I love the rain. Everything about it is great - the after-rain smell, how it helps everything stay green and beautiful, the sound on the roof. We had an almost-record breaking amount of rain this year, and I still love it.

But onto the list.

I haven’t been enough places to really know where I’d want to live. I can fantasize about a bunch of places I don’t want to live in, and list some where I wouldn’t want to live, but actually picking places to live is kind of tough.

4) BC Okanagan - lots of lakes, some desert, some mountains. But a bit dryer than BC’s islands and coasts, and with more fluctuating temps, ie. hotter in day, cooler in night. And actual SNOW in the winter! SNOW! :D

3) Belize - Hellz yes I’d go back to Belize, even with their crazy hurricanes and extreme temps. The atmosphere and character of Belize would draw me back, and there isn’t too much of a language barrier.

2) I’d also like to live in Europe. There’s a few countries I’d like to check out - France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, etc. To be honest, I just want to check places out, but I’d want to stay over there for awhile so I guess this one can be classified as “moving”. But I doubt I would stay.

1?) And I love islands. I’d like to go check out some other islands, but it’s pretty expensive. I’m kind of obsessed with French Polynesia, but other islands could also be good. Maybe those Easter Islands. Or the Cook Islands. Or something. Islands. I just like saying the word now.

Oh and I want to go to China. But I don’t want to live there. Just thought I’d throw that into my completely disorganized mess of a list.

And where don’t I want to go? Australia. NO THANKS. I don’t want to go any place with spiders bigger than me. And yes I know that some of the other places I mentioned also have big spiders - I don’t care. Shut up and quit stepping on my dreams with all your logic. Australia is where all the alien species come from and I hate it on principal. I mean really - kangaroos? WTF are those things? Stupid Australia.

OMG, lists was such a good idea!

PLACES THAT WEASEL WANTS TO GO:

#5. Other places in Canada. This country is so freakin’ huge and it has all types of neat stuff, scenery-wise, that I’d love to see. You know, not along the US border. North West Territories, for example. Strathcona Park. Newfoundland. On the same note, there is a lot of stuff I want to do in the U.S. of A. Unfortunately it is about the same price to travel within Canada than it is to leave it, so for the sake of keeping the wife happy I’ll have to move out for more “cultural experiences.”

#4. Belize again. *breaks into song* I… HAD… THE TIME OF MY LIIiiiiIIFE! Just sitting back on the beach of a tiny island with white sand looking out over the azure ocean. We even got to see a thunderstorm on the horizon once, which was wicked. It’s the exact type of relax-on-a-beach cheap-vacation that I love. But again, repition begs that I head elsewhere.

#3. New Zealand. With some of the most beautiful geography on the planet, New Zealand sports a million wonderful cliff faces and jagged coastline that challenges even Norway’s Fjords, which I can’t even pronounce. I also hear you can get super, super fresh lamb at the local butcher. Like, you walk into a highway side butcher shop and order a leg of lamb, and the teller leaves to get it from the back room. But then you notice that there is no back room, it’s just an open door to a pasture. And the place has no electricity.

#2. I’d really like to go to the United Kingdom so that I could meet up with various locals and trash talk the Irish and their stupid kilts. Actually, I really get a kick out of accents, I think they’re so cool. It may help that I can’t emulate accents whatsoever and the novelty therefore never wears off. But surely there are sights to behold yonder. It’s all about the drunkeness though - when I think about the UK I think “party.” Oh and I want to hear two cockneys get into a heated debate, that’d sound awesome.

#1. Austraaalia. The only word I can fake-accent on the entire planet. Amazing scenery, huge beaches, warm water, exotic wildlife, wicked cool accents, and … and … well the whole damned place is one giant tourist trap.

Place I least want to go to:

GREECE. Sure the scenery and the history appeals, but the current government in Greece is so conservative that they’ve banned handheld video gaming units from their entire country. They confiscate gameboys from crying 9 year olds at airport terminals. It’s sick, I tell you. Sick.

Well I got nothing to comment on for the first 3/4 of the post, other than the fact that you live in England and it rains. People in the desert don’t whine that it’s hot, so… stfu.

