The Nocturnal Gamer

Some new things!

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:22:42 GMT

Hullo. It's been a while. In lieu of anything actually exciting happening, here are two videos of the kiddies :)

Just in time for the new year

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 14:33:21 GMT

I am brilliant. Discuss:

http://www.nocturnalgamer.com

Smiles

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:42:46 GMT

One of Oscar's first milli second-long smiles, caught by my mum, who spent most of her visit last weekend with her camera glued to her face:

And here's some more oscar pics:

And just in case you think babies spend all the time sleeping and smiling, here's what they usually do:

Street Art in Japan.

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 22:05:09 GMT

Just... amazing!

Oscar pictures

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:34:41 GMT

Here's some pictures my mum took yesterday. All my ones are still on my phone while I wait for a bluetooth thingy to arrive from a tardy ebay seller. Grr

(that's my mum, by the way)

And my personal favourite:

He's amazingly good during the day, night-times are ... as expected. Up to now he's basically either feeding, or asleep, but he's having a few minutes of just staring at the clearly highly confusing world before getting hungry. We're all very tired, but just about coping.

Course, next week is half term, and Alice will be home all week. Now that'll be fun.

Oscar

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:49:43 GMT

This is Oscar, our son. He was born this morning at 3am, after 1 hour 23 minutes of labour. He weighs 8lb 3oz, 50cm long. Mum and baby are healthy and fine. Right now, he's full and asleep.

With one day to spare...

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 10:04:00 GMT

Website updatery kinda thing.

http://www.nocturnalgamer.com

Feel free to sign the guestbook, that mysteriously refuses to show new entries for hours, until it's good and ready.

Oh

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 23:23:22 GMT

And then last night, I got catalepsy again for the first time in ages. I got it a lot as a kid. I wake up, but my body is still asleep. It's a bit of an altered state, and you hallucinate a lot. I woke up last night, and felt something jump on me from behind. It wrapped an arm around my throat so I couldn't breath, and proceeded to thrust it's groin on my back very fast. Lasted about 20 seconds before I regained control of myself.

I am having fucking odd dreams at the moment.

Dream

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:15:32 GMT

Last night I had a disturbing dream.

It was really really short. There was an old woman sitting in front of me. She was sat slightly forward, and had a reasonably fierce expression on her face. She was tapping the fingers of her left hand on the wooden arm of her chair, which made a strong staccato sound. ~tap tap tap tap tap~. ~tap tap tap tap tap~. She was impatiently waiting for me to do something. Over the top of the tapping of her fingers, there was a beeping sound, which woke me up. After about 30 seconds of wakefulness, I realised it was the phone downstairs, which was running out of batteries, off its cradle.

I've dreamed about her before, which is odd, eh? Last time she was dressed in black robes inviting me to join her circle of initiates.

Ok, so it sounds rubbish. But it was bloody disturbing at the time.

Children grow up too fast

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:32:27 GMT

Fo sho.

School starts next week!

Me update

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 13:03:44 GMT

For want of something else to do, here is some random drivel.

Alice just shut her thumb in the front door. I'd feel more sympathy if she hadn't been having a huge tantrum and slammed the door herself, having been told already today about 3 times not to slam doors. I might take her to an urgent care centre (mini A&E) in a bit if it's still bad. Big dent in a small thumb :-( Poor thing.

I went babysitting for a friend last night. She works for the same person as me, and doesn't have much money, so I didn't mind helping out. I was feeling mildly less sympathetic when she rolled in with her mate and a random picked-up man in tow at 2.30am. I don't mind watching TV, but having nowt else to do for 7 hours sent me a bit barmy. Exhausted today.

Alice only came back from my mum's for a week last night, so it is nice to have her back. Lots of cuddles this morning - she even climbed into my bed for cuddles, which she NEVER does! She's a bit grumpy though - nothing unexpected since she hasn't been home for two weeks (we were on holiday the week before).

I really don't have anything exciting to write here, I'm just writing for the sake of writing, and because childrens' telly drives me nuts, and the PC is in the same room, and I need distraction...

There's loads of other stuff going on, but nothing I really want to write about in public. Hope you're all well, and all that.

yours
A dull man.

