Block Copy Coders

Went to see Cars last night with the lovely Suze and also took a few photos.

Just a quick recce to a sweet shop in Southsea that’d I’d really like to do a proper set of photos of. It’s a really odd place, a complete throwback to times past manned by Mr King who must be an octogenarian by now. He’s an original thinker who only opens up the shop late in the week around 10pm in time for pub emptying and the end of the last show at the adjacent Kings Theatre that his family used to own. Originally we thought it was a crack den.

Will pop into the old house this morning to see if there’s any news of Casper and pick up some mail.

And I don’t mean the one you did at school, I always wrote fake notes for that

Yesterday was a geeky day and I reckon I earned my *nix golden underpants after setting up a pathway to get builds to the client in the least possible time. It’s a big melange of rsync and shh port redirection and the cleverness is in those utilities themselves rather than the way I’ve strung them together. Even so I *think* the feeling I’m getting is the closest that other people get when nailing a spice-rack to the wall or putting up some shelves. I may go and beat my chest on the balcolny in a bit.

fig(i) “I can’t do this”

And so far it’s a day of funny feelings, next up was an uncharacteristic nervousness I’ve not felt since schooldays after getting the wheels in motion to study AS level photography. It’s a part time course that starts in September, runs for the full academic year and one night a week for 3 hours. And I have to have an informal interview with the tutor before getting on the course. Now I -know- that what I’ve done so far is likely to be good enough to get me accepted but this is where the odd nervousness is coming from. I have the irrational feeling that teacher is going to phone me up and tell me off for doing my homework badly

Speaking of teacher’s the flat we’re currently in is for key workers and that includes a lot of teaching staff. The lift has recently become a bulletin board for one of the residents to write increasingly self important and snotty notices about various minor grumbles. It reached a peek last week with a pompous but heartfelt plea to keep the area around the bins tidy. Fair enough as it is a more than a bit grotty but slightly galling was “I think we should be able to keep the bins tidy as after all we are teachers” as if being a teacher gave instant membership to some aryan like super race and granted supreme bin hygiene super powers. Even worse was lots of spurious apostrophes, bad spelling and missing words. My writing’s not the greatest but this looked like a collision between the scrabble lorry and the apostrophe van.

Suze had a pen on her so she marked it, terrible grammar, see me after. And we’ve heard no more. The bins are a lot tidier too

It’s one week into the tiny flat sharing without problem or incident I’m eating more types of vegetables than I new existed and getting a clear run on work now the distractions of the house sale have drifted into the distance. Suze breaks up at the end of the week (she’s taking in Kerplunk and Buckaroo for the last day) so it’d be nice to get away somewhere next week. We’ve also got the Edinburgh fringe coming up soon and best book some shows to see.

“That’s tuttle”

The weekend was pretty nice. At a barbecue on Saturday night held by Suze’s ex Colin which despite a little bit of anxiety on Suze’s and my part about possible-awkwardness was really great. Good to see a few of Suze’s friends that I met at Bernie & Jim’s party in Norfolk and also meet Frank, Colin and Kate’s 3 week old baby who had a massive mop of hair foir one so young. Must have been pretty tickly coming out

Did a little bit of Wordpress hackery this weekend, most obvious of which is the flickr montage on the right hand side-bar. It collates a bunch of recent photos into a bit of flash and lets you click on them to see the full-size version on my Flickr page. If you want something similar on one of your web pages you can find info here. You’ll need to edit your theme template to get it into Wordpress which I can’t be arsed to explain how to do Had a little look at the Flick API and it’s pretty easy to write for. Wouldn’t mind making a plug in to collate a load of thumb nails into banner for the top of this blog that gets updated every few hours or so

We also did a close to final draft of the wedding list. It’s always hard knowing exactly who to invite for what part of the day and as ever there’s a tension between what you’d prefer and the cost. I think we’ve sorted it out mostly though. It’s definitely going to be a great day and an awesome party.

This week is a bit of slog to honest to be honest, there’s a bunch of what’s best described as admin, for the business, moving house and wedding. There are some gems in that cowpat of paper shuffling.

First up is a bit of photography. Rather than go the path of getting pre-packaged Weddings-R-Us wedding stationary (invites, table settings, etc) we would like to do our own with a few images from around the place where we first met. Times drawing on though and for that to be practicable I really need to get some suitable pictures this week. So hopefully I’ll be back in the centre of Southsea one evening this week Crossing my fingers in the hope they’re going to come out nice and we’ll be able to make something unique for the day rather than some cookie cutter twee stationary covered in ribbon holding silver doves and low quality lace.

Secondly we found some part-time AS level courses for photography that start in September and I want to apply for one of these this week. There’s nothing of that level in Southampton unfortunately and the nearest we found was Highbury College near Cosham. Still a half hour stint down the M27 once a week shouldn’t do any harm and I’m really excited at getting some structure to what’s been a really rewarding hobby.

Thirdly there’s an end of week reward for there’s a few of us going to see Jon’s’ band Geko compete at the Emergenza National Battle of the Band Finals this coming Sunday. I’m looking forward to that. There’s 24 bands this time, the competition of the highest quality yet but and 10k worth of studio equipment in the balance but I reckon they’ve a good chance.

