Pure Brilliance In A Can...

So I threw a Halloween party and only 4 people came, lol. It was fun though, small gatherings are good :) We chatted about numerous random things and got to play Scrabble and Happy Families at 1am with a set of childhood cards that were found in a recent clearout at my parents house. As a note to anyone thinking of pulling a similar performance know this; 2/3rds of a bottle of wine has very little effect on my strong skills of logical deduction. Mwaha!

I'm trying to get the wings on DA but I need some natural light to get a good shot; the black paint's reflecting too much so artificial bulbs and flashes are a no-no. That may have to wait for the weekend. Oh November, why do you get so dark before I get home from work?

My quest for a new recipe for potato wedges landed me with an flv file courtesy of Google detailing all the ingredients I usually use in vastly different proportions. Despite a worrying gaze at the amount of Paprika that ended up in the bowl I forged on, and suprisingly it was rather nice.

I leave you with a senior moment: spending 40 mins attempting to connect a netbook to my protected wireless router before remembering I locked it to specified MAC addresses too. Oh dear.

To add to the bizarre occurances yesterday, I went to my window to watch meterorites last night. Instead, I got Jupiter, but no stars. Which was just plain odd. Then the whole southern sky started flashing up, about once a minute. I thought some bright spark was letting off fireworks, until I clicked that there was no sound.

And spent the next 45 minutes watching a lighting storm that was so far away I couldn't hear the thunder. It was *awesome*, the whole sky just lit up and the clouds were low, so you could see it around the edges :) As it moved further East I spotted a bolt or two behind the clouds.

Then it clouded over, so I wandered off for a few hours and peeked out just before bed. The sky had cleared again, Orion was out my window and 5 minutes later I saw a meteorite. Just one. A red one. But one was enough :) Wipped out my baby telescope and went nebula spotting. Kind of difficult when you're trying not to make it obvious you're looking out of a telescope in the general direction of 3 storey terrace houses, but I think I pulled it off.

My flat is covered in ladybirds.

Yes, ladybirds. All over the outside of my bedroom window. I've caught 4 inside (somehow, I don't really want to know how they got in).

To add to that, a giant bee just landed on my windowsill... AND DIED.

Is a flat covered in ladybirds a sign of the impending apocalypse?
Answers on a postcard.

I will quit the crack
I will quit the crack
I will quit the crack


what's that Gameplay.com, my 358/2 Days preorder just posted?
...okay, maybe not just yet

This production was brought to you by polymer clay, cocktail sticks, a craft knife and several late nights in front of the TV. With special mention to the first batch of plated jewellery-making chain I brought which has now discoloured but is still good for using up on accessories.

Also found new series of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. I approve. :)

It is cold today! Brr! Even one of my spider plants has taken objection to the sudden drop in temperature and curled up so I've had to move it away from the window. Luckily I don't have to go anywhere today, +1 for tea and +50 gamillion for the trip to the grocers on Wednesday, where I spotted the baking potatoes and thought that might be a nice idea for the weekend. Toasty warm potato in the oven, part of me must have seen this coming and it's a part I like.

I discovered last.fm yesterday. I think it was registration only last time I looked, but I didn't realise it was one of those tell me what you like and I'll recommend similar stuff deals. I can really use that, I haven't picked up much new music this year at all and I think my MP3 player's wondering what happened.

So plan for today, polymer clay and DDR. Yes I brought a dance mat. It seemed like a fun idea at the time, and if it annoys the pillocks downstairs then all the better for it :) I went through the tutorials on Monday, diiscoverd I'm rubbish at the slow songs but have a high tolerance for hearing the same track over and over for 2 hours. Taking bets on how long it takes me to twist my ankle, or land in a spectacular heap on the floor.

I have sat huddled around a fire in the silly hours
I have been up until 4am
I have had 5 hours sleep
I have had bacon
I have sucked a little less at Guitar Hero than usual
I have a coffee table
I have less vodka than yesterday
I have a headache

In conclusion, my sister's parties are awesome.

Ho hum, Friday night and I'm stuck indoors with a cold. Not like I always go out or anything, but I really wouldn'tve minded a bit of pubbage this week. I'm better that yesterday, when hacking up phlegm every 10 minutes made going to Thursday's pubmeet and attempting to hold a conversation without gelatinous intervention seem like a really really silly idea, so that's a good start. But still not quite up to a night out yet.

I'm spending my days killing time until October 9th. For October 9th brings: more Kingdom Hearts! I'm such an addict. It was after I preordered that that I realised Scribblenauts is out on the same day, I've been waiting all year for that one but not sure if it's worth preordering both now when I probably won't get around to playing it until after KH. The price might've dropped by then. Hm we'll see. Until then, I'm playing a certain game about the adventures of a well-spoken gentleman which I really shouldn't have yet (shh). And looking up Organization XIII videos on Youtube. Youtube is scary... or maybe it's the fans that are scary, but we all knew that already.

