainly a learning experience - I encountered the types of people I hadn't encountered since High School but this time in adult form. This is obviously not something I'm saying to sound high-and-mighty, but it was a very strange and stark reminder that there are people who are genuinely in a lot of financial and domestic trouble even within this country in this day and age - and it is very strange how easy it is for our individual circumstances to isolate us from this reality. As a university student in Glasgow's city centre I very rarely was exposed to people who survived on job seeker's allowance or minimum wage. And it seems like a strange thing to say, but I almost sympathise with the likes of David Cameron - a person who wouldn't know the price difference between Rizla and Swan filters even if it paraded in front of him naked. The most conservative of politicians seem to act out of an ignorance that is very difficult to escape from and is often completely unrealised.

I also experienced my first workshopping session and my first formal real-world conditioned testing of a personal hypothesis in an academic setting. Followed by my first university graduation (incidentally with a first class degree) - the first because of my acceptance onto the prestigious MProf programme at the University of Abertay Dundee, the first university in the world that offered any formal training in games development.

And now I've faced my first semester of a Masters programme, and my first experience of life in Scotland as a semi-independent adult. I have to say that this' whole work-life balance thing is a lot more difficult than it appears. Game development is very much not a nine-to-five industry; at least in the form of the Masters course and through Crytek's infamous 'Crunch Dinner' tweet - and I'm deeply afraid it could become worse since I've most certainly heard enough horror stories from the industry expert lecturers, mentors, and visitors.

My Christmas workload also seems to be quite heavy and I've a lot to do before the 13th of January, but being at home rather than being at uni has a serious impact on my working practices since the monitor on my laptop is teeny in comparison to the much more normally sized monitors at the uni. I've to finish my 3D Modelling & Texture work (a subject completely new to me), write the proposal for an innovation project, develop a presentation on my main project, complete two reflective essays, and organise the submission of my main project.

The worst part is that this hasn't been an example of poor time management, quite a few of these submissions only appeared and were clarified within the last few days. They ain't making it easy for me.

Well I guess it was yesterday. I did manage to say thanksgiving to an actual American though. He knows who he is.

Black Friday has always been a fascinating topic of conversation in the UK, since its slowly becoming an imported tradition. As far as I can tell Black Friday sales only began a few years ago - at least online - with Amazon selling Wiis and Xbox 360s for Ł50: a pretty amazing bargain even by today's standards.

This is the first year I've seen (or to better put it, noticed) any sort of in-store Black Friday promotions. ASDA (aka Walmart UK), Tesco, and Argos all seem to have sales of some description. But to be perfectly frank with you, most of the deals they are advertising are shit.

-
I was going to write more, but I do not know when you are reading this but a police helicopter has just crashed into a pub in Glasgow. The pub is in the city centre by the riverside and is normally full to the brim on a Friday night.

Keep these people in your prayers, because this could be anything - there is one police helicopter in Scotland and it has crashed into a full pub on a Friday night. I don't think anyone I know is there but there is every possibility they may have been, at present we do not know how many people have been injured or killed.

August. Fecking August was the last time I updated.

Of all people it was Loco who made me realise this by asking about my lack of logging into FFXIV. Presumably he is injured and has run out of people to contact. :P

Since my last posts, my situation has changed a fair bit. I live in the city now in the student accommodation I mentioned before, and am adjusting to life as a non-commuting student. Dundee, although small, is fairly pleasant.

Also they have this:



The Masters is going fairly well, and sometimes fairly unwell. I am trying to adjust to the systems in place at the university but it is quite different from my undergrad stuff and I even keep typing in my old username. I also feel a little like an outsider since most of the course is made up of graduates from the university, but hopefully that will dissipate at some point.

The workload is pretty hectic, aside from the regular modules you would expect from a Masters, there is the additional challenge of game development with a simulated client (people client, not computing client), and the language, deliverables, and conduct is very different from the academic style I was used to. Being a designer is apparently more about client interaction that I previously thought and that's a challenge I'm going to have to overcome, since it's painfully obvious that I am painfully shy.

