by ·Comments Off on Technically Officially Published

After having probably the most jaw dropping working day I have ever experienced which consisted of me continuously repeating the phrase “people are getting paid to do this” over and over again as I was playing a computer game as part of my working day, I technically finished last Friday as a published writer.

Nothing terribly ground breaking, but this and this over at  Bit-Tech were written by me.

The review I wrote might even be going up early next week unless I’ve made any assorted stylistic faux pas.

by ·Comments Off on New Research and Gaming

I often pick up a copy of the Metro in the mornings these days and one jumped out at me this morning declaring “Gaming Children ‘unfit for school’”.  The article was a short piece about primary school children falling asleep in class, missing meals (although if they’re missing meals in school I’m not sure that’s entirely their fault) and being unable to concentrate.

The reason for this, as declared by one particular teacher, is that they are addicted to gaming.

This may well be shooting fish in a barrel but let’s dissect that a little.

Continue reading

by ·Comments Off on Defamation and Why I am now Too Scared to Post Anything

From now on, I will try to avoid just posting my lecture notes on anything I find interesting, as that would most likely be dull for everyone else and would be the very definition of quantity over quality.  Also, it would happen frequently, because I am going over a lot of (in my mind) very interesting things.

However, here is an interesting little nugget of the law concerning saying things about other people:

1) Defamation, more specifically libel, is where you say or write something that is published in some manner that damages somebody’s reputation (the actual definition is a little longer and more extensive than that, but this is the gist).

2) If this happens, a person can sue you for damages that will be decided by a jury who probably doesn’t like you and won’t be on your side (or in most cases, actively hates you).

3) Every fresh publication of this can be considered a new instance and can also be actionable.

Here’s where things get a little more scary if you are updating a blog.  In the case of internet publication, it is considered a new publication every time the piece is downloaded.

In short, if you get away with something potentially defamatory, you probably won’t get away with it for long.  Not only that, but even if you pull your piece, Google will still have it.   Google will have cached it.  Google will have downloaded it.  Google will know all about your defamation.  That’s enough.

I have been through some of my previous posts and I’m fairly certain I’m ok.  In a worst case scenario, I could use defences of “Fair Comment”, in particular with relation to being maybe a little bit rude about theatre pieces, or if I’m feeling particularly confident, “Justification”, where I would claim that what I said was true, which should never really be too hard to manage.

All the same, if you notice a drop in the number of posts, just be aware that the above is swilling around in the back of my mind.

Additional Notes:

I suppose the very worst thing you could do if you’re worried about defamation is to put a brief outline on how the law around it works up on your site.  I suppose the only thing really worse than that is to put up the contact details of a good tort lawyer.

Another reason you might notice a drop in posts is that sleep is fast becoming a luxury event up there with eating and drinking when put next to the desperate scramble to keep all the shorthand I’ve learnt in my head.

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"David" in shorthand. It almost feels like I paid a PR firm lots of money to rebrand me or something. UPDATE: Aaaand I'm wrong. The dashes should probably be on the OTHER side. I think I might just take the "it's a personal language" defence...

I am now on my way to becoming a profeshnul riter and I have just finished my first day on my NCTJ (which is a series of letters I never seem to be able to get in the right order the first time) course.  I have already learnt some valuable lessons which are as follows:

1)  Despite being a swot and trying to learn a bit of Shorthand before the course, I know nothing and what I do know I now know I know wrong.

2)  In shorthand, my name looks a bit like the logo for some variation on Starfleet.

3)  When you interview someone, you need to ask for a contact number.  I already knew that you also had to ask for their age, but asking someone over the age of about 40 for their age is an exercise in diplomacy that I wasn’t quite ready for today.

4)  Work experience in a call centre is good because it trains you for people telling you to “go away” in much less polite terms than that.

5)  I have a lot of work ahead of me.

