Dan Govan

I’ve been playing a royal fuckload of pc games lately.  A combination of discovering I can buy and download games without leaving the house, having given up World of Warcraft a couple of months ago and generally maintaining a very short attention span.

I’ll put up a list later of all the games I’ve played recently, but these are the ones I want to play. They’re not out yet.
Sims 3
Diablo 3
Starcraft 2
Dragon Age
Prototype
Champions Online
Knights of the Old Republic Online

I was on a short hike a few miles north of San Francisco a few weeks ago. I had thought to bring a full bottle of water in my satchel but hadn’t thought to make sure the top had been securely attached. It came off, and my bag became a lovely little lake for my phone to swim around in. There was also a small moleskine notebook and one of my my hiking companions exclaimed “Oh no, your diary!”. I explained that it was empty.

Empty diary. Sadface. My life is measured in google calendar and facebook fotos.

I'm actually working on my blog today. Strange huh? It's all a bit simplistic compared to my original mockup but hey ho. I'll see what I can fix without ripping it all up and starting again. Hopefully.

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It's a dreadful way to start an entry but: I haven't really been blogging much. My life is documented in other ways now: everything notable that I do is in my google calender, and every weekend a new album (or two) of my recent exploits goes up on facebook. On the other hand, this blog thing might have more longevity so I should probably write a summery of 2008...

January

2008 sucked to begin with, mostly a continuation of the emotional hangover from the breakup in November. I'd been doing cool stuff and gotten back into Warcraft to keep busy but the grief was still a constant companion and New Year's was a mediocre washout, by comparison to most other NYE, a failure. On the plus side, January was where I began to turn things around. It had been a particularly lardy Christmas and I decided I needed to lose wieght, so I started exercising and watching what I ate. In the name of getting out of the house I started a regular Orange Wednesday film night with a few friends. I re-opened comms with Ciaran and his posse that I'd been friends with at uni. I got talking to and met a couple of guys off OKCupid (not as sad as it sounds) and was out every Saturday with Giles and Will in a refusal to bow down to the depressingness of January. Also: West 5. Lol.

February

Was mostly more of the same, though a bit less partying and was kinda seeing Rich. Highlights: Eddie Izzard at a tiny venue, the new Popstarz venue. Lowlight: getting ill twice.

March

Involved five days in Paris visiting Mikey and a weekend revisiting Warwick for the "End of the Union" event. I also re-quit Warcraft and hit my weight target (70kg), which I've stayed around since then. Clubs and parties continued on Saturday nights, exploration of cinemas continued on Wednesday nights.

April

Saw Portishead and We Are Scientists, went to the The Future Of Webdesign conference, Laurie visited from SanFran, James turned 30. Also: snow!

May

Ken lost the election, I saw the Wombats and went to Edinburgh for a few days, Mikey returned from Paris.

June

Mmmm sun. Glastonbury. Stonking. Avenue Q. Start getting active on thingbox more. Drastically misrepresent myself to a posse of new friends by pulling two nights running. Also fun and frolics at Thorpe Park.

July

London Pride, Lewis, Week in Malaga, Mark, Javascript training. Meeting lots of fun new people.

August

Brighton Pride, Singing in the Rain, Anglesey, Manchester Pride, my first Pie and Mash. More of the same.

September

Shitty month, due to having to stay in Kev's (lovely) spare room in Watford and living out of a backpack. Randomly went to Bestival. Apart from a few lunches and dinners there were no midweek funtimes. On paper things were fine but it was very depressing, with too much time to myself to think. Perhaps as compensation I began going out on both Fridays and Saturdays as the norm, rather than one or the other, crashing on spare beds, futons and couches of more centrally-based friends.

October

Having finally moved into the place at Elephant and Castle things began to look up, though it was frustrating how long it took to get and assemble all the Ikea Furniture. Film Wednesdays had died a death but the heavy weekends continued. Had my first (and as yet still only) bona fide club pull. Amusing but meh. Annoyingly in spite of the facts of the matter I seemed to be getting a "reputation", though it was true I had tripled my sexual experience in less than a year, that really wasn't saying very much.

November

The two-nights-out weekends (including my birthday) culminated in a my taking advantage of time off work to go out four nights in a row. A record for me, and a bit of a milestone. I was clearly much better at this malarkey than I used to be. Excellent fun, good times, but tiring, and it changed my point of view on a couple of things. Firstly, I was kinda tired of night buses. Secondly, I decided I wanted a bit more "grins and snuggles" in my life. Given I had been pretty busy and social recently I had a few possibilities for dating, but that proved irrelevant as my first choice agreed to what was a lovely night of drinks and dancing. The rest of the month, and the first couple of weeks of December, was mostly spent being ill and/or playing Warcraft. The expansion had been released so I rejoined after a break of 9 months. Between that and Luke's pennilessness, I didn't do a whole lot, especially in comparison to the previous few months. As I discovered later everyone had had colds or flu of some description over this period though so I didn't actually miss anything.

December

Mid-month it was off to Edinburgh for the season's familial festivities. To be honest I had been really dreading it, but it turned out to be really good. Almost issue-free and pretty cheery; it was great to catch up with everyone. I had also been stressed about NYE, after the previous year's flop, and I had resigned myself to tagging along with some friends to a houseparty. Which proved awesome. Lots of people I knew and kinda-knew, was drinking and talking shit til 7 in the morning. My New Year's nights have always been good and I was very glad to find that 2007 -> 2008 was a glitch.

The summer is over, winter slipping on. It’s getting chilly out so I can wear my winter coat again. Joy. In spite of this, after three years of faulty failings and a massive “repair” bill, the aircon at the office still only seems to work every other day. I have to wear a t-shirt and a jumper into work just in case. It’s not working today. Sweaty foetid grimness, without sunshine or a light breeze to make it tolerable. Sigh.

I recently moved to elephant and castle, but I haven’t really settled in yet. Most of my stuff is still in boxes and disarray, and we still lack real internet. It’s 15 minutes walk to work though, which in London is just astonishing. Feels pretty good generally, hopefully I’ll be able to get everything sorted and get back into the swing of things. BBQ season is over, it’s time for the house parties.