At the minute we're also experiencing 'crunch time', brought on by a mistake made by our Producer. We actually have half as much time to complete twice as much work as we were expecting. Just like real life I guess. The programmer is bearing the brunt of the work but I have to make a lot of decisions that could destroy the work we've done so far and make it an unentertaining slog - which it may already well be, but making it worse would not help.

It's funny that there should be more to this post than there is, but I guess that's a result of being burned out. I should really write tomorrow or the next day as well since I'm supposed to be keeping an Innovation blog, so the practice could really help me.

I got an email from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) today reminding me that November is about to start. The very thought of me making it through the 'required' 1300 words a day right now was very amusing.

One of the major benefits of Square Enix being a Japanese country is that all of the testing periods, and early access beginnings, and emergency down-period maintenance in Final Fantasy XIV have been happening at ideal times for European players. The Japanese 6pm start time has translated nicely into 10am start times in the UK.

For some strange reason however, the Early Access period which began yesterday morning has so far been afflicted by much more frequent downtime and maintenance breaks than ever occurred in the last two Beta phases. There has of course been much discussion across the Internet as to whether or not Square are really ready to launch A Realm Reborn, since crucial gameplay elements keep getting hit by overuse.

This is absolutely nothing in comparison to Diablo and Simcity so far. And hopefully come the official beginning of the game there will be no serious issues. The game so far is incredibly busy despite technically being pre-release - so at the minute there does not seem to be any gap in player numbers.

Being able to play on either the Japanese or NorthAmerican/European servers also means you get a tiny insight into the culture of the players. The NA/EU servers are filled with players shouting out things across the entire region, whereas the Japanese servers are much more reserved and quiet, without people having conversations across the country. And mostly trolling each other.

I have to go to work, so this is a blog post cut short. Eh.

"Good morning early access, it's been too long"

I realise that there have been multiple occasions within the recent few blog posts that I've left things unclarified or hinted at things to discuss within the future. Unfortunately my memory is not great - as I'm sure I've said a million times.

I've been accepted to study my Masters and at the minute I'm in the dreaded money management aspect of the process. Unfortunately it is next to impossible to get graduate funding in the UK and even scholarships and loans are scarce. I've explained before that undergraduate degrees have always been free in Scotland to Scottish and EU students (unfortunately this does not expand to English, Welsh, and Northern Irish students) which is a truly wonderful thing and should be a policy implemented the world-over. Sadly this privilege does not expand to postgraduate degrees.

That's why it's wonderful that the government has agreed to offer a scholarship to Scottish/EU students on this particular course. I'm saving myself Ł3400 on tuition, half of which is to be paid by the uni and half by the gov. The major issue with money does not come from that - but rather with the cost of living.

You see, once again Scotland is different in that regard when compared to England and generally the rest of the world. In Scotland it is very common to attend a university based on location, with commuting being the most common practice and the key reason as to why I chose to attend the university I did. In fat the university offering the Masters was my first choice but I was put off by the fact that it would involve moving across the country to live alone at 17. At that point I had barely ridden a train without my parents (which is sad, but that's what happens when you don't really need to do so). Anyway to summarise, moving away to uni is uncommon for home students in Scotland.

The accommodation looks set to cost me around Ł5500 for the entire year, or about Ł110 a week (or $170 US). It honestly seems quite expensive for an ensuite room but utilities, broadband, shared kitchen and lounge are all included so maybe it's not that bad? I honestly have no idea, and have never rented in the English speaking world. Tunis was 25DT a week for a room, shared bathroom and kitchen, including electricity and wireless Internet - but that was like 1/3 of my pay a month, so God knows.

I really hope I can find a job in Dundee.

Speaking of Tunis. Eid Mubarak! It's like Muslim Christmas. But obviously without Christ.

I have the strangest feeling that I may have slightly overplayed the beta for FFXIV: ARR although I only reached the end-content segment of the beta last night, which also served as the last time I will ever access to my in-game character as he is. Seeing the achievements of other players and even other members of this very forum slightly emphasises the fact that while I probably did better than average the highest level I achieved was 22. The game was quite fun for me though.

This is perhaps the first time I've ever really been able to play a game properly socially even though the limitations of a USB keyboard in combination with playing on the PS3 did somewhat limit communication. Despite now being a professional game designer (in a manner of speaking), I still find that my interests in games remains slightly niche even among my contemporaries - plus I still suck at the social thing anyway. I partied up with some TFFers during the beta, and healed with the semi-regularity that was expected from me which I think must make me a good team player. Also no screenshots because it doesn't work on the PS3 yet. Shamefully.

