The Top Maplineer Tips from the Maplin 2014 Winter Catalogue

The 2014 Winter Maplin Catalogue: A Review

Beginning with this classic pose, you really can't do better, even if it amplifies a certain rotundity around the waist of this chubby Freddie Flintoff (tip for next year, Maplin: buy baggier shirts).

 



I turn the page and find it disappointing to see that Maplin haven't left behind the staged poses of the previous catalogue. Two hands are definitely not better than one unless this is actually some kind of far eastern martial art.



This is better but the finger point up loses marks. What's on the end of that finger and where, indeed, does he plan on wiping it?



Another classic. The teapot is an elegant alternative but sometimes hard to carry off. Fortunately, this year's model does a great job. Both spout and handle are in the right places.


The classic again and superbly carried off. Nothing to note here so better move on.

 



What can I say? This is a terrible interpretation of the teapot. We can see his spout but that's a sorry excuse for a handle. The only positive thing about the post is the position of the fingers. Some might say it's a feeble attempt at pointing but he's actually demonstrating an excellent way of remembering Fleming's left-hand rule for motors. First finger: field. Second finger: current. Thumb: motion.

 



If you ever needed a painted fingernail example of Fleming's right-hand rule for generators this could be it. If you are looking for finger pointing, this is probably not how to do it. The eyes are looking in a different direction. I'm afraid this woman doesn't install confidence that she would know how to rewire a sink.



This is a superb example of how to pose for the portly man of the world. Casual yet with a certain intensity. This is the guy you want giving advice about pin connectors.




An odd one this and new for this year's catalogue. It's a big Morrisey and ever so homoerotic. It's clearly modelled on the painting of St Sebastian, who was the first gay icon. It's good to see Maplin reaching out to all sectors of the community.



 



The above is a perfect example of how not to point. The term 'pissed off' and 'wish I wasn't here' spring to mind. Would you buy a caravan recharge socket from this man? I know I wouldn't. Point me in the direction of a man who knows how to point!



This, however, says 'where's you nearest 240 volt outlet, mate?' What confidence. What elan! Well done, sir! I'll buy anything from you and use it in the bathtub safe in the knowledge that it's been double earthed!



If this year's Maplin catalogue is a bit of a mixed bag of poses, I've saved the worst for last. Two hands pointing is never a good idea and this shows why. Where is he pointing? Is that 10 o'clock or 11? Where should we look? Is one hand helpfully pointing in the direction of the other? What's he saying? It's like he's being too helpful and simply getting in his own way. The result is that he looks like he's doing a bad disco dance.

Better luck next time, Maplin!

A Nigel Farage Cartoon Containing Some 17th Century Vulgarity

Another cartoon rejected by Private Eye. The verse is from 'A Satyr on Charles II' by John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester. And, yes, they did use language like that back in the 1600s.
Following it is a video of the drawing process along with my usual stream of consciousness waffling.

Free Christmas Card For Anybody That Wants One

[caption id="attachment_4491" align="alignright" width="268"] Superglued polar bears[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4487" align="alignright" width="224"] Labrador pelt[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4493" align="alignright" width="301"] Baby seal (unclubbed)[/caption]

If you're anything like me (and, if you are, then I feel sorry for you) then you won't be receiving many Christmas cards this year. I don't have a large circle of friends and those few friends I do have know that I'm an old fashioned God fearing atheist. Yet that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy sending cards. I'm one of those poor sods who actually makes his own cards which I send out and suspect people then think: bloody cheapskate, sending me this hand drawn cartoon when I wanted a mass produced Santa...

[caption id="attachment_4490" align="alignright" width="256"] The Edmonds Sphincter[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4489" align="alignright" width="245"] Immigrant labour[/caption]

In previous years, I've adopted my Stan Madeley moustache and novelty sombrero to send cards to random celebrities. This year, however, I'm not sure what I'll do, and that's a special shame because a pile of cards have just landed on my doormat courtesy of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

I'm not sure why the International Fund for Animal Welfare thought  I might want some Christmas cards. I suspect it's their way of mocking my mild autism and low quota of friends. I'm even less sure why they think I might feel obliged to send them some money. It seems a rather presumptuous thing to do: send a person a product they've not asked for and then expect prompt payment for that product.

[caption id="attachment_4492" align="alignright" width="290"] Plastic robin[/caption]

I mentioned this to somebody this morning they thought it would only be right to stick the cards back into the prepaid envelope and return them to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. However, that seems like a lot of effort on my behalf when I didn't actually want the bloody things in the first place. It's like those bastards at Cleaneazy or those bigger bastards at Avon who stick catalogues through your letterbox and get shirty when you rip them up. 'But that was my property!' they protest. To which I reply: 'the moment you stuck it through my letterbox, it became my property. Now bugger off and don't do it again'.

[caption id="attachment_4488" align="alignright" width="197"] Elk hunter's sweater[/caption]

Have I mentioned that I find it hard to make friends?

So, sending the cards back would involve effort and the charity mob would surely just repackage the cards and then send them to another poor victim. I don't want to feed this cycle of unwanted Christmas card sending.

So I have a dilemma.

Or I had a dilemma until I came up with a solution.

[caption id="attachment_4485" align="alignright" width="315"] Dog sniffing its balls[/caption]

If you suspect that you're going to be depressing light on Christmas cards this year or if you'd just like another Christmas card to the hundreds you're bound to receive, then drop me an email. All I need is your name and address and you can leave the rest to me (stamp). I'll personally sign each card with a name that might not be my own and then, time and inspiration permitting, I might even scribble some kind of cartoon onto the front cover. Failing that, I'll simply deface the card in some darkly humorous way that amuses me but will ensure no Christian lingers long by your fireplace.

[caption id="attachment_4486" align="alignright" width="182"] Stuffed cat[/caption]

I only have ten cards so you might want to be quick if you want one of the more tasteful cards. If you want a particular card from the lousy selection on offer and displayed throughout this blog post, please indicate. The cards will be with you shortly or whenever I can get access to a post office or use a friend's franking machine when they're not looking.

The New Toothbrush

A miserable way tot start a new week but here's one of the three cartoons rejected (minutes ago) by Private Eye.

Zero Choice in a Multichannel Age: Sky TV and the Decline of Culture

I watch very little TV and yet I find it strange to admit that given how much TV I watch in a week.

When I say I watch very little TV, I mean rarely do I tune into a TV channel and watch whatever they're showing. Instead, I watch things I recorded a long time ago (and stored digitally) or I watch things I've nabbed from the internet, such as my current interest in the work of  the late Christopher Hitchens whose interviews and debates are readily available on Youtube and I highly recommend.

Last night, I had a chance to look over Netflix and found myself still awake at 4am after watching a double bill of excellent documentary films. The first was a sheer left-of-centre fluke that I would never have found myself watching had I not been randomly browsing through the Netflix catalogue. ' Bill Cunningham New York' is about one of those people that makes life seem better simply because they exist. Cunningham is a street photographer working for the New York Times. His interest is fashion but not the rarefied fashion of the catwalks but the fashions of the street. Yet, if that sounds precious, then I should say that fashion usually ranks up alongside with New Age goat yoga in the list of subjects that interest me the least but I was pretty quickly captivated by Cunningham's energy, his upbeat but edgy manner, and the sheer enthusiasm of the film which is about intelligent outsiders living in modern New York as much as it's about glitz, ditz, and high heels. It's a documentary I can't recommend more highly. Cunningham is just a great human being and the kind of person that should be affixed to space probes as an example of the high watermark of our kind.

