Thursday, September 30, 2010

What?! Two posts in a day?

As promised here's some nice shots of the place I am internshiping at.  Ok I lied they aren't nice, I in fact took them using the 1.3 mp web cam on my laptop


This is what the building looks like from the outside.  I know, pretty damn sweet.  The cars serve as a good reference to how god damn tall those front doors are.

This is the view in from the front doors to the art space that they always have open.  At the moment it's some artist who plays around with aerial shots.


When those big double doors are not open this is the way you get in, a tiny tiny door at the front.

Here is the rear of that door with a fire hydrant for size reference.  You may not be able to see but there medieval brackets for a large wooden beam to rest on to lock the doors at night.


Just a quick shot of the art room.


The work area upstairs! Those macs you can see might as well be from the pre war era.  They are so old

This last shot is so you can see those kick ass chains hanging from the wall in the background.  They hang off the beam on the ceiling and I assume they were used for hauling heavy things around the substation.

See I told you I would post pictures =P

Actually doing work

Yes the title is the truth, it does not lie!  As I write this I am actually engaged in work.  When I say work, I do not mean for myself or for university (although it does count towards my courses and it has been organised by uni).  I am in fact at my internship and have a short period of time to right this as I am way ahead of the work they assign me.  I know, it's amazing.

I'm stationed in an old electrical substation in Paddington (a trendy suburb north of the city in Brisbane).  The company I am working for is called Artworker's Alliance and they arrange artistic ventures in Brisbane from workshops to exhibitions.   This is an amazing opportunity for me as the two places I wanted to work were in gaming multimedia or local art community and I'm surprised to reach either of those fields so quickly.  The substation itself is amazing and when I get home I will post some pictures of how pretty it is.

The work itself is interesting, although it wears me out so so quickly.  Their website has been built from four seperate developer's ideas and is split between CSS, HTML, SQL and some file formate called TPL which I have never seen before (but seems to contain php code).  In order to actually search the website's code in order to change things I had learn some new techniques such as using a program called Agent Ransack.  This Agent is my best friend with the ability to search the code of any file from .exe to .jpg.  I have to thank him for being so wonderful.

The actual website I am working on is here and that text down in the footer that has the address? That took me four hours to find in their database.  I almost fell asleep while doing that, but it was still worth it.

In other news tomorrow I begin my work in the 48 hours game making competition.  I am intending to keep at least a vague blog up as I work at Anger Issues Interactive but who knows how it will pan out.  To be honest I am a little terrified about the prospect of this competition, but we will see how it goes.

Due to this competition this week's weekly web roundup will be canceled though =(  Sorry guys.

-  Fae

Monday, September 27, 2010

Weekly web roundup #5

: phew : sorry about the lateness (I say that a lot). I started my internship just last week and it kept me busy, plus throw in a distraction or two and I'm just a couple of days late for my roundup. Never the less here we go!




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX1m0Y2Vkg&feature=player_embedded


To start off we have a double pokemon fan made trailer set up. These amused me greatly, especially little bits and pieces that take information directly from the show. Both were found on Geekologie originally.


Finally a quick reminder about why Pink and the Brain was an awesome cartoon.

Sorry about the lack of content this week, but as I said, busy as hell. I only got a chance to write this while my files copied and now I have a journal to create for Avalon. I'll update soon to talk about the internship with all it's quirks and fun!

Hope your all good in internet land!

- Fae

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

People who cut in line

First of all this is not aimed at anyone in particular. I did not get cut off by some idiot on the train or get stuck in traffic because someone wanted to get there faster than me. No, this topic came about from using a random word generator to get an idea to write about.

Cutting in line is all about short term enjoyment, it's bad karma and it can ruin the day of everyone else around you. I'm sure we can all think of a time when we were stuck in traffic because there's road work ahead and they merge the two lanes ahead of where you are sitting. Being good little road workers they give you plenty of warning and so all the people wanting to not be left short have merged when the signs first appeared. However there is a group of people who want to zip down the now empty lane and merge at the last possible minute. This makes sense if you don't care to think about anyone else who is waiting behind you.

But those poor people sitting there in line, waiting patiently for their turn, they can be waiting for three to four times longer because of your blatant ignorance of the proper way to treat other people. There has been times in traffic where I have seen a group of cares not move for ten to twenty minutes because of a constant stream of idiots pushing up ahead. It just isn't on.

To a lesser degree you can see people with this mindset at any point where two lanes merge. When a new lane joins a highway and everyone is happily merging one from one lane and then one from the other. But then there is that inconsiderate moron who doesn't want to wait for that one other person to merge and jams his car ahead to make sure he gets to his destination a couple of minutes early. These people are not nice people.

These practices can be seen off the road in other places, lines at super markets (especially people who decide to take a blatant 30 items in the 12 or less lane), lines at post offices etc. These are bad practices, they are bad mojo and they leave a disdainful taste in everyone else's mouth. If you do these things please take a moment to look at how you are effecting everyone else's day and do something about it.

It's just bad karma.

Bit of a rant, but sometimes I just feel the need to blow some steam off =P Hope your all having a grand day in internet land!

- Fae

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Of transgendered and masturbation

*WARNING* Just starting off by saying that content may offend, but is more likely to weird out people who actually know me in real life. *WARNING*

You could say that going from making almost not updates to updating about masturbation is going from one extreme to another, but I have been thinking about it a lot lately (>.< thinking about masturbation a lot) and decided that it would make a good transgender update.

