art post 3

ok, yet more art. this one is also an old piece that got left behind. it's still not 100% finished, but it's done enough for me to publish it.

i havn't much else in the way of news. happy birthday irirshmadcat. i'm a day early, but i'm sure you won't mind.

it's raining again today. yesterday brightened and me and penelope_stone got to go for a walk in the powdermills, in the sunshine. it was lovely.

yea... if i think of anything else to say i'll do another post. my brain is totally blank right now. perhaps because i woke at 8:45 this morning, after getting to sleep some time after 1am.
i had really a wierd dream, though. i think it was inspired by all the news from san diego comic con. i was some kind of gaming com, barry (d+d) was there and there was a huge group of just about everyone i know playing d+d. but it was getting late and i had to get the last bus home. and i had to figure out where it left from - it turned out to be just outside the convention centre. so i had 20 minutes and i decided to go on a ride, but it turned out to be a massive larp that started out in an old temple or something and went on a rollercoster and then ended up on a beach and we were all given plastic sticks. i saw my aunt joan on the beach. but i was paranoid about missing my bus and then i woke up.

more new art

:) i love submitting pixel art to deviantart. it's the one category where, if you've done your pixelling correctly, you are guaranteed views and comments (and sometimes favs).
yea, i finally got around to finishing my pixel of penelope_stone's bedroom. it's in my dA gallery. so two new pieces of art in two days, this isn't bad going at all.

now i need to motivate myself to put this art up on my website.

i'm back drawing again

god. i'd been over a year and a half since i drew anything. that's terrible. i got bored of all my other creative pursuits this evening, so i opened up painter and pulled out my graphics tablet (and no - it wasn't covered in dust, because i wipe the dust off it regularly). i did a quick sketch and coloured it just as quick, so the results of my evening are somewhat slipshod, but it's not the worst thing i've ever drawn. anyway - funny loli girl with a broken wrist can be found at my deviantart account.

yea. bye.

ooh - look. my mood is happy - woooo!!!

the quandaries of life and finding a job

i changed my style again. this time, it's one of the default Lj ones. i generally don't go for them, because they are too generic, but at the same time i'm way too lazy to go work on a style myself. anyway, we'll see how long this one lasts. it has a good chance of lasting a good long time, because the tags appear in a cloud, the page summary gives numbers of comments and the main entry text is constrained to a certain line length. so it has the things i like, the only problem is the colours, but it was the best of the pixipets ones.

i applied for more jobs today. dull, dull, dull sounding ones: secretarial and admin. i tried to just go for companies that sound interesting, in fields like music, printing, IT. i did apply for one customer service job, and one software testing job (whatever was i thinking? but it is an entry level position and they give you training, so why not? (the voice in my head says "because you have no knowledge of the industry." shush voice in my head))

i did this funny career test yesterday to help me figure out what kind of job i'd really like to do. it had this to tell me: Creative Expression, Aesthetics, Time Freedom, Job Tranquility, Change and Variety, Knowledge, Excitement, Moral Fulfillment are all aspects of a career that i would find fulfilling.
so:
_ i need to be exercising my creative drive, ok;
_ everything needs to be beautiful and inspiring, this is where i generally get let down;
_ i want no pressure, yea - good luck with that one;
_ again no stress or bother, so important it happens twice;
_ nothing boring and routine, never going to happen;
_ i want to learn new stuff and be using my brain, this one is a possibility but probably not without stress and responsibility;
_ can't be boring, i think we had this one already too;
_ and finally morally fulfilling, what on earth does this mean?
so in other words: my dream career is one that dosn't exist. well, ok - i have just cut off any ideas out of hand... ok - actually thinking of jobs that have all of these things: the no pressure thing is the real difficult thing to get around. you know, apart from the stress bit, games designer fits into all of these. i imagine it would get kind of routine after a while. writing a fantasy novel got routine - come up with idea, find good words, structure words into a sentence, come up with more words, structure them into a sentence that dosn't follow the exact same structure as the last sentence... yea. it's really hard.

anyway.

my 3d girl model is coming on. not exactly well, but we're getting there. i re-appled the biped because her hands weren't cooperating.
penelope_stone took me and davidnarby on a road trip looking for a car yesterday. it was quite successful. she found a car that suits her.

right. i think i've said enough.

short ramble

it's raining out. a nice kind of heavy rain, that sounds pretty splashing against the ground and smells like earth and greenery and the vibrant life of plants in summer. it's the kind of rain for running out in wearing your pyjamas and getting drenched and cold but before that happens, you get a nice tickle from nature.

yesterday, my keyboard was moaning at me about its batteries being critical, but today all seems well again. i have some batteries in front of me anyway, just in case.

