What Has Happened

This blog has, like many of my other endeavours, suffered a hiatus.  When Christmas hit and I found myself otherwise occupied I let the blog slip.  With the closure of Adgitize, I soon felt less inclined to continue writing and have recently been suffering a similar block with my artwork.  For approaching four months I have let this blog sit, not being updated.  I doubt that my contributions to the blogosphere has been missed greatly, but I am also aware that I was getting something out of this blog and had no desire to let this sort of thing happen.  Currently there is still a lot preventing me gathering the motivation to get back into blogging.  I have a lot of other projects and life issues to contend with.  This is probably (or rather, hopefully) an interim post until I can start getting myself re-organised and resume my posts.  There are plenty of things that I would wish to write about still.

On a side note, I probably won't be continuing my Buffy series of articles.  At least, not until the next time I feel inclined to watch the series through again.  The reason being is that I finished watching the series a while back and it's no longer fresh in my mind.  I have since watched a lot of other stuff and trying to force myself to remember particular episodes or specific thoughts I had on the series seems redundant to me now.

I hope to return to this blog soon.

Anime

When I was quite young, I remember viewing Akira for the first time.  I had no idea what was going on, but I did not care and absolutely loved it.  I have loved animation for as long as I could remember.  Akira opened new doors for me.  At the time I found it hard to get hold of other Japanese animations and every piece of anime I could scrounge up, I savoured.  I loved the style, the quality (of most anime I was watching at the time, at least) and the imagination.  I have even gone so far as to defend anime as being superior to Disney, which in some circles may be considered sacrilege.

These days it is a lot easier to get hold of Anime and in the last five or so years I have watched a considerable amount.  As a child it was certainly more exotic and I am saddened that it has become so much more mainstream, but in contrast that does mean I now have more access to something I love.  It brings up complex and contrasting feelings.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all.  I hope you all have a lovely day in the manner in which you best like to celebrate this end of year festival.

I'm going to leave you with my favourite Christmas song, A Fairytale of New York.

Amiga

My Mum bought herself an Amiga to do some work on when I was little.  It soon became more predominantly a games machine for my siblings and me and provided a good decade or so of fun.  I still marvel at how far games have come in my lifetime, certainly in terms of graphics.

I recently obtained an Amiga emulator to be able to play all the games I have from when I was growing up.  Some of the games I initially tried were not quite as good as I remembered, some hadn't overtly been effected by nostalgia.  These were the beat 'em ups and platform games I'd spend hours getting nowhere with.  Then there are some truly classic games like Elite and Civilization.  The game play and content of these games is so well realised that merely updating the graphics would put them on par with many new releases (I realise that Civilization has had many sequels which have seen the basic design expanded upon, because I love these games and only stopped playing them due to time constraints).

I was surprised to learn that as a games machine, for a time the Amiga was a fairly heavy hitter.  I always longed for a console like the Megadrive or SNES and never quite realised at the time what a marvellous machine we already had.  Nevertheless, I think the Amiga sparked my interests in computers and creatively inspired my imagination.

Calvin and Hobbes

When I was about six or seven I went to a bring and buy or something similar and bought Calvin and Hobbes, The Lazy Sunday book which features a collection of the Sunday strips of Calvin and Hobbes.  Calvin and Hobbes was a syndicated daily comic strip that was written and drawn by Bill Waterson from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995.  It is a comic strip about a highly imaginative and disruptive child called Calvin, who's best friend is his stuffed Tiger, Hobbes.  Hobbes is just a stuffed toy to everyone bar Calvin and, for the most part, the reader.  I absolutely loved this comic strip when I read it.  I  poured over my book so much that I eventually caused it to disintegrate.  I have since collected all the strips in various collected editions.

When I was a child I loved the imagination and creativity of the strips and growing up I have found a deep philosophical introspective quality.  Repeat gags and concepts like Spaceman Spiff, The Snowmen, Rosalin, The Wagon,  Dinosaurs and so on, I found wonderful.  I have recently started reading the strips again and this time around I find myself identifying with parents perspective more consciously than I had before.  I do also, of course, find the strips funny and any appeal to my sense of humour will win my favours.

Links

Today I didn't have the time to think up an article for today, so for a change I am going to send you to a couple of other blogs from my blogroll.

First up is my brothers blog, The Modern Historian.  Despite a slight bias on my part this is nonetheless a marvellous blog where each day is a today in history.  He has found some very interesting historical titbits to share.

The second is my friend Niniane's blog with contributions from other bloggers, The Mythogenetic Grove.  A treasure trove of creative writings and writings on creativity.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer - The Dark Age

The Dark Age is the eighth episode of the second season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  This episode is a continuation of the episode, Halloween, in which Giles' dark past is explored further.  The beasty in this episode is a demon conjured by Giles and some of his friends in his youth, when he was a tare-away and is now killing those that summoned it.

This episode not only explores the concept of consequences of our actions and the responsibility we have for them, but also expands on Giles character and in some ways changes the relationship between him and  Buffy.  Being a father figure and an authority, Buffy is exposed to his imperfections and vulnerability.  It also serves to move Giles away from a clichéd image of a twee English librarian by expanding into his rebellious past and makes the character more interesting.