So I often used a particular line to convince male friends who took my leaning towards lesbianism as nothing more than male blooded women chasing. This particular line seemed to convince people quite quickly that something was wrong and there was no chance of any maleness in me. This particular line was "I don't masturbate".

That's not to say I didn't ever try, or experiment. It was not for lack of trying. It just never really did it for me.

Now I don't particularly know any other transgendered individuals, so I can't know for sure if this is a normal occurrence or not. Certain webcomics and stories online (my only source of information >.<) lead me to believe it is not. But to me it is a simple line. My genitals are not the right genitals in my minds eye. This blocks any enjoyment that I could get out of them at all, and therefore they have never led to enjoyment.

However with relationships over the years I managed to develop a way to enjoy myself without involving direct genital interaction. Also for a long period of time I had decided it would unfair to ask anyone to be in relationship with something as changing as me, so there was a long period of enforced celibacy. At the end of my celibacy I was amazed to find my entire body literally jumped at someone's touch. Basically my body was like a catfish's body if you exchange the tastebuds for.. I don't... sensitivity? Yeah that metaphor really went somewhere.

There must be some kind of merit behind this lack of masturbation in the past (and ejaculation if I want to be exact), as certain psychoanalyst (I'm referring to the big bad one that controls any further development in transgender ways) seemed to think that this was a valid reason to think about moving forward.

Hrmm >.< that was quite a personal post, I hope no one found this too full on, regardless I hope your all happy out there in internet land!

- Fae




Friday, September 17, 2010

Weekly web roundup #4

Weekly roundup 4! I surprised myself by being on time this week. On with the roundup!


This soundtrack is fantastic. There is a link on his youtube page to the mp3 of this song if you are interested enough to download it (like I was). I find it wonderful that I can recognise a decent number of the sound effects / tracks he used to make it. God 8 bit is wonderful.




This is agreed by most people to be a fake, but we can only hope it to be true. A live action gritty pokemon movie with drugs and black marketing and death and the like. Basically hardcore pokemon. How could this be anything but awesome? Seriously?



>


I just love how out of the blue the guy seems to appear on the right of this video. And moonwalking too? How could his entrance have been any better?




Finally Mameshiba. These videos (there is a good 20 or so) make me so happy every time I see them. For clarities sake there are a couple of toys made by Bandai for this group, but as far as I can tell they are not directly marketing anything in these videos. Never the less they are simply amazing. I love their little faces.

Oh and Mameshiba translates to "Little bean dogs" (?). If you need more information on who these Little bean dogs try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs6RJ7-6MpQ. Granted this won't actually give you much more information, but hey.

Hope you enjoyed this weeks roundup! Stay tuned for more regular updates =)

- Fae

Thursday, September 16, 2010

My cat has emotions?

I found it way too hard today to think of a blog topic. I have been quite sick for the last few days, my brain feels like mush and my limbs are heavy. However I didn't want to go a whole week with only the weekly web roundups, so this is my attempt to get some content out. It doesn't help that there is only thing going through my mind at the moment =P But regardless, onwards into blogging!

I have been away for the last week on and off. In my defense I usually spend at least every second night at home, but my cat seems to have noticed. As most people realise, cats tend to not really care what goes on past a little warmth, getting a pat every so often and receiving regular food. I never thought that my cat was any different to this standard stereotype. However on returning home he has proved me wrong, irritatingly.

To those that don't know about my cat (and there must be at least a few) he is black, loud and recently become a pig. He was injured a month or so back, the vet claims it was a blow to the head whether from falling from a tree or getting kicked by a pedestrian. I was told that he probably wouldn't survive this, but he slowly improved until he returned to his cat like state. However the biggest change was he was now a pig. He used to eat a single meal for breakfast and dinner, now he tends to annoy the crap out of me unless I give him at least one and a half meals every time it's feeding time.

So I get home and instantly he standing on the desk next to me meowing loudly. I let him climb on my lap and pat him happily for an hour, but that's not enough. Over the rest of the day (we are talking the next 12 hours) he follows me around, meowing for attention and just generally being needy.

Now I know my cat and he is needy, and he is loud (as has been covered). But not like this. So this leads me to the conclusion that he misses me. Now like every cat lover I may just be fooling myself into believing that my cat actual has some kind of relationship towards me other than food provider (and this is definitely helped by the fact that my cat drank my asprin water before I could use it last night), but I have a feeling he may actually like me ^^.

*Phew* Well that was a bit of effort, but hopefully if I can pull myself back into the blogging mood things will return to their natural state. Hope everything is going well for all you out in internet land!

- Fae

PS. Did I really just post a blog about my cat? Oh well, on my way to my dream of being a crazy cat lady!

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Weekly web roundup #3

First off let me apologise for the lateness of this weekly roundup. Somebody distracted me, for a couple of days. Because of these being gathered over the last three weeks on and off I regret to say that I cannot credit where I found the original links. You can be assured though that it was a combination of geekologie, digg, reddit, destructoid and something awful. Regardless here we go!




It took me at least twenty seconds into this to realise that he was being so superbly sarcastic that I could barely notice. Wonderful piece =P




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQt54x6KmK8


This one has a nightmarish element to it. I mean a carnivorous caterpillar? That's almost an oxymoron. I always love to see new things in nature that astound me and this was no different.