The second film is only available via Netflix, it being a Netflix Original. It's called 'Print the Legend' and documents the rise of the 3D printing business, particularly the rise of MakerBot. If, like me, you enjoy cutting edge technology and long films filled with great yet occasionally flawed characters, then you should give it a try. It's also, sadly, going to be the closest I get to 3D printing technology in the next decade.

If you've not tried the month's free trial over at Netflix, these two documentaries make it a compelling opportunity. And, no, I'm not getting paid to promote Netflix. This is a rare thing on the internet these days: an honest recommendation.

Perhaps it's because mainstream cinema has become so juvenile (I find myself feeling weary with anything that comes from Stan Lee's imagination) but, in the last few years, I've found myself increasingly drawn to the form of the long documentary. They seem to fill a gap in my life that normal TV no longer satisfies. Back when I had access to Sky, I'd often watch channels such as Discovery. At the beginning, they were great places to go and find long programmes about difficult or unusual things. You could watch a two hour documentary about something bone dry but interesting. They were the early days of satellite and cable and they were showing anything to fill the hours. Then things began to change. Channels that were previously happy to fill their schedule began to chase viewers. The documentary channels, previously dedicated to factual programming, perverted their terms and began to run programmes which weren't at all factual. They were shows about hillbillies talking about alien abductions and effete men scaring housewives with tales of hauntings. They were shows about three toed ancient civilisations and space creatures helping the Egyptians to build the pyramids. They were shows that would make me throw the remote control across the room and mutter darkly about crystal banging idiots intruding where they weren't wanted.

Once these abortions of programming were allowed, the factual channels also found they could run reality shows. They soon became crowded with scuff knuckled series about renovating hotrods. I look today (Sunday) and I see that the History Channel has devoted 12 solid hours of 'Pawn Stars' followed by 'Storage Wars'. National Geographic is showing 'Hitler's Jurassic Monsters' and then endless 'Yukon Gold'. Animal Planet HD is showing a solid run of 'America's Cutest Pets'. Discovery itself is showing 'Auction Hunters', followed by 'Yukon Men', 'Gold Divers', two episodes of 'How It's Made' (not a bad show but endlessly repeated), but then variously, 'Trawler Wars' (an endlessly repetitive show about fishing) and 'Mystery Investigator: Olly Steeds' who is today searching for Atlantis. Atlantis! F.F.S.

Like so many people I know, we recently ditched Sky after many years. When Sky started out in the UK, you might have paid anywhere between £10 and £30 per month for its channel line up of a few dozen channels. They now boast about 700 channels. Their most basic line up of channels is £21.50 a month but once you start down the Sky path, you quickly discover the only limit is your bank account. You need Sport channels? That's an extra £24.50 a month. Movies? Just another £16.50. Want to watch any of those in HD? Just another £5. You want more than the basic line up of channels? Well, that's £33 a month instead of the £21 but if you want one of the football club's official channels, that' s another £7. Before you know it, you're blowing through £100 a month and because you're blinded by all the choices they're offering, you forget to ask yourself once simple question:

Are you actually going to watch any of this crap?

'Choice' is one of the great scams of our age. It was Thatcher and her cronies who told us that we should always have choice because choice produces healthy competition. In the long term, there might be a case for that argument in a few limited situations. However, the evidence of the last two decades makes me question the logic. When they opened up our local bus service to competition, about five or six companies fought for the business. We endured a decade when the local bus service was provided by some very questionable companies driving buses that were apparently built by 'Death Trip Motors Inc'. We travelled around in anything from old holiday coaches to converted vans that rattled and fell apart at every pothole. That was the result of choice and competition. Yet soon the bigger companies began to buy out these smaller companies to the point where we now have two bus companies who effectively run a monopoly and charge upwards of £2.50 just to travel one stop. Unless you're travelling across the county (also £2.50), you don't use the buses  and the term local service begins to have a hollow ring when you can no longer afford to pay for local journeys. In other words: choice destroyed the local bus service which now caters to none but the few workers who have to pay the toll or pass holders who get free travel  funded by local government.

I do not doubt in the slightest that if it were not for the license fee, the very same would have happened to our TV. We're promised choice but there is really very little real choice available on Sky. Often the choices are mutually exclusive. If you're watching Nigerian TV  then you're probably not going to be watching the Irish Channel. Is Fashion One going to appeal to the same people who enjoy Forces TV or Flava TV. Now we're heading towards the rump end of the year, we've got Blissmas (Channel 376) showing nothing but Christmas rot, which is probably not going to appeal to audiences watching any one of the countless Muslim channels.  If you subscribe to LFCTV, you won't be subscribing to MUTV. If you enjoy the Gay Dating channel, you probably don't watch Babestation or any one of the endless pornographic channels where women flash their cleavage throughout the day.

The point I'm making is that unless you're a Christian Irish-Nigerian homosexual hetrosexual who is currently serving in the armed forces and looking forward to Christmas when you're hoping to get a Liverpool FC shirt to compliment your official Chelsea sex toy shaped like John Terry,  then you're unlikely to look at your TV guide and be overwhelmed with choice.

Yet not only are the real world choices fewer than advertised, so much of the remaining programming is of such a lamentable quality that you'd be hard pressed to say it's actually worth the money you spend. Those that complain that the license fee is actually a form of taxation are the same people who would happily turn our libraries into private enterprises and shrug their shoulders when the non-fiction section is ripped out in favour of a karaoke bar. They oppose the license fee on ideological grounds and not because they could deny that the BBC actually do produce (some) quality programmes that represents the best of our nation. Most of the few channels on Sky that provide quality programming are simply replaying much of the BBC back catalogue. Gold is a perfect example of that (though as if to disprove my point, today showing 'Only Fools and Horses' and 'Allo Allo'). Dave is another, though when I now look, I see it's also showing 'Storage Hunters' from 11.30am to 6pm.

To sum it up: 99% of the programming for which you are paying Sky exorbitant amounts of money is indistinguishable from bullock muck. And the very small fraction of programming which you enjoy in a month would not look as attractive if you were consciously aware that you were paying £2 - £10 an hour to enjoy it. I assume that most people who pay for the Sports package are really paying for the football, in which case, it's probably cheaper to buy tickets and attend the games yourself than pay £25 a month to watch your team who, if you're lucky to follow one of the bigger teams, might be televised once a month. Often, you'll pay £25 a month and never actually turn over to the sports channels because you're not interested in volleyball or American Football or yachting or any other of the lamentable sports they cover. Add in the cost of paying for sports channels during international breaks and the summer and the real price of following your team begins to look ridiculous.

Finally, if you do enjoy football, you also now face the competition of BT Sports. Choice might be a fascinating point of political theory but the reality is that poor football fans now have to pay two subscriptions to watch the matches which were, until recently, confined to one channel.

