Beck Hithe Cottage is a site for a cottage in north Wales that I did for a friend of a friend. For people who had no experience with websites before, they gave me a whole lot more information that most clients do! I’m really quite pleased with this design, my best of all the cottage sites so far.

I’ve also just completed a new design for the webcomic list. I did a previous design for it about 9 months ago, and Ash was keen to get going on that, so I asked for a day to make a better version. We’re both really pleased with the end design, although Ash’s enthusiam is fading a bit after spending all day CSSing it. I’m happy to see how much I’ve improved over the year though. I also got myself a nice new Canon Ixus 800 camera out of it which will be great for uni.

Well I’ve completed the first week of university. It’s been tough, and I’m just recovering from the “fresher’s flu”. It’s a sign of how isolated I’ve been that I can’t remember the last time I just had a normal cold.

It’s been hard to adapt too, to being surrounded by lots of people in my generation (well, just) in a busy environment. I’ve been trying to make as many friends as I can so I have lots of contacts, rather than sticking to a small group of people, but the course has naturally split into it’s own little cliques, and its difficult to get in on some of them.

My diet has had a few sticking points. I might end up going off on my own to eat somewhere, even though I hate eating alone.

I seem to be having as many bad days as good at the moment, some days I come home exhausted thinking “why am I putting myself through all this?”. One of the modules in particular is difficult as it challenges what I’ve been working on, and the way I’ve been working for the past 6 months. But that way is the correct way to work really, it’s just hard to adapt. It would be good to have a proper design process to rely on, instead of falling back on inspiration.

Travelling has been a problem too. I thought the train could be good, as I could do some work if I need to (when I get my new laptop) but it’s a tiny shitty train that stops at all the villages, and is packed with schoolkids by the time it gets to Bury St. Edmunds. Also the timetable is messed up early on and breaks the pattern, so for 10am lectures, I can get the 8:15 train, but for 9am lectures I need the 7:50 train.

Cambridge itself is a lovely place, and I can imagine myself living there, although in what sort of accommodation I’m not sure. I went to one of the lower-priced uni-run houses and it was a tiny place, with 5 students squashed into it. On the other end this girl on my course is in a 1 bedroom flat that costs £800/month!

Another 6am start tommorrow…

It’s been so long since my last update and a lot of stuff has happened. I spose the main story being I’ve been made an unconditional offer to study Graphic and Web Design at Anglia Ruskin University!

I’ve had a quick look at the logs of this site and I seem to be munching a whole lot of traffic, so I should really put some effort in and update it.

\o/

Got another little addition to my portfolio:

www.crosswordcluesolver.com

Another joint project with Ash, I made up the layout and graphics and he did all the codey magic and then stuffed it full of adverts.

Been at work 2 months now, with only 1 day off, yesterday in fact, due to illness - I think I had some winter virus. 1 month until america lady comes back to see me!

Edit: well I AM a silly billy!

I just got back from going karting for the first time. I went with two friends who had done it before, to an indoor track just outside of town. In the afternoon, it wasn’t at all busy and we bought 36 laps for £20, split into 2 sets of 18.

On the first lap, everyone breezed past me and I managed to a staggering 27 second laptime. From then on I got into the 20s and the late 18s.

We had a quick break and discussed tactics, then onto the 2nd set, and this time I was really on it. The amount of grip when cornering is awesome. At first I was stomping hard on the brakes and turning in, in the end I was just tapping them and then mashing the gas and powersliding around the corners. I was also leaning into bends to distribute my weight. There’s a long corner at the back of the track which I learnt to take at full throttle, which scared the crap out of me at first, the kart shuddering about, watching the barriers shoot past me.

After we had finished, we went back to the pits and got a print out of our laptimes, and on the 2nd set, I had managed to get a 17.45, which was the lowest of all 3 of us. The only problem I had was there must have been something sharp in the seat, because I have really bad sore points on my back now, even through some overalls, a t-shirt and a top. They are going to be painful for the next few days.

Well it’s been over a month now in my new job and so I really should write it down here. The application process ended up being really quick and painless. I phoned up asking about it on wednesday, went to the agency on friday and was at work the following monday.

I’m in the emergency services department of the town council, working in a smallish office with 3 other people. My official title is Lone Worker Administrator, but I end up doing lots of other jobs for other departments too. Some of it is pretty monotonous, and the pay isnt that great but it has definately added some schedule to my life and made me more productive, even though now I have less free time on my hands. That also could have to do with me giving up IRC and Quakeworld too though.

