Sunday, September 28, 2008 1:22:40 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Started the new job about a month ago now, and I'm quite enjoying the actual job itself, the people who work there (and the money they pay).

One thing however, has taken a huge hit. I was often asked by a friend of mine how I managed to get so much stuff done when juggling personal projects with a full time job. The answer has become clear since doing this "real person" thing of commuting and spending standard hours at work. My productivity has absolutely plummeted, I come home too tired to do anything computer related at all. I have ended up either collapsed onto my bed listening to music, or spending time with my newly acquired girlfriend Jo (bad timing, but not complaining). This is not because I do more work at work, but because I'm actually having to travel into work and get up early to prepare, I'm suddenly devoting thirteen hours of my day towards the job instead of the normal seven or eight hours.

I shall resolve to do something about that soon, I can't afford to not be working on my personal projects, Scrobbles or otherwise if I am not putting things out there on the internet, if I am not creating time to learn new technologies then there is little point in being a programmer at all.

Today however, I am working on Scrobbles, my work ethic has not gone anywhere and I have resolved to cross a few things off the list, as pointless at it is in light of the above.

Url re-writing is now done finally, and I'm going to push forwards with getting the rest of the things ticked off as much as possible. And I'll keep you all informed with my coping strategy for developing personal code when faced with the Real World. I think I know what my solution is, but I don't want to talk about it until I know if it is going to work.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008 10:06:27 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Still knackered after this weekend, so I'll keep this one brief (which means I'll probably end up rambling and it will end up long, but we'll see).

Friday

On Friday, Jo and Ed turned up at my house with Alan (a guy I know from the British Sea Power crowd) who had kindly offered to give us all a lift up to Tan Hill for British Sea Power's idea of what a festival ought to be.

Friday was absolutely sublime in every way. We got to Tan Hill early evening, set up our tent, and went to watch The Witch and the Robot. Their set came complete with the expected shaving foam madness, but with the addition of a lovely video of snakes and a background video of wonderful TWATr style rambling on about witches and nothing in particular. Our favourite paper maché headed man came around with a vacuum cleaner while balloons with lovely phrases were handed out to the crowd along with badges and free albums. A bunch of guys with white suits came out and we took turns to draw on them with marker pens. The music was fairly damned good too (as expected of them by now!!!).

These were followed by Silvery who created fine fine circus inspired music, followed by possibly the best British Sea Power set I have ever witnessed. B-sides and rarely played tracks all over. Incredibly chilled out stuff. Grabbed a set list to take home too. It was especially pleasurable to hear North Hanging Rock played at last, just epic.

We didn't stay up too late past this and hit bed early. A fine fine evening though.

Saturday

Saturday was a day of potato rolling, tug of war, falconry (I GOT TO HAVE A FALCON LAND ON MY WRIST!!!), and I totally won the Welly Wanging competition (at the cost of a pulled muscle in my back). Beer was drank with a spoon, and crackers were scoffed mercilessly by our adopted team mate Andy the Gonzo Journalist. (Class act). Ed made a fine attempt at eating doughnuts without his hands, but sadly this was not to be.

I missed a bit of the music because I was just too tired for it, I did however watch a bit of I Like Trains and caught Matt Eaton and the Modern Ovens before going for a walk with Jo across the hills in the setting sun. It was a fairly amazing afternoon once we had gotten away from the hustle and bustle of the bar :)



The ensuing British Sea Power gig was just sublime, although I think the tracks could have been ordered better. It was delightful to hear some of the Decline Of tracks and OMG WOOOO WOOOOO, they played Hearing Aid!!! Well, it made me happy anyway, they made it sound just as it should too, and they ended it brilliantly.

After this epic set, we went outside to watch some fireworks which people had brought with them (I had donated towards a big pack organised by the members of the BSP forum) and sat next to a bonfire with Jo and had a chat with Scott and his wife Dawn. It was quite beautiful really. This was followed by more music from BSP and anybody else wanting to join in. According to the press the Arctic Monkeys and the Klaxons were involved, but to be honest I think they were too drunk back in the bar (yes, they were there too).

A late night on Saturday night, but a happy one nonetheless.

Sunday

Sunday we spent the entire morning chilling in the tent, only surfacing at around 1-30pm for some lunch before the afternoon activities. We ate lunch and played granny racing with somebody whose name I cannot remember and then went for a walk across the hills and sang songs. We returned cold and wet to watch the film Man of Aran, with a backing sound track played live by British Sea Power. That was sublime, so beautiful and settled a discussion Jo and I had been having about the meaning of the word "Bleak".

Being freezing cold, I headed back to the tent to warm up and was soon joined by Jo, who turned up just as the sun was setting, so I took some photos of that. I then read her an excerpt from my new book "Beautiful Code". I don't think she found it all that entertaining however so she was probably relieved when Ed turned up and turned our attention to chips. At about 11pm, Jo and I left the tent (and Ed, as he had fallen asleep) and went to get some mix cds from the lucky dip cd exchange, and a hot chocolate from the bar. It was probably the warmest part of the weekend sat there and I felt quite content at how everything had gone down.



Monday

An early night for us all and then a drive back the next day. 'Nuff said.

Thanks for everybody who was there for making the weekend what it was. Thanks for Ed persuading Jo that it was good idea to come on the weekend. Thanks to Jo for agreeing with Ed and giving up GenCon for a weekend of the raw northern outdoors (a big change from the poncy south). A MASSIVE thanks for Alan giving us a lift there and back. Thanks to British Sea Power for hosting such an event. It went down very well and I'd definitely go to another one of these if it ever happened!

An apology to the BSP regulars, who I managed to pretty much avoid all weekend despite saying I'd make an effort for a change. I don't know what happened there!!

Full flickr set can be found here: http://flickr.com/photos/robashton/sets/72157607055798896/

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 4:43:43 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

After getting a few silly, random things exorcised from my system, I sat down last night and set to work on the Scrobbles client and libraries, as these have been neglected while I have been working on the core server-side stuff.

Last time I left them, I was dealing with some problems to do with the situation where the user upgrades the Scrobbles client, and that client uses a newer database schema for the local cache, or the web services change so data can no longer be submitted the old way. This is quite a rare occurrence, but it just so happens that in my latest overhaul a couple of months ago I completely changed the web services and now have 500mb of unuploaded data sat on my hard drive needing migrating one way or another. And if I'm going to do it nice, I may as well write a system that can cope if I have to change things again in the future rather than just doing a one-time migration on my computer alone.

I had a few options to choose from, that I could think of.

• When a new version of Scrobbles is installed, do an in-place migration from the old cache to the new cache
• Keep the old web services intact and add newer ones seperately, with migration happening server-side per submission
• Write an adapter for each new schema, mapping old data into new data before passing through any new code

Each of these had its own pros and cons, chiefly to do with the resources that each method would require from either the client computer or the server, but also to do with the maintainability and reliability of each method.

• Doing an in-place migration would require that it be capable of migration from any previous version to the modern version, and potentially have to migrate across several hundred thousand rows - this is hardly a background operation and would be prone to problems if migration was cancelled by the user.
  
• Not breaking older clients wouldn't give users an incentive to upgrade, and the server would have to start having to do quite a bit of work to translate older requests into newer ones, and having resolved to make these web service calls as thin as possible this would go against that.
• Adapting the data client-side moves the burden of translation from the server to the client, and while translation from any previous version would still be required, not being done in bulk would mean this could be a transparent process.

All the above would require that the client would have to be capable of dealing with there being multiple cache files present, and be able to find out the version of each cache file. Initially this was going to be achieved through naming the cache file by its version, but I've never been one for naming conventions having been completely previously disgusted by the heavy reliance of them in Lionhead's The Movies. I instead added a Metadata table to the cache database and set a version in that. This means this can be checked for with a simple query on opening the cache and the relevant actions chosen.

