Monday 31 December 2012

Music of the Teenies

I always keep up to date with current music, and I find myself looking at the Australian charts and the trends of music. I always find it really interesting.

Every decade has "its music". In the nineties we saw a lot of pop, europop, dance, and other party songs like that. And the noughties were filled with a lot of pop as well, but with the inclusion of auto-tune and other special effects and synthesized sounds.

Friday 28 December 2012

Poetry Friday - Never Give Up

Whether you want something,
Or whether you don't.
You don't want to quit,
You say that you won't.
But every time you start,
You can't see the end.
And at every decision,
There's a fork in the bend.

Monday 24 December 2012

The Middle of Nowhere

There is a well-known place in Australia.

Only Australians can go there.
Any Aussie can get there, no matter where they are.
No matter where they're going, or where they came from.

It has no houses, and no shops, no buildings at all.
No one stops there, everyone just passes through.
No one lives there, but everyone has been there.

Saturday 22 December 2012

Shrinking English

In this incredibly fast paced world that we live in, everything is happening all at once, and we have to constantly speed up to keep up, or get left behind.

Ludicrously fast internet, multi-tasking smart phones and tablets, and AI such as Siri all help us to spend as little time as possible on any given task so we can move onto the next one.

With SMS messaging, along came the invention of a shortened, abbreviated English, and the invention of hundreds of words such as "lol" and "ily".

English has never really been the same since, in fact, for a long time; English has been shrinking.

Strength in Subtlety

The reason I haven't been able to write a diary entry as often as I'd have liked to recently is partly due to my work at a little theatre near my house where I've just started doing lighting and sound design for the plays.

I have been at the theatre for performances and rehearsals nearly every day for the last two weeks. But tonight was our final performance. The play we were doing was none other than The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde.

It's a brilliantly funny play about a couple of aristocratic young men living in England in the 1890s, who both adopt an alias in order to visit the women they love. Both adopt the pseudonym of Ernest, yet neither are actually called Ernest, which is problematic because both the girls they are in love with, have a complete obsession with the name, and it turns into a terrible catastrophe when they are both found out.

Monday 17 December 2012

Your ATAR

I need to state quite frankly beforehand that none of the following should be taken seriously. It is a satirical joke, making fun of the stress and apprehension that students experience before finding out their ATAR. To read my real opinion on the subject, read my previous entry.


No One Cares

In Australia; at the end of year 12, each student is given a rank from one to one hundred that tells the student how well they did. If a student gets eighty for example, it means that they did better than eighty percent of the state.

The rank essentially tells universities and colleges who to choose for particular courses. Almost every tertiary course has an ATAR cutoff. The hardest and most prestigious courses, such as physio therapy and medicine, have cutoffs around 95. So that only the best 5% of students in the state can do that course.

Friday 14 December 2012

Poetry Friday - Somewhere

Somewhere way up in the sky,
Somewhere where we all can fly
Somewhere where the grass is blue,
Where cows miaow and ducks say "boo!"

Somewhere where the flowers sing,
Somewhere where the bees don't sting.
Somewhere where the mik is honey,
And every stranger is a bunny.

Thursday 13 December 2012

Summer Holidays

Summer is not a particularly interesting time of year in Australia. Christmas is the most fantastic day of the year, and New Years always brings bitter-sweet feelings, reminiscing, and party food. But other than that, essentially nothing happens. I'm really only writing this because there's nothing else to write about, and my blog was looking a little bare.

Monday 10 December 2012

Song of the Month - The End of Time

This month I'm going to share a song I wrote about a year ago called The End of Time, from the album Sinking. My aim was to write a beautiful song that could be played during the closing credits of a game that could perhaps be very emotional and powerful.

It's not a very complex song, and there's no amazing story behind it. But I really like it, and I think if used correctly; it could be really powerful.

Saturday 8 December 2012

Dash for Cash 2

It might help to understand my predicament if you read my previous post. It tells the story of that day before, and how I found myself playing this dreaded game again.

But to summarise my day that far; I had gotten four hours sleep, worked eight hours as a labourer, ate my body weight in marshmallows, and found out that I was going to be playing a surprise game of Dash for Cash with just a few hours notice.

Friday Night Games

I recently got a job as a labourer on a farm, picking, sorting, and bunching Calla Lilies. They're pretty yellow flowers native to Southern Africa, but picking them for hours in the sun is hard work, and quite tiring.

Yesterday I was on the farm for nearly nine hours. I got up at six in the morning to be there by seven, and I was finished at three thirty in the afternoon.

My back was wrecked from bending down to pick the flowers over and over, as it is every day I work, and I was quite tired having only slept about four hours the previous night, and I was leading worship at my youth group that night.

Friday 7 December 2012

Poetry Friday - My Angel

My friend is the best, she’s everything to me.
I wouldn’t trade her for anything; nothing’s as much to me.
Her hair is always frizzy and her laugh is like a roar.
But her smile is the one thing I most of all adore.
She’s just a little crazy, and she’s just a little strange.
I love everything about her, there’s nothing I would change.

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Artwork Tuesday - Flash Spirograph

I recently wrote a diary entry about the three games I've finished work on and published, one of them - Flash Spirograph - is capable of making some really interesting patterns and images.

It's simply a spirograph with capabilities that are only possible digitally. I remember playing with a spirograph when I was little and thinking it was the best thing ever. This is my chance at recreating that experience with someone far more powerful. For this month's Artwork Tuesday; I'm going to share some interesting patterns I've created using it.

I encourage you all to try it out here. It's incredible what you can make, and I'd love to see some patterns that other people have come up with!

Enjoy!

Saturday 1 December 2012

Sneak Previews of Games

My blog hit 5000 hits yesterday. What a fantastic week it has been. This week I finished school for the year, won a 5G iPod Touch, and got my first job, and now this. Things are simply great right now.

As a little reward for my dedicated readers; I'm going to share some sneak previews of games I'm working on. I don't do this very often, not in the early stages of development anyway, because so much can change in a short amount of time. But these two I'm going to share are two games I plan on working on extensively this Summer and hopefully finishing in the near future.