Holiday plans and work experience

As of monday I started work on the TWOLER project and I'm currently sitting in a computer lab at Westminster's Cavendish campus waiting for a meeting. I've been busy researching, collecting data and trying to establish new RSS feeds from my spreadsheets. By the end of this project I hope to have achieved my goal of creating a disabled access map for the University of Westminster which works for all four campus' and on mobile touch screen devices. This means that currently they're trying to get me an iPod Touch to work with. Result.

What I really can't wait for at the moment is going on holiday to the Hebrides. 3 weeks from this friday and me and Ollie'll be sitting on that coach heading to Glasgow and then onto Oban where we catch our first of many ferries.

Saturday 18th we arrive in Oban, have a few hours hopefully spent in the sun before getting a ferry to Castlebay on Barra and spending the night in a very nice Hostel.

Sunday 19th we get the ferry over to Eriskay and walk as far up the Uists as we can get before setting up camp for the night.

Monday 20th we get the bus from where we camped the night before ALL the way up the Uists to catch the Ferry over to Harris where we get another Bus up to spend the night in Stornoway. Perhaps a night on the town.

Tuesday 21st, early morning the bus takes us back down Lewis to Tarbert where we catch the Ferry over to Skye to spend the night there.

Wednesday, early on we get the ferry back over to Lochmaddy on North Uist and head down to Askernish where the Highland games are taking place along with a whole heap of celebrations.

Thursday 23rd is the day we get the ferry from Barra to Tiree and spend thursday and friday morning on Tiree and Coll before heading back to the mainland. Can't wait!

Legoland today, I saw some Jackdaws, my iPod is good?

I can't remember when the last time I posted was. Today I went with Janet, her cousin and uncle to Legoland and it was pretty cool. It's a shame that myself and Conor wouldn't make it to Billund and back in a day or the Copenhagen trip would be awesome. It still will be.

I haven't a clue why but I've started learning the Binomial names for about a dozen or so garden birds of Britain. My head is bloody caining at the moment and as much as I'd love to take a paracetamol or something for it it's been brought on by stress. I got in tonight and my dad was in a foul mood about this and that. Shouting was involved and all that, I'm most vexed!

Next time I'm in London during the day, I need to find the head of the wigs dept. at ROH and see if I can borrow a 18th century powdered wig for my birthday party. I want to turn up as the Marquis de Sade. I might just do the head though and leave the rest up to people's imaginations. Though I don't think many people would know who he was. An offensive fuck to many but also a genius at pushing the boundries.

I saw a bunch of Jackdaws today at Legoland. That was pretty cool by my standards. I've never seen them before.

Next year I know what options I'm going to take. I really want to learn another language. So if Advanced Audio isn't an option I'm going to learn German. Other than that I'll take 'Creativity', 'Music, Media and Sound' and 'Creative Video Production.'

Bloody knackered.

Kestral's and Lego

So for three hours in a lecture on creative learning techniques, in which we made lego models, talked about them and then were bought coffee, I just got the hardback version of Wormwood Gentleman Corpse (a graphic novel authored and drawn all by my favourite comic: Ben Templesmith), a present for Janet and Choke by Chuck Palahnuik from Borders all of which only cost ME £2.91. To be honest, I understand more about David's (one of my lecturers who specialises in creative learning techniques, especially Lego) but I'm still not a fan of expressing ideas, thought processes and concepts through metephors using Lego. Sorry David!

On my way back however I was walking on the grass and a beautiful little Kestral flew down and landed next to me. Froze for a moment, then took a worm from the ground and flew off! It was great. I think I may have seen the same bird on campus before. (F. tinnunculus)

My Documentry photography project last week went reasonably well and I've got my Graphics project up too. Check them out!

Holidays and Dismemberment

Janet got to India in the end which is fantastic. After over a week of a delay she's there now and having a much deserved holiday. I miss her a ridiculous amount. After lectures and seminars today I've spent most of the day with James as we've planned a possible holiday for ourselves. Courtesy of Capcom Games. Capcom are running a Resident Evil 5 scavenger hunt tomorrow in London which needed to be signed up for. There are a certain amount of clues then we get to central London and search for 'Bloody Limbs' and get them to a secure location. The person/people with the most and highest scoring limbs gets an all expenses holiday to Africa. It sounds amazing. We've put a lot of work into clue solving and figuring out where these limbs are going to be and hopefully we should do well. Plus, I know the area like the back of my hand. All the times I complained that "We're a bookshop not a f*cking information bureau," has bitten me in the arse as it's payed off.

I've had a great time this past week. We got loads of footage for our Graphics project in Further TV Practice and came out with a rather gorgeous looking title sequence for a music program which we've called 'They Call us Artists' in homage to the original 'Dom Kallar oss Artista' which we got the inspiration from.