I decided in the end to go with the final option, of creating adapters around existing code, mapping various methods and classes through a common interface. It involves a bit of work anytime I have to change the data structure between storage and uploading, but it means not having to modify existing code that already works when upgrading. It also means that each client can deal with software that uses older versions of the client library to create old cache databases.

It doesn't strike me as the best solution because it doesn't feel as elegant as I generally like things to be, but it shall suffice as I don't expect to be changing things too often anyway!!

In other news, I have resigned from my post at the University of Reading, and have taken up employment elsewhere. This saddens me slightly, but the new company does look like it's going to provide some interesting times. Because it's a real job with a scary looking contract, I'll refrain from mentioning who they are until I know what their blogging policy is. I don't want to get in trouble by suddenly becoming googleable to those concerned.
Anyway, onwards to a great deal more money, and to a more structured day - it should be interesting (at least, until Scrobbles makes me a millionaire.. )

Tuesday, August 05, 2008 4:34:02 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

This weekend I headed up to Kendal and had myself actually quite a good time, despite the gallons of mud caused by a downpour on Friday night. There are many complaints to be had about the organisation and the price considering the actual acts being put on, but I don't care about any of those things cos there was plenty of entertainment to be had nearly all hours of the day if you just loosened up and enjoyed the chilled atmosphere.

Friday

We arrived on Friday evening, and immediately set up the tent because it had stopped raining. No sooner had we finished doing this and got ourselves and stuff inside the tent then the heavens opened up and started soaking people outside still trying to put their tents up. The Friday night lineup was appalling so we just sat in the tent drinking and listening to the ambient sounds coming from the main tent which we'd parked our tent just behind.



Saturday

The previous night's downpour left us with a field full of mud, so after failing to find wellies that fit me, I just went bare foot and enjoyed it.





I ended up stripped down to a pair of shorts and was soon frolicking in the mud for pleasure. Later on while watching the guys photographed below (no idea who they are) I realised I was pissing blood from my foot after cutting it on something, but the mud and crap soon acted as a clotting agent and put a stop to that...



Photos end here as I was getting a bit drunk and I wasn't going to risk falling over in the thick mud and getting the camera dirty. A good evening though, slightly ruined by the Super Furry Animals being a crap band, but only slightly as the local Kendal talent during the day made up for that.

Sunday

Sunday the mud was getting a lot firmer and after grabbing breakfast I settled down in my favourite tent to watch some folk covers of some awesome songs by Johnny Cash and Steve Earle by the Wild Wood Band (known also as the Wyrd Strings when doing their silly stuff). Talented guys. That tent was lovely too, lots of straw to lie down in and a really chilled atmosphere to boot.



The sun was coming out and straw was being provided for people to relax in, and people started making mud sculptures out of the now rather substantial mud.





It was nice to see people enjoying themselves so I spent a couple of hours just wandering about, flitting between the various stages and getting the occasional cup of tea from my other favourite tent (a cafe serving five bean chilli and doing their own little DJ set).





Next up I met up with some of the delightful people from the bsp crowd and partook in smuggled cider and... another other questionable liquid. It was nice to see some familiar faces and I sat outside my favourite tent with them until it was time to go see The Witch and the Robot (one of my favourite bands at the moment). They were, as expected delightfully odd and a pleasure to watch once more.





Eamon Hamilton was on straight after and was another of the very pleasant acts on this day.

After this, we packed up our tent and after getting a photo of the festival flag in action, I put the camera in the car for the rest of the evening.



On arriving back into the festival site, I headed down to the dance tent where it was probably about time for EMF to be performing. For the novelty value they had to be seen and I was lucky enough to turn up just as they started playing "Unbelievable" and left straight after. Timing or what?!

British Sea Power were as always a delight to watch, and I met up with some fellow flag makers who I spent the rest of the evening with along with some other people who I had met during the day. Having people to help wave mine and Jo's massive flag was a real bonus, and by the end of it my arms were absolutely dead.

I had to spend an hour posing with people and the flag whilst they held on to me for support in the thick mud and I sank deeper and deeper... but I'm hoping at least I'll find a good photo to use in the competition.

A good weekend all in all, although slightly marred by the day after where my grandparents made me go to A&E for the aforementioned cut in my foot. They scooped out all the crap, x-rayed it to make sure nothing else was in there, bandaged me up, and put me on antibiotics while getting a telling off from the cutest nurse I have seen in a long time - I was not complaining. (Hey, if you're reading this get in touch yeah? ).

Trains on the way back were cancelled and I ended up getting a taxi from Birmingham to Reading courtesy of the rail services. Say what you like about our public transport but at least they look after you when things go wrong! 

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 12:11:20 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

With the success of the artwork we presented to The Witch and the Robot a few months ago ( see here ), when British Sea Power announced a festival flag and bunting competition I decided to re-enlist the help of the vaguely talented Jo to add a touch of class to the entry I wanted to put together.

That was over a month ago now.

After an initial three hour design session where we discussed concepts and bored the hell out of Owen with our ramblings, we came up with a vague plan involving a bedsheet and fabric to create a lion and a bear with some beer, and whatever else we came up with during the creation period.

A trip was organised to the rather excecllent Fabric Land to pick up materials and equipment to perform sewing and cutting activities with, and a bed sheet was procured from Woolworths.

Somehow, from this pile of material, Jo managed to craft a brilliant resemblance of the Lion from the third battalion pin I possess, and a really good attempt at the bear from Open Season, BSPS's second album. Owen cut some leaves out, in the style of the leaves from Decline Of [bsp] (BSP's first album) and I... made some stars and the pint of beer. The easy stuff because my fingers don't generally do what I want them to do and the hard stuff would just come out wrong.

All of this material had to be sewn onto the bedsheet by hand, and I've calculated that we've put well over thirty hours into this over the past month. Nevertheless, it has turned out quite well, so thanks to Jo for being a good little creative director, and thanks to Owen for his leaves as I don't think fabric and sewing were really his thing... he looked bored to death, bless.



Now to use the rest of the fabric to make a daft costume, and the rest of the thread to tie Jo up once we're done, she must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the competition.

Monday, July 14, 2008 10:24:53 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Fine fine fine, the weekend as it happened.

Friday

Friday was my birthday, although I like to keep this hidden from most people so I don't feel forced into any sort of celebration, take things as they come.

I had organised a meetup of some old friends that night (Dave, Luke and Stears), although the fact that it was my birthday was entirely coincidental, it just being the first Friday night that people were free to go for a few quiet drinks.

This started off as one of those evenings where we sit down over a few slow beers, and talk about geeky things like code, our mobile phone and OS preferences, what we're doing at work, and our recent hijinks, as we rarely see each other there is generally a lot to catch up on.

At about 10pm, we had moved into the territory where bad jokes start getting told, and the conversation becomes normal enough for non-programmers, so I called up Ben and grabbed him, and texted some students to make sure they were in the metal-bar across town before we began the trek.

As we had hardly been drinking enough to really justify three hours dancing wildly in a metal bar, it was decided that we would catch up with ourselves by going through Back of Beyond's more than adequate supply of Sambuca. Rounds were bought with 2-3 sambucas each in them, and at least five of these were purchased.

It was safe to say, that this was the turning point of the evening.

Somehow, we made it to Facebar, were we rendevouzed with a horde of "people that I know". I don't remember much about Facebar, only that it was a lot of fun and that I kept falling over. Somebody suggested doing some strawpedoing and apparently I managed to succeed in this for a change. Probably not good in the long term however. Somewhere between here and home I managed to pick up a facial injury which is a bit embarassing - but oh well these things happen!

