cubicgarden.com...

In Fusion, a little gem in the pleasure beach

[ Socially Offline ]

While on holiday in Blackpool I found myself riding in fusion twenty times through-out the day. Don't get me wrong, there are other good rides in Blackpool pleasure beach but the Pepsi Max Big One was closed due to the high winds, The Iru-bru Revolution is too short and is a poor relation to the classic Thunderlooper. Space invader 2 was also closed but the big dipper, Avalanche and steeplechase did both give me a suprise. But not really enough to want to queue up again. The queue times after 5pm got as low as 5mins and after 6pm you could wait one turn and jump on again. The night got even better with the find of the Ridge Racer 2 arcade going for 30p a credit at the south pier. Now thats what I call a holiday.

The Pacemaker is more than a match for the ipodmixer

[ All media ]

Saw this article in the independent the other day, although its dated back to June it was in my aggregator for so long. Hopefully my python based APML project might help with this in the future. Anyway I think its a fair article pointing out the weaknesses of using the pacemaker being battery life and flat out snobbery. Actually on that I found this forum which I was dying to reply to, but couldn't be arse'd to convince these bunch of morons otherwise. Anyhow, here's some nice quotes from the independent article...

"We could see young, affluent consumers becoming more proactive with media, making their own music, film and editorial," Sars says. "We saw the door of portability kicked down by the iPod, which taught consumers that you can take all your music everywhere. We wanted to move both things a step further."

The idea of sharing, whether it's in the pub, on the beach, at a club or online, was the driving force of the project," Sars says. "If you have a party at home and everyone loves the music, you can take the music you've mixed, save it on the device, then upload it to the online community via Pacemaker Editor. Then you can just email everyone and tell them, 'Here's my music from Friday night.'"

"We are not out to substitute professional DJing," Sars says. "We're coming to the market with a complementary product, a new way of viewing music. It's about having a go anywhere, anytime. Genre doesn't matter – just mash it up. If you look at the fresh, intelligent young generation of people today, that's how they view media. You don't have to follow one genre; as long as you love it and go for it, you can be totally unafraid."

I've been doing a lot of mixes and I actually need to upload them. Including a mix from the south pier of blackpool one late night. I can't believe I was djing in cold winds till gone 11pm. Crazy eh? Some people did come up and ask about the weird device I was playing with and I would explain and actually quite a few people were interested. But some loser said I should check out the ipodmixer. So I did and I think he totally missed the point of the pacemaker.

Blackberry Thunder, so what?

[ Mobile and Wireless ]

So I've said nothing about the iphone 3g launch but mainly because I don't really care except to see how cheap I can pick up a old iphone for on ebay (they would make nice ebook readers I've been thinking). But according to some this thing above is meant to be Blackberry's answer to the iphone. What a joke! Its also worth noting it has almost the exact same features as the M700 (pictured below).

However I'm interested that the general shape of originally the SPV M500 (not the iphone) and its successors including the Touch and M700. Looks to be the industry standard now. Before the M500, I believe it was all about the flip, the slide or the candy bar. Now its about the slate and everyone's got one.

No choice but learn Python...

[ General computing ]

I was reading about the guy who started the Specto project and started reading through his blog. I came across this blog post mentioning how it all started out of frustrating because there was a lack of interest for person tracking system like Specto turned out to be.

I do want to spend sometime learning Python for this exact reason, theres a small tiny apps which I want to write to speed up/improve a task or too on my machine. But I'm not sure where to start and I'm starting to think I should just use Flex/Air as i can do that much quicker.Yes its bad news but what other alternatives are there for a non-progrmmer like myself? I had hoped Konfabulator might have offered a simlar thing but the linux alernatives are all writtern in Python anyway (screenlets, gdesklets, etc). Then my favorate application which i have yet to play with deeply Conduit is also written in Python and its add on are also in Python. And last of all the xbox media centre uses python for its scripting. So it time to get serious, and to be fair I did say I was going to start learning python in my new year resoultions.

So first point of call, what editor? I only got attached to XMLspy ages ago for writing large dense XSL and XSDs. So I can change easy enough. I thought I'd ask Mr Python, Simon Wilison but looking at his blog he was undecided in 2003 and who knows what he's using now (i did twitter too).

