Maxpedition are a company with an aim.  I don’t think that this is an aim written on their literature or website.  Instead it is written large – very large – on every product they make.  The aim is this: A Maxpedition product must never stop working.  To this end they over-engineer everything and refuse point-blank to cut corners that would have a lesser company’s accountants snapping their pencils in half and issuing a “seal all exits” alert. 

I rather think I like this approach!

I have a quite a few Maxpedition products: Gear Slinger, Key Fob, Proteus Bag, Wallet and Gear Clips.  Every single one of them, despite years of abuse in daily life and hardcore airsoft, look brand new. If any of the above list have faults at all it is that they are so over-engineered that sometimes they are not easy to use.  For example the Maxpedition key fob is almost too big for my pockets and has enough Velcro on it to stick to an wild boar.  We will hear more about Velcro in a moment.  To this list I have added the Rolly Polly Extreme and it is that product I will be reviewing now.

I am on a world tour at the moment and my packing needs are very clear.  Firstly, I need a bag that will store away.  Secondly, I want a light bag that I can use as an occasional day sack.  Thirdly, I need something that I can hike/bike/ski/ride with all around New Zealand’s mountains.  I already have a good city bag – what I call my tech bag – in the Crumpler Sinking Barge.  This bag holds my laptop, camcorder and everything needed when visiting a city.  It does not do so well in trekking the wilds as it is too heavy and not so well endowed in storage space.  So the cry went up for an ‘occasional’ bag that would not be used every day and not take up much space. 

After searching the web and my favourite gear-haunts I came up with the Maxpedition Rolly Polly.

Basic Facts and Figures

This bag continues the high-end build quality that Maxpedition aspire to:

Product Materials

• 1000-Denier water and abrasion resistant light-weight ballistic nylon fabric
  
•  Teflon® fabric protector for grime resistance and easy maintenance
• high strength zippers and zipper tracks
• UTX-Duraflex nylon buckles for low sound closures
• Triple polyurethane coated for water resistance
  
• High tensile strength nylon webbing
  
• High tensile strength composite nylon thread (stronger than ordinary industry standard nylon thread)
• Internal seams taped and finished
• Paracord zipper pulls
• Stress points double stitched, Bartacked or “Box-and-X” stitched for added strength

Product Features

• Folded size: 5” x 5” x 4”
• Main: 16” x 12” x 2”
• Frontal top pocket: 8” x 5” x 1” with 8” x 2” loop fastener field
• Frontal lower pocket: 10” x 8” x 1” with inner divider, key retention and 4” x 6” loop fastener field on the outside
• Slip pocket: 7” x 7”
• Hydration sleeve: 16” x 12’ with grommet drainage
• Total volume: Approx. 500 cu. in.
• Empty weight: 1 lb 8 oz
• Belt: Integral closed loop, fits up to 3.5” belt
• Hydration: Accommodates up to 3L / 100 oz. reservoir
• Shoulder straps: Included, adjustable in length; elastic hydration tube loops and adjustable sternum strap with built-in emergency whistle
• Handle: Integral, made from 0.75” webbing
• Attach: Short Malice clips (optional accessory), Siamese SlikClip (included)

The Rolly Polly range from Maxpedition is designed more or less as a backup bag or “bug out” bag.  Its main feature is that it rolls up small when not in use.  How small? Lets look:

Rolled up and ready to rock

The bag rolls up very small indeed.  A mere size: 5” x 5” x 4” in size when folded.  On the outside comes a few options for storing the bag in this mode – either by the hoop, the clip on the top or the molle loops.  Its closure is held by the strongest of Velcro, but a single hard tug on the grip below the label will pull it open.  Once pulled the bag rolls out revealing the straps.  The straps are then pulled around to the rear of the bag and the Velcro flap (that held the Rolly Polly shut) becomes the top closing mechanism.  This Velcro is the main thing holding the top closed.  This is both a good and bad thing as the insides are quickly accessible but the flap cannot be secured by a lock.  The other thing holding the top shut is the way the straps are designed: by wearing the bag the straps pull the top closed.  I would have preferred a zip here, but I guess it is a question of weight and space for a bladder.

That top closing – notice how the straps hold it closed

Rolling it back up is not hard and I was able to do it without practice.  To quantify that last sentence consider this: I have a “three second” pop-up tent and, sure, it takes only three seconds to put up.  To get it down and back in its bag is like practicing Judo on Zebedee from Magic Roundabout – its not easy!  If putting a three second tent away is a level 10 (on the scale of “bastard’ness”) then rolling up the Rolly Polly is only level 4.  The procedure to restore ‘packed’ mode:  You empty the bag, fold in the sides, fold in half length-ways and then roll it up and Velcro closed.  Finally, sit on it and adjust.

Rolled out

On the rear of the bag are two zippered pockets and one zipped liner pocket (shown above the Velcro patch on the left image)  These pockets are good places to store items that would move about in the main compartment and the lower one comes with a fob for keys.  I keep my camcorder in this one with no hassles.  As you can see the bottom pocket also has a large patch for Velcro attached items – such as ID tags, etc.  The straps (shown in the second image) are very light and strong with a chest clip and Molle loops running up the sides.  The two top loops are rubber Molle and would perform very well for drinking bladders.  The straps are well balanced and will not crumple when the bag is in use. 

Inside the main compartment (shown in the third image) there are three sections.  The first is a fold out Velcro lined zippered pocket.  This is perfect for any items that would perhaps fall out of the compartment.  The second is the main holding space.  This is much bigger than you think and the bag ‘balloons’ well to accommodate larger items.  At the bottom of this is a drainage hole.  The third section is separated by a thin membrane and this is where you would put a bladder. 

One nice feature, and a throw-away one that will possibly come in handy, is the inclusion of mini whistle on the chest clip.

 

The whistle on the clip

One good blow on this is very loud and since it is always accessible it is very welcome.

In the field:

Field testing any bag always highlights the real issues, I have broken many products that felt strong and good out of the box in the course of my adventures (I am looking at you Viper!), and think a proper field test is vital to any product being successful in its function.  For this bag I chose a real test: cycling up Mt John in New Zealand.

I filled the bag with the following:

• Large sports water bottle.
• Rollup water proof jacket.
• Sunglasses in case.
• Sun cream.
• Anti mossy’ cream.
• My Canon camcorder.
• Spare battery for above.
• Pocket knife.
• Fleece Jumper.

The bag was full in volume but about half the maximum comfortable weight.  We cycled up the mountain in about 3 and a half hours, which was seriously hard going in places and bloody windy.  At the top was a large observatory that had a nice little cafe.  The bag was pulled around and taken on and off many times.  It performed very well and all the seams withstood whatever I threw at it.  It was also very comfortable to wear with no tugs and pulls against my frame through bad design.  The Velcro holding the bag closed did not come lose once and all in all I am very satisfied. 

