Before this, the only event I’d organised was HACKBMTH 1 alongside Adam @skattyadz. To go from a one-day hackday with 20 people to a weekend-long event with up to a hundred attendees is quite a jump. And I’m proud to say it went pretty damn well. And of course, it wasn’t all me – I couldn’t have done it without Tim @timofetimo and Paul @paulalbinson as well as the input from @tombuildsstuff and of course advice from @alukeonlife. Hats off to you guys. And of course @andytouch and @tombuildsstuff for bringing cake.

We had some worries beforehand. A lot of puzzle pieces needed to fall into place before the day would be a success, and luckily they all did. Some of them only fell into place days or hours before the event was due to begin. Initial planning for the event was rocky, with many organisers dropping out and leaving it up to fewer and fewer of us. I don’t blame them, though.

But it all went brilliant. Everyone had a blast, especially me. My face was used in a game, in a HTML demo, and in God knows what else. We had a HUGE variety of talks, including one on Kennedy Space Centre, a Raspberry Pi Tank, social media storytelling, the fail swap shop, Kinect, and loads more besides. Every session was a difficult choice between competing things of equal awesomeness.

I also did a talk about CSS Pre-Processors, namely SASS, and my recent obsession with them. Many people left feeling like they were more prepared to explore the scary world of CSS Pre-processors.

Thanks to all for coming along. I’ll post some pics up when I’ve got some. Here’s some choice tweets from the event:

Eventifier Archive for the Event, with pics.

Thanks to everyone for coming along. Of course, the event would be nothing without you guys and your brilliant, varied talks. THANK YOU.

And of course, thank you to our sponsors. Bournemouth Uni hosted us, and BCS provided funding, along with Freshleaf Media and Campaign Monitor. Without them it couldn’t have happened.

2012 is the year where the best games showed you that every moral choice was wrong and every decision will be regretted.

Here are my highlights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcKLuUxz8ig

Filmography in 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68aKCIXZ-LY

DJ Earworm’s 2012 Mashup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q0dsG8fTHY

News Bloopers in 2012

The following is a Sponsored Post.

I’m not the most prolific photographer, instead choosing to let the pros take over when it comes to taking the best shots. I’m happier editing photos than taking them. And you’ll certainly be lucky to find me on the other end of the lens!

But I still like to carry around a small portable camera in my bag for those moments I really need to treasure, for when a phone’s camera simply won’t do. A camera also needs to be able to survive the depths of my bag, sharing the bag with my MacBook Air, notebooks, pens, and other assorted items.

From the whole wealth of cameras available, the Sony Cyber-shot™ ‘Slim and Stylish‘ cameras totally fit that bill. Apparently, it can survive almost anything. While I don’t plan on finding myself on the side of a mountain anytime soon, that’s always reassuring. If it can survive a mountain, it can survive the horrors of my messenger bag.

And as a design-obsessive, the classic design hearkens back to classic cameras from the 90s with the sliding front. A classic, timeless design. And with its Carl Zeiss lens, it’ll take some amazing shots for such a tiny package.

Of course, that’s not the only camera in the Cyber-shot™ digital cameras range. There’s also the Professional Compact which manages to cram a full frame 24.3 megapixel sensor into a small chassis, which certainly blows my phone’s camera.

The whole family is rounded off by the Portable and Powerful and the High Performance camera families. There’s something for everyone there. The 20x optical zoom on the High Performance camera would be invaluable for grabbing details from the furthest of targets out in the countryside, or you could go for a HD video of the cityscape around you. And the Portable and Powerful family are perfect for those nights out when you need a reliable, light camera that can capture every unforgettable moment.

If only I could get them all. (But I don’t have enough hands.) But for me, the Slim and Stylish camera fits the bill. What one do you think works best for you guys?

The Doctor Who episode Blink may be Stephen Moffat’s greatest hour. Filled with superb writing, time travel wrangling, one of the best conversations in TV, and an ingenious twist (see video below), most importantly it introduces the most horrific villain in Doctor Who, ever.

