All posts by Newt

Games Designer, Publisher, Web Developer, Dad.
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Here’s Spring!

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Finally Spring is here in the glorious and fantastic way that its meant to be. The whole Winter dragging on thing, kinda put the garden into suspended animation of which it came out of in all its flower bursting open glory last week.

Still keeping my head down due to BIG AWFUL FAMILY THING which isn’t all that awful because its being handled with a great deal of grace. But it turns out that isn’t such a bad thing since I’m catching up with a number of things

A new avenue of interesting stuff has opened up within my role at work which is cool and what us curious and inquisitive IT types live for 🙂 Shame the journey in and out (one and a quarter to two hours each way) is such an arse. Thankfully the new(ish) Nexus 7 is acting as a worthy Kindle replacement, now with added Pdf capacity, alongside my long-standing Ipod Classic for tunes.

The kids are blossoming, both are eating all that is put before them, even Henry who is Britain’s slowest eater because of his enlarged tonsils. Evie has just hit 6, and is a bright sparky, artistic and athletic ( two days of Gymnastics a week ) young girl. As more of Henry’s vocal bits get switched on, it gets rammed home what a little extrovert we have on our hands (and none of our other family members are extrovert – so its a bit of an eye opener) and quite funny and cheeky with it.

Well and truly settled into the house now, which means its going to be full steam ahead on sorting out the rooms that weren’t given a fresh start by the extension. The late arrival of growing season is a boon, for the garden is somewhat of a mess. Turns out the Landscape Gardeners, who the main Builders subcontracted , didn’t do a very good job. A good number of wall capstones and stairs paving stones have come loose as the mortar holding them on has disintegrated during the heavy autumn/winter rains. Oh and add on top of this the fact that THEY BURIED the old concrete paths and garden beds at the top of the garden beneath the new top soil (which was too shallow anyway). I’ve been chasing the Clowns to sort it out for about a month now, and while the Main Builder has been making all the right noises it hasn’t been fixed yet 🙁 I know from dealing with them last year, after they had declared ‘we’ve finished!’ (back in Feb) and left us with a Snagging list made up of unfinished work, that things will take ages to sort now that we are not giving them money hand over fist. (Moral of story, never give Builders their final payment until they have done all of the work to your satisfaction). Despite me going on at great length I’m actually quite certain that it will get fixed, sooner rather than later, because I’ve become a lot more calmly assertive mainly from dealing with the Numpty builders. So thank you Numpty builders 😀

D101 trundles on. This time last year I was barely at the wheel and didn’t know where I was going with it. Now I’m firmly back at the helm and about to create a bunch of pleasing abundance. Its nearly its 5th Birthday and we are nearly at title number 25 🙂 OpenQuest 2 is my main job at the moment and nearly done, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it 🙂

Overall there’s a real sense of healing going on in my life at the moment, a year later than I had originally hoped but its ace to be finally in that place 🙂

Heart matters

Harry ‘Zen’ Stanton

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With my head buzzing with so many possibilities, this really cool interview with Harry Dean Stanton, followed through from one of my favorite films Repo Man, brings me back to the Source. If you ever wandered what this Taoism kick that I keep on going on about,this gives as good explanation as any 😉

I will never be able to listen to “Row, Row, Row your boat” in the same light again 🙂

Heart matters

The Lion awakes!

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Arggh Winter should be over now! Why is it not over! Its the Illuminati they want to kill all us proles, with colds and flu and UNSEASONABLE WEATHER. 😛

Well they are not going to get me, I’m far too Awesome for that 🙂 [and so are you if you admit it]

Family on the mend. Henry and Rach made great strides forward this week. Kick in the teeth though is that I’m dad-alone this weekend cos Rach’s work put her on 5 days of shifts 🙁 Oh well we’ve been here before and it is so much more palatable (fun even) in the big extended house.

I”ve got a lot more energy. Still a bit cold ridden, but more 10%-25% than before. Proper sleep and good diet (as in cut waayyyyy down on the processed food during/after work and replace it with more fruit ) is doing wonders and propping up the bloody mindedness that has prevented me from falling ill fully, to the point were that bloody mindedness has become a calm strength 🙂 I WIN!