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=975_1283799588

Ok, so people would have been hurt in this granted. And it would have been terrifying. That does not stop the fact that it is hilarious in a slap stick kind of way. I mean look at the amount of furniture that flies past the camera.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A88YiZdXugA

Portal 2. Co op. Robots that are best friends. How can this possibly be anything but awesome.
An oldy but a goody. This song was one of my favourites during the time I spent in school and talking to Miss Sketchy I realised not everyone will have heard it or seen the video clip. So here it is in all its glory!

Hope you all enjoyed this weeks late roundup. University starts tomorrow so hopefully I will get off my lazy ass and begin to blog properly again. Stay tuned!

- Fae

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Missing in action

I apologise for the incredibly long break in blogging. I'm going to use the excuse that it is my holidays and I have been avoiding all kind of responsibility and work. Basically the last two and a half weeks have been playing dwarf fortress, visiting Miss Sketchy (^^) and watching various TV programs. So I'm going to place the blame on a particular individual who has been distracting me (You know who you are).

So instead of a nice post about a topic in particular I am going to use this space to cover what has happened other than that in the last two+ weeks. Those bead art things I made a month or so back? I have a decent collection now sitting at almost 30 sprites, 20 of them made into hair clips and one turned into a brooch. My goal with these is to never let anyone see the same hair clip twice (bar certain exceptions like room-mates or someone I see way too often to be able to keep up). These will get saved up and next year when the anime convention comes through time I will be selling these and some simple badge art to the nerds of Brisbane. That should go well.

Work on the game project (Avalon:The Fallen) has not gone ahead as planned. Scratch that, no work has gone ahead as planned. I have been terrified of doing something completely outside my scope (game textures) and so I have been putting it off. However yesterday I did a good four hours work on them and tomorrow I intend to finish the work that I was meant to do over three weeks. : shrug : . I'm ahead anyway it's no problem.

My big project I was meant to do over the holiday? It didn't happen. Turns out when I no longer have a reason to go to uni or do uni work I just stop doing all things that may be considered responsible. I must watch this in the future or I will be absolutely screwed when I go freelance.

So that's a quick rap up on how the holidays has been. Hopefully I will get back in the swing of things as it's less than a week until I'm back at uni. That kick start should get me back to doing my actual work. We can only hope.

Hope everything is pleasant for you in internet land!

- Fae

(PS. A lot of lack of posting has been to do with not having a computer, but I have had it for over a week so that excuse can only be taken so far).

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Of doppelgangers

First up a quick apology for the lack of content and missing the friday weekly roundup but for the last week I have not had a computer other than my lowly laptop and my room mate's when she is out. But reguardless on with the post!

Doppelgangers, some of you may have met what you consider to be yours, others may have not. But I feel I have, to some disturbing results.

You see, I kind of wanted to *ahem* get intimate with mine. I didn't realise till later but basically what I wanted to do was have sex with myself. Is this the highest form of vanity? This caused me a bit of mental concern, but I got over it.

More importantly I could see so many places in my life and hers where we split. I could trace my life and see how small (and large) changes to my life would effect the end result. For example when we first met she was working for the RSPCA, the exact company I was attempting to work for when I finally found multimedia. She is vegan and I stopped being vegetarian when I first fell into the transgender teenage depression. Outside of life changes though we liked exactly the same TV shows, exactly the same genres and so much more. It was bizarre to meet someone like that.

I bumped into her again a couple of nights back, I still wanted to have sex with her -.-

Hopefully I should get my computer back in the next couple of days and post all my crafting pictures I have stored and ready to show.

- Fae

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Smoking -.-

So as many may know I gave up smoking about.. hrmm... seven months ago? It was moderately painful, I had been smoking for about... ten years? Wow I never realised that I had been smoking for that long. Probably a good reason to quite if any. But back to the point. It's not as hard as I thought it would be. Really. If you need to give up smoking, or if you just want to give up smoking, go do it now.

No really, it wasn't hard as I thought it would be at all. What did I use to help myself get over it? Nothing at all, no patches, no gum, no drugs, no replacement. I just stopped, and I encourage you to do it to if you want to give up! People are happier to see me, I get more done and I just generally feel healthier. I know, I know, lame lame lame. But wait, it gets lamer! You know what you need if you want to give up? You need to want to. Told you it got lamer.

Some people will never give up smoking, because in their heart of hearts they will never believe that they want to. Those that are told by friends, family, loved ones that they should always relapse because they don't want to actually stop smoking.

So why could I stop smoking? After all I had tried once before and managed to stop for a total for six months before relapsing. It was a simple answer, and probably one of the most common ones for a smoker to come across... health.

You see if you want to get gender re-assignment you must pass a series of stringent tests in order to go ahead and get it done. The hard part for most people is passing the mental tests, I have gone into this is past posts. But the problem I had was with smoking. The surgeon I want refused to do anything unless I gave up smoking, strangely enough I was told that about a month before I actually gave up.

So there you go, now some more lighthearted information!

Before I gave up I had one major problem, I lived with a super smoker. You know the kind, the ones that have a smoke more than once in a 22 minutes program. I decided that when he eventually moved out I would not have any temptation. Considering my three room mates I would left with after he moved out I thought this wouldn't be a problem (all non smokers). Flash forward to now. Out of those same three room mates two have pouches of tobacco sitting on their desks and the third just smokes the other two's.

