Ramblings of some guy

"If tears could build a stairway and thoughts a memory lane I’d walk right up to heaven and bring you..."

Wed, 18 May 2011 22:56:50 +0100

“If tears could build a stairway
and thoughts a memory lane
I’d walk right up to heaven
and bring you home again”

- Author Unknown

This made me think of my two babies that I never got to hold… I love you both always and will think of you forever! x x Megan and James x x

(via newagepixie)

How things change

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:00:00 +0100

They really do, sometimes you just know that the path you’re heading down is the right path to be taking, so you just run down it, paying little attention in what’s going on around you, because you are exactly where you want to be, with the people you want to be there with.

On January 7th this year, a path which I had long ago decided was not one I’ll be able to go down was opened up to me. This path as such, was a life with the greatest person to ever enter my life, Lynette Davies. The relationship I’ve had with her over the years is a hard one to explain, when I first met her she was with someone very close to me. We grew close and quickly became very good friends, able to confide in each other and trust each other with nearly any secret we happened to have. This friendship grew into much more than a friendship, we fell in love, at a time when we really shouldn’t have done.

Since then we’ve gone through a lot together, one major event that made us closer than ever before, and will live with us for the rest of our lives. It’s something neither us can forget, and neither of us want to forget. After that event, something else threw us apart, we had our first proper falling out, and it was a serious one. We didn’t speak for well over a year. We started speaking again in the July of last year, and instantly went back to our old ways. This was excellent, I loved speaking to Lynne again, I suddenly realised how empty my life was without her in it, how much I’d missed her since we’d last spoken, and how much of an idiot I had been for refusing to speak to her over something which was, in the grand scheme of things, a small thing to get mad over. This unfortunately came to an end sooner than I had hoped, her partner at the time got jealous of our relationship and we were forced to stop communicating.

This brings it back to January 7th, a few days before I got a message from Lynne. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but there were 2 things that struck me. The first was that she was communicating with me again, after months without contact for reasons mentioned before. The second was that she seemed very distressed. I later learned that her partner had left her completely out of the blue and that she had a complete mental break causing her to end up in hospital. Which is not the thing you want to be hearing from someone you consider to be your best friend, even if you haven’t been able to speak to them for a considerable amount of time.

We spent the next few days just chatting through the night, catching up and reminiscing about how things once were. Before we knew it, we had both decided that we were seeing each other again, we never asked each other how they thought, we just knew where we were. It’s a strange feeling to have that connection with someone, and it’s one I’m so glad I’ve found. So, January 7th, the day I finally got to be with the woman I love in a way that no one can have any real objections, nothing standing in my way, the path was opened.

So, nearly 3 months on from that date, and we’ve been running down that path together, aiming for the same goal, knowing that we both want it. The goal we’re running towards is a common one, but most people take it slowly, tip-toeing along, making sure that they are ready, their partner is ready and that people around them have accepted their relationship. Me and Lynne see things differently, we know what we want, and we know what the other wants, and that is a life together, marriage, kids and our own house. Growing old with each other and enjoying our lives along the way. We know each other well enough that we don’t feel the need to slow things down, we know what we’re doing is what we want and we know that we’re not going to change our minds about it.

Over Valentine’s Day, a big thing happened in our lives. One of the major things we’d been aiming for actually came to be. We got pregnant. Our life together had become an amazingly real thing that we would definitely never forget, our first child together was on the way. I couldn’t stop smiling, she couldn’t stop smiling, we were so ridiculously happy I’m sure we could have been declared insane (more so than already). Things unfortunately came crashing down to earth a few weeks later when Lynne collapsed in the bathroom. She booked an emergency appointment with the doctors to make sure everything was all right. What we learned, was that the pregnancy was ectopic, meaning the life of Lynne was in danger if things weren’t done to resolve the issue. We were forced into a situation we never wanted to be in, we were going to lose the baby. In the space of 2 months, we had managed to get to a stage where most couples would take years to get to, and then lose it all in a matter of days. We had the most extreme emotional rollercoaster I have ever experienced in the space of 2 weeks.

