Fyorl

mov01916.mpg

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:35:28 -0700

mov01915.mpg

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:31:25 -0700

This guy had just setup on the main town square and started noodling...

Turn on the damn Mike!

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:34:43 -0700

Yeah I was invited to a party being held for charity. It was pretty lame so James and I went up and messed around on some instruments to relieve the boredom.

They neglected to turn the mike on though... which was probably a good thing as I can't sing.

This isn't my bass by the way. Check out my Flickr shots to see my Wesley 5-string.

Latvia

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:15:27 -0800

Me on a train in Latvia. Editing in GIMP. Thinkbubble says 'Marshmallows'

Puzzle Pirates

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:34:08 -0800

A while ago I found this great little game called Puzzle Pirates. Basically you create your little pirate character and then you have to do puzzles to perform certain tasks. The most fun was joining up with other people on someone's ship and going pillaging. You all had to work together and do your own puzzle well in order to help the ship sail, load guns, fix holes, pump water out, navigate etc. Anyway, it was a great idea and completely smashed the mould of most other MMORPGs out there. I was happily pillaging and collecting vast amounts of Pieces of Eight since my #1 goal was to outfit my little pirate dude in some cool piratey gear. So I finally saved up enough to buy him a Swashbuckler's Jacket. That's when I found out about item decay. Apparently, after 90 login days my awesome Swashbuckler's Jacket would be reduced to rags. So I had effectively thrown 12,000 Pieces of Eight out the window and my dream of a cool little pirate was completely destroyed. Even though I had 90 days to enjoy my Jacket, I knew that I would have to collect the money again and it didn't seem worth it to me. I like set goals that I can accomplish and then forever bask in the glory of. I don't like having to keep working to re-create the rewards. I like to move onto other goals so I have a sense of progress. Puzzle Pirates did not provide. Sure I could instead save up to buy a ship which would never decay and then happily sail the high seas on that but I would still not look piratey enough! Sure, if I was playing a MUD I could imagine what my character looked like and I would have no problems. But when I'm given an avatar, I damn well want him to look cool! Obviously other people don't want the same thing from their games so I'm sure a lot of them can look past this (and a lot do judging by the 3 million Puzzle Pirates out there). And I can see why the item decay is needed, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with their system. You can't have the same economy that they have without item decay but unfortunately I don't want anything to do with that system.

'Free time'? What is this strange phrase?

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:32:07 -0700

I just recently started my second year of post-16 education. This is my final year of A-levels and I decided not to drop any subjects and instead continue with the 5 I had taken last year. Normally people drop one because A2 (the second year) is more difficult and therefore time-consuming than AS (the first year). Usually people have about 3 subjects at this point in their education although it's becoming more common for people to have 4 and 5. Anyway I have noticed the past year that I haven't been able to be as active on the interwebs as I would like (being a nerd and all) as I have lots of friends I like to chat with and various community sites I try to keep up-to-date with (like deviantART and GAIA Online). The past year has seen my activity on those sites decline dramatically and I can only imagine it's because of the fact that I seem to have no free time anymore. So I thought I'd have a look at the number of hours I work to see if I was actually doing a lot of work or just being lazy and wasting my time, avoiding my online 'responsibilities'. Here goes: I take 5 subjects at A level. Each subject has 4 lessons timetabled for my school-week. 5 * 4 is 20 lessons a week plus one for our PSE/PSHE/Citizenship lesson. So 21 lessons a week in total. Each lesson is 1h 15mins long (or 1.25 hours) which means I'm doing 1.25 * 21 hours of work in school each week. That's 26h 15mins. Fair enough, less than people in lower years who have full timetables and do 31h 15mins a week. However (and this is the killer), this is A level and so it's expected that for each hour you spend in lesson you should spend an hour in your own time doing homework or reading over your notes. This was told to us in our A-level introduction day and has since been repeated to me. So we double the amount of hours in school for hours in my free time (which include those at home and those in my free lessons at school). That's 52h 15mins of pure schoolwork every week. You might say that even though I'm expected to do an hour outside lesson for each I do in lesson I wouldn't realistically receive that much work or need to go over my notes to fill up all that time. That may be true for some A level subjects but when you consider that I take Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and German it becomes a bit more realistic. Some statistics: In the first week back at school I've received (according to what I've put down on my Noticeboard) 12 pieces of homework not including all the stuff that I didn't get done in-lesson. It's probably not that many bits of homework but I know from past experience that they all take a while to do. Either way I can safely assume that I spend about 52 hours a week on schoolwork. The average hours worked for women in the UK was 31.4 in 2001 and for men it was 42.2 hours.. So I'm already doing 10 hours more than the average working adult male. The best bit is that European legislation (which has been adopted by the UK) states that the maximum number of hours someone can be forced to work (as in their Employment Contract) is 48 hours a week. Obviously no-one's defying the legislation in this case because I choose to work this long by my choice of A levels but it still puts it in perspective a little.

