The Research Roadtrip - Day 2, 00:23

Johnnie Ingram — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:52:00 +0100

This is not good.

It’s half past midnight, our time, and Hugh and I are getting ready to record our interview for The Overcast. Hugh’s been up since 5am. I’ve been up since 4am because I live further away from Edinburgh train station than he does. Neither of us, it’s only fair to say, is running on 100% battery power.

Nonetheless, we could have pulled it off. God knows, both Hugh and I have done far worse. The major problem that we have right now, as I kneel on the floor of our B&B desperately combining all the complementary coffee sachets into one unsuspecting mug of wake-up juice, is that we’ve just returned from a night of heavy-to-industrial-strength ale drinking with Matt and Dave of Short Fuze and former Strange Company stalwart (and now Short Fuze employee) Ben Sanders.

Short Fuze are a fascinating bunch of guys. For those of you who don’t know, we’re down here learning how to use Moviestorm, their up-and coming commercially-licensed, dedicated Machinima package. Of all the purportedly commercial Machinima packages, this one’s by far closest to its goal from what we’ve seen today.

It’s also quite complex stuff. The guys at Short Fuze are super-enthusiastic about their product (not to mention geeks to a fault - when you can have a ten-minute conversation with their CEO about the various OGG codecs you know something’s right), and they’ve been forcibly injecting information into our poor, protesting brains all day. The fact that we said “ooh!’ about once every 20 seconds has nothing to do with it. Then they insisted on taking us out to the pub and having fascinating conversation with us over beer. I say it was fascinating. I remember it was fascinating. Remembering anything else, like my own name, is harder. In fact, the last two paragraphs have been mainly ghost-written by Hugh, based on the vague mutterings that I made before I collapsed into a snoring, drunken stupor.

I’ve no idea how this Overcast interview will go, but I think it’s probably wise if I apologise in advance. I’m normally far more witty and articulate, honestly. I blame those b@rs!s at Short Fuze, and their insistence on buying every round.

[[ EDITED for typos. Not too many, bearing in mind how drunk and tired I was when I first typed this ]]

"The Research Roadtrip - Day 2, 00:23" by overman@z-studios.com

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:16:37 +0100

Well, I just finished editing. Don’t worry, I cut around both times when you got sick, so no one will ever have to know it even happened.

Except Hugh’s dry cleaner. Yeah, he’ll know.

Machinima for Dummies: The Research Roadtrip - Day 2, 00:23

The Research Roadtrip - Day 2, 00:23

"The Research Roadtrip - Day 2, 00:23" by overman@z-studios.com