So despite feeling a little like Jonathan Pryce (hence black and white picture above) in Brazil there’s enough to look forward to give me a little bit of enthusiasm to shift a bunch of this administrative smorgasbord onto the “done” pile.

And finally. The best response to many kinds of animosity is ignore it and just get on with the business of living well. It’s advice I’ve often given and am finally taking The important people know the true shape of things anyway so nuff said on that.

A big hello to Suze who has this evening entered the blogsphere.

Lovely to see you here honey

Been off the dial for nearly a week now after going through the fun of moving from Pompey to Southampton.

The maths say that 3 people living in a tiny flat, with one of them working there, should equal a whole heap of hassle. Fortunately the maths don’t know what they’re talking about and despite what can only be described as a fairly stressful and tortuous move last Monday the rest of the week has been really good. May it long continue/

This is where I’m now working from for the next 6 – 8 weeks

Despite a sack full of shit during the moving, a socially hectic week (Wed’s – Tonight all feature a certain amount of enthusiastic boozing) and being in what can only be called temporary accommodation the dominant feeling is one of being settled. Which is exactly how it should be.

Yet another update of my highly prosaic blog. Sorry for it just being a list of things that’s happening but there’s a fair few of them and getting them down here helps categorize and order them.

Works funning up.

We’ve a bunch of contractors working for us doing some coding / art / design on a game title up in Dundee. The contract’s coming to an end and the guys have performed brilliantly, they really are a cracking bunch That hasn’t gone unnoticed by the people we’re working with who’ve offered jobs to a lot of them. I don’t mind that to be honest, free market and all that and to be honest I want the best for the people who’ve been working for Xen for that last year. If that’s in Dundee then that’s all cool. What would have nice would have been a phone call from the person making the job offers just for common curtsey’s sake. There’s a little bit of temporary confusion now that could easily have been avoided. As Esther said, that’s life.

The Moto GP Far East X360 localisaton work is just about complete. There’s been a few bugs found that was in the original EFIGS version. The guys at Climax have been super helpful, whoever ends up working on that the Moto GP team for some reason seems to be top drawer. I really need to get a line drawn under this thing though in the next few days as packers are round on Friday and all my stuff is getting moved on Monday.

We have a little idea for a project leveraging some super duper ace tech that would blow your socks off (I reckon). I need to get a proposal together and zoom that off to the relevant people. There’s some interesting options about how to fund the development of it that have been knocking about for while. It just needs a bit of will to pull these strands together to get things moving. And I seem to have a surfeit of it right now

We’re also talking to someone about a year long contract supplying dev services which could be fun as well and give us the chance to work on some more top flight titles. A bit hush hush but we’re talking.

The PC Neon thing is dragging and to be honest it’s reached limitations of my patience, Jeff and Giles being reached and breached a little while ago. I’ve had a concerted effort over the last week to pin down the relevant people and move this thing onwards but it’s been tail of unrquited email and calls. I -know- that this down to the inevitable slower pace of dealing with $A_VERY_BIG_COMPANY_INDEED$ but push is coming to shove and I’m suspecting that the only way to close this thing is a trip to the states. We had a similar situation on Neon X360 where until a bunch of us went out for a few pivotal meetings progress was slow. It’s fair to say that the X360 version wouldn’t have been in the console if we hadn’t gone there mob handed

More boringly on today’s list is sorting out some temporary biz accomadation in Soton as Suze’s flat is too small to work in. A friend of mine has an office down in Ocean Village let on a month by month basis so that sounds like just the thing for me. I spent a good bit of time sorting out my goods and chattels as well as throwing away a shed load (quite literally) of stuff. It’s amazing how ruthless you can be if you know that everything you keep you’re going to have to pay to be moved / stored.

Stress. Stress. Stress. Lucky I’ve got Suze. She’s been an absolute rock. I loves you girl

Only negative right now is that I was gagging for a bit of a goodbye party at this house. It’s a fantastic shape and size for party and there’s been some fantastic times had in this place. Work and time pressures mean that’s not going to happen. Still I’m off down the Fawcett tonight for a little goodbye to Pompey drink. Should be nice.

So this week I need to get myself sorted out for the big move. I’m out of this place and off to Southampton in in 8 days and before then happens I need to:

• Decide what goes into storage and what I’ll take to Suze’s flat
• Hire some storage to store my stuff
• Hire someone to pack and move all my stuff

There’s a lot to do and so far 0% of it is complete. Oh dear.

A nice night out on Friday and a very relaxed Saturday / Sunday mooching round the house, watching a few videos and films was just the ticker and has put me in a chipper mood for this week’s hecticness.

I think that’s the last time I’m going to look that relaxed for a good few weeks.

Yay!

Still some hassle to sort out about the equity split with Jo but at least the house sale hasn’t been lost.

Still it’s a big step and a step close to being settled elsewhere and being able to give all my focus on the big adventure forward rather than clearing up the mess of the past.

Nearly there with house sale. The contracts weren’t exchanged yesterday but we came very close.

The buyers have asked for us to pay an indemnity insurance for a little bit of surveying which said that the chimney brest in the utility room was nice and stable (£160) and also for us to bear the cost of a zero pressure valve being fitted to the boiler that stopped a leak.

It’s 0.000617283950617% of the sale price so I’ve said that’s fine.

Jo’s said it isn’t.

Hopefully there’ll be some sort of resolution today