Hiatus

I'm going to be away attending an English folk festival (I was invited, OK?) from the 1st of August until the 11th so I'm going to have to put off my discourse on Cyber Nations until afterwards. The folk festival is being held in Sidmouth, Devon. If by some odd chance there are any NationStaters attending and wish to meet, feel free to drop by an e-mail (siroccothemod@gmail.com).

And so I leave you with the arresting image of our cat Otis above. Wish me luck and succour from hairy morris dancers.

Cyber Nations Part One

This is a photo I took of a tree on University of Aberdeen campus.

As you've probably gathered by the title this is going to be the first of a series of posts I'm going to be making about Cyber Nations, a nation-simulation site similar in concept to NationStates.

I'd just like to make it clear at this point that this isn't going to be a review or rant about the site. Cyber Nations has often been viewed as NationStates' strongest 'competitor' if the term could be applied and as such a certain amount of rivalry has amounted between the proponents of either site and I think I may anticipate a certain amount of, ah, bitchiness if I don't portray things accurately enough. I'm just going to mention my observations and discuss the general ethos of the site.

NationStates will be five years old this November while Cyber Nations is a few months shy of its second. I remember when the site launched there was a certain amount of discussion on the NationStates forums about this new game and how it would compare. I confess I didn't have any interest in the site at the time and its much more complex nation management system rather put me off. I've never been much of a video/computer game person but I have watched someone play Civilisation before and that's what instantly comes to mind when I grapple with the micro-management required in Cyber Nations, except it's spread out over months of playing rather than one sitting and obviously has the added complexity of interaction with other players. I didn't really have the patience for that so I left it alone.

Until today. Cybernations has long since passed its early developmental stages and has developed its own devoted following so I decided I'd have another bash at it and record my gameplay and thoughts here for a while until I'd had enough.

I've registered my nation and called it Plijous. The first thing I noticed was just how much more customisable your nation is than on NationStates. You can choose a capital city, a major religion, an ethnicity, name your ruler and even write a small descriptive paragraph about your nation. Technically you can choose a major religion on NationStates through issues but you're pretty much restricted to Roman Catholicism, atheism, and paganism. I'd encourage people to submit an issue concerning that so it can be remedied. Could be pretty awesome I think. None of the rest is available on NationStates though so I enjoyed the extra freedom I had to populate Plijous with Arabian frogs that glow in the dark, all the while enjoying their diverse mixture of religions to which they adhered.

I was asked to choose a nation team, which I believe is the same as a trade alliance (think European Union). All teams have their own identifying colour. Those who do not wish to be in a nation team are independent grey states. There isn't really any equivalent of a nation team in NationStates, as we don't have any in-game mechanics for alliances or trading of any sort, leaving that up to roleplay co-ordinated efforts like GDODAD. The closest we have are regions though nations aren't necessarily allied in them. This may be the same for Cyber Nations, I'm not sure yet. Like NationStates, there's an FAQ page but due to the greater complexity of the game there's huge swathes of text to read through to get an essential understanding of the game.

As well as joining a team you can join an alliance too which seems a little confusing to me but it seems to work.

Wishing to throw myself into the game I decided to join the Yellow team and an alliance called 'We Are Perth Army'. I'd vaguely looked for any NationStates ones but didn't see any nor did I really expect to since there aren't any Cyber Nations regions on NationStates. I eventually joined this alliance while looking for somewhere a Scotsman such as myself could settle in.

I'm probably mixing up steps in the nation creation process but the next thing I did was choose a place on the Cyber Nations world map which looks exactly like a world map of Earth. This quite fascinated me because NationStates doesn't have any maps other than player-created ones. I recall an attempt once to construct a world map but unsurprisingly it fell through. The premise of the Cyber Nations map is simple (and necessarily so). You have the world map and you choose a place on it to be where your nation is, be it in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, clutching to an ice shelf in the Antarctic regions or in the hearts of the major continents. I chose for myself a small island off the north coast of Russia for no especial reason. You can't see where all nations are at any time on the map and with about 35,500 nations I'm sympathetic to that.

Moving on, I was asked whether I wanted to take part in wars or not. I elected to not take part in wars because I wanted my nation to still be standing by the time I'd finished the posts for this blog. Once I've done a few posts I'll activate it and see what the war mechanics are like.

