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It's not that exciting...
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Jun. 20th, 2008 @ 03:36 pm
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My laptop has just decided to install Vista SP1. As if to celebrate two men have appeared outside the house playing the drums and singing.
I wonder if that's an option I can disable in the prefrances... |
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Jun. 20th, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
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I'm not sure why I haven't updated this recently again, there's at least some interesting things I could have mentioned, (and boring things I could have made seem more interesting then they were) but for now I shall simply post a sort of cartoon doodle. Might post another one later I did on my PDA...
Ligretto START! |
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Been a long long time...
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May. 14th, 2008 @ 05:22 pm
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Its been a while since I actually updated this, mostly because about three weeks ago the shiny new vista laptop I won arrived. Actually, to be pointlessly honest, a 'similar to, but not what they said' laptop arrived. Unlike my original prize this is a CR model (Rather then the FZ model previously mentioned) and is clearly lower spec. This one has 40gb less HD space, 0.01ghz less processing power, no blue-ray drive, 50% less L2 Cache and a totally different Graphics card. I was going to write angry e-mails or throw it away, before realising I have no idea what an L2 cache is, the graphics card has no great difference, the hard drive is still 4x my current laptops, it's ram is about it has twice my current laptops and the battery life is about 4x better then the FZ model and 500 times better then my old laptop. (Its also smaller/lighter/nicer looking, as well as other advantages I can't be bothered to type)
Anyway, I like it. It's new, its fast and its pretty. Most of all it gave me the chance to actually install my recent purchase of After Effects. And of Photoshop. And of Illustrator. (And
Premier Pro, Encore, Flash, Bridge, On location & Ultra) (Oh and soundbooth). This was great because I hadn't installed most of them on my old machine because A) They wouldn't fit (Collectively they require 25gb or
so.) B) They wouldn't run at a speed even approaching the low end of 'barely usable'.
Which means I've spent the last few weeks messing about with learning the features of Photoshop & Illustrator and having fun with After Effects. It's interesting coming from Gimp and Expression, I know what I want to do, just not what buttons to press. It also seems I haven't really been using vectors properly...
Annoyingly, vista doesn't like my graphics tablet for whatever reason. Being as the pen already has a terrible nib and the tablet has a lack of buttons, I've bought a new one which will hopefully works better and allow me to do more then mess around with photographs. Anoyingly it hasn't arrived yet, so I scanned in a quick sketch and had fun with photoshop brushes colouring it, to produce the following image: (click to embiggen)
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Humphry Lyttelton
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Apr. 26th, 2008 @ 12:51 am
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A picture after today's sad news.
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Apr. 22nd, 2008 @ 10:55 pm
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I only just turned on my laptop....
Its been a weird day.
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All material here is by Hennell.
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Apr. 9th, 2008 @ 08:33 pm
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Heehehehe.
Forget the useless, valuable, exciting prizes I mentioned earlier; as of 6:30 today I became the proud holder of an 'Additional material by' credit on Radio 4!
Wooohooohoooohooo!
How this ended up happening within a sport based show I've little to actual idea, but it was terribly exciting all the same.
Should you wish to hear my comedy skills, or just hear my name in the credits at the end you can either listen live to tomorrows 11pm repeat, listen again via real player, or download the podcast/mp3. (All (aside from the repeat) available here.)
Anyone care to guess what bit I wrote?
I don't have any thoughts here. I'm too busy writing for radio 4.
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congratulations! You all get to be envious :-D
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Apr. 9th, 2008 @ 11:07 am
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About two months ago I won a Dave Gorman DVD.
I thought - "That's nice, I hardly ever win anything."
About one week ago I won a trip to Finland.
I thought - "That's nice, I hardly ever win anything."
About 50 minutes ago I won a Sony Vaio Laptop, a years worth of Nero Caffe coffee and a years free useage of BT Openzone wireless.
I thought - "That's nice, but this is all getting a little bit old now."
I'm impressed that my quick 30 second radio 'advert' is of a more 'Finland deserving quality' then other peoples long in-depth reports and or videos. I obviously rock with my audio production skills.
