Jaz Design

Week 1. Click to full view!

I love post-its. I use them whenever I can and stick them everywhere! I thought I might try something, really out of curiosity for me, and keep my post-its each week. Some things here might be clues as to what’s on the horizon.

So much! So many ideas, plans, thoughts, things to do! The site needs a ginormous update. Some freelance work I’m doing will mean I’ll finally finish my content management system I was developing for my portfolio meaning that should finally appear in it’s full glory (bells, whistles, the works!)

I’ve also been investigating some good photo gallery software, since that’s something I really don’t have time to build from scratch. I want to keep my full photography portfolio on here, and hopefully link through to a print service. I’m thinking of going with Coppermine for now, gallery2′s back end didn’t seem particularly user friendly to me… but I’m still not completely happy with what coppermine offers, so any other suggstions are welcome.

I’m working on some freelance projects, one for the 3rd Guildford Guides, another for The Sporum (Spore and the Sims 2 forum) which involves fully reskinning an smf forum.

Work work is busy as usual. Lots of sites went live recently so I’ll have to update on that soon.

I went to the University of the Creative Arts on Saturday for an open day, to see about postgrad courses. I won’t be able to do a masters for a few years (gotta save up etc) so I’ve a few things in mind until then

I know it’s been a good long while. I’ve been so ridiculously busy finshing up the last of my coursework – some of which I may share in the not too distant future – and working amongst trying to stay sane and see my friends, Mister, family etc.

Whilst it’s been terribly stressful to the point of losing my mind, I’ve also had some awesome times in the last few weeks – seeing an old friend in London for the day after 4 years of not seeing each other, attending my Mister’s dad’s wedding which was just such a lovely day, spending time with the Mister – romantic meals and whatnots, seeing the Michelles. It’s all good.

Also, speaking of the Mister, he just won the Design4Science competition for our category (Web and Multimedia) – FIRST PLACE. The piece of work he did is awesome, and I’m not just biased You should still be able to view it here. If you’d like to read more about the competition, check out the Design4Science website. I’m so proud, as you can imagine. His work will be exhibited in Sunderland, Manchester and Stockholm.
Also, I was tagged, sooo…

Instructions:
Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot:

1. Fat Chick Crafts
2. Put a Sock in it
3. Suzy Sells Sea Shells
4. Enjambed
5. The Daily Ghosthand

Next, select five people to tag:

I think I’ll stick with the people already tagged… since I don’t know who else has blogs? I’m so out of the loop.

1. LK
   
2. Cherie
3. Christin
4. Twain
5. Sniggs

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Worshipping the Spice Girls, attending junior school, living a life free of responsibility. I was about to be ten, so actually I guess I would have just finished school for the summer. I’d just moved off of the farm I lived on for a year, I wasn’t too happy about that. I loved the farm.
What were you doing one year ago?

Desperately longing to tell my Mister how I felt and not doing I keep a diary and I started a new notebook about this time last year, it never ceases to amaze me just how much has happened for me in the last year. Never. I was probably sitting in exactly the same place, well not exactly, over on that other desk, working away like a busy little beaver, daydreaming…
Five snacks you enjoy:

1. Cookies
2. Kekkle chips
3. Cheese baps
4. Cornflakes
5. Pancakes

Nice and healthy then… haha.
Five songs that you know all the lyrics to:

1. “Wonderwall” by Oasis
2. “Invincible” by Muse
3. “Unintended” by Muse
4. “Butterflies and Hurricanes” by Muse (I could just write, all the Muse songs, and be done with it)
5. “Sleeping with Ghosts” by Placebo

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

1. Cry?
2. Give some money to my Mum, other close family
3. Invest some, aren’t we supposed to be frugal and things, pensions? High interest savings accounts? I’m sure I’d do that with some of it.
4. Buy all the cameras.
5. Buy a PS3 just for the sake of two games.

Five bad habits

1. Sleeping
2. Eating rubbish for breakfast
3. Not making important phone calls. (will keep this one too)
4. Procrastinating
5. I only have four, I’m perfect No I’m sure I have others.

Five things you like doing:

1. Making arts
2. Spending time with the people I love
3. Reading
4. Photographering
5. Sleeping

Five things you would never wear again:

1. ?? I don’t think I’ve ever made that much of a fashion tragedy, not that I can think of anyway.
2. Ok maybe this pair of massive cheap boots that were impossible to wear, but that’s not by choice.

Five favourite toys:

1. People…
2. My cameras
3. Play Doh
4. ??
5. Stuff

I know, this still needs updating, the template needs finishing, the front page needs finishing, everything and anything is up in the air. There’s not a lot I can do at the moment I’m afraid – lacking reliable internet and what not. Once I set up EasyPHP and what not on this newly formatted mashup of a PC I might get chance to sort things out.

On a more excitable note, I start my second summer of work at 3-Wise Internet Solutions (who are also my host, <3) tomorrow. On top of that, I have three, maybe four, units still to finish for university due to my illness at the end of the first semester, my dissertation research, self elected research and other general course reading to do. That’s a lot, but that’s ok, because it’s all positive. I also have my own personal photography and internet projects in mind. My head’s a bit full at the moment, I’m sure you can imagine.

I took my Mister to his home for the weekend, gave myself a bit of a break during that time, to play Guitar Hero, spend time with him and generally do not much. It was gooood. It all had to end tonight though, ready for tomorry Oh, and yeah, it was some sort of five day weekend, haha.

My Mister took me to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie last week, I’ve always thought the storylines were silly, but the movies are certainly entertaining. Worth the look.

Just a general blog about general things. I was thinking about what kind of focus this blog should have, maybe think about target audience, but I think I’d find that too hard. I like to talk about random things, things that go on in my life an so forth. Thus, I suppose my target audience is people with similar interests (I do need to update my profiley thing actually…), and my focus is just plain everything.