This is from an email I wrote out a couple of days ago:

I thought I’d tell you a tale of honesty and dashing good looks that portrays me in the knight in shining armour image I’d like to be remembered by.

At the gym today I was warming down and doing some stretches, when my magpie eyes spotted a tiny little shiny thing on the floor beside some mats. Curiousity awoken, I pulled my legs from behind my head and put down the car I was benching pressing one-handedly (artistic licence invoked) and picked up this tiny little blue polished stone.

I didn’t know if it was a geniune jewel or just a piece of plastic from some 50-cent blinged out trainers and so my mind started digesting if to hang on to it, because it might be valuable or there might not be any chance of returning it to it’s rightful owner anyway. Plus I like collecting things I find on the floor. Then my collosal conscience kicks in (it comes free of charge with my all-around-good-guy persona(tm)) and I thought of the person who could have lost this and how much it would mean to get it back, even if the chance of that actually happening was very slim. And I remembered the good fortune about winning that Xbox, and maybe some karma was being involved somewhere, and this could be a test.

So I strode up to the main desk and handed it in. The girl there told me it belonged to a woman who worked there and it was a sapphire from her mother’s 30 year old engagement ring which she had lost the day before. All the staff were really thankful and I left the gym with a smile on my face, head held high, riding out into the cold night air on my trusty white steed.

I’ve been in an optimistic mood recently and have been entering competitions I see in newspapers and on the Internet. One of them was in the Sunday Mirror - Win an Xbox 360 every hour on the hour. I saw they had online entry so I thought “Woo I can enter for free” until I got to the site and found they charged you 50p to do that. So I thought “What the hell” and entered anyway. Then about 2 weeks later when I had forgotten about it, I received a letter saying I was one of the lucky winners. I was quite skeptical at first and I didn’t want to phone up incase it turned out to be a hoax. But eventually I was coerced into phoning and everything checked out.

Now what to do with it? I have friends who have Xboxen and it would be fun to play online, but it’s only the Core pack and to do that, I think I need to upgrade it so I can use Xbox Live. Plus all the games are pretty expensive and I’ve never really been a console person. Then I see the Core packs selling for over £350 on Ebay which is a £100 increase on the RRP so that’s probably what I’m going to do. I’ll wait til I get it in my sticky little hands before making a final decision.

The funny thing is I have friends who were really hyped on this console and had pre-orders but the shops ran out of stock before they could get theirs, where as I didn’t really care too much and somehow ended up with one anyway. It’s nice to have some good luck for a change anyway.

A couple of months ago, a friend from America stayed round my house, and even though we both had the most honest of intentions, we connected in a way that hasn’t happened to me before, and it soon became more than just friends. We only spent less than two weeks together, and now sadly she is back in the states and I don’t know when I’ll ever get to see her again. My brain’s still hurting from going from lonely as hell, to being so close to someone you feel you could bare your soul to them, back to being alone again. It was an amazing time and I don’t regret it at all. I miss you.

I haven’t taken much time to update this for a while now and I have quite a few things to say so I’ll break them up into smaller updates.

My birthday was really a non-event, but I managed to stop myself getting too miserable. For presents, the main thing I got was an electric RC helicopter. At first I was a bit nonplussed as I have never really been in helis. “When you were young you always said you wanted one!” claimed my dad, much to my puzzlement.

Anyway after staring at it in the box for a few weeks, I took it out for a spin in the garden. It was pretty clumsy and I didn’t have much idea what I was doing. The box states “for intermediate or advanced pilots” which was great seeing as I’d never flown a helicopter before. I’ve now had about 5-6 flights on it and I’m getting into it. I can just about hover it to some degree of stability tail-in and I managed to do a few circuits when I took it out to the flying site, and scared myself when I got too high - something I’m not used to happening with planes. I’ve crashed it a lot of times now and only done damage once, which was an easily replacable part. I still find it frustrating though as sometimes it does weird things and I can’t understand why. I also have no idea how to set it up properly and I could be doing it all wrong for all I know.

Thomas, a friend in Sweden also has one and we compare notes on flying them. I have the advantage of 8 years flying planes over him so I’ve learnt a little quicker.