BUT WE GOT LISTS! And I’m a sucker for lists so let’s light this puppy.

Fozzie’s Super A+ #1 List of Places to Live That Aren’t His Current Place of Living

5. New Zealand - It’s like Australia but with more sheep and less desert. It also has a cool native population with killer tribal tattoos and tons of internet connectivity so it’d be like not leaving home at all. Oh and I think Elves might live in the forests, at least I heard something about that.

4. Belarus - I’d bring a couple of cases of toilet paper and american blue jeans and live like a god amongst the poor and downtrodden. Besides poor people and lack of basic necessities, Belarus is also known for its super hot commie chicks which I am totally down with. Since they’re poor they’ll be attracted to my piles and piles of blue jeans. Oh ya and they got Chernobyl which would be sweet to go walk about near, what with the ghost towns and all.

3. Canada - It’s like visiting a slightly wussier version of Wisconsin, and it’s not too far away in case I need to run home to mommy. Canada is known for its fantastic ginger ale and hockey which I’m a fan of. Canada also holds Maristar whom I covet, and Weasel whom I tolerate, so much partying could be had. Finally, Canada is full of French people so I wouldn’t have to be scared to walk the streets at night as I am currently, because Frenchmen are totally wuss.

2. Ireland/Scotland - They’re the same place, really. They’re both full of drunken hooligans who have such amazing accents that you can barely tell they’re speaking English at all. If it wasn’t for the red hair and funny hats on the Irishmen, you’d hardly be able to tell which of the two countries you’re in. I’d probably have to give the slight edge to Scotland since they seem a little tougher. If I were to move there, I’d join a gang of footy hooligans in Glasgow and turn cars over and burn them, and maybe pound some faces. That’d be cool…

1. Japan - Ahh Japan… where to start? First off, it’s chock full of cute chicks. Not hot, cuz hot generally denotes nice round boobs and curvey goodness and the Japanese body style generally doesn’t support such things, but cute. Japanese folks all like videogames and electronic accessories, so my nerdal tendencies would be less noticeable. And.. they’re all short so I’d be like some kind of giant or something up in that bitch. Finally, through careful film study I’ve determined that Japanese penises are all super super small so I could be in their “monster johnston” interracial pornos. I think we have a winner!

Is it possible to die from being stuck indoors because of too much rain? Hurricane effects notwithstanding? It’s rained for most of the last month. Even though seven of the water companies in the southeast have imposed a hosepipe ban. Since February.

This is England. The Great British Summer is an international joke and always has been - it’s associated with rain, poor temperatures and general sogginess. A few years ago it started looking good - we had a couple of blistering summers (temperatures in the high twenties celsius; sunshine; long, clear evenings of loveliness) and now, all of a sudden, we had one of the coldest, driest winters on record, a hosepipe ban by late February, it’s almost June and it won’t stop raining. Who says global warming isn’t happening? It’s a holiday weekend here and it’s been grey and crap for the duration.

There is nothing to do in this town when it’s raining. Except go out and walk in the rain. All sports get washed out. Going to the pub is unpleasant because you get rained on. Shopping is a damp nightmare and everything smells of wet dog. The cinema is packed and the DVD store is empty.

I need some sunshine. I’m a believer in SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Winter swings in, a grey lid of cloud descends over the valley I live in and it stays that way for six months. Everyone around me begins to eat large bowlfuls of pasta for breakfast and savagely snap at anyone else who breathes funny. It’s like everyone, of both sexes, gets PMT. For half of the year. I need to emigrate. Again.

Where to go though, that’s the question.

1. Australia, because of good weather and a higher standard of living for less money.
2. Canada, because I have family there and I’ve always liked it.
3. Italy, somehwere in the depths of the countryside where I could enjoy the weather and ignore everything else.
4. China, because they’re about to hit a boom and it’s going to be an interesting place for the next few years.
5. Madeira, because there isn’t twenty square meters of flat land on that island that isn’t man made and I like hills.

If you had to name the top five places in the world that you’d be interested in living if you didn’t live where you do, what would they be and why?