For some reason I feel like my English has been slipping as of late, and reading the previous paragraphs seem to be confirming this. This may be because of my lack of writing since the end of the last semester, and the nigh-ESL situation at my weekend job. It's jarring, given that this time last year I was striving for Queen's English in Tunisia in an effort to be understood through my accent - which although soft, seems to confuse foreigners, and make iteration necessary for individuals from places as far afield as Plymouth*. Last week my sister commented that I sounded very Scottish. I think that thanks to all of the episodes of Buffy and Storage Wars she's been watching, and her recent trip to Germany may have caused this.

Anyway onto the title of today's blog.

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: The police who investigate crime, and the Procurator Fiscals who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories."


Dun-dun

For the second time, I have been selected for jury duty, and this time I couldn't come up with an adequate excuse to get out of it (I'm not sure the last time was too adequate, but I have yet to be arrested for it so, meh). Today was the first morning of a week of making my way to Sheriff Court <img src="a few blog posts ago">, and although I entered the court feeling a bit apprehensive about the entire situation after going I again feel a twinge of excitement. Today was the first time I've ever stepped inside a court room or even a court house, and the first thing you notice when you enter a Scottish court is that the media which we all have instant and constant access to in the modern day world doesn't really serve as a great font of information on the Scottish court system. Sure, you can use Wikipedia and other more academic sources to study the theory of Scottish trials - but that's about it. Despite the above court there has never been a Scottish version of Law & Order, and although a murder trial was recently aired on television (first time ever?) I missed it. Simply put, the Scottish people - even the well-educated and well-read - have a general ignorance of the court system unless they have faced it personally. Fifteen jurors, three possible outcomes, and a court layout that vaguely resembles a board meeting. I think if I'm chosen for service I'll have to write a lot about it.

Unfortunately, I wasn't chosen today - because there was no trial today due to unforeseen circumstances that cannot be publicly divulged. In this case, I too am a member of the public, and do not know these circumstances. There will also be no trial tomorrow, and I am not required to attend - thank you prerecorded message for saving me from an early morning. But on Wednesday. I am going to juror the shit out of whatever case it is, if I get picked. I wanna know what a trial looks like damnit. I shouldn't know more about American and English trials than Scottish trials⁺.


"How now, brown cow?"
*The joke here - which I feel is necessary to explain since I'm currently in that state of tiredness where I feel a wee bit drunk - is that Plymouth is in England.
+Or for that matter, Japanese court cases thanks to the vague interpretations provided by the Ace Attorney series. Yes - pretend Japanese court is better known to me than real Scottish court.

Well look who's got a break to type some stuff so that people who vaguely care can read about it.

Me.

I've had a lot of things happen to me since February, and problematically my short memory span means that I'll forget to mention half of them here and perhaps do so at a later date - with a significant amount of the remaining memories being forgotten to time itself.

Firstly and foremostly, I completed my Honours Project, entitled 'An Investigation into the Effectiveness of Co-Designed Teaching Games versus Traditional Learning Games' (or something like that, I've not had to write out the full title a lot) - visited the local primary school used them as guinea pigs, plagiarised their ideas and made a game which they enjoyed despite the shoddy production values and the fact that it was just one big evil experiment. My research actually delivered a result contrary to the research of just about everyone else researching the same subject so I either did something wrong or did something VERY right. To be fair, I've never actually seen research in the exact same scope and field as to what I did so technically I could have just done something scientific - but I am a self-deprecating person so I'm going to assume I fluked it.

I panicked quite a lot around the time to submission since I still had a lot of work to do in the week leading up to hand-in, plus two additional presentations to prepare for: a presentation of the software, and a traditional conference-style poster presentation.

If you are interested, the software presentation went so much better than expected that I nearly cried coming out of it, it was on the same day as my only exam of the semester and I was incredibly nervous since it was to be presented to both my sometimes-critical project supervisor, and the 'hard-ass' project coordinator for the year. They were surprisingly amazed that I'd managed to make anything half-way competent since technically speaking there were very few programming-related classes on the course, the fact that I had chosen a Develop-and-Test project over an Experimental project was an even bigger surprise since there were programmers who had specifically avoided this type of project because it required coding.