i don't really have any news worthy of note, so i guess i'll just go now.

woah, the rain just got really heavy. cool.

the craziness of playing games and finding work

so... what do i have to say for myself today? not a whole lot really. i'm playing fallout 2 at the moment (meaning in general with my days, not right this very moment). it's fun - insanely similar to the first game, so it's really just like a continuation, which isn't really a good thing because it lacks the learning curve and dedicated time that hooks you to a game. it's like: ok, i've spent however long getting used to the controls and idiosyncrasies of this game, so i'll play it for a good bit to pay off that time investment. but that hasn't happened with this game. and the story just isn't hard hitting enough - they are holding back on me, alluding to stuff that will come along in the future. i suppose it should make me excited or a little curious about what the future holds, but it dosn't. so i just go around, do side-quests and get killed an awful lot. which is fun too. no dog to keep me company this time, though.

ooh, i never mentioned - i don't have a job. so it's back to applying randomly for me. now i've developed a certain apathy and my self-inhibitions get flung out through my eyes. this is the stage where my actual personality gets to apply for things and i end up putting stuff like is funny, spontaneous and creative on my applications. it has worked in the past - when you stop caring, you get a job. the world is somewhat twisted. perhaps future employers fear a person who is desperate, they get all sorts of nightmarish resonances of a clingy, needy child and absolutely don't want to have to deal with it. but when you just don't give a damn people respect your lack of self-regard and know your the kind of person who will just get the job done without need of extreme guidance. or maybe that's just the cute world of chibi dolls and baby monsters that is my mind.

god - my brain chemicals are so messed up today.

3d modelling as a form of procrastination

got to bed at 2 last night. woke at 9 this morning. i have a feeling i'll be tired this evening. ah well. it was worth it.
i was messing about in 3dsmax last night and i opened up my girl file. i put basic materials, hair and (dan dan daaaaa) a biped rig on her. i can now pose her in any position i want. wooo!!
of course, all of this is in procrastination of my novel, but it makes me feel good when my procrastination efforts result in something creative. unfortunately, my model's proportions are a bit wierd, so i had to make the biped rig unrenderable (shush, firefox dictionary - this is a word) because it was poking out in odd places.

so - plans for today: renew my provisional licence (now called a learner permit - way to make new drivers feel inept). i must drop an invoice into cit, and apart from that, i think i'll make a material for my girl's eyes, a bump map for her hair and sort out the colour scheme on her clothes. and not write... maybe i'll write.

i think that's all i have to say.

a usual sort of post

i'm supposed to be making an invoice right now, but as with anything i'm unsure of, i'm procrastinating. and what's the best form of procrastination? writing in my Lj.

and i do actually have something to say. just something small, but something none-the-less. a few days ago (yes, this is old news) i got some burt's bees peppermint shower soap. this is the same shower soap we (penelope_stone and i) used while travelling across america. we picked up a bar in flagstaff and it was with us for the rest of the 4 weeks in the US. it smells lovely and it leaves your skin really soft. so when i saw it in a health-food shop in town i had to buy it. yeay.

i'm reading watchmen at the moment. read ch. 1 last night. it seems interesting - introducing characters and getting to know the main dude. not so much on the setting yet, i'm sure that will come in time.

yea. i guess i should get back to this. the sooner i get it done, the sooner i can go writing.

prince of persia

i downloaded the e3 trailer for the new prince of persia game the day before yesterday. the trailer is beautiful. if the game is half as good it will be brilliant. and my brain's way of marking the occasion was to have me dream of being the prince. the world i was in was beautiful, all twilight and beaches, and strange tents of cloth and stone sitting just beyond the waves.

not like my dreams last night which involved sharks and drowning and tsunamis and not being able to save anyone or even warn them.and there was something about being locked in somewhere (in a big tank?) and having people laugh at you and come see you, but not let you out.

battles atlas part 2

lets make part 2 posts a theme, shall we?

a bit ago, i posted about my new obsession with battles and specifically the song, atlas.
today, me and davidnarby got to talking about music. i lent him some of the nine inch nails stuff that i like, and while i was at it, i decided to give him atlas. his reaction was to say "battles, that sounds familiar. i think i have one of their albums. math rock, isn't that what they call them?"
he's had mirrored since christmas. i can't believe it! there's me planning on spending my first pay-check (whenever that may be) supporting the band and buying their album. and here it was in the house all along. i really need to trawl through his music collection. i'll bet he has a tonne more albums like this one - ones that i've been interested in, but haven't got.

anyway. it's cool.