Kara visits London, and we paint the town fuschia

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 20:45:45 GMT

Halen's waaaawesome London Sincon 2006 report. (Copied and pasted verbatim from the Sinfest boards because I am teh lazy).

Hello. How are you? Good. I am tired. But happy.

Please forgive me for the state of these photographs. Drink and mini phone cameras don't mix, especially since I switched my camera to fine detail (for close-ups) half way through the evening, which makes every photo from then onwards a capricious blur, not helped by my shaky hand, and the fact that the people I was trying to photograph were weaving happily from side to side.

APALLING PHOTOGRAPHS FOLLOW.

I'm also going to use people's real names from now on, because it's just weird, otherwise. For reference, in order of appearance:

Halen - Steve
Xavyor - Greg
Celaeno - Kara
Kara's friend - Emily
Magix - Martin
Teh Digital Dragon - Dave

Ok, so. Thursday. Toddled down to London, dropped the nipper at my mum's and wandered into central london, to meet the folks at Piccadilly Circus. At the statue of Eros. Having no sense of time or space, I arrived ludicrously early, only to find that the charming Greg was even more temporally disconnected than me, and was waiting. Eerily, I recognised him instantly from the pictures thread, I suspect he was wearing the same clothes and that. Hoorah. Say hi to Greg.

We chatted away for a bit, and I bought an ice cream. TWO POUNDS! It's called a 99 for a reason! Because it should be fucking 99p! I was outraged. We rang Kara and sent her into an unseemly panic because she though her clock was wrong. Actually, if I'd bothered to look at the clock on the same phone with which i was ringing her, I'd have noticed we were 20 minutes early. Whatever. This isn't very interesting. We passed the time by pretending we were in Tokyo with big neon lights.

Well, I say "we". I mean "me", Greg just looked bemused at this odd person babbling incoherently. It was around this time we realised we had no idea what Dave actually looked like, although we assumed he was coming. All we knew is that he had dark hair (wrong, thanks kara!), he was 6'3" (wrong, thanks me!), he had long hair (oh my god, this was actually correct) and he was the coolest person Guccipiggy had ever met. What this meant, is that Greg and I ended up chasing a completely random american tourist around the fountain CONVINCED it was Dave, which it turned out not to be. Delightful.

There was also a man playing the bongos, so I took a photo of him. It'd have been rude not to.

In any case, Kara and Emily eventually arrived - how to describe them? Short? ... I'm joking, I'm joking! Extremely glamorous, lots of fun - we were all grinning like idiots. Martin popped up shortly after, hoorah!

Kara even gave us presents! Mine was a teddy bear for my daughter, which incidentally, she loves. She fell asleep on him on the way home (no greater accolade!), and has christened him "Polar Bear Peaks". I'm not sure why, odd child. Anyway, just to prove she loves it:

Even Dave eventually sloped in with a sheepish grin. Oh, the fearsome Digital Dragon. He's a pussycat! Almost bashful in his sweetness ;) He's gonna hate me for saying that.

We wandered aimlessly into a nearby pub, which had the near-fatal promise of a free bottle of wine with each main course. The problem here is a) I drink fast, and b) I hate silence. It turns out that (pre-alcohol), Dave, Greg, Martin and even Kara and Emily (although less so), are quite quiet people. Cue incoherent babbling. I started the evening as I meant to go on by knocking the table, and spilling Emily's half-full glass of red wine all over Martin (and the floor). This may explain his delighted expression through the evening.

What does Greg's face say? It says "Steve, you're drunk. Ha ha!"

Oh, did I mention we got carded? I was delighted (I'm 29). Turns out she wasn't even interested in mine. Harumph.

Anyway, we skulked out of there with our tails between our legs, and wandered into china town, and into a nearly identical pub, with the sole distinguishing feature that it had an unnaturally high bar. While this shouldn't have been a problem, two of our company were just over 5 foot, leading to a scene a little bit (only a little! No hairy toes in sight!) of that bit in Lord of the Rings where the hobbits go to the prancing pony in Bree and peer over the counter. Much sniggering into kerchiefs.

