Journals

I was recording a couple of lines last night and while I was at it I decided to do another reel. Rather than mimicking existing characters like my last reel I decided to make things up on the spot.

I'd love to hear your thoughts

More Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 tom-foolery with myself and Archie.

Clicky.

Sorry for journalling 2 days on the trot but I just wanted to say that my unemployment has come to a sudden end...

I'm working again as of Thursday this week.

Cats. Right?

I like to think he's dreaming that he's Sonic the Hedgehog.

Halfway through my second to last day.

Totally drained and cannot focus on any of these site's I've got left to build.

It's not uncommon for me to get bored at work but this is just a genuine lack of motivation, with good cause I guess.

For those of you not in the know, the company I work for announced that they are closing down the sales and design departments. This puts me out of a job this time next week.

Again, for those not in the know, I am married, living in a rented property, paying for a car on finance along with all the regular bills that I need to pay.

Bricks are now being shat.

First day back after a weeks holiday and the second file I get is for a guy who wants "plenty of advertising banana space" on their site...

sigh

Ugh... clients.

From an email received today:"I can't give you an example of what I want at the moment but I need this up and running ASAP as I am in the middle of a major presentation tomorrow."

...I don't even know where to start with that sentence. However, I am kind of impressed that he is currently in the middle of something that hasn't happened yet.

So, I played through Gut Reaction again after about 10 years or so. Pretty old mod for Half-Life and a classic in my opinion.

Rather than uploading the entire thing I made a sort of highlights reel containing only the entertaining parts of my play through. (I listen to feedback sometimes )

Clickity-Click

Why I don't sleep much.

I work in Web Design in an office based in Shrewsbury. The days are your average 9am - 5pm (with an extra 30 minutes tacked on for some reason). Now, Shrewsbury is about an hours drive from my house, with another 15 minutes walk to the nearest free parking. This means that in order to get to work on time the latest I can leave my house is 7:45, which means in order to get up, get dressed, have breakfast and make lunch I need to be out of bed by 7:10.

In the evenings after work I will get back home at around 6:45pm - 7pm. I will then need to have dinner, wash up afterwards, spend some time with the wife etc. I usually get time to myself from 9 or 10pm. So basically, if I was to turn in at midnight, I only get 2 or 3 hours to myself for gaming or mapping or browsing the net. Basically, it's not enough.

So I don't sleep, and at weekends I sleep even less to make the most of my time off. Usually turning it at 4am Saturday morning and getting up at 6am, then turning in again at 4am Sunday morning and sleeping until 9 or 10.

...I'm tired.

Even if you're not a fan of Zero Punctuation, you should definitely skip to to 5:35 in this one if you're a fan of Half-Life.

Enjoy

Ok, new dream. Certainly more disturbing that what I'm used to.

I've got a new job, on a production line, skinning live cats. Now now, don't jump for the "sick fuck" responses just yet. The cats were fine. Underneath their fur and skin, they had more fur and skin. It was as though cats were meant to shed their skins from time to time, but the process just would not occur naturally. The thing is, the cats fur was identical underneath, same colours, pattern etc.

I go home and decide that I might as well skin my cat while I'm at it.

I run a Stanley knife down the side of my cat, peel away the top skin, but the fur underneath is black. The black cat, kicks and thrashes out of the outer skin and scurries to the other end of the room, then sits in the corner and hisses at me.

Then I woke up...

I can only assume that this means my cat is a spy.

I had a very vivid dream last night. Well 2 actually. In my first dream I was having to go away on business for a month, to the other end of the country. The thing is, I had to leave my house in the early hours of the morning so my wife was fast asleep. I kissed her on the forehead and left my house, knowing I wouldn't see it again for some time. I felt genuinely emotional and was so relieved when I woke myself up at 4am.

The second dream happened between then and when my alarm went off at 6:30am. I was in my house again, during a torrential downpour and there was a leak in the ceiling. I went upstairs to check it and the entire upper floor was sodden, the carpet cold and full of water. Same with the bed. The place was a mess.

I looked up both of these things online this morning. The first dream apparently symbolises that my life is changing, moving forwards. Not reluctance to do so, just an awareness that change is coming.

The second one tickled me a little:

"To see a leak in your dream symbolizes loss, disappointments, frustrations and distress. You are wasting your energy on fruitless endeavors."

Then I went to work.

I don't sleep. I'm sure I've mentioned this before. I usually get 4 hours sleep a night during the weekend, 6 or less during the week.

We have a 3 day weekend this week thanks to May day (No idea what the actual occasion is but an extra day off is aces in my book). Anyway, I decided last night to get an early night. Got about 10 hours sleep in total. Then I woke up.

"GUARGH!!! WHAT THE F-"

I had the worst migraine I've ever had in my life. If you've ever experienced waking up with a headache, you know it sucks. However, take that pain, times it by 3 and add severe nausea. Whoo. Long story short, everything I put in, including painkillers, came flying back out at high speed.

Basically lost a day of my three day weekend while I slept it off. Woke up around 8pm in the end. So I managed to eat something, stayed up with the wife until she went to bed at midnight. It is now 4:30AM and I have been working on The Core since then. Not tired at all now having slept most of the day.

Just thought I'd share.

The quickest way to lose your passion for something is to make a career out of it. That's my opinion anyway.

I used to mess around with HTML and CSS from time to time and I used to genuinely enjoy it. The thing is, that was the occasional 3 hour session at most. When it comes down to "You WILL do this between 9am and 5:30pm!" it is a totally different story.

I think that is why I wouldn't go into game design full time. I usually map for a couple of hours at a time and I enjoy it. If I was told to build levels for 9 hours straight, I would rapidly get fed up with the processes involved and the quality of the work would suffer. Job security is another issue of course. If I make a bad website I spend a few hours fixing it up. If you make a bad game, you stop making games.

Another factor about doing design as a hobby is that if you're not sure how to approach a problem or if you simply get tired of working on a project, you can have a break, maybe leave it for a day or 2 and come back to it. At work, I have the option to say "I don't know what to do with this" but all that happens is the site moves down the list 1 place and I am given ANOTHER site to work on. It's draining. In the end of course, you HAVE to come back to the project within a reasonable amount of time or the client gets pissed off.

urgh...

Sorry for the wall of text.