Tomorrow I get to hop on a train (yay!) to exchange a jacket I brought last weekend for the next size up. I really hope they have it, I'm really fussy with clothes and I absolutely love it! Fingers crossed :)

For now, I'm off to look for a spare part for the necklace I totally forgot my Mum gave me to repair last week. Realising you've been carrying a gold necklace of unknown value in your wallet to and from work all week is a somewhat... shocking experience. Whoops.

(It's been so long since I did this that I've forgotten what all my tags are. That's just sad.)

While I was outside it.

Let me start at the beginning. Sunday evening; I'd gone to the pub with some friends because a band that one of their friends was in was playing. It was a really good night out. I kinda like The Alex, it's a quieter, smaller pub than the one we frequent on a friday and when in good company it's nice to hear what the people opposite you are actually saying!

Anyway, fast forward to 11pm. I have the luck of living right next to the town centre so it took me a minute or two to get home, upon which I took out my key, put it in the lock and turned it around

and around

and around

and around

... crap.

Yes the lock was quite literally well and truely fucked. At 11pm. On a Sunday. To tell the truth, I'm thankfuly rather calm in a crisis. It's all that logic in me. After trying to reach the other side of the bolt by ramming my weedy little arm through the letterbox (to tell the truth I'm kinda glad that failed) I decided it was far more sensible to leave calling my landlord until sane-o'clock in the morning and called my sister to come rescue me instead.

Which she did cause she's an absolute star. :) So I waited through a rather sleepless night to call my landlord at 7am, with the horrible feeling that it's August and what on earth would I do if they're on holiday, expecting an entire day of phone calls and lock smiths and time off work and oh dear I'm covering for someone else who's off and... well, a night full of worrying. What can I say, I'm all logic in the moment but when the action dies down my brain wakes up and Just. Won't. Quit.

So up at 7am, bright and early and expecting a day of epic faffing trying to get this damn door open. I phone my landlord and... someone will be there in 30 mins.

Seriously? Seriously. A relative of my landlord turned up and hammered the lock out of the door*, got stuck at the end and had to call a locksmith who arrived 20mins later, unlatched the bolt in less than 10 seconds and the whole thing was done by 9am. Very impressed.

So I'd spent all night on 2 hours sleep worrying over nothing. Logic, you could teach my inner overthinker a thing or two.

(*I hope it woke the noisy bastards downstairs up, mwaha! Everyone else in the building; sorry. I think they'd all left for work by then, apart from one guy who I apologised profusely to but he was cool with it)

Tastes... like fruit cake. With a strange aftertaste.

I just found two of my characters from 2002 in a folder full of artwork I drew in 1996.

1996.

WHAT THE SHIT???!!! :O

Okay so I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Awkward Teenage Love Triange on Friday...
( Continues under the cut )

It saddens me how posting on my poor neglected journal was an afterthought:

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsickness_bag
and courtesy of the "related pages" links, an old Graphic Design Contest (see archive section):
http://www.designforchunks.com/

I swear this topic was never meant to be this funny. :D

I wanted to go out on a day trip on Saturday but I couldn't decide where to go. Kent is full of coastal towns that drone on for hours and hours about their seafaring past, doesn't really interest me tbh. I spent an hour on Friday googling before deciding it'd take far longer than a week to track down somewhere that'd interest my creative self so decided to postpone it for a week. I instead spent Saturday looking for crafty things in Rochester High Street (aka that one that no-one goes to because there's nothing there), and Dockside (aka the shopping centre no-one goes to cause there's nothing there).

And during yesterday's shopping trip I discovered two art shops within a 5min bus ride of my house that sell Fimo! Brilliant and bad news at the same time; brilliant for me, bad for my wallet! I returned home one cyan block richer and mixed up some nice shades of purple:
( Pinky Purple Poly Cubes Bracelet under the cut )

Also, it turns out there's a Pilot at Dockside! (aka clothing chain that sell my size where I used to buy tops for going out before they all shut down). So have a pair of earrings I knocked up this morning in half an hour before leaving the house to match the new top I brought yesterday:
( and Smokey Black Top-Matching Earrings under the second cut )

Finally: Strawberry Jaffa Cakes.
Verdict: no.

I'm a little sleepy, so just a quick post from me to tell you all about the wonderfully messy things I've been up to this weekend.

First up, the bright pink extremely girlie braclet I made with instructions from one of those freebie leaflets they give out in Hobbycraft, with a bit of modification based on what bits I had in my box.



Next up: Polymer Clay! I had a block of yellow Fimo left over from the Heartless project, and while figuring out what to do with it discovered you can use it to make beads. Awesome! So I figured I'd give it a go.. and promptly brought 5 more blocks of clay to mix colours with. Whoops think my definition of "use up" got a little skewed there!

