Well… over four months without a post. Thats not good!

What have I been doing in all that time? I don’t really remember, its all gone so quickly. Finished Uni back in June and did some climbing before I left, got back and had a week or so off. Then started working and earnt a fair bit of cash which I promptly spent on this:

53 Plate Renault Clio 1.2 16v Dynamique

Which I need to clean because its rather filthy at the moment, done about a thousand miles since it was cleaned! Mainly due to the fact Vince and I went up to Carlisle for a few days to do some climbing the other week and gave it a good thrashing around the hills. Haven’t had the time to clean it since I’ve been back, I may do it now though.

My old Browning .22 Semi-Auto rifle finally bit the dust too, so thats locked up in the gunsafe and has been superseded by a Ruger 10/22 which is veeeeeeeeeeery nice to shoot. Very. Oh yes.
Ham and Jam is progressing slowly but steadily and the team is working around the clock to add new content. It’s take a bit of a hit at the moment as half the team are working on a commercial project (myself included) which has a very tight deadline but good pay. I’ll be able to tell you all about that when its done.

Uni starts again on October 2nd so I’ll probably go back up there around the 30th September or so due to the fact Carlisle City Council won’t gave me a parking permit till my tenancy starts on the 1st, which is a Sunday so no post so it won’t come till the 2nd. Hopefully it gets to me before I leave in the morning for Uni else the car may get clamped.

More news soon!

I finally plunged into a new era, that of Mac power:

By the end of the day I had installed BootCamp so I had the option to run Windows XP and OS X on it, which is quite handy. The new iMac is blazingly fast and for those not in the know, the whole computer is built into that flatscreen monitor. Its not even a rubbish computer as well, it blasts through all the native intel programs (although PS still takes ages, but a new version of that “soon” should fix it).

I also got Steam and HL2 on it to try it out and was pleasntly surprised, it defaulted to max settings and I was getting 30-50fps as standard.

Ham and Jam also runs nicely on it. Its very handy having a second PC, one can be browsing the internet, have music playing and MSN open and the other doing work on is great. The “work” computer can have all the resources dedicated to it and that now flys along. The Apple remote is brilliant too.

Six weeks left, one minor project and one major for Roger, two minor ones for Max and my Elective project to hand in on June 1st, should be a busy end.

So I’m back at Uni now after my 2 weeks off and nothings changed, the dishes pile up on regular occasions and getting sleep is tricky after two weeks of pure silence at night.

We’ve got another Flat Party tonight, so I might get some photos from there and stick them up here. Got a shedload of Uni work to do, nearly done my Animation (its now bordering 45 seconds) and just have to add music and titles to it in Final Cut Pro. I’ll upload it when its done for all you people to laugh at. Got the other assignment to do of finalising a cut of my movie that I shot, that won’t get shown as its about 75mb at the moment, compressed.

Ham and Jam is getting on great guns, we’ve had a lot of interest from the public and online media and have been doing the odd interview in places as well as sorting through the hordes of help applications. We’ve got a good team sorted now and things are progressing along nicely, currently we are finalising exactly what we want in version one and getting it in and sorted. The site has had a huge amount of hits, especially when Planet Half-Life mention us in there news, site traffic literally goes up by four times the amount.

I’m off to Tesco to get food and stuff, then off to Climbing, Wheel and back to the Party here. Eight weeks to go…or something.

Read All About It!

Heres the rest of the group of 5 for my first assignment:

Phew. Beat that cold/flu thing within the week Louise said it was going to take. Used copious amounts of Lemsip Max Strength, decongestant spray, at least 2 litres of Orange juice a day and going out to a party. Three days is all it took. So what have I been doing?

Went out for Sally’s birthday to the Brickyard on Monday, bit of Fancy dress and people looked at us all very odd. Got stopped by the Police who were looking for suspicious looking people in the area. Great thing to ask a Soldier, Surgeon, Duck, Hippy, Schoolgirl, a 70’s Housewife and a French Mime Artiste….. I think the alcohol killed whatever was left in me as Tuesday morning was feeling fine.

Wednesday was climbing as usually, was doing some odd stuff again and using some cams and nuts on the features, sort of outdoor climbing techniques…indoor. Then off to the Wheel for some rock. Thursday was ye olde Photography Elective so had fun in the darkroom printing stuff out. Karoke in the Globe too with Steven belting out some songs at 1:30am. Friday has lecture in the afternoon and spent like an hour animating a ball bouncing around. Fun.

Friday night I went down the Globe for a drink, and found it was Lindsay’s (Binsey McPish) birthday and her sister Sandy (or Alexandra if you want to be technical) was down, along with her friends Kristen and Natalie and her parents. So a few drinks in the Globe…Robertsons…Walkabout…Jumpin Jaks…and the Wheel. Then back to her flat for some more and cake, staggered downstairs and back to my room at about 4:30-5am.

Lastly, heres a one of the photos I took for my Elective

Enjoy.

I’m ill. Some sort of cold contraption thats been lurking in the darkest corners of the flat. Jack’s had it, Louise has had it, Danielles had it and now its my turn. Ugh!

Its also blooming cold, -2 to -6 at night the past week with snow and ice all over the shop.

More info when I’m better, excuse me whilst I go die.

WTF!

A photo update, havn’t had one of them for a while!

Head on over to the Image Dump

I also updated my Portfolio the otherday with new stuff from Uni, probably seen most of it on here anyway. Also changed the details to be more upto date.

At last its done, a few visible texture errors to me but I’ve had enough with this model now. Roger likes it so its done! Now I just need to do the sketch for the planning stage of it…

Long time no update!

After talking to Uisdean the other week, I found a set of 5:1 Speakers for under £50 delivered to my door, 3 anxious days later they arrived and worked beautifully, enough bass to kill any living thing. Saving Private Ryan, Band Of Brothers, Any DVD and Call of Duty 2 are now simply amazing.

Note the rear left cardboard box pillar to get it in the rough right place, needs to be further back but then the other side would have to be in mid air!

Then after 3 days they just got a ridiculous amount of static noise/clicking/popping in them. I was not happy, after hours of trying different stuff I packaged them back in the box ready to ship back for a refund. I did however post on a few forums about my problem and one guy suggested it was the fact the cables were unshielded (I had this suspicion) and that atmospheric conditions would affect it, so i unpackaged it all and plugged it back in and it works. So looks like it will be so-so depending on weather, have my old 2:1 system on my desk as well for quick switch overs until I fix it, so I’m actually running a 7:2 system now!

Jack decided to throw another party, again with under 5 hours warning. Perhaps not as great as the first, less people, less drinking and lasted an hour less (only up till 4:30am this time) but either way, had some memorable moments:

Yes, thats what you think it is. Vinegar. Why Sally decided to do this we do not know, but she did and being the fools that we are, Liam and I followed suit. Uisdean refused, but after this:

You can imagine why.

The Vickers is coming along nicely, still needs a lot of work messing the thing up so its not a pristine weapon in a field of mud and blood, still got the legs of the MG gunner to add, dirty the boxes up, grass in places and maybe the odd dead tree. As well as the rest of the environment.