Supports of the video game will proclaim that game developers have the right to freely develop and publish games involving any content, and that gamers have the right to enter the fantasies of the digital world, a place far from reality, and enjoy that experience. This argument would typically hold against games such as Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2, and Counter Strike: Source, as well as many, many other games. It does not, however, hold in the case of shooting at NATO troops. Every week come back the reports of the sacrifices that have been made in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban, every week families are affected, and every week we live in a safer world for their valour.

Defenders of the game then become keen to point out that I’m happy to play Call of Duty 2, and other world war games. Is it really that different to be playing a modern conflict than a historical conflict? Well, yes it is. Because historical conflicts don’t affect our lives right now.

Where does the boundary lie in what’s acceptable video game content? How far will game developers continue to push the limits? What makes a video game disrespectful? Will next year’s Medal of Honour game involve players flying airplanes into the twin towers? For me, the boundary is about to be crossed for the first time in October. I never believed that I’d be disputing the content of a video game. But I never would have imagined a developer would make such a tasteless game like this.

Video editing! Didn’t that used to strain powerful computers? And now it’s available on a phone!

That’s pretty incredible. Check out the webpage here, or see iMovie in the iTunes app store here.

1. Arrival

The first thing I did after getting through passport control at San Francisco airport was to take a taxi to the Apple store. “That’s weird… normally it’s hotel or something…” muttered the taxi driver after I asked him to take me there. As my first experience of a taxi ride in San Francisco, I’d like to account that this was not at all dissimilar from playing the video game Crazy Taxi. The driver even scored a few $ for performing some crazy drifts through the four-lane highway. Alas, future cab rides were not to be as fun as this one.

2. The iPad

Once I got to the Apple store I asked the nearest genius for an iPad. To which he replied, “we’re all out of stock”. So after $40 taxi ride, after an eleven hour flight, after a three hour wait, after a two hour flight, after a three hour wait, after setting off at 1:30am; I couldn’t get hold of an iPad…! I would later join a two-week waiting queue in order to get a reserve one at my nearest Apple store in Valley Fair. In order to pick it up I would have to queue for an hour outside the store, and all this after three months of the product being released. So what’s all the hype about? Well, what we have is a device that is once again changing the way people are envisioning portable computing with a combination of tremendous functionality alongside superb interface design and ease of use. Despite the generous size of the multi-touch screen, the device itself can be lifted between two fingers positioned on the bezel of the screen and tucked into the smallest of bags. But what really threw me about the iPad was the amount of functionality that’s its taken from my laptop. It’s amazing how much you can actually do on an iPad, and I believe I can do about 80% of my daily computing activities on the iPad, such as browsing the web and sending emails, reading books and watching YouTube. And of course the phrase, “there’s an app for that” applies to even more now than it did on the iPhone, and my favorite couple of apps at the moment are Air Video (an app to stream videos from a PC or Mac to an iOS device, with video conversion on the fly), and Fruit Ninja (a humorously fun, fruit-chopping game). I really do think that this is the beginning of a shift away from laptop devices to slate devices.

3. American Life

Alongside technological discoveries, I’ve become a bit of a baseball fan. At first, my roommate’s endless love for the Yankees (he never misses a game) put me as a New York Yankees fan, but after going to my first baseball game at AT&T Park, San Francisco, I’ve immediately become a Giants fan after they beat the Dodgers 6-5. I’m also loving the Fish and Chips alternative… Burgers! Burgers are everywhere and ranging in value from a $4.99 drive-thru to a $30 gourmet, and “I’m loving it”.

The whole geography of northern California is pretty awesome. Silicon valley has been seeing light clouds in the morning which blow over to reveal a perfectly clear blue sky by about 10:00am, and a consistent high temperature of 25°C. Moving further north to San Francisco, the temperatures drop as soon as you reach the city. Some areas of the city will be shrouded in fog, whilst others will be completely clear, but one thing across San Francisco varies more than the weather itself; the elevation. I’m pretty sure I received a free workout trying to find my friend’s car after watching the July 4th fireworks.

4. Apple

My work at Apple seems to be going pretty well, and the iMovie product is both captivating and thrilling to work on. Of course I can’t write about anything specific I’ve been doing for Apple, but I can say that it’s great to see some of the changes I’ve been making working, and to know that some day in the future they’ll be out there on every Mac computer. I’ve already learned a tremendous amount about software and programming, as well as how to work within a company, and I’m sure I’ll continue to cram my brain with new techniques and skills right up to the last day of my internship in late September. I thought I’d share one of the most important things I’ve learned using an analogy that springs to my mind…

5. A Closing Thought

A swimmer is trying to swim from a beach to a nearby island. When the swimmer first enters the water, it is hard for them to drown. The swimmer happily enters the cool water and begins swimming, the journey begins. The simmer may reach the island at some point in the future, but the important thing for now is that he or she keeps moving forward, and keeps his or her head above the water as much as possible. Very regularly, large waves pass over the swimmer, plunging them underwater. The swimmer can’t see or breathe for this considerable lapse of time, until he or she reemerges from the water. Then, everything becomes clear again.

