Play this now

What's better than a Tim Schafer game? A pretty darned old-school point-and-click Tim Schafer game with Tim Schafer in it. Host Master and the Conquest of Humour is short, sweet and awesomely well-written.

I got 22 jokes. How did you do?

*sneaksneak*

*sneaks in*

Wow. No updates for six months. I feel bad.

I'd better go by category.

Another Place
If all goes to plan, Another Place will be going to the Calgary Film Festival in September. I'll find out some time in June, and if so Rob and I plan to head up there. Hopefully I can get time off work to go. I mean, it's not every day you get to go to the festival premiere of the first proper screenplay you ever wrote.

Games
I'm looking forward to:

• Overlord 2
• Mass Effect 2
• God of War 3
  
• I'm interested in FFXIII, but I have never, ever seen a gameplay trailer with so many unexplained nonsense words in the subtitles, so the jury's still out on this one. I enjoyed FFX and FFXII, both of which were very different FF flavours, so I suppose I can be open minded.

I also just bought The Force Unleashed (whose demo I enjoyed and whose story I've heard good things about) and the new Prince of Persia, My level of interest in these games is such that I wanted to play them but not pay £40 for them; now their price has dropped to a sensible level I'm hoping to give them a go.

I keep feeling like I should get back into Mirror's Edge -- I got a copy through work -- but the gameplay oscillates between being totally exhilarating and utterly frustrating. It's like the game is only grudgingly letting me do the good stuff -- rooftop parkour -- and is making me pay for it with ridiculous pathfinding and combat.

I also keep hearing vague things about Dreamfall Chapters, but I refuse to get excited about it. Why should I? First of all, it probably won't be out until some time in 2013, at the very least. Secondly, given my experience with Dreamfall, I'm treating any further TLJ-flavoured forays with extreme caution.

However, I still say this: if there were TLJ comics, even a webcomic, I think they'd definitely be worth the trouble. I feel like TLJ really lends itself to graphic novels and if Dreamfall actually was "a story set in the TLJ world", as we have now been told, that might have been the better route to go with it.

Nones
Contrary to evidence I actually am still updating Nones. (Honest.) In fact the upcoming section is one I've been looking forward to writing for a loooong time. The reason Nones hasn't been updated lately is because I have been insanely busy at work and I generally come home exhausted. Besides, the story had hit a point where I needed to step back and think about it.

But now things have quietened down a bit at work, hopefully I should get back to regular updates and writing some of my own stuff (including Ship of Fools). However, Rob made a good suggestion and I've put an email notifier on the archive so that people can get notified when there's a new update, rather than checking back.

Me

• Job = awesome
  
• Rob = wonderful
  
• Austin = constantly changing weather
• Orchid = happy and growing new flower spikes
• Flat = seriously lacking a cat
• Books = too short (maybe I should go back to George R R Martin...? nah)
  
• Baking skills = +2

There we go.

Hell of an update

This is the trailer for Another Place.

I am so, so blown away by all the work the crew in Calgary have done. Not so long ago, this was a few pages in Final Draft, a little script meant to be helpful. And now it's this... this living thing. Aside from a few extra lines, I've had nothing to do with it since it went out there - the cast and crew have done it all.

And I can't believe any of it. I'm so moved it's... just unreal. And if David Haysom (Adam, the sick man in the trailer) doesn't move you, you're just not a human being.

*curls up, tries to breathe*

I have lots of news to share. Lots and lots. But that had to be first.

• I have moved to Austin for my dream job. It is hot. It is difficult. I am in a delicate position between apartments right now and there is a furniture situation involved. But. Things are progressing.
• I miss my boyfriend Rob terribly, every day. I have all this great stuff happening and I want to share it with someone I love.
• My job is awesome, and it involves writing, and that's all I can really say about it.
• I keep alternating between being ecstatic at living in another country, to infuriated by all the bureaucracy involved. Again - nearly over.
• I am still writing Nones, despite evidence to the contrary. Reports of my terrible worth as a writer and human being are exaggerated. Slightly.
• I am STILL playing Mass Effect.

Jo out (for the count).

Out with the old, in with the new

Kind of tired. Long day working on ONE DAMN THING. But I'm pleased with the progress I've made on it. Not much more left to do on this, I hope. Be nice to move on.

I've been looking at temporary accommodation in - er, the new city I'm moving to. I'm actually getting pretty excited about this, despite the other concerns I have. It would be hard not to be excited about starting my dream job on a great salary in a new country, though I am very sad about leaving.

I am slightly peeved, however, that I need to buy a new 360 and rebuild my console library. I only just got a new 360 (my old one bricked). Oh well. Means I have an excuse to go shoppin' with impunity. And get Republic Commando.

And:

HA! Sorry Rob, I started reading DM of the Rings. You no longer have an excuse to poke me at random and tell jokes I don't understand.

...Not over DM of the Rings, anyway.

Linky

I'm incredibly flattered by this. (from what I could translate, anyway. Anyone help me out?)

Oh, the pile of stuff

July 4? Already? Months of silence? Again? Excessive question marks? Eeek.

Well, no offence, but I've been taken up with writing other stuff, namely stuff for work. (For all of you bright enough to have realised this before I did, it's quite tricky working when your employer is seven hours out of sync and 3000 miles away.) I am working on Nones as well, but it's being snatched in between times because my weekends belong to other considerations right now, so updates are about as predictable as autumn leaves.

This is because I am moving some time this month, moving to a new country for a new job, joining a new culture and leaving everybody behind - family, friends, one particular person who I'm going to miss like crazy, and jolly olde rainy England. I'm trading it all for sunnier climes and the only job in the universe that could realistically have lured me away from all this.

In January, my only concern was getting my creative writing course finished on time. I was single, unemployed, miserable about my life and living at home. Currently only the last one still applies and even that won't be applying for much longer. It's quite frightening how fast your life can change once it gets moving. But it also proves one of my favourite sayings: today is not tomorrow. Zen (and particle physics) tell us hard-and-fast certainties in life just don't exist and it's foolish to be certain of anything.

Other things in no particular order:

- I've been sick as a parrot this week because of a bad reaction to some medication, which I'm sure you really wanted to know. Still got some good work done though. Ha!
- Susan Arendt, are you reading my mind? Not that I object, but it's interesting to see an article that I agree with so completely I could have written it myself.
- I really really want to see The Dark Knight and The Forbidden Kingdom. In other news, I really really want to forget I ever saw the new Indiana Jones movie.
- I got made an admin on the Mass Effect Wiki and have been duly awarded one geek star by the appropriate authority. Oy.
- xkcd rocks forever.

Jo out.

Jaffa cakes

Why do my family insist on buying these things? Why? They *know* what the inevitable outcome will be. The empty box, the plate with its little crumbs... they're so sad and I feel so guilty afterwards.

I took a trip to Portsmouth to see my grandmother last weekend, which seemed to go okay. Aside from the place we stayed in, which had mattresses like sacrificial altars and a toilet whose cleaning fumes nearly gave me chlorine poisoning, but it's all part of the rich tapestry of life. Besides, it was nice to get out of Leicester for a while. Now I'm back, I'm trying to keep on top of paperwork at the moment (I have a lot to do and falling behind would be very bad) in between reading and getting work done.

The reason I have so much stuff to do all of a sudden is because I'm not only starting a new job, moving to a new place or moving country, but doing all three at once. Very scary. I keep wanting to fast forward about six months ahead so all this will be over. Still, the only way to get there is to keep going forward.