Yes, there are many reason to wear a watch, but simply telling the time is the least of them. The first clue that there is another reason comes from the mind boggling array of wrist-based choice.
Endings are actually beginnings too. This is what I told myself as I sat in the tiny, oh so tiny, room in Osaka. It's one of those glass half empty [...]
This Tier 1 event included elements of a Tier 1 Sub Op and involved two live kidnaps of players obtaining their Tier 1 Team Badges. Some fantastic action, strong story and roleplay. Basho is proud to present some of the finest milsim on the planet.
I have written before about travellers wanting a point to it all, to travelling. In part this is perhaps seen as them wanting to justify the vast cost of [...]
I know I know, its a year late... but, finally my film of Tier 1 Military Simulation's Operation Sandstorm is complete and released for immediate digital download. (I did a write [...]
New release! Just fresh off the render machine is our latest production for Tier 1; Operation Orchid Dawn. In aid of the charity ORCHID - Fighting Male Cancer, Warrior (UKAZ) [...]
The bullet train pulled smoothly and serenely into the station, totally belying the speed it had demonstrated when blistering through the Japanese countryside. As I stepped down into the shiny [...]
I wallowed comfortably in the exceedingly warm waters, the balmy mountain air was cool and smelled of the rich wood my surroundings were constructed from. I was butt-naked and in [...]
4am in Tokyo, Japan trickled around and we were ready to go. We skipped breakfast and headed down to the famous Tsukiji Fish Market. It opened at 5:30am and back [...]
Tokyo, like Beijing and especially like Delhi, is a city that one could spend a lifetime in and never feel a sense of completion. The Japanese way of doing things [...]
I have always looked at maps of the world and wondered if they skew perspective. America appears massive while Australia and India are diminished and Japan… well, miniscule. Even when [...]
"So," said Cesca loudly and clearly, just as I was drinking from a water bottle, "What's all this about China and Tiananmen Square?" I almost did a spit take. [...]
Everyone loves Pandas and at the Panda Conservation Centre near Chengdu, China is probably the best place to see them in the world. Watching them reminded me of the [...]
No recent product launch has grasped the Zeitgeist as much as the Pebble watch. It represents a perfect storm of elements coming together all at once and its success is [...]
In China, Daoist temples atop mountains are so numerous that there must be something about these high places that answers a longing for cliff edges and being above the clouds. [...]
Please note, before I begin, that the following are all my own thoughts and words. So, by their very nature, they will be subjective - you'd be amazed of [...]
Flanked by several enormous mountains, Tiger Leaping Gorge is top contender for the deepest gorge in the world. The upper road of the gorge makes for some breath-taking hiking and [...]
"You have to imagine," said the man in broken English, "that this..." he gestured his hands at the view in front of us, "big lake... flood wide and deep... great water!" He broke into a wide toothy smile.
"But I didn't want to raise the alarm" "Why not?" I asked "Well," said the man, uncertainty creeping into his voice as his mind digested what he was about to [...]
At one point in our journey I actually advocated to Cesca that we skip China. That she didn’t listen, and talked me round, proves clearly that I don’t know everything and [...]
Certain cities in the world are instantly recognisable from hundreds of classic movies that have been set there. No one could mistake Paris, New York or London on film, but [...]
Shot entirely on location at CopeHill Down. The main feature is 37 minutes of the best milsim ever undertaken in the UK! I had an inside track on the “serial” events, a first person perspective on the role play and took part in all the big actions – including the capture of the objective for the US team. All cut together with music and professionally coloured, this is a great film of how deep milsim can go.
I have played many and been to many events where the organisers said they had reached the perfect balance point between real military exercises and a simple skirmish. I realise now that they either made the game too boring or little more than a skirmish with complex medic rules; milsim for the Xbox generation. In Operation Jawbreaker, Tier 1 also strived for that perfect balance themselves and in the most important respects I think that they came damn close to achieving it.
I love the cinema and movies. I also make films myself. What stared as a simple passion for the action and adventure in films has [...]
I got into running about a year ago after ending up in hospital twice in three karate lessons. After the second time my wife and I had "a conversation" and I agreed to take up a sport less likely to cause injuries. I clearly picked the wrong one though.
This is a dual editor collaboration. The DVD will contain 2 x 30 minute renders of the footage from the game (one by me and one by Chris). We had filmmakers following both teams, capturing all the briefings, the serial events and all the action in the best FPS Basho tradition - quite a package!
Delhi. Many people say they have “done” Delhi, but in all honesty they haven’t. They have perhaps done the tourist parts of New Delhi, or maybe [...]
