Busy – and then quiet – first day at the show. As a result, looked like a blockbuster of a day first of all, then settled down so that it ended up in the ‘decent’ category. Still, if the same happens tomorrow I’ll be happy with the weekend as a whole.

Draw the World Together went really well it seemed; Karl Kopinski took to the process like a duck to water. Neil and Andrew both of course did great stuff too. Karl did a knockout sketch of Callista that I’ll share soon enough. Suffice to say it contains three figures… but simply looks amazing. We were all green with envy.

Right, now it’s time to get off to the curry house with artists and a few players in tow. (I can tell all the ‘regulars’ are here because my hits today are so low!!) I’ll leave you with me and a box of money.

Before I shower, shave, pack, etc.

Today: Pick up van, pack all our stuff, think we don’t have room, find we do have room, leave Brighton, lunch at Oxford Services, arrive Birmingham, get lost, get found, unload, set up stand, check into hotel, go find beer.

(If you’re in or around Birmingham this evening and want to find us for a pint, either check Facebook for our location (I can update from the mobile) or just try pubs in the Hagley Road area of Edgbaston. The Garden House is a pretty good bet as it’s right next to our hotel – especially if it’s a warm, dry evening, as the beer garden’s nice.)

Tomorrow: Up, breakfast, into the Clarendon Suites for Day One of UK Games Expo. Show’s open from 10am to 5pm. We’ll have Andrew Wildman, Neil Edwards and special guest Karl Kopinski sketching until their pencils break in two. Also: many cheap games and excellent freebies. (And by the way, I personally supervised the packing of CoH/CoV t-shirts. Oooh! Also we have special ‘black’ CoH/CoV tees not for sale anywhere else. Although we may have given you one of them, once.) Then; curry. If you want to eat with us, you’ll have to come to the show and find out where we’ll be.

Sunday: UK Games Expo, Day Two – 10am to 4pm. Then packing, the road, some crappy service station somewhere, the road again, unpacking in the middle of the night and home.

Are we clear? Good. See you there, or not.

Late Friday. Not a helluva lot to say, but egads, why not post about it right after it’s happened eh?

Today started with forgetting something; my driving licence, to be precise, but as my flat is five minutes from work it just meant a slightly longer walk for the three of us from the office to the care hire place. With van duly hired, we returned to the office and loaded things for a couple of hours, taking special care not to forget anything else.

We were off almost exactly at midday (which is becoming a pattern, I noticed), and made good time to the M25… then crawled intermittently as a mysterious ‘obstruction’ slowed us down (which never revealed itself to us). Pulled into the Clarendon Suites car park a tad before 5pm, and ended up unloading and setting up the stand until about 7:30pm.

Not much has changed about the Expo since last year, although our stand looks a bit more swish – if you ask me – and also we of course have space for artists this time, where we didn’t last year. We’re all looking forward to a couple of days raising cash, but also selling loads of games. Bring your wallets, people!

Strolled across the road after setup to book into our hotel, then wandered around for a bit through a maze of corridors trying to find our rooms. Then off out, a decent enough meal at TGI Fridays (What can I say, it was in walking distance) and a nightcap in the local pub, The Garden House.

That’s that. Pretty standard fare so far. Tomorrow it gets interesting. Night!

Start the day with coffee, and trying to figure out what we have left to do for the UK Games Expo. We’ve done this so many times it should become second nature, and to an extent it has, but there’s always room for error… and the more complacent you get the more errors you make.

We need to buy hangers (for t-shirts) and storage ‘tubs’ for stock and, in fact, t-shirts. Quick trip to Woolies and one of several local ‘pound shops’ and we’re sorted.

Back to the office. It’s Massage Day (woo!) and Chris is having his First Ever Massage. When he comes out he tells me “I don’t know why I waited so long to have that.” Nor do I mate.

Check on the movie Spaff left rendering overnight. Lucky I did, as despite being excellent quality, it has one minute of ‘blank space’ at the end which probably makes it several hundred MB bigger than it needs to be. Set it to re-render.

Dive into email, feeling way too jittery from the coffees first thing. I never learn.

While I’m emailing, three PC cases are delivered to me. They need to go in the van tomorrow for Secret Prize Project. Feel like an old man as I talk about when I used to open PC cases for a living; well kinda, I was a PC journalist once.

I’ve been asked to judge a student competition for Stafford University, so download the files that I need to look at.

The first re-render of Spaff’s video is the right length – and half the size – but is smeary and pixellated. Fiddle with a few things and start it going again. Pretty sure it’s not going to work.

Watch a few of the videos from the UbiDays press conference. Good job by them on their PR. Remain unconvinced of the earth-shattering importance of a follow-up to Beyond Good & Evil. I mean it was good, but it wasn’t The Best Game Evar.

Browse through some very creative rendered Lego people for the competition. Students are smart. Must adjust my presentation accordingly.

Read an email from @Geoffrey – hallo! – pointing me to an interesting article about the deaths of MMOs. The stuff about Auto Assault is quite moving. That leads me on to a new post-apocalypse MMO that’s being worked on, in part, by some die-hard AA fans. It’s called Apokalypsos. Be careful not to drop that final ‘S’ or it’ll be something to do with the end of the world via dance… or a crappy fruit drink.