I’ve had a good week. Made my second trip to London since I’ve been ill, mostly to see my Mister, mostly It was good to have a day out. I’m not a fan of London but I did have a good day.

We had lunch down at St Paul’s – there’s a large Marks and Sparks food court there, they had this amazing vanilla and maple syrup smoothie thing – lush!

Then we hopped across the river to the Tate Modern. I’m not big on modern art, but I do love Cy Twombley’s ‘Four Seasons‘. Mostly because of the way he uses such a variety of materials, mostly. They’re just stunning pieces. I also really liked ‘Billingual’ by Juan Usle – however I can’t find a good photo of that online.

We were going to get the boat to the Tate Britain but missed the last one, so hung out on the grass outside the Modern for a while since the weather was so nice. Mosied back in a Waterloo direction and watched the sunset from the banks of the Thames over the Houses of Parliament.

We found dinner at a fancy Pizza Express restaurant, and ate far too much. It was so good though. I haven’t been out to dinner in ages, much less taken out to dinner, so I felt really spoilt We wandered down the river and looked at all the lights. All in all, a good day out.

Monday I did my first ever drive to Bognor to see Linz. J used to take me but we used to go the long way round, so going the proper way involved a lot of guesswork and following road numbers. We got some chips and wandered down the beach at dusky time. It was really good to see her.

I took my Mum to Brighton on Tuesday, we went shopping (picked up some guitar strings for the acoustic – my Mister appears to have got me back into playing), and then got ice creams and fell asleep on the beach.

Wednesday I drove up to see my Mister in Harpenden, got stuck in the most horrendous M1 traffic I’ve ever seen, and so came off at the first junction and guessed my way to his, and got quite lucky with my guesses really. Had a couple of nice meals with his family over the duration of my stay – tried some new food too which is unusual for me, it was good.

Friday we came back and went to Sainsbury’s in search of this easter egg I’ve wanted for about a month. They didn’t have it, which is very unfortunate as all their eggs were 75% off and as the one I wanted was a tenner originally, that would have been an amazing deal. I got a different egg that would have been equally expensive – a Lindt chocolate thing with a box of chocolates – and while the chocolates were amazing, there’s no way I would have paid a tenner for it! The Mister picked up a load of little Lindor eggs which were only 13p – if you wish to stock up on chocolate, head over to Sainsbury’s.

The past few days, when not working or doing other things, have been spent playing Sim City 3000. The Mister built up a city together and have actually done quite well so far. We got hold of a copy of SC4 Deluxe, and have developed a region as a starting point for both of us to see how we do things differently. I swore I’d never play Sims games again, but I guess I was mistaken. We’ll have to wait and see how City of Ghosthands does

Just a heads up in that I am making changes to the site template (damn you Kubrick template! – from what I’ve read and experienced thus far, it is NOT the easiest thing in the world…) so any weirdness is probably due to that. I still need to sort a fair few things out, but at least I’ve got the header changed, though that said I still want to tweak that.

The reason I’m blogging is because I checked my stats today, it tells you referring links and different things, and to my amazement, someone found the blog by searching for “buy milky way crispy rolls” on google! I guess they want to buy some, if they’re still interested I get mine from a vending machine in the Portsmouth University

I’m also amused that I’m the 7th result for that. Google funny.

Oooh I just looked again, someone got here via Lindor Egg! Maybe I should just blog a lot about chocolate and have done with it…

Wouldn’t it be amazing if, one summer’s day, when there was gridlock on the M25 and countless people were sitting with their windows down, waiting for the traffic to move, if, someone put a song on that everyone knew the words too, some kind of cult legend, like Bohemian Rhapsody, loudly, and started this chain of singing that moved through the traffic like wildfire. I think that would be awesome.

That’s what I thought when I was in traffic on the M1 yesterday anyway, singing along with Freddy Mercury.

April 2nd

Sugar Puffs
Sandwich – houmous and celery
Jelly bugs
Chocolate eggs
Half a box of chocolates
Roasted carrot, parsnips, garlic potatoes and broccoli with a Quorn mushroom and garlic escallop thing.
A few glasses of peach schnapps and lemonade

Eating bread soaked in yoghurt and honey just so I can swallow some food was not how I envisioned the next few days. Although, there may be ice cream soon. I guess that’s an upside, right?

Adbusters have announced ‘Slow Down Week’ (see the animation here). The premise being:

For one week, instead of running to catch the bus or zipping in and out of traffic, try walking to work. Instead of grabbing take-out on the way home, cook a meal with your family. Leave the TV and computer off, and play an old-fashioned board game, or just sit and catch up with family and friends. If possible, take a day off work — and then while it away with a long walk and an afternoon nap.

It sounds interesting, but then one has to have been going fast in the first place for that to work

I checked out the latest Adbusters in the liiiibary t’other day, it was a roundup of 2006 edition, which, as per usual, scared me senseless. It’s very interesting though. Always worth reading.

Also, it being new year and all, I thought I’d share this link with you – yes everyone claims to have the secret to willpower, but this kind of thing I think would actually work if anyone actually tried it.

And now, I must go blitz my Play to Create project………..

ETA: I’ve been chocolateless since Sunday…. similar to last year I’ve given it up.

I had the weirdest dream, whereby I was in a James Dean movie, but I was also a man wearing a Jack Daniels t-shirt (JD I guess) and everyone was in colour except James Dean. Something weird went on, where we all ended up in this testing centre with lots of PCs where we just had to do whatever we would normally do on a PC, and I remember desperately trying to think of a way to escape. Dean was there too. I think someone had an afro.

What the hell was that about, and why was I a man?

It was not helped by my cat waking me up at 5am by walking on my head repeatedly until I got up.