New Year

I always thought that once I finished in education, I’d stop thinking that a new year began in September (or in the case of Cambridge, October). That hasn’t been the case, because you can never escape the fact that summer is a time for holidays, rest and recuperation, and as such, autumn always feels like a kind of new beginning.

This is especially true for me this year. In my professional life, we’ve finished off the latest James Bond game and have started work on some great new projects. In my spiritual life, I’ve changed churches, starting a brand new one with a small group of friends and seeing if we can make a big difference. And I guess there are changes in my personal life too, with one of my best friends moving to New Zealand for a year.

These transitions were all marked by a couple of incredible back to back holidays. First I went to Greenbelt for the third year in a row. It’ll take a lot for it to ever influence me as much as on my first visit, but I still learned a lot. Plus, I finally got to see Jars of Clay! Then it was off to Tokyo for an extended farewell party for James, before Dave and I saw how much of the country we could see in a week (tick off Tokyo, Yokohama, Shizuoka, Osaka, Nara, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kyoto, Uji and umm… Dubai Airport). It was incredible, I hope I can write some more about it soon.

All in all, it was a perfect way to embrace the new year. Hopefully lots of exciting times ahead.

Fishing

I usually rip Dave continually about his love of fishing. None more so than when I suggested that he get a tattoo of a rod on his back, a line down his arm and a fish on his foot so he could experience his hobby everywhere he went. However, I’m a fair guy and I’ll give anything a try, so I gave him today to convince me that the sport wasn’t completely boring.

As much as it pains me to admit it, it was actually somewhat alright.

Now, I don’t think I’ll ever be fishing obsessed. I can’t ever imagine myself reading books about insects and tying bits of coloured thread to tiny gold hooks. Or subscribing to Fly, Rod and Reel magazine for the latest tips and tricks. Or enthusing about the latest piece of angling equipment that I’ve wasted my money on just to boost my chances of catching carp in a river in Scotland in November. Which is probably all inaccurate, but that just shows you how much I care.

In fact, I’m someone much more likely to want to ignore etiquette, and start using some of that fish pheromone Dave and I picked up in America to make things a whole lot easier. Because at the end of the day, catching fish is fun. Especially when you’re a hot-blooded testosterone-fueled male with a lust for blood. And dead fish.

Today we only managed to catch one fish between us. Amusingly, it was when Dave came over to tell me to take a ten minute break, because my attempts at casting had the word “failure” written in a mess of fishing line on the water. Of course, as soon as Dave grabbed the rod to show me the error of my ways, a rainbow trout with a keen sense of irony decided to bite. It reminded me a little of the time when my Dad decided to show me how to mow the lawn properly, and promptly ran over the cable.

Sadly, that was it for the day and all the excitement had disappeared before lunch. Still, there’s enough blood lust left in me to want to go again. Probably with some stun grenades. I’ve heard they work well.

Develop 2010

Thanks everybody for a fantastic time at Develop Conference!

It was really good to be back down in Brighton and hanging out with the rest of the UK game development community. Although for all intents and purposes GDC is bigger and better, it does lack that sense of camaraderie that Develop attains. Especially when everyone is angry at the government for the lack of tax breaks.

I felt especially privileged to attend as a speaker, and being able to give something back to the community. Steven Tovey and I spoke on SPU Assisted Rendering, which I hope everyone enjoyed! You can check out the slides here if you’re interested:

If I was to take one thing from Develop,  it’s that in the games industry we should always prefer quality over quantity, and the long-term over the short-term. These are thoughts I’ve had for a long time, but at Develop, we were discussing these issues over a pint in the bar at night, then woke up to find people like Greg Zeschuk and Tim Schafer confirming them in the mornings’ keynotes. It’s always good to discover other minds that think like yours!

However, what often turns out to be the best thing about conferences is hanging out with people from your own company. Sometimes these are people you’ve never spoken to, at other times your friends and regularly people at all stages in between. You can never ever put a value on that, or the added enthusiasm everyone returns with.

