Ramblings of some guy

I’ve been using tumblr for a day now. Got it setup to work on my own domain, had to put it on a subdomain so I didn’t mess with other stuff on the domain. This is pretty great. I’ve chosen a decent looking theme, added disqus and flattr buttons to try and get a bit more content/referrals coming in.

Obviously, this sounds like a great service, but it’s missing a few things, and requires more effort in some areas than it should.

Read More

I’ve been interested for snakes for several years now, even before I went to University a few years back. Here’s all the snakes I’ve had. Years in the headers I when they were born and died, not ownership dates, those are mentioned in the text.

Bailey: Corn Snake: 1990s - 2010

About 2 years ago, I acquired someone elses snake that had not been well cared for and hadn’t been fed in what seemed like months. She was an old (Estimating early-mid 90s, no one knows) Corn Snake and 4 1/2 to 5ft long. I nursed her back up to health and she started to get nice an chubby.

The problem was, she’d been so badly cared for she got very defensive within her Vivarium, so shoving your hand in to attempt to handle her was a risky manoeuvre that took some effort if you didn’t want to get bitten, and even though I know it doesn’t hurt (from experience) I don’t want to get bitten.

Bailey sadly passed at some point last month, but she was old and had stopped eating, so it wasn’t much of a shock

Blaze: Amelanistic Corn Snake: 2008 - Current

So, I had an aged Classic/Normal Corn snake in my care. What next I thought. Within a month of acquiring Bailey I purchased a month old Amelanistic (Lacking melanin, so no black, similar to Albinism) from a breeder I met online. He was about 8” long when I got him, and was an awesome little guy.

He’s going strong nearly 2 years later, has been growing well and eating well. Due to my constant handling of him from a young age, I could probably poke him in the face (I wouldn’t) while he’s in his viv with no chance of being bitten, this guy is tamer than my cat. Despite being this tame, he strikes amazingly, which is the most awesome thing to watch a snake do

Chester: Western Hognose: 2007 - current

About November last year, I purchased a Western Hognose from a local exotic pet store as an ex-breeder. He’s the most active snake I’ve ever seen, and he just looks amazing (I really love hoggies).

Unfortunately, since I got him, I’ve yet to get him to take a meal. This is a growing concern as he’s obviously losing a lot of weight, and has even shed due to being too small for his skin, which is not a good sign. He’s still active though and I’m still trying as many techniques as I can find to get him to eat.

One thing I didn’t realise when I bought him, is that Western Hognoses are rear-fanged venemous. It was unproven and thrown away as incorrect information for quite a while, but recent information suggests it is actually true. In order for them to inject their venom (very weak stuff, comparable to a bee sting) into you, they actually need to “chew it in” to get the fangs in the back of the mouth to dig into the flesh. It’s all very interesting stuff :D

Pics coming soon

So, there I was. Looking to start logging my progress in Juggling, what a great reason to start a blog, share techniques and compete with fellow jugglers to improve quicker. Now, 3 years later, I haven’t touched a juggling ball for months, and 5 is a struggle (I know that sounds good to some people, but I used to juggle 5 as warm up). My hobbies have shifted and changed, my interests have ermm, damn, thought I was on a roll there. Anyway, what I’m saying is I have new things that take up my time that I can scribble about.

First of those new things is my cubing/twisty puzzles. Now this is something that started just over a year ago, I stumbled onto a youtube video on how to solve a Rubik’s cube, it intrigued me. I downloaded some program for my PC that allowed me to twist this virtual cube about. I hadn’t actually watched the video yet, I thought I would test my ability. 3+ hours later, I had managed to complete one side properly and was trying to work out how to do the next layer (I had decided going through the layers was smart, apparently I was actually right). Sometime the next day I was trying to solve the final layer, this was a bitch. I couldn’t move or rotate any pieces without screwing up the puzzle. It was here I cheated, and I feel bad about that moment.

Anyway, I can now solve a Rubik’s cube (3x3x3) in about ~30s with a very basic technique. I have 2 of these (3x3x3 Cubes), one I currently have a weird sticker pattern on that makes it a bit tougher (some pieces can swap in ways that makes the puzzle looks unsolvable). The hobby obviously doesn’t stop there. I have a 2x2 a 4x4, 2 5x5s, a 6x6 and a 7x7. I can solve them all easily, the challenge is no longer there. So, what else have I got? Well, a 3x3x3 with no centers (void cube: causes some more unsolvable looking situations), a single colour 3x3x3 which changes shape (bump cube/mirror blocks), a square-1,a megaminx (first non cubic puzzle),2 mastermorphixes (awesome puzzle), a 2x2x4 (cubic puzzles confuse me still), a golden cube (owned it for over a year, still can’t solve it) and a gear cube (this is awesome). I also have on the way: A skewb,a hex skewb,a pyraminx,a helicopter cube, another 3x3 and a jing pyraminx

I’ll go into these puzzles in detail over time, and talk about my other new hobbies a bit tomorrow :)

Well, I haven’t updated my old blog for about 2 years, but I keep wanting to write some stuff for it. Problem is, I forgot both the username and password and couldn’t be bothered reinstalling Wordpress for the 50th time.

I’m now working in web development, doing lots of php,mysql and javascript on a daily basis. It’s really good and I’m learning a lot about creating an entire system from ground up, which I think is the most useful thing in the programming world. I intend to eventually make apps myself and sell them off, in an attempt to make some kind of money for myself. This seems like a much better route to take than just working for a large company, hoping that one day I’ll get paid a reasonable salary for stupid hours of actual mentally testing work.

My main issue with this goal, is that my design skills are pretty lacking. I know what’s good when I see it, I just can’t make it. I’ll have to get there one day though, the interface is the biggest part of an application you wish to sell, people are very shallow when browsing software