Ashley Rondeaux

With another Venice carnival behind us this year, let’s take a look into the history of the city’s magnificent annual celebration of opulence.   The Carnival of Venice, or Carnevale di Venezia, is a historic festival celebrated in, Venice (of course). There are no real concrete guesses as to the exact year it began, but many sources point to the year of 1162, after the Venetian Republic defeated the Austrian invader ‘Ulrich II of Aquileia’. The festival initially celebrated their victory, but in later centuries, it became an event of pleasure and freedom.   During the Renaissance, it became an official…

Star Wars: The Old Republic is an MMO that began in late 2011 and has been receiving ongoing support and updates over the past decade. It, like many other MMOs, utilises free-to-play gameplay with a subscription service to unlock the latest expansions and many other features. It is a spiritual successor to the hugely popular ‘Knights of The Old Republic’ games, set 300 years after them – thus being a couple thousand years before any of the Star Wars movies. The main story follows the troubled peace agreement between the Galactic Republic and the recently revived Sith Empire, where small…

We’re back at it with a second, completely amateur recipe article. Unlike the last one, this one actually has high quality photos. Today we’re making Korean-style beef, with the vegan option of sautéed garlic butter mushrooms, and two Korean sauces: a homemade ssamjang (sauce for wraps) and pajeori (spring/green onion salad).  Ingredients: Beef + Marinade: Beef (I personally used approx. 2 ribeye steaks, can also be tenderloin or sirloin for example)  Salt. Black pepper.  Sesame oil.  Garlic Mushrooms: Your choice of mushrooms, sliced.  Sliced garlic cloves (as many or few as you want)  Butter (also your choice, cut off as…

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear ‘animation’?  Animation is a truly fascinating art. It’s an endless well of creativity, and there are limitless ways of expressing it: 2D, 3D, stop motion, CGI, claymation. All are many forms of just animating, let alone the endless personal art styles within each of them. And above even that, there are genres.  I’d like to draw attention to what I feel is an underappreciated genre in particular, and that is, as you will have guessed, dark animation. When I say dark, it has a lot of vagueness as to what…

Now, this may be a very odd title. Filled with mystery, a touch of mischievous clickbait perhaps. I’ll be completely transparent though, the end to this story will be disappointing. There’s going to be some wonderful build-up, emotional storytelling and beautiful imagery (if I do say so myself.) But it will all end so abruptly and unfortunately that it may just leave you regretting ever reading it in the first place. Nonetheless, I’ll spin the tale anyway. Back in mid-2014, June or July perhaps, I was watching a livestream on Twitch in the early morning. Nothing of note, but the…

I am, by no means, a professional chef. Or a food blogger. I have no high quality camera, just a 5 year old iPhone. I also don’t have some inspirational story about how I travelled the world and came across these enlightening noodles that changed my perspective on life. But I do have a recipe on some good noodles, so I thought I’d share it anyway. I think we’ve all been quite irritated by recipe sites that go on and on before even showing you the ingredients, so without further ado and at risk of already turning you away from…

In the video game industry, crunch is best defined as a forced overtime for workers in order to meet expected deadlines. It can be prevalent in all industries of work, but the term is most often synonymous with the game industry. When the development team starts to fall behind in regards to a deadline, the hours per work week can double in more extreme cases. Across many instances, the staff are never paid for this dramatic increase. Unfortunately, crunch is very normalised in game development, and the negative effects have only recently been brought to light in the media. So…

The Lord of the Rings is a widely beloved franchise. Originally only a series of novels, the universe has expanded in many ways. For many fans, the books are the perfect medium for telling the story, which I can definitely see the argument for. For others (most certainly including me), the movies were timeless, cinematic masterpieces that, while not completely capturing the full world Tolkien envisioned, were glorious in their own right. Sometime this year, the Amazon-produced TV series should be coming, and I imagine that too will garner divided opinions. But for specific fans, there is another form. If exploring the world…

I first heard about JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure via memes on Twitter, like I’m sure many people did. It was during the airing of Part 4 (Diamond is Unbreakable), sometime in 2016, and I thought the joke was pretty funny. I’d heard some good things about the show, so thought I’d give it a shot. I was immediately blown away by a completely new experience in anime: gore, violence, captivating storylines, enthralling characters, and plenty of humour. 5 years on, having watched and read Parts 1-7, I want to give my own review on each Part that has an anime so far, meaning the…

Everybody should love cats. They are small, fluffy, cute and evil all in one. They could cuddle you for an hour straight, then suddenly decide you are their mortal enemy and scratch you to shreds. But today I’m here to celebrate the best, gentlest cat ever, this chubby fella called Thor. I mean, look at him. So much belly to rub. Thor has been my cat for the past decade, born March 15th 2012, we adopted him and his twin brother Zeus from a family friend. So very, very tiny. Thor has always loved to hide under blankets. Thor had…