Jedit was in the comments and was one of the first I looked at. It runs on everything Java does, is GPL and support Python along with XSLT too. What also tops it off for me is Robin McKinnon uses it (i actually remember him showing me this). So I'm giving it a try and pull up some Python hello world type stuff to play with. I left the O'reilly Python book at home but when I get back I'll have a look through that. If you know anywhere else I should be looking, shout. I've not forgotten Uche's 4Suite.

Well I had to go somewhere for my holiday

[ Just plain life ]

I did say I wanted a beach holiday a while back and I wanted it to be pretty cheap... So Blackpool it is... Hey and perfect timing, for rain, rain and more rain. Does not matter, hotel has free wifi, the rollercoasters are all running and I got myself an extended weekend. So having just booked the whole thing 5 mins ago (yes its 7am now) I'll sleep, wake up, pack and jump on the scooter. I don't expect to do much more that walk on the beach, check out the rollercoasters and head into the arcades. Maybe I might find some of the classics and end up spending my pocket money on Ridge Racer like I use to when I would spend some time in Weston Super-Mare (the blackpool of the south west don't you know?). Well what ever I do its going to be relaxing...

The Definitive History Of UK Dance Music?

[ All media ]

Ok I should I really be pointing my finger at another part of the BBC? Yes because they will never learn if someone does not say something, even if its going to be a moan and groan. BBC Radio 2 have been running a season of programming around dance music, so I checked it out and was for most of it pretty happy with what I heard. I mean these guys went way back, back to the northern soul, disco and casino era. It was good to hear this because all the other documentatries about dance music have made it out like it totally came from America and we just adopted it. Nope you can certainly see how everything was being put in place including the soul weekenders. Anyway slowly we get into the warehouse scene and lots of talk about where the music was coming from. At once again for the first time, finally we hear it wasn't just from a bunch of djs going to Ibiza and trying to create the same vibe in England. So I'm thinking wow, this might actually live up to the name of The Definitive History Of UK Dance Music. Then we hit 88 and 89... Things get a little hazy in the reporting and acid house is mentioned but not as much as I thought they would have. Hey at least they played Acid Trax by Phuture (the first acid record). The reporting picks up again and there on the ball again about things like the free parties, criminal justice bill, etc. But 1993 comes and there is a mention that hardcore split into many genres but you know what. Happy Hardcore never gets mentioned! Instead theres lots of talk about Jungle, Garage (funny enough not much about Drum & Bass). And on the other side lots of talk about House, Progressive House and techno but once again nothing about Happy Hardcore. You could say they tried to mix it in with techno but Carl Cox and Derek May doesn't play happy hardcore and would be the wrong people to talk about it. Thinking about it Gabba and European Techno influenced music (think TTF, Scott Brown, Bass Generator), didn't get a mention either, which is strange because it seemed so popular up in Scotland with massive rave events like Rezerection. Actually from the Rez website.

New Years Eve 1993 proved to be a watershed event for Rezerection, as 1994 saw the demise for the traditional London style breakbeat sound favoured by the regular Rez DJs like Grooverider, SS and Seduction. The new Rez sound was heavily influenced by the Dutch and German hardcore scenes and the likes of Westbam, Tanith, Dye Witness and GTO took over from Grooverider, SS and N-Joi as hard trance, bouncy techno and gabba dominated the Scottish scene.

Like I said its more a moan and groan than anything, but I remember growing not listening to BBC Radio 1 for this almost exact reason. There was no place for happy hardcore on radio 1. It was rejected then because it was seen as cheesy, too happy, etc. And obviously thats has carried on through because never mentioned in this definitive history of dance music...! I was also going to make the point that Trance also got very little attention in the documentary. I'm not sure why, but at least it got mentioned and I guess Underworld, Sasha, etc are pretty close to trance. Anyway so in wrapping up the whole documentary, they talked about things like UK only music like Grime, Big Beat (chemical beats or punk house), Bassline, etc. But once again no mention of Happy Hardcore's split into Freeform Hardcore, Hard Dance (or Future Dance) and NuEnergy which are all uniquely british. Don't get me wrong, I don't know too much about music genres but when it comes to Happy Hardcore, I know what I'm talking about even if I'm a trance head nowadays. It was left out of this documentary and never talked about, shame on you Radio 2!

