Completed Coursework

Hurrah! The last piece of coursework was handed in today. Although I have to say it was done the very long way around.

The brief was to create a website with CSS along with some flash animation and anything else you felt should and could be included. I have spent a few weeks on it, however left the 2000 word report till the late minute. (Old habits are hard to break.) I have also been off ill to be fair and have had have been prodded an poked by needles and doctors, so I was running a little late.

So I was typing up my report today, to then upload onto the website, along with a few other pages that I noticed had some errors in. Now as it's a website you'd think all I'd have to do was transfer the files to the server, which an be done within Dreamweaver itself. Alas no, for a Uni to make things that easy? You have to be kidding. No two train rides later I'm running into Uni (they were not quick or easy train rides the one day I need them to be) and I transfer over my few files in seconds and then head home again.

Incredibly infuriating and annoying, but hey, at least everything is handed it bar one piece as I have been unable to catch up with the work. Also I can now follow my doctors orders to the latter, which I haven't been doing so much trying to get all this coursework in. Now it's done I can concentrate on getting myself sorted out. I have been feeling much better over the last week though it has to be said, but I'm dreading catching the next cold and it wiping me out again, and I also dreading the stress of going back to my retail job. One that I no longer enjoy thanks mainly to management and annoying customers. Oh well not long now and the job of six years will finally be behind me. (Have tried to quite nearly three times now and have either ended up staying or coming back, don't know what's wrong with me.) :)

Anyway I am now finally free to pursue some personal projects for a bit, which I am looking forward too. I also need to catch up on the Uni work I have missed, but for now I am going to sort out some stuff for my poor neglected fan site....

EuroGamer Expo Nov 2009

So a week after the MCM Expo in London I went to the EuroGamer Expo with my other half and our talented friend from college.

We went up to play some of the new games, and to see some people from the industry, with Media Molecule there for Friday and Relentless we had a few people to drop in on as they came to our show too. :)

Video from the event will be up soon on my YouTube account, in the meantime the photo's are up in a mini-photo-blog.

From EuroGamer Expo Nov 2009

The highlights of the show were getting my little Sackboy statue and chatting to the lovely people from Media Molecule and Relentless. We also managed to make it onto the website while playing the rather brilliant Blue Toad Murder Files, not the best shot ever, but the game was good fun and a definite download on the 17th of Dec. :)

Other than that the day was a rather relaxed affair, very different from last year when we were bouncing around stalls promoting the college course and talking to every company we could. We also were quite happy to hang around for most of the day as there was a lot more to see this year, however it was rather busy and meant that some games just had too big a crowd to get to see.

Overall though the majority of the games were all of a high quality and polish even if they all started to look very similar in subject matter after a while. The two games I most regret not getting a go on was Split Second as it looked very good and quite a refreshing change in the racing genre, and the controversial Heavy Rain would have been nice to sit and try so I can make up my own mind about it.

Anyway there's the quick little round up a little later than the actual show, but between Uni and everything else at the moment, it's been quite a busy month. :)

MCM Expo at the London ExCel Centre

So what else have I been up to other than drowning in Java code at Uni? I did take some time out to go the the regular geekfest that is the MCM Expo in London, which as always is at the same time as my sister's birthday. (Which is also my brothers birthday, one day I need to work out the probability of half siblings being born on the same day eleven years apart.) This year it was a pretty special occasion as it was my brother's 10th and my sister's 21st. So for my brother we took him around the sites in London (where he was born) and then for my sister she got to spend the weekend with friends dressing up and generally being silly.

She was dressed as Princess Zelda from Twilight Princess on the Wii, she really suits the character and managed to make the whole costume around her physics degree. As she spent so long on the costume she decided to enter the Masquerade (the cosplay competition at the event), after she submitted her form I added on an extra instruction to her introduction. All I asked was them to mention that it was her birthday as they annouced her name. This is what happened instead...

She was a little surprised and was not particularity impressed with me, but I think she was somewhat chuffed to have around 800 people singing her "Happy Birthday". :D

Most of the event I was unlucky to have a rather nasty sinus infection throughout so did not get to go around my haunts in London as I would have liked, just wanted to ensure brother and sister had a good weekend.

I did however seem to end up with my other half catching the costume bug, and we're now making props and coming up with costumes for the next event. Which happens to be in May around my birthday, however I also have exams then, so I may have to skip that one this year. :( It was also a shame that Video Games Live didn't make it to London this year as it would have been nice to go again, but alas London, as it is for most, was too expensive a place to put on a show this time around. Well fingers crossed for next year....

A VERY long time ago....

Okay it has been an age in internet time since I updated this blog, the main reason was getting the Little Big Planet level finished for college and then conducting the end of year show.

Which actually went rather well, there was a group of about four of us that were there everyday, mostly just having a laugh and hanging out, with the occasional break to fix a downed computer. However there were other times when we found ourselves entertaining guests from Relentless, Black Rock, Sony and Media Molecule. So the invites we were all so nervous about paid off and some pretty cool, important and importantly nice people came to see what we had put together.

For me the highlight was having Media Molecule turn up and give me a little plaque type thing that said my level was officially awesome. :D Apparently I was on cloud nine after that, then the next day a rather important person from Sony turned up (who I had actually met at my part time job at Game) came to see what we had done and was very impressed with some of the work. :)

Overall the show went well and people have been in contact with the companies that came to the show and have either received a lot of help and advice on what to do next, or have had job interviews! :)

I on the other hand have been juggling the start of University, am now studying Games and Multimedia Envrionments BSc (basically lots of programming so far!). I was also manager at work over the summer which took up a lot of time, we had no regional manager or deputy or store manager at one point so it was me and the trainee, who got most of the responsibility as I got the flu a the worst time possible!

I also have had a rather large change in my personal life over the summer too, which has resulted in me being the happiest I have ever been. I have met someone rather special, who was right under my nose for years, who was and still is my best friend, and everyone has been wondering why we weren't together. He really is my soul-mate.

Now on from the soppy stuff(!) I'm now drowning in coursework and working on relaunching my old website, which was a repository of Dreamstone info and the like. However I also have to learn CSS to do this effectively, which before Uni was confusing me, however now I have a handle on it and things should start snowballing from here. Just have to get the coursework done and a Christmas in retail out the way and things should ease off for a bit so I can catch up on my neglected personal projects, one of which is this blog! :)