We got some terrible news last night; my stepfather’s mother died last night.
I knew that he, my stepfather, was very close with his mother up until a about 6-7 years ago, when he moved away, to the South of England; whilst she remained in London.
Understandably, he’s devastated.
Regardless of how far you drift apart, or how far you move away from one another, nothing will ever prepare you for the loss of someone close.
“They’ve gone to a better place.” people often say at times like this. “They’re happier now.” I can only hope that’s the case.
It’s awful.
We go through our lives amassing vast amounts of objects, putting too much thought into money and material possessions, but what’s the point, when nothing you own can be taken with you once you’re gone?
Rather than doing this, we should focus on living. Spending time with the people we love, before it is too late.
We need to learn to live. To love. To work on one’s self, not one’s wealth.
We need to learn. Find joy. Happiness. Excitement. Fear. Anger. Sadness. We need to learn to feel.
“I knew she was ill,” he said “and still I sat here.” That sums up what I’m trying to say perfectly. Life is much to short to just put things off. It’s not worth to just keep saying “I’ll see her next week.”
Yesterday, you said tomorrow.
Please, appreciate what you have. Appreciate your parents. Your siblings. Anyone in your life who’s special, who’s close, because all too soon, it’s all gone, and there is no tomorrow.
I’m sorry if this post is all jumpy. If what I’ve said doesn’t make any sense.
Alright? I haven’t really been posting a lot recently, partly because of some design stuff I had to do, and also partly because I’m in the process of looking for a ‘proper’ job. I know, it sucks. Among everything that’s going on, there’s one subject that I cannot stop thinking about: the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
I should start this off by saying that I’m currently reading it, and that it’s brilliant! Like, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as powerful or as poignant as this. I should also say that I don’t really know where this post is going, so please forgive me if I ramble on about nothing in particular, which let’s be honest, is entirely possible.
Reading this has made me realize something: I absolutely love Dystopian narratives. Thinking about, almost all of my favourite books, films and games are Dystopian. 1984 (obviously), Fight Club, Brave New World, Battle Royale, etc. I don’t know what it is, it’s just a brilliant genre/style.
Anyway, because this book’s constantly on my mind, I can’t help but notice, or imagine, similarities between the fictional Oceania and the real world we live in. Think about it, we live paying tax to people who control almost everything we do. There are bodies that regulate the media we see/hear/read, they have total control over what we consume. Going down to a much more basic level, there are companies that charge us for water. That’s one of the essential things we need for survival, and it’s controlled by a few companies. Thinking about America for a moment, their government put up a false façade of freedom, but are able to control every aspect of their lives, without even being noticed.
If you haven’t read 1984, I won’t go into great detail about the plot as to not spoil it, I’ll only mention one thing. In the novel, the population is spied upon at all times of the day via devices named Telescreens, which are in all residences, with only the people of higher power being able to shut them off. Does this remind you of anything?
In Britain, there are CCTV cameras everywhere, and I mean everywhere. In fact, we’re the ‘most watched nation’. Yes, there may not be cameras in everybody’s house, spying one everyone all the time, but it’s almost guaranteed that there’s one on every road, at least in the built up, more populated areas. At any point, when you’re out-and-about in Britain, you never know if you’re being watched. Most of us try to put it at the back of our minds, but from reading 1984, I’m always on the look out for CCTV. Yeah, some people would argue that they’re a good thing, the cameras, stating that they prevent crime, but they don’t. If you live in Britain, and have never really thought about this, have a look around the next time you’re walking through town, I bet you’ll see more CCTV than ever before.
We’re controlled, there’s no question. Everything you’ve watched or read today, that’s part of the mass media, has been regulated, and potentially changed, before it was deemed ‘suitable’ to be broadcasted and shown to the masses. I think this is another reason that I like Fight Club. Tyler addresses this very thing, and makes plans to put it to a stop. He speaks about how money and wealth is just another way of controlling the masses, and making sure that the powerful remain powerful.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve thought about what the world would be like if there was no government, there was no money or no property. This would put everyone on a level playing field, so to speak. I do want to write something about this, but this post is not the place for it. Do you think it’s possible though, to get enough people on your side to spark a revolution? A revolution in the sense of Fight Club. Destroying banks, removing money and wealth?
