If you’re anything like me, you probably visit a small handful of websites, blogs and forums every day forever. Yes, alright, this is the internet equivelent of going to the same pub every night, but… er… yeah.

People I Know

Daniel Albano, at the top of this list because his last name begins with an A, helped get this website fully functional. He needs to update his blog more often. Also his Twitter.

I’m quite pleased to have worked with Jay Bushman during my time at Disney ABC. He’s got a Hell of a brain on him – a brain responsible for the Loose-Fish project, which rather marvellously looks at new ways of telling old stories. And he’s on Twitter, too.

Vincent Clark is a good friend and a great writer, and his presence should be noted.

If you’ve read Jump Leads then you’ll know that JjAR is an absolutely incredible artist. He has a gallery on DeviantArt which is well worth your time and attention. Go check it out.

My friend Pooka (real name Benjamin Maydon, but I’ve never actually heard anybody call him that) is a musician, a Superfrog enthusiast, and a fan of classic children’s television programme “Knightmare”, and a writer (he’s written a four-page Jump Leads story, which is awesome). You can find out what he’s getting up to these days on his personal hub thingy.

Euan Mumford and I had a collaborative writing blog, but we forgot to do anything with it and I let the domain lapse. Oh well. Euan has a Twitter feed should be into that sort of thing.

Michelle Osorio of Kill 9 Studios directed Boomer’s Day Off, and also co-wrote it with me, which was a lot of fun.

Kris Straub is some kind of webcomics God, responsible for not one but four brilliant webcomics - Starslip, chainsawsuit, F-Chords (on hiatus), and the long-since-finished Checkerboard Nightmare. How does he do it? Follow his Twitter feed and maybe one day you’ll find out.

Fellow Jump Leads and But, Sir… writer Andrew Taylor has a blog and a Twitter feed. He tends to talk about things that have actual relevance, and he’s got a very particular sense of humour about it, too.

Paul Varley, another member of the Jump Leads writing team, has a Twitter feed and a blog, but he almost never updates either.

Vincent EL is a nerdcore rapper who knows his shit. His stuff is often strange, brilliant and, on occasion, Swedish. If I had the money I’d download each and every one of his tracks right now.

Writers I Like

Does Dave Gorman count as a writer or a comedian? He’s perhaps best known for travelling around the world trying to find 54 people with the same name as him, but he’s also written for The Fast Show, The Mrs Merton Show, and has contributed material for the likes of Steve Coogan and Harry Hill. He’s also had two immensely successful stage shows, one of which was adapted as a six-part television series for the BBC. But, at the same time, he played “himself” in Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive, appeared in (I think) three episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and hosts a show called Genius for TV & radio. Frankly, I don’t know what to think.

Both Rob Grant and Doug Naylor are brilliant writers. Together they wrote 36 brilliant episodes of Red Dwarf, two novels based on that same concept, not to mention their contributions to Spitting Image (which includes an incredibly annoying number one single) and their radio skecth series, Son of Cliché. Unfortunately, Doug Naylor have seen fit to set up website, but Rob has his own website and he’s on Twitter.

You may not be familiar with Mil Millington, but he’s one of the funniest writers in the UK. His website, Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About, is quite possibly one of the most enjoyable reads on the entire Web of Intar, and spawned a novel of the same name. And then more novels of different titles, also written by Mil, and also printed with ink onto pressed bits of tree bound together with glue.

The man behind the wonderfully brilliant Discworld novels, Terry Pratchett is a master of fantasy, comedy and satire. He’s my absolute favourite author of all time, and if you don’t have at least four of his books on your bookshelf then I hope for your sake that you own books he’s written and you just haven’t gotten around to putting them on the shelf yet. He’s on Twitter too, but he seldom updates.

Brian K. Vaughan has written a lot of really, really good comics. He’s penned stories for almost every major comic book character in the Marvel and DC stables, and is the creator of Y: The Last Man and Runaways. He’s also written for Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight and Angel: After The Fall, which makes him a winner in my books. Unfortunately his official website no longer exists, so here’s his Wikipedia entry.

While he doesn’t seem to have a presence on the web himself, Joss Whedon does have a rather large collective of fans who latch onto even the tiniest bit of news even vaguely related to him in some manner.

Music I like

Whether you like hip-hop, you also like British things, or you like to put those little grey cells of yours to actual use rather than just hearing people rap about this bitch and that gun then you might find Dan Bull a refreshing change of pace. He is arguably Britain’s only real rapper. No, Dizzee Rascal doesn’t count.

What kind of geek would I be if I didn’t enjoy the rather spleniforous music of the esteemed Jonathan Coulton?

I’ll always have a special place in my heart for The Feeling. The doctor tells me they’ll have to operate. Oh-ho-ho-ho! But seriously, I love them so Goddamn much.

The Foo Fighters are, I think, the only modern American rock actually worth listening to.

I discovered The Fratellis in early ’09 through some of the DLC on Rock Band, and liked them enough to pick up their album “Costello Music” when I found it on a trip back to the UK recently. They are a strange combination of old-school rock and modern rock, and they’re also very distinctly British.

Like the aforementioned Mr. Coulton, MC Frontalot is a geek standard. Arguably the only good nerdcore hip-hop artist out there, although Beefy is pretty good too.

I’ve always had a very strong fascination with the artistic message behind Gorillaz. Their music is brilliant – Demon Days is, to my mind, the greatest album of all time – and Jamie Hewlett’s artwork is beautiful.

Lemon Jelly are masters of their field – brilliant instrumental music. Great to listen to while I’m writing.

Heard of Muse? Of course you have. They’re sublime.

Stuff That Is Me

I’ve contributed to several blogs over the years. I’ve had an article published by the now defunct Noise To Signal, I was a semi-regular contributor to TV blog Channel Flip. And I’ve recently become a contributing contributor over at Unlimited Rice Pudding!, a Doctor Who blog.

If you like my writing you may be interested in my Ficly account, wherein I have written short stories of no more than 1,024 characters. You can find older stories of this nature on my old Ficlets archive.

I have a few social networking things. I have a MySpace page, which I almost never use. I’m also on Facebook, where you can also find a Jump Leads fan-page on Facebook. Oh, and I’m on Twitter as well.

Do you play videogames? So do I. Feel free to add me to your online gaming contact lists in Steam, Xfire, Xbox Live, and the PSN network. Also, if you play Rock Band 2 on the Xbox 360, here’s my RockBand.com profile and here’s a list of the songs I’ve downloaded.

Occasionally, very kind-hearted fans have bought me gifts based on things they’ve seen listed on my Amazon wishlists. I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea or not, morally, to encourage or promote this behaviour, but nevertheless here are the links to my wishlists at Amazon US and Amazon UK respectively. At the very least it offers an insight into the sort of things I like.