i have friends who make movies :)

this is a world of warcraft movie made by aether_muse. i don't play warcraft, but i've watched her play and this movie is quite cool. a parody of the discovery channel's i love the world, but set in the game. i love that song.

the ogranized mess

i put things in strange places when it's late at night. like my oblivion cd (ok, its actually a dvd, but cd reads easier)... it was on top of my subwoofer. now that may seem like a good place, but the top of my subwoofer is reserved for my external HD, some note paper, a dusting rag, a mirror and my camera case. not cds. cds have never gone up there and i don't know how the oblivion cd got there last night. if i hadn't used my mirror to check my hair i would have been ransacking the place later to find the cd. actually, i think the oblivion cd is feeling rebellious recently. i couldn't find it yesterday either. it was over on top of my new cupboard - the place where random bags and clothes go. actually, prince of persia is over there too. that shouldn't be. they should be on my study desk - that's where random cds belong.
so right now, the oblivion cd is right in front of me... and i'm thinking of leaving it there for being bold and getting itself off to random (wrong) places.
and since i'm talking about stuff in my room: my stool got stolen and has been missing for the last few days. but i got it back and now all the clothes that had been accumulating on my floor are balanced (not quite as precariously as usual) on the stool - where they should be. so everything's where it should be and i can walk on my floor once again without having to dodge random piles of clothes. always a good thing :)

i watched spiderwick chronicles last night. i quite enjoyed it. a nice simple movie with fun creatures, but i wouldn't be rushing out to buy it, or even to watch it again.

taleweavers later today. i havn't been in ages; it'll be good to see the lads again. i'm taking a day off writing today. i'll just go talk about it instead.

yea, i think that's all i have to say.

allergies part 2

i spoke with mammy about my cough and possible allergies and she said it is very possible, and this is her reason: when i was younger (like really young) i was diagnosed with a mild form of asthma. i never paid it any attention, because i never had an asthma attack, just a cough. but i guess all this means that i have lungs that are susceptible to irritation by some things, like dairy products (and also strenuous exercise, which is probably why i've always hated long-distance running / jogging). so there you have it.
now i'm going to cut things out of my diet one by one to see what i can and can't eat.

in other news, my writing is coming on well. i got 4 pages done this morning / early afternoon, and am hoping to get more done this evening, but we'll see. it is saturday, after all and saturday nights are best kept for computer games. but i guess i'll see how i feel later.

a possibly dairy allergy?

i'm just heading off to bed, but before i go, i have one thing to say.

remember my little post about last weekend and i mentioned that i thought i was allergic to chocolate and that's what caused my cough? well, now i'm thinking it's not just chocolate, but the milk in the chocolate, and probably the milk in the ice-cream. i'm now beginning to suspect that i'm allergic to dairy products. i stopped drinking milk a few years ago and my cough hasn't been as bad since then - i used get it every night and morning, now it just comes sporadically during some days and some nights.
so i'll have to test out my theory. it would kind of suck, though, because i quite like cheese - cheddar mostly, and i like yoghurt, but i guess if i'm willing to put up with my cough i can still eat them. maybe just not in the evening. but i don't even know if my little hypothesis is true. i should go talk to mammy. she'd have a better idea than me.

good night, then.

motiviation

happy birthday nesf

last night i watched gladiator. i think it has to be one of my favourite movies ever. i've seen it about 10 times and it's brilliant every time. it was so good, in fact, that it broke my creative block. i went upstairs afterwards and wrote about a page (which isn't that much, but i was tired). then today, i got about 700 words done (which isn't that much either), but more importantly i remembered how to write. this may seem like a kind of stupid thing to have to remember (but you must keep in mind that this is coming from someone who forgot about party shuffle in iTunes). my problem is that i've been trying to write straight to the screen, which never works with me. last night, i remembered that i write lying down in bed - and it works. words just flow and ideas come so much easier. i think sitting and creativity just don't happen for me. so now i'll be writing mornings and evenings, and hopefully getting up to 1500 (2000 would be sweet, but perhaps a little unrealistic) words per day. of course, this will only last while i'm doing re-writes, but i have about 4 scenes to do at the moment.

so all's good :)

i got to see harry and guinness playing for real today. ooh, i think i totally forgot to mention penelope_stone's video of them. here's the video. so today, we were listening to music outside (the sun is shining - it's wonderful) and lovecats came on. you may have noticed that lovecats is the song from the vid. anyway, it came on and the two messers came into the garden and wrestled for a bit. it was so funny. and crazily coincidental. my life is just full of them these days!!
harry and guinness are totally like gay loves, though. they'd totally have little puppy-kittens if they could!!