The 3rd Olympic ring (black) is now safe on my bookshelf

[ Socially Offline ]

Thanks to everyone who was involved in getting this lost (now found) ring. Its sits proudly on top of my bookshelf in the centre of the room. Getting the ring required quite a few people and Tim was the one finally who convinced the woman in the gallery to give it up. I got a small video of the moment Tim came back with the 3rd ring. We were in the great little cafe next door love saves the day. We also went for a couple drink afterwards where we spent a lot of time looking at the esperanto, some mad/eccentric lady (who's meant to be well known in the northern quarter) started to help. Its really the amazing thing about ARGs you can get dragged into it and you maybe do a part and leave again or get really interested and end up playing along. Having the ring sitting there in the middle of the room and knowing there is only 4 more in the world its hard not to keep being involved. Thanks Tobin and Nicole, Tim and Simon, Davemee and the Unfiction forum.

Yes I did do a dance in front of the gallery afterwards with the ring, but the woman was on the phone so she didn't see me I think.

I Found the 3rd Olympic ring

[ Socially Offline ]

Found in Manchester's trendy Northern Quarter (with the help of the community) but I wasn't able to take it, today. Some woman with a stick up her behind got all funny because I wasn't what she was expecting.

Join the search for the lost ring... we need people in Manchester tomorrow between 4-6pm who can try and get the ring for us. If that sounds like you, twitter me tomorrow.

There is so much free knowledge online

[ Web 2.0 ]

Can I just say I love the internet! There is tons of great resources online and most of them are freely available to anyone who wants to invest the time. I can't understand people who say the internet is full of crap. A bit of media literacy about how to search, how to judge sources, friends recommendations, etc, etc and internet is a better that any other resource known to man. Simple!

In that vein, here's a couple of great little resources which have been recommended to me by friends.

How to bridge the distance between business strategy and design - recommended to me by Paul via Del.icio.us. I mean wow, I would love to hear this live, the presentation slides are pretty credible and describing enough that you feel like you could give the presentation
yourself with enough time.

Living digital - recommended to me by Kate via email. I've heard of this guy but yes this is a awesome presentation to google. Would love to get him to the BBC one day. A lot of this for me is shaking head in agreement but its so good to have that sometimes. Even today I hardly ever turn on the TV, its all about Internet content be it licenced, unknown or unlicenced. Its also good to see the technology is ready. My friend bought a Popcorn box a while back and a couple of other friends bought a xbox just for xbmc the other day. And I got to say I'm still having fun downloading what ever highdef content I can find and playing it back on my homemade xbmc box.

Background Patterns - recommended to me by everyone but Lucas was first. Lovely site, well thought out and the fact you can download the pattern is ideal.

You are irrelevant...

[ Science and Theory ]

I was talking to one of Emma's friend on a night out in London a while ago and we got talking about my theory of Steve Jobs control of Apple (still to be written I guess). Anyway we got around to the ipod and I suggested that before the ipod, Apple was all about Thinking Differently

Now its not about thinking anymore its about you being irrelevant now.

The more famous commercials and print advertising featured dark silhouetted characters against bright-colored backgrounds. The silhouettes are usually dancing, and in television commercials are backed by up-beat music. The silhouettes are also usually holding iPods and listening to them with Apple's supplied earphones. These distinctively appear in white, so that they stand out against the colored background and black silhouettes. Apple seems to change the style of these commercials quite often depending on the song's theme or genre.

Yes you can also be the dark silhouette, a mean-less thing to hang a ipod off? Well thats the way I see and Emma's friend did actually agree with me. Its not very suttle either... I mean what other adverts have you seen when they have blacked out the person? Imagine a wii advert with a black silhouette? Car advert with a silhouette driving the car, hell even a drinks company advert with silhouettes? Yes it might sound all wrong to some of you and maybe some will say its just good advertsing. But good advertising works by getting in deep and making you feel inadaquent or in other words irrelevant right? The ipod adverts are just less suttle.

Yep your irrelevant get use to it, or change it.

right shall I close the comments?)

Excellent StackOverFlow podcast

[ Design and Ideas ]

I'm slowly catching up with some of the podcasts I was able to download at the frustrating speed I've recently had. I wanted to give a special mention to a excellent Stack Over Flow show which is a podcast by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky.

Late in the podcast both of them just run through books which should be read or even owned. And there are some classics in the list.

Don't have time to listen to all that jibba-jabba? Here is Joel's short list:

• 1. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
  2. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
  3. The Non-Designer's Design Book
  4. Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering
  5. Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
  6. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
  7. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
  8. How to Win Friends & Influence People

If you don't like the rambling podcast style, there's also a public transcript with more books that you can shake a tree at.

