VanDusen Gardens

Took a walk around VanDusen Gardens yesterday on a perfect autumn afternoon.
Although this is a private garden, Vancouver has equally spectacular public gardens. I admire Vancouver's focus on gardens, they are a priority, immaculately cared for and constantly maintained - maybe it's part of the English legacy in British Columbia.

Often I see elderly English ex-pats enjoying the parks .. always makes me smile.

Halloween In The Hood

It's halloween and people are celebrating!

'That Damn Red Van!'

.....

Spied from space. Available on GoogleEarth. "The Damn Red Van!" which blocks my parents view in England can be seen!

When GoogleEarth was released I checked out my parents place. I was startled when a saw "That damn red van!" parked out front their place. "It's there! It's there!" You can see the bloody thing space from space!!! LOL! I had to let my Dad know, so I called him up and told him that the red van is showing up on satellite imagery. He laughed hard, and said "damn red van!" HAHAHAHA.

Here's a ground level view "The Damn Red Van"..

Sod it, turf it out.

This is our new fence.(that's my car accross the road!). It's been up for a couple of weeks now, and the garden has been going under some transformation. We've planted spring flowers, and tommorow we'll plant some for summer. Soon we'll add a climbing plant to cover the arbo over the gate. See those small trees in the front?, they are now in a raised bed in front of the fence. Which brings me to the headline story. Tonight I headed out into the rain and rolled out 3 rolls of sod - a perfect fit. Stamped it in, watered it ... looking good. Just thought I'd share that. hahaha.

180

This is my first video game, published in 1986! by Mastertronic Games. Mastertronic had been having a lot of success selling budget games for 1.99 at the time, so they launched a new brand - Mastertronic Added Dimension brand (MAD games) which sold for 2.99. This was one of the first games on the brand. It turned out to be quite a hit, and was in the Budget Title Top 10 for a year.

I was working at Binary Design in Manchester, England in my 1st full time games programming job. There, I started my career, met a lot of my life long friends and had some great times. Lot's of stories, lots of laughs - I'll tell you a bunch over the next few months.


Checking out the retro gaming sites it's remembered well, which is Ace! A couple of my Canadian workmates - Spence & Dave, loved this game when they were teenagers. Small world! Small world! That really made my day.

This game took about 6 weeks to develop. I remember the boss coming upto me and informed me of the looming deadline. Deadline? What do you mean. HA! I was under the impression games were finished when they were finished.

My good friend Ste Pickford did the famous hands, and Pete Gartside is the voice behind the '180' sample. Jez did the bar scene graphics. At one point the bar maids boobs inflated as she pulled pints :) The boss went bonkers, which was lost on a bunch of 18 year old lads.

Here's a link to a review on Lemon64:

http://www.lemon64.com/index.php?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/games/details.php%3FID%3D9

Ahhh, Happy Days!

The View From My Office

My company has 4 floors overlooking English Bay in downtown Vancover. This is the North facing view.

On the 19th floor we've got a very large outdoor deck/patio area that overlooks the ocean and downtown area.

Every Friday we get several kegs/barrels of beer and have a office party. Creative dudes take turns playing music on the turntables. Yes, we're spoilt - it never gets old.

Nighttime, the eastern view really comes alive.

In the distance you can see the Cascade mountains in America. Mount Baker, a active volcano, is around 80 miles directly east and on fairly clear days it dominates the horizon. I love that mountain! The snowboarding is incredible. It's a little out of the way for most people so it doesn't get packed. It's a mighty mountain not for the faint hearted.

That funny looking building is the Harbour Centre. Up top is a restaurant/observation deck. Never been up there - I should go!

Vancouver, is a great city. If you ever get the chance to visit you should come. It's world class, in-fact it just got voted the No#1 livable city in the world by the United Nations.

The Streets Of Manchester

This is a picture of M, Paul & Me in Manchester, England last winter. I took this picture outside the Museum of Science & Industry after a few tasty ginger ales.

Breaking The Law,

Breaking The Law...

My neighbour Oz is a production manager, and was just on tour with Judas Priest.

He offered us a couple tickets to the show here in Vancouver. My wife is a rocker and jumped at the chance to see them. It's no secret I'm a fan of the powerchord, so I was excited about the show.

After watching the opening band Anthrax (awesome!) we went to check out our seats. Nice! 10th row.


Scanning the crowd, I could see a sea of testostorone and dehydration. Red faced heavys, some old, some young - but all heavy metal psychos. I felt right at home :)

The show started, with Rob Halford screaming ominously over a hyper sustained e-chord guitar slam. I like it already! The band ripped through the 1st of many classics (my wife told me!), puntuated by Rob Halford doing many costume changes. Dude! This guy changes more than Cher .. I'm serious.

The classics progressed with Rob screaming at us that this is the product of "30 years of heavy metal!" I'm impresed Rob, I'm impressed!

All the great heavy metal show moments were there ... the power trio, the synchronized guitar swinging, the hair flicking and some kinda bizarre rugby huddle that only broke up after a lead guitar noodling session ends. I think all the kool bands should do this. Could you image Radiohead all huddled up at the front, the guitarist noodling away like Eddy Van Halen, and just as the last crazy pitch bent note rings - they all dart off in all directions just like the Red Arrows (Blue Angels for the North Americans) - that's rock n roll ;}

Throughout the night Rob played some kind of heavy metal grand wizard - which he kind of is. They performed the 2 Priest tracks I know amazingly well .. "Breaking The Law" & "Turbo Lover".

It was nice to see a bunch of English lads doing their turn so far away from home. We loved it. Thanks A Lot Oz !!

The Pacific Northwest

I love this place. I moved here just over a decade ago (wow!) and fell in love with the epic, epic nature.
It's got fab mountains, vast forests, inland seas, islands, wilderness, mind blowing oceans.
I've been really lucky to live in two of the areas great cities Seattle & Vancouver, live on a island in the Puget Sound and explore the mighty states & provinces of Washington State, Oregon, British Columbia and Alberta.

Welcome to my blog. After seeing my brothers great blog, he inspired me to create my own.