A mysterious skill of soft techniques

Tickle Me Elmo

Laughs while burning to death,

What if you never got to be human?

I just read someone’s blog about when random strangers started to IM them because they thought they were either a celebrity or a chat bot. It’s pretty funny.

Sex, Drugs and Videogames en España

According to Wikipedia,

“Personal consumption and home cultivation of cannabis have been decriminalized, but buying or selling remains a criminal offense.”

And High Times has this to say,

“Spain is in the vanguard of a new European revolution in pot freedom”

There’s also a forum post on that page from a tourist who claimed he paid just 4 Euro per gram for homegrown ‘dank’!

I’d be interested to hear a more official account of the legal status.

[EDIT: 04/03/2008] Oh dear lord it’s just how I imagined it to be… 

Work:

In other news, Pyro in Madrid are hiring.According to their website they’ve got 125 staff and are working on PS3, Wii and XBox 360 projects…Read more about the company on MobyGames or Wikipedia.They also seem to have connections with academia [Spanish].There’s some coverage confirming that they’re working on an adventure game for Wii, to be released in 2008.One of my friends went there for an interview and had this to say:”pyro seemed coolgenerally people were nice, the interview questions actually made sense (not like completely irrelevant technical or even theoretical stuff), office seemed good, game they work on as wellthey are doingtwo titles with the unreal 3 enginethere seem to be a lot of hot girls there TBHthey offer free spanish courses toothey booked a really nice hotel for meboth actually… although the one in mallorca was more touristy, whereas the one in madrid was more business like, really nice breakfast buffet, swimming pool, whirlpool thingy in the roomquite enjoyed my stay “

 

It looks like both EA (Madrid) and Ubisoft (Barcelona) have studios in Spain, though I couldn’t find much information about current vacancies there.

“EA Europe Integration is a centralized studio based in Madrid specialized in the integration of the localization of games to European languages.”

Also Revistronic look like a real developer (Though not much on MobyGames and barely a mention on Wikipedia), and they’re also in Madrid.Likewise there’s Mercury Steam who are collaborating with CodeMasters (virtually no presence on MobyGames and Wikipedia), Madrid.As for smaller developers, there’s Virtual Toys (DS developer, Madrid), BitManagers (last GBA game released 2003, Barcelona), OkerFactory (PC & Mobile, San Sebastian).Also, the three year old Tragnarion studio in Palma de Mallorca has recently announced they’ll be using Unreal 3 for their upcoming project. One of my old colleagues has interviewed who speaks well of the impression they made on him. However, other friends had some very negative things to say,” i was in mallorca… was raelly nice… warm weather the guy I talked to seemed nice, the company seemed nice generally, the office was ok, but there was just something that gave me a funny feeling… cant point it out though”Me:I looked at their office on Google and it seems like a pretty industrial areaits in an IKEA buildingand they are owned by ikeawell not quite.. but something like thatthe investor giving them all their money is the one who set up all the IKEAs in spain or soand he thinks the games industry is cool and wanted to invest in itwithout bugging them too much it seemsso they seem to have quite some freedom, compared to having some publisher with contanst pressure*constantbut like I said… there was something which I cant point out that gave me bad vibes i have to say I found mallorca very nice toomuch more so than I expectedjust not too sureabout that companyalso I dont know what mallorca is like in the main tourist season…they have a LOT of shopping there though.. but most of it was closed now”An another friend had even more harsh things to say about Carl Jones, the studio manager,“Oh boy.Ok.<candid>He is the omega wanker – the wanker from which all other wanker’s images were wraught.</candid>”Incidentally flatshares seem to go for around 350 Euros per person per month, which is similar to what I was paying in Vienna.Games-Industry.biz has a directory of development studios in Spain.There’s also a group called ADESE, who have a list of publishers in Spain.And there’s a global map of studios which might be of interest.More about Spain and Madrid,

Quality of Life:Mercer rated Madrid as 42nd for quality of life in their 2007 global survey (London was slightly better in 39th position) and 56th for health and sanitation.

Cost of Living:Mercer’s 2007 survey revealed Madrid to be 26th most expensive (with an index of 92.1 compared to London in 2nd place with an index of 126.3)There’s also a handy salary converter and some detail about the cost of daily goods.

