Firstly I’ve just finished work on Need for Speed Undercover. It was my first game here in Canada and I think I’m quite proud of my part; the Audio. This was my main excuse for not blogging as we have been very busy for months finalling the game. Anyway it’s all done now… you should all run out and buy it of course

I have a met a lovely girl named Victoria. She has been keeping me on the straight and narrow. She’s 28, gorgeous, clever and fit as a fiddle. Would you believe I’m considering running for a Triathlon? She ran one back in March and thinks I can do it easy. In triathlon terms it’s nothing (400k, 11k, 5k).  But for me it’s a challenge. The cycling and swimming parts I think I’ll be fine, but running is my weakest link. I run like a cross between a chicken and giraffe. Think I gave up illusions of grandure after the egg and spoon race age 3. Trust me it’s not a pleasant site. A visit to the treadmill is in order.

We went to Seattle for Thanksgiving and cooked a Chicken. Well we cheated a little and bought a cooked Chicken, but we did the rest. Seattle is actually really nice and you can certainly get a lot more for your money down there in terms of Condos. Did’t get to see Microsoft, but there’s always next time.

Also Visited Toronto the other day for the first time. Saw Niagara, truly amazing to see. The town around it however is very much like a Blackpool / cheap Las Vegas however. Very Americanized. All you can eat buffets and Casinos at every turn. The area around it, Niagara on the Lake, is much nicer. Known for it’s Ice Wine (very sweet desert wine), there’s loads of Wineries near by that give you tasting tours. I recommend this to everyone Went up the CN tower too. It’s not the tallest stucture in the world anymore, but it’s still damn tall.  147 stories I think. Try standing on the glass floor at the top with a hangover.

Ohh! Nearly forgot to mention. Went diving, for the frist time in nearly a year. Victoria had done her PADI open water course so we could go together. We went to a place called Porteau Cove, which is near Squamish here in BC. Beautiful place surrounded by mountains. Anyway, was fully expecting Victoria to hate it and me to love it, but as it happens the complete opposite happened. I couldn’t equalise, had too much weight and had absolutely banging headache when I was finished. Victoria one the other hand was a complete natural. The whole incident has put me off a little bit, but not to be defeatist I’ll give it another go soon, to make sure I’m not really that crap.

Anyway, that’s a Whistle-stop tour of what I’ve been up to the last few weeks.

Hope to have some more post for you all soon.

Right, by AutoPilot I mean the little man inside your head that generally does your daily routine while you ponder other more important things. You know what I mean, the instinct to always put something back in your pocket without thinking about it. This bloke also surfaces when you’ve had way too much to drink and steers you home.

The reason I mention this is because recently it appears that mine has got bored and likes to amuse himself by causing havoc in my life.

Firstly one of my neighbors left their tap running and the floor above my apartment flooded. I couldn’t believe how stupid someone could be to do such a thing. I then promptly did the same myself and flooded my kitchen.

Then just the other morning I was getting ready to go to work and misplaced my iPOD. I tore the place apart before and after work. I even asked the security in the building if anyone had handed it in. Nothing. Days past by and I began to resign to the fact it had been stolen. Then I found it placed in my wardrobe!

The last one really takes the biscuit. I fell asleep at a friends house after a evening out. He luckily lives in the same building as me so this isn’t a big deal at all. Or so I thought… I awoke to find myself wondering around OUTSIDE my building, with no shoes, jacket or keys! Turns out I must have stumbled (sleep walking perhaps) to the elevator without collecting my keys, tried to go to my floor, found that I couldn’t without my keys. I then had gone to the only floor I could, ground! Nobody was about so I think I decided to walk outside! Unbelievable.

I can’t tell you how scary it was to wake up walking around outside with no shoes on. Truly astonishing. I managed eventually to plead with the concierge to let me back upstairs to get my keys. But only after a long drawn out conversation about why anyone would be that stupid.

The little bastard has now made me so paranoid I’m checking everything twice and sometimes three times.

Moral to the story. Wear a set of keys around your neck. Add a GPS tracking device to all expensive electronics and continually check the taps!

For those of you that do not know the demo scene is a collection of people “sceners” throughout the world that build “demos”. A demo could be considered to be very much like a music video, but where all the graphics are done in real time. These demos are shown at demo parties, where they are judged in a competition. There are different restrictions which will ultimately decide the type of the demo, such as 1k, 4k, 64k and unrestricted. The demo scene is basically a playground for future games programmers and has some of the best programmers on earth.

