DAVID as a movie rating

I wish I had thought of it but am glad a fellow blogger, and movie/comic book buff, has had the imagination to spring forth such an excellent review rating system.

OK, so I'm a little biased. I'm a DAVID. And I do remember saying to a friend once, how weird it was that DVD was DAVID without the vowels. I got some odd looks but it suited my agenda...

David from Clandestine Critic is the blogger in question. His is an entertaining blog and I'd be more than happy to adopt his movie rating system if I had Badinage set out that way. As it is, I don't plan to review things in quite the same way but I'm still jealous that I hadn't thought of it!

If you like your movies and comic books then Clandestine Critic needs to be in your reader. With over 750 posts in its 5 year history, DAVID is nothing if not dedicated.

Bayonetta review live in the Crossfire

 

Bayonetta is part pleasure and part pain, it is there to simultaneously reminded you how videogame combat can be fun without being ultra-realistic but also how cheesy story-lines and make-shift characterisation can combine to make a total and utter mess of things.

My first review of 2010 is for SEGA's Bayonetta title that was released in January - you can read the full review over at Caught in the Crossfire.

I expect my next two reviews will be for Dante's Inferno and Mass Effect 2 with Bioshock 2 and Heavy Rain to follow, unless I get any surprises along the way.

3 days in...

...and a Happy New Decade to you all.

Large parts of last year I truly would like to forget and so am not planning to do an end of year write up. Instead my focus has been on a post dedicated to what I consider the best that entertainment has had to offer from the '90s. The post should be up sometime this week.

I expect 2010 to be a better year for my own focus - as you may know I lost a good few months during the summer of '09, to illness.

I'd like to wish my readers all the best for 2010 and keep Badinage in your feedreaders!

MIA

Two bloggers I've missed since they became MIA:

Foton - last seen April 1st 2008 @ AFK Gamer

Was the blog I read to balance out all the dry, ridge posts made by other MMO bloggers back around the time I played WoW. Although I don't play MMOs now, I still keep AFK Gamer in my feed reader in the hope new posts will arrive.

Foton's self-indulgent introduction post from 2004.

Dave Yeager - last seen July 31st 2009 @ Soul Kerfuffle

The post that hooked me into Soul Kerfuffle? Take a read through The View From The Top - it gave me time to pause and consider my own thoughts on the time I spent, trapped in the MMO grind. Still in my reader, Soul Kerfuffle was one of the blogs that inspired me to write online. Not a gaming blog or an MMO blog - Just one man doing his part to add more background noise to the internet.

I sent Dave Yeager a email question(as I also did with Foton) as, being a curious fella, I wanted to know what was keeping him away from blogging:

Since your last blog post, what have you replaced that time with and do you miss blogging?

Since my last post I have purchased my first home with my wife, but otherwise I don't think much has changed really. This is a good thing mind you, but I have filled the time with things like work, friends, some amusing community sports such as dodgeball, wiffle ball, and kickball, and plenty of video games to be sure. Neils Clark's book, Gaming Addiction, came out and really I wondered what I could possibly do for an encore in the realm of relevance in the gaming community lol.

There was a time when I looked to redefine the purpose of the blog as a source of good news, but really Happy News does that already and better than I ever could anyway. I actually intend to do some "Best of the Decade" posts with a couple of my friends, but even those take a back burner to other things. I do not particularly miss it, only because there is so much terrific content out there that I don't see that I can add much to the discussion anyway - and if I do wish to add something, I can always comment. ;-)

Of course, since Mr Yeager sent me his reply to my question, new posts are beginning to surface at Soul Kerfuffle! Sod's law..!

So, my readers, if you had the power to bring a retired/MIA blogger back to entertain you with their wise words, who would you pick?

'No' to NaNoWriMo

Two years ago I failed, somewhat miserably, at finishing a novel of 50,000 words in the month of November - aka NaNoWriMo. I didn't take part again in 2008 and again this year I'm stearing clear but my experience, back in 2007, was a good one of self-discovery. I still have the 10,000 or so words in a number of notebooks and even have an idea for a new novel which would suit the NaNoWriMo but not for this year.