When you travel through a country, especially if you are using a published travel guide, you are walking a well trodden path. Indeed maybe a thousand people are doing it with you simultaneously. This has a very strong effect over time, as more and more guest houses start catering only to the backpacker and spring up all along the route, which had myriad knock-on effects. Such as: taxi services who know the guide books better than you do and hordes of travellers at ever corner all "experiencing" the local atmosphere; all the time failing to realise that they are in a "bubble" like a Disney theme park ride.
"Art is that human endeavour which illuminates the contiguous nature of reality. Momentarily breaking us free from our illusion that the Universe has a dual nature." Writes Basho. Find out why...
Obsessions that you share with others can never be judged rationally as you lack the context needed to see them from the outside. In order to see them for what they really are you need an example of the same thing in a new context that you don't obsess over.
I sat on the balcony and considered the view. The remote 7800ft high mountain town of Shimla flowed over the hills in front of our hotel. The roofs were the [...]
This is a “Special Edition” of my Hong Kong at night film. The beautiful skyline of Hong Kong at night! Come with us through the brightly [...]
This film is a compilation of clips and unseen footage from the games I attended run by Tier 1 Military Simulation. Before 2011 I had not played much milsim, now... well I recently laid in a puddle from 1am, freezing cold and surrounded by poisonous mushrooms, for 8 hours to spring an ambush! I fell asleep and started snoring. Moments later I was awoken by a wet weight crashing down on my back. Team commander Trip had thrown a log at me, missed, hit a tree and it had collapsed a rotten limb across my sprawled form. Had the opposition walked past at that particular moment then they would have heard the rest of the concealed team completely failing to stop laughing.
Here is a quick cut, colour and render of the Helicopter Assault during Tier One's Rolling Thunder Milsim event. I have put this together at the request of a friend, [...]
Jaisalmer is a town located 575 m west from the state capital Jaipur. It lies in the heart of the Thar Desert On the road, and neatly tucked into our [...]
My first ever commissioned film was released today and stands as a landmark for Basho films. I have learned more about Sony Vegas, filmmaking and special effects from this project [...]
It just has always been my position that Philosophy and Science are not in competition to uncover the secret of reality, and that the attempts by Physicists to paint this dichotomy was self-destructive and not worthy of their time. It is almost as if they are leaving their old enemy of "Religion" alone and picking on a group they don’t think will fight back.
The recent riots got me philosophically thinking and the following analysis is the results of those thoughts. Much of the behavioural science is from the book “Predictably Irrational”, which I [...]
As a traveller you know, and even expect, the unknown to occur. You want this; for some it’s the whole point of leaving their home in the first place. It’s usually to do with the fun stuff like walking the Great Wall, eating Sushi in Tokyo Fish Market or jumping off a bridge in New Zealand with only an elastic band to prevent your death.
“Way to get out there!” my watch gleefully announces. I watch its face, awaiting any further messages from its GPS ROM that has tracked my every move for months. In any other circumstances that might be a disturbing thought, but here the watch and its sister satellite high above my head record my movements like the Goddess Nike made flesh. Nope, nothing else, not today.
Ask a hundred people where in the world they would like to visit most of all and a significant percentage of them will say Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. [...]
Following on from last weeks’ EDC post, here is the list of what I take to the Gym. Notes: As the great Eddie Izzard said, I have “techno joy!”. This [...]
http://www.youtube.com/embed/olUjdKqBL0I I have often remarked that the challenge of making an airsoft film - when you are also playing in the game - is that you can only edit [...]
I stood alone in the pre-dawn of the morning and the silence of the surrounding forest was punctuated only by the hooting of owls and the snoring of AQT players as they serenaded the coming sun. I was taking my turn on watch and the firebase was so dark that I couldn’t really see my way to walk around the inside of the perimeter. It was a large base by airsoft standards, about 70 meters long and 20 wide, with several small wooden buildings, huts and fire positions all surrounded by steel barrels acting as the wall between the players and the trees beyond. Every few steps I raised the NVG scope to my left eye and took a look into the gloomy and misty darkness. Through the NVG there were only dark shapes with blurry outlines, suggestive of men among the trees, but these didn’t move so I took them to be bushes. Nevertheless, I gripped my rifle tightly in my right hand.
Many Indian cities are a jumble, a mix of the ancient and modern, but nowhere I have ever been compares in this regard to Varanasi. [...]
Criticism isn't as easy as people like to think. This is because that, while everyone knows when things have not gone optimally, as the old adage goes, “opinions are like assholes; everyone has got one”. However opinions are not often the result of well thought-out analysis, but rather the result of frustration and the need to vent anger. In airsoft, where bad command decisions can lead directly to the unquestionably real pain of being laced or embarrassed, most teams have a very simple method of dealing with the potential for such situations: They don’t have commanders at all.
There was only one time in our journey around India that I didn’t feel entirely safe, one moment where I thought to myself, “Ah, this is potentially a dangerous situation” [...]