Welcome to broadband limbo or something?

[ Just plain life ]

So I'm online but at such stupid speeds that its like I'm using ISDN.

Another BT engineer came out today to check my ADSL line and the exchange I'm connected to. I bought another wireless adsl router yesterday so I was able to demostrate how slow it was using both the smoothwall box and the cheap wireless router. We even used multiple phone cables and took all my phones out of the loop. The engineer even used his own laptop to run a couple of tests using my equipment and the results were exactly the same.

• Results for speedtest #1215882742
• Date of Speed Test: 2008-07-12 18:12:22
• Download Speed: 109 kbps (13.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
• Upload Speed: 668 kbps (83.5 KB/sec transfer rate)

On this speedtest I got download speeds of 0.11 Mbps and upload speeds of 666 Kbps and finally on this one download speeds of 84.9 kbps and upload speeds of 679kbps

So the upshot of all this is that BT can't do much else and its now down to my ISP to come up with a solution. My ISP (Ukfreesoftware network) are not exactly the best for customer service, so I'm expecting quite a fight on my hands if I want anything to change. Yes this really sucks and I can't understand whats changed.

Its just today been all fixed! Now I'm speeding along the internet, finally.

Website down and I might as well be offline

[ Just plain life ]

Sorry to everyone wondering what happened to cubicgarden.com recently. The apache server just needed a restart but I couldn't get online to do it. Yep theres trouble at home, once again to do with the broadband connection. Something is brewing between UK Freesoftware network and BT, but I'm stuck right in the middle with super slow broadband or 1min broadband. Currently its super slow, with average speeds of 34.0 bit/s (yes bits not kbits!) down and 12.0 kbit/s up (yes kbits). It wasn't always like that, the 1min broadband had me restarting the smoothwall server every 2mins and grabbing what I can before the internet timed out.

This has been going on since late June and has involved BT coming out to view the exchange and my house.

Just to hammer the point home, heres a couple of the emails i got over the past few days.

We have now successfully raised a fault with BT against this circuit for investigation, we would recommend that you follow this up by either calling our Internet Support team or emailing us in approximately 5 working hours. We should, have a full update within this time scale.

We have been notified by Entanet that they have successfully raised a
fault report with BT in respect of your ADSL connection.

We recommend that you follow up directly with our ADSL support line on
020 3002 4831 after allowing 5 hours for an update on the fault issue.

This also means the connetion to my hosting is slow and painful, hence I wasn't able to login and restart the apache process before the internet connection would drop.

Thanks for bearing with me, I've only got BT engineer number 4 coming out tomorrow morning now.

Booking a holiday for next week, any suggestions?

[ Just plain life ]

Some people know I'm a bit of work-aholic and I tend to mix work with pleasure, (i'm sure you guys do too) but I've been tracking how much time I actually spend on BBC related work and its a little scary. It also started to manifest in my health recently. So I've been carrying a chest infection which usually lasts a week for about 5-6 weeks now (yes I've seen a doctor or three and had medication). Generally my immune system seems to be quite low and needs a kick or two. So it made sense now I'm getting better to go on holiday, so I get the full benefit of the healing process.

Anyway so the point I'm getting at is, I'm finally going on holiday (and I don't mean to a conference/barcamp/etc) just holiday. So novel the idea, I'm a little lost in what I'm going to do besides sleep, sit in the park or beach and do small webby stuff (oh yeah, can't be going on holiday without internet access of course). Anyhow, I've settled on a place and date but I'm not very happy with the price. So I was thinking maybe people like your kind self could help me find cheaper or an alternative. Right now its all looking like this...
Outbound: Tue 15 July 2008
Manchester International Apt > Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

Inbound: Sun 20 July 2008
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport > Manchester International Apt

Total price:GBP 182.70

Hotel: 1 room(s) for 5 nights

XXX star hotel
Star rating Hotel Arena AMS

S-Gravesandestraat 51 , Amsterdam, Netherlands, 01092AA.
Check-in date: Tue 15 July 2008
Check-out date: Sun 20 July 2008

1 Adult(s) 0 Child(ren) 1 Room(s)

Total price:GBP 367.68

=
Total price of your basket: GBP 550.38


Now I can't be the only one to think, geez that seems quite expensive for a 5 day holiday in Amsterdam? Ok I understand its July but I can actually get a flight to Toronto for GBP 440, New York for GBP 360 and Boston for GBP. Its not the same because I have friends who I could stay with while in those places but I'm also thinking I'm meant to be resting and that might mean staying in a hotel so I don't get sucked back into socialising and those wild wild parties There are complete alternatives too, like just booking the cheapest sun, sea and beach holiday I can find (which seems to be Greece for about GBP 270-ish. Or if I re-engage my brain again, I start thinking maybe I should be using that 500 pounds to pay off more debits and maybe part of a credit card. Oh well for a holiday....

