Yeah, I know. Hardly worth making a big song and dance about, is it. But I tried to analyse why I fell off doing doodles on this site in the first place, and it was because I think I was trying to do a bit too much too soon. I thought that if I got a fancy graphics tablet and started faffing around with a fancy piece of software, then some sort of latent artistic ability would suddenly emerge and I would be able to produce something truly amazing, immediately.

Of course, it doesn't work like that. Not only does producing things that are genuinely amazing take time and effort, everyone also has their own distinct ways of working that they find most comfortable. For me, that has always been stupid little stickmen with oddly expressive faces. And so, I think for the immediate future at least, the stupid little stickmen with oddly expressive faces are back for now.

The thing I've always liked about doing the stupid little stickmen with oddly expressive faces in the past is that they make me think a little bit about what I've just written. I wouldn't go so far as to say sketching a companion doodle for a post makes me really reflect on things in any great depth, but it does at least make me think about how — and if — it would be possible to get the general vibe of the post across using a quick and dirty doodle.

Often that takes the form of a stupid joke. Back when I did three-panel comics on this blog — which I know at least one person enjoyed, but no-one else ever mentioned, so I stopped doing them just in case I was actually embarrassing myself with them — there were even some running storylines that went along with the blog posts, and sometimes the blog posts and the comic storylines would feed off one another in various ways. That was always pretty fun, actually, but like I say, outside of one once-regular commenter who I haven't seen for a long time (I hope you're well, Jud!) and my wife Andie, who bought me a large canvas print of one of my comics that still hangs above our bed, no-one ever really mentioned them, and I had no great designs of being "a webcomic" or anything anyway; it just seemed like a fun thing to do, and I had a copy of Comic Life on my Mac, so things just sort of went from there.

When you have your own site, though, I think it's important to make your own little mark on it somehow. I mean, obviously you already do that if you're writing things on it, but we are creatures that respond well to obvious visual stimuli, so if the overall look of the site helps get someone's personality across, so much the better, I say. I have tried to do this to a certain degree with the use of the Atari ST's system font for headlines — I tried putting the whole site in it once, but several commenters said it was difficult to read, and it probably was — but nothing beats a bit of scrappy artwork from someone who doesn't really do visual arts.

I've told the story of why I like drawing expressive stickmen many times before on this blog, but for the benefit of those disinclined to go searching through the archives, it stems from, as so many things do, my time at school.

I did pretty well for myself at secondary school. What eventually turned out to be an autistic spectrum condition (though I wouldn't know that until several decades later) meant that I kind of thrived in the structured environment where I was always learning things. But I wasn't, like, the school swot or anything. I had a mischievous streak, which was brought out of me by my friends — and particularly my good friend Edd, who I sat with in many different lessons.

Edd and I liked to doodle. We would doodle all sorts of things, all the time. It was one of our favourite activities — though we knew not to do it anywhere that we might get in vaguely "serious" trouble for. No drawing on desks, no defacing school property, and no doodling on our exercise books that the teacher would mark. (I must confess, however, that during one especially memorable Year 7 Humanities class, my other friend Daniel Blyth and I went through an entire History textbook and drew at least one dick on every single page. My favourite was the one that was poking out of a Roman water gourd, inexplicably shouting "I SCREAM!")

No, Edd and I would doodle on paper that we would specifically bring in for that purpose, or our "Rough Books", which I know I have talked about multiple times on this very site, so I won't tell that specific story again. But anyway. Given the opportunity to doodle, we would take it. And one of the things that we loved doodling was stickmen doing stupid things.

One of the earliest things we did with stickmen began in German lessons, which were so boring we eventually came to the conclusion that was some sort of temporal disruption around the Modern Languages department. (I successfully freaked several of my friends out by using the "countdown timer" feature on my snazzy Casio digital watch to make it look as if time was indeed running backwards.) We livened things up with "The German Stickmen", which was a four-panel comic in which two people would argue about something really stupid in German in the first frame, the second frame would devolve into them yelling "Nein!" "Ja!" at one another multiple times, the third frame would always be one of them shouting "ACHTUNG!" (like in Wolfenstein 3-D, see) and drawing some form of (usually explosive) weapon, and the final frame would inevitably involve some form of extreme violence or, most commonly, a mushroom cloud.

Over time, our ambitions for the stickmen became more elaborate. We'd already "created" (and I use the term loosely) the characters Edlock Holmes and Watson as a result of our shared enjoyment over the point-and-click adventure games The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and when we went on holiday to Gran Canaria together, we produced an epic-length stickman comic, drawn in extreme haste and with no real care, called Fate of Thingy. This thing took on a life of its own and was rewritten multiple times, and I still have it somewhere — though I think it's missing one or two pages. The intent, you see, was to do a "rough" version of the comic using stickmen, then when we got home we'd do a "proper" one. I did, indeed, start doing a "proper" version, at one point, but we both decided we liked the stickmen so much they would become the canonical versions of Edlock Holmes and Watson. As Fate of Thingy continued to expand across multiple parts, all further development was in stickman form — and continued to be on the bright yellow legal pad Edd had acquired from his mother's workplace, until we ran out of that and had to start using bog-standard notebook paper.

So yeah. Stickmen are important to me, as ridiculous as that might sound. I have an intense, nostalgic and emotional attachment to them. And thus I think they should continue to be an important part of this blog. I will, therefore, from hereon, endeavour to provide you with a stupid little doodle to accompany each post (except when I really can't be bothered). Is that enough of a commitment for you? Well, tough shit, because it's all you're getting.

Nein!
Ja!
Nein!
Ja!
ACHTUNG!

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The post #oneaday Day 768: Sketchin' appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The experience in question was meeting up with someone who was one of my best friends back during our mutual school days, but someone whom I haven't seen for more than 20 years. I had, for many years, assumed that our lives had simply diverged, and that was that — it's happened with plenty of other people in the past, so one more wasn't a particular surprise.

Imagine how surprised I was to get a message from my Dad a little while back, though, telling me that one of his friends had happened to come into contact with this erstwhile friend of mine, and that the latter was interested in reconnecting with me.

I initially wasn't sure what to make of the situation. As I say, our lives (and lifestyles) had diverged significantly around our university years, as we had gone to different places and studied different subjects — though in a peculiar twist of fate, I did spend two of my three years at university living with his then-girlfriend. Not in a dodgy way, I might add; we were just friends, and it seemed optimal for everyone involved to come to some sort of arrangement.

Anyway, at some point in our third year of study, my erstwhile friend went over to Europe to continue his studies and, as our time as students came to an end, we sort of lost touch. As I say, at the time I felt like it was mostly a case of our lives and lifestyles moving in fundamentally incompatible directions — sad, to be sure, since we had been the best of friends at school, but an understandable symptom of growing up and growing older.

Thus it was that I arranged to meet him this evening in the hotel where I'm staying for my monthy visit to work. He happened to be in the area and definitely seemed keen to meet, so I decided that I would take a chance and see what would happen. I was nervous — scared, even — but also very conscious that 20+ years can make a lot of differences in someone's life and way that they live, so I was hopeful that we'd be able to sort of… "reboot" and see what happened there.

I'm delighted to report that things went well. A lot has happened in 20+ years for both of us, and we spent a lot of time catching up on things. But at the same time, my friend that I once knew was well and truly back. He was not the person that I had drifted out of touch with for one reason or another; he was the person that I used to know, and before long we were swapping stories, sharing truths and talking just like the big 20+ year gap had never happened.

I'm happy about this, for a number of reasons. I'm happy that I reconnected with someone who was once an important part of my life. I'm happy that his life seems to have gone in a positive direction, even if the course of it has taken a very different trajectory to mine. And I'm happy that the person I used to know is still there. Or has come back. Or some combination of all of those things.

To put it another way, this was a worthwhile exercise that I'm glad I took a chance on. It would have been so easy to make an excuse and try to get out of it — I've done this in the past with social occasions I've been uneasy about — but no, I decided that what I needed to do was take a chance on this, and just see where things ended up.

As it happens, I feel like they ended up in a good place. I hope this is the beginning of not just one rekindled friendship, but several — as he put me in touch with a couple of other people who had expressed an interest in reconnecting. We shall have to see where that all goes.

Anyway, after all that, my "social battery", as the kids call it these days, is well and truly depleted, so I am going to sit and play video games until it is time to go to bed. Good night!

The post #oneaday Day 683: Reconnection appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It is 1am and, surprisingly, I am wide awake. And this is after an evening of drinking… well, I'm not sure I'd say heavily, but we all had a fair few cocktails over the course of 6 hours or so. None of those cocktails were astronomically, brain-fryingly strong, though, so right now I just feel quite… pleasant. Which is nice. The last few times I've had a drink I've found myself just skipping the "happy drunk" phase and going straight to "maudlin".

It was the Eurovision Song Contest this evening. I never feel like I particularly give a shit about this, but if it's on I always find myself getting curiously invested in proceedings. We missed most of the actual performances because we were out in the garden having a barbecue, though we did have them on the radio in the background, so at least we heard most of them.

Without getting too much into global geopolitics, it was looking a bit… risky for a while, shall we say, but I don't think many people will have had too many complaints about Austria winning. The song itself was a bit boring, but no-one can deny the impressive range and power of the Austrian chap's voice. Very operatic. Very impressive.

I find it curious that Eurovision is often described as being very "camp" and even "gay" or "queer" — and I'm not denying any of those things, I hasten to add — while simultaneously having plenty of performances and costumes that heterosexual people would also get a kick out of. I guess a sexy bod and a sexy outfit is always a sexy bod and a sexy outfit, regardless of what gender identity or sexual orientation you're looking at it from.

I suspect the "camp" and "gay" descriptors tend to apply primarily to the performances in their entirety: the flamboyant, overdramatic productions that most of them involve are, for whatever reason, associated with queerness, and that, in turn, gives the whole thing a distinctly queer identity of its own. At least, I suppose that's the case, anyway. I am not, I hasten to add and emphasise strongly, an expert.

Perhaps the argument runs something like "Musical theatre is flamboyant and overdramatic, gay people like musical theatre, therefore anything musical theatre-adjacent that is flamboyant and overdramatic must be gay." I think I've cracked it! Or maybe not. I don't know. I've drunk four cocktails this evening and consequently I'm not entirely sure my powers of reasoning are the best right now, and I probably shouldn't even be typing this. But oh well. It's done now. And, I think, without any spelling mistakes. Certainly a far cry from certain earlier entries on this blog. Or, rather, the tweets I sent the night before the blog after. In fact, you know what, let's revisit those for posterity. (Read from bottom to top for chronological posts.)

For context, these were sent on the 7th of May, 2010, when I was absolutely twatted off my face, basking in the misery of my first marriage having broken down and the prospect of having to move back home to live with my parents for a while. I, obviously, apologise for the errant homophobia, but, y'know, different times and all that. Not that it was particularly acceptable then, either. But I'm sure most of you reading this have some off-colour things you say when you're among friends. And, at the time, my Twitter account was pretty much entirely "among friends".

I haven't seen most of those lovely people for quite a while, though I did randomly run into "dollydaydream" at Specsavers a couple of weekends ago while I was getting a new pair of glasses. That was nice. Hopefully we can have a proper catch-up soon.

I kind of miss that (relatively) youthful exuberance. At the same time, I'm also glad I'm not going out in town on a regular basis, because going out drinking these days is expensive. Much better to just have a few nice drinks in your nice comfy home with people you enjoy the company of, and actually be able to hear one another.

Does that make me an old fart? Almost certainly. But y'know what, I don't give a shit. And now, as a great man once said: Going to bd. Fuck off. Nght night.

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The post #oneaday Day 344: Very late night appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Regular readers will recall I started rewatching Friends a while back. I'm up to the fifth season out of ten as of the time of writing, and I'm really enjoying it.

The "culture shock" of watching it for the first time in more than ten years has mostly dissipated now, and the fact that no-one is ever seen fiddling with a mobile phone, looking things up on the Internet or experiencing life entirely through their camera lens feels pretty much natural now. Stop to think about it, and it's still clear that the world has changed a lot — mostly for the worse, I'd say, unfortunately — but after a while, Friends has, for me, shown that it has that magical "drawing you in" nature that means it doesn't matter that it's dated in some ways.

Friends was never really about a specific time period, anyway. Sure, it acts quite nicely as a snapshot of the late '90s and early (pre-smartphone) '00s now, but I'm not sure it was ever intended to be that. Instead, it was a show that was always about the people: specifically, it was about the concept of found family, and how the group of people you chose to surround yourself with was just as important as — or in some cases, more important than — those you were related to by blood.

I must admit to a certain melancholy about viewing Friends in this light, because for all the wonderful conveniences and whatnot we have today, I miss just… hanging out with friends. I miss everything from walking a couple of miles into town during a free period of sixth form in order to get peer pressured into buying a new N64 or PlayStation game. I miss skipping lectures to go play Perfect Dark. I miss Board Game and Curry Night being a regular thing. In short, I very much miss having that "found family", because in 2025… it just doesn't feel like it's there any more, for a whole manner of reasons, not just technology-related.

But at the same time this is why I find an occasional rewatch of something pleasantly familiar like Friends to be extremely comforting. I may not literally be there with the main cast — and I wasn't back at the time, either — but the nice thing about the show is how it makes you feel included. You see the ups and downs of each of the main cast's lives; you see the little in-jokes they have with one another and you understand where they came from, because you were there when they were first coined. And you root for them; even seeing what colossal dildos they all are at various points in the series — particularly both Ross and Rachel — you cannot help but root for them and wish them happiness.

And the nice thing is, you know they get that happiness, because it's that kind of show. Even if you've never seen the show all the way to the end, you almost certainly know what at least some of the main "resolutions" are going to be. Arguably it's only really Joey who is left without a real sense of wrapping things up neatly — and his spin-off series didn't really fix that either, though I must confess I haven't seen it — but even so, one gets the feeling he's probably going to be all right.

It's a bit sad how many of the Friends cast are no longer with us. Matthew Perry was, of course, a tragic loss a couple of years back, and I was sad to learn recently that James Michael Tyler, who played the recurring coffee house barista Gunther, passed away in 2021. Add this to the fact that several people from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which I watched all the way through a while back, are also no longer of this world, and it's a little bit sobering. At least they all have a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

This got a little more morbid than intended, but whatchagonnado. Friends is still a wonderful thing, and I am really enjoying my rewatch of it. There's nothing quite like returning to the media you loved in your formative years to bring a teensy bit of comfort to the bleakness of modern existence. If you haven't done it for a while, I highly recommend it.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 323: Bing biddly bing bong bingy bong boooo appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I watched the first episode of Friends over lunch today. By my reckoning, it's over 10 years since I last watched Friends all the way through, and I've had a bit of a hankering for it recently. It's nothing to do with the inexplicable rise of Friends merchandise (up to and including Krispy Kreme doughnuts) in the last year or so but rather simply the fact that Friends always was, more than pretty much anything else on television, my "comfort show".

I was always aware that Friends was going to age. Hell, when I first started watching it, the first season in particular already looked very dated in terms of the fashion sense and hairstyles. But there are ways in which it shows its age now that I wouldn't have considered back when I was obsessively watching it as a teen.

The laugh track, for example. Audience or canned laughter has completely fallen out of favour for TV shows over the course of the last 20-25 years or so, to such a degree that there are those who find it (if you'll pardon my use of GenZ vernacular for a moment) "cringe". Even people who were there for it first time around.

Honestly, I've never had a problem with a laugh track. In fact, with Friends, it was part of the experience — as emphasised by the YouTube videos that remove it and make Ross in particular look like a psychopath as a result. But it was more than just a signal of when something funny had happened; I really enjoyed hearing the audience reactions that were other than just laughter.

For example, during that all-important moment in the second season where Rachel learns exactly how much Ross was in love with her in his late teens and ends up kissing him, there's an absolutely glorious moment as she walks across the room to him in complete silence, the only sound being her shoes echoing on the hardwood floor of Monica's apartment. Then, as she comes up to Ross and grabs his face in preparation to kiss him, there's an audible gasp from an audience member that feels completely genuine. Then, when the kiss happens a moment later, there is cheering, screaming and applauding. It's an amazing moment, made all the more amazing by how the audience had clearly been rooting for them, but were unsure if the writers were ever going to resolve that particular dangling thread.

Friends, like many shows of its time, was filmed in front of a live studio audience, and this allowed the cast to work around the laughter and other reactions. Supposedly Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe, absolutely hated it when the audience interrupted her lines with laughter, but she never let it show. At the other end of the spectrum, it's abundantly clear that the late, great Matthew Perry adored playing to the crowd, with much of his delivery reliant on pausing for reaction and playing off the audience's response. It's different from what TV shows today do, yes, but it's not an inferior way of doing things by any stretch of the imagination.

Sometimes this backfires for a non-native audience, such as when a guest star shows up to rapturous applause from the American audience, but no-one in the UK has any clue whatsoever who the person in question is. (Okay, I very rarely knew who the person was, outside of a few obvious exceptions like when George Clooney and Noah Wyle, riding the peak of ER's fame at the time, showed up.) But you can get something from that even if your response isn't the same as the audience's; it's a sign that Friends was huge, and Hollywood people were almost certainly queueing around the block to make a guest appearance in what was, for a long time, the hottest sitcom in town.

With the bizarre resurgence in Friends merchandise there has been recently, I wonder how much it really resonates with a modern audience — i.e. those who grew up after the launch of smartphones, and after the ubiquity of the Internet had been well and truly established. Very few people in Friends even have a mobile phone, and computer use is rare to see, often the subject of comedy. The way people develop interpersonal relationships has changed massively since Friends' time. Hell, even the concept of just hanging out with your friends in person at their place is likely to be completely alien to some people — I was there for it, and it even feels like a distant memory to me, to be perfectly honest.

But the strength of Friends wasn't necessarily that it was a snapshot of a time and place — although, many years after it was current, it functions quite nicely as just that — but rather that it was a show with some strong, well-defined and nuanced characters, with a wide array of interesting storylines, many of which were rather boundary-pushing at the time of the show's original broadcast. So far as I'm concerned, it still holds up very well as a "comfort show" for me due to its familiarity — and I suspect, so long as a younger viewer can get around the culture shock of certain ubiquitous aspects of 21st century life just being flat-out absent from much of the show's run, there's still a lot they can get from it, too.

