Pling!

i33

So, I spent the bank holiday weekend at i33, the Multiplay i-series LAN events held at Newbury Racecourse.

The Cast

Simon “Demented-Idiot” Mott

Niall “Rivernile” Scott

Shane “Dataforce” McCormack

Thursday

Thursday was fun. I got home from work and did what I normally did, went on IRC and made tea whilst pondering whether or not to go to salsa or not. Then the others came on IRC and basically swayed my decision for me (they were having all the fun 45 minutes down the road whilst I was at home…), so I quickly packed up, bought an Early Arrival ticket, hopped in the car and went to Newbury, the home of sweaty, smelly geeks.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t play any games on Thursday. We went to Tesco’s and bought a tent among other essentials (which for me was Coke Zero, oranges and crisps) and then had fun setting up the tents in the gales that were occuring at the time (with lots of innuendo: “Simon’s pole is longer!” “No, put your pole into Shane’s hole”) and Shane saying “Ow, ow, ow” a lot when getting whipped by the tent in the wind, and still not moving out of the way until we told him to… Still, my Scouting knowledge came in use when it came to putting up tents (epic fail on Niall’s behalf tbfh), and then we retired back to the Berkshire and played some more multiplayer Notepad…

Friday

Okay, this is the day I actually started playing some games: EVE Online, Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 were the games of the day, followed by an amazing Chinese in Newbury, but then I decided to give up and head home for the night – I needed sleep and I wasn’t going to get any sleeping in the cold and wind of Newbury (I only got about 4 hours the night before) so a quick trip home to Oxford later, followed by a solid 8 hours of sleep, I was set for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday

Despite having to travel from Oxford, I still managed to get back gaming before anyone else was up – catching up on gaming from the night before.

Saturday was the day of the DDR qualifiers, which I qualified absolutely no problem, alongside yet more gaming

(if the above video does not play, click here, or download full quality here: http://www.pling.org.uk/static/i33ddrqual.mpg)

This was followed by yet more gaming and then the big announcement, where Multiplay were holding i34. It didn’t really matter because we weren’t going to be there, but we went along for shits and giggles (and also free stuff, but we didn’t get any), but it was good fun, and we then decided to try and get the Golden Tickets in the quiz, but failed miserably…

Anyway! After that fun, we headed off into Newbury, grabbing some food from Pizza Express before disappearing off to Varsity (which had a dance floor and women, including one who wanted to dance with me – a rarity in my life!)

Sunday

Sunday morning started off with drunken wanderings around the Racecourse with a camera, followed by tentage and yet more gameage, mainly EVE and then in the evening my nickname was called over the tannoy to report for the DDR final! Okay, only one other person in my class turned up, and only 2 in the Intermediate class turned up making the tournament a lot simpler than it needed to be (it was basically me vs. this guy called Sheriff) and after the finals, we were still neck and neck so TopTotty (the DDR admin) decided to hold a tie-breaker, which I lost by 3%, despite being marginally (0.07%) ahead at the final…

Still, it was pretty close!

(if the above video does not play, click here, or download full quality here: http://www.pling.org.uk/static/i33ddrfinal.mpg)

This was followed by a trip to the Toby Carvery, and yet more gaming into the night

Monday

Monday was the last day, which was kind of sad, but also a relief because I needed a shower and a real bed again. Sunday was just more gaming, then packing up and going home… So not much there

THE WHOLE WEEKEND!

Photos: i33 set on Flickr

VIDEO

(if the above video does not play, click here, or download full quality here: http://www.pling.org.uk/static/i33.mpg)

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Car!

I got my car back today It’s nice. Like putting on a comfortable pair of jeans.

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Vlog #2 – Car Crash

(note, if you’re seeing this on Facebook, my website, etc, LiveJournal doesn’t export the YouTube correctly, so here’s the link – http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=p-VYu8L5AYs)

Sorry it’s quite long, I need to learn how to be briefer…

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My first vlog

Finally got round to doing one… YouTube fucked up the aspect ratio when I uploaded it though I’ll have to render it as 4:3 letterboxed in future…

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I for one welcome our new pirate overload

This election was an interesting one, it’s the first one I took a great deal of interest in, and that was made possible mainly through The Yorker and it’s Sky News approach to campus journalism (report lots of news quickly, although I was surprised to see Nouse beat The Yorker in getting the results up. Hell, I heard the result on URY, refreshed Nouse and it was there. That was quick.), despite the fact I had qualms with some of The Yorker’s earlier news coverage of the campaigns. Being on placement, I couldn’t be in York to see the campaigning, attend hustings and generally get caught up in election fever, but thanks to the brilliantness of the Nouse twitter-style micro-blog updates and URY it made no difference I’m 200 miles from York in Oxford. I felt there, I got excited as the presidential results got closer, and everytime I head AMC’s wonderful Donny accent (oh how I miss home), and then was trying to count up the scores in my head as the individual college results for Kunwar, Payne and Scott was called, then decided it was too close to call. Then the Mad Cap’n won, and we had a pirate SU president-elect. Then his victory speech, I was hanging on his every word

I never wanted to be here. Somehow I’ve got in

People keep asking me, am I going to take the job and the answer is…

Oh shit, is he going to turn it down, is Payne going to get the job after all and it’ll just be yet another YUSU next year?

Yes

This means real change for YUSU. Real change. These elections had a greater turnout than any other University in the country, some have accused Scott of having a very clever campaign. I think he just inadvertantly tapped into the apathetic masses.

People are now condemning those who voted for the Mad Cap’n for turning the University into a laughing stock and YUSU into a joke. I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think Scott has the real potential to get students more involved in YUSU, and as some of his writings (albeit in the style of a pirate) and his debating in the Club of PEP presidential debate prove, he knows what he’s talking about. He’s been in student societies, he’s an average student who happens to have run Britain’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day for the past 5 years and ran for the comedy value of being a pirate.

Although not the candidate I ended up voting for, I applaud that Scott is our new SU president, and I hope that he lives up to his potential.

As I write this, I’ve noticed a group calling for his immediate resignation and to call a by-election has been called – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11137553271. I really hope that Tom does not bow to that presumably vocal minority and pays attention to the majority who voted him in.

I was going to write a long blog based around the campus media, and how the introduction of The Yorker has helped the traditional media by adding some competition to the existing world, especially helping improving from printed media to more web-based (see, Vision’s Facebook application and Nouse’s now more frequently updated website, which now has an increased set of commenters), but I’m absolutely buzzing from the result and listening to it on URY and following the election on the Nouse micro-blog all night, and my head’s all over the place right now. Sorry if this is a bit scattered!

Next year promises to be interesting.

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