"Imagine that Dungeons and Dragons and an '80s video arcade made hot, sweet love, and their child was raised in Azeroth. If you're not already experiencing a nerdgasm at the thought, I don't want to know you."- Reviewer

Okay it's time for audiobook review number two! (Hey, that rhymes!)
It's time for Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, read by Will Wheaton.

I really don't think that I can do as much justice as the above reviewer did with their finishing statements about Ready Player One. It really is an absolute Nerdgasm of a book. Fantastic.

Ready Player One is set in the not too distant future, 2044, when the Earth is ravaged by the lack of remaining resources and poverty is everywhere. The only escape for everyone is the OASIS, a MMO like no other. There are thousands of worlds within it, ranging from sci-fi to fantasy, to just worlds filled with schools! Everyone on Earth has some sort of OASIS character, even if that is just their job, everything is run through the OASIS.
The book starts with the will of the creator of the OASIS, leaving a final message: since he is heirless, he will leave his entire vast fortune to the one player who can find his Easter Egg, hidden within the game.
This creates wide controversy as entire clans, known as egg-hunters (or gunters) spring up to try and find the clues that will lead them to the gate, studying all sorts of 80s/90s nostalgia (since the creator was greatly known for his love of the era). The book follows one particular Gunter (known in the OASIS as Parzival), on his quest to find the Egg within the OASIS.

A very cleverly written and suspenseful book, filled with references to everything that geeks and nerds will love, this is certainly an enjoyable read. I'm really trying not to give away any of the plot here, since I 100% recommend, to each and every one of my geeky friends (you know who you are), to go and and either read this book, or get the audiobook. It is fantastic. Loved every second! (If you don't want to, read the title of this blog again, still no? READ IT AGAIN! then go buy the book)

Fingers crossed that my next book will be as wonderful, Star Wars: Heir to the Empire.

Achievement Unlocked!

Matt Out.

Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts. ~Author Unknown

Hello again people.
Not sure if anyone is still reading this, but hopefully there are some people stuff out there.

So from sometime in Aug (22nd) to early September (12th) my parents, sister (3 mentions) and Sophster came to see me, so this will be a blog about that.

Okay. For those of you that don't know my family, they look like this: (me, dad, mum, Rach), in cheers!

(yes it was tricky finding a picture of mum, because she likes to be behind the camera)

Okay, so how did we spend our time? We started off hanging out in New Haven, since I had to work. :( But this meant that my family got to see Yale and some of the New England coastline.

Then my parents and sister dissapeared off to the mountains for a weekend, so Soph & I were left in New Haven, since I had some work to get done, again...

This was about when Hurricane Irene hit. Which Soph & I might have slept through.... we still witnessed the damage though and the irritating loss of power which occurred on only my end of Edwards street! This meant that we spent most of the weekend at the lab, which had power and played lots of Quarriors (which is an awesome game, look forward to that one GameSoc!)

Soph & I left after the storm (still with no power at home) for Boston on then bus  Monday morning. We met my parents at the hotel in the afternoon and so my holiday could start!

We stayed in Boston for 2 nights and managed to see a large amount of the city, but the main highlight for me was going whale watching off the coast of Boston (see Soph's facebook for more pictures) It can only really be described by actually doing it, so I won't try here, but it was fantastic.
We also managed to see Harvard, which was really pretty, but not as nice as Yale (I think I'm under obligation to say that) and Cheers!



After Boston, we headed into RI, to see Providence. Here, we saw Brown University, went shopping, saw the city and had a really HUUUUGGEEE meal. We only stayed here for a night, before moving along to Cape Cod, where a more traditional Hinton holiday could start, i.e. a relax!

We stayed at a small resort with it's own beach and had a nice relax, pottering around to the nearby towns, or up the coast to another beach etc... which was wonderful, I was really ready for a rest at this point! So that really was great to do!

Following this, we spend a few days hanging out in New Haven, since I had to get back to work. My family did some more chillin' as we prepared to hit NYC the next (and final) weekend.

NYC is an awesome city. We stayed out in Queens and got the subway in each day. Having 3 days in total was a good plan. Meant that we weren't too rushed and managed to see loads of stuff. Statue of liberty, times square, central park, rockerfeller center, empire state, Macy's.... it goes on and on. There is so much to do in NYC. Oh, we also saw the Chicago musical, which was really good.