Why tell us all this Jimmy? Well… the demo scene is very dear to me as it’s what ultimately started me on this path of making videos games. I was so involved that I organized and hosted the last big UK demo party “dejavu 2k“, which was held at my university in Leicester.

Unfortunately the UK was a very quiet place for demos in those days and after university I lost all touch with the scene.

It was kind of by blind luck that I watched a demo recently by someone called ’smash’. The name really rang a bell and I emailed the author to find out that we have both gone to Brussels together for Wired98! He told me that the Uk demo scene is now very active.

Typical! I’ve now moved to Canada!

Anyway the whole incident has got me interested to see whats going on the scene these days. So I’m going to download a few new demos and put them up these pages.

I also might blow the dust of some old graphics books and have a play at knocking something together…

In the mean time here’s a list of links to some my favorites. Many of these won’t run under windows as they were designed to run in DOS 32bit protected mode. Luckily nice people have been capturing them as videos…

2nd reality - the future crew
the secret life of Mr black - orange”
megablast - orange”
paper 64k - psychic link”
square - pulse”
toasted - cubic team”
baygon - melon dezign”

I still remember the days when I could go out until 5am then get up and go to work! What is it these days that causes my brains to go on vacation every Saturday morning? This morning is especially hard and certainly all well prepared plans will go out of the window in favor of my bed.

I’ve tried many cures. The latest being eat as much B12 as you can stuff down your neck, as soon as you realise you’re pissed. In my case this its first thing in the morning, which as I’ve found out is way too late.

Even this morning I’ve considered this wonder cure, but at 40 bucks a packet, they can kiss my arse.

Today I look around my flat (sorry condo) and it looks like someone has come in and trashed the place. Books everywhere, jacket thrown on the floor.

You know it’s not going well when the third person of the day asks you over MSN; “is this the booze talking?”

To quote the mighty With-Nail; “i feel like a pig shat in my head”. Actually it’s not that bad yet, but I can hear the farmer feeding the little bastard eggs in the next room.

Jägermeister is a horrible drink. I seem to get cartoon drunk when ever that cursed stuff comes out. No matter how many conversations you have with people saying that you can’t stand it. It always seem to show up with your name on it. Damn you Jägermeister!

Oh god, country music has come on the iTunes shuffle because some distance colleague gave you his music collection so long ago. And you simply haven’t the energy to make it to the mouse.

James begins to talk about himself in the 3rd person. Christ it’s getting bad now.

Right well, this post was supposed to have a point. So guess I should get to it…

Yes and I’ve done this before I’ve got my Canadian driving license. Why? Well it’s more fun of course

It takes a while for it to go through with me being new to the country. They need to do loads of background check to make sure you’re not a nutter.

Well anyway a good friend of both Manus and myself, Mark took us to the shooting range for the day last weekend. I can’t tell you how much fun it was…

I was quite nervous at first as I’ve never even fired a gun before. (well only an air rifle, but that doesn’t count.)

Mark brought along:

1. 9mm Smith and Western
2. 9mm Glock
3. AR15 Rifle
4. Remmington 12 guage pump action shotgun

Manu went first. He didn’t enjoy it

I was really accurate with the pistols. Mark even called me a natural, but I think he was just being kind on a beginner. 7 out of 9 were bull-eyes.

Surprisingly there was very little recoil and any of the weapons , with the exception of the shotgun, which would leave a bruise.

I was immediately hooked. I can’t begin to tell you how much fun this was.

A Brilliant way of relieving stress. I’d never thought I’d say this, but I’m thinking of buying one now

My good friends Manu and Jesse felt it was time to me “real” mountain biking this weekend. Actually is was Friday as work gave us the day off being leap year and all. Typically this being our day off it rained like a bastard.

Before heading to meet the guys I went via the bike shop, where the blokes there thought it was quite funny that I was taking to the mountains.

In contrast here’s Manus bike. Not short of a about $2500 for this baby.

Hmm, I should have listened to those nagging doubts in my mind. We went to Burnaby mountain which was considered intermediate.

Here’s me laughing at the sign for “most difficult” trail.

I ended up going down a black mountain bike run and going over the handle bars. I busted both my wrists the left one quite badly and bruised some ribs.

This is after a couple of days… nice

Moral of the story:

Buy better bike. Believe the sign when it says ‘most difficult’.

The idea of these pages is to simply brain dump many of the things I’m currently thinking about or involved with. That will range from all things programming related, scuba diving, mountain biking, flying, firearms and whatever else I’m up to at the time.

Hopefully some of it will be of interest to others.

Jimmy