-.- God damnit

(On another note, if you are one of my room mates and you are reading this no I am not having a go at you!)

- Fae

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Almost finished the semester!

This weekend I finish my second last semester. This means all I have left after this is two days a week interning at a large multimedia firm and two days a week doing project work. 12 weeks of this and I am graduated from university, so exciting.

I'm not sure exactly what I want to do when I get out of university, originally I wanted to freelance straight away because I hated the idea of working for other people, but I have been warned that to make a name for myself / learn things I should work for a larger company. Well at least I have my ABN set up so I can start my own personal business if the need be. But I want to do my own thing! But I want to make a name for myself! Gah! Things can actually be difficult sometimes.

Reguardless the next set of holidays will be used to set up my portfolio and portfolio web site for QANTM students. This makes me feel really lame when people ask me what my plans are for the holidays. It's even worse than the other possibility which is "I'm doing project work" >.<

This being the last week of uni there are a lot of people around me stressing out and desperately trying to do last minute work for their assignments. I may have done work in advance, leaving me sitting here on the last week with nothing to do. I have even done the optional work -.-

Still, later on this week I will have done all the work I need to so I will be able to look into writing more interesting blog posts and maybe even relaxing!

Hope your all good out there in internet land!

- Fae

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Spreading the joy of catnip

The day after posting that I would be focused on doing work for uni and how busy I was I went and did something awesome and completely unrelated to uni. Sorry about not posting it straight away, but at least it makes a good Saturday evening reading!

On Thursday I went over to Liz of Little Farm In The Suburbs's house as I had not seen her in ages. I was very surprised to find out that she had a project planned for the day!

We were going to go seed bombing.

Now seed bombing is an activity where you wrap up seeds and compost, protect them in a un-fired clay layer and then spread them out throughout the neighbourhood. The clay protects the seeds as they begin to sprout and when the environment / seeds inside break through the clay layer the plant has a little base to grow on. The most common way this takes place is with wild flowers on urban desolation. Things like old abandoned lots in concrete jungle areas.

But Liz had other ideas (which I fully agreed with). She wanted to bomb Brisbane with Catnip, as the cats themselves don't have the ability to plant it. I thought this was wonderful and promptly agreed.

So the ussual way you go about this is 5 parts clay / 1 part compost (or fertiliser) / 1 part seeds. Now I don't know even anyone out there in internet land has ever seen catnip seeds, but they are small, minuscule, just generally tiny. So the ratio was off, even though in each 6 gram ball we made were 40 seeds on average. But we didn't have any clay so an adventure ensued!

Three or so gardening shops later we were told we had no chance in finding clay (the clay I noticed in other instructions was a dried powder and I assumed it was used in gardening). Some of the people we asked for help from were flummoxed by our need for clay, and we ended up in Spotlight.

Spotlight is a dangerous place for me, and after purchasing beads which I didn't need we managed to escape with clay.

After a short crafting experiment at Liz's place we had 100 seed bombs ready to spread!

Me, looking like an idiot.

I left with 50 seeds bombs in my pocket which are now growing throughout south east inner Brisbane (mainly Stones Corner / Norman Park / Cooparoo / Morningside). So cats of Brisbane rejoice!

- Fae



Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Approaching the end of the Trimester

University is almost over again, I am currently in the second last week of the second last trimester of study that I may ever do inside an institution. So forgive me for cutting this post short.

The company website is at its final stage (all it needs is the character art completed and I'm just waiting on those files to be uploaded) so your all welcome to visit it as much as you would like.


Other than that I just have until the end of next week and I'll be free to work on my own work. This means all those side projects that have slowly let accrue will suddenly get a chance to get done! So soon QANTM students will have the ability to upload their portfolios to my web server, my portfolio will be complete and the database will begin to fill.

So hang on readers, soon there shall be more content!

- Fae

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Good crafternoon everyone!

So I spent this weekend entirely productive, it may be the second last weekend for my university semester but I could think of nothing but than CRAFTING! So these were my efforts this weekend, and also my first attempts at perler beads ^^

Baby Yoshi

Baby yoshi was fun simply because of the fact he is tiny and took little to no time create, these are the kind of projects I like. Taken from Super Mario World!

A wild Shaymin appears!

One of my favourite pokemon (other than togekiss, but I was afraid of running out of white). This character's design is based of the menu icon in Pokemon Heart Gold / Soul Silver.

A fawn

This design was made for Chi (my room mate). Her boyfriend wanted to make her a deer and so I pulled up a rough image and shrunk it. This proved to be ineffective, so I rebuilt the pixels and handed it to him, this is the result!

A wild Caterpie appears!

This was made by the same guy that put together the deer and this time I had no hand in the design. Never the less I thought it was worthy to put up =) This one is based of the sprites for Red / Blue.

Shy Guy: He only wants a friend

Poor shy guy, so lonely. He's by far my favourite Mario character so I had to make him. This design is based off the shy guys from Yoshi's Island.

Boo!

Isn't Boo awesome? That's what I thought and my friend (known as Sketchy to some!) thought so too! So I decided that I should make her one! Design found from a google image search of "Boo" + "pixel".