To compare it to its competition I have tried on and used Cesca’s similar Life Venture fold up bag.  This one is simply not designed to the level of the Rolly Polly and is nowhere near as comfortable to wear.  It has lasted 4 months use with few issues, Cesca reports, but I am the one massaging her shoulders when it hurts!  The main differentia is the price.

So a quick recap of the good and bad points:

Good:

1. Light
2. Good size and space
3. Packs very small indeed
4. Good straps
5. Good features
6. Strong built quality

Bad:

1. Velcro closure isn’t water proof and gaps exist
2. Material is a lighter type and probably not as strong
3. Quite expensive (£58.95 for tan - more for ACU)
4. Must be emptied to roll back up

Overall I like the Rolly Polly a lot and use it everyday.  If it does fail in any respect I will write a “Epic Fail” post so check back.  However, given Maxpedition’s reputation, and the strength of my other Maxpedition items: I have no doubt it will be working fine in years to come!

Overall it scores a good 8.

Basho defeats Mt John!

Regards,

Basho

**WARNING** Mild spoilers ahead, nothing that isn’t all over the press.

Tropic Thunder has to go down as the film I most want to watch while stoned and drunk.  I was neither of these things although I was in New Zealand, which at least was different from being down the Odeon in London.  Yes I can attest that it rains in New Zealand.  Such rain that even David Bowie would be satisfied.  So Cesca and I did what all English do when it rains. 

We went to the cinema.

Unlike the last picture I saw in the cinema, Dark Knight (which I watched in Alice Springs no less!), I am not going to hold off reviewing it.  Dark Knight requires some context to review and consequently I have just downloaded the previous film Batman Begins.  This will enable me to judge the film against something of a yardstick of quality, something for it to live up to. 

There is no such film for Tropic Thunder!  Nothing I have ever seen measures up to this movie in terms of “fucking insanity”.  This is perhaps the ultimate “fanboy film”, one which will live on in student flats and dorm rooms for many years.  One that will be chucked in the BlueRay player after many a night out drinking.  It exists in that strange and sometimes brilliant genre of movie in that it is “Hollywood making fun of itself” film.  The sort of film that has sly nods to genre classics and is essentially art recreating itself by burning all that has been held dear up until now.  Not that this film is as smart and important as The Player, nor scripted as well as Get Shorty.  Nor is its subject original, being both classically portrayed in Bowfinger (A film within a film) and Hot Shots! Part Deux (The Vietnam war as humour). 

What it has is that it is funnier than all of them.

All comedy either comes down to two things.  Script or Performance.  This film has an excellent script in places, some of which has drawn a lot of criticism, but it is in the performances that it really shines.  Each of the actors in this film are excellent in this respect, although the greatest performance is the now phoenix-like star of Robert Downey Jr’s. 

His entire character is a skilfully presented joke that lasts the entire movie.  Not at one moment does a joke about his character being an obsessive mega-method actor, who can’t “switch off” his performance, fall flat and they provide at least 70% of the jokes in the movie that work. 

Some reviews have remarked how this stella performance shades the others, especially Jack Black (who is after all more than capable of holding a film on his own), but this misses the fact that Jacks character is telling a different joke.  The clue is in the amazing, simply amazing, makeup on Jack.  In the first few scenes he looks every bit the hard bitten Nam Vet.  Think Tom Sizemore in Black Hawk Down.  He is all blazing eyes and gungho.  Once the camera stops he is missing his assistant, needs room service and eats drugs to fuel his performance.  This is a critique of one type of acting.  It is almost (possibly) Jack ribbing himself? 

So it also goes with Stiller’s character, who wants to be taken more seriously as an actor, he is an faded star who has had action hits aplenty but finds them hollow.  He has foolishly acted in a serious heart felt film to try and win an award, which would give him back his self belief, but it failed at the boxoffice.  His life is essentially surreal and he is lost.  To such an extent that he cannot spot reality from the special effects laden films he has starred in.  This is all the more clear when he eats from the nick of a severed head because he thinks it is prop.

The script doesn’t stop there.  There are clever nods to all sorts of Hollywood movies and stereotypes.  We all spotted the easy jokes about Eddie Murphy, Snake Pliskin and Forest Gump, but there are even more subtle ones about Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Dear Hunter and Apocalypse Now.

Then there is the funniest joke performance since Michael Cane played Austin Powers’s dad.  I am talking about Tom Cruise as the studio executive Les Grossman.  Wearing a fat suit, with a bald head, fake hair and screaming more profanities than your average pimp, Cruise owns every scene he is in.  Like a more violent version of the Studio Exec in the Orange Adverts, he scares everyone by screaming at them at full volume.

Les Grossman: Now I want you to take a step back… and literally fuck your own face!

I can see the casting meeting even now:

Casting Agent 1 :  “Tom, Tom, Tom, we need to break you out of all this negative media coverage.”

Tom’s Assistant : “Yeah like, get everyone off your back about the Scientology thing Tom, its starting to define you Tom.”

Casting Agent 1 : “Your an Actor, Tom!”

Tom : [nods] “I am, I am an actor!”

Casting Agent 2 :  “We need to get you in something different, something not so serious…something with mojo!”

Casting Agent 1 :  “Something with, with… Jack Black maybe?”

Tom’s Assistant :  [Looking thoughtful] “Or Ben Stiller, like a cameo in Dodgeball 2 or something!”

Tom : “I like Robert Downey Jr too.  Iron Man rocked”

Casting Agent 1 : [snaps his fingers] “Tom, I have just the vehicle for you, something that will get the people talking about your movies again Tom.”

Casting Agent 2 : [nods] “Something funny Tom, something you can really get your teeth into!”

[Tom yawns]

Casting Agent 1 : “Something with Downey, Black and Stiller in it Tom!”

Casting Agent 2 : “And you get to do the booty dance!”

Tom : [suddenly interested] “The booty dance?”

Casting Agent 2: “The booty dance Tom!”

Tom’s Assistant : “He can do the booty dance in this picture?”

Tom : [Tom Cruise holds up two fingers] “Twice.”

Casting Agent 1 :  [gulps] “Twice?”

Casting Agent 2 :  [wide eyed] “You want to do the booty dance twice Tom?  No one can do the booty dance twice in one film Tom…”

[They exchange looks]

Tom’s Assistant : “This is Tom Cruise gentleman.  He can do the booty dance more than once!”

Casting Agent 2: “You can?”

Tom: “I can!”

Tom’s Assistant :  “He can!”

Casting Agent 1: [pointing] “Tom you’ve got a deal!”

[Tom Cruise Smiles]

Tom Cruise, all is forgiven.  Anyone able to do the booty dance twice in one film can believe the sky is vanilla for all I care!