Anyway here's the first set I made. I like the spotty and stripy ones near the top.


When the white clay arrived I had a go at a cane tutorial I found on the internet. And mucked it up royally by getting the stuff welded to the work surface, and sending the nice blended tone I was trying to create into a wonky mess. Damn!

The second skinner blend was a sucess, but after this point it all went a little bit wrong!



Wonky flowers anyone? :D I think I was working too small, the petals got squished together while I was putting the background on the other side.

Finally I learnt a valuble lesson: never throw botched attempts in the bin. Because I managed to turn aforementioned botched skinner blend that got stuck to the board into this:





Considering it was a salvage job, I'm rather pleased with it :)

(* read: old tube of mascara that's fulfilling it's secret life dream of becoming a craft tool)

Hm. I can still see posts from last year on my userpage and this bothers me. So, I come to you from the other side of The Plague II, the second illness to throw me to the floor this year and leave me curled up in bed wondering if there was a time when drinking water didn't make me want to send the contents of my stomach back out into the world from whence they came. Ick.

So I was ill for a few days but I don't care, for the illness of doom was proceeded by what is quite possibly the most awesome 4 days of this year so far. Bournemouth was awesome, Southampton was awesome, you are all awesome and no I don't need to buy a netbook. Honest. I can't believe how nice it is down there, okay so it was a bit too windy for beachwards escapades but over here it is pelting it down. From what I saw of yesterday after crawling out of bed that is, camped out on my sofa tenatively watching the patio door because heavy rain is what makes the big(ish) spiders come in.

So I was in Bournemouth for 3 days when it occured to me heading home on a Friday was a silly idea, what with it being a weekend and all, and I arranged to decend on some Soton folk for a day, which was equally as awesome. Is it possible to have a weekend of too much awesome? I got to see people I haven't seen in a month. I also got to see people I haven't seen in many months. I rode a bike for the first time in 11 years*, had ice cream, watched tea being made by the bucketload, met a little man who is quite a bit bigger than the last time I saw him, was reclassified from "human" to "road", re-wired a TV setup, got absolutely thrashed at Mariokart 64 and introduced to the strange and twisted colourful world that is CBeebies**

So I think that settles it; nope, no such thing as too much awesome :)

And no, no Netbook. Not like I have any geeky houses here to take it to anyway :P

(* yes I counted; I worked it out somewhere along the pavements of the A33 just after I'd figured out that gears are in fact a very good thing which can make the top of your legs stop absolutely killing after 2 mins. What can I say, my kiddy bikes never had gears. Gearmatically challanged.)

(** the C stands for Crack)

Ask this little guy:

(Link to pattern)
( More info )

:)

Take that, Current Cost Meter! I knew I'd get you working with my PC even if it took me all night. See? SEE?! 4 hours including such gems as a broken cable driver (1hr30 of mucking around before finding an alternate), an uncooperative complied .exe file, Python installs (plural), and all the related library installs to get the lovely GUI graphing program running from source will not faze me. Mwaha.

In conclusion; it's finally working.

No I'm not going to post any pretty graphs now, I'm going to bed! I've had a really crap day today (you know the one, the epic quarter-life crisis job-related kind). Well until I got home and found in my letterbox the cable to connect the toy my electricity supplier sent me to my computer. Despite all the faffing it was actually kinda fun to get something like that working. But for now; sleep. I'll play with my new toy tomorrow.

I feel absolutely shattered this afternoon. Had a few people over for a housewarming party yesterday (2 months after I'd moved in, heh), I was a little worried it'd be a total disaster but it was really fun! I haven't had people over for years, spent a day wrestling with the temptation to hide half of my stuff (which was promptly abandoned when I realised moving the sketchbooks, action figures and anything even remotely geek-incriminating from my living room would be physically impossible). It wasn't a big party, just a few of my old schoolfriends and Medway people but it turns out that was a pretty ideal number for the size of my living room without moving furniture. :)

Now I'm absolutely shattered, so glad tomorrow's a Bank Holiday. I'm off to spend the afternoon drinking tea, playing with an article my Dad gave me about getting Electricity usage meters to talk to computers and playing Kingdom Hearts. Yayfun!

...After shock resurrection act, is suspected Temperamental. Experiments in progress.

Can blowing dust out of a laptop keyboard straight after you turn it on theoretically cause a crash?

My laptop just spectacularly managed to kill its backlight inverter again and I'm trying to figure out if it's my own stupid fault or just a co-incidence. More for my own curiousity really, either way the second inverter is dead and I'm still deciding whether to get another one.

On the other hand my external monitor's throwing a party cause it feels loved again. Bless 'im :)