Things I miss

Florida is feeling more and more like my home now. I've been here for nearly five months, and England is beginning to feel somewhat far away. I still miss a few things about the old country, though.

• Sausages. Of all the foods I expected to miss, it's proper English sausages, with mashed potatoes I miss most. The stuff they call sausage here just isn't right. And salami and wurst, while they're also sausages, are just not what you need for bangers and mash. If I really felt like it, I could get some at The English Shoppe (sic) but I can't quite bring myself to go in there. When I get back to England, expect me to gorge myself on sausages for at least three days.
• Decent Indian food. The Thai food is fabulous here, and the Asian food in general is astounding, but I still haven't found a good curry. I love making it myself, but I haven't cooked a proper curry in ages, because I just don't have the ingredients. I've been told a few places to buy good Indian spices, but I do miss having a huge selection in every supermarket, and I really miss having Mill Road on my doorstep.
• Fish and chips. Yes, they sell fish and chips in the local Irish pub. It's not the same. It's really not. I crave Tommy Tucker's. (You may detect a food-related theme emerging here...)
• Top Gear. Yes, yes, I know you can get it on cable. And I know you can torrent it. But we don't have cable, and I can't be arsed to torrent it. Top Gear was pretty well the only show I watched on British TV in 2009, and I just used to like settling down on a Sunday evening with a beer watching the Hamster.
• Old stone buildings. I grew up in school buildings 600 years old. I went to university in buildings 500 years old. I owned a house with bits well over 400 years old. It's weird being in a place where anything older than me is called "historic". Orlando and Winter Park literally did not exist 120 years ago, and most of it is only a few decades old. I yearn for places where you can sense the passage of time. Maybe ancient Indian mounds will do the trick.

Tomorrow: things I expected to miss, but don't.

Huzzah!

It's exciting times in Mongoose World right now.

I just got back from the Picturehouse, where we did the final tests of the Cambridge Film Festival machinima stuff. Damn, it looks good on a big screen. Really, seriously, good. Even though I've seen all the films at least half a dozen times now, I'm going to be right there in the audience just to get the experience of watching machine cinema writ large. The festival kicks off in a few hours, and I'm going to set up home in the Picturehouse for a few days, hoping to meet as many of you as possible.

And yesterday was just unbelievable. I've had people I haven't heard from in years contacting me to tell me they'd seen me on BBC news, on ITV news, and on the BBC Web site. I spent all day being swamped by investors, technology partners, media companies and journalists enthusing about Moviestorm, wanting to know more, and itching to get home and try it for themselves. Now I'm being asked to go all over the place and talk about Moviestorm, from schools to TV companies, major corporations, and indie film groups.

It's like my little baby is growing up. Personally and professionally, I've never felt more excited or fulfilled. I can see a huge future for machinima, and a huge future for Moviestorm within that.

And at the same time, I'm somehow finding the time to write my own films, even if I haven't got around to shooting them, which is an immense source of pleasure. The knowledge that I could shoot them gives me encouragement. When the frenzy dies down a bit, I'll move out of Celtx and back into Moviestorm.

To everyone who's helped, encouraged, criticised, nagged, or just cheered from the sidelines: thanks for making this happen. Let's carry on changing the world of film.

Do credits on TV matter?

So the BBC is being forced to rethink the way it scrunches the credits into a corner. Which is great news for actors and crew who like to see their name on a show they've worked on. And great news for people who actually care who did the music or the dubbing or who the executive producer was. But how many ordinary viewers actually give a monkey's? Do you watch the credits? Do you care if they're squished - or even cut? Or do you think they should be shown out of respect for the creators?