Marrion Berry Delight

Step1. Pick grandpa's marrion berries.

Step2. Rinse them, bung them in a pan with sugar and corn syrup. cook down.

Step3. Serve hot, over cold ice cream

Relax and enjoy....

Freaky Dancing
My bro MSN'ed me today, to let me know some of my work is hanging in Urbis Art Gallary - Manchester as part of a Hacienda exhibition, which is nice.

Back in '89, before DIY culture was re-invented me and mates, in retrospect were on a creative trail blaze - we'd been making games for years (what! we were only 21), had a band, some ran companies and one night in a park in Chorlton we decided to make a fanzine and hand it out to box-party-people in the Hacienda queue.

The concept was simple, every Thursday we'd goto Ste's office and photocopy the issue and on Friday hand it out. Any given issue was filled with comics, artwork, stories, photos and reviews. Everyone loved it. We did it for about a year, then called it a day.

In the last decade as everyone has reflected on this period of Manchester history, Freaky Dancing (FD) has appeared in book after book. We knew we where doing something good. We understood our rock and roll history, knew all about punk rock ... now here we where in the boom time of Acid House ... we knew it was special. Manchester was ground zero for all what was new and happening. Tony Wilson once made a comment on FD which blew me away, and was kind of the reason we did it -- "It's the only written account of this legendary period in Manchester History" - thanks Tony!

Anyways it's hanging is Urbis Art Gallery. Anyone in England reading this, send me a photo.

Top, nice one - sorted.

Richmond Night Market

We headed over to the Richmond Night Market on Saturday night. It was a rainy evening, it'd been raining all day - in fact .. all week. So off we headed to get out of the house.

The place was mostly a ghost town except for the food vendors. Lots of vendors didn't show and the ones that did had a good sense of humor. Good times until the rain started to really come down. I bought some chow-mein, bartered with a dude for a $5 ipod cable and ate some tasty Taiwanese desert - mmm-mmm. After the market we headed to coffee shop and watched the rain hammer down on the road :(

The Streets Of England

Here's a short movie featuring some of the streets of England :)

The Houses Of My Life...

Here's a tour of the places I've lived in my life, spanning 3 countries and 2 continents.

It all started here in England. This is the house where I was born....

When I was ~6 years old we moved to the house where I'd live until I left home ...

Somewhere around here, me and my friend shared a house. Didn't last long. It was the formative years of Acid House...

In 1989, Summer Of Love, - my brother and I shared an apartment
in this renovated Victorian building in the centre of Manchester. Happy Days...

After traveling, I returned back to Manchester and lived in the leafy suburbs. Here I painted my rented room and lived in fear of the land lady from entering the place. Looked great, but she wouldn't have appreciated it ...

The following winter I moved to Seattle. I had this great place in the Queen Anne neightbourhood, it had a panoramic view of the city, Mount Rainier, Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains. Lots of fun went down in this place ...

After M and I outgrew our small apartment we moved up the road to West Queen Anne. It was a lovely place with a big deck overlooking a great garden, we became great friends with our landlady - who we still visit in Seattle every now and again. We lived here for a few years, had many happy times, got married and then come up a mad idea to go live on an island. The old house has been torn down and replaced with a much bigger building. The highlighted area shows the original location of the house...

This was our 1st place on Vashon Island. We considered this a transitional island dwelling, not out in the woods, but near the town so we could transition into 'island life'...

Transition over we moved to the middle of the island to a house with 5 acres! The land was lovely, often deer would roam into the garden. We had a cheeky peek view of Mount Rainier. About 1 month into this place - the owner decided to put the house on the market, so we decided to bail...

So we moved to the center of the island, and rented a house off a lovely lady called Rogene. We had several good years here. During the summer months, deer would sleep in the bushes in the yard - all very sweet. The air was so fresh, and with almost no light pollution the skies where filled with stars. This is where I really felt at one with nature. Epic. After 3 years, we decided to move back to the city... I was working a lot, the commute was quite long...

We moved back into Seattle into a neighborhood called Ballard. A Norwegian fishing village which over the years has become a hip spot filled with great restaurants, bars and clubs. We had fun here, catching up with friends and hanging out. During a trip to Europe the company closed my studio and with it came an offer to relocate to Vancouver, Canada... So the short but sweet stint back in Seattle came to end ... and the adventure continued...

In Vancouver we picked a place with all the hallmarks of Ballard - beach community, restaurants. We fell in love with the place.We'd walk to the beach most nights, even in the rainy winter months. We didn't know many people, but it didn't matter... we had one another and we enjoyed exploring our new town...

We decided it was crazy to pay someone else mortgage. So we bought our 1st house in East Van. We lucked out, because we'd managed to buy a nice place within a great neighborhood with very, very nice neighbors. In fact, this is rare - but I know all my neighbors, get along with them... and in a neighborly fashion socialize with them in the summery gardens enjoying a wine or two. Lovely.

Trough of Bowland

This was actually the first time I'd be to the Trough Of Bowland, and epicly beautiful part of Northern England. I was around 20 miles from my parents house! I never went because I didn't own a car when I lived in England. The Duchy Of Lancaster has a huge estate in the Trough. Enjoy..

20 Years Of SuperGeek'ness

That's right, 20 years! I've been making games now for 20 years!. I can't believe it. That's almost half my life being a robot.

How did all this start? I was addicted to arcade games as a kid. I'd sink all my 'pocket money' into the machines, and any family holiday to Devon was rated on how good the arcade was.

