World and Writing of Adam David Carter
My fiancee bought a Tintin poster from Tintin Shop Uk in Covent Garden London. Now it has pride of place on my wall. Frame from Ikea.
It of my Favourite Tintin story ‘Explorers on the Moon’. In its native french it is called ‘We Walked on the Moon’ which I think is much cooler than the english version.
I am a big fan of Hergé and his Ligne claire (French for “clear line”).
Well I have preordered Motorsport Manager.
Cannot wait. I have being playing Motorsport Manager on iOS for the last week to sate my hunger for this game. Now it is no longer a challenge :-(.
For those that do not know. Motorsport Manager is a game for iOS and Android. And it is brilliant. It was created by Christian West. He worked for a big name developer and worked on it in his spare time. Because it was wildly successful it allowed him to setup his own game development company. Now he is working with Sega to bring a more complex version to life.
I am a huge fan of F1. My Fiancée evens watches it now with me. I remember playing Grand Prix Manager 2 1 on my friends windows computer. He always loved Michael Schumacher but I didn’t.
Whilst writing this post a quick google 2search revealed Looking at the other F1 management games I realised how antiquated the genre was. Most of the games were made by fans and had not evolved past the formula 1 managerial sims created by Edcom with Grand Prix Manager 1&2 games from the mid nineties. So seeing Motorsport Manager with it modern UI is really exciting. They are getting help from Sega’s Sport Interactive as well. Yes they made Football Manager so that only makes me more excited. I have always liked Football Manager but I not that connected to Football world so some of it could be some what esoteric.
But it all happens on September so I will see if I can sate my excitement till then.
Also want to add that the fine people at Literature and Latte have being adding a lot a content to their blog about Scrivener for iOS or just Scrivener if you are looking on the App Store. Also they have an interview with Charlie Stross on there. Even if he does looks like a chubby Heisenberg.
Which reminds me I need to give Scrivener a five-star review.
I have a confession to make.
I have never expected anybody to ever read my blog. It was to be an external expression of my consciousness on the internet. Much like Last Week Tonight with John Scream in the Void. Guess that was kind of naive.
But two friends from work have read it and that was two more then I was expecting. In fact I always thought is was more of a negative number. Which was silly I suppose.
Their feed back was greatly received as would all feedback.
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As I write this I am currently enjoying a nice latte at sixeight Kafé.
It is located near Pigeon Park (Or St Philip’s Cathedral of Birmingham. located on Colmore Row. I have no idea why it is called Pigeon Park). It is just behind House of Fraser on Temple Row by the Grand Western Arcade.
Not that I say this lightly but it has some of the best coffee in Birmingham City Centre, which no small feat. What I like about it is there is a consistency to the coffee that I do not get in other coffee shops. One of the reason I avoid the High Street chains is whether you get good coffee can change from person to person. I used to like the coffee from Nero’s in the Bullring but the person who made coffee left and since then the coffee has not been as good.
But my favourite bit about sixeight kafé is the large basement underneath or the speak-easy style as they call it. It is nice and cool which nice on a hot day like this. It is also very quiet as well which is very good for writing. They also have a great selection of local sourced cakes.
The only down side is they don’t take ApplePay/AndroidPay but take contactless payment but with a 25p surcharge. It still on par with the High Street chains for a coffee & cake so I am happy to pay for the much better atmosphere.
If I was going to try hosting a writers group, I would do it here.
Cheers Peeps
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I write this I am recovering from a spot of Lurgy. Or is it The Lurgy. I am always unsure, should you call it The Flu or it just Flu. Or it a illness scale “Last year I had flu but this year I had The Flu”. That is without going into where Man Flu sit, which my Fiancée assures me is a real thing.
Started to come down with a cold last Tuesday. Wednesday it got on to my chest and roughed me up a bit. I have what you might call a weak chest. I had a chest infection when I was 27 and ever since then when some cold gets on to my chest it f**ks me up. I spent a lot of time sweating and being completely out of it.