Although I’m not a huge fan of this game, I do love the art style and setting. Steampunk is my favorite genre and it is sorely underserved in gaming circles. Actually, now that I think about it the only steampunk game that comes to mind is the stellar RPG Arcanum, and that was years ago. Why is it that we have a bajillion games with elves and fireballs but can’t get more than a few in a unique setting? IT DRIVES ME CRAZY WITH INSANITY!

Anyway, the art is cool too. Unfortunately art has little place in games, graphic fidelity is where it’s at. As Psychonauts proved, fantastic art direction and tight gameplay just has no place in the world of licensed IPs and lens flare. Indie games are great, but they just don’t have the money to turn their ideas into a fully fleshed out title.

So until the big studios wise up, which will never happen, we’ll have to make due with stuff like this. It’s fun, but as filling as a twinkie.

I know I said a few months back that I’d avoid the gaming articles, as they don’t attract too big of a crowd. Well you know what I just realized? I don’t care what you think, and you can go stick it. That’s right, go stick it.

SteamBrigade
by: Pedestrian Entertainment

Released: February 2006
Price: Free Demo, Full Version $19.95 CDN
Status: Not final, not beta (see below for details)

Description: Steam brigade is an indie game developed in Vancouver, BC (right next door to me!) that is currently released as a finished product, but there are several free updates in the works that add heavily to the functionality of the game (such as Internet Multiplayer modes).

It is most accurately described as a side-scrolling physics-based RTS, but the implications of such a description are quite difficult to comprehend without actually trying it. One purchases vehicles and troops, which march towards the enemy; you also directly control a steam-powered airship with a magnetic grappling hook.

Review: Well, I downloaded the demo and was immediately hooked. I was very impressed with the initial presentation - plot is presented in a rhyming storybook fashion, with superbly done artwork. The menu interface is very slick, intuitive, good looking, and easy to use. 10 out of 10 so far.

The game proper fires up, and I have to admit - I needed to do the tutorial. I was fumbling and couldn’t figure out how to play properly. The tutorial quickly cleared things up and gameplay was more intuitive than my meagre brain would accept. Controls are deadly simple and there’s not a whole lot you can do - yet the gameplay remains engaging and fun throughout.

The premise is that you have a factory on your end of the map - and your opponent has a factory on the far end. You have to get an unarmed engineer to the enemy factory so that he can blow it up. One would think you can just pick up the engineer with your magnetic grappling hook and haul him over there - but anti-aircraft emplacements, flak tanks, and enemy airships all conspire to stop your airborn raid. So you resort to troops to take out the AA guns, which are countered by enemy tanks and cannon batteries. It’s like a giant game of paper-rock-scissors, except instead of 3 choices there are 9 to play with.

All of this in a fictitional world where everything is steam-powered yet still fairly technologically advanced - makes for a great atmosphere! “SteamPunk” I think is what the genre is officially called.

Gameplay scores an initial 8/10 for the pure fun factor; as I upped the difficulty the second time through my score drops to 7/10 as it started to be too challenging. Not that I normally complain about that. The most recent patch adds “skirmish mode” where the replayability of the game is enhanced by quite a bit - randomly generated maps instead of having to replay the old ones. Good times!

Pros: Addictive, fun, and you get a warm fuzzy feeling playing indie games.

Cons: Addictive, could use a bit of tweaking, and no Multiplayer (yet).

And now for a DailyBlitz First: An Interview!

Q: Who are you and what are you doing at Pedestrian Entertainment?!?!
A: Hey man, I work here! My name is Ryan Thom. I spend half my time programming and the other half doing producer-type stuff (such as giving interviews).

Q: It appears that Steam Brigade is PE’s first work - was it a coming together of like minds, developing a labour of love right from the start, or was it more a mad scramble of “Quick! We gotta find a goddamn artist!!”?
A: Well, I suppose it was all those things at different stages. It’s a coming together of like minds in that Colin Fletcher and I graduated from Digipen together back in 1998 and we’ve been designing games in our spare time ever since. We both worked as game programmers for about 5 years before leaving our jobs to do our own thing. Pedestrian Entertainment was formed a year later. It’s been really great to be able to actually make a game with Colin rather than just think up new ideas.

