A Tribute to Mean Machines

 

I may have touched on this before in a post of yore, but I’m a massive advocate of video games. And by ‘advocate,’ I mean that I love them. Ever since me and my brother got an Amstrad 464 Plus for our birthday (it must’ve been our 10^th if I remember rightly), I’ve been hooked. Obviously, gaming has moved on exponentially since then – we had to put cassette tapes into the fucking thing to load the games and then go away for half an hour while a crappy bitmap ‘loading’ screen constructed itself line by line on the screen. And people complain about loading times on consoles today...

Anyway, that Amstrad with its wank graphics (even for the time, they were shite) planted in me the seeds of a computer games geek, and from then on I don’t think there’s ever been a period in my life where I’ve not owned one console or another. Indeed, by the time I left University I had about 12 different consoles in my room – it looked like a suicide bomber had detonated themselves in a branch of Gamestation (well, the queues do get quite bad on a Saturday afternoon). It wasn’t just playing the games that interested me though – it was everything about the subject, which eventually and inevitably led to me become addicted to buying games magazines. You see, back in the early nineties there was no internet, so the only place you could get new info on games and read reviews and get cheats etc was in the magazines, so naturally I had to embrace them as my only source of vital information ‘leaking’ out of such exotic sounding gaming locations as ‘America’ and ‘Japan.’ I say there was no internet – there was, just about, but getting online meant going to the school IT classroom at lunchtime, opening up Netscape Navigator on one of the dogshit slow workstations and waiting 3 days for Alta Vista (remember that?!) to pop up on the screen. No thanks. Not when there was football to be played in the car park.

So magazines were heavily relied on for gaming news, and the one I bought most often? Mean Machines Sega. It was an amazing journal full of lewd jokes and witty articles, and probably the magazine that made me want to ditch the hum drum life of a school kid and become a rich and famous games journo. There were several other mags I used buy at around the same time (CVG, Sega Power and GamesMaster – the former two now defunct, while GamesMaster is on life support) and they all promoted this notion that writing about games for a living was the equivalent of being an international playboy – jetting off to L.A. for a games convention, being wined and dined by publishers trying to sway your opinion on a new game, getting loads of cool free stuff...it just seemed amazing, and I wanted a piece of the action. Sadly, as I grew up I realised that the view I had was slightly askew and then real life got in the way and the dream died (as did the print magazine industry – damned pesky Netscape Navigator!), but I’ll always remember those mags as a key component of my childhood; indeed, the prose within is most likely what led to my sense of humour being what it is today.

Now, I’d been planning to write about this subject for a while and kept putting it off, but last night while randomly web surfing (surfing...navigating...there’s a theme here somewhere) I came across a website that almost made me cry with delight: The Mean Machines Archive! Yes, that’s right – somebody has gone to the trouble of distilling what made Mean Machines such a fantastic magazine and condensed it all into one amazing website! I couldn’t believe it when I found this site: all the memories came flooding back. It gets even weirder though – check this shit out. After looking at that archive for a while, I logged in to Twitter and one of the ‘suggested’ tweeters who popped up in the sidebar was Julian Rignall, a former staff member at Mean Machines! I sent him a message asking if he was the same person from the mag, and he replied that it was...and this sparked a slightly surreal Twitter conversation about the good ol’ days – y’know, how games mags aren’t the same anymore and how the humour has gone from the writing. 

It was all very strange – to have been sat on the couch thinking about Mean Machines Sega, finding a website dedicated to it, and then ending up chatting to one of the core journalists from the mag...like I said: strange. He was a very nice bloke and to him and all of the other journalists from that era (Gus Swan, Marcus Hawkins, Ed Lomas, Martin Kitts, Tim Weaver, Jes Bickham, Richard Leadbetter, Jonathan Davies and many, many more (is it sad that I remember all these names?!)), I say thank you. You probably have no idea how inspirational your games-related ramblings really were.