Start an email with thoughts on the Lego designs, but don’t finish; go to lunch with Mat and Chris instead. Over burgers we talk about the show this weekend, and set the MMO world to rights – usual stuff.

Back to the desk to an email announcing our summer party; we’re going to Thorpe Park. Even though I’ve known about this for ages, I’m suddenly excited by the prospect of many rollercoasters. Yayyy!

Next up: boring show prep. First, decide on how much stock we want to take, then see if we’ve got that much available. Then, re-price an awful lot of it as the prices have changed. I am the Pricing Gun Kid.

In the middle of this I get a phone call from my contact at Stafford, pressing me for decisions on the Lego design thing. I give her my choices over the phone.

At 4pm we go over to our other building to do a count of every t-shirt we have, and move them all from flimsy, crappy cardboard boxes (which are a pain to move, stack, and store) into those new tubs. Utterly tedious and sweaty work, but needed to be done.

Finished by 5pm, and we drop by the Community team to grab some swag for the weekend. We pick up mostly Guild Wars stuff – Skill Pins, Mini-Pet cards. I walk out with a very heavy bag. Mat also hands over the new printed signage for the weekend, and we agree to meet tomorrow before we go pick up the Transit van.

5:30pm, and we’re locking down final bits and pieces. I’m starting to get that feeling, that tingly feeling of dread that we’ve forgotten something or we haven’t done something. This results in me asking Chris “Have we got [insert thing here]” about a million times.

Last thing before I leave, Chris says: “We’re up to 186 applications.” Meaning our casting job isn’t getting any easier.

Tomorrow: van hire, packing, then The Road to Birmingham. Expect service to be light.

G’morning. Slept like crap; you? Came home last night with that sticky, ready to burst feeling in the air – and we had a mother of a thunderstorm overnight, that woke us up several times. It’s nice to fall asleep with rain on the window. Not so great to get woken up by thunder which sounds like the building’s collapsing.

Anyway, so this weekend. We’re off to the UK Games Expo as you know. I know a few of you reading this are going to come down, which is lovely. I will again attempt to do some updates from there, but the likelihood is I won’t be able to sit and blog very much – at least I hope not to be able to. If I can, it means we’re not busy, which I won’t be happy about. If you want to keep tabs on me you’ll be better off with my Facebook status updates.

In the interests of transparency, or sharing, or some sorta thing, I thought I’d let you know our general plans for the weekend too. Really only of interest to those of you attending, I guess. Unless you know an awesome curry house in Edgbaston.

Friday’s pack-and-travel day as always. We’ll be driving up and aiming to be there on-site at about 4pm or something. After that we’ll most likely be done for the day, so expect to find us in a local pub or similar not too long afterwards. If you’re likely to be in B’rum with time on your hands let me know.

Saturday is of course a show day. The show’s open from 10am to 5pm. We don’t have any particular schedule planned, so pop down to the stand whenever you want. We’re in the main dining room, which won’t look like that… but basically when you arrive in the main doors, turn left and we’ll be on your left (maps). By the way there are tournaments going on outside of the show’s main opening hours, so you might be on-site outside of those hours but we won’t!

Remember if you want a sketch from Karl Kopinski, you’ll need to turn up on Saturday. I have a feeling given Karl’s detailed style he won’t be doing many sketches, so if you really want one, come early.

Saturday night is of course our only free time, so if you’d like to hang out, that’s when it’s gotta happen. When in Birmingham we usually end up at a curry house – does anyone have any good recommendations? If we can decide in advance I’m happy to group book somewhere, and you’re welcome to come, but you’ll have to pay your own way I’m afraid.

Later on Saturday I’m sure there might be some drinkin’, but also, there’s late night gaming rooms available at the Menzies Strathallan Hotel, which is right next to the Expo. If anyone is interested in volunteering to run something, even if it’s only a decent boardgame… we’d potentially be up for that ourselves. We do have a lot of HeroClix….

Sunday is again a show day, and the Expo’s open from 10am to 4pm. As it’s a shorter day than usual we’ll naturally be doing a few less sketches, so again, if you want on the list… get in there early. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the list is full (and closed) by midday. Also; don’t be offended if we limit you to one sketch per person per day, initially. We want to allow plenty of ‘newbies’ to get sketches.

Erm, that’s it I guess. When the show’s done it’ll be time to pack and ship out home. Hope to see you there sometime over the weekend!

Feast your eyes on the newly-cheapened (in prices!) list of game bargains you’ll be able to pick up this weekend at the Games Expo:

That’s right, we accept credit cards. In case you were wondering what’s been reduced – Guild Wars: Eye of the North is now £15, Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa is £15 (or £40 for the very limited number of Collector’s Editions we have left) and the Guild Wars Nightfall Collector’s Edition is now.

Not pictured: City of Heroes and Guild Wars t-shirts, all sizes, now £15! Guild Wars Hoodies, now £30! Plus reductions across other Guild Wars merchandising!!

What’s that you say? You’re flat broke? You just want free stuff? Well then, how about this:

That’s right! Limited in number! Gold and red in colour! It’s an Iron Man HeroClix, courtesy of our chums at Wizkids Games!! Get ‘em while we still have ‘em….