The downside of course of all this sudden energy has been a huge fustration that its still winter and that I can’t race ahead with my best made plans.

I let my rage out this afternoon, while Grandma had the kids for couple of hours and I was left home alone.It wasn’t a particularly fun test drive. It involved

And then my mate posted a link to Boris Johnson, being called up for “sandpapering the truth” on telly this morning.

Then a strange thing happened. I cracked up laughing, and got out of my Rage state (or more accurately Nerdrage since I was sat in front of the PC at the time).You see Boris Johnson by my set of personal values is an awful awful vile man, but I can not take him seriously because he’s what I call a Clown. In my book a Clown is “Someone who is so far off the Way of proper and decent behavior, I have to laugh instead of cry or get upset”.

Which made me realise that laughing in the face of Darkness, leaving you in a state of love and capable of countering it,  is much better than getting angry and made impotent by your rage 🙂

Heart matters

Once again ‘interesting’ times loom high on the horizon.

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Today, like most days in my Awesomeverse,has been a long journey, living in the moment as much as possible.. From the total fail of still being full of snotty cold, to the triumph of seeing our Henry (similarly afflicted but much more so) get much better and doing a ton of house work almost effortlessly (which got me a heartfelt hug from our Rach, who usually despairs on that front). Late in the day some one close to us gave us some Game changing news, which isn’t very good and needs to be handled as gracefully as possible (so I won’t go into the details of what). It would be the sort of thing that could have driven me into a state of total panic, which I would loose myself in for months.(like what happened this time last year) Instead I have quickly regained my calm and assessed the situation for what it is. If nothing else it is going to bring about a change in my family’s day to day routine, and I hope that with clear heads and compassionate hearts we can do the best for all concerned.

While musing about this just now, the following snippet popped up and  resonated strongly with me:

“… but when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

W.H. Murray, , The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)
Anyhoo, just when you thought things were settled in the Newt household, here we go again 😉
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Still I rise

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So its officially still winter, despite  almost spring like conditions last weekend. The small Newtlet family is currently hammered by colds and related illnesses. The good lady Rachel is currently asleep pumped full of antibiotics to combat tonsillitis. Our Henry, usually a climbing blur of motion, sits quietly on the sofa and Evie is somewhat fragile  after a bout of the latest.  Myself I’ve managed not to have a day off since last September. Its weird I’m suffering the physical effects of the various ‘breathing diseases’ as I call them, in fact I reckon I’ve had a cold pretty constantly since last September, which was the last time I had any time off work. In fact this was when I decided I wasn’t going to have any more time off work – which has been the case. Proof of mind over matter, or at least bloody mindness 😉

So in between falling asleep and brief bouts of fever, I’ve been quietly getting on with things. Not so much that you can measure ‘achievements’ but mainly doing the work to put things in place. Its a seasonal thing. Winter is a time  for introspection and planning. Spring planting, Summer growing and plans coming to fruition. Autumn the harvest. Rinse, repeat.

Heart matters, Music

Life and Death

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One of the milestone moments of 2012 was the death of my Father, Derek Newport. At some point I’ll post something about how I feel about his death, but its not the time at the moment with the world stuck in the winter blues.

However two music related pieces that struck me cold this morning.

One of my favourite musicians Wilko Johnson is talking on the BBC about how he feels now that he’s been diagnosed with Terminal Cancer.

  • Wilko Johnson: ‘Terminal cancer has made me feel alive’

    • “The things that used to bring me down, or worry me, or annoy me, they don’t matter anymore – and that’s when you sit thinking ‘Wow, why didn’t I work this out before? Why didn’t I work out before that it’s just the moment you’re in that matters?’

    “Worrying about the future or regretting the past is just a foolish waste of time. Of course we can’t all be threatened with imminent death, but it probably takes that to knock a bit of sense into our heads.”

    Meanwhile another one of my favourite musicians, and friend, Keef Baker has a new lp out inspired by the death of his father last year, under his Nimon moniker which is him doing ambient using only a guitar.

