It Was Also Bravestarr's Horse

I did it! Thirty posts in thirty days over the course of November. I didn't think I'd actually manage it, and only have done so through a slight bit of cheating and bending of the rules. I think the idea is to post daily, but I missed that on two occasions. Despite that, I did get in the thirty posts within the allotted month.

This only stands as a personal achievement. I didn't raise money for a cause or make anyone's lives better because of what I wrote (not that I'm aware of anyway). My friend Cian took part in Movember and raised money for prostate cancer awareness. His was a much better cause, all told. To alleviate my guilt, I donated to his cause. Also, he had a smashing 'tash.

But I'm proud of what I did. The quality of posts meandered a bit, sliding below the imaginary average level this blog aspires to maintain. There were funny posts, nostalgic posts and far too many posts about video games! It started with an angry letter to Google and finished with some thoughts on the value of living. But they were all fun to write. Once or twice I arrived home from work without a single idea on what to post that evening. I would just turn on the laptop and start typing. Those often turned out to be my favourites.

Now that it's all done, you might be interested in some facts:

• I recorded 1,684 page views from November 1st to 30th across the entire blog, not all for the new material, but there was a marked jump from the 700 view per month I've been averaging since June. 
• Taken as they stand, my total word count is an astonishing 14,948 words, averaging just short of 500 words per post (498.26), peaking at 1,723 and dipping as low as 112.
• If you removed the cut'n'pasted poem from my post on the 5th of November (which I obviously didn't write, nor had to retype) from the count, it stands at 14,873, or an average of 495.76 words per post, peaking at 1,723 and dipping as low as 37 in the altered post.
• The median word count was 419.
• There were 10 comments left.
• Currently, the highest viewcount for a single post is 86, for the very first post. Second place has 32 views.
• There are 22 images and one video. 
• The instances of blatant disregard toward the conventions for the proper use of italics and bolding must number somewhere in the hundreds.
• Occurrences of spelling and grammatical errors are similarly numbered.

I had a lot of fun completing my 30/30 (now you should get the title's reference, if you hadn't before this). Hopefully I'll try it again next year and compare the results.

How were they to read? Generally boring? Too long? Painful to view on account of the previously mentioned disregard for literary conventions? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

And thanks for reading.

When You're Gone

Life is a funny thing. For the vast majority of people, we have no concept of it ending. We see people die every day, yet a part of us always manages to convince the rest of our brain that it'll never happen to us.

But it does.

We don't know when, we don't know how. It's not biblical, just a fact.

When I leave this mortal body behind and finally learn what really happen afterwords, I hope I'll be leaving the world a better place. I hope that my actions here will make other lives a little brighter.

God forbid, if it happens tomorrow, I know that I'll miss what I have. I have the most amazing, loving, incredible wife I could ever have dreamed of. I have family that I love and miss dearly every day. I have friends that I hope to grow old with and laugh about our days in college together in fifty years time. I have a job that does make other peoples lives a little brighter, a little happier.

But I don't plan on giving it all up tomorrow, or the day after, or the next month, year or decade.

This isn't a post about death. It's about life. Live it as best you can. Be a positive influence in the stories of as many other people as you can, because when you go, that'll be the only thing that matters.

Make your world a little brighter.

Dear Xbox Three-Sixty

You have suffered much in my hands.

Oh, sure. It started out all sunshine and roses, an easy life, living day to day with just a small handful of games, sharing my attention with the Wii. Life was easy. You were new and shiny, young and invincible.

But all that would change. I would taste the sweet nectar of Live. One free weekend for all Silver Members. So much changed in those few hours. I became addicted, needing more. I bought a One Year Gold subscription and dusted off my old games. I had never played the multiplayer stuff before, now it was all I yearned for. Like any good narcotic (or so I'm told), the more I played, the more I wanted.

But it was Burnout Paradise that got you all hot and bothered, and left me in the cold. At first, I thought it was a random glitch in the matrix, a graphical error that caused a console freeze. But I quickly learned the truth. You were dying inside. It was only a matter of time.

I sent you away. They told me they would make you better, return you to me as if it had never happened. And they did. I remember the day I got that phonecall that you were home. I opened the package to see you lying there. It was you, not a replacement. I could tell by your serial number.

We've had some great times since then. You were always good to me. You soldiered through long nights of Rock Band with friends, twelve hour marathon sessions of the newest release or hours upon hours of watching TV shows and movies. We reached over 30,000 Gamerscore together, just you and me, dozens of games, an internet connection, Xbox Live Gold, days and weeks of playtime... ok. Maybe a bit more than just you and me, but all through you.

I even brought you to Canada. After all those years, I could never dream of leaving you behind.

For a while, you sat there waiting. Waiting. Wondering when I would show you the same attention you had been used to. Then September 20th arrived and it was just like old times. I was running you through your paces again, every evening when I got home, long, intense sessions at the weekends, not only running the game, but sometimes hosting, Party chatting and downloading all at once.

It was to be expected, really. The first time I saw those two red segments light up your face, I paused. I refused to see the truth. I told myself that you just needed dusting. It didn't help. I moved you to a new, brighter location. It didn't help.