After managing to hit both ends of the emotional spectrum within a week, we’ve recently managed to find the middle ground and return to a state that we enjoy being in. The other night, a very interesting conversation took place. We were talking about where our relationship actually is, how we’re more than just boyfriend and girlfriend to each other due to how much we both want to be with each other. The next thing we knew, we woke up engaged and beaming from ear to ear just thinking about the conversation from the night before. Being engaged means a lot, it’s a sign of things to come, a step that was inevitable but still amazing to have finally got through. I can’t explain how amazing it is to finally be at this stage with the person I’ve always wanted to be with. Yes, we’ve missed the beautiful, romantic proposal and the shiny ring, but that is still going to happen, it’s an amazing gesture that I want to be able to provide when I’m able to, but for now, I think we’re both over the moon with being engaged, although it must feel weird for her, engaged but with nothing on her finger to show for it.

So, in under 3 months, we’ve gone from not talking to engaged, we’ve bounced through nearly every emotion possible, and managed to have to deal with a situation that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. We’ve gone through more with each other in the last 3 months than some couples I know have gone through in the years they’ve been together. I don’t regret any of it, I’m happier now than I’ve ever been before, I’m with the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with, and we know exactly where we’re going and are able to trust each other, and confide in each other more than anyone else I’ve ever known.

Pixie's Wonderland: A beautiful quote by Rosemary Urquico

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 20:43:00 +0000

Pixie's Wonderland: A beautiful quote by Rosemary Urquico:

newagepixie:

“Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know…

I stumbled onto this quote, and from the first line I was thinking of Lynne, after sending it to her, she obviously felt the same way about it, promptly putting it on her blog

Disconnection

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:55:39 +0000

I’ve never found it easy to stay close to people I’m no longer around, there’s a lack of reality to chatting online; the absence of the basic senses is something I struggle with when communicating with people. I find things like smell, sound and touch much more powerful in recognition of a person than actually visually seeing them and definitely much more than just talking through a chat program or SMS. Smell and sound are the main

This lack of connection to people when I’m not around them is a very strange feeling that I do struggle with on a daily basis. I don’t keep in touch with my family as much as most people seem to do, but when I’m around them I can stay up and chat for hours, have a good time and get along with them really well. Don’t get me wrong, I do love my family and I wouldn’t be who I am without them, it’s just I sometimes when I’m not around them, they’re very rarely on my mind and I have no intention on attempting to get in touch and chat about how my day/week/month has gone like I would do when I’m visiting.

The people I talk to the most when I’m not physically around them are people I either regularly see (on a weekly/daily basis) or my girlfriend. Regularly being around people seems to help me feel connected to them for a time after we are no longer around each other, I wonder how they’re doing, what they’re up to and general small talk topics, but I don’t feel it is important what the answers are. I know that sounds really bad, but it’s just the way I feel. I don’t feel anywhere as close to them as I do when I’m around them.

The only exception to this weird state of mind I live in is my girlfriend. I love her so much that I constantly feel connected to her, I’m emotionally invested in her happiness, and I constantly worry about how she’s feeling, hoping she doesn’t feel sad, lonely or negative in any other way. The only way we’ve been able to communicate recently is by sms,phone calls or Skype. The Skyping and calling has definitely helped me feel more connected, but strangely for me, I still feel connected when chatting through SMS. SMS is obviously not enough of a connection though, I don’t feel as connected as I do when calling her, and nowhere near as connected as when I am there (I think that’s probably normal though).

What’s strange about how intensely I feel about her, is that instead of not actively caring about her when I’m not with her, I worry a lot. I don’t feel I’m able to protect her if she has “a moment”, I’m not able to calm her down, not able to hold her and make her feel safe. This is made especially difficult by her issues, her current situation and recent events. I won’t go into any of them, those are personal to her.

The long and short of it is, I don’t feel connected to anyone I’m not around other than her, and when I’m not around her I still feel so connected that I’m constantly worrying more than I probably should.

PS: I struggled with writing this post, and was also unsure if I should even post it. I’m worried it will paint me in a very bad light, as a person who doesn’t care for anyone. This isn’t the case, when I’m with people I feel completely connected to them, I feel the whole range of emotions. Sometimes even a memory can trigger me to suddenly feel connected to someone again. It’s just not being there with them makes me not think about them at all.

The Better Things

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 15:46:00 +0000

Sometimes in life you meet someone awesome, someone that you have such a great connection with that all you seem to do is think about them, and being with them makes you smile a stupid grin. Unfortunately, sometimes this awesome person is someone that everyone around you doesn’t want you to spend much time with for whatever reason; sometimes these reasons are perfectly acceptable, and in my case, three or so years ago, they were.

