The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I spent the best part of the weekend trying to install SWTOR on my MacBook Pro (early 2011) why did it take me the best part of the weekend? You’ll find out in a bit, but it was in part to me not knowing what the hell I was doing and the scatters of info spread across the net to fix all the little problems I encountered along the way.

What you’ll need:

1. A Mac (I’m running Lion – don’t know how similar this is on the other versions)
2. Genuine copy of windows 7 (has to be 7 if you are using Lion… I think) on CD.
3. Blank DVD or USB thumbtack
4. Internet connection
5. At least 40GB free HDD space
6. The best part of an evening
7. A SWTOR subscription

Step by step.

1. Back your stuff up (or chance it – your call, don’t blame me if this goes tits up)
2. Tap “Boot Camp” into spotlight and it should come up with  ”Boot Camp Assistant” (You’ll find it in Applications>utilities if not)
3. Follow the instructions through – You’ll need the blank disc or the USB to create a Mac drivers install disc thing (Don’t worry your Mac will do it all for you, you just need to sit and wait)
4. You’ll be asked to create a partition for Windows. If you just want to run SWTOR on windows you’ll need at least 40GB (I went for 50 to just play it safe… well the second time around I went for 50, I learned this lesson the hard way)
5. Your Mac will split your HDD and ask you for your Windows install CD
6. It will restart and then start installing Windows about half way through it will tell you your HDD isn’t in the right format, simply select it, click advanced and then tell windows to format the drive.
   BE CAREFUL HERE THE LAST THING YOU WANT TO DO IS WIPE YOUR OSX (I should point out I don’t know if thats even possible but either way be careful)
7. Follow the Windows install bits all the way though and when it asks tell it to do a clean install of Windows.
8. If you get to the step where it asks you to validate your Windows CD key and it won’t take the code for whatever reason just delete the details off and hit continue, you can register it later when you’r in Windows.
9. Let it finish (It will turn on and off loads during this process)
10. Ta darrrrrrrrr it installed Windows! (If you are anything like me this is where you’ll have the “OMG what have I done to my shiny, shiny mac” moment)
11. Install the disc with the drivers on your Mac created an age ago (I had to do this twice because some drivers didn’t stick – google searches suggested this is normal)
12. Get your copy of Windows to validate (or check that it has)
    Start menu > “ctrl+click” on Computer scroll down and hit validate. It should show a big blue Microsoft badge if it has or a link to do validate it if not.

    This Bit you might not need… If you managed to validate jump to number 20.

13. If you have trouble validating Windows telling you the key is incorrect it could be because you are using an ‘Upgrade Edition’ (No that’s not code for pirated – it is an actual version of Windows 7). If this is the case you need to install Windows again (yeah I know it’s bollocks – I can explain why and how this trick works but the long and short is that you’ll need to do this if you want it to validate)
14. Download this file from Apple http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3172 and run it (I know it says Windows Vista – just trust me)
15. During the install of that file from Apple it might crash and tell you it’s not compatible or something if so just find the file in your downloads folder or wherever you saved it and right click ‘run as administrator’ then it should work fine.
16. Pop your copy of Windows 7 back in and run it from ‘My Computer’ within Windows.
17. Sit and wait while it does the thing all over again
18. Taaa darrrrrr you’re back in Windows wondering if this is really worth the headache.
19. Now validate your copy of Windows.
20. You’re good to go and download the SWTOR client (or install the discs – does the box copy even have a disc in it?)
21. Play Skyrim while it installs and downloads – seriously this will take forever!
22. Thats it you are now ready to play… Enjoy.

Few Things I Found Out

See thats only… 22 steps!!! (urghhhhh)

It’s worth it though and if the lovely people at BioWare ever do bring us a Mac client you’ll have a head start on all your Mac buddies and you can lord it over them next time you’re in Starbucks (just don’t let them see the Windows desktop or hear the noise). I’d hit all sorts of bumps on the road to SWTOR on the Mac and read a lot about other peoples Boot Camp woes – granted I’m no expert but this is how I did it and it worked for me. If you do get stuck post a comment or tweet me and I’ll try help if I can.

On the 24th aug 2007 at 18 mins past one. Sue came into my life, she was beautiful.

I knew from that moment on I was in love. There was something about her subtle curves and the the way she lit up when I touched her. We would sit up ’till late talking to friends, she kept me company when I was lonely and she was always there when I needed her.

We saved the universe together more than once.

