Well, after 9 months of waiting my America 2010 has finally come around. After making it through an extremely slow week, I’m packed, checked in and ready to go. I fly around 4PM tomorrow afternoon and should hopefully arrive in LA at 7.20PM the same day.

Loyal Twitter followers, preserve and stay following – I’ll try my best to occasionally tweet while over there. I’ll be sure to take plenty of photographs (I’ve got 8GB of space waiting). Have a lovely September and be sure to subscribe via RSS / Twitter to receive periodic updates on my blog.

A Dear Lady, originally uploaded by marcofiori

This is the first time I’ve ever captured a ladybird so clearly up close. I love the colour of it and the sheen. It stood out as I walked past on the way home from a local canal.

Not too much to say about this photo. Bamboo PR wase down in Shoreham-by-Sea visiting a client and this is the town’s nicest feature. It’s a lovely church from the Saxon era so I couldn’t resist whipping out my camera and taking a shot.

I wrote this late one night on the way back from the pub. Don DeLillo is one of my favourite authors and I love what he does with language, the urban space and modern culture. I took a similar approach.  Enjoy.

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It begins with a man. A single man. Littered among the discarded papers and faded seats, he stares into the floor, the stucco drawing him in. He’s nobody, a mere ghost in a sea of mediocrity and repetition.

The stale air seeps into his soul, bringing him around to the harsh reality of existence. His eyes clear, his attention drawn away from the abyss. Its welcoming call urges him to stay as his tries to shake away the haze.

Still drinking from the cup of consumerism, surrounded by false idols of worship. Water purifiers, the latest distraction of isolation, pizza. It’s washed down with a shudder, a jolt. A break.

Time is lost. The U of the Thames brings him around with its waters. The bobbing heads, the briefest of eye contact – suspicion, partnership, indifference. Nothing makes sense, morals are lost, respect pushed beneath the tumbling train.

Darker it goes, the earth embracing it like a mother does it’s newborn. The womb of the FTSE. A crack on a glass, a scratched name into the plastic armrest. Preserved until the end of time.

Beep beep beep. Mind the gap. Mind the closing doors. Mind your business. Mind your mind. Mind mind mind. Do you mind? Mynd.

And release, no bang, no light, not vast thrust into the world. Merely air, like a man struggling beneath the surface of a lake, yearning for a crisp, life affirming breath.

It begins to make sense again. Counterculture is countered by culture. He’s an easy rider clear, the fresh air cleansing the stagnant fabric of the worn seats. 4 empty, 3 taken.

His name is Jonas and he’s nobody, a grain of salt in the eye of society. He works as an administrator, administrating the bureaucracy of administration. His humble quest to complicate those that need complicating is just. Without him, it’d be too easy. There’d be no triumph over the behemoth.

He stares at the woman next to him, using the dark glass as a mirror.  She’s drooping, almost melting. Her turquoise waterproof, half zipped, her mouth pursed. Hands on her lap, black trousers, she seems to disintegrate into the carriage’s seats. Looped earrings, sparking in the artificial light of the tube.

Jonas shifts his weight away from the woman, taking solace in his thoughts. He’s wearing a suit, the uniform of obedience. Deep blue, capped off with a burgundy tie. It sits askew, off centre.

Jonas is now Jon.

Image Source: www.strategyinformer.com

Following on from my LOTRO preview for Strategy Informer, I was given the chance to find out more about upcoming strategy game, Patrician IV. It’s due out at the beginning of September on PC and Daniel Dumont, Creative Director at Gaming Minds Studios, was kind enough to answer the questions. You can find the full dialogue here and as usual, there’s an extract below. It was fun being on the other side of the PR veil again.

Strategy Informer: For the uninitiated, what’s the Patrician series all about?

Daniel Dumont: The main principle of the Patrician games is that you start as a young trader in the historic setting of the Hanseatic League – the northern and eastern European sea area of the late middle age.