If you have suggestions for a cheap holiday, let me know I can pretty much do from this Friday till 2 week from now. Sun is good and wifi is also got to be involved some, but geneally I'm looking for peace and quiet in somewhere I can go out and travel too far. So I look forward to hearing your suggestions...

Resume at any point

[ Science and Theory ]

Adrian Hon, talked about his dis-taste for choose your adventures books in his session. He described the 5 finger holding multiple pages and multiple routes which we choose to hold while playing those games. He even mentioned how he sometimes will start the game from the finish.

And it got me thinking, is it only geeks which do this kind of thing? Also is this a good or bad thing? I would say being able to hold multiple places of a complex script in your head at the same time and being able to move forward from any point and resume at anytime any of them has to be a good thing. This actually ties nicely back to the those geek qualities The 10 Real Reasons Why Geeks Make Better Lovers.

Geeks understand multi-dimensional relationships

Geeks connect with their online buddies in several guises, often getting to know the person behind the avatar as friendships deepen and move from adult communities to personal IM.

A geek can flow seamlessly between conversation about a friend's partner and kids in one window and an elaborate group sex scene in another, without feeling any discontinuity between the personas. Even if the friend is a 43-year-old father of two in IM, and a 22-year-old dominatrix in the group.

With all that going on, a geek has no problem accepting that sometimes you want mocha ripple cherry fudge chunk swirl with almonds and a waffle and sometimes you want vanilla lite.

Just a quick thought...

Althought I got to add when I put this past Kate, she did say "isn't the only people who read the choose your own adventure books geeks?" So everyone who read those books were doing the 5 finger resume? Maybe...

Technorati Tags: geek, brain, thoughts, multiple, discontinity, time, space

Doing all the right things

[ Web 2.0 ]

I mean to include this graph of ping.fm in the last blog entry but must have fell a sleep or much more likely the internet went off again (i've been having so much problems with my home broadband recently its not even funny). The graph shows how Ping.FM has or could be come a trusted message broker. Someone posted a comment about incoming XMPP support which seems to add more fire to this idea of a message broker.

But just when we were getting excited about ping.fm, when someone really does things correctly. identi.ca ticks almost all the data portability and openness tick boxes I can think of. Not only is the service a Opensource Creative Commons framework based on Jabber/XMPP but it supports OpenID and remote subscription via OpenMicroblogging which is OAuth and some established responses and returns. But no thats not all, it finally supports Federation, which means finally people really like owning there own can build and maintain there own and connect to the network when it pleases them. Simple this is awesome and I've already joined it.

So much for booking a holiday for myself

[ Just plain life ]

No rest for the wicked, as they say in some quarters...


Technorati Tags: holiday, trip, timeoff, rest, relax

Ping.fm, the way web services should be done?

[ Web 2.0 ]

So I've finally signed up with Ping.fm thanks to David Owens giving me a update to date code for ping.fm.

So what is Ping.Fm and why do I find it very interesting.

Well according to the website.

Ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.

Its a service which will pass on your single message (or ping) to other services. So in practice I can message ping.fm and the message appear on plaxo pulse, twitter, jaiku, plurk, facebook and linked in. Of course it does more than that but those are the ones I'm interested. Whats even better is Ping.fm has im, email and applications of its own. So one of my biggest frustrations is twitters im bot which never bloody works, should be solved.

Its also good to see the setup with other services part is done without revealing your username and password when ever possible. But there are a couple services like twitter and plurk where you must. What would have been ideal is OpenID logins, but few of these services support that right now anyway. Actually on Plaxo, I had to go find the login details because I'm so use to using OpenID.

