Saturday, 24 July 2010

twitter...

i thought i'd give it a go...interestingly, the second i had an acocunt and a blank 'tweet here" box my mind went blank...in times like this i think its always a good idea to say something stupid and facile...so i did...

feel free to point and laugh at my idiocy here: http://twitter.com/C4RP3R

busy busy busy...

have had a fair bit to do recently so not much time for blogging...basically one of our key titles is going out the door and we've been slamming it pretty hard to get the bugs resolved...one way or another... :)

trying to manage the 'end-game' of delivering a video game is interesting...its a bit like being the teacher in a classroom of 5 year olds and the school is on fire! you're desperately trying to get everyone out the door so no-one burns to death but being 5 year olds they're not helping...some are hanging onto you slowing you down, others are putting their hands over your eyes so you can't see the exit, some are busy trying to get their coat or their favourite pencils...



...and then there's the ones who are busy pouring petrol onto the flames saying that the fire is not quite the right colour or shape and it doesn't quite burn fast enough...all the time complaining about being burnt to death...

Tuesday, 9 February 2010

emperor's new clothes...

i fucking hate pretention...its a malaise that affects the stupid and unimaginative...sheep basically...so the phrase emperor's new clothes gets a regualr workout from me...but to take it further i analgised it when discussing Bayonetta in the context of emperor's new clothes:

"its like a 15 year old lad drinking lager for the first time...it really tastes all bitter and horrible and he really wishes he had a nice Barcardi Breezer instead...but all his mates are drinking lager so he perserveres...the truth is, all his mates are wishing they were drinking a Barcardi Breezer too!"


wouldn't it be nice if everyone 'fessed up and drank what they really liked instead of what they think they should like?

more time?

slim picking this last week...but I managed one fairly disgusting one when discussing what to do in the event of more time being found:

"it's like we've got a massive mouthful of food, we're furiously chomping away as fast as we can but there's half-chewed food dribbling down our chin while large lumps of food are falling out and making a mess of our t-shirt...we should really try and finish our mouth before we take another bite surely?"

Friday, 29 January 2010

building blocks...

I remember when my son was much younger he used to like me to build him a tall tower of wooden building blocks which he would then knock down...he loved it so much that he started to get impatient as i was building the tower and would knock it down halfway through...half the blocks, half the noise, half the fun right?

so i would try and get him to hold off until i'd finished building but i wasn't always successful...certainly when i managed to keep him at arms length then the tower was awesome and the fun was at maximum...but whenever i failed to keep an eye on him and he did manage to interfere too much thenultimately we both failed to deliver the best experience in the time allowed...

hmmm...

Monday, 25 January 2010

polish...

recent analogy told to me by one of my team...

"its like we've got this cake, on the outside it's a little bit burnt in places and a bit dry but on the inside its still a little raw...we really need to cut the burnt bits off and get the cake back in the oven to finish it off properly...but they're all there with hands full of cake decorations and icing bags at the ready...i wanna shout "stop! its not ready yet guys!"...no-one wants to eat bad cake no matter how good it looks!"

I like the analogy...I especially like my team using analogies on me! :)

Thursday, 21 January 2010

last minute changes?

when recently discussing the types of changes feasible at the later stages of a project, someone told me about Peter Jackson working on the final audio mix just two days before the world premier of Fellowship of the Rings...can you guess why this story was told to me?of course! they wanted free reign to chop and change stuff regardless of how close a major deadline was...

as a counter to this view however, i remember hearing a story about a bloke whose airplane was in a little trouble, he had no parachute but still chose to jump out at 1000ft and take his chances rather than try and land the plane safely...luckily for him he fell over a 1000ft but managed to land in a rather large fir tree and so got away with a just few broken bones...good work fella!

The moral of this is that just 'cos one person managed to do the impossible doesn't make it the sensible option...one swallow doesn't make a summer and all that...