New Year

So now is about the time that people start banging on about year-end lists and how they're incredibly important. I, for one, have no such list to contribute. You see, thanks to a mixture of insomnia, coursework stress and having a wireless laptop, the days and weeks have just imploded in on each other like drunken bears over the last turkey wing.

The year has had lows and fewer highs, but in general it's been okay.

That's pretty much all I have to say. Be safe people. To 2008!

Sraen Out.

Tetri!

After loading up my new iPod with all my music, I something very strange has occurred. I am now the holder of Satan's iPod. It's red, and it has 6.66GB of music on it. Really, it does. Look, proof!

This is quite disconcerting, but open to a moment of hilarity; Perhaps the album to push my iPod out of satanism should be The Number Of The Beast by Iron Maiden?

*****

In other news, I have renewed my decade-old addiction to Tetris. It's unsettling to realise that I have played longer and more often than any other person I know, and that my high score is up at sextuple figures. I blame the lack of fundamental Tetris-Resisting training in our primary schools; we must protect the next generation from this addiction! We have anti-drug campaigns; why not a campaign to highlight the dangers of Tetris addiction?

But alas, as long as the fatcats up in Video Gamer land keep on selling it (and giving it away for free) there will forever be legions of addicted fans, such as myself, all waiting for the moment the motherland decides to rise up and take the world using an undiluted version of their mind-control technology (the aforementioned Tetris).

*****

Finally, I thought I'd share with you some of the wit and wisdom of Yahtzee Croshaw, registered supergenius.



Sraen Out.

Moooovies

I am nearing my 100th post; hopefully if I manage to actually care enough to post in the next few days, I'll break triple digits before 2008 rolls round. Which isn't actually that impressive, but it is an achievement of sorts.

Thankfully, I've scored enough money from my relatives to be able to get a load of cool gear in the upcoming price-slashathons (read: sales). For instance, I am setting myself up to have a better knowledge of films in preparation for my future participation in Film Studies at A Level; so far, I have collected the Mad Max trilogy and Robert Rodriguez's Mexico trilogy. Very soon I shall add the Bourne trilogy, 300, The Stanley Kubrick Collection and The Quentin Tarantino Collection to that list. Hopefully I'll be able to find the time to watch all of them; perhaps I should start organizing myself properly, allocating time to specific tasks and following them through.

Or not.


In any case, 2008 is looking a bit brighter than 2007 for me on a personal level. Let's hope it plays out properly, eh?


Sraen Out.

Merry Christmas

I hope you all have a good Christmas today. I'm going to spend it eating far too much turkey and being offline for an absurdly long time.

Sraen Out.

The Clock Is Ticking...

I was born sixteen years ago today. At about sixish. It was snowing.

Yes, readers, I am now 16. Unfortunately, I did not suddenly become a hulking mass of testosterone dragging an axe and a wench. I guess that happens at the 18th.

All joking aside, I'm actually feeling pretty good today. This time next year I should have shed the baggage of High School and be free learning my own thing away from the idiots who say that I do too much work (THREE PAGES. ONLY THREE. HOW IS THAT TOO MUCH WORK FOR AN EXAM?).

But I have to slog through my GCSEs first. If all goes well, my lowest grade will be a handful of Bs. So that's good.

I really have nothing else to say. It is my birthday though, so I have an excuse.

See you people. Sraen Out.

Dork Knight

So last week I had my Post-16 Interview. What that means is that they herd up a load of us and shove us into the Sixth Form building to fill out a form before getting us to talk to a teacher for a few minutes and kick us back into lessons. After queuing for twenty minutes.

But I digress. What it means is that I now know what I need in order to apply for the A Levels I want to do next year; and, thankfully, I am almost certain to obtain them. For the four choices I have, all I need are 5 C grades or above. That will be easy as hell to get; I only have one subject where I may get below that, and I'm targeted As and Bs everywhere else. So woo.


Here are my subject choices:

Art
Photography
Film Studies
English Literature & Language

And now my subject choices and the prospects they have in store for me:

Art - Unemployed, bearded and covered with paint. Dreadlocks optional.
Photography - Unemployed, bearded and saying "Oooh, pretty" at random objects.
Film Studies - Unemployed, bearded and talking about Alfred Hitchcock far, FAR too much.
English Lit & Lang - Unemployed, bearded and insane.

I'd best get started on that beard then.

******

After hitting his 150th post, James has moved over to a Wordpress blog. I like the look of his new blog, and the other pages are helpful too. Good luck to him; he's a good blogger who's managed to outpost me quite significantly despite me having a month's headstart. Just goes to show what you can do when you can write well AND quickly, eh?

Sraen Out.

Digg for Photographers?

A quick perusal through the archives of Photocritic has lead me to an extremely interesting new startup site. PhotographyVoter (I know, a really unoriginal name. All the non-word websites have been taken) is apparently built on a pretty robust clone of Digg's system, so technically it should be fine - but that's not the issue. The fact is, nobody is using it. It's so new that it's not exciting yet, and that's why I'm posting about it. I would LOVE to get this site up and running, because there's so much out there that is lost in the tide which could be easily brought up with this service.

So anyway, that's all I've got now. It's almost 1AM and I have a guitar lesson in a few hours. I leave you with shinies:


Click for high-res goodness.

Sraen Out

Yeah, I'm back

Yes yes, I know. I've been forgetting to blog again.

To be perfectly fair, it's not really my fault. I did warn my non-existant readership that I would put my GCSE work first, and have done. I've actually started to obsess over my prep work for my Photography mock next term. So there.

But truly, I'm sorry to anybody who reads this thing. I have been struck down by the weight of work and illness, and as such have been doing bugger all.

But I digress. Time for some news!

I finally got a tablet. My brand new Intuos3 A5 Wide arrived last week and I totally love it; it's a great piece of gear, and well worth the money. I also got a copy of CS3, with a massive education discount, which means I'm going to have all the awesome programs I could ever need. All I need to do now is sit tight and wait for them to email my CD Key over to me, so that I can actually install the software.

I've got my own little creative area now; some of you who remember months back may recall that we turned a small outbuilding into an art house, but that has since been relegated to storage thanks to the winter and our excess of useless junk. So now I have a large area in the middle of the house (it has a very strange floor plan, our house) for my digital stuff, my books, and my traditional stuff. Awesome. Pictures to follow.

I've been thinking about making my own website for a while now, but have never got round to it. For one, I don't have the money for hosting. Which is always going to be a drag; I'd love to own sraen.com, and I doubt any other address would properly do. I do have my .mac webspace, but it's got one funky looking address and is pretty small (I'm looking for about a gigabyte or two of space at least). I can build good web galleries in Aperture, I can create the site in Dreamweaver, and I can install either a Blogger blog (straight from here) or a different one (I've been looking at MovableType.org - it seems nice). I'd definitely have Lightbox2 (an EXCELLENT little script that looks great). All in all, I want to learn how to build websites; I think it would be something cool to do. It would be especially useful as a portfolio site, since I have more direct control over it than deviantART (which I haven't updated in forever).

But until I manage to find cheapass hosting, a job, and an audience, it's going to be only a pipe dream.

Sraen out.

[Update: WOO I GOT MY CD KEY!!!]