There is, I'm sure, plenty you can criticise Friends for if you want to get on the tedious "everything is problematic" bus, but fuck that. I love Friends, I always have done, and starting this new rewatch afresh this lunchtime, I suspect I always will.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 248: Bing biddly bing bongy bing boo appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm pleased to report that all of us kicking up a stink over RoseTintedSpectrum's YouTube channel being wrongfully terminated yesterday has proven successful: our lad managed to finally get through to a human being at YouTube, and his channel has been reinstated, with just an obviously insincere, automated "apology" of sorts from YouTube attached.

This is obviously a good resolution to what was a stressful and upsetting situation for Rosie, and it should bring a few things into sharp focus for everyone. Corporations are not your friends. Corporations can and will take things that you have created away from you at a moment's notice. Corporations do not care, particularly when they rely on automation and "AI" to do their work for them.

Human beings are your friends. Individuals that you make a personal connection with are how you get by in this increasingly horrible world that we live in. Friendship groups and communities can get things done — the last 24 hours has clearly proven that, with Rosie's story not only spreading across Twitter and temporarily drowning out at least some of the white supremacy thanks to the few creators with a decent following who are still there, but also making some noise on BlueSky and even getting a writeup on the retro gaming website from the NintendoLife folks, Time Extension.

I find it kind of hilarious, tragic and frustrating that there are some folks who took glee in this whole situation. People such as the odious George "FunkySpectrum" Cropper, who has made his entire online life about spreading hatred of people he doesn't like. And people like one anonymous stroppy twat who goes by "GlamorousAlpaca" in Time Extension's comments, who just made shit up about Rosie for no apparent reason. But as frustrating as the sad, pathetic existence of these people is, they will never know the joy that Rosie is undoubtedly feeling right now: the understanding that there are people out there who like him, care about him and will fight for him when he has been wronged.

I'm glad that all this has been successfully resolved, but I'm concerned that this sort of thing seems to be happening a lot more of late. The cynic in me blames the rise in the use of "AI" in big corporations like Google; despite these systems being demonstrably fallible and prone to hallucinations, it seems big business is willing to trust its judgement, even going so far as to give it the power to completely remove someone's hard work from the Internet for a perceived (and, I reiterate, non-existent) infraction. It happened to me with WordPress.com, it happened to Rosie on YouTube and I'm sure we'll hear about it happening to other people, too.

The Internet continues to enshittify itself, but we can still find havens of sanity amid groups of like-minded, sensible, supportive and caring people. If you have been fortunate enough to find a group like that online, be sure to hold on to them with everything you have. I feel like they will only become more valuable to you as time goes on.

Oh, while you're here, go pop RoseTintedSpectrum a subscribe if you haven't already. Watch a few vids and leave a couple of nice comments, too. The lad could do with a smile after the last 24 hours.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 157: A happy ending (not in a sex way) appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

My reasons for despising short-form content are numerous and varied, so I won't go into all of them here, but one thing in particular vexed me so when I stumbled across it yesterday that I felt the need to get this particular rant out of my system. And that is what I call the TikTokification of comedy — or, to put it another way, the divorcing of comedic moments from context purely so that idiots can quickly and easily steal them and share them on their mindless social media.

I've actually been thinking about this for a while. The first time I was particularly conscious of it was when I started seeing that a number of comedians had started upping their YouTube presence. And all their videos had a few things in common. Take a look at these thumbnails:

All of these are completely transparent clickbait. And while a certain amount of clickbait is a necessity on a platform as saturated with material as YouTube is, I really detest the whole "half a sentence" thumbnail format. I didn't click on this one, which has almost certainly floated across your YouTube recommendations at some point, either:

This, to me, is the YouTube equivalent of the Twitter engagement bait (that thankfully seems to have died a bit of a death… along with the rest of Twitter) where a brand would go "[our brand] is _________" and expect people to "fill in the blank". And people, dumb consumers that they are, absolutely would. And it didn't matter whether they were filling it in with obscenities or bootlicking nice things, it was engagement. It made the numbers go up. That's all that mattered.

It's the same with these comedy clips. I like all of those comedians above, but I don't want to click on their videos because it's rewarding manipulative behaviour, and also encouraging the main problem that I want to talk about today: encouraging people away from enjoying a creative work in its entirety and towards a grab-bag full of "best moments" that completely lack their original context.

Good stand-up comedy makes the entire show into an event, and runs a narrative thread through the whole thing. Not all comedians do this, but the best comedians, in my experience, make you feel like you've enjoyed a complete story by the time you've left the room. Sure, there may have been some deviations along the way, and the story may not have made all that much sense… but there was still a sense of narrative progression. A beginning, middle and end, if you will. For some great examples, check out Rhod Gilbert's show Rhod Gilbert and the Award-Winning Mince Pie and pretty much anything by Eddie Izzard.

When you slice a show up into little bite-sized bits, you lose that context. Sure, the individual moments might be funny on a superficial level, but you lose the added depth of them being part of something bigger. And that's a real shame. And this leads me on to the real reason I'm writing this today: my discovery yesterday that Friends, a TV show I absolutely adored during my formative years, has its own YouTube channel.

And yes, you guessed it, the Friends YouTube channel looks like this:

The stand-up comedy thing I can sort of forgive. While I much prefer seeing an entire stand-up set and enjoying that feeling of context and narrative, there are sometimes just single jokes or routines that you want to share with someone. And you can probably make the same argument about Friends.

But for me, and regardless of what you and/or the general public might think of it now in 2023, Friends was always about more than just the jokes. Friends was a phenomenon. Friends was about us spending 10 years alongside these characters in an important, turbulent part of their lives, and watching them grow and change. Friends was about us simultaneously being envious of these twentysomethings somehow being able to afford massive apartments in Manhattan, but also feeling like the moments they shared were relatable in their own ways.

And an important part of the entire experience was context. While Friends actually starts kind of in medias res, halfway through a member of this pre-existing friendship group telling a story in their favourite coffee shop, it still makes an effort to introduce us to everyone through the way Rachel enters the picture as a formerly estranged friend of Monica.

We feel included. We feel like we're learning who these people are — and over the course of the subsequent ten seasons, we really get to know everyone. And while the age of the show means that life in general is quite different for most folks right now — look how infrequently anyone on the show uses a mobile phone or a computer, for example — it's still relatable to anyone either going through that "20s to 30s" part of their life, or who has already been through it.

These characters grow and change as a result of the things that happen to them and the simple act of getting older. They enjoy amazing high points and some heartbreaking low points — although nothing too heartbreaking; this was a primetime comedy show, after all. But everything that happens helps to define these characters and make them more than simple, mawkish, two-dimensional representations of a single personality trait.

Slice all 236 24-minute episodes up into one-minute chunks, though, and you have content. You have individual moments that, in many cases, simply don't really work as standalone "jokes" because they rely on you knowing and understanding the characters and their relationships. And you have no sense of that ongoing growth and character development, because all these clips are posted in a seemingly completely random order determined by whatever the person running the Friends YouTube account felt like putting up today.

I realise this is a bit silly to get annoyed and upset over, but it's frustrating to me to see something that I loved so much in its original form and its original context be treated as fodder for the mindless content consumption machine of 2023. It irritates me to think that there are doubtless some people out there whose only contact with Friends will have been minute-long clips on YouTube, and through those they will likely have formed a totally different opinion of the show than someone who watched it from start to finish.

Is this elitist and gatekeepery? Not really, since Friends itself is easy enough to watch in its entirety via either streaming services or undoubtedly cheap DVD box sets that no-one wants any more. It's just the latest symptom in a disease that blights society, where no-one believes they have "time" for anything any more, so watch badly cropped minute-long 9:16 clips on double speed while they're doing their daily quests in Mindless Gacha Bullshit X, rather than settling down, taking some time to relax and just enjoying something in its entirety.

I hate it. Hate it. And while I'm aware there's nothing stopping me from doing what I describe above — I think I even still have my Friends DVD box set somewhere — it's exhausting just to be around all this short-form garbage, and frustrating to live in a world where seemingly no-one has an attention span longer than a TikTok video.

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This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as in the case of Star Trek you're sitting there for a good few minutes watching swirly space and Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and Avery Brooks as Commander Sisko (still in season one at the moment) and, consequently, without a credits sequence the show itself has a few more minutes to play with. But does that few minutes really make a difference? Perhaps when the show is a short 20-minute affair, but when it's 45 minutes or more there's a strong argument for saying the writers should maybe look at where a few bits can be snipped.

But anyway. Whether or not credits sequences are a good thing isn't really what I want to talk about today, since that would be a short discussion — yes, they are — but what I did want to talk about is the ones that have stuck in my head over the years. A good credits sequence is strongly iconic and does a good job of summing up what the show's all about — either literally, by introducing characters, or sometimes in a more abstract sense by using representative imagery.

These are in no particular order. Given how I'm attempting to call them up from my living memory, they'll probably in roughly chronological order, but I am making no promises. I'm simply going to provide them for your delectation, with a few words about why I like them, why they're important to me or why I simply find them memorable.

Henry's Cat

I hadn't thought about Henry's Cat for the longest time, but a brief Twitter discussion with the fine Mr Alex Connolly the other day reminded me of both its existence and its terrible but strongly iconic credits sequence.

I honestly don't remember much about Henry's Cat beyond the title sequence and the little bit of an episode I watched out of curiosity on YouTube the other day. But I do suspect it's rather a product of its time, and not the sort of thing that kids are watching on TV these days.

Count Duckula

Whoever uploaded this gets bonus points for including the "Thames" logo at the beginning. Ahem. Anyway. Count Duckula was brilliant. And I've watched a few episodes recently and it's still genuinely quite amusing thanks to some wonderful voice work and characterisation… not to mention its baffling premise of a vegetarian vampire duck voiced by David Jason.

Unlike Henry's Cat, the Count Duckula theme and intro has stuck with me all these years. However, I did not know until two minutes ago when I looked at Wikipedia (to make sure it really was David Jason who voiced Duckula) that Count Duckula was actually a Danger Mouse spinoff series. TIL, and all that.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

You can't really get more iconic that Star Trek when it comes to title sequences, and there's really not much more that needs to be said about The Next Generation — aside, perhaps, from the fact that when you look at it, it's actually rather basic. Once the credits themselves start rolling, it's little more than text and the Enterprise occasionally hurling itself at the screen.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

I didn't like Deep Space Nine all that much when I was younger; its relatively "static" nature of being set on a space station rather than on an exploratory starship made it feel a bit more "boring" to the young me. Revisiting it recently has made me realise (or remember?) that it's actually really rather good — and certainly a lot more consistent than The Next Generation was in its early seasons.

I like the theme very much. It's one of those pieces of music that just sounds satisfying. What I did find interesting, though, was when they changed it very subtly starting in the fourth season:

It becomes faster, I think it's in a different key, the orchestration is different and the accompaniment is less "bare". It accurately reflects the show's noticeable change in direction from the fourth season onwards, not to mention the changes in the cast: Commander Sisko becomes Captain Sisko, The Next Generation's Worf joins the crew and Shit officially Starts Getting Real with regard to interstellar conflicts.

Friends

Friends was everywhere when I was a teenager, and I didn't mind because I enjoyed it a whole lot. The credits sequence was simple and straightforward, accurately summing up each character with a selection of season-unique snippets of their most iconic moments. It was fun to try and identify which episode each of the snippets had come from… you know, if there wasn't anything better to do.

Angel

Ah, Angel. Probably one of my favourite TV shows of all time, next to its companion piece Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which is also one of my favourite TV shows of all time, but whose credits sequence I never really rated all that much). Angel's intro was great in that it reflected the dark, brooding nature of its title character, but it also allowed the show to pull off one of its best features: the unexpected and surprising fact that while it wasn't afraid to deal with some seriously dark themes, it was very happy to poke fun at itself and show the silly side of the supernatural as well as the scary. The intro helped with this in that it set the expectation for a very "serious" and dark story, then in true Whedon fashion, it often subverted these expectations with the actual content of the episode.

Yuru Yuri

(This was the best video of the intro I could find that hadn't been snagged by YouTube's copyright laws. You'll just have to deal with the Spanish subtitles.)

I love Yuru Yuri. It's such a delightfully mundane and silly anime; very little actually happens in it, but by the end you have such a wonderful understanding of these loveable characters that it doesn't matter that they haven't done anything of note. The opening titles complement it perfectly, introducing the characters visually and setting the energetic, joyful tone for the rest of the show.

Love Live!

You'd hope a show about music would have a catchy theme tune, and Love Live! doesn't disappoint. This video (which repeats several times; you're not going mad) is from the first season and, like any good opening sequence, neatly summarises the show and its characters without them actually "saying" anything (although one could argue the lyrics of the song have a certain degree of meaning). Also it's just plain catchy.

Akiba's Trip

One thing I really like about Japanese games is that they treat them the same as anime — and that means that a big deal is made out of the opening credits, with music that is often released as a single in its own right. Akiba's Trip had a particularly strong opening with a catchy theme song, a good introduction of all the characters and, again, a summary of what to expect from the next few hours of your life.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory

The Neptunia series has some excellent songs throughout, but the opening theme for third game Victory is one of the stronger ones. It does a great job of capturing the games' energetic, joyful spirit and acknowledges their origins as a parody of the video games industry at large through heavy use of electronic effects and synthesised sounds. It also makes a point of demonstrating the extremely strong friendship between the core cast members — they may not see eye-to-eye about everything (or anything) but they stick together and help one another out.

Omega Quintet

Last one for now, otherwise I'll be here all night and I quite want to go to bed. I wrote a few days ago about how I like the fact Omega Quintet treats its episodic story just like an anime series, complete with opening and ending credits sequences. Here's the opening sequence, which you see not just at the beginning of the game, but at the start of every chapter. It's as delightful as the game itself.

The post 1962: Great Title Sequences (From My Living Memory) appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Spent the evening round at my friend Tim's house this evening. We played some multiplayer games and just hung out a bit. It was pleasant.

On the multiplayer front, we gave ZombiU a go properly now that I have a Classic Controller Pro or whatever the Wii U Xbox controller knockoff is called. It's much more playable than the cumbersome, weird Nunchuk and Wiimote setup we tried it with last time, and made for a far more enjoyable game.

ZombiU's multiplayer mode is a lot of fun. There are two distinct ways to play: a Capture the Flag-style mode and a variant on a "Horde" mode. Neither of these are conventionally implemented thanks to the focus on asymmetric play: one player has the Wii U GamePad, while the other has some form of more traditional control scheme (preferably a Classic Controller Pro) and plays on the TV. The GamePad player is essentially playing a top-down real-time strategy game, while the player on the TV is playing a conventional first-person shooter.

It's a simple idea, but very effective. The GamePad player is able to summon zombies of various types into the player's game by tapping the screen, though there are certain limitations: firstly, different types of zombies cost a certain amount of resources, which increase gradually over time; secondly, you can only have up to eight zombies summoned at once; thirdly, you're not able to just plop zombies down right next to the player: red zones on the map (including a mobile one in the player's immediate vicinity) show where you're not able to summon one of your minions. Each time you place a zombie, you creep closer to a level up, which allows you to unlock new zombies and abilities; in other words, the longer the match goes on, the more difficult it gets for the "Survivor" player.

It's definitely worth a try. Not sure how much "staying power" it has, but we played it for a good while this evening and it was consistently fun.

Having the opportunity to spend some time with Tim this evening got me thinking, though. It's been a while since we were able to hang out together, and with two of our regular board gaming group now considerably busier than they once were — one with a new house, another with a new baby — it's getting more and more difficult to find opportunities to spend time together and do fun things. This is all part of "growing up", of course, but, to sound like a petulant child for a moment, I don't like it all that much.

Over the last few months, I've found myself feeling quite a bit more isolated for various reasons. I haven't seen quite a few of my "real life" friends for quite some time, partly because they're busy with their own real lives — there are several new babies in my circle of friends, for example — and also partly because my own social anxiety makes me feel like I'm being a bother when I consider asking people if they have time to hang out.

There are lots of things I'd like to do with people, but I'm not entirely sure if the people I know now would be interested in doing them. I'd like to play board games with a wider circle of people, for example; I'm envious of my friends elsewhere who have groups who can meet much more regularly than mine. I'd like to play some role-playing games — both silly ones like Maid: The Role-Playing Game and more traditional ones like Dungeons & Dragons — but I'm not entirely convinced I know anyone who'd be up for it. And I'd like to shamelessly copy my friends Mark and Lynette in having a regular "anime and cocktails" evening (perhaps with less emphasis on the latter, as I don't drink much these days) during which we watch several different shows with markedly different themes. I am at least thankful that I can share Final Fantasy XIV with Andie.

Chances are I do know at least a couple of people who would be interested in some or all of the above, but it's sometimes difficult to know how to bring these things up — or, in some cases, how to ask to join other well-established friendship or activity groups who would be into this sort of thing. It's even more daunting to contemplate the prospect of finding completely new friends, so I have to wonder if I'll continue to be stuck in this faintly dissatisfied situation, never quite able to truly share some of the things I enjoy with other people?

The post 1886: The Order appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This PAX weekend has been pretty much everything I hoped it would be. I had a great time with my friends, I saw some cool stuff at the show and I picked up some fun swag.

Most importantly, we successfully carried a number of formerly Internet-only relationships into the offline realm. Doing this is always a nerve-wracking experience — regardless of whether said relationship is platonic, romantic or anything else — and so it's always a pleasure when things come together and we all get along.

I actually wasn't too worried this time around, though. Something brought us all together in the world of Final Fantasy XIV and the fact most of us have been together for nigh on two years now says something positive about us and what we mean to one another. There have been tough times, as with any relationship, and people have come and gone over time, but the people with whom I spent my weekend represent a core group that I have always very much enjoyed spending virtual time with — and it turns out I enjoy spending real time with, too. It's just a pity we're all so scattered.

"I'm glad everyone is exactly how they seem to be," said one of our number last night, possibly slightly fuelled by a beer or two. "It means that everyone's genuine. And that we're all as fucked up as each other."

That latter point is key, and not necessarily a bad thing. Almost without exception, we've all had Shit to Deal With to varying degrees over the years, and our adventures in Eorzea have provided not only some much-needed escape at times, but also an outlet through which we can talk about the things that have been bothering us with like-minded individuals.

And that is immeasurably valuable; in an age where it seems people are drifting further and further apart from one another for various reasons, it's comforting to have a group that is pretty much always there for you. I know I'm grateful for these friends, and I'm sure they are too.

Now coffee is calling, closely followed by a connecting flight, a taxi ride back home and then almost straight back out (hopefully with time for a shower first!) to go and teach clarinet to kids. It's all go, huh. I shall sleep well tonight, for sure.