It's blackmail yet so many of us succumb to it. Hell, even I succumbed for a long time. Now I watch very little live TV and I collect and treasure the things I know I'll enjoy. I'm even slowly weaning myself off football, which just rots the soul as you see the excesses of these tattooed louts paraded in front of our eyes. Above all, I just try to avoid the marketing spin and the scream of the loud but banal. There's some great TV out there if only you're willing to look. Just look beyond the places where Sky precede everything with a pound sign.

Ed Miliband and the Kim Kardashian Factor

And here's my Not Safe For Work video and my spontaneous rant about Kim Kardashian's arse, Dr Matt Taylor's so called 'sexist' shirt, Ed Miliband's leadership, culture, populism, art, and the lack of real debate around the Ched Evans story. Partway through the video, I repeat a section of video, so you' not going mad if you think you've seen that before. In the final part of the video, I make comments about the Ched Evans story which I wouldn't wish to be seen as a defense of Ched Evans. I merely ask why celebrity should have any bearing in our forming a decision in any kind of moral debate.

The Obvious Kim Kardashian Cartoon

A Topical Ed Miliband Cartoon

New optimism this morning. Yesterday I installed a new plugin to this blog and it claims to track my RSS feed. I thought literally nobody picked up my feeds but now I see it's even more popular that reading the site through a browser. Oh, I know many of the hits are bots working for news aggregators. I also know that simply because my stuff appears in people's feed readers doesn't mean they actually read my words. But it feels oddly better being unread by thousands of people that being visited by just a few hundred.

***

This morning I faced a mild dilemma. What do you do when SPAM isn't SPAM? The Chinese are clearly a clever people and are adapting their tactics. I've been hit by their SPAM for months and I've been able to delete it all without hesitation. This morning, however, I found this comment waiting for me:

Love your full scenery shot~!
Welcome visit me back http://ecinfant.blogspot.hk/

The problem is that it's not entirely SPAM. Whoever left it, looked at my post long enough to spot that I'd included a panorama shot of Sherdley Park in St Helens and, clearly, the people of Hong Kong trawl the web looking for panorama shot of Sherdley Park in St Helens... I'm not sure what I can do if the spammers start to read my blog. It's my nightmare scenario.

***

As you can see, I don't have much time to write so I've quickly narrated last night's cartoon. It's eight minutes of my usual nasal waffle (I always sound like I have a cold, which is probably to be expected because I do always seem to have a cold). Today's brief rant is about UK politics and Nigel Farage and my difficulties with drawing Ed Miliband's face.

Trains, Trees, and Bloodlust

Children are brutish. I'd either forgotten this or it had never occurred to me before yesterday.

It was Wednesday afternoon and I found myself trudging across Sherdley Park, which Wikipedia would tell you is a 336 acre park in Sutton in St Helens. It's probably the biggest park in the area and I know it from my childhood when we'd occasionally visit to look at the peacocks.

It was late afternoon and the sun was already lying oblique to the land, throwing long searching shadows that had hurried me on towards the hospital where I was due to collect some important paperwork. I'd had a bad morning. For the third time in about a month, I'd discovered that the neighbour has not been passing on mail mistakenly delivered to their address. This is bad enough when the letter is a bill but far worse when the mail includes important hospital results. All week, my sister had been expecting a vital letter from a consultant and only when the letter was three days overdue did I think to check the only place we'd not yet checked: above the neighbour's fireplace. Sure enough, our neighbour had kept the letter and hadn't bothered to pass it on. It was why I found myself making the trip into St Helens so late in the day. It's why my day had been so frantic, how I'd come to accidentally smash my bike lamp (now fixed thanks to superglue), discovered that my headphones (essential walking equipment) were bust (and are still bust). Without music and feeling generally pissed off with the world, I was trying to pass my time taking pictures of trees as I made the 25 minute walk.




By the time, I was heading back, it was nearly three o'clock and the schools were emptying.

Sherdley Park sits beside Sutton Academy so it was unsurprising that I found myself surrounded by Sutton Academy students. In the modern climate, a man can't take photographs when there are school kids within ten miles so I put away my camera and pushed on towards the dying sun and my imminent train home.

And then I saw a group of them. Well, I say 'group' when I mean a 'gang'. It was a gang about 200 strong and the correct term is probably a 'mob'. It was a mob gathered on the edge of the park for reasons that were unknown until I got closer and I heard the cheering. Then I saw the fists flying and flailing cuffs darting between the camera phones held aloft. It was an old fashioned schoolyard scrap and I hadn't seen one of those in years. I confess: I smiled.



The path to the station led right past the crowd and I feared they might swell over and block my exit to the train. However, by the time I got close, the scrap came to an end when one lad broke away. He was a short brutish lout, probably raised on nothing but pig meat. He had the look of the typical schoolyard thug or typical in my experience of schoolyard thugs who always tended to look overweight, squashed features, short cropped hair topping off a look of malevolent evil.

He was cursing towards another lad who emerged from the crowd but I don't know why. I'd passed on, aware of that my train was due. A moment later, three teachers ran past me and back towards towards the riot. Teaching is an insane business, not for the weak of heart. My own instinct would be to leave the two lads to duke it out but, I suppose, the teachers aren't there to decide which fights are fair and which are simple bullying. Perhaps the punch-faced boy was the victim and not the instigator. I don't know and I'll never know.



Sitting on the platform five minutes later, I overheard all manner of rumour from the students waiting for the train. No doubt in some dark corner of the internet, videos are being posted and bloody noses posed for posterity. It's a different kind of childhood and, I think, a sad one too. I was beaten up twice in my life and both times at school. Strangely, I wasn't beaten up a third time. Not once I'd hit six feet and the thugs discovered that I knew karate. Yet I'd hate to think that footage of my childhood beatings still exist. I'm not sure how I would react had I been born into this generation where nothing passes into forgetful memory, when the youthful discovery of sex and violence are there for the word to see and to mock.

Yet the bullying isn't the real reason I hated school. I hated school because school taught me nothing but prepared me for a life of subservience to a system. The very concept of a tie is anathema to me. What exactly is a tie? It's the only item of clothing that doesn't actually fulfill a utilitarian service. People might say it covers up buttons or fills in a gap but, really, it's there to do nothing but indicate your subservience to a greater other. In the bright light of day, schools are supposed to be about personal development and bringing out your character and individuality. The truth rarely spoken is that schools -- and I suppose I really speak about those in deeply working class areas -- are really about destroying the individual, of taking away the rebellious streak, and preparing you for a life of 9 to 5 grind. Your school years really teach you how to wear a tie.

Last night, thinking all about this, I fired off an email to the school which was largely tongue in cheek but less largely, I suppose, a genuine expression of my relief that children are still unprogrammed, raw, occasionally bestial. Only a fool would prefer chaos to a civilisation but all great civilisations need a touch of madness. Last year, Jon Ronson wrote a hot blistering piece about hacking culture in America, a subtext of which was the correlation between crime and freedom.

Seeing the crowd calling for blood and excited by violence was a reminder that really that's there within all of us. It is ugly and might hint towards the frightening truth that civilisation is merely a thin facade and extreme brutality is merely under the surface of the suburban bland. However, it's also a reminder about freedom and how that's something everybody really yearns for.

Anyway, I'm hopefully programming today. Here for posterity is my email to the school.