The poster presentation was a much more awkward event. The presentation was only in front of two active listeners, someone from the department and someone from outwith the department. Ironically the person from in-department was also one of the lecturers I was quite pally with and had referenced within the text of the project. He knew the material well and questioned in a quite a harsh way, as you do. Arse.

Consequently when I graduate, I will no longer be Mr. Aerif.

I will be Mr. Aerif BSc (Hons) 1st Class.

Which is pretty damn wonderful. To translate that into American (or rather Latin) would probably be Summa Cum Laude. Obviously I'm quite pleased, and apparently this is an academic first for the university, the course has been available for nearly 10 years and this is the first time someone has achieved this type of Honours. In addition to this I'm also supposed to be receiving additional marks of merit from the University that technically I can't talk about until I'm awarded them.

Oh and Richard Lemarchand (lead game designer of the Uncharted series, and great inspiration to me) will be at the graduation ceremony to receive an Honorary Doctorate. He's also giving a lecture the day before, which I'm attending.

I hold a conditional offer to a Masters course which will feature zero tuition fees, and have technically met the condition. So I may also be doing a Masters next year.

Studying pays off kids. Well, so far.

Papa Benny is retiring, the first Pope to do so in 598 years. The BBC described him as a 'filler-Pope' after John Paul II, which is sort of unkind in a truthful way - in reality His Holiness didn't do anything all that memorable, this early retirement will likely be the most memorable part of his Papacy. Hopefully this will mean that the College of Cardinals will recognise that voting for an elderly Pope is a bad idea, we'll get a young Pope - he may even be liberal enough to make some meaningful changes to help modernise the Church in a way, such as marriage for the Clergy. Is a change like that a good thing or a bad thing, though? It is believed by some that the liberalisation of the Church of England and the Church of Scotland has led to the decline in congregation. Catholicism remains strong without this liberalisation, and presumably would be left unchanged or strengthened if Priests could marry - I never considered being a Priest due to the marriage laws, but that could change.

Yesterday I watched the BBC's 1954 television film 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', it was okay. the ending of that book was always a little foggy to me, and the film didn't really help it. I just listened to a radio-play version of it on the BBC, which was just recently created and had to tune out of it. Hopefully when I find the 1984 version it will be better, because I haven't enjoyed any of the other adaptations.

I finally got hired for my first 'permanent' job last Monday, I'll be working 8 hours a week at a local small supermarket (the Co-Op, for those Brits aware of it). The pay's okay, and the hours are pretty great for a student. If I'm forced to go into independent development upon graduation then this will definitely help. A job's a job.

This is the UK from the space, back when it was snowy. If you read Gemma's blog you'd know it was snowy. Or if you read the British news. Or if you are a resident of the United Kingdom.

I've received all of my results for the previous semester, and am quite pleased. You may recall (or not, I don't remember if I posted it), that I put in an almost excessive amount of effort into my Web Development module and ended up neglecting my Game Design module to such an extent that I'd done practically nothing by the week of the deadline. Well apparently the results didn't see fit to reflect that. Despite the WebDev module being a 3rd year module and presumably easier than the GameDesign module, I scored 6% higher in the latter. 6% isn't a big deal except that was the difference between a first-class mark and an upper-second mark. Ach well. It's still quite good.

Sadly today was also the first time I've weighed myself since before Christmas. And the news is grim. I haven't gained any weight.

I don't want to get fat or anything, but I do want to be a little bit sturdier. I now weigh less than my three younger sisters and have a BMI of around 16.5. Stray gusts of wind make me stumble backwards sometimes. I'm not interested in forcing myself to gain weight by taking up a high-calorie diet or anything like that, but it would be nice if I were to just gain a little bit of weight without having to have a dramatic change in my lifestyle. No skin off my back if I don't gain any weight though. At least I've gained some of the weight I lost in Tunisia back.

Anyway, I just want to state that I am utterly disgusted and appalled by the amount of procrastination I am doing right now. Creating a blog entry to avoid working on the report due for Friday? Absolutely f***ing disgusting.

