Richard's Online Journal
[04/03/09] Click Video Magazine
Putting journalists in front of cameras is usually a bad idea, but often quite funny. For proof, you need only look back to 1991, and the release of Click - a magazine on VHS tape which lasted just two issues before vanishing. Each one cost a fiver, which was an astronomical amount for a magazine at the time, but I bought both of them and remember them very fondly. They were very much products of their time, trying to turn the character based banter of most gaming mags of that era into something more like fly-on-the-wall comedy. A lot of it was pretty eye-rolling even at the time, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fun. The writing was on the wall as soon as the first one appeared in shops though, and I wasn’t surprised when Issue 3 never appeared.
I think I’ve still got the tapes somewhere, although I no longer own a VHS player, and for years I had the sneaking suspicion that I was the only person who even remembered them. Then for some reason they came up in a conversation with the PC Format boys this morning, and out of curiosity, I hit Google. And what do you know, it seems that there’s at least one other person who remembers them, and they go by the name PJVonoBox. And not only does Mr. Box remember them, he’s uploaded them to the internet. Hurrah for PJVonoBox! May his bottom always be fragrant.
The second episode was a good bit tighter, attempting to have at least something of a story running through the reviews and features, and with most of the cast a bit more comfortable in their on-screen characters. The features weren’t as good though, mostly because of the trouble of getting early-90s computing to look cool. Whatever happened to all those awesome Virtual Reality games, anyway?
Oh. Right…
The scary thing is that I remember watching these at the time and being deeply envious of all the Amiga/ST people who got to play such awesome looking games, while I was still stuck with an out of date IBM PC without even VGA graphics, along with my Nintendo. To all the people who had those systems at the time, and liked to gloat over us PC users with our strategy games and stats-based roleplaying titles and classic text adventures, please don’t think I’m gloating when I say: Hah! We win!
[15/02/09] 25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me
1/ I have never shot a man just to watch him die. That would be a shocking waste of harvestable organs.
2/ Confusing ‘jam’ and ‘jelly’ may be a dumb mistake when visiting America, but I find it’s worth it for the look on the waiter’s face during breakfast.
3/ My burglar alarm code is posted above the keypad in the form of a brainteaser.
4/ Putting the correct code into my burglar alarm opens a trapdoor into the spike pit. I am not a complete moron. My neighbours are learning to live with it ringing at least 5 hours a night. At least, I think they are. We don’t talk since the restraining order.
5/ I have a side-business where I change my name to the latest celebrity heart-throb and give exclusive interviews to the gossip rags. Technically, I’m only “a” Johnny Depp this week, but that’s apparently good enough in a court of law.
6/ My hobby is going to Creationist meetings and complaining that geography teachers never take the time to inform their students of the clear and present threat posed by Jormundgand the World Serpent. It’s in the epic poems, people! Look it up!
7/ I don’t trust intuition. Don’t ask why, it just doesn’t sit well with me.
8/ When stopped in the street by charity workers, I like to guilt-trip them by talking about the harm they’re doing by taking money that could so easily be going to other, even more important causes. That reminds me: this year, please donate to Children and Adults Suffering in Honduras. That’s quite long, so feel free to just use the initials when writing out your cheques. I’ll pass them on.
9/ I entered Walkers recent ‘invent a flavour’ competition by suggesting a healthy, sodium-free version of the traditional Ready Salted crisp. I didn’t expect to win, but I can’t help but feel insulted that they chose five seperate flavours of evil instead.
10/ No matter how many lottery tickets I buy in my life, if I ever win the jackpot, I plan to tell everyone it was my first time. And I found the ticket in a puddle. And the first thing I plan to do is have a big roaring money fire. Just because.
11/ I once saw a ghost at my local cinema, but then these four guys in jumpsuits ran in and blasted it with some kind of laser guns. I saw them a few years later, and it was still kinda cool, but nowhere near as good.
12/ My first act as Education Secretary will be to make Sesame Street re-dub all its songs so that children know it’s really pronounced ‘zed’.
14/ I don’t believe in the number 13.
15/ I was once stopped by Customs for trying to smuggle a bottle of aspirin back into the country. Apparently you don’t need to. The talcum powder was appreciated.