My nation was complete! Hooray! The Benevolent Tim rules his people proudly, the flag of Paraguay flapping softly in the wind and there is nothing to be heard but the distant ribbiting of the nation's biofluorescent frogs. Moderately pleased, I had my first look at my nation page.

The first thing I noticed, and it's quite hard to miss, was the large block of angry red words telling me that my nation's peaceful nature meant I wouldn't make very much money, my nation was overcrowded with 250 people to a square mile, my citizens were rioting, my nation had no infrastructure, and I should have a military to police my people. Whew! I've only just founded Plijous and already it's falling apart.

The second thing I noticed was the sidebar. NationStates has a few links. Ones to your nation, your region, issues, telegrams, the world page, and the United Nations being the important ones. Cyber Nations has about thirty which support various features as collecting taxes, buying land, improving the infrastructure, paying bills, wars, foreign aid, and so much more. This is clearly a much more demanding game than NationStates has ever been but I'm open to new challenges so I looked through them all taking note of what seemed important and what didn't.

The last thing I noticed before trying to immerse myself in the game was the resource box. The resources show what kind of things I can trade with other nations to get more money for improving the nation. All these resources have their own little effects on the populace and the nation. I have to admit that I was almost turned off at this point because as much as I like the human interaction of alliances and such, I'm not such a big fan of the micro-management side of things, the whole SimCity vibe of having to buy and sell to work your way up. My two resources are oil and wine. My dislike for this is purely a personal preference though, and not a negative assessment of the way the game works.

An interesting site to visit is the Cyber Nations wiki which parallels the NationStates wiki that we've come to know ourselves. The differences should be obvious enough for me not to comment but the greater requirement for co-operation in Cyber Nations definitely seems to have helped bolster such a dedicated wiki. I was impressed by what I saw and the wiki's definitely been useful in assessing just how strong the fanbase is for Cyber Nations. Out of curiosity I looked up NationStates which throws up this page. Even to the casual reader it's not difficult to notice a rather scathing tone to the article. I don't want to sound like I'm bitching but I do wish to take issue with some of the assumptions made in it (not the least that bizarrely enough NationStates is referred to in the past tense for a majority of the article).

Most of these larger, complex regions did most of their business on off-site forums, like InvisionFree and others, as the game itself was very limited in capability.

This is a strange comment to make since Cyber Nations does the exact same thing. All the alliances have off-site forums just like NationStates regions.

Eventually, players realized that by 'crashing' a region, and installing a new Delegate, the game could take on characteristics gravely lacking in gameplay such as war, politics, etc.

Asides from the 'gravely' which I'll get back to, I agree that we don't have any official mechanisms in the game for war excepting regional influence. But no politics? That's just wrong all over. Having battled very hard to get my region Lancre off the ground and instill enough patriotic pride in its members to grow the region until it had 50+ members was very difficult. There's no in-game mechanism for encouraging people to join you region, or persuading people to vote you for delegate, or sorting out wrangles between nations in the region who are ideologically opposed. That's all done with words, with diplomacy, and with threats. And that is what politics is.

For a long time, there was speculation that Jolt (who now administers NationStates) would create an expanded version of NationStates. However, despite the rumors, no such sequel ever came into being. Many speculate that no programmer would attempt to create a more complex game for free.

NationStates 2, I can assure you, is still being developed. And it will come. There's a rumour that we might get some more news this Autumn, so there's no need to give up hope quite yet. As for the last sentence in the quote, no one ever said NationStates 2 would be free. Quite the opposite in fact. NationStates 2 when it comes out will cost about US$5-10 (or £2.50 - 5) a month.

With the advent of Cyber Nations, however, and the rise of faster, cheaper, more accessible alternate reality programming, many speculate that NationStates will eventually decline in popularity.

Well that's just bitchy. Right now we're experiencing the usual dip in nations we get everytime it's summer but the rest of the year we do just fine.

Well, that's it for part one. In the next article I'll focus more on the details and have a look at the wider Cyber Nations community and forums.

San Francisco NationStates Meet-Up

From the furthest left to the furthest right:

Mikitivity, BongoConga, Cannot Think Of A Name, Erastide, Raistlin's Apprentice, and Pythagosaurus. Click the picture to get a bigger version.

