Observations of the Fox

You may note that there were no posts during December 2018, that was fairly deliberate, just to see how many people might keep visiting the blog without new things to lure visitors in. It's actually more than I was expecting...so that was an interesting experiment. It wasn't all an experiment though, part of the reason for not posting is the fact that I'm in the middle of moving house and drastically changing my life. The last seven years have seen me studying and retraining, but thst phase of my life is over. At the end of 2018, I started teaching, and at the start of 2019 I begin my first contract as a teacher of Industrial and Visual Arts.  The blue dot indicates where I live now, the red pin indicates where I'm heading... roughly 770km between the two. This month will see that move taking place. Fingers are crossed that it all goes smoothly. Having a regular invome again should mean the ability to order game proofs quicker, and prototype a few ideas tha...

I think the mid 1990s will always be my golden age. I had just left high school and was starting to truly forge an identity of my own. I had gotten a job and was earning my own keep for the first time. The cold war was ending and the feeling of hope in the world was echoing my own feeling of freedom and the chance for a better life. Nirvana was showing the world that you didn't need make-up and big hair to play good rock music. And you didn't need to spend far too much money on film clips to get into the top 40. White Wolf's Storyteller system was showing the roleplaying community that games could focus on story rather than a quirky set of skills and abilities (but it still included these anyway). I had a good core group of friends, and it felt like we'd all stay friends forever... I could go on...but that's not the point of my post. Around this time, a friend and I developed a game called Ukiyo Zoshi (translated from Japanese it roughly means "Tales of the Flo...

I have a few things on my plate at the moment, some of which will probably have to go on hold. I've already missed the deadline to build a costume suit of "Iron Man" armour in time for Supanova. I had hoped to get this done by Gencon Oz at the latest, but that's not looking like a reasonable timeframe either unless I really focus on it as a priority. But the Gencon priority was to get Quincunx working. At this stage I know that I have a functional system and setting, but there is still some playtesting to be accomplished, a decent amount of typing and some layout work to be achieved. Thankfully, I've had a friendly email from someone who's interested in helping out with the Quincunx project. His name's Riley and he's one of the founders of Every Gamer's Guild in Newcastle. I really must get up there one of these months. Maybe next month for a preliminary run of Quincunx with enough time to make any drastic changes if they prove necessary. In a sim...

This month I've been married for five years (on September 20th to be exact). It just struck me. The reason I thought of this is the fact that the last time I physically laid eyes on my best man was at the wedding, but out of the blue he has appeared again on my radar through Facebook. It's odd that this person who I still consider one of my best friends is someone who I haven't seen in ages. And it's odd to think of all the changes that have happened in my life since I last saw him (as well as thinking of ll the changes I'd have expected, which simply haven't occured in that time).