Anyway, that’s about it. I’m sorry if I rambled on a bit. Thanks for reading! If you’ve any thoughts about anything like this, please comment below!
Here we are again. It’s four in the fucking morning and I’m not asleep. Such is life. This got me thinking though, is it possible to train your body to not need as much sleep as it normally would.
I mean, for the past, like, 5 months (?) I’ve been getting very little sleep, most of it through my own doing. And now, I really don’t need to sleep that much, at least not as much as I would have before all this. Take, for example, a couple of weeks ago. I was knockin’ about at a friend’s house, watching films, getting bevved, etc, and I got no sleep. Like none. I’m pretty sure she fell asleep at some point, but I know for sure I was up all night. The point to this is that the next morning, I was fine. I didn’t feel tired at all. Nothing was effected by the lack of sleep.
I know, 100%, that I never used to be like this. Back in the day, when I had school work to do, I’d often stay up super late getting shit done, at the cost of the next day. I was a zombie for the day after, which meant I was wide awake for the next night. “It’s a vicious cycle” as a friend once put it. Now, however, I often pull all-nighters, both for work and for why not? and be fine the day after. I did find, back when I needed to be up late for school, that’d I’d often produce my best work at these times. I’d have a certain point when I past being tired. I guess the adrenaline would kick in, and I’d get a boost of energy. At this point, working became so easy. If I was writing something, the words would just flow out, appearing on the screen almost with not effort. It was glorious.
I can still hit this point now, but it’s not as easy as it used to be. Nowadays, I need to get proper juiced on caffeine, like seriously juiced. I’ve only done this a few times, and although each time it’s been great (ridiculous work flow, insane productivity) I’ve crashed hugely the next day. At one point, I found myself falling asleep whilst using my laptop, like just nodding off. I guess it’s good I don’t need to do this too often.
Being able to stay awake like I can now does have it’s advantages though. I guess for a bit of backstory, I should tell you that I make Tumblr Themes, both for fun and to sell. More times than not, I’ve got ‘real world’ shit to do during the day, be it going out with people or whatever, so the only time that I get to work is at night. Distractionless coding at night is wonderful. Everything seems to come together a lot better than it does in the day. Don’t ask me why, it just feels like it does. One other thing that working at night is good for is listening to music. I tend to purchase shit loads of albums, most of which that I never get a chance to listen to, at least listen to properly. In fact, even now, I have Adobe Dreamweaver and iTunes open. A Theme half-built in one, and Mac Miller’s Watching Movies with the Sound Offplaying on the other.
So, I guess to you can train your body to not need a lot of sleep, well, to some extent you can. I’ve always wondered what my threshold would be. I mean, how long would I be able to go, un-juiced, without sleep. Like, how many days would pass until I just couldn’t take it any more? I honestly doubt that I’ll ever test this. It would be cool to know my number, but I doubt I’d enjoy the experience. I kinda like the idea of hallucinating, without having to take anything. Presumably, there would be not long time effects of doing this. I mean, Randy Gardner did it, and he was fine after. But, as they say, no two subjects are the same.
I’ve wrote one of these posts for the last two nights, including this one. I probably won’t write one tomorrow, or any day next week. I want to get back to work properly and finish off a few Themes I’ve got ‘in the works’, so to speak. Besides, everything gets back to normal today. Yesterday was a Bank Holiday, so I didn’t need to get fully stuck into the programming, but the rest of the week, I will.
That’s about it for tonight. I’ve got a few idea for some more posts, so they could either be written tonight, or written some when else, who knows? But anyways, thanks for reading. Much love. <3.