One summer night when I was 12, I was walking home with my friends from karate lessons. Paul, told us this tall tale of his friend's dad having a computer built onto his house. "A computer?, what can you do with that?". "You can make your own games ...". That one single line changed everything. I wanted to know about - computers. First up, I'd heard about some kids doing stuff on computers in Tandy (Radio Shack), soI start hanging around watching these kids - checking them out, watching them program. It was good stuff as well, one of the dudes had a SCRAMBLE game going. Impressive.

My fascination was right on time, the home computer movement blew up in 1980 - thanks to Sir Clive Sinclair producing the Sinclair Z-80. The product sold, and in '81 the release of the Z-81 cemented the industry. There was tons and tons of magazines on 'home computing' 'computer and video games' .. games being sold everywhere ... advertising luring parents to buy computers for their kids ... by the end of '81 I could program.

My first computer was the Commodore VIC-20. My ace dad bought it for me for xmas. I loved that machine : 2K RAM - 2K RAM - this post is already 3K in html script - I just measured :~ . My 2nd, and most treasured computer was the Commodore 64. A beautiful machine.

Moving along here...moving along ... the transition from geek to super_geek happened when I was 17, I attended a IT course and convinced the tutor to teach us Assembly or Machine Code - the language of micro-processers. A month later I was better than him, teaching him a trick or two. That summer I wrote demo after demo, and tons of mini-games. On a rainy day, I was lining up for the bus, when the pressure from my mum to goto the job-centre got to me. In the Job Centre, or at the time we called it Maggie Thatchers Joke Shop, I saw a posting for a games programmer. What? Serious? I applied, interviewed and got the job. It all started here. The friends I made here are my greatest friends that I still have today. They've been my creative partners in life.

I won't go on, but that all started 20 years ago. I'm lucky I still love my job and still challanged. I feel fortunate.

I'm an artist at heart - this is where I get my kicks.

Manchester

Here's a movie I made from various clips I grabbed . Here I tried to show another side of Mancheste - the grand architecture and the waterways of the industrial revolution. Enjoy

Dub Night Out

Great night out last night, me Dubmaster C & Mr Mattar Paneer headed down to the Commodore to watch Dub legend - Lee Scratch Perry.



We've been to enough of these events to know that bands don't come on till really late, so we hung out in my garden drinking Red-Stripe & munching on a delicious bbq M put together. When we arrived we caught the back end of the first band - Los Rasarillos, a Mexican reggae band - very kool, had a lot of ska energy about them

Next up was Dub Is A Weapon. A fine, fine band from Brooklyn, New York. There was a moment during their performance where I thought ... "Dude, I want to be in a dub band .. this looks lots of fun". They blew everyone away. The sound was amazing, driving bass, mad echos, great drummer and the best bit was the saxaphonist girl ... very kool. She was miked up to a reverb and echo and it was really, really loud ... sounded ACE.

It turned out that Dub Is A Weapon, is the backing band for Lee Scatch Perry. On he rolled around 1am, the band switched gears and took it back 20 years or so. On he came, rattling away, chatting away before launching into his first blinder. It's a sensational sound, ingenius music. Still a show man at 71 and complete with grand-wizard like experience he advised the kids "Be Strong", "...Push Down Your Enemies..", "... Enjoy, the Life ...".

Around 2:30 we rolled out into the warm Vancouver air in search of a cab. Eventually we got one, now came the coin toss .. "Tails" for the dubmaster. Before I could expound "Heads.." the DubMaster was in the car - "See you tommorow...!". Nice! hahahahahaha

Back In Vancouver

We arrived back yesterday after a smooth flight. From England all the way to the Rockies there was cloud cover, apart from a gap over Iqaluit - previously off my radar until Oz went there with the White Stripes. It was pretty kool to look down from 40,000 ft and think he'd just been there with the band :)

The Rockies are mostly snow free, the Cascades still have a large snow pack. As ever it was EPIC flying over those mountains, and kool to be able to pick out some of our fave spots. "There's Harrison Lake", "Hey, that's where we picnic in Golden Ears Park", "Check out Hope ..."

Yesterday was super sunny, glorious after all the rain. M was convinced she was turning into a mushroom. Oz picked us up, and after a transfer of bags from the car->house we all sat in the garden catching up.The garden is all fluffy, B did a great job watering. Thanks!

So, how was the trip? Fantastic! We all had a wonderful time, had some great family outings. Mission accomplished with cheering my parents up. I fell back in love with England - what a great place it is.

Raining Cats & Dogs..

It's raining super hard here ikn England. Everyday it's good olde English rain - bouncing of the pavement style. Despite the hard rain, we've been having a lovely time with my family. A good time for us all to be together.

Tonight, we're back in Manchester - hence this new post. A final night out with our pals ... a few pints at our fave pub 'Peveril of The Peak' followed by a tasty curry in Rusholme (The curry mile) .. I'll probably have 'Mateer Paneer' with a stuffed Naam Bread - and a Taj Mahal beer ... mmm..

Talking of food, we've been enjoying some of the goodies here - Lancashire Cheese, Potatoe Cakes, Crumpets, Jaffa Cakes, Cadbury's Chocolate, PG Tips tea, Euro Beers etc.. etc..

We're heading back to Vancouver this weekend. Just checked the forcast - looking sunny. I expect our garden has grown, looking fwd to seeing what's new and what has grown.