i has a posse in moscow! (and other public service announcements)

heart meter pin, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

hey everyone - am aware i haven't blogged in a while (or updated my flickr - this photo isn't even of what the heart meter pin looks like now!). unfortunately my ibook has died so i can't do a whole lot of internet stuff at home atm, typing this (very slowly, forgive the horrendous grammar...) from my wii currently (thank the lord for the opera browser, even if it is a bit pants!). all donations to the 'let's buy rach a new laptop' fund gratefully accepted ;) especially in the form of buying stuff from the shops or particularly custom orders - if you've been thinking of getting something personalised or asking for something special for a while then now's the time to do it! i certainly have plenty of time on my hands atm so to take advantage of that i'm offering special discounts on all custom orders - just convo me or use the alchemy button on etsy or send me a message on folksy :)
*** notice: due to the wonderful wii browser, i'm able to check both sites and fill orders as fast as ever, but be aware that if you send me a message/email and don't hear back quite so soon, it's just cos i'm waiting for a spare lunchbreak at work to reply on a computer where i can type faster than 8 words per minute ;) ***

so what've i been up to in the meantime? well, making new stuff (which i hope to be able to blog/flickr/upload to shops asap), getting back into exploring the awesome possibilities of cross stitch (don't worry, i won't be putting the hama beads away any time soon), and knitting something very special :)
thanks to everyone who has kept on buying though despite quietness. special props to my new russian fans (i am forever debted to your country (and alexey pajitnov) for giving the world the gift of tetris*), to my repeat buyers who just keep coming back for more (hi kim n holly!) and to the influx of orders from folksy.
hopefully i can return you all to your regularly scheduled OMEGAZOID soon :)

*new hi score! 205 lines, 350631 pts \o/ any tips for gba screenshots?

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

i'm going to pixellate in 2008

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 container necklaces 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 :)

* correction: my good friend thomas just reminded me of the amazing mario cake that one of the Blizzard guys had at his wedding, which probably came before the cookies. as have probably lots of other things that i've forgotten about. either way, the point still stands! :)

happy advent everybody!

nintendo christmas decorations, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

and to celebrate it, we have some new items in the etsy shop, two mario stars and a metroid screw attack to hang on your christmas tree! lots of new items on the way including keyrings, brooch/pins, and my new zine, also entitled omegazoid, so keep an eye open here, on the flickr and on my etsy shop :)

the manchester craft mafia fair was on at urbis yesterday, which was fun, sold some stuff and got to chat to lots of lovely people! i ran a competition on my stall, for the person who made the best pixelblocks creation to win a shiny nintendo belt buckle. photos of all the entries, along with the announcement of the winner, should be up later this week! incidentally, at that pixelblocks link you can see the stop motion pacman animation i made with my set which were not actually bought from firebox at all but rather from the famous FAO Schwarz toy shop in new york :)

last of all i just had to link to this diesel sweeties strip, since it pretty much describes me and my affinity for tetris. after the craziness of craft fairing, arranging falling blocks is actually quite relaxing!

ms pacman is so much better than mr pacman

new bracelets, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

only a quick one, because it's the manchester craft mafia market this saturday and i'm busy designing my new zine, making lots of keyrings and generally trying to get ready in time! also, some etsy milestones this week - i hit 100 hearts thanks to etsy buyer latara, and a cool guy called jim from illinois bought 3 things in one go and made me very happy :)

thought you might like to see these new bracelets that should be up for sale in my etsy shop sometime next week-ish, would love any feedback on whether you like them, which design you prefer, or any suggestions for how to make them better on my flickr.

in other news, this watch doesn't exist (yet) but if it did, i would need it desperately.

see you on saturday if you are coming along to urbis, you really should because there are going to be tons of cool people there (and me) - here's the flyer!