I should start off by saying that this isn’t a review of the film. Personally, I don’t think it’s right that you should write something that could potentially ruin/diminish someone else’s experience with the film. Yes, I have written reviews before, but they were for films that haven’t just come out.
Right, Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG) is the latest release from Marvel Studios. For this next bit, I’ve taken the film’s synopsis from IMDb, so I don’t purposely add too much, potentially spoiling stuff. Let me just say, before we get too deep into this, I will say if there is going to be anything spoilerish in the post, to give you the opportunity to skip over it, without seeing the details.
Light years from Earth, 26 years after being abducted, Peter Quill finds himself the prime target of a manhunt after discovering an orb wanted by Ronan the Accuser.
I love the fact that the description of the plot that IMDb gives is vague. To me, that’s just how they should be. I know that when ever I buy a DVD, or a Blu-Ray, I hardly ever look at the back of the box, at least until I’ve actually watched the production.
For me, the beauty of this film was that it included completely new protagonists, new in the sense that they’ve never been seen in cinema, as the main characters, anyway. Many people wouldn’t expect the first instalment of a new franchise to be any good, but it really was!
A bit of back story: I went into this film expecting it to be, how shall we say. not up to scratch with the rest of Marvel’s releases? Honestly, that was what I thought this film was going to be like. Some thing that’s a little bit like The Avengers, but not quite as good. But, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
One of the reasons that I was a little expectant for it to be bad was because of the talking racoon. NON-PLOT SPOILER COMING UP! What’s a racoon?AMIRITE? THAT WAS THE SPOILER From the trailer, and all the publicity, the character made the film look a tad, dare I say, childish? But, once you get into the film (which is practically immediately, by the way) you realize that this doesn’t matter in the slightest. SLIGHT SPOILER? In fact, for me, Rocket was one of the most well-rounded, and most comedic characters in the film.END SPOILER.
For me, most Marvel films that feature a host of ‘main’ characters, often include one that doesn’t really bring much to the table, so to speak. For example, in The Avengers, for me, this character was Captain America. Like really, would the film have been much different if he wasn’t there. Of course, I only use The Avengers as an example as it’s the closest Marvel film to this one, aside from X-Men. I truly believe that GotG doesn’t have this problem. Each of the characters, BE WARNED, CHARACTER SPOILER, even the tree (Groot) was superb, and he says 5 different words in the whole film!END OF THAT ONE.
I feel that is a testament to the filmmakers, YEP, ANOTHER ONE that they were able to make witty, meaningful conversations that include the character that only knows one phrase. This film includes all the typical Marvel humour, the quick one liners, the visual gags, etc. I don’t want to get super spoilery and quote some, but trust me, they are there.SPOILER BE GONE!
There are two things for me that really sealed the deal. That made me 100% feel that this was the best Marvel film made. These were MINOR SPOILER Dave BautistaTHAT WAS THAT, and the soundtrack.
Let’s start with the first thing on the list, shall we? POTENTIALLY MAJOR CHARACTER SPOILERS. The first time you see Bautista in the film, you get the impression that he’s just another wrestler-turned-actor who can’t really do the latter. But, as the plot progresses, and Drax (Bautista’s character) becomes more involved, you discover that the acting style is perfect for the role, and suits the personality of the character down to a tee. Truly brilliant. I’d absolutely love to see Bautista in more and more films in the future!OKAY, THAT ONE IS DONE.
The second reason that made me fall in love with this film is the soundtrack. It was unreal. The soundtrack is composed a number of 70’s and 80’s classics, that are such a juxtaposition to the movie that they work perfectly. For example MINOR SPOILER. There is a scene right at the beginning of the movie that features Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) exploring an abandoned planet. As you’d expect, the environment is desolate and dark. There are a bunch of alien looking animals walking about the place. Some small, rat looking? things attempt to bite Quill. But then, the incredible track Come and get Your Love,by Redbone, starts playing. Quill picks up one of the rat? things and sings into it like a mic.END SPOILINGS. That was both a brilliant way to introduce the soundtrack, and also a fabulous way to introduce the character.