Today as I put her back in the box, I feel a slight guilt trading her in for a younger model with larger storage and built in wifi. I’m so sorry sue I hope you find a new home with somebody who will love you as much as I did.

They were Goodtimes :’) xxx

Right, I’m 27 soon…

…I know I act much younger and look far older but if you aim for the middle of those two figures, 27 is the number you’ll wind up with. It would also appear I’ve chosen the age of 27 to have a (technically delayed) quarter life crisis.

What are you on about Lee?

Well I first read the term ‘quarter life crisis’ on the back of a book that my brother Adam gave my sister Lizy a few years ago, I didn’t read the book for whatever reason (probably due to the fact it wasn’t mostly pictures of Batman on the inside, or maybe I just didn’t like the cover). The term “quarter life crisis” must have subconsciously stuck with me though and I had forgotten all about it until recently when somebody asked me what had been up with me lately and in a rather “meh” tone of voice I told them of this theory of the quarter life crisis.

It’s most likely to strike in the mid 20′s but could be sooner or later depending on your personal circumstances I guess. It’s probably going to strike around a birthday or one of those odd moments where somebody says something like “you know Grand Theft Auto III is ten years old today?”. Your first reaction is to declare them a dirty liar while you start bringing up Wikipedia on your iPhone to check. It’s that kind of almost insignificant event that leads your mind down a path which has only one conclusion…

“…Shit, I’m old.”

The next thing you know your stood watching your secondary school self give Mr Parkes the answer “Johnny Vaughan” to that time old question of “So then Mr Williams, what do you want to be if you grow up?” For the record I answered “Johnny Vaughan” to that question. No I didn’t want to be involved with the supply of class A drugs (although I understand a lot of people in that room at the time have since chosen that career path). What I actually wanted to do was present The Big Breakfast. Seriously that was my life’s goal at that time; I wont lie it kinda still is, The Big Breakfast was bloody good.

As I reached the end of secondary school I made the decision not to go to college, there where many reasons behind that decision but the main ones were quite simple: I was too lazy and hated students (especially art students). A small part of me had always regretted that decision until recently when one of my more promiscuous friends informed me that college wasn’t all shaggin’ and casual drug takin’ and for her the whole thing was actually a bit boring. I’d chose to throw caution to the wind and actually followed up on what I wanted to do, so I got a voluntary job at the local hospital radio station. I won’t lie I didn’t stick it long, that place was grim and I have the utmost respect for anybody that gives up their spare time to produce content, put on a happy face and actively involve themselves in people’s lives who really aren’t very well.

It was good fun though and as I was the cool new kid with the denim jacket and sideburns put on “the younger persons show” on a Saturday night under the wing of  one of the stations vets, a lovely lady called Lin. I’d go around the children’s wards talking to the kids a generally being me having a laugh and getting requests for the show later on that evening.

Wyclef Jean – Perfect Gentleman was often requested and it seemed odd having kids asking for a song about a stripper to played for them. It was good fun and I really enjoyed that bottom rung of the ladder to fame but then came that make or break moment that everybody who works on hospital radio goes through and the day when that sick kid who had been there every week since you started was suddenly gone. Nobody need say what happened, you could feel it in the air. I broke, that was me done. I don’t think I ever went back.

Simultaneously to that me and Lin had scored a job on a lovely (but very local) radio station in the south of Birmingham. It was fucking brilliant, while all my mates (I say “mates” more “people I knew”) where reading up on paint or dribbling wax on the floor and claiming each dribble represents and emotion or some crap me and Lin were out at Faithless gigs and hanging out backstage with Ash (remember Ash? What the bloody hell happened to them?) It was brilliant! I was on the second rung of the ladder to my Big Breakfast dream and I wasn’t even 18.

Then it started to go south for god knows how many reasons, blah blah blah… really long paragraph… skip to the end and before I knew it the radio station had long stopped broadcasting and I was working in a Sony Centre. I won’t lie it was a good laugh and looking back its no wonder the shops got closed down, I think I was single handedly responsible to all the dicking about in at least two of those shops.

We’d play off ground tig on a Saturday while also serving customers, we’d pile up TV boxes then Starsky and Hutch the Van through them out the back and encourage some guy wandered in off the street (who was quite clearly mentally ill) to have a little dance in the shop…

…and video him

…in HD

…and then put it on YouTube

…and produce a line of mugs with his face on and sell them out the back for £12.

That was a good laugh, but it’s no wonder we went bust.