The official thread for the meet-up is here. There are also more photos to be seen.

I'd have loved to go too but alas, I live thousands of miles away. Seems like everyone had a good time anyway, and that's the important thing.

What Kind Of NationStater Are You? - Take Two

In Aberdeen there's a nightclub called Liquid. One of my flatmates was having a birthday so he took us all there to celebrate. As it was early in the night, there were not many people at the club yet except for the dude in the image above, bopping away all by himself on the dancefloor. Marvellous.

My previous NationStates quiz went down very well, but many complained of its inaccuracy. I therefore present you with the new and improved second edition:

What Kind Of NationStater Are You?

It should be more accurate but feel free to comment (or even better - write your own NationStates quizzes and I'll link them here).

I have got myself a flat at last. It's an excellent two-bed flat with large spacious rooms, a kitchen which is twice the size of the one in my house in Crail, a TV(!), a washing machine, and double beds. I cannot express just how relieved I am to finally be rid of this cloud of uncertainty that's been hanging over me. The flat's on the bottom floor and right next to the entrance which is absolutely fantastic. I don't need to climb any stairs and moving in will be so much simpler. I literally just need to enter the front door and turn left! And the flat's right next (and I mean RIGHT NEXT) to a supermarket too which means I don't have to take an hour getting my groceries like I did at my old place.

The flat is two miles from campus but I don't mind walking, and there's a bus stop right in front of the flat if need be. I couldn't be happier.

It's not a perfect story though - Martin & Co have refused to give me and my friends back our deposit for the house/flat we tried to get for all of us. Considering it was because of Martin & Co's unbelievable behaviour that we couldn't get the place I think this is very unfair. How dare they demand my guarantor's accounts and then say they're not good enough? They shouldn't need them at all. But enough of my bitching. It just means I'm in need of even more money (the deposit was £1200 which is £300 split between the four of us) to survive the next year. It's a right bugger but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do.

New Logo

The results are in from the Create A Logo competition for the blog. The competition was a popular and fierce one; we literally had two entries competing. Very tough. Very difficult. But in the end there could only be one champion.

I have a new logo for the blog courtesy of Il Ruffino whom I thank very much. Consolations go to the second place man (or woman?), Qallegnia whose entry had many winning elements including the ever popular flightless hippo.

In third place comes Zwangzug with his entry which unfortunately didn't reach me by e-mail for some reason.

I chose Il Ruffino's because although it is pretty generic it does fit the black background of the rest of the blog while Qallegnia's faded yellow one was a bit out of place which is a shame because I really liked it.

Here is Qallegnia's entry:



And further credit has to go to Il Ruffino's NationDates logo which is trés cool. I almost wish I did run a dating agency just so I could use it. It is a seriously cool logo. So here it is:



Finally, here is Zwangzug's entry which is very awesome though I must admit a personal distaste for all 'curly' typefaces. A wonderful effort nonetheless.



Again, I applaud all competitors' creativity and I'm sure the logo will do very well until I either get sick of it or someone makes a better one. Thanks again! Should Il Ruffino wish his name to be used as that of a disputant in the next issue he is free to e-mail me.

Strange Issues

I was wandering through the issue list just now when I happened across these bizarre submission. I get lots of weird issues and I don't usually share them on the blog because I do not want to encourage people to submit silly things. But I've decided that for once I'll allow you to dip your toe in my world. I don't really think any comments will do these justice. Read on.

Title: Is half-breathing an option?

Issue: A group of environmental activists has spoken out against exhaling, saying in sign language that it hurts the environment.

Validity: Not valid for nations where breathing is outlawed or impossible.

Option 1: Prominent environmental activist @ @RANDOMNAME@ @ believes that exhaling harms the environment, and he tells you using sign language, "You mean to tell me that people can just exhale whenever and wherever they feel like here in @ @NAME@ @!? That's ridiculous! Do you know how much C02 is released when all of @ @NAME@ @'s population breathes all day and night? That air belongs to mother nature, so let's let mother nature have it, not the remains of it. For the sake of our environment, please outlaw exhaling."
[effect] exhaling has been outlawed to save the environment

Option 2: @@RANDOMNAME@@, the owner of a large tobacco company, calls you on your phone, "Hey, what's all this about not being able to exhale? You know what would happen if we all stopped breathin'! And besides, think about @ @NAME@ @'s economy! It would dry up like water in a desert. Don't do this to me, err, well I mean don't do this to us! Why don't you do somethin' more worth your while? The industrial taxes seem a bit high lately, eh?"