This year we actually managed to make most of that hanging out happen in pubs around Brighton. Two years ago, all of our evenings ended up being taken up by a variety of other activities, but this time we actually got to see some more of the city at night. In many ways Brighton reminds me of Cambridge, with lots of pubs scattered all around the city centre, cropping up in quaint and winding lanes intermingled with a variety of interesting shops. We made a concerted effort to hit as many of the pubs as possible, but there were just too many, so…

Roll on next year! Probably have to think of something else to speak about first…

Off to Develop

It’s once again time for Develop, the United Kingdom’s biggest games conference. I was last there two years ago, where I enjoyed the sights of Brighton’s post-colonial sea front, the company of my co-workers, the bright lights of the awards ceremony, and of course, the free ice creams. More importantly, I learned important lessons about rendering skies, multi-GPU, quickly sobering up when games journalists approach and drunkenly abusing carveries.

Fish and chips at Develop Conference 2008

Now I’m back again, and this time I’m speaking! Steven Tovey and I are presenting a session on SPU Assisted Rendering on Wednesday afternoon at 3pm, where we’ll discuss things like car damage, deferred lighting and engine design, all with the end goal of helping you use the PlayStation3′s SPUs to speed up your rendering. What’s more, we’re actually hosting Wednesday’s coding track, so you’ll get to see a whole lot more of us throughout the day.

Hopefully see you all there! Right, now off to pack…

Things I’m Looking Forward To

It’s always good to be positive, so I thought I’d compile a list of all the things I’m looking forward to in the coming months.

• The FIFA World Cup, sixty-four football matches spanning a whole month.
• Swindon Town in the League One play-offs.
• Blur will finally be released, 28th May in the United Kingdom.
• Announcement of a new iPhone, hopefully released sooner rather than later.
• E3, including the first look at the Nintendo 3DS and possibly the new Sony PSP.
• Potential trips to Develop in Brighton followed by SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles in July.
• Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Monkey Island 2 Special Edition and hopefully Inazuma Eleven, Again and Last Window are all great new video games to be released.

And this only takes me up until the end of the summer, who knows what excitement the autumn and winter will bring? So roll on the coming months!

Book Review: Seriously Funny

Adrian Plass. Jeff Lucas. How can you go wrong? Well, it turns out you can’t really. Seriously Funny contains twenty-four short letters bounced back and forth between the authors which contain their trademark humour but also their incredibly encouraging and challenging view of the Christian faith.

Seriously Funny by Adrian Plass and Jeff Lucas

What I have loved about Adrian Plass is how he has communicated that you don’t need to be some sort of superhuman to be a Christian. That there are no spiritual “haves” whilst the rest of us have to reside as “have nots”. We are all fools and idiots but despite all that, God still loves us and can use us. And this view is communicated just as strongly through the words of this book, as Jeff and Adrian humbly trade stories of their failure, and also occasionally of their successes, with plenty of stories about life on the Christian speaking and writing circuits.

Church life and theology are also discussed, nothing too heavy as this is a fairly light book. What particularly stood out for me was a short conversation about how we as Christians often attribute small events and coincidences to God. “Thank you God, for providing me with a free parking space!” Because God obviously cares about such huge matters that he deems to intervene, but on small trivial issues such as famine and war he decides it is not worth his effort. Of course, there’s a huge hypocrisy there to the point that it becomes insulting, but Adrian and Jeff only ever criticise from deeply inside the Christian faith, with their own mistakes firmly on the table first.

Yet above all, you’ll finish reading this book with a smile on your face, encouraged further in your faith and challenged too. If this is your first meeting with these two men, then keep reading, things get much, much better. But if you’re already a fan, although this isn’t their best work, it’s still a must read.

General Election Predictions

It’s time for my eagerly awaiting General Election predictions! After a fairly decent go of the European Election last year, I couldn’t let the opportunity to predict the most unpredictable election for years pass me by.

Who knows what will happen? Will the Liberal Democrats continue to ride the waves of their success after the first leaders’ debate? Or will the young idealists have got bored of politics and stayed away from the polling booths like they’re prone? Will the Conservatives have managed to convince the electorate to let them return? Or will the inability to communicate the “Big Society” return to haunt them? Will Labour have the trust of the voters to return the economy around? Or will the demand for change cause their supporters to look elsewhere?