Politics:The last election was in 2004, so they’re due for another in 2008.

“The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, commonly abbreviated by its Spanish initials, PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español), is the major party in Spain and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in 1833. It is a social-democratic party”

“The PSOE was founded with the purpose of representing the interests of the working class born from the Industrial Revolution with the declared objective of achieving socialism, and inspired by the revolutionary principles of Marxism. Nowadays, it is a social democratic party.”

Madrid:

“The population of the city was 3.5 million (December 2005), while the estimated urban area population was 5.5 million. The entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area (urban area and suburbs) is calculated to be 5.84 million. The city spans a total of 607 square kilometres (234 sq mi).”

Nightlife:

“Madrid is noted for its nightlife and night clubs. On weekends, Madrilenian youth are famous for dancing all night long, stopping only to have some chocolate con churros at dawn, go home, take a shower, shave (or not), and go to work.”

Climate:

“The region of Madrid has a temperate Mediterranean climate with cold winters with temperatures that sometimes drop below 0 °C (32 °F). Summer tends to be warm with temperatures that consistently surpass 30 °C (86 °F) in July and that can often reach 40 °C (104 °F). Due to Madrid’s high altitude and dry climate, nightly temperatures tend to be cooler, leading to a lower average in the summer months. Precipitation levels are low, but precipitation can be observed all throughout the year. Summer and winter are the driest seasons, with most rainfall occurring in the autumn and spring.”

“Here we have the average temperatures in each month in Madrid: – January: 9 ºC- February: 11 ºC- March: 15 ºC- April: 19 ºC- May: 22 ºC- June: 27 ºC- July: 31 ºC- August: 32 ºC- September: 25 ºC- October: 18 ºC- November: 13 ºC- December: 9 ºC”

Public transport:

“Serving the city’s population of some six million, the Madrid Metro is one of the most extensive and fastest-growing metro networks in the world.”

And last, but by no means least,

Sex

“Tourists walking along the beaches of Spain this summer should watch where they step, especially between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. They might disturb the world’s oldest activity. Local police have deemed this time slot a happy hour in the truest sense — the time set aside for young people to have sex on the beach.”

Happy Anniversary!

One year ago today Rockstar Vienna was shut down.

Hooray!

It’s also especially significant for me as I haven’t been employed since then, so it means I’ve managed to spend an entire year of my 30s without having to look for work. It feels like a little taste of early retirement. You really can have a fulfilling life without having a job.

Sadly I’m going to have to think about getting work sooner or later, probably around September. There’s still a possibility that I’ll get funding for my PhD but the competition’s so fierce that I’m not going to hold my breath.

I’ll be having a drink or two later on tonight to celebrate, as are a bunch of the other ex-RSV crew.

Cheers!

Amsterdam 2K+7

At 4am on Friday the 27th of April I got up to fly to Amsterdam.
At 9pm on Tuesday the 1st of May I flew back to Brisol.

Here’s a photo documentary of what happend in between when I met up with Christian, Thad, Oli, Chris, Anastassiya, Roland, Jaecinta & friends…

I’m putting the videos online too, but they’re not all public. You’ll only be able to watch these if you’ve registered with YouTube and are part of my listed Amsterdam group. Give me a call if I’ve missed you off the list and you want to watch them.

Livin’ La Vida Loca,

Christian and Thad sleeping in Vondel Park,

Boats on Queen’s Day

Inside the Flying Pig.

Walking around the city.

Hanging out at the Pig was very exciting!

Thad helps Christian to make his first ever spliff,

Visiting Roland and Jaecinta’s apartment.

Out and about,

What people look like when you’re drunk,

Chess at the Pig,

Out and about again,

Queen’s Day Street party,

I was last to leave on the final day, so I spent the whole day trying to smoke all of the remaining grass our party couldn’t take with them. This is all that was left by the time I had to catch my train,

Mike Gravel on Marijuana

While I don’t get to vote in the US elections, this Democrat has some interesting and appealing things to say.

Around 5:30,

“What do you think about legalising marijuana and giving the people the opportunity to grow their own remedy?”

“That one’s real simple: I would legalise marijuana.”

Then around 6:20,

“Marijuana’s a simple one, we legalise that and you should be able to go buy that at a liquor store just like you buy alcohol.”