blog innit

you fat bastard

2009-04-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted anything in a long, long time. It's not that i haven't done things worthy of writing about, more that I'm a lazy twat.

This inherent laziness is likely the cause of my most recent discovery, that I have broken the 200lb barrier, well laziness and my love of fatty sugary foods. I'm now officially overweight. I'm slowly but surely becoming a morbid...

So what to do?

Well it's hardly rocket science is it, I need to eat less food and do more exercise.

Tasteless food and hunger pains here i come...

s.

Sarah Palin - WTF!

2008-10-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

How the fuck did Sarah Prolife-Creationist-I-Don't-Have-A-Fuckin-Clue Palin get this far?

and here's some more classics...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rXmuhWrlj4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8__aXxXPVc

what he said.

s.

It's all not gone Pete Tong

2008-10-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

"Life moves pretty fast.
If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Wise words from the Bueller, a lot has happened in the last 2 months...

Activision finalised the takeover of Vivendi and went on a Vivendi studio/project killing spree including the studio I was at. I was laid off with a decent severance, accepted a job with DreamWorks Animation, and moved to Pasadena. It's been a bit mental.

Anyway we're settled in Pasadena now and I've had my first week at work and I'm loving it.

Skadoosh indeed.

s.

Planes, Trains and PT Cruisers - Episode 2

2008-07-09T22:32:00.000-07:00

Vegas Baby!

So we met up with Stelzer at midnight where we finally had dinner and then went to bed, yeah baby! that's how we roll.

So first port of call was to sort out some new wheels, off to enterprise...

So for the drive back to San Diego we had a choice of an open top muscle car (bear in mind it's 43 degrees outside, that's 110 in old money) or Chrysler's attempt at a Bentley. We went with the ridiculous but air conditioned Chrysler 300, marginally better than the shitty Cruiser.

Next stop the gun store for some bitchin' MP5 and M16 action... wooo!

The gun store has an eclectic collection of targets some of which border on the politically incorrect. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of Matt shooting his mental shoulder bruising rifle, maybe next time.

So it's 4pm, we've run out of stuff to do and even the outdoor pool looks too hot... "Should we just start drinking cocktails?" not the best idea but it worked out okay... at least until 7pm anyway, I'm a total light weight...

I'm pretty sure this wasn't that late but i don't remember it being taken so... yeah. Anyhoo, we headed down the strip, called in at a few casinos and got a taxi to a strip club, there seemed to be some confusion with the taxi driver as he seemed to think we were in desperate need of a brothel. After listening to the brothal propriaters sales pitch we excused ourselves and high tailed it outta there where thankfully our bemused taxi driver was still waiting. Second times the charm and he dropped us at the Spearmint Rhino for free, sweet.

So it seems you can touch in vegas!, that scene in Go! is a load of bollocks, there was much groping had by all. That's all i'm going to say about the strip club.

The drive back to San Diego was relatively uneventful, next up is Carlsbad ("The best place in the US" - paul), San Diego and LA.

s.

Planes, Trains and PT Cruisers - Episode 1

2008-07-06T00:38:00.000-07:00

Mark and Paul came to visit...

Surfing
Paul contemplates entering the 100 year storm.

The Road Trip Begins
we loaded up our rental PT Cruiser (which by the way are total wank) and headed for the Grand Canyon, and after just 7 hours of solid, straight, uneventful, mind numbing driving we arrived in a small town called Williams about an hour south of the Grand Canyon. Williams seems to be one of those towns that sprung up along route 66 and is now more or less a tourist ghost town. Mark tries desperately to not look annoyed while i tourist it up with the camera.

The bar/taxidermist in Williams, Paul drinking his pint of 'recommended' brew while his new best friend (the cowboy/bar owner) takes our photo.

Grand Canyon
Probably the most photographed hole in the ground in the world. I have to admit the size is rather epic, so epic that it doesn't really look real, more like a star wars matte painting or something, anyhoo here's the money shots...

Had a go at a panoramic stitch vista thing.

After the Grand Canyon we headed for Vegas, Mark got a speeding ticket as well as a court date (nice)... and then just when we were arriving at the Hoover Dam the shitty PT Cruiser gave up on life...

This is the view of the Hoover Dam we had for 4 fuckin hours while we waited for the tow truck, we finally got in to Vegas at Midnight.

In the next episode Paul goes mental in Vegas and starts shooting guns and grabbing strippers tits, ace!

Ski-doosh!...

2008-06-07T23:45:00.000-07:00

I went to see Kung-Fu Panda today and it was totally worth it, so worth it I felt compelled to blog it's greatness. It was well written with witty jokes and laugh-out-loud sketches, the animation had beautifully smooth and subtle motion with fluid fight sequences, a real joy to watch. The female characters didn't need the big bucks voice actresses but apart from that it was superb.

winter road trip part 2...

2008-04-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

Coast route Highway 1...

s.

Yosemite

2008-04-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

This was so long a go i can't remember the details, here's some photos...

s.