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It was the wedding of my friends Cat and John today up here in sunny Aberdeen, Scotland. It's pretty rare to have a horrible wedding — though I'm sure they happen on occasion — but I am, unsurprisingly, pleased to report that it was a jolly nice day, with a pleasantly short ceremony (in which I did indeed read the shit out of the poem I'd been provided with, and was subsequently complimented by all manner of people I'd never met before throughout the rest of the day), a tasty meal that struck a good balance between being posh and actually being edible, and an enjoyable evening of ceilidh music and dancing. (I must confess to not having indulged in much of the dancing, primarily because I don't really enjoy it but also because my trousers were at risk of falling down partway through Strip the Willow.)

Cat is one of my oldest friends that I'm actually still friends with. She was the first person I ever met at university, and something of a fixture in my life throughout the course of my undergraduate studies. We haven't seen each other all that much for the last few years — primarily because she lives in a whole other country (yes, Scotland totally counts as being a whole other country) — but it was nice to see her today and it be pretty much like the intervening years simply hadn't happened; the only difference was that she was wearing a big, impractical dress and had a different surname.

The fact I'm friends with Cat reminds me of one of my secret proudest moments. It may not sound much — particularly if you're not someone who has suffered with social anxiety — but it was a big deal to me.

Let me explain.

Prior to starting university properly, I had signed up for a pre-term music course, during which I'd have the opportunity to play with members of the university symphony orchestra, as we indulged in some intensive rehearsal and study over the course of a single week, culminating in a performance of Shostakovich's 5th symphony and Beethoven's 7th symphony. I had never performed a full symphony before, and here I was preparing to perform two of them after just a week of rehearsal. It was challenging, but fun.

What was more challenging to me, though, was the prospect of meeting new people. I'd already established in my mind at secondary school that I wasn't quite sure how to go about making new friends or meeting new people, so I was quite nervous about going to university. (I had also contemplated, as I'm sure many people had, making up a cool nickname for myself, but never quite had the guts to go through with lying to potential new friends about what "everyone calls me".)

So it was that I found myself in the lift after the first day of the music course, heading up to the 15th floor of Stoneham Halls of Residence to get a bit of rest. Also in the lift with me was Cat — although I didn't know who she was yet, aside from the fact that she was in the string section. As the doors closed, I decided that I was going to bite the bullet and actually try to make a new friend. So I introduced myself. And, as often happens when I take a social "risk" like this, I was surprised to discover that I didn't die, wasn't punched in the face and wasn't showered with acid from my conversational partner inexplicably turning into a giant, acid-spitting snake-like creature. Instead, I found out the name of someone, got to know them a bit and had a ready-made excuse to escape when I reached the 15th floor. Ideal.

Over the early days at university, I came to know Cat quite well. Having grown up in a school where interests were divided quite sharply along gender lines — it was also the days before being a geek was "cool", although the relatively recent introduction of Sony's PlayStation meant that situation was changing — it was quite surprising to meet someone of the female persuasion who not only tolerated the presence of video games, but also appeared to be genuinely interested in them. We spent many an hour sitting in my room playing Final Fantasy VIII and Point Blank together — to date, I'm not sure I'd ever be able to name Rinoa anything but "Cat" — and we had a most enjoyable time getting through our music (well, English and music in my case) degrees together.

In short, she's one of those friends that will almost certainly be a constant presence in my life for many years to come yet, and I'm really happy to see her so happy today. I wish her and John a long and happy life together, and that new life for them starts today.

Thanks for a great day, Mr and Mrs Cowe. Have a very happy life!

The post 1744: Congratulations to Cat and John appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I don't mean that I'm too old for anime or related media, of course — I really hope the day never comes when I feel like I've "grown out" of the things I love today — but rather I feel like the opportunity to enjoy and share these things with friends has been, to a large degree, mostly lost.

I mention this because of my aforementioned conversation with Lynette. Aside from this blog — where, as we all know, I'm pissing in the wind — Lynette is one of the few people I have the opportunity to enthuse about anime with on a fairly regular basis. And it's somewhat frustrating to both of us that we're several thousand miles apart and consequently unable to get together regularly for cocktails, popcorn and a few episodes of some favourite anime series, perhaps educating one another on recent discoveries that we want to share. It's something we'd both really like to be able to do — indeed, we have done it before, on the occasions when I've had the opportunity to visit her and her husband Mark (also a close personal friend, and also someone with whom I can enthuse about anime) in Toronto.

This is one unfortunate side-effect of the whole "global village" (hah, bet you haven't heard that term since a '90s issue of PC Format) thing the Internet has brought about. It's never been easier to find like-minded friends who share the same interests and passions as you, but the thing people don't mention about that seemingly great development in socialisation is how frustrating it is to not be able to get together with those friends on at least a semi-regular basis. (Unless you're loaded enough to be able to simply hop on a trans-Atlantic flight at a moment's notice whenever you fancy it, in which case I think I hate you a little bit.) I have friends literally all over the world — America, Canada, the Middle East, Japan, Australia — who I would love to hang out with and do all sorts of mutually enjoyable things with (no, not that sort of thing, pervert) but am unable to do so. I'm fortunate enough to have these friends in the first place, of course, but by gosh, I sometimes wish they were just around the corner so I could drop them a text, invite them over for an anime evening and subsequently have an enjoyable time.

Why not ask your local friends, you might wonder. Because my local friends all have their own passions and interests — and, with us being the age we are (we're not in university any more!) a lot of them are doing distinctly "grown-up" things like grouting their bathrooms (whatever that means) or having children. I certainly don't begrudge them any of those things, but it can be sad and frustrating when it's difficult to get people together for anything more than the most cursory of social occasions. Life gets in the way, in other words.

So, uh, anyone local want to hang out and watch some anime? We have popcorn.

The post 1569: Life Gets In the Way appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It was the first day of secondary school. Everything was big and new and scary — I'd come from a small village school in which the entire school population was roughly the size of a single year group in my secondary school. I'd chosen to go to said secondary school because a lot of my friends were going there, and also my brother had attended there some years previously and had come out of the experience as what is generally accepted to be a Good Person. Also, a lot of the people who had been bullies to me in primary school were going to a different secondary school, so I knew that I wanted to avoid that one like the plague.

But I, as ever, digress.

It was the first day of secondary school. I was sitting in my new seat in my new tutor group, and our tutor, Miss Quirk (yes, really), had tasked us with spending a few minutes getting to know the people around us.

I gazed around me. I was sitting next to a boy named Murray whom I didn't know. In front of me was a girl named Claire, whom I had instantly fallen in love with due to her long shiny blonde hair and the fact she wore short skirts with tights — something which I found (hell, find) inexplicably attractive. (Hey. I was eleven years old and easily pleased — but to be fair, she did remain consistently stunning throughout our entire school career.)

Behind me was my sometime best friend from primary school, Matthew. I say "sometime" because he wasn't always my best friend — he was a somewhat fickle chap rather prone to occasionally deciding he'd rather hang out with the "cool" kids, whose opinion of me tended to flip-flop back and forth on an almost weekly basis. Needless to say, I ditched him fairly soon into my secondary school career as a result of two events: one, him sneezing so hard he snotted over his hands and then ate it — mmm — and two, him deciding that sitting in his chair, miming masturbation and bellowing "I'm a wanker! I'm a wanker!" would be somehow amusing. (To be fair, it was sort of amusing, but perhaps not in the way he intended; needless to say, I didn't really want to be associated with him after that.)

Anyway. Our seating arrangements were the way they were in order to encourage us to interact and get to know each other. We'd been deliberately seated next to people we didn't know to encourage us to break out of our primary school "cliques" and widen our friendship circles — a theoretically sound idea that even at that tender age, I could see the benefits of.

Unfortunately, I couldn't act on it. Given the prospect of being thrown into enforced interaction with someone I didn't know from Adam, I froze up. I had no idea how to begin a conversation, how to get to know this person. Frantically, I turned around to gaze at Matthew (a pre-"I'm a wanker! I'm a wanker!" Matthew, I might add) and looked at him pleadingly.

"I can't remember how to make friends!" I said quietly to him. He just laughed and motioned for me to turn around and talk to Murray. He obviously hadn't taken my statement seriously, and that was frustrating, but I had little option but to try. It was a terrifying experience, though, and obviously I didn't set a particularly good first impression on Murray, because he became a complete bellend who bullied me on a regular basis. (I got my own back by punching him in the face just as the principal was walking around the corner and, although I was punished for lashing out like that, the unspoken consensus between my parents and the teachers involved was that he probably deserved it — and to be fair, he didn't bother me again after that.)

That first day and that pitiful statement — "I can't remember how to make friends!" — stuck with me, though. Because I can't remember how to make friends. It just sort of happens. I have made friends with people over the years, of course — the friends I made after I abandoned Matthew following the "I'm a wanker!" incident (such as Edward James Padgett, who has been mentioned in this post since it was first written, he just didn't see it); my university flatmates; my fellow students on my music course (though not on my English course — I didn't really get to know anyone on that side of things); and people I've worked with — but if I'm thrown into a new situation with unfamiliar people, or simply decide that I want to get to know new people who perhaps share my interests… I still have no idea how to do this.

This is, as I'm sure you can appreciate, frustrating, particularly as at the age of 32 I finally feel that I have found a number of geeky "niches" that I fit nicely into, and would like to share these experiences with like-minded people. I greatly enjoyed spending time with Mark and Lynette while we were over in Canada because they are both My Kind of People who enjoy the things I do — but I also found myself somewhat envious of them for having a group of friends they play Dungeons & Dragons with, watch anime with while drinking cocktails and all manner of other things that are in keeping with their interests.

This isn't to say I don't have friends, obviously. The friends I see most frequently are my regular(ish) board gaming group, and I wouldn't exchange them for anything, since I really, really appreciate the time I spend with them indulging in our mutual hobby. However, we do have our own incompatibilities — two of our number are really into football, for example, while the rest of us either have no strong feelings or actively hate it. (I fall into the latter category.) Similarly, I very much like Japanese video games, while several of the others cling to common misconceptions about them and thus either refuse to play them or have little interest in exploring them and having their misconceptions disproven — though at least they are patient and willing to listen to me talk about them. Conversely, a couple of our number are big into Skyrim, a game which I found almost unbearably tedious after a while. To continue the pattern, I'm a big fan of anime and would really like it if I could have a semi-regular viewing session with a small group of people, but no-one from that particular group is biting for various reasons — some don't like or don't see the point of sitting and watching something together as a group; some aren't interested in anime.

You get the picture, anyway. I obviously don't begrudge my friends these incompatibilities we have — everyone is different, after all, and thus has their own tastes — but I find myself wishing on a regular basis that it was a bit easier to find additional friends (note: not "new" friends, because to me that implies a degree of "replacement", which I don't want) who have common interests.

Actually, let me qualify that somewhat: I find myself wishing that it was a bit easier to find additional local friends who have common interests. It's obviously no problem whatsoever to find new friends on the Internet who have similar tastes to me, and I'm very grateful for the fact that I do have so many people on the Internet that I can rant and rave about how awesome Ar Tonelico is or how much Kana Little Sister made me cry or whatever. But as much as I appreciate these friends in far-flung corners of the world, it's not quite the same as having someone you can just pop over and see at short notice, hang out and do some things that you both enjoy.

So, uh, anyone want to hang out, play some games and watch some anime?

The post 1221: How Do You Make Friends Again...? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Friends is something that I've watched so many times now that I can pretty much recite it word for word along with any episode that's on. It kind of fell out of favour with the public in its latter stages as many people saw it as outstaying its welcome, but I enjoyed it consistently all the way through. As I say, it was comfort food; you knew what to expect with every episode. It was never anything adventurous, but the characters were both relatable and attractive, the situations they got into often personally relevant, and the quips and jokes memorable and, yes, genuinely amusing.

I started re-watching Friends again the other day having come into possession of a complete collection, only this time around I'm watching the "extended cuts" that came out a few years back. These aren't Lucasesque "special edition" versions, they're simply about 5 minutes longer per episode, with numerous scenes restored to their full length and, in many cases, adding a whole bunch of additional context and depth to the characters and setting that simply wasn't there before due to the constraints of the TV scheduling.

I'm really enjoying them so far. This extra footage means that watching the show again after a few years' break strikes a wonderful balance between the comfortably familiar and the brand-new — and, given how well I know the original versions, I can immediately recognise when something is new. In many cases, scenes that had rather awkward and obvious edits on TV now make much more sense, and in some cases there are scenes that I simply don't think were even there at all in the first place — Joey's first meeting with his colourful agent Estelle, for example.

More than the pleasure of getting some "new" Friends to watch, though, I'm overwhelmed with the feeling of comfortable nostalgia that watching this show always infuses in me. I've spent so much time with these characters inside my TV over the years that I feel like they're my friends, too — a fact helped by the fact that I still, to this day, tend to group people in my mind according to which one of the main cast they most remind me of. (Shh. Don't tell anyone.)

One thing I'd forgotten about is that the show appeared to coin the term "friend zone" back in its first season, where Joey uses it to describe Ross having waited too long to make his move on Rachel. I shan't get into any of that endless discussion over people who use the term "friend zone" today because it's inordinately tedious and frustrating, but I wonder how many people remember where it actually came from and its original context. A few years back, I would have deemed it unthinkable for someone to not have knowledge of Friends, but a lot of years have passed since then.

And yet, I struggle to think of a recent TV show I've been quite as attached to as Friends. I've enjoyed various American comedies that have come since — How I Met Your Mother was originally sold to me as something of a successor to Friends in many ways, and I have major soft spots for Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock — but for me, nothing will ever be quite the same as the time I spent with Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross, Chandler and Joey. However well (or otherwise) you think it may well have aged, there's little denying that for many people of a similar age to me, Friends was and is a touchstone of popular culture that will always carry at least some degree of personal resonance.

The post 1100: The One where Pete Watches 'Friends' for the First Time in Quite a While appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Of my friends who have got married whose stag dos I've been to, none of them have done the stereotypical "get hammered in Amsterdam, hire hookers then leave Stag Boy in an embarrassing position to be discovered by the police/his parents after several hours of considerable discomfort". And I'm actually quite grateful for that. Although everyone jokes about that being the way that stag dos are "supposed" to go it never struck me as particularly fun — especially not for the Stag, who will probably be left rethinking his friendships in the hours between being chained to the lamppost and having to explain to the nice police officer why he is naked and covered in margarine.

My own stag do was relatively stereotypical — paintballing in the daytime followed by drinks in the evening — but I chose to invite my female friends also, and nothing embarrassing happened. Not that I remember, anyway. I remember it being a rather fun night — there are certainly a bunch of photos suggesting it was lurking around somewhere — but I didn't leave it thinking "wow, my friends are a bunch of bellends." Which, again, I'm quite grateful for.

A stag do should be an opportunity for the groom-to-be to have some time with his closest friends — regardless of gender if he so desires — and have a memorable "send off" before married life. That looks like exactly what this weekend is going to be, so I'm going to take the time to relax and enjoy it hopefully as much as Tim will.

Bed now. The drinks have been flowing freely and we've been playing Cards Against Humanity for the past few hours. Hilarity, as usual, ensued, but I'm more than ready for sleep now!

The post #oneaday Day 984: Stagging appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

You have to say it right for it to be satisfying though. Try it with me.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose. Now open your mouth a little as if you're going to cough up a big ol' flob and pronounce a nice, crisp, hard "C" sound. Immediately follow with a round, fruity "O", where your mouth makes the perfect shape of the letter it's pronouncing, leave a short gap, then follow up with the "CK". Ideally, you should throw back your head slightly while doing the "CO–" bit and give a pervy smile while doing the "–CK" bit. Advanced "COCK"-ers should feel free to add a crescendoing "mm" or "nn" sound beforehand for added amusement. "mmCOCK!" "nnCOCK!"

Lest you feel I've lost it here, let me explain my love for this gloriously expressive one-syllable word. It came about back in secondary school. Some friends and I were hanging out, and I, for some reason, happened to pronounce the word "cock" in the manner described above, and everyone fell about laughing. According to my friend Craig, it was hilarious because it, I quote, "sounded like a porn star saying it." (It sounds even more like a porn star saying it if you also say the word "SUCK" in the same manner as the word "COCK" described above.)

Anyhow, the word "COCK" became our go-to insult or space-filler when there was a lull in the conversation. This use of the word, completely devoid of its usual context, came to a head one summer when my parents had gone on holiday and I was left alone in the house for the first time. My friend Woody and I had recently discovered Final Fantasy VII and, having both finished it possibly several times by this point, were doing a communal playthrough together, fuelled by tequila which we had decided we would attempt to drink despite the fact that both of us felt that it tasted like what a glass of water would taste like if you dropped about fifteen cigarette butts in it. As night fell, we decided that The Thing To Do would be to switch over and play Resident Evil 2 very loud while absolutely munted off our tits. (We also left a metronome ticking outside the room our friend Ed, who had flaked out early, was sleeping in.)

For whatever reason, during our Resident Evil 2 session — and remember we were absolutely twatted by this point — we then decided that The Thing To Do would be to turn to each other and repeatedly say the word "COCK" in the manner described above to each other while attempting to continue normal play. Normal play was already somewhat difficult due to the amount of alcohol we had imbibed coupled with Resident Evil 2's cumbersome controls, so it largely degenerated into just the shouting of the aforementioned syllable over and over and over again.

I don't know for how many hours we kept this up, but it was certainly a long time. Probably at least one hour and possibly more. I'm pretty sure that we somehow got most of the way through the game while repeatedly bellowing "COCK" at one another, because I have a vivid memory of collapsing in a drunken, exhausted heap after failing to kill the final boss and waking up the next morning in an awkward position with the PlayStation still running.

So there you go. That's how much I love cock. I'll go all night with it.

(Aside: WordPress recommended "wine tasting descriptors" as a tag for this post. I'm not sure I need to make any further comment than that.)

The post #oneaday Day 954: I Love Cock appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

What that means is that sometimes I get tongue-tied and don't know what to say. Sometimes I let conversations run inside my head but worry about what the possible outcome of them will be, and end up saying nothing. Sometimes I quite literally have nothing to say whatsoever. And sometimes I do say something and don't get the reaction I expected and consequently feel weird.

As you might expect, this makes the prospect of "making friends" a fairly terrifying one. Obviously I have made friends over the years, otherwise I wouldn't have any right now, but I can never quite remember how it happened. In some cases, it was a simple matter of being thrown together in some context — living together, studying together, working together — but in others, it's not quite so clear.

