Hey all.

My band has our first ever live gig next friday! WOOP.

I'll be the only one whose never been on stage before!

Wish me luck!

Still alive.
Short Summary.
Tattoos upgraded.
Red Dead Redemption, played, completed and loved.
All the rest of life, much the same.
Speak to you soon, electric monkeys.

I am still here. I just haven't done anything excessively interesting lately. Nothing worth reporting/ Well other than my leg tattoo. I'll try and post pics soon. I hope you kids are fine and dandy?

What an awesome couple of weeks I’ve had.

It started with Eurogamer which was a nice day out in London playing some games, a few more days off work mostly spent chilling out or playing Borderlands, and then I was off to Toronto with Amy.

I frigging love that city; I can easily see myself going there for yet another holiday as we still didn’t get to do everything we wanted to. Sneaky Dee’s was regularly suggested for somewhere to try but we never got round to going there.

So what did I get up to? Well we did a tour of Casa Loma (odd thing was while we were reading facts about Sir Henry Pellett; it appears that he visited Aldershot, my home town, in 1910. So here we are on a completely different continent the other side of the Atlantic and my hometown pops up!).

We revisited the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum). The Michael Lee Chin part of the building was still being built when we first visited a few years ago, so now it’s finished we explored all the dinosaur/fossil exhibits (I liked the massive prehistoric Turtle and Flat Faced Bear skeletons). It also turned out that there was a special showing of this guy’s personal gem/jewellery collection in the geology section. Amy being a jeweller herself and loving gemstones this was great for her. I have to admit that the geology section was really interesting for me as well.
I really enjoyed the ancient Chinese and Japanese exhibits as well. The highlight was seeing a statue of Guan Yu.

We had been chatting to and became friendly with some of the staff members in Neon on Queen Street, and one night we all took a trip to an open mic comedy night. I can’t quite remember the name of the bar/venue, it could’ve been called Central, or something like that. It wasn’t too bad for open mic, some of the comedians were actually really funny, and those that weren’t any good were funny just because it was so bad.
All the comedians seemed to like mentioning rape for some reason though. I get the impression lately that within comedy it has become almost fashionable to mention rape in you routines. But when unskilled comedians are obviously shoehorning it into their routines it becomes more apparent that they are just doing it to jump on the bandwagon. It was kind of odd and everyone present noticed it.

I had always intended to see some live music during our stay. I knew that AFI and the Gallows were going to be playing Tuesday night, and that was a possibility although I haven’t heard any AFI for a good few years (mostly heard them through punk samplers I used to get) and I’ve not really heard much Gallows either, but I was willing to give it a shot. Another option for Tuesday night was seeing Vader and a bunch of other bands at the Mod Club. I’ve heard OF Vader but don’t think I’ve actually listened to any of their stuff. I noticed that Swashbuckle was also on the line-up. While I’m not a fan of Pirate-Metal or whatever they class themselves as, it could’ve made for an interesting evening. But this is all a completely moot point as Tuesday is the night we went to see the comedy!
So we were at this record shop on Yonge Street which also sells tickets and we found out Wolfmother were playing on Wednesday so we grabbed tickets for them in the end.
The Kool Haus was a nice venue. Me and Amy promptly grabbed some seats with the intention of if the support acts were any good we would get up and watch them. No worries there then because both support acts were massively dull. It was as close you could get to the levels of Muzak dullness with a live band. Their tunes washed over me like waves of liquid boredom, not one song provoking me to pay attention, which is a shame. But then Wolfmother hit the stage. All hair and classic rock goodness. Every song was a winner, and the bands stage presence was electric, particularly the bass/keyboard player who has seemed to base is appearance/moves on Animal from the Muppets. Maybe the organisers purposely chose mediocre support bands to amplify Wolfmother’s turn, if so it worked a bloody treat!
I have to note, one morning I was reading the entertainment guide in one of the newspapers and it appears that pretty much the day we left a spate of really good gigs starts and continues all the way into mid December. Please, Toronto, next time rearrange these to fit in with my holiday schedule. Ta.

