I originally posted this over on ScrewAttack.com, but I thought I’d repost it here, seeing as this is my main blog and all.
Hello, G1s, I’m NeiloMac, a jack-of-all-trades geek from the wintery climes of south-west Scotland.
I’m not sure what prompted me to sign up for a ScrewAttack account, but I thought it’d be fun to start writing about my current thoughts on videogames, as many of you are already doing. I probably won’t be writing anything Earth-shatteringly out-of-the-box, but I hope what I do write is a fun read nonetheless.
Before I start harping on about my opinions, I thought it’d be an interesting excersise to think back over my videogaming life for the past 20+ years.
This entry was written by , posted on November 19, 2009 at 1:16 am, filed under Uncategorized, gaming, musings, tech and tagged gaming, musings, nintendo, retro, sega, sony, xbox. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Metal Elvis is a work of pure genius.
Discuss.
This entry was written by , posted on September 17, 2006 at 12:21 am, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Gah. Need to vent. Going to go through the whole situation so you can understand.
So, a few months ago, my new friend Fiona and I started planning to go see Dream Theater in Wolverhampton once the tour date was announced. I, with my last pay from Ladbrokes (I was let go at the end of August – company was overspent on staffing and contract cutbacks and outright non-renewals across the board) I bought two train tickets. Fiona’s bought the gig tickets, but the hotel’s not booked (Fiona’s job – she spent £40 ish on the gig tickets, I spent £90 ish on the train fare, so a hotel room should’ve balanced it out nicely), but I’m thinking ‘we’ve got time.’
September passes, and every so often I quiz Fee about the hotel situation. September ends, still no hotel. I’m getting a bit concerned at this point. It’s around this point I start to get the feeling that Fee’s getting a bit more distant with me – I’m pretty good at reading the vibes people give off in conversation, even over the net it seems. Remember the timing of this, it’s important later.
So, we’re into October and the gig’s rapidly approaching, still no Hotel, so I badger Fiona about it, as I know she has the money to pay for it, so what’s the hold up? Then she springs something on me that I had kinda thought might be the situation in the back of my mind: she’d landed herself a boyfriend, a co-worker, who she’d been seeing on the quiet for the last month, pretty much about the same time I started to feel things were changing in the way Fee and I were interacting with each other. Now the reason for the lack of hotel bookage is a bit more evident: you get a new romance and some other things tend to go out the window, it’s understandable to a degree. However, she’s left it so long that the hotel I was hoping we could’ve got was booked out. And to cap it all her new beau isn’t too chuffed about the prospect of his new girlfriend trotting off to spend the night in a hotel in england with a guy who’s fancied her recently. Again, understandable.
So, Fee explores the prospect of her boyfriend coming along, which doesn’t overly appeal to me, due to the inevitable gooseberry factor. Turns out the boyfriend can’t get the time off work, so we decide that the best thing to avoid unpleasantness is to do seperate hotel rooms rather than splitting a hotel room as previously planned. Through all this, I’m getting a bad feeling about the whole situation deep in my gut. I could sense that the situation could be awkward due to the spectre of Fee’s new fella hanging over everything. I tossed the whole thing around my brain for a few days and decided to go with what my instincts were telling me, and cancelled going to the concert. I e-mailed Fee to tell her, and sent the train tickets back to Virgin with all the necessary details to get my ninety quid back.
Fee’s not happy about the situation, and I get the feeling that she thought I shouldn’t have sent the train tickets back and gave her her ticket so that she could go. Fuck. That. I bought the tickets with my own money and if I want to cancel them, tear them up, fold them into a paper aeroplane or wipe my arse with them, that’s my right. I’m not complaining about what she did with the gig tickets. They were her property…but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Fast forward to last night, and in the middle of a game of Mortal Kombat: Deception on my trusty Xbox, my mobile rings. On comes a male voice I don’t recognise. The following conversation isn’t exactly verbatim, but it’s as close as I can get it from memory.
“Is that Neil? Neil o Mac?” (Neilomac is my nickname on the mikeportnoy.com forum, where Fee and I first started talking to each other).
“Yes,” I reply.
(In a sarcastic tone) “Where would you really like to be right now?”
(Thinking it might be someone from the MP.com or VoicesUK forum, or even a UKMGer) “Err…Wolverhampton? Who is this?”
“Ahh, you go and leave her in the lurch…you left her in the lurch!” (And something about the train tickets too, I think)
“Who is this? Who am I talking to?” (I’ve got a pretty good idea who it is by this time, but I want to be sure)
He kept rambling on, so I just thought ‘fuck this’ and hung up on him, then turned my phone off. Later that night, I switched my phone back on to see if the offender, who I assume was Fee’s boyfriend, decided to leave any messages. Predictably, he did. More of the same, with added “I managed to get time off work after all, so we’re down here, and you’re not, nanny nanny poo poo.” and calling me a fanny. The words ‘pot’, ‘kettle’ and ‘black’ spring to mind. As well as ‘fucking douchebag of epic proportions’.
Really, how was he expecting me to react? All “Waaahh, they went to DT! Boohoohooo!” All it did was reinforce in my mind that I made the right choice. I don’t appreciate being insulted by an insecure, smart-mouthed cock monkey though. If I was as much of a prick as him, I’d probably have phoned back and ripped him a new one. 
So, yeah, I missed what sounded like a killer DT set, but I get the feeling I might not’ve enjoyed it as much as I should’ve had I went with Fee. Bah, had I known this would happen I would’ve went with my pal Steven instead.
This entry was written by , posted on October 27, 2005 at 12:32 pm, filed under Uncategorized, life and tagged emo pussy ranting, life, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
http://www.bol.de/shop/bde_homestartseite/artikeldetails/ID6387133.html
Samples of the new Dream Theater album. Even through low-fi 30-second clips I can feel the quality. *drool*
June 6th can’t come soon enough.