So yeah, GotG was both far better than expected, but also, I think, one of the best Marvel films made. Like ever.
If you’ve seen the film, hit up them comments and add your opinion! Or even if you haven’t, chat to some people. Be warned, there could be spoilers.
Thanks for reading! ❤
As a side note, I was listening to the soundtrack whilst writing this post. I really is fantastic. Even if you haven’t seen GotG, you can’t help but not love every track. Have a lil’ listen, why don’t ‘cha?
This meant that I could not work on the theme at any point before or after the allotted time. I had never done anything like this before – I typically like to spend time making sure everything is looking good before I say it’s finished – so I had no idea how good the end product would look.
This process involved me doing three things, which were:
Designing – A digital mock-up. I like to use Adobe Photoshop for this.
Developing – This is the actual building of the theme. I like to use Adobe Dreamweaver.
Testing – Arguably the most important part. This is where I needed to make sure that the theme was working on all browsers, and also that it scaled correctly on smaller devices, such as mobiles and tablets.
As you can see, there was a fair amount to do in order to say that the challenge had been a success, and to say that the end product is finished.
If I was to do this, I wanted to make sure that I did nothing out-of-the-ordinary in order to accomplish the task. So, I woke up at my normal time, and did everything that I would normally do in the morning. So, at about 9Am, I started work.
The first thing, as I have said above, was to mock-up the design. Doing this allows the designed to get an understanding of what he/she will be building when the time comes. Again, as I’ve said, I like to use Adobe Photoshop, so this is what I did.
There were eight things that I would need to design, which were:
The Menu
Text Post
Photo Post
Link Post
Quote Post
Chat Post
Audio Post
and Video Post
As I almost always do, I began with designing the menu. Doing this allows me to get a grasp of the size and dimensions of the rest of the theme, relative to the menu. This would be fixed to one spot, meaning that as the user scrolled, it would be constantly visible and accessible. The design for the menu, and also the area when the Posts will appear can be seen below.
As you can see, the menu of the theme is one left, and the area in which the content of the blog will appear is on the right, in a lovely shade of purple, I might add. After this, I needed to design the different Post Types. I’m not going to write about every one, as it is clear what they look like.
Text Post
Photo Post
Link Post
Quote Post
Chat Post
Audio Post
Video Post – I pretty much always use Achievement Hunter videos in my mock ups. Both because I’m a huge fan of what they do, and also because it’s nice to have something good to watch when testing.
The designing of the theme took me up to about 1Pm, which for me was great time. I usually take a week or more during this stage. Anyway, the next thing to do was the actual development of the theme. As I’ve mentioned, I like to do this in Adobe Dreamweaver, but really any text editor will work.
I only really came across one issue during this, which was the fixed positioning of the menu. I had never needed to have something that was fixed in one place, but also relative to the rest of the design before, but in the end I worked it out. But, to be honest, I’m not really sure how I worked it out. For this particular area, it’s a case of It works, but I don’t know why.
The development stage took about three hours. Also here I was testing as I went along, to make sure that everything worked and displayed correctly.
A demo of this theme can be found here. It should be noted that neither the video or the audio are linked to the page, but one can get a sense of what they would do. Also, the link at the bottom of the menu section will bring you back to this blog. This is the only link that takes you anywhere, the rest are just for show.
That’s about it. I managed to designed and develop a desktop theme in one day. I’m currently looking to into putting it up for download, but if I were to do this, I’d want to refine a few things like, for example, the Tag and Clock icons not lining up correctly with the text to the right.
I said I developed a desktop theme because I didn’t have time to make it responsive (meaning that it displays correctly on every screen size), but, this is something I can work on if I were to put it up for download.
The warmth, comfort and stability of my current surroundings are magnificent. Words cannot begin to describe how wonderfully gorgeous my current location is. There is near silence, with a slight, quiet sound of the breeze rolling over me. It’s bliss. I feels as though I’m floating, but I can feel something soft beneath me. I’m not even thinking consciously, it’s more like I’m simply being. I’m in a cocoon of safety.
