Gaming/Anime T-Shirts

Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates on this site, unfortunately new job commitments have made it difficult to do… much of anything really.

What I have been doing in my spare time is creating a few gaming and anime related t-shirts.  I’ve always wanted to own these sort of t-shirts but as I’m rapidly approaching my late 20’s I can’t help but feel I’d be embarrassed by wearing an outright Gears of War or Dragon Age kind of thing, so what I decided to do was create a few of my own that (in my opinion at least) look pretty snazzy but at the same time only the most die-hard of fans will recognise.

A Guide For Getting Into Anime

While attempting to sleep last night I got to thinking about anime, more specifically the reasons why people in western civilisations don’t seem to embrace it in the same way as our neighbours in the east do.  There are sadly many preconceptions on the subject, and today I’d like to hopefully change any negative opinions you as readers might have about anime.

First up, we need to know exactly what anime is.  The word itself is not the Japanese word for their style of animation contrary to popular belief, but it’s what us western folk commonly refer to it as.  In Japan the word is used to describe any animation, so to them TV shows like SpongeBob Squarepants, Scooby Doo or Tom & Jerry are known as anime along with their own style.  Anything in cartoon form is known as anime in other words, whereas in the western world we have separate mediums.

Seeing as I’d imagine most readers are from western countries we’ll continue to refer to Japanese animated programs as ‘anime’ to avoid confusion.

Matt Cardle’s incredible X Factor performance

I know I’m a little late with this, but this past Saturday I sat down with apprehension to watch the X-Factor on ITV.  Like a lot of people I only really enjoy the audition stage for the atrocious performances, but this week one act above all others caught my attention, and his name is Matt Cardle.

Matt is a guy who hadn’t received an awful lot of recognition leading up to the Bootcamp stage of the competition, he’d comfortably got through his audition but from what I remember (which admittedly wasn’t much) he was a solid yet unspectacular singer.  On this night however he chose to sing Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I saw Your Face, and it stands right up there as one of the most stunning performances see on on these types of shows.  I won’t lie, this reduced me to tears.  Here’s the video of his song, enjoy it.

The Stig Revealed, But He Must Be Mad

It’s been breaking news across the UK over the past couple of hours, but in case you missed it (or want to know why I think he’s mad) the iconic face of BBC’s Top Gear has been revealed as… Ben Collins.

The Stig's identity has been revealed

It’s been rumoured for a while that Collins is indeed The Stig, but now that it’s official it’s not really all that interesting.  The man is a former Formula 3 driver as well as taking part in Le Mans and IndyCar, which means unless you’re a fan of those particular racing disciplines you’ve probably never heard of him, so for him to be revealed as such a well-known character watched by millions of casual car fans isn’t exciting in the slightest.  In fact when the rumours started coming in thick and fast once the ‘white’ Stig had replaced the ‘black’ stig people were speculating big names from Damon Hill to Michael Schumacher, in fact the Top Gear producers even went as fas as to jokingly reveal Schumacher as the mystery driver.  But alas, any hope of The Stig being revealed as a big name in the world of motorsport or keeping the mystery alive for a while longer has been totally spoiled by a very selfish and greedy man.

Best And Worst of The Past Decade

Since compiling various Top 10 lists in recent weeks there was one thing that slightly bothered me with it all, and that feeling was rightly echoed by various comments from those who read them.  Not only was it extremely hard to decide what ten video games, films and albums to put in each list but I felt that ten choices simply wasn’t enough.

So, for this blog post I’ve put together what I personally consider to be the best and worse of the decade that has now just passed, hopefully including a few more titles you’d expect to see in there.  We’ll start off with video games as that’s been a talking point for a couple of people, so here are my 25 best and worse of the decade – in order this time.