So, while this film gets better with the assistance of friends or alcohol (whatever’s your poison), I watched it in an empty cinema on the far side of the world sober as a judge and still found it bloody funny.

I give it 8.

Regards,

Basho

We experienced a wonderful open-air market where the bohemian essence of Byron came alive. Hippies were everywhere with Ozzies selling clothing, dijeridoos and drums etc, Africans selling jewellery and Indians doing henna tattoos. The weather was not in our favour, but it was good to be there and see local Byron at play.

Sleep was calling loudly so we meandered back via the road (not a patch on the beach walk) and collapsed into our room. Belongil Beachouse was not the romantic beach oasis we imagined and our room was simply a let down. Mainly wooden panelled it was part clad with cork behind the bed, very strange. There was an extra single that served as a place for our belongings which was the best comment I can make really. The showers were passable though waiting outside in the cold was not fun. So anyway, our first afternoon we crashed for a while out of necessity rather than anything else. There was live music playing at the restaurant next door that was fine for a while, but the became extremely annoying when trying to sleep. I escaped and went for a walk to the beach and arranged our WWOOFing on KI while J caught another half an hour. We freshened up, changed for dinner and pac-safed as usual. Dinner at the very same restaurant next door, now without live music, was delicious, not too expensive and was washed down with an excellent bottle of cab-merlot enjoyed by us both. We relaxed and chatted, at ease with one another.

DAY TWO

Having at last discovered a wireless cafe with good food, drinks and an atmosphere we were very loyal to them. So brunch was at Mokha where we sorted our liveaboard, Australia Zoo transfers and accommodation for the trip up the coast in to Queensland. We decided a PADI refresher dive was a good plan having not been dive buddies for seven years and so nipped into Byron Bay Dive Centre and booked ourselves in for the next day which extended our stay in Byron by an extra night. In the afternoon we borrowed the hostels boogie boards and headed out unguided into the pacific ocean and braved the winter seas. It was soon evident that neither of us had miraculously discovered any knack for this since our honeymoon. James had however brought his waterproof camera and so recorded the watery bikini clad proceedings. I proudly managed to catch one wave, but sadly J didn’t manage to catch me on it or a wave himself. We enjoyed being in the ocean though the current was strong, and I was somewhat comforted by the surfers bobbing behind the waves further our to sea. Perhaps a lesson next time?

We chilled out in the evening over a delicious home cooked tikka masala, thank you sweetie, and reviewed the boogie boarding footage which I can only describe as like being in a washing machine when suddenly you glimpse a flash of bikini bottoms between the waves! Consequentially I’ve reserved all my rights over the final cut of our Byron Bay movie! We finessed our Sydney harbour movie and added new music to the opera house section.

DAY THREE

After a good breakfast of slow releasing carbs (yes, porridge again!) we did some more web-surfing, not the type of surfing expected in Byron, but needs must. We were both looking forward to diving again, and J was particularly excited that the 40D would not be strapped to my face. A little nervously to be honest we questioned ourselves on the terminology. BCD or BDC? “Just remember, don’t get the o-ring wet” James perked up before we arrived at the dive centre for our refresher. The obligatory video was played which rather focused on promotion and sales of SSI than imparting the information we required. There was one other diver, an Israeli dive master, that Rupert (our instructor) took under his wing. So with wetsuits on we waddled into the small pool for the practical exercises. All our gear was prepared for us and I was personally I was glad we weren’t required to wrestle with Medusa on this occasion. My memory of diving was rusty, or so I thought, but this was easier than expected to be honest.

So on went the weight belt (with buckle in the left hand), the BCD (with regulator and alternate air source on the right side and inflator and console on the left). We checked everything; our air supply was ON (with the console pointing down) and our regulators and BCD was working. We were ready. Our tests included mask clearing, regulator retrieval, buddy breathing, neutral buoyancy, easy. Rupert was happy with us all and so it was time for our dive at Julian Rocks, a small rocky island seen from Belongil beach. Our briefing mainly covered getting into the boat, use of the safety sausage, man over-board procedure and also the rules to be obeyed when diving with sharks! My attention had now been diverted from the complexities of diving to avoiding the natural path of the Grey Nurse shark! Well life is all about experiences so here goes.

We jumped into the 4×4 and onto a rib with some poke and soon we were there. Quickly gearing up we went off backward into the water, like lemmings. Now refocused my full concentration was on having a successful dive, with or without a shark encounter. So down we went. The visibility was poor so no sharks were seen by us, but our dive was successful despite a strong current at the end. No matter how hard you swam your progress was at the discretion of the water. Safely back on the rib to my surprise the German girls had seen a huge pod of Grey Nurse shark only meters away from us! I was filled with a great sense of relief and also disappointment that I didn’t realise this dream whilst diving under an instructors care. Walking back along the beach we were treated to the most spectacular sunset which signified the end to a very happy day, and we shared our excitement about our coming Great Barrier Reef adventure. Dinner was tikka masala take2 and an early night before our next Greyhound trip of 18 hours to Caloundra via Brisbane.

Byron Bay was great, particular for me. I loved the relaxed hippy vibe, unpretentious air and sense that everyone was very comfortable with themselves and contented to be going about there business. The boutique shops were both interesting and eclectic and the service aptly friendly. The ever changing colours of the expansive sky over Belongil beach was romantic and enticing and I would have liked to have stayed longer. I question how I would like it here in summer with the invasion of tourist in every corner? This aside I could happily revisit Byron in years to come. Being by the beach feels like coming home for me.

Cesca

1. ???????? ????? ????????A big post about my leaving the UK for a year!
2. A review of my Christopher Ward watch.
3. A review of my masters book: “4 Shades of Black”.

So watch this space!

All will be completed once I finish moving out of my flat!

Steam - Just click to play

I knew that Eve was too big a prospect to be able to review in more than the lightest terms and indeed to cover everything would reduce me to bullet-points PowerPoint style. I had avoided Eve for many years mainly due to timing in that I was too heavily involved in other games to give it the attention it certainly deserved. I did however try it about a year ago before the last major upgrade. I was fresh out of other MMO’s at that point but found the clashing change of style and the famous learning curve to be a major hindrance. Eve seemed to be inscrutable, complex and baffling. The newbie missions proved too much for me to understand and the interface very badly implemented. I put it to bed after only a few nights struggle.

So why return?

Anyone paying attention to the MMO news and websites could not help but notice the shockingly high scores that Eve has and continues to receive in the press. I looked further than just these. The strength of any MMO is in its community and from some of the incidents I have read about it was clear that Eve possessed a community of special significance.

In space no one can hear you Cha, Cha, Cha!