This feeling remains for what feels like an eternity.
What’s that? A noise. Quiet at first, but then suddenly it rips through the serene calm air around me. The darkness has gone, replaced with a greyer, slightly lit blur in front of my eyes. The noise still pertains. I can’t quite locate the source of it. Where is that noise coming from?
It’s all becoming more focussed. My hearing is gradually becoming sharper and as for that noise, I think I’ve found it. It’s emitting from right beside me, to my left, I’m sure of it. My vision is coming back. I can make out lines of what looks like a soft material surrounding me.
I can’t take that noise anymore. It’s driving me insane!
Raising my left arm, I bring it down on what I feel to be the source of the noise. A monumental crash echoes in my ears. Almost too scared to look at what I have just stuck, I peer out of my slowly receding net of safety. What I see, I instantly recognise.
It’s black, with a rectangle containing what looks to be red digits, but I can’t quite make them out, my eyes are still a tad blurry. But then, complete understanding hits me, and I’m more scared than I have ever been. This is it I think to myself another day has begun.
I sit upright, push what I now know to be a duvet off of me, stand up and begin the process of getting ready for work.
I wrote about what I did on Friday, and it didn’t go too badly, and, more importantly, it was fun. It essentially involved my writing about all aspects of the day, from the point of which I went into school, to the end of the day when I sat down to write the post.
As part of my plan on getting better at written work, I would like to do this sort of thing everyday. It might be a push, because of the other work that I have to do, but it should hopefully pay off in the long run.
It’s still not decided if I would actually write the at the end of each day, or wait until the end of the week and post all five days (Monday to Friday) in one long post.
There may be one of these appearing tomorrow, there may not.
I’ve seen a lot of people writing about what they get up to in an ordinary day. Sometimes they are interesting, sometimes they are not. Either way, it’s a good idea. So, I wanted to have a go and see what happens.
I had school. I was expecting that I would have a pretty bad day, because I thought that I’d have to endure a Science lesson, which isn’t what I wanted on a Friday.
Anyway, before leaving, I made the decision not to take my Kindle, which I bring with me most days, as I doubted that I’d have much time to read. However, when I got in, the Study Room, the place in which I spend the majority of my time, was locked. Bollocks, I thought. The one day that I don’t pack the Kindle is the one day that the Study Room is shut.
The Regis School – The place where I sometimes learn things.
Next to the Study Room is the Common Room, which doesn’t actually have a door, so it’s more of a Common Alcove. This is where I went to sit. Seeing as all of my work is digital, and that there are no computers in the Common Alcove Room, I didn’t have anything to do, aside from flicking through the notes I’ve taken in various lessons, which is what I did.
Ten years minutes had passed, and I had exhausted the notebook. But, at this point, and friend came up the stairs and into the Common Room. This is when I received some wonderful news. He informed me that we’d have triple ICT today, which meant that I didn’t have Science. Top.
The Study Room was unlocked by teacher after about another ten minutes, but by that point, there wasn’t really any point in logging on as we would have to leave soon. But I did anyway. This is when I remembered what I have been doing at home that morning. I was playing Pretend You’re Xyzzy, which is an online clone of Cards Against Humanity, which is how my friend and I spent the remainder of the time.
The first lesson was a double of ICT (not Science!) in which we would be spending time looking at another database exam in Microsoft Access. We started a new mock exam and began to work through it, with the teacher helping out along the way.
We got through the first Activity with no problem. All that was needed was a table of inputs, processes and outputs, and a few sentences about how various things would be achieved, like how a certain type of data would be found in the database. Kids’ stuff.
But, this is was when we hit a snag.
In the exam, we would need to split the data into different tables, in this particular example, the number of tables would be five. The recommended time for this Activity is thirty minutes, but none of us, teacher included, was able to work it out in an hour and a half. Needless to say, we left that lesson without completing it.