At about 3am, it was decided that we would head back to Dave's, and drink Jägerbull as he had a lot of Jägermeister at his house. So we set off, resolving to pick up a large supply of Red Bull from Murco's, our trusted all night petrol station in homeward adventures. We head back to Dave's for Jagermeister and The National, everybody is happy so at 5-30am we retreat to our homes for a good night's sleep.

Or rather, a few hours...

Saturday

We get up at around 10am and resolve to a day of chilling and possibly even a chilli in the evening. Given that I got my face damaged the previous night, I sacrifice the vegetarian stance I've been maintaining (for variety rather than ethical reasons) and set up some bacon and brie sandwiches, buying some really nice and well looked after bacon for this brief lapse. Ben pops around to the house and Stears him and I decide to spend a day down at the cinema, and head down at about 15:30 for this purpose. I get some replacement glasses from specsavers and we go to watch Kung Fu Panda. The woman who sells us the tickets mis-hears us and we don't realise until we're at the screen that actually, we're going to watch Hancock. Ah well, it was entertaining I guess.

We head out for a coffee, and discuss plans, perhaps it would be funny to go fly somewhere on Sunday and grab lunch, possibly Greece, or Italy. This idea is investigated on Stears' phone a bit, and then we head back to the cinema to watch Wanted. Absolutely hilarious movie, recommend it to anyone.

We arrive back at my house after going via Tesco, at around 10:30pm and I decide to look at some flights. Greece is too far away, and Italy is too expensive. At 10:50 we decide "Hey, let's go to Spain and grab some spanish food". AWESOME.

Ben runs to get his passport from his house, and Stears and I feel smug that we keep our in our laptop cases. I book three tickets to spain at 5:40am, and we RUN to the train station to catch the final train to the airport which leaves at 11:34pm.

We spend the morning pissing about at the airport, drinking coffee and setting our Facebook statuses to comical things like "Gone for lunch"

We are relieved on checking in, to find that I have booked our flights correctly and that in a few short hours, we'll be at Alacante drinking beer and eating Paella.

Sunday

We arrive into Alacante and grab a taxi to "the beach". The beach it is and we are amused at how our random adventure has gone so far.

We buy some shorts and towels, and head onto this beach to do some... lounging around and perhaps a bit of sleep. Ben and I go for a swim and are pleasantly surprised by how warm the water is. At 9am, the ambient air temperature is 25 degrees Celcius, so we know we'll be in for a hot day.

I realise I've left the country without bringing a bobble to tie my hair back, and after not showering for 24 hours and in this heat, my hair is going to stick to my face and make me incredibly irritable (I want to do murders where I'm irritable), so we set about looking for a shop that sells bobbles. In this overly-religous country however, the entire town is shut down because it's Sunday morning and everybody is at church.

I improvise by tying my tie around my head like a bandana, and feeling like a prat for the rest of the day. Oh well, I looked like a prat wearing the tie in the first place, so this is probably an improvement.

The rest of the day is spent just pissing about, drinking beer, eating paella and swimming. Ben and I play with his camera and use the long lense to 'snipe' random passers by doing their general activities. We spent the entire day drinking beer, and slowly learning the local lingo. We have an awesome time, but it's one of those awesome times that is hard to put into words because the good time is being generated from just being there and talking nonsense over beer whilst people-watching.








12 hours later, we're a bit worse for wear through tiredness and beer - and in my case almost drowning and we say goodbye to the city and make our way home.

We arrive back in Reading 6am, having left 36 hours beforehand. We're dead on our feet. We've witnessed the sunrise from Gatwick airport twice in a row and are getting dangerously sober.

Monday

A few hours sleep is had, getting up once more at 10am to fix the boiler, and get some work done. Life is back to normal but photos need uploading. What a weekend eh?

The un-edited photo set can be found here.
The flickr set can be found here

Saturday, July 05, 2008 12:59:39 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Today, Firefox loses all my bookmarks, it's done this in Fx0.x Fx 1.0 Fx 2.0 and now Fx3.0 - you'd have thought this would have been fixed by now.

Opera takes two hours to upgrade, and then the new version decides it can't render its own UI anymore, and when it finally starts doing that again, I've lost most of my toolbars to the UI eating monster and it's utterly fubarred beyond repair.

Internet Explorer 7... worked. Okay, it wasn't the best with standards, but it worked. The UI is clunky and it's not as pretty as the two aforementioned browsers, but it DID ITS JOB.

I 'upgraded' to the beta of IE8 a while ago, which failed to work with a lot of sites (mainly because the Js model has had an overhaul), and that is what prompted me to start using Opera (and then Firefox when that fell over).

I have decided to go back to IE8. It might be unstable, it might occasionally crash whilst on Facebook, but at least I know it's going to do those things. It so far has never unpredictably just stopped working, or ruined my life, or killed my cat. If I carry on using Opera or Firefox, those things might just happen, and I just can't take that risk.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 1:01:40 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Well well well.

Radiohead totally deserve all the praise they get. What a performance.

I turned up early, before the gates opened, and headed right down the front before lying down in the grass and keeping my spot whilst listening to music and not drinking too much liquid so I could stay there all night. (Hey, if you're competing with 50,000 people in a crowd, may as well do it properly).

Bat for Lashes were... interesting. Absolutely appalling and uninspired lyrics, but a lovely ghostly sound. with some interesting moments in it. Her voice really doesn't quite make the grade on some of the songs she tries to sing, but I guess not everybody can be Bjork.
The performance was slightly marred by the power cutting off three quarters through the set. I shouted out that they should dance for us while they waited for the power to come back on and they obliged whilst playing some tribal drum beats. Cool stuff. I'll check their album out.

Radiohead... Thom is so entertaining, he's like a hyperactive monkey or something. They played some lovely tracks from all over their discography, (excluding Pablo Honey of course). I was pleased to hear tracks from Amnesiac and Kid A getting a decent airing.

Highlights for me were hearing Dollars and Cents, The Gloaming (oh Wow, what a track when played live), There There, Bangers and Mash and Idioteque. Everything else was fairly amazing too. I sometimes forget that Radiohead seem to have managed to make all of these classics and are therefore able to put together a two hour set out of nothing but amazing material, and still have lots of spares.

Special mention must be made of Thom coming on and doing a solo rendition of Cymbal Rush from his album The Eraser. It sent shivers down my spine and brought tears to my eyes a little.

I don't want to do big gigs like this very often, at the start of the set I was contemplating NEVER doing it again, I was contemplating NOT going again tomorrow (I have a ticket). People are idiots, pushing and shoving each other out of the way, being rude and generally quite selfish.
I like the small gigs that I go to, where if that happens, it happens on a much smaller scale and as a group people can do something about it. I like being able to hear the actual performers sing, instead of having a 50,000 strong choir. (Although some songs were made awesome with that effect).

However, Radiohead won out and by the end of the set I was just amazed at how brilliant everything sounded. The crowd had settled down and I was quite happy stood at the front and zoning out to the rather excellent music. Not bad considering I wasn't really that excited about it for some reason.

Tomorrow, I'll probably not head into the fray, and I'll probably not go there as early. I'll be quite happy lying in the field on the outskirts of the crowd, and just soaking up the summer evening clouds, and the atmosphere of it all. Beautiful.

PS: I recommend these, I was so glad to have them with me tonight and I'm never going to go to a loud gig down the front without them ever again. You can still hear everything perfectly - better even, as your ears aren't being pounded with an overload of information. No further hearing damage for me thanks.