The Weeping Angels have always been Doctor Who’s most horrific villain. Only able to move if no one is looking at them, if you blink or turn away from them they rush you.

They don’t kill you if they get to you. Instead, they send you back in time to before your own birth, draining your time energy and creating some wonderful time travel paradoxes in the process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH0R01gP3m0

I have until the rain stops.

In Blink, one character, Kathy, finds herself transported from London in 2007 to Hull in 1920 after an Angel touches her. She leaves Sally a letter detailing the life she’s led. She has lived well, overcoming being stuck out of her time and living a good life, eventually dying in 1987. It is bittersweet writing at its finest and wonderful use of time travel and beautiful props. Heartbreaking.

Billy Shipton and even the Doctor and Martha are victims of an Angel, sent back to London 1969 – the destination of the victim seems to depend on the Angel that touches them. Billy waits all his life, 38 years, to deliver a message to Sally. Another heartbreaking scene, melding great science fiction time travel with pure emotion.

Overuse of a villain is Doctor Who’s most frequent fault, but thankfully the Angels have only appeared a few times in Who. When they do it is a terrifying and horrific experience for every character involved, as seen in The God Complex.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhImhTS_lFY

However, the crucial send-victim-back-in-time feature was largely forgotten in the two-parter The Time of Angels and Flesh & Stone. Those two episodes were a mistake, I feel, overloading the Angels with unnecessary abilities (notably the ability to control their victims as puppets and control others if they view them through a screen) and reducing their overall threat and core horrifying ability – the ability to remove you from your life and place you somewhere else. As with all Doctor Who villains, the more you’re fighting the easier they are to fight.

The Weeping Angels will return in The Angels Take Manhattan, the last episode of this half of Season 7.

This is the last episode we will see Amy and Rory Williams, leaving in ‘heartbreaking’ circumstances.

Based on these facts, my imagination went into overdrive. Here’s what I hope will happen in The Angels Take Manhattan. The following is speculation. Maybe it’ll turn out correct. I certainly hope so. This has been stewing in my head for months now, so this may be a splurge of words.

The Angels Take The Ponds

Rory has always been one to throw himself into sacrifice in dedication of the Amy and the Doctor. In The Angels Take Manhattan, he will make the ultimate sacrifice – overcoming the fear and distracting the Angels to allow Amy and the Doctor to escape a dire situation and live. The Angels will overwhelm him. But, of course, they don’t kill him. They send him back to the past, stealing his potential time energy.

Perhaps he could be sent back to the prosperous 1920s New York. Who knows. Either way, he is gone, stuck in the era he’s been given. Perhaps he is sent back to the 1880′s, to live on a farm in rural Idaho.

Determined to not let Rory’s sacrifice be in vain, the Doctor and Amy defeat the Angels. But as a last act of vengeance, one Angel throws itself at Amy before it dies, sending her back through time to join Rory.

The Doctor escapes, alone, as he is destined to be. But of course, he’s a time traveller, so he does the first thing he can think of and dives into the TARDIS and attempts to find Rory and Amy in the past. But for whatever reason – time distortion from them travelling, or damage, or residual time from the Angels, the TARDIS lands him in the wrong year.

The Doctor in ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’.

He exits the TARDIS onto a farm, full of energy, excited to rescue the Ponds to get them back home for Christmas. Except he’s too late. About 50 years too late.

The Ponds are old, living happily in their old age. They’ve attempted to contact the Doctor for years, but eventually gave up and lived their lives as happily as they could, finally satisfied to find some peace after the adventures they’ve had.  The Doctor has arrived at the right time. Amy is grievously sick. There’s nothing he can do to help her. She dies, having lived a full life, with Rory at her side.

The Girl Who Waited

We’ve seen Rory die of old age in a paradox and Amy trapped on her own for years, so this scenario is not alien to the viewer. But it will be more heartbreaking than ever. The Doctor has inadvertently given them the thing they needed most – time to live. Time to live without the Doctor coming and messing their lives up. The Doctor offers to Rory that he can take him when he leaves, but he refuses. He chooses to stay in the past, in the life they crafted for themselves.