Option 3: An anonymously sent letter was found in your mail today. It says this, "I like breathing! Both parts of it! But I also like the environment. The problem is not just the exhaling though. It's also the breathing in. I suggest that you make special publicly available rooms across @ @NAME@ @ that you can breath legally inside. The air inside will be turned into oxygen and carbon dioxide acording to how many plants and animals are in the country at the time, and then released back into the environment. That way, people can breath sometimes, and it won't hurt the environment. It might hurt the economy ever so slightly, but wouldn't you rather breathe and have trees?
[effect] you cannot breathe in public,there are specific rooms designated for that purpose

Title: Riot against the sun

Issue: A small group have made a riot against the existence of the sun, claiming that it does not or should not in fact exist.

Validity: Not Valid if you don't have a sun or if you don't have a moon.

1. "The sun should not exist! It causes sun burns and without it, there wouldn't be global warming! We would save the environment! We must fire Mars out of a cannon into the sun! We must destroy it!" Shouts Señor Robert Stupido to a large crowd of other rioters.

2. "What kind of ****ing idiocy is this? Without the sun a million plants wouldn't grow! Many species would be extinct if not for the sun! We should strap these idiots to a rocket and fire it at the sun!" Says Flarde Jorben, famous botanist.

3. "I have a genius idea! Instead of destroying the sun we could blow up the moon! Wouldn't that be fun?" Bobby Norem, video gamer.

Title: monsters

Issue: after problems with some sinking ships on your sailing sea with fish boats disapearing the goverment has takern it op to depate

Validity: no special condisions

option:we must do something! sais jefrry aderson the leader of fishing industries. my boats are disapiering outside the coast you must send the navy out to cach hwo ever does this and ecsecute them!

option:you are going to take my ships into the sea for caching wath! skreams admiral byarboton while stiering at you! thats just waste of reacources think
of the cost if we dont cach anything,or if the rumors that the shipreck serviver told os are true,and there is a sea monster out there he call it important i call it redicules

Title: [none]

Issue: Cows have begun parachuting into your country with large signs on their backs that read "Eat mor chikin". They continue coming in larger and larger numbers and seem to be overpopulating your country. The cow population is booming. You must do something quickly.

Validity: Not valid for nations with compulsory vegetarianism.

1. Jay Unospio, Animal Rights Activist, says:"I believe these cows should be allowed to roam free in our country, as they were here first. We should also listen to their holy message and eat more chiken."

2. Kill M. All, Government Member, says: "Kill them all. KILL THEM! I think we should immediatley kill off all these nuisancse cows. It would boost our meat economy as well as clear up our country."

3. Chuck VanSquiezum, Street Bum, says: "We should capture the cows and use their foot power to power our nations' homes. Hail the cow!"

Title: Should people kick others?

Issue: A group kicked individuals have been kicked around my kickers who play in soccer and other foot sports.

Validity: Not valid for nations with good economy.

"We should stop these fools!" yells angry protester bada-bing. "We should ban all sports immediatley!!!"

"Are you kidding? Sports are very important to the economy!" replies Joe Slate, a famous soccer player. "We should throw these guys out!"

"This gave me a idea." says four-star general Patton. "We could use a kicking army for later wars so why not, huh?"

NationDates Feedback

Kilminning Rock again, this time from a distance. Looming eerily in the haar.