Road Trip part1 - Sequoia & Kings Canyon (Endor)

2008-01-13T14:59:00.000-08:00

So between Chrimbo and New Years we decided to take a road trip up north and then come back down Highway 1 (famous twisty, cliff-top road that runs along the pacific coastline).

Our first destination was Sequoia National Forest - crack open the snow chains. In to the park and straight to "General Sherman" - a huge Sequoia tree which is the largest single living thing on earth apparently, anyway it was pretty big. The whole forest looked like Endor, I have to admit to feeling a little 'rebel-esque'.

So anyway we drove up to a lodge and had dinner, the snow and ice is pretty full-on at this point; we're at like 8,000feet or summink. So on the way back down the mountain I manage to somehow do a full 180 while going around a hair-pin bend; nice. There was no damage and it was all over in less then 3 seconds but it scared the crap out of me; I took the rest of the bends with a little more respect, and less speed.

Anyway the next day we headed over to Kings Canyon for some more snow capped driving; this time with Ari behind the wheel. We stopped at a huge frozen lake which was kinda cool, had some sort of giant tadpole things swimming around in it, fuck knows what they were, some of them were at least 6-8 inches long. After some snow-shoeing we headed back to the B&B...

Next up, Yosemite.

just a small one

2007-12-10T22:00:00.000-08:00

Went to go see 'No country for Old Men' last night, really enjoyed the movie but what blew me away was my gargantuan 'medium' coke...

Medium, it was a litre!

mental.

s.

man-cold

2007-12-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

After a courageous fight I finally succumbed to Ari's cold, so I've been at home for the last 4 days...

The worst thing is I can't even get cbeebies in this damn country!

s.

Big Brother just got Bigger

2007-12-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

So it appears that we now own Activision, woo discount on COD4!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7123582.stm

or maybe they own us???

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16458

s.

Giving Thanks to Catalina

2007-12-02T12:21:00.000-08:00

So no posts since comic-con in July, anyone would think i haven't had anything interesting to post... you'd be right, there was Siggraph in August which was kinda cool, bumped in to a few old friends and what-have-you, but since then it's been sort of quiet (work/lazy weekends etc)...

But recently we headed to Santa Catalina Island for Thanksgiving... rock and roll!

Catalina is a strange island, it was bought by Wrigley of the chewing gum fame in the 20's and has featured in many movies including Jaws. One of the movies shipped a bunch of Bison to the island for filming and then couldn't be arsed to ship them back so they released them in to the wilderness - conservation USA style!, so now Catalina has wild Bison roaming around, and we saw one... yay!

The island has mentally clear water so we took a submarine ride in one of the coves. Haven't seen so many fish since we were in Australia, we even caught a glimpse of a sea-lion... woo!

We stayed in the Islands largest town - Avalon(3,000pop) which is like a mix of Scarborough and Portree on the Isle of Skye, kinda quaint and kinda kitsch all at the same time. The island is pretty hilly so i have no idea why we decided that a bike ride would be a good idea, even the slightest of hill climbs proved too much for my weak and feeble legs, i now know exactly how unfit i am. It appears that the main mode of transport in Avalon is the golf cart(there's a lot of oldies in Avalon) but Catalina also boasts sophisticated forms of transport...

The airport is perched on the top of a mountain which appears to allow take offs and landings while at cruising altitude... awesome! - needless to say we caught the ferry - "i ain't getting on no damn plane foo!".

Catalina is a pretty funky place and if you're ever around this way it's well worth a weekend visit.

This blog post was on the behalf of the Catalina tourist information board.

s.

Geek Fest 2007

2007-07-31T00:42:00.000-07:00

Oh boy Comic-Con!

Words can't begin to describe this visual feast of human social interaction so here's the money shots, 10 points for each correctly guessed costume...

0 points = I probably don't know you, what are you doing reading my blog, you obviously have much better things to be spending your time on.

10 - 20 points = You don't really know what you're doing do you, i bet you said "Storm-Trooper" too... oh boy don't you look like a fool.

30 - 40 points = You're on the slippery slope to Geekdom, get out now while you still can.

50 - 60 points = Oh dear there's no hope for you, i bet you even guessed the names of each character rather than just the film/game titles.

70+ = Well done you've wasted your life.

s.

e3 2007 news and spews

2007-07-13T00:49:00.000-07:00

okay so the announcements have been made and trailers released,
I can finally show you the two games I've been most recently involved with...

the first one was when i was in Australia working at Krome, I only got to work on pre-production stuff writing rigging tools etc as we left before they went in to full production...
http://www.gametrailers.com/game/5146.html

This one is the game i'm currently working on at High Moon Studios here in San Diego...
http://www.gametrailers.com/game/5148.html

so yeah.

s.

Fourth shmourth

2007-07-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

This week we experienced our first american Independence Day (4th July), something about freedom from British oppressive rule... as if... anyhoo...

we had a bbq and filled the house with 'immigrants', i think there were 2 or 3 americans so the spectacle wasn't lost on us completely. Like most american holidays Independence Day is centred around food and lots of it, so we ate our weight in burgers, steaks, hotdogs and pie lots and lots of pie.