While I am more than happy with the friends I do have, I do sometimes wish I could have more. That may sound greedy, but the fact is that I don't get to actually see the friends I have all that often. The vast majority of them live in the States (thank you, Internet) and the others live just far enough away for it to be A Big Effort to go and see them. And, you know, sometimes I just want people to play board games with. I bought a copy of Legend of Drizzt, one of the cooperative Dungeons & Dragons adventure games, this week and I'm hoping I get the chance to play it more than once or twice. If I had more friends (who liked board gaming) then I'd be able to play it more often — at the moment, however, it's determined largely by mutual availability and whether at least one of us can be bothered to drive about 50 miles. I'm more than happy to for the prospect of board game fun, but it's the former bit that can be tricky sometimes. Hopefully if and when Andie and I manage to move a bit closer to Southampton it'll be a bit easier to be more spontaneous — as it stands, however, it's a relatively rare treat to see people.

This is all rather self-pitying I know, but I direct you back to the first line of this post. Social anxiety makes the act of making new friends — even the prospect of just talking to strangers — a terrifying and difficult prospect. Even in an environment that should be "friendly" — I know there's a local board game shop in Bristol that does games evenings, for example, but I don't even feel especially confident about that. My mind gets caught in a cycle of "what ifs" and I just end up deciding not to go.

Perhaps one day I'll get over this social anxiety and be more confident about making new friends and considering that people might actually want to spend time with me if they don't have to. That day is not today, however, which means that I'm all the more grateful for the friends I do have and the time I do get to spend with them.

Anyone fancy a game of Legend of Drizzt?

The post #oneaday Day 899: I'll Be There For You appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It's not been a great week to be in my mind. You can't control how or when or for what reason depression will hit you, but it's been getting me down somewhat recently for a variety of reasons. The events I outlined yesterday are one contributing factor, but as I said there, they aren't directly affecting me and thus I have to think that the exaggerated feelings of disappointment and upset I have been feeling may be caused by, rather than be the cause of, depression. Or perhaps there's a whole mess of contributing factors.

I don't know. And thinking about it inevitably doesn't help.

One thing that is getting me down a bit at the moment is how far away I am feeling from all my friends. I live in the middle of nowhere a long way away from pretty much everyone I know, and thousands of miles away from the people I talk to literally every day — friends, coworkers, confidantes. I have Andie in my life, a fact which I am incredibly thankful for every day, but that unfortunately doesn't stop the occasional feelings of loneliness and disconnection.

It's partly my fault in some cases, of course. When you have disparate, unconnected friendship groups scattered around the globe, it's difficult to keep up with all of them. (Hell, it's difficult to keep up with disparate, unconnected friendship groups in the same city sometimes.) Some necessarily fall by the wayside as a sort of natural atrophy. In many cases, this gradual contraction of your worldwide friendship network is a sign that one or all of you have evolved and changed from the people you were when you first knew each other, and you're just going in directions too different to stay together. In others, yes, it can simply be laziness, but mental states play a role in all this, too, particularly if you struggle with social anxiety as I do — sometimes even the prospect of hanging out with a longtime friend can be terrifying if you haven't seen them for ages. What if you have nothing to talk about?

Mostly, though, my daily life, my work and my hobbies have led me to the position I am in now, where the vast majority (though not all) of the people that I would consider my closest friends live many thousands of miles away across the Atlantic Ocean, and in some cases even further afield than that. It's great that I can talk to these people every day thanks to various forms of social media and other online happy funtimes, but sometimes all you want to do is get some people together in the same room, play some couch co-op (or couch competition games like the rather wonderful Hidden in Plain Sight), play some board games, eat some pizza/curry/Chinese/other takeaway goodness and simply, you know chill out together. It happens all too rarely these days.

Ah well. Not a lot I can do about it right now at 1am in the dark in Chippenham, is there? Someday I'll buy you all a drink. Just probably not all at the same time.

The post #oneaday Day 877: Far Away appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Disclaimer: I'm aware that I wrote almost exactly the same post as you're about to read at this time last year, and for that I make absolutely no apologies.

It's PAX East time! Yay! I'm not there! Boooo.

I've not been to many conventions or big shows like that over the years, so I have very fond memories of those I have been able to attend. My decision to attend PAX East in 2010 was very much a spur of the moment thing — I'd decided I wanted to leave my primary school teaching job because I'd given it a chance and determined it wasn't for me, I was trying as hard as I could to pursue a career in the Writing Words About Games industry, and I was feeling a bit miserable and lonely. So, with a little financial help, I flew across the pond to Boston and went to my first big show in America.

It was an exciting time for a number of reasons. I'd just started working for Kombo.com which, while it didn't pay particularly well, provided me with a position where I could legitimately say I was a professional member of the games press. I knew that a large number of my buddies from communities such as Bitmob and The Squadron of Shame would be in attendance, so I'd have the opportunity to meet some people face to face. And I always love the opportunity to visit the States. I'd never been to Boston before, and while I was under no illusions that I'd be seeing much of the city while I was there, I was looking forward to being Somewhere New.

It was also terrifying. As a sufferer of social anixety at the best of times, the prospect of meeting people I'd only ever talked to on the Internet in the past was a scary one. What if we didn't get on? What if it was a massive disaster and it destroyed the carefully-cultivated relationships we'd built up with one another? What if I had nothing to say? What if I got lost and it was actually because they wanted to lose me? All these thoughts whirled around my head as I was on the plane, but I was very happy to discover that PAX was, in fact, a happy, inclusive and wonderful place for geeks of all descriptions to call home — whether they were someone who just liked video games or was also into collectible card games, role-playing games, board games, cosplay, the history of technology… anything like that.

That word — "home" — is an important one. Because it felt good to be there. It felt like a world which I wanted to belong to, surrounded by people that I wanted to be with. It was a world that accepted and embraced each other's differences and brought people from many different walks of life together in the name of common interests. Perhaps most importantly, it made friendships real. It's all very well chatting to people online on a regular basis, but once you've spent time with those people in person — seen them, heard them, hugged them, tickled their beards in a homoerotic manner where applicable — your friendship is on a different level. I haven't seen some of those people I met at PAX East 2010 in person since that weekend two years ago, but in many ways I feel closer, more connected to them than many of my — for want of a better word — "real" friends. Perhaps it's because they're also "Internet friends" that I speak to most days via Twitter, Facebook and G+.

Whatever the reason, knowing that lots of people I know are at PAX East right now and undoubtedly having a great time (and/or queueing for hours) makes me a bit sad — not that they're there, obviously, but that I'm not there with them.

I propose a pact, then, faraway friends: PAX East 2013. Be there. You have a year to prepare. Get cracking.

The post #oneaday Day 809: PAX Pact appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

In a recent blog post, one Ben Goldacre described Spotify's auto-sharing behaviour as "creepy" and called for greater transparency in opt-out procedures. While I don't disagree that users should have the option of whether or not to share what it is that they're doing, I do disagree with the good Doctor's assertion that showing off your tastes to others is somehow "creepy" or "wrong".

The reason I don't find it either of those things is because of discovery. Spotify is built in such a manner that it's easy to check out an artist or album you're unfamiliar with in a risk-free environment. You don't drop any money on the album directly, so if you wind up hating it, you haven't lost out. And if you end up loving it, you can whack it in a playlist or star it for future reference.

Combine this ease of trying things outside of your usual comfort zone with social features and you get a powerful tool to expand your own tastes. Because music is an ever-present part of society these days — silence, it seems, is frowned upon by most people, particularly those of more tender years — conversations about what artists are awesome are less common than they once were in the age of buying CDs (and, heaven forbid, cassettes). Music is just there for many people — a disposable thing that people may well have a strong connection to but perhaps don't always think to actually discuss,

What Spotify's sharing feature does is allow you to see what friends have been listening to and, if it takes your fancy, jump right in there and have a listen yourself. I've discovered more than a few new favourites this way, and I'm certain other people will have been curious about some of my tastes too. I don't have any objection to people seeing what I've been listening to and I'm certainly not ashamed of it. The same is true for Netflix, newly launched in the UK and nicely integrated with Facebook to allow you to share what you're watching. On the whole, I'm much more inclined to pay attention to new releases if my friends are enjoying them rather than if they're simply "critically acclaimed". See: The Squadron of Shame

Goldacre suggests that people will make judgements based on what you have been listening to, and your playlists which, if you weren't already aware, are made public by default. And perhaps people will — but the attitude I have always taken with personal taste is that it is just that: personal. If you're the sort of person who ridicules someone else just because of what music they listen to, how they dress, or their appearance… I probably don't really want to know you. Everyone is free to make their own choices with regard to what entertains them (unless, you know, if you're into something fucked up and illegal) and so people should not feel ashamed or embarrassed to share what it is that they have been enjoying.

In fairness, it's entirely possible that there is the scope for cyber-bullying among schoolkids based on what they might have been listening to with Spotify, or the content of their playlists. But there's the scope for cyber-bullying based on their photos, their status updates, all the other stuff that's on Facebook, too. This isn't excusing it. However, it does mean that Spotify itself isn't some sort of creepy bully-magnet. As with all forms of social media and teens interacting with others on the Web, it's important for parents to be involved and aware of what their offspring are up to. If it looks like causing a problem, they should be familiar with the options that are there to protect people — and Spotify has those options if, for whatever reason, sharing things does become a problem. But someone's listening habits are public by default — and why shouldn't they be? There's nothing to be ashamed of there.

Perhaps I have a naïve view of social media and sharing information on the Web. But I just don't see how sharing your entertainment consumption is particularly harmful. Sharing deeply personal information, yes. But the fact that you listened to the Lazy Town soundtrack today? For me, that's the start of an interesting conversation, not something creepy.

The post #oneaday Day 738: Diversifying appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I can't even pin down why I sometimes find it difficult to say the name of the person who is standing right in front of me and who, in most cases, I know quite well. Perhaps I worry I'll mispronounce it (granted, it's kind of hard to mispronounce most of the names of people I know, though I have no idea how to say the surnames "Ohle" or "Honea" to this day and worry if I ever meet the people in question face to face I'll pick the wrong possibility and make a big tit of myself) or perhaps I just think that someone's name is somehow a window on their soul, a piece of their person that is, well, personal.

I don't mind people calling me by name, though, that's the weird thing. And I'm aware it's silly to feel odd about saying other people's names — particularly if you're calling out for someone. "Hey! You!" really doesn't cut it in a room full of people — although to be honest, I've never really been one for calling out anyway, as I generally much prefer to just go over to the person in question and speak to them, as yelling just draws attention to 1) you and 2) the person you're yelling at, who may not be grateful for the attention.

Of course, it's easy to go the other way and start calling people by their name far too much. Then it gets a bit weird, people start raising their eyebrows and wondering why you're "acting suspiciously". Saying someone's name too much is often seen as a sign of guilt, like you're trying to avoid accidentally referring to the person as someone else, like an ex, or a hilariously deformed person you saw on TV that you can't get out of your head while you look at your friend, however awful a person that makes you.

Maybe it, like so many socialisation things, is something you just need to practice a bit. It is, after all, one of the things about "growing up" — the moment when you stop calling adults "Steven's mum" or "Mrs. Stevenson" and start calling them "Geoff". (Steven's mum's parents didn't like her much.) Perhaps there's still some sort of residual hang-up in my mind about that, like so many things.

Ah well. One more to add to the list.

The post #oneaday Day 137: Say My Name, Bitch appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Good evening all! It's a little late, I know, but I've just got back from the weekend of my birthday celebrations which actually turned out to be rather more of a big deal than I originally anticipated. Still, nothing like seeing in a significant milestone in your ageing process with a bang, is there?

I can safely say that this weekend just gone has been pretty damn awesome. Definitely the best birthday I've ever had and certainly one of the best — if not the best — weekends I've ever had. So wins all round on that front, then.

A big public thank you to everyone who helped make this weekend what it was, and an extra special thank you to Andie, who not only took me to London on Royal Wedding day (a less unwise thing to do than it sounds, surprisingly) and spoiled me rotten with dinner, a show, awesome company and a lovely hotel, but is also the reason I am now in possession of the only existing canvas print (to my knowledge, anyway) of one of my silly cartoon strips. Pictures to come.

Thanks, too, to everyone who came out last night — there were a lot more of you than I was expecting, which was awesome, though I'm pretty sure it made the nice men who ran the restaurant want to kill us. But oh well — we ate lots and left them a pretty generous tip, frankly, so I'm sure they can deal with it.

Sorry that some of you weren't able to make it out, but I'm almost certain I will catch up with each and every one of you. I'm talking particularly to my friends in the Southampton area here, obviously — those of you who are further afield (such as in different countries!) I will come and see you when I win the lottery!

I think I've mentioned this before (in fact, in four hundred and *mumble* entries, I've probably mentioned most things at least once) but I find it interesting how somewhere can still feel like "home" even when you don't live there any more. Southampton may not be the nicest place in the universe, but I spent a significant proportion of my life there, and as such, every time I go back — and see the people whom I associate with that place, even if they also don't live there any more — it feels like coming home. The familiar streets, the same old shops, the same old throngs of zombie-like pedestrians congregating like a gibbering horde outside WestQuay. It's a comforting sense of familiarity, and while I may never live specifically in Southampton again (possibly) it's nice to know it's a place I can definitely hang my hat on and call "home".

Conversely, the place I currently live in — the home I grew up in, in deepest darkest Cambridgeshire — hasn't felt like home since I left for the first time back in 1999. This may be because of the fact I barely know anyone here any more and thus don't really socialise or get involved in nightlife around here much (nor do I have any real desire to, to be honest, as at some point I'll move on again) or it may be the fact that I moved back here last September out of necessity rather than a desire to. It may also be something to do with the fact that the majority of my worldly possessions are still in cardboard boxes in the garage, meaning I haven't really made my living space completely "my own" — because, well, it's not. But needs must and all that.

But enough of that. It's 20 past midnight and I am absolutely exhausted after a long drive. I am going to sleep like a log tonight. Starting now.

Thanks again to all who made this weekend what it was. I'll see you all — along with the people I didn't get a chance to see — soon!

The post #oneaday Day 121: First of May appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Hello! I am in the pub with good friends celebrating my birthday. As a result, it seems like a good time to take the Communal Blogging approach, where everyone present gets to write a short paragraph. This also absolves me of responsibility for any drunken grammatical errors because they probably weren't my fault. So there. Without further ado, here comes the first paragraph from someone who isn't me.

Aren't kittens awesome. I mean like cats in general to be honest, all fwuffeh and cute and slinky and tired and stretchy and shit. Like I said. Awesome.

Luke is being all kinds of mean on twitter. I think that Amy may destroy him at some point. Sometimes, I worry about Luke. And then sometimes I just don't care.

So Luke just tried to steal Pete's iPhone how rude!?? Honestly I had to resort to telling him off like one of my students, I'm not so sure that I can achieve the standard Q31 in a pub on a Saturday night!!

"What's a lovely curry" said pete and Graham sneezed on Laura, in which she replied "you need to be wiped down" pete then jokingly laughed and called graham a "dirty boy" ..which he liked a little too much.

Thanks pete for a great night. Was also really nice to meet andi who I forgot I met before. Is good to see you happy. Ultimately it's been fun to be around people who make me laugh and who are interesting. Happy 30th.

Absolutely splendid night with my mate pete-not entirely sure what should be written here, but I've had a few pints and honestly life is quite good! Great to see friends grow up, although not too much thankfully-and its nice to have a chat with new people-with a lowest common denominator (that's you pete). Right, should stop- fact from tonight-9 out of 10 people have an iPhone…..if you believe tonight's statistics…

Pete! What more needs to be said? You're amazing. Good job!!

Well, here we are again. It's a Saturday night on the whiskey. Curry has been done (full!) and gin has been given. Why are we here? For wholly celebratory purposes, of course. Unless you mean life, in which case I haven't the foggiest, save to say it doesn't involve a god of any sort that I know of. Music is probably the answer. That or inevitable death. Cheery, eh? Yep, that'll be the whiskey talking…

Well done everyone. Thank you for your contributions. Good night!

The post #oneaday Day 120: Communal Blogging II appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It's said that you can't switch on your TV and not be able to watch an episode of Top Gear, Friends or Scrubs. And far from being a bad thing, I feel this is very much a good thing. Your opinion on the matter will, of course, vary according to your opinion of the programmes in question. But I happen to like them all very much.

Friends in particular, it has to be said. Friends finished long ago now, of course, but it will always hold a fond place in my heart. I started watching it when I was back at school, and it quickly became one of those shows that I felt the need to tape every single episode of, and ended up with several bajillion VHS cassettes' worth.

I'm not sure exactly what it is that I like about it. I think it's the fact that the characters are very strong and recognisable — so much so that their own mannerisms have entered the realms of popular culture.

There's also the fact that most people can relate to at least one of the characters. Amongst all my friends, I know plenty of people who are Joeys, Rosses, Chandlers, Monicas, Phoebes and Rachels. And plenty who are combinations. (I also know plenty of people who are the cast of The Inbetweeners, too, but that's another story altogether.)

Mostly, though, I think it's the fact that every episode is both inoffensive and amusing, easy to watch and seemingly infinitely rewatchable. The ultimate in disposable TV. Comfort viewing.

It'll be a sad day for me if E4 ever stop showing episodes of Friends. For one, it'll mean I finally have to bite the bullet and purchase the complete DVD box set, something which I've successfully managed to avoid doing for the last ten years.

In unrelated news, it's my birthday tomorrow. I will be 30. How exciting! Or possibly depressing, I haven't quite made my mind up yet. (Except my lovely girlfriend is whisking me away for a fantastic birthday weekend, so the event itself will be totally brilliant and awesome, so that's pretty much decided. Hurrah!)

The post #oneaday Day 118: Among Friends appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It was the wedding day of my friends Ben and Amy today. It's been a long time coming and they're going to have a very long and happy life together, I'm sure.

One thing that struck me during the ceremony, though, was how odd ceremonies as a concept are. Very formalised and based in tradition, they're a far cry from the way you act in regular day to day life.

And I guess that's the point; a wedding ceremony isn't something you do every day (hopefully) so it stands to reason that something should make it extraordinary. So why not infuse rings with meaning and symbolism, and why not insist that people are facing each other at the correct time, and why not delve into Old English when necessary?

It's all about tradition. Concepts such as marriage and the like are almost as old as society and civilised living itself. To modernise them after they've been the same (or at least similar) for so long would be to break with years, decades, centuries of tradition.

That doesn't mean people don't do it, of course. Unconventional weddings are great fun to be a part of. But there must be a reason that so many people choose to do things in the "traditional" and apparently antiquated manner. For all the trappings of modernity we have these days, it seems that there are some traditions and ceremonies that we still respect.