Kirby

Ahhh kirby, was there any better way to use up the colour pink? I think not. He's based off the nes sprite since past there he begins to get a lot of shading. Based off another's perler design.


A wild Mew appears!

Damn mew! Hanging from lights and taunting people! This was for my room mate Chi as she was upset I couldn't figure out how to make a small dragon ball that you could actually make out the star on! Based off a Nintendo sprite!


Hair accessories

These two are powerups from mario games. The P-Wing is from Mario 3 and the feather is from Super Mario World. These are both now glued to the back of plain barrettes and are perfect for wearing out on a night on the town ^^ Both these sprites are pulled from their respective games.


Heart Necklace

Final piece! I'm happy to say that this one is completely original. I know, crazy huh? I had a bucket full of purple left and I love both purple and hearts, so what was I to do!

And there you have it, my weekend in review. Hope you found it illuminating ^^ If you have any questions about the beads or quite frankly anything at all please leave a comment.

Hope your all going well in internet land!

- Fae

Friday, August 6, 2010

Weekly web roundup #2

So I didn't do as well with awesome clips this week, but here is what we have!

Awesome advert, I don't know exactly how much is faked and how much is real, but never-the-less it is incredible. I would never trust my life to such a device. Found on Reddit.



Hilarious simply because the guy was asked to make it more 'obvious' when the server went down (it was obvious enough to begin with >.<) Found through reddit!



Amazing gecko, so small and impervious to water that he can ran along the top of it. I love how amazing animals can be!



Another one from the same guy that did the Cows & cows & cows. So cute yet horrifying at the same time!

You know I should really stop mentioning that I got them from reddit and just let you guys assume. Although some came from digg =P

Hope your all going well!

- Fae

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Productivity failure!

After almost a month of perfect productivity and ultimate work getting doneness (everything there made sense god damn you) I was immobilised in a sunbeam for upwards of three hours. But never the less I have things that arrived in the mail today that I will put to good use!

First up to the plate is my new laptop skin that I spent three episodes of eureka designing and I'm pretty pleased with it =)

Laptop sticker!

So now my little Eeepc is personalised and pretty and ready for a night out on the town! I'm quite pleased with myself.

The other delivery was a bit annoying, as two and half weeks ago I ordered twenty two thousand perla beads and two boards for positioning them on. The beads have not arrived yet though, so I'm sitting at this board imagining the great things that I shall make such as:

this

this

and this

I can't wait for them to arrive =)

- Fae

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Project work and other tales

First of all I have finalised my blog for my project work. This blog will also contain multimedia based features that are a bit to multimedia focused to go on my personal site. Things like code techniques, ways to speed up loading of files etc. For all future references please visit it at this exact address:

Ok! On to other matters! I have discovered a fatal flaw with my plan to get work done as fast and as efficiently as possible for my project work. I am running out of things to do. I have two websites as done as I can make them without particular content given to me (pictures and text). I have business cards, game logo, business logo, manual template and a box art draft all complete. Once I plan the presentation itself I have technically finished this trimester even though the end date is the 21st of August. So time to start working on making textures! (I'v always wanted to do that).

On the other hand my portfolio website is approaching creation date now that the mockup is 100% done! For anyone interested here is what I expect the front page to look like : grins :

New Growth Designs

Other than that social life has gone splat and no longer exists other than the wonderful time I spend at uni. Oh well I'm sure it will recover, it wasn't a fatal fall.

Oh wait I promised other tales! Umm... today I managed to restrain myself from being a total of seven things:

1. A t-shirt with the print "['hip', 'hip']" (hip hip array)
2. A t-shirt with two weevils separated by a less than sign (the lesser of two weevils)
3. An umbrella with a katana handle
4. A t-shirt with a L4D health pack on the back
5. A portal t-shirt with the words "Look at me still talking when there is science still to do"
6. A crystal firejewel
7. A pair of very very odd boots

Did I want all of these things? Yes very much but shipping to Australia is a bitch and the store I buy from must really have enough for me to warrant the purchase worthy before I pay exhorbatent shipping fees and sadly no store had enough merchandise to make it worthwhile.

Damn.

Hope your all going well out there in internet land!

- Fae

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Life update!

I realised yesterday that with all these posts I don't think I have mentioned anything about what is going on with myself for quite a while. So here is an update on life in general!

So I'v been productive. Some may say too productive. I have a business developing well, I have four or five domain names, I'm well well ahead in almost all my subjects. People are starting to complain, especially those in my field (multimedia). On the flip side of this (this is the side I like) I'm getting progressively better and better at what I want to do. My Photoshop art especially has gone from being absolutely horrible to becoming close to what I'm after.

I'v been spending any spare time I find from work either playing a little bit of Team Fortress 2 or practicing my flute (damn being able to play music is wonderful, even if I'm not as good as I would like to be).

That's basically been my life for the last... 3 or 4 weeks? In its entirety. Yeah not much going on. People I would like to visit have been sick or busy =( But that's not to say I haven't had fun, I have had so much fun with developing skills, especially with the web site coding.

Is it odd that my favourite days are the weekdays? I get to go to uni and see friends, I get to hang out in a sweet room and pester Cliff and constantly ask Jodie 'does this looks good?'. I have huge seven to eight hour periods of working with friendly people in a fun enviroment. When I started doing work this trimester I was watching TV shows everyday. Now I can barely get through two 40 minutes episodes of something for the concentration I put into work and the talking we do amongst ourselves.

