Well folks, a new year is here and I feel fresh, like strawberries and cream or that feeling you get stepping into a waterfall whilst shaking your head around reciting ‘because I’m worth it’. That’s right 2009 is here and I’m feeling good about it. I think I’d describe 2008 as being both the best and worst year of my life wrapped up in a giant ball of yarn. Whilst there were plenty of very bad times though, the positives were just far to great to ignore. So in keeping positive, here is a list of all the very good things that happened last year.

Travel: I managed to travel to Spain, Minneapolis, Vancouver, Seattle, Moscow and London. (Yes contrary to popular belief I do not live close to London).

Work: I got not one but two promotions, and I was able to go and work with some amazing people in Moscow

People: Hanging out with John, Moe and Hilden is an obvious high point. Spending time with M.C. at PAX, getting to hang around with the London crew a little more (Dave, Ben, Kyna, Pete and Kerry) and of course, all the fantastic people I got to meet at the Daryl’s. Not to mention I got to meet with Eddie Olmos, Aaron Douglas and Allessandro Julliani…

Events: The Daryl’s, PAX, London Expo

Guitar: I somehow managed to end up with Dave Weiner (solo artist and second guitarist for Steve Vai) as my guitar tutor. The guy is frankly a living legend in my book, he has a lot of time, and he’s simply one of the nicest guys you could ever wish to meet and to top it all off he’s one of the finest guitarists on the planet.

Gaming: There have been some simply beautiful games released this year from MGS4 to Lost Odyssey. So many great gaming moments right through the entire year.

So looking back, even though there really were some frankly depressing and awful times last year, the positives have been incredulous. My plan now is to try and keep this momentum up and cut out the bad bits to make 2009 the best year of my life yet.

So to my New Year’s Resolutions:
1 – I will before the end of 2009 release some form of album.
2 – I will attend the Midwest Gaming Classic show
3 – I will go to PAX 09 and not stay in a hotel that looks like No More Heroes and takes an hour to travel anywhere
4 – I will go to Vancouver for at least a few days this time, I WILL smuggle a Raccoon out of the country
5 – I will pass the MCSE exams, every one of them. I want the shiny badge.

Christmas 2008 was sadly less good for me this year, I wasn’t able to get any time off work and seeing as my family live in a different country there was no possibility to take time to travel and see them. That said I did pick up a few games to play during the period. If I had to use one phrase to describe Christmas for me though it would have to be:

“Christmas, it was good except for the Werehog bits”

Funnily enough, that sentence can also be applied to something else… Can you guess what it is yet?

I also picked up a SNES recently and have been topping up my collection of games wherever possible. I was incredibly happy to find on New Years Eve the following classics:

Pop ‘n’ Twinbee
Legend of the Mystical Ninja
U.N. Squadron
Unirally
Lost Vikings

I also stumbled upon a copy of Persona 3 FES which I snapped up immediately. This is a game that you simply don’t see around in the UK at all in spite of its very recent release date. There’s no sign of Persona 4 on these shores for a while so I decided to pick this one up after the glowing comments from pretty much everyone on the DGR podcasts recently.

Oh and I recently picked up Left 4 Dead and an Xbox Live Gold card. I fully expect you all to add me as a friend so we can get some zombie slaying time in soon. My gamercard is: McPhilthy

Peace, Love and Good Happiness Stuff for 2009

Phil Haymes

Living in the Russian Federation – Red Square! 27-10-2008

Ok, so the weekend hit and it was all about being a tourist. Given that I hadn’t really been able to see a lot of Moscow yet due to work hours I decided that the weekend is for tourist stuff!

Saturday: Visiting Red Square
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get as much video footage as I’d have liked as they don’t seem to like filming. I went walking around the area for about five hours as I love to just explore new places on foot. Red Square was awesome, to say the least, and nothing could have prepared me for the Kremlin Palace, which frankly must have been designed whilst induced on the best drugs known to mankind. The whole thing gave me a Tetris vibe… hence the music ^_^

Sunday: Ismolova Market
Sunday got cold…real cold. I met up with some of my friends at work and headed over to Ismolova Market, which is the most surreal setting for a marketplace. Imagine wooden buildings for market stalls that design-wise would be much more suited belonging to Disney World and yet selling souvenirs and dodgy (read: incredibly nice) Kebabs. Also, where else but Moscow could you see a Southpark vs. Winnie the Pooh chess set?

On another note, it suddenly got a lot colder today. Much freaking colder, actually, as you’ll see in this video. I’m not sure why I have the Pink Floyd song Sheep playing in the background so don’t ask.