Many moons had passed since the those last days of Radio Hollymoor and before I knew it I was stuck in retail, I was a lifer. Those “people I knew” had all gone on and completed university, become teachers or pharmacists, had kids, been to jail or got hideously ugly and I was exactly where I didn’t want to be. Stuck in a dead-end job where I’m constantly pissing into the winds of stupidity for less than my brother makes working part-time in Wetherspoons. I know it’s wrong to complain about having stable employment in the current economic climate but there isn’t a day that goes by in that shop where I don’t dream of a CH-47 Chinook carrying a full cargo bay of munitions crashing into the side of the building (not the side of it I’m stood in obviously) and bursting into a ball of flames.

If it’s not who you are but what you do that defines you then I tend to not mention that place when people ask what I do, working in a Hi Fi shop isn’t interesting in the slightest, it’s a challenge sure I’ll give it that but it’s just not the right kind of challenge. I struggle with what to tell them when people do ask though, I’m not a journalist even though I hang out with that crowd, I don’t think I’m a particularly good writer so I tend to avoid that one for fear of the first thing coming up in the google search they run on me being ‘Tweet Nothings’ and although my business card says Social Media Manager I tend to avoid that too because it makes me sound like a bit of an asshat. GamingLives is what I do now though, all day. Every day.

I couldn’t tell anybody why though; I feel a sense of duty towards it, some bizarre need to stay up till daft o’clock in the morning and make sure all the bits I’ve declared myself responsible for are where they should be and that some fanboys haven’t come a long and trashed them. I can’t quite pin it down to just one thing it is that I love about it, I think its more about having a sense of belonging or being a part of something great.

It’s not all sunny days in Los Angeles and Cheesecake Factory burgers though, its hard work, really hard work and just like any job there are days where you just wanna twist your pad in half and throw the bits at the wall in a massive rage quit fit. Regardless of the odd low though, I couldn’t give it up. Granted it’s not the big breakfast, it’s become more than that now.

So what exactly is the quarter life crisis?

Well it’s kinda this blog post…

It’s the moment that where you start analysing all of those decisions you’ve made be them big or small; from what you decided to do at an age when you really weren’t qualified to answer the question to deciding if you should get on that train to London to meet the strangers off the internet.

It’s the moment where you realise that it really didn’t pan out how you wanted.

and it’s that moment where realise that you won’t be presenting The Big Breakfast.

It’s not a depression though, its more of an acceptance.

It’s the acceptance of all the bad choices that lead you to where you are at that very moment.

It’s the acceptance of that nagging feeling you have had in the back of your head for a while, knowing that you need to make some big changes, sort things out and start doing what you really want to do before it really is too late.

The trick is just having the bollocks to do it.

The first Darksiders didn’t get the attention it deserved from the general gaming public, which is a shame because its a fucking good game. Sadly Darksiders II seems to be going the same way. You’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that this is worth keeping an eye on.

Following up from what was one of my favourite games of last year, Darksiders II puts you in control of another of the Horseman of the Apocalypse, this time… Death. To bring anybody up to speed who hadn’t played the first game, you played as War, one of the Four Horseman who was summoned to earth to stop a battle that had broken out between the angels and the demons. The game’s mythology treats the Horsemen as enforcers of a treaty between Heaven and Hell who were to be summoned when the seventh seal was broken. Somebody is playing games though, and War is somehow summoned to Earth during a battle between Heaven and Hell, without the aid of his brothers and without the seventh seal ever being broken. War is basically fitted up for starting the fight and sentenced to death, but is given one last chance to find the one responsible for summoning him and restore the balance.

Darksiders II further builds on that story and the mythology of the first game by telling parts of the same story from a completely different perspective. It takes place in parallel to the story of the first game, as Death is trying to find out what has happened to his brother War and why he was wrongly accused of instigating the apocalypse. Death plays very differently to how War did in the first title; War was very much the warrior while Death is kind of the rogue of the group; he’s much faster, more agile and will dodge incoming enemies attacks rather than blocking them. Death also has far greater customisability, allowing you to focus how you want to upgrade your skills and traits so that you can play the game your way and increase your skills with, say, heavy weapons if you want to.  While it’s not full-on hardcore RPG type stuff, it does add that extra little layer of depth that I’m sure most will love. This new customisability extends itself further and you’ll be able to purchase new armour from vendors in towns, or equip pieces you may find on your travels, so while War in the first game was very much War all the way through, Darksiders developers say that its possible for you to have a completely different Death from any of your friends after just an hour of play.

Today’s tale is of Seymour the Dragon taken from Thursday the 9th January 1992.