One thing I’ve noted is how everyone seems to love helicopters. I can show a video clip of me hovering a plane, which is a hard thing to do and people aren’t bothered. But I do it with a helicopter and people are blown away, even though it’s something they are designed to do! I just don’t get it.

It’s my birthday tommorrow, I would have forgotton if not for the timely reminder at the top right of this page, and I have the usual pre-birthday depression. I remember my 21th birthday at the final days I was at university. I had depression and didn’t want to drink on my tablets, but some friends dragged me out and we went bowling. That was nearly 3 years ago now. Coincidentilly I went bowling earlier this week with the only 2 real-life friends I have here. Going back to uni has always filled me with dread, just the memories of anxiety plus not knowing if I could be able to cope with looking after myself, especially with this diet. Then about a week ago I had a dream where I was back there, and suddenly it didn’t seem so scary anymore. Now I think about it, it’s not such a daunting prospect, I’ve been thinking about my future and maybe it would be the best thing for me to go back and have at least something to show for the money and effort I’ve already invested.

I’m finding it so hard to keep motivated at the moment. I think it’s my diet again - my gym trainers trying to stuff me full of carbohydrates and the only carbs I can tolerate are potatoes which give me an energy burst then make me feel sleepy afterwards. John my doctor says I should be fine with little to no carbs though, so who’s advice do I take? It’s so damn frustrating. I tried rice yesterday as another carb source and I had diarrhea this morning and have been feeling shitty and lethargic. Feels like I’ll never be able to eat normally again.

Oh yeah, quick Quake 4 review: weapons - generic, levels - linear as hell, running around and shooting bits - average to good, spoiled by crappy rail-shooter bits, ending is a joke, multiplayer sucks.

Trying to get things back in order again after getting a bit slack the past two weeks. I have a couple of websites to get on with and just generally need to keep my life on track. On top of that, I’m now taking even more weird and wonderful supplements - Green Barley which is this bright green powder I take in the mornings and evenings and now I’m also being de-wormed. My doctor has seen new studies that people with Candida are likely to suffer from worms and parasites so I’m on some homeopathic drops. The problem is they make me feel rather queasy for a couple of hours after taking them. They’re ethanol based, and taste like vodka, and I’m not sure if its just the effect of this tiny bit of alcohol on my teetotal body or there’s a chemical in there that’s battering my immune system. I’m gonna stick with it and hope it sorts itself out and I become more tolerant to it.

Here’s a little graphic I made for Ash today for his comics site. I said I’d have a look about making a layout for him too but that’s something to do for another day.

and that’s all I have to say on the matter.

I found some slightly newer pics also from when I first started flying.

Here’s my first ever plane, the superb ATS Kite. I’ve yet to find a better trainer. I ended up taking both my A and B tests on this. I think Flair make them now, and they’re better than most of the ARTF crap you get now.

This was my Kyosho Cap232, and probably one of the best ARTFs I’ve ever had; - well it was probably the most expensive too. I remember I kept going down into the garage just to take it out of it’s box and admire it. It flew really nicely too, and it taught me a lot about flying smooth aerobatics and power management.

Unfortunately this was involved in my biggest crash yet. I remember having a feeling of forboding on the day too, in the end I just came up with “whats the worst that can happen?”. I was soon to find out.

I went into a huge power loop and right at the top scythed into a trainer plane that I didn’t see in time, going the other way. I slashed all the way along the top of his fuselage and ripped off his tail, but he managed to come in for a landing. Nothing fell off my plane, so I thought I was lucky, until I found I had absolutely no control and was heading for the ground with the throttle jammed open. It made a huge crunch when it hit into a ploughed field just behind the treeline, and my stomach just jumped on hearing it. When we got there, it was a total mess. The fueltank had ruptured and the batteries were ripped apart and smoking. The engine was about 30cm down into the mud and the crankcase had been broken. All the radios were destroyed apart from two wing servos.

It turned out the trainer’s tail must have hit or damaged the radio switch on the side of my plane as we scraped past each other. If I had had that switch on the other side, I probably would have got away with it. The engine eventually lived on when someone had a go at welding it back together and is still running in a clubmates plane, although for how much longer I don’t know. I saw a brand new kit on Ebay a few months ago and I was very tempted, but didn’t have the cash to buy it on impulse. Plus I wondered if I would be bored of it now, as I’m getting more into 3D aerobatics, which that plane really isn’t capable of. Still, I’ll always remember it as one of my favourate planes ever.

