Carpe Diem Part 2

A long time ago, I wrote a post entitled Carpe Diem. It was written not long after a very good friend of mine, and the man who had introduced me and taught me to drumming, had lost his ongoing battle with cancer. It talked about the way that, following on from his death, I had regretted not making the effort to go back to where I grew up and go and see him, and the band that I used to be a part of, a regret that I still have today. The title became obvious to me as I wrote the post, and now I find myself writing another piece for which this title is, sadly, incredibly apt.

It's taken me almost 18 months to get to the point where I feel I can do this post justice. I'm not going to name names in this, in fact I'm intentionally changing them as the things I'm about to write about are incredibly personal, and the wounds still raw. My motivation for writing this post? I can't honestly answer that, as I don't really know. I guess it allows me to show that, from the dark days that clouded summer 2012, there can be an escape, and that time truly does heal.

Writing the Unwritten Rules of Online Gaming

This is a repost of an article I first wrote around 4 years ago, and appeared on the original PsychoticMonkey.co.uk, before my Wordpress woes. I've taken a look over it, but a lot of it is as applicable then as it is now!

We've all been there. You're enjoying yourself with some online play, be it on the PC or over XBox Live, and all of a sudden something happens that ruins it all. It can be anything, but invariably it's the actions of another player rather than the action of the game itself.