Dear Headmistress,

I assume you are used to hearing only bad things about your students so I thought it only right to drop you a quick note to say 'well done' when they prove themselves a credit to our community.

Like so many of the older generation, I've been occasionally cynical towards the youth of today. I've always assumed that they're all ensconced pimple deep to their Gorilla glass, enjoying virtual worlds but otherwise too busy face-twittering their Google yahoos  to care a hoot about healthy living and the great outdoors. I don't know about you but I say there's neither a vice nor virtue you can find on the internet that you can't also enjoy by climbing up a tree or looking down at the world from a high rocky ledge.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I was enjoying a bracing visit to Sherdley Park today (peacocks) and I noticed a sizable gathering of your youth also enjoying this 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' (Keats). I say 'sizable gathering' when I should more accurately describe it as a 'mob', though I fear there are too many negative connotations attached to that word when I mean to say only positive things. There they were, upwards of two hundred in the field, enjoying nature in the gathering dusk. This, I thought to myself, is surely a sign that all is not ugly about modern youth. Watching them, I was reminded of the words of Fitzgerald who remarked that youth give off the 'calories of virtue'. I thought pretty much the same when I heard one of your virtuous tykes shout words which will forever be etched in my memory. 'Effing nail him!' he cried or words to that effect and I believe even you, Ma'am, would forgive his use of the Anglo Saxon had you seen the look of wild enthusiasm in his eyes.

So, please, allow me to congratulate yourself and all the staff at the Sutton Academy for encouraging your wards to embrace traditional sports. I would never have thought that bare knuckle boxing would still be so popular with our youth but now I see that it's still extremely popular at Sutton Academy! I've not seen a crowd so fuelled with bloodlust since I was lucky enough to see Ali fight Foreman in Zahire in 74. It was particularly encouraging to see that enthusiasm shared by the three members of staff I witnessed rushing out to get a ringside seat. One note of caution, however: I'm not sure men of their girth and age should be running quite so fast, particularly the one at the front who was a lovely mover and probably enjoys ballroom. If he popped a knee, what then? A promising dance career could end, just like that. [Snaps fingers] As for the one at the back (bearded, possible real ale drinker), it was an admirable effort but perhaps he should reconsider the wisdom of the hundred yard dash.

Finally, could you please pass on a 'very well done' to the two brawlers involved? It's so good to see young people feeling passionate about their sport and the combatants were certainly bursting with passion when they were done, particularly the short brutish lout who looked like he'd been raised in a shed on nothing but pig meat. You should be proud of him. In my experience, such a high tolerance for pain will certainly earn him a career as a doorman, bouncer, or even a history teacher.

Again, thank you for restoring my faith in modern youth.

Faithfully,

No Cartoon

No cartoon today because I was quite pleased with the cartoon I drew last night. In a moment of dumb optimism, I posted it off to Private Eye along with two other of my recent cartoons, which means that I'm hopefully over the huge crushing self-loathing that lasted me nearly half a year and caused me to cartoon nothing. The three I've sent are all quite good. The first, from last night, is probably overdrawn and far too offensive for anybody to publish. That said: it's probably in my top five of the cartoons I've ever drawn. The second is very minimal without even a title and, I think, it pretty strong. The third is my older style and a joke which isn't too bad, even if the drawing isn't the best. Usually it takes them a few days to reject them, at which point I'll have enough material to fill the blog for three days.

In the meantime, the game moves on. Shuffleboard King now has a big new feature which I'm pretty pleased to have got working. It's something that's been commented out in the code for a long time because I could never figure out how to get a certain mechanism working. Last night I had a breakthrough and the new mode now works pretty well (albeit with a few very minor bugs that should be fixable). It's currently at a very vanilla stage and I now need to jazz it up and make it more fun to play. However, version 1.1 of Shuffleboard King should be a major update. I've also ditched the old logo and created a really nice minimalist icon, to match new menus and dozens of other fixes.

A Theresa May Cartoon

Two cartoon posts in a day! I won't be able to keep this up, even on the dehydrated monkey glands and tiger spleen. After my Ed Miliband cartoon, here's my cartoon and video about Teresa May and the European Arrest Warrant. I might draw more today but I have code to write.

An Ed Miliband Cartoon

A Quick David Cameron Cartoon

A quick video with commentary about drawing a David Cameron cartoon.



And the finished result...

Long Sunday

Sunday. I have a cartoon to post but I haven't finished it. I have a long piece of nonsense to post but I haven't finished it. I have made significant changes to Shuffleboard King but it's not ready to be rolled out. I have dozens of jobs to do and I won't have enough hours in the day to do half of them.

Worst of all: I have one enormous bug to fix and I have no idea how to fix it or what might even be causing it. Since the game mode I've introduce in the next update is for single player and is 'against the clock', I decided to implement some high score tables so players can track how well they're doing in each of the levels. I programmed the high score routines, wrote a simple sorting algorithm for the scores, as well as a neat method of storing scores for each layout of table. Looks great when I run it on the PC. Then I build it for Android and no text appears on the highscore tables. Usually, this sort of thing is easy to fix. This time, I just can't see the bug and I'm beginning to fear that it might be a bug in the build of Unity I'm using. That might mean I'll have to upgrade my Unity to the latest version and that's not something I want to do. Each time Unity updates, the developers fix certain bugs. That, you might think, is great. However, my game is working despite the bugs. If I update it to the lastest version now, I need to test the entire game again because there might be new bugs. Even worse, the parts of the code they've fixed might start to work correctly which is a problem if I've taken into account their bugs to make my code work correctly. If their code starts to work properly, my workarounds for their bugs might then become bugs in themselves...

Long Sunday. Lots to do.

Slow Day

I've been back blogging every day for nearly three weeks. Sometimes, it feels like I'm holding a one sided conversation with Google crawlbot. I write something and within seconds, the crawlbot arrives, scurries around the post, rips out the keywords, and disappears back to Google HQ where it buries my words in the trillions they have stored there. Other than that, very little traffic passes this way. Sometimes it's hard to feel motivated.

So, today, it's been a day away from the blog and away from the web. I watched Liverpool lose to Chelsea and then I watched two episodes of Gold Rush, which remains one of my favourite shows despite my knowing it's heavily scripted and in spite of the levels of frustration I feel when I see people doing dumb things (ignoring Gene Cheeseman is always dumb).

However, my day has been largely been spent coding the game. I've added new menus and a new game mode which I think is probably the best so far. I have quite a bit more work to do before I even think about issuing a new update of the game.

The Evidence Against Ed Milliband

Let's face facts: politics is a dumb game often played by even dumber people. We can try to dress up Westminster but pomp and finery really only get us so far. Wrap ermine around an arsehole and you don't reduce its essential arseholeiness. Politics is the art of egregious manipulation; it is pandering to our lowest motivations, whether that's putting more money in our pockets or keeping more foreigners out. Politicians who don't play that game and aim high will usually fall the lowest. Few politicians have fallen in the public's estimation further and more quickly than Nick Clegg, yet there are not many politicians who have put their country before their better political calculations. A stable government at the time of the last election might have been best for the country and even the wider financial system but it has destroyed the Lib Dems for a generation. Is that fair? Hell no. Political life is rarely fair.

