We held a games night for students and school pupils on Tuesday 20th November at University of Ulster, Coleraine. It was a good turn out and the night was a success (other than a minor hitch with the Halo 3 System Link game). My own game Sky Surfer was on show, and it was pretty fun to get reactions from new players of the game. Obviously the most common response to the game was how insanely difficult it was, but in amongst the pain there were some very positive reactions, with several people saying it was really addictive and one even reckoning if I sold the game they would buy it. Nice! It did emphasise the point that I made whilst writing my evaluation of the project: User play-testing is vital! :)

Anyway, some photos of the night can be found here.

Today in the post I got a parcel from Amazon.  It took me a while to think of what I’d ordered, then I remembered that a couple of months ago I’d pre-orderred the X-Files Collector’s Edition box-set: all 9 seasons of the X-Files plus the movie.  At the time I thought the price was a screw up, since it was only £69.  Well once I got the DVD’s today I looked up Amazon, and sure enough, the boxset is now £199!  Thats a grand saving of £131!

First thought was that I could sell them and make a handsome profit, but I decided I’d much rather keep (and watch) them, and be happy in the knowledge that I only paid 35% of the full price!  Yata!

One of my supervisors found a cool video on Youtube of a guy who has worked out a way of imitating the Wiimote’s functionality with your fingers using a panel of infrared LED’s and some reflective tape.  This is extremely interesting from my own research perspective, having done some coding on motion sensing through a webcam and realising the difficulties associated with this.  Perhaps we’ll try it out in the future.

On the subject of all things Wii, I just ordered my first Wii game in about 8 months – Super Mario Galaxy!  After hearing what the guys at 1up had to say about it, I just couldn’t resist.  And so the stack of games I have no time to play grows…

Gamedevelopers.ie have published my write-up of the Serious Games Awakenings ’07 Conference, which took place in Derry on Friday 26th September 2007. Check it out :)

Oh yeah, and its my birthday today. :)

Hehe.

This article is an extremely interesting read provided by 2Spare.com. It lists the top 15 strangest coincidences, some of which are pretty damn freaky!  I find the following Anthony Hopkins coincidence particularly strange:

The British actor Anthony Hopkins [who shot to fame as Hannibal Lecter] was delighted to hear that he had landed a leading role in a film based on the book The Girl From Petrovka by George Feifer. A few days after signing the contract, Hopkins travelled to London to buy a copy of the book. He tried several bookshops, but there wasn’t one to be had. Waiting at Leicester Square underground for his train home, he noticed a book apparently discarded on a bench. Incredibly, it was The Girl From Petrovka. That in itself would have been coincidence enough but in fact it was merely the beginning of an extraordinary chain of events. Two years later, in the middle of filming in Vienna, Hopkins was visited by George Feifer, the author. Feifer mentioned that he did not have a copy of his own book. He had lent the last one – containing his own annotations – to a friend who had lost it somewhere in London. With mounting astonishment, Hopkins handed Feifer the book he had found. ‘Is this the one?’ he asked, ‘with the notes scribbled in the margins?’ It was the same book.

Spooky, eh?