In reference to lesson number 5, I am actually remarkably excited about this.  I’ve often said that I like having lots of work, but this isn’t entirely accurate:  I like having lots of work that I’m going to enjoy.

This work in particular is looking highly enjoyable and to be perfectly honest, this might well have been the first day in about four years that I haven’t found myself constantly checking the clock on the run up to 1pm and 5pm, traditionally being feeding time and home time respectively.

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The dice are trying to kill you.

I have an affinity for Dungeons and Dragons, one of the most geeky of games.  In the right circumstances can be hugely enjoyable, with those circumstances largely being “not taking it too seriously”. 

One of my first attempts to get a couple of my friends interested in “proper” Dungeons and Dragons did not go well.  It was a standard basic-set adventure involving a dungeon for a dark wizard’s salt mine that started the players in a prison cell and was meant to lead them to an exit that turned out to be a lost city, or something along those lines. 

The two players in question only made it to room number two before killing each other following a dispute about what to do with an unconscious hobgoblin that they were dragging along behind them.

The warning bells for this scenario were probably starting to warm up around about the time the characters were rolled up and given the names “Keith” and “Derek”, the former being a thief, the latter a cleric.  I’ll admit that this was an early version of Dungeons and Dragons which was a little low on character customisation, with Dwarf and Elf being a class as opposed to a race, but in terms of fleshed out characters, Keith and Derek were particularly poorly dressed skeletons.  Of course, this didn’t register as a problem, as after all, these were pretty much new players to the game, and it was probably best just to get on with the adventure and let them work out their characters from there.

What followed is probably more likely my fault than theirs, as I proceeded to allow things that a more seasoned DM would work around.  Keith and Derek, with the help of burly NPC Axel, tricked their hobgoblin gaoler, Jerj, who I consistently mispronounced as “Jerry”, and broke from their bondage.  However, being without any equipment other than the soiled rags they were wearing, they were keen to keep a set of manacles that happened to be in their cell.  Not only this, but they then decided to fill the manacles with an unconscious hobgoblin gaoler.  Now the warning bells were starting to clang a little.  I allowed it, regretted it, and then decided that I would have the hobgoblin regain consciousness slowly, leaving them plenty of time to leave him behind.

Dragging their captive along behind them, for reasons they did not fully comprehended, their captive hobgoblin started stirring into consciousness.  They promptly entered a discussion about what to do with it.  In a reversal of what you would expect, the thief thought it would be immoral to slit the creature’s throat whilst it was out cold, whereas the cleric practically had the knife to its throat before anyone could think.  I can’t quite remember what happened immediately following this, but either Keith killed Derek, or Derek killed Keith, or Keith and Derek somehow accidentally killed each other with some unfortunate rolling of dice (the Killer Dice principle).

Taking a few things away from this misadventure, I learnt some fairly useful lessons.

1)                 Don’t always let players have their own way.

2)                 Learn to fudge the dice.

3)                 Don’t always let players have their own way.

4)                 Make sure your players actually want to play.  A bit of a no brainer, but I have suspicions that Derek and Keith were less than keen.

5)                 Don’t always let players have their own way (but not at the expense of point number 4).

If anyone out there recognises the adventure I’m talking about (something along the lines of “Escape from Zanzer’s Dungeon) and has actually played all the way through, I’d be interested to know because I’m convinced nobody actually made it.  It seemed to go on forever and so in many ways, I’m glad Keith and Derek never made it past room two.

Additional Notes:

Years later I would start a campaign and allow a game-breaking Barbarian-Wizard to be created.  I swear the player used loaded dice to roll for his characteristics.  It is an all new variant on the Killer Dice Principle resulting in a long slow death from exasperation for poor soul trying to run the game.

Incidentally, if anyone laughs at you or otherwise teases you for playing Dungeons and Dragons, remember the following two things:

1)  They have heard of the game and therefore probably know what it is thus maybe just as geeky as you.

2)  They are secretly jealous.