Today, I was looking back through my blog's posts and discovered something I'd completely forgot to post way, way back. Before I was even at university. So, here it is - something all of you will no doubt find very interesting:

I present to you a select number of the complaints we got when we decided to convert NationStates into a dating site... (all nation names or true names have been removed to protect anonymity)

Just a complaint:
You people ruined Nationstates. This disgusts me this NationDates. This is supposed to be a game where you take over a nation and form a regional government and such and you guys go and change it into NationDates. This is dispicable and I am thinking about quitting the game.
I am totally disgusted and I will never create a new nation and I will never play Nationstates 2. I would of loved to play Nationstates 2 IF it comes out but I am not giving my money to you. Social Networking???!?! What is this Myspace now?? I have a Myspace and I am not using this gay "match yourself with your ideal nation" crap.
Go away.
A disgusted nation,
[nation name removed]

--

I have a huge problem. WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH NADTION DATES? It makes it look like this is some sissy love test sight. Then the blurb- Even some nation leaders just want to MAKE OUT? Excuse me? I'm 12 years old. Plus it makes my nation look weak and pathetic. Either you repeal this monstrosity soon, or I will quit using this sight.

--

I hate pink. i hate love. this game was intended for nations to be able to fight each other and see who is the top nation. now i feel that alot of people are going to stop playing the game. i say that we change it back to the way it was. plus it don't look god an male nations!!! no one asked us if we wanted to change it, they just changed it and that violates our rights.

--

The change to the website is so stupid. The best word to describe it is super faggy. Everyone in my region hates the change and i guaruntee the we're no the only ones. I bet that soon, you'll have no-one left to play your game anymore. We want a political simulation, not some gay-ass dating site. They have better websites for that. I beg you, stop the madness, please?

--

Is the pink "NationDates" theme an elaborate april fools joke or is it a permanent thing? Please make this go away, it hurts my eyes.

--

Dear SalusaSecondus

NationDates!? I think I'm gonna puke! How much longer is this crap gonna be on my computer monitor? I wan't it off soon! This is going to deter new players, and I'm sure I won't want to come on again for the rest of February. Believe me, new nations will be rare if this keeps up. I hope this is just for valentines day, because if not, they'll be nations leaving by the minute! By the MINUTE!

Your pissed off friend,
[name removed]

--

This Nation Dates thing sucks. I'm sorry but I hate it. You should change back to the original ammediately. I loved Nationstates, but a dating site, what is up with that. And not only that but what happens when somebodies wife/husband thinks their spouse is on a dating site? CHANGE IT, PLEASE!

--

This one is a piece of art:

Dr Mr. Barry

First off I'd like to thank you for writing your book 'Jennifer Government', and producing the game 'Nation States'. I believe both are profound and quite interesting. However, due to recent circumstances, I feel a great need to email you today. This email is regarding your change to Nation States.

Based on my experience, and being a member of the NationStates game, I believe you have made a mistake by changing NS to 'NationDates'. This mistake I fear will have grave consequences. Since I appreciate this game so much, you might be able to see why I'm emailing you. To my understanding, you have made this drastic change due to the lack of income from the game. I must say that this change will only increase your income by a very little if any at all. There's a couple simple reasons for this. First being what you have changed it to. Gamers go to Nationstates.net to play a game that gives them a chance to make a nation, something that you can go around telling your friends about. But when the game also is a "dating service" type of site, right off you become embarrassed. I could just about guarantee you that you will lose a lot of customers by making this switch, just because of the pride that some of these people have. With loss of customers and new visits, revenue will decrease obviously. If your change has made income due to some sort of contract or what not, it can only be temporary, and I predict that you would probably have to make another change in the near future.

I have a few suggestions that can increase your income so as to allow you to revert back to the way you had it before. There are many ways to make income through the internet. Probably one of the easiest and helpful methods is using Google Adsense. It may seem tacky to have google ads on the bottom of your page, but the results are irresistable. When you see a google ad, that was payed for by an individual who must pay a certain amount every time that ad is clicked on. The way Google Adsense works, is you put a little "box" of Google ads anywhere on your page (normally the bottom or sides), and whenever someone clicks on the ads, you and Google split the income. You pay absolutely nothing to set it up and keep it up. The ads are also related to your site, so in your case it would have to do with government or current events or what not. Just visit this site: https://www.google.com/adsense/ And register, it's that easy. Since there's over 100,000 nations already, the potential income for NationStates is really not bad at all and could almost pay for everything right there.