(The other two were won based on luck, and the fact I entered loads of competitions (Been thinking of getting a new pc). I personally endorse The Prize Finder site, who helped me discover the metro's laptop comp (among several others I haven't yet won.)
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deadlines, deadlines and more intresting deadlines.
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Apr. 5th, 2008 @ 08:37 pm
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Why does everything have to all clash at once? At the moment I have a dissertation to do, a R&D project to really sort out, animation to work on and an essay to at least start considering.
None of which are as intresting, although annoyingly more important then my options for doing more pictures for newsbiscuit, the possibility of getting some sketches on BBC7's Tilt or the offer I have to submit jokes to Look Away Now.
Plus I was forced to miss seeing I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue because trains don't go anywhere.
Must get back to dissertation work, rather then looking at sport themed news....
How come you can't run with scissors, yet they're running around London with a huge fiery torch?
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The Media and the Primaries
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Mar. 27th, 2008 @ 01:38 pm
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If only Obama was to focus on 1960's pop pianists we could get the headline:
"Bert Backs Barack".
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Gordon Brown's Vision:
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Mar. 27th, 2008 @ 12:58 am
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I find it worrying our Prime Minister has Visions.
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two toons
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Mar. 17th, 2008 @ 03:53 am
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I've been working on my animation(s) for the last few days, which has been great fun. My current project involves the writing of sketches, recording of sound, as well as the actual animation efforts which has left me doing too much of all three.
I'm having withdrawal from the artwork making parts however, with the result I've been drawing loads of cartoons again. Some I've posted elsewhere because they wouldn't make much sense here, but this is what I imagine current Chinese news looks like:
And this will probably only make sense to a few people, but here's the result of the fantastically vague US technology Patent system:
(Extra wide image - click to embiggen)
And from that fairly geeky cartoon, I shall leave with a very geeky random thought, hopefully marking the return of 'proper' things at the end of my posts:
When a computer crashes should you console it?
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Distracting me from my dissertation ...
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Mar. 12th, 2008 @ 08:42 pm
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Yesterday I wrote about a thousand words on my dissertation. The hardest part is making sure I keep the quotes with their source. Apparently our tutors take that sort of stuff very seriously.
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Mar. 11th, 2008 @ 07:25 pm
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It's the 11th of March. My watch says it's the 12th, clearly having slept through (over?) the leap year/day a fortnight or so ago.
I feel this has probably messed something up, but I don't know what.
Clearly I should closer watch my watch. (Or look before I leap (year)) |
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Feb. 28th, 2008 @ 12:01 am
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According to my tvs program guide the thing I'm currently watching is "Sky Cops - A series about a North Yorkshire police helicopter unit."
So far its stared Adrian Lester (from Hustle), Paul Guilfoyle (From CSI), Maura Tierney (from ER), Alaison Janey (from the west wing) and John Travolta (from Battlefield Earth).
To be honest I'm starting to have my doubts it's actually the Yorkshire helicopter thing. One of them just said "Senator, your running for the presidency was not in my plan". That's right. The presidency. That should have no place in the advertised programme.
It should be 't presidency
I thought I'd posted this 30 minutes ago. |
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Untitled
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Feb. 27th, 2008 @ 01:22 am
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What on earth was that?
Our house was just shaking. Not slight, wobble wobble shaking, but full on back and forth movement. Lengthy movement with sustainable shaking. Things fell off my desk. My first thought was that it was James doing the loud stomping motion one does when you stand on a lego brick. However that clearly wasn't it because it wasn't just our house. The whole street was moving. I suspect tomorrow we're all going to be assigned new postcodes.
Hopefully tomorrow I won't wake up to find the house collapsed on top of me...
EDIT: It's blooming Birmingham. If they're not annoying me with their stupid train station, they're attacking my home with their -earthquakes-!.
EDIT 2: Apparently its centre was Hull. The link above has now been updated, making Edit 1 look silly. However I don't care. As Lincoln has now had both floods and an earthquake, I'm worried what's coming next. I think I'll go and check the smoke alarms work.