game city and other such fun

storm troopers love the wii, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

so much fun it took me a week to recover! as it might you too after you read this mammoth of a blog post ;)

so, first things first - nottingham game city was the 25th to 28th october, nicely timed for my half term holiday, and it was ace. didn't make it to see the lost levels on thursday unfortunately but got the train nice and early on friday to arrive just in time for the lego star wars talk with jonathan smith from tt games. he showed us the new wii version of the complete saga, complete with wii lightsabre (tm) - a wiimote duct taped onto his son's red telescopic toy light sabre, showed us all the new stuff they've added to lego star wars 1 and 2 (including the ability to fly the millenium falcon round the pod racing circuit) and also talked a little bit about the upcoming lego indiana jones and lego batman games (on which ign mis-reported and got all the comics geeks up in arms - yes, including me). got to speak to him afterwards a little bit about educational gaming and how all the kids i've worked with absolutely love lego star wars and we love playing it with them because the co-op mode is perfect for teaching them how to work together (when they're not killing each other with force chokes that is, which i note features heavily in the new arcade modes). anyway, there was a star wars panel afterwards, mostly dominated by some bloke from SFX, i played around a bit on some of the indiecade games (cloud was fun until i kinda broke it), wandered over to the art of the game exhibition which was either smaller than i expected, or most of it was hidden away (flickr evidence suggests the latter) but there was some cool jon burgerman stuff there (he designed the game on exhibition in london last year). then it was 3pm, time for the unveiling of wii lego star wars: the complete saga on the mahusive giant screen in market square, and the chance to have a go on it! darth vader went on it first, against a random jedi (jedi won, not sure how staged that was), then they let the kids who had queued up have a go (all were absolutely loving it and hilarious to watch) and then i got to have a go against some random guy who was actually more enthusiastic about it than me (hard to believe) and i kicked his ass :) the controls were pretty easy to grasp, although i didn't get to try out the force moves cos aayla secura apparently doesn't have any, but she was pretty damn sweet with a light sabre. then i checked out the demo pods in the marquee they had in the square and spent the rest of the afternoon teaching some kid how to play guitar hero, which was fun!

saturday i had to get up *really* early to get the train to get there for 10 as not to miss the opportunity to drink tea and doodle with the aforementioned jon burgerman. ok, i don't drink tea, so i had hot chocolate instead and whilst i was waiting for them to go get some from the shop, i made some katamari damacy papercraft that had been left over from the wonderland craft session on thursday. met jon, who is lovely and did a sketch for my sister who is a huge fan, did some doodling, met a cool new friend called elsa (*waves* yay i wasn't the only girl gamer there on their own!) and was promptly late for the are you indie? talk with the also aforementioned indiecade people and alice taylor of the *also* aforementioned wonderland blog. who i got to meet afterwards and swap moo cards with, along with cory doctorow of boing boing fame! it was interesting actually, making the connection between indie gaming and the 'handmade' craft market in that you respond differently and accept different standards from them than you would to more commercial products - but also that indie games and webcomics can follow a similar distribution/monetizing model in that you can give something away for free, and still make enough back from your fans to keep going.

anyway, next was the big show. keita takahashi of katamari damacy fame did his keynote talk (which is best documented on the wonderland blog here) which was weird, funny, awkward, insightful and introduced by alice herself, giving a big shout out to etsy and the videogame craft phenomena which was nice! i haven't actually played much katamari, since i don't have a ps2 (yet) i've been limited to a quick go on someone else's psp, which allegedly is quite hard and not particularly true to the ps2 game (phew, i didn't just suck then), but it is a really fun concept, and the art and the story and the music and everything is just ace. keita ended the talk with a small demo of his new game nobi nobi boy (it means stretchy boy, amongst other things) which also looks kinda fun - any game in which you can give a pig a piggyback, eat it, fly up into the air and then poo it out and watch it float back to the ground has to be worth a go ;)