-----------------------

'15 Step'
'Bodysnatchers'
'All I Need'
'The National Anthem'
'Pyramid Song'
'Nude'
'Weird Fishes/Arpeggi'
'The Gloaming'
'Dollars And Cents'
'Faust Arp'
'There There'
'Just'
'Climbing Up The Walls'
'Reckoner'
'Everything In Its Right Place'
'How To Disappear Completely'
'Jigsaw Falling Into Place'
'Videotape'
'Airbag'
'Bangers + Mash'
'Planet Telex'
'The Tourist'
'Cymbal Rush'
'You And Whose Army'
'Idioteque'

Apparently.

There have been some complaints that Thom didn't "interact with the audience very much". Fuck that shit, they only had a couple of hours and they were determined to knock out as much music as possible. Damn straight.

Monday, June 02, 2008 10:03:41 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Yet another evening of a work closer to the end than I was at the beginning.

I really didn't feel like starting, but I forced myself into it, wrote a small list from the main to-do list and got to tick a few things off it.

Seems setting specific tasks is more useful than I'd have thought. I also figured out some stuff which will help me at work tomorrow.

Monday, June 02, 2008 2:39:15 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Over the year of my contract with the university, I have been teaching myself how to do web dev - and coming from a background of professional desktop software development, moving to this world was surprisingly difficult.

I don't mean development as in the ability to put together a few pages about myself, or the ability to design a pretty website.I mean development as in putting together a full featured web application wtih the same features as an equivalent desktop version (if one was to be written).

My chosen area of learning revolved around ASP.NET because I'm already very familiar with the .NET framework. This turned out originally to cause me problems, because when developing ASP.NET applications you're given a lot of things you simply do not need, and you're given a structure to work inside of, that may or may not fit your end goals.

I found going to PHP and doing work in that helped, as I was given direct control over the process of form postbacks, and made to do everything myself. This gave me an understanding of the technology underlying ASP.NET and therefore the ability to work within the framework and create syncronous websites.

Obviously, the future is in asyncronous requests - a world without postbacks, and I've spent the past few months getting to grips with javascript, getting it to talk to the server, and architecting my web applications around a combination of syncronous and asyncronous behaviour.

When developing any code, I try to keep everything as organised as possible, to keep functionality in re-usable libraries, to keep presentation and business logic seperate, and this is where my main headache has been - in developing web software that is as organised as my desktop software. Trying to develop and utilise patterns across the entire web application so that once a few concepts have been described, anybody else could find what they were looking for if modifying/re-using any of this code.

Again, surprisingly difficult to do in a web application environment, as you are occasionally forced into mixing your logic and layout with this eery combination of Javascript, XHTML and VB.NET (Pick a fight on my choice of language and I will hurt you).

ASP.NET advocates the use of re-usable web controls, which can be slotted into web forms, just like in the desktop world, and I often find myself putting those in a seperate class library so I can easily have access to them in my visual studio toolbox. But then these controls end up referring to, or requiring certain markup to be available on a page (such as common dialogs inside of div, or web services exposed via the WebMethod system on pages). They therefore end up needing to be heavily commented, "do not use unless these thigns are present". They should probably be entirely private to the website itself - and even then there is the scope for abuse when you have over 50 seperate pages they could end up being used on. Can you say spaghetti code? No wonder PHP tends to be so all over the place - as you're not even forced into using any framework when writing it.

There are dozens of things like this, that the developer ends up just having to make a decision on. If you want to learn how to use individual components of code, learn how to use the framework, learn how to write the code, how to do little things, then there are books, there are websites to learn from. This has never been a problem.

If you want to learn how to put together, how to architect a solution that's elegant and forward-thinking, there is surprisingly little out there. It's left to the developer to work it out. (I'm talking a lower level than just N-Tier diagrams before anybody asks).

If I was working in a company that did web development, then I would no doubt be picking up on these things from my peers, who would have picked it up off their peers, who would have developed and learned from other people too. I am not however, and have ended up with my own style of doing things which may or may not be in keeping with other peoples.

A reflection on where I am now? I think this kind of learning is all very well and good, but it is harmful to productivity if you're doing it for your job. The amount of times I have now written this web client for the MeAggregator to a certain level of functionality before realising that I can't go any further without doing it all an entirely different way. If I was experienced in this field, I would have had it completed a long time ago.

I am lucky to work in a job where this is acceptable, and hope that the final product of this effort reflects the time I've taken to learn how to do things properly through trial and error.

Writing code is easy, writing huge amounts of code is easy - but writing large volumes of code that is understandable and well designed as an overall concept... it takes effort and knowledge.  The former I'm willing to put in, to extreme levels - but the latter can only come with time, and that's something we all wish we had more of.

Sunday, May 25, 2008 8:37:06 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

In the interest of self organisation at work, I'm going to write a blog entry each week over at Redgloo with a list of the things I wish to acchieve at work. My boss can then comment and add things and I can cross them off as I get them done.

This is quite a cool idea, and I'm going to start doing it for Scrobbles as well, although maybe not as regularly. I'm dangerously close to finishing this project (at least to the point where people can start using it), and this week and weekend has seen a forced increase in productivity - the likes of which not seen for quite a while from me. I'm not entirely sure how I managed it, as at the beginning of the week I really didn't want to work on it. I just forced myself to by setting some tasks and got carried away from there. Let's try to continue this eh?

I tend to keep a text file on my desktop containing the current 'to-do' list, and as I have this, I can safely post the list as it stood at the beginning of the week, and cross out the things I got done this week also. I have backdated this entry to a week ago, to reflect this.

The way I'll do this, is each time I post, I'll post a revised version of the list, containing only the things I still need to do, and as I get things completed, I'll cross them out of the most recently written blog entry :) If I think of new things that need adding, I'll either edit the blog entry, or if enough has been achieved to warrant it, I'll make a new entry.

I'll highlight the 'next' planned work actions with italic lettering, and these will be things I aim to get done within a week's time.

• Write the public services for third party websites to retrieve/submit data
• Authentication
• FB Application like system, where users choose who is allowed to pull their data from the site
• Totalling queries
• List Queries
• Interval Queries
• User Info queries
• Generic Server Work
• Update database on server to catch up with development version
• Update server site to take on all this new code I've been writing
• Get the automated backup scripts working again
• Work out how to finance the purchase of a new server
• Snippet format work
• Add capability for user inputs to be given to snippets
• Add capabiity for third party websites to insert data into snippets (using public services)
• Editing of pages (Ajax stylee, I already had a syncronous version done)
• Hide/Show editing controls - based on user authentication
• Adding pages
• Removing pages
• Renaming of Pages
• Adding snippets to pages
• Moving snippets around pages
• Editing the inputs to those snippets
• Javascript Based Snippet Editing/Creation
• World of Warcraft Automated Blogging
• Buy domain (wowscrolls.com)
• Choose a technology to build on
• Develop automatic user creation based on Scrobbles data
• Choose a decent template for advertising revenue
• Architect a data-driven pipeline for generation of blog posts based on
• Location
• Activity
• Player Character
• Party
• ???
• Develop background process to generate blog posts
• Use the World of Warcraft Armory to populate character profiles
• Add capability for characters to automatically post comments on each other's blogs for purposes of hilarity
• Online Community
• Populate Wiki with 'general' information
• Populate Wiki with stat family documentation
• Populate Wiki for API documentation
• Create forums for snippet requests/application requests
• World of Warcraft Data Submittal
• Create an online page (using the third party data API) to allow online data submission for World of Warcraft (IE: without using the client)
• Make client application for automatic data submission stable (One is already written, it just needs a lot of work!)
• Automatic World of Warcraft upload (Make this more atomic)
• Create an intallation manager (DOH, re-invent wheel!?)
• Elevated installer process
• XML based 'module' installation/uninstallation
• Filterable install list
• Rollback on fail
• Create click-once installer for the installation manager
• Logistics
• Add a 'status' to each account for payment info
• Provide the means with which to easily pay (Paypal/Google Checkout/Direct CC/Phone??)
• Limit the number of queries each user is allowed and make this dependent on account status
• Third party limitations (payment system too?), to prevent DoS attacks.

