Another two months since my last post. I’m shit. Sometimes I think about how rubbish I am at this regular blogging lark, and I cry like the one on the right:

(Merry Christmas, arseclowns.)

http://twitter.com/essell2

1. Be fitter; happier; more productive.
2. Do everything.
3. Resign yourself to nothing.
4. Eat less sweets.

1. I’m not a student anymore.
2. I don’t live in Middlesbrough anymore.
3. I now live in Newcastle.
4. Newcastle is good.
5. I’ve got my first real job.
6. The job is in the games industry, and it’s a nice job.
7. I get free drinks.

Good news, it seems, comes in one big lump.

I now work at the Newcastle studio of Midway – home to the peerlessly brilliant Robotron, the increasingly crap Mortal Kombat series, and the recently released, John Woo-inspired Stranglehold (which I won’t comment on for now). My job title is Junior Designer, and I do a lot of mission scripting in the Unreal 3 engine, which despite its monkey bus driver-like quirks [often taking a while to respond, crashing a lot], I’m very pleased to be using. Kismet, the engine’s new visual scripting system, is good stuff.

We’re currently working on the game of The Wheelman – an upcoming and fairly typical-sounding Vin Diesel film, and therefore a pretty high-profile game featuring guns, cars, explosions, mild language and baldness. Especially for a first job, it’s a nice, big and interesting project to be part of, and after a Summer of worrying about possible unemployment and disapproving parents, I’m chuffed with how things have worked out.

Things finally feel like they’re on the right track.

Here are some of the things I’ve been up to in the last couple of months, that serve as a small part of my sorry excuse for being shit and not posting anything:

I went to see the Chinese opera production of Monkey: Journey to the West, at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. It was very good. Kim fell asleep on the way there.

I went to London, and to the Tate Modern.

This is Mark, looking at some stuff.

During some touristy walking around central London the next day, Mark and I randomly ended up bumping into the gay pride parade, and then following it to the main event.

We did all this in a totally manly way, of course.

After losing Mark in the crowd, and being unable to phone him because the battery in his mobile was flat, I stood around a lot taking photos of random people.

I ended up standing around for over two hours, and got really fucking wet.

Wah.

I recently stayed up all night to finish a piece of work and hand it on time, and I like to think that I’ll never have to do it again in my life. That would be nice.

It’s my final dissertation for my Games Design degree, focusing on the level design process for Half Life 2. I’m fairly satisfied with it, although I think it suffers a little from being torn between speculating on the theoretical design considerations involved, and reporting on the practical process of developing my own level. I’d have preferred to focus much more on the former, but it hasn’t been my impression that Good Academic Writing is necessarily the best way to grab the marks on this one, due to the nature of the course.

That, I suspect, will be a rant for another day.

Alex watched it, and we chatted [i.e. I talked at him] about it afterwards.

We talked about other things, too:

Sadly, this is probably the best drawing I have done in a long time.

For anyone who owns an original vinyl release of New Order’s timeless classic, Blue Monday, there is the Blue Monday Owners Club. It’s an ongoing collection of photos of people with their Blue Mondays – accompanied by the occasional quote – which I have recently submitted my own contribution to. Here’s my photo and [slightly posh] quote, which has recently been posted on page 6 of the site:

“It makes me go all tingly when excellent work from different disclipines and genres comes together, to create something even more brilliant than the sum of its parts. I can’t think of a better example of that in music than the collaborations between Factory Records and Peter Saville – of which Blue Monday is a true icon.

As a wannabe-DJ, I think the only bad thing about it is that it’s so good, and so distinctive, that it’s impossible to find something worthy of following it in the middle of a set…”

Speaking of fine dance music, I’ve recently been under the influence of the rather lovely Annie Mac and her Thursday night radio show – from which I am shamelessly stealing the following two recommendations:

Cansei De Ser Sexy:
5 ladies and a solitary gentleman, rocking, popping, dancing and bitching their way from Brazil. Lots of dirty fun to be had, complete with wierd, amusing and pleasingly vulgar song titles.

Luke Vibert – Realistique
The classy, sexy, summer-loving funky house highlight of his new album, Kerrier District 2. A welcome reminder that I need to get back to spending too much money on records…