New Poem

You can head over to here to read it.

It is a quick one but in the time it took me to write (like 10 minutes) I am pretty impressed, all that inspired it was the witnessing the beginning of rain the other day aha and I wrote a few notes down in my phone’s text message drafts. I had imagery of the rain as ash and wanted to write something like that.

Continue reading

The Crafty Badger

“We are two students from Blackpool making things we like in hope that you will like them too! Our names are Lauren and Jake, lauren studies graphic design and jake studies fine art. We are new to this but we are learning along the way. We are working on making lots of hand crafted paper goods for you, our styles our different but we have thrown everything together to create The Crafty Badger, to show and sell to you! Thank you for checking us out :)

These are two very cool people, if you head on over to their Facebook here (opens in new tab) you can check out photographs of some of their quality handmade products.

I went to school with Jake for five years and I knew Lauren a little bit through the two months I did in sixth form (fail) anyway, check them out and if you like their stuff you can buy it from their etsy store which you can find here.

Addict – MineCraft Ramblings.

MineCraft Adventure Update

MineCraft Adventure Update

I have become addicted to MineCraft again I fear. Not addicted but close.

I have finally got my head around mods and they make the gameplay so much more fun, the best has got to be the Zeppelin Mod, which allows you to build a ship and add a craftable block and it auto-detects your craft and allows control of the craft with the Numpad (these buttons are configurable though so useful for if you don’t have a numpad).

I have found a really awesome seed for a world and have started to build a castle and air dock close by each other. There is something just so therapeutic about building in MineCraft, it lets you just relax and get lost in the world and your own thoughts.

I have started playing around with a craftbukkit server now and love the plug-ins you can get for it, MineCraft is very fun sure, but without mods I think I would get bored again.

But is all that going to change?

MineCraft 1.8 should hopefully be released soon and it includes so many new features, including Sprinting, Experience, Rivers, Deep Oceans and The Endermen.

Out of the list of updated mechanics and features the new mobs, The Endermen are my favourite. The Enderman are dark mobs with glowing white eyes that just move blocks around, and will ignore you…as long as you keep your eyes averted. If you look at them, as in if you physically put your cursor over them they will stop what they are doing and stare at you. But still they won’t attack.

But as soon as you look away, they will either sprint at you or teleport and start attacking. I’m not sure how powerful these mobs will be but they sound so scary.

The Endermen

The Endermen

With the addition of these mobs, the lore and mythos of MineCraft is starting to expand and be created. Considering there is no story about MineCraft there are certain things starting to develop into ways of making a story. For example, The Far Lands, about 2,500,000 blocks away from the centre of the map. The game starts to lag, physics start getting buggy and the map starts generation random structures that make no sense.

On top of that the mobs having names allow them to be incorporated into stories, i.e. Creepers and The Endermen.

Even “The Player” has an unofficial name, called “Steve?” by Notch, the lead on the team responsible for creating MineCraft. The question mark is Notch’s way of avoiding officially naming the character.

Another addition to the ability of a MineCraft lore forming is in the new addition, the maps will generate NPC villages, whether NPC’s will be in the villages or not has yet to be announced, but it might make the game lose some of the appeal of being the only person in that world.

On top of NPC villages, ruins are going to be added. Randomly generated ruins will be made with a distinct look allowing for more room for The Player to go exploring, these will definitely be fun on SMP with a friend.

NPC Villages

NPC Villages

The Update dubbed MineCraft: Adventure Mode is looking to be a sterling addition to the already amazing game that is MineCraft.

All the stuff I have spoke about concerning the Lore of MineCraft makes me want to write a short story, maybe about a Steve? and The Endermen? Who know’s what I will get up to when I have some free time. Another thing that I am toying with is making some MineCraft videos and putting them on YouTube, I think I will do that once I have my iMac though so I won’t get too much lag in the recordings.

- Daniel

Finally Getting Back In To Writing

So as the title says I am finally getting back in to writing, with me updating this site more and also planning out a story that I want to write.

I keep starting and stopping stories and have a folder on my PC with lots of little folders and word documents unfinished. But my flaw is I will sit and try and write without having anything planned and I just got lost and confused. Swamped in my own words and thoughts. So I have decided upon a new tactic.

I am writing out the story in basic terms, from start to end i.e, “they did this and then they did this and then this happened.” Once I have a couple of pages with the whole story wrote out from start to end like this I will then be able to just sit and write the story without worrying about where it is going and how the characters will get from A to B. As well as doing this I am going to do a sort of timeline of the whole story. More structure is definitely what I need.

Not only am I doing it because I like writing, if I can keep this up until I start University again I will be in the writing mood and will be able to get my creative energies flowing easier aha.

Juggling writing this with working full time though, it’s hard. I hate my job aha.

I have applied for a job at Waterstone’s, an English book shop, that is hiring temporary staff for the Christmas period. This means I’ll be leaving my permanent job for something that will come to an end, but I’m fed up of working for the Co-Op, I don’t careeee which aisle the beans are on, I don’t caaareeee if we sell popcorn. 

I would care about having a nice conversation with someone about which books I think they would like.

…unless of course they are buying another biography of Jordan’s.