The Doctor leaves, heartbroken, as is the viewer. If he can’t save the Ponds, he’ll save someone else. And as he ventures off, he realises he’s left someone stuck in limbo.

I am always a fan of heartbreaking, bittersweet endings, and this seems like too good of an opportunity for Moffat to pass up. If he does what I hope he will, then I will cry. And so will every other viewer. If he does something even better, then I’ll be all the more happy for it. It’ll finally be something to beat Battlestar Galactica‘s truly sad ending. It’ll be a final send off to the excellent Ponds, and a way to see them live out their lives peacefully. Bittersweet.

The Angels are coming.

They’ve always been coming.

It was just a matter of time.

I genuinely thought that Doctor Who had done something immensely clever. (Spoilers for Asylum of the Daleks ahead.)

I have often complained about the over-the-top press coverage of Doctor Who. The new companion and new everything is all revealed way ahead of time, leaving no spoiler unturned. It’s almost impossible to avoid Doctor Who news, with it popping up on the front cover of Radio Times and everywhere else. I understand the need to churn up the hype machine, but as a lover of mysteries and twists, it frustrates me endlessly.

But the twist in Asylum had me throwing my hands up, declaring Stephen Moffat a genius for subverting the process of hype and throwing us a huge red herring. The hugest red herring of all.

A brilliant moment. To hype up her character, seemingly spoil everything, only to then suddenly pull the rug from under us and completely shock us. To kill that character off, (or at least Dalekify her) was a genius move.

I considered for a moment that she could still pop up later in the series with the Doctor’s typical ability to save anyone. But that would be fine, because this twist alone throws her entire character future into mystery. A truly interesting and clever moment. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Her popping up in this episode was a surprise, and her popping up again will be another surprise indeed. She might never appear again, doomed to be Dalekified forever.

But… no. Within seconds of the episode ending, the official Doctor Who twitter account not only tweeted about her being in this episode, but also on the official blog now there’s a post explaining she will turn up later in the series.

Two steps forward, three steps back.

(Still, a great episode.)

It might never even get anywhere. This is a possibility. If it was cheap, I’d take a gamble. But at the price it is, I can’t get behind it.

It isn’t finished. It needs work. This wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t cost…

…$50. That’s a mighty large amount of money. Sure, that equates to about 9p a day, an amount I’d happily pay for Twitter, but the value of app.net is far less. With Twitter I can access people from around the world, a vast network of intellectuals and idiots alike, and hear about news before it’s even reported on the news. With app.net I can access the people I already know. Joy. And with app.net that’ll never change, because…

…It’ll never get the userbase that Twitter has. Sure, it won’t get the 14 year old Bieber lovers who don’t know who Neil Armstrong is. That’s certainly an advantage. But you won’t get the average joe, the person who just happens to be in the right place at the right time to capture an iconic moment. These moments aren’t captured by web developers sat in their office. Twitter will still be the first to report everything, because Twitter is open to everyone. App.net isn’t open to everyone, and…

…It runs the risk of being an exclusive club. The $50 per year entry fee makes it very likely that it’ll be reserved for the elitist, those who are bothered enough to cough it up. I don’t ever want to be part of such a club, too busy staring up it’s own arse to see the world outside, existing in it’s own bubble. It’s just an ‘I have $50‘ club.

…there’s no room for failure. Or experiments. The $50 suddenly makes it serious. You can’t just set up a joke throwaway account for an event, nor can you make a comedy account because it’s likely it’ll fail. On App.net, there will be no horse_ebooks. There would be no @big_ben_clock. There would also be no ‘bad’ spam, which is good, but I’ll take the crap because there’s diamonds out there. On app.net, everything will be the same. No shitness, no brilliance.

Promises mean nothing on the internet. If there’s one thing my cynical hardened self has learned, it’s that promises mean nothing, especially on the internet. App.net is promising a lot – privacy, user data, and so on. Actually providing a product is a different story. I have no idea who the CEO is and his word means nothing to me. Even if Gabe Newell promised me something for $50, I’d probably turn my nose up at it. Unless it was Half-Life 3.