A Right Royal Clusterfuck

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. They, whoever 'they' are could have a point. What these words are though, I have no idea. After uploading yesterday's flurry of Manchester-themed photos, I was looking through the Pictures folder on my laptop and I came across this:

It's a bit of a random one, but these are the words that it speaks: I took this while I was getting ready to march out of some barracks in London on the day of the Royal wedding last year. I was part of the naval contingent who lined the street immediately outside Westminster Abbey, and we had to march through London to the Abbey and do all the rifle drill etc. on the march. If you look closely, you can see Prince William on the TV screen - we were all watching the proceedings on BBC News before we went outside to form into our companies and march down to Westminster. We did 2 weeks of drill training prior to the event, which involved 'learning' how to stand still for up to 3 hours at a time - which sounds easy enough, but try it holding an SA80 rifle...they're light enough initially, but after a while it feels like you're holding a particularly large cartoon anvil under your arm.

The march out to Westminster went well enough, and to be honest I actually felt quite patriotic seeing all the crowds and all the Union flags fluttering in the morning breeze. The whole world was watching and it felt quite amazing to be part of the event. Obviously, I missed the actual ceremony because I was stood motionless outside Westminster Abbey as it was going on, but I did see a Horse Guard get flung from his horse right in front of me as it reared up - that shit was worth the admission alone. After the Royals came out we did the salute as they went past in their carriages, then we all 'fell in' and attempted to march back to the barracks with the Royal Marines band playing music ahead of us. Unfortunately, we hadn't rehearsed this at all and we were all out of step: it was a total clusterfuck and I wanted to die of embarrassment - but you've got to take the rough with the smooth I suppose. Except when it comes to peanut butter: in that case, it's never smooth. Always crunchy. But I digress.

I'm not a royalist or anything, but to be involved in the day was quite special and there aren't a lot of people who can claim to have been involved in a Royal wedding.

Assorted Images of Manchester

I waxed lyrical about Manchester in my last post, so I thought I'd upload some of the photos I took over the weekend, along with some from previous visits (the ones with a hint of sunshine in them!). Enjoy!

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Well, what a weekend that was. One of the best I’ve had in a while – but also, conversely one of the worst too. I’ll elaborate.

I went back home to the fair city of Manchester to attend a work seminar thing on Friday and due to the fact that I have family and friends there, I decided to make a weekend of it, couch surfing and seeing old pals. The seminar went well (apart from all the stuff that went a good few miles over my head), and afterwards I met up with a couple of mates for a few drinks in town. It wasn’t a late one, and I was back indoors by midnight, but the whole experience was turned slightly sour the next morning when I realised I’d lost my driving license. All of my other cards where there in my pocket...but the license was gone! How the fuck this happened, I still have no idea. I had no reason to get it out – indeed, I’m pretty sure I got none of my cards out throughout the entire evening...so how it managed to vanish into thin air is a complete fucking mystery. What makes it even worse is that I now have to dish out another twenty quid for a replacement photo card...that’ll take weeks to arrive. The main aggravation factor with this is that even though I’m almost 31, I still look (according to every shop owner/bar tender in the land) ‘under age,’ so buying alcohol is pretty much off the agenda until my new license arrives as it’s my only bit of accepted identification. I suppose I could carry my passport around with me...but that’s just weird. At least I’ll have an excuse to give my liver a rest I suppose.

People keep telling me to tell the police that I’ve lost it...but what’s the point? The police are fucking useless at the best of times and all they’ll do is write my details down on a post-it note that’ll waft off the desk and into a bin as soon as somebody opens a window to let the stench of stale coffee out of the office.

