I have decided to stop being tight and spend some money on my place in Bath rather than just using it entirely for gaming or technology. As a result, I managed to pick up a cheap print on canvas from some really iffy place in Kingswood that was run down and had people that would mug you if it were dark.
After that, the next few I got from the much safer Amazon website from a company called DagaCanvas. Pictures below… Continue Reading
Over the past few weeks I have slowly been getting back into video editing as I just reinstalled Adobe Premier on to my computer and cleared the hard drive to make room for more source video files. Below are details of a couple of videos posted on YouTube. Continue Reading
Now on a train back to Bath… To those who have emailed me, I have around 100 unread emails so will take time to work through.
I also have tons of gaming and TV series to catch up on too. Someone mentioned the new Doctor Who started? Portal 2 demands some attention too.
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Over the past few weeks I have been pretty distracted by a new game called Minecraft. Still in development so it has its bugs, but for 10 euros its good value for money considering how much time I have enjoyed it.
Within the game you basically have this massive randomly generated world that has no boundary’s and allows you to mine resources and build whatever you can imagine. Sounds good, but you also have some great “redstone” mechanics to makes things complicated too.
Various objects you can craft can generate or receive power via redstone and this allows you to create anything from simple switches to open doors to computational machines capable of performing mathematics.
We run a private multiplayer server where a few of us from the Volition Cult community create things on a single world, below are some of the things we have created so far. (Click images for descriptions.)
I have to get back to playing Eve tomorrow though as I have neglected her. But its hard as I just don’t have the time to play all the games I need to play. With the new World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion coming soon, new Assassins Creed and Call of Duty games due really soon its really tough to keep up with everything.
Even with these problems, its still been a great weekend as I got to enjoy more Krusty Kreme donuts. One of my work colleague from our London office came to Bath. Normally this is bad as they tend to bring me work to do, but this time I was bribed with Krusty Kreme donuts! Technically as I get paid to manage IT, that includes helping users anyway but sugar brides work too.
I have noticed that some of my colleagues in Bath have started to learn that if they offer to make me hot chocolate, I prioritise there requests over others… I fall for that “trap” every time it seems.
Anyway… Merlin has finally appeared on iPlayer so that’s all for now.
/me is afk.
Its been annoyingly hot lately at work. Our office lacks air conditioning so its been a nightmare, and even my poor servers are starting to feel the strain. Had to shut one Aeon on Monday morning to give it a well deserved break. Nyx and Hel picked up the slack to let it cool down for a day. (Ah, the power of virtualization!)
Temperatures at home in my flat have been very cool though. Lifehacker had a load of useful posts on how to survive the heat lately and one of them worked well for me. During the day, you keep the curtains and windows closed to keep the hot air out, while during the night you open all of your windows and let the cool air in.
However I have taken this a step further, as I am on the top floor of my building there is plenty of cool air and wind in the evening but sometimes the wind stops, so I had to rig a way to keep the cool air pumping in so enough cool air is in to last the whole day.
During the night I rig a fan up as shown in the picture, when the sun has set and air outside is cooler. I recommend people give it a try, works well for me.
The chairs actually were not stable, so I did move my coffee table next to them to hold them in place so my fan would not fall out of the window, as it would have been a very noisy four story drop! Not sure this is rain proof either…
Widcombe Rising street party was on Sunday 13th June 2010 to celebrate the 200th anniversay of the Kennet & Avon Canal. Not much to say, attached photos are nice though.
Photos of Bath, UK taken on the 13th January 2010 after a evening of snowfall. Mostly around Victoria Park, taken in the early morning before work.
Having worked until the early hours of the morning the night before I woke up late and scrambled to get ready for work, fifteen minutes later I grabbed my bag and started heading down the 70 or so steps from my apartment to the ground floor, opened the door to see a pavement covered in Snow.
Slightly shocked that it actually snowed in December for once near Christmas, I suddenly remembered I always wanted to get a photo of snow covered bath rooftops from my living room window, so I dashed back up to my apartment and actually opened the curtains and took a few very quick photos with my phone before quickly sprinting back down the stairs and heading to work.
I managed to put all the photos together in a panorama image.
Hopefully it snows more in January like normal, and I can get some better photos where the rooftops are actually completely white rather than just a bit white in this photo.
