What I detail in this account of my final day at Moonfruit, I assure you, will contain nothing but pure fact. I’m not one to exaggerate or bend the truth so I’ll keep it plain and simple. I’ve said before do not expect any visual pyrotechnics or poetic evocations, for I am writing simply of my experiences as an Intern.

I walked into Moonfruit headquarters on my final day. Trotting down the hallway I found myself listening to the wearisome drones of Sarah Lamb – one of my bosses – complaining of how bored she was last night as she watched the vacuous face of Simon Cowell recite his motives for crushing someone else’s X Factor dreams. I became irritated at her stupidity, complaining that was impossible considering it was a Thursday night and X Factor’s on a Saturday – Sunday for results – and that Simon Cowell had passed his reins on to Gary Barlow who, when he talks can hit less notes than Brum on a day with the ducks. ‘You’re awake, that’s good,’ she said. At the time I didn’t know why that was good, but soon I was to find out the crisis that was sweeping through the building.

I entered the office to be cornered by Joe White. He told me there had been a robbery and that Moonfruit’s fruit had been stolen. You may not know, but the only way Moonfruit are able to perform their duty as guardians of the site-building sphere is by channelling the forces of the supernatural fruit in their possession. This fruit was only obtained by chance, as Wendy Tan White on one of her weekly spelunking trips was distracted by a peculiar shimmering light. She approached it to find an outlandish man dressed in medieval attire who to this day still claims to be a descendant of Odin - Eirik Pettersen. Wendy however was not looking at the riddle that was Pettersen, as she had eyes only for what he had cupped in his hands – a shining sphere that looked like it had had a bite taken out of it. The two agreed it could not have been from this world, assuming it to have been harvested from somewhere alien, somewhere like the moon!

That was the day Moonfruit was born. It is said that there are still some forces the fruit has which are yet to be explained, one of which is a strange attraction or pull it has on some individuals. It is this pull which brought Joe White to Moonfruit. After graduating from Cambridge with a degree in Economics, Joe tried his chances in Minor League Baseball but failed due to a recurring wrist injury he picked up in his teenage years. Luckily every cloud has a silver lining, as what had crippled Joe’s sporting ambitions proved significant in his business success. He had built up a detailed knowledge of the internet industry in his youthful years, and he will say to this day that it was the power of the fruit which helped him utilise and not be embarrassed by what he knew.

However today Joe was a shell of the man I once knew. The office seemed cold and restrained. I asked, ‘What must I do?’

To be continued...

When I got to the bus stop I had to take off my shoes, belt, watch and anything else that could be flogged for the metal inside it. I walked through the body scanning machine to hear it sound an alarm so I was ordered to repeat the walk of shame to hear it go off again... and again... After that I’m given the all over by a red coloured stick to find a bleep coming from my pocket – chewing gum wrapper. I’m all hot faced and rattled (not because of my ginger induced pigmentation), but I’m still not excused as there’s a problem with my bag going through the x-ray machine. Kindly asked to slowly open and remove items from my bag I’m to find there’s a slight problem with my phone – I was on 3! While this is all happening my bus has come and gone but I don’t know this because there’s over 100 platforms where the bus could stop, and there’s little signposting indicating where I should go. Far from leaving security though, I turned see my friend having troubles of his own – a small fart through the body scanning machine led the authorities to think he was transporting animals illegally. We run through the bus stop in our socks for better corner-slipping speed for 10 more minutes and find our platform with a closed door and a grim face on the conductor. ‘You’re too late,’ he tells us regardless of our pleading. We are left to sit and wait for the next bus – 6 hours from now.

‘You wouldn’t turn up to a bus stop three hours early, so why would you do it at an airport for a plane?’ That’s the question my friend asked me as we found ourselves in a file of cars outside the airport at 5.30 on Friday morning with our flight leaving in less than an hour. Take what I wrote about the fantasy bus stop from hell in the paragraph above and apply it to an airport. I hope my friend takes note of this and realises there’s a slight difference between catching a bus and the marathon that is catching a plane. You might be able to decipher that yes, we did miss our plane.

Anthony

Christmas came early for the children of Germany last week, as the German ban on Doom was finally lifted after 17 years. Doom, considered a game ‘which captured the imagination of a genre of gamers,’ is a first-person shooter in which an unnamed space marine has been chastised after assaulting his commanding officer, who had horrifically ordered his unit to fire upon civilians – our hero was sent to Mars. A gallant character who demonstrates such valour in the face of adversity warrants a good game, and the gamer is not found wanting.

The forgotten warrior is caught up on what was previously considered a dull planet where ‘your day consisted of suckin’ dust and watchin’ restricted flicks in the rec room.’ My only criticism here is the people at ID Software could have learned to annunciate, but I soon forgot about pronounciation when the planet experiment backfired leaving the unnamed marine – you by this point - as the sole remaining human on Mars, your duty being to fight through the entire onslaught of demonic enemies in order to keep them from attacking the Earth.

Everyone who hasn’t grown up in Germany knows how the rest of the game unfolds, but what is significant about Doom is that it carries one of the earliest cases of an online community. The ability of others to customise levels and otherwise modify the game, in the form of WAD files was a popular aspect of Doom. It was the first mod-making community, affecting the culture surrounding first-person shooters, and even the industry. For the majority of WAD cases several custom levels mostly in the style of the original game were made, while others implemented new monsters and resources. This led to brands from popular culture being tuned into Doom WADs by fans – marketing had never been so easy!

Germany’s ban is quite bizarre; for starters because other versions of the Doom franchise such as Gameboy Advance, had previously been approved. As for the original Doom, all copies rested silently in the dusty confines of a back alley sex shop, nestled between a stack of age-old pornography and a secondhand muzzle-like device – like pornography, sales of the violent shoot em’ up were restricted to adult stores only. It is now considered to be of artistic and scientific interest, and after appeals from Bethesda Softworks (the current owner of ID Software), the ban has been lifted with jubilation felt across not only Germany but the gaming world.

The conclusion was that such pixellated violence surely cannot pose a threat to children, as those lifting the ban decided it was a title of ‘mainly historical interest’ which was unlikely to be played by children. Therefore they had decided that Doom equated to an old piece of furniture in an antique shop and it is thought that children hate antique shopping. Try making a ‘bull in a china/antique shop’ joke there, because I failed miserably at it.

Anthony

As I’ve said in recent blogs, social media platforms are powerful tools, and of late they’ve been very powerful tools for pending revolutions throughout the world. Everybody knows of the social media concerns to the hierarchy in Tunisia and Egypt, so much in Egypt that Mubarak banned the use of social media altogether - Was it work related stress that condemned him to his hospital bed? But now with the most recent upheaval in Libya, we can again look to social media for the dissemination of news and explanations on whether the rebels can put down a ‘mad dog.’

Phone networks throughout Libya were shut down back in February as a way to stifle the brewing rebellion. However, rebels were able to hack into the networks and created ‘Free Libyana,’ which restored coverage of the rebellion to approximately 750000 rebels. The Free Generation Movement has over the last 6 months informed all what is happening in the capital, including the co-ordinates of potential snipers. Furthermore, the National Front of the Salvation of Libya tweeted yesterday ‘welcome to all our brothers and sisters from inside Tripoli on Twitter… Internet returns to them for the first time in a long time! #Feb17#Libya.’ It is clear from this that social networking sites are undoubtedly indispensible to the rebel forces in Libya – there is more to Facebook than it just being an evolved dating site!

Social media has played a role in the anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and Northern Africa, but is it technology or the people driving these demonstrations?

Anthony