I made my first Youtube video today. Take a look if you want.
Archive for February, 2008
If the blog post I’ve just read at Hawtymcbloggy (along with a number of other blogs and websites) is to be believed, Microsoft has made another blunder recently. I recommend that you read the post itself in its entirety, as it is explained in much better detail than I’ll go into here.
Basically, there was a kid named Nathaniel who had an extremely customized Xbox 360 which he preordered and had since the console’s original launch. He had traveled with his Xbox for 2 years and had it signed by some of the important figures in the gaming industry, and also had some custom art put on it. Unfortunately for Nathaniel, his Xbox got what is known as the Red Ring of Death (RRoD). This is a light which is usually green around the console and turns red after a very common hardware fault. In order to fix it, the owner has to send it back to Microsoft for repairs. He was worried about the art and autographs on his machine so he called in to Microsoft and they assured him that everything would be fine. He sent the Xbox in with a note explaining the circumstances and requesting that the autographs and art (in black marker) not be removed. Instead, he received his working Xbox back with all of the art wiped off with rubbing alcohol. This news is hitting a lot of the major gaming blogs, so maybe he’ll get compensated for his loss, but it seems slightly doubtful. You can see photos and the whole article at the link I posted above, but maybe you have to be a gamer to really understand how crappy this could be for someone.
Leap day - it seems to be a symbol to me of the lost. It is a day which comes so little that one feels as if he should take a close look at his life and spend the day doing something crazy in order to remember its very special nature. I don’t really plan on doing that, mainly because I can’t think of anything crazy, but also because something crazy enough might get me kicked out of the country. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize any future attempts at British citizenship, would I? The answer is no, children. Can you say that? No.
Seriously, though. Maybe I’ll make a Youtube video. I’ve never done that. That would be the craziest thing I could do in comparison to my normal nature. I was going to take a photo of a pork pie today, but Steph ate the last one yesterday because she was starving. I was sleeping at the time, so I couldn’t protest. I wanted to take a photo of it because I actually like them. I hadn’t tried one before, but the pies made from humans and gooey bug stuff in the Sweeney Todd movie made me want to try one. I did, and it was delicious - not at all like the movie, of course. Anyway, I was sleeping because my schedule was opposite of what it should been. I basically got up at night and went to sleep at the morning, so I didn’t sleep the night before last, and then stayed up all day until 6pm. Then I went to sleep and woke up at around 7pm with a horrible cramp. I won’t say anything more about the cramp, but you can investigate it here if you want. It seems to happen to me sometimes if my diet isn’t varied enough. I’m probably going to seek out fruits and vegetables today, because it is one of the most horrible things that I experience in life.
In recent personal news:
We have been working on HandRooster, and it seems that not everyone has left us. Our web hits aren’t massive like they used to be, but I’m hoping that will come with time and good comics, so we’ll just keep making them. I haven’t carved wood in ages, mainly because the house is still cold. I usually carve in the living room but I don’t have any wood or coal right now so the living room is cold if we’ve got the fan heater in the computer room. Steph never spends time in the living room, so I don’t want to steal the heater from her. Perhaps I’ll get some wood or coal soon and heat it up in there so I can carve. Otherwise, my hands are too cold and they hurt while I’m carving. I’ve been writing a bit - mostly small journal posts, HandRooster scripts, and little poems. I’ll remind anyone that is interested that most of my poems are in the poetry section of my website. I’ll probably be making individual pages for them or rearranging the page I have because my friend Lewis suggested that it might make them more readable. I agree, so I’ll get on that soon. If you read them and have any comments, email me or leave a comment. There is some contact info here Hmm. What else? I got some books yesterday. I intend to do book reviews on all of these at some point, but here are a couple of links. They are quite good books. This author writes very different fantasy books. They are a refreshing change to the usual:
Golden Fool
UK version
Fool’s Fate
UK version
Anyway, those are the latest two I’ve received and I intent to start reading them right away, although I have many other books to read. After I’m done, maybe I’ll finally get around to doing some book reviews. I guess we’ll see.
I hope you all have a Merry Leap Day and a Happy New March. Do something crazy!
Ah, so this post is to serve as a sort of main course to the sort of starters I’ve been making lately…if you’ll accept the food analogy.
First of all, we’ve almost finished the cosmetic updates on my website. I think it looks very nice and Steph has done a good job adding the birds into the header. It’s pretty cool, and it keeps the idea behind the theme the same. I really like it, and it makes me want to post a whole lot more than my previous theme, which had some problems displaying images correctly and just did some screwy things whenever I’d try to format things the way I wanted them. This theme is clean and simple, but remains visually pleasing. Anyway, enough of web stuff.
I thought I’d mention that I’ve added a poetry section to my site, and I’ve got a bunch of my poems on there. Now, I’ll just state for the record that I haven’t really made most of my poetry available to just anyone to read before this, so please realize that this contains a ton of my stuff, some of it left unfinished or without any editing yet been done. Stuff will change on the poetry section as I add/remove/edit poems. I also hope that nobody makes fun of me. I write from the heart, but I haven’t always followed the rules for some of this stuff, I’m sure. It has mainly been a way for me to express my emotions, which I’m usually really bad at doing. Anyway, if you want to read them, feel free. If not, that’s fine too. Just don’t send them to tons of people in chain emails making fun of the crappy ones. Oh, and don’t claim them as your work, just in case one of these babies turns out to be my cash crop. Yeah…..that’s going to happen…totally.
HandRooster: The comic is coming back. It is coming back soon. It is coming back this next week. This week’s scripts are done and they have been sent to the beautiful artist who is my wife, and she will be working on them tomorrow and later this week. I hope we haven’t lost our fan base entirely, but if you read this and you used to read the comic, get your RSS news readers ready..or just go to the site later next week if you’re old school like that. I must admit that sometimes I prefer to go without a newsreader myself. I call it “going newsreader commando” and it can be quite an exciting experience.
It was a nice sunny day today, so Steph and I walked to the shop in Strathtay. On the way, I took some pictures which I will share below. I had been wanting to get some photos of a couple of little waterfalls near the path, so I got those and a few others. I hope you enjoy them, because I had a problem with my Aperture plugin which uploads photos and I couldn’t get most of them on for hours. Now that I have conquered that problem, I present them to you.
Honestly, this post was going to be longer. I want to talk about some books I’ve been reading and also some work stuff, but I think I’ll do proper book reviews at a later date and work can wait. I’ll leave you to what you were doing before this rude interruption. Have a good one, as required by law.
In case I’ve forgotten to mention it before, but I’ve recently updated my site design. I’ve been using the same theme for a while and I thought it was time for a new one. So, I downloaded K2 and I looked up some styles for it. I found a pretty cool one called Curlz and Steph has edited the header and footer images for me using elements from my previous design. I think it looks good. It isn’t done all of the way yet, but it probably will be in the next couple of days.
So, I’ve updated my Projects page. I added the photos of one of the woodcarving projects I did, which I’ll also put below. It is called a Dalecarlian Horse, and there is a bunch of cool stuff that this wikipedia article will tell you about them. I’ll just let you look for yourself if you’re interested. Anyway, have a look at my projects page or just read below for the same stuff:
This is a Dalecarlian style horse I carved from basswood using instructions from a Swedish style woodcarving book I have. I made it as a gift for my mom for Christmas but just got around to uploading the pictures. I don’t think it’s too bad for a first attempt at this style of woodcarving. It is difficult because I don’t have a bandsaw to cut out the rough shape so I had to rough it out by hand from a block. Steph (my wife) did the fancy traditional paint job.