Anyway, we sat around and got a little drunker. Kara laughed at my atrocious Japanese accent ("But... there's only 5 vowel sounds! How can you get it wrong?!"), we were generally rude about Feiticiera not coming because he was a bit tired, bless him. amd we talked about people Emily had never heard of until she looked just about ready to die of boredom.

Pictorial evidence, you'll notice they're already getting blurred, ahem. It's the focus, honest. I'm not drunk. One side of the table:

"They come in pints!"

"Your japanese is so shit! ha ha ha!"

Kara doing her best japanese tourist impression.

Other side of table:

Martin looking delighted

Clearly I'm telling some form of hilarious story at this point. Just look at the rampant interest in their eyes.

Anyway, Dave has miraculously escaped my camera, as you'll notice. However, he got snapped A LOT by the others, so you'll just have to wait or them. Greg bowed out and we bid him goodbye with several group photos performed by nice passers by.

As we got drunker, Kara laid down the law. What was it going to be: singing or dancing? singing or dancing? SINGING OR DANCING? Two pints later, astonishingly, karaoke actually seemed like a good idea (to me. To Dave it seemed like living hell but hey, peer pressure is a wonderful thing). We found a Chinese place nearby, but it seemed to only be doing chinese karaoke. Our Mandarin being a little limited, for some reason we thought following a vague memory the two tourists had from a year ago would be eminently senisble, and we decamped to get the tube to Googe Street, where they swore blind a pub called "The Pint Pot" had a Karaoke night every thursday. We stepped on the underground, and Martin promptly fell asleep:

Clearly, we were riviting conversationalists. We hopped off, and wandered around like loonies for a while, haranging passersby as to the location of this mythical pub. Having walked full circle, Martin excused himself and retired early. Fie! Fie on you!

That was a picture of him leaving. I think.

Astonishingly, we found the pub, which was hands down ODD. A tiny pub with a karaoke machine at the back, it was about 1/4 boozy england yobs, replete with plastic george cross hats and foam hands, 1/4 polite neat-looking chinese people, 1/4 asian boy racers, and 1/4 businessmen with their ties undone. So weird, but strangely awesome.

At this point, the evening becomes a little blurry. There was dancing, I know that. I remember dancing with Emily, and I danced with Kara. Even Dave danced (read: was forced to dance), in fact, that's where the Dave sandwich photo comes in. I even have a vague horrific memory of "grindin ma body", and quite possibly "wrigglin ma belly" with Dave, but let's pretend that's a memory. Even more worryingly, I remember people taking LOTS of photographs. This has me in a cold sweat.

There was also singing. I'm not swearing to it, but I suspect we may have belted out "Living on a Prayer" as a foursome, to a baying crowd, and something else that alcohol-smudged short term memory omits. Fortunately, but the time Dave staggered up to request "Come on Eileen", they'd stopped taking requests. Saved by the bell. Here are some blurs that may or may not be photographs of the karaoke pub:

Er, this may be kara. Possibly.

I'm reasonably convinced this is Dave swearing at me. Such a rude boy.

Ahh, group hug. Or possibly headlock

Dave sandwich! GRIND YA BODY!

And last but not least, Kara throwing it down hawaii style yo. Or something. I'm not quite sure what she was doing, but she looked happy, so I went with it.

We eventually staggered out at Oh My God O'Clock, and realised we had no fucking clue where we were. We walked for a while until we got somewhere recogniseable, at which point the extraordinarily drunk Dave insisted he would walk home, and left us worried like mother hens clucking over a disobedient charge. We hopped in a taxi to the youth hostel where Kara and Emily were staying, and I chatted to Kara for a bit while Emily pootled on the Internet. I then jumped in the MOST EXPENSIVE TAXI KNOWN TO MAN, and remortgaged my house to get home.

The end.

In all, it was bloody brilliant.

What didn't I mention? Oh, the creepiest moment of the night, where a drunken lad accosting Emily for a "dance" in the karaoke pub, but actually just squeezed her boobs and legged it. Classy. Oh, Kara, looking at my dancing and thoughtfully commenting "Hmnn, it's kinda geeky. ... Oh, but that's ok!". Me - *crushed ego quietly deflating*

And... and... and... stuff!