just making things up to fill the space

i attempted to get some writing done today. i figure i got about 100 words. not so good, but still better than 0 words. and apart from those few words i've done very little of note with the rest of my day. i think living in new zealand spoiled my views of summer. i had forgotten just how bad irish summers are - how dull and overcast. so what i'm getting at is that the weather wouldn't inspire you to do much. it's a mini-battle just to get over its looming sort of depressiveness.

i made sushi rice for dinner. it was yummy. i need to figure out the right proportions for the vinegar/sugar/salt mix, though. i make it with balsamic, which is way too strong, so i water it down (with water) and always end up with too much. anyway. it's not like it will go off quickly or anything. i covered the remainder with tin-foil and it will be there for again.

i want something good looking, but easy to model in 3dsmax. i'd do a tea-pot, but that's cheating and i wouldn't feel good about the end result. i'm thinking some kind of funky building... but my imagination has run away somewhere, probably somewhere with better weather than here.

ok, i need to end on a positive note: my sushi rice rocked!!!

the cake is a lie

don't let a computer whip up a cake for you; you never know what might be in the ingredients.

1 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix.
1 can prepared coconut pecan frosting.
3/4 cup vegetable oil.
4 large eggs.
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.
3/4 cups butter or margarine.
1&2/3 cups granulated sugar.
2 cups all purpose flour.
Don't forget garnishes such as:
Fish shaped crackers.
Fish shaped candies.
Fish shaped solid waste,
Fish shaped dirt.
Fish shaped ethyl benzene.
Pull and peel licorice..
Fish shaped volatile organic compounds
and sediment shaped sediment.
Candy coated peanut butter pieces, Shaped like fish.
1 cup lemon juice.
Alpha resins.
Unsaturated polyester resin.
Fiberglass surface resins.
And volatile malted milk impoundments.
9 large egg yolks.
12 medium geosynthetic membranes.
1 cup granulated sugar.
An entry called 'how to kill someone with your bare hands'.
2 cups rhubarb, sliced.
2/3 cups granulated rhubarb.
1 tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb.
1 teaspoon grated orange rhubarb.
3 tablespoons rhubarb, on fire.
1 large rhubarb.
1 cross borehole electro-magnetic imaging rhubarb.
2 tablespoons rhubarb juice.
Adjustable aluminum head positioner.
Slaughter electric needle injector.
Cordless electric needle injector.
Injector needle driver.
Injector needle gun.
Cranial caps.
And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor
control chemicals. That will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue.

and now an actual update

buh, i always seem to start my entries with a dull statement like, "the weekend was good". it makes me feel uninspired. but i also feel that just starting into a story in the middle of it (as in, not doing a lead-up to the meaty bits) is too sudden. anyway.

i've been playing portal on lordkilljoy's xbox. got about half way through over a month ago, and i finally got around to finishing it yesterday. ok, i feel i should mention that lordkilljoy had totally hyped up the ending, so i was expecting something absolutely amazing. it was a good ending, but not nearly as good as other games i've played (prince of persia comes to mind for best game ending ever: both sands of time and two thrones). i should also mention that portal is the most annoying game i've played in ages. actually, i don't think my frustration was helped by the fact that it takes me ages to aim accurately with an xbox (i had typed xbob, hee) controller (or any controller that isn't a mouse and keyboard, for that matter), so i kept getting stuck around railings and things. all that aside, i couldn't stop thinking about the game all the way down on the bus and as i fell asleep last night, so obviously i enjoyed it... i just didn't realize it as i was playing or something. actually - it was hilarious. i was somewhat tired on monday night (i got mostly finished monday night, and just did the last bit tuesday afternoon) and i kept forgetting that i had a portal gun and what sort of fun things it can do to make my life easy. so i ended up wandering around a lot (i think my brain was secretly looking for levers or something) and wondering how on earth to get onto the next bit. of course, when i remembered the wonderful uses of the portal gun, i berated myself for being such an idiot. lordkilljoy must think i'm slow in the brain or something!!

so yea. monday was interview day. it went well enough, apart from the fact that they asked me to "go through my cv" and gave me no hinting or encouragement or anything. right! i'll just ramble and mumble for a bit and feel like some sort of foolish robot for not being able to read your mind and know what it is you want me to say. grrr. it felt more like some kind of memory test than an interview. like as if they wanted to test my public speaking skills more than my ability to do the job they had advertised. i hate the world some times. i was feeling very misogynistic in the bus on the way back to cork yesterday. i need to stop ranting now - i can feel my stomach start to knot up with annoyance. ok, this is me breathing.