Tutor, which is basically where you go and ‘check-in’ so to speak with another teacher and possibly discuss anything that may be worrying you. But, more than likely, YouTube will be on within five minutes. Break, which comes after Tutor, was spent play Pretend You’re Eyzzy again, and then it was back to it.
Another hour of ICT would follow this. We continued with the same problem of splitting the tables and, long story short, we were still unable to do it correctly. I did find a way of doing it wrongly, but a way that worked nonetheless. But because you need to show how you split the tables, no marks would be given. Again, we left with this section incomplete, but with the teacher saying that he’d have a look at it over the weekend. I then spent the next hour or so playing Pretend You’re Eyzzy with a friend, before leaving.
I then went to Sainsbury’s to do a little bit of shopping. Which means that I spent a large amount of time looking at Blu-Rays. After that, I came back home, played a cheeky bit of Grand Theft Auto before becoming victim to a headache that had been threatening to pounce since this morning. Had some dinner (Ham, Egg and Chips) before reading some Insomnia by Stephen King.
With the headache now in full swing, I took a paracetamol and laid down for a bit. I then, as you do, became bored. But, the headache was now being kept at bay by the drugs, so I began to write this post.
That’s about it. I don’t know if this will be interesting or not, but I might write another if it is. I’m now going to read a bit more Insomnia, it really is rather good, before possibly watching a bit of Fawlty Towers.
I’m a student. That much is evident from my header. I study ICT, Media and *groans* Science, which is the focus of this post.
Science is the subject that I took because I wanted to ‘fill a gap’ so to speak. I have no real interest in it, other than using it in ways that disprove religion. (which isn’t hard really, is it?)
Both ICT and Media have had deadlines that needed to be met, which meant that I’ve been avoiding doing work for Science, in favour of getting other stuff done for the Media and ICT. This has been the case for about two weeks.
During this time of being away from Science, I’ve realized that I truly do not care about it. That thought has always been in the back of my mind, but I’ve never really looked into it too much.
I understand that it was my fault for taking the subject in the first place. That, if I knew I didn’t like it, I shouldn’t have chosen it. But the fact of the matter is, I enjoyed it for the first year.
You see, for the first half of the course (two years) we had an incredible teacher. He was more than willing to look at your work, he was incredible helpful, and, arguably more importantly, he wasn’t pushy.
For you to understand this, I should explain how the course works.
Science at A-Level, or at least the course that I’m doing, is a BTEC. This means that all the work is coursework that needs to be submitted at the end of the two years, and that there is no formal examination to look forward to. This was one of the appeals to me when signing up. Before Sixth Form, I had taken another BTEC Science course in which me, and some other classmates, competed all of the two years worth of work in two weeks. Basically, so long as all of the work is completed by the end of the year, it doesn’t matter when we do it.
When the current Science course I’m taking came into the second year, there was a teacher change, with the first, and better, one moving to another school. We couldn’t not have a teacher, so another came and took the originals place.
When describing the first teacher, I said that he wasn’t pushy. This is where the two teachers differ wildly.
This new one wants the work completed when it suits her. That is not how a BTEC works.
Instead of marking the work when we complete it, which is much more effective, she tells us that, for example, she wants a whole unit in by the end of the week.
One of these self-set deadlines made an appearance when other work for Media and ICT was due in. So, with my main focusses being these two subjects, I didn’t do the work for Science. It was during this time that I came to my conclusion of: I don’t care about Science any more.
I should be doing the work, I know that. Right now, I could be working on a document about soil or something, but instead I’m here writing this.
The way I see it is:
I’m not going to need Science. I want to be a Web Designer. Why would I need to know about Cell Differentiation or Diffusion?
I have exams coming up for both subjects, plus more coursework for ICT.
So long as the Science work is completed by the end of the year, it’s all good.
This isn’t just my view either. Most of the people in my class share the exact same opinion. Even the people who joined this year, who didn’t have the original teacher to compare the new to, thinks she’s awful.