Uni is close to ending this trimester (three weeks left) and then I begin the final trimester before I am finished and get thrown out into the wide world. To be honest I'm not as scared as I thought I would be to finally no longer be a student. I'm preparing now, developing the things I need for my portfolio, creating a personal image and developing my brand. I'd have to say life is pretty god damn good.

Now if only I could something about the lack of sweet sweet loving =P

- Fae

Friday, July 30, 2010

Weekly web roundup #1

Ok new plan! On Fridays I will link things during the week that have been nothing but awesome. Most of these will be newer videos if I can help it but the occasional older video will be linked. To make it easier I will embed them in this page itself, but I will also provide a link. Also I'll try not to make everything comedy (as hard as that is with the web).

Why am I doing this? I spend an awful lot of time on the internet checking to see anything new hits the news. I tell people I do this so I don't miss the news but to be honest it's just to see what the internet's most popular pages have appeared. So without further a due this weeks roundup!



Incredibly creepy, and I'm not sure if it's intentional. Strangely enough found thanks to my parents.



An odd video about how this women is a world class TV master chef. I didn't expect it to be as hilarious as it was. I just love how it starts out so simple but ends so over the top. Found on Reddit.



This just recently hit popularity and although it is Steve Carell (I don't like him overly much) the banter between the two in it is hilarious. Really worth watching! This one is from Reddit too.

Girl who thinks she is the ugliest thing on earth teach other uglies how to fake attractiveness. Hilarious tips and comments. Thanks to chi.

And finally


Wonderful video detailing a benificial mutation in the human species where a child was born with extra working fingers. From reddit.

That's all for this week. Hope you enjoy it all =)

- Fae

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Why you should not use internet explorer

Time for some multimedia talk! Today's topic, browsers!

So browsers, everyone has at least one. First the good browsers!

Chrome
I feel this is the best browser personally, it may not allow you to equip as many add ons as it's popular cousin Firefox, but what it lacks with that it makes up for in pure out-of-the-box brilliance. It's resilient to destruction, being able to close parts of the browser that crash without losing your pages. It's fast, it's not a massive resource hog (although there are better programs). Finally it's improving quickly as it is rather a new browser. And most importantly it displays the web efficiently without needing as much code as some other browsers.

Firefox
The big brand name that everyone trusts! Firefox is a decent browser by anyone's standards. It is very adaptable program, you can easily add spell checkers and add blockers without a problem. It has improved over the years to be sure! There are just two problems I have with this browser. The first exists in the 'Frontmotion' edition, this edition is often used by admins as it's easier to lock down, but it has a tendency to fracture parts of web pages making them ugly or slowing them down. The second exists in the code needed for firefox. On each page you may need one or two lines of code to make things run. When you add these up there is a significant drag on the internet on lines that aren't particularly needed.

Opera
Opera doesn't have the most features. Opera doesn't exactly display things perfectly every time. But one thing opera does is run incredibly fast on nothing. This means if you have a slow computer, or a tiny laptop, this browser can make you feel like your running something much faster. So it's definitely not the best but it has its uses.

The devil (Internet Explorer)
The standard one that you expect that comes with windows is the infamous "Internet Explorer". Now this particular browser (in all its current incarnations, although 6 is the worst of them all) is evil, just evil. When a web developer makes a webpage they often need to make a completely separate page of code just for dealing with people who want to use Internet Explorer. Please, please never use this browser. When you use this browser certain groups on the internet take notice and write down a use. These people are big, they control how the internet is meant to flow. If they notice a certain percentage of people use internet explorer they decree that web pages must be able to show content in this browser. If less people use IE it means the designers will have to work harder to make it a good browser. Either that or I will never have to bother with it again (thank god).

So that's the browser I personally have experience with and can happily state anything about. Of course there are many more browser out there, but these one's mentioned (plus safari) account for a whopping 99.2% of all browsers out there (according to W3, magical overlords of internet standards). So the big three browsers (chrome, firefox, opera) are all good to use, but never....
ever..
ever..
ever..
ever...
ever...
use Internet Explorer with current day's practices (please =P).

Thank you, and goodnight ^^

- Fae

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Magical Trevor: The truth behind the madness

(for those that haven't seen this horrible display of misusing magic you can find the first one here)

Magical Trevor, for years he has shown only his public face to the people. For years he has hidden the evil behind his calm friendly mask. But today I will reveal him for who he really is, I can only hope that I don't mystery disappear in the same way that those who last went public with this information did.

As we all know, Magical Trevor first appeared to the public when his first major trick was successful. As we all know he made a cow disappear and then later reappear, but in actual fact the only people who know what happened that day were the ones that were there. However we can look at the footage and work out logically what happened that fateful day.

Trevor destroying the cow

So when Trevor made the cow disappear, as can be seen in the above picture, what he was actually doing was destroying it. Obviously what he is firing there are lasers, lasers are the only thing that are that awesome. So Trevor has just vaporised a cow, what does he do next?

Threatening the witnesses

Obviously next he takes care of the witnesses, he can be seen here threatening the cows. His exact threat can't be told from this picture alone but look at those crazy crazy eyes. But still more evidence is seen when we find what investigators found later on at the scene.

The letter found at the site

As can be seen obviously in the above picture, Trevor left the cows threatening notes detailing the possibilities if they talk. But cows are known for their steadfast loyalty and thus they needed to tell the world about their poor lost friend.

