#oneaday Day 894: Clip Show

Clip episodes are TV shows’ way of making a low-budget episode and not having to worry about being the slightest bit creative.

After 893 previous daily blog posts and having just been on my Couch to 5K run for the evening, I’m knackered and can’t think of much to write about, so I’m going to do my very own clip show. In the process, I will highlight some posts from the past that you may have missed. There are likely to be a lot of these, as this blog currently has 953 posts on it (893 of which are, as previously mentioned, posted at daily intervals) so you would be forgiven for having not seen some of them in the past. (If, on the other hand, you have seen each and every one of these posts because you’re good enough to read them daily, first of all, God bless you, and second of all… uh… thanks.)

I started blogging on this site back in July of 2008. I’d tried keeping a blog on a couple of other sites in the past — here’s one from 2005 (composed almost entirely on a Nokia N-Gage, believe it or not) and here’s another from the year prior on the subject of my experiences as a secondary school teacher. (The latter was a spinoff from a series of emails I used to send family and friends while I was training to be a teacher.) I did used to have a self-hosted blog on my own personal domain, too, but that is long since defunct. This ol’ WordPress site here is probably my most long-standing web presence that is still actually updated. Which is nice.

Prior to starting posting things daily… well, things were pretty much the same as they are now. I’d post on a range of topics from video game-related business to board games, the death of a beloved family pet and even trying my hand at music review blogging. (The linked post there actually led to me being specifically invited along to another band’s performance a short while later — the “review” in question is here.)

I’ve spent some time in curious virtual world Second Life over the years, and in February of 2009 I wrote a couple of posts on the subject — firstly, on the subject of virtual worlds in general, and secondly on the subject of how your on-screen persona can affect your own self-perception. You’ll doubtless notice some parallels with my recent post on why I play as women in video games. I still find Second Life fascinating, sleazy elements and all, though I haven’t paid it a visit for a very long time. Some of the people in that crazy world provided great comfort to me in lonely periods and just writing this is making me feel a bit bad that, to them, I must have just upped and vanished one day. Perhaps I’ll return sometime — though whether it’s as my male “real me” or female “total escapism” avatar I couldn’t say! I certainly used to enjoy the whole “CG artwork” aspect of it, where I’d take pictures of things in the virtual world and then mangle them beyond recognition in Photoshop. (A great way to learn how to do crazy things in Photoshop, incidentally.)

In April of 2009, I revisited a game I used to play on the Atari 8-bit: Alternate Reality: The City. When I originally played it, I had no idea what a role-playing game was or what I was supposed to be doing. In 2009, I was armed with The Internet and a map I’d printed out, so was much better-equipped to go on some adventures. This post chronicled one character’s ill-fated expedition into the cheerily-named city of Xebec’s Demise, and I like to think it gives the reader a good feel for what this unusual game is all about.

A month later, I remembered that the “pictorial story” idea I’d done with Alternate Reality was rather fun (if time-consuming), and decided to give it another shot, this time with The Sims 3. Remembering my previous post on evil in games, I figured it would be interesting to see how messed-up it was possible to make a Sim. Very, as it happens; the many and varied mundane adventures of Lars the Bastard will attest to this fact.

You may remember the spammers’ craze for sending bizarre narrative emails with unsubtly-embedded pornographic exhortations within from around September 2009. I took it upon myself to compile some of them and see if anything coherent came out. Nothing did, as you can see.

In December of 2009, I discovered Warhammer Quest. I also discovered the joy of writing down the emergent narrative which comes about during a game session of a theme-heavy board game such as Warhammer Quest. The result of this initial experiment was The Adventures of Count Kurt von Hellstrom and Company, a saga which hopefully will continue someday — though I haven’t had the chance to play Warhammer Quest since writing that post, I don’t think.

And in January of 2010, I started posting entries daily. But that’s another story. And I’ll compile a selection of my favourite One A Day posts for tomorrow’s entry. I bet you can’t wait.

#oneaday Day 720: To the Lurkers

As a somewhat belated and not-very-difficult-to-accomplish New Year’s resolution, I thought I’d make a specific effort to try and engage a bit more with those who leave comments on here. Being a relatively directionless personal blog, of course, the vast majority of my readership is made up of people that I already know in real life (or quasi-real life, otherwise known as “elsewhere on the Internet”). But in the last year particularly, I’ve seen quite a few people showing up here who aren’t among my immediate group of close friends.

That’s not a bad thing! Don’t shy away!

Whew. Thought I’d lost you for a minute.

Anyway, to all new readers, I’d like to say a big hello! And to those who have been reading for quite some time, hello! and thanks for reading!

I know there’s quite a few people out there who read but never comment, either, so I thought it might be nice to devote this whole post to us just getting to know one another a bit. If you’re a lurker and you’ve never commented on this blog, why not make this the first post you write a message on? If you’re a long-time commenter, why not get to know some of the other random people who frequent this site and strike up some friendships between the disparate social circles in which I move, both on and offline.

Of course, this is all a moot point if no-one comments on this post, so I’m hoping that I don’t end up looking somewhat foolish by putting this post up only to receive no responses whatsoever. And this isn’t a shallow, thinly-veiled attempt to get more comments — well, it sort of is, but that’s not the primary point. Many bloggers seem to measure their worth by how many comments they get. Me? I’m just curious as to who out there is reading this, who they are, what they’re doing and what brought them here.

