My Life on the Net

So, I have a week till my portfolio is due in. My portfolio is the body of work which I’ve handed in to various modules throughout this year. After trying to find all of the work I’ve done, I’ve sadly come to realise what a terrible filing system I have.

It’s not as if I haven’t done this before. I did it last year, and as far as I can remember I vouched never to forget this and organise my work . Well, that lasted, didn’t it?

Currently I have about 1 TB worth of storage in various hard drives, of which most is full. Most of that is stored in one particular folder as well. C:\Users\Craig\Desktop\stuff. That particular folder currently houses over 18,000 files and most of my coursework for this year. Best of all, most of this I no longer required, it’s just I can’t be bothered to clean up.

While I do strive for minimalism, when I loose organisation on my drive I also loose it in real life. The clutter is back in my flat, and I have to force myself to throw things out that I haven’t used for ages. Minidisk player? Thrown out. Broken iPod shuffle 1g? Why do I still have this? Various 5Gb ATA Hard Drives? WTF? I’ve been ruthless.

With changes in my life and a lot more stress due to my mum being in hospital, I’ve let the mess pile up. I’ve been on standby to rush off at a moments notice to see my mum ‘just in case’, but unconsciously. I’ve left my bag packed since I came back, I’ve been buying food by the day so if there’s any problems nothing will be wasted. I’ve been keeping my phone on charge instead of letting it die every few days.

I didn’t tell you, but I found out some things after my sister came up from Edinburgh. She heard from my aunt, who happens to be a doctor, that she didn’t expect my mum to get through the coma she was in. She’s been fairly stable since, but last night she started having problems again. I’m always on standby.

I’m thinking a lot about her right now, but I’ve got my studies as well. I’m so disorganised.

On other news, check out my new podcast website, the Kilted Cast. We’re hoping to release our first episode on Monday, but feel free to check us out and leave comments!

[Photo Credit - Alphabetical by Marcin Wichary]

You would have thought that with all this time I’ve been away I would have travelled far away to Egypt or something.  Well, I did, and no–I didn’t see any mummies.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for little old me.  The holiday in itself was a fun adventure and I had little complaints (well, there was the heat… and the sun… and the… i’ll shut up now).  I’ll get back to that later.

What’s more interesting, of course, is what happened after I returned home from my sunny travels.  I’ve been busy working on a few projects and was happy to find out that vacationeer worked perfectly in my absence.  But when I made my way home my mother was not in a good state.  She has a massive infection in both her legs and when the doctor came round we found she was highly anemic.  We got her into the Royal Infirmary Hospital at little past 9pm on Wednesday for an emergency blood transfusion.  She’s still there, slowly recuperating under the watchful eyes of nurses and various different medical students trying to figure out what’s wrong with her.

While this was going on, my cousin Chloe even managed to make a visit to the hospital!  She wasn’t there on a visiting a patient though–she went straight to the maternity ward.  Labour was induced  and she gave birth to 7lb baby boy called Aidan.  It was a tricky birth, but everyone seems ok in the end.  I’ll need to meet up with my uncle at some point and congratulate him on becoming a grandad!  Oh, and my cousin–it’s freaky to think she’s a mother!

Before travelling back up to Dundee I wasn’t just sitting on my thumbs thinking tech.  I was working on getting my room up to scratch in the house for my return to Edinburgh in a month’s time.  I don’t like the fact that for three months I have to relinquish my favoured independence to live with the parents being told when to eat and when to go to bed.  But, that’s life.

With a little time (how does three days sound?) I managed to modify it from being used as a store-room to being a clean, minimalistic room with plenty of space left clear.  I even modified my cupboard, which was being used unfortunately to store jackets, into a server closet full of all the kit to keep a test server running while I’m down there.

Things are looking up, until I have to pack.

I hope you’re all doing well.  I’ve missed reading blogs and as you may be able to read via this post, I definitely need to work on writing a little more.  My writing skill will come back, won’t it?

p.s. I just put up Corinne’s new blog theme (WIP) and I’d love you to check it out, as well as check out some of her posts.  She’s going through a little downer right now so be nice if you leave a comment.  Hopefully I’ll be able to make her blog more soon, and maybe even make her write about things that are a little bit more upbeat!