Nachimir

It varies a lot, and it's pretty hard to find prices online. Mine's around £1000 a year, and he does my returns, payroll, and is authorised as my agent to take care of all dealings with HMRC. I think he's probably at the expensive end of the spectrum, but by no means the most expensive. One person I know said theirs is about £400 a year, but when I was looking for quotes none I got were anywhere near that low (IIRC, £800 or so was the lowest I found). Likewise, another person I know who runs a small shop and does freelance work got a quote for loads of stuff for £300, but the accountant then didn't do the work. It's worth asking the people you know and choosing carefully. Cost isn't the only factor. Get one who is based near you so you can meet them face to face when need be; several times in the past few years we've needed to discuss aspects of the business or changes to the tax system. I met informally with a few before settling on one who seemed to understand my business, too. Others seemed perfectly competent, but had absolutely no clue about the internet or any kind of business that works online. At the very beginning, I had the best intentions of learning to do all of this stuff myself, but quickly realised they didn't translate into action or actual willingness; just a nagging, annoying to do item that seems to have something else more important floating in front until a deadline approaches. If you're disciplined and willing to put in the research to understand the tax system, maybe you can do it yourself, but I don't know many people who run businesses for whom it's not a huge headache without an accountant. IMO, unless you're willing to take time off work to do it, tax stuff does not mix well at all with anything else that requires project management. Record keeping can be pretty easy if you do a lot of stuff online. Both my bank and paypal offer CSVs of all transactions, and beyond that the records I need to keep are mainly a cashbook, all invoices and receipts, and a record of my own pay. Updating records is trivial with something like a google spreadsheet, and collating all of the records to send to the accountant is a few hours work, tops. (Edit: "you're", not "your". Oops)

Let's not Yes, I'm sure. I was very much a part of the mapping community at the time, and response to 2K3 was lackluster. At the time 2K4 was approaching, there was some "It's like a sports franchise, maybe we'll do a yearly release like Madden" talk from Epic too, but I'm almost certain it was tweaked to feel a little more like UT99, and a lot of fans of the series were pretty relieved by that. At the time, Epic were exceptionally good at maintaining contact with their community of players, mapmakers and modders; even those high up in the company would regularly respond to email from fans. I played both 2K4 and 99 at a LAN party the other week, and IMO 99 has held up much better over time (The heightmaps that were new in that version of the engine led to some big, wide open outdoor deathmatch maps, which don't work well with that design). Anyway, it's easy for developers to talk big about their new upcoming FPS, and Epic have definitely had their peaks and troughs with UT. I really hope Spire lives up to what the developers are aiming for, and I'm pleased to see indies tackling genres that previously only seemed open to big studios.

Ok, something sensible: Having an accountant. He costs me a not insignificant chunk of change per year, but he gives me excellent, sensible advice; notifies me of things that might be useful financially; has ready answers to a lot of questions that otherwise have cloudy answers online; frees up time I'd otherwise spend on admin, learning to jump through bureaucratic hoops, and probably screwing up something important; and most of all, sorting out my company and personal tax returns plus everything related to them this month has been an absolute breeze (compared to other years when I did my personal return myself, and also compared to the freelancers I know who are right now procrastinating and pulling their hair out as the deadline approaches). If you freelance or have even a small company, I really recommend getting an accountant. If you use the time you save to work instead of playing games in your underpants, then it will probably offset the cost.

APOD regularly has excellent stuff. I love this long exposure with fireflies.

I'm interested. The way they talk about Quake make me a little nervous, because it reminds me a lot of the interviews done to hype Unreal Tournament 2003 (Basically: "It's going to be amazing because we're designing it with focus groups of eSports FPS players!". Cue rerelease a year later as UT2004, mostly to make it feel less clunky). Then again, this is a small indie studio: They wouldn't do that, and I think stand a higher chance of making a coherent, interesting design. I like that they evidently understand how procedural generation can make stuff bland, and are working against that.

Yeah, good luck to them firing AR-15s at tanks and drones (in their absurd, paranoid alternate future).

I would like him to repeat and meditate on those words until realisation strikes.

Thanks. It was a few hours work, mostly due to setup and calculations. A CNC lathe could probably do it in under a minute. It does indeed seem like magic to take a chunk of stock and turn it into an actual thing. Drawing things in CAD and feeding them to the laser cutter, 3D printer or CNC mill feels very similar; you knock up an idea on a screen, and a few minutes or hours later, you're holding an actual object.