Reserve Tank

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:25:35 -0700

Here's a nice advert that's been circulating around my TV for a while. Sounds like a fantastic idea doesn't it? The advert says it all: when you're busy talking about random crap to a friend (on a roadside bend no less - maybe concentrating on driving around the bend would be a better idea?) and you run out of credit on your phone, instead of cutting you off because you have no money left they instead kindly put you in debt! I'm sure there are loads of occasions where your conversation about dinosaurs' dietary habits is so important that you want to take out an overdraft just so you can finish it. I wonder how much the interest is on this overdraft anyway? And wouldn't that interest mean that you actually pay more for those extra minutes on the phone than you would have if you hadn't so tragically run out of credit? I suppose if it was a really important call then I guess running out of credit and having your call cut off could be a problem... It's a good thing emergency calls made on mobiles are free really. ¬_¬

Work Experience

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 05:50:53 -0700

As some of you may already know, I've taken a week's work experience placement at the Environment Agency to make up for the two weeks of work expeience I did at Budgens, organised by the school ¬_¬ Anyway, I got in about 7/4s of an hour ago and have been given the desk of 'Matthew Lee' who is apparently away for this week. It has a swivel chair. This makes me happy. The Team Leader's name is Graham and he had some things setup for me to do this morning (or so I've been told) however he's been called out on 'Flood Watch' (not quite sure what that entails but I'd like to believe it involves more than just watching the floods) and so before I can really do anything, I've got to wait for him to get back. Meanwhile, one of the team members, Claire, is helping me out with stuff even though she's a little busy answering all the phones on account of her being the only member of the team still here. As usual, my dad's given me crazy amounts of food to eat for lunch so I'll give you an update if I don't manage to eat myself to death. Update 1: Well lunch came around and we went to a talk on Dyslexia and how to accomodate it in the workplace. It was actually quite interesting and I learnt a few things about it. After lunch in the cafeteria we got back and Graham was there - nice to see he didn't drown or something. Anyway Claire took me out to investigate a fly-tipping report. Apparently a load of stuff had been dumped outside a sewage treatment facility. Obviously just dumping rubbish anywhere is illegal under the Environment Protection Act but on top of that it was reported that some Japanese Knotweed had also been dumped along with it. Dumping that stuff anywhere that may cause it to spread is a violation of the Wildlife and Countryside Act because it's so invasive and so whoever did so was in for a bit of a fine if they were caught. So we drove along to a sewage treatment plant and wandered around for a bit trying to spot this fly-tipping but we couldn't find any in the reported place. Claire thought that the company may have gotten rid of it already since it was right outside their gate so we went in to see if anyone knew. We found one worker who helpfully informed us we were at the wrong plant >_< When we got to the actual sewage treatment plant the fly-tipping was quite obvious. There was at least a couple of transit van loads worth of wood, metal frames and even a toilet and sink. The Japanese Knotweed was there too so we had to search around for any evidence of who'd dumped this stuff. Unfortunately the bin bags we searched through only had random juice cartons and roof tiles but no bank statements or anything. So the only thing we could do was to call the council to clear the stuff up and tell them about the knotweed. Bit of an anti-climax really but it was cool to attempt a bit of detective work.

Adobe AIR

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:10:25 -0700

Finally, I can use my web development skills to write desktop apps! Well... once they release the Linux version of the Adobe AIR SDK that is. Who needs C and PyGTK or even Java when I can do cross-platform apps using nice high-level languages that save me loads of time? Fair enough they're less efficient on computer resources but I'm the programmer and I'd like to think my time's more important than the computer's =P. I hated you Adobe for Dreamweaver but if you don't turn out to be lying about this Linux version you will be forever worshiped by me. (At least until I start my own software company that kicks your ass...) Let the good times roll.

GAIM

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:42:51 -0700

I've been using Kopete for a while to chat to all my Windows-using friends (yes, I realise that makes them the scum of the earth but they're the only friends I have). It has its quirks I suppose (like big file transfers failing) but generally does everything I want it to. However, recently I've been playing an MMORPG called Dofus (definitely worth checking out) and in order to play two characters at once I need two instances of the game running at once. In order to get the best speed I decided to log into the failsafe terminal instead of loading KDE and all the stuff that goes along with that. I also decided to try out GAIM as I reckoned it would have a smaller memory footprint than Kopete from previous experience of using it. The thing that struck me most were the improvements to its interface since the last time I used it. It's no longer ugly! It's got a nice, clean and intuitive interface and I have no trouble using it. I'm definitely using GAIM now instead of Kopete. This of course adds one more to the list of GNOME apps I actually use. Another thing I discovered that I liked was Metacity. In the failsafe mode you only get an Xterm and so have to start a window manager from that. I'd forgotten briefly what the KDE one was called and so ran Metacity instead as it was a name that stuck with me. Again, I like the simpleness of it. Of course, KWin's probably just as good and it's my own fault for over-customising it >_< I know this sounds utterly ridiculous but I might end up sticking with the failsafe terminal. Who needs a desktop environment? Just give me an X session and a terminal and I'm perfectly happy ;)

Hypocrisy Perhaps?