I wonder if we'll still be theeing and thouing in two hundred years time? Smart money's on yes.

The post #oneaday Day 112: Standing on Ceremony appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Secondly, PAX East represented the last time I had the chance to see some of the people I consider to be my best friends in the world. It sounds sappy, I'm sure, but the relationships I've cultivated online over the last few years are some of the strongest friendships I've ever had—and in some cases, I've met these people once or twice… and in many cases, not at all.

Thirdly, PAX East last year pretty much marked the start of the career path that I'd very much like to follow full-time, given the opportunity: being part of the games press. At the time I was writing for Kombo.com and between meeting up with people and seeing cool panel discussions (some of which didn't feature my brother) I was hunting down interesting stories and reporting on them. I'd been writing the news for a little while by then, but attending an event and spotting the new hotness was a lot of fun, and something I want to do more of in the future.

The best thing about PAX East, though, I've already touched on, and I blogged about at length last year. It's a place to call home. A place where people who enjoy video games can come together and nerd out to their hearts' content without fear of judgement, without feeling like they have to "hide" their hobby or play it down. No, this is a place where girls could dress as Bayonetta without (much) shame, where people could experience new aspects to their hobby, where people could meet some of their idols and where people could get together and meet each other.

In short, it was awesome. And that's why right now I am very much wishing I was there in Boston, scoping out the nearest coffee shops and Dunkin' Donuts to the convention centre, arguing about which places to go for food and playing "spot the influential industry figure".

So to all of you over there in Boston right now, I hope you have the best time of your lives over the next few days. Because if you don't have the best time of your lives, I could clearly have had your tickets and had the best time of my life instead. (Assuming I could have actually flown over to Boston, of course. Planes are expensive. But that's beside the point.)

Yeah. I JELLY. Deal with it.

Have an awesome time, PAX East. Wish I was there.

The post #oneaday Day 69: PAX Bostona appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Well, the other thing about these glory days is the fact that we didn't have the Internet. And these days it's easy to take that fact for granted, given that most of the things we do throughout the course of every single day involve the Internet somehow, from the smallest little things to huge, life-changing events.

It wasn't always that way, and oddly enough it's a piece of educational software that really drives the difference home. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? was a game that tested your geographical knowledge and encouraged you to find out about the wider world. And you had to do it without the aid of Wikipedia, a website which means you can rattle through the Facebook version in a matter of minutes. Sure, it was often necessary to use reference material to pass the game's missions, but there's something a little different about using an encyclopaedia or atlas to find things out rather than typing things into Google.

For me, though, there's no going back to those dark days. I think about all the people I have in my life right now, and I bet over half of them are in my life because of the Internet, whether it's directly or indirectly. Some people I initially met face to face and then ended up getting to know via email or IM chat sessions. Some people I met online first and then met face to face later. Some people I've only ever met online, but want to meet face to face. And a few people I know online and am more than happy to keep them at a very long arm's length!

It's difficult to imagine how the events of the last year would have gone without the Internet. For starters, the situation wouldn't have arisen in the first place, for many reasons. But let's assume it had for a minute; the people from whom I had the most support were people I knew because of the Internet. A couple of them happened to be physically close to me, but a lot of them were on the other side of the planet. How different would it have been without them?

Perhaps if there was no Internet then I'd have more friends who are physically close to me. But then would that lead to a "compromise" sort of situation, where you hang out with people you don't really like because it's convenient?

Who knows? All I know is that I'm pretty damn grateful the Internet exists, and I'm equally grateful that the people I know because of it exist. You rock, so keep being awesome, and on that day when I win a bajillion pounds on the Inordinately Generous Lottery for People Called Pete (which doesn't seem to have started yet, sadly) I will be travelling around the world to meet each and every one of you, buy you a drink and/or call you "dick-tits" to your face.

The post #oneaday Day 60: Just Imagine... appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Some of these tests may not be compatible with your own personal social interaction algorithms, in which case you may feel free to omit them. If you end up omitting all of the below tests, then you may wish to consider upgrading your interpersonal software to the new "Lighten The Fuck Up" edition to ensure normal functioning in society.

Test 1: The Quotation Test

To perform this test, first ensure you are in a social interaction scenario with your new friend(s) and the background volume is set to a level where you may be heard.

As an optional safety measure, you may wish to preface this test with the statement "have you seen [insert name of favourite movie/TV show here]?"

Performing the test is a simple matter of quoting your favourite scene, including impersonations of the actors/actresses if your vocal communication facility is up to the task.

Success criteria include: laughter, quoting another line, finishing the lines with you, rolling on the floor laughing, applause, eternal adulation.

Failure criteria include: blank looks, expressions of confusion, the word "what?", awkward silences where there should be laughter.

Safety note: overzealous performance of this test may lead to people regarding you as "the quote person" and reconsidering inviting you out to social occasions on the grounds that you're unable to hold a conversation without Blackadder quotes.

Test 2: The "Name That Tune" Test

A prerequisite for this test is a certain amount of self-confidence and/or alcohol. Assuming these conditions have been met, you may commence the performance of this test by bursting into a song of your choice, the sillier the better.

Success criteria include: joining in with the song, harmonising with the song, adding percussion parts to the song.

Failure criteria include: confused expressions, sudden claims that they have a "thing" to "do", walking 20 feet behind you in the street.

Safety note: if you are in a social environment where bursting into song is frowned upon, such as a library or the quiet bit of a classical concert, consider performing this test when the environment is more appropriate.

Test 3: The "Compound Swear-Word" Test

In order to perform this test, steer the conversation towards something that really, really pisses you off, preferably a person or agency which gets your goat and makes you want to throw things. When the time comes in the conversation to say exactly what you think of your ex-boyfriend/tax inspector/boss/co-worker/weird guy you see on the bus every day touching himself, refer to them by making up a compound swear word.

For added safety, you may wish to prepare a suitable bank of compound swear words in advance. Examples include: "cockwipe", "dicksplash", "creamdick", "felch-monkey", "knob-jockey", "cock-custard", "fucknut", "twatbag", "bellwodge", "cretinous cum-gullet", "insatiable scat-licker" or "cuntishly twat-faced bellend-arsepipe".

Success criteria for this test include: a moment of astonished silence followed by hysterical giggling and requests to repeat the compound swear word in the same irate tone of voice you originally uttered it.

Failure criteria for this test include: awkward, rather than astonished silence, frowns, tutting, slaps around the face either with or without the use of a haddock.

Test 4: The "Say The Funny Word Over And Over Again" Test

Performing this test requires that you have determined what your favourite word is. This may or may not be an obscenity, but it tends to work best with single-syllable rude words such as "cock".

To perform the test, utter the rude word in an exaggerated voice without explanation. Then repeat it a number of times.

Success criteria for this test include: people joining in with saying the word, laughter, recording of video evidence using mobile phones.

Failure criteria for this test include: invitations to leave, the arrival of psychiatric nurses.

Test 5: The "Failure Recovery" Test

In order to perform this test, think of the worst joke you have ever heard that never makes anyone laugh. It doesn't need to be offensive, but it sometimes works better if it does.

Utter the joke. Following the inevitable awkward silence, follow up with either the word "Anyway…" or an impersonation of howling wind and tumbleweed.

Success criteria for this test include: laughter at your own self-deprecation, a patronising pat on the head, a complete change of subject.

Failure criteria for this test include: requests to explain the joke in great detail, making it even less funnier than usual.

What next?

If you've successfully performed at least one of these tests, it is safe to assume that the people in whose company you are presently are, in fact, friends rather than people you just happen to be at the pub with.

If all tests have failed, it is extremely important that you fake a phone call and/or trip to the toilet but actually run for your life in the hope that you will never see these people ever again. You may also wish to contact technical support and attempt to install some more acceptable social graces into your personality.

Good luck out there!

The post #oneaday, Day 51: Litmus Test Your Friendships appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm a trained teacher, as some of you may know. This meant I spent an extra year at university following my practically useless but enjoyable English and Music degree studying a PGCE (a PostGraduate Certificate of Education, for those who like to know what their acronyms mean). It was an enjoyable but stressful time, and I was happy to make some good friends during that time, one of whom was my placement buddy for my second in-school assignment.

His name was Owen, and he was a good man that I've sadly fallen out of touch with in recent years, but we had some excellent times. He was also convinced that we were Jay and Silent Bob, an observation that was pretty accurate on so many levels. But that's beside the point: the point is, Owen and I were the original source of Angry Jedi.

You see, sometimes when you get home from teaching practice all you really want to do is get absolutely trashed on cheap rosé and make music from approximately 48 CDs worth of samples. So that's what we regularly did, with extremely entertaining results. We decided that we needed a name for our makeshift band, and decided that the oxymoron "Angry Jedi" was a fitting summation of our respective personalities and the bizarre music we created. Ever since that time, I've taken to using "Angry Jedi" or some variant thereof as my username, as it's 1) a reminder of some very fond memories and 2) a name that no-one else ever appears to have thought of on the Internet… except someone on Xbox LIVE.

On Xbox LIVE, I'm called "sonicfunkstars", which I believe we discussed the other day. "sonicfunkstars" (all lower case, that's important) was a previous makeshift band that consisted of me and, occasionally, my good friends Sam and Edd. There was also a brief dalliance with being "Captain Gaspard and the Snarfriders", but tracks under that name are all on a MiniDisc somewhere (yes! MiniDisc!) and I have no idea where. If I ever find them, you'll be the first to know.

But you don't care about personal history. You want to hear the ridiculous sounds we came out with, of course. All right. Here's a selection of some of our finest moments. iPhone users, as ever, click on the song titles to listen. Everyone else, use the fancypants WordPress flash player thingy.

Bad Influence

This track was composed for two reasons: firstly, to have an excuse to use as many Harry Potter quotes as possible, including the titular "Bad Influence" extract. Secondly, we put it together while we were teaching a unit on "fusion" music at school. As such, there are some fairly diverse ethnic influences throughout the track. It also contains the line "It's knowledge. It's power. It's not a fucking tractor." And, as I recall, we used to find the "ta ta tippy tippy tum na" guy hilarious, though that may have had something to do with the amount of wine consumed.

Baching Mad

When creating this track, we decided it would be amusing to imagine what it would be like if J.S. Bach were having a piano lesson and doing very badly—so badly, in fact, that he ended up breaking his piano. (Let's leave aside the historical inaccuracy of J.S. Bach playing a piano for a moment.) We then followed this by attempting to mix together as many inappropriate pieces of "classical" music as possible with some kickin' beats. See how many you can spot. This is, to date, one of my favourite aural monstrosities. Particularly the key change partway through.

Kick the Dog

I honestly can't remember what twisted path of logic led to the decision that we should create a track based on abusing small yapper-type dogs with a variety of increasingly-gruesome implements punctuated by drum fills performed by chickens. But I'm glad we followed it. Owen's performance of all the verbs he wanted to do to annoying rat-like dogs took several takes, as I recall. There's also a nice bit of Nirvana mixed in there, too. No actual dogs were harmed during the course of this track.

The Guff Rap

No explanation required.

Get Off My Ship Original Mix and Ultimate Mix

These two tracks performed two important functions: firstly, to provide a showcase for PATRICK STEWART, and secondly, to demonstrate the concept of remixing to impressionable sixth formers. Captain Picard gets increasingly frustrated at the people who keep invading his bridge and politely requests they vacate the premises.

The Judas Joint

Our crowning glory: mixing, if I recall correctly, five Judas Priest tracks together and including a break for Meg Ryan to have an orgasm. The evil laugh in this is performed by me. I was pretty impressed with myself.

There are other tracks, some of which don't appear to have survived the move between computers and through time. The most notable absence is a brilliant song called "Today Fucking Sucked", which I don't believe needs any further explanation.

Anyhow. I hope you've enjoyed this window into the life of a trainee teacher, circa 2002-2003. And now you know why I'm called Angry Jedi. It is not because of the somewhat more offensive meaning of the phrase which my friend Amy discovered last year.

If you want to know that one, you can Google it yourself. (It's quite amusing. And/or disgusting. I forget which.)

The post #oneaday, Day 38: Angry Jedi appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This was in the days before digital cameras were particularly widespread, of course, so these were actual photos on actual paper. I took a lot of photos, but there was still no way it'd be possible to take as many as you can with today's cameras. That meant that each captured memory had to be just so, and there was no going back to try again; you caught it, or you missed it. Simple as that.

Of course, nowadays, it's much easier to capture and keep a memory, assuming you don't do something ridiculous to your computer like take it into the bath with you. But that doesn't mean photos lose any of their impact, or the memories contained therein. I'll bet I can take a random selection of photos from my iPhoto library and be able to explain each and every one of them.

In fact, let's do just that. I'll give you ten, just so we're not here all night. Hold on, I'll be right back.

So without further ado, here we go.

Would you look at that? We went and got a nice one to begin with. This is the wedding day (obviously) of my friends Rob and Rachel. Instead of confetti, they had bubbles. It was awesome, and we all ate a lot of food and got quite drunk. Fact: Rob and Rachel were one of the first couples I knew who got together at university and are still going strong today. I salute you, you lovely pair.

Aha. There are actually two separate stories behind this one. The guy in white makeup is, I believe, a chap called James Gaynor, who was starring alongside me in a production of Marivaux's L'Epreuve, also known as A Test of Character. He was playing a character called Frontin, I was playing a character called Lucidor. Lucidor was in love with a girl called Angelique, who was played by a most lovely lady named Sarah, but there was a long and complicated plot involving Frontin pretending to court her on Lucidor's behalf and it all got a bit French.

As for the mobile phone and the text on it: the mobile phone was mine at the time (Nokia REPRESENT), "sonicfunkstars" was the name of the fake band I made music under (using Sony's ACID Music software and approximately 24 CDs of samples, most of which I probably never used) and "txtr's thumb" was the name of my second album. Interestingly (not really), "sonicfunkstars" is still my Xbox LIVE ID, and it's one of the only places on the Internet where I'm not "angryjedi" or some variant thereof. The other is YouTube.

(Exclusive: I found the title track from said album. It used to irritate the fuck out of anyone with a Nokia phone. You'll see why.)

Ah yes. I can tell you exactly what is going on here. This is during my second year at university. The location is my friend Chris' bedroom. Under the desk is Sam, who is drunk, and spent most of the night seeing what tiny spaces he could contort himself into.

Lying on the floor is Steph, who is reading a book—possibly Bridget Jones' Diary. In the background is her erstwhile boyfriend Brett, my most enduring memory of whom is when he burst in the front door of Steph's house, furious that "someone's drawn knobs all over my car". Someone had indeed drawn knobs in the snow that was all over his car, and Sam and I naturally knew absolutely nothing about it.

But that was not the occasion in this photo. No. This was simply a social gathering at Chris' house—Sam, Steph and I were all flatmates in the first year, so we often took the opportunity to hang out together. We'd "lost" a couple of flatmates along the way to other social groups, but we'd stuck together for a lot of the time.

One of whom was the rather magnificent Beki, seen pictured here with Sam, again. This photo was taken on our hall of residence bar's "70s Night", a night where only the six of us from Flat A33, Hartley Grove Halls, Southampton, made the effort to dress up. Sam is wearing a woman's shirt.

Whizz forward to last year, and we have a picture of a game of Scotland Yard in progress, one of the very few games I'm aware of that provide you with a hat as part of its components. Pictured is Tom. Not pictured is Sam. And me. Obviously.

This Post-It space invader adorned the front wall of Ruffian Games' studios in Dundee. Obviously a little light relief after getting Crackdown 2 out the door.

Back in time to the first year at university again, we see here the midst of Operation Shopping Trolley, our attempts to stealthily remove the shopping trolley that had inexplicably appeared in our flat overnight. "Inexplicably" as in for once it wasn't one of us who had brought it up. Notice the cunning ninja disguises Sam and I have adopted.

This is Dungeonquest, one of either the best or worst games ever created depending on your outlook. It's a game where you have an approximately 23% chance of survival (they tell you this in the instruction booklet), and is almost completely determined by blind luck. Combat is resolved almost literally by rock-paper-scissors… except here it's slash-mighty blow-leap aside. I was astonished to discover that they have actually remade this monstrosity. I was also quite tempted to pick up a copy, but that would be a very silly idea.

To this date, this is still the most literary piece of graffiti I've ever seen, found on the back of the cubicle door in the gents' toilets in The Hobbit pub, Southampton. The whole door was something to behold; there were full-on conversations and slagging matches going on between various wall-writers, an excerpt of which you can see here. Theatre Studies was repeatedly accused of gayness. A bit rich coming from people hanging out in gents' toilets.

And why don't we end with this one, then? This offensive masterpiece was produced by the cast of Southampton "Rattlesnake!" Theatre Group's production of Alan Ayckbourn's Round and Round The Garden whilst finishing off rehearsals prior to taking the show to the Edinburgh Fringe. We'd all gone a little bit stir crazy by then, and so we took to lite-vandalising the whiteboards in the lecture theatre where we'd been rehearsing. ("Lite" because you could just rub it off. But we did leave it there for the lecturer to discover in the morning.)

Look closely and you'll see a selection of details; Pac-Man re-imagined to become Sonic the Hedgehog eating shit, some stickpeople having a threesome, some anagrams, a victim's eye view of the Ku Klux Klan looking down on someone they've just thrown down a well, an out-of-context stage direction from the play made to sound dirty just by the simple addition of "just the way I like it" and my excellent drawing of the entire cast of the show, except me, because while I was quite happy to draw all the others I didn't feel confident drawing myself. Also, BUTTOCKS.

There you go. Proof that I have an incredible memory for silly crap. And proof that even if you've forgotten me, I probably haven't forgotten you.

The post #oneaday, Day 31: Looking Back Through a Lens appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

To clarify: I have been drinking quite a bit and as such this post may not be the most coherent thing in the world. But I make not apologies for this as drinking is fun, in moderation.

To whit, I went out with an old friend tonight; my friend Woody, who is someone I went to school with. I didn't get to know him, really, until I got into Sixth Form, when we spent a lot of time each lunchtime playing Uno, eating cheese and bacon baguettes and playing a bit more Uno. But since that time, we've stayed in touch and occasionally gone out to get a bit drunk.

Tonight was one such occasion. I haven't had the opportunity to go out and get pissed for quite some time. Actually, that's not quite accurate. The last time I went out to get pissed was New Year's Eve, during which time I managed to drink a lot and somehow spectacularly failed to get drunk whatsoever. This may have been something to do with the amount of Kinect gaming that took place during that time. Dance Central, it seems, is a suitable antidote to drinking.