At the moment I'm typing from my dad's laptop after using the PCs at university for the past week. My computer's buggered but my good mate Alex is helping me in the repair process of that. He came round yesterday but we ended up playing Guitar Hero most of the time and we went to see The Watchmen which was fantastic! I highly recommend the film. As a result of going to the cinema however I now want to see pretty much everything we saw trailed at the cinema. With the exception of Fast and Furious 3 and Lesbian Vampire Killers which for some reason I'm very dubious of. James Corden permitting.

Hopefully tomorrow'll be a good laugh and I'll get some decent pictures. I know when Resi 5 comes out I'm going to be a we bit strapped for time. Tomorrow evening I'm going to the Rock Societies upcoming 'Sinfest' event which has been publicized for a while and the night after (on release day itself) I've got a doc. photography assesment and I'm seeing my friend Helen's band perform. Colour me Wednesday they're called.

No-one was in the house last night apart from me. So as much as I wanted to watch the movie my good friend MUAD'DIB! lent me...it was Resident Evil Degeneration. Which I wouldn't be scarred of, those kind of films just make me paranoid about the creaking of my own house.

Photography, Oysters and India

My RFID reader arrived the other day, it's very exciting. I can now touch my oyster card on it and it'll open the top-up page of the Oyster card website.

I've been playing with more new media practices too. As well as starting this blog and my web cartoon blog (Ants with Jet Engines) I've joined Twitter and subscribed to RSS feeds of other blogs on my phone. I'm starting to get very excited about new media tech and I'm wondering if this is a direction I should look into on my course at uni.

Unfortunately James and I didn't manage to get places on the Sony Resident Evil 5 advanced play event on the weekend, which is also a good thing. I didn't know that work would have let me go. So now temptation isn't there. On the same subject, I've joined the Capcom online forum to hear more Resi 5 news. I have a book about Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3 & Code Veronica X which is a beautiful read. It contains the back story, walkthroughs, concept art, item descriptions and character profiles. I bought it two years ago for about £20 on Amazon. It's now selling on there for up to £175! I know it's discontinued and there's alot of hype around Resident Evil, but damn! I put my copy up for sale yesterday at £101.02 so I get a total of £85 for it. I hope it sells. I could use the money.

My photography project the other week went alright. It wasn't fantastic, but a last minute rush around the alleyways around the Strand and Fleet Street isn't going to be amazing if it's all done within a 3 hour window with no background research. Ollie (my glamerous assistant) and I bumped into CJ while we were there, that was good. So we spent the afternoon with him.

At the moment Janet's in hospital. Luckily I'm right next door, so I can visit in my lunch breaks. Hopefully she'll be out today. She's meant to be going on holiday to India on sunday. I really hope she's alright to travel. She's been looking forward to it so much.

Please do visit Ants with Jet Engines. I'm really trying to get it around at the moment and get as many people reading it as I can. Although everyone who's commented on it says they love it (with the exception of my mother as 'it's rude' and it's not her humour) I am very concious of the fact that it's only friends and family that have seen it. I do believe they like it, I'd just like to get some outside opinion. I'll maybe tell the folks on the Capcom and Spaced-Out forum about it too.

First Post

At the moment I'm feeling a bit rough. I've got a nasty throat infection that's making it feel like there's a stanley knife blade in there everytime I swallow. I'm quite pleased that at the moment I have no immediate coursework creeping up on me other than my documentry photography project for friday.

I got home today sometime around 5 o'clock after having a great day with Janet and her family. We went bowling, the four of us, then had lunch in Nandos. It's amazing how good you can be one minute will be gone the next in bowling. I got three strikes in a row in one game then the next...all gutterballs. I had fun though.

I can't wait for August now though. I've booked my tickets to Copenhagen and I'll be meeting Conor there, who will, I believe, be staying over the night before. I haven't seen Conor since March and it'll be great seeing him again. I got my Christmas present from him the other day and it's fantastic. It's the TPB of Ben Templesmith's comic 'Welcome to Hoxford'. The illistration, as like all Templesmith's work, is beautiful. It's weird, although the characters have nothing in common other than bothe being in prison and being 'big guys' I have some how associated Templesmith's 'Ray Delgado' a psychopathic serial killer with 'Shadow' the main character of Neil Gaiman's American Gods and have Ray's face on Shadow too now. So far great book by the way.

I've just signed up to the Capcom Europe forum after attending their Resident Evil 5 playing event in Hammersmith. I had a ball. The guys there were great.

Most importantly in my news is that my portfolio of sketches is just about at the size now where I start posting my on my blog. This isn't said blog. It's up and running, but nothing on there yet. 'Ants with Jet Engines' coming soon.

Here's a taster of what's to come.