People may wonder why have I been busy for the past two months?
Over three years ago, in the virtual world of Eve Online, a few players decided to get together and form The Volition Cult (VOLT) Alliance in game, and choose to fly together for common goals within the game.
Back then, it started out simply as a means of players working together for personnel gain within the game. Three years on, and it has turned into much more than that… Its now a community of friends, or almost “extended family” almost as some of the people I know from within VOLT, know me better than real life friends or family.
The 22nd September 2009 marked the three year anniversary of the formation of our online community, and to celebrate this we decided to host a large meetup in the United Kingdom… Specifically, myself and a guy called “Doc” hosted the event in the City of Bath.
On the 5th August 2009, I started work on preparations for the meetup, these preparations and planning would consume most of my time for nearly two months, from finding a date that suited everyone to quadruple checking the route for karting. That said, its worth mentioning how helpful M4 Karting were, as I must have called four times, and emailed twice double checking things, and a staff member called Laura was very helpful and understanding of what I was trying to organise.
We eventually picked the 1st October onwards for the meetup, and until mid September, it was simply all planning work, with phone calls, and emails being sent round. On the 23rd September, I spent a 3 day weekend cleaning my apartment to ensure it was spotless and clean for the visitors. As Bath is expensive to stay in, many people would be staying at mine or Docs for the duration of the event.
On Wednesday, 30th September… Doc came over in the afternoon and assisted in the baking of the cake, helping create the Victoria Sponges which would make the foundation of the VOLT Cake. Thursday saw me spend my first day off work finish the cake with the design, structure and art that was applied to it, to create this final result.
The first guest arrived at my apartment Thursday Afternoon, with another shortly after. We had to remain awake until 2am for four more guests that were arriving at Bath Spa Bus Station around that time early Friday Morning. But we could not stay in bed to make up for that as throughout Friday Morning, Afternoon and Evening more guests were arriving.
Thursday Evening, Doc drove me and another guy from to Bristol International Airport in the evening to collect Filarion, who was flying in from Germany. In true “Doc Op” fashion, Doc saw the “Bristol Airport >” sign and went the opposite way claiming it was a short cut… After a few minutes for him to realise we were lost, I got my Google Maps + GPS out on my mobile phone and got us back on track.
Filarion’s flight was delayed, but luckily the two guys from Denmark I had to meet at Bath Spa Train Station at the same time were also delayed as there train was on fire, so they got put on a coach. In pure luck, the coach they were put on by First Great Western was the same coach two people coming from Denmark and Slovenia were arriving on, so at 2am we were able to meet all four of them at Bath Spa Bus Station.
Throughout Friday, I had made nearly ten 30 Minute Walks to collect people who were arriving in Bath who needed help finding my apartment or suitable parking in the city. Not normally a problem, but when my apartment is 60 stairs up, and the closest parking is at least 15 minute walk, or 30 minutes from the centre its quite a draining process to repeat several times a day.
We spend Friday Evening in The Trinity, the local pub in Bath where my old corporation was formed, and also where I probably decided to start playing Eve Online about four years ago. There was much drinking and socialising and some people from my work even gate crashed and said hello.
Saturday Morning was another early start, as we had to get to M4 Karting which was 30 minute drive away by 11am, but with just over 10 people staying in my apartment the bath room queue would be well over an hour, so most of us woke up around 7:30am as we slowly started to get ready. We managed to get ready, and left the house at 10am with all drivers having a print off, with details on how to get toM4 Karting.
Almost all of us arrived at around 10:50am, as Laura was about to start taking our names and setup the races however one car was missing with a few guests… Doc… Who arrived at 11:10am having performed a Doc Op? Who knows. We were able to get everyone’s in game names down on the computer that tracked the races though. After some more preparation, and everyone paying there £35 we got suited up and the races started.
Everyone got to do 4 Heats and a Semi-Final, and the best 6 people got to go in the Grand Final. We had booked two hours for this, but we had over run quite badly due, and we were about for nearly three hours. Laura, the organiser who managed us must have had a hard time too, so credit to her for having to put up with us, and our antics. At the end, we got a nifty presentation too, which we have a video of here. Overall everyone agreed that £35 was well spent, and from the people I spoke with, they agreed it was one of the best karting experiences they had. Kella even blogged about how good it was here. Everyone also got a print off, which looked like this.