next up was a talk entitled 'my mum' by ste curran of thetriforce.com which was basically about how his mum used to love gaming back in the pre-atari days, fell out of love with it when the industry got a bit teenage boy-focussed (guns and shooting and driving and killing people) and how he got her back into it (and got less bored with gaming himself) through the wonder of animal crossing (aka the 2nd best game ever). and how games should be broad enough to cater to everyone and not just teenage boys. kinda preaching to the choir in places, well especially to me as i did an internal 'yay!' at every example of what gaming can and should be doing, but nice to hear someone in the actual games industry be sticking up for the gamers who aren't all about the fragging. and also, to be termed a 'hardcore' gamer, cos yes, i have been known to import games from japan (even if it was donkey konga) and although the types of games i like best are usually lumped in with gimmicks and casual games, i do care about them alot. so much so that i'm half tempted to try and get into the industry myself, but that's a whole nother story... rushed straight out of that talk (which i have to note, was in one of the smaller screens of the broadway arts cinema, with stripey two seater sofas instead of chairs) and into the ARG talk, with guy parsons masquerading as an unfortunately-unable-to-make-it dan hon
from mind candy (the people who did perplexcity of which i was a (small) part of). so not much i didn't know, but nice to see guy again, and reminded me why, despite the bitterness surrounding the later stages of PXC, args are actually really fun. then a quick dash to page 45, the best comic shop in the world, where i got issue #1 of suburban glamour (click for preview) which i read on the way home and is absolutely gorgeous (and brilliant) and back to manchester for...

arcade fire at the MEN with my mini-me (little sister)! which was *awesome*. how they managed to make a huge arena feel like the manchester academy i don't know, but i'm terribly grateful as i nearly cried when i couldn't get tickets to see them last time round at the apollo. pics on my flickr, but nowhere near as good as the ones my sister took (she is an amazing photographer). got a nifty lenticular poster of the neon bible too which is now up in my room and looks like the neon sign is lighting up when you see it from different angles. i love neon :) i wish i was in the arcade fire, they looked like they were having so much fun. and i wanted the singy girl's boots.

sunday time! the trains were rubbish on sunday so my mum graciously offered to road trip with me so she could go shopping whilst i geeked out. due to rubbish traffic over high peak i missed the first 20 minutes of from russia with love: the documentary the bbc made about the politics, rights wars and general hilarity surround the birth and rise of tetris. quite funny to see how serious it got over one little computer game, that turned out to pretty much be one of the key reasons nintendo, and the gameboy ever got so big in the first place. there was an interview with the guy who made it, alexey pajitnov, afterwards which was just brilliant - he is such a lovely lovely man, who incidentally, plays with his pipes to the left (yes i asked the silly question, everyone laughed, it needed to be done.) i also got to ask him later on which version of tetris he deems to be the most definitive, to which he said the gameboy one, which was nice cos i totally agree, and was bewildered at the weird version they had in the cabinet downstairs where a guy was attempting the tetris world record. there was also a smaller talk downstairs afterwards where the *real* tetris nerds got to geek out even more about versions and rules and whether the s or z block is better (alexey said s, i think i agree) and inbetween there was a giant queue full of people wanting to shake his hand and i think he was a little bit astonished all these people wanted to talk to him! i got my tetris cart signed and couldn't actually believe how excited i was about it.

after that it all felt a little bit of an anti-climax, but fortunately i had more fun in store in the form of my good friend john who was in town visiting and we hung out and watched neils' hole in my shoe song (very topical for me at the moment) on youtube, and on monday went into manchester for a spot of shopping and hanging around in arty cafe's and finding john a new hat (and a lovely one it was too) so yes, there's more pics up on my flickr if you want to go have a look, thank you if you've managed to keep reading this far, and i'll update with more recent news later in the week!

immensity

white light, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

i went to see oceansize tonight :) they were amazing (as usual). i don't think i have smiled, or rocked out, so hard in a *long* time. i like this picture because the light overwhelms you just like the music does when you see them live.

anyway, on my way home, i stopped off at moonlight to get some ice cream (damn you, rob, for introducing me to that place) and then i got the bus home. on said bus, i managed to achieve my best ever tetris high score! 199 lines! \o/ *one* away from the elusive level 20 just as we were pulling into parrs wood. but at that point the pieces weren't getting to the sides even on full whack, so i had no chance. i love tetris (but only the original gameboy classic cartridge version, none of these 'new improved' efforts).

so yes, a pretty good night :D

p.s. went to see control last night, very good but very sad.

p.p.s radiohead day tomorrow!!!