I need to take more care of this place, along with other things in life. The last few weeks have been a bit weird, I’ve started losing focus and letting things slip through my hands. At least I’ve taken one positive step and got my “job broker” on the search for jobs for me. It still feels a bit like jumping in at the deep end though.

One piece of good news is that I phoned up an old friend, who I have only ever spoken to online, from thousands of miles away. She’s staying in this country for a few months and we might arrange to meet up, which feels great and ARGHH ANXIETY at the same time. That said I was really shakey just about calling her for the first time, and that worked out ok, so there we go.

I was cleaning out the spare room today and found a whole load of mixed up photos that my mum hid away to stop my brother playing with and destroying them. Found some pretty embarrassing baby photos which I promptly uploaded.

This is me, and my two cousins with my granddad. It was probably taken in novemeber when both me, one of my cousins (the one on the right) and my grandad have a birthday. I think the look on my face must be due to a party-popper just going on. The tree in the corner is still alive and in our living room, and the toy plane is up in our loft.

Whilst rummaging around my harddrive, I found this article I wrote for a blog a long time ago. I thought I’d put it up here too.

Long ago I remembered watching this children’s TV program which really freaked me out at the time. I didn’t purposefully intend to watch it, I just caught the first episode and got hooked. The last episode terrified me especially, so much that I blocked out most of the memories, and for years could only recollect a faint glimmer of it and thought it had been a bad dream. Then in a late night nostalgia IRC moment, I tossed out what faint memories I had of it to see if it was real and got the words back: Dark Season.

Dark Season is like a cross between Doctor Who and The Demon Headmaster (I was a bit old to watch that on telly but read the book) with some Nazis thrown in for good measure. It even had the very young English rose - Kate Winslet in, what more could you want??

I won’t let go Jack! oh fucksticks

It took place over 6 episodes, the first 3 being the Demon Headmaster stage. I’m probably going to spoil the hell out of this but I don’t think there’s any chance it will be back on television ever again so I guess that’s ok. All the kids in a school are given free shitty laptop computers, this was in 1991 mind you so digital watches were still a marvelous technological achievement. But somehow these machines had the ability to hypnotise the kids and turn them into horrible zombies with strange psycho-kinetic powers. The main characters seem to escape this fate through luck or judgment but one of them isn’t so fortunate. Meet Olivia, former speccy geek and now Class-A psychological disaster area:

Hay guys….URRRGH BRAIIINS

This was pretty damn scary for my 10 year old eyes, but in the last few moments of episode 2, the terror was ramped up to ULTRA-FEAR. After doing the usual crazy antics such as exploding light-fittings, Olivia had disappeared for a while so I hoped the scary quotient had been used up for that episode. I was so wrong. One of the only likeable and non-insane teachers in the school was trying to get to her car. I was waiting, on edge for Olivia to pop up and try to stop her but she didn’t and the teacher reached the car and got in. Me and several thousand other children around the country breathed a sigh of relief. And then silently..

…Olivia’s face rises up from the backseat.

:(

ARRAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

That was honestly one of the most terrifying moments of my childhood televisual life. Christ, they shouldn’t be showing shit like that before 9PM, yet alone on kids TV at 4 o’ clock. For the next 3 years I had carbackseatphobia. I couldn’t get in a car without doing a close inspection of the back of the vehicle, including any compartments crazed zombie girls could hide in.

After an anxious week of waiting, the next episode finally comes around and mercifully, the teacher manages to escape before Olivia can eviscerate her using only her mind. The kids using master hacker skills manage to save the day and stop everyone become zombies as well as reversing Olivia’s transformation. Hooray, celebrations all round. But it wasn’t over yet.

Miss Pendragon: scary witch and super-nazi

Now started the even more creepy second half of the series. It revolved around a giant Cold War-era supercomputer buried under the school, ominously named the Beremoth. Miss Pendragon and her aryan followers are trying to uncover it, under the guise of archeology. As the plot progresses, it’s revealed that Pendragon was in the charge of the original Ministry of Defense project many years ago, but was shut down because of her twisted ideology. The Behemoth needs a human "implant" to operate properly, and one of the three children from the first three episodes has been selected, due to his blonde hair. But he reveals it’s dyed blonde, and through a twist of fate, Miss Pendragon gets pushed into the seat of the Behemoth, clamps springing out to lock her in place. The machine takes over her mind and she starts talking in a cyborg voice. Then the Behemoth rises, taking the evil teacher with it, bursting up through the floor of the school hall.