This entry was written by , posted on May 12, 2005 at 1:20 am, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
My goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is Fellatio Cwac Cwac.
What’s yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.
I’d like to say, for the record, that I have never, and will never, give a duck a blowjob.
This entry was written by , posted on March 11, 2005 at 6:00 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
1. I have never been on a plane
True. Not once.
2. I have one long-sighted eye and one short-sighted eye
Also true. I’m a freak of nature.
3. I owned CDs before I ever had a CD player of any kind in my house.
True. The first CD-playing device in my household was a Sega Mega CD, and I wound up getting a couple of CDs before that (one was a soundtrack of Street Fighter II, if I recall correctly)
4. I have played with members of Simple Minds.
False, but I was in another part of the same suite of rehersal rooms as ‘em a few times.
5. I have never had a serious girlfriend.
True. I doubt the ‘girlfriend’ I had when I was 11 counts.
6. I have only been outside the British Isles once.
True. I went to France with the school when I was 11.
7. A band I was in supported Franz Ferdinand before they made it big.
False. Never even seen ‘em play.
8. I have 13 nephews and nieces, and I am a great-uncle to three girls.
True: I have three brothers and two sisters, all a good bit older than me, and my oldest neice has either two or three daughters…I can’t remember to be honest.
9. Once, I stood behind Gregor Fisher (AKA Rab C. Nesbitt) in a queue for a cash machine without realising it was him.
True. He lived in Dunlop (a small village a few miles north of Stewarton) at the time and he used to come to Stewarton for his shopping.
10. I once helped set fire to an abandoned Lada.
True. It was also where the delivery boys for the local free paper would dump their loads when they couldn’t be arsed delivering them
11. I don’t have a passport.
True. Need to get one sometime.
12. I wrote music for a porno movie that was never released.
False, but it almost did happen: a friend of mine was lined up to direct a porno movie and I offered my services to do the music. Never actually went through though.
13. I am a virgin.
True. Had opportunities, but they didn’t work out. Talk about blue balls.
14. I am a shareholder in Sega
False. Thank fuck for that too…I’d probably have lost a lot of money since the early 90s.
15. I have used my status as an ordained minister to perform weddings and funerals.
False, but I am an ordained minister.
This entry was written by , posted on January 14, 2005 at 10:05 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
This has been doing the rounds amongst my LJ friends…ten of the following statements about myself are true, the other five are false.
1. I have never been on a plane
2. I have one long-sighted eye and one short-sighted eye
3. I owned CDs before I ever had a CD player of any kind in my house.
4. I have played with members of Simple Minds.
5. I have never had a serious girlfriend.
6. I have only been outside the British Isles once.
7. A band I was in supported Franz Ferdinand before they made it big
8. I have 13 nephews and nieces, and I am a great-uncle to three girls
9. Once, I stood behind Gregor Fisher (AKA Rab C. Nesbitt) in a queue for a cash machine without realising it was him.
10. I once helped set fire to an abandoned Lada.
11. I don’t have a passport.
12. I wrote music for a porno movie that was never released.
13. I am a virgin.
14. I am a shareholder in Sega
15. I have used my status as an ordained minister to perform weddings and funerals.
Go for it!
This entry was written by , posted on at 1:15 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
http://joesandalo.altervista.org/listamp3.htm
The Queen and Beatles stuff have Freddie, John and George spinning in their graves so fast that it’s affecting the Earth’s gravitational field, and the Dream Theater stuff is just as bad. Highly recommended if you’re up for some comedy and pain at the same time.
This entry was written by , posted on at 12:35 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
A little meme I’m snagging from adrianclark…”Open your MP3 player, select the full playlist, set to random and list the first 10 tracks that come up”.
1. Jeff Wayne – Thunder Child (from Jeff Wayne’s War of The Worlds)
2. Dreamscape – Short Time News (from The End Of Silence)
3. Nightwish – The Riddler (from Oceanborn)
4. Joe Satriani – With Jupiter In Mind (from Crystal Planet)
5. Atheist – No Truth (from Piece of Time)
6. Bon Jovi – Love Ain’t Nothing But A Four Letter Word (from 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong, Disc 4)
7. Jellyfish – Let ‘Em In That’s Why (Live) (from Bellybutton)
8. Porcupine Tree – Cure For Optimism (from Recordings)
9. Slayer – Born of Fire (from Seasons In The Abyss)
10. Led Zeppelin – Moby Dick (from The Song Remains The Same)
Pretty diverse. I like that. 
Of course, there’s still the other 7,425 songs on the list, but what the hell.
This entry was written by , posted on January 10, 2005 at 11:49 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
How was my year? Well, boring for the most part. Got a boring-arsed job in January, went to see Dream Theater (and met up with a fair amount of the UKMGers on my LiveJournal Friends list; top chaps the lot of ‘em, and I still owe Trev Ridney a pint. 
), eventually left the job, bummed about on the dole for a while, started Ninjutsu up in Glasgow, making several new friends in the process, saw G3 with old pal Steven and UKMGers Mark, Pablo and Paul, became happy as my friends Ryan and Sharon became parents to a bouncing baby boy named Charlie, and had a musical explosion towards the end of the year as I joined a band, played my first gig with them and got back in touch with some old college pals out of the blue, leading to securing me a week-long job as their producer/engineer for the debut EP of their band.
*whew*
So, in short, DT, new pals, G3, Ninjutsu, end of year music = good.
Old job, getting lots of job knockbacks, still being single = bad.
2004 Overall = meh, with occasional highlights.
At least 2005 is going to start well; the production/engineering thing kicks off a fortnight on Monday. Woo! 
This entry was written by , posted on January 1, 2005 at 2:16 pm, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.