Warning! Politics and Elections Ahead
A ballot paper used in the 2005 UK General Election. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) If you are in the UK it won't have escaped your notice that we have a General Election in a few weeks (on Thursday 7th May). Campaigning hasn't moved into high gear yet, but it will next week when Parliament is prorogued. (Maybe that word implies a lot about our politicians, pro rogues!) don't care about politics? Voting isn't mandatory in the UK. However, t if you don't vote don't expect anyone to listen to you complain about the government or anything affected by what it does. That includes the economy, housing, immigration, defence, policing, traffic, trains, prices of things, the NHS, public services, or just about everything else. In fact you can probably only talk about the weather, reality TV and football. I personally don't want…
Verify on Gov.UK – a user experience
Verify postcard (image: GDS / Crown Copyright) I had occasion to become a beta user for the Government Digital Service sponsored Verify service (previously known as IDA - Identity Assurance). I'd come across Verify before at work, I spent the first six months of 2014 as the product owner for a digital service that was looking at integrating Verify at a later stage. Right now there are only two accredited providers for Verify, although there are several others building their services for later stages. You have the choice of either Digidentity or Experian. Both of these have been through an accreditation process with GDS. I initially chose Digidentity because I'm in favour of competition and it was less recognisable to most people than Experian is. Digidentity I really liked the way that Digidentity looked, and they had a clear process…
Megagame – Watch the Skies 2: Global Conspiracy
This is a copy of an article from my game blog On Saturday I was the lead control for the East Asia region in Megagame Makers largest game so far, Watch the Skies: Global Conspiracy. You can read rather a lot about it on twitter, facebook, reddit and a number of blogs because there were over 300 people involved in this megagame. Look for #WTS2 to find some of it. So my role started some time ago, the first Watch the Skies megagame, with a mere 50 players, was filmed by the chaps at Shut Up & Sit Down and megagames became insanely popular. I missed WTS because of family commitments (it was my daughter's birthday weekend). WTS2, and just about every other megagame, got booked up overnight and I couldn't get a space on it. Jim Wallman had a plan…
Book Review – Masaryk Station by David Downing
Masaryk Station by David Downing My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very satisfying end to the series, although still leaving me with a wish for a more detailed epilogue that told us more about the rest of the cast's lives. As with the others there is a lot of history being told here, Downing does his research and then puts it on the page. Although one obvious lack was the bit about copying a film where the story goes straight from copying to playback without going through the development process. This is in an era where chemical processing was needed to view pictures on film after they'd been shot. Given the rest of the research I'd have thought that was known to Downing. I did enjoy this though, and there were a number of different angles. Logo of the…
Author Interview – Kevin McLeod
Kevin McLeod is the author of the Viking's Apprentice series, award winning children's adventure stories. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I've been writing stories since I was in primary school. I really started to get properly interested in writing after reading The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King. It's a brilliant story written for his children. Do you write for a living, or do you also do other work? I gave up my day job on my 39th birthday as a present to myself for the success of The Viking's Apprentice. I used to work for the Civil service. I've never looked back. How did you get into being a professional writer, and how much effort did it take to be able to write full time? I always enjoyed writing and I…