I’m not going to go into the details of why we probably shouldn’t have been spending the time together that we did; but those reasons no longer exist. The fact they no longer exist doesn’t help completely, even years later I still feel that people won’t be able to completely accept the fact that we are together, and I’m worried that my family may show some hostility when we let people know of our plans and the current status of our relationship.

Although our relationship started 3 1/2 years ago (behind closed doors) and we are still ridiculously close today, we spent a long time not communicating due to things that were both said and not said by both of us on a subject which I have only fully disclosed to a few people even though it is something that has been on my mind for years and is a very touchy subject that I get emotional about nearly every time I discuss it.

Only recently have we been in a situation where we can actually have a proper relationship, as such we have finally been able to seriously discuss a future between us. It’s been quite interesting and emotional having these discussions, it’s amazing how close we are despite of all we’ve been through and all the obstacles we’ve had to contend with throughout our relationship. It also amazes me how well she understands me, how much she makes me laugh and smile, how she has no issues opening up her deepest darkest secrets to me and also accepting me for who I truly am.

She’s the greatest person I’ve ever known, the greatest love of my life, and if I believed in that sort of crap I would describe her as a soul mate. The connection we share is something I have never experienced to this level before, we get each other at the core and it is an amazing feeling to have. I truly do intend to spend the rest of my life with her, start a family with her and die old with her.

I would normally rant for about 5 paragraphs about now

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:28:23 +0100

But I’m way too pissed off to say much interesting.

Is it bad that I can be so annoyed at something that ranting just doesn’t cut it anymore?

Anyway, some bad/annoying/frustrating things happen to frequently to be healthy, not entirely sure why I bother trying to be happy at times, always end up in a worse state than when I started. Trying to be happy is just like setting yourself up for a kick in the balls, it hurts like fuck and outweighs all the good that came from the experience.

Although, as we all know. As soon as we get the opportunity we try to be happy again, sometimes it even lasts long enough that we feel that nothing can go wrong this time… of course it never lasts long enough and after the now common kick in the nuts, all the happy moments become things that just piss you off. The happy memories become memories you wish you didn’t have. The faces, the smells, the sounds, the songs, the places; they all become things you no longer want, the remind you of what once was, what will never be, and worst of all the kick in the nuts that you thought might not come this time.

And yet we carry on with everything, repeating this vicious loop, hoping that at some point the happiness will only end when your life ends and you’ll leave the world with a smile on your face, instead of just ANOTHER kick in the nuts.

Okay, apparently I am in the mood to rant, ignore the title if you want.

Well this went well

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 23:44:33 +0100

I intended to do some blog posts on stuff, I forgot what now, it’s been a while since I last updated.

Well, new things have happened since then, so lets do a quick catch-up.

I started work on amdavies.com — I didn’t like alixd.co.uk, too unprofessional looking domain. Once I get amdavies.com up and running properly I’ll do a nice redirect. I started on amdavies.com a while ago and then stopped, as I normally do.
I’m not sure on the last status update of Chester, but he started eating again, and is now nice and chubby as a Western Hognose should be :D
Some serious stuff went down… again, related to the last properly serious thing that occurred to me. It’s all very personal and lots of people are involved so I don’t want to go through it all. Either way, I’m a bit touchy on certain subjects again at the moment. So good fun.
Kier and Mike of vBullet (pre-IB takeover) fame, have announced their upcoming new form software, XenForo. I have a lot of respect in the work these guys do, I was impressed with everything they did at Jelsoft when they had some creative control, so I can’t wait to have a play with this from the admin/developer side.
Kier showed off a little cool thing for member profiles. I played about with it and wrote a cool script to do some stat signatures. Was pretty good fun to work on for a day or so. Never really played with GD much.
Mikey hinted at a decent Xen*.com domain still available so I grabbed it up :D
I just finished spending a few days working on said domain, allowing users to generate the URL for my sig image stuff :D XenMod is looking pretty hawt.

That’s about all the interesting things I can think of. Anything else that happened was either not that important and so instantly forgettable, or I just forgot cause my memory is kind of shocking.