The night before we had to return to the UK, I went to Armoured Soul on Queen Street and got my tattoo retouched up. They are really nice folks in there and the shop itself was very cool.

So besides all of these jollities it was mostly a lot of shopping and eating maybe a bit too much, but the whole holiday was amazing and really recharged my batteries, although the amount of walking we did was obscene.

Oh and ban kids from flying on the same plane as me. It makes me a angry panda.

So I'll leave you with a song. I chose it for 2 reasons. It's on the album I was listening to on repeat on the flight home to try and aid my sleep and this tracks called "Oh! Toronto" Fitting.



Take care.

Eurogamer Expo 09.

OK, I'll admit now, I didn't take any photos/footage of the games. But it was a good day out. It was pretty packed inside and I didn't get to play as many games as I'd like to. Here's a few thoughts on what I saw.

Bayonetta:
Did actually get my hands on this one. From what I had heard of it I knew it was going to be a tad bonkers and it didn't fail to prove that in the demo levels they had playable. First level I tried was staged on a face of a clock tower that had exploded and was plummeting through space. I was fighting against angels although serpent looking flying dragons also turned up during the brawling.
The second level was in a courtyard, like something similar you'd see in Devil May Cry 4 but more lush and colourful. More of these mutated looking angel beasts turned up to receive a good kicking. At the end I was faced with a boss who was wielding a axe that was nearly the size of the entire part of that map. Needless to say I slapped him around with a few good combos, which led to a super attack where I summoned a dragon from my hair which bit the boss into many meaty chunks (wtf?).

I really enjoyed what I played of this game. The graphics were gorgeous, the sound and music was intense and the action and controls were smooth, responsive and flowing. Even the loading screen let you practice combos from the move list. I suspect there'll be achievements attached to just that aspect of the game. The only gripe I had was the camera could've been a bit tidier. When you are playing a game as intense as this, where its hard enough to keep track of you actions due to effects going off, you need the camera to be spot on. It wasn't bad enough to put me off the game, but did result in a few hits received from the enemies.

I think this'll more than likely go on my rental list rather than a purchase for now.

Dragon Age:
Now, I've seen a lot of people jabbering on about this game recently, but I never was that bothered about it. I hadn't read much about it, or bothered looking at screenshots, It wasn't on my "must buy" list at all. But having looked at it and getting to play it for 5-10 minutes I'm impressed. Its probably done enough to tweak the part of my brain that tells me to play games where I can level up and loot stuff.
The graphics weren't worth writing home about, but I think I could have some fun in that game. Won't be buying it until I've finished Borderlands at least once though!

MAG
Got about 5mins on this. I didn't no what to expect here either really. All I knew was this was a first person shooter with the option for disgustingly large teams. But for what I did play, it moved smoothly and intuitively, and looked pretty tasty. My teams spawn point was in a building that was on top of a hill. Looking down from that viewpoint the lush wooded/jungle scattered with tents and camps, looked really nice. Someone had chucked a few smoke grenades around which also looked great. Overall it had a sense of atmosphere, as much as you can really get from a FPS.

God Of War 3 and Dante's Inferno
Grouped these together because they pretty damn similar. Graphics were pleasing and the action gore-filled with some imaginative deaths. Not much more to say about them. Will play them in the future if I get the chance, though I don't own a PS3 or have a friend that would buy GOD OF WAR 3 so that might be doubtful.

Left 4 Dead 2 & AVP
Possibly a couple of the busiest stalls/gaming stations at the events so didn't get hands-on, merely got a over the shoulder view. These are 2 games that I was quite interested in, but unfortunately the people that were playing them as I was watching were clueless and just ran around aimlessly pretty the whole time. I really don't claim to be a great FPS player but I can just about hold my own. These guys actually did nothing to show off the potential of these games, so I'm really none the wiser for seeing them at the show.

Uncharted 2
Now this did look really nice, but as I said I don't own a PS3 so tried to not like the look of it too much, haha. Not in a console wars xbox360 snobbery way, more of a if it looks that good I'm gonna want to play it and I can't!