Steam Brigade is actually the third project we started since striking out on our own. The first was too big, and the second fell through because we couldn’t get the art side of things going. Third time’s the charm it seems. We were extremely lucky that Joel Carlson was availible right when we were just thinking “Quick! We gotta find an artist!!” Joel and I were friends as kids and it was a crazy million-to-one coincidence that he a) had become a supremely talented artist, b) had just come back to Vancouver and was availible to work, and c) was really keen on Steam Brigade.

Q: What inspired the SteamPunk theme in Steam Brigade?
A: I wish I could make up a grand, romantic tale of dreams and visions for you. Really, we just thought it was a cool theme/art direction and went with it. It was just a theme for the game until the story came together and it became more of a universe. Or the start of one anyhow. Then we really fell in love with it.

Q: How is Steam Brigade faring, anyhow? Better than expected? Worse?
A: Well, the response has been amazing. We’ve received so many helpful and encouraging comments in emails and on the forums and such. It’s really the community aspect that has been the most rewarding so far. Our customers and fans have really added a lot to the game with their suggestions and finding bugs here and there. We’ve been trying our best to return the favour with frequent updates.

As far as sales go, we’re definitely doing better than expected, given the amount of promotion we’ve done - which is very little. This was actually a deliberate choice. We wanted to let the news trickle out slowly, get some feedback, work the kinks out, get word out a little more, get more feedback, and so on. The result is a polished product that has the benefit of months of input from the people that actually bought it. We’re at a point now where we are ready to promote it more openly, so we’re hopeful that the sales will increase accordingly. Heh, we’d love to do this for a living. :)

Q: The physics implementation in Steam Brigade had a really profound effect on my enjoyment of the game, despite the fact that it isn’t particularly a major element in the game. Have you found it was a worthy investment of your development time?
A: Good question. That’s a pretty big item that we aim to discuss in our postmortem. The short answer is yes, though it took quite a bit longer to integrate than we first suspected. The difficulty stems from the fact that we’re trying to restrict a 3D physics engine to 2D - something it wasn’t originally designed to do. That said, the folks at Newton deserve a lot of praise for developing a superb physics engine and doing the industry a huge service by releasing it for free.

I agree that it isn’t a major element in the game play. The effect is subtle, but I suspect it is more important to one’s enjoyment of the game that we realize. There is a certain “feel” that the game has which is difficult to describe. Things feel right. Motion and trajectory are predictable. It’s tough to nail down, but I think it’s definitely a benefit.

Q: In today’s day and age of piracy, many online-release gaming companies are touting their “excessive sales despite copy protection.” How are you finding your approach fared? Do you wish you implemented it differently after seeing your sales?
A: That’s probably a good question for a follow-up interview. Right now we just don’t have the numbers to say one way or the other. Also, we’ve been approached by several portals and online publishers who have their own copy protection schemes, so that may muddy the waters some.

Q: I’m excited to see what PE has to offer in the future; any new games on the horizon, or are your expansion plans for SteamBrigade sucking up all your time?
A: Heh, I’m excited too! The answers are yes, and yes. Our plans for Steam Brigade are our primary focus right now. The level editor, online multiplayer, and a Mac version are the big priorities. But yeah, we’ve definitely got more on the horizon. I’m all giddy just thinking about it.

Q: And finally, is there anything you’d like to say to the masses that I may have glossed over? ;)
A: Sure. The more copies of Steam Brigade you buy, the more good-looking and popular you will be!

Sales has been pretty much my career for the last… wow… I guess it’s over 5 years now. Something like that. One common thread between each job is how different all the customers can be - not in terms of their personality or tastes, but in terms of what they expect out of a sales staff.

Every place I worked at usually got two complaint letters a month. I’ve seen quite a few of them. They always fall into four categories, and seem pretty evenly distributed:

Dear Store Manager,

I was in your store on April 9th, 2001, at 4:06 until 4:21pm. I was just window shopping and checking out what you had. And I was accosted by your sales people’s constant asking of “can I help you?” every 15 seconds. This behaviour is completely unacceptable and I’m telling all of my friends and family to stay out of your store.