So I’ll start. I’m Pete. I’m 30 years old. Were my girlfriend writing this, she would have emphasised the word “old” since she is several years my junior. I live in Chippenham, which is a small and unremarkable town in Wiltshire, somewhere in the depths of the West Country of the United Kingdom. I live with my girlfriend Andie in a small two bedroom house which has two very friendly cats named Artie and Chester who live next door and frequently barge their way into our house.

Until the end of last year, I was a writer for GamePro.com, which sadly folded at the end of last year. Currently, I write for Inside Network covering social games and mobile apps, and am looking for a little more work with which to top up the money I’m getting from that. In past lives, I’ve been a teacher in both primary and secondary schools (swearing “never again” to both), a supply teacher (ditto), a Creative and a Specialist in the Southampton Apple Store, a temp at the Most Depressing Company In The World (a loss adjusters, if you’re familiar with the concept), and at university I was a starters chef at a pub and The Man Who Collected Glasses and Cleaned Up Sick at a grotty, “trendy” bar in Southampton city centre.

I went to university in Southampton for four years, the first three of which were spent studying English and Music, a more useless combination of subjects I don’t think it’s possible to pick when considering future employment prospects. (Kids: ignore anyone who says English is a “good, general degree”) The last year was spent doing a PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate of Education) — in other words, training to be a teacher.

I got married in October of 2008 but my wife and I split in May of 2010, an experience which was quite possibly the most emotionally agonising, painful thing I’ve ever been through. I made it out the other side, though, and can accept that mistakes were made on both sides, and have moved on.

I like video games, cats, music (I play the piano, clarinet and saxophone), drawing stickmen, my iPhone, reading, writing, blogging, the Internet, Community, Friends, Spaced and friends with whom I can both talk seriously and make jokes about flatulence. I hate onions, spiders, leeks, The X-Factor, people who won’t shut up about platform wars on either console or mobile (seriously! Just use what makes you happy, and stop telling other people they’re wrong and/or gay), Facebook Timeline, spam (on the Internet, not the meat), Big Brother, reality TV in general and the sort of teenager who wears tracksuits that look like pyjamas and too much Lynx.

That’s me, handily summed up in a few paragraphs. A more comprehensive breakdown of my skills can be found here. Any questions?

So what about you? Who are you? Why are you reading this? Where did you come from? Do you think I’m se– no, wait, that’s a different list.

#oneaday, Day 300!

Other people may have made it to this milestone before me, but here I am: day 300. I am going to resist any “This Is Sparta”-type quotes here, largely because I haven’t seen 300 and also because that whole meme is kind of played out, really.

So, here we are. This day arrived with little in the way of fanfare and, in fact, a bunch of tweets and posts ranting about things which happened to other people. But I think today of all days I’ve earned the right to be a bit selfish, to say things about me. So that’s what I’m going to do.

This is very much the home stretch now, of course, with just 65 days remaining until I’ve completed a full year of non-stop blogging. Well, not non-stop, but daily. You know what I mean.

It’s been one hell of a journey, as those who have been following from the start (and prior to that) will be able to attest. And it’s not, naturally, the course I would have chosen this year to take had I the opportunity to decide my own destiny on a moment-to-moment basis. But, unfortunately, sometimes the consequences of the things you do and the choices you make aren’t immediately apparent, and it’s not until months or years later that you realise you were heading down one road when you thought you were heading down another. A big step in life’s journey is accepting that sometimes things don’t go the way you expect them to, and thus you will have to learn to deal with them, for better or worse. Most of the time, you do have choices, although they might not be clear at the time. And, decisions to murder, rape and pillage notwithstanding, there are no “wrong” choices per se, so long as you’re just willing to deal with the knock-on effects that your choices have.

Back on January 19 of this year, I made the decision to take on the #oneaday challenge. It’s a decision I’m glad I took, as it’s a habitual process now; it’s something I enjoy doing every day and if nothing else, it’ll provide an interesting record of a particularly difficult year in my life. It got me to thinking, though; does every year contain as many “events” as this one has? In my 29-and-a-bit years on this planet, is every year so filled with things that are “interesting” and affecting? Quite possibly; it’s just that most of the time, things happen, they pass by and you forget about them. And making a note of them may make some things seem bigger than they actually are. But on the flip-side, looking back at things that happened with the benefit of hindsight can make you feel better about them.

I’m not saying this is how I’d have chosen 2010 to go for myself. If I had completely free choice, I’d have won the lottery, bought an exciting car, be living in a nice (but not excessive house) with at least one cat and maybe be doing a bit of freelancing. Or possibly I might have invented faster-than-light travel and gone into space. I couldn’t say. I didn’t have completely free choice, sadly.

But here I am, 300 days later, and I’m at a stage where I can look back in a contemplative manner, stroke my beard and go “Hmm”. This is a better state to be in than I have been in the past. So here’s hoping that over the next 65 days that things only continue to get better.

And to all of you who have been following this blog, however long you’ve been reading it for, thanks for coming along for the ride. Your thoughts, comments and support have been very much appreciated. Here’s to that final push.