Sunday, January 13, 2008 4:32:10 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Ok, so I actually live here, but it's quite rare I stick around for the weekend and don't pop into London/somewhere else to go for a gig or something.

Went out last night with a bunch of people down to BoBs, and had ourselves some drinking and geek-talk. Found out that some of them are more interesting than would initially seem (Jo), some drink more than I thought they did (Emily, Rob - er.. one of the Robs) and yeah - good times.

After they all left around 10pm, I sat around with Andy and we just generally caught up, and found that he has a substantially better taste in music than I typically give him credit for. That was nice.

After some more drinking we headed for Reflex because some cheesy dancing was definitely in order. We met up with Phil there and I mainly just bounced around like a lunatic for a couple of hours, it just seemed appropriate somehow :)

So hurrah, I have friends that I actually like, and I'm looking forward to doing even more stuff with them on the very rare occasions I'm not out doing stuff just by myself.

Speaking of doing stuff with friends, Rob (not the Rob above, but the other Rob) mentioned he was doing to a record fair in Reading to purchase many fine records. I don't own a record player but I figured it would be a good chance to get my hands on some cheap CDs that I haven't got around to buying yet and maybe get some vinyls anyway as I should think I'll be getting a record player next month seeming as my collection of vinyls keeps increasing just because I keep getting them along with the CDs I've been buying. (It's a conspiracy I tell you).

I also figured it would be a cheap way to buy a load of singles that are missing from my collection, and it would be a good way to buy a load of singles from bands I haven't listened to yet without having to buy/download their entire albums. I'm not paying for MP3s on iTunes dammit - MP3s are for stealing, Records are for owning.

My word, what a collection of stuff you can find at a record fair. I'll be going next time (March) with a lot more money. A LOT more money.

I went with £40 and somehow ended up with the following:

Menomena - Under an Hour (Album CD)
Parts + Labor & Tyondai Braxton - Rise, Rise, Rise (Album CD)
Galaxie 500 - This is Our Music (12" Album)

British Sea Power - It Ended On An Oily Stage (Single CD)
British Sea Power - Remember Me (7" Single)
The National - Cherry Tree (Single CD)
Beirut - Elephant Gun (Single CD)
Brakes - Ring A Ding Ding (7" Single)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - In This Home On Ice (7" Single)
Brakes - Hold Me In the River (7" Single)
Broken Social Scene - 714 (Shoreline) (7" Single)
The Fiery Furnaces - Crystal Clear (7" Single)

So, really not a bad haul for the money spent and it was just quite a lot of fun browsing everything and realising how much music I actually really want to own. I now own nearly every single BSP single/album ever done, I'm only missing a couple of singles - so my inner-completist is sighing with happiness.

I'm incredibly proud of the Rise, Rise Rise album - I never knew that even existed and the moment I saw "Parts & Labor" AND Tyondai Braxton on the same physical media I got a bit excited and made the guy put it on so I could give it a listen before I handed over my money.

I saw Parts & Labor live a few months ago when they were supporting Battles and I was incredibly impressed (with their beards as well as their music) and I've never heard any of Tyondai's solo stuff before so I figured what the hell.

I've almost finished listening to that one and my ears have just been blown off. Awesome stuff.

Next up I'll be doing Under an Hour by Menomena, I'll be interested to see what their instrumental stuff is like having only previously hearing their two studio albums.

What a pleasant weekend.

Monday, November 26, 2007 4:20:35 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

This is old news if you're a close follower of The Movies modding scene, but hasn't really been given any attention for some reason.

In a thread posted over at The Movies forums, a member points out that a picture of somebody's baby appears in the game files in a texture called "Marine.dds". Quite who this baby belongs to has not yet been determined, but it is an amusing easter egg nonetheless.

A Marine Baby

More interesting, is when another member posts that there is something suitably dodgy in the game files for him to be unwilling to post it for fear of punishment from the higher powers.

Intrigued, and armed with the information that it was "A painting of a nude woman", I popped into the newly released "The Movies Editor" and performed a quick search.

A Nude Woman

This is what then came up. I can't say I really see the fuss myself, but it is a nude woman and it is present in the actual game as sold in the shops. The game is sold with a "Teen" rating, which mentions nothing about nudity being present.

I then did a search for any sets that might use this image.

Usage Search

Two sets actually use this texture, but on closer inspection they use specific texture coordinates which mean the nude woman is not visible. The game as shipped does not ever show the nudity.

Having said that, the Hot Coffee scandal involved content that could only be unlocked by modifying game files. The exact same can be said for The Movies. I'd be interested to see what the fundies would say if they found out about this - coupled by the implied sex scenes available in The Movies and (with modding) full on nudity it would make for quite a racy pornographic game in their eyes.

Sssh, better not tell them then...

Wednesday, October 10, 2007 11:18:06 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Saturday, September 08, 2007 8:40:56 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Went to 229 Great Portland Street last night, primarily just to see British Sea Power.

I didn't expect it to be awesome, it's British Sea Power, a band who I started gaining affection for a few months ago, but not to any huge extent.

It was awesome.

There were a lot of other bands on, and I'll cover them first!

The Clik Clik

I don't know if the phrase exists, but "Chav Indie" comes to mind. They didn't sound awful but by the end of their set I wanted to shoot them for the sheer chavness of their performance. Ick!!

Pete and the Pirates

Typical boring indie rock, really nothing memorable either good or bad, I remember being bored.

The Good Books

Ditto, I went next door to the smaller room because I couldn't take much more of this.

Get Shakes

Aah, I loved these guys. Two people, some drums, microphone and synths and an iBook. Nothing particularly awesome about the music, but it was interesting to watch and when the guys playing the music are enthused, you can't help but get a little excited too. That and by this time I'd been drinking for a couple of hours and things were getting mighty peachy!

British Sea Power

So, I went into the main room and sneaked back up to the front and watched as the guys started setting up the stage for British Sea Power, as the flags got brought out you could identify the main fans because a large cheer erupted around me. I noted that the guy next to me had brought his own foliage with him, so I shook his hand for being awesome. It's not the "in thing" to do anymore, but I'm a sucker for these things and you can't fault enthusiasm.

The room started getting packed as the fans who had sensibly gone for a drink together before the gig to avoid the pre-BSP shitfest arrived. BSP came on and the people around me collectively squeed. I don't remember much after this, just lots of WOW and WOO moments as I danced around, hugged people and just generally enjoyed the company of the fans who were obviously into having as good time as much as I am.

Obviously, there were quite a few hardcore fans around me who actually love BSP. I think I might become one of them because last night's performance was so orgasmic. They did some crowd surfing and I manhandled three of the band members. (Read that sentence how you like ). I've purchased tickets for their gig at the Fez in November, and booked myself a ticket for a gig they're doing on the river Mersey that same week. They've got a boat and we're going to go a-sailing whilst listening to awesome music.

I shall wear my new British Sea Power t-shirt with pride, because this is a band worth following. Bring on LP3! :o

Thursday, September 06, 2007 12:53:33 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

wanted to link a friend to a domain I'm currently working on, but oooh nooooo. I can't possible do that.

I start talking about the domain to him, and he starts getting confused.

"What are you talking about Rob?"