Oh right right right.

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 19:18:34 GMT

I actually forgot again. I updated my website wot you can find here:

http://www.nocturnalgamer.com

It's a bit ranty though - much funnier in my head and all that. Feel free to post in the guestbook and make me feel like people actually read it.

Amusingly, google image search has picked up the picture I posted about 3 months ago of a japanese girl in maids uniform, and associated it with the word "hentai", which is another name for japanese cartoon porn. Highest number of hits my site has ever seen.

Late nights and such

Sun, 16 Jul 2006 12:23:52 GMT

So I travelled to London with some friends for a mutual friend's engagement party, which was quite fun. The journey home, less fun. Party finished about 2.15, and we walked to a hotel where some people were staying. Well, most people walked - the bride-to-be didn't walk, I carried her in an exercise in futile chivalry. Me so manly.

After that I walked to Trafalgar square to jump on a night bus to Harrow, where my mum lives, at about 3am. I doze off for a bit, and wake up as I'm jostled by the heavy-breating man next to me. Worried he might be trying to start a fight or some such, I ignore him, and am shortly delighted by the noise of him being sick on the floor next to me. Hmmn, lovely. I put my feet on the seat in front of me and pretend nothing's happened. A while later we're nearing the end of the journey when the bus driver notices the swimming pool of yak on the floor, promptly ordering everyone off the bus, and driving off in a huff.

Now sensible people at this point would wait an hour for the next bus. Not me - I vaguely recognise the name of where we are and do some incorrect distance calculations in my head. So I walk it. After a while I notice I can actually see pretty well, which would be because it's dawn. I walk over the top of harrow hill (which by the way, is extraordinarily posh and exclusive), stopping off in the graveyard to take some pretty pictures of a graveyard at dawn, and such :)

Got home at 5.11am, and now I am a zombie. Anyway look, graveyard:

Cameraphone doesn't like low light :-(

I'm also mildly worried someone might have taken photos of me 70s disco dancing to banghra music.

HBTMHBTMHBDMHBTM

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 09:14:21 GMT

Another year older, hurrah. Got drunk on Friday, lazed around with family on Saturday (interspersed with tantrums from limit-testing 4 year old). Mostly played with new toy.

Hmmn, SO cute. The ipod is quite cute too. Ahaha. Oh dear.

My old MP3 player was actually held together with selotape, bless it.

p.s. OMG SINFEST HAS MOVED FROM KEENSPOT OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!

New forums very exciting an' all that!

Report card!

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 22:07:18 GMT

My four year old daughter came home today with a school report card. What's with that?! She's four years old, and at pre-school nursery, and she gets reports? I told her, I said, "if it's not straight A's, you're in for a whupping".

Ha ha! I'm joking! I'd only whup her if she got a C!

ok not really. It's in school report speak though. I've offered some translations below:

Report: "Alice can organise her thoughts verbally and will rephrase a sentence when necessary to improve clarity"
Translation: "If you don't give her what she wants first time, she'll keep on at you until she gets it"

Report: "Alice has an enquiring mind"
Translation: "She asks the question "why" every time you speak"

Report: "Alice is a friendly, confident, chatty child..."
Translation: "Talks constantly"

Report: "takes a natural lead within the group"
Translation: "Very bossy"

Report: "who likes the company of other children who tend to look up to her"
Translation: "She's tall"

OK OK OK I'm being facetious. Really it says that she's a genius and wonderful and perfect and stuff, which is absolutely right, because she is (despite being REALLY mean to me at bathtime today, *sniff*). But still, a report from nursery. Heh! I feel for the poor teacher having to sit down and think up things like "She can identify similarities, differences, patterns and change during scientific work" about 4 year olds!

I suck

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:41:47 GMT

I died in the Dungeon of Halen SH

I was killed in a crumbling fissure by Samsally the kobold, whilst carrying...

2 gold pieces.

Score: 1

Explore the Dungeon of Halen SH and try to beat this score,
or enter your username to generate and explore your own dungeon...

