Changing

New blog is now up, won’t be updating this one anymore.

 

Link

Quicky

Sorry for the lack of short posts, I really am. Will get something out soon. In the meantime, read this brilliant piece by the brilliant John Walker.

Best Search Ever

WordPress does a neat little thing that shows you the most used search terms that were utilised to find your blog. I have no idea what this one is, and I don’t think I wrote about whatever the searcher wanted to find, but it made me laugh out loud.

“ what is the song that is like cult 44 but its not a good song”

Short update

Ok, its been a bit quiet on EG for a while, but for good reasons. Firstly, I haven’t bought a new game for ages, so there’s little for me to write about. I’d rather have few posts of good quality, accurate games journalism rather than spamming my blog with crap about games that nobody plays.

Speaking of games nobody plays, I installed Thief: Deadly Shadows on my 2nd PC, because it refuses to work with my main PC, so expect a few posts on that.

In other news, I intend to pitch a few more articles to the Escapist, because their new editorial calendar is out, and quite a few issues have caught my interest.

Finally, I’m considering a change of banner, because this one is getting old. Opinions please.

GCSE Module Results

I do 3 papers to start off with; one for each subject, those being physics, chemistry and biology. The maximum result for each is 50. For A* you need at least 45, and for an A you need 40. So it was with great glee I noted down my results.

P1A – 47
B1A – 43
C1A – 50

So two A*s, an A, and full marks on chemistry. Not too bad. But I’m less confident with my ISA, which is when you’re marked on an experiment.  I also don’t get the results back for the ISA, because the results are subject to moderation by the exam board. Ah well.

In other news, Cloud Cult, Mountain Goats and Architecture in Helsinki are all competing to be my favourite band. Throw some Decemberists in there, and I’m about to explode with such a difficult choice.

Future Publishing: Well, not my future

I sent a query to Ross Atherton of PC Gamer for work experience, and he referred me to PC Zone, because PCG isn’t offering it. After trying to sound all slick in an email to Ali Woods, the editor of  PCZ, she found out I was younger than 18. Erk.

Nevertheless, it as just really nice how these two editors were so informative and helpful. So here’s to you, PC Gamer and Zone. Also; which one is better? They both seem incredibly similar in format, but I’m going to lean slightly to PCG, because I won one of their competitions without knowing it, resulting in me getting a copy of City of Heroes/Villains and a sexeh figurine. Maybe this harks the beginning of a new experimental videogames journalism series, in which I write about my descent into the misty worlds of MMOs.

Or maybe not. Who knows?

Merry Christmas!

I won’t be posting anything tomorrow, so have a happy holidays everybody.

It’s that time of year…

It’s that time of year again, the winter holidays. For most people it’ll mean a religuous festival, presents, and fun. My family will be celebrating it with our neighbours, and while I intend to enjoy it as much as possible on the day (and I probably will), I thought I might hammer out my thoughts on the whole season before it’s too late, and I have to start on why Spring sucks. And on a side note, I’ll refer to the winter holidays as christmas, just to simplify things, but know I’m talking about chanukkah, kwanzaa etc.

Sadly Christmas has become way too commercialized. I love the idea of giving presents to friends and such, and the whole idea of doing good, but yet again capitalist industries have corrupted and perverted what should be a wholesome, authentic time of year. An example would be Christmas movies; studios pump out as much bilge (in the form of a Vince Vaughn film) into their cinemas in a weak and desperate attempt to get some quick and easy money, because what could be better than taking your kids to the cinema, right?

Another example is all these toys floating around in the market for kids. Instead of people just celebrating Christmas with their kids, it seems they have to win them over with consumerist crap from the Star Wars franchise (don’t get me started on that shitty CGI film that Mr. deadbeat loser George Lucas did recently).

Anyway, I once again am running out of ideas for this post, but I think you get my point. It just kinda bugs me that it’s become more of a corporate than a real holiday.

Wwaaaahhh

My article pitch for the escapist was rejected. Then again, the email did say “We appreciate your interest and look forward to seeing more from you.” So maybe I’m not terrible after all!

Then again, that’s probably an automated response thingy.

On self-deprecation

Self-deprecation is the quality I most abhor in others. Someone says “I’m too dumb to understand it.” and it usually means one of three things; that thing is ridiculously complicated, that person is too dumb, and you really like that person.

And because you really like that person, you have to say something like “no you’re not” or “nah, this is just way too complicated.” Except my problem is that it always sounds fake. They always give me a vacant gaze that says ‘don’t patronise me’, and that always makes me feel ten times worse.

There’s only one thing worse than self-deprecation; comparative self-deprecation. It’s ok if they say “I’m dumb compared to so-and-so” because I can sometimes manage to dismiss that with a little bit of spite and say “what?! So-and-so is stupid compared to you.” Which makes them feel much better. But then it means slagging off so-and-so.

And the worst type of self-deprecation is comparative self-deprecation to the person you’re talking to. “I’m so dumb compared to you.” This is absolutely the worst for me. I have to convince the person I’m on their level, and they’re on mine, which I regularly fail at doing.

The thing is, (and imagine I’m saying this in a shy, little voice) I am actually quite smart/attractive/awesome in every way. For example, I’m the only guy in my year with a (good) blog. I honestly can’t say with conviction “no, I’m not that smart”, because I am (unfortunately) self-assured of my intelligence.

So next time, please don’t self-deprecate. It makes me feel terrible, and my weak efforts to try and restore the situation to normal will fail terribly. Instead, just give me a hug. See? Everybody’s happy!