Monday was another day in the office. Things were much busier today than they had been over the last week as a few new people started and I’m looking after them right now. I didn’t get out of the office until after 8pm so nothing new really happened today. I’m hoping that tomorrow will be more eventful!

Adding Boost to your Picking technique with F-zero. A couple of excercises that I like to do to improve my picking technique, speed and acuracy on a near daily basis. Both riffs come from F-Zero X which means they’re gonna have some serious boost…

Riff 1: Crazy Call At Cry (Port Town)
Riff 2: Driving Through on Max (Rainbox Road)

The trick to mastering this really is to start slow and work your way up to a decent speed. You need to make sure that you keep accurate technique at each tempo and that you don’t play any differently.

Living in the Russian Federation – Ninja Power! 24/10/2008

It’s been a fun time at work, the change of environment from working wih and supporting 3,000 people down to around 10 has been a welcome change of pace and attitiude. Finally I’m in a position to really start looking at best practices, preventative measures and most of all I’m laying down the groundwork for all the IT stuff to come down the line. There’s a real buzz about being a part of a ‘first team’ and doing the things that we’re doing. Next week is going to be insanely cool as I get to start travelling Moscow to various IT vendors and retailers to start negotiating prices, kit and support which should be a lot of fun. It’ll also be a great place to really get to see some more of Moscow which sadly I’ve not seen anywhere near enough of so far

Being an office of only a few people (and never having everyone there at the same time…) things could easily get boring, however we actually manage to have a great time especially when things like this happen. So to set the scene, the office is silent, we’ve all got our heads down working on various things then out of nowhere this dude appears at out 19th floor window swinging around like a mother fucker with a squeegy. Ron chirps up straight away “ya know, I can see he’s breaking at least 6 separate safety procedures already” then starts reeming them off. Deividos then chirps up “and people die making these buildings all the time like that, this place is made from the blood and bones of the fallen just like the Pyramids!”.

This proves that there is nothing like a dude swinging around outside your 19th floor window to brighten up the day (and clean the view!)

Today was also monumental as I visited the shared vending machine for the first time and discovered two gems… take a look!

Ninja Drinks are awesome and you can check out their website at Ninja Drinks!!!

Tomorrow it’s my first day off so I’m going to do some touristy things….

Philthy

Living in the Russian Federation – 22/10/2008 ‘Milk?’

Today I decided that I really needed to get some milk so that I can have coffee whilst at home. I’m pretty much a self confessed caffeine whore and if I don’t get regular doses I’m not the most responsive person on the planet. With that in mind, I set off to a small grocery store on новый арбат (New Arbat) which is the main area that I’m staying in. After getting back to the apartment I recorded the following little video post:

Mmmm salty…

As mentioned I decided that I’d head out to get some actual milk. Instead of head back to the same store I decided that I’d check out a new area and see what I found. The results were staggering! I headed up past новый арбат and then doubled back down арбатская (Arbatskaya – or Old Arbat) which is the main pedestrianised tourist area. I stopped for Starbucks and continued on to смоленская (Smolenskaya) which is the area where I catch the tubve in the morning as I hadn’t had a chance to explore yet. After the hilarity of seeing the ‘Golden Ring’ hotel I found an awesome little grocery store just on the corner, best of all they accepted AMEX so I can use the company card there.

Much more happened on this little trip so I recorded a little vid blog just after I got back in as frankly what I witnessed was just plain weird.

I’m only a couple of days into this now and if this is the level of crazy I’m seeing then I can’t wait to see what else is out there. It’s a scary, insane, and rewarding thing to stay in another country that doesn’t have a recognisable language. I’d never imagined that I’d get to do something like this but have to recommend that if any of you lovely readers get the chance to do something similar you take it – there’s nothing else quite like it!

Sir Philthy

Living in the Russian Federation 21/10/2008

I’ve now been in Russia for a day and a half with almost no sleep or food as of yet. But it’s ok, I’ve had an amazing time so far and I’m really blown away by how nice the city is. First things first, I want to dispel the myth that the city is ridiculous levels of cold. Experience so far puts it at a little warmer and clearer than Leeds, whilst it may get much colder during January and February, right now it’s pleasantly mild.

Today was my first day in the office, a daunting prospect when I hadn’t really gotten my bearings with my surroundings yet (or eaten any food). I hadn’t even had any coffee due to a lack of milk, which as those who know me will understand means that I was barely even functioning on a basic level this morning.