EDIT 3: The epicentre has now been moved to Market Rasen. Which is in Lincolnshire. It's getting closer!! By tomorrow morning we'll find it started in our garden.
(It also was evidently quite big (for England), hopefully things falling of my desk, peoples cupboards opening and pictures being knocked askew is the biggest damage it caused.)
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This entry is as late as the train it rode in on.
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Feb. 18th, 2008 @ 02:50 am
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A couple of days ago I got a final letter about that delightful train trip I suffered with last month. I'd sent in a quick complaint form to Virgin about a week after the journey, but wasn't really expecting that much.
They actually responded quite fast, posting an acknowledgement letter saying my complaint had been received and would be dealt with shortly. This was nice, if wasteful of paper, but I didn't believe they would do anything. This has less to do with any particular cynicism or distrust on my part, and more due to them having sent a 'secondary' letter the day before. I almost wonder if they did that deliberately so their trains seem more efficient then the post office.
Anyway, the second/first letter had said the delay wasn't anything to do with them but they thanked me for my comments and would be passing them on to the appropriate network. This was intresting because I hadn't really made any comments, other then a bare statement of the facts. Oh, it's -possible- I suggested that a 'toddler with a duplo set could provide a better train service'. I wondered if they enjoyed passing that on...
I then got another acknowledgement letter, this time from Cross Country who evidently are the people who's fault it was. They thanked me for my complaint and said they would be following it up. I'm beginning to think the reason no-one knew what was happening at the time was because rail networks only ever communicate via post, and have to acknowledge each and every letter. I hope they also sent a "thanks for forwarding this to us" letter to Virgin, who then acknowledged the acknowledgement, so they can acknowledge that who can acknowledge that and so on and so forth until the world runs out of stamps.
Since then Cross country have since sent me a proper response. I received a full apology consisting of 2 A4 pages on what had happened and how it had all messed up. I'm not sure my comments on their lack of communication really works retroactively. My desire to hear the full timetable of how things were moving was mostly an 'of the moment' thing, when I was trying to travel. It's not greatly useful to me one month later.
Then again I -might- have suggested in the comments field that 'unless they were communicating with us via smoke-signals, I saw no effort made to inform passengers properly, and what little information we were given seemed to have been divined from the shape of clouds based on how accurate it was'. I think its possible they might make comment boxes smaller in future. Although if memory serves I think most of my comments went onto the forms reverse....
Anyway, my annoyed ranting and prolonged complaining clearly worked. Along with the two page apology (Possibly basing their length on the length of my complaint) they included rail travel vouchers to the value of £46. Not quite sure how that works, as that's more then my entire return ticket was, and this was only half of that trip. Still I'm certainly not going to complain about it, which might be why they did it...
Maybe I should send them an acknowledgement letter in response . I could retract the comment that 'the only thing slower then your trains seems to be you ability to react to your mistakes, something I'd have thought you should be quite experienced in'.
I also said their trains smell too much of biscuits. |
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Baftas
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Feb. 10th, 2008 @ 06:27 pm
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by the time I post this she'll probably have stopped but the news 24 reporter on right now has been talking at the baftas non-stop for easily 10 miniutes.
the best bit however was when she asked Hugh laurie if he'd seen all of the films that were on the shortlist for best screenplay award he's presenting.
Hugh: Errr, um I welll.. err the posters were very good. All of them! Execelent posters. |
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This story should melt your heart
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Feb. 8th, 2008 @ 04:35 pm
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This has been one of the hardest Journal entries I’ve ever had to write. I don’t often cover serious topics, events or moments of importance here because, well it feels weird. My deep-rooted heart felt emotional angst is very rarely written down, partly because I have none, and partly because I usually just carve it on my arm with a penknife.
(Of course that’s not true, the only thing on my arms are freckles-a-plenty and my watch. I have no angst and if I did I’d never go near my arms with a penknife. It sounds far too ticklish.)