There was a guy on Twitter who made an excellent mockery of this, by tweeting links to new stories about other mass shootings in the USA, along with the text "We need an armed federal agent in every [location]". Among many, the list included school, post office, government building, and… drum roll: Federal agency. Also, Columbine High and Virignia Tech both had armed guards

I think what the publisher meant was "conversation in which the owner is struck". Given some of the stories I've heard and seeing some of the seamier bits of Reddit emerge in the last few years, I'm only partially surprised. The games industry has a hardcore of actual misogynists and sexists in it who won't respond to reasoning or perhaps even ever empathise with, you know, the other half of their own fucking species. The rest of the industry simply has to work to distance itself from them, in a "No, they're not what games are, they're just culturally shit games from a very specific part of our industry" kind of way.

I needed an obsolete type of bolt for a BMX I restored, and couldn't find one anywhere except a mild steel (hence easily rusted), shit one. Yesterday I met someone for a bit of lathe tuition and made this: into this: Lathes can be incredibly therapeutic to use. There are a load of how it's made photos here.

I thought it didn't seem like you, but taken alone, the text seemed more than plausible for thing-someone-would-say-on-the-internet-and-be-totally-sincere-about

Erm, not quite (First drop cap to next page. tl;dr: Because of 24, U.S. army courses in interrogation had idiots turning up with useless preconceptions that cause shit like Abu Ghraib). I'm not saying that violence in games is bad, because I don't believe it is, but a parallel with torture isn't exactly accurate. Sure, it doesn't compel any of us to immediately go out and hurt someone else, but most depictions of it do place in our heads a completely inaccurate model of human behaviour and effective action.

I got this when it was on sale yesterday. At first, I played on normal and got intensely annoyed at how quickly it can wipe out even a well set up ship. On easy, I'm finding it quite addictive, but I still suck: High score of 917. I quite like the Engi ship that has drone control from the start, with the Kestrel I was struggling to get past 550.

Edit: Old patent, but published this year: http://thesilentchief.com/2013/01/11/new-playstation-move-design-discovered-in-latest-sony-patent/ It looks fine when with CLOP to see what happens and everyone is a bit drunk. With the gravitas of a patent around it, it looks significantly more unhinged.

I have a Kindle 4, and find I'm more inclined to actually get all the way through a book on it. I have all kinds of half-read paper books lying around, but if I start something on the kindle I usually finish it. I also like that it's so thin and hence easy to pack. If you travel or commute a lot, Kindle > paper. I did try reading a PDF on it before, stared at it slack jawed for a few seconds, then quietly closed it and went back to a formatted ebook. That and searching really do kind of suck on it, but reading and marking pages work well.

Sony patent, apparently:

Hah. The ultimate game: Writing from c. 1996, volunteer team organisation from c. 2002

I think the postfix -punk now means "Not even tiny little bit punk". Oh god the writing: It's like a mod idea without the typos. If it didn't have the incredibly glossy trailer above it, I'd expect the last line to be "It's going to be amazing, I just need coders, texture artists, level designers, an audio guy, and 3D modellers to make it happen. My job as team lead is game design and ideas".

One day, there will be a Big Big Dog and it will carry this: http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-20944726

No, you're absolutely right, and I agree. The film itself is also very concerned aesthetics and mood though, I wish more filmmakers could make the jump from their film to a trailer that does that

Bleak, ambient track at the bottom of this post: http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2012/12/jasper-tx-an-index-of-failure/ Fluid Radio post some good stuff.

The trailer plucks scenes from a surprising amount of the film, but I suppose that's because it is a very slow, almost ambient film. It doesn't give away important plot points or the finale though. I enjoyed it because I'm a sucker for anything involving cults, feral/desocialised children, and the insane feelgood hippy institutes that sprang up in California and ended up ultimately harming people. All of which Beyond The Black Rainbow touches on.

Yes! A part of that is that your eyes move slightly further apart or closer together depending on how far away the object you're focusing on is (2D planes not a problem, but overriding the reflex can give some people eyestrain in 3D films). I'd guess most of it is just that we're conditioned by everything else we've ever seen at the cinema and on TV though.