---

Leaving you with an almost quote from Monday's 'Mrs Brown's Boys', a brilliant Scottish/Irish sitcom with no fourth wall, or self-censorship:

Buster: I thought I'd get Dermot a new smart phone
Mrs Brown: Why is there black tape on the box?
Buster: BBC License policy, you can't show the brand
Mrs Brown: Well that seems a bit pointless, anyone can tell from the box that it's an iPhone 4s.

Seven years ago I somehow found this site. And seven years, here I still am. Well, seven years and fourteen days. But who's counting? Certainly not me.

I was a decidedly average writer back then, and I know this because my first post on this forum wasn't in the Member Lounge to say 'Hello, world', it was in the now neglected RP forum. I could stand to be more pro-active and restore the RP forum but the problem is it's not really something I can do by myself. I've taken in part in a few projects before, some in the public eye and others in the private, sheltered-away-only-visible-to-two-members-and-admins section of the forum. But everything just sort of falls apart unless you have dedication from all participants - and that's something that just doesn't happen all that often on the Internet, though to be fair the real world has a high project-failure ratio as well.

But the quality of my writing has improved since then, I completed NaNoWriMo in 2011 (or 10?), and was a regular contributor to my university magazine last year. This year has been slower with Tunisia getting in the way of a few things, and a bit of unfortunate editing on my first article of the year has made me a little bit bitter concerning the university magazine. I do hope to write something for the next issue though, if possible.

The event I'd like to write about is the same I covered last year while participating, Scottish Game Jam (#sgj13). This year I don't think I have the energy to enter as a full participant, but I already have a ticket, so I'm sure covering the event internally will be fine instead. Last year the event lasted closer to 60 hours than 48, so I very much doubt I'll be spending all my weekend there. Glasgow is freezing.

On second thoughts, I don't think I can do it. Too much work for the project. I really really don't like deadlines. Academia would be better if it wasn't for deadlines.

It is worth mentioning that for those not aware of where that quote comes from, this is not a plea for help for a potentially suicidal individual. By rights it is the admission of a dying person. Although that is something that does not describe me either. Now, we shouldn't rule out the possibility of me dying within the next few days - because that's silly. But this whole paragraph was sort of silly to begin with.

I haven't posted in this blog for a while, mostly because I was admittedly in a state of recovery. This Christmas season was literally the first time I've been free to relax at home since last Christmas, and since I'm now more of a casual observer on these forums now than a majorly active participant, updating this blog wasn't much of a priority. In truth, I've spent a lot of my free time gaming - which is a good thing too, since an actor should watch films, and an author should read books. The inspiration I've gathered during my time off will one day be used productively assuming I remember ideas generated, and I'm sure my body is grateful for the break.

Unfortunately, I've still got a major research project to undertake, and while I'm sure I'll enjoy doing it - it is a lot of bother. I have been granted my ethical approval from the university to involve human test subjects, and have been granted disclosure from the government (Ł25 for a stupid piece of paper that says I have no convictions or cautions - a crime in itself). At this point I just have to recruit the test subjects and execute the main point of the project. But I have to balance this with job-hunting, report writing, and general living. This could be the end of me -_-.

In the next section, I talk at length about Pokémon, omit this section from your reading if you so choose.

---

I recently purchased a pre-owned copy of Pokémon White 2, to compliment "Naomi"'s copy of Black 2, and have suddenly rekindled my childhood obsession with the franchise. Truthfully, we're not very good at it yet, but we plan on beginning to compete professionally, and in understanding that I've quickly mastered the RNG system (in about 2 days, no less :P). RNG abuse is seen by many as being an illegitimate method of playing and competing, but the problem is that it is not technically a form of cheating, since there is no external save or game-editing involved within the process, and the professionals all do it - making it a necessity in order to even have a chance.

For those of you not in the know, RNG abuse is the process of forcing the game's random elements to conform to your will by understanding game logic. Computers as we know them are not able to generate a completely random number, and in truth psychologists will probably tell you that humans are the same, and so will statisticians. Truly random numbers don't seem to exist, and for those in the know this can be manipulated. The statistic of only 1/9000 Pokémon being shiny is true in layman's terms, but everything with Pokémon games is pre-determined (albeit 'randomly'), and triggering an action on a precise date and time will always result in the same reaction. With this knowledge you can manipulate the reaction.