Frankly, I don’t know. We’ll find out tonight, or more accurately, early tomorrow morning. But that’s not going to stop me having a go at guessing the results anyway. First up, let’s predict the share of the vote:

My predicted share of the vote

According to the BBC’s election seat calculator, that gives the following results:

• Conservatives: 280
• Labour: 261
• Liberal Democrats: 80
• Other: 29

However, as that predicts a uniform swing, it isn’t entirely accurate. In fact, an opinion poll by Ipsos MORI conducted in marginal seats predicted a 7% swing from Labour to the Conservatives. I can’t believe in reality that it’ll be as big as that, but it will still obviously be bigger than the uniform swing predicted above. Thus taking into account a slightly bigger swing away from Labour in marginals, my final predictions are as follows:

• Conservatives: 292
• Labour: 247
• Liberal Democrat: 82
• Other: 29

Therefore I predict a hung parliament, with the Conservatives short of a majority by 34 seats, and possibly also short of being able to form a coalition with the DUP. That said, not only is the election result incredibly unpredictable, so is what will happen afterward. There is nothing to stop a Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition taking place with these figures.

To go into some more detail about the smaller parties. I expect the SNP to return 6 seats, gaining Ochil & South Perthshire from Labour but losing either Perth & Perthshire North or Angus to the Conservatives. They will probably hold onto Dundee East from a Labour challenge. Plaid had 3 seats at the last election, but that is notionally down to 2 due to boundary changes. I expect them to pick up Arfon and Ynys Mon from Labour, or possibly Ceredigion from the Liberal Democrats, to gain 4 seats in total. However, I do regard them as the weakest of the nationalist parties and most likely to have a bad night, but it will mostly depend on the night Labour are having. They will definitely return 2 seats. Looking at the independent candidates, in Wyre Forest I expect Richard Taylor to be elected for a third time, but George Galloway (now Poplar & Limehouse) and Dai Davies (Blaenau Gwent) to lose both their seats to Labour. I expect the Northern Ireland parties to pick up 18 seats in total, which is guaranteed to be my most accurate prediction.

I wish I could do the same detailed analysis with all the parties, but frankly, I’d get it hopelessly wrong. And I’m riding my luck with guessing the few constituencies above, because local issues always have a part to play, that I have little knowledge of in areas other than Liverpool, Swindon and possibly Cambridge. But we can still ask one further question: will there be any Michael Portillos?

Well, nothing will ever quite be as satisfying as that moment, but a few big politicians could fall tonight. I’m going to predict that all Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians will remain safe, although there’s always the chance they could trade blows with Oliver Letwin and Chris Huhne in very marginal seats. Labour however, definitely have politicians at risk. Jim Knight (who?) will go, as will Jacqui Smith, her of the expenses scandal, but I’ll give Tony McNulty the benefit of the doubt.

So, to conclude, I predict a hung parliament with a potential Conservative minority government. It will also be a good night for the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru will gain but the SNP will stay comfortably where they are. It will not be a disaster for Labour, although it might be for Jacqui Smith, but it will be disappointing for the Conservatives to have failed to gain a majority.

I’ll update tomorrow when we can see just how wrong I am.

Update 08/05/10: The final results are in:

• Conservatives: 307 (36.1%)
• Labour: 258 (29.0%)
• Liberal Democrats: 57 (23.0%)
• Others: 28 (11.9%)

Clearly, both the Conservatives and Labour did much better than I expected, with the big losers being the Liberal Democrats. This saddens me a lot, because there was a lot of hope and optimism throughout the campaign, but in the end, it was replaced by the fear of two party politics and everybody reverted to type.

In terms of the smaller parties, the SNP didn’t make any gains as I predicted, whilst Plaid did worse than I expected. I was also right that George Galloway and Dai Davies would lose their seats, but wrong that Richard Taylor would keep his.

With regards to personalities, it turns out that the BBC swingometer didn’t highlight all the ministers that could lose their seats, so I missed out on people like Shahid Malik. Interestingly, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats barely traded blows at all, and it seems as if where people knew they had a good MP (as opposed to a bad one marred by the expenses scandal, or even a new unknown candidate) they voted for them heavily. Evan Harris and Lembit Opik were both big shocks though, particularly the latter.

What’s interesting about the way the parliament has ended up is that the only obvious coalition is between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, but that’s really going to struggle. It’s going to be a very interesting time in Britain, but a good one as finally political parties learn to work together. And I hope they’ll need to, because I think we need to implement some form of proportional representation (either Single Transferable Vote or the Additional Member System) as soon as possible to restore the public’s connection with politics.

Voting

Finally, polling day is upon us! I feel a little like a child on Christmas Eve, incredibly excited by what tomorrow night will bring. Ignore any nonsense you might hear about this having an effect on the country, what I care about is good television. It’s like England being in the World Cup final, but spaced out over eight glorious hours of BBC coverage.

