the new album, Before the War, should be available in free-downloadable mp3 and purchasable CD format very soon.

Suggesting piracy of books of any members of the Author’s Guild would be irresponsible of me, so instead I’ll just suggest you find authors who *aren’t* guild members and do your best to support them instead.

Support authors like Cory Doctorow, who openly invites you to copy his books, share them with friends, shift them into any format you like.

Don’t let books fall into the same copyright-abusing mess that the music and film industries have. Please.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Good night, good to see Snog live again.