And so we come to Ed Miliband. Ed Miliband is probably a nice guy. Safe, dependable, and with brains to succeed. He's not been terrible as Labour Party leader but neither has he lit many bonfires. He's obviously not the new Blair but, if anybody wanted the new Blair, they'd slap some tan on the old one. Nor is Ed the new Neil Kinnock, who lacked many of Ed's virtues but had a certain fiery passion and was LOUD. VERY LOUD. No, if one word damns Ed Miliband it is the word 'nice'. He's been a very nice Labour leader.

Because I think that politics is essentially a dumb game, I have myself a big dumb theory about general elections. It's not insightful. It's not complicated. Unlike many, I'm not actually cynical about politics or even politicians. Politics is only as dumb as the populace it's trying to manipulate and my big dumb theory is really an expression of my utter cynicism towards the general public who don't really care about politicians, don't have strong opinions about the main parties, and look like they're going to reject them in even great numbers by voting for UKIP.

Despite my thinking that politics is dumb, I am fascinated by the game. I read and listen to all the pundits who talk about swings to the left and the right, the mood of the electorate, and the financial situation of floating voters. I hear all kinds of theories about why certain parties do better in the north and why the mood of the nation changes based on the time of the year, the number of royal babies on the way, and even the length of women's dresses. Yet I've found nothing that beats my big dumb theory.

My big dumb theory is this: General Elections are always won by the better looking party leader.

You might frown at that but I'm not claiming that all our Prime Ministers have been stunningly good looking. I'm merely saying that, compared to their opponent, the better looking candidate always wins. Good looking doesn't always mean more handsome. Character has much to do with it. You will not win an election if you have a silly sounding voice unless your opponent has an even sillier sounding voice. John Major's voice looked like it was going to lose him the 1992 general election until Neil Kinnock stood up and started to shout 'alright!' and then the public realised which silly sounding voice sounded the least annoying and least likely to leave them with a four-year-long headache.

I've produced the graphic on the right to make my point. Not only are our Prime Ministers getting progressively better looking but you'll see that we have to go back to the early 1970s to find a genuinely close ugliness contest between Heath and Wilson. In 1974, we had two general elections when the British public really couldn't decide which one of them was better looking.

If my theory is correct, David Cameron will walk the next election simply based on his looks. The reason is pretty obvious. Small things matter when the percentages are close. Historically, parties have always battled hard for the remaining percentage points to sway an election and something as apparently trivial as the leader's face, character, manner, and voice can make enough of a difference. The key, I think, is to ask cartoonists who they'd least like to draw. Nick Clegg is as fiendishly difficult to caricature as Miliband is easy. Handsome but bland faces are  always harder to draw than unique and interesting faces. And because of that, I think Miliband is doomed. He has a unique and interesting face.

Let me be clear: despite everything I've just said, I like Ed Miliband. Given a choice of sitting down and having lunch with either man, I'd always choose Miliband over Cameron. I think he's intelligent, compassionate, and a good speaker. He is everything that the Labour Party should want in a leader. However, he does have physical flaws which the British public simply won't look beyond. Is it cruel to comment on his hair, the bend in his nose, his deepset eyes, his lips, his teeth, or his adenoidal voice? Yes it is. But politics is a cruel bastard of a game and as Twitter constantly proves, people are not so enlightened that they won't mock somebody for their looks. As Kenneth Clarke put it this morning: ' I have to say I’m afraid I share the judgment of the majority of the public about whether [Miliband] looks like a potential prime minister.”

It's also worth remembering that it was the Unions who voted for Miliband. MPs and party members had voted for David, not Ed. It was a huge miscalculation. David Miliband was a guest on The Colbert Report over in America a few nights ago and he demonstrated why he'd have walked the next election. Unfortunately, brother Ed is Labour's William Hague. Hague was always destined to become Prime Minister. He had the brains and political acumen to rise to that position, except Fate had also bitch slapped him into oblivion with a billiard shine and banjo twang of a voice.

So, it's no surprise that Miliband might face a leadership challenge. Sadly, I think it needs to happen. Much as I like Ed Miliband, I think Labour need to have a leader to make the next election honest. The polls don't matter, even at this late stage. In the heat of battle, with Cameron, Miliband, Clegg and Farage, lined up on stage, Cameron will undoubtedly emerge the winner. I'm sure of it. Change the faces, however, and I think things will be different. Labour are actually blessed by quite a good looking front bench. Some could breeze through the next election. Given a couple of good months in the job, Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham, or even (here's a crazy idea) Tristram Hunt would make politics interesting again and they might actually save us from the prospect of UKIP holding the reins of power in this country. This really isn't about the snide comments made about one good man's looks. This is about saving us from a truly terrifying prospect of seeing Nigel Farage as our new Deputy Prime Minister and, unfortunately, my big dumb theory has no reassuring data to assure us that ugly men can never become the power behind the throne.

The Eighth Level of the Modern Hell: App Marketers

It's only three days since I launched my game, Shuffleboard King (I think I might have mentioned it), and it has already introduced me to a new level of hell: shysters touting for business.

Dante originally reserved the eighth circle of hell for all manner of scammers but I think even he'd be surprised at how quickly these marketing types pounce in a global electronic age.  The eighth circle must have broadband or something. This evening, I received my eleventh email and the most brazen of the lot. I suppose that means they're great at their jobs but, I have to say, it's a rattish job to be great at. They even sent me a gaudily produced price sheet of services they provide. It was the length of a novella and ranged from Press Releases ($49), Twitter campaigns ($99), all the way up to the 'Top 25 Media Package' for the entirely reasonable price of $4999. There are some interesting services in the mix. Improving my icon could cost me $49 and I can apparently buy 4000 Android reviews for only $1699. 220 Android reviews with ratings works out at $965 and a Expensive Youtube trailer would cost me $899.

It's eye watering stuff. The top package is like a smorgasbord of black hat operations, including 2400 forum posts and mass mailings to the 100000 people in their database. In other words, I can pay somebody to spam forums and email accounts with information about Shuffleboard King.

Normally, at this point, I would say something like: I don't know what's more depressing, that services like this exist or that people actually make use such services. However, I know what's more depressing and it's not the fact that people still dream.

Everybody writing a game or app is a dreamer of sorts and dreamers make excellent victims. Yet sometimes if feels like there are more rats than dreamers.

The truth, of course, is that there is no magic. A person could spend $4999 promoting a game or app and they'd still be damn lucky to get back one percent in sales or ad revenue. The only people winning at the sharks circling the Play Store. They taste new blood in the water and greedily eye the naive game developers setting out thinking that a fortune is waiting for them. Only there isn't a fortune. There are only more predators, waiting to drag them into deeper waters.

I entered into this expecting nothing and nothing will change that. I'm writing my game because I enjoy writing a game I enjoy playing. I hope other people will enjoy playing it and I hope people will email me, tell me interesting things, make me laugh, and make me feel generally better about the world. That's why I do it.