The CEO never looks at the camera. Come on, if you want the viewer to cough up $50, at least look at the camera. Just once. Come on. At least acknowledge the viewer exists.

I want to get behind it, I really do. But I can’t right now. Not at the price it is. Not every year.

Right now it just seems to be just like Path – a way of interacting with people you already know, telling you things you don’t really care about like the food they’re eating or the beach they’re on. And Path is free.

If you know me, then you know I love @horse_ebooks. I often get a lot of questions along the lines of “What exactly is this bloody horse and why do you keep retweeting it?”, so I thought I’d summarise it in one post.

sometimes it just becomes

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) July 24, 2012

@horse_ebooks is a spambot. There’s no way around it – it’s a spambot, a dirty dirty spambot. It’s been designed to sell shitty ebooks and set up by some Russian guy. No one really knows what it is, and that’s part of the fun of it. Some have tried to find out, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what it posts.

I am confident that I can help you build your chicken

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) June 15, 2012

@horse_ebooks attempts to promote and sell crappy ebooks by posting completely random snippets from them. By posting sentences completely out of context (and often with broken grammar/styling) it manages to make mundane sentences completely laughable. Often sentences are cut short abruptly, suddenly making a mundane sentence a complete mystery, and often with completely hilarious results. Every tweet is a real quote from a real ebook, which only makes it more hilarious.

I had arrived back from the shops

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) April 25, 2012

And it is consistently funny. Every tweet makes me giggle, and I have to resist retweeting every one.

I love horse_ebooks because it’s utterly absurd. It’s a bot that is fulfilling its purpose well but in a completely useless fashion. Absurd, insane humour is always welcome in my world, and horse_ebooks is the epitome of that humour.

I highly recommend you follow the account for a slice of bizarre, absurd fun on a regular basis.

Become popular and bask in the sunshine

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) July 16, 2012

What runs horse_ebooks?

Often under tweets you’ll see the source, such as “web”, “Twitter for iPhone”, etc. In the beginning, horse_ebooks ran from the source of “Horse ebooks”. At some point in September 2011, it abruptly changed to “web”, leading to a lot of confusion. This change could mean that a real person is manually putting in the tweets, pasted from real ebooks. But the sheer volume of tweets and ‘feel’ to them doesn’t seem right to me – it feels like a bot.

Either way, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t need to know if it’s a real person or a horse typing on a keyboard or a bot. It doesn’t matter and I don’t feel like I should have to find out. It would ruin the mystery and absurdity of it all.

How to make a strategic use of a washing-machine

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) April 2, 2012

Further Reading

• Something Awful’s post from a year ago is worth a read to see how far we’ve come with our beloved horse. (We haven’t.)
• KnowYourMeme’s page should summarise everything I’ve missed.
• SplitSider’s article “The Ballad of Horse Ebooks” is well worth a read too.
• Horse ecomics are comics drawn from tweets.

spinning on a sheet of ice it all makes sense

— Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) July 1, 2012

the panel at #teenweb2 twitpic.com/a7ix9e

— Paul Brannigan (@proactivepaul) July 14, 2012

Photo from @proactivepaul

We discussed internet security and privacy, the concerns of being arrested for something you say on the internet, school teaching of programming, and so much more. It was a brilliant experience and the topics discussed were excellent. Also I was quoted quite a lot on Twitter from some quips I had blurted out.

'minecraft released a really early version... And now they have moe euros than Greece.' CC: @jonginn

— TeenWeb Conference (@teenwebconf) July 14, 2012

‘I lost marks for not using Wordart’ @jonginn #teenweb2

— Tom Oakley (@tomoakley125) July 14, 2012

.@jonginn at #teenweb2: „My boss follows me now… It’s a bit scary!“

— Dan Freytag (@DanFreytag) July 14, 2012

I also spoke on the Show & Tell, where I briefly spoke about Kinect development and my final major project, Slugfest.