Summer

So that middle part of Summer has been a bit sucky. So we shall skip all that, don’t really want to go into it….

Now things are better!

I lost my mac for a week and a half, hard drive failed, followed by back for two hours, followed by hard drive fail.
In the end Clockwork (Leeds Apple Care), replaced the drive and the drive’s cable, and shes all good now!

I’m off to Moor Fest next week, I’m doing the lighting for the Green Room, with Chamsys and whatever fixtures I get given, learnt some useful things from their Chamsys Guide for that matter, (and I fixed up the tab box on the home page for them!) Nice bit of jQuery!

Made a shoutbox for Halo3Wheelmen its hosted on 360gaming.net so had to do a lot of fudging and built a mini phpBB api to get user/ban data out of the forum, its all built in jQuery and PHP, jQuery makes ajax stuff, and append/prepend so much easier than pure javascript.


Job wise I am still waiting to hear back from Firebox.com, but it looks like I shall be staying in Leeds for another year at least, being a Venue Tech, which should, with the new boss, hopefully lead to more external work, but I shall still be working as a freelance web developer. Tho there have been some interesting local jobs come up on the GeekUp jobs Board. (I need to start going to GeekUp again….)

In that vein I currently have a bit of work on building a Asset/Event Manager for LUU Events, details on that to follow, but as a project it keeps me out of trouble, since Google fell thru.

Hopefully I should be getting back into modding phpBB which is even easier now since they now use GitHub to host their repository, so I’m gonna have to get to grips with forks, and loading parent data into the child repo…. (If that makes sense).

So essentially things are busy, not perfect but good. Could be better could be worse…

Hopefully at some point I will get around to doing a Carlyon CMS release candidate, tho I am thinking I need to rip out my CSS boilerplate and thus the relevant core html template files, we shall see.

In other news, I now have completely new graphics for 360gaming [dot] net, I was approached and offered the services of O Sheep Dip, and now I have graphics! Woot!
360gaming.net now has a HogBall league tracker on top of the 1v1 challenger system, tho no one has tested it yet, and I only have the one team, people don’t seem interested…

Tho there is a BTBhub on the way, it was suggested to me that building a BTB league is the way to go, and now I have the core Bungie Code checker, and with the advent of Reach, its data API (POTATO!) and of course, its massive ForgeWorld, the future is bright for Halo and 360gaming.net, now all I need is to find more games with similar developer offerings, and getting myself access to the true Xbox API……

So that summarizes the later part of summer… O and Katie is now home.

Also checkout my tumbleblog

Catch you after Moor Fest, (which will be my first ever festival, I’ve never been to one, and now the first one I am going to is also going to be my first external lighting job….)

Off to watch Sherlock on BBC1

And Happy Birthday to Kayleigh (The GirlFriend) 🙂

The End of an Era

So, as of this moment of writing I am sat playing the Halo Reach Beta, got the LSRfm.com Office Remote Control Camera on the go (it has night vision tooooo) and Portal for Mac downloading on Steam for Mac….

Oh and I am a total of 3000 words away from the end of my degree, have today presented my project of 360gaming [dot] net post the basic video phase….

So the end is nigh for my university career…

What next?

Freelance Web Development,
Proper Job Web Development,
Freelance Events Teching,
Lighting and AV

Who knows the future is bright, but defo not Orange…. 😛

Halo Reach First Impressions

So first impressions, not too bad, I’ve not played enough to make a full analysis, but initially it looks and plays quite good.

Tho when I first got in the tank it got quite a lot of getting used to, as it drives a lot different.

Also the default control method is quite a bitch to get used to initially.

I spend most of my time using the Jetpack addon, tho enjoy the use of the invisibility, and running has its uses. Invisibility also messes up everyones radars too.
Tho I am yet to see the use of the lockdown, seems a bit vulnerable…I’ve mashed down enough opponents who have just come out of it….

So to more playing in the morrow. I’ll write a full review soon, just waiting for the other playlists to unlock!

In other news, I applied a patch to 360gaming [dot] net to allow captured and generate a flash video from a reach render (Halo 3 render already supported :-P)

GSoC, WordPress and ME!

So I have been accepted onto GSoC for another year!

This year I am working on a Bugtracker, using WordPress as a base, probably working on top of WordPress 3, need to discuss this with my mentor, but I’ve not been well the last couple of days, which was hell for the Station Manager Presentations (well done to @RichLegate btw), and thus I didn’t go to Plasa, tho I am feeling better now 🙂 Hurrah!

Handed in my coursework/dissertation this afternoon!

Now just a Motion Graphics video to finish, and a essay to write.

Not forgetting a dissertation presentation….. Fun

Its Crunch Time

So this week is going to be one of the busiest weeks, I will have had in a long time.

Finishing touches to my Project 2 Project: http://360gaming.net/, deployed that last Monday, just need to finish testing the game tracker/ranking system and thats all done.
Thats due on Wednesday! Crikey.

It’s also Leeds University Unions@LeedsUniUnion, Celebrate Week, where LUU celebrates its member led Societies, culminating in The Riley’s, an awards ceremony!

LSRfm.com (@LSRfm_com) is up for 3 awards:

  • Best Publicity
  • Best Event, for Big Tidy Up, (live coverage from Rich Legates House)
  • Best Society

So, its always good to be nominated, since the nominations are Crowd Sourced from LUU Members.

I’m also a second time nominee for LUU Lifetime Achievement award, (nominated three years ago when they thought I was leaving).

I’m also working a hell of a lot this week.

  • Metropolis on Thursday
  • Fruity (Hollywood) on Friday
  • Live at Leeds on Saturday all day!
  • Damnation on Sunday all day!

Which then takes us to Monday 3rd of May, which is May Day Bank Holiday. Which means the union is closed, so LSRfm.com is broadcasting from my House for the day.
It’s the day of Halo Reach’s Beta toooooo! Hurrah!

Should be good fun, hopefully it will be Sunny too!

That then takes us to next week, with a double deadline for motion graphics and New Media Strategies and Futures on the 6th of May.

Then thats it the end of my degree…. Shit….

Oh and today I find out if I am doing GSoC 2010 (Google Summer of Code)

And tomorrow is The LSRfm.com Station Manager Job Presentations and Interviews, which I have applied for.

And tomorrow and Wednesday is PLASA Leeds, an Events Trade Show and mini conference, which should be good to make some industry contacts and see whats going on, in the World of Live events….

Its gonna be messy!