Cow addressing the media

The cows decided as group something had to be done, so as a whole they organised a media conference and tried to reveal the truth about magical Trevor. Unfortunetly before they could get the whole truth out they vanished mysteriously. Nobody knows where they went, but later on in Trevor's career he hints on where they might have gone.

Final resting place of the cows?

To all you nay sayers who claim that he returned the cow, nothing can be revived from a laser blast. The more likely solution is that that is in fact a different cow. We believe this to be the actual truth. Trevor still refuses to return our calls.

- Fae

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Life goals

I was talking with my room-mate today over lunch as she had seen a lecture called "Randy Pausch, the last lecture: Achieving your childhood dreams". She spoke of this lecture fondly talking about how the man taking the lecture talked at length about how he worked to achieve the dreams he had since he was a child and it got me thinking about my dreams. Lately I have been all about not wimping out of things like this, so I'd like to take today to talk about what exactly I want to achieve in life, from easy to hard. Here we go!

1. Successfully run a freelance business for web design:
This one I'd say is the easiest of all the dreams I have. In fact I would say that this one is guaranteed within the next decade without a problem. Still, it's important that I get a chance to do this. I'd really like to use this business to make things for some local art projects, perhaps run the page for a small theater company of something similar.

2. Make a website without any external resources
Simple enough! This means I don't want to have to refer to tutorials, I want to make all the pictures by myself and write every single word of content. This will only solidify my strength with multimedia design.

3.Teach or inspire a group or individual
Simple enough! I want to teach at one point =) this is also a fallback point for failure or boredom with working in multimedia (Those that can't do, teach).

4. Search for an endangered or thought extinct creature.
At the moment the creature in question would be the Quetzalcoatl bird of south America. It's almost a cryptid with how it has not been seen. Other possibilities involve a couple of rare birds from New Zealand that are basically extinct and to a lesser degree visiting the Galapagos. The animal/s I attempt to find will basically be dependent on the year that I do this plan! Note, what I'm after has to be outside Australia. I don't want to take a tour bus to the outbank and look around, I want to trek through jungles! I want to wear a safari outfit!

5.Write a book.
Straight forward goal! The topic is irrelevant! It could be a book on modern webdesign and themes involved in todays decade or it could be a self help book! Who knows?! (obviously not me). For clarification I would like to write a book that gets published, simply outputting a book worth of writing is not enough for this goal =)

6. Create art
I want to be able to create something that is considered art! However due to my inability to enjoy my own work the exact way that this goal must be satisfied is my own satisfaction with this art.

7. Either become the best in the world (or at least in the top three, we'r talking medal winning position) at something or write an entry in the encyclopedia.
Simple enough, the first thing that comes to mind with the best in the world half is becoming one of the world experts in something. This may coincide with the searching goal if I manage to discover something that has not been seen in decades and get a picture / description but who knows! All I know is that it will happen.

There we go! That's my life goals!

Interesting enough none of these goals are childhood goals, to be honest I never had any childhood goals that I haven't already achieved. I guess my childhood must have been simple because I have:

-Traveled extensively
-Learnt to make internet pages
-Built my own computer
-Learnt to drive
-Learnt to ski double black diamonds
-Can play music

Oh well! Just means I had a chance to set more goals =)

So what about all you out in internet land? Do you have life goals? Have you written them down so you can't back out? These things are important! Live your life to the fullest =)

- Fae




Sunday, July 18, 2010

I finished too much work =(

I have done a little bit too much work this week and come Tuesday I will be at a point of my project where to do any more right now may be a stupid idea. Anger Issues Interactive needs a way to play movies and it's done, and the game website needs to be stitched together while I wait for content. Put in numerical terms, I'm four weeks ahead of my work.

To many other people (especially ones I know at uni) this would be a fantastic relief, to be able to sit back and watch TV and play games. But at the moment all I feel is discontent. To be honest there is another reason why I may feel this way. An important friend is sick and there's not much I can do about that.

So here I am with a lack of work and suffering because of it, is that a compliant often heard? If my supplies had arrived from America I could making fun things, but I'm out of beads at the moment. I guess the best I can do is practice some flute, learn Javascript and practice photoshop techniques.

Hope everyone out there in internet land is well!

- Fae


Friday, July 16, 2010

Karma

As try as I might I have not been able to think of something to write about for my blog for the last couple of days as I have been doing nothing but vague designing and coding my project group's page. So determined to have something to write about today I have decided on a random topic: Karma.

For those that don't know (and I assume everyone would, but anyway), karma is the idea that bad things will eventually bite you on the ass. Some people view it as a direct payback (Cut off someone in traffic and you will get in turn cut off), some wiccans see it as the rule of three (any energy or thought, whether positive or negative, will return to them three times over) but regardless the general idea it is a commonly held idea one of payback. Some people turn up their nose at the idea saying "But that's just superstition!" but the version of it I'd like to talk about today is a simple one which I will attempt to present logically.

My version of Karma relies mainly on happiness. You see in my everyday life I try my best to be happy, smile and treat people with kindness and respect. In everyday life you tend to bump into the same people everyday, whether they be the people who serve you coffee everyday or people who tend to catch the same train at the same time as you. If you always smile and offer them your seat if it looks like they need it they will be happier. If they are happier they will tend to treat others better reguardless of nature. Eventually this will come back to you in the simple form or someone smiling at your or offering you their seat.