Along with the Google Adsense you are going to want to advertise your site a little more. The only way anyone is going to find NationStates is through Izolt, typing in NationStates directly into a search engine, or word of mouth. Not exactly great exposure if you ask me. Capitalize on Press Release services such as i-newswire.com and PRweb.com. These sites can send out press releases that go to Search Engines and journalists across the globe, all for free. By doing this, it also increases your ranking on Google and other search engines because more keywords are used. I've used Press Releases quite often and they really do bring in lots of new visitors. One of my Forums I advertised recieved 13,000 hits in 2 days for example. You will also want to look at SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services. Most will cost money, but some are free and can greatly increase your exposure through search engines.

Having some of your staff members write articles at other Websites is an excellent idea as well. Some highly visited websites offer you the chance to write articles. By writing an article about NationStates or any of your novels will greatly increase your exposure.

Ok, so far I've talked about advertising a lot. All of that will help you get more clicks on the Google Adsense. However, there's another way to get a lot more money as well, and I believe is possible for NationStates. What I'm reffering to is Sponsorship. The size of Nationstates alone is probably enough to impress a business, but also the originality has got to count for something. I suggest having a representative or even yourself contact organizations and businesses dealing with the same topic as your site, and seeing if you can get a sponsorship worked out. A sponsorship would include just having them either pay for a banner to put on your site, or just recieving donations from that organization. You could possibly contact organizations such as the United Nations association of the United States of America (http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c=...PJpF&b=260414). Or if you want to go smaller, contact smaller organizations that deal with World Issues or government.

I definately think it is possible to make the income necessary to hold together NationStates and that switching to NationDates is futile and a big mistake that will have irreversable consequences. Please consider this email and look into it. I do really love Nationstates, and I want to see it grow, that's why I'm sending you this email today. Thanks for all the work you've done, and good luck with everything.

Sincerely,

[name removed]
United States of America

--

Hope you all enjoyed that!

Issue #216 Is In The Game

This is a picture I took of a dog in Crail Harbour. I love the way light and dark contrast and interplay here to give us a picture of a dog.

The latest issue's a bit wordy but still, I think, a good 'un. Has five options too!

Plans And Schemes

Castle Walk, Crail. I once dreamt I was running down here and being chased by flying canoes. Seriously.

Plenty of interesting things have been happening in NationStates, but it occured to me, and not for the first time, that it's difficult to get all of it into one blog and especially from my own issues-fixated point of view. When was the last time I talked about passing trends in the roleplay forums? Or new invader groups making an impact on the world? A long time I'm sure. So, to tackle this, I have decided to announce a new segment to my blog entitled 'Sirocco's Interviews' where I discuss the various facets of NationStates gameplay and recent developments in its virtual world with players and moderators alike. So watch this space, and if you feel you ought to be interviewed, feel free to e-mail me.

If I choose not to interview you, please don't be offended.

I'm also planning on replacing NuMetal's thread on issue typos since he hasn't actually updated the thing in two years and may in fact have disappeared long ago. I'm not sure. So there will be a new, cleaner, and more meticulously controlled thread in which to point out all the mistakes I've made.

So what's been happening recently? Well, one player has made very long arguments as to why NationStates moderation is unsatisfactory. He raises interesting points, but be warned: his main strategem appears to be to bore his opponents to death.

In other news, I've arranged to get a two-bed flat with a Polish friend of mine and my bone marrow registry card arrived in the mail. I kinda hope I never have to use it, but that's not an option really is it?

And finally, here's an issue which was just too bizarre not to share:

Title: lesbian nation

Text: should zoe white queen of lesbians be allowed in anyone country

Validity: condons are useless for lesbians

Option 1: zoe white says i sould be allowed there is nothing wrong with lesbians

Option 2: Samantha Keating who is zoe whites lesbian partner says lesbians r good in bed

Option 3: nathan cheslin says lesbians are wrong they should not be allowed in peoples coutrys

Issue #215 Is In The Game

This is an edited version of a photo I took of Kilminning Rock (you can see the original in a previous article somewhere).

I quite like the new issue. It has a subtle reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy which is always a selling point.

My Month Long Adventure With Martin & Co

Electricitree.

