Gril

  • The Jam To-morrow

    Two quarts of Bertolli. 55 cans of fizzy pop. Several bottles of wine. Two cartons of apple juice. Four trays of assorted dips (no nachos). Bananas, crisps, oranges. Jam. Bread. Uncountable bottles of cheap beer. Five empty pizza boxes spilling out of overfilled bins. Twenty assorted laptops and associated smelly men. This is the content

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  • In Flight: Vancouver

    There are LOGS floating downriver. Admittedly, there’s not many and they’re guided by tugs, but I half expect Huck and Tom Sawyer to hop off one. They’re the impingement of Vancouver’s looming hinterland on the carefully-gridded suburb. When the Sikh cabbie drives me out of the airport, it smells like America. Hot tarmac and grease

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  • Freelance Year One; In Retrospect

    The end of last year was the lowest point of my life so far (and it was almost entirely my fault, sorry M), but set this year up perfectly for a single golden question; could I survive and thrive as a freelance writer? The braggadocio-saturated answer was, thankfully, ‘yes, you cowardly arse; why didn’t you…

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  • Modding Skyrim: understanding what modders want

    This is an interview with the anonymous modder Vorians, who’s worked on the Unique Landscapes and Better Cities mods for The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. I was interviewing him to talk about Skyrim for this piece on What Modder’s Want for Gamespy, but he didn’t reply in time, so I’ve posted it here.

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  • Unfinished Symphony: The Hunt for Red Orchestra

    It’s 1941 and Nazi Germany has just invaded the USSR, its erstwhile ally. SS counter-intelligence soon detects a range of radio signals from communist and socialist sympathisers, embedded at all levels of European society. Since the SS call transmitters ‘piano’ and supervisors ‘conductors’, they name this nascent resistance network the Rote Kapelle – the Red…

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  • A Fresh Breeze: The Witness & Jonathan Blow

    I was lucky enough to get a chance to interview Jonathan Blow, creator of the most challenging game of this generation “Braid”, and play a very early version of his next puzzler The Witness; so early that only the core structure will be preserved when it’s finally released.

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