Taken about 2 years and 1500 miles apart, it was only when I looked at the second picture on my laptop that I realised it reminded me of one I’d taken in Pompeii. I started to write this post then but got side tracked with the events happening in Japan.

The main similarity in the photographs is, of course, that they’re both shot from a fairly similar angle of a long straight street. The big difference, of course, is that one is of Sheffield and the other Pompeii. A modern city versus a historical one. Yet one that we can still learn much from.

When I was in Pompeii it wasn’t just the quality of how well preserved it was that impressed me, but the logical way in which the city had been designed. You can see how deep the kerbs are in the bottom picture: they’re getting on for at least a foot deep (33cms). A health and safety nightmare these days for sure, but it was done for a very simple reason: hygiene.

There weren’t any sewers in Pompeii, instead everyone simply emptied everything out into the road. Twice daily (at morning and at night) the sluice gates on the aqueduct at the top of the city were opened, thus washing the streets.

To make it so people didn’t have to wade around in muck the roads were built deeply inset, and the stones you can see in the middle of the road were laid for people to cross at. Each crossing stone is, at maximum, the width of the axel of the carts that used the road.

The simplicity is mesmerising to me, and I think we could benefit greatly from this kind of design more today.

It’s been a week now since the earthquake hit Japan and, like everyone else, I’ve been sat watching the news in disbelief, wonder and horror. It doesn’t feel like it can be real: it’s difficult to comprehend from the comfort of a sofa in England. We rarely experience the extreme forces of nature here: more often than not it feels like our own ineptitude getting in the way rather than actually being overwhelmed.

Possibly the most unbelievable thing of the disaster is how well it is being recorded. Images of the Pakistan floods last year were taken from the relative safety of helicopters flying above: from Japan we have hours of footage first person, the people in danger, distributed so rapidly for us all to watch.

The picture above was taken a few years ago in Pompeii. It is not exactly what it initially looks like, which is to say that it is not the body of a person caught in the volcanic ash cloud that descended upon Pompeii.

Instead it is a plaster cast of a cavity the archaeologists found as they carefully excavated the site – many more such cavities were filled revealing places where bodies had once laid. There aren’t many on display in Pompeii itself, but there doesn’t need to be. Even in its broken state this mannequin perfectly captures to us how it must have felt to be in Pompeii on the day Vesuvius erupted.

Even though this is an echo of a natural disaster from nearly 2000 years ago, the connection to Japan, to me, feels very real.

Spring is coming on fast (even though it’s gone a little cold and damp this weekend) and, as the sunlight does occasionally pour in through the windows, we realise it’s time for a spring clean.

And nowhere is that more evident that with my website. I know I’ve been struggling to update it, and I’ve had about 3 half finished pages for the articles hiding on my hard drive for weeks. I have been busy, very busy, but I’m not sure that’s an excuse.

After a lot of thinking, I realised that – at this point in time – I’m not enjoying writing the “how to” section anymore, and wasn’t actually that happy with some of the stuff I’d written.

So, for now, it’s on hold while I rethink exactly what my aims with it are, and how best to tackle moving forward. It’s likely this blog will take over, and I’ll create a few permanent links to the half decent things I write. I’ve got a feeling that there’ll also be articles about things other than just games design.

Like the signs that are littered around Sheffield, this site is currently under repair.

I’ll be back…

PS: Yes, I have tweaked the colours and layout of the site a bit, and no, I don’t know why it’s not displaying quite right on Firefox 4 Beta yet.