But would this community be penetrable by a newbie? Eve has been out for a long time and large and powerful guilds (corporations in Eve) have claimed parts of the game territory as their own kingdoms. This would put off all but the most stalwart of hearts as how can one start afresh when everyone else is so far ahead of you? I wanted to find out if this was true and my opportunity to test the theory was granted when Steam launched a 21 day free demo of Eve.

I am a big fan of Steam and, unlike the myriads making complaints on Steampowered’s forums, I have never had a single problem with it. In fact I pretty much see such services as the only future path for gaming delivery and community building. The ability to click one button and have Eve delivered to my desk, installed and ready no less, was too much temptation for me to resist. So I clicked to install fully expecting to be as disappointed as last time.

How wrong can you be?

A NPC Space Station

Much has been written about Eve’s graphics, and justly so as they are mind bracingly beautiful, but this is a facet of a greater truth: Eve is the best programmed MMO I have ever played. I have never found a game, let alone an MMO, that is so alt-tab friendly. Diving in and out of Eve is not only smooth it is actually a joy. It is quite possible to set your ship on a journey, alt-tab out to surf or write and then alt-tab back in when you get to your destination. You can even surf in game through a basic browser window built into the client. The prodigious programming skill demonstration does not end there. Eve features a single (cluster) of servers. All players are in one place and when logging in at night expect to be sharing Eve with over 30 thousand players.

That’s 30 thousand ways to die

The Space Journeys in Eve are amazingly beautiful and all colours

Moreover, and often overlooked, the music and sounds of Eve are startling. Drums and bass tunes sound the coming of battle with a pulse quickening action tempo, which give way to Bladerunner like soulful space-musings as you either loot the fallen or yourself get looted. Whilst in station the sound provides a much needed injection of bustle, an atmosphere that would otherwise have been missing as stations are essentially instanced and you can’t get out of your ship at all and walk around.

This is the first of the design decisions that one must get used to with Eve. You, to all intents and purposes, are your ship. You never get to see anything more of yourself than your portrait. This may strike some as strange because, since your character can of course change ships merrily, this can lead to Eve having a sense of disembodiment and dislocation.

Inside a Station - each race has very different architectural styles

Most MMO’s spend much of their design budget in making you feel ever more your avatar but here that is taken care of in the portrait designer in the first ten minutes of play. I personally imagine that I am a ship “Mind” from Iain M Banks’ Culture novels and play the game that way. This works surprisingly well since also like the Culture I use a lot of drones to do my fighting.

My lovely Drones

So what can one expect in the first 21 days of play?

If you are a long time Elite or X3 player you will quickly find slipping into what is called “Carebear” Eve to be very simple and welcoming. The gargantuan amount of Space in Eve is split into core systems (based on 4 factional play areas) and the dangerous “low-Sec” space, which is similar to the Wild West in that the gun is the only law.

You have been warned

Staying in “High-Sec” space is safe enough that one can play the entire demo and, with luck, not get into any conflicts with players at all. I say ‘with luck’ because Eve is permanent PVP and players can opt to become pirates earning their living by the highway robbery of other players. This usually revolves around camping the large jump gates that connect all the zones with a team of specially rigged friends and blasting anyone too slow to get away or defend themselves. This is not only allowed in Eve; it is actually positively encouraged.

My Vexor Cruiser

However as a “Trial” player I knew I stood very little chance in such scenarios and so spent much of my time avoiding them. My plan was to understand the game before diving into PVP and thus I focussed on the missions available whilst improving my skills. This is essentially because of the way progress is managed. All of the game’s skills can be learned by anyone. Many have prerequisites in the form of core skills and require skills books to be bought from Universities or the Marketplace, but there is nothing holding you back in any other way. The catch is that learning skills in Eve takes place in Real-Time™. So a skill that is 3 days to learn will literally take 3 real days before it is ready for use. This means that a “Trial” player is completely outclassed by players with months into the game and has absolutely no chance of winning in PVP. On the other hand the game is impossible to twink and the old problem of new players with gear above their station is gone. The size of the skill tree is so large that it would take literal years to learn it all and so there is plenty of room to specialise in different areas and indeed this is the way it has been designed.

My Character Sheet and skills

Complexity is the watchword in Eve. Where something could have been smoothed over and made simple, ala’ WOW, Eve has purposely gone more complex. Indeed interface is often viewed as being too complex, but I feel that this is entirely the plan CCP have followed. They want Eve to be deep in every way and having a large amount of information is an aspect of this. The whole experience of playing Eve is alike to operating Microsoft Windows. Similar to Microsoft’s approach, there are many different ways to do any one thing. For example, locking onto a ship; which requires that you are in range of your ship’s abilities; your own targeting skills, away from any interference; both yours and the target’s velocities; any ECM active in the area and finally that you haven’t used all your available lock-on’s (which is based on your memory ability); can be performed by clicking on the target in space and clicking lock on or clicking and holding down the mouse and picking lock-on from the pop up menu or clicking with the RMB and selecting lock-on or right clicking on the target in the Overview and selecting lock-on or throwing all that aside and fitting a “Auto Lock-on” module to your loadout. And that’s just to lock-on. To actually shoot something you need to consider your ships power capacity, the range of the gun, the range of the ammo in the gun, the bonus’s of any modules you have installed, both ships velocities & facing, ECM again, your implant bonus’s and any possible legal implications of attacking this target. Not for nothing did I play the game with a calculator and a pad of paper next to me.

That my friends: is DEPTH!

However, one man’s depth is another man’s confusion and the newbie help channel is chock full of new payers completely lost. Moreover, most of the help they receive is also from slightly less newbie players who perhaps have only a few days extra play on them.

Rookie Help Chat in full flow

Many people have complained about the cliff-like learning curve, but I prefer to think of Eve as an enormous meal. Like a Christmas dinner or banquet. Your eyes will definitely be bigger than your stomach and it takes an awful lot of digesting to get through the starter before one can even consider the main course. In fact even the volauvents are filling. This leads many new players into a great feeling of indigestion and frustration in that they are reading about all the fun things in Eve but that they cannot yet do any of them and will not be able for quite some time.

Relief congestion tablets come in the form of surrogate programs and websites that surround Eve and are essential to play. One such program is EveMon that logs into your account while you are logged out and keeps an eye on your training and when you can expect the current skill to complete. It also allows you to make a plan for the future of your character by picking a job, ship, loadout or skill set and showing the correct progression through to that glorious achievement. This is only slightly dented when one reads that the best plans are all over 90 days of training away and to fly a Titan is 250+ days itself! Another good system is that found at Battleclinic.com, which outlines all sorts of useful information and has a program for uploading ship loadouts and reviewing popular fits. Actually being able to fit all you could want on a ship is an art form in itself and I have spend an inordinate amount of time playing with my modules to find the best balance for my ship. For example: my level 1 destroyer was paper thin but could mount an impressive 8 guns. Thus my fit was all about keeping a long way from the enemy and using multiple long-range mods and long-range railgun ammunition to blast them from afar. This is in contrast to my Vexor Cruiser that specialises in remote combat drones and so I was loaded with high end armour and automatic repair systems that would keep me alive until my combat drones could destroy the opponents. This means that the ships it is possible to fly all require a different playing style.