After feasting we wobbled down to the beach and watched the fireworks, ohh, ahh...

Also managed to watch a few summer blockbusters this week so here's some quick reviews in the style of ebay feedback...

Ratatouille - A+++++++++++

Die Hard - A+++++++

Transformers - A++++

s.

Bourne the Game

2007-06-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

Our game was announced this week so i can finally tell people what i'm working on, unfortunately that's about all i can say, anyhoo here's some links...

Official website - http://www.bournethegame.com/

News sites...

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6173106.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;img;11

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=14474

I say Cornetto, you say Coronado...

2007-06-25T21:44:00.000-07:00

So this weekend we went down to visit Pete and Fred (and Bug), hung out at their place and then decided to head over to Coronado for the day... it's kind of a quaint island/peninsula on the other side of the bay to San Diego, it has this amazing crescent bridge that links it to the city. Anyway had a cool time, promenading and stuff.

had a look round the Hotel del Coronado which is this old Victorian hotel built in the 1800's, it has one of those cage lifts with a bellboy and has old chandeliers coming out of it's arse, it sort of reminded me of the Shining; well apparently it's where they filmed 'Some Like it Up 'em' with Marilyn Manson or something like that.

Anyhoo, here's some photos to appease the illiterate amongst you...

my biannual post...

2007-06-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

yes I know i'm a total slack fuck when it comes to posting on this thing but i finally got myself a laptop and thought i'd celebrate with a post... yay!

So, it's been over 6 months since we arrived in Southern California, so what news do i have...

well I drive now, bought a car and everything. We've rented a place by the beach and done a bit of traveling - Vegas, LA, Mexico... Vegas was lame but the Hoover dam was pretty cool and I got to shoot an mp5 for my 30th birthday, fuck yeah! LA is a shit hole and Tijuana smells like one but both were interesting experiences if nothing more.

more to follow...

we're off to sunny Californ-eye-eh

2006-10-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

Okay thought I'd make use of this blog thing rather than write a multi-recipient email...

So yeah, that's it for Australia (Brisbane Above), we've been here 5 months and I'm quite sad we're leaving, made some good friends at Krome and haven't done nearly enough travelling around Australia to warrant moving on but I'm sure we'll be back in the future. We did manage to get to a few places though; the sunshine coast featured heavily and we went for a few day trips to Mt. Nebo, Mt. Glorious and Mt. Tambourine all of which were very picturesque.

While in Brisbane I was working on the new Spyro game, it was almost finished by the time I arrived so I didn't get chance to do that much but what I did do I really enjoyed. It was a lot of fun doing cartoony style animation rather than realistic based stuff, I found it a lot easier to get in to then I thought I would. Anyway, I think Spyro is a pretty good game actually and I'm hoping it does well, it certainly deserves to. Here's a photo from my last day at Krome with some of the animation guys...

While working at Krome I did manage to slip in a very quick trip to Sydney but that was mostly to sort our US visas out, "mostly"... and about 5 days in Melbourne. Melbourne was cool we did a crazy tourist drive on one of the days setting off at like 5 in the morning or some shit; did the Great Ocean Road and saw the '12', no wait '11', whoops I mean '10' Apostles (they keep losing some to the ocean). Ari had a helicopter flight to see the 'rocks' from the air...

I said I'd take photos as it took off; nothing at all to do with the fact that I was shit scared. We also did one of those tree top walk things through the rain forest, it was a steel walkway about 70 metres up above the forest floor, felt like something out of Jurassic Park 3, mental...

And then, before we headed back to Melbourne we stopped off at 'Bells Beach' which is where Keanu finally catches up with Swayze in Point Break. We also managed to squeeze in a 'high tea' at the Windsor, which was wicked-sick posh.

...............Policeman: We'll get him when he comes back in!

...............Agent Utah: He ain't comin back!

After leaving Krome Ari's family took us up to Fraser for the weekend, which was excellent, very sandy, but excellent. The 4WD-ing was very cool and the island itself was amazing, shipwrecks, dingoes, sand dunes and crazy fresh water lakes.

We stopped off at the coast again for one last time and still quite disappointed with my lack of tanage I stupidly decided to sunbathe without sun screen... ouch...

So yeah, we leave tomorrow (Sat 7th, 11am), fly for 13 hours and arrive in LA 4 hours before we set off; which I'm guessing is going to be a bit of a killer.

If I can be arsed I may make this blog in to a proper blog and actually update it on a regular basis, once a month shouldn't be that hard... maybe.

I can't end without any mention of some of the crazy Aussie wildlife we encounted this time around. Ari was confronted by a green tree snake and bitten by a massive centipede but I managed to avoid the wild perils this time around, still here's some of the crazy critters that frequent her sisters place...

Speak to you on the other side of the Pacific I guess.

s.

I have a Blog!

2005-07-02T01:36:00.000-07:00

how cool is this...

err, so... yeah... why did I create this again.

as soon as i can think of something interesting to say
I'll post it, could be a while ;-)

s.