Once your setup, you can just go to the site and type in your messages which get ping'ed elsewhere. But thats not where it ends, nope you can setup custom and service triggers which allow you to route a message based on a rule you setup or something a service does. So imagine Twitter stopped working (yeah when does that happen?), you could divert messages to another service which you may only use in emergencies. I was trying to work out if you get ping.fm to watch for messages which came through another service and echo those out to the rest of services. So say I SMS twitter, Ping.fm sees the twitter messages, notices its not on my Jaiku and reposts it there.

As mentioned before there is many ways to post to ping.fm but no SMS yet. Right now you can use a facebook application, a load of im bots including xmpp via gtalk, google gadget and even a iphone and wap client! Of course more importantly there's a developer API.

Why do I think Ping.fm is that great? Well its using the web as it should be. There was never a reason why you had to sign into different services to leave messages. Ping.fm is like a layer above all the crazyness going on in the social messaging space. I don't know if I quite trust it yet, currently my hand is forced because I hate the alternative. However these guys are going about the whole thing in the correct way. I love the fact there's from day one im bots and a api. This means once I've setup my services, I don't really ever have to log into ping.fm ever again. This might sound shocking but theres another service which is like this. Dopplr, is trying to be quite transparent in its deliver and use to people. So you can setup Dopplr with your personal calendar, its pulls out places and will inform your friends once you clash. No need to really go back to the site ever really (unless you want reviews and your carbon footprint). There is always a question of how these services will make money without advertising but I don't know maybe a pro version ala Flickr or they could sell the attention data being generated from the messages going through there services?

Who knows, but right now I'm pretty impressed with ping.fm. Once they have SMS gateways its going to be even better.

Korg DS-10 synthesizer in your pocket

[ All media ]

Ok I was catching up with the 1up show and they had a segment on the Korg DS-10.

Finally, one of the most powerful new drugs to hit the market is introduced for the very first time outside of Japan by Korg scientists Kazuhito Inoue and Masanao Hayashi. The DS-10 is set to out-perform even its predecessor, the mighty MS-10 thanks in part to its much smaller size, which leading musicology experts Torrey Walker and Ryan O'Donnell have declared to be "almost swallow-able!" Side-effects of the DS-10 include: overwhelming desire to create electronic music on-the-go and to quit one's job in a misguided quest to become a star performer. Oh, and to buy a metallic-pink DS.

Basiclly its a full synthesizer on your DS which can use the wifi feature to link more that one together. Not only that but the touchscreen and multiple screen displays make it very easy to play with. I even believe you can record tracks and play them later. Wow! This awesome, don't get me wrong I still prefer my pacemaker but anything to make the barrier lower and for people to get back into remixing and making music is a good thing in my book. You know stop us from being just consumers. Actually why would you even bother with a ipod now a days, when you have things like this and pacemaker?

I was on the train the other day coming back from London via Shefield and there was this woman sitting next to me. She must have been about 40ish and she asked me what the thing was I kept fiddling with. I explained it was like 2 ipods but I can dj/remix live on them (my usual response for people asking now). She seemed to understand but just ended up saying, she thought it was a new type of mobile phone or games device. I was going to ask if she wanted to have a try but she didn't seem like she was that interested. Maybe next time I'll get some club chick instead.

Technorati Tags: ds, nintendods, korg, synthesizer, pocket, music, remix, make

I am not a werewolf

[ Socially Offline ] | Tags: werewolf  werewolves  gaming  play  hide+seek  hideseek  london  southbank 

Next year I'm to make sure I get in there early and get a ticket for Hide+Seek on London's Southbank. I missed the conference part again this year but boy oh boy did everyone have fun playing werewolf afterwards. I believe at one point there were 4 games of about 15-20 people playing at once. Maybe they were a bit too close so you couldn't hear very well what was going on but there were tons of new people to play with and even some of my friends joined in who have never played before. Talking of which, a special award goes out to Hannu for picking two werewolves on his first ever game and in such a important role as the seer. So amazing that a mature player took this as werewolf tactics and almost voted him off. I also took part in a game when we almost got rid of all the werewolves without killing any villagers. Every night the werewolf would try and kill the seer (aka myself) and the healer would heal me. Ok to be fair the werewolves were new to the game but only after 3 rounds of no one dying on the nights did the werewolves start picking off other players. By which time the game was almost wrapped up for the villagers

Technorati Tags: werewolf, werewolves, gaming, play, hide+seek, hideseek, london, southbank