If you must Mauer, if you must

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:01:16 +0100

If you must Mauer, if you must:

Haha, what an awesome catch by Mauer!

Wikipedia Game

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:38:33 +0100

Wikipedia Game:

Test your skills of wasting time on wikipedia. How quickly can you get from one random page to another?

Snakies!

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:20:12 +0100

Bailey

Chester

Housing

Old pic of Blaze

Snakies!

My tumblr issues

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:26:00 +0100

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.

Post Editor

This is a major point of concern. The “Rich text editor” used for creating posts, is completing lacking basic functionality. I have options to bold,italicize,~~strike~~ the text. Order it in lists, add an image and links, and put texts in a blockquote:

like this

But at the end of the day, none of that is actually useful in creating a nice post. There’s no method of creating headers, changing font style or size without jumping in to html mode. Due to this, I’m writing my blog posts, in HTML, which is just a bad thing to be doing if you want people who don’t understand HTML to be using the product.

Widgets

The theme I chose has a great section on the right, for things to go. I was hoping for a list of widget or something I could chose to be put in that area, things like twitter or facebook updates.

Of course, there was nothing. I had to manually add a twitter block, in HTML again, modify some CSS and add a clearing div so the “Following” section didn’t steal the twitter sections space. Again, this is all fine for me, I’m a web developer, it took me about 5 seconds to read the code and work out what I had to do to get it showing where and how I wanted, the average user will just assume it’s impossible without outside help

Comments

As I said earlier, I had to manually add comments using disqus (seemed to be what everyone else was using, so I went with it). Some themes apparently allow you to add disqus comments very easily, which is quite nice. The theme I chose didn’t, once again I was into the HTML off to edit some CSS and work out where to put various blocks of code.

I’m still struggling to get rid of some bugs with this. Not all post types have a comments link, and one post even has had the title changed to the amount of comments it’s received. Which is a really amusing bug when you think about it. When viewing the post itself, the layout seems to explode, so I’ve got some more digging about in CSS to do to get this working correctly.

More to the point though, what semi decent blogging software(other than tumblr apparently) doesn’t have it’s own commenting system? It’s absolutely rediculous.

Theming

Maybe this is just the theme I’ve chosen, but I don’t have the ability to change ANYTHING other than the background image without once again, editing the HTML. I shouldn’t have needed to edit any HTML at any point during setting up my blog, unless I was making strange modifications (flattr mostly). I hope they learn the issue with this before a lot of potential users just leave because they can’t do what they want.

Twitter Integration

I’m putting this issue under twitter, although it may be an issue with the bookmarklet.

I have attached my twitter account to tumblr, so I can easily tweet about a new post on the blog, this is great and I can see myself using this a lot. On the current page, I’ve got a checkbox “Send to Twitter” and the ability to edit the message: “Blog: My thoughts on #tumblr [URL]”. It will tweet out that message I send, replacing [URL] with a short URL to the blog post.

The issue comes when I’m using the “Share on tumblr” booknarklet, this allows me to quickly add a page/video/picture etc to my blog, without going through the hassle of copy pasting URLs. The problem is, there is no “Send to Twitter” checkbox, it is automatically checked. I don’t want to tweet about everything I add to my blog, I like to keep my twitter about slightly thoughtful messages, no video links to the funny cat video I found on youtube.

Stats

I admit it, I’m a man obsessed with numbers, all I want is to see everything in terms of numbers. The problem comes when this is not available to me. I want to know if people are reading my blog, how they got there, if they come back, if they click on any individual posts etc etc. This is both useful information and interesting to me. From what I can tell, tumblr offers me nothing, absolutely nothing. I have no clue if people are reading my blog. I know if they “like” my posts, but that doesn’t really mean anything if 90% of your readers aren’t registered on tumblr

The other thing: Snakes

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:28:33 +0100

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

Gear Cube - Quick solve (via disjunto) Terrible quality video of...

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:36:25 +0100

Gear Cube - Quick solve (via disjunto) Terrible quality video of the gear cube and me solving it the day after it arrived..

How things change

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:26:00 +0100

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 :)

Finally, an update : The Word of Notch

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:53:17 +0100

Finally, an update : The Word of Notch:

Minecraft is an awesome waste of time. Latest dev update just got pushed. Go check it out :)

On to tumblr I go

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:40:07 +0100

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