My Life on the Net

Something tells me the “Big Bad Wolf” wasn’t any of that - just a semi-overweight jogger taking a stop outside the little piggies’ house and who was so out of breath the piggies couldn’t understand him properly.

I would be panting too. I know how far I can reach when jogging - and I don’t like it. I just hope when I was cycling today I didn’t knock some piggies house over. That would be a tragedy.

My home town, Edinburgh, had it’s benefits. There’s a saying going around about the place - wherever you go, you climb up a hill - and to this day, I’ve faced that. That was the great benefit of Edinburgh, that I knew that even walking the short distance to school, to the city centre, anywhere - I’d be getting more exercise for my time than I would be getting in a flat city.

But guess where I ended up, yep. Not even that, but my bike was left in Edinburgh too - leaving me with three choices. Should I learn how to jog (and through previous experience I knew that was out of the question), join the Gym (loads of paperwork and too expensive) or do nothing. Guess which I chose.

I finally realised the error of my ways, but that wasn’t going to change the fact that the previous two options were still out of the realms of possibility.

I bought a new bike.

Today, a week after I purchased it, I went for a ride. I loved Edinburgh for it’s cycleways and unfortunately Dundee has none of these. It was windy but warm and I went out thinking that I could just start reminiscing about the good old days.

If only.

I learned that even though I could cycle 25 miles a day easily before I left for university, it’s doesn’t keep up over the 6 months that have passed since I left. I huffed, I puffed and I almost considered I was generating the high winds over the Tay Bridge and giving Mother Earth a run for it’s money.

Exercise is hard when you haven’t done it for a while, isn’t it?

If you’ve forgotten. I said Phwoto (the photo location sharing web app) I was creating would be operational by the end of last month. Big mistake. I didn’t expect to hit the brick wall which was family problems that stopped me from developing it.

It’s slowly getting sorted but I’m not around during the weekends to work on it, which leaves me about 6 hours per week to work on the code.

It’s a little tricky, but since things are getting better I’m going to set a release date. Knowing me, a release date in my mind will sort out every little problem I’ve got right now… So, without further adieu…

Phwoto is going to release 1st April 2007. (And no, this aint no April Fools!) and the aim is to set to let some people into the beta a week before.

I’ve learned a few things since I started my life in university - mainly just how high school should have been. If you were like me, your school experience was full of boredom and I remember never really feeling challenged. It had it’s positives, sure, but the negatives highly outweighed them.

Although the course I chose to do at uni wasn’t exactly challenging, I’ve still learned a lot. It may not have been about Web Design or Web Development - but more about life and different ways of learning.

The ability to work on your own projects.
School kept me busy, especially in my last two years. Everywhere I turned, there was homework due or a huge amount of classes to revise for. Not fun. At university, this semester I have just over 10 hours of classes a week - a stark drop from the 28 hours I had in high school. It means I can work on what I want - let it be sleeping, watching tv, coding ever delayed web projects or photowalking.

It’s not just the lack of classes that helps - it’s what’s available to us. If I need to, I can go into university and use their software, their hardware, research in an enormous library or even rent equipment to do what we need.

It’s not as stressful.
There’s still assignments due, sure. But instead of overnight coursework taking up your time when you come home - you’ve got a month, maybe even two to write an essay or design a website. Simple, which means I don’t feel as stressed until the last night remembering that I haven’t done a thing for it.

The coursework isn’t as specific.

I remember my essays from last year for Higher English and History were extremely strict. Strict questions, strict answers.  It’s a bit of a jump when you move to uni to have a question that could mean a variety of things - but i’ve found it really helpful not feeling restricted. It means I can go where I want to go with the question, and I still pass well.

I don’t need to get up as early.

Well, it’s an 11am start for all of my classes. Yay. Sometimes it’s even later. Double Yay.

Everything’s a little easier to store.

I could never find my notes from high school. They were always bundled in ring-binders and disordered - so if I was looking for a specific note on let’s say… The Great Gatsby, i’d have to spend about half an hour looking for it.

With most of the notes, assessment details and lectures available online - it saves a bunch of time and takes only a few minutes to find what you’re looking for.

Don’t worry about the move to uni - they make it easy.

If you know nothing - you’ll be fine. If you know a little - it’ll be easier. If you know too much - prepared to be bored.

How the hell does mess seem to grow from nothing? One day you have a clean minimalist room - and the next week I can hardly wander to my bed before crunching something under my feet.