The blogger that lead me to be involved in the NaNoWriMo experience was Yeager from Soul Kerfuffle, who doesn't look to be involved this year. A blogger who has become fairly infrequent with his posts but to my history of blogging and motivation he's invaluable. My personal thanks to you, Dave.

A number of my fellow bloggers that are attempting to put aside their procrastination and are actively involved in this years NaNoWriMo are listed below - I congratulate them all for their bravery:

• Ysharros(Stylish Corpse) Dragon Writing:

"If any of you reading this have danced around the idea of NaNoWriMo or generally around the idea of trying to write something, but have managed to slither out of it through a combination of apathy, procrastination and terror, then maybe my experiences can be of some help. I’m not trying to bully or cajole anyone into NaNo — for me, it’s helpful to have a deadline and a public commitment, but that’s all it is."

• Scarybooster(Scarybooster) NaNoWriMo iPhone Screenshot of the Day:

"Just for fun I thought I would be fun to take a screenshot of my novel written on my iPhone everyday. That and it is easy way to keep my blog active. So, check out today’s snapshot."

• sarahdobbs(Sarah Dobb's blog & portfolio) International Procrastination Month:

"I’ve done NaNoWriMo once before, in 2006. I spent every morning before work diligently typing away, and had one crazy weekend where I wrote 20,000 words over the space of two days, and ended up finishing around November 20th. The finished novel, tentatively titled “Reality”, then sat on my computer for years. Every so often I’d open up the Word file and cringe at how awful it was, have a go at editing a chapter or two into something resembling a real novel, and then give up again, but mostly it just sat around being ignored. I kept thinking that I really should do something with it, because it was a really really awesome idea – zombies in the Big Brother house! – and then Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set happened, and I finally acknowledged to myself that I never would work Reality up into a publishable novel and it would be forever consigned to the dusty recesses of my hard drive."

Good luck guys!

A history of writing

While I was contemplating moving my blogging activity from Wordpress to Blogger, old thoughts began to spiral back from the mid '80's. These years were not always the most fun for a shy, withdrawn teenage such as I. But it was in these solo moments, that some firm foundations were laid towards the emphasis writing has over my life today.

Looking back over my writing history, I have fond memories of a time when all I owned was a manual typewriter, producing home-made fanzines after school. The very first of these was my The Marvel Update back in December 1985 - I attempted a round-up of the current X-Men, Dare Devil, Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spiderman and Web of Spiderman comic book titles. I still remember picking up my comic books, at a local store, every friday and I had a cunning plan to produce my monthly marvel update fanzine for the store to sell. Being 15 years old at the time, this seemed a fool-proof plan and I planned world domination! Of course, the 15 years olds of today may not be such wild dreamers as I.

My other great love of the late '80s, early '90s was the new wave of hardcore punk music(see Ian Glasper's book, Trapped in a Scene) and again fanzines were my writing outlet. So SLAM was born, lasting all of two issues. Interviewing bands, writing gig reviews and very sloppy cut 'n' paste design, were the order of the day. By this time the writing bug had bitten hard and there was no escape - I was DOOM(ed).

Thinking back to the mid '90s, you can blame my first home PC and MMO gaming for the lack of anything similar to the DIY fanzines of the '80s. Of course I did write in note books, on scraps of paper but for reasons unknown, I was never a desktop publisher. I can only believe that the distracting power of PC gaming(and those naughty MMO time-sinks) got the better of me.

Blogging, and subsequently freelance writing, have only been a very recent activities for me. With gaming in the MMO, World of Warcraft prompting me to start my first blog, The Liber. This was probably back in 2005/6 and over those handful of years, my writing has become something which is part of my daily life and not something that I'd give up easily. But I do question how long blogging can survive in this fast-paced and ever-changing world? And where will my writing lead me over the next decade?