When I’m introduced to a new topic or area of knowledge, I most often feel completely overwhelmed by this lack of understanding, I think to myself that I may never fully understand, or that it’s going to take me a prolonged, tedious and stagnant period of time to eventually learn. It’s these moments that are always the hardest to get through.

Please feel free to drop me a comment about any of the stuff I’ve discussed in this post.

Please feel free to drop me a comment about any of the stuff I’ve discussed in this post.

I’m living with new friends, Steven, Yamir and Dan. Steven’s been bugged my friends form back home to set up a blog detailing his American adventures, so be sure to check it out too for closely related updates!

Tomorrow’s the first day of my three month internship at Apple – exciting times!

The first menu the game came up with was nothing new. Choose a team; red or blue. In Counter Strike it’s terrorists or counter terrorists. In Day of Defeat it’s allies or axis. It was on the second menu that the big difference in this game lay; I was faced with a selection of nine different classes, each with its own distinct look, feel, weapons and abilities. Situated in the centre of these choices stood a huge, muscular man who, with my mouse hovering over him, lifted with all his might one of the biggest guns I think you’ll ever find in a video game. I’d just met the heavy.

From the moment I entered the battlefield (of what can be only described as uttermost carnage) on the first day of the Team Fortress 2 beta release to now, several years later, I can honestly say that I have loved every moment of it. The other eight classes each have their own, brilliantly designed features, and can be instantly distinguished from just a simple shadow. The pyro, with his scorching flamethrower, a class to flee from. The speedy scout, an asset to the infiltration of the well-balanced bases of ctf_2fort to steal the enemy intelligence. The demoman, with his sneaky spider mines and explosive grenade launcher. I can honestly say that there is no game which provides the same adrenaline rush generated by playing as the spy. I can hear my heart pound as I sneak up on an enemy sniper, ready to perform a well timed back-stab before quickly cloaking myself, invisible to the enemy. I stealthily plant sappers on the engineer’s constructed turrets and dispensers, whilst deceiving enemy medics into healing me. There’s never been so much unique diversity in a first-person-shooter.

The beautiful cartoon style (a rarity in video games) creates a stylish appearance, whilst placing further emphasis on the game’s entertainment factor. My favourite features of the game’s look are the character expressions and phrases. Engineers will cry out, “that spy’s sappin’ my sentry!” Heavies will ludicrously laugh at their foes as they empty 200 high caliber rounds into the enemy team as spies complain that, “they’ve got blood on their suit,” after knifing a soldier!

It seems that the game has been brilliantly designed to allow for players who perhaps wouldn’t normally play first-person-shooters to enjoy a slice of the action. The heavy requires little instant-reflex skills. The medic provides a largely non-combat role whilst providing a crucial asset to the team, whilst the engineer adds a more ‘RTS-like’ style of gameplay. Everyone seems to have been catered for, and new players will quickly become attached to their own personal favorite classes.

The game’s meta-critic score reached 92/100. The game has succeed in providing huge multiplayer diversity via its combination of a class system and superbly designed maps to allow for complex strategies. Valve has been consistently at work on the game since release, providing many patches as well as new maps, gamemodes, weapons, and achievement. There’s never been such a blast of quirky multiplayer mania as this – a thoroughly recommended game, and by far my favorite. It’ll be a long time before an online multiplayer game tops this.

Steam on Mac runs like a dream, and the new interface displays and manages all your games far better than the old one. Although, I have to say that I was more than a little disappointed with the initial line up of games for the Mac version of the platform. Valve had strongly implied that their catalog of source games would be readily available for Mac users. I found that this was a false assumption I’d been led to make, and when I loaded Steam for the first time, I found that only Portal was available of this collection of games. As awesome a game as Portal is, I’ve completed it about two years ago, and don’t really have any inclination to play it again! It turns out that apparently every Wednesday there are a series of new games released for the Mac. Effectively, every week there’s a random probability that the games I want to play, such as Counter Strike: Source, become available.

