My history of zombie-ing

So zombies eh...

It's hard to say where my interest in zombies really began. The first zombie film I remember seeing is Return of The Living Dead 3. I'm not sure why that one stands out in my head more than any other but it just does and I haven't saw it in years either. Reminiscing really makes me want to go and see it!

Return of the Living Dead 3

Although it's the one I remember most it's not my favourite of the genera by a long shot. My favourite has to be Dawn of The Dead, it knocks the socks off of everything else.

Dawn of The Dead

It's a great film, so much going for it. Great build up, great action scenes, drama, suspense, twists and then there is the whole social commentary aspect of it. That being said I'm not a pretentious film critic or anything so I'm not going to go on about how great a film it is or even go so far as to say it is waaaayyy superior to the remake. In fact I love the remake, I think it really stands up on its own 2 feet and brings Dawn into the current generation. I know we really have to thank 28 Days for that (and I also know but don't care that they are 'rage infected' people in 28 Days and not 'real zombies') and that is my 2nd favourite zombie film. I love the pace of it, being thrown straight into the apocalyptical world with just a little bit of back story. And actually a pretty decent back story at that, believable enough as far as zombie back stories go, sure beats radiation or solar flares.

I think the great thing about the films is it is so easy to put yourself into the place of the protagonists. To see them reacting to discovering their first zombie, coming to terms with the outbreak, making their defences, saving others and so on. It's great to watch them and think of all the things you'd do and how you'd do things differently. Learning from other's mistakes and pre-planning is what it's all about at this point!

As well as films, zombies have also had a great representation on the video game front. 

The first zombie related game I remember playing is probably Zombies Ate My Neighbours. It was great fun and a brilliant multi-player, never completed it though cause damn it was hard! House of the Dead was a great shooter, one of my favourite at the arcade where I remember me and a friend spending £20 in one sitting to try and complete it. We got all the way to the end boss but then run out of cash, gutted!

Zombies Ate My Neighbours

Of course you can't make a list of zombie computer games without mentioning the Resident Evil series. I wasn't a huge fan of RE1, probably because I played RE2 first and just found it a lot more exciting, RE1 has a very slow start. I'm proud to say I completed RE2 with an A ranking.

And although I'd class myself as an old school gamer I have to hand it to the next gen consoles for getting the zombie game just right. Left for Dead 2 (again I didn't play the first) and Dead Rising (1 and 2) are pretty much what I'd class as zombie gaming perfection. Left for Dead is great because of its fast pace, team work and great sense of accomplishment that comes with getting good at it (and I was good). Dead Rising is brilliant for its openness, bizzareness and all round fun. It's great to see a game that doesn't take itself too seriously.

I actually spent a little time developing my own zombie game as well. Its been a while since I worked on it but I plan on coming back to it at some point. The aim is to make it a pretty open survival game, focusing more on lasting for as long as possible than horror or scares. Here is a little video I made about it and posted on-line a while back about it (be warned though it is 20 minutes long) : 

My game and this blog aren't the only times I've used technology as part of my interest in zombies. A while back, when I was just a wee kid lad learning the internet, I made an Angelfire website dedicated to sharing information about preparing for the zombie apocalypse in my home town. It never got very far as most of my time was spent fighting with the HTML but amazingly it is still up and viewable here: http://www.angelfire.com/planet/zombieguide/index.html My HTML may have changed by my interests sure haven't!

Something I really want to address in this blog is how we can use technology to help us survive in the zombie world. It's something I haven't saw a lot of the films focus on (other than attaching chainsaws to things) and I think it's an area that really gives us the edge over our life deprived counterparts. Hopefully I'll manage to put the 2 together in some interesting and creative ways.

My history of computing

I could talk for hours and hours about computers, it's such a huge topic and there is so many interesting areas, but I'll try and keep it brief and stick to the specific areas I consider to be milestones as I grew up with them.

The first computer I really remember having is the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the 128K version with build in tape deck. It was brilliant!

The ZX Specturm with built in tape deck

I was pretty young when I got it, maybe around 6 or 7 and I still remember sitting on a toy box with my uncles after they had set it up for me and my mum giving them into trouble for not giving me a shot cause they were so amazed by it as well (they were about 30 at the time). There were some great games on it, my favourites being Dynamite Dan, Fast Food (which my mum rocked at!) and Robin Hood which was really long but had great controls and just felt really smooth to play.

Dynamite Dan
For years all I could remember about the game was the giant cheese in the bath

Fast Food
My mum was so good at this she got onto the upside down levels

Robin Hood
This game was HUGE great fun though

I never really got into programming on the Specturm which had a BASIC compiler built into it but my friend did and I remember seeing a 'hello world' game he had programmed and not being very impressed.

I think it was after that that I got my Atari. No huge memories of that other than Outlaw which I loved.

Outlaw

Then came the Sega Master System and afterwards the Mega Drive. The Master System was ok but it was really the Mega Drive I fell in love with.

Blast Processing! The Sega Mega Drive, computer of the gods

Without a doubt my favourite game was Toejam and Earl. It was just huge! Great fun as well and a brilliant co-op game, to this day one of the best I've ever played. It was colourful and humorous and the randomized levels meant you could play it repeatedly without getting fed up. The only real problem it had was no save points so quite often I'd play for an hour or so and then get fed up and have to restart all over again on the next play through, often getting to the same point and then getting bored again.

Toejam and Earl
One of the best co-op games ever

Other greats from my childhood include Golden Axe, Sonic 2, Wiz and Liz, Skitchin, Road Rash, Rock 'n' Roll Racing, Worms... I'll leave it at that.