Saturday afternoon, I went back into Manchester for a more leisurely wander around the city. It’s been a while since I graced my home town and I always marvel at how quickly new buildings and developments spring up. I found myself walking around a whole new sector of the city centre that looks like something out of an Arthur C Clarke novella – it’s all glass towers and open boulevards...actually quite a nice place, if you like living in Gattaca. It was also, coincidentally, my mother’s birthday so I bought her a gift and then went to have a look around the National Football Museum. It‘s recently been installed in the Urbis centre (ripped from its former home at Preston North End’s stadium), and I must say that for a free attraction, it’s pretty damn impressive. The shape of the Urbis building (it’s like a giant wedge of cake) means that you’re constantly heaving your ass up stairways to get to the next part of the museum, but the sheer number of interesting football-related artefacts (old footballs, old kits, old tickets, old...stuff in general) is staggering. I suppose this is to be expected in the National Football Museum, but meh. What is also quite interesting is that it is housed in Manchester and not London...but that’s another story. After the museum, I moved on to the Arndale Centre, but not before spotting former Olympic athlete Linford Christie in the street. He was setting up some kind of sporting event for under-privileged kids and they’d sealed off the road to set up a running track, supposedly for running races. I didn’t stick around to see what went on, but Kudos to Linford for doing something like that. He’s a bit of a monster in reality, too – I honestly had no idea how tall the guy was. If he hadn’t been a sprinter, I’m pretty confident he could’ve played Cole Train in Gears of War 3 instead. Or something.

Saturday evening I went out for a meal with my old dear (as I said, it was her birthday), and also managed to meet up with my sisters and their respective partners, so all in all it was quite a good day.

Sunday morning was always reserved for the East Manchester 10K race that I entered a few weeks back. Unfortunately at the time I entered, I hadn’t factored in that I had no way of getting to the event, other than under my own steam as a) few people I know who drive would be up at 8am on a Sunday to give me a lift, and b) there is no direct public transport between where I was staying and the race start point. So I got my running gear on and ran the three miles to the park where it was being held. It didn’t help that I arrived way too early and then had to sit around for 45 minutes after collecting my race number, but when the race started, I was well up for it. It was only a 10k (my usual race distance is half marathon (13 miles)), but by God was it tough. I was in about 6th for most of the race as the ‘elite’ athletes all raced off ahead...but slowly I made my way up through the rankings (and almost got lost at one point due to the lack of signage in a wooded area), and ended up finishing the race in second place. Second fucking place! Out of about 120 other runners! I got a medal and a voucher for £20 from a local running shop (which I used to buy socks...) so I was happy with that...but the 3 mile run home was less welcome.

Sunday afternoon was spent again walking around the city centre, but this time I went exploring the older side of the city where the cobbled streets and old warehouses still loom menacingly. It’s really atmospheric in certain parts of Ancoats and the outer limits of the Northern Quarter – it’s all old fire escapes and grand old office buildings with impossibly decorative frontages hidden by decades of grime and soot. The little warrens of alleys hold so much industrial heritage and history it almost makes you sad that it’s all so hidden away and forgotten. Manchester is widely regarded as the birthplace of the industrial revolution, and was nicknamed ‘Cottonopolis’ back in the 19th century on account of the sheer number of cotton mills and chimneys blocking out the sun and filling the air with smog. To travel these narrow, cobbled back streets in 2012 and see how the buildings that represented the pinnacle of the industrial age have fallen into disrepair and decay is very sombre. Everything is so silent and eerie, but just a few streets away, there is bustling traffic, street music and thronging crowds of shoppers rush around. I think that’s the main thing – the quietness and the lack of people. Once upon a time, these alleys were full of people, imports and exports from the canals and the hubbub of business, trade and industry. Now...just silence and crisp bags blowing in the gutter. The towering glass buildings of the modern age in the middle distance only highlight the juxtaposition. What a strange sight they make – two complete contrasts of the ages. Hmm.


Manchester in the 19th Century, apparently. At least it's sunny.

Anyway, late Sunday I ducked out of the rain (didn’t I mention the rain?!) and into a little city centre pub to catch a bit of the Manchester City v Southampton game, before getting the train back south. I’m always a little bit sad when I have to leave Manchester, not just because it’s my home town, but because there’s nowhere quite like it in the UK. I’ve lived in so many different parts of England and visited so many more...and none of them has the same feeling, the same vibrancy, and the same welcoming atmosphere. Bristol comes close...but it can’t match Manchester for nightlife, entertainment, heritage, warmth and diversity. London does, obviously, but it’s also too big and impersonal. I think it may be that when I leave, I’m usually going back to somewhere I don’t really know anyone of have much of a social life – much like where I’m living now. It never seems to make sense that I’m leaving a place I love and feel at home, to return somewhere I’m relatively unhappy and a total outsider.