Styles you will need to learn to avoid death

Caught in the rays of the pirates

OMG a pirate is on me!

Death in Eve is in two flavours. Firstly your ship can be blown up. Scratch that. Your ship WILL EVENTUALLY be blown up. This leaves you in a tiny little escape pod which is then your transport home to collect the insurance (that you really should take out) and buy another ship. If your pod is killed then you wake up in a clone, which is like life insurance, and it costs money to purchase a clone that is good enough to recover all your skill points.

System Jump-Gates, often surrounded by pirates

Thus death in Eve can seem expensive and it is only in the supreme job of game balancing that has gone on in Eve development that means that this is not as bad as it first appears. Firstly, cash in Eve is everywhere. Very soon it is possible to earn a ton of cash from either mining or mission running and you can own any number of ships. Secondly, the business side of Eve is even more advanced than the basic gameplay.

The market is vast and well designed

I am talking here about Corporations

Most MMO’s have Guilds, but Eve has taken that to a new level. Here Guilds can actually own (control) parts of space and declare war on each other to contest entire areas. Alliance tools and every type of Corp’ management function is available and the entire process is very advanced. More advanced than even in SWG. There is even a system to create contracts that can be for anything at all. This means that the only real limit in Eve is the imagination of the players and the corp leaders. I have read of teams of players that sell themselves out as mercenaries and fight dirty little wars on a larger corps behalf, or act as security for a mining corp that has been targeted by pirates. Massive fleet battles abound in “Low Sec” space as rival corps battle each other in hundred strong teams of carriers and even mighty Titans (which are 3 mile long super-ships).

It is all amazingly complex but far away from a 21 day account

A mighty transporter ship

Complexity is like Marmite then. Myself I love it in a game and those without it such as WOW turn me right off. Eve has it in spades and one can completely envelop your mind in the deep waters of Eve’s gameplay, only occasionally surfacing for air and to remember that you were married.

However no good corp touches a “Trial” player and so I spent my 21 day’s solo’ing missions and building my skills up to the point I could fly something worthwhile. The missions are all given out by NPC faction based agents of varying quality and level. High level agents give harder missions and it was not long before the search for new agents became a highlight of an evenings play. Eventually I found 3 good level 2 agents in one star system and could take 3 missions at a time. This quickly boosted my ISK (cash) reserves and I was able to graduate to a cruiser and thence to a BattleCruiser. Some of the missions were very hard indeed and required I took time off to think of the best approach to beat them. This was all great fun and I happily salvaged the wrecks of my fallen enemies while planning my next missions and helping out on the newbie boards.

Acceleration Gates lead to “deadspace” and your missions

I must admit however that in all that time I haven’t died once (more through luck than judgement): so I cannot quite explain the nuances of that to you all.

Each red cross represents an enemy ship, the larger the cross the higher the class

Of course Eve can be boring at times but this is actually vital to any MMO. An MMO is not a flat line of high excitement, like say an FPS, an MMO is something you live in. Somewhere you go to relax, to unwind. Eve is a great tool for unwinding after a hard day at the office. A little mining, a little mission or two, just check those blasters you put on the market have sold, make sure the skills are learning correctly, yadda yadda yadda. You can spend ages in Eve just ‘living’ through your character. Then suddenly and without warning a simple system jump can turn into a vicious battle for your ship, your life and everything in your hold as you are ganked by a group of player pirates. Like a cold bucket of water to the face, you are suddenly broken from your slumbering idleness and thrown head first into intense combat. That means that the line of Eve is more like the EEG graph of a heart attack patient at times and the EEG of a stoner at others. I am sure that this has led to more “the-dinners-in-the-dog” scenarios for married men than people realise.

So Eve is tough like EQ1, deep and player led like SWG, graphically ahead of Vanguard and fun like WOW.

Battle!

Is it therefore the perfect MMO?

No, it is also like a mega-tsunami of complexity that is split very firmly into two camps of “Carebear” space and “YArrr!” piracy. If you give it enough time to win you over you will learn to love it with a passion, but if you try and run before you can walk, or even walk before you can crawl, you will only be frustrated and lost in a complexity of options and depth the like of which has not been seen before in an online game.

I have only scraped the top off this game; truly my review could be 20 thousand words.

A Station up close

The same station as I warp away

I have really enjoyed Eve. If I was single, and not about to go swanning off around the world for a year, I would play it every night. As it is I have to step away as it is quite the most life sucking MMO I have ever encountered. That is for me its greatest achievement and it’s greatest failing. If you have the time and the love of learning to play this game I can assure you of almost limitless adventures.

I award it 9/10

Regards,

Basho

Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.

A few of those who read my original review of Sins Of A Solar Empire (Sins for short) have commented that they are still on the fence regarding this game’s greatness.

Some have pointed to the dream of Homeworld III, which is wishful thinking really and at least a year off, others have said that the depth of Sins does not extend to the actual engagements themselves and claim that the stronger force (numerically speaking) will always win:

That is not true at all!

I am going to review Sins Multiplayer by recounting a game I played against my friends Jim and Kiero over broadband from our homes. I hope this will settle once and for all the question of this game’s depth in all aspects of combat and the huge amount of fun to be had in, what must be, this year’s best game so far.

It all started with a large map game played over 3 star systems and a total of 8 players. 3 Mediums, 2 hards and the 3 of us.

The team roster

The placement of the teams is random like everything else in the galaxy generation and this means that no two games will be the same. All we decided was that we humans would start the game as allies and fight off the others. Once the map was loaded and the first fledgling scout craft had scanned the planets it became immediately apparent that Jim and Kiero were in one star system and I was in another surrounded by the two hards.

Typical!

I knew that I was in big trouble. The AI in Sins is lethal on hard and more than likely this was going to end in my death. There was only one thing for it; flipping a mental coin, I went begging to one of the hards and made friends. This meant giving them resources whenever they asked, gifting them intelligence and attacking whatever dumb target they had in mind for me to help them to victory in this map. I bid my time and did as they asked as we three humans tried to stay afloat. I knew that the AI was using me as a buffer from its enemies, but I also knew that I couldn’t yet battle both hards alone. I invested in trade and spent my cash on upgrading my fleet.

A lot.

One of the cool things about multiplayer Sins is that you can save the game at any time and come back to it.