went to galway on sunday - played with lordkilljoy's nephews. or one of them at any rate. ryan is a little young to actually play with. but i got to play run around the cars with darragh (yes, the cars were parked). kids are great for doing random running with :)

hmmm. i can't help but feel that there was something else i wanted to say. lordkilljoy wants me to join twitter, but i don't think i will, because i like to go on so much. i just can't curtail myself to less than three paragraphs once i've managed to frame my thoughts, and i never do anything whimsical enough to warrant a one liner post and so on and so forth ...insert random excuses here...

yea. i think i should stop now - i seem to be getting somewhat ranty. some day soon i will write an incredibly happy post that will have nothing but goodness in it and will smell lovely like a warm summer's day and will taste like whipped ice-cream and will feel like... hmmm, ok :P i think i'm loosing my mind.

ooh - i think i'm actually really allergic to chocolate. i have this annoying cough that (possibly until now used to) comes randomly and i think it happens whenever i eat chocolate. i'll have to put it to the test. it would be so great if it was true, because i don't like chocolate and it would give me extreme motivation not to eat it :)
i figured this out yesterday when i got a magnum (the ice cream in magnums is the best ever, unfortunately there is tonnes of chocolate to get through first) and my cough came along afterwards to annoy me for a few hours. so it would be cool if i knew how to prevent my cough and it would never bother me again :) wooo!

and see - my mood is happy. i got over my mild annoyance at the world. actually, maybe my mood should be hungry. my stomach is empty right now.

dr. horrible's sing-along blog

http://www.drhorrible.com/act_I.html

heh heh, best thing i've seen on the internet.

things of little note

i'm off to dublin for the weekend.

um. that's actually all i wanted to say.
it's wierd, though. some of you may know that penelope_stone is my sister. well - i'm heading up to dublin this weekend because i have an interview on monday. but i also get to spend the weekend with lordkilljoy, which is great. penelope_stone also has an interview on monday, in kerry (where her boyfriend lives) and she is heading down to him today to spend the weekend with him. it's crazy how freakishly coincidental all of this is. and just to make matters worse, we just happen to have boyfriends who have the same first name. it's so wierd. sometimes i feel that someone "up there" is having a great laugh at all of this.

anyway. in my dream last night i was in a factory being offered a job. but not just one job - they offered me 5 different positions and i had to choose what i wanted. there were 5 levels - basic worker, technical worker, junior manager and 2 upper managerial positions. i couldn't decide between technical worker and junior manager and i was asking davidnarby his opinion. but even as i put the question to him, i knew i didn't want the responsibility of a manager. and i reasoned that i love doing technical stuff. it was odd.

battles - atlas

i'm totally obsessed with atlas (by battles) at the moment. i listened to it about 10 times yesterday. i ripped it to iTunes and each time it ended, i pressed play again. it's just not long enough - i get to the end, and feel sad, and say: "awh, it ended." i like it so much because it's a happy bobby song - the kind i can dance around my bedroom to. ok - dance around my bedroom is possibly an exaggeration on the size of my room. but anyway. it's a good song. we'll see how long my infatuation with this one lasts!

i don't really have much other news. i'm almost finished in CIT. just getting the finishing touches on the animation. there is once bit that everyone has a problem with, but i just don't know how to fix it.

ooh - i got my first "sorry we don't want you to work for us" letter yesterday. it was from a publishers - they were unimpressed by my lack of anything even remotely resembling editing on my cv. but they said it really nicely :) then i ripped up the letter and threw it out.

right so, back to work for me. i'm procrastinating now, because i'm not sure what to do with this problematic scene.

new music

i did have some news this morning, but i've forgotten about it. half way through my day and i have 5 things on my list of things done. i have 2 huge things left though. i have to change an entire scene and then change the timing on every other scene in the animation (because it goes way too fast).

oh, yea. i remembered what i wanted to say. i created a playlist on last.fm called new music to listen to. it's a mix of: hope of the states, do make say think, a sliver mt. zion, set fire to flames, battles, jonny greenwood, guillemots and athlete (the last 2 only have 1 song each). i'm really liking all the music. of them all hope of the states is my least favourite, but they are still good. i'm really liking battles; they have a very cool sound (math rock, apparently). i had atlas stuck in my head all through lunch.

yea. i havn't much else to say. i'll go now.

ps - i made a new icon last night :)

i have an interview

happy birthday partical_boi.

