Ever since Nidzumi was sold I’ve had a lot more free time. While as much as I would like to convince myself that Football Manager is a worthy way to burn that time, it’s probably not. So, call it a summer project with long term ambitions but I’ve recently launched my next project.

You see, ever since Nidzumi was sold and subsequently closed (apparently) I’ve been listening to more music. It’s been great really. The only problem is, and I’m trying not to sound like one of those people, that not many people are aware of the cliché-free hip-hop I’ve been listening to. Now I’m going to stop there because we’re entering pretentious music listener territory, which is the opposite of what I wanted to achieve with the site. So instead of rambling on I’ll let you visit Lesson Six.

This is probably something I should have done a long time ago and for anyone left in the lurch, I apologise. I don’t know why it has taken me this long to do it but I guess it’s justified my choice in the first place. Let me explain.

I’ve spent the last two and a bit years of my life constantly updating a site called Nidzumi. Me and a couple of friends started it while in college but I still couldn’t tell you exactly why but I’ll do my best. I wrote a few articles for a site called MSXBOX-World and the more I got involved, the more I wanted to do. I kept pushing for new features and content but I was frequently rejected. Hindsight tells me that they weren’t just being tough for toughs sake, it’s actually difficult keeping the basics of a site running before you can run off doing podcasts and columns. I didn’t know that and left to start my own site

Admittedly none of us could write at that point – I still probably can’t now – but that didn’t matter so much, we had fun doing it. The truth is, we were just doing it for fun, at this point I had no idea about review copies or perks like that. I still remember my first review copy, Euro 2008. I was chuffed, like we had made it or something, I didn’t know that my 360 would keel over and destroy the disk but that didn’t really matter.

As the friends moved on, Nidzumi was solely left to me. Again, with hindsight I would have scoured the net for staff to keep the site constantly updated but I didn’t. I reviewed every game, wrote every article and edited everything as well.

Really, it wasn’t until late last year that I started to get some new talent on board. The problem is that by that point I was already burnt out, I just didn’t know it yet. I mean if you want to turn something you love into a chore, open a website about it and try to run it by yourself day after day. Chore is probably too strong of a word, if it was really a chore I wouldn’t have done it for two years but you get the idea.

At the risk of sounding like an awards speech, I would like to thank everyone who wrote for the site at one point or another. Daniel Lipscombe, Ewan Aiton, Jen Allen, Steven Wright, Matthew Maharaj, everyone who signed up originally, everyone who wrote features towards the end and anyone else I’m probably forgetting. Oh, and I’d like to thank god, I’m not religious or anything but I think it’s the law to mention him in your award speech.

I guess I should get onto what eventually happened to the place. Well after my last birthday I decided that focusing on my Graphic Design course would probably be more helpful. For those who don’t know I also study Graphic Design down in Falmouth. Now Graphic Design isn’t your normal type of do a bit of reading every now and then degree, you have to constantly be thinking and working on projects. I’m not saying that a Design degree is harder, but if you want to do well it’s constant work, and I want to do well.

So that’s why I sold Nidzumi.

I have no idea what’s happening with it now. I don’t know who would buy a site and then not use it, but that is what’s happened to it. I wanted to still write for it in some capacity but that’s looking less and less likely with every day the site is inactive. It’s a shame, but surprisingly I’m not so hung up on it.

The past few months have allowed me to make so much progress at Uni, have more free-time to cook recipes on BBC Good Food and for the first time in nearly three years, play a game for what it is. Not that I’ve been able to play a game like a normal person yet, I’m still doing the odd freelance job.

So that’s it really. Thanks for reading this long and overdue post that could have been summed up in one sentence; Nidzumi was a fun couple of years but I’ve sold it now.

Any questions?

Not even a third of the way through but despite having to play catch up and abuse the scheduling feature of Wordpress every step of the way, it’s still going well. Here’s to the next 100, thanks for reading.

Now that the veil has kind of been lifted on Daniel Lipscombe’s (Former Reviews Editor at Nidzumi) upcoming project, why don’t we blog about it? Naturally I’ll be covering the design of the whole process but I’m actually more excited about the prospect of writing for the site.

Back in the early days of Nidzumi I occasionally wrote features called Back In Time. Now BIT were short retrospective reviews of old games – basically just an excuse to indulge in a little nostalgia. I only wrote a few of them but the time spent going back with a critical mind on games like Blade Runner, Omikron and SimCity were some of the most enjoyable moments while running Nidzumi.

I’m really relishing the opportunity of going back through the years and reminiscing with some classics, digging out some diamonds in the rough and having problems getting old games to work. Alright maybe not that last pint but it’s an exciting time, a brand new site and all.

I made some tweaks to the blog. Mainly the sidebar, actually just the sidebar.

I rarely get comments on this blog, don’t worry I’m not pleading for comments or anything. I just thought, considering nothing else of importance has happened today, I should repost the comment above.

It’s safe to call it spam. Gene probably didn’t find the article on Google and didn’t think it was great. I disregarded it as spam until I realised that the image I used on that post was a 3D shark and his website is watchsharktankonline.com. It just makes me laugh how the internet works sometimes.

Between working on a new brief, editing articles for Nidzumi and getting Basingstoke up into the Premier League (stuck in the Championship at this point) I haven’t really done all that much today – I know, a big surprise.

I did however, make Pizza from scratch. Well I say from scratch, we made the dough from yeast, flour and the trimmings but we didn’t grow our own tomatoes or anything. Although I am currently growing some intense looking parsley, which after a week of nothing is now coming through at an alarming rate, like we’ve given it plant steroids or something.

Do they exist? They would mess up those weird competitions with giant turnips in village tents.

Anyway that’s your lot for today.

Don’t worry I’m not quitting one a day, although we seem to be dropping like flies recently. Ever since our, for lack of a better word, leader dropped out some time last week, the rumblings across the network have been that people are looking to quit. We’re a little past fifty days into this challenge – a seventh of the way – and people are already thinking about stopping. You guys make me sick…

Well that’s not true because I’ve been thinking the exact same thing. I’ll be honest, I jumped on the bandwagon because of the talk going on over twitter during the first few days of the year. But as the days and blog posts have been crossed off, my posts have become less eventful or meaningful. I’m starting to wonder what I’ll really get at the end of it all.

With that said I’m still enjoying the whole process and I can’t wait, come January 1st 2011, to say I made a blog post every single day.

I’m still trying to figure out why I’m doing this #oneaday one a blog post a day. I frequently have ideas for articles that I either don’t have the time for, or ideas that will result in too short or scattershot posts. This blog would be an ideal place for the latter but ever since I signed up for this scheme those ideas have bolted.

I’m thinking of buying an additional Moleskine journal for me to write down any self-indulgent thoughts or queries while I’m not thinking about writing. That way when I come back to the screen I’ll at very least have a list of illogical thoughts to dump into a word document. That will be vaguely entertaining right?

Maybe I’ll post some theorems on Monopoly or Darts. Those are pretty much the two things I’m getting into at the moment. What is weird is that no video game, maybe bar Tetris, has had the long lasting appeal of these traditional games. I wonder if in sixty years or so we’ll still be playing Modern Warfare 2 or Peggle? Probably not, unless I’m still struggling on those latter spec ops levels.