My friend Rob has been kickstarting the Liverpool geek talk sceene, with the guys at his place of work, organising and hosting SWIG. It’s grown from a small meeting discussing WordPress at InterconnectIT‘s office, to taking the upstairs at Leaf Tea Shop in Bold Street.

Rob had been on at me for a while to do something at a SWIG event, and upping the ante, he said they were doing a bigSWIG, and would I like to talk about one of my projects, MegaDrive.me. I’d asked Rob a hundred questions about WordPress – which MegaDrive.me is built in – so I did feel obliged to return the favour!

MegaDrive.me was a project I’d started to catalogue Japanese Mega Drive games, write reviews and comments, and learn WordPress on the way. I also stressed something which as an employer I think is very important.

The talk went well, I was up after my mate Dan Donald, and it was great to see loads of familiar faces from the Speak the Web event and Naconf the week before. You can find the slides from the talk on SlideShare.net.

Good things are happening in Liverpool, and it makes me proud to be part of it. Keep it going, Rob!

I’m a regular at Northern Digitals, an event for like minded people involved in digital creative industries around Manchester, to get together, have a beer, talk about work, techniques or influences, ruminate and make new friends.

The popularity of ND nights prompted Matt Booth and Gavin to host a more formal event, which they called BLAB. Featuring a recognised figure from our online/creative industry, they’d do a talk, we’d all drink beer and everyone would enjoy themselves. Following this format, BLABMini was created, featuring 5–6 speakers, shorter talk times, slightly more informal.

I got an email off Matt asking me to talk at the latest BLABMini, on the 1st December at The Deaf Institute. The subject was on “Things I’ve Seen”, links you’ve been passed on twitter or via blogs, makes you stop and think “wow” or “why didn’t I think of that”. Quite an open-ended subject, so I pinned mine on inspirational things I’ve seen.

I also narrowed it down to be things I’ve seen on Vimeo, as most of the really cool/wow stuff I see is on there, and I hammer that “Later” button. Pretty sure I have more content on there than on my Tivo!

Anyway, it was my first time at the venue, it’s like an old school house or something, and hardly touched inside. It’s great! I met with the other speakers before it kicked off, @katiemoffat @katiemaymanc @VariousArtists & @JeffreyBowman. We decided on a running order, and said I didn’t mind being last.

The content from the speakers varied wildly, from 9/11 memorials, via brown bananas and spoof chef videos to keeping sane in a city. I showed three videos from Vimeo, a piece on calligraphy, an intro to a skateboarding video and a rock video. All talks were very well received, the audience were attentive and appreciative, and knowing the kind of crowd that goes to ND nights, it was a good feeling knowing where to pitch the talk.

Thanks to Matt & Gav, all the speakers and the audience. I really enjoyed myself.

As usual, the BLAB talks are filmed, and will appear over on the BLAB page on Vimeo when edited… I will post a link when it arrives!

Panoramic pic by Harry Bailey

November again.

One year ago I broke my arm in three places and needed surgery after the .Net Awards party.

I get an invite to go to this years bash. Of course I go, right? I mean, lightning can’t strike twice.

And it didn’t.

We had a great time. I did four client visits before the first beer, and one during. Hooked up with Phil Sherry and Tweedy, joined by Techie Rob and a few more, then off to the do. The theme this year was “Rock”, as if you couldn’t figure that out from the picture above (from l-r: me, Rob Ryan, Dan Oliver, Bruce Lawson, Chris Mills and Patrick Lauke.

The Iron Maiden cover band were excellent, Guns2Roses… well, I’m not a G’n'R fan… and the last band, Conquest of Steel, with legendary Opera Dev Relations dude Chris Mills on drums utterly rocked.

So no shocking x-rays this year. No tales of train-catching heroics while on morphine. No more stupidity… for now.

Most of you know I’m a gaming nut. Most of you know I collect Japanese Mega Drive games.

I was browsing through the ace pcengine.co.uk site, watching videos, reading reviews, planning on buying a few more shmups, when I thought “why don’t we have something like this?”. The “we” being Mega Drive gamers.

Obviously, there are a lot of sites out there that details release dates, genres, covers etc. like the great SegaRetro.org, but there was something… complete about the PCE site. It had factual information, it had visual information, it had opinion. You could relate to the authors and what they were saying, and it did make me reassess my opinion on a game or two, and go and physically play R-Type again after browsing.

For me, the Japanese Mega Drive’s biggest charm was the box art. Glorious, explosive, full colour illustrations set the scene before picking up the box and looking at screenshots. Box art is where it’s at! When you stack them all together, there’s something really mesmerising about the colourful spines with Japanese type, topped with the red, green and black MD logo.

