A weekend in Birmingham
This weekend I went away to Birmingham for a long weekend. I was competing in The CGS (www.thecgs.com) UK Combine. For anyone who doesn’t know what this is, it’s basically the only professional gaming league in the world, and the winners of it get up to $1′000′000. Myself and 4 others went to the UK qualifiers for a chance to be drafted to one of the UK teams, who will travel to LA later this year to compete for the prize money. However, considering all the best players in the world were there, we basically turned up for a bit of drunken banter and some easy money.
Friday was a pretty easy going day, apart from waking up at 7am and seeing morning for the first time in about 3 years. First of all we checked into the hotel, where we had a 1 person room booked for 5 people. It was an absolute shit hole, and there was nowhere near enough room for 5 of us, but I managed to shotgun the bed so it was okay. We just spent the whole day playing practice games and chilling really. It took a while to get used to the peripherals, as we could not plug our own into the practice PC’s. Our first practice game was against TLR, where we drew 9-9 on Inferno and then lost 10-8 on dust2 (not 100% sure on the dust2 score, but it was something like that). We went straight from this match into a game against Berlin Allianz on inferno, where we lost 10-7. After a break, we played against eSports 180 where we won 10-6 (again, not 100% sure but it was similar) in our final practice game, and then made our way back to the hotel. After a little while deciding what to do, me and the rest of the team decided that since we had to be there so early the next day we’d take it easy and go see Iron Man. Won’t bore you with the details as it was a pretty easy going evening, but the film was decent.
Despite our best intentions we failed to get to sleep until about 4am, as Naz decided to throw water all over me continuously for an hour, until I jumped on him from the bed to the floor. However, being the dumb prick he is (love you Naz) this wasn’t him done, and when I got up to use the bathroom I returned to a bed soaked from head to toe in water, which made for a rather uncomfortable night, with the only consolation being that I managed to steal his pillow, so it was even worse for him.
Saturday was the main tournament day, and we would get to play our first official games. The tournament was single elimination, so one loss and we were out. Unfortunately, our seed didn’t exactly work in our favour, as in the first game we got the best team in Europe, and arguably in the world, Birmingham Salvo, and had to play it on the main stage. Now for them it was nothing, as they have played in TV studios in LA, and flown all around the world competing, but for us it was a pretty big deal, and was pretty nerve wracking to be thrown straight into that. The first map was inferno, where we started on the harder Terrorist side, and lost 7-2. We managed to get a single round on Counter Terrorist side before they finished it off, and the result was 10-3. Not a great result, but a lot of rounds came down to 1v1’s where they just had the greater experience. We were quite happy in one way though, as we managed to get more rounds on them than Rio Sinistro did a few months back. The second map was dust2, where it was a lot harder and their skill really showed, and they beat us 10-2. The two scores are pretty similar, but the games played out very differently, and they really were dominant on the second map.
This was the end of our tournament play, and we finished 9th-16th and won £500. Although annoying that we only got to play one match, this opened up the opportunity for a hard night of drinking on Saturday night, and I never was the type of guy to turn that down. We left the Omega Sektor at 9 o clock roughly, and went over to Wetherspoons, where one of us couldn’t get in due to dress code, so we bought some booze from Tesco’s and made our way back to the hotel. After a few quick drinking games there, I gave Dan a pair of my jeans to wear, and we met everyone at Spoons. After a few casual pints there, and some horrific stories from Rich (Whenever you start a story “One time, my friend did this…”, it is ALWAYS about Rich. The guy has done everything, seen everything, and will do everything), and a few awkward questions to the bouncers as they threw us out, we moved on to find somewhere else to drink.
We made our way to the main street in Birmingham, which I forget the name of, and went to a place called “The Sports Bar” on Rich’s reccomendation. Despite a few of us being turned away at the door for dress code, Rich managed to convince the doorman that they were Swedish, and despite them not knowing about the dress code they had a lot of money to spend and it would be in his interest to let us in. It was a pretty standard night at this point, with some casual pole dancing from Rich, Ral, Paul and a few others, and everyone was having a pretty good time. However, about 2 hours into this club, I looked around to find Dan and found him sitting on a sofa in the middle of the club spewing on himself. Classy.