and as my title says: i have an interview. waahhhhhh. davidnarby came to pick me up today (i didn't cycle in because it was miserable this morning and i was suffering some kind of crazy depression) he said usit had called. i was like: seriously. i applied for the job last night. i was moderately excited. well - i was very excited, but trying hard not to be. it could have been a rejection letter.
anyway, i rang the lady who'd rung me - no answer. so i went and checked my emails. i had one that said: i tried to contact you to schedule an interview. waahhhhhhhh. an interview. it's so exciting.
:roll eyes: ok - it's an interview. there is still a high chance that i won't get the job, but i can always hope. actually - generally i do better on the jobs i don't want, maybe i should start convincing myself i don't want this job. yes: think of the early mornings, the lack of personal time...
so - the job. it's doing web design / development for USIT. just the kind of thing i enjoy doing. my interview is on monday afternoon. i'm not going to say i hope it goes well, because it will go however it goes and i'm not going to get my hopes up too high.

my dream last night

yea - this one gets its own post. i had such a crazy dream last night. i can't exactly remember the story very coherently, but it involved walking acrss a desert, getting attacked by africian tribesmen, having one tribesman try to marry me, getting to the city and into our hotel. watching fireworks out the window and fighter planes fly overhead streaming coloured smoke behind them. it all sounds normal enough, but i woke up quite wierded-out this morning. there was something creepy about it.
yea, and there was this other bit where i was checking my emails and lordkilljoy had sent me one saying it took him 17 hours to get back to dublin. i remembered that bit brushing my teeth this morning and had to do a quick double-check to make sure i had actually dreamed it. i hate when that happens.
anyway - i'm going to do some work now.

a follow up to last night's post

so this morning i talked with people in my family. penelope_stone's reply was: "you always hate work. you complain endlessly whenever you are working." i thought i liked working in interval (in christchurch) but obviously not.
davidnarby's insight was to tell me i'm being too much of a perfectionist and working on anything is a series of iterations towards perfection, and if by 4 iterations you get to 90% of perfection then that's good. while getting to this point, i mentioned that i like animating and i don't find it boring, yet i don't like my current job. liking + not boring = not liking. yea - we noted the lack of logic and balance in this one too.
i think it all comes down to the fact that they've left me alone with little input and less feedback and my lack of self-confidence is getting in the way and making me mentally wring my hands at every step i take. i just can't run with something when i'm not sure about it - i either ignore it (which i can't do with this project) or stress out, endlessly procrastinating and getting nothing done while stressing about not getting anything done. it's a vicious circle.

i really don't like working

there's something about me and waking up to an alarm for work that just don't go well together. it dosn't matter where i work, or what i'm doing; having to get up for work and then go do a day's work makes me really, really tired. and when i get tired i get depressed, so having a 9-5 job just kills my usually perky and good-natured personality. it's awful. my mood hasn't been this consistently low in over a year. i'm still mainly good most of the time, but at least twice a day i fall into a lull and get to wondering what's wrong with me and why i don't feel happy (or at least neutral). so now (because i can't think of any other reason) i'm going to put it down to exhaustion. and saying all of that, i'm going to go to bed now - because i can only summon the energy to sit here and listen to music. i had to quit playing oblivion earlier, because i couldn't focus enough to think about what you're supposed to do in the game / go out and get a new quest.
yea - 11 hours sleep, here i come!
i know i've ranted about this before, but i hate going to bed early because of some external source - aka the rules of society that say work starts early in the morning. i said before that sleeping through 11pm is bad for me, because it's the most creative part of the day for me... my body goes wild releasing endorphins, but when i'm asleep that dosn't happen, so i'm getting depressed because i'm missing out on my daily fix of natural-happy-drugs. o_O i have no idea if this is truth, but it sounds good to me. actually (after a little reading on wikipedia), i'm quite certain i just fabricated that whole paragraph. the part about 11pm being creative wasn't made up though. i sometimes get totally hyper at around 10:30 / 11ish. it can be annoying when i have work and have to go to bed. that happened last night - it was 12 before i crawled under my covers, and then i read for a bit. i'm rolling my eyes at myself. silliness!
hmm - i actually don't think i'm in the mood for a decent rant. my mood has neutralized - writing about it clearly had therapeutic values. anyway - i'm still wrecked and i'm still going to bed.
no doubt i'll update in the morning - until then.

edit at 9:04, i'm still up. i got distracted looking at my website. my 3rd year flash project is totally insane. i can't believe i came up with the idea.

films, friends and dreams (fabrications?)