Sony Conference

I have just finished writing about the Sony Conference which I watched this morning due to things coming up last night. Check it out here:

http://danposwriting.wordpress.com/game-reviews/e3/

Microsoft Press Conference

So there we have it Microsoft’s main announcements have been…well, announced. Check out my posts on my favourite things here: http://danposwriting.wordpress.com/game-reviews/e3/

Fare thee well Doctor! *Spoilers*

Again, I emphasis spoilers. If you haven’t watched “A Good Man Goes To War” yet then don’t read on, or do if you aren’t bother about spoilers.

 

*******

Amy, Rory and River

Amy, Rory and River

So last night saw the last episode of Doctor Who until Autumn 2011, in the weirdly named, Let’s Kill Hitler. What this has got to do with the events of last nights episode I do not know.

Moffat said that there would be a huge “game-changing” twist at the end of “A Good Man Goes To War.” Whilst yes, I guess it game-changing. In the end it wasn’t very original because, it had been rumoured for a while that River was Amy’s daughter. I mean thinking about it, it makes perfect sense. Although I must admit they played it very well, keeping us unsure, but I felt a little let down that it was that simple.

We know River is in prison for “killing the best man she has ever known”, and if she is indeed Amy’s daughter and it was Amy’s daughter who killed the Doctor at the start of this series then maybe that is the Doctor’s final day.

But again I don’t think this is to be the case, I mean the Doctor has got two more regenerations left, and I know a Time Lord can be killed completely if they are destroyed before the regenerations kicks in. But thinking about it properly and not as if Doctor Who was real, I doubt the BBC would end it with Matt Smith with two regenerations left. And even then that may  not be the end, The Master’s regenerations ran out and he managed to carry on living through the use of other peoples bodies. Unless the ended it and brought it back again in a decade or so. But I have a feeling that Matt Smith will only do one more series as The Doctor. With Amy and Rory having a baby now, maybe they’ll leave at the end of this series? But then again, River said she was brought up in a forest, so maybe Amy and Rory don’t raise her in the end, or the go on to raise her there possibly?

What I find interesting is that Steven Moffat wrote “Silence in the Library”, the first episode that River appeared in. I wonder if he had this twist in mind from the start or if it just occurred to him. I mean the link between River and Pond might just be a nice coincidence, with last nights show explaining in the forest where River was raised they didn’t have a word for “pond”, but at the same time it did fit quite nicely, and with River being Moffat’s creation who knows?

I wonder how many regenerations along River is? Maybe she is the thirteenth? That would make sense but she died for good in the library episode, well her body anyway, her mind went on living in the computer. But this means as The Doctor goes forward he’ll be going into Rivers past, this will allow us to see other generations of River. We’ve already seen one, where she was in the space suit, and we know she’s regenerated again, because of when the kid died in front of the homeless guy. So many questions.

And that’s what I love about Doctor Who, it leaves you with so many questions. And some get answered, sometimes not as much as we’d like but anything is something. Sometimes it doesn’t occur for a while. A good example of this is when The Master died when he was played by John Simm, and Tennant burned his body on the pyre and the ring dropped, with a mysterious female hand picking it up. We didn’t learn who picked it up for a while.

On a side note, I love Rory. During the first episode I wanted him to just get killed off and be done with it, partly because it might have made Amy harder but mainly because I didn’t like the character. But I must say as this season has progressed the humour surrounding him has got funnier and his character has gotten stronger. This hasn’t ever been more apparent than in last nights episode, where he donned the role of The Last Centurion again. The scene with the Cybermen was perfect and his line, “Do I need to repeat the question?” When the fleet in the background exploded was done and performed perfectly.

I’m going to miss Doctor Who whilst it’s off air, I truly am. And I’m going to miss writing about it. I can’t wait for the series to resume in the Autumn, according to Wikipedia it will air in September. I mean, I’m sure I can wait three months…just.

At least we’ll have Torchwood to occupy us in the mean time. Although I have seen the trailer for the new season and I’m not sure what I think, I’m hoping they haven’t made it overtly American, it needs to be kept true to its roots, otherwise it will just get way out of hand and ruin a good series.

How did you all find last nights episode, and the series so far?

Did you expect the twist? Or maybe not?

 

 

E3 Is Almost Here

So as the title says, E3 is almost here! This Tuesday to be exact. I’ll be posting a lot during the 3 day convention, especially Twitter. (Let the #tagging commence.) Last year I was able to watch the live press conferences before jetting off to America to work at Summer Camp. Although no America this time I should be able to still watch the live events and provide my coverage here and on Twitter like I said.

GameTrailers have been covering a lot of pre E3 content for example this amazing trailer for the upcoming Tomb Raider to be released at the end of 2012.

I’m quite excited to hear more about and see the new home console fromNintendo (Project Cafe is the codename) will it REALLY have screens in its controller as rumoured?

What are your thoughts and opinions?

Keeo checking back for the updates and “Like” my new facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Words-Form-Windows/214576338565461) or follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/dan_pos) to be alerted when I post something.

Also, the final Doctor Who tomorrow. I know I didn’t post an article about last weeks, which I should have done but I will post a long one tomorrow or Sunday about the mid season finale.