Crazy bitch and supercomputer combination

Lots of things seem to happen next, including poor English rose - Kate Winslet being trapped in the lower chambers, running out of air. Pendragon is rejected by the Behemoth, either because her mind was adsorbed, or because she was a nasty nazi bitch, I can’t remember. Eventually Behemoth takes on it’s own identity, and producing the moral conclusion to the story, one of the school kids reasons with it that war is wrong, and if it was truly intelligent it would know this.

Lets do the time warp yeah!

Behemoth concedes to this stunning show of logic and shuts down, destroying itself. It starts receding back into the ground from which it came, and before anyone can stop her, the now clearly insane Pendragon jumps back into the operator’s seat and is dragged down with it into the abyss, swallowing her up. Explosions and fireworks happen and the hole is sealed up behind her. The last picture you see is her locked in the Behemoth’s seat, in the now semi-flooded subterranean chamber, with water up to her chest, staring blankly into the distance. Is she dead, or still alive, trapped down there for eternity, her brain no longer in any working state? It sent shivers down my spine, thinking about it, and it still does. Then the story ends with a ‘Hey aren’t kids like us great? Lets go home’ moment. It is never explained what happens to Pendragon, and that’s probably the most creepy way of ending it, left to an unknown fate.

scary fate

That was my lasting memory of the whole series, which I had kept locked away, like Miss Pendragon, in my mind for 12 years until it popped out again last month. This stuff is oscar material compared to some of the trash I catch on today’s children’s telly. Writer Russel T Davies went onto bigger things, including Queer As Folk, and is now working on a new Doctor Who series.

In doing this update, I am indebted to a bloke called Roy and his excellent Dark Season website - http://www.xanderly.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk which jogged my memory and from which I stole those screencaps. For more reminiscing, have a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/tv/darkseason which even includes some video clips, that still creep me out to this day.

Jack is getting on fine, although he can still be a bit nippy sometimes still. He can also make very strange noises, like he’s still learning his vocal capabilities. Yesterday I was laying on my bed, listening to these motivational tapes I’ve been given by John, and writing notes as needed, so I had Jack out to make it a bit more fun. After running up and down my bed checking out his new surroundings, he lept onto my hand and kept grabbing hold of my pen when I tried to write.

Eventually I gave up and just let him have the pen, but then he lost interest and ran up my shoulder instead. But when I started writing again, he ran back down and started chewing it with his beak again. I worked out he only wanted to play with the pen when I was holding it. Surely there must be a certain level of intelligence associated with such social play.

I managed to take some somewhat blurry pics.

My dad took it apon himself to order a load of Depron foam and dismantle my old Ikarus Yak shockflyer, trace it, template it, and make more of them. This time they’re made of 6mm foam instead of 3mm, so to be more sturdy for outdoor flight. They have the same great flying charactoristics as before, so much so that I’ve ditched the Ultimate Biplane one as it was falling to bits, partly because of poor design, and me getting a bit too daring with some low-level aerobatics. At least now with the new ones I can really chuck them about and just build a new one if I smash it.

Some more pics of that night’s flying available here and here.

The latest news is I’ve got some foam-safe paint and tried painting them. Unfortunately the stencils blurred a bit, and the spraycans were a bit crappy. I’ve got a compressor and airbrush setup at my disposal though, so I might give that a try next time.

I’ve also got an idea for a shockflyer community site brewing, so that will be something to look out for later.

There’s a screenplay writer in an irc channel I hang out in, who’s working on something right now. Looking for inspiration in her surroundings, she asked if she could use my online name for a charactor she was working on. Always wanting my name to be up in lights, I agreed. I asked her what the description of me was:

He’s a short, jack russelly, jewish, gay guy - the name just seemed to fit

Awesome.

Finally finished this website I’ve been working on for a while: Axis Health. It’s been a bit of a challenge learning CSS techniques but I’m quite pleased with it. I already have a few more projects lined up. My original plan was to just do some web design work and see if it’s something I want pursue a career in. I’m still not sure about that really, but now I’m gonna try to put together a little portfolio of work and see how things pan out. I might just get any job I can find for now to get some earnings coming my way, and carry on doing this on the side.