We decided to take him back to the hotel, and myself, Dan, Adam, Bob and Paul made our way back. Dan’s state progressed at a crazy rate, and 5 minutes into the walk back he was unable to move his legs, and me and Adam had to drag him the whole way. We managed to get him through the hotel, despite pulling him by his arms along the floor for the last corridor (which Bob got on video, will embed it when I can), and dumped him in our hotel room, and then went back to drinking in the hotel bar. At this point we met up with a few other people, including Rich and the Infused management, and chilled at the bar for a bit. Rich and Bob decided it would be a good idea to snort a table length of salt each (real salt, not a nickname), and ended up collapsed on the floor in the middle of the bar in tears wondering why the fuck they did it. Like real troopers though, they recovered and carried on for another hour or so, where we got into a drunken debate on The CGS’ role in gaming, which pretty much consisted of 10 people shouting at me how wrong I was.
After our drunken arguments were complete, we made our way back to the room at about 8am, only to find Dan and Adam had locked themselves in there and in a drunken state could not wake up. However, we did manage to wake up numerous people on our corridor, including the naked woman next door who I managed to argue with for a few minutes. We then proceeded to collapse in the hallway and fall asleep, only to be woken up by the hotel manager saying we couldn’t sleep there. He opened the door to our room, which we then found covered in spew and alcohol. Combined with his realisation that we had 5 people sleeping in a 1 person room, his decision was obvious, and we were asked to leave the hotel, and a £60 charge was sent our way. We walked straight out the hotel, with the manager shouting at us that we had to pay the charge, but we were all far too tired and drunk to respond. On the off chance that the manager reads this, sincere apologies for the state we left it in, but if you had let us stay in the room that night we would have cleaned it up a bit before we left haha.
We then wondered the streets for an hour or so looking for the cars, only to find ourselves back at the Omega Sektor, and 2 minutes from the hotel. From here however we regained our bearings, and continued to the cars. After a few hours of “sleep” in the back of Dan’s van, where I was lying on toolboxes and ladders, and had my feet up in the air against the door, we returned to the event to watch the draft. Dan also managed to spew all over my jeans earlier that night, so I left them in his van before leaving, hope he’s realised by now or the place will stink.
You all pretty much know what happened from here (and if you don’t you can read about it at www.thecgs.com and www.cadred.org), so I won’t bore you with the details. We watched the draft, collected our pay and I wandered home, having had an awesome weekend and a bit of easy money. Definitely reccomended, and thanks to everyone involved!
We’ve got the paint if you’ve got the balls…
This weekend a group of us from Uni went to “The Big Game 2008″, the biggest paintballing event in Europe. 1200 people, 600 a side, and a whole weekend of paintballing. It’s mental.
This was our second year at the event, and we went up on the Friday to get a headstart on the festivities (read - drinking). It took us over an hour to pack 14 people’s stuff (clothes, tents, sleeping bags, paintball gear, food, alcohol) into our 3 cars, and when it was done it felt like a bill should be passed to prevent it happening again. With 3 square inches per person, the hour long car ride was less than comfortable, but bearable.
Friday was pretty chilled out, and despite our expectations of a crazy night of alcoholic debauchery, we were snoozing under the stars by midnight. Actually, snoozing may be a slight over statement, as 90% of us spent the night shivering and shaking, especially myself with no floormat or sleeping bag. An early rise on Saturday morning allowed us to spend the day messing about at the campsite, with only a minor break for a quad biking session. The rest of the day was spent drinking and preparing for the Sunday, as well as spending copious amounts of money on pointless things for most people.
Saturday night was spent at the bar, where the event organisers had arranged a camel racing competition. This was where the magic began. Half way through the races I strolled up, and casually said to Skeith “Yea I’ve seen this race, put all your money on #4″. The race was ran, and lucky number 4 came in, to my utter shock. When opportunities like this arise, there’s no such thing as quitting while you’re ahead, so my immediate response was “Told you so. Put it all on #3 on the next race”. The story continues, as #3 pulled in in first place, and the whole group of people we were with were gagging for a tip on the final race. “Go for #5 this race guys, it’s a shoo in”. The race was ran, and everyone was sat with baited breath. It finished, and the woman announced that my horse had won, yet again. I jumped up onto the table and started screaming, only for her to casually continue “Oh sorry, #2 won…”. My fall from grace was from noble, as I shouted abuse (in a very inebriated state) at anyone who found it funny, and continued to try and collect on my losing ticket. To my dismay, they would not pay out, and I left the bar to continue drinking back at the tent.
Sunday eventually arrived, and it lived up to every expectation. The event was hostage based, and each team had to gain control of numerous hostages and perform certain tasks in order to gain more points than the opposing team. I won’t go into the gorey details of it, but 8 solid hours of paintballing will inevitably be awesome, regardless of the semantics.
We returned to Stafford later that day, and we finally got to get some rest, after a fantastic weekend. Photos available here.
