SELECT * FROM Shane

In my daily lunchtime-wasting internet crawl today, I stumbled across an interview with Robin Hobb, bestselling author of (among other series) the Assassin’s Apprentice Trilogy, which I own, signed by her, and of which I have read the first volume.

Although interviews asking writers how they find the time to write are a-dime-a-dozen, I haven’t really read one since it became a real issue for me. Since starting full-time work, and getting married and starting a family, basically. And it really hit home this time. With my life destined only to get even more full of non-writing activity, I’ve begun to realise that it would be all too easy to just stop writing, and never pick it back up again.

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In 2007, the hotly anticipated Star Wars video game The Force Unleashed debuted its epic trailer at that year’s E3 convention. This trailer’s most notable feature was the amazing and dramatic footage of an anonymous Force-wielding character bringing a huge Star Destroyer crashing to the ground using only the Force.

It definitely impressed me, and I made a mental note that I was going to play this game.

I recently had a chance to play a version of this game that included this mission (previously, I had played the Wii version, which was cool because you got to wave the wand like a lightsaber and things like Force Push actually required a push action, but the Star Destroyer battle was omitted), and found myself immediately in two minds about it.

While I don’t think this battle was the unmitigated disaster that so many people on the internet seem to have written it off as, it wasn’t the jaw-dropping teeth-clenching awe-inspiring life-defining battle it had been built up as. Here are a few reasons why.

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Last week, a job ad appeared on SEEK for a Biotic-Powered Super-Soldier. It was, of course, an ad for the upcoming PC and XBox 360 game Mass Effect 2.

After a bit of thought, and after perusing the Terms Of Use on the SEEK website, I find myself wondering whether it was right (or even legal) for this ad to have been posted.

No one could claim that advertising is a morally (or even legally) upright field. In fact, there’s no one who wouldn’t actually laugh at that suggestion. But this ad for Mass Effect 2 has gotten me thinking all over again about advertising, and how it really has infiltrated every aspect of our lives.

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Hello out there! If you’re reading this, you’re probably a bit lost. On the off-chance that you are actually here to read about this blog and its author, here are some highlights.

The title “SELECT * FROM Shane” is a simple SQL statement that essentially means “select all columns in the data table called Shane,” or in non-geek-speak, “Everything in Shane.”

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