"The site I linked you to"

"Eh? The conversation starts with 'X'"

....

Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom block "harmful" phrases, such as ".cmd" and ".scr", so people can't be lured into installing trojans. Fine. I can deal with that, but when their RegEx is so fucking retarded it can't tell the difference between an actual .scr and something which just happens to have .scr in it, you have to start wondering just what kind of idiots are behind the design of this increasingly redundant chat client.

My url? It began with www.scr (Not giving the full URL, cos it's a WIP!). And that was enough to get it censored. They don't tell you your message has been blocked or anything useful like that. They just block the entire message and nobody is any the wiser.

Absolute fucktardedness. I remember coming across this a year or so ago and thinking "Oh, they'll be sure to sort ot out in the future".

Not so it seems. They're too busy adding rollovers to the MSN adverts, and throwing ad-laden emoticons and winks at the client and obfuscating the network protocol so people can't make third party clients.

Forget about any REAL flaws this idiotic piece of software might have. (Ok ok, I know the filtering is done server side, so it's bugger all to do with the client, but you'd have thought they'd fix the glaringly obvious by now no?)

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 1:02:03 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

I had an absolutely STUNNING weekend, which involved:

Moshing at a hardcore metal concert in London (rugby tackles, flying leaps and lots of punching/kicking).  Not something I'd normally listen to - but live it just kicks ass because of the untamed violence! A thanks to the wonderful girlfriend and her colleague from work for inviting me along despite wondering if "It might be a bit too heavy for you"...

Heading down to Southampton to meet some people from the Lionhead Community and ending up in a flight simulator was pretty darned awesome too. I won't go into details, but we had a nice quiet drink at a pub, then headed into the workplace of the guy hosting the little meet-up to fly in a 737 simulator.

There were four of us in total, including the programmer who worked at the flight center, so we each had plenty of time to fly the plane while we were there.

I went first:

As you can see. I had a bit of fun taking off, and circling around for the landing. I may have also attempted to make my passengers sick by rolling the plane around the sky a bit - but I deny everything - I was just making sure the motion system was working..

All was going well until the landing, where I managed to get a bit enthusiastic and broke the hydraulics temporarily. Apparently I was too violent and I managed to deplete the rather large system of its oil supply, so whoops. Crash.

Roger went next.

He went much the same end, except he didn't perform any aerobatics and managed to miss the ground entirely when landing. I think he got a bit scared of the tarmac and ended up pulling up too soon. Flyy!

Jason was up next:

And he scared us all by not quite being able to fly in a straight line at all. Somehow.. somehow 100ft from the ground on the landing attempt he managed to pull it all together and complete a successful landing - much to the amazement of the rest of us. I think Norrie our trusty programmer/co-pilot may have had something to do with that, as he was working hard on the rudder to make sure we actually hit the tarmac and not the grass/buildings next to it...

We spent the rest of the day back at Norrie's place drinking and eating and I stayed the night at Jason's (Who I've never met before haha) where we stayed up until a silly time watching The Simpsons and playing Bioshock. Good times!

A cheesy slideshow of the whole sordid event can be found here, and photos can be found here, here and here.

So really, a rather amazing weekend, and that was without the Bank Holiday Monday of relaxation, where I managed to sit around and do nothing all day and still enjoy myself!

Friday, August 03, 2007 12:28:39 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

First off, a big thanks to Shirley for hosting the MeAggregator BBQ the other night, I think we can probably claim it as a success, although I do regret making a tit of myself trying to keep with Karsten on the chinese rice wine..

Life is cool at the moment, Redgloo is taking shape on the devlopment machine at work, and I'm doing my best to follow T-rex's expert advice outside of work. Got a party tonight, and tomorrow I'm meeting a girl who doesn't suck for a spot of one on one drinking tutelage .

Anyway, one of the things I aimed to do once I was back in Reading was to buy some of the musical instruments I used to play, and erm.. start playing them again in my free time. First up is the Guitar, as anyone can play guitar, even if you haven't owned one in four years :)

I popped onto Ebay and found a chap who was getting rid of his musical instruments so he could go jetting around the world. I found a nice simple classic guitar which appealed to me and placed some bids and ended up snapping it up for about £150 (Retails new at around £350).

I stayed at home late this morning so I could sign the paper and pick it up from Parcelforce, the seller was amazing and was very honest and forthcoming about the delivery. "I didn't get time to do it today, so I'll make sure to get it sent tomorrow", and he did! It took just under 17 hours for it to get from him to me and I had great fun unwrapping the parcel.

Well, it plays just like he said it plays. It's got a really rich sound, it's amazingly loud and clear compared to other classical guitars I've played in the past and I'm looking forward to learning some new stuff once I've gotten into playing it again.

Starting off with the familiar and over-played, I'll be jamming with The Rolling Stones and moving onto anything which has an interesting finger pick. I'd love to get Buckets of Rain (Couldn't find a video of Dylan doing it himself )Nailed before I visit my dad again, it's such a lovely piece of music and would sound really nice on something which didn't have those orrible steel strings O_o

And here's a picture of me with the lovely thing, Ok I'm posing a bit but I was actually playing something, honest!

Thursday, July 26, 2007 4:07:02 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

What?

Last night I decided to be impulsive and on a whim headed into Brixton to watch a band comprised of people I either knew or were acquainted with at school, all of whom I haven't even spoken to in four years. [Swound]

I was a bit apprehensive of travelling to a strange place alone, of possibly being bored, of not liking their music, of being surrounded by strange people in a bar I was unfamiliar with but this is what impulsiveness is about - taking risks and haha did it pay off.

After an eternity of sound checking and a lot heckling by a nearby table of really old people (They were hilarious), Swound finally kicked off their set in style by telling us to "shut yer mouth" (Apparently it's a track of theirs ) and Rowan started prancing around the stage like a total nutcase.

Rowan jumping around like a lunatic

Brilliant stuff, I didn't know whether to laugh or dance, I chose the former due to the low alcohol content of the pisswater I was drinking and clapped along to the madness.

They had an interesting style which I couldn't quite put my finger on, but there was a track or two that would definitely do well if presented to the masses, (the Shut your mouth track whatever it's called being one of them).

Ah it was some good stuff, but unfortunately as I had to dash down to the Victoria line which is closing early this summer I didn't get chance to stay around and catch up.

There's always next time, and with any luck they'll be signed, successful and have lots of hot girls hanging around by then. Here's to hope eh?

Tuesday, July 10, 2007 9:49:22 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Ok! Amsterdam has been booked, both acommodation and flights! :D

This is a bit of an oddity really, I made a post about three weeks ago on the 'secret' HK Forums over at the Lionhead website asking when the next pissup would be, seeming as it's become a regular and enjoyable occurrence resulting in much hilarity and entertainment (see previous post on that matter!).

Somebody jokingly said that we should go to Amsterdam because that's where he lived and I decided that was actually quite a good idea and started asking around in that direction.

Another thread was made, and in it some interest was registered for a trip to Amsterdam and somehow between then and now I've managed to get 6 people over the internet to commit to a trip to another country. Amsterdam on the weekend of the 11th August then! =D.

I'm never a very assertive person when it comes to people so I'm quite proud this has finally happened. Of course, James helped organise the details of where we were staying and the flights, so it's thanks to him we're actually managing the logistics of it all :D

The guest list?

• Philip Stears
• Ben Murray
• Rob Ashton
• Emil
• fel64
• James Rogers

Not bad at all eh? It's shaping up to be a most excellent weekend of shenanigans and tomfoolery (hey wot?)

It's also my birthday this week, or so Outlook claims. In celebration of this dubious fact I shall be going out and getting drunk, not once, not twice, but three times.

