Merry Halo Christmas Everyone

I hope you all had a good Christmas. It was a relatively quiet one here in the Haresign household, what with me barely having any cash to speak of.

However, aside from the hideous amounts of chocolate everyone gets, I also received Halo: Anniversary. Being the die-hard Halo fan I have of course played it way back when but the lure of new graphics, achievements and the new maps for Reach was just too much.

Wait! That wasn't there before was it?

You noticed some posts appearing from when this place was on hiatus? Don't worry you're not going insane, I'm moving some select pieces from GeekGasms.org here too. I'm doing it mainly because at some point I'll be pointing people to my work and I'd rather send them to a place with everything rather than two places with gaps.

Snow began to fall, huge flakes of it

One of the things I intend to do is to start throwing up some of the writing I do in the writing group I've joined. Well, at least the ones I'm happy with. This bit was written in there, we were given five minutes to write a Christmas piece beginning with "Snow began to fall, huge flakes of it". So here ya go:

Snow began to fall, huge flakes of it... Dave's head smacked against the steering wheel. This better not lie he thought as he could see it doing exactly that at the side of the road.

It was 9pm on Christmas Eve and he had two hundred miles to go before he got home. And home was exactly where he was going to get to, not matter the weather, Tim was three this year and Dave knew that this was when Christmas mattered and he was going to be there when his son woke up to see what Santa had brought.

It.. It's changed?!?

What? There's been a change and now an update?
Yes, strange person checking a site that's been dead for nearly two years, there has.

So the GeekGasms.org experiment was pretty much a failure. Poor communication, changing priorities and more can be blamed. However, there were a number of successes. We had a podcast for over a year and a half and I blogged nearly every week, but as we started to lose people I stopped, then the only other regular blogger did too. Nevermind, it was damn fun while it lasted. There's a couple of ideas Danny and I batted around that may keep some life in it though. We'll see.

However, this year I decided to make a rather drastic change. Quit my day job and give writing a try properly. So I need a web presence all of my own, originally I was tempted to do it with GeekGasms, but there's too much on NightJim.com to just abandon that too.

So I've decided to update the latter, because that's where Justice League of Abertay is and it's more within my own abilities. Right now it's still the old site, but I'm in the process offline of ripping it apart, discarding a lot of crap and going from there. This page is going to be my main update portal, with the site being more of an archive of stories etc.

Also we have my first success as a writer. I'm now a contributor on BeefJack.com, keep an eye out for news stories from me, as well as the odd blog/feature such as this Halo one I've already done.

I'm also going to keep updating GeekGasms.org with my blogs, but I'm going to be putting them here too. Hopefully an all new NightJim.com will spring up soon, and I already have some material for it.

Halo article on BeefJack

Here's a feature I contributed to over at BeefJack for Halo's 10 year anniversary. My first proper article printed by someone that isn't myself :D

Halo: Combat Evolved - Happy anniversary

Pricing the Digital Ink

To keep a theme running I'm once again going to go on about comics. Yes OK I'm missing my weekly trip to the store to pick them up, and then get home and devour them over a coffee.

Moving at the end of August means that I've not been in a brick and mortar store since DC's whole new 52 kicked off. Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, DC has rebooted their entire universe and every single issue was a new number 1 from the very beginning. Sort of. OK it's not that simple but I'm not interested in that right now. What I'm here to get at is Digital Comics and pricing.

On the Fringe of Fringe

As a self-proclaimed geek and having often been regarded as someone holding a high office within that establishment I'm ashamed to say I've never watched Fringe. I remember a lot of noise being made at the end of one season (see how little I know) when there was a bunch of comics seen from an alternate reality that were slightly different to the ones we know and love. At the time I thought “Huh, that's pretty cool. I should probably watch that.” Yet I still didn't get off my arse and bother.

To be fair I've done my 24 and Chuck marathons, plus Supernatural while I was on break from here. When Smith started moaning at me for not watching it I thought it was about time I pulled my finger out and with the big move I've got a lot more time on my hands so I decided to see what the fuss was all about. Boy, I should have gotten round to this sooner.

No More Through The Gate

This week is rather a big one sci-fi, and myself, and not in a happy “Here’s the finale of Battlestar where we get all the answers” way… OK, bad example. Anyway, Monday saw the last ever episode of Stargate aired. Not just Universe but everything Stargate related. The producers have said MGM currently aren’t interested in continuing the saga of the SGC in any form having knocked back all four proposals for movies.