A little bit of personal…

Best. Week. Ever. – time to resurrect the blog

By Rich August 13th, 2010, under General, TrueAchievements

It’s been an incredibly busy year for me (!), and I’ve been absolutely useless when it comes to keeping my blog up to date.

What with a new job, TrueAchievements, a demanding wife, various other social networks and a fair amount of gaming, finding time to keep a personal blog up to date is something I’ve struggled with. The longer you leave it since your last post, the less you feel the need to get back involved.

However, this coming week is destined to be a bit of a legendary one in my life, so I thought it would be A GOOD THING to get back into the blogging habit.

On Tuesday I’m flying off to Germany for GamesCom 2010 – this in itself would be a reasonably exciting event, but due to my involvement with TA I’ve managed to secure a couple of Press Passes. This means access to the event a day early with (hopefully) some decent exposure to a load of upcoming games without having to stand in line for hours at a time. The last time I went to a games event, it was back in 1988 at Earls Court, when notable exibitors were Ocean, Ultimate and Your Sinclair. I do think Activision and EA were also there, and they seem to have done alright since.

I’m taking with me the friend who also went with me to that event, which is pretty awesome – it will be like we’re 14 again!

Added to that, he’s a big Tottenham fan, which brings us nicely on to the next exciting thing next week…

Spurs have qualified for the Champions League preliminary round, drawing Young Boys of Berne. This is immense – a) Because they are called Young Boys and their ground is called the Wankdorf, and b) Because they play on Tuesday night when we will be in germany and not a million miles away from the game. I did check out the prospects of trying to get over to Berne to see the gam live but the timings didn’t quite work. Anyway, we will be watching the game in a German pub on Tuesday night which should be considerably amusing.

Following our 2 days at GamesCom, we fly back on Friday and I then immediately grab my tent and head off to V 2010. Kasabian, Kings of Leon, Faithless and Prodigy, along with a whole host of smaller names will be playing, and if the weather behaves as expected it should be an amazing weekend.

More updates shortly, I promise!

Tags: GamesCom 2010, V Festival
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V Festival, and Spurs top of the league!

By Rich August 21st, 2009, under General

Well, it was as predictable as night following day, and various other cliches – 4 posts in 3 days and then nothing for 2 weeks. Such is the nature of blogging I guess.

And it’s not as if nothing has happened either – spurs have recorded two fantastic victories in their first two (arguably tricky) games of the season, and currently sit top of the (admittedly still foetal) Premier League.

This is a wonderous if unexpected moment, and unfortunately I will miss the 3rd game of the season (away at West ham), due to being at the V Festival. Which is sort of good, but it’s recently a game we’ve done well in (Stalteri’s 94th minute winner a couple of years ago being a case in point).

Anyway, V will be great, and I’m planning to see this lot:

Saturday
Jet
Starsailor
The Ting Tings
The Wombats
Dizzee Rascal
Calvin Harris
The Killers

Sunday
Ocean Colour Scene
Natalie Imbruglia
Athlete
The Twang
Snow Patrol
Elbow
James
MGMT
Lady Gaga
The Streets

Don’t think it’s going to work out right, but we can but try.

Anyway, we’ve just packed all our gear up, and we’re planning on getting there at around 9am tomorrow to pitch our tent. Not convinced by camping after Hop Farm, but there’s not many alternatives.

So, hopefully it’s going to be a top weekend, back some time on Monday…..

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Kissy Sell Out

By Rich August 8th, 2009, under General

It’s been a while since I was a regular on the club scene, but having visited at least one a week (and often more) for around 10 years of my life makes me occasionally yearn for those times when I hear some proper choons.

I went to the Hop Farm Festival in June, and was looking forward to seeing Paul Weller headline as he’s a bit of a ledge and I’ve never seen him live before.

But spending some time in the Dance tent during the evening, I saw Kissy Sell Out‘s set which totally blew me away – proper boshing basslines, total jump-up-and-down-like-a-nutter music, just brilliant.

So I ended up forgoing Weller for the headline DJ set from 2ManyDJs (how cool is their site btw???). Their set was a similar style of music, interspersed with samples from classic dance and rock tracks from several decades, and some pretty spectacular visuals.

Anyway, I was only in that tent because of KSE awesomeness earlier in the day – so big props to him, and check out his show on Radio 1! (if this listen again is still available, check out his remix of the Noisettes at around 28 mins in to get an idea of what he’s all about)

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The team

By Rich August 8th, 2009, under General

Hmmm.

Woke up this morning with the familiar annual feeling of mild confusion and thoughts of what might have been.

I fired up the laptop with some trepidation, and this is the team that confronted me:

Position	Name	Club	Price
Goalkeeper	B Friedel	AV	£4mill
Fullback	K Gibbs	ARS	£2mill
Fullback	L Baines	EVE	£5mill
Centreback	J Terry	CHE	£22mill
Centreback	K Toure	MC	£6mill
Centreback	J Woodgate	TOT	free
Midfielder	J Cole	CHE	free
Midfielder	M Fellaini	EVE	£7mill
Midfielder	G Barry	MC	£7mill
Midfielder	A Lennon	TOT	£8mill
Midfielder	R Delap	STO	£1mill
Midfielder	R Blake	BUR	free
Striker	N Bendtner	ARS	£4mill
Striker	D Berbatov	MU	£33mill
Striker	C Benitez	BIR	£1mill

I’m not sure what to make of it really: the defense seems pretty solid, although question marks remain over JT’s back injury and whether Keiron Gibbs will be first choice at the scum; the midfield is a bit of a disaster, Lennon apart; and up front I seem to have gone for a policy of only signing players beginning with ‘B’.

Talking to everyone after the auction, most teams had 4 or 5 players of high-scoring potential, I seem to only have a couple.

The transfer window opens on 1st September, when it will be free for all to try to grab those semi-decent players that slipped through the net.

Still, at least I got:

Look at my hair!

Tags: Fantasy Football
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Fantasy Football Auction tonight

By Rich August 7th, 2009, under General

It’s that time again.

Our 5th Fantasy Football season kicks off (booo!) tonight, with the annual auction.
Thanks to my shocking performance last year, I have the dubious honour of hosting this year’s event. So 9 of us will be sat around my dining table getting progressively more drunk and confused until we each have a squad of 15 players.

We use a site called Fantasy League Pro – it’s not cheap, at around £28 for the year, but they do a good job of updating the stats straight after the games, and the transfer system works well.

The auction works like this:

Everyone starts with £100million
You have to buy a squad of 15 players
You must have at least 1 goalkeeper, 2 full backs, 4 midfielders and 2 strikers
You can only have a maximum of 2 players from each premiership team

The final one is the killer, and makes planning any form of strategy a bit of a nightmare.

We work our way through the massive player list in order, every player is available and the bidding starts at £0. Bids must increase in multiples of £1million.

The whole auction generally takes around 4 hours, and by the time we get onto the strikers no one generally has the foggiest what’s going on. Which is why I ended up with the frankly awesome front pairing of Craig Bellamy and Matt Derbyshire, and therefore why I am hosting it tonight!

For anyone who is interested, here is a link to Our League.

Tags: Fantasy Football
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