Pleidiol Wyf Im Gwlad
Bit of a belated post, but with all the Saint Patrick’s day festivities I haven’t had a chance to recount my tales of the final match of the Six Nations.
Wales went into the game with the tournament all but won, needing merely to lose by less than 20 points to France to win the whole thing. However, this didn’t deter us from getting horrendously drunk and bringing out some good old fashioned Welsh pride. Since the Easter holidays had started, lots of people had gone home, and I couldn’t find anyone to watch the rugby. However, Rob agreed to watch it with me, despite his complete lack of interest in the sport, providing we played a drinking game which would get us wasted by the end of it.
What we decided on was pure genius, or complete unadulterated stupidity. The game had 3 simple rules:
- If the commentators said “Wales” or “Welsh” I had to take a shot of beer.
- If the commentators said “France” or “French” Rob had to take a shot of beer.
- If the commentators said “ball” we both had to take a shot of beer.
As you can imagine, this wasn’t the easiest of games to play. If any of you have ever played Centurion, I can assure you this was 10 times worse. Within 20 minutes I felt the affects. This may seem weird, but I can draw you a good example to show how much we were drinking - At one point I had 8 shots cued up in a row, as the commentators said “Wales are now starting to take the ball out of the Welsh half, attacking the French with some blistering runs. For the first time this game the Welsh are showing they know how to use the ball, and showing the rest of Wales what they can do. Wales wales ball ball wales wales ball ball.”. We ended up finishing 18 cans between the two of us in the 80 minutes it took to watch the game, with a 15 minute break in the middle, and I ended up in bed at 10 o’clock, wrapped in my Welsh flag rambling about how proud I am to be Welsh.
All in all a rather succesful day, with a Welsh grand slam, and a discovery of a new game bound to end in a free ride home in the nee-naw car.
Vida en el carril rápido
Okay so I haven’t really had anything to say for the last week or so, so I’ve put off updating the site. I don’t really want to fill it up with loads of drivel about my personal life, as I realise how uninteresting that will be for everyone, so I’m trying to limit it to stuff people can relate to. You would not BELIEVE how difficult this is, when your daily life consists of waking up, playing games, going to the gym, getting drunk, and going to bed. It doesn’t make for that many amusing anecdotes, or witty cultural observations. My interaction with the wider world of politics, business, and world developments generally consists of reading Digg every few days, so I feel it’s best to wait for something to come along, rather than use filler text to feign an active website.
However, even in my sheltered little life of of slumber, inebriation and genocide, you get a few little diamonds which brighten the day. Today I had a 200 Carat beauty, as I discovered a fantastic new band, Los Campesinos. I use the term “new” very loosely, as they’ve been around for ages. However, I’ve never really given them a chance, only finally listening to them today due to chronic boredom. They’re quite odd, and I don’t think any description of them would really do them justice. They’re very upbeat, very fun to listen to, and have some really clever lyrics. The closest analogy I’ve got for listening to them is “skipping through the park on a sunny Summer’s day, covered in glowsticks, hand in hand with Stephen Fry”. They’re also Welsh (I think, their Myspace says they’re from Cardiff at least), which gave them a major positive in my books, so I reccomend them thoroughly.
So yeah, worth listening to them. This post’s link is going to be a link to their Myspace, as you can hear some of their music on there. I reccomend “You, Me, Dancing”. It starts off a bit slow but builds into an amazing song. Hope you enjoy them.
Los Campesinos
Los Campesinos - You! Me! Dancing!
First post is always a fun one…
No point in introducing myself or giving you a little background, because obviously you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t know me. Just decided to start a blog to put some of my thoughts and daily happenings. I like writing, and I like talking about myself, so a blog seemed the logical solution to satisfy both of them.
Today has possibly been the laziest day ever. Although I woke up at 8 AM, I didn’t leave bed until about 9 PM. Well, that’s a bit of a fabrication, as I got up to have a shower, but I decided it was just too fucking cold and went straight back to bed. Gotta love the student life. Lectures don’t start until Wednesday, so I can pretty much repeat this every day until then.
Will probably get bored of this blogging thing within a few days, so I wouldn’t hold out for any more updates, but hope you enjoy it until I finish.
Oh, and one final thing; Since I whore Digg so much, I thought I’d leave a little interesting link at the end of every post for you to check out, as a parting message. This first one is a showcase for a few mods this guy has made on his Wii, and it’s absolutely amazing.
Johnny Chung Lee’s Wii Projects
The stuff he does on there is incredible, and I really hope Nintendo are taking notes. I could see this sort of stuff being used on a lot of games in the future, especially the third one.