Using these methods has yet to garner me a perfect Pokémon - because in truth this requires generations of precise breeding coupled with RNG abuse. But it has got me a shiny Feebas and shiny Eevee.

The day my copy of White 2 arrived, was also the day that, at 11am, Pikachu appeared on top of the Eiffel Tower (although I kept thinking it was Tokyo Tower, and jokingly Blackpool Tower, even after it zoomed out of Europe). I was disappointed that the announcement concerned the launch of a Generation VI on the 3DS, as I was really opening for an Emerald remake for the DS. Hoenn was without a doubt the most beautiful and memorable region of the Pokémon world.

Kanto has a map that I can draw on demand (not showing Digglet cave...):

Indigo	Pewter	-	(Mt Moon)	-	Cerulean	-	(Rock Tunnel)
|	|				|		|
(Victory Rd.)	|		Celadon	-	Saffron	-	Lavender
|	|		|		|		|
L	Viridian		|		Vermilion	-	J|
	|		|		|		|
	Pallet		L	-	Fuchsia	-	J
	|				|
	Cinnabar	-	(Seafoam)	-	J

Well it's easier with paper...

But anyway, from Kanto the most memorable landmarks are really only Lavender Tower and Silph Co.. Kanto in itself was not all that interesting in retrospect despite at least two cities representing Tokyo.

Johto had a few more memorable landmarks, and the chance to connect with Kanto. Generation II was a good generation for Pokémon.

But Hoenn... It had a volcano, a beach resort, ship-wrecks, contests, a space association, and a city which had to be dived to. Hoenn was beautiful and would have been even more so on the DS. Perhaps a 3DS remake will result in the most beautiful Pokémon game created.

In terms of Sinnoh and Unova... Sinnoh didn't really feel like it had much to offer, and in fact I'm struggling to think of any memorable architectual features. Unova has Castelia City, which actually feels like a city. So points go to Unova.

A lot of people are probably right in assuming that PokémonX and PokémonY will take place in a region based on France, or possibly more specifically Île-de-France (the region around Paris with a population of >10million). An unreasonable number of people are proposing it should be based around the entire continent of Europe. I would not be happy about this if it were to mean a region the same size or slightly larger than normal. Considering the last region was practically based on a single city, and the others on relatively small areas of Japan. A whole continent for a region? Insulting.

---

Last night, I went to see Les Misérables in the cinema, opening night in the UK. I was quite thoroughly impressed with how they managed to both adapt the musical to the big screen and throw in some continuity references with the original novel that will have gone over the heads of casual viewers and even those only familiar with the musical (such as the escape to the Parisian convent, and the Thénardiers sneakily giving away their son, Gavroche). Anne Hathaway's performance was actually all it was cracked up-to-be. She was pretty spectacular.

What I loved most about the film is the balance between the orchestral music and the singing. Every production of Les Mis I've ever seen has slipped up in that regard unfortunately. This is actually the first time I've been able to understand all of the lyrics, 'specially since 'Master of the House' normally sounds like 'Moster of thee howse' in the fake Cockney accents, Baron Cohen's "'Allo 'Allo" accent was a nice touch. The whole scene was fantastic, the Thénardiers put every thief that ever lived to shame, they were truly amazing pickpockets in this film.

So the fact that I'm posting should automatically make you think that I am in full coursework mode and procrastinating. Well haha, you'd be absolutely right. I suck with procrastination.

Right now I should be writing a report on an emotional-bonding-related board game and creating an educational website, but you know what, working towards deadlines that are less than 48 hours away is no fun. Typing what's on your mind is much more fun, and that's why I will never be a doctor.

I got an incredible 77% for my project proposal on the effects of co-design in educational gaming, which is frankly unprecedented judging by the sample proposals we were given to look at for guidance as to how the report should be structured. I am of course aware that this probably has little bearing on the final product, and all of that work has still to be done. But that was a pretty awesome mark. Almost double the lowest passing grade. I'm glad that sleepless week didn't count for nothing.