Tonight, though, was another matter. Plied with Sambuca and beer prior to going out to the delightful pubs of Cambourne (imaginatively named due to its geographical proximity to both Cambridge and Bourne), we drank quite a bit and reminisced about the good old days.

As you get older, the opportunities to do something along these lines get more and more infrequent, so it's worth taking them when you can. Because sometimes, there's nothing better than sitting down with a good friend, chatting about days gone by, remembering times you'd got intoxicated on substances of your choice and the silly things that had occurred as a result of said intoxication.

Woody, incidentally, is someone who has managed to remain all but invisible to the Internet, which is something of an achievement in this day and age. But you might say that makes the memories I have with him all the more precious, as the only record of his existence I have these days are the few photos I have of him now. Most of which involve being drunk.

The UK has a drinking problem, it's clear from just walking down any big city high street on a Friday night. But sometimes, just sometimes, it's nice to spend some time with a friend getting off your tits and having a good laugh about days gone by.

That's what happened tonight. And I hope it happens more often.

The post #oneaday, Day 15: Regression appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Actually, let me start.

Fuck you. I remember at the start of 2010 thinking "2009 sucked. 2010 will kick ass." I can't even remember why 2009 sucked so much now, such was the order of magnitude that your suckiness dwarfed it by.

Let's keep score, shall we?

I started the year in a job that I wasn't sure I wanted to do—an ill-advised return to school teaching on the suggestion of several people who thought I'd be good at primary school teaching, and that it might be less stressful than the horrors of secondary education.

They were wrong.

Given that the school I worked at was in what can politely be termed a "difficult area", there were plenty of what can politely be termed "challenging pupils". Most notable among them were a child who decided to spend one early morning Guided Reading session lying face-down on the floor screaming "PLEASE STOP THE PAKISTANI INVASION! PLEASE STOP THE PAKISTANI INVASION!" in a school that was probably made up of a good 60-70% of ethnic minority children, and the kid who liked to tear down wall displays, run out of the classroom and climb trees. It's amusing now. It was less amusing at the time, and it should be pretty obvious that those kids have no place in mainstream education.

Also at the school, I went through an OfSTED inspection, where the school was judged to be "failing". This is because it was judged on the same criteria as schools in affluent areas and therefore, unsurprisingly, came up somewhat short. I was referred to as "inadequate" by a person who had spent approximately ten minutes watching me teach, and I knew that I had to get out.

Fortunately, an ideal excuse for getting out came along in the form of PAX East in Boston, MA. I had never been to Boston, and I had never been to a video game convention. This was also going to be an opportunity to meet a huge number of the Squadron of Shame members face-to-face for the first time. I wasn't about to pass that up, so I bought a ticket even before I'd quit my job.

I quit said job just in time to avoid having to go on a residential trip with the kids I'd come to resent so much and spent a blissful few days amongst my fellow nerds at PAX East and can honestly say that there are few occasions that I've ever felt happier than when I was there with my "people". I wished it could go on forever, but sadly it couldn't. And things were only going to get worse from hereon.

I worked for a few scattered days doing supply teaching, but wasn't enjoying it at all, least of all the whole "get up early just in case there's any work" arrangement, where every day led to the weighing up of emotional wellbeing and financial stability.

In late April, I turned 29. I was not in a good place mentally, so I didn't feel much like celebrating at the time. I still don't. Then in early May, everything changed. The one thing I thought I could count on—my home life, my marriage, the love I had—went away. There were many reasons for this and at this point it doesn't do anyone any good to assign "blame" either way because things on both sides led to this point. I wish they hadn't, but it seems that some things are supposed to happen, however painful they are.

And painful it was. The experience damn near destroyed me. I had whole days where I was completely unable to function. I had plenty of times when I wished everything would just go away, that I wouldn't have to face these things any more. I went through all the however-many-stages-of-grief-there-are several times and am still jumping back and forth between them now. I resented everyone who told me that it would "just make me stronger" and put on a brave face for the public (and this blog, which I kept plugging away at even through those dark times) but appreciated those people who showed themselves to be true friends more than they could ever realise.

And all through this I was no closer to finding a job. I interviewed for a job I didn't want and did well (though didn't get it) and for a job I really did want and didn't get that either. Eventually, the money ran out and I found myself having to move back home, an act which however you dress it to me and however necessary it was still feels like a punch in the face every time I wake up of a morning.

The holiday season came, and I spent it in the States with my brother and the rest of my family. This turned out to be a positive move, as I had the opportunity to meet up with a bunch of people and do what is commonly referred to as "professional networking". I scored some freelance work out of the whole arrangement—freelance work that pays money, even.

Then I came home to discover a huge bill from the taxman thanks to some uncompleted self-assessment forms which I had no idea I was supposed to do and a podcast to edit whose audio files were ruined beyond repair. A final slap in the face from a shitty year? Let's hope so.

During 2010, despite all this, I made some great friends through the #oneaday initiative, through Kombo.com, through The Big Pixels and through Twitter. I also successfully completed the Couch 2 5K running challenge, and have posted every day since the 19th of January on this blog. Those parts of the year I wouldn't change. The rest can go F itself in the B.

2011 has a lot for me to look forward to. More freelance work, which I really enjoy, even the rewrites. The all-new One A Day Project, which I'm doing my best to co-ordinate. Hopefully a full-time job. And I'm praying for a lift out of the black pit that I've been sporadically stuck in since May. Can you be sporadically stuck in something?

Tonight I'm going down to Southampton to spend New Year's Eve with one of those true friends I mentioned earlier. 2010, I shan't be sorry to see you leave. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Actually, do. I've installed a spike on it, at just about ass-level. I hope you enjoy it. You cunt.

The post #oneaday, Day 348: End of the Year Show appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Just think how much more we could all get done without all this waiting. Consider how long it takes someone from any Government agency to write back to you, drawing out what is usually an unpleasant process (why else would you be writing to an arm of the Government, were it not to complain about something?) even longer than necessary. Perhaps your question was a simple one that can be answered with one word—the words "yes" and "no" were invented for exactly this situation—but no. More often than not you'll receive a letter back informing you that they're "unable to action your correspondence" or, in English, "not able to reply to your letter" and demanding further details that you've already given them at least fifteen times.

This sort of thing is annoying and, in this age of instant communication, bordering on inexcusable. Who writes letters any more, anyway, for starters? Wake up and smell the electronics.

The trouble with taking this attitude, though, is that it starts to filter into other parts of your life. You find yourself wondering why the text message you sent thirty seconds ago hasn't been replied to yet, without thinking that the recipient may just have better things to do than respond to a message that simply says "COCK! PISS! PARTRIDGE!" because they might, in fact, have a job to do. You forget the context of a reply on Twitter because someone replied to something you posted four hours ago. And in the meantime, you sit staring at your computer screen, iPhone or, in the worst possible scenarios, your wall or ceiling. Because you might get that response you need in the next thirty seconds/minute/half an hour/hour/day and you couldn't possibly do anything useful in the meantime. But of course you can't send another message following it up because that's pushy and rude and you don't want to look like an asshole.

Well, bollocks to it. We need an inversion of this situation, where "important" things get resolved quickly rather than are "endeavoured to be responded to within 72 hours", and where it's okay for your friends, family and/or that hottie you texted to be quiet for a few seconds/minutes/hours/days at a time. Because let's face it, staring at a wall is marginally less productive than staring at a toaster waiting for it to pop.

Because at least if you stare at a toaster, you end up with some delicious toast. What's your wall ever going to give you?

The post #oneaday, Day 307: Wait. Terry Wait. Overwait. Call The Wait-er. appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Tonight's activity was an entertaining affair–a murder mystery dinner party in celebration of my good friend Sam's 30th birthday. (Sam, incidentally, does not know anyone called either "Don Woods" or "Pook" and would like to make that fact abundantly clear.)

For those who have never attended a murder mystery party, it's an enormously fun opportunity for a bunch of people to get together, eat, drink, dress up in silly costumes and then make twats of themselves with each other. Ostensibly, it's a game where everyone is supposed to "role-play" their characters and through careful questioning, determine who the murderer was.

In practice, it's an excuse for people to talk in silly accents, overact and generally lark about. It's a pretty far cry from what tabletop enthusiasts would call "traditional" role-playing, but in actuality it's pretty close to what your common or garden D&D group gets up to. Only probably with more comedy French accents and less in the way of dice-rolling. Which is good. Because the dice-rolling bit of role-playing is often seen as the "geeky bit", whereas with a bit of encouragement, most people can enjoy a bit of impromptu improvisatory theatre, especially when their confidence glands have been appropriately lubricated via the judicious application of alcohol.

Tonight was no exception to the above rules. A diverse group of people attended and hammed it up through three acts of questioning, accusations and gradually-escalating amounts of backstabbing, espionage and clandestine affairs. As the evening went on, people gradually grew much more comfortable with the whole experience and started ad-libbing somewhat. Mostly, it has to be said, with some fairly filthy comments. But that added to the fun. Particularly as the amount of wine consumed throughout the evening meant that everyone's accents suffered somewhat.

So if you're looking for an opportunity to get some people together, dress up in silly costumes and engage in a spot of light role-playing (of the non-filthy kind) then a murder mystery party is the way to go. The set we played–The Brie, The Bullet and The Black Cat–was structured pretty well, with handouts and helpful prompts for all characters, meaning that no-one was left flagging and having to come up with questions all by themselves. It worked well, even though only one amongst our number managed to correctly identify the murderers by the end of the whole experience.

It was a good laugh, though, and surely that's the point of any game when it comes down to it.

The group are now settling down to a game of Eat Poop You Cat! which I discovered the other day can be referred to as Broken Telephone in polite circles. Wine has been consumed, so I anticipate that the sentences and drawings produced throughout the course of the game will be somewhat spectacular.

It's up and out early tomorrow morning for a run, with a change of scenery for once as I'm in Winchester instead of back home. I hope it's not cold.

The post #oneaday, Day 286: Murder and Mystery appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The best nicknames emerge organically; they just happen. And then, good or bad, you're stuck with it amongst one group of people for a very long time.

I have three nicknames. One of these ("Angry Jedi") was self-chosen—well, technically, it was a joint effort between me and the buddy I was teacher training with at the time. We were called "Angry Jedi" collectively, as our preferred method of stress relief after a tough day at the chalkface was to compose bizarre sample-based music, and of course we needed a name under which to "release" these tracks. We fell out of touch, and I've been using "Angry Jedi" or variants around the Internet ever since. Except on Xbox LIVE, where some asshole got there first.

"Angry Jedi" was actually the latest nickname I acquired, however. I have two earlier ones which still get rolled out occasionally when I'm with a specific group of people.

The first of these—"Helmu"—came about when I went to the Edinburgh Festival with the Southampton University Theatre Group in 2000. We were taking Turgenev's tragic love story "A Month In The Country" up to the Festival Fringe and performing it in the open air in Edinburgh's botanical gardens. The play went well but was something of a commercial flop—well, you try convincing people that sitting outside in the cold Scottish weather to watch a "tragic Russian love story" is what they want to do, when there's a lot of comedy on in the warm with bars nearby—but the nickname "Helmu" was nothing to do with the play itself. No, instead it was to do with one of our evening's activities. Someone had had the foresight to bring a PlayStation with them (the original PSX, oh yes indeed) including a copy of Track & Field. I elected to play as Germany, and as everybody knows, the most amusing name in the Deutsche Grosse Kindernamebuch is Helmut. So I chose to call my character "Helmut". Unfortunately there weren't enough letters, so my player was known as "Helmu". This name then stuck for the next ten years.

The second name was also the work of the Southampton University Theatre Group. "Beast Man". Yes, I have the dubious honour of being occasionally referred to as a character from He-Man. The reason for my being dubbed "Beast Man" was due to my role co-directing a production of Twelfth Night for the group. At least, I was originally co-directing it with my friend Krissie. However, one day I got an email from Krissie saying that she was off snowboarding and would I mind awfully directing the whole play?

I had never directed a play before. The experience caused a not-inconsiderable amount of stress, which manifested itself as forgetting to shave and occasionally bleeding copiously from the nose. Both of these things were seen as somewhat Beastly, as my unshaven visage bore something of a resemblance to this gentleman here, albeit somewhat less ginger.

This nickname also stuck for the next ten years. Although I can't say it isn't strangely satisfying to be greeted by ex-members of the Theatre Group as "Ah! Beast!"

So how about you lot? Some of you out there have usernames that obviously mean something to you. C'mon, share some stories. OH GO ON. I'll give you cake*.

* offer of provision of cake subject to withdrawal at any time.

The post #oneaday, Day 281: Call Me "Beast Man" appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Mmm, boobies… Sorry, where was I?

So I thought I'd go a bit stream-of-consciousy for tonight. I haven't done that for a while. This isn't proper full-on freewriting, 'cause I'm not starting the timer and writing for a set number of minutes. But I am writing things as they come into my head. Which is nice. It also means that I might go off on something of a tangent as I – oh look, there's a badger with a gun, do you see?

I am currently drinking grape soda, which I'm sure I have had before and liked but had forgotten quite how much it tasted like Calpol – the nice purple stuff you have when you're a little kid, not the foul and disgusting pink stuff you get when you're over the age of six (the imaginatively-named "Calpol Six-Plus", fact fans). For those of you reading in American, Calpol was, for a long time (and possibly still) the generic "cure-all" medicine for children. I have no idea what was in it that made boo-boos go away, but for kids it is very much the equivalent of the fantasy RPG "cure-all potion" that restores hit points and, if it's a fancy-pants version that costs more than 50 gold a time, sometimes cures status effects.

What was I saying? Nothing much at all, really. This is perhaps not my best work. But, you know, you work with what you've got. And I'm currently full of pizza and Calpol-flavoured fizzy stuff, surrounded by people I like very much indeed and so frankly, I'm more than happy with this post reflecting the pleasant feelings of "Ahh…" that I'm enjoying right at this moment. Regular followers of this blog since I started the whole #oneaday thing will know that it's been quite a while since I've been able to really sit back, enjoy myself and make a contented-sounding noise like "Ahh…" so I'm damn well going to enjoy it.

I may be broke, unemployed and not exactly in the position I envisaged being in at this stage of my life. But, you know, for the moment? I can deal with it. Things could be worse – things have been worse – so I'm pleased to say that this could well be that downward spiral taking a turn for the better. If spirals can indeed take turns for the better.

You know what I mean. You reach rock bottom, you have to start climbing back out again sometime. So onwards and upwards it is, and thank you to those people who have made it possible. You know who you are.

Now there are games to play and Calpol to drink. Night night.

The post #oneaday, Day 277: Boobies appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

And so it is that you come across people who are Your Kind of People. People who are Your Kind of People can appear at any time in the wild. For introverts like me, it's sometimes difficult to find them as finding new people inevitably involves putting yourself out there a bit and actually talking to strangers. Scariness. Unless you have an appropriate context in which to start talking to new people. Perhaps you've been exchanging messages online. Perhaps someone you know is introducing you. Perhaps you're at a social occasion for some mutual friends. Perhaps it's a new job. Perhaps you get the idea by now and I can stop giving examples.

It's sometimes difficult to define what Your Kind of People are. Is it to do with interests? Personality? Physical appearance? Whether or not they stink of cabbage? Well, in my experience, the answer to this is "yes". All of those things are contributing factors in the complex equation that determines whether someone else is Your Kind of Person or not. And someone being Your Kind of Person doesn't necessarily mean that you're attracted to them, although this can and does happen. In which case you end up dating someone who is Your Kind of Person, which is pretty much an ideal situation to be in for everyone involved.

I am very pleased that over the last few days I have met several people who are My Kind of People. The reasons for each of them being My Kind of People are varied, but they're all people that I feel very comfortable and happy hanging out with. People who I feel understand me, or if they don't understand me now may well be in a position to say "Yes, I understand Pete perfectly" at some point in the future. People with whom I share some interests. People that I enjoy the company of. People who are, in short, pretty damn awesome.

It's always a pleasant feeling when this happens. You don't get a positive Moodlet in The Sims 3 for making a new friend for no reason, after all. Finding new people to spend time with is always good, particularly if they are people that you don't feel you have to compromise the person you are in order to be with. People that you can be comfortable with and let out the side of yourself that sometimes stays hidden in polite society. (And I'm not talking about the side of you that might like to wear nappies or do inappropriate things involving poo or pieces of ginger. That side is probably best to keep hidden until you're absolutely sure that Your Kind of People share said interests.)

So, I'm having a very lovely weekend when all's said and done. I hope you are too.

The post #oneaday, Day 272: Person LF Person appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

If you've ever dipped a toe into the murky waters of online dating, you'll know that most sites are 1) filled with people who are apparently far more attractive than you (but in fact are either using a fake photo or a very good photographer) and 2) demand that you give them vast quantities of cash every month for the privilege of being able to actually talk to anyone. Fair enough if they work; certain places like match.com even offer a money-back guarantee if you can't find yourself someone to talk to on their network. There's also that interminable string of "OMG! GET LAID WITH GIRLS IN [insert location from your IP address here] TONIGHT!!" that you get on some of the Internet's less salubrious sites. But the less said about them the better.

No, OKCupid takes a different tack by first of all being free to use. Marvellous. Second of all, rather than relying on people searching via simple criteria ("I am looking for a woman aged 25-35 in the Outer Hebrides") it does some rather clever profiling of your personality via a bank of approximately five bajillion "match questions", some of which are "official", but many of which have been submitted by other users. All of them are multiple choice, and all of them require you to not only put your own answer, but the answer you'd like your ideal partner/friend/fuckbuddy to put, too. And they don't have to match. Perhaps you're spoiling for a fight, so you put that you like immigrants, but you'd rather your ideal match were a card-carrying Daily Mail reader with borderline racist tendencies. Or perhaps you want to find someone who will never, ever argue with you about anything, ever. In which case you put that your ideal partner/friend/fuckbuddy should answer the same as you, and that it is MANDATORY (like the sex party) that they do this. And you won't accept anything less. No sir.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that the site builds what is probably a pretty accurate psychological profile of you and, as such, allows you to find people who you're likely to "click" with fairly quickly. It's pretty remarkable in the way it works, and it's surprising to see how accurate a picture of your personality it can build from these questions. And of course, the more you answer, the more accurate said picture becomes.

Not only that, though, but the site also does stuff like tracks how likely people are to respond to unsolicited messages. So that hottie you have your eye on may only have a 5% response rate, in which case your declarations of a desire for a night of wild and steamy passion will probably fall on deaf ears. Or at least ears that will go "ugh" and block you promptly.

