Fragments of Him

So, I made a game with a couple of friends in 72 hours:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Aceria620/fragments-of-him

You'll need to install Unity if you don't have it. Also, it might be a bit heavy on your processor, so I apologise for the framerate if you're on an old machine.

Please rate it! You can log in with Facebook!

There's more information about it on my name games blog:

http://games.matazone.co.uk/

Woohoo!

Mata Meet - London 21st December - Bring it on!

Hi,

This is still slightly vague (depending on whether a doctor decides to break my nose in December) but I'll definitely be in London from around 6am on Friday 21st December.

I'll have travelled all night on the coach and likely be a bit knackered, but does anyone fancy meeting up during the day/evening? Or offering me a place to sleep for a few hours until it gets to a more civilised time (the closer to Victoria, the better) and so I can meet with people later?

What say you all? I know it's the last Friday before Christmas, so likely to be pretty horrible in London, but meeting up for a few drinks would be lovely - I've not seen a lot of you for ages... Was it when I was leaving Oxford?

EDIT: no longer vague - this is definitely on!

Dead Lily - 2012 Halloween animation

Hi everyone!

It's my ten year anniversary for Matazone Halloween animations! For a decade
I've been trying to scare the pants off of you. Read more below...

***

In this news letter:
New animation!
Facebook group!
Year round-up
Webcomic
Short stories
Forums
Until next time...

(Unsubscribe information at the end of this mail)

*** New animation! ***

It's that time of year again, so it's time for another Matazone Halloween
animation. This year it's rather special - it's my first video on YouTube, it
was created through co-operation with people in three countries and two
continents, and frankly it's just darn tootin' swanky:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a51rDvqAX6E

PLEASE share it with your friends! I love making these things and I want as many
people to enjoy them as possible. Digg it, Twitter it, Facebook it... Pass it
on!

Also, please give it a thumbs up on YouTube and add comments

*** Facebook group! ***

Lots of the old friends from the forums and new Matazone companions have
recently been joining together in the Matazone Facebook group. Drop in if you
fancy hearing about new things and finding like-minded people:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/matazone

*** Year round-up ***

I'm still in the Netherlands, travelling around Europe a little when I get the
time, and generally having lots of fun with lots of cool people. I'm also now in
charge of the Games Design & Production department at the best games development
academy in the Netherlands, so that's rather lovely.

... And no, my Dutch still hasn't improved much.

Some progress was being made with my novel (yes, I know I've been saying that
for ive years) then life got complicated again. I promise you, I will one day be
writing to you all to say where you can get my novel and finally read it!

Life is still bloomin' brilliant, and I hope you're having fun too!

*** Webcomic ***

The Matazone webcomic, Trouble Down Pit, is still up and running. There are
nearly 600 strips on there now, and new ones are always added every Monday and
Friday

http://comic.matazone.co.uk

*** Short stories ***

If you want some more spooky stories then try the downloads over here:

http://www.matazone.co.uk/shop/index.php?cPath=28

They're not recommended for kids, but if you fancy a horror 5 minute horror
story on your iPod/MP3 player then give them a try.

Of course, you can also see all of the old animations on my site, and the
Halloween animations can be found here:

http://www.matazone.co.uk/menus/miscmenu.html

*** Forums ***

The Matazone forums have been up and running for over nine years and lots of old
faces have been coming back on there recently, so if you haven't visited for a
while then now would be a great time to pop in again, we'd love to hear from you
again!

http://www.matazone.co.uk/forums

*** Until next time... ***

I guess that's it for the year! It's been a weird and complex one in my personal
life, but it's turning out to be awesome in the end. I hope your lives are full
of as much happiness as mine... And mine will be even better now I've finished
this animation and can stop dreaming about graveyards!

Don't forget to check by the webcomic for your regular Matazone fix!

Thanks for reading, have a great Halloween, and I guess I'll see you at the same
time again next year!