Tomorrow I'll be cooking chilli for my new housemates (who by the way, are awesome). I want to tell the world about these guys but it can wait until we're drunk and I can do it safely without embarassment :)! Then we'll be heading for a quiet drink or two at BoBs (JAAAAAGERBULL!)

On Thursday I'll be travelling into town to meet Andy Quayle (an old ... friend? acquaintance? accomplice? ), James and possible someone else from school and possibly Emma seeming as it's on her home turf. There shall be both Jager and Bull there also. (JAAAAAGERBULL!!)

Friday I have not yet organised anything, so if anybody has any ideas or plans..? I'd quite like to watch Die Hard 4.0 but it really depends if anybody is around.

Saturday... oh Saturday, deary me! I did the bad thing and organised an event on Facebook. Of course, nobody is currently in the local vicinity but perhaps we might get five or six people into BoBs to enjoy watching me drink myself into oblivion? (JAAAAAGERBULL!!!!!!!). Ben and Philip are coming down so it's not all bad! :D

Today I recieved (promptly!) my P45 from DriveWorks meaning I might possibly get paid by the university this month (Gasp!). I also received a pile of bills and a nice good luck card signed by everybody in the DriveWorks office  :). I could be soft here and say it meant a lot to me and I will - thanks guys!

Thanks also to Maria for penning a little note stuck to this little pile of mixed goodness - I miss you too!

Friday, July 06, 2007 8:08:26 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Graduation

Yesterday I finally got around to graduating, har har!

Started off as an ordinary work day at my new job at the University, meandering in, having a chat with Karsten and a nice meeting with Shirley before heading down town to meet my Dad. It occurred to me just before leaving the uni that I might need a shirt and tie for this whole graduation thing so I dragged my dad from the train station to John Lewis where in not too much time, and with not too much pain managed to pick a nice black shirt and white tie to go with the shiny black robe they make you wear for these occasions.

We went for a couple of pints at the Hobgoblin as we had some time to kill and I have to say, this no smoking ban thing has a lot going for it. The Hobgoblin is a far more pleasant place without people making you smell horrible while enjoying your pint of Old Rosie.

Skiiip to the London Road campus a couple of hours later and I was merry enough to consider graduating finally. Met up with Stears and his parents and proceeded to get robed in all our finery!

Taking a photo of myself. How clichéd :o

The graduation ceremony itself went smooth enough once I'd worked out where I was meant to be going. I took the holistic method and just followed other people who were considerably more likely than I to know where they were going. I'm not sure how people know what they're meant to do once inside the great hall, but thankfully there were people in front of me who I could copy.

The Deputy Vice Chancellor had a nice blue hat on, so when I went up to shake his hand I decided to show him the appreciation his dress sense so clearly deserved by telling him what a nice hat he was wearing. During his final speech when he was thanking various people for being useful I got a thankyou too, "And thanks goes to Robert for telling me my hat was nice". Ok, I'll not mention that again now, I promise - I was fairly proud about it at the time though :X

So, we're now outside the graduation hall and I'm with my mum and dad who haven't seen each other in like, a gazillion years and I was ready to jump between them to stop any fights that might occur. It turned out unnecessary and we quickly set about taking photos of us to be uploaded onto the internet when they finally make their way to me!

OMG HUNGRY!

Rather than stick around, we all decided to head down town for a beer and an indian, which we duely did. Managing to get through over two hours without resorting to talking about the weather even once! I can't say I recommend the curry house we went to, but the wine was ok and it wasn't too expensive either.

One of the tasks at hand was to get all of my stuff moved from my mother's car into my new house, which I move into tomorrow! It was done and mum gave us a lift to dad's hotel so he could get changed before we commenced more drinkage let mum start driving north again.

I took dad to BoBs and introduced him to the magical wonders of Jagerbull, ho ho ho :D

Dad with Jagerbull!

Aah how I've missed Jagerbull in the long week since I had it last! The Wetherspoons one really wasn't as strong as the DIY ones I was constructing at Glen's 40th birthday but that's probably for the best considering everything else I'd been drinking all day. Back to the Hobgoblin, lots of beer - picked up the passport I'd accidently left there earlier in the day and after a few more pints headed home. Good day, good company and hurrah, I finally have some letters after my name =D

Sunday, May 20, 2007 2:01:09 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Introductions

The day finally came and I was pretty excited. It was a bit weird travelling down south and 'skipping' Reading as a station but that was ok - today's goal was Guildford and Lionhead. I was going to be meeting a lot of people; some I already knew quite well and some were going to be new, all I really knew was that at some point I was going to be drinking and having an absolute blast.

I was not disappointed and so the story begins with me, the main protaganist in this tale of drunken debauchery and geekdom, leaving the station at Guildford and meeting up with The Kaiser and ProfYaffel in the nearest pub. We had 30 minutes before we had to head to Lionhead and we were going to make the most of it.

A couple of pints later it was time to get in a taxi and we were running late. While we were in the taxi I actually missed a couple of phone calls from somebody at LH asking trying to find out where the hell we were. I was too hyper to notice however and this is where the fun began.

Lionhead Studios.

We waltzed in making a loud and spectacular entrance. Well... I say we, but mainly it was just me being loud, hyper and bouncy. I feel sorry for the people who hadn't already met me because I probably came off as a most insane individual. I feel sorry for the people who DID know me because they couldn't pretend they didn't.

Once we'd settled down and apologised for being late, it was time for meet the people organising this little outing, so we got to meet a new face, a lovely Claire Hedley. Turns out she's been at Lionhead since the dawn of time under a multitude of titles but today she was the internal community pet. She makes sure that the Lionhead staff are happy by providing them with social events and toys, or something.

Anyhoo, Peter Molyneux(my idol) and Cathy(my hero) turned up once we'd introduced ourselves and it was time to go around the table and do it all over again.

Present at the meeting along with the blurb that we inevitably had to give about ourselves:

• Wout Hennekam - Assistant Community Officer/Pet
  
• Sam Van Tilburgh - Community Officer/Pet
  
• Claire Hedley - Internal Happiness Coordinator
  
• Cathy - Lionhead PR (Peter's boss :P)
  
• Peter Molyneux - The Boss
  
• fel64 - The Lionhead fansite - Loinhead
  
• Maggot - Came from the land of the danes, that's dedication
  
• Crosbie - Moderator and English teacher to the unwashed masses
  
• Roger - TMOA Radio Host
  
• Satansmunchkin - Obligatory TMO Noob, Somehow made it to High Karma by just being nice O_o
  
• Madfruit - Official LH Oldbie, Moderator and as we found out later, a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde type fellow
  
• ProfYaffel - Drunken Hanger On, holds the noob poking stick on the forums
  
• Derobrash(Me) - "I write a lot of code and then don't release it, just to piss people off" I believe was how I introduced myself
  

Munchie, Roger and Madfruit.

fel64, Maggot and Crosbie.

 
Claire, Sam and Woody.

As expected of any official community meeting, there was some free stuff to be had, so a thanks to Lionhead for providing a signed copy of Fable (not Fable 2 :() Also, probably a mistake as they soon realised, they provided us with flashy Lionhead Yoyos. I immediately broke the first one they gave me by being the only one who was actually excited to have a yoyo. I receieved another and went on to break that too on our way around the studio much to the relief of everybody concerned.

Oh yeah, about the studio...

The Studio Tour

We were incredibly honoured to have Peter Molyneux himself giving us the guided tour of the Lionhead Studio. He's a very busy man and for him to take so much time out of his schedule to acommodate the community visit goes to show how much he cares about the community as a whole.

