Celebrate!

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I was watching my nine month old son this morning. He has just taught himself to stand by grabbing the struts of his cot and pulling himself upright. When he achieves this, he burbles and howls with happiness, does a little staggering dance and raises his hand in the air like a footballer who has just scored the winning goal in the last seconds of a World Cup final. He is clearly very happy indeed with the achievement of standing upright. Needless to say, I don’t feel (or behave) the same way when I drag myself from my bed and Read more…

Guild Wars Third Impressions

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I am a couple of weeks into Guild Wars 2 and have had time to poke around a bit, get over the initial glitz of the launch and see a bit more of the world. What do I think now? I am still impressed. If anything I am more impressed now than when I started. An incredible amount of work has gone into this game, giving it a level of polish in the world-building that I don’t think I have seen in an MMO before. It’s not just that the game is beautiful; it is clearly a labour of love. Read more…

Computer Migration

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Last week I upgraded my PC computer. Since my games machine often doubles as my work machine, it normally being the most powerful computer I own, I had to migrate my work stuff to the new machine this week. Back in the bad old days, I used to dread this. I would needed to have locate a large number of disks and activation codes and installed my software onto the new computer. I would have had to burn CDs, DVDs or used an external hard-drive to shift my data. There would have been a lot of fumbling as I tried Read more…

Guild Wars 2: Second Impressions

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On Friday, I upgraded my computer just so I could play Guild Wars 2 and I am glad I did. As the owner of one of Asus’s Republic of Gamers laptops I am now in a position to really appreciate all the work that has gone into this game. The world now looks like all the screenshots on blog posts and magazines. It’s jaw-dropping. The special effects when you use a spell or skill are lavish. When you get a group of people fighting together it’s like an explosion in a fireworks factory, and I mean that in a good Read more…

Guild Wars 2: First Impressions

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I’ve been looking forward to Guild Wars 2 for a couple of years now, ever since I read the earliest press releases from the developers. I was a big fan of the original game and the folks at ArenaNet were talking about a lot of exciting new stuff for the next iteration. As you can see here, I was so psyched by the release of the latest version I did something I have never done before, I bought the Collector’s Edition (pictures courtesy of my lovely wife, Radka). The Collectors edition comes with a very fine statuette of the Char Read more…

Author’s Notes: Stealer of Flesh

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I know, it’s a bit silly to be writing up the Author’s Notes five months or so after the book was released but what the hell– I’ve been busy and I’ve been sick and these things get done in their own time.  Stealer of Flesh is a book that Amazon made possible. Seriously. All of my life I have wanted to write something like it but I was born at the wrong time. In order to explain that we need to rewind to when I was a very young teenager. I grew up reading, among other things, lots of good, Read more…