Soph & my family then left really early... really early... on the monday morning.
So overall it was amazing to see them and to see some parts of New England which I have not been able to see due to my lack of a car! I really did enjoy every minute, so thank you to my parents for coming to see me.

Stay tuned for another audiobook review & Mr. Knapton's visit!


Achievement unlocked! Sorry if it was a little long. I tried to keep it short.

“The sound came again. There was a whistle to it, and a moan. It was almost a hiss, and it could’ve been a strangled gasp. Above all, it was quiet, and it seemed to have no source. It whispered.” ― Cherie Priest, Boneshaker

Hey people once again! 

Look at this 2 blogs in quick succession, look at me go... 

I thought I would try something new, possibly even controversial with this blog entry. After having recently (well a while ago now subscribed to the fantastic audible service, I am now listening to ~1 audiobook a month. 

For my starting book, I chose Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, on the recommendations of my favorite "not too horrible" podcast, the d6generation. Thus I thought it might be a good idea to do a quick run-down of the book on here and then continue reviewing if people are interested in reading my reviews. 

Starting off, I will not give away any large spoilers or anything like that, since the aim of these will be to let people know whether it is worth reading, not to ruin the book itself. The book was narrated by Will Wheaton (whom some of you may have heard of) and Kate Reading, both of which did a fantastic job of bringing the story alive (I was thoroughly impressed by Will Wheaton's prowess as a voice actor, and was not put off by the fact that a grown up Weasley Crusher was speaking to me, okay maybe for a sec...) 

On to the book: This a a steampunk novel at it's heart, set in an alternate history to the Civil War (which unfortunatly isn't mentioned or used enough throughout the book). The Boneshaker, after which the book is named, was a huge drilling machine, built to mine through the ice under Seattle, to obtain the vast stores of gold hidden beneath. Unfortunately, due to the race of it's construction, it backfired. The machine produced a thick, heavy smog which slowly filled rooms, buildings and streets until it eventually had to be contained by a great wall build all around Seattle, making Seattle basically inhabitable, but some people stayed. 

The book follows the exploits of the Boneshaker's inventor's wife and her son (Zeke), as Zeke ventures into the city to try and find out more about his father and try to clear his name for the atrocities caused by the boneshaker machine. 

The book is really interesting, especially if you're a steampunk fan. It doesn't play on any of the standard steampunky types (like Victorian spaceships, or whatever), so it seems like it's own fantastic world. Which brings me to the first problem, the world is rich and wonderful, but is unused, it seems like a backdrop and never has any impact to further the story etc... it's only a minor thing, but would have been nice. 

The story is also creepy and a bit dark, with viscous (yet believable) characters and themes, which is always a plus for me. 

Also, it has airships. I frigging loooovvveee airships. :P

So in summary, since I will try adn keep these short, if you enjoy steampunk and are looking for something a little different with zombies (yes, steampunk zombies), then give this a listen. I also cannot recommend audible enough. 

Next will be Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, to which I am currently listening. 

Thanks guys & gals. 

Achievement Unlocked! 

“In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you.” - Frank Wilczek

Hey,
It's been a while again! Ooops!

Thought I would quickly do a blog which isn't about gaming! (I know, dull huh?)

 Haven't put anything since GenCon, so let's start with just after that. I traveled directly from Indianapolis, gaming capital of the world (okay, so not entirely not about gaming), to sunny Durham, NC to help out at Duke University's HIGS lab.




 If anyone is interested, HIGS stands for High Intensity Gamma Source. It produces these high-intensity gamma rays (after which it is named) by Compton Back-scattering of FEL photons produced by "wibbling" the electrons  as they travel around the storage ring. This produces a mono-energetic, intense and well polarized beam which can be used to excited a target of interest to observe the levels (and hopefully discover new levels by looking at gamma decays from this target). It can also tell some of the characteristics of the levels due to the set-up of the detectors around the target itself.



So I was around Duke for 2 weeks in total, firstly for "our" experiment and secondly theirs as a further helping hand. It was really good to see Duke University, which has a beautiful campus, especially in the summer since the weather was wonderful all the time. It was a pity that the lab was kept at electronics temperatures, meaning that I had to put a jumper ON whenever I went into the lab.


Plus the ants were annoying, stupid ants and their lines...



Anyway, I'll leave you with this;

To honor my new PFS character, who is a wizard with a big-ass gun! (If anyone reads that as big ass-gun, he'll kill you)

Achievement Unlocked!

