ok, so i know you've all been sat there at your computers, refreshing and wondering 'where on earth has spugmeistress gone?' well, now, ladies and gentlemen, i can finally reveal the super secret special project that has been stealing my time away from hama beads and DS games for the past couple of months!
are you ready? no, you're not. you need to be properly prepared for this kind of awesomeness. go get yourself a nice cup of tea, some suitable biscuits (the OMEGAZOID recommends and endorses ginger nuts, always) and find a comfy seat (and maybe your wallet...)
www.operationsleepercell.com is many things. it's an internet massively multiplayer game type thing. it's an interactive story about spies, intrigue and the eternal struggle between loveliness and EVIL. but most of all, IT'S FOR CHARITY! :D go, poke about the site, play and have fun, knowing you are doing it all in the cause of loveliness and raising funds for Cancer Research UK.
the OMEGAZOID is proud to sponsor Operation: Sleeper Cell and The Agency (as well as pointing at the websites and going 'I made that!' in a girly high pitched squeal ;) ) and as a result of over-flowing loveliness and all other things awesome, the OMEGAZOID would like to extend very special discounts to all members of The Agency who identify themselves in the proper fashion. If you have found yourself here for the first time, then check out the two shops:
the game is running for the next 10 weeks, so we'll be a little busy until then, but any orders will be processed as soon as possible, and i'll be taking commissions and re-stock requests at the end of November/early December in time for Christmas. meanwhile, enjoy the game, and help us save the world!
i haven't made any new hama bead things in aaaaages but daisy's birthday was a special occasion and gave me good excuse to unpack the craft stuff :) me and daisy both have excellent taste in comics!
me, her, izzy and jo had a very girly weekend in, well to the extent that geeks can be girly anyway - it basically just means we were playing singstar and wii fit instead of halo :P speaking of wii fit - i'm doing pretty well on it now, my wii fit age is consistently lower than my real one, and it's actually working at making me fitter! i was slightly disturbed by my (male) yoga trainer (the girl is annoying) having the worlds tinyest ponytail, but on daisy's game it wasn't there! jo didn't even believe me! when i got home, my trainer had longer hair and no ponytail either, but it was back today... i haven't figured out if the trainer changes (but keeps the same voice) or whether he just likes having his hair up some days and not others...
tested out a bit of brawl too which was fun, mario kart wii which is haaaaaard to get the hang of, and played an awesome zombie board game called last night on earth too.
we are also all slightly obsessed with animal crossing, so the DSs came out on sunday :D daisy had lost her village like I did with mine a while ago, so I could feel her pain, but we helped make her a new one and brought her spare things for her house, and everyone came round and brought fruit to Tallaght to start my new orchard, and helped me with the last bit of the weeding, but the big news in Animal Crossing land came when we went to visit izzy's village, sunidale. izzy is slightly more careful with her games, and thus still has a well established village and didn't need much help, so i had a wander and met her villagers. After a bird called Robin introduced himself to me with a squee, I began to get deja vu. It turned out Robin was one of my long-lost villagers from Aceville! I hadn't the heart to do a Zaphod Beeblebox and tell him his home town was destroyed, never to be seen or returned to again. What broke my heart is that he didn't even recognise me - with a new face and hailing from a new village, why would he? I don't know how the Doctor does it....
ace weekend though, lots of gaming, good food and fun times :D
i hope that after all this time, you can excuse the horrendous pun :)
Folksy just went online this week, and were kind enough to make me one of their first featured sellers on the front page!
*waves to any newcomers who found their way here as a result*
so, since i was getting the free promo, i figured i'd better update this thing and let you all know what is going on in the world of the OMEGAZOID. item one - i've moved! OMGZ HQ now resides in the sunny(?) climes of Milton Keynes, and whilst it meant that the Etsy shop was offline for a while, we are now internetted up and back in business :) custom orders and alchemy are still somewhat off the cards until i get round to unpacking all my craft gear (i have a huuuuuge dresser to fill with all my hama beads and bits of paper and wool, yay) but i've started re-listing things in the shop and fulfilling orders, and hope to get on to making and listing some new stuff very soon. am going to miss manchester a lot (especially since the manchester craft mafia girls just opened up membership and have all sorts of fun things planned, but the new job i moved for is totally worth it (christian youth publishing if you're interested) so things are pretty good in the land of the OMEGAZOID.
item two! oooh let me think where we left things off... so many good gigs since then, mars volta, bjork, 65daysofstatic (with errors supporting), iliketrains (with kyte supporting), we are scientists, foo fighters, ben folds (at the shepherds bush empire - first london gig and a gorgeous venue to spend it in) and the awesome, always amazing radiohead where i bought the most comfortable t-shirt in the world (made from organic cotton and recycled plastic bottles!) with the uber-cool typography from in rainbows on it (i got lyrics from house of cards - the only IR track they didn't play that night!). also of note, i played this is it as part of the hide & seek festival in london town (i love being only 40 mins away on the train, there's so much going on there, but it *is* threatening to explode my social budget and bankrupt me) which was awesome fun - running round london trying to stealthily avoid chasers and not get lost/left behind as you travel closer to the secret surprise after party featuring a gig by imperial leisure who i *love* and am going to see live again in a couple of weeks.