Once upon a time there was a Dragon Called Seymour, he lived in a cave with his mum and his dad. None of his friends like him becuase he breathes rain and snow instead of fire.

Few things I think worth pointing out with this epic tome which some fucker obviously stole and used it as the basis for Skyrim.

• This was in my religious education exercise book of all things, don’t remember Jesus having a dragon.
• I received a tick for my masterpiece and another for the fantastic piece of artwork which accompanied it depicting a lonesome Seymour the dragon in the woods.
• My spelling hasn’t improved in the slightest, the only difference is that my computer fixes it for me now.
• A rain and snow breathing dragon would kick a regular dragons arse… I was on to something back then.

When we was in Germany for gamescom we managed to wangle a look at Ridge Racer Unbounded now I’ll be honest I probably felt the same as you initially when I heard that there was a new on on the way and “meh” pretty much summed it up. Then I saw this trailer and was sold. Now I’ve actually played the bloody thing I’ll be disc twitching till its out. I hate saying things like this but it could be the game Burnout Paradise fans have been looking for.

Some games have been around since what seems like the dawn of time, they have legions of fans and rarely change because… well they don’t need to. They have been around since the dawn of time and have legions of fans because they are widely considered to be ‘good games’. Eventually though, they are outdone by their competitors and they need to pull something drastic out of the bag and go for the reboot, they need that ‘Batman Begins’ moment if you will. Ridge Racer is the latest member of that club and, while the developers aren’t marketing it as a reboot, they quite easily could do.

A fresh tank of gas is just what the Ridge Racer series needs and that’s exactly what the guys and girls of Bugbear Entertainment and Namco have given it. Don’t start fanboy screaming just yet though, as everything you love about the Ridge Racer series still remains: the cars still have that Ridge Racer look to them and the sense of speed is still there, as is the ability to pull off those ridiculously long drifts around the game’s sweeping corners. The drifting, as you’d expect, helps to build your boost bar which can be spent on that extra bit of speed or, if you can save yourself, you’re able to blow your load on set sections of the tracks and do things like smash through thick concrete walls, creating shortcuts and altering the layout of the track for the next lap and the racers behind you. It’s not just these set piece sections that are destructible though; it’s possible to turn a fair bit of the track to rubble all in the name of building up your boost – as a loose rule if it has yellow and black stripy bits on it you’re going to wind up in tiny pieces scattered across the road, but anything else seems to be fair game for a good smashing.

-For some dumb ass reason at every press presentation I’ve ever been to they guy from the studio will ask “has anybody got any questions?” and nobody ever does! What the fuck – fucking pretend “journalists” granted I wouldn’t go as far as to call my self a journalist but if some guy has just asked me if I want to know more the answer is “yeah I do” and if all else fails rather than sit there in awkwardness I’ll just chat shit about games. So here is the time such an instance occurred after being shown Resistance 3.

Back when GamingLives was in Germany for Gamescom, I managed to get one last look at ‘Resistance 3′ before its launch. One of the very strange things about being in those preview rooms at Gamescom is that when a presentation ended, one of the developers would always ask… “so does anybody have any questions”, and for practically every presentation nobody said a word. I, on the other hand, wasn’t going to let the opportunity to talk to one of the industry’s biggest developers pass  me by so I took Jon Pacquette, Writer at Insomniac Games on ‘Resistance 3′, to one side for a chat about 3D gaming, big bosses, co-op and comic books.

When creating a game for 3D, do you need to take anything extra into account in the development process or is it fairly easy with the PlayStation 3 where it’s just a case of flicking a button and *BANG* all of a sudden the game’s 3D?

[laughs] Well it’s a little harder than that. If you have split screen in a game it helps because it has a lot of the same principles with regards to running two buffers, and Al Hastings, who is our chief architect, is a wizard with how he got the 3D up and running. The trick is finding the subtlety in how you actually implement the 3D and the depth to the 3D; one of the biggest things that we figured out during development is that a lot of games put the HUD up at the very front in the closest layer to the player which has the player constantly looking up to the front and then looking back into the game  and we felt that a lot of those games caused some eye strain. So from there we started looking at the best 3D implementations out there on the market with regards to the user interface and we even got looking at ESPN 3D who actually put all of their UI in the centre layer so that whenever you are looking at stuff its always right there; it’s easy to glance down to the score and things like that so we decided to move our HUD into that middle layer and it improved things immensely. We had spent a lot of time trying to get the 3D right as well as get that feeling of depth right, so that it doesn’t cause a lot of eye strain with our 3D implementation.