Unfortunately it seems that I won't be working for the lecturer, having received feedback that the skills she wanted aren't the skills that I have. I'll actually be surprised if she finds someone suitable for the position, since it turns out she also wanted someone incredibly competent with both 2D and 3D art, alongside being skilled in GUI creation, programming, and academic writing. She certainly asked the wrong class for applicants, considering how limited the skill-set of the average classmate of mine is - and I mean that in the kindest way possible - I am one of the few souls capable of using Unity3d competently, programming in C#, and as evidenced by the project proposal - academic writing.

She really made the wrong choice. :)

Anyway, another opportunity has appeared to me today. The university are looking for team-members for 'University Challenge'. I'll be trying out, although of course, there is no real way to know how well I'll do. 'University Challenge' is ridiculously difficult, and there does seem to be some favouritism towards the Oxbridge universities - not least because Cambridge and Oxford can have up to five teams representing their various 'colleges', whilst every other university in the country may only have a single team.


featuring Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, and Ben Elton

Just downright favouritism, that's what it is.

A few years ago I heard that some of the scummier British newspapers have a system of prioritising what tragic events to cover based on the race of victims, with one British person being worth so many Americans, worth so many Africans, so many Chinese etc., and this is something you almost take for granted since people, despite how unracist they may claim to be, do have a certain empathy for the people most similar to them. I got to witness this first hand in September whilst I was in Tunisia.

You may remember the controversy which arose over the apparently god-awful (no pun intended) anti-Muhammad and anti-Islamic film 'Innocence of Muslims' which resulted in protests all over the world. The most noticeable thing about these events was the great focus placed on the death of the American ambassador for Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, an unfortunate event but perhaps not the most tragic of events related to the riots, since at least 70 people were killed in relation to the reaction of the film - mostly Muslims.

Anyway the point I was making is that because of all of this coverage of the events in Benghazi, the events in other countries were almost ignored. In fact despite Tunisia before hit by the rage across the world, my family didn't hear about it until I told them. And 4 people died in Tunisia.

The remarkable thing about Tunisia is that the people are in general friendly, there are some complete arseholes - and customs that don't make sense to me - but at the same time there is a lot of people harbouring a burning and extravagent hate for the United States of America. Hate for Israel is pretty strong, but it's not something that was immediately noticeable. I have some Tunisians as Facebook friends, and have seen some pretty interesting posts that may give you some insight as to how America has made some people feel:

"Dear America,
Your 9/11 is our 24/7
- Palestine"

The 14th of September was the day before I left Tunisia (maybe I'll tell that story before - it nearly killed me as well) -

Oh wait, I just realised Tunisia nearly killed me like 4 times. Maybe I'll share the ones I haven't told before later.

Anyway...

The 14th of September was the day before I left Tunisia, and a day I had set aside to go shopping for some souvenirs. I took the TGM into the centre, and walked up Ave Habib Bourguiba towards the medina - having never been before. Sadly after walking towards through the massive medina (literaly the size of a small town, I got lost like twice) I realised that there was nothing really new and nothing worth buying as a souvenir - however I had a backup plan with souvenirs so it was fine. For some reason my trip to the medina felt strangely hostile, I was tripped up by someone at one point (whether it was an accident or not I don't know) and I'm remembering that I recieved a few angry looks and very few invitations to browse - although this may be a trik of my memory - I don't know.

Something that I didn't notice at the time of me leaving the medina was that a lot of shops were closed, almost randomly. I attributed it to being a Friday, but it wasn't something that I had noticed before.

My plan to find 'emergency souvenirs' as it where, involved heading to the Monoprix inside the shopping centre 'Central Parc', so I could buy a few cans of Harissa, and some Tunisian sweets to bring home. The sweets were sold loose and had to be weighed by a member of staff, who for some reason spoke to me in English even as I attempted French. It was weird. As I was about to finish up shopping a member of the staff approached me and said something which I didn't understand before pointing at her wrist, and as I made to tell her the time she somehow managed to get the point across to me that they were closing early (I don't remember how, maybe she said something in French that I actually understood for once), so I approached the checkouts and was moved over to the cosmetics counter to have my items (all food) rung up, noticing that the shutters to the entrance had already been brought down and that all of the staff were hurrying. I realised that something was seriously wrong but it wasn't until the cashier said something that sounded like 'Americizi' whilst laughing - presumably she thought I was an American and found this hilarious.