item three! this one will be shorter, promise! i got back into animal crossing again after my irish friend ger gifted me with his town, Tallaght, to take over the running and refurbishment of, so that's been fun. other people would find it soul destroying to have to start all over again with the months worth of weeds and the mortgage and the collections and everything, but i am still finding it really fun the third(?) round. i also *just* managed to get my hands on wii fit (it's sold out like crazy everywhere) which is also fun, and got super smash bros. brawl the other weekend which is ace, but been too busy to get much playtime in so far :s but all of that is because i'm busy on a top-secret mission, helping to produce a game all of our own with some friends, which will be unveiled this summer and hopefully raise a lot of cash for Cancer Research UK.
so! all in all, incredibly busy but uber-exciting times :) so please forgive me if i don't update too often, but be assured that OMEGAZOID is still alive, just lying dormant, ready to pounce with some really cool stuff as soon as possible :)
haven't been able to update much recently, as i haven't had much time to do anything particularly new - work is busy and i have an uber important job interview tomorrow, so this is going to be brief, but i really just had to show off my new diesel sweeties goodies that arrived in the post this morning! the t-shirt is soooooo comfy (as per usual with american apparel stuff) and i shall be wearing it to see jimmyeatworld tonight with my rockin' little sis. (how appropriate) you can see on my flickr my awesome red robot pixel socks with tiny angry androids marching up my legs to destroy humanity! (fortunately my knees get in the way at that point)
best be off, sposed to be at oxfam 10 minutes ago - and on that note, stay tuned for news of fair trade fortnight and free chocolate to blog lovers!
just a quickie! i finally got round to making some new stuff, did i mention before that i <3 diesel sweeties? much pixel love :)
any ideas on what to do with this maniac mansion picture? don't suppose anyone has a mother who looks like a green tentacle and is looking for a mother's day gift? (march 2nd everyone, not too far away!) it's probably the biggest thing i've done so far with my mini beads, lots of fun though :)
just listed a new heart pin just in time for valentine's day too (2 shopping weeks left!)
went to see explosions in the sky last night at the newly refurbished academy in manchester. well i *went* to see stars, but got there and found out it was actually explosions who were playing, and i'd got mixed up because stars is *tomorrow* night! doh :s they were awesome though, tis lovely to get lost in live music (as opposed to getting lost in somewhere you have been a million times but has disorientatingly changed round) sometimes, especially a nice bit of atmospheric post-rock. chords don't half have a strange power to make me smile for no reason. they were supported by eluvium, who was also very good, and who made a surprisingly immense amount of noise for just one guy, his guitar, a keyboard and a macbook. a lot less song based than explosions (which is saying something for a band who didn't pause for mid-song break once in the whole 90 minute gig) but more like a 5 second snippet of radiohead stretched out and layered upon layered for 45 minutes. considering people still make 'classical' music now (including a certain mr j. greenwood himself) what on earth are they going to call this stuff in years to come?
ok, i got these absolutely ages ok, but i only just got round to taking a photo (with my shiny new camera that i got for christmas!) so look, i have new moos!
i also found something funny on the packaging that you might not have spotted before - you'll have to check out my flickr for that ;)
i have tons of stuff i want to blog about, including new designs, my radiohead discbox, some biscuits i made... it will be more interesting than it sounds right now, i promise! work is a little crazy at the moment, but i will get round to doing some proper blogging soon, so watch this space :)
happy new year! i'm only um... 12 days late ;) the pre-christmas period was completely crazy, christmas and new year also crazy but in a completely different way, but things are sloooowly starting to get back to as normal as things ever do! really need to restock up on stuff, particularly heart meter pins and heart containernecklaces before valentines day - anyone have any requests from the sold items back catalogue?
anyway, i've collected quite a few good links since the last blog, one of them being the awesome human stop-motion tetris game above, from the same guy who has previously done pong, pole position and space invaders. as you might know from the pixel jewellery, my previous musings on the bling collection and the amount of papercraft and other videogame craft i've posted about, i have a thing for 3D iterations of pixellated, 2D, screen confined computer graphics. fortunately for my own sanity, it seems like i'm not the only one!
yes, lots of people make videogame craft these days, but these pixellated cookies are possibly the first i've seen crossing over into bakery*, and certainly the most delicious of pixel-based goodies documented. pixels, and the 8 bit low-res sprites made out of them, with their little jaggedy-edged aliased squares are visually quite hard, angular, cold images with a limited palette and accurately defined boundaries. not something you would think would translate into the majority of traditional crafts, and certainly not bakery with it's loose control on colours, edges and uniform output. but by adding taste, texture and tangibility we can bring the pixel characters and images off the abstract virtuality of the screen and into something we can experience with more than one sense, validating the attachments we have towards to videogames.