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:07:47 -0700

I happened to be watching the news recently and there was a report on a speech by the infamous George 'Dubya' Bush. In it he mentioned that the US were the global leaders in combating Global Warming. He also urged other nations to sign up to carbon emission reduction targets etc. I find this rather interesting considering America were one of the few nations who refused to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol. As I understood it, the aforementioned Protocol was an agreement to cut carbon emissions.

Quote

Mon, 07 May 2007 17:00:00 -0700

Heh I just read the announcement on GaiaOnline about the Avatar Exporter. I know no-one else will find this nearly as funny as I did but I didn't want to let it escape my memory so I thought I'd write it down:

it currently has some minor bugs involving instant death

Besides, who needs an avatar exporter? I've been grabbing my Gaia avi and posting him around the internet for ages. I don't need a special feature to do it...

Abandonware

Wed, 02 May 2007 17:27:58 -0700

Man I love Abandonware. Ever since I got Dosbox running nicely on my computer I've been able to play so many classic games. Way back in the day when plot, innovation and depth were more important than realistic graphics programmers slaved over hot computers making masterpieces. If you're ever bored and have no idea what to spend all that ample free-time on, check out this site and possibly go grab DosBox yourself (google it). I'd recommend Settlers II and Gladiator as pretty awesome starting points if you don't have any game titles to go by. Also, if you know any great games you remember playing as a kid and you think they'll be up there, please tell me, it's hard to wade through so many games and find ones I'm willing to play.

Please stop bashing The GIMP!

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:12:56 -0700

I'm sure most of you have heard of The GIMP. It's a completely free, open source image editing app. It's comparable to Photoshop and this is where I get annoyed. I realise that it's not going to have quite as many features as Photoshop or not look as polished. That's understandable though because... it's free. Yes, it does spawn multiple windows instead of just floating them like PS, that's not a problem because I use multiple desktops and usually have one devoted purely to GIMP. The next version's gonna implement GEGL so you can all stop whining about CMYK colourspace support. The main thing is, it can do pretty much everything you could want it to. It may not be as straightforward as in PS (sometimes it's actually easier) but it can be done. It's got two extension languages (Script-Fu, Python-Fu) so it has the scope to make life a hell of a lot easier than PS. My biggest gripe (and the reason I wrote this) though is with people saying "Well we tried them both and it took us nearly twice as long to do the same with The GIMP." That's because you're used to using Photoshop you damn moron! PS has a complicated interface and to do some things it's not as simple as people would like to make out. I've used Linux since I found out it existed and before that I'd never used PS anyway. So I'm used to using The GIMP, in fact I use it a lot. My profile graphics were done using it (and inkscape for the bass-clef) and it would probably take me at least twice as long to do the same in Photoshop. I hope you can see my point here. It's a fairly obvious one yet all over the internet I read the same thing and I can't understand how people fail to realise that they're just more familiar with PS 'cos they're Microsoft lackeys and The GIMP doesn't get as much attention on Winblows. There's no point giving me that 'GIMP's got poor documentation' crap either. When have you ever found yourself reading the help file when you wanted to do something in PS? I guess some people must or otherwise the docs wouldn't exist but most people would just turn to google. With GIMP you can do the exact same thing. There's an entire forum packed with tutorials and users willing to help others out. Plus I wouldn't expect the developers to write documentation for it. They're not paid a cent. I'd prefer them to keep adding to the app and let the community write the documentation. There's plenty more I could say about the comparisons that get thrown around but I already digressed a bit at the top. [/rant]

The About Me Blog

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 22:28:44 -0700

There's not much to say really. I was born in Australia and lived there until I was four. I then moved to Laos and lived there for two years. Since then I've been lounging around in England. I'm post-16 education at the moment studying Maths, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry and German with only a year or so to go. After that I hope to take a gap year and go to any number of places such as China, Australia and Germany before I'm back into another three years of education at University. I currently work as a Web Programmer with my good friend and company partner, Ben. We share a web design company called Elemental Design. I suppose we do make some money occasionally but it's mainly just a hobby. And one that I hope to continue and perhaps turn into a profession in the future. As you can see from the 'Bands' section on my profile, I'm quite passionate about my music. I play the Bass Guitar and have recently taken up Piano. I also hope to get my own Double Bass in the future and learn to play that. I like a huge range of music and play in a few bands (namely Sobriquet but also a Jazz and Blues band). I'm sure I spend far too much time on the computer either doing web-related stuff, talking to some of my many international friends or playing games but I do also like to write. Whenever I find time for it and am properly motivated I churn out a few pieces of fiction (my preferred genre being Fantasy) which can be found at my deviantART account. As far as sports go, I like to play basketball whenever I can. I also really like watching it but I don't follow any particular team. Ice Hockey is another favourite but I've never had the chance to play it myself. From what my friends tell me, I'm a good listener but I have a habit of correcting everyone's English which can get quite annoying apparently. I blame it on having an English teacher as a mother. OK, fine, I guess I did have a lot to say and I'm surprised you actually read down this far but you made it and now I've finished... Really. Yup, you can stop reading now.