Block Copy Coders

Lost at Tetris. Had to run bath and make breakfast as a forfeit. Bah

Just typing this as Trevor Smith wanders about the house. He’s a surveyor giving the house a once over for the people who’re buying the place. A tad annoying (being surveyed, not Trevor himself) but another step towards getting this place sold. No hitches so far, estimated time of move still early July

That was after an absolutely fantastic start to the day playing puzzle games against the Japanese even though I was comprehensively thrashed. Got the DS version and am hugely impressed. All the old Tetris magic is there plus a few extra modes but it really shines as an on-line game. It has a great “play a random person in the world” mode and this time of morning it’s mostly Japanese opponents up for a round of block spinning. I really need the practise, 2 cartridges arrived and one is for Suze who right know consistently hands me my arse on a plate every game. Slow boy, must try harder.

Nintendo have got this sooo right, randomly playing anyone on the globe is quick and easy and more fun to than any of the one player games. This and Animal Crossing : Wide World have got me hugely into handheld online gaming over the last couple of weeks, something the PSP just couldn’t do despite the undeniable charm of Wipeout. It was really nice swapping items with Suze in AC last night with me Pompey and her in Soton

If anyone’s up for Tetris my FC is : 078853 357481

On the subject of Nintendo, Wii? What the fuck is that all about?

After having such an ace time at Giles & Jeff’s Party a little while ago having a drunken computer games battle we decided to invite a few people over for an evening of electronic entertainment on Saturday. Quite nicely a few more turned up than we expected and it turned into a pretty excellent party that trundled on until 10am Sunday.

Good stuff. Highlights included watching Swith’s recut of 2001 into 2001 seconds on the projector, 71m randoming it up and watching Revenge of the Nerds Sunday afternoon. And it was Jeff’s birthday too

It also turned out that Suze is a bit of Tetris demon and trounced all comers in several 5 way DS multiplayer game. She beat me a number of times too after a some rather embarrassing pre match cockyness on my part.

Some pics here taken by a few different people including me, not that top notch, quality pretty much determined by the state we were all in

The place is in a shocking mess this morning, luckily the cleaners here later today but it’s so bad I feel compelled to do some pre-cleaner tidying

In other news the Llamasoft XBLA project took a big step forward in the commercial side and we’ve now got a contract through which is great.

Ace night out last night at The Joiners in Southampton to see Jon’s outfit Geko duke it out in the Southampton finals of the EMERGENZA battle of the bands competition. Which they won. Hoorah. Next step are the regional finals at the Wedgewood rooms in June. If they win that it’s on to the finals at the Astoria. Fingers crossed.

I took the camera down to get a few shots but as combination of beer diminished motor skills and what I like to call “moshing twats” made me a little nervous of getting right down the front. So the shots aren’t all that but you can find them on my flickr page.

fig(i) Moshing Twats

A little slow-going on the biz front right now. Jeff and Giles completed Neon PC a while ago (and very lovely it is too) but we’re still wading through commercial mire on the distributor side getting the correct contracts in place. The same is also true for the guys new project as well, we have everything pretty much agreed in principal but the staller is getting the contractual side sorted. It’s a necessary evil when dealing with big companies but an evil never the less

It looks like I’ll be off to E3 though and there’s nothing like a few face to face meetings to help slice through the gordian knot of this sort of nonsense.

I am really excited about the new Llamasoft game though, the guys have been working on it for a while now and starting to produce some mouth watering visuals starting to hint at the pyrotechnic delight #{gameName} will be. Over the source of Neon and Neon PC the guys have made an excellent foundation to build this new project on top of and I know it’s going to be something special Jeff and Giles have been posting some updates on their Livejournal accounts which you can find here and here

The house move is chuntering along, solicitors have been instructed and the wheels are in motion. We’re advised 10 – 12 weeks so hopefully that should us in the new place sometime in July. It’s nice to see the SOLD sign up outside the house and a date. Even though it’s a way away still at least

Tonight should be good, off to a battle of the bands in Southampton to lend support to a mates and who’re competing for the top spot. If they win this it’ll be onto the county round. Should be taking along the camera in the hope of getting some good piccies

And got bit of a do this weekend and a few peeps are on there way over for a night of gaming on Saturday After having such an excellent time playing Geometry Wars RE over at Jeff’s a few weeks back thought I get a few people over here for a repeat session. I predict a lot of drunken Guitar Hero. Should be good.

Well hopefully this should see me returning to Wordpress for future blog posts.

Fingers crossed that I don’t get plagued by poker site spam posts in my comments section again

As with Live Journal Wordpress uses a web form to make updates. My spelling is pretty atrocious and tend to write really badly when I don’t have a spell checker to rely on so usually I’d write posts in Mail.app and then paste them into the web form when all of the red squiggly lines had disappeared.

That was until I found out that Safari supports spell checking in text input boxes All you need to do is Apple ; and Safari will cycle through words in the text box it doesn’t think are spelt properly. Hoorah!