All that for free, while the sites out there that demand your credit card information to even get you to sign up still cling to the old ways. Why not go on over and find out a little something about yourself? You might even make some awesome new friends. "AND MAYBE MORE!!" as the saying has it.

For the curious, these are my Sims-style personality traits based on the 389 questions I've answered so far. (It's super-quick to answer questions using the convenient iPhone app. Also, I get bored at night-time.)

From left to right, said icons indicate that I am less aggressive than average, less ambitious, less compassionate (not sure I'd agree with that one), more attentive, more pessimistic, less spiritual, more loving and more scientific. The magic robots have spoken. That is me. Until I answer some more questions and prove them wrong, of course. Apparently I need to grind my spirituality and compassion stats a bit.

The post #oneaday, Day 264: Cupid Rules OK appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm away for the weekend. Specifically, I'm attending the Eurogamer Expo, the UK's answer to gaming conventions like PAX. It's been running for a good few years now apparently but I only really became aware of it this year. I decided to attend, as I thought it'd be a good opportunity to get hands-on with some of the latest hotness that I'd missed out on at PAX, as well as catch up with a few friends from Twitter.

Eurogamer Expo has a way to go yet before it can even think about competing with PAX in terms of scale, but it's certainly got potential. There are plenty of high-profile companies in attendance with their big games, and tickets sold out completely, so people are certainly interested in events like this. They need to sort out their non-existent press provision and look at more in the way of "special events" to make it a truly excellent gaming convention, though. Some evening concerts wouldn't go amiss; or more in the way of the few developer talks and presentations that they do have already.

Day 1 has so far passed in a most pleasant manner and I am looking forward to tomorrow. I wrote an article about Fable III today, you should totally go and read it, as it's awesome. Here's the rest of the day in one-word summary format:

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Multiplayer: Tense.
Killzone 3: Loading.
Killzone 3 in 3D: Migraine.
Gran Turismo 5 in 3D: Cardboard.
Peter Molyneux: Entertaining.
Fable III: Amusing.
Dead Space 2: Frightening!
Gears of War 3 Beast Mode: Multiplayer?
Fallout: New Vegas: Fallout.
Saw II: Bloody.
3DTV: NO.
Rock Band 3: Realistic.
@jenjeahaly: Yay!
@shoinan: Fun!
@lewisdenby: Brief!
@LinkYeah: Freshers.
Eurogamer's press provision: Horseshit.
Being told off for taking a coffee while wearing the wrong wristband: Bewildering.
That redhead girl I saw at one point: WOW.
Tonight: Surprise!

So that was my day. Tomorrow will be another day and hopefully I'll get a chance to try out a lot of the things I didn't get to see today. There's a lot of really good-looking games on offer, most of which will be well familiar to people who went to PAX, in all likelihood. Fable III in playable form was the big deal for those who like that sort of thing, and it's looking lovely. Peter Molyneux's talk on the history of the Fable series and its influences from movies and games was particularly interesting, as you'll know already if you've read this like I suggested earlier.

It was great to finally put a face to some Twitter usernames, too, and meet a few new ones as well. Hopefully over the next couple of days there'll be more of that until we're all one nice big happy games-loving family of awesomeness.

And, of course, tonight. Surprising a very dear friend was totally worth it. Even if I got called a few rude names along the way.

For now, I bid you good night.

The post #oneaday, Day 257: Away Message appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

There'll always be a little trace of me left in Southampton thanks to largely-pointless but fun geotagging app Gowalla. When I first downloaded said app, there weren't many people using it but I liked the idea of it. Go out, walk around, "collect" places. If nothing else, it was a nice way of building yourself your own custom tourist map of a place.

So on more than one occasion, I went out for a walk with the specific intention of creating a bunch of Spots around Southampton. This became something of an obsession, with the vast majority of Spots around the city centre being created by me. General way of telling: if it has a lengthy and slightly sarcastic description, or is the kind of thing you wouldn't find on a typical tourist map (such as "The Pedestrian Crossing That Makes The Funny Noise"), it was probably created by me.

Now, as pointless as Gowalla is in many respects, there are many reasons why it'll always hold a fond place in my heart. Firstly, as I say, it's been my way to leave my mark on Southampton. I "found" these places and tagged them the way I wanted them to be tagged. This means that Greggs on East Street will forever be remembered as "fine dining for chavs". At least until they realise and ask politely for the description to be changed. Which, let's face it, they probably won't.

But the second reason is that my wandering around, creating these spots, marking my territory (as it were… albeit with less piss than is usually implied by that phrase) caused me to meet one of my dearest friends from that city. She happened to use Gowalla, stumbled across some of my sarcastically-described Spots and decided that the person who tagged Greggs as such was someone she'd like to get to know better. So we progressed from stalking each other via Gowalla, to tracking each other down on Twitter, to chatting on Twitter, to finally meeting face to face. It was one of those random instances of chaos theory at work, where one little choice made slightly differently would have meant we'd never have met. And, given what was going on in my life at the time we met, and how much she helped me through that difficult time, that would have made things go very differently for me.

So I'm certainly glad that I've left a "mark" on a few places over time, be it physically, emotionally or technologically. Because you never know when those marks might lead to something great, even after you're gone.

The post #oneaday, Day 240: Making your Mark appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Edit: Look, I added a picture, making that first paragraph completely redundant. I could have deleted it. But I've chosen not to.

You'll forgive me if I forego my usually verbose nature (he says, picking the most pretentious words possible) just for the sake of today, I'm sure. Today has been a day of mixed feelings that I haven't finished processing myself. So I don't think I have any concrete conclusions to offer; this is just going to be one of those self-indulgent rambles.

No change there, then.

Today, I left behind the fine/chav-infested capital of the South Coast, Southampton. I know it feels like I've been saying this for a while now. But today it finally happened. I left my flat, I dropped my keys through the letterbox (picturing them landing and bouncing on the carpet inside in slow-motion with appropriately overdramatic "slam" sound effects with each impact) and said a last goodbye to the place I had once called home. It was difficult to do. I stood there with my hand in the letterbox for a good few minutes, not wanting to let go. But after mustering some mental strength, I did, and it was done. That particular chapter was closed.

I took a walk into town to burn the hours until I was supposed to be meeting some friends for lunch. I spent most of the time drinking coffee, reading Twitter and delivering an excessive amount of Follow Fridays as I realised I'm lucky to have so many friends right across the country and even the world, let alone just in that city.

It didn't make it easier to say goodbye to those few special people though.

This is where those mixed feelings come in. On the one hand, leaving sucks, there's no question of that. But on the other, there's nothing like a crisis to discover who are the important people. To be fair, I knew already. It's nice to have it confirmed. But heartbreaking to have to walk away from them, look back and know that they're sad because of something you're doing, whether or not it was your choice.

So to those few special people I said one last farewell to today, thank you for making my last day marginally more bearable. A lot more bearable, in fact. And thank you for making it hard to let go. To leave on the quiet, mourned by no-one after ten years? That would be awful. To leave knowing that people will miss you? As unpleasant as it is, it is also nice to feel appreciated and wanted.

As of now, I'm staying at my parents' house. I am not feeling happy. Fresh start or not, tonight in particular is going to feel hideously lonely.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring more positive feelings. But it is going to take some time.

The post #oneaday, Day 236: Moving Day appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about today was social networking. I'm not talking Facebook, Twitter, Friendface or what have you here. I'm talking actual social networks.

"Social networking" is one of those terms that sprung up a few years back, along with the word "leverage" being used as a verb (stop it!), and the obnoxiousness that is "monetize". But it actually has some grounding in good sense, for once. Our social lives are nothing if not a network. And society in general is one gigantic network of people, some of whom are connected to each other, others who are not.

Let me give you an example. You walk into a shop. You attempt to buy a Cornish pasty from the gentleman behind the counter. For some reason, you have some difficulty. Perhaps the shop in question does not sell Cornish pasties. Perhaps the gentleman behind the counter is having difficulty understanding your heavily-accented English. Perhaps you muttered what you said. Perhaps you delivered your request in sign language and the gentleman behind the counter is unfamiliar with it.

Regardless, you have difficulty acquiring said meat-filled pastry product. As a result, your brain informs your mouth that it would be a really good idea to call said gentleman a "twat". So you do. Then you storm out of the shop. Cut back to gentleman behind the counter, who is standing flabbergasted at the frankly disproportionately offensive response that a dissatisfied customer just gave him. (It was a bit rude. There are plenty of other places to get a pasty.)

His friend comes out of the back room to see what's happening. He tells her that he just got called a "twat" by someone, and he's actually a little bit annoyed about that. His friend tells him not to worry and reminds him that there's a night out planned that evening.

That evening, gentleman and his friend go out for a drink or two with a crowd of friends. Gentleman is a little sullen, so one of his friend's friends (let's call her Alice) comes over and asks him what the problem is. Gentleman knows Alice, but not very well. But he quite likes her, so he tells her about the earlier incident and describes you perfectly.

"Oh!" says Alice. "You mean Sam / Don Woods / Kittycow / Elana / Matt / Jeff / Jen / Pook / Rachel / Moonsong / Jane / Mandy / Calin / Graham / Chris / Amy / Denise / Mark / Lynette / that person I know whose name escapes me right now*? Yeah, they're always like that. Don't take it personally."

The next time you see Alice, she tells you to stop calling people in shops twats. You raise an eyebrow at her, then you both have a good laugh about it. Or she punches you in the face. One or the other.

This is a small-scale and somewhat contrived scenario, of course. But these sorts of things are happening every day on varying levels. What is happening to me right now is indirectly going to affect the lives of many, many others. While it would be somewhat presumptious of me to overstate my own influence over other people, I know for a fact that there are at least a couple of people out there who have very strong feelings about the fact I am leaving. These reasons are very different from one another. Some of them know each other, some of them don't. All of them know that I wouldn't do this if I had a choice.

Unfortunately, I don't. And I'm sorry that the actions and choices I have made, along with actions and choices I have no control over, have led to this point, where so many people's lives are going to be just that tiny bit different from hereon.

Those of you who are going to be that little bit farther away from me than you were before, I'm just an email, comment, text, phone call, tweet, IM, PingChat message or really, really loud scream away. Those of you that all this isn't affecting directly? Well, I hope you can join everyone in keeping your fingers crossed that this is the beginning of something new and awesome.

I leave town tomorrow sometime. Those of you in the area, keep an eye on Twitter and your phones for details of a meetup.

* Interactivity! Delete as applicable.

The post #oneaday, Day 235: Social Networking appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

You'll surely excuse the enthusiastic gushing and emotion that is shortly to follow. You'll hopefully agree that it is justified by the time I'm done. I might be funny tomorrow. If I've had any sleep. Otherwise I'll just be grumpy. "No change there then," I hear you say.

As has hopefully been made abundantly clear by now, I am leaving Southampton very shortly. Some might say "imminently". Specifically, on Friday. The vast majority of my stuff was taken away yesterday, meaning I'm currently ensconced in a hollow shell of a house that is but a shadow of what it once was, which was in turn a shadow of what it once was prior to that. But now's not the time for such thoughts.

Today was intended to be a day of tidying up final bits and cleaning up. And indeed it has; I've packed up, tidied up and hoovered the bedroom and study, with more to be done later this evening. But today has also been a time to see friends, some of whom I haven't had the chance to see for some time, and some of whom weren't able to make it out on Friday for drinking and WUBWUBWUB.

So I spent the morning overcaffeinating myself with a "cafe crawl" alongside Ben "xoorox" Willmott (with accompaniment from Mike "Sex Panther" Porter in the first coffee shop) and then getting on with a bit of Java-fueled tidying. Having not slept terribly well last night, the experience of exhaustion coupled with hyperactivity was… curious, to say the least.

Just as Ben and I were parting ways, I ran into the very fine and lovely Elana "dollydaydream" Moylette (second from right in the header image, fact fans) who has been a great and wonderful friend over the last few years, ever since I trained the crap out of her at our local Apple Store. She was very keen for me to catch up with her later, and that's what I've just done.

I've got to say, I am 100% glad I did. I am now the proud owner of possibly the best gift anyone has ever got me (and I got a Super NES one Christmas) – a beautifully-made scrapbook/photo album full of wonderful memories. It's something that will be utterly irreplaceable in years to come, and evidence that however I might be feeling about the circumstances surrounding my departure from here, I've touched the lives of a whole bunch of people, and they, too, have enriched my life.

While it sucks balls that I am leaving, I've found it deeply touching that there are very obviously so many people out there who genuinely care about me, appreciate me for who I am and, above all, have helped me survive one of the most difficult periods of my life that I've ever been through.

So to all those people who've made it clear that I'm not going to be forgotten as soon as I drive off on Friday, thank you, from the very bottom of my heart. You are awesome, and I'll never forget you or what you've done.

Hah. The comic I pre-prepared to go at the top of this post the other day seems rather flippant now. Still, there's no arguing with The Robot.

The post #oneaday, Day 234: Dear Friends appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

And realisations were reached.

They say that you've reached adulthood when you don't enjoy clubbing any more. Actually, they don't. I just made that up. But it's as good a measure as anything. I used to enjoy clubbing at university. At least I think I did. We used to go to a local shithole called "Kaos" every Monday night from the university Theatre Group, imbibe a great deal of cheap alcohol and dance until the early hours. And I have plenty of fond memories of those occasions. Again, at least I think I did. They're a bit hazy.

So last night we went to a couple of places. First up was the Orange Rooms, which is a reasonable-ish place full of girls in dresses that barely qualify as dresses, comfortable-ish chairs and overpriced drinks. It was cool to see everyone but the conversation was gradually muted by the fact that the music got so loud that the bass was shaking books off the shelves on the walls. And frequently onto our heads.

I don't know if I'm going deaf, haven't attuned my hearing properly or am just ill-versed in the fine art of conversation during loud noises. But other people seem well-equipped to continue a conversation under these circumstances. I find myself having to say "Huh?" and "What?" a lot, or feigning that I've actually heard them when as a matter of fact I haven't.

This becomes doubly troublesome when it becomes clear that the other participant in the exchange has asked a question. I have two choices at this point—yes or no. No-one ever asks a question requiring a complicated answer under these circumstances, which is a small mercy, I guess. So I have to work out whether the question which has been asked is one which requires a yes or no answer, and then pick one of the two. I have a 50/50 chance of my answer making sense. Sometimes it doesn't. Then I just shrug and let the pitiful attempt at conversation fade.

Late in the evening, a few people disappeared and the rest of us were dragged to a nearby club called "Junk". Aptly named. At "Junk" I had my first experience of a style of music a bunch of people I know have been banging on about for ages, which is, I believe, dubstep. I didn't really know what dubstep was prior to tonight, but I had a feeling I probably wasn't going to appreciate its finer artistic merits.

As it happened, that was a correct assumption. Dubstep, or at least the Junk interpretation of it, appeared to be playing songs as they originally sounded, only with a bassline that goes WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB over the top of it, and an occasional klaxon solo. So the whole thing ends up sounding something like TURN AROUND BRIIIIGHT EYES EVERY NOW AND THEN I FALL A PAAAAAAWUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB HOOOOOOOOONK HOOOOOOOOOOONK WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART

Sorry guys. I know you dig it and all. But I really don't get it. Like, even a little bit. It hurt my brain. The thumping beats are fine for dancing, but I couldn't see myself just sitting listening to it.

Dancing is weird, too, isn't it? People wilfully gathering together in order to gyrate suggestively and/or spastically presumably in the hope of attracting someone to have some form of sexual congress with. Well, okay, no. Not everyone is there to get laid. But the ones who are make themselves very obvious. I'd hate to be an attractive girl. The sight of a bunch of men gradually gathering around you making overtly sexual motions is probably enormously intimidating. And that, besides the fact I'd think I'd look like a dick, is why I don't do that. It is also why I don't go to clubs to look for a potential mate. Or indeed at all.

So there you have it. At the age of 29, I am officially Over Clubbing. (Note: this is different from "overclubbing", which generally leads to a significantly larger hangover than I had today) I like going out for a drink at a decent bar. I like having a laugh with my friends. I even like going to smaller clubs that play decent music. The Dungeon here in Southampton is a great example, largely because it attracts nerds, geeks, goths and other outcasts of "mainstream" culture. But spending time in what appears to be a darkened warehouse that plays music that doesn't make sense and getting surrounded by perverts in Ben Sherman shirts? Sounds like a dream come true to some, I'm sure. But I think you can count me out!

The post #oneaday, Day 230: In Da Club appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Still, there are a number of things which are supposedly inherently social activities which are actually improved severaltimes-fold by the complete and total absence of other people. And yet the peculiarness that is "social convention" precludes people from ever considering taking part in these activities without other people present at times.

Since we're on the subject, let's consider the cinema. The cinema is a place with lots of seats where lots of people can sit together and all watch the same movie. A movie is an audio-visual form of entertainment where it is necessary to both watch and listen in order to understand what is going on. Ergo (yeah, I said "ergo") it is natural to assume that you would want to give this your full attention. So why did you bring these people with you?

The Giggler

The Giggler sits and watches the movie and laughs obnoxiously loudly at everything. Not just the deliberately funny bits. But the bits they find amusing, too. The trouble with The Giggler is that they find everything funny. From the fact that the lead character has a zit on his nose to the cheesy line that the love interest spouts, everything provokes a snort, snicker, giggle or guffaw.

You're watching the climax of the movie ("climax", incidentally, being a word that would cause The Giggler to collapse and possibly explode) and it's clear that it's a powerful, dramatic moment. However, The Giggler has decided that this moment is actually the funniest thing they have ever seen, and they proceed to ruin the dramatic tension for themselves, you and everyone around them by chortling away to themselves.

Net result: You, and most other people in the cinema, want to punch them in the face by the time you leave.

The Joker

Ally to The Giggler, The Joker has a sly comment to make about every single scene in the movie, which normally sets The Giggler off into one of their famous Fits of The Giggles. The Joker knows the perfect moment in which to say something completely inappropriate which ruins the whole movie for themselves and everyone around them. Fortuitously, The Joker usually has the good sense to say these things quietly so that only they and their immediate group of companions can hear them.

But when a planet is about to explode on screen, there's a moment of silence and The Joker leans over and whispers "Cock!" in your ear, there's no way you can recover from that.

The Farter

The Farter is a subdivision of The Joker. The Farter also does things inappropriately at just the wrong moment. But you can imagine what it is they do instead of cracking jokes.

The Texter

The Texter can't keep their hands off their mobile phone for the duration of the movie, despite those stern warnings and irritating Orange adverts before it starts. The Texter inevitably has poor low-light vision, too, so insists on having their phone set to full brightness for while they are sending messages to all their friends who are not you.

