Jaz Design

I’m really tired. I think I just finished my show promo, I’m not sure. The perfectionist still wants to poke. But she also wants to sleep.

I still need to sort out the comments system on here. I am thinking about it, honest! And I wish to reskin. This one’s too… something. It’s not me enough.

Anyone who has a GFXartist account, I have one too.

South Park this week was awesome. I can’t wait for Ed to get his X-Box back (it had the “ring of death” or whatever) so we can play Guitar Hero. It better be back before GH3 comes out…

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.

This Wednesday my Mister and I attended the Future of Web Design conference in Kensington, Londinium. I’d never been to anything like this before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I found the experience really enjoyable, it was really interesting to be with so many people interested in that kind of thing, and the talks, whilst often things I knew or common sense, still helped bring my mind back to what I should be doing, and what the web’s about.

That said, I’m a student, I’ve worked in industry not even two years. From what I’ve read on other blogs the professionals weren’t as keen on the day as I was, but I do think that had a lot to do with the level of experience – I’m sure a lot of them have been to a lot of conferences. As it was there weren’t many students there at all, just our small crowd from Pompey and maybe one or two others. Definitely a professional day. I did enjoy it and I did find it interesting. I’m glad uni suggested it, and I think the experience was well worth the (hefty) 60 pounds…
I have some not so great photos I’ll probably stick on my flickr next time I’m at home.

These are some of my notes from the day. Made as coherent as possible, I was very tired that day :S

More

I completely lost track of my spending last weekend. All it takes it to stop doing something for one day and then you’re track’s completely broken. So, didn’t make it a month. Plus the spending I did on Tuesday would completely wreck my percentages.

That said, I’m very happy with my Tuesday purchases. I’ve been looking for some decent black jeans for about two years, plain black, not very dark grey. Black. I found some amazing ones in Bay. I also got this weird dress/top thing from New Look which looks really cool. I’m clueless with fashion, but the stuff that’s in fashion is a bit weird at the moment. I got some other things too… basically spent too much money, but for some reason I felt like I needed to.

I am managing to hold back on buying a new mobile phone. I really dislike my current phone, but until that breaks I really have no excuse to purchase an extravagance that costs 150 of the English pounds. It won’t offer me many benefits, better mobile internet, but who really needs to be connected 100% of the time… and it’s pink. And shiny. But. I’m going to wait until summer to make a decision about this, hopefully by that time I’ll be earning, and that would be the sensible thing to do.

Going home tonight. Easter break. Gonna get some Ben and Jerry’s on the way home and cuuuddllle up with mah hunnnie.

Redyed my hair – it’s now half black and I rebleached the other side so it’s really bright blonde. That side is going to go pink in a week or so

Yesterday the other half an I went to see 300. He likes Miller and knows about these things, whereas I have no clue about things like graphic novels and was mostly going because I liked the trailer, and I’ve dragged him to every shitty horror flick that’s come out since October. I was surprised, I thought the film was amazing.

It was certainly visually stunning, although I’m not so sure I’d have been so accepting of the obviousness of CG had I not known it was based on a graphic novel. Either way, they really went to town on it. I especially loved this technique that I’ve only just started noticing appearing in movies, where, for example, someone shoots an arrow, the camera pans in on the arrow, time slows down and it moves around the arrow before it speeds up again, drawing you in and making you feel a part of something otherwise quite flat. It’s almost 3D without being 3D.

Gerard Butler was impressive, I’ve only seen him as the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, it was very entertaining to see him do something so different, and do it so well.

The story wasn’t that strong, it was mostly about the fighting which is fair enough, but they did manage to put enough of a storyline in to have me crying by the end of it (I felt like I’d been hit with an emotional bus, but I think that may have just been me). There were some very touching moments, some downright scary moments, but mostly, a lot of bloody moments. But even then, they were well engineered bloody moments.

The soundtrack, the soundtrack, the soundtrack, I adored it. Rocky vs classical, always a winner with me. I thought it fit the movie very well. I’d recommend the movie, assuming you can deal with slow motion decapitation… or just generally a lot of slow motion. I read somewhere they filmed most of it at 50-150 frames per second – shows just how much slow motion they did or planned to use!

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I realise now on DA you get a free prints account, so I just messed around with the options to see what would happen, as a result, this photo of the sunset over Southsea is available as a print.

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All else is going alright. Got a lot of work on at uni, but it’s all good things. Thinking of things to write about for a dissertation, working up a design for a competition, running a business focussed on environmentalism (proper website and details available next week), it’s all good.

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Thursday 21st March

Nothing!

Wednesday 20th March

Chocolate chips 0.49
Pizza 1.15
Broccoli 0.46
Butter 0.46
Chips 0.88
Enterprise Investment 30
Car Insurance 476.04 (not including this in percentages as it tips it too much, just included for records)

Totals so far…
£235.35
Necessary £179.96 76.46%
Unnecessary £55.39 23.54%

We went up to Londinium yesterday. We have this project at uni at the moment which entails some science research and looking at how people engage with science and various things. I didn’t think I’d be well enough to go to London, but really wanted to because there’s so much one could get out of this project. I was also still miserable about not being able to hit the galleries in our two weeks off.

As it was we didn’t make it to the galleries, just the Science and Natural History Museum – both of which were awesome but exhausting. Worth a visit, I really want to go back to the Natural History Museum for a proper nose about.

I might have some photos, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll check the camera in a minute.

Anyway, huge step for me, and I survived. I’m not too tired today despite having to get up at 7am to go do a table top sale. I have to sell a lot of my unnecessary stuff simply because it’s unused clutter – I didn’t make too much today, but will be doing another sale in a few weeks. Hopefully do a bit better.