Over the next few days the lads and I managed to survive by hook or by crook. We spread our wealth and helped out those who needed it the most. It was a real team effort. Eventually we got to the point where Jim and Kiero had their solar system sown up and I was just putting paid to the final few homeworlds of my AI “friends” who had decided to break our truce. I easily engineered that, it was simple; I just stopped doing the missions and sure enough the greens got annoyed at me and canceled the alliance… just as my fleet jumped into their homeworld.

The Greens don’t live to regret our alliance.

It was at this point that I became nervous. You see I had yet to dominate my solar system and Jim and Kiero had killed all opposition in theirs.

I am Red and Jim and Kiero are the two shades of blue.

Both are expert RTS players and we have all crossed swords in many games over the years. I know that Jim is the absolute turtle. He loves to build up a massive fleet/army/force and attack late-on in the game. Kiero on the other hand is sneaky. He doesn’t hesitate to throw a curve ball your way and rattle the front door as his force charges through the rear. My fear was pushed over the top and into action when they announced that they were coming over to my solar system to, “give me a hand”.

Yeah, you can help me out by showing yourselves out lads.

It was just a matter of time. Suddenly this ‘help’ became, “Perhaps we can take a few of these remaining green planets, heh heh”

Over my dead body matey. They moved their massive forces towards a green planet not knowing what they had forced me to do. I waited until they were in battle against the remaining AI forces, then I clicked to end the alliance between us all. My gambit worked; they were both so involved and over confident neither of them heard the warning message. I ordered my fleet to the same planet…

The trap is set.

Jim’s fleet was the stronger of the two so I approached him first.

Jim’s fleet is huge.

When you end an alliance in Sins there is a countdown of 1 minute 30 before you can start shooting. This is in the game to prevent exactly what I was about to do but Jim didn’t know that the count down had only a few seconds left to run…

I saw that he was distracted attacking the greens and his fleet was facing the other way. In Sins most capital ships fire their main weapon forwards only. Thus catching a fleet from the rear is the best way to attack.

I close on Jim’s fleet and open fire.

By the time he realised I had already started firing…

His fleet went down hard. No capitals escaped alive. He cried foul and Kiero was alerted. He jumped his fleet in behind mine determined to repeat the tactic I had just used on Jim; by destroying my capitals before I could turn them around. It was a good move on his part because Kiero loves the JLM missile frigate. This lightly armoured gunboat fires upgradable missiles for long range devastation on a target and he had tons of them. With the time needed to turn and distance between us the JLMs could rain down missiles on my capital ships and strip all their shields completely before I could even open fire in return. This tactic had served him very well before and I was apparently now helpless, with my back fully exposed to his righteous revenge on behalf of Jim.

I could feel his confidence. Good because one of my Akan capitals had upgraded itself to level 5 and therefore I had this:

Before he approached I pressed the button.  The Armistice power stops all ships in a local area from firing for one minute.

Armistice in effect.

One Minute with which I could turn my fleet around and charge him, closing the gap so that his lightly armoured JLMs would be face to face with my heavy Kodiaks that excel at close range.

My swarm of Kodiaks close the gap.

One minute to order my Dunov support capital to recharge my highest level combat capital’s shields. One minute to swarm over his capitals so that he was surrounded and unable to bring their main weapons to bear on my entire fleet at once.

One minute, in which I could win.

Time’s up…

Kiero’s capital ships go down.

All of them.

Without his capitals Kiero’s forces were doomed but he ordered them to fight to the last man, rightly thinking that he had to hold me back enough to develop more ships and bring the battle to me again. However during that minute of Armistice I had also used our previous relationship to find out his main productive worlds and nuke them from afar using my hyper Noalith canons, which were in orbit around two of my planets. And I had also ordered and built another 5 capital ships of my own.

They both called it a day.

This game was won by my race but they will be back again I am sure. Jim is a master of using the Scrin in CNC3 and I have yet to beat Kiero at AOE II at all. All of us love RTS’ and online multiplayer especially. We all say that Sins offers not only strategic depth, for which it is justifiably famous, but also tactical depth.

This is the depth needed to lift the game to the level of a multiplayer masterpiece.

I hope this little story has excited you a little to sample the delights to be found in this game!

The multiplayer score from us is a clean 9 out of 10.

Regards,

Basho

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house “fixer” at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen’s dirtiest work at the behest of the firm’s co-founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack). Though burned out and hardly content with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed business venture and mounting debt have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. At U/North, meanwhile, the career of litigator Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class action suit that Clayton’s firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. But when Kenner Bach’s brilliant and guilt-ridden attorney Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) sabotages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career and his life

What is it with George these days? The last 4 or 5 movies he has been involved with have all been seriously excellent. Whatever is leading to the rhythm he has found, I thank the god’s for it. Here we see George making some very clever producer decisions. He knows that the background plot to the movie; the law case; is incredibly lame. I was able to sum it up to Cesca (who wasn’t paying attention - tisk!) with the simple description:

“Its just like the Erin Brockovich story”.

Its a hard rock life

The case is in effect a MacGuffin designed to act as motivation for the characters extreme decisions and actions. Another MacGuffin is put in place for Clooney, with the pressure being put on him to clear his brother’s debts. This is basic stuff.

So why the high score?

The high score is because Clooney has filled out the story by picking some of the best actors alive today.

Firstly we have himself, and boy is he good. He always reminds me of actors like Connery, in that he mainly plays himself, but he does it with a lot of conviction and style. Also leading the pack has to be the universally acclaimed Tom Wilkinson. His softly manic performance as Edens is excellently realised and expressive as he regains his childhood freedom, if only for a little while. I love the moment when, after people had been almost baby talking him for most of the film, he suddenly snaps back into the ninja-killer lawyer he really was for just a moment of clarity. But, these excellent performances are outshined by Tilda.

I’ve always had a thing for Tilda after seeing her many years ago in the brilliant Orlando. The final look in that movie (as she breaks the forth wall), won her a fan for life. Here she gives us a perfect character study of someone willing to do anything to take away almost overwhelming fear. This fear is, I feel, almost a sort of addiction for her character as she struggles when on her own in controlling her bursting emotions, which in front of others are clinically professional. Tilda really got into the look of the role and even gained weight to fill out the business clothes of a hard nosed bitch. For the normally very thin actress, this probably made her ability to play discomfort a lot better, as the usually svelte Tilda would have displayed far too much physical confidence for the part. Here she fairly itches in the body of Karen Crowder and at one moment actually shakes with fear.

In fact, thinking about it, addiction is a big part of this film. Clooney’s character is fighting a previous gambling addiction, his brother was/is an alcoholic and Edens is a manic depressive on pills to control his mood swings. Yep, these are fucked up people all trying to win some sort of redemption. Of course, Clooney is the character we hope will win through and the final confrontation is very satisfying.