Other notable games were
Heavy Rain. Very Intriguing. Nicely implemented QTE (if you have to do them, at least do them well and make them interesting). The way options were presented to you was interesting. For example part of the game I was watching someone play, they were interrogating a criminal, the options for the approach to take floated around the playable character and reminded me of the subtitles from the film, NightWatch. Whether this is a flashy way to present very linear gameplay we shall have to see, but I think I may be renting this sleuth-em-up in the future.
Saw. What? I didn't even realise they were making a Saw game! Anyway, the people that were playing it were doing it wrong. They were completing the tasks given to them, and therefore NO DEATHSCENES. Surely that's the whole point of the Saw franchise? I kept wishing they'd do something wrong Oh and expect lots of walking around barefoot in glass, and putting you arm down toilets full of hypodermic needles.

Saturday nights plan was to watch Dead Snow but when that fell through GreatEarthBeard kindly invited us all round to his place where we watched Dead Set which I am ashamed to say I had never seen before! Zombie fun + you get to see Big Brother contestants die horribly, what more could you want?



More pics from Friday.

Spot of sight-seeing. Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast.


Fishy weathervane on top of the Eurogamer Expo building.


My scrumptious girlfriend, Amy.

Going to Eurogamer Expo 09 in London tomorrow with the missus. Hopefully we will have a good day out.

Totally addicted to Borderlands at the moment. Its great fun. Currently running around with a shotgun that fires acid. IN YOUR FACE HALF NAKED PSYCHO MIDGET RAIDER!

Tally Ho!

Not a bad haul, all in all. Spesh as they were all £3.99 each! Bargain. So does this mean I don't have to do my 4 CD's a month thing next month? I'll see how my finances are looking after Toronto.
Annoying thing was I found these in a sale on the HMV website. I was going to use the vouchers work gave me (£40 that they gave us because they didn't arrange a team building outing for us, WIN!). So I go to pay with my vouchers on the website, just to find out that HMV the store and HMV the website are separate things and I can't use the vouchers! So I gave in and just bought them. I deemed them enough of a bargain to justify it
I love finding cheap CD's like this, gives me more of an impetus to buy stuff by artist's I'm only partially familiar with, or stuff that I really should own.

So instead I pick up The Comic Strip Presents, a old series from years ago. One of the episodes gave birth to:



Also picked up Warriors Orochi 2. I frigging love the Dynasty Warriors games.

Pretty good weekend was had, actually felt like I accomplished a decent amount in my own way.

Bah! I'm slowing down on the old blog front. Guess I should do more interesting stuff to talk about! Ha!

Friday, Amy took me out to Wagamama's for a nice meal. It's nice to get dinner bought now and then Inspired by that she used her Nintendo DS cookbook thing and cooked my up some chicken gyoza on Sunday. For her first attempt I was amazingly impressed. They tasted so good! She did have to swap the saki out of the recipe for water, mind.

Saturday, watched Zombieland with some friends, It was pretty good. Kinda a zombie-lite film as it wasn't as gory or full on as other zombie flicks, but the humour was good and I really enjoyed the light-hearted fun.

Tried the new South Park tower defence game on XBL. Why do I find these games addictive? It gave me the urge to watch my old South Park DVDs again. Haven't watched them for YEARS. Think I've only the first 3 seasons so may have to pick some more up soon.
Also tried out Fallen Earth. Wasn't massively sucked in by this game, which is a shame because some aspects look really interesting. I don't think I have the time to invest in it to get the most out of it. Might have another bash at Fallout3 though. Played it pretty intensely till about halfway through then got distracted by some other shiny object that occurred in my life, and find it hard to get back in where I left off. I may restart a new character.

Gonna head off now and see how many CDs I can get with the vouchers I got from work. Here's some Cornelius. Was listening to it at work and remembered how much I like it.
Adios!