Here’s some crap I found covering my desk, and you be the judge:

• Twelve films. (2 films waiting to be developed, 5 unexposed colour films and 5 unexposed b&w films.)
• An empty milk bottle (1 pint - expired 15th January).
• 87p (in 1 and 2 pence pieces).
• 3 Film SLRs and 1 Digital SLR.
• “Nobody Cares What You Had for Lunch” by Maggie Mason
• A Bylk sim card
• Daft Club membership card (expired Dec 02′)
• 98 Envelopes
• 7 3/4 socks
• 17 comics, one magazine
• 30 1st class stamps
• Pencil shavings
• 3 bent paperclips
• 1 coffee bean
• Battlestar Galactica - The Mini Series

Commodore 64, Sega Master System II, NES, Game Gear, Game Boy, N64, Playstation, Game Boy Colour, another Playstation, Xbox, DS, DS lite and a Xbox 360. I can’t believe I’ve had so many - and those are only the consoles, I’ve had about 5 PCs, three macs and too many game-enabled phones to count.

I’ve been around the gaming world since 94′ when I got the Commodore for my 5th birthday. Back then games and apps came in floppies and hardly any of them took the massive 1.4Mb you had on the disk. Some did, and you had to make sure you didn’t lose all twelve of the disks while trying to load a game.

Kids today will never have to find out about floppies, and they’ll never imagine anything like the floppies that were around for the BBC computers or that some apps came around on tapes (I remember trying to load Batman Forever on an add-on for the commodore - it took forever!).

They’ll never get frustrated when you put a cartridge in the console only to find that dust, a simple enough thing, is stopping your game from playing. Probably countless hours of my life must have been spent trying to solve all this hell.

They’ll never know the magic of 8 bit music.

If the graphics aren’t perfect, they’ll call it a bad game - we didn’t even have 320 pixels wide back in the day, not even anything close to HD. Try to be fascinated that Samus was a girl in Metroid Prime when her face was less than 8 pixels wide. Exactly.

They’ll take ergonomic controllers and rumble packs as a necessity. I remember sore hands from almost all my old consoles, especially my Sega Master System II and paying extra for a rumble pack for my Nintendo 64 controller and feeling like it was a really large step for gaming. Controllers were made cheaply - it was only Nintendo being nice that they made rounded controllers for the SNES.

I was there when Grand Theft Auto went from 2D to 3D. That was awesome. Now by the time some kids grow up to be my age, if it doesn’t feel like you’re in the game - it’s not a game.

They’ll never believe that some of my favourite games were made by a few people only to be released on a major label later on - they’ll think it all needs level designers, sound managers, 50 coders, 500 testers and a million pounds as a minimum budget. I’m pretty sure that my favourite game of all time (Uplink) was made by three people as a recreation project. I have a copy of the entire project plan too, thanks to owning the CD from 99′.

Don’t forget where you came from…

Everyone seems to be talking about the rise of UFO sightings in the United Kingdom recently.  It’s even been in The Telegraph.  This reminded me that in fact, I’ve seen a UFO. (Not as in alien, but something I could not identify)

Mostly everybody was drunk in the Orchard Bar that night, being New Years Eve.  The countdown was complete and the majority of people were cheering. I had my camera, and a few others did too. That’s when we realised something wasn’t exactly perfect in the night’s sky.

People often talk about the trianglar lights. Three of them, hovering without regard for wind or speed - just hovering.  That’s what happened that night.

These three lights were somewhere in the night’s sky. So I took a picture. I thought it was weird, then I thought nothing else of it. I was new years day (by now), and it was probably some drunken person up town who let off three balloons into the night’s sky.

But they were glimmering. Something I’d never seen before in a balloon.

When I got back, I zoomed in and took a closer look.

They don’t look like balloons from where I’m standing - I have no idea what they are.  Who knows if I ever will.

I usually love a lie in.  I also love staying up late and seeing the night roll on.

So, what’s different?

Recently, for no reason whatsoever I’ve started going to bed at a reasonable hour. 10pm, 11 - but never after midnight.  I’m surprised what it’s done to me already.

I woke up at 8.30am this morning, naturally. I lifted myself out of bed with a smile and fixed myself with an Americano and breakfast (something that always seems to be too much effort for me in the morning).  I went to class, and paid attention - even though the actual lecture is something I may already know or something I don’t care about.

I’m eating properly. 3 square meals.  Something else completely unheard of.

No more insomnia. I can sleep all I want and know that when it’s dark - I rest. Nothing else too it, it’s like my brain’s being reprogrammed to it’s ordinary state.

The one thing I do find strange though, is that I used to have this fixation with being up till all hours. I love the night, but with sundown being just after 4.30 pm here, what’s the point to staying up late?  It was something liberating - something that while in primary and high school we never saw much of, as we were forced into bed at what seemed to be not-so-reasonable hours - but something that as I grow more aware becomes less of an issue.  It’s actually more liberating to get up early and feel refreshed, not squirming each time the alarm goes up in the morning.

I just hope this isn’t a temporary high, as the night become less each day and sunlight becomes the norm, will I feel this good in June as I do now?