the high score table of life

people who have been around me long enough know that i get a little bit excited about high scores. particularly tetris ones :) it's somewhat of an achievement when you beat your own personal best (and since my copy of tetris is so old that it doesn't save high scores, i have to write mine down on the back of the cart in permanent marker*) that you don't get very often in real life.

except for this week anyway :) the aforementioned people will also know that i am a little bit fangirly about late night radio 1, particularly colin murray's show on from 10 til 12. every tuesday night he does the black hole of radio 1 where they play an hour or so of stuff that people send in from the internet, exclusive myspace tracks, youtube live stuff, mashups and remixes from the hype machine etc. well last week i wasn't around much so i had to catch up on what i'd missed on the iplayer (praise the lord for its invention) and found that colin hadn't been in either, so it was huw stevens standing in for him (not quite as amazing as colin but still quite cool and introduced me to the wonder of iliketrains) but i thought i'd listen to the black hole anyway and how glad was i that i did? because i'd completely forgotten about it, but i had submitted my own link the previous week, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why radio 1 played tragedy, the heavy metal bee gee's tribute band, on tuesday 18th november. i have a bit of a history of trying to get my name mentioned on every single radio 1 show i like - i won a competition on mike davies' punk show a while ago (he thought my surname was awesome), but this was certainly a personal high score for me :)

aaaaaaand, all this in a roundabout way links to my most recent collection! if you too want to celebrate being the winner on the high score table of your life, you could do much worse than one of my customised personalised pins or necklaces available on folksy or etsy. how cheesy does that sound?! i promise you i didn't make it all up to sound like the worst infomercial ever, but i really enjoyed making these and i hope people will like them - they come in whatever colour you like (including neon for all you nu-ravers out there) and there may even be a special mention somewhere for the person who comes up with the funniest 3 letter/digit combination ;)

*for the record, 205 lines or 261485 points depending on which one you count

one zine left

i've been mentioning this on the etsy and folksy listings, but omegazoid issue #1 is very nearly sold out! so if you wanted to get one, buy now to avoid disappointment ;) but if you *do* miss out, no worries because issue #2 is on the way soon! anyone got any requests? we'll have more puzzles, more games reviews, some pixel by numbers colouring in, but there's still room to fit in more if anyone has any super special ideas! there may even be some previews of the new stuff i have on the way including hi-score necklaces and pins, the key collection and more christmas tree decorations for this year :) all appearing on flickr soon!

music tip of the week: i went to see sigur ros at alexandra palace in london last week and they were *awesome* - we had snow (twice!), rain and a confetti party, not quite what i was expecting after seeing their heima documentary but a brilliant show, especially given the loveliness of the venue. however, i think the best bit of the night was the support band, for a minor reflection, also from iceland but with less lyrics and slightly more rock. i've been listening to their cd non-stop since i got back and it is the sound of pure win. check out their myspace if you like a good bit of post-rock!

mutants and alchemy

spugmeistress is pleased to announce that Alchemy is open! Alchemy is a feature on Etsy where you can commission custom items to your own specifications. you can either put your request in the public Alchemy forum and sellers will bid on it to see who can do you the best quote - or you can press the 'Request custom item' on my Etsy page if you would like me to do something for you. as you can see from the pics, i've done custom stuff before by request - one person wanted a heart container necklace in legend of zelda colours, and another more recently wanted four lives on their heart meter pin. it's the place to go if you want variations on items i'm selling, requests for restocking from my back catalogue or suggestions or commissions for new stuff!

if you can't think of anything spectacular to ask for, there are a couple of new lines and items in the works, so keep your eyes on this space (or on my flickr) where i'll post up the new stuff before it goes into the shop.

videogames: live and musical

it was london games festival this week, and whilst i didn't get to go to much (or to nottingham game city either :( ) i did get to see videogames live kick the whole thing off last friday. videogames live is an american thing where they get classical orchestras to play the themes from well known games in an attempt to celebrate videogames as a proper artform and give a bit of respect to the composers (can you guess whose idea the whole thing was? ;) ) unfortunately, the games with the most orchestral theme tunes seem to be the type of shooty war games i don't really play, so i didn't recognise half of them. super mario bros, and famous blindfolded youtube guy doing the PROPER tetris theme (the orchestra did a really random version in the arcade medley at the start) were probably my favourites.

i chose the final fantasy video to top off the post for a special reason though - the choir singing in it included my friend daisy! yay daisy! she (and the rest of the choir) was awesome, and blatently the best reason for going, although the choir didn't get to sing as much as they should have. videogame music doesn't tend to have many words in it... legend of zelda could have had words to sing along to if they'd gone with the awesome system of a down version but sadly not :(

one other particularly cool bit of the night was them showing this go team video before the show - i *love* the go team, pacman, and silly urban gaming type things, and i hope you all do too :) i also liked the loading screen they put up in the intermission, every show should have one of these! means you can judge whether you can make it to the bar/loo/tshirt stand in time before they dim the houselights again. life needs more progress bars.

speaking of progress - i've started getting back into my etsy/folksy shops a bit after a flurry of recent activity out of nowhere (thank you random buyers!) so i should probably start posting a bit more. i still have some new stuff i haven't got round to taking photos of, so i should unleash these on the world sometime soon. in the meantime, enjoy your shaky cam youtube fest!