A lot of films are carried by the actors struggling with a poor plot and this film could be judged in this way if it wasn’t for the quality of the acting and the smoothness of the direction. This is a film for film fans. One to watch for the love of good acting and although it is not going to be as remembered as long as other recent releases (There Will Be Blood, for example) it is definitely in the same league.

8/10

Sylvester Stallone has created some of the best loved characters ever to grace the cinema screen. Characters we all know and love to bits. Everyone loved Rocky, why? Because he had heart. Everyone loved Rambo, why? Because he kicks anyone’s ass for America! The old idea of America.

“Rambo? Rambo makes James Bond look like Mickey Mouse!” - Basho’s stepdad 1985.

I grew up with Rambo and Rambo II and have seen them all many times. My parents never minded me watching the violence because Rambo only kills ‘baddies’. Well, he’s back and he has one more set of ‘baddies’ to kill. After the excellent remake of this other classic Rocky, Stallone knows what his audience is going to want. Firstly Rambo must look like he’s 20 foot tall. Here he still does, the thick size of his neck having not atrophied at all in the intervening years.

Secondly, Rambo must be on his own. Sure Rambo here has help from some mercenaries and their ex-SAS leader (who has the same Londoner accent as me btw) but he must kill all the character baddies one on one.

Thirdly, Rambo must be tortured by his violent past. It doesn’t matter that he isn’t a Christian, but it does matter that he is trying to repent for what he was and indeed still is.

“Y’know what you are, what you’re made of. War is in your blood. When you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathing”

Finally, Rambo must carve up an army using an array of heavy caliber weapons.

Check!

All of these things are brought together with a very large dose of nostalgia; the font used in the opening credits, the mud, the theme song, the big fucking knife and even his mega bow and arrow set make a come back. Also making a come back and the main focus of the film is the over the top action and people being seriously owned by Rambo. Without a doubt this is the most bloody film I have ever seen. More bloody than Hamburger Hill, more bloody than any other Rambo, more bloody even than A Better Tomorrow II (where Chow Yun Fat shoots 86 people in a 100 minute film).

This film has a very serious gore level to say the least. You have been warned.

So what about the story? Forget it. There isn’t one and there isn’t any deep philosophising beyond trying to work out what Rambo is thinking under that intractable gaze of his. The entire IMDB entry says:

In Thailand, John Rambo joins a group of mercenaries to venture into war-torn Burma, and rescue a group of Christian aid workers who were kidnapped by the ruthless local infantry unit. IMDB

This is not a remake of Rambo I, this is a remake of Rambo II. So recommending it depends on that distinction. If you loved Rambo I’s soul, its performances by Richard Crenna, David Caruso and especially Brian Dennehy and found the action was a backdrop to that, then this is not the Rambo for you. However, if your memories of Rambo are of him shooting that bow, blowing shit up and kicking Steven Berkoff in the nadgers then this is your Rambo all right. With a cherry on top. After this I wonder what will be next. Cobra could be remade as new. Rumours also exist of a Rambo V, which would be strange to say the least. I personally am loving these recent 80’s nostalgia movies, like Rocky and now Rambo, they remind me of watching Rambo as a kid on Sundays eating my Sunday dinner and yelling encouragement as he dished out punishment. They played to your sense of right and wrong and never asked you to question that. Its kind of liberating to see movies like that again. I kind of felt a little like Anton Ego in Ratatouille, when he takes the first bite of the dish the rat has prepared for him. It flashes him back to his childhood, as did this film for me, and that is always a good thing to cherish.

So, I personally loved it, I feel that the look was amazing and crisp as hell. I don’t mind gore, nor do I mind a short story:

I give it an 8 out of 10.

“Mission… accomplished.”

For that we should all be eternally glad.

Deathproof is another movie from QT that speaks of his private obsessions. Sure the obvious things like cars and violence, any reviewer can spot those, but also deeper things that are really apart of his psyche. This man has a fucking amazing DVD collection; that’s all I am saying. If the sum of a man’s ideas and inspirations are to be found on those golden shelves, QT’s shelf is fucking vast. Anyway, actually I am talking of something a little deeper.

I am talking women.

To watch this movie I made the standard QT arrangements. Firstly, I drank the best part of a bottle of wine. Good wine, but nothing that you would serve to your granny. Second, I turned the volume way up and the lights way low. Like Jesus said, “Play it loud”.

Many people read immense volumes into QT’s work. even the post modernist idiots got hold of Pulp Fiction and spent ages chopping its concepts into finer and finer chunks until they, as usual, lost themselves somewhere on the road. You know what, I think pretty much everything QT has done since has been a reaction to that shit. Although the riffs are still there as like other QT films there are angles, tracing shots, scenes and dialogue that are copies, I mean homages, from other films. This is his trademark. In Kill Bill he riffed the Sonny Chiba films, Bruce Lee, Kung Fu movies of the 70’s and manga, amongst many others.

In this movie he is assured enough that for the first 30 minutes he is mainly riffing himself. The ring tone from kill Bill (my brother has that tone), the juke box solo moments, the two Texas cops (also from Kill Bill - great come backs guys) and especially the women. But I will come back to them.

Also mentioned in the mainstream media is the film grain, the rough cuts, the damage to the movie stock. This is all over the place until the moment happens. I don’t want to give it away, but that moment left my jaw on the fucking floor. A shock the like I haven’t seen in years.

Well done sir! Well done.

After that the film clears up. Maybe he ran out of old stock, maybe the reason is simple, but I would like to think it is on purpose. If for nothing else to get clear shots on some of the most amazing women in cinema.

Ah, the women: QT’s true obsession and one all men share. The casting of the ladies in this film is inspired. QT is a big fan of ‘real women’ because ‘real women’ are strong and beautiful, playful, curvaceous, sensual and amazing. It is the true and abiding love of women that drives this film. I could not fail to notice the amazing curves of Vanessa Ferlito (who I last saw being shot in Jack Bauer’s arms in 24) were cast for a very real reason. My mind was taken back to the speech in Pulp Fiction, where the very attractive Maria de Medeiros spoke of what is sexy in a women; the pot belly. This was all there in the way Vanessa dressed, this was all women.

That, of course, added to the shock. It is all the more shocking to get to know someone and then see what happens to them directly after.

Watching QT’s previous movies it was clear that he was in love with his star; Uma. Maybe platonically, but love none the less. Here he gives us a smorgasbord of what he thinks is the ideal women. in the second act, we have the very cute and sassy Tracie Thoms, together with one of the most beautiful women to grace Hollywood in many years; Rosario Dawson and he even tops the delights of her facial acting by casting the brilliant Zoe Bell as herself. Zoe was the stunt double for Uma in Kill Bill and here her blue eyes sparkle most brilliantly as she is, finally, in the cameras eye rather than under a wig. He role, character and performance owes much to her own personality and is all the better for it.