So, if you're reading this and think you might be able to help me with a SEO campaign or help boost the profile of my game: please don't waste your time. I accept that Shuffleboard King will remain largely unplayed and generally ignored. I hope it's a good game that will get better but it's success won't rest on my being dumb enough to fall for the clever words of people who, next year, could be selling bunks on Mars like, last year, they were selling us pyramid schemes. Dear marketing types: go back to where you good looking people have perfect teeth, big smiles, perky tits, and razor pressed suits. My teeth aren't great, I smile but only at the wrong things, my tits need work, and unless you count old fading jeans, t shirts, and hopelessly overlarge sweaters, I don't own a suit. Please don't email. Don't read my blog. Don't come back. This bandwidth is reserved for real people.

 

 

What is the Point of Contactless Payments?

What is the point of contactless payments? I've tried them dozens of times now and I keep swearing that I won't try them again because every time I do try them, exactly the same thing happens. Today I found myself staring at a payment doodad which proudly advertised 'contactless payments'. I'd had a bit of time with my SAD lamp this morning so I was probably feeling unduly optimistic about the world. I was in (prepare yourself for a shock) a good mood, so I thought: 'come on then! Let's have a go of this little beauty!'

So when the checkout woman said 'That's £1.25', I waved my card over the contactless portion of the doodad.

The woman stared blankly ahead.

I waved my card again.

'Pop your card in when you're ready, love,' she said.

'I'm going contactless,' I answered, possibly with a sensual erotic sway about my hips, a certain come hither look in my eye.

'Oh,' she said. 'Wait a mo... I have to do something...'

She fiddled with the terminal a moment. 'Hmm...' she muttered as she fiddled. Seconds passed. Then more seconds.

I waited.

'Ah, here we go. Okay.'

I waved my card. Four lights turned green. All was great with the world.

Except, going contactless had taken me about half a minute longer than sticking in my card and doing it the 'old fashioned' way.

So, again, what exactly is the point of contactless payments? The simpler things apparently get, the harder life becomes.

***

It's like Vodafone. They'd suspended by family plan because I was a day late topping up my phone. I topped up Monday. They re-enabled the plan Tuesday and it still wasn't working yesterday when I contacted Tim. Tim, who was probably Indian and not called Tim, said he'd fixed it however after I'd finished speaking with Tim, my phone wouldn't make calls out. This morning I contacted Vodafone and managed to speak to a nice Scottish lady. She said all my friends and family need to pull out their sim cards and wait half an hour. This we did. I popped mine back in my phone and tried to ring a friend. It worked!

So out I went. Half an hour later, I needed to ring home.

'Sorry, you've not enough credit on your phone' said the annoying Vodafone woman who I'm sure used to voice those annoying Christmas ads for Woolworths. Only, now I do have credit on the phone because the nice Scottish lady had given me £1. But that's not the point, I paid £5 three days ago so I wouldn't have to need credit. So now I have to try to contact Tim, whose probably Indian and not called Tim, so he can put me through the nice Scottish woman.

Christ. Let me get back to my lamp... My mood needs topping up.

 

A Day of Shuffleboard King

Today I intend to blog more but less. A few short posts that nobody reads rather than one that nobody reads. I think it will suit my brain since today I'll be pulled in every direction, when my mind only wants to work on the game.

Wednesday was a rare day which I managed to entirely devote to improving things on Shuffleboard King. I coded all day and night but, looking back, it doesn't feel like I added a great deal. It's odd but adding things that are small and user friendly can take much longer than implementing things that are big and game changing. The game runs on a loop, which means that the same code executes every fraction of a second. Adding features that don't interrupt the running of that loop are easy. Adding a dialog box to help the user means bringing everything to a halt and that can be tedious. Saying that, I added a shot counter message, which works well and was a good suggestion by a player.

I've also added a few other features that people have been suggested and, late on, I started work on a new game mode, which proves my point about the differences of big and small since I got it working about 2AM. My intention now is to have features which are enabled on a version of the game which people can buy for a paltry sum. There'll be no micro transitions or in-app purchases. Just an old fashioned choice on the Play Store of either playing the free version or pay a little and getting a lot more.

Having said all that, after yesterday's hard work, I've also broken a different part of the game than I was working on. How it happened, I have no idea since these things are mean to be isolated from each other. However, it has happened and I'll probably spend the entire day figuring out why.

 

Tim and Twinkle

So, here I am, talking to 'Tim'.

Tim is one of Vodafone's helpful online chat chaps you get through to when you want help and I needed help. I'd stupidly forgot to put £5 on my phone over the weekend and my 'family' package had been suspended. So first thing Monday, I'd put a fiver on my phone, which Vodafone subsequently took off me before they texted me to say they'd reactivated the service. Except every time I now try to ring a member of my group, I get the annoying patronising Vodafone woman saying 'Sorry, you've not got enough credit to make that call'.

'Well, of course, I don't have enough credit!' I scream.'I hate mobile phones and I don't put more credit on my phone for precisely the reason that, if I did have credit, you'd have just charged me 50p to make a call I assumed was free.'

That's how I came to contact Tim and here is our illuminating exchange in all its dull glory.



Is it only me who suspects that 'Tim' isn't really Tim's name? Would a Tim totally miss my attempt to lighten the mood? Why did Tim take me so literally? Would a Tim really mangle the language in such a peculiar way? 'For account verification purpose'! 'Have a lovely day ahead'! 'It was really a pleasure chatting with you at this point of time'!

People call Tim usually use slang, produce typos, or just have plain bad speeling. But this is different. This suggests to me that Tim is actually Indian and Tim is part of the huge shift in global economics which has seen many of these support jobs move east. Could Tim be one of those unfortunate souls who are now asked to deal with members of the British public whilst having a very bad understand of the British public's peculiar ways and humour?

Now, that's not the reason I'm writing this. I'm not angry with Tim. I liked Tim. The reason I'm writing this is because Vodafone clearly think that I might be offended if Tim gave me his real name. It's like they're calling me a racist simply because I'm a member of the British public. It's like walking into a shop, seeing a shopkeeper of clearly Indian lineage, and asking his name. If he paused, looked at you carefully and then said 'my name is Barry', you would assume either that he couldn't remember his name or that he was wary about telling you his name lest you launch into some racist rant. Of course, Barry's name might be Barry, like Tim's name might be Tim, but this isn't the first time this has happened to me this week. I was dealing with a webhost via email and it was pretty obvious that the person on the other end wasn't really called 'Twinkle'.

Twinkle does not sound like somebody who fixes things when your web server goes down. The fact that shortly after talking to Twinkle, somebody from India began checking my site, suggests that my old web host had also moved their support to India.

What annoys me isn't so much that they've done that (though, incidentally, it does annoy me because their cheapness often means I get a crap service) but that they're being so sneaky about it. Of course, these companies would argue that giving their staff Western names makes it easier for us to communicate but I think it's something else. They know that we suspect and they also know that we don't approve. So now we're talking to poor unfortunate buggers who have to pretend to be Tims and Twinkles.

Anyway, I think I'll have to contact Tim again. He's reactivated my phone in that specific meaning of the word 'reactivated' which also means 'killed'. I now can't make or receive calls. This time perhaps I should ask his real name.

Google's War on Unnatural Links

It's a SPAM filled morning. I received my first piece of marketing rubbish about Shuffleboard King ("it looks a great app"), from a company wanting to help me with my SEO strategy. I haven't the energy to tell them that I don't have a SEO strategy and, frankly, if the difference between success and failure is being the kind of person who talks about having a successful SEO strategy, then I'll pick up my hobo stick and knapsack at the door before I hit the railway tracks.