It's the basic principle of 'treat others how you yourself would like to be treated' and I think it's a very important one to live by. It's a really simple concept, a logical one at that, that is based off cause and effect. So please in the future be nice to everyone around you, it means everyone else will be nice to you. And no one likes a dickhead =P

On a different note I'd like to add that I in a slightly more superstitious way believe that it will truly return to the person who deserves it =) Just saying!

- Fae

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A full day of work

I'm absolutely exhausted. I have spent all day coding furiously to try and get my project group's website up and running (www.angerissuesinteractive.com) and my brain is reeling from being in that mind set. My hands kind of hurt from constantly thumping them on the desk and my voice is a bit hoarse from yelling at code that won't obey. Although I went out for lunch when I got back with my bowl I kept coding as I ate. But even though I feel this way, I have had a wonderful day.

Yesterday I worked just as hard, and yet I didn't have the same kind of show for it. I recorded music for my project group, presented a ten minute talk on my self identity and did a little bit of coding. Reguardless I spent the whole day working, even when I got home I did some work on a couple of logos I had stuck in my head. (It may be important to note that I did get a massive piece of positive feedback about my work from someone who I think is just the most awesome guy and this just may have kept me fueled, but still)

I don't understand why people can't appreciate doing a good full day of work, I find that if you ever feel like your not doing anything with your life and things are stagnant doing everything you can for a full day is the best cure. It doesn't matter if your doing hard work or just work that needs doing, you'll wear yourself out sleep better and feel great the next morning.

Still, I'm exhausted and it's time for bed =) Promised someone that would I read a poem for them that they need to record for some project or another tomorrow morning early, and I don't like letting people down.

- Fae

Monday, July 12, 2010

Food for thought

I cannot understand why people do not eat well. I know people who would be happy to eat instant noodles every single day for the rest of their life, and I ask myself "Is that life?". I mean it echoes my sentiments about not trying to live a happy life, being depressed all your life is like eating nothing but Smith's BBQ chips. Sure it may be easy, and in the very very short term rewarding but if you keep it up your going to get fat and unhappy again.


Does this dog look happy to you?

The big difference is enjoying food vs enjoying eating. Enjoying food is fine, enjoying the most delicious combinations possible with the perfect blend of spices, what could be better? The problem is people who just enjoy eating. The people who would buy and consuming absolute crap simply because they could, it just boggles the mind.

Eating good food helps so much in everyday life. Just going to the effort to make something extra delicious may take you an extra half an hour compared to the two minutes to heat up noodles, but the time you make up from being that little bit more happy pays off. We all know what it's like, when your depressed work drags, you find things distract you easily and stuff just doesn't get done. That extra time spent making good food pays off in how efficient you spend your time.

Plus the best bonus you get from this is impressing friends and guests. The look on people's faces as they taste your well honed skills evident in your mushroom risotto is worth it, believe me. Girlfriends or boyfriends will fawn all over you just that little bit more.

So what I'm basically saying is take that little bit more time in your life to make your own food. Start small working with bits and pieces that are premade (like pasta sauce) and then start to experiment with adding things. Look into what makes up your favourite sauces, you'd be very surprised at how easy stroganoff and carbonara is for one. Work your way up to making your own sauces, understanding spice and cooking times! It's one of the most basic rewards you can give yourself =)

- Fae

(Edit: I just spent waaaaaay too long trying to understand the coding for the Blogger template, but regardless I have a new layout. This new background / colour scheme is based on my identity mood board I made a couple of weeks ago. Hope you all like it ^^)

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Thinking positive

So today an old acquaintance messaged me on Facebook asking for a shoulder to cry on, I couldn't actually manage to get out to her as I had a hundred page project plan to finish, two essays to write and a date to go on, but that didn't stop me from chatting to her. Things weren't going well for her (well duh, who would complain about life going really well) and she was feeling pretty bad. She was feeling pretty down, but just like I remember her she was very very negative about the situation. Now if your reading this and your the individual that talked to me today I mean no offense by the following post I just wanted to talk about thinking positive (as gay as that is =P).

Thinking positive is damn important in life, just as being nice to others is! Life may not be any better when you think positively (duh =P), but if you always think negatively life can never be happy. I know a couple of people who don't have too bad a life, but they don't ever love their life because even when it's good "It's only good because something bad is happening". Seriously people, being that negative can't be fun.

You see, you will always be miserable unless you can learn to think positive. Doesn't matter how good things are, you will always hate your current situation. So lets look at it on the opposite side. Say things absolutely suck and you are thinking positive, what's happening now? Life is not being particularly fun, but you think things will pick up soon so your not absolutely wrecked by the news. How is that not bad?

So how can thinking positively not work? I do not see a failure in logic here. Think negatively and life suck, think positively and life rules. How can you go wrong?

Finally, I'd like to talk about the one drawback I have to admit there is. I am widely optimistic on the humans around me. I'm often heard to spout things like "Surely people can't be that dumb!" and "Wow, I didn't know people could be that mean =(". This hasn't come back to bite me on the ass badly (bar maybe one, max two people I used to know). But on the whole I have to say it's worth it. Life is awesome this way.

So take your pick, either life sucks, or you think positively =)

- Fae