So,with my WordPress skills coming along well, I decided to see how far I could push myself and designed a site to show case the box art, the facts about the game, opinion of the review as well as providing a place for comment and discussion, screenshots and video.

Now, I knew I couldn’t do this on my own. Something my mate Ian Wilson had said to me kept ringing in my head. He’d edited some articles about Japanese Mega Drive games on Wikipedia, but the overlord page owners had reverted the changes. What’s the point in helping if it was going to be over-ruled? Sod it, let’s make our own! Together with Ian, and prolific games journalist Damien McFerren, I thought we’d have a good, knowledgeable trio to build such a site. We’re also all Mega Drive collectors, and it’s important to me that all experiences and thoughts about these games are from playing the original games on original hardware. Yeah, sad I know.

Please take a look at megadrive.me

Yes, know there’s a lot of work left to do! Writing the synopsis and opinion for all these games will take a long time. We’re only scanning cover art for games we own, so is an expensive journey ahead!

We’ve also got shirts and posters in the pipeline. These will be kept to limited runs, once sold, forever gone. We’re in talks with quality paper suppliers like Fedregoni and GF Smith, and print places like Team Impression, to make sure the quality is of the highest order. My good friend and fellow jaypee Dan Clarke is doing the illustration work, and the first piece looks awesome.

Stay tuned, and feel free to add your memories about some of the brilliant — and not so brilliant — Mega Drive games from 20 years ago!

Lucky me, I got tagged by heavy metal / web accessibility legend Chris Mills, so I shall enlighten you all, then tag seven friends who can do the same.

The rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Seven fascinating factoids about me

• I am a video game nut. I used to work at Sony in Liverpool and I collect Japanese Sega Mega Drive games.
• I have the dyslexia symptoms where you cannot tell right from left when pushed for an immediate answer. Obviously know my right from left, but if you ask me off the cuff, I *will* get it wrong. I wrote L and R on my hands when doing my driving test, for the instructors sake as much as mine!
• I’ve met one of my heroes. Trent Reznor. Only briefly, and he wasn’t a cock. Hero status upheld.
• I have titanium metal and 6 screws in my left arm, after breaking it in six places. No, they don’t set off metal detectors.
• I’ve studied five different languages in my time. French, Latin, Japanese, German and Spanish, the last being the only one I’m proficient in.
• I’m a big Star Wars freak. So much so that I have the original trilogy on Japanese LaserDisc…
• I do an awesome Yoda impression.

Last Thursday, I was down in that London to speak at a D&AD Student Awards Sharp’ner session at the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane.

I’d been invited, as last year I was the Foreman on two Student Award Briefs, Interactive Design and Microsite Design, which was a fantastic experience. D&AD invited judges from both Professional and Student awards to the evening to help students understand what we are looking for when we score and assess all the work in front of us, in such a short time.

There was some great insight from Steve and Clem about what makes a great piece of award winning work, and I found Paul West from Form to be a great speaker, who shared his gut feeling belief about a good design and advocated being challenging, to give the judges something to think about.

During this time, about eight students had been selected to disappear into a private area and run through a mock judging session on the Nokia Interactive Design brief…

Next up on stage was Paul Kemp-Robertson from Contagious and myself. I’m not going to lie to you, I can hardly remember anything Paul or myself said, so I’m looking forward to the D&AD video that’ll be online shortly, to see what the hell I was going on about! I chose a piece of winning work from the Microsite Brief, the BBC iPlayer backed one, and spoke about why it appealed to me, and us judges as a group, and we tried to convey some of the atmosphere that happens when judging is in progress on the big day.

The student judges then came out, and revealed their judgement for the Nokia brief. At this point, Paul and I were getting a little concerned about remembering all the reasons we selected some work and knocked some back, arguing the toss and backing up our groups choices, should our winner not be picked. Fortunately, the students chose this piece by Matt Turnbull as their unanimous winner, just like our group of Judges did. Phew!

Matt Turnbull was also at the event, and got up to say a bit about how his life has changed thanks to winning the award and a six month internship at Nokia. An absolutely brilliant chance, Matt seems to be on his feet and enjoying himself.

Afterwards, a few students said hello and thanks, and pressed a few questions, which is always great, then it was off to Jack The Ripper’s pub, The Ten Bells for some beers with the D&AD crew.

My last month can be summed up by the digitised voice in the old Mega Drive game, ESWAT.

In a moment of desperate bad luck, I fell in the street and broke my left arm. As ever, it wasn’t quite that simple…

I’d been invited down to the .net awards on the 18th November, held in London. A lot of my friends and industry piers were going and I took our contact James from the D&AD. I met up with Phil Sherry at his hotel, had a beer, met his boss Mikey, then proceeded to meet Colly, Dan Donald, AlunR et al at a pub close to the venue, which all happened without incident.