So, this is a weird thing

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 21:05:48 GMT

Yesterday, I answered my colleague's phone. The conversation went like this (identifying details replaced by ~~~~~~) :

Me: Hello, Yvonne ~~~~~~~~'s phone
Strangely voiced stranger: Oh... is Yvonne ~~~~~~~~ there please?
Me: No, I'm afraid she's not here. Can I help you?
SVS: Well... I was hoping to speak to Yvonne. My name's ~~~~~ ~~~~~. I'm a researcher at the University of ~~~~~~~~~~~. I've been told there's a meeting at 8.30 tomorrow morning at ~~~~~~~~ Health Centre, and I wanted to check with her whether I could attend?
Me: Ah right. I don't think she's due back today I'm afraid
SVS: Well, I don't really like to ask, but do you possibly have a mobile number for her please?
Me: Sure, hold on one sec...... ok it's 07~~~~~~~~~~34
SVS: Great. Well. Thanks very much Steve. *click*
Me: No prob... wait HOW THE FUCK DID HE KNOW MY NAME?

Never heard of him before. Would certainly remember that voice, and apparently, he's about 3 foot tall, and I've certainly never met anyone of that description through work.

Following the logic, psychic dwarves are working at our local university, which means it's run by Willy Wonka. I demand chocolate.

Pathetic begging time

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 13:18:38 GMT

Ok, so thanks to Trustedfaith on the Sinfest forums, I've got my guestbook working on the Nocturnal Gamer site. But it's sad and empty, and it needs your loving. Go leave me a nice message please:

http://www.nocturnalgamer.com

Click on "abuse me" in the left hand menu :)

Nocturnal Gamer #15

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 20:27:28 GMT

Right, right, right. I forgot, I updated again. Here:

http://www.nocturnalgamer.com

Apart from a small wobble, where the entire site disappeared off the Internet, when my hosting provider for the domain name fell over for a day.

Hurrah. And stuff.

Misc photo dump

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 13:05:22 GMT

I was looking through my "my pictures" folder, and I realised - what's the point in having all these pictures on my PC if I don't share a few of them?

First is Alice in the Lake District. With a swan. And stuff. This is duller than I expected already.

Next is me with a big sword. Yay.

This is one the favourites of the sinfest comics I coloured. I can't remember if it won. Probably not ;)

A picture Desire did of Alice from two years ago, with added fairies ;)

Next is my mum and Alice on a tube in london on the way to a museum...

And here's mum in the museum:

Ahaha! I am of course, kidding. Here she is:

AhAHAHA! Funnier and funnier! All joking aside, here she is at the zoo:

I'm hilarious, me. Here's a real wild animal

Boom, and indeed, boom.

A while ago, I was a games "journalist", and that meant freebies (and not much work). My favourite were from odd Korean companies, including this odd fist-rabbit thing:

I particularly like the label:

"Get in" indeed. Company folded shortly afterwards, sadly.

Here's some shots of lovely sunny happy touristy Birmingham.

Er, well, Birmingham, anyway. Forget the other bits.

Hrm, this is a picture out the back window on a foggy day:

And to finish off, my girl in a wood. I'd write something sweet, but as I write this, she's currently having a massive tantrum in her bedroom because she made a mistake colouring in Bob the Builder, so I'll pass ;)

This entry was surprisingly more dull than I thought it might be. Oops. Sorry!

Fabulous

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 20:19:45 GMT

I'd heard about this, but I hadn't gone out and looked for it. This is KT Tunstall's first performance on UK television - on Later with Jools Holland. Apart from being her best song, what she does is just so mindblowingly clever, and talented. Take a peek.

Oh, just fucking brilliant.

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:11:06 GMT

I don't know what I'm more annoyed about. C3P0 first, or Jar Jar Binks a close second. This is highly irregular

Your results:
You are C-3PO

C-3PO		70%
Jar Jar Binks		65%
Jabba the Hutt		65%
Darth Vader		60%
Han Solo		57%
Darth Maul		57%
Mace Windu		57%
Qui-Gon Jinn		56%
Emperor Palpatine		56%
Count Dooku		56%

You don't have a lot going for you,
and you let everyone know it.
You may have one or two
close companions left,
but if you keep complaining
they may wander off.