We started off by just walking down the corridoor and peeking into the server room, I could smell the computers and I think my source-sense was tingling. All the way down to the meeting rooms I started noticing how much the entire building is geared to the thinking types. Nearly every wall is a whiteboard. Seriously, they've got some really awesome wallpaper which has gone up nearly everywhere to create giant swathes of drawing space for anybody who needs to scribble something down. I couldn't help but turn green with envy, we have some whiteboards at work and I thought we were pretty blessed. I've never seen anything like this.

Obviously, there was sensitive information on a lot of the whiteboards but because I've signed my life away I can't go into any detail, suffice to say that somebody has some really neat whiteboard handwriting skills, it was all so neat and tidy =O!

We popped in to see Russell Shaw, who was hard at work in his own special sound proofed room doing something with sound. He's been at Lionhead since the dawn of time and was working with Peter back in the Bullfrog days. Things have definitely changed since then from his single electronic keyboard to an entire array of gorgeous sound systems and impressive looking equipment. I wouldn't have minded coding in that room and just using it to listen to music. I have a feeling it would have been most splentastic.

It must be pointed out that all throughout this, I was literally bouncing off the ceiling from the mixture of caffeine and sugar I had gorged myself on, on my way down. I was impressed that nobody had kicked me out yet

We headed into the Fable 2 floor to something really quite special. The room was filled with people busy at work creating a game that might actually end up being one of the best RPGs ever. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself there, I think it's infectious).

The artist's area was probably the most interesting, I've never seen so many action figures in one place before. I'm not sure who they belonged to, but they certainly made the area look impressive and I can see that they'd certainly add to the creativity of the art guys.

Nearly everybody had two monitors and it looked like a really nice working environment. One of the guys near fran at the end had 4 monitors, including a proper many many many inch widescreen Dell thing. Again with the envy, I'm beginning to wish I'd kept up with the idea of working there . I don't think they'd take me anymore though because by now I was still bouncing off things and everybody is probably terrified of me by now :D.

Cathy was a hoot throughout the tour, physically jumping in front of things we shouldn't really be seeing and preventing Peter from saying anything he shouldn't. I've always enjoyed watching the battle between Peter and her for control over the output of information to the masses and this day was no exception. There is a secret project going on upstairs which is so far from even being announced it's unreal. Nevertheless it didn't stop Roger and fel pushing for information at every chance they got.

We did end up hearing some rumours towards the end of the day once enough alcohol had been applied, but once again there are those pesky NDAs that we signed, so you'll just have to wait until Lionhead releases some official information. MWAhahaha.

And Breathe

The rest of the tour was very interesting, but to an outside perspective probably much more of the same. We managed to corner Dene Carter near the photocopier and disturb Neil Wakefield who was hard at work, but other than that it's probably time to move onto the cafeteria.


At this point, fel64 and Roger had organised some interview time for their communities (TMOA and Loinhead) and it was time for us to go drink some coke and sit around in the cafeteria. The first thing I noticed when walking into the cafeteria was the giant, and I really mean giant beanbag. I did what any self respecting guy would do and belly flopped right into it. I got a few weird looks but the comfort experience was totally worth it.

Once I'd had a relax, I started making a tit of myself again by talking about stuff I shouldn't have and then 'landing' outside to bug Neil and a few other guys. Satansmunchkin and I also played a game of Table football against Crosbie and Madfruit and it's safe to say that we lost quite badly.

Claire then provided us with a serious selection of sugary objects and I proceeded to wtfpwn my stomach with sugar. Mwahahaa. We all had a go playing some racing game on the (sssh) PS3 on the projector but I wasn't overly impressed and it was now time to go watch some exclusive never seen before video footage.


Videos

We kicked off the second half of the Lionhead portion of the day by watching the unreleased Video Diary. I can't say anything about it, but it was quite informative and very professionally done. I'm looking forward to seeing where they go with the next ones.

We then had a discussion about the community in general and where everything is going. They have plans, big plans, and they have a date to implement those plans by and they're already working hard towards it. We saw what they were doing with the site and they have some really exciting ideas about how to bring the community forward.

Lionhead is built around the community and it's one of the things that makes Lionhead great. It's brilliant to see that there is some genuine recognition of this from within Lionhead itself. I can't say much more, but keep tuned to see some real changes coming soon!

We also watched a random video Sam made about the move to the new building, which I don't think is gonna be made public (in its current form anyway), but it was still interesting nonetheless.

BEER BEER BEER BEER BEER

Ah, the whole point of the entire day. A chance to go and get wasted in the local. Inside was a bit crowded so we all headed outside so Sam could get some video footage of the drinking action. Claire had organised some rounds to be paid for by the company and we took full advantage of it. Having said that, I think I probably spent nearly £80 on beer and food last night so it wasn't THAT cheap .

I stole some wifi from a nearby house and headed to the forums to see if any of the HK members who didn't make it were jealous yet. Turns out they were stalking us via the comfort of their computers on the LH webcams. Popped in to make them a bit more jealous, pinged Dave Gower and let him know we were at the pub and commenced some more drinkage.

My arse on webcam.

I met Jenny from IRC while outside and it turns out she's now working at Lionhead, it's a small world to be sure.

Once sufficiently inebriated we headed inside where it had quietened down a bit. Clare left and I gave her a big hug to say "thanks for putting up with my crazy" =D.

Spent the evening wandering around talking to as many different people as I could, managed to corner Glen Watts and had a chat about the games industry and B&W2, had a chat with Sam about The Movies Modding stuff, and then decided to piss Madfruit off by disrupting his "game" on some brunette he was trying it on with.

I am so intensely desirable you see, that she instantly fell for my charms and Madfruit was left in the cold. We had a nice chat about cars, life and the universe and before we knew it, it was time to bugger off. Pity I wasn't interested and I was only doing it to spite him. I am such a malicious bastard :D

I asked Sam what we were gonna do after the pub and it was agreed that heading to Sam's house was a cool idea. So with fel, Maggot, Sam and Woody + A few others we started off down the road to the source of more beer. We quickly realised we'd left a, by now, very drunken Madfruit behind so fel went to go drag him out whilst we re-grouped.

Sam's house was a laugh, he has a really nice place. We set about finding more alcohol and found it in the way of random pink cold stuff and Gin & Iced Tea (A surprisingly good combination).

Sam has the Halo 3 beta so we all had a play of that. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to just pick up and play. I even managed to kill some people before Sam decided to take the headphones and start hurling abuse at the other people playing. (Bless).

Sam playing Halo 3.

Anyway, the rest of the night at Sam + Woody's place involved playing with his giant wooden cock, getting completely smashed and watching Madfruit make a tit of himself. Eventually he fell asleep but not before he'd trashed the living room and called us all a variety of interesting names.

At 4am, fel and I decided to call it a night and we went off in search of the TravelLodge. It took us 30 minutes to find the place, and another 15 minutes to work out that actually I hadn't booked a room there, I'd booked a room at the Travel Inn just down the road :$.

Some sleep and breakfast later, we headed off, content in the knowledge that the night was a job_well_done.

Thursday, May 17, 2007 9:16:18 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

Climbing is awesome fun!

I went once, when I was up in Aberdeen and I climbed for 6 hours solid (yeah, I felt that for a few days after) and I never went again.

So, I signed up to an intro course with Ben so we could do a few hours supervised before making it a regular thing (or at least until I go to Reading at which point I'll need to find a new belaying partner). FREAKING AWESOME.

Just spent the past two hours being  a complete monkey, did some really easy climbs to start then jumped into some E1s (5b/c) and E2s (also 5b/c). Just fantastic, obviously shimmying up "stuff" comes naturally to me because I get hyper and just tend to climb whatever is around, but it's