The First Six Months of the Rest of My Life
So today is my 6 month wedding anniversary. I have to say, I love my wife so much. While I find myself flawed more often that I should, everything about her is perfect. Living with her has been the best time of my life. I can only see that continuing.
The holidays were great. We had Christmas with the In-Laws for lunch, and my parents for breakfast. New Years was spent with friends, and the rest of the holiday has been spent relaxing. There was even a 12-hour Lord of the Rings marathon in there somewhere.
The other part of my life at the moment is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. What a spectacular game. I have invested about 70 hours so far, and I feel like I'm only 2/3 through it. There are so many side quests, and things to do. Not to mention you can just start a new character, and choose all the other options. It's almost a whole new game.
Work starts again tomorrow, and it's going to be the end of my acting Team Leader position. I look forward to the lessened responsibility, but am a bit sad about the lower pay grade. Considering I never actually received a pay at my "new" level, it was all just back-paid at once, it won't be that much of a shock.
Life keeps on moving. I might keep you informed, however because "you" is basically no one, I might not. Who knows.
Leading the Team
So over the last few weeks I have been acting as Team Leader at work. I think that as this time is wrapping up, I will be glad for the break back to normality.
The position isn't that much different from what I was doing in my "pleb" role, but I was responsible for more of the "fixing" problems, than actually "telling people that we know about" problems. Some problems were easily fixed; you would make a phone call, talk to the system administrator, and the issue would be resolved. Others require more finesse, where you make 5 phone calls to work out who would be responsible for the system, then find out they are away that day.
You are also responsible for the communication to the senior staff. That's the scary part. A problem is raised, it is completely up to you if you send communications or not, how you send them, when you send them etc. And if they aren't right, someone gets in trouble. Luckily, this only really happened two or three times, and in those times, I only made a poor decision once. And my Manager (who got the blame) was ok with it. He is a great guy.
Long story short, it has been a stressful month-and-a-bit. This has impacted on my home life and my side-projects a bit as well. StationeryReview.com has suffered from lack of reviews, and while I have been working on TheLeek I haven't put as much time in to it as I should have.
In the coming weeks, Skyrim is coming out, and I am hoping to make the most of it. I might even get a review posted (depending on how much I can play, and if I have the time.)
Have Fun Y'all,
Andrew
The Leek
Right, so one of my various dodge projects a while ago was "theleek.com.au", and it was pretty swell for all of a couple of weeks. Basically, the original plan didn't take off. So I have decided to band together some geeky brothers, and do something with the domain name.
So far, the best suggestion has been a group blog which everyone can post whatever they want on it. By everyone, I mean my friends and such who are approved posters. You never know what can happen with a collection of interesting information on the inter-tubes.
It would still maintain the original idea of games, tech and culture, but the beauty is that covers almost everything in existence. People could post about something they found out about online, something fun, something crazy, projects, whatever, and it would all fit in the criteria of "everything".
It's a beautiful concept. Now, time to do it...
Post-It Notes 3×3
Post-It Notes 3x3, a set on Flickr.
This is a test post from Flickr to WordPress. I don't really expect it will take over from the normal way of doing it, but hey, lets give it a try!
The Stationery Business Isn’t Too Stationary
So my side project for the last few weeks / months has been www.stationeryreview.com which I started towards the end of last year. Basically, I review pens, paper, diaries and pretty much anything else that might be considered stationery.
A few weeks ago I took some time to send emails to a number of stationery manufacturers who I quite liked, and received quite a positive response. Pepople like my website and want to send me items to review. It's amazing.
So far, I have recieved 3 notebooks, a Filofax(!), a 40% off to a stationery retailer and I am expecting more in the near future. It's been so encouraging, and I hope I am able to keep it up.
My previous post about the Meta Game was a nice mind-experiment, however it hasn't panned out yet. I haven't had any time to work on making a website, and I haven't heard hide nor hair from the other involved party. Perhaps it was just a good idea, and not quite worth the effort. We shall see.
The next few weekends are going to be crazy-hectic. I have numerous parties, weddings, events, barbecues and funerals (heh, joking) to go to, and Patrice is on placement at the hospital, so next week I am going to be getting up at some crazy hour of the morning, and getting to work in the city by 7am. At least I will build up a butt-load of time off.
Till next time, keep on trocking (trucking, and rocking)
- Andrew
Thinking Meta
For a few years I have had an idea which I haven't really shared with anyone. While at uni we were encouraged to think differently about gaming, and the idea came from a thought session leaving traditional gaming behind.
Imagine a treasure hunt, where the clues for each item are online and the goal is to find QR Codes stuck around the place, scan them, and claim the points.
While I believe the idea is sound, I haven't had a decent way to create, test, produce or maintain the game until last night speaking with one of my good friends, who offered to do the leg work on the project.
Between now and registering a domain name for the project, a lot needs to happen. We have to finalise the parameters and rules of the game, think of a name, build a website and test it with a group of people.