"The dragon, as it dies, falls on top of your unconsious companion, killing him." - Unknown (GM licence rebuked)

Okay, so some of you, probably most of you, based on how excited I was know that last week I was at GENCON! This, being the largest gaming convention in the world, probably deserves a blog entry for itself. Thus, with no further adjure, it begins!

I should probably start with what I was doing. During my time in America, I would like to thank Ben Lash, David Meierfrankenfeld and Ed Lehman for ensuring that I stayed into my roleplaying games. Ben and David also set up a good group of Pathfinder Society players, allowing me to get back into GMing, and allowing me to learn the Pathfinder system (from which I doubt I will ever return!) Due to this, at Connetticon, I met the venture captain for NY, Art Lobdell, who managed to organise me running as a tier 1 pathfinder judge at GenCon in Indianapolis. 

Yeah, that place. I think they get the point Matt! 

So, on Tue 2nd, I set off on the longest car journey of my life. Around 700 miles across 6 states to get to Indianapolis. But man was it worth it! 

Starting Wednesday, I had signed up to run 3 slots of PFS at Scott's Brewhouse, as a pre-GenCon bash. This was crazy busy, great fun with the awesome atmosphere of the pub, filled to the brink with gamers from all over, though I think I was the only English GM there! The place even had a special GenCon menu with items like "magic missles" and "Cthulu burgers", not sure what they were, but that was all part of the fun. 

The next day GenCon started! 8am slots meant that it was an early start for the PFS guys. Soon, outside the PFS room was covered with eager players, wanting some PFS fun! So, with a loud "Ready or not, here they come!", they crammed themselves in to the appropriately 70 tables, each complete with a grinning GM, ready to mercilessly slay them all at the hands of his budding minions... kidding! 

Players waiting for the GenCon special: Blood
under Absalom

And so the madness began. Each new slot brought new players, new modules, new plots and new sources of fun! It was awesome, (with the exception of one player, don't ask) everyone who played at my tables was a great guy (or girl) and I'm glad I met everyone there.

I won't go through each slot, because that will take ages, but some highlights included the writer of a module watching me run his module and him playing one of the NPCs throughout, some awesome Kobold roleplaying in "Sewer Dragons" and the sheer madness of the GenCon special event, even if my party were not greatly balanced. 

Just a small section of the Dealer's room. For more
photos, see my facebook album, which I'm about to make! 

Some notes about the con. Got time to check out the dealers hall and the open gaming area for a bit, watching and quickly playing some of the newest games, I'm looking forward to getting my copy of Quarriors soon, which is an awesome looking game. I was immensely surprised by the look of Battleship Galaxies, though I didn't have time to play it myself and Star Ward X-Wing looks like a great load of fun, though that might just be my star wars geek talking. Also there was a game using Rubber Duckies! (But I can't remember what it was called) 

After some close calls with losing my voice and killing party members (had 4 players down to 1hp off death...  , the con was over! I quickly got out on my plane to NC, for an experiment at Duke university, where I currently find myself. 

I'm currently looking forward to seeing Soph, my parents and my sister( 2 mentions!), 2 days after I get back from NC! Yup, it's all go atm! 

So, I'm sure I'll put another short blog about my time here in sunny NC (it's weird having to take my jumper OFF to go outside!) so ya'll can look for'ard t' that! 

Achievement Unlocked! 

Thanks for listening!

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” J.R.R. Tolkien

I apologise for my once again delay in the writing of this blog, thus I would firstly like to extended my congratulations to anybody who keeps up with their blogs on a more frequent basis than I, which would be pretty much anyone.

So my most recent event was going to Connetticon over last weekend. Connetticon is a huge general Cosplay and gaming convention held in Hartford, CT (as I have mentioned previously). I played 5 sessions of Pathfinder over the weekend, bringing Professor Calaelen (my elven Alchemist character) up to nearly level 2. I even got to GM a game, which was really good fun.
I have been playing huge amounts of pathfinder recently, which is really good fun. It's good to get lots of rping in and I don't think I'll be returning to D&D 3.5 any time soon, so people back in Guildford should be ready for lots of pathfinder society play when I get back!






I'm really looking forward to my parent's and Soph's visit at the end of August for 3 weeks. I think the plan at the moment involves a mini road trip around the New England area, including Boston, Cape Cod,  Providence and New York. So I'll keep you all posted as to how good that is, as soon as it's done.