16/ I’m uncomfortable around crying women. Reminds me too much of my first date.
17/ Murder weekends confuse me. What’s wrong with roleplaying a copycat killer?
18/ As a child, I decided to write a note saying that if I ever got access to a time machine, I’d come back and meet myself at that exact second. When I didn’t appear, I tore the note up in disgust. Now, I can’t help but wonder… what if?
19/ I believe book burning should be a capital offence, unless the book is Eragon.
20/ I never, ever misuse apostrophe’s.
21/ I was given a medical license specifically so that it could be revoked. Those doctors were very sore about Dr. Cobbett’s vacuum cleaner/darning needle based Home Liposuction Kit. So were the patients, but that’s what small print’s for.
22/ If it ever comes back, I’d like to run a cool rebranding campaign for the Spanish Inquisition. Suggested slogan: “Torture! It Never Goes Out Of Style!”
23/ Since you never know you can’t do something unless you try, I like to tell people that I can swim the Atlantic, pluck stars out of the sky, and totally kickstart their modelling careers.
24/ I keep a pen in my pocket at all times, just in case someone I don’t like asks to borrow one. Then I can do that bizarre thing where you frisk yourself, going “I’m sure I had one...” only to walk off leaving them pen-less, knowing that really, I did...
25/ I never, ever do internet memes.
[14/02/09] So. Where Were We?
As one of the (checks stats page) three or so people still reading the site, you’ll probably have noticed that things have been a bit quiet of late. Chalk it up to a mix of a truly hectic December (or as we call it in the writing trade, ‘bloody December’, thanks to two months of work having to be squeezed into about a fortnight when nobody particularly wants to be doing anything), and the inevitable January that follows. What’s that? It’s February? Damn. Well, throw in a dollup of laziness too…
Still, it’s been a busy couple of months. I’ve been hard at work losing a couple of stones worth of unsightly blubber (which would be more satisfying if there weren’t another three or four left to go...), relaunching a website, developing a taste for bacon bagels at breakfast, writing roughly a million words, trying to work out why you can never get a pack of yoghurts with the most important flavours - strawberry and peach melba - instead of mango and raspberry and whatever, and repeatedly banging my head into my desk in an attempt to forget that ITV ever commissioned Demons. I threw a snowball at someone for the first time in about five years, tried in vain to work out why Walkers would bother producing not one but five crisps flavoured like the devil’s very bladder phlegm, and had the deep satisfaction of watching a car that tried to scythe through a puddle I was walking past one cold evening end up skidding out into oncoming traffic. I’ve read six books, burned through several seasons of new TV programs, and my Death Knight is up to Level 73. As you can see, time well spent!
(Also, I’ve been messing around with Twitter. A lot...)
However, all this has meant ignoring the old site a bit. As I’ve told a few people, I’m still feeling a bit burned out on blogging per se, but there are definite advantages to having some kind of presence. In particular, it never hurts to be visible if anyone’s got interesting projects going, and just having a place to write stuff without having to go through editors and the like can be very refreshing. (A proper post about that coming at some point.) Also, I’m fairly sure that the internet runs on the same kind of system as the Mayan gods, only instead of requiring sacrifices to fuel the universe, its gears call out for cat videos and viral memes. If blogs can’t provide it, the whole world as we know it could… go outside and see the sun again, probably. Brr!
I’ve made a few changes to things, and there are a few more coming. The RSS feed now does full-text instead of snippets (although as ever, I frequently chop and change stuff after it’s been posted/I notice mistakes), which makes it easier to do quick snippets instead of always going for long articles. At some point, I’m going to try and get a less horrific photo for the front page too, although that might mean a few more trips to the gym. I’m already sweating blood over an official one I need to have taken on Monday, and it’s not a great look. If all the world’s a stage, I really need to get myself a more photogenic understudy at some point…
What? Oh, fine. Here. Here are the funny cats...
We now return you to your Valentine’s Day/ASAD, already in progress.
[14/02/09] Aching Solitude Awareness Day
(And if you’ve been reading for a while, don’t forget last year’s celebration.)
[30/11/08] Spotted On Audible
Flip to page 65 to see more laws of physics shamelessly violated