But I should put this aside, as the platform is a very enjoyable experience. I’ve found there to be a large amount of games available, and more are coming out all the time, and this is very good news for us Mac users. For the entirety of this weekend both Mac and Windows users can play one of the first cross-platform multiplayer games, Altitude, completely free! A game I may well have overlooked had it not been available to try, Altitude is a fun little 2D combat flight game with some typical game modes including ‘death-match’, ‘soccer’ and ‘demolition’. The most addicting feature of the game is its leveling and experience system, very similar to that found in Call of Duty 4. Kills, goals, level completions and achievements gain the user additional experience points, and at particular intervals the user gains an additional level, unlocking new planes, abilities, skins, and more! There’s definitely a lot to this initially simplistic-looking game. My house mate and I have just finished playing our first hour, I’ve reached level 10, and we’ve both gone straight to Steam‘s online store to purchase it for a currently discounted price of £3.50 – what a bargain!

Once I had all the documents, I was able to queue for entrance, where firm and fierce airport security checks were taking place. I had had to travel to the embassy without any electronic devices, including my mobile phone and laptop, as they were not allowed into the embassy, and there was no official location to put them. I was with a lady in front of me who I thought was going to be thrown out for sure, for she was being incredibly rude – and these guards weren’t to be messed with; I for one ensured I followed every last instruction and didn’t do anything I wasn’t told to do!

Once I got through the security checks, I followed the building round to the side, and to the reception to check in. The interior was grand, the walls lined with pictures of american history and culture, and as I sat down, large screens boasted images of american flags, american icons (such as the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge), as well as the great american seal I would hope to get on my visa.

I sat down in the hall and waited to be called to one of the twenty-five booths. Once I was called to a booth it was very straight forward. Hand over the documents, have my fingerprints scanned, and answer some simple questions. After two callings to the booths my visa was approved, and I went to a final desk to arrange for a courier delivery of my visa, and return of my passport. I left the building after two hours. Next stop – America.

Every so often though, this small world of mine falls slightly apart. A crack in my beliefs form, and I realise (or perhaps remember) that where there is generosity there can be motive, where there is friendship there is sometimes betrayal, and where there is honesty there can lie deceit. Life is not about living in perpetual paranoia, nor is it about being oblivious of what lurks in the shadows. It is about being cautious, but trusting. It’s about absorbing and deflecting hits. It is about shining light into the face of darkness, so as it can rarely touch you.

Unfortunately today I witnessed a large crack in my reality. I realised that someone I’d known for a long time was not who I thought they were, and so sadly it’s time to move on and upwards. If someone isn’t who they say they are, I say forget them. Life flows on. Certainly for the most part it seems to be a smooth and beautiful journey…

As a liberal democrat I couldn’t hope for anything more. The conservatives have offered a referendum on electoral reform, positioned Nick Clegg as deputy PM, and the liberal’s best policies have been selected, including the £10,000 personal allowance.

As Lord Ashdown neatly put it… “hurray!”

Again, the conservatives were seen to be making poorly thought out moves to sway voters towards them. Last week we saw childish posters depicting Gordon Brown as royalty. This week saw what Peter Madelson described as a”disgusting” and shocking smear attempt, whereby surprise surprise, Nick Clegg was the target…

As I anticipated, Clegg was positioned in the middle this week, and bore the brunt of oppositional offences that were completely lacking in last week’s debate. Cameron and Brown both upped their game, now being much more emphatic, and addressing the camera, resulting quite rightly to a very close series of instant polls.
On the European Union, Brown opened brilliantly with a very convincing argument for being in there. “Jobs”, he strongly claims, is the simple answer. On the other hand, Cameron appealed perfectly to EU skeptics, retorting that far too much control and power over the country is being given away to the EU. To which, Brown again responded very impressively and emphatically, arguing passionately that collaboration within the EU is required for economic recovery – the classic Labour response to the economy. Brown not only well-handled the issue of the EU, but he also held the strongest answers on Afghanistan, giving a necessary (given recent criticism over troop’s equipment), bold overview of Britain’s mission.

But of course not all was good from Brown, he managed to throw a cringeworthingly awful blow to both Cameron and Clegg, claiming that they were “like his two boys fighting in the bath”, in an obvious attempt to separate himself from the other two parties in exactly the same way as Clegg had so successfully done last week. “I think that one sounded better in the rehearsal,” quipped Clegg. Alongside that, Brown’s cheeky grin all too often surfaces at inappropriate moments, giving the false sense that he’s detached from the issues at stake.

The question on the environment was interestingly made personal; enquiring each of the leader’s green policies, whilst rooting for hypocrisy. Brown responded that he uses the train, Cameron said that he uses decent house insulation (!) and Clegg tried to honestly admit that he could do more. At the “after show party” Sky News seemed to play an amusing game of “politician roulette”, doing an awesome job of failing to capture any depth and policies of the people involved. For some reason, the most popular question in the press rooms was on religion, catholicism and the pope – yet this was the only issue where all three party leaders agreed!

The debates seem to be all about creating as much hype, contention and unsettlement within the electorate before an election. The election is now a three horse race whereby one of the horses has to run twice as far in order to win than the other two. A fair, diplomatic election..?