  • Nimon – Drowning in Good intentions.

    • Keith ‘keef’ baker has been a musician for over 20 years and has worked in a very wide range of styles. his output of side projects since the last ‘keef baker’ release shows just some of the stylistic range. ‘sharps injury’: powernoise, ‘ocdc’: complextro, ‘crackpuncher’: grindcore, even comedic ebm: ‘mandro1d’. not to mention various micro-projects and collaborations. but nimon is something different, something much more personal. written at a time just before and not long after the death of a close family member when nothing was soothing his soul except the intensely pure sounds of brian eno, sunn o)), stars of the lid, christian fennesz and their ilk. the intention behind nimon was to create ambient music by deploying the limitless potential of the electric guitar as the only instrumentation, pouring the pain he was feeling into his playing and then tearing those recordings into pieces using sound design, reversing, pitch manipulation, time stretching and a whole world of both standard effects and maxforlive modulations resulting in deep, majestic ambient compositions, developing dense worlds of ethereal, dreamy atmospheres. with ‘drowning in good intentions’ nimon manages the remarkable feat of channeling deep emotion into a sound that’s uncompromisingly advanced and cerebral. a constant flow of superior, shimmering drones, melodic and cinematic with a dark, but sweetly sorrowful elegiac quality. ‘drowning in good intentions’ is a simultaneously a trip into despair, grief and hope.

    Heart matters

    The Heart Matters

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    Short version: The Mind on its own is pretty darn fun, but put Mind + Heart together and you’ve got something that’s infinitely Awesome 🙂

    Longer version: This something I’ve suspected for a while, and as a believer in the Chakra system (of which the Heart is one of the Severn energy centres) something I made a conscious effort via a magical working to ‘open’ that energy centre last year (the key phrase of which “Do you want to be a Grumpy old  man”). A working I might hasten to add had a very dramatic and noticeable effect in the second half of the year 🙂

    However all that was slightly turning on the tap compared to what happened when some new information, summed up by the the video at the end of this post, unlocked new realisations on how central the Heart is and how to practically use it in every day life.

    Important realisations.

    • The Heart is the centre which all other energy centres send energy flow through in your personal system (micro), and the link to the external energy grid (i.e. the rest of the world). If your Heart is closed then this puts a squeeze on the other energy centres, and in time the whole thing breaks down.
    • Also the Heart thinks. There is evidence from the scientific community on this one (see linked article below and the video at the end of this post). This is codified in our language by the old saying “Follow your Heart”. A lot of our problems are caused by over reliance on the Mind, and ignoring the Heart. Get the two working together and you’ve got a very strong partnership. I’ve been putting the principle I started this post with (the short version) into practice for the last seven days and its had a huge effect on my life. During that time I’ve had a very intense family crisis that having my Heart switched on has allowed me to zoom through it and actually come out ahead.
    • “Compared to the electromagnetic field produced by the brain, the electrical component of the heart’s field is about 60 times greater in amplitude, and permeates every cell in the body”, Open your Heart and you are working on energy plus when compared with just working on Mind alone.
    • You don’t have to do some intense  form of yoga, kung-fu, magic, charakra working to open the heart and work with it. Just say hello, give it a bit of attention and let it do its thing.  Meditation, Yoga etc. may help you develop and refine, but you can’t beat just listening and acknowledging it and building it up by living with it switched on.
    • You’ll know when your Heart is open, since you’ll feel a warmth throughout your body, your thoughts will be fluid and you’ll generally feel upbeat and at ease with the world. It will also be very difficult to knock you from that position, unless you actively give into Fear (because you think you should do) which closes down the Heart and pushes you into Mind.

    I realise I’ve probably jumped ahead and mentioned stuff a few folk who read my blog will be unfamiliar with. But this realisation really has linked and made sense of a lot of things that I’ve been working with for a good 20 years and sharply upped the ante of my life. I therefore felt it important enough to dive right in and shout out.  From now on I’ll be categorising posts that deal with what is popularly termed “the metaphysical” with the category “Heart matters”.

    Right the following video is a good 12 minute summary, enjoy and enrich.