To be honest, I have to take that viewpoint. It’s not as if I live in the most politically enlightened constituency. In fact, I almost certainly live in the least – Liverpool Riverside.

My wonderful constituency

At the last two general elections, Liverpool Riverside has had the lowest voter turnout in the UK. In 2005 the turnout was a measly 41.5%. Despite that fact, and despite the fact that there was an 11.0% swing to the Liberal Democrats, Louise Ellman was returned as the Labour MP with a majority of over 10,000.

This has its inevitable effect on politics in the constituency. The other parties don’t even bother fielding decent candidates. Hustings events are almost non-existent. In fact, the closest challenger, the Liberal Democrat candidate, didn’t even bother turning up to the one hustings event I did hear about (even if it was days after the event).

So what choice do I have? I could return Louise Ellman as an MP, who undoubtedly has done a great job at standing up for asylum and refugee issues in the constituency, personally intervening in cases we know well. On the other hand, she’s a Labour loyalist who tows the party line, and thus voted for things I profoundly disagree with, such as the Iraq War and the Digital Economy Bill. Or I could vote Liberal Democrat, for a candidate who can’t be bothered to turn up to hustings events or push a leaflet through my letterbox, and who my sources tell me was known as “Duracell” at university because he wouldn’t shut up. Frankly, even mentioning the Conservative candidate (or god forbid, the UKIP and BNP candidates) is a waste of time. Especially when he uses the phrase “never walk alone” in his campaign literature.

Despite all this, I love the first-past-the-post system. I love the power it gives me to not only be individually represented by an MP, but the power to throw them out, to challenge them and to hold them accountable. I love the strong, decisive governments it gives Britain (well, most of the time). Yet even I am struggling to justify this belief to myself at the moment.

I will go out to vote tomorrow. But sadly, I won’t be voting for the person who best represents my constituency, because I haven’t had the chance to meet them. I’ll be voting based on the performance of their leaders in television debates, vague promises in manifestos that are scared to be honest with the electorate, and on the simple fact that if this is a safe Labour seat this election, maybe I can make it an unsafe Labour seat at the next election, bringing some much needed political debate into this wonderful part of the United Kingdom.

Work

There was a brief period as a child when my parents started a small weekly family Bible study. Every week there was a verse to memorise, neatly written on bits of card that were placed all around the house. I have to say, it wasn’t very successful. In fact, there’s only one verse that I can even vaguely remember, which was:

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord…”

Colossians 3:23

It’s something that has stuck with me through the years, and I quite like the way The Message summarises it:

“Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t cover up bad work.”

Yet something that has struck me recently is how in churches this verse is often very selectively applied. Yes, of course you work hard at your job, 9am to 5pm, but just don’t let it stress you out and hurry quickly home, because that’s when church work starts, and that’s what’s really important. Right?

Actually, no. For me, I feel that God has called me to my job, and that doesn’t just involve turning up 9 till 5, it involves going the extra mile, putting in the extra effort and working as if I’m doing it for the Lord. It doesn’t take a backseat to anything I do for church, it takes precedence.

Look, if work/life balance is hard, work/church balance is harder. It’s something we all have to battle with, and there are certainly times that work can dominate to our detriment. But that’s not always the case: work isn’t always something be sacrificed for the greater good. All I can do is remember something so important that God put it in the Bible twice:

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might.”

Ecclesiastes 9:10

Summer

This year, summer began on Saturday 24th April. I know that for certain, because that’s the day they finally started to play cricket again, which I’m fortunate enough to be able to watch from my bedroom window. The sounds of wood on willow, friendly banter and gentlemanly applause echoing through my flat brought a small smile to my lips, as I knew the harsh winter was over and months of sunshine were ahead.

The start of summer

Of course, in real life, we’ve now had that week of glorious April weather, and will have to put up with four months of something nominally called “summer”, but instead featuring plenty of cloud, wind and rain. As it is, I’ve just turned on the central heating in my flat. It really shouldn’t be this cold in May.

But despite the inevitably of the weather, I’m optimistic about the coming months. For the last few days I’ve finally felt healthy again, and it’ll only be a couple of weeks before my toe is fully healed and I can return to playing football. Although this year got off to a slow start, it looks as if I can finally put my foot back on the accelerator. And of course there’s the World Cup to look forward to. Who could ask for more than that?