I also received another email about 'unnatural links' on a website I maintain on behalf of other people. I've had a few of those emails myself. One of my old blogs contains a link to Spearmint Rhino and they keep asking me to remove my 'unnatural' link because, they claim, it's damaging their Google ranking.

'Unnatural links' is going to be the new big thing in the world of SEO. You should keep an eye out for it. Rather than sounding like illicit relations between two uncles, it means that Google are finally cracking down on the business of fraudulent back links.

Dull technical bit: for a long time, websites earned their kudos, known as their Google Pagerank, depending on how many people link to them. The theory is: if people link to your website, then your website must contain quality things that people enjoy reading (judging from this morning's traffic, that means naked pictures of Barbara Windsor, cats sneezing, and hamster porn). There are, however, ways that so called 'blackhat' companies (the people who like to cheat the system) can artificially inflate a page rank. They create false links leading back to your site. Often, those links are from webpages that just contain thousands of links embedded in meaningless text. Sometimes they're on websites produced by people working for schemes like Amazon Turk, where they ask you to write a 2000 word article on cheese for 25p. You write your low quality cheese article, they pay you your 25p, and the company then posts it to their 'everythingaboutcheese.com' website with backlinks  to some cheese company has paid them a small fortune in order to improve their SEO. The trick is that the blackhat operation will have hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousands of cheese related webpages. Each one will have very little value in Google's eyes but enough of them will amount to something that counts towards your Pagerank. If you ever wonder why 99% of the internet is filled with bland meaningless crap, waffling on about things you can't believe people would want to read: blackhat operations are the reason. Their websites are the dark matter of the web.

It's also why you can often find websites that have page ranks of 5, 6, or 7, even though contain nothing but marketing crap, and others (coughs humbly) contain original cartoons and writing but have a relatively low page rank of, say, 4/10.

Which takes me back to Spearmint Rhino. Unfortunately, it's been so long since I wrote my old blog, I can no longer remember the password. However, even if I did remember the password, it fills me with inordinate pleasure knowing that I can do something to piss off Spearmint Rhino. In fact, it's great to know there's a way to damage the SEO rankings of any company you particularly despise. Click here for great offers from O2.

The irony in all of this, of course, is that until a few months ago, the very same companies now asking us to remove links were the companies begging for space on our sites. Every day, I would receive one or ten requests from companies offering me real money so they could post to this blog. Trust me that I need the money and sometimes I was tempted to allow a cheese related post. However, I just wouldn't compromise my blog that way. And if Google is finally going to war against these SEO clowns, then it's a moment to celebrate.

Marketing freaks have ruled the internet for so long. The only bad thing I could say about Google's crackdown is that it seems to be wrongly identifying quality websites instead of spammers. Even if I say this myself: my other blog, the one I can no longer access, was pretty damn funny. Spearmint Rhino are bloody lucky to have that link.

A Brief Aside About Vimto

I said to a friend the other night: 'You don't have any phobias, do you?'

'Of course, I do,' she protested. 'I have loads of phobias.'

'Okay,' I replied, certain of myself. 'Name me just one.'

She thought for a moment. 'I tell you what makes me go cold. I can't even look at them without wanting to scream... gremlins.'

'Gremlins!' I exclaimed and, I admit, gave a bit of a chuckle. Gremlins!

'Not the cute ones,' my friend protested. 'Not Gizmo. I mean when they change and become those pointy eared lizard things singing songs from Snow White. Urgh!'

'But they're not real,' I replied.

'What does that matter? You asked if I have any phobias and I told you. Gremlins.'

I didn't argue my point but I'm pretty certain that gremlins can't be a phobia, unless you mean the film Gremlins 2 which I stupidly saw at the cinema and nearly gave me a lifelong phobia of cinemas.

I only tell you this because I went shopping yesterday and bought a bottle of Vimto.

Yes, Vimto. I happen to like Vimto and even if that marks me out as somehow strange and juvenile in my tastes, well I am strange and juvenile in my tastes. I like Vimto and on a cold day, I enjoy a warming cup of Vimto to melt my internal icicles. That's why I bought a large 1L bottle (on offer at Tesco) and how I came to find myself looking at the label.

Vimto have redesigned their label and they now have an animal gazing out. The animal is wearing a warm woollen jumper and holding a nice steaming mug of Vimto. I bet you can't guess what animal is now the face of Vimto.

I'll give you a clue. What animal makes you think winter, the cold weather, the possible onset of snow? What animal do you think would fancy a drop of Vimto to warm it up in the deep winter months?

I asked a few people I know.

Two of them guessed 'bear'.

Wrong.

Another guessed 'rabbit'.

Wrong.

A third guessed hedgehog.

Good guess but wrong.

The answer is...

...





...





...



Wait for it...



...





...





...







...

That's right. A toad!

A bloody toad!

What the hell has a toad got to do with winter? I know it's cold bloodied blood that's how toads are. Sticking hot Vimto through its system doesn't seem like a very good idea to me at all. In the toad world, that's probably as dangerous as us sucking liquid nitrogen through a straw. It also doesn't make logical sense. Toads are completely absent throughout the winter. I can honestly say, hand on heart, I have never seen a toad on Christmas Day in my life. In fact, I can't think of an animal I associate less with cold weather than the toad.

Vimto, what were you thinking? This is an outrage! You destroying your brand by putting meaningless toads on your bottles.

And, just in case you haven't guessed, I also happen to have a massive phobia of toads and buying that bottle of Vimto yesterday tested every inch of my self-control. I might have to start drinking Ribena.

[Extra information: They're apparently using a toad so they could create the hashtag #vimtoad. As pointless as it is bloody moronic!]

And It's Goodnight From Me...

It's 3AM and I'm about finished for the night. It's been a long day.

The game should be back on the Play Store and I'm hoping that tomorrow will see fewer dramatic bugs.

I'm still not sure what caused the physics glitches except there appears to be a difference in how screen touches are handled between Android devices. I increased the sensitivity of the throws and that allowed the pucks to fly at the maximum speed. However, this caused a very rare situation to occur on the Dutch Shuffleboard, in which the pucks could bounce back towards the front of the board. I'd written code that caught them and destroyed them (putting them 'out of play', as the rules of Sjoelen dictate). However, the code had a loophole I hadn't spotted and it allowed some of the pucks bounce back, escape the board, and cause all manner of hell with the game logic, which didn't expect pucks to be rattling around the floor.

But this is the nature of computer programming. One small change (the sensitivity control) caused a bigger bug to reveal itself. And this is why I never believe any leader who announces that new computer systems will improve the NHS or any branch of the government. The complexity of computer systems increases enormously the bigger they get.

In addition, I fixed about nine or ten smaller things. Or I hope I fixed them. I'll be playing the game tomorrow and hunting out more bugs. I'm sure there are plenty.

If anybody reads this blog and has an Android device, please give the game a try. Perhaps drop me a line to say it seems stable because now I'm now going to bed and I know I'll be dreaming of pucks flying out of the screen, causing all kinds of havoc as they break noses and glasses, chip tooth enamel, go flying out the window, damaging cars, nuns, and policemen...