went to see wanted last evening. i didn't really have any pre-conceptions going into the movie - i'd only seen one trailer and that showed a really cool-looking bullet flying through the air and some people fighting and it looked like a good ol' action movie. and it was inspired by a comic, so i wanted to see it; but i wasn't loosing sleep over excitement about it. and for me, that is always the best way to be when going into a film.
about 10 minutes i was like: this is a very cool movie. by the end of the film i was like: this movie is the coolest think i've seen since equilibrium. it was one of those films that stayed with me after i left the cinema, during dinner afterwards, on the way home, when i got home, going to bed, getting up this morning... yea. it "resonated".
so that's "films".
onto "friends". while me and lordkilljoy were hanging around town waiting for the fil to be on, i ran into neil and suzanne - the couple we shared a lift from bristol airport to glastonbury with. that was random and uexpected, but good. at the same time, lordkilljoy was talking to an old friend (possibly??) of his, so it was doubly random.
now for "dreams". i had crazy dreams last night about trains. trains used be a huge feature of my dreams a few years ago, and last night they came back with a vengence (i hate not haveing an in-browser spell-checker). me and penelope_stone were trying to get a train to maynooth, but we weren't sure what one went there. there were loads of people on the platform, all pushing and shoving, and when a train came half the people got pushed out in front of it. i was one of them, and i leapt to the other side of the tracks. then trains were coming from everywhere, with no room to dodge between them and i was jumping wildly to try to avoid them. i did, but one girl wasn't so lucky and i watched as a train ran over her arm and sliced it clean off. blood poured from the hole in her shoulder and she screamed and cried, and i felt so sick watching. i'd lost penelope_stone and we still had to try and get on a train... i can't really remember much else, but i wasn't really a nice dream.
i wonder if work is bad for me?

i tell myself to slow down, but it dosn't work

since i got home from my round-the-world trip, i've been a lot fitter than i've ever been in my life and i don't want to loose this fitness. so in an effort to stay in shape, i cycle into work (for the 2 weeks that i will be working). this morning i wasn't really feeling the greatest, tired, my stomach is being a bit wierd... and i decided to take it easy cycling in.
hah.
i got as far as the corner onto the back road (which is about 200m from my house) and i was speeding; cycling as fast as i could along the smooth stretch of cycle-path. so much for taking it easy. i pushed myself up all the hills and raced down all the slopes. oh well. it was fun, and the rain held off.

the weekend was good. i went to a house party with lordkilljoy on saturday night. he'd just come down, after a day of work and then a 3 hour car journey. i was well impressed with the fact that at 4am he was still up for drinking cocktails. but the night was good - they sell stone's ginger wine in ireland, so that's what i was drinking - mixed with sprite. yummy.

we're thinking of going to the cinema tonight. maybe to see wanted. lordkilljoy's seen it already, and there are about 5 films that i want to go see.

i got back into my novel a tiny bit on saturday (??). i realized that i have so much that needs re-writing, or just writing for the first time. my scenes don't blend so well and i have to introduce some characters in a better way that i have done. so at least i know what i need to do now, i shouldn't be procrastinating so badly any more.

not much else news - i should get some work done...

ooh - dave's campaign ended last night. the game was good, but the ending was a bit easy and not at all what we expected.

into work

usually, i'm a very punctual person - early for things even. except for work. work was always the one thing i could never motivate myself to get in early for. i'd usually get in a few minutes before the hour - just enough time to get in and get organized (like take my coat off and sit down). but now i've started being 10 minutes late. and this dosn't bother me, but each time i walk in the door to the office i think of the scene from the matrix where neo gets called into his boss's office and the boss says "you think that somehow the rules do not apply to you" (well i'm not even sure if his boss does say this - smith could say it at some stage, but anyway).
yea. this little story doesn't really have a point - i just wanted to write it here, becuase these are the little things that i miss writing in my journal. you don't get to write this kind of stuff when you just stay at home all the time. you don't have these little random thoughts because everything is mostly similar all the time.

yea. i'll go do some work now.

i think i should use tags as subjects

i got 9 hours sleep last night. i hadn't realized how tired i was until random tears started leaking from my eyes. it's not the right time of the month for random crying, and there's nothing wrong in my life at the moment, so at that stage i became a little shocked that my body was actually still functioning; because i'd not had a good night's sleep in a week. i went to bed then, that was at 9ish. and i slept soundly until my alarm went off at 8 this morning. i would have slept longer if my alarm hadn't gone off. ah well.

so barry and the lads had a d+d session on saturday. it seems i missed a good game. they are in the process of destroying the world it seems. killing gods and releasing demons - and that's our good party. oh well.

not much else to say. i'm in cit right now, coming up with ideas and watching promo animations that deign studios have done. most are amazing. actually. a lot are 3d and it's totally made me want to be doing some modeling and 3d animation stuff.

lordkilljoy is coming down on saturday. i can't wait. it's been like 2 weeks or something since i last spoke to him face to face. gmail chat is all well and good, but it can't give you a hug or hold your hand. anyway - roll on saturday :)

i have a job!