So you see – a weekend that was both awesome, and pretty shit at the same time. Awesome as I got to see family and friends, win a silver medal and bask in the might of the great Northern metropolis of Manchester; but pretty shit because ultimately I had to leave. I think I’ve made my mind up on the experiences of this past weekend alone though – after my current job placement ends in April, and after I’ve been travelling for a few months, when I return to the UK it’ll be to settle in Manchester.

Skinny Cupertino

Apparently, there’s an actual term for that fucking annoying thing that mobile phones do when you’re typing a text. You know – when you’re typing happily away, hit ‘send’ and then re-read your text to find that it’s auto-corrected about nine different words and now it reads like something a drunk tramp might shout at you from across the road. It’s known as the ‘Cupertino effect.’ This slightly bizarre name comes from the way that in some early word processors, the auto-correct facility built in to the software would change the word ‘co-operate’ to ‘Cupertino.’ Incidentally, Cupertino is a place in America where Apple Inc. is based. Who’d have thunk (auto-correct that, Blogger) that a name existed for such a random thing. Got me thinking (thunking?) though. I reckon I’ve discovered something that doesn’t have a name. Yet.

When I was out running a few weeks back, I noticed something a bit...odd. Well, two things actually. The first thing was that it was sunny. Let me repeat: it was sunny. For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘sunny’ means that the sky was a rich blue, there were no clouds, the sun was out and it was pleasantly warm. I know – hard to believe, right?! But there you go. A side effect of these alien conditions was that most of the trees I was running under or beside were casting shadows all along the paths and roads, and it is here that I noticed the thing that I cannot find a name for.

Basically, as I was running along I noticed that my own shadow, whenever it passed through the shadow of the tree branches, caused the outlines of them both to ‘shimmer’ momentarily. It’s really hard to describe in words and I doubt even a really good camera would be able to capture the effect properly, but trust me – the edges of the two shadows ‘break up’ as they pass through each other, and when you’re in constant motion (as I was, running), it’s really noticeable because your eyes adjust to following the pattern of your own shadow busting through all of these over-lying ones. This probably sounds like the ramblings of a fucking nut job, but trust me, it’s true. So, next time you’re stupid enough to go running and it also happens to be sunny (talk about infinitesimally minute odds), run under some trees and check out the fucked up kaleidoscope shadow stuff that’s going on. As I can’t find an actual term for this phenomenon online (or any reference to it whatsoever), I’m jumping in and calling it the CHarnock Refractive Interfering Shadow Theory. Or CHRIST for those among us who enjoy an acronym – I know I do. On second thoughts, that acronym might already be in use...but, y’know, sod it.

Use my new-fangled theory wisely and always credit me in your thesis...or I’ll bust through your bedroom window at night and destroy you with a cold fusion gun. Peace.

Take The Weather With You?

Seriously, this incessant shitty weather needs to fuck off. I honestly can't recall a period in my 30 years of life where it has been so constantly grey, windy, cold and rainy as it has for the past few months. Jesus - it's fucking August for fucks sake...and look at it. Look at it! It's blowing a gale, the sky is the colour of Rab C. Nesbitt's vest and the rain is coming down in sheets. I know there's been some talk of this 'jet stream' thing fucking up our summer, but to be fair I'm not interested. All I'm interested in is that its August and we've had one day of sunshine. Fuck - June and July were bad enough, but now we look set for yet another month of horrific weather.

It's an old cliché that us Brits are a little bit obsessed with the state of our generally miserable weather, but I feel I have special dispensation to be a little bit bored of it this year. I spend a fair amount of my time outside, what with my running, cycling and being a motorcyclist so I feel that it affects me more than your average moaning twat and it just seems that for every hour of sunshine we've been treated to recently, we've have to pay the penalty of 20 days of incessant torrential rain in lieu. It doesn't look like it's going to get any better any time soon either, so wet jeans, soggy money, water-damaged phones and sopping shoes are (sadly) going to be with us for a good while yet. Fucking weather. Fucking Olympic athletes jetting off home to sunny countries. Damn them. "Cheers for the medals, London - we're all off home to top up our tans by the pool..." is what I'd imagine most of them are thinking. Jealous? Fuck yes I'm jealous.