The One Who Doesn't Get It

The One Who Doesn't Get It is fairly self-explanatory. Stereotypically, The One Who Doesn't Get It is a girl who has been dragged along to a sci-fi movie by her boyfriend, but it's by no means limited to the female of the species.

The One Who Doesn't Get It is trying very hard to like the movie but just doesn't understand it. Perhaps it's a movie based on a TV show or comic series that they don't have any context for. Perhaps they went to the toilet when a critical plot point happened. Perhaps they're used to stories with all the depth of a puddle. Or perhaps they're just a bit slow.

Regardless of the reason, The One Who Doesn't Get It very much wants to Get It. So they ask lots of questions of the person who appears to Get It the most. Which is probably you.

The Rustler

The Rustler is, at their core, a kind-hearted soul. That's why they stocked up on drinks and snacks in the foyer. They're more than happy to share their tasty treats with you. Unfortunately, the tasty treats that they purchased come in the noisiest bag imaginable. And not only that, the sweets in the bag are all individually wrapped, too, meaning that not only do you have to rustle the bag if you want a sweet (which you do, because they're delicious and exactly what you want right now) you then have to spent a few minutes rustling the paper of the sweet in order to get at the delicious goodness within. And once you've had one, you want more.

In this way, The Rustler has managed to escape blame for themselves alone. By sharing the goodies with others, it's not just their fault.

The One Who's Seen The Movie Before

The One Who's Seen The Movie Before is, in many ways, the most dangerous of all. Because The Giggler, The Joker, The Farter, The Texter, The One Who Doesn't Get It and The Rustler can all be ignored or told to shut up. The One Who's Seen The Movie Before can do their damage and make it irreversible before you know what's happening.

All it takes is a simple "Oh wow! This is the twist coming up!" to ruin any sense of dramatic tension. The One Who's Seen The Movie Before assumes that everyone else has also Seen The Movie Before and as such doesn't mind dishing out a few spoilers both before and during the movie. And because they're your friend, you don't want to punch them in the testicles for doing so. But inside, your mind is beating them senseless about the face and neck.

The Other Moviegoers

This doesn't even take into account the other people in the cinema. There's The Very Tall Man, who inevitably sits right in front of you, even when the rest of the cinema is empty. There are The Annoying Children, who are usually other people's The Jokers and The Gigglers. There are The Weak Bladders, who get up every five minutes to go and have a piss, and inevitably sit on your row, requiring you to stand up to let them out. And numerous others. These can be dealt with by simply not sitting near anyone else, ever.

So stay safe. Just go by yourself. Unless you're with a significant other and you really don't care about the movie and just want to make out in the back row. But, you know, you can achieve much the same effect by simply turning off the lights in your living room, and it won't cost you seven quid.

In other news, I went to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World today. By myself. And it was awesome.

The post #oneaday, Day 223: One Adult Ticket, Please appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I have one particular friend in that "other" world that I want to talk about today. We both started at around the same time, which means our avatars are both around the four year old mark right now. I've been rather more sporadic in my attendance than she has, but ever since we met we've shared a very close friendship which is pretty much unlike any of the other relationships I've cultivated in that particular world. She's one of those "constants" that you know you can always rely on. She's always been there, and has always offered a sympathetic ear when I've needed one.

We've also always shared a mutual love of insulting the crap out of each other. She admonishes me for my long absences and the fact I can type without mistakes at 85 words per minute. In response, I take great delight in drawing attention to her own typos, which have resulted in us inventing a number of our own words that anyone coming into our group is utterly bewildered by. I'm not even convinced we know what "furple" and "plinge" mean. But from the context, they are generally inclined to sound dirty.

Then we'll find something to argue about like children. Last night saw a particularly epic "am not, are too" battle that managed to impress everyone around us with our sheer tenacity. One of us will, at some point, accuse the other of being a pervert. The other will, in turn, bring up something from the past which lends incontrovertible evidence that no, they are in fact the pervert here. And so it goes on. For hours at a time, usually.

This is something that has always baffled me about friendship. At what stage do you make that mutual decision that it's okay to be incredibly rude to one another, especially in front of other people? It's one of those peculiar contradictions that seems to make perfect sense while you're engaged in it, yet is utter nonsense when you think about it. The common theory is that it's a sign you're so comfortable with one another you're happy to say absolutely anything to one another, because you know that you do genuinely care about each other. In the case of my friend and I, there's generally a bit of playing up for the crowd, too—they've come to expect it of us. When we're alone together, we'll generally talk normally and candidly.

I have a number of "real life" friends who are like this, too, so it's not just a case of the John Gabriel Internet Fuckwad Theory coming to life. Board game nights generally degenerate into smack talk and aspersions cast on pretty much everything it's possible to cast aspersions on. And yet somehow without disrupting the gameplay. (Much. Usually.)

I guess it's one of those social anomalies that we'll never truly understand. Still, it always keeps things entertaining.

With that in mind, thanks for reading, you complete bellend.

The post #oneaday, Day 218: I Love You, You Twat appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

But there is one sphere where pretty much anyone can get a taste of what this is like. The Internet. When you're talking to someone on the Internet, you might not be able to see or hear them. You're certainly not touching them, smelling them or tasting them, unless there's some exciting new Skype-compatible technology you're all using that I haven't heard of yet. But regardless, friendships and relationships form, grow, break, explode, spread, all the things that real relationships and friendships do, in fact.

Except for the fact that the lack of "something"—be it sight, sound, smell, touch or taste—makes everything that much more intense. For many people, cultivating a friendship in "real life" is a drawn-out process that takes some time of getting to know each other, getting a feel for one another, understanding what makes each other tick and so on. This process still happens between people who have met online, but at a vastly accelerated rate. The very nature of communication on the Internet means that responses can be considered more carefully and, assuming you're an honest person, made more honest than you might feel able to be if you're sitting in front of someone, their piercing eyes gazing into your soul.

Of course, the opposite's also true. It's much, much easier to be a bastard and a liar thanks to the wonder of the Internet. And, in many cases, without consequences. Some people find this fun. But the emotion and the hurt it can cause is just as real as the feelings of friendship, affection, even love that can also be felt in these relationships between people who have never seen each other, in some cases.

On the whole, though, the opportunity to meet and talk to people from all over the world is something which should never be taken for granted, whatever form it comes in. Whether it's posting on a message board, writing an email, using Twitter, checking out someone's avatar in Second Life, raiding with guildies in WoW; without the Internet, there's no way that a whole bunch of these people would be in our lives. Old friendships would be lost and forgotten. New friendships might never be made. Soulmates might never find each other. And you wouldn't be able to read the deranged, 1:30am ramblings of someone such as myself.

Some might say the world would be a better place for that. But, y'know, I kinda like it this way.

The post #oneaday, Day 213: Intensity appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Going for a walk

You haven't been outside all day! And it's, what, lunchtime? You need some Fresh Air. Your mum and dad always told you that Fresh Air was good for you when you were little, so therefore it must still be good for you right now. So why not go outside and get some of that Fresh Air? It's super-fresh! Mmm! Feel the freshness invigorating your lungs and spirit! Don't you feel just a little bit more alive, especially now the stale odour of last night's curry isn't infiltrating your nostrils? Why not stay out for an hour or two? Go to the park! Sit and stare into space for a while. Fresh Air is good! The more of it you get, the better!

Going shopping

This is an even more fantastic idea! Not only will you get Fresh Air on the journey to the shops, but you'll also get Stuff once you arrive at the shops! That means once you arrive back home, you'll have Stuff to find homes for! If you want to go shopping on the pretence of doing something useful for the somewhat medieval state of your hovel, then you could always buy one or more cleaning products while you're out! Fresh Air and Stuff! Awesome.

Phoning all your friends

You don't generally like talking on the phone. In fact, you talk on the phone so little that your BT phone bill is perpetually in credit, meaning that they constantly owe you money. So why not use some of that credit and phone those people that you haven't spoken to or seen for a while? I bet they have lots of awesome news to tell you! And you can joke about how untidy your house is. Plus, you never know, they might actually want to come over. And that will give you an actual reason to tidy your house. Because there's no point tidying up without a reason now, is there?

Seeing all your friends

Perhaps one of the friends you phoned is having a bad time and wants to rant over a coffee. Perhaps someone who is always busy is having a rare day off and wants to see you. Perhaps you feel like getting some Fresh Air, and conveniently there's a friend you haven't seen for ages. So why not get some of that awesome Fresh Air and see your awesome friend? Yeah.

Turning on the television and staring at it

It doesn't matter what's on, because you won't really be watching it. It could be Jeremy Kyle. It could be Ben 10. It could be Last of the Summer Wine. If the last channel you left your TV on was Dave, it's probably Top Gear. Why not sit yourself down on your couch and enjoy some mindless entertainment? It doesn't matter if you don't normally watch the programme in question. It's on. And you owe it to yourself and to Culture to find out what all the fuss is about.

Making an overelaborate sandwich

Your kitchen is messy, but you're hungry. What to do? What to do? Make a sandwich! Rummage through your fridge and cupboards for the most disparate luncheon products you can find, slap them all together between two pieces of bread that you don't think is mouldy, add at least one condiment or sauce, place it on a plate (or, if all your plates are dirty, in a bowl; if all your bowls are dirty, in a frying pan; if all your pans are dirty, in a bit of kitchen roll; if you have no kitchen roll, just pick the damn thing up) and then retire to your couch (where you may optionally turn on the TV and stare at it) and enjoy your creation before realising that your bizarre combination of cooked meats, chilli sauce, some unidentifiable fruits and vegetables you found in the baskets at the bottom of your fridge and mayonnaise doesn't really go. But you've made it now; so you're damn well going to eat the whole thing if only to be able to tell people about your magnificent creation.

By now it must be bedtime. So go to bed satisfied in the knowledge that you couldn't have possibly had a nicer day, and of course all the tidying up can wait until tomorrow. When you'll go through this whole process again.

The post #oneaday, Day 203: Things To Do Instead Of Tidying Your House appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

No. Talking with someone you respect and trust is always good. So that's what a friend (who shall remain nameless to spare her blushes) and I did today. We spent most of the day (well, afternoon) sitting and chatting over various beverages and sandwiches, starting with an enormous caramel latte (which my companion added at least three sugars to just for that "extra kick", making a smiley face from the sugar and then stabbing it in the eyes because it "didn't deserve to be happy") and eventually moving on, having harassed our AV salesman mutual buddy at his place of work, to a large pitcher of delicious, summery, fruity cocktail atop the roof of Vodka Revolution.

We also saw a flying spider. This little dude, whom we christened Harold, had been attempting to crawl up the side of our pitcher in an attempt to get at the cocktaily goodness within, but was failing miserably. By about the fourth or fifth time he'd slipped down the side of the pitcher, he was obviously ready to give up. So imagine our surprise when he floated off the side of the pitcher and then whistled past my head at high speed.

We both blinked and looked at each other.

"That just happened, didn't it?"

"Yeah."

"That spider just flew."

"Yeah."

"What the fuck?"

"I have no idea."

There's probably a perfectly rational explanation for it. Harold was only a tiny money spider after all, so it's entirely possible he was just blown away by a passing breeze. Or perhaps there was a thread leading far away that we couldn't see. But it's a much nicer story to think that Harold was the one spider in the world who had learned to fly. I don't normally like spiders, but I have plenty of time for a tiny little one that has learned to fly.

Anyway.

The day was technically completely non-productive, but after a few days of feeling something of a decline in my mood, it was exactly what I needed. I wouldn't dream of speaking for my companion, but I certainly hope it helped her too. By the time both of us went our separate ways at the end of the afternoon, both of us had pleasant smiles on our faces; something which neither of us were sporting when we met up with each other around lunchtime.

So if you're feeling low, take a day out. Call up a friend, perhaps one you haven't seen for a while. Meet up. Drink coffee, beer, cocktails, whatever. Sit in the sun. Chew the fat. Set the world to rights. And you'll find that things will feel much better. For a while, at least. And sometimes, that little perk-up is all you need to keep going a little while longer.

So a hearty thanks to my companion for a lovely day.

The post #oneaday, Day 164: Healing The Mind, And Flying Spiders appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I went out tonight. I was meeting up with some friends I used to work with and have really been missing recently. Some of them know the details of what has been going on in my personal life recently, others don't. (Incidentally, if you're reading this right now and don't know the details, I'm not quite ready to make it completely public just yet. Give it time.) The best thing about this evening is that my friends know how to have a good time with the minimum of fuss. There were no difficult conversations required, no prerequisites for the fun we were going to have, just an inordinately large amount of alcohol, some frankly fatal-sounding concoctions that I'm almost certain I'm going to regret in a few hours' time and an awful lot of homoerotic dancing.

I apologise profusely to all my friends for fondling their nipples in a distinctly inappropriate manner, but none of you seemed to mind at the time.

Friends are great. I encourage you all to get some. As in some you can go out and see on a regular basis. I absolutely love my online friends and trust them absolutely, but sometimes there is no substitute for being in the same physical place as other people, letting your hair down and acting like a complete twat. There's nothing I'd love more than to do the same with all the members of the Squadron of Shame. One day, perhaps. But for now, a huge shout-out to @dollydaydream, @kslice47, @HarmlessSaucer and @lukejhall for an enormously fun night out involving considerable amounts of drinking and watching ChatRoulette on a big screen.

Seriously, guys, what sort of person are you if you're quite happy to go onto a webcam site and masturbate in front of someone you don't know? Disturbing, but horribly, horribly compelling.

The post #oneaday, Day 110: Hic! appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

After tonight, I'm wishing I'd started playing sooner! That game is fun. We weren't playing for big money – a £5 buy-in got us 8,000 chips, and the last man standing would get everyone else's fivers. But the money didn't matter. It was the game itself that mattered. I found it pretty amazing how a simple game largely dependent on luck (or card-counting) can have such moments of drama and enormous satisfaction in it. Obliterating opponents with a hand that is just better enough than theirs to screw them over completely is enormously satisfying. Perhaps not for our gracious host, who was one of the first out, quickly relegated to a "kiss of death" advisory role.

I came second in our game. Considering I'd never played before, I thought this was pretty good going. I managed to bluff my way through to some storming victories on a few hands, but was ultimately defeated in the last few hands by a straight vs my two (high) pairs.

I'm not sure if I was just getting lucky, or if I was actually "playing the game" correctly. But there were a number of occasions where the choices I made paid off bigtime for me, in some instances even allowing me to knock another player out. I'd be curious to try again to see if it was just beginners' luck. I know it certainly wasn't the others going easy on me. Although perhaps the fact that none of us were particularly experienced helped me out somewhat!

The best thing, though, was to find a game that I was actually good at. I like stuff like Agricola and Power Grid, but as I wrote a short while back, I am generally pretty terrible at them due to something of a deficiency in the strategic parts of my brain. I don't know what it is. But apparently, it seems, I have a decent poker face. I'm not sure how to take this news. Is it such a good thing to be a good liar?

Well, in the case of a game like poker… of course it is!

You look great in that shirt, by the way.

The post #oneaday, Day 89: No, It's Like "Poke-A-Nose" appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Anyway.

Tomorrow, I fly to Boston for PAX East. It's strange to think that this time has finally come. When I think back to early in this whole "one a day" experiment and the things I said, wondering whether or not I'd be able to go, wondering whether I'd be able to get out of my job, wondering if I'd ever make it to the States to see my friends whom I only know by their Twitter avatars and occasional glimpses of embarrassing photos on Facebook.

Now, that fantasy is a reality. Well, it will be very soon, anyway.

There are two emotions in my head right now. Immense excitement… and nerves. Almost like stage fright.

Anyone who's ever met anyone they've talked to online for a long period of time will know that the first face-to-face meeting is always the hardest. People are different online to how they are in reality, and however much you can protest that the way you write or chat online is your "true self", the fact is that people will judge you when they meet you for the first time – subconsciously in most cases, but they're doing it all the same. It's that that always unnerves me – whenever I'm meeting new people for the first time, not just trusted and beloved online friends, but anyone. It's a side-effect of the social anxiety that I've suffered for as long as I can remember, but I'm determined not to let it get in the way of an awesome time. And it doesn't have to. I met my wife face-to-face long after we met online, after all. And yes, I probably was an awkward twat – still am – but that one worked out just fine.

The fact I've met some members of the Squadron of Shame before will help – especially given the fact that we got on well the last time we met and didn't (to my knowledge, anyway) want to tear each others' throats out with hammers by the end of our time together. I feel like I know a lot of the others very well already thanks to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, podcasts and all manner of other media that makes "Internet gurus" and "online entrepreneurs" drool with glee. So I think it's going to be just fine.

Doesn't stop me feeling nervous, but it's not a sense of crippling anxiety. It's more a state of wanting the "introductions" phase to be over so we can kick back with some beers and then hit the show floor of PAX East running. Because there's an asston of stuff to see, and there's a bundle of people I want to meet. Quite how everything will fit into those few short days I'm in Boston is anyone's guess – but I'm going to make a damn good try of it.

So tomorrow morning at 8:40, I board a coach bound for DESTINY. That's right: DESTINY. (Then I catch a plane which will take me the rest of the way to DESTINY. But the coach trip comes first.)

I'm clearly getting delirious. Time for bed, I think. Good night!

The post #oneaday, Day 66: The Time Has Come appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

But the Squad are just that. I may be a couple of thousand miles away from them, but they're my bros, my buddies, the legen-wait for it-dary ones, that sort of thing. Which is why the opportunity to potentially meet so many of them in one place at such a massive nerdgasm as PAX will be beyond awesome – even if podcast host Chris' revelation that "if someone threw a grenade in there, they'd wipe out the whole Squad" was somewhat chilling. Who would play Pathologic and then podcast about it for three hours then? (Of course, it may be your opinion that the world can do without three-hour long podcasts on the subject of Pathologic, but that's a discussion for another day.)

It's pretty awesome that the Internet, as well as being the home of ridiculous chavs like this, can also be the home of genuine friendships and new ways to stay in touch. I know that every time I sit down and listen to the Exploding Barrel Podcast, for example, it's like I'm hanging out with Mike Minotti of Bitmob (as he now prefers to be known, formerly Tolkoto) and his brother AJ rather than listening to people I don't have any real connection with. As time has continued on its way and the good word of the Squad has spread further and wider, mostly thanks to Twitter, we've picked up more and more people who want to be involved, some from other sites, some from other podcasts, some who are just awesome people.

And that's pretty cool. That's, as they say, some Web 2.0 shit right there. And I love it.

The post One A Day, Day 4: Blurring Realities appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.