Now I have you sitting on my sill, beside an open window. You remain cool and comfortable, sucking in the Vancouver November air. For now.

But I know it's coming. I know our time runs short. Now I cherish every moment. I don't want to start playing a new game in case that will be the one that finishes it.

I just don't want it to end yet.

Your owner forever,

Denis.

Hair Today, Books Tomorrow

I think I've mentioned this fact before, but I get most of my reading time on the bus either to or from work, or during my lunch break. This means that I rarely have the luxury of finishing up neatly at the start of a new chapter, or even at a convenient break within a chapter. The best I can often manage is furiously zipping through the last few lines of a paragraph and leaving it there. Sometimes I don't even manage that, looking up from the page to discover I'm already at my stop.

This means I had to get creative with bookmarks. My first attempt at tracking where I stopped was simply to position the end of the bookmark roughly around where I finished up. This never worked, as the marker slid from its placing as soon as I released it. Next, I attempted to macgyver a card with a slider that I could position at the point where I wanted to pick things up from, but this didn't really work either.

Finally, I hit on an ingenious idea, one so simple, I feel like I should have been using it for years.

Working in a daycare setting I'm often asked to hold on to hairclips for children that get too fed up of constantly replacing them during play. I usually clip them to my ID lanyard to remind myself to return them safely. More often than not, however, I end up finding them where I left them once I get home.

Thus I struck upon the idea of using hairclips as bookmarks. When I need to stop, I simply attach the clip to the page I'm on at the point that I've reached. Then, when I'm ready to read again, not only do I instantly know what page I finished on, but I know the exact line I read last. It works great, and even comes with its own secondary function.

I like to get immersed in a book. I fall head-over-heals into the world, and when things get tense, I get tense also. I fidget during the exciting moments, and having the hairclip conveniently to hand, I tend to snap it open and closed, back and forth in my fingers. I try to be discrete about it, muffling the snap in my hands, but I sometimes wonder if it gets incredibly annoying to people sitting nearby.

I also end up breaking the clips, like I did today to my current favourite bookmark. I may have to go shopping for hairclips tomorrow on my lunch break.

If anyone asks, they're for my wife.

Score One For Games

Classical orchestral pieces have long been acknowledged as stunning examples of music, capable of taking the listener through ranges of emotions, all while really only interacting with a single sense.

Movie scores have shred some of that appreciation during the last few decades. Star Wars, Batman and Tron all have easily identifiable scores that have become classics in their own right. The names John Williams or Danny Elfman can be held up as modern equals to the greats of Beethoven or Mozart. Indeed, the work of John Williams has been a regular favourite of many great orchestras, especially the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

However, despite events such as Video Games Live or the very recently released CD from the London Philharmonic, The Greatest Video Game Music, there still isn't the same level of appreciation for video game scores, and it's a crying shame.

While cut-scenes play out like moments from a movie, unlike movies, video games include incidental music which can be presented as a dynamic addition to the scene or level, shifting tempo and volume according to the actions of the player. This reaction to the events onscreen can deeply effect the level of player immersion into the world. As the music swells in a tense moment, I can feel my pulse quicken, knowing that something is nearby, about to strike.

I'd love to start seeing video game sound tracks get more and more recognition. It's starting to happen now, as major composers are working on games and digital and CD sales of video game score continue to rise.

Several years ago, Claire and I once suggested to a friend that worked on a radio music program for Irish classical music station Lyric FM that they should do a special around video game scores, but we were informed that no-one in the entire station had access to any, so it wasn't going to happen. 

Hopefully some day it will happen. Hopefully some day soon.

Weekend Work

Most people enjoy their work-free weekends, going hiking, relaxing at home, or visiting family.

My weekends are usually filled with sleeping in late, going forwalks to Granville Island, or around the beautiful Lynn Valley, hanging out with friends, going for dinner with friends, watching movies or playing Xbox.

But I love getting woken up at 7:30 Saturday morning with a phone-call. It's happened four times in the last two months, and it's always the same.

"Hi Denis. Sorry to call you, but can you work for us this morning?"

Shower, shave and out the door for four hours of working with smallies and their parents on a Saturday morning. I love it.

When work isn't even work, it's easy to enjoy and look forward to. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Friday is my Monday. I look forward to Monday morning like most people look forward to Friday at 5pm.

From BC To QC

Today we said good-bye to the first two friends we made on arrival in Vancouver.

Before we made the actual trip, we asked in the internet for tips about moving to the area. We used the best online forum community, RPG.Net to put the word out, and got loads of helpful advice and suggestions.

One user in particular informed us he was from Galway. He and his Canadian wife were living in Vancouver, and offered not only to show us around, but also to put us up for a while. At the time, we had already booked some time in a hostel, but happily did crash with them for several nights afterwords.

They recommended areas that were nice and things to look out for.

They made two Irish people very far from home feel welcome.

Tomorrow they travel across the continent to her parents in Quebec.

Claire and I will both miss them dearly.