I mentioned a few articles back that I'd be heading back up to Aberdeen for the rest of the summer but that is now not going to happen because we got royally screwed by the letting agents Martin & Co. To be fair, it wasn't completely their fault, but the bits that were my fault are excusable because I have red blood running through my veins and emotions. Our general inexperience with the whole renting a house thing may have contributed but what do you expect? We also had the most appaling bad luck. We've never done it before an- OK. Maybe I should start at the beginning... the beginning... the beginning... [insert wavy flashback effect here]

It all began about a month ago. There's four of us wanting to live somewhere, preferably together, so we look around and find a four-bed flat/house amalgamation which is excellent. We contact the letting agents and let them know we're interested.

The fun begins.

The first thing they want is a deposit of £300 each for the house and guarantors' forms so that if any of us should somehow become an outrageous gambling addict they'd still get their money. We were all fairly alright with this, we could do that. When do they want it? We looked through their papers where they casually remark that finding a guarantor, printing out the forms, sending it to our guarantors, getting them filled in, and then sending it back to Martin & Co should be done within "two days" or the place goes back on the market. We of course assumed it was some kind of terrible mistake because the Royal Mail delivers letters, it does not currently employ matter transmitters. After much frustration and blood and tears they agreed to give us four more days. Bloody fantastic.

I printed out the forms which seemed to go on for ever so to save ink I turn the quality down. It's no big deal. At least it wasn't at the time.

The forms arrived back home and with so little time left it was agreed that the best way to finish this would be to scan the signed forms on the computer and then e-mail them to the company. Ah, big sigh of relief. Not so. They soon reply that they can't read the forms and I remember all too late about the ink quality. So, the forms are posted to Martin & Co who accepted them. It was all looking pretty straightforward after that, soon we would be able to move in on the 2nd of July and all would be right with the world. Not so.

They give me another impossible deadline to procure guarantors' accounts. For the last three years. My dad was the guarantor and happens to be a self-employed gardener so it was going to be a bit tricky. In the end the only thing we could do was get my father's most consistent employer to send them a letter with the information they needed. So I got the letter and I posted it hoping they'd get it in time.

The very next day, and I am not joking, the Royal Mail goes on strike. What. The. Flightless hippo.

These delays pushed us to the 2nd of July, the day when we thought we could move in, for them to finally tell us that the accounts weren't "good enough". There's not really much to say after that is there? Part of me wonders whether they get a secret thrill from utterly shattering our hopes on the very day everything was supposed to be sorted. We now have to look for somewhere else except there IS nowhere else because we've been spending the last month breaking our backs trying to appease these nutters who treated us like the middle-class burgeoise looking for a second home instead of students trying to get somewhere affordable to live within walking distance of the university. It totally reeks of piss this. We've got four people looking at a two-bed flat now and even that looks shifty. And we won't all be able to live with each other either. Thanks very much Martin & Co. Thank you very bloody much.

So, as a result I'm going to be staying in Crail for the rest of the summer and try to supervise the acquisition of a new flat from afar, and try to arrange some employment for myself when I get back to the granite city. Which means I'll still be around which nicely segues us into NationStates things.

Given the popularity of 'What Kind Of NationStater Are You?' I will make a new and improved version soon which should be much more accurate. And cool. With go-fast stripes.

There will also be new issues soon, but that's pretty much a given. The only new news regarding them is that I'm hoping to make them even better over the next few months. Which tells you absolutely nothing but I don't want to give anything away. It might not even happen. So. Oh, and no-one seems to have been getting the last issue I put in which is, yes, an Easter Egg issue. I had a browse through the nation pages and only came across a handful who'd be eligible but I still believe people will work it out soon enough.

I'm planning to end the competition for a new Sirocco's Blog logo by the end of the week, so anyone with, to use the computery terminology, 1337 Photoshop skilz, and wants to enter should do so as soon as possible.

And finally, at the end of a long, long post... Gahd, I really wouldn't mention it unless I needed to so badly, but if there's any rich and generous (or even just generous - just rich won't help) benefactors out there, you can PayPal me using siroccothemod@gmail.com for which I will always be eternally grateful.

I'm going to miss the relative simplicity of first year university. Bye bye fair fresherdom, you were always there for me. Kinda.

What Kind Of NationStater Are You?

This is a photo I took of a candle. It makes a pretty neat desktop background.

Below is a link to a quiz I wrote:

What Kind Of NationStater Are You?

Any accusations of clumsiness regarding the accuracy and efficacy of this quiz will be adamantly refuted. Enjoy!