ok, it's only a job for a week or so, but still. i'm working in CIT. it's strange to be here again. they've done some home improvements - added new doors and such. i just went for a walk and ate a nectarine outside, and the air smells lovely. damp and grassy and woody - like a forest after a rain show. who would have thought the college grounds could smell so good. the sun is out too - drying stuff up and warming the air.

i came in this morning and put on phantomFM, and the first 2 songs i heard were ones that had been popular when i was working in EMC. it was a bit strange...

anyway. i don't have much else to say.

glastonbury 2008

woah, there's just so much to write about. it's a little daunting trying to get 5 fabulous days down into a little box of text. so maybe i'll just start with some pictures and go from there.





and all the rest of the pics can be found in my scrapbook.

so, let's see, then. wednesday, we left ireland and arrived at the festival. a very smooth journey involving a lift to the airport, a flight, a taxi to the festival drop-off point and a bus to the festival. there was a huge queue for international ticket collection, which was remedied by the organizers just handing out blank tickets to everyone in the queue. possibly not the greatest thing ever because no one got a ticket with their name or picture on it, but we all got to get into the festival. but well. we found a good camping spot in the family camping area. and even though we were woken by the shouting of kids' playing at 8:30 every morning, it was worth it not to have drunken people falling on our tent.

wednesday evening involved shopping, eating and sampling somerset cider. strong stuff, that. so wednesday night was a really good laugh, once again we ended up in fits of laughter at the edge of the stone circle. and then we went into a little tent where a girl was singing "the mouse on the stairs" and we joined in somewhat rowdily. we calmed down quickly and in a blatant display of random drunken shifts of form, we went writing in our journals. funny!

thursday was spent in a sort of haze of tiredness and general hung-overness, but it got much better as the day went on. more shopping and eating and drinking smoothies and going for a mid-day snooze. we went to bed early and didn't get up to anything crazy.

friday saw rain, and the start of the music. the ting tings played in the john peel tent, that was the highlight of the day for me. we also saw camille o sullivan, kate nash, a bit of sinead o connor (she was terrible) and kings of leon. we had lovely warm showers too. the key to showers at galstonbury is to go at about 6pm, when everyone else is getting drunk and settling in for the headliners. especially easy to do when there is no one you've ever heard of on the line-up.

saturday saw the end of the rain and an eclectic day spent shopping and catching random acts in the circus area. there was nobody good on any of the main stages saturday night, so we saw a really spectacular fire show instead. it was amazing. plumes of fire rising 10 metres into the air. we were at the very front of the barricade and the heat was enough to warm the air by about 15degrees. the noise of gas burners shooting massive gouts of flame into the sky was somewhat deafening. on friday night we'd seen and heard it all the way at the pyramid stage... when that ended we strolled into the astrolabe theatre for black sky white doing "bertrand's toys". it was freaky. people dressed up as marionettes dancing to chilling, deeply threatening music. they danced like creatures who havn't quite grasped the grace of movement - like anti-elegance. but it was amazing to watch - captivating. so disturbing that you couldn't stop watching it.

sunday... ahh sunday. the day of leonard cohen.
he's the one person at the band who's music i really like (ting tings are good, but they are nothing but a fleeting drop of some happy chemical in the music world, like a party that you really enjoy while it's happening, but you don't pine for it when it ends, because you know there will be other excellent parties.) but leonard cohen; he is a legend. a singer / songwriter of epic status who has entered into the realms of the human unconscious. his set was amazing, even if he only sang five songs i know. i think his voice has deepened over the years, just listening to his essential this morning and it seemed way higher pitched. anyway... he was cool. he tilted his hat to the crowd after each song and smiled for the cheer he got. at every song the crowd went wild - the cheer was phenomenal - like the cheer that's usually reserved for the end of a gig. yea, so he was good :)
we had a second shower on sunday, and then caught the end of neil diamond's set, which consisted of sweet caroline and forever in blue jeans. the headline slot of the festival for us was my morning jacket on the park stage. they rocked out pretty well, but we were just too tired to fully enjoy them. i got chow mein on the way back to the tent and that was glastonbury 08.

awh. i didn't want it to be over. i wanted the music and the good food to go on for ever. but it did end and monday morning dawned bright and sunny and we packed up and got back to bristol airport with neil and suzanne (the same people we shared a taxi with on the way down) and flew back to ireland and eventually got home at 11pm.

and that's that really. i think, next year, if i dodn't know at least 7 bands on the line-up i won't go. because it's really not fun going to bands when you can't sing along. even though the fringe acts are what glastonbury is all about, nothing raises your spirits like singing and dancing with a crowd of people to your favourite songs.