Letters to friends

We went to see U2 in concert at Wembley Stadium last night.

It was a good concert, and the tickets were only £30, which is even cheaper than they have ever been in NZ.

The have a pretty wicked stage for this tour. It is a big crab type thing, which gives clear views from almost every angle, so they can sell seats around the whole stadium.

The two bridges rotate around, and the TV screens can move and extend up and down. The band all have wireless mics and instruments, so they can walk around that outside ring and give all the fans in the standing area a close up look.

The drummer was stuck in the middle for most of the show though, except a song where he just played bongo drums.

U2 360 degree tour stage

U2 360 degree wrap around TV

Because of the stage, they had the most people ever in Wembley for a concert, around 88000 for our night, and over 90000 the night before.

Here are a few more pics of the stage from the u2.com website

U2 360 degree tour - extended TV

U2 360 degree tour

Here is the set list for the night.

Breathe
No Line On The Horizon
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Beautiful Day
Until The End of the World
New Year’s Day
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
Stay
Unknown Caller
Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (Remix)
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Pride (In The Name of Love)
MLK
Walk On
Where The Streets Have No Name
One
(Bad)
——–
Ultraviolet
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender

We left in the middle of the last song, so we could get a jump on everyone else, and get the tube without having to wait in line for an hour, like we did with the trains after the Rugby World Cup.

So lets go where we’re happy – To the Highbury cemetery.

We actually walked there from our flat, a mere 1 1/2 hour stroll.

We took a £5 tour of the tour only side of the cemetery, which was about 45 minutes long. Highlights of this side included the graves of Thomas Sayers, Victorian bare knuckle pugilist, and Michael Faraday an early experimenter with electricity.

The Grave of Thomas Sayer, with a life sized statue of his dog King

Apparently when Michael Faraday was asked by the British Minister of Finance about the practical benefits of electricity, he replied “One day sir, you may tax it”.

The other side of the cemetery was open to the public (for £3), and had the tomb of Karl Marx, who according to wikipedia (Who knows so much about these things), never managed to say anything funny enough to quote here.

Grave of Karl Marx (and wife of Karl Marx, and daughter of Karl Marx)

I just found out from Wikipedia that Douglas Adams is also buried somewhere in the cemetery, but we didn’t see his grave.

Alas, Keats and Yates were no where to be seen on either side.

Last night Sarah and I went to see Regina Spektor in concert in Hyde Park.

The concert was very very good.

Regina has a beautiful voice, and is excellent on the piano and guitar.

She played 4 or 5 songs solo, and used a back up band with violin, cello and drums for the rest of her set.

About half of the stuff was off her new album, Far, and the rest was older stuff, including a couple of songs I hadn’t heard before.

Far and her previous album, Begin to Hope, are both great, and I would recommend both of them without reservation or hesitation.

Here is a video that someone else put on youtube from the concert. The wonder of the internet knows no bounds.

My games have been free for 5 days now, so I figured I might as well share the information about the downloads with you.

The most popular game has been GumDrops, which is currently #25 top free download on the Japanese iTunes store. It is also the #11 free game, and #4 free puzzle game download on the Japanese store.

Those numbers represent 897 downloads from Japan today. So thank you Japan!

Here are the worldwide download numbers, per game, per day

I spent the last 6 months writing games for the iPhone, hoping to strike it rich, or at least earn enough to cover my costs.

In that time I have released 4 games, plus lite versions, plus 1 quick free slide puzzle game.

The results are now in, and it has been a complete and utter financial disaster.

6 months after my first game was released, I have earned a grand total of $170 US from sales.

This would work out to about 25 cents an hour, or it would if I hadn’t spent $200 US on sprites for my first game.

So after 6 months I am $25 in the hole.

With the way the App store is going, I think things are going to get even harder, as more and more games are released, with a lot more development, artwork, music and marketing put into them than I could ever hope to achieve on my own.

I think the worst part has been logging onto the Apple developers website every day and seeing 1 or 2 sales across all 4 of my games. The statistics update at 10:30 am here, and it has been a daily compulsion of mine to log on and feel terrible about my lack of success.

Still, things could be worse, I got to spend a few month doing something that I enjoy, and although I didn’t make any money, I also didn’t go into debt.

The first part of my rehabilitation is admitting my failure, which I am doing in this post.

The second part is to lower the price of my games to free. I will lose the  $1.40 or so a day that I was earning, but hopefully it will break my depressing habit of checking the daily sales and getting upset.

Game development as a hobby is a lot more fun for me than game development as a failed business model.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me in this endevour. Your support has meant a lot to me.

Sarah and I are finally making some friends in England.

Prince Albert and We

We spend 2 days and 3 nights in Singapore, staying with my friend Jim, who I know from University, his wife June, and their 2 boys.

The first day we went to a water park, and Sarah and I both got sun burnt quite badly on our faces and shoulders. We had put sunscreen on, but forgot to top it up regularly.

Watersliding with Jon

Jim and June also fed up enormous amounts of food, and were gracious and excellent hosts.

Family Portrait

We also took a look around town, including a stop at the Raffles Hotel, and saw the Merlion.

Singapore Merlion

First Generations, Singapore

Thailand was great once I figured out a way to keep the bugs away from my face

Say hello to my little friend