Do you have to make any trade offs by having the 3D? Is there anything you have to lose?

Well you are basically running two lower resolution “eyes” essentially, so you might see a little bit more aliasing and things like that but on the flip side, because you have the two frames and your eyes are putting them together, it kind of eliminates a lot of that. I think those trade off are worth it if you like 3D but that’s just part of doing 3D in general and we’re really, really happy with how the 3D turned out. I think there are some people who were sceptics when we started doing it at Insomniac but, in the end, most of the people have become true believers.

I got annoyed with the internet and everything that is wrong with it last night and I’m in a place where I can’t really do anything this morning so I figured I’d share the list with you.

• Stupid duck face omg girl gamer profile pics where the camera is above your head and your looking up at it
• Facebooks new news feed – I thought it was shit, then I thought it was clever but now I just want my stuff back and I dont need to know everytime body likes somebody elses photo
• german internet hosting places -because gaminglives was off for a fair chunk of yesterday
• My blog layout (yes this one – it looks rubbish)
• People who tweet shit with the sole aim of trying to get retweeted so that people will think they are cool.
• People who think they are brands – your not a brand your a twat.
• People who review games that clearly haven’t played the game. Just play the fucking game you tit – your supposed to be a gamer.
• This stupid intenet banking thing HSBC Have given me to get into my banking which I can’t take out anywhere because if I loose it im boned.
• RSS feeds – why does anything still need them? They are the stupidest thing in the world.
• iTunes – why can’t you just track fucking stats?
• My twitter background – its to messy
• Amazon.co.uk – two orders in a row gone AWOL, what the fuck guys I want my phone case!
• Arsehole creepers on twitter – you know who you are
• Passive agressive status updates on Facebook -yeah that’s right this thing on my list is about you.
• People that you can’t unfollow or unfriend because it will cause to much ballache.
• People that have a picture of a dog on their profile for anything. Its always the same stupid puffy faced mop head dog as well. Get a proper dog!
• People who do nothing but enter competitions for anything on twitter. I might make a new rule – if your not a gamer you can’t win anything.
• Raptr updates – fuck sake guys turn um off.
• New phone firmware – I want new phone firmware! The internet should of kept quiet until the week before it was ready.
• The windows phone WordPress app and its all-round general shitness.
• The WordPress websites admin area when used on a mobile – I wanna add bulletpoints god dammit!
• Spam emails from friends and family that say things like “forward this to 10 friends and a fairy will give you money and blowjobs but if you forward it to less than ten you’ll catch cancer – fuck off sending me this shit!
• Gamers who wernt around when the mega drive was – you guys dont know what it was like stop pretending you know about games.
• The gadget show – its shit stop getting an internet semi everyweek when its on.
• Tweeting your horrorscope – wtf
• Free WiFi in public places – why is it always so crap?
• People who by tablets that ain’t ipads then pretend they are the best thing in the world  – im not being a fanboy but lets be honest you are kidding nobody.
• N4G and all its hoop jumping and bullshit for no reward other than a fanboy fight in the comments
• People who comment on stuff that they havent read.
• Ubisofts press website – where the hell is everything?
• Copy paste Facebook updates (even the ironic ones)
• Flickr and its stupid upload limit a month
• YouTube not giving us a partner channel.
• Apple and their crappy podcast support pages.
• Tumblr blogs that just repost endless shit and giffs that they seen reposted on somebody elses tumblr. If you want a blog be creative with it stop posting up twilight crap
• People who post /sqeeeeeeeeeeee
• This smily :/ He is the arsehole of smilys
• Ppl who stil rite lik dis K m8?
• That stupid picture of the potato man from reddit that people use that always has fuuuuuuuu on it.
• Adverts on sites that show up before you can look at the site
• Netflix and the lack of it or anything close to it in the UK.
• People getting a hard on over onlive – where were you all months ago when I was telling you to use it?
• Blog posts like this that is a list of somebody ranting about crap that nobody cares about and were created just because the guy who wrote it was bored and had a bee in his bonnet.

It’s the tough second album for the gaminglives podcast – think we did pretty well.

As usual a massive thanks to the thousands that downloaded it and the first episode – dunno why I’m saying thanks here about 2 of you probably picked it up from my blog – big thanks anyway.

lol – to think me and Adam said we’d be happy with 500 listeners by the 6 month episode too – how wrong we’re we?

<3 Lee

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