(Edit - Forgot to put this on the front page. Little bit out of date as I'm already in the South Island)

1. Going to head down to the South Island tomorrow for a few weeks, it's for work but fortunately I'll be able to catch up with family and friends back home, as well as meet my Niece for the first time. I can't wait!

2. Regarding my last post, at the time I felt frustrated with myself over my lack of progress with game development but I'm over that now. Still taking a break from actively programming games but I expect to get back into it within a month or so. Since making that post I received some nice messages from collaborators and the people who play my games, re-established contact with a few members of the Derelict team, and been interviewed by Christian at Curly's World of Freeware (Interview hopefully will be online soon!) all of which helped my confidence. Thanks guys!

3. Just today I was informed about a free Game Design course being run through a blog (Hat tip: arran4). While unfortunately I don't have the neccessary textbooks (Challenges for Game Designers, Understanding Comics and A Theory of Fun) and can't get them on time, I thought passively observing the course and discussions might be a good way of getting me back into making games. There's more info about it here.

4. I have been mentally planning my next game, which will be an anime inspired fun Mecha FPS. Though unlike "Blow Stuff Up" (or any of my other games, for that matter!) it will have an actual plot and the gameplay focus will be on hardcore Robot-on-Robot action. I plan to draft out the story first, and then produce a one level prototype with stand in graphics (The mechas will probably be rendered in Wolfenstein-esque sprites!).

5. Joined Twitter the other day to experiment with it. Though I was initially quite skeptical about it I'm having fun with it and I can use it to advertise my site updates. You can follow my latest tweets either directly through twitter or through the panel on the right hand side of my site.