What is good though, someone in the class found a website called Nygma Science. It basically has completed work for everything that we’ve been doing. Just copy the work, change some of the words, and Bob’s your uncle.
It’s more than likely that you’ve heard about King’s successful attempt to register the word “Candy” as a trademark. If you haven’t been following this case, it basically means that if another developer creates a game and the title included the word “Candy”, King can either ask them to change the name or appeal to have it removed from the store completely, be it Google’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store.
King are trying to stop another developer from using their idea. This is fair enough. If you’ve spent time and money creating a game, you’re going to want it to be yours, you won’t want anyone stealing it. But, they’ve conveniently glanced over one key fact.
Candy Crush Saga isn’t an original idea.
One wouldn’t be hard pressed to see Candy Crush’ similarities to CandySwipe. There’s also a chance that if your saw this in the App Store, you’d just assume that this was a clone of Candy Crush itself. But that is not the case.
CandySwipe. The original Candy Crush Saga.
CandySwipe was created by Albert Ransom in the memory of his mother, and was released in 2010, a full two years prior to Candy Crush Saga’s release.
King have neglected to mention that their game is a clone of CandySwipe, but that hasn’t stopped them from attempting to sue Ransom. This led him to write an open letter to King:
Dear King,
Congratulations! You win! I created my game CandySwipe in memory of my late mother who passed away at an early age of 62 of leukaemia. I released CandySwipe in 2010 five months after she passed and I made it because she always liked these sorts of games. In fact, if you beat the full version of the Android game, you will still get the message saying ‘…the game was made in memory of my mother, Layla…’ I created this game for warm-hearted people like her and to help support my family, wife and two boys 10 and four. Two years after I released CandySwipe, you released Candy Crush Saga on mobile; the app icon, candy pieces, and even the rewarding, ‘Sweet!’ are nearly identical. So much so, that I have hundreds of instances of actual confusion from users who think CandySwipe is Candy Crush Saga, or that CandySwipe is a Candy Crush Saga knock-off. So when you attempted to register your trademark in 2012, I opposed it for ‘likelihood of confusion’ (which is within my legal right) given I filed for my registered trademark back in 2010 (two years before Candy Crush Saga existed). Now, after quietly battling this trademark opposition for a year, I have learned that you now want to cancel my CandySwipe trademark so that I don’t have the right to use my own game’s name. You are able to do this because only within the last month you purchased the rights to a game named Candy Crusher (which is nothing like CandySwipe or even Candy Crush Saga). Good for you, you win. I hope you’re happy taking the food out of my family’s mouth when CandySwipe clearly existed well before Candy Crush Saga.
I have spent over three years working on this game as an independent app developer. I learned how to code on my own after my mother passed and CandySwipe was my first and most successful game; it’s my livelihood, and you are now attempting to take that away from me. You have taken away the possibility of CandySwipe blossoming into what it has the potential of becoming. I have been quiet, not to exploit the situation, hoping that both sides could agree on a peaceful resolution. However, your move to buy a trademark for the sole purpose of getting away with infringing on the CandySwipe trademark and goodwill just sickens me.
This also contradicts your recent quote by Riccardo in ‘An open letter on intellectual property’ posted on your website which states, ‘We believe in a thriving game development community, and believe that good game developers – both small and large – have every right to protect the hard work they do and the games they create.’
I myself was only trying to protect my hard work.
I wanted to take this moment to write you this letter so that you know who I am. Because I now know exactly what you are. Congratulations on your success!
Sincerely,
Albert Ransom
President (Founder), Runsome Apps Inc.
This just goes to show that King do not care who they stamp on or who they anger, so long as they get exactly what they want, which sadly, they have done so.
I wrote this post because I wanted you to know exactly who King games are and what they are capable of doing to get what they want. I just hope that, if you are a player of Candy Crush, you take into consideration the information you have read and remember who the original creator of it was.
Samuel Stroud 