Stunt women are sexy. Any women with that amount of physical confidence is sexy.

With that overloaded amount of ‘girl power’ on screen he had to cast a man’s man as contrast. Kurt Russell is a man’s man’s man.

His roles and career have been some of the highlights of my life’s film-watching. Here he is let loose large on screen as Stuntman Mike. The enjoyment of seeing Mr Russell play a baddy is second to none and his larger than life character balances the strength of the girls. He is a stone cold killer, getting-off on murder, the hunt and the kill. However, being this is QT, he is also bloody cool. Vincent Vega cool.

So much for the casting, what about the story? What story? The story is very simple; a killer stalks girls for some unknown reason. He has a fantastically stupidly over the top US muscle car. He stalks a group, but then picks on some stunt women by mistake who kick the shit out him.

To say that I give nothing away in that synopses shows that this films story is entirely irrelevant as was the point of the Grind House homage:

Exploitation film is a type of film that eschews the expense of quality productions in favour of making films inexpensively, attracting viewers by exciting their more prurient interests. Exploitation films rely heavily on the lurid advertising of their content rather than the intrinsic quality of the film.

Exploitation films may feature forbidden sex, wanton violence, drug use, nudity, freaks, gore, monsters, destruction, rebellion and mayhem. Such films have existed since the earliest days of moviemaking, but they were popularised in the 1960s with the general relaxing of cinematic taboos in the U.S. and Europe. Since the 1990s, this genre has also received attention from academic circles, where it is sometimes called paracinema.

What QT was doing was trying to make a GrindHouse film with an insiders edge to it. One that we would get. One that would add a layer to the otherwise straightforward’s chaos of the story.

He made it. But, It is a fan boy movie sure enough and while I would hold my hand up at at that label : I am much more of a movie fan in general and not limited to violence.

QT is lost on those who aren’t.

I was very worried before I saw this movie. Sure I liked all his other films, but I missed 90% of Grind House cinema (I’m too young at 30) and so I was thinking that finally he had made a movie that I wouldn’t ‘get’. Not a bit of it. I loved Death Proof and recommend it to anyone who loves spotting the riffs in QT’s movies; as well as anyone who loved Pulp Fiction.

8 out of 10 and a good 8 at that. Warning: one scene of unimaginable shock and horror.

My style of painting has moved forwards in the last 15 years I have been practicing.  This style is heavily influenced by Cezanne and other impressionists as they formed the major part of my GCSE and ALevel.

Here are my favourites with some of the background, click the images for the large versions:

Cesca 2005

This is my wife Cesca.  A few years ago she went to Africa for a month and I painted this to come to terms with missing her so much.  We have it above the TV in the lounge.  This is Cesca when she was in Amsterdam, the prior occasion we had been apart for a long time.  Strange fact: the time taken to paint this, including drying time, was exactly the same amount of time it took to watch the movie Predator, which I had on in the background (I know the film so well now that I don’t actually need to watch it!).  What I was going for was the happiness I saw in the original image, Cesca has a fantastic smile when happy and here it is full flow.

Grandad

Grandad Bell.  After Grandad died I wanted to paint something for my Grandmother that would show how much I loved him.  Here it is.  Grandma has in hung in her lounge.  This is him in his classic pose; sitting in his chair and enjoying his paper.  This is how I remember him.  I had not painted anything for 4 years before bashing this out first go.  No warm up, no practice and no pause.  It took 4 hours and the end recipient was very happy.

Tabs

Tabs was a wonderful cat.  More human than cat really. Tabs was a fat, happy and peaceful feline.  I had nursed Tabs using a mothering kit after his mother was knocked down and killed only a week after his birth.   10 years later he died.  My family felt the loss very hard and I wanted to paint something to remember him b.  This is my painting of Tabs when he was young.  Again this was the first run at it and it took only 4 hours.  I remember being unsure whether it would come together before I added to darker colours.  This brought the image into focus and made the 3d effect suddenly pop into life.

This is a very bad image of the painting as the original is up on my mothers wall.

This is him posing like only a cat can!

This next painting of Tabs is him when he was younger and fitter than before, but this time not aware of my gaze.

This one is for me.

A Warawi Christmas

Back in the year 1999, I was poor.  Very poor.  I couldn’t even afford to give my mum a ‘proper’ present  at Christmas, so I painted her this. I hid it on the  top of the shelves in the front room and didn’t tell her about it until speaking with her over the phone on Christmas day.  Her reaction was fantastic.  Not the best painting of mine by any means, but one that is loved by the owner!

A-Level final pieces

Final pieces during A Level are hard.  Not in the way you might expect though.  Rather for me the difficulty comes in completing too fast.  If I paint a watercolour then I am done in 4 hours max.  If this is a 15 hour exam then I have to take a book!  This leads to the worst possible situation for a watercolour artist; improving.  The number one, silver plated rule in watercolour is to WALK AWAY AND DON’T GO BACK!  Seriously.  Nothing will destroy a fine painting more than spending too much time on it.These are my non watercolour final pieces.  I cant stand my other ones.  You see, I learned the above rule through painful experimentation.

This pastel represents the painful knowledge of death that all beings hold.  It is about entropy and knowing that we are all food for worms.  The bottle, you notice, doesn’t change.  This represents the light of truth, which will one day go beyond the cycle of birth and death and empower us all.  This was, of course, from when we were studying dreams in art.

Teddy here is a still life, something that we had to do regularly.  I drew him straight into neat using a darker set of pencils than in the past.

That skull makes another appearance in yet another still life.  Our teacher would set up the scene and we would all draw it over a couple of weeks.

This is the final piece that got me into my A Level.  You see I had not studied a GCSE in art and the A Level was going to be denied to me.  My teachers struck a deal with me.  If I did the GCSE in one year and got an A, they would let me onto the A Level in year two and pass my GCSE work as my year one.  This painting was my final piece on Lautrec and one of the very few oil based paintings I attempted.  I got the A.

Cezanne Work

Cezanne was my study artist for my second year in A Level.  My mind was being woken up for impressionism and he was by far my favourite.   I learned everything I could about him and spent many hours getting into how he painted and, more importantly, why.  I visited all the galleries I could to see as many real paintings of his as possible.  I feel I eventually ‘got’ him but emotionally, I am light years behind.

Japan Brush Sets

One year Cesca received a Japanese art set from her aunt.  These are my playful attempts to paint with it.  This style of painting is all about the ‘whitespace’ and I painted all these in about an hour total.

Anyway, If you liked the paintings, there are many more to be found (61 in total) at my Flickr page.

I continue to paint when I can, and much more output will be coming this year, so keep watching for more.

Regards,

Basho.