Have fun,

Mata
xxxx

The body mod spectrum, from make-up to liposuction and breast implants

Something I've been thinking about recently is where the levels of social acceptability lie for body modification - although perhaps I should call this 'aesthetic modification'.

At one end of the spectrum we have very temporary stuff, such as make-up or clothing. Corsets change the figure of the wearer and are considered slightly risque but nothing very special.

Then there are acceptable but more intrusive things, such as dying your hair, waxing/shaving.

Going beyond that you have the mildest of mods, such as botox and filler injections - these are breaking the skin, but in the mildest of ways and have a temporary effect.

Stepping up you get to piercings - these are funny ones because their acceptability depends on where the piercing is, who you are with, and your social status, so these can, I think range across all levels of the spectrum, from very acceptable (ear piercing), to very extreme (skull horn implants).

Tattoos are probably the next step - permanent and socially devisive, but increasingly acceptable. Their culture is rich, but they are generally shunned by the British middle classes and accepted happily by everyone else. They have both the permanence and the skin-breaking aspect that makes them more extreme than many piercings, and the pain aspect shouldn't be overlooked.

Moving on, you get to cosmetic surgery, but even there I think there's a spectrum of acceptability. I had a hair transplant a few years ago and some people have great difficulty in believing this, as if it would be unthinkable to do something so strange. I know quite a large amount of women who say they would consider surgery on their breasts, either to make them larger, or smaler, or to lift them if they sag in later years. Breast reduction is very accepted, breast lifts are less accepted, whereas breast implants are generally considered a little odd, as if the woman clearly has self-esteem issues. Men also have 'muscle' implants that visually appear to be muscle but are non-functional body mass.

Likewise, the removal of sagging skin, such as by a tummy-tuck or face-lift seems slightly more acceptable than liposuction where people often say they feel like they have cheated somehow.

I also heard recently that there is an irreversible process to turn brown eyes blue.

...

I also think that immunisations are augmentations too, but I'll stick to only aesthetic treatments here.

To me, these things are a spectrum and it seems odd to accept one end without accepting a whole chunk more of it. The reason I've been thinking about this is that after years of regular training and healthy eating I've reached the peak of my aesthetic limits that I can reach without stepping up to serious hardcore cardio workouts and protein-only diets, but I want to take it further and so I've decided to have liposuction on areas that teh exercise has never seemed to touch. Even typing this feels like breaking some kind of taboo - like people aren't supposed to admit these kinds of things in public. What makes one end of the spectrum acceptable and another taboo? I don't feel like I'm cheating - I've worked hard to be fit and looked after myself well, but I know there are limits. I am very happy with my body, in particular my strength and level of fitness, but I do want to aesthetically take it further.

To put it another way: to say 'I think my skin looks better with non-natural pigmentation in it (tattoos)' is widely socially accepted, but to say 'I want to have a slim waist and I'm okay to have it sucked out' is considered differently.

This is more of a musing than a debate, it's just something that interests me.

Flirting

I had a long chat with a friend yesterday about flirting and how difficult it is. She told me about an experience where a girl had apparently been flirting with her but only became aware of this long after the moment had passed for anything to happen between them. I've also been told that I've sometimes had people throwing themselves at me and I've been completely oblivious.

I also know couple of exceptionally attractive women who are never approached for dates. Instead, anyone interested in dating them approach the women's friends - I think that these people are probably thinking 'she's stunning, I bet she gets approached all the time, I'll check with her friends first to see if she might be interested because I don't want to be just another sleaze hitting on her because she's beautiful'. In the meantime, the only people forthright enough to approach the women tend to be often be a bit sleazy and not entirely nice people to date. The women end up dating unpleasant people because they're the only ones with the self-belief to skip the flirting and take a more straight-forward approach.

Flirting is so hard to judge - no-one wants to push themselves on another person, but no-one wants to be too open and get hurt themselves. I sometimes wonder how on earth we ever survive as a species.