one of the theories i have about why so many geeks like to make stuff out of their favourite games is that we want to experience a part of them in the real world, and because after spending so many hours of the day staring at a screen, craft is a way of getting back to something that exists in other ways than just virtual reality. it's backed up in other areas of life too - art and other precious artifacts are experiencing a rise in value in the auction houses, partially as a response to the mass-availability of virtual digitised copies on the internet. added to that, in rainbows, the latest radiohead album so notoriously given away for free, still got to number 1 both in the UK and the states with its recent physical CD release - not to mention the fact that a fair amount of people (myself included) were willing to pay even more than normal for the deluxe boxed edition. people not only still see the value in having a hard copy of things they could easily store as files on a hard drive, but they actually want the 'real' copy more now that virtual copy is so widely available.
maybe it's because in comparison to the millions of copies digitally created, the original physical objects get relatively rarer and rarer. maybe we value them more because they are so fragile and easily damaged or lost that they demand greater care. maybe it's because so many people are now able to access the piece that the demand for the original exceeds the number of people that would have previously known about it. maybe it's just the novelty, retro nostalgia or blatent disregard for realism that makes things like papercraft generated from low polygon Second Life objects so intriguing a diversion. or maybe, and i think this is my personal favourite, we surround ourselves with these objects and memorabilia in order to further immerse ourselves within the virtual world and pretend that we're in the game. as much as wishing for real life personal save points and pause buttons is clichéd, i know i certainly would have loved to be one of those people making up the tetrominoes in the cinema :)
happy christmas! blog's been quiet cos christmas has been crazy busy this year, but to all my friends, all my blog readers, all the people who are looking at this wondering what on earth someone has bought them for christmas, hope you have all had a lovely day :D and please enjoy the best christmas song ever courtesy of mr shakin' stevens!
today's gaming bounty has included guitar hero, copious singstar, two versions of zelda, and endless ocean - which if you've read the zine you'd know i was really looking forward to :) so going to take a bit of time off to play with all these and will update in the new year.
couldn't leave without giving you all a little something to celebrate and thank you for reading, so you have a choice of *two* gifts from me (via some other reputable websites...):
and since i have just been looking at my google stats (welcome all my new american and canadian readers!) that tell me that you lot love the videogame papercraft, here are some handy links for you.
bsangel (ms hawty mcbloggy herself) is also an etsyer and has some awesome stuff including this highly appropriate xbox 360 condolence card and these envelopes which i love mostly because they seem to be made out of old issues of edge (glad to see i'm not the only one appreciating it for its design just as much as (or in some cases more than) its content ;) ) *
the other thing my google stats picked up this week was this: "why is my wii lighting up when it is off" which sadly seems to stump even the mighty google. i think you'll find it'll be something to do with wiiconnect24, mystery searcher. check your wii settings and tell it not to illuminate the slot every time you have a message. unless you want it to. how's that for public service? :)
*whoops no link, they seem to have sold, have an incredibly sweet player 2 card instead (sigh, /me thinks of valentine's day...)
ps** oh dear, i am a doofus - the envelopes are actually by another seller called betty death who is also awesome and makes amazing cuffs.
ok ok ok, so i'm about 2 weeks overdue with this one, for reasons that shall soon become apparent. so, this was my stall at the manchester craft mafia market at urbis on dec 1st. it was my first ever craft show type thing so i was uber nervous, but everyone was really lovely and i really enjoyed chatting to both the customers and the other sellers! one of the things that was particularly fun was that i had my box of pixelblocks on the corner of my stall for people to play with as their awkward friend/parent was busy looking at my stuffs :) i set it up to have a competition for the best pixelblocks creation to win a genuine imported nintendo nes controller belt buckle if they left their contact details. unfortunately, i have looked everywhere during the past two weeks and seem to have misplaced it :( so i am going to put *all* the pictures up, and if one of them is yours, comment or email me and you might just win by default ;) *
one of the other things that was particularly exciting was that i launched my brand new zine! it's called omegazoid and is the printed sibling of this very blog, with activities, colouring in, me waffling on about games, and some other random stuff. issue 1, now available on etsy, includes pixel by numbers, picross, games reviews and a super secret surprise knitting pattern! i was up til 4am the night before the market printing and cutting and hand stitching each individual binding (i forgot to locate a stapler) and i must say i am rather pleased with the end result! now i just need to sell them all so i can get on with making issue 2 ;)
and to finish, an interesting weird thing that happened this week: not only did the owner of a facebook group i posted on that very day, find my zine (becoming the first ever etsy-facilitated omegazoid owner woo!) randomly without realising who was selling it, but it turns out he used to live round the corner from me! (waves to ste, quick plug for his radio show/podcast one life left which is very good.)
*not a scam, honest, i am just very bad at losing things :(