R2D2 Lantern which we made last year

I was sad to miss Rhythms of the World back in Hitchin, but I see that there was a fair amount of rain and thus maybe it was a good year to miss if I had to miss one. I hope that everybody had a wonderful time, hopefully James didn't drink all of the beer which I would have! This also a good time for me to mention that I am also sad to miss Towersey Folk Festival this year. I'm sure James, Michael and Katie will have lots of fun without me, but it might not be the same!




My board gaming has been continuing weekly, mostly playing lots of Castle Ravenloft at Nexus on Tuesdays, I am working my way through painting all of the minis and it is probably safe to say that I am "pimping" out this game pretty thoroughly. Apart from that, my game purchasing has been at a sad minimum, except for a preorder of Quarriors and Belfort, I have no games that I really need right now.

Back to work. The beam at WNSL is completely off now, unless I have said this before, I forget. My project is coming along fairly well, should be all finished shortly and then it will be time for me to start writing my dissertation for the year.

I'll try not to make this too much about gaming. I should going to GenCon this year to GM some more Pathfinder. This should be loads of fun, so I should let people know how that all goes after it's done. I have also been asked to do two more Conventions in November, so fingers crossed I should have a lot of experience GMing by the time I get back.

Thanks for listening.

Achievement Unlocked!

“The crime problem in New York is getting really serious. The other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up.” - Jay Leno

Hey everyone.

I apologise for my huge lack of a blog recently. I see that it has easily been over a month hopefully people didn't miss it too much!

The Typical Times Square Shot. (Man I'm a tourist)

Most of you will know that Soph visited me during May, since (what with the Royal Wedding and all) the British (who are still in Britian) get a quite frankly stupid amount of days off within a short period.

It was nice for me to be a tourist again, with a great visit to New York where we did all the touristy type things, Empire State, Grand Central (didn't have much choice about seeing that, as it's how we arrived!), Central Park, Lincon Centre and shopping!


The M&M store and Nintendo world were awesome, my only regret is not getting a certain pair of hilarious boxers from the M&M store! (People who want to know what they have printed on them should ask me, since I don't want to post it publicly!)

Central Park is beautiful. 

Soph and I spent our second weekend together visiting Hartford, which was slightly disappointing as a town. Despite being the capital of CT, there was a huge lack of things to see or do, unless you enjoy looking around Malls which have no shops in them (which was actually a little freaky). This meant we ended up just getting a taxi to a nearby (open) Mall and just shopped for the day.

I won't go through Soph's entire visit, just thought I would summarise it, since most of you can look at pics and stuff on facebook or can find out details other ways. It was really really good to see her and now that she has returned to the green and pleasant land (or whatever). I do miss her a lot.

Still my parents, sister (2 mentions!) and Soph have now booked their flights to visit on the 22nd of August till some time in September (I think 12th), so I'm really looking forward to that.

So, I'm here on my first night shift in a good while, which has been really nice and I am taking a break from work every now and again to update this. Things are progressing forward with my work here at the lab and we're all very much rushing around trying to get things sorted for our last 3 weeks of runs before the beam here is shutdown on June 24th (which also means no more shifts after that date!)

I'll deviate slightly into gaming for a second, to mention some of the stuff that I have been doing in my free time recently. In NY, after Soph left I picked myself up a copy of RuneBound, which I am looking forward to getting another game of on Tuesday, which should be awesome. Neuroshima Hex saw a lot of play-time while Soph was here and seems to hit the table fairly frequently at Nexus, so I might look at getting the expansions for that at some point.
Literally 10 mins before I turned up for this shift (probably would have been better to sleep, upon reflection...), I finished Portal 2. I thoroughly enjoyed the game, it was perfectly balanced in humor, difficultly and length. So well done! (Incidentally if anyone is interested in playing the co-op then I am definatly up for that).

I'm continuing my way through DA2, which I am actually enjoying. It seems to have got a lot more rap than I believe it deserves, but this could be since I am playing it as a role-player, not as a pc gamer (incidentally my character is a silly joker, especially in serious situations). My only complaint about it is the CONSISTENT re-use of areas, which I find really annoying. I understand that I do lots of side quests, and the game offers lots of side-quests, which is great, but slight changes in the areas, just different objects or textures in places would have been greatly appreciated.

I apologise for the massive delay in actually posting this. I entirely forgot about it.
I will ensure that it's not this long in between my posts other times. To make up for it, here is a picture to express my deepest apologies.

P.S. Happy now Elle? :p