Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.
By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.
Since last we spoke, I have been:
To Seattle!
In America, I am treated like a king. People keep telling me how good I look, how great I am, starting conversations with me in the street, or actually giving me stuff. That last one was because they worked at the company who’d invited me there, but even they gave me more than I’ve ever heard of them giving anyone, including something they’ve never given anyone before, and informed me that this was because I was their favourite. I don’t know what it is, a lot of these things happen before they’ve even heard my spectacularly quaint English accent.
Shavin’ Like A Man!
No room for my clippers in my luggage and no time to shave before leaving, and haunted by this strange curse that seems to mean I spend all press trips absurdly dishevelled and hairy-looking (and without notepad – another curse I managed to break this time), I bought the cheapest way to shave I could: a razor. I’d been meaning to try this, but a few things have always put me off it a bit. Bear in mind that my only experience of razor-shaving is what I see on screens, and there are only two types of scene involving them:
Scene A – a sparkling blue-tiled bathroom, morning. A beautiful woman is visible in the bedroom beyond.
A magnificently buff, bare-chested middle-aged man shaves manlily, then winces and touches his cheek.
Man: Ow, it burns!
VO: You need: Nivea For Girlymen Soft Kitten Gel For Ultra-Sensitive Weak Babyskin!
Scene B – a dingy motel bathroom, morning. A beautiful hooker is visible in the bedroom beyond.
A magnificently buff, bare-chested middle-aged man shaves very, very, carefuly, and slices his whole fucking cheek open. The cut, or bloodstain resulting from the cut, will be misinterpreted later in the film.
In other words, it seems to be excruciatingly painful and almost guaranteed to result in mutilation. Nevertheless, I bought an extremely cheap razor and no after-shave soothing product, inwardly asking how bad it could really be, despite the result of all previous internal “How X can it be?” questions having ultimately been answered by reality with “Fucking, fucking”. *
* I’m partly stealing this line from Boss Nonnu, because he stole my game.
Turned out it was fine. In fact, much easier and more pleasant than electrical shavers, as far as I recall actually using one to try to remove stubble. In general I’m not the kind of adult male who’s still trying to eradicate any evidence that he’s ever grown a facial hair in his life, and therefore must be under the age of fourteen and have his whole life ahead of him. So I’m not scraping the bejesus out of my skin, but still.
Getting A New Bike!
This one, but with slicks, which I’m informed are tyres that go fast on roads. I can now verify that they do.
I stuck it to the bike thieves of Bath by leaving my old one unlocked in town until it vanished. Ha! How’d you like that one, velo-vultures? Not much fun to ride, is it? No salvagable parts, are there? Probably fell off, didn’t you? Yeah, that’s because it’s broken. I mock the socio-economic circumstances that have driven you to unlawfully take possession of my reject! Hm. Now I feel kind of bad. But I’m still pretty sure you’re not the good guy here.
The bicycle is the best vehicle mankind has invented so far. Lots of others can do things it can’t, but those need irreplacable fuels to noisily drink and messily belch out, and the whole energy equation with them is just short-sighted and ugly. A bike is just a dramatically more efficient form of human movement, an outright improvement on the most fundamental thing our bodies do. It uses nothing, requires nothing and emits nothing. It’s also a little like flying on land, which is pleasant.
At A Stag Party!
This one is not what those in the truth business call ‘true’. Al, the groom, is, like me, not the type for stag nights. So he came to my place for fancy burgers and homemade chips, then to town with others for moderate drunkenness, then the next day for a Thai meal at the only one of Bath’s seven Thai restaurants whose location I’d forgotten, then to the park for close-quarters frisbee. EXTREME.
It was good. We ship out to his wedding soon, but I have a metric Christload of work to do before then, so I’m trying not to think too far ahead.
Losing My Internet Connection!
This router has never worked very reliably for me, so I borrowed a new one from Jonty to try. I couldn’t get my PC – or three others – to see it, so I went back to the old one. That no longer worked at all.
Fixing My Internet Connection!
Which is why and how I am talking to you now and not sooner, unless you are one of the people to whom I have spoken to sooner, in which case that happened.