A good thing that I had a Taxi organised to get me to the office! Even better was the really nice quality FREE coffee available all day long in the office. This was a good thing seeing as I was there from 8am through until 8pm – a pretty lengthy first day on the job. I only stopped once to pick up some sandwiches somewhere around lunchtime so by the time I finished I’d had almost nothing to eat since mid-day yesterday (and that was an in-flight meal…) Some how I managed to find my way around the Moscow Underground Metro and arrive at the street I’m staying at (Novvy Arbat).

I was really impressed with the sheer liveliness of the city – there’s a really amazing vibe that I really wasn’t expecting.

After looking at the shiny stuff I decided that I should really find somewhere to get some food so I started exploring until I found a 24 hour place. Now Moscow is expensive, people warned me but I had no idea. I bought the following:

Toothpaste, cheese, bread, ketchup, Pringles equivalent, a bottle of Pepsi, 2 bottles of Mountain Dew, some shower gel and a Snickers.

The total cost for this stupidly small list was £26 or $47

WOW

I eventually made it back to the apartment with less trouble than I’d anticipated.

Philthy

Living in the Russian Federation – 20/10/2008

So I arrived after a couple of fun flights… The first thing to strike me was how incredibly hot the women are. Incredible. I kid you not, there were two flight attendants who I’d consider to be pretty much perfect, and the lovely girl next to me on the flight was a dead ringer for Tricia Helfer (of BSG fame).Things bode well indeed.

Aside from the women, I have to admit to having a near panic situation when boarding the plane as I realised that a) I was the only English speaking person on there and b) EVERYTHING was in Russian. This was just the flight too. I sort of wondered what I had got myself into but the fear soon subsided when I was brought my first in-flight vodka (Yes, first – indicating that there were several more after that initial one).

Getting back to my apartment from the airport was pretty easy enough, although first impressions were that I’ve never seen traffic blocked like I did here. My driver Dimitri (who was a living legend) informs me that the roads just get conjested randomly through the day and night with no warning. Sometimes a 25 minute walk can take 3 hours in a car, although he recommends that the car is the better option!

Here’s a video of my first impressions of the hotel:

It’s already 11pm here so I don’t intend to venture out into the city until the morning. First day at work: 8:30am sharp – I’m looking forward to it.

Philthy

Living In The Russian Federation – Mafia, Tetris and Vodka 19/10/2008

So it turns out that I need to travel to Russia. Apparently I’m needed over there for a while to set up a whole load of new IT kit and work with a deluge of new people that will be starting in my company’s fledgling Russian office in Moscow. I don’t speak Russian (yet) and I’ll be literally living there. Apartment, grocery shopping, doing my own washing and of course catching the underground to work each day.

What this means is that I’ll be able to write about the wonderful, different, crazy and extreme things that I see whilst living there. I’ll be searching for Robots, checking out the local food, seeing the sites and being my usual British self so please look forward to some interesting blog updates in the near future.

‘How near?’ I hear you asking… well I fly out in just a few hours and I’ll be getting straight to the day-job as soon as I get there. As soon as I have an established internet connection however, I’ll be posting like a Vodka inspired Tetrimo trying to make a 4-line Tetris.

So my friends, I bid you farewell for now! Please feel free to start up some bets on how fast I get met by the Mafia.

Philthy

Living in the Minus World – The Former United States of America

During your time of  economic crisis and inability to run a National Presidential Election, We the Great British Empire have decided it’s about time that to take the reigns once more. We feel that we gave you more then enough July 4th Holidays and frankly the idea that some of your larger companies that have offices here are forcing this upon the people of our great nation is absurd. 

To provide more information on this, our Chief Ambassador to the Rest of the World, John Cleese has provided a written statement on behalf of Her Majesty The Queen. Please take proper time to read and understand everything listed here. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Sir John Cleese.

To: The citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President
of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the
revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties
over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which
she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for
America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of
you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following
rules are introduced with immediate effect:

You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will
be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘favour’ and
‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping
half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise.

Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable
levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’).

3. Using the same 27 words interspersed with filler noises such as
“like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of
communication.

There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your
behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of
the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn
your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.

(more…)

That’s right folks, today marks the release of a Metallica album that does not suck and so to celebrate what myself and John have decided should be named “Metallica Day” I decided to pick up the guitar and learn one of the new songs.

There are frankly a lot of very cool songs on the album but the one that instantly resonated with me was The Day That Never Comes, and so I set to work late at night transcribing like crazy. And whilst I don’t have all of the song down (I’m still working on the main solo) I wanted to get something out on this glorious day. So please feel free to watch this video of me late at night, wearing sunglasses when I clearly shouldn’t be and making what I hope is a half-decent first try of this awesome song.

Because I’m me, I’ve taken a few creative liberties in some areas so this isn’t an exact transcription…

Love

Philthy