We went to the awards, hosted by Zeldman (shorter in real-life), had a few free beers, met fellow front-ender and VW camper van nut Ian Lloyd for the first time and a lot more lovely people. The actual awards were a bit of a non-surprise, to be brutal. End of the night, get our coats and head back to the hotels. At 11.30pm.

Mine and Phil’s hotels were in walking distance of the venue, so we set off to have a final beer at his hotel as Phil and Mikey were catch an 8.30am train back to the North East.

The drama happened as we were running to cross over a junction before the lights turned red. Stumble, fall, hand out… and I knew straight away I’d broken my arm. It really was as simple – and as stupid – as that.

Lying in the road, with people yelling to get up, I lay there with my arm over my chest well aware that it was broken, and insisting that I needed an ambulance. Long story short, I spent the night in St. Thomas Hospital, on morphine with a few x-rays to show off my talents. I came to at around 7am, and saw Phil still with me by the side of the bed. I thanked him, but told him to bugger off and catch his train.

It was a pretty bad break, as you can see. I must have fell with some force, as it’s broken in 3 places, and I acquired a massive cut and bump to my left cheek. The cheek is still numb now, and it took weeks to actually feel my teeth again. The staff wanted to operate on my arm, but couldn’t tell me when they’d do it. Maybe on the friday, maybe saturday. I wasn’t too pleased with this, as all my gear was in my (unused) hotel room and my train back was at 2.30pm, so I asked if I could head home, since I didn’t live in London and had no family close by to help me out.

So, arm broken and in a sling with a backslab, still under the influence of morphine, probably smelling of beer, with a bleeding cheek, blood-matted beard and wearing a snug fitting OrangeBus shirt Phil had fortunately given me much earlier in the night (my coat and shirt had to be cut off to get at the arm), I gingerly walked to my hotel and picked up my stuff.

I also finally made the call to my wife. Any man who’s got himself in trouble while away from home will know this feeling. However, I’d not been able to call her earlier as I’d managed to lose my phone somewhere between busting my arm and having the x-rays in hospital. The day before, while at Preston station waiting to catch the train down, my iPhone had crashed, and my wife said I could take hers, so I could still be contactable. On the train down, my iPhone started working, so I left hers in my bag at the hotel.

“Yeah, er, hi Idoia. I have a bit of an accident, and I’ve broken my arm…”

To be fair, she took it very, very well and was really concerned.

After chomping two Ibuprofens, I walked to the tube station and made the two changes to Euston. I had to hang around a bit in Euston, so forced a sandwich down, and when the train was ready to board, I asked a member of the train staff if I could sit in 1st class, as my arm was evidently broken.

I sat down and promptly fell asleep. When I woke, there were three rather cautious looking fellow passengers on my table, giving me the eye because I looked a right state! They did ask what happened and warmed considerably at my tales of stupidity.

Idoia met me at Preston station and we drove to Blackburn hospital. After waiting for about three hours there, I got a bed and was in for the night. The staff knew about the break, as the staff from St. Thomas in London had rang ahead and probably warned them “watch out for this idiot coming in with a broken arm!” I’d also been given a CD with the x-ray scans on, to hand over at the hospital.

Saturday comes with a visit from the orthapedic doctors, who confirm that I’ve really buggered that arm up and warn of paralysis or lack of feeling in the arm as two possible side effects of surgery. After having nil by mouth since 2pm on Friday, it turns out they’re not operating. The day was passed with snoozes and some movie watching and online chatter thanks to my iPad and 3 mifi, which were still in my bag from London. Without these, I think I would have gone mad in hospital. Nil by mouth that night, hope they operate on sunday. Sunday comes, with a visit from the anaesthetist. This is good, means I’m having surgery.

I remember passing out at 11.30am in the operating theatre, and awaking as I came back to my bed around 2.30pm, in pain and groggy. I had massive pins and needles for the next few days, and basically a lot of pain from the metal work.

So what did they do?

As you can see from the x-ray, they’ve plated the radius with six screws, and pushed a wire through the middle of the ulna bone, and basically threaded the broken bits of bone onto it. According to someone who knows how this is done, it’s not a delicate manouvre, and it’s a good job I was out like a light for it. It would also explain the marks I have on my upper arm that look like it’s been in a vice. The doctor pointed out that the wire is left long, so that they can pull it out again…

I went home the next day, with a bag full of drugs and an appointment to come back in two weeks. When I went back, they took the bandages off, the orthopaedic doctor took a look at the arm and fresh x-rays and was very pleased with what he’d seen. No need for a cast or more bandages, leave it uncovered, and start moving it around.

How are you doing, Jake?

