100th Blog Post!

So, according to my dashboard thingy, this piece of text constitutes my 100th blog post. I think it's quite safe to assume everyone guessed that from the title. It's pretty certain I've written a few more than that, including some I've discarded as being rubbish (oh yes, even worse than some of the tripe I've clicked publish on, imagine how bad they were!), I distinctly remember one I wrote in borderline anger and then deleted before I accidentally clicked said publish button, but this is number 100 that is publicly viewable and at least, and possibly at most, 4 people will read.

I'll be honest, I expected nobody on this planet to read the crap that I decided to type in, typically on dodgy public transport (bus has only hit 1 curb this morning and slammed on breaks once, good day, but then again we're only half way there) or when I couldn't sleep at some god forsaken hour in the morning. (Just hit 2nd curb, a roundabout approach too!). But it hasn't been the view free zone I expected, I'm not going to pretend I get thousands of hits, as obviously I don't, it's a personal blog and a shoddily written one at that. But I've had a couple of thousand and I'm quite happy with that! (No, that doesn't include me looking at my own, it doesn't count that).

I've used it to air a couple of short stories I've written, I have more but lack the nuts to make them public, I also have a longer one I haven't finished, but let's be real, chances are it's crap and I'm pretty damn sure it'll never see the light of day. Actually thinking about it I doubt I'll ever actually finish it, probably for the best! If anyone wants to see a story so far version... tough.

I've used it to vent opinions, I've used it to rant (usually fair enough I'm sure most people will agree, I do enjoy a good 'go-off-on-one' but someone has to wind me up first), I've used it to try n be funny. For the next 100 posts, if I get that far, chances are I'll do exactly the same.

I will publish the script, along with a link to the video of a recent presentation myself and a colleague wrote in the style of star trek, it was highly classy. It's on youtube now (Star Trek - Revenge of the Tribbles) but It'll be better all in one place I feel. I'll get a copy later.

I'll leave you with a proper blast from the past, here be a link to the first thing I ever posted. I steal from Red Dwarf, Anchorman and have a dig at facebook (setting the pattern early then). Not exactly inspiring and the 2nd post was better and I've been much funnier since... on a relative scale (3rd curb and a sharp brake). But it brought a cheesy grin back to me face for a second:

http://andrewdrisc.blogspot.com/2010/09/end.html

You stay classy Internet.

Dead Island

OK, yeah I'm a bit behind, but I've just got around to watching the Dead Island trainer (which can he found here), for the last few days I've heard numerous accounts of how disturbing it is, how it's plain wrong and should be banned... all the usual random stuff from people who are desperate to desynthesize everything to the content of Miffy and Friends.

However, deciding not to let people form opinions for me, as I very rarely do to be fair, I watched it. I can only say it was very effective, the setting of a family making a last stand against the fairly standard zombie enemies was very good. It gave it more of a sense of familiarity in it's setting than normal game trailers and to be 100% honest there was a hint of emotional reaction on my part, which doesn't happen often.

However, clearly it's been set out to do this, to try and get a reaction from the, everything must be PG brigade, to try and evoke a response and use the inevitable Internet banter to build hype and generate publicity. There's no possible way the developers could have thought featuring the death of a small child in the trailer (who was clearly already a zombie) would invoke any other kind of reaction. My reaction to this is, do they lack confidence in the game itself to get good reviews and build it's own hype.

The style of the trailer is somewhat unlikely to be indicative to the actual game play (haven't seen that much in action yet despite having a quick nose round youtube for a few videos), which will doubtless be a fairly standard FP, zombie slasher type game, and to be honest the trailer hasn't done much to get me excited or interested. My rule of thumb is if you need that much publicity, you probably don't deserve it.

I'm of course ready to be proved wrong by amazing reviews, but you wont find me holding my breath.