Next everyone left for The Globe, just out side of Bath. Normally they don’t do reservations due to the size of the place, but I managed to speak to the manager who kindly set aside three tables for 23 People in the morning. Again, this was a brilliant meal although we stressed out the bar staff a little with all of us paying separately. It was kinda cool to see “Reserved: Stone x 23″ on a few tables though. (Nice for my Ego)
Next we set off for my apartment again… As it was Saturday, my works Car Park would be empty, so we borrowed that so everyone stayed together. I was a little nervous about fitting 20+ people in my small apartment but it just about worked. I got out the cake, and handed out slices to everyone, and it lasted a good 5 minutes before it was consumed. Video here.
Next J nx demonstrated the new Alliance Member Registration System, with API’s an Industry support before we all headed to Longwell Green for some Bowling. We had a few games, and the results are currently on my desk waiting to be scanned later. It was cool as half way through, at around 9:30pm they turned off the normal lights and turned on the neon lights and disco like lighting. It certainly made things more interesting.
Sunday saw people starting to depart, so we decided to see people off and relax in the morning before going to Victoria Park, where Nuero was trying out his impressive kite, and we enjoyed throwing things at each other, and trying to hit each other with “bomb” like things.
We had another meal Saturday Evening at Pizza Express, with the few people that remained. But from that point onwards, we were seeing most of the people off, as they travelled home.
Over the next week Frank and Matrix stayed to see the UK. We then went to Jaflong in Bath a couple of times, as its probably the best Indian Restaurant in Bath. I have been to many Indian Restaurants, and to Jaflong a number of times, and they are consistently good, but not too busy or expensive which is handy.
Thursday, just before they left my Grandad helped drive and take them on a tour of heritage sites around the South West of England:
Friday, 9th October saw the last day, as I took Matrix to the Bus Station at 6am, and Frank to the Train Station at 4pm as they headed home. I am sure there is stuff I have missed off, but I am exhausted, and plan on sleeping through the weekend.
Another busy few days, I managed to find a little more time to continue work on that sketch I was working on, but I quickly got distracted by a awesome find…
A very helpful and awesome person called Alex has created a very large resource of video tutorials about PHP. He runs a YouTube page here, which basically has a massive collection of videos where he talks viewers through PHP one step at a time. Its been a useful resource for me, along side the large number of reference books I have.
Meanwhile, I also managed to get someone to visit at lunch, and take a large number of photos while I posed so that I could place my body over the top of another person… With a little tweaking, and a fair amount of photo editing this was the result.
I spent most of Saturday preparing for the evenings VC Academy course that I run twice a week. Its basically where I talk for just over 2 Hours, about the Combat Thoery of Eve Online, helping new players that join our cyberculture get over the Learning Cliff. I had not expected for it to be so popular, or get such good feedback, so at least I am doing some good, even if its just helping people enjoy there free time more.
Sunday I got taken out with my Grandad who took me to the “Living Cavalcade of Costume” event in the The Octagon at Milsom Street. The building interested me more than the costumes, although the people there made for an interesting day.
More interesting was also taking time to see “Art for Life 2009″ event in Queen Square. There were some really good pieces of art on display and sale, but at the same time some poor pieces. Perhaps I am too critical though?
That did give me some inspiration actually, for something else I wanted to sketch. I would like to do something on the City of the Ancients from Final Fantasy 7, but no idea how yet.
Also, my Grandad insisted again that there is some “card” you can get if your a resident of Bath, so you don’t have to pay to go into some of the museums in Bath, but I have never ever heard of that from any paperwork from the council, or from others…
But, I opened up Google and did some Searching, Searching, Searching, Searching, Searching, and more Searching… Which lead to the Thermae Bath mentioning something called a Discovery Card they recommended people to use. So my final search, and I arrived at this page. How hidden away is that!
Finally, AAT have been pestering me about membership renewal as well. I can’t really afford to renew, and there is no need for me to do so as I am not working in the Accounts Industry at present, so apparently I can’t have my MAAT letters after my name in 4 weeks time I guess.
Think that’s all I can type for now, as I have some other paperwork to get sorted before the day is over.