In this setting, there are 32 historical towns which produce certain goods to fulfill the demand of the citizens. However, each town produces other goods and therefore, the main game mechanism is to buy goods where they are produced at a cheap price and spread them with ships to the towns where the goods are in short supply and sell them at a higher price.

The economy system in the background is fully simulated and the prices are calculated in real-time by offer and demand. The AI traders – your concurrents – are simulated as well.

The Dark Man, originally uploaded by marcofiori

Someone told me this looks like Elvis. Like the Sepia Cloud Formation photo I previously posted, this was taken through a train window. The raw result wasn’t very satisfying, but throw some post processing at it and it’s come out better than expected. I like the stark contrast and the mystery that the treatment provides.

It’s been a long while (over a year and a half) since I wrote for Strategy Informer and it definitely feels good to be back writing for them. It was the first paid-games-journalism gig that I managed to get and I’m very grateful for the start that they gave me. Appreciation aside, I’ve written a Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) preview. It looks at the state of the game with the Free-2-Play (F2P) upgrade coming this Autumn in mind.

The article can be found over at Strategy Informer and I’ve included an extract below.

Since arriving on the MMO scene in 2007, you can’t help but feel sorry for Lord of the Rings Online. Despite being one of the best online RPGs since Everquest, its highly polished exterior and loyal fan base have failed to draw subscribers away from World of Warcraft. Coming up against Blizzard’s behemoth is akin to climbing Everest – no matter what the IP, no-one seems to be able to stop its dominance.

Having quickly realised its facing a losing battle, Turbine and Warner Brothers have altered the subscription model to Free to Play (with the release of the Shadows of Angmar content pack). It’s an intelligent decision and one that will certainly appease those who refuse to pay for monthly play. We jumped into Middle Earth to see how the quest for the One Ring is coming along.

This photo, taken from a moving train, was pretty uninspiring before I put it through post-production. I darkened the foreground and I’ve intentionally overblown the highlights before adding a shade filter to exaggerate the contrast. It’s a bit noisy, but I like how dramatic it looks. It’s come out how I had in my mind when taking it.

Image Source: Uproxx

Rather than discuss the following topics in depth, it’s wiser to give a brief overview of what I’ve been watching, playing and doing with my time recently.

The biggest news is obviously my return to Football Manager 2010. Fresh from watching the SEGA marketing video discussing the new features in FM11 and with the Premiership in full swing, I decided to return to my 2019 Barnet save. I lost the whole of my Sunday (13 hours playing the game straight) as a result, seeing my newly promoted team relegated in their debut season in the top flight. Surprisingly, despite being dumped back to the Championship, thanks to the fairplay rule, Barnet are in the Europa Cup with Inter, Dortmund and Partizan. Updates as of when they come.

Elsewhere, I’d been playing Forza 3 for the first time. It’s fantastic and makes me less depressed about missing Gran Turismo (if it ever gets released) after defecting to the Xbox 360 this generation. It takes time getting used to a simulation again (after sliding around in Grid), but once I’d turned off the counterproductive driving aids, it proves a much more enjoyable experience.

I caught Salt last week at the cinema and my full thoughts can be found here. At the weekend, I invested over two hours into The Pianist (2002), Polanski’s Warsaw Ghetto true story. Adrien Brody is excellent as the protagonist and it’s a depressing tale of the horror that was the holocaust.

Here’s my favourite photo of the week.

Finally, I’m planning on doing another page feature for GAMES? and that’ll appear at the start of September, while I’m away for three weeks in the states on holiday. More on that to follow.

Stay frosty marines.

Starling’s have such mechanical movements that it can be frustrating shooting them with my Sony H50. The focus is just too slow and until I progress to a faster Nikon SLR, I guess I’m stuck with such a problem. Still, out of around 70 shots in the space of 3 minutes, this one managed to come out well. It’s a shame about the shadow placement, I had no choice though.