And see that’s what I mean. The start of a sad upsetting entry and I go and spoil it with silly ‘jokes’. This event actually happened about 3/4 weeks ago (just before I left Bristol), but it’s taken me this long to face writing it up because its so distressing.
See I found and lost a friend. I was trying to sort out our freezer, and, well, I found this inside:
It seems a friendly snowman; unable to cope with the current British temperatures, had crept into the cold appliance in order to survive.
Obviously having only recently awoken from its summer-long hibernation it would have been expecting cold weather and failing to find it had decided to move in with our food.
Now I'd have loved to let it stay, but a freezer is really no place for a snowman. It can irreparably damage their internal clock, they forget their skills in hunting for prey, and they might be killed in a horrific frozen-vegetable based incident.
Concerned of these risks, I carefully managed to coax the 'man' into a suitable container, and transported him outside. I hoped if I released him into the wild he'd be able to fend for himself and might find a mate to settle down with. He suffer a couple of mild decapitations during the move, but he seemed happy enough to be back out doors.
    
Alas; it was not to be. It seemed the strange lukewarm environment was just too much for him to cope with so fast. He moved around a bit at first, but obviously not used to so much friction, his movement seemed slow and unwieldy. Despite my offers of food, he resisted all attempts to help.
Unable to help, I was forced to watch as he appeared to just give up and wait for the English weather to take its course. I did my best to shelter his slowly deteriorating corpse from the rain, but it was to no avail. That night was his last.
 
RIP freezer-snowman buddy. RIP.
 THE FREEZER SNOWMAN
???? - 2008 |
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First day back at uni
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Jan. 22nd, 2008 @ 12:21 am
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Today was the first day back at uni. For some reason they've decided that we need a third lecture on a Monday (when else?) and so put a 90 minute lecture on, only 30 minutes after a 2 hour one. This gives little time in between and was even worse today due to unexplainable hotness in the room. Despite also having a digital meeting this morning, I spent the day feeling surprisingly motivated.
The was weird but useful. I furthered a cartooning thing I was thinking about, worked on a podcasting plan that seems actually feasible (I.e. not a sketch show that needs weeks of post production), wrote & submitted a sketch, and inquired about a first aid course.
Plus up until four minutes ago I was working on my one act play and I have another cartoon thing I e-mailed someone about earlier that might go somewhere....
As well as that I did washing up, shopping, sent some post and even found time to think up an idea for my digital project and start sketching some character designs.
Plus I'm thinking of going to finland. Not right now though, as I'm going to bed.
More on some to many of the above may be explained at a later data, until then feel free to be freaked out. I know I am.
Surly the amount of room it takes to swing a cat is highly variable based upon both the size of the cat, the length of your arms and whether you swing it by its paws or tail... |
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Podcasting, disertations, and audio leads.
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Jan. 20th, 2008 @ 04:10 am
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Earlier today my dissertation wasn't going terribly well. In fact if you were to find yourself a piece of A4 paper, and maybe crumple it up a bit it would look almost exactly like my work so far (with the addition of crumples).
Right now however, I have expandable notes and quotes worth about 15% of my final word count and will easily add more. Most of that is down to the fantastic Bruce Williams, who kindly agreed to talk to me over Skype earlier about why he started podcasting, setting up the Audio2u.com podcast network, the problems and opportunities his podcasts have bought him and many other things besides.
If you're interested in learning Adobe Audition, want to understand sound and audio theory, or learn more about digital photography from a top professional photographer I thoroughly recommend Audio2u.com is the place to go.
Hopefully I'll be able to get a couple more interviews with a few other people, partly because it'll be very helpful, and also because I spent a fair bit of money on a new mic headset (I stood on the one I had) and a pc-to-minidisc-lead (I've lost/misplaced the one I had) in order to use/record skype. (I also discovered maplins when looking to buying the lead, where I accidentally bought another lead and an awesome thingamabob which I couldn't remember what I needed for although knew I wanted one. (It was for experimenting with and also for mending the sound on my TV at home.)
All in all quite the productive day.
If a picture is worth a thousand words my dissertation is going to be a dodle. (A repeat but relevant) |
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