I left the supermarket and went up the escalators (the supermarket was on a basement level), and moved towards one of the exits, but the shutters were closed, as were the shutters on all exits. Some people in front of me where ushured out of the goods entrance so I followed them out to the street to find almost every shop closed and shuttered.

That's when I remembered what had happened in Libya, and felt quite scared, almost certain there had been some sort of terrorist action. God knows how much danger I was in at that time, but I couldn't be certain of anything, since people on the street seemed quite calm.

I took the TGM back as I would have anyway, and as we crossed the strip of land between the two lacs I saw a massive plume of black smoke that stretched out for miles. A lot of people were staring both at me and at the smoke (although in fairness people stared at me whenever I was without a tan), and there were a few people pointing and laughing at the smoke, obviously aware of what was going on. If your picturing arab-looking people wearing traditional Islamic clothes, you're wrong, these were people wearing jeans, shorts and the like.

When I got back and accessed the Internet I learned that the American embassy had been invaded by protesters and was on fire, as was an American school. Traffic had come to stand still as police took control of the roads. It was all pretty horrible, and I had planned to visit a café that evening since it had been the first place in Tunisia I had been to. The IAESTE representatives who visited that night told us not to go, because it would be too dangerous. There wasn't a curfew that night, but it was still a pretty horrible time.

I now realise that there wasn't much of a point in that story. But it's probably something I would have written in my journal thread if I hadn't needed to pack.

Yesterday I mentioned the posibilty of a job that could change my life, perhaps in a manner that may have been a little bit over the top. It may require a little bit of an explanation...

You see as a game designer I have become aware of the relative lack of job security within this industry for the majority of its employees. Don't get me wrong, normally once you are in, you are in. But companies don't last long in general. Whilst I personally hate the corporate machines that churn out carbon copy sequels once a year with a slight improvement in graphical prowess (I'm looking directly at you EA, you bastards) - to get a job there is incredibly safe, since EA isn't about to go bust. Not that all successful companies are cloning machines, there are of course big companies like Square-Enix and Naughty Dog who manage to remain successful without churning out duplicates - and companies like Rockstar North and Jagex (either of which I'd love to work with) who keep to a single series whilst having distinguishable titles; but I'm not sure how happy I would be in this sort of environment, and won't know for some time.

Last year, as you may know, I worked in the university as part of an initiative to help the transition from further education colleges to university, and provided 'expert knowledge' regarding the interpretation of coursework specifications and stuff like that. And I've got to say I really enjoyed it. Which is why I've been considering more and more the prospect of being an academic.

Three or four weeks ago, one of my lecturers (a woman who has repeatedly said that she only lectures because she has to to continue her research and detests doing it) advertised a position as a game designer for one of her projects to my class. Consequently I completed a CV, and brushed up my porfolio*, and got an interview. I feel that the interview could have gone better since I was so nervous, but her research assistant was impressed by the CV at the very least, and when she asked for an example of academic writing I sent it away maybe a little bit late but she still said 'Thanks!' in the email - this seems like a big deal to me since the woman as I have said is a bit of a bitter shrew at times.

The fact that she wanted an example of academic writing could at the very least be an indication that if I get the job it could lead to a more academic career path, since I would be working quite closely with academics. And I think I would love that.

The thing is, she said she'd get back to me soon. It's been 11 days since the interview. I hope everything works out. It would be so nice after the bad things that have happened in the last few months.

Speaking of which, it may be the case that my slash wound may not leave a scar. There is still at the very least a small line on my arm from where the blade made contact, but for some reason I have a feeling it may not stick around - since the wound wasn't that deep in the first place. I'm no medic though, and I'm not sure how scarring works - but since it's been 2 months since it happened and there is still a mark I probably shouldn't expect it to go away, should I?

I think I'd miss it if it were gone. It's an important part of my life, a milestone, and even if it has bad connotations, it wouldn't be wise to completely forget about it, would it?

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*Ha, how great would it be if the FFVII-2 game I keep in my portfolio got me a job! Thank you TFF if that ever happens!