(This list displays the top 10 results out of a possible 21 characters)

Click here to take the "Which Star Wars character am I?" quiz...

Death and driving

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 13:14:50 GMT

Went to my cousin's funeral yesterday. He died at 31 of a brain tumour, isn't that cheerful?

In any case, funerals are horrible, although this one had its moments in between crying and such - my particular favourite being where the hole they'd dug in the graveyard wasn't actually big enough for the coffin to fit into - hilarious! In the end, an enterprising bearded man whittled the sides of the coffin down with a penknife. As it happens, my cousin happens to have been as stubborn as a mule, so his reluctance to be put in the ground is understandable.

But on the way, , since the weather was glorious, and I was quite lost, what better way to pass the time that by taking photographs of the peak district?

Ok, so that's not the Peak District, that's actually just a motorway. Ever tried taking a photograph on a motorway whilst driving? I suspect it's probably illegal. I was distinctly swervy.

Off the motorway now, attempting to take pictures of pretty fields.

This is what middle england looks like. Long winding roads, patchwork fields, rolling hills, all that garbage. Very Shire.

Took this passing through Buxton (of Buxton mineral water fame).

And this. Some might query how sensible it is to take photographs whilst driving past about 12 police vehicles investigating some crime of a serious nature down in a field by the side of the road. Not me! Maybe it was aliens.

Oops, slightly wonky, as was my driving. This is my favourite type of road by far - framed by a tunnel of green deciduous trees, dappled sunlight.

Accompanied by the sound of many, many, many sheep. These were near a village called "Sparrowtop in the High Peak", which I think you'll agree, is a fabulous name for a village of about 3 houses.

My attempt to demonstrate the ex-mining nature of the landscape. See how the rolling hill has been completely sliced in half by the hand of man? Crikey, and all that.

And some odd stripy cows. These were near a tiny village called Swift, or Fleet, or something like that. It's only of note because signs proudly proclaimed that not only was this miniscule settlement due to have a two-day flower festival, it was also having a teapot parade this weekend.

After fruitlessly driving around for an hour, I lucked upon the right road to the village of Hope, where the funeral was taking place, which happened to be through an astonishingly beautiful mountain pass, as you can see.

More of the same.

And should you ever wonder what the unlucky recipients of similar genetics to me should look like, here they are. From left to right cousin Sarah, me, (very pregnant) sister-in-law Janine, brother Chris, cousin Eric, his girlfriend also Sarah, Cousin Matthew, Cousin Alex. Alex, Matthew and non-girlfriend Sarah are siblings, and it was Eric's brother Nick's funeral.

So there you go, my little journey, lovely. La de la etc.

My daughter is smart. I am not.

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:56:30 GMT

Background: Alice has developed an allergic reaction to ... something (we've no idea what, probably a random flower's pollen), which means she's getting hives (red welts) coming up all over her body, quite randomly. To combat it, she has to take a nasty-tasting medicine with an anti-histamine in it.

This morning, she was being a bit demanding and grumpy, so we told her, she wouldn't get ANYTHING today (day off school for teacher training), unless she said please. She thought about this for a moment, and then proclaimed very loudly "Ok, GIVE ME MY MEDICINE".

Which just goes to show, she's a bit too smart for her own good. She got the medicine anyway, which is something of a pyrric victory, if you ask me.

Anyway, I'm not that smart. I was at karate yesterday, and we were practicing punching in pairs. What this entailed was you stand there, and your partner hits you. Then you swap. Oh, fun! Except my partner for this particular exercise happened to be a 15 year old girl. While I don't particularly enjoy hitting 15 year old girls, she didn't appear to mind all that much. But here's my problem: given you're punching someone in the chest, it's rather hard not to look at the place you're punching them - in this case, an underaged girl's breasts. So I'm thinking "look in her eyes look in her eyes look in her eyes don't punch her in the tits look in her eyes". She asked me a question and I'm quite surprised I managed to not scream out "I'M NOT LOOKING AT YOUR TITS!" in response.

And how did it come about I'm a grown man writing about trying to avoid punching a girl 13 years my junior in her tits? What does this say about the state of my life?