They were like vultures just waiting for me to open my wallet.

One particular gentleman, his nametag said “Andy,” talked to me no less than 4 times during my stay in the store, each time I politely declined his offers. Sure I was poring over the specs of a computer system and scratching my head, or reading the packaging in detail, or even checking out the underside of laptops, but at no time did I request to be barraged verbally by your sales staff. I beleive disciplinary action should be taken.

- Bitchy Woman

And then there are the ones that go like this:

Dear Store Manager,

I was in your store last Wednesday and I wandered up and down the isles looking at all your equipment, for a full TWENTY MINUTES, and not a single salesperson came to help me. I was looking spacily at everything and wandering slowly. Every time a salesperson made eye contact with me I quickly turned away and whistled to myself, but that’s because I’m shy, not because I don’t want help.

One particular gentleman, tall with a green shirt on, he deliberately ignored me I think because of my outfit. Just because I come into an establishment wearing dirty jeans doesn’t mean I don’t have any money. I know how you people work - commission - and this tall salesman who was ignoring me was blatantly doing so for fear of not getting a buck.

Please pass on to him that I am professional gardener and I was planning on spending a lot of money with a sales person that day, but I will now tell all my family and friends to no longer spend a single penny in your store.

- Another Bitchy Woman

Occasionally we’ll get:

Dear Store Manager,

I walked into your store the other day and within 15 seconds I was already being hounded by your sales staff! I had hardly set foot in the door and gotten my bearings when I was barraged with a million questions like “how are you” and “what are you looking for.”

I immediately turned heel and left as you obviously have a very aggressive sales staff. I will never shop at your store again.

- Bitchorama

and finally:

Dear Store Manager,

I walked into your store the other day with no clue about anything electronic. Right off the bat I didn’t even know which way to turn, and I was peering around the store for help. I was standing at the front door looking lost, and I waited what must have been an eternity, like 15 seconds or so, and none of your lazy sales staff bothered to come help me.

Beleiving whole-heartedly that this was racism, as I am African American, I immediately turned heel and left. I will be writing a letter to the better business beareau regarding your actions.

- Bitchy bitch bitch

I’m not just saying “bitchy woman” out of spite, I’d say 80% of the letters I’ve read have been written by women. I think guys feel the same ways too but are just too lazy to write.

All of those complaint letters become jokes to the sales staff; we note the names on the letters and put “complainer” on their file; they aren’t forgotten. Funniest thing is, though - those letters dictate the policy of the month. At one sales meeting, we’ll all be read the letter, and the management will say “now let up on the customers! Don’t put so much pressure on! Leave them alone and wait for them to come to you!”… And then 30 days later management will be saying “Another customer lost because you lazy assholes didn’t do your job!”

People get canned for this type of thing. It isn’t a harmless stress release from a stupid customer. Three letters about one sales guy, conflicting or not, will usually convince the management to let them go.

It happens everywhere though, not just in sales. Every person on the planet thinks the whole damn world should change because the way they think is right should be what everyone thinks. Another somewhat-disjointed example would be from the flying half of my life - people buy a house near an airport then they complain because the airplanes keep them up at night. But they aren’t harmless, stupid complaints - they’ve actually resulted in a procedure book for Victoria Airport Night Flying that is 6 pages long. Instead of the standard landing and takeoff procedures, you have to adjust your flightpath after sundown and change your altitude and alter approaches and all sorts of other rules. I’m sure it’s actually caused accidents out there at some point.

One wonders why the people bought a house next to the airport in the first place.

I say everyone should look at it like this: You have a hand dealt to you; play with it. Don’t complain that you got the wrong cards. Roll with the punches. Go with the flow. Be nice and respectful, and know that everyone isn’t out to disturb you - they’re just floating on through life like you are. If you think everyone’s accusing you of dressing grubbily or being black, then those thoughts will consume you for at least a few weeks.

You too, Lyrish - you don’t know the full story. What if someone that looked similar to you came into the exact same store a week before and ripped them off?

Everyone should stop taking everything so goddamn seriously and get on with their lives instead of lingering on all the trivial small things that make them upset.