Now me being ill is not new but it hampers my writing as it happened at the start of two days off straight. Normally I will get the odd day here and there as I work in retail. So I think it is what I get for planning two full days after working five days. I work with the public a lot and it means I am front and centre when comes to illnesses.
Anyhow I did was realise how cool Alto’s Adventure is. It was only game I could play in my fevered state. I played on my Apple TV and all took was a pressing single button. It became quite zen and calming after while. Broken up with small spells of my freaking out because I had got to the furthest distance marker.
I also played a lot of SteamWorld Heist by Image & Form. It is set in the same universe of SteamWorld Dig (my favourite mining game) and full of cute steam bots called Cowboys. It is a cute and fun game. I was made aware of it by Jam_Sponge of the excellent DaftSouls podcast. He said it was like Xcom and I see what means. Xcom Two always feels like when things go wrong, it is you who made the mistake. SteamWorld Heist is very similar in that regard. It came out on the Nintendo DS store awhile ago but as I don’t have a DS I had to bide my time. Music to the game is supplied by Steam Powered Giraffe.
I also listened to a lot of Bukle’s Podcast(Aka Adam Buxton) which is very good.
And the Literature and latte are finally releasing Scrivener for iOS. Which I thought would never happen. I knew they had gone to beta testing the program but I had expected that it would take the amount time it took them to get that point ie six months to a year. Well that is what I get for not trusting Keith. When it comes out I will put my thoughts on using it here.
TLDR I’ve been of work for just under a week and I was so out all I could do was play Altos Adventure as it was the only thing I could get my head around.
Played a board game night with friends.
It was fun played Skull!(and Roses) and Trivial Pursuit. We had hope to play Battlestar Galactica:The Board Game but by the we got back from the pub we had had to much Proseco
Next time we are going to play Pandemic which I am really looking forward to.
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Had a few issues with my domain mapping (self inflicted) when I change over my domains.
But I’m back up and running.
I will try and update the site more often. Have a few idea for blog posts.
On a side note I have got my internet back, which was good cause it was very stressful. And I’m also getting married in October so that has been the most important thing in my life.
But I realised I was always putting some things off and waiting to before going ahead with my life. It was always “I do that when I get time” or “When (insert random time) happens I’ll get started on my Novel”. So I decided it best to start now.
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As my country seeks to extricate itself from the EU, I wonder what their expectations are and what they will be satisfied with.
Leave the EU completely and retain complete control of state. With its control over our economy and the self inflicted wound that goes with it.
Or leave the EU but retain connection to the Single Market, but have to deal with the free movement of people. This is the one I don’t think the people who voted leave would be happy with. They will cry foul and go even further into the bosom of Nigel Farage, UKIP and their fellow hard right groups.
Now to be honest I understand how they feel. To be disinterested, ignored and left behind. The North of England has had a rough time for the last 30-40 years. Since mining industry was closed in the eighties and manufacturing became less important to the Nation’s economy as a whole. It has been poorly invested in over the past few decades.
Some of the poorest areas of Western Europe are in the North of England. They have received a lot of support from the EU but they have seen immigrants getting jobs when they can’t get jobs themselves or lost jobs to only be replaced by cheaper labour.
It is easy to blame immigration for all your woes but that undervalues the years of systemic underinvestment from Westminister. This will not change anytime soon and will probably made harder with the economy weakened or possible recession.
My only hope is that the people who voted to leave the EU don’t lose hope when the impossible expectation they were given fails to materialise. Don’t give in to the hate and let others make their decision for them.
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So we had the Openreach engineer out again and he took one look at the number and said he “Could not install the line” as it was a Midland exchange number. As I am on the Central exchange that was not going to work. A nice guy called Gary has been chasing up BT Openreach and keeping me informed on what was going on. Due to his hard work I finally feel like I am getting some where. Which is a good feeling. An engineer is coming out on Friday to fix the line and as it a Central number I feeling good about my chances.
I am currently writing in the basement of Coffee Lounge just opposite New Street Station and Grand Central. It is possibly the largest independent coffee shop in Birmingham. To be honest that might include the chains as well. I had a Flat White