This is possibly the most interesting toy I have bought in a while. I took a bit of a gamble buying it, unsure if it was a crappy gimmick, or something actually usable.

Turns out, with a good bit of practice, it’s probably going to be the latter. There’s a lot of fiddling involved to get it working, and a REAL LOT of practice just to get the hang of making it do anything meaningful at all, but after less than an hour of mucking about, I was able to play Unreal Tournament 3 with some semblance of competence.

Now, the above isn’t exactly a display of my finest moments playing an FPS - the bots are on Novice level, and I’m clearly jumping around randomally, killing myself with the occasional rocket, running into walls, and generally acting like a retarded rabbit. However, outside of using a mouse to move the camera, everything else - forward and backward movement, side stepping, jumping, main and alt weapon fire - is being achieved via micro-movements in my facial muscles. If you can’t be bothered watching all the way to the end, I managed 3rd place out of 6. I’ve actually placed 1st a couple of times, but of course I wasn’t recording those…

The future is coming, folks.

UPDATE [14/09/08]:

After a few more hours practice, it seems I am improving. The below video is from this morning - a win, including 2 Killing Sprees, on the Shangri La map. I’m still fighting Novice bots, and I still have a bit of trouble at times, but I do feel I’m improving. As before, I’m using the mouse to aim, but everything else is via the NIA.

Initially inspired by a glitchy speaker system at the cinema where I saw Wanted, the latest Downfall track is a rhythmic visit to a cybernetics facility.

Hope you enjoy Blueprint.

I have a Zhevra!

It’s totally raining MMO beta keys at our place right now.

I wonder what’s next?

Seems I got invited to the Round 3 Closed Beta for Age of Reckoning.

That was unexpected. The only reason I have a beta-center account was because I entered my Open Beta key from Preorder.

It’s all NDA’d and such, so there wont be any exciting news here about it, but I’m looking forward to trying to crash the client. :)

It has arrived. It is beautiful. I have nothing more to say.

So, there’s this bakery in the city, around the corner from a place I visit regularly for work. It’s on Erskine Street, and is called Central Baking Depot.

I only noticed it recently, but it has potentially been there for millenia.

Yesterday, I finally found the time and inclination to pop in and see what they do. I’m a bit of a fan of baked goods, so I like to investigate newly found bakers. Besides, I hadn’t eaten lunch, and bakers make pies. Who doesn’t love a pie?

They were very busy. People everywhere, munching down on delicious looking baked goods. It was pretty late for lunch by this point, which is probably a good thing - were it peak lunching time, I might not have been able to get in the door.

Whilst waiting to be served, I witnessed the following conversation between a fellow customer and one of the staff.

Customer: do you have any mince pies?

Staff: Mince pies? No.

C: No mince pies?

S: No, just what you see on the menu.

C: Oh. Well, I’ll just have a sausage roll then.

The staff member then proceeded to recite a list of 4 or 5 splendid-sounding sausage roll variants.

C [slightly aghast]: Don’t you do anything plain?

S [proudly]: No, we only do extraordinary!

At this point, the confused customer left - perhaps to the convenience store across the street to get a sloppy Mrs Macs - while I mentally noted that I had certainly come into the right bakery.

I was then served by a bright looking, friendly-but-not-annoying fellow who had the service skill to note I was wearing a work shirt with my name on it, and greet me by name like an old friend, without making it feel like an old friend I wish I hadn’t run into.

“I’ll have a chicken, pea & lime pickle pie, and a mexican beef & chili bean sausage roll, thanks!”

Yes, I actually said this sentence out loud, and was not greeted with a look of bemusement or a pitying “I’m sorry sir, but that isn’t even legal!” as the silent alarm was triggered.

No, these are actual, real items, right there on their menu board. I know, I know, they sound like some sort of fantabulous Willy-Wonka-esque dream-foods, but they were real, and I bought them.

They were absolutely fucking delicious, too.

Snog at the Gaelic Club last night, with Inflatable Voodoo Dolls and Bleepin’ J Squawkins supporting.

Good night, good to see Snog live again.

A taste-test of the new Downfall album I’m working on: Imminence is more ambient noise, with some electric piano thrown into the mix - somewhat inspired by playing AudioSurf to Music for Airports.

She has an old Yamaha ‘PortaSound’ keyboard so I plugged it in and I liked what came out. Who knew I could play piano? Certainly came as a shock to me.

So, once I got over the “rhythm games are silly” phase of my life - thanks to Guitar Hero 3 - I have opened myself up to a whole new range of gaming.

Unfortunately, most of it is crap, but I have found something quite wonderful. Called Audio Surf, it’s a rhythm-game influenced “puzzle racer” apparently. No, I hadn’t heard of puzzle racers before either, but think a “match 3 colours” game combined with.. racing. yeah. something like that.

The real beauty of the whole thing though, is that you supply your own music - in any of a number of formats - and the game makes the track to suit the music. And make the track to suit the music, it most certainly does.

The speed of movement, the placement of the blocks, the amazing background visuals, everything is perfectly timed to the tempo and intensity of the music.

I tried a number of artists and genres, and the results were all entirely pleasing, in one way or another.

KMFDM and Ultraviolence made for a fast and furious edge-of-your-seat freefall experience, whilst Brian Eno’s more  sedate Music for Airports 1/1 led to a suitably ambient ponderous game.

What really made it though, was playing the entirety of Blur’s Parklife album back to back. The resulting experience was a true rollercoaster of cheeky bouncing, upward meandering wonderment and downhill thrill-riding. Easily the most fun you can have with brit-pop without pills and a bad head in the morning.

All of this made better by the fact that the whole game only costs us$10 and you can download it over Steam. Happy days.