Friday.
Work was as it had been all week. Very, very dull. People getting their work to me to upload late caused me to have to stay late. My plan was to nip to town on the way home, grab Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, go home and chill (or cotch as scarringthewound has taught me) but by the time I had finished work, I just wanted to get the fuck home.
Later that night I went to the cinema with some friends and watched Pandorum. It was fairly alright, the sets and creatures were nicely designed, action was nice and brutal, they did a good job of making the creatures seem tough as nails, but on the whole I wasn't blown away and didn't feel like I had seen anything ground breaking. More of a DVD watch I'd say. I'd say the first 20mins of the film were the best for me.

Did make me realize something, I'm fucking tired of cheap jumps in movies. It just feels a bit like lazy writing these day.

Saturday.
Brighton was a success. All my tattoos are booked. Had a good long chat with Ade at Nine regarding my sleeve. Kicking around some awesome ideas, I'm going to compile a collection of images that can inspire the piece. The original piece that is inspiring it can be seen here. The face is getting moved up to my upper arm and the tiger is staying on my forearm. So my first actual session is in April now, and I'm booked in once a month till November next year! It's going to cost a lot, so I need to keep telling myself its worth it, which it totally is.
Also booked in for late January to get my leg piece done at TattooFX, Burgess Hill. That should be done in one session apparently which is awesome, it can tide me over till the big job
So between those 2, £150 worth of deposit laid out. Lol.
Also in Brighton I went to Dave's Comics and picked up 2 Dungeon graphic novels. I have a couple of singles from a while ago and loved them. Even got myself a mouse mat printed up of one of the characters.

Ended up watching Punisher:Warzone in the evening. The plot and acting in that movie was pretty ropey, but the action was good and that's all you really want from the Punisher isn't it? You want him to get all pissed and off a bunch of people in gruesome ways. Punching straight through someones head was a impressive feat.

Sunday.
One long lay in, because I haven't had one in a good while. Cold pizza from the night before for breakfast then spent the day geeking out. Putting Games Workshop models together whilst watching Spongebob and Monty Python DVD's. Excellent way to spend a lazy Sunday!

I was gonna give you lot a song today, but as its the 40th Anniversary of the very first broadcasting of Monty Python you can have this. I chose it mostly because the guy that wants to be a lumberjack has the same name as me! (Well my middle name).


Take care, folks. I'm off to read this I stumbled across whilst searching for links for my blog.
Linky.

TORONTO! I go to Toronto in roughly a month’s time. So anyone from that area or knows it well please inform me of cool places to go! Also up for the idea or meeting up with folk if anyone would like to? I can regale you with tales of adventure from the British countryside (uh-huh, whatever) Long shot I know. I would go on the Canadian group here, but you have to be Canadian! Darn it. Me and Amy (my girlfriend) will be around for the second week of November.

We went before a few years ago. I was working for the holiday company LastMinute.Com as a temp. There was a competition to win a holiday. All you had to do was make a blog entry post on their site and you were entered into a draw. I have a feeling that not many people applied. I just wrote down a short page of drivel and ended up winning a voucher for £700 worth of travel. So we checked our options, paid a little bit extra and got a five day stay in Toronto.

We tried to fit in as much as possible, which unfortunately wasn’t a lot in five days. We took a trip to Niagara, which we figured had to be done really. The actual falls themselves were cool, but the surrounding town, I hate to say, was little better than a cheesy English sea-side resort, such as Bognor Regis! But the majority of people that we have spoken to that have been there, tend to agree with this. This trek took us a day pretty much, mostly traveling.

Other stuff we got up to was visiting art galleries, the Toronto Museum which we both really enjoyed (despite us not really being big into museums generally) typical touristy stuff like the CN Tower and boat rides out the harbor, and a whole load of just walking around checking out the shops and restaurants. There were a couple of times that we went back to our hotel room to drop off the spoils of our shopping trips and just fall asleep. We had totally intended to go out and actually do something in the evening, but the flesh was weak (and sleepy).

This time round we really want to get more stuff done!

On a different note, the last episode of Shooting Stars was on this week. I've really enjoyed it being back on the air, but it was all over too quick! Enjoy "Tiny Eyes" till i speak to you next