freeg131: Philip Gamble

On arriving back home from school after book return day my mum said that Tank Montana, the breakfast show host on our local radio station, had been suspended.

Was this, I wondered, because of a trail for his breakfast show (which I never listen to), which appeared to imply that Amy Winehouse was taking drugs - apparently not.

From a rather quickly read out statement I believe he has been suspended until at least the 1st of July because he recorded a conversation with his boss (I have no idea if this was played on air or not).

The most exciting thing to happen on Mercury since Tom and Kez’s breakfast show.

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Walking home from school this lunch time along the Grand Union canal with Jon I was disappointed to find that I wasn’t able to provide proof of the existence of a mini-railway which used to run along the bank of the canal parallel to Beggars Bush Lane. I remember seeing the mini railway, similar to the one in Cassiobury Park, when I was younger and went on bike rides with my dad.

All that I saw of it today was would could have been an engine shed and a sign saying “No Locomotives past this point”. Great. Now Jon probably thinks I made it up….

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Yesterday lunchtime I was invited along with Jon to attend Mr Needlestone’s first student e-council meeting to discuss the use of technology in school and in particular our school’s e-learning resource, Rickypedia. Most years were represented and I was surprised to see that I actually knew a couple of the lower school members.

I couldn’t stay for the full meeting as I then had to demonstrate my computing coursework to Mr Cruse. And yes, it went wrong. This was followed by a discussion about GameMaker - Mr Cruse is considering teaching in it to Year 9 (but couldn’t complete the 1945 tutorial!), and my websites - primarily GameMaker Blog but also some general talk about SEO (mainly how I ‘hijacked’ 3rd place in a search for “Rickmansworth School“).

This was followed by Computing in which we undertook a field-trip. To the room next door, the library and LI6 to inspect hubs and the server. What fun! Still it made a change from the normal lesson format.

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You may know that I run several websites which relate to YoYoGames’ Game Maker software as well as contribute to the MarkUp game development magazine which focuses on the Game Maker platform.

Despite the apparent lack of recent developments in Game Maker, Game Maker 8 is not due until at least 2009, Game Maker’s appeal is growing. So much so that in this year’s ‘activity week’ at my school it looks as if one of my computing teachers will be running a Game Maker course.

My major GameMaker projects:

• Game Maker Blog - popular GameMaker news, comment and opinion blog
• Game Maker Affiliation Service - button/banner exchange service for Game Maker websites

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