Urgh... Hell of a Day...

Well, I've taken my game down from the Play Store. No matter how many times I've been playing it over the past couple of weeks, it's never enough.

In all honestly, I thought it was pretty solid and then I heard horror stories from one user with pucks either not moving or flying all over the place. Not at all sure what's going on but I think it's probably better to take a couple of days and figure this out. It would have been tolerable, dealing with these bugs, but I've had a hell of a day. I need to find a bigger rock to hide under.

Under The Rock

Woke up dreading the coming day. Not that I have anything out of the ordinary to do but the game being live makes me uneasy. I had a restless night, wondering about how it's performed. I always feel like this when something I've poured my heart into is suddenly out there. I just want to crawl under a rock and not look how my work is faring. I guess I'm not really suited to the harsh reality of internet life. I appreciate the good people enormously and it's why I do this. I feel lifted by every generous comment and email.

Good people make me feel better about the world and I know there are plenty of good people out there. I've been very blessed in my time as a blogger to have contact with many bright, encouraging, enthusiastic, and generous souls. I've also had the misfortune of attracting the scorn of a few whose vengeful ugliness really breaks my spirits. There really are too many Welsh Rottweilers in the world.

The outcome of yesterday was my releasing version 1.0.1 of the game. I'm taking an ambitious approach to my version numbers. The first 1 represents major alterations to the game. So, if I add a new big exciting feature, such as a new game mode, that number will increase to 2. The 0 will only increase when I add smaller but key features, such as new menu options or I fix some large bug. Last night I increased the last number, from a 0 to a 1 since I fixed a small but dumb mistake I'd made, positioning an important button in the space occupied by the ads. That last number represents everyday bug fixes. I expect it to get into double figures very quickly, possibly by early afternoon...

The other outcome of day 1 was my first look at my advertising stats. The numbers were higher than expected (due entirely to Tim Worstall, many thanks Tim)  but the income depressingly oval shaped. I don't understand it but I hope it will increase in the coming days and weeks. I never did this to make a fortune. It's more about achieving a goal and raising my competence as a programmer. However, I'd like to think that I'd get money for allowing people to paste their ads on my game. At the moment, if feels like I'm providing a charitable service to billionaires.

I'm honestly at a loss as to what to do next. I had a report from Barman who says that it's too difficult to throw the pucks the length of the board. I now have to go through my code very carefully, trying to figure out if I've overlooked anything that would make the throw power device dependent. The two main things that change from device to device are screen resolution and processor speed. But since neither should affect my calculations, I can't see what it could be. I could increase the power of the throws by any amount I like but I've spent weeks carefully tuning them to a point which doesn't break the game's physics. Time in computer games is not linear but discrete. A moving object doesn't have every moment of its path calculated to an almost atomic scale. Like slowing down a movie, objects leap through space. In a physics simulation, the objects also leap through space (but, theoretically, the gaps are much smaller) and if they're moving quickly, they can simply leap through other objects because the computer never examined the time-frame where the two objects would have collided. Of course, there are ways to calculate these things more carefully but it requires so much more computer power that, in the context of a simple game, it's unworkable.

However, that's my day. Solving a problem which I'm not entirely sure how to solve.

I drew some cartoons last night but they're lousy.

I'm going to hide back under my rock.

A Cartoon About Poppies

My body just gave out last night and I slept most of the evening. I'm not feeling particularly better this morning, though there's definitely a fretful edge about me as I now worry about possible bugs in the game. As I've said previously, we live in a strange age where the consumer is God and I now feel utterly obliged to fix everything and anything that might be wrong with my code.

It's a odd place to be. On the one hand, I feel like I've come to the end of a journey of many months, when every day I've had to figure out another problem or learn to do something new and often difficult. The reality is that I'm now judged by strangers with the power of clicking on a star rating which can either destroy me or build me up. Yet I also understand that there's no way of knowing the real value of that rating. In the internet age, we're used to rating things and people sometimes rate out of sheer spite or malicious intent. We're also in throwaway age, when people try and discard with equal indifference. For me, however, all of that is plumbed directly into my central nervous system and strangers now have the power to make me feel sick and faint, buzzing or glad, miserable or elated. Never look at the reviews has always been a motto I live by. With Google, you can't avoid it. It's there, visible and unavoidable, when you need to examine the bug reports for your code.

But that's for tomorrow. For me, today , I just feel so damn happy that I wrote 10,000 lines of code which made a kind of logical sense.

All of the above was rattling around in my head, last night, when I fell asleep. When I awoke I tried to relax by drawing a cartoon. Taking the encouragement of Ben as my starting point, I thought I'd try to change my style. I can't honestly say I followed any example, though I was looking at some cartoons by Bill Stott earlier in the evening and had I realised how much I enjoy lines which aren't straight. So I tried to draw this with a deliberately unsteady hand. After a couple of less successful attempts, I began to settle into a style and I drew three cartoons in rapid succession and I was surprised that I liked the results.

Shuffleboard King: Your New Must-Have Android Game

Well, here it is, the efforts of the past few months which I've given the catchy name: Shuffleboard King.

I'll probably regret this in the morning but I've now released my first game onto the Play Store (hopefully, it should appear here in the coming hours). I might have delayed more but I'm mentally and physically exhausted and this is a somewhat daunting moment and I just wanted out of the way so I can move on and improve the game.

What is Shuffleboard King? Well, it's the version of shuffleboard I wanted to make for myself and for my friends who regularly play shuffleboard on their tablets. The problem with current shuffleboard games is that they feel quite artificial to play. Their physics tend to feel and look quite scripted in that you throw a puck and the damn thing flies out of your hand in a perfect straight line. Even the best shuffleboard game out there feels like the computer is playing the game for you.

So, I thought I'd try to make a shuffleboard game myself and this is the result.
I'd like to say it was 'easy' but, in truth, there are many hundreds of hours of work in this and it's probably thousands of hours if I take into account the many months before I started, just to learn Unity and all the other packages I used in this game's creation.

The part I'm most proud about, I guess, is the version of Sjoelen included in the game.
I nearly released this a few weeks ago but at the last moment, I discovered Dutch Shuffle (called Sjoelen on the continent). I watched a few videos and got hooked on the gameplay. I also realised that I could add my own Sjoelen mode to Shuffleboard Kings using the code I'd already written and, an extra month of work later, I'd expanded my original three game modes to include a fourth.

Those 4 games are the traditional shuffleboard, Sjoelden (Dutch Shuffle), as well as two games of my own creation: Angleboard and Crossboard, which do pretty much as described. On Angleboard, you bounce your shuffle off a rail so you have to play around a 90 degree bend in the table . In Crossboard, you can throw your puck from one of four sides toward a target in the centre of the table.

There's a tournament mode, in which you play opponents who are increasingly difficult to beat. There's also a challenge mode in which you have to beat 50+ challenges, such as throwing the winning puck on a board already dominated by your opponent.

I know there'll be bugs, typos, and probably even the occasional glitch. Some I can't fix but are part of the Unity engine. Others, I'll work hard to eradicate in the coming months, should enough people actually play the game.

I hope you will take a chance and play the game and perhaps, if you do, you could tell me what you think in kind, even patronising, words.