I enjoyed the Mega Drive so much that a once I got a job and started earning some proper money I took up collecting the games again. To date I've got about 230 games and splashed out recently on a flash cart to allow me to play homebrew and ROM hacks on the original console. I'm not one of those purists (read snob) that thinks emulators are for lamers but there is something more enjoyable about playing games on the original hardware that you just don't get from them. Still they are great to play hard-to-get games on and for development (and cheating!)

I even got into ROM hacking for a while I still do it here and there when I have the time. You can check out my site www.mybrillgamesite.com to see some of the stuff I've done.

After the Mega Drive came the usual: Playstation, N64, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, DS, XBox 360 and that's where it ends. Nothing to say about them really other than GTA 3 blew me away and was the reason I bought a PS2.

GTA 3
The game changer in video games

I think I got my first PC when I was about 12, maybe a little younger. It cost my mum over a grand and she was paying it off forever! That's my mum for you though, she'd never see me go without even if it meant sacrificing the stuff she wanted.

It ran Windows 95 which my mum's friend tried to downgrade to 3.1 because he thought it would be too complicated for me. This resulted in him breaking it (it wasn't 3.1 compatible) and us having to return it to the shop! Thankfully they fixed it (I can't remember if we had to pay or no) and I got a working computer again. My only real memories of it are it having this weird program called 'BASE' which was a picture of a lounge (living room) which came on at start up and you could click on things to open programs, like the TV would open Windows Media Player, the briefcase would open My Briefcase and so on. It sucked and was soon removed.

I also took my copy of Warcraft into school on the last day of term (we could take toys in to play with then) and the teacher didn't let me install it on the computer cause she said it wouldn't work (she was right as it was an Acorn computer) and when I got home I found it had slipped out of its paper case and got scratched, breaking it. What a waste, I was gutted.

Warcraft

Then it was what I think is the usual progression for a kid interested in computers - taking things apart, learning about upgrades, falling in love with the internet (my friend had it before me so I used to always go to his to use it, even tried once when he wasn't in but his dad said no) (I also got banned from AOL 3 times within 6 months!), getting bored during computer class cause you knew everything already or could fire through the work in 10 minutes.

Fast forward a few years and a degree in Artificial Intelligence later and here we are.

Just now I've got a real interest in computer vision and reasoning upon what the computer can 'see'. In my sister blog workingwithcomputervision.blogspot.co.uk I talk specifically about this topic and am working on a game player that works using computer vision, it's interesting and you should check it out if you are into that sort of thing.

I'm also fascinated by Infinite Mario and Automated Driving (i.e. Darpa Grand Challange) although I haven't looked into them although that much. Still great concepts though.

Infinite Mario
http://julian.togelius.com/mariocompetition2009/index.php

Darpa rand Challange
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

I think that about sums everything up, any other details I think of I'll give in later posts. Now just my history of zombies to discuss...

My history of gardening

In order to set the scene for future posts I think I'll take a little bit of time to go through my journey so far with each of my key topics. First up let's look at gardening.

My gardening history is quite a short one, only a couple of years long, and even then we are only talking the spring and summer months since there isn't a great deal to do in the autumn and winter (or if there is I don't know about it yet). There is a good reason for this, I've only stayed in a flat with a garden for a couple of years! Growing up I always stayed on at least the first floor or above so never had a garden of my own and even if I did I doubt I'd have a huge interest in gardening as a kid since my mum (who raised me) didn't show a particular interest in it.

It's kinda strange that actually. Despite not growing up around any gardeners or ever having a garden one of the things I really wanted when looking for my own flat was a place with a garden. Maybe it's just a case of me wanting what I've never had. Whatever the reason, 3 years ago I got one when I moved into my first flat with my then girlfriend (now fiancée and soon to be wife!) and it's a beauty:

The garden circa May 2010

Ok so she's not exactly 100 acres but she is good enough for me. I'd already made a few changes to the garden when the above pic was taken, putting down a few slabs at the entrance, tidying up the ones that were already there and adding some small stones for decoration and to make it easier to take the brown bin in and out. I was planning on parking my motorbike where the brown bin is in the picture but it was too much hassle getting it in and out of the small entrance and down the narrow path. A shame as well, if I'd managed to keep her there maybe she wouldn't have gotten stolen and set alight. Such is life though.

Here it is from another angle, I'd also planted several flowers all along the border at the side of the house:

May 2010

Nothing came through though and I vowed next year to learn more and to try harder.

So next year my garden was looking like this:

March 2011

You can see the lawn is in a bit of a bad way, covered in weeds and brown patches, the hedge is cut way back but it is still alive and well, the council cut it once a year for us and I think they got a little carried away last year. They also mow the lawn several times a year for us which is pretty handy.

So when I said I vowed to try harder I meant it, I even went so far as to measure the garden out and draw scaled plans of them! And a colour coded planting plan as well:

I didn't get everything planted that I wanted to but I did get quite a bit done. I didn't create the circle in the middle as I decided it would be too much of a nuisance for cutting the grass between it and the diamond but I did expand the square and remove the pampas grass from it. This time I also researched my plants before planting and bought some propagators to germinate them in first and pots to grow them in doors until I felt they were strong enough to survive the Scottish climate. Here is some photos of the process and the results:

And finally throughout all this I also made a wee cold box to try and grow tomatoes in, the box is good, not hole free but good enough, the tomatoes were rubbish:

2012 hasn't saw much action so far. I've been pretty busy with work and wedding related things but I have added in a bird house with several feeders to the middle of the garden and also got some professional help on restoring the lawn from GreenThumb (expect more on them and their great value for money service in another post). Here's a pic of the garden earlier this year:

February 2012

There has been some changes since then but they'll need to wait for another post, this one is already way too long. Hope you've enjoyed it though!