Well, I was back in work two days after surgery, although due to the Tramadol wasn’t of too much use. The arm was never in plaster-cast, only bandaged after surgery, and I’m sure has healed a lot quicker due to the metal holding everything tightly in place. A month after the break, and it does hurt a little. I can touch the arm on the break points with no real harsh pain, but the scar is still quite sensitive, feeling like someone’s put a car battery jump start on at my wrist and forearm. Mobility’s pretty good, although I can feel a bit of muscle wastage already, and stretching feels funny. Pretty sure I bust my little finger as well, to be honest, as that’s hurt like mad since. I can also feel the tip of the metal wire if I lean on my left elbow, which smarts! Importantly though, I can type, hold and drink a glass of wine, and playing video games seems to be just fine!

“So what have we learned from all this?”, the anaethetist asked me after consulting me on Sunday morning.

“Walk, don’t run” was my reply.

How did you get those x-rays?!

While waiting to see the doc, I asked the nurse if there was a CD (the one I’d brought up from London) in the files, and could I take a copy as I had my laptop with me, hence the high quality pics!

Today was dConstruct, an excellent digital/online/geek event in Brighton. Unfortunately I had to miss this one, as I had other priorities, but I’d been to the last two years events.

This reminded me of another coincidence…

As my first dConstruct day drew nearer, I put a few shouts out to see if any attendees from the North West wanted to car share and chip in for petrol money, as I knew I’d be driving down. At the time, dConstruct were using the BBC’s Backchannel, a service for all attendees to find out a little more about who else was going. You could create a profile, provide a pic, Twitter handle, email and location, which was great for looking up people near me in the North West.

Ahh cool, there was one guy near me in Burnley who was going. Interestingly, his profile said “scouse, but not that scouse like”. Ok, this warrants further investigation, being a scouser meself, like. He might even share a lift and pay for some petrol!

So I emailed him introduced myself, said I was going to dConstruct, asked what the scouse reference was about and that. Turns out he’s from Liverpool. But not just anywhere in Liverpool. Waterloo/Crosby area. Same as me.

Turns out he’s a bit younger than me though, so I didn’t recognise his name. However, after a bit more chatter it turns out he did go to the same school as me, just 10 years later. Like my youngest brother Tom…

You guessed it. He was in Tom’s class.

So now I’m good mates with Rob O’Rourke, or @sanchothefat as he’s better known online, despite the fact he didn’t car share with me that year, as he’d already got tickets. He did join us for the drive the next year tho!

Previous theories
http://www.systemerror.co.uk/2009/09/18/theory-part-ii/
http://www.systemerror.co.uk/2009/09/18/theory/

This year I had the great honour of being a Foreman and juror at the D&AD Student Awards 2010, which was held down in Olympia, London.

For those of you who don’t know, a D&AD award comes in the shape of a pencil. As a creative, a Yellow Pencil is one of the highest honours bestowed upon you by your peers. It’s career defining, and can only be bettered by a Black Pencil…

However, I only had a hand in awarding “Baby Pencils“, a slightly vertically challenged version of the full professional award, but nonetheless, the honour of being asked to take part in the Student Award judging, and to be a foreman for the two briefs I was judging was incredible.

The two briefs were the Nokia Interactive Design and the BBC Digital Design brief. These student briefs had been sponsored by both Nokia and BBC, and had two people from the respective companies along with our six other jurors plus a D&AD Jury Manager for the day.

I can’t say I wasn’t nervous. A few questions and doubts were running through my head, but while getting a coffee before the opening speech, a few of the professional award jurors were more than happy to chat and assure me that it’d be a fun day.

The first ‘cull’ of the Interactive Design brief was hard work. We had to do this without discussion, and approved pieces make it through to the next round where we’d choose “in-book”. Not talking meant that I was in doubt as to whether I was picking the right kind of work, so I viewed every piece before making a mark on my clipboard, and adhered to the three principles of D&AD judging. The Idea, the Craft and On-brief.

We went for a coffee, and came back to see successful cull-dodgers back on the walls. How relieved was I to see nearly all the works I’d circled yes to? Yeah, very! This put me at ease, and now discussions could be begin, which was great. As the jurors all warmed to each other and the task at hand, the whole job started to go by quickly, and we all investigated why each piece should be up there.

To cut a long story short, this is where we confirmed in-book, then went on to decide Firsts, Seconds and Commendations. If you didn’t agree with the choices, you could explain your thoughts, or be persuaded by others.

The jurors were all in strong agreement for all the accolades awarded, and I have to say our bunch were great people and knowledgeable professionals.

The work itself came in many forms, excellent ideas with average execution, super-glossy production hiding incomplete work, polished, peculiar, amusing, endearing, piss-taking and best of all, it came from all corners of the globe. The Student Awards is important, as these creatives will be working their way into agencies everywhere, and it’s good to see hard work and creativity awarded. Very honoured to have been involved!

For more info, follow the weeks awards on the D&AD blog.