Author: David

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Photography Travel

Auckland Sanity Trip: Day 1

Auckland Sanity Break

I’ve been getting wanderlust again lately. I haven’t been out of Australia in almost a decade, and when you compare that to the first part of my life where my family moved around quite a bit because of my father’s work, it somehow feels less stimulating to keep seeing the same things over and over again. Add to that a real desperate need to get away from my job for even the shortest amount of time, and suddenly I’m winging my way over the Tasman to see Auckland and visit with an old friend from high school. It may not be the most glamourous of holidays, but it’s better than the alternative: sitting at work and bitching about how I don’t want to be there. The following journal entries are only slightly edited, and written on as on the spot as I could get – I didn’t want to have to recall everything weeks later.

Continue reading “Auckland Sanity Trip: Day 1”

Categories
Video Games

What if classic games had Super-Easy mode?

CollegeHumor have outdone themselves again. This one is for all those people who can’t finish an easy song in Rock Band without the “No-Fail” option 😉

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Via: Kotaku AU

Categories
Photography

Photos: Frosty morning

It was bloody freezing in Parramatta this morning! There was a thin layer of frost on pretty much everything. See these quick snaps I got on the way to the bus stop.

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Categories
Movies and TV Reviews Tabletop Games

GOLD: The DVD that does double damage

About this time last year, I started watching a great new web series called Gold. In brief, it is about the trials and tribulations of two national-grade roleplaying teams as they prepare for the international championships of their chosen game, Goblins and Gold.

Once the first season was concluded, a call was put out to help fund a DVD run. Naturally, I wanted to help out a project that had given me plenty of entertainment, and doubly so since I am immersed in the local gaming culture of Sydney.

The Feature

It took a while (inevitable, given that the project didn’t have big studio backing), but I finally got my DVD in the mail. I sat down to watch the whole feature end-to-end and am still blown away by the truth that David Nett and his team have managed to captured. While many of the characters are deliberately written and performed to be larger than life, they draw easily on archetypes of both the gaming culture (speak Elvish much?) and pro sports (seriously, disfunctioning dice rolling hand?).

There’s also a constant reminder that while this is all glitz and glam for the players, the sport is still niche enough to get shut down when the competition for spectators ramps up. What I’m trying to say is that while GOLD is obviously fiction, it still rings true for me.

Special Features

While I haven’t had time to sit down with the commentary tracks yet (there are two of them!), I did watch the cast and crew interview with GirlGamer‘s Cricket Lee. There are some insightful observations and revelations in that interview, and it was warming to see that while a number of people went into the project as gamers, even more began gaming as a result.

Final Verdict

Look, the basic content is still available for free on the GOLD website so you can try before you buy. That being said, I think the DVD is a great thing to have. Purchasing it shows your support for a great project and helps the GOLD team make the case to financial backers that a second season is viable. I highly recommend it. Plus, you’ll also get a behind-the-scenes photo and GOLD collectible game card.

Categories
Books Movies and TV

A Game of Thrones teaser

Those of us who don’t get HBO (eg, Australians) probably missed this recent teaser for the commencement of George Martin’s A Game of Thrones series. It doesn’t give away much, but I definitely heard Sean Bean say, “Winter is coming.” He is going to be awesome as Ned Stark.