Speaking of London/the Olympics - that closing ceremony was pretty good. There were points where I was convinced that the acts were miming (One Direction most definitely were), but after a while I was happy that what I was seeing was just a delay between the performer singing and the sound catching up with the TV picture. I hope. And if they were miming and it wasn't just an audio/visual delay...then damn. That was some pretty shocking miming. So yeah, it was pretty entertaining and I think it was a very well put together concert/performance/thing. Don't really know what's happened to Liam Gallagher's voice like, but very good all in all. Apart from the bit with Russell Brand. And the Spice Girls. Ultimately though: Rio de Janeiro - the gauntlet for both the opening and closing ceremonies has truly been thrown down (in a puddle).

I had a slightly weird experience earlier on today. I'm currently staying with my significant other in the lovely (if wet, grey and windy (see above)) county of Dorset. This morning I went for a run that took me past the little graveyard in which TE Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) is buried. I went in, looked at his headstone, and then turned around to continue my run. As I turned the corner, I found myself on a very long, very straight country road that was completely enclosed by trees, and in the distance there was what appeared to be a white figure. I continued running onwards down this lane and the figure slowly but surely grew in size...just like the bit in the opening scene of the film Lawrence of Arabia starring Peter O'Toole! I must admit that I was a little bit freaked out by what was unfolding, especially seeing as this particular road was deadly quiet and there were no other runners or cars around due to the early hour. Was this an apparition of TE Lawrence coming toward me? Was it Peter O'Toole on horseback out for a morning ride? Was I hallucinating having just been to his grave? Alas no - it was a silver Toyota 4x4. But this experience just illustrates the kinds of problems I have when I put my contact lenses in the wrong eyes.

Speaking of running, I'm taking part in the East Manchester 10k race next Sunday. My third event of the year after the 20k and the half marathon and should be quite easy after those aforementioned races. So 10k...that's 10,000 metres right?! Mo Farah did that in 27:30 at the Olympics the other day. I did it this morning in 41:09. Watch out Mo...I'm only, er, a few minutes behind you...

News you say?

I tried, I really did. I was determined that I wasn’t going to be one of those people who moan about the Olympics. Indeed, I was one of the people who quite clearly made my feelings towards the dissenters known: stop fucking moaning about increased traffic and an influx of tourists – the Olympics is great for our country and a perfect stage for us to show off to the rest of the world.

But I’m afraid I have to take a little bit of a step back from that opinion right now. Why? Have you tried to watch BBC News or ITN or even your local news over the past few days? All it consists of is repeated wall to wall coverage of people winning medals! Which is great...but c’mon – when does it become overkill? Sure, it’s fantastic that Team GB are kicking ass in so many different events...but why, oh why, do BBC News et al feel the need to show us endless repeats of Team GB winning medals and then have the same people sat on a couch being asked ridiculous questions about their achievement? For half an hour at a time. I kid you not – I put the news on last night: Dressage/Chris Hoy/those brothers who destroyed the Triathlon. And to them all I say well done. But to put the news on again this morning and be subjected to the same images, the same interviews, the same non-news? It’s a little bit tedious, wouldn’t you say? I want to hear the news. News. BBC News showed an 8 second snippet about the Bank of England issuing some new, more ominous warning about the double-dip recession...and then it was back to lycra-clad people crying and holding big golden coins. What juxtaposition.

Now, I want to state once again that I’m not an Olympic naysayer. I have maximum respect for the achievements of Team GB (except the SHIT men’s football team). I do not condemn the whole spectacle as nothing more than a waste of money, as some do. I haven’t even mentioned the ridiculous sponsoring of the event by fast food chains (oops). But please...let’s get some perspective here. Since when, I ask you, is some bloke winning a cycling race more newsworthy than a load of civilians being blown up by government soldiers? If you need 24hour coverage of the Games, there are various media outlets available that will cater for your (somewhat neurotic) needs. But I simply can’t condone the main news channels constantly pushing the Olympics into our faces. News should be news. Sport comes at the end. That’s how it should be on a news programme. Rant over.