The first thing for me will be the web development. The site needs to contain quite a bit of information;
- Entry page, information about the game
- Registration page (to be locked down until the game is released)
- Clues page (for registered users)
- Profile (to see your scans, and maybe basic information)
- Leader board (to keep the competition fierce)
- Admin pages
- Create a clue / code
- Landing pages for each code
- User Maintenance
I’ve Been Thinking…
With my personal website down, and my other project taking off (hitting about 300 visits per month... That's gotta be a Personal Best) I have been thinking about what I'm going to do with my homepage.
I was originally playing with making boxes circles, and having "bubbles" of information, but I feel that circles are a bit overdone. My latest though has been a combination of Javascript (which I really should learn) and CSS to make an interactive, but not flash, website.
Imagine loading the page and having a picture of a lamp turned off, and a chord. Click the chord and the light bulb appears in the lamp, and shows some information. Move the mouse towards the information and roll over something which flashes then disapears. You go searching and discover it's my twitter feed.
Interesting ideas, all completely doable with a little outside-the-box thinking and googleing "How to make stuff disappear with CSS". I love researching and interesting, but simplistic ideas. Cross-browser the idea could be hard, but if I build it for chrome and firefox, I have cornered the market.
In other news, I think I have found a midi-tower case for my N.A.S. - The NZXT Temest 410 Elite (Assuming it fits in my cabinet) would be amazing. Room for 8 HDD's, cable management, full ATX support and enough fans to keep everything cool. Throw in an 80+ Gold PSU and away we go.
Patrice and I are also in the process of printing our Wedding photos via Big W Photos. We are doing some canvases, a couple of photo books and a whole bunch of prints. Can't wait to see how they all turn out.
I think that's about it from me for now. Till next time!
Andrew
Reworking the Juggernaught
Ever since high school I have had web hosting. Originally, it was through NearlyFreeSpeech until they changed all their pricing options, and started to jip me. Then, after some research, I found Arvixe.
They offered an excellent service, with the right sort of payment plans and comitments. They also offered a free Domain name. So, being a bit more mature than I was when I registered www.sodderinc.com (Patrice helped me pick it) I registered "www.andrewdor.com" - which is where I have resided ever since.
When I started the new hosting, I spent some time migrating the old sites across, however I never really did anything with the top-level domain. It was originally a portfolio in an attempt to get in to the game design industry. That failed spectacularly.
With the new lease of life I have given my Blog (over here at blog.andrewdor.com) I feel it might be time to try rebuilding and repurposing my "andrewdor.com" domain. What could it be? Who knows! Maybe a small advertisment for myself, or just links to my various other endeavours?
Anyway, I think I'm going to blog about my web design experiences here, and I can use the extra thinking time while writing to subconsciously tackle those tricky situations which always arise when cobbling together the magic that is the Internet. Amazing what you can do with a netbook, a wireless hotspot on your phone and some time on a train, isn't it?
Mobile Computing Just Got Srs
For those who are not part of the internet, "srs" is short for Serious. "Seriously" is how much Patrice and I were excited about getting new laptops. When my tax came back we worked out that we would have enough money to get one each.
I did my research, and once I had worked out what Patrice needed in a laptop, and what I wanted in some serious mobile computing usage, we decided to go with the Samsung NC110-A06AU which came in at the incredibly affordable $312 each. JB HiFi were having a sale! The unfortunate thing was there was only 1 in Ipswich, so I had to wait two days to get one in Brisbane, while Patrice had hers and was rubbing it in.
Here are a quick rundown of the specs:
- Dual-core Atom N570 (1.66ghz, hyper-threaded, 64bit capable)
- 1gb (quickly upgraded to 2gb of RAM)
- 250gb 5400rpm HDD
- 6-cell li-ion battery
- 10.1" screen, at 1024x600
- Multi-touch touchpad
The first thing I did (before I even turned it on) was format the hard drive, and install Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit. It came with Starter Edition, which just doesn't cut the mustard. (Mustard is being able to change your wallpaper. You can't in starter) I only installed the 32bit because Samsung only supplies 32bit drivers. Also, I think 32bit is a little lighter on the memory, and with only 2gb, you have to be careful!
Upgrading the RAM was one of the easiest things I have done in a laptop. They take DDR3 SODIMM, which as I found out, is about $20 for 2gb. I took a trip to uMart to pick up two sticks, and ended up with Kingston (cringe) 1333mhz sticks, for $23 each. I was wanting to get the G.Skill ones, however they were sold out. The actual process is about as hard as making toast.
After swapping out the RAM, installing Office 2010, all the drivers, the latest Windows Updates and running Ninite I have to say, I'm more than a little happy with the results. It's snappy, useful, light, and looks pretty damn cool. The keyboard is even really nice. The only bit about it is the placement of the page up/down keys, and they lack of actual Home/End buttons. I use them ALL THE TIME.
I'm planning on putting basic Adobe tools on it as well, possibly Photoshop and Dreamweaver, so that I can web-work on the run.
All in all, I highly recommend this netbook if you are looking for something quick and easy to take with you. Definitely do yourself a favor and get a real copy of Windows 7 for it though. Starter is not awesome.
p.s. I am putting secrets in my blogs from now on. If awesome webcomic writers can have hidden text, so can I!