Dragon Age and other ruminations

Been playing a lot of Dragon Age lately. Really addicitive but have hardly made any progress due to my constant reloading to see every angle of every conversation lol.

I’ll probably be playing it when I get home tonight, although I have had a sudden craving for photography. I don’t think I’ve even looked at my Camera in nearly a year and I bet there are a lot of photo’s on there I haven’t been through. Got an urge to have a trawl through all the stuff I haven’t been uploading or processing and make sure it is available.

Anyway, it will be much easier to play Dragon Age lol. And then after that I have to get through Mass Effect, as the second installment is due out in January. There are also a few PS3 games I need to complete – Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Valkyria Chronicles etc.

Maybe it’s for the best that the Icecrown Citadel content patch for WoW isn’t out yet, as if that came out as well I don’t know what I would do. Assassins Creed 2 is out this week / last week as well. Getting really good reviews and apparently supposed to be extremely amazing. Argh, there aren’t enough hours in the day (mostly thanks to having to work for 8 of them lol).

Daylight savings

Daylight savings is horrible. Just because some business man wanted longer to play golf in the afternoons does not make a valid reason to screw with world timezone settings. Argh.

Also, I am trying to get photo.artinstill.com working again since moving my hosting to Jumba. No idea when this will get completed. I hope to be spending more time on photo’s once this is done. Of course I have said this many times in the past, but this time I mean it, honest.

Yes the buses are horrible

The new bus timetable is as bad as I feared. I now spend around 30 minutes more each day in travel, the bus stop isn’t near my work anymore and I have to leave the house earlier and leave work earlier.

 So no idea what Action buses were thinking when they made this but I think the word ‘Thinking’ is being overly generous.

So anyway, no new news here except that I have been slack and not taking photo’s. I can’t even really blame World of Warcraft, as I wasn’t taking many photo’s before I started playing again.

Perhaps it is just Canberra. In Brisbane there was always the river, the gardens, Southbank etc and plenty of Overclockers meets to go to. In Canberra I really didn’t expect that things would be so based around the ability to drive. Basically if you don’t drive in Canberra, you are screwed.

So there is nowhere for me to go to take photo’s. And yes I should be taking them of anything, even the garden etc but it is hard to work up enough care factor about Canberra to even do that much. It’s as if I don’t want a photographic record of ever having been here lol.

So anyway, enough rambling from me. Back to the void again I go.

Finally + Buses:

I received my Lenspen’s (from www.lenspen.com) and cleaned up the sensor on my camera. One of the things that has been holding me back from photography lately has been the fact that after taking a great photo, I then need to spend some 2 hours or so cloning out all the dust spots. So after some 3+ hours of carefully cleaning, then testing, then cleaning my sensor it is now in an acceptable state. I plan to head out next weekend and take some photo’s of whatever I can find around Canberra that’s within reach of my bike.

On a related note, it is finally getting warm enough that I may start considering riding in to work. Except I like having time to jump on the PC in the morning and get the bus. So do I place fitness over luxury… tough choice.

Also I am very upset at Action’s (the local bus company) new bus time tables and routes. If I am reading the new maps correctly it is going to make getting to and from work take around twice as long and be utterly inconvenient. Everyone at work seems to be saying the same things for all sorts of different suburbs. Oh sure, if you happen to live in a shopping centre the new system is fine, but god help you if you live in a suburb. They seem to have cut most of the suburb routes back and turned them into loops that deliver you to a shopping centre where you then change buses to an express to the city. No idea which bright spark came up with that idea – some of the suburb buses are standing room only in peak hour, now they will be funneling all the suburbs into a handful of buses at shopping centres. It’s all going to crash and burn within days of going live is my prediction.

So anyway, that’s the news. Stilll working on a new design for the site but am having trouble coming up with a logo I like that will also go on business cards. So nothing can be done without a proper logo as to some extent that will impact on the theme.

Procrastination:

Hmmm, I really must remember that every time I don’t feel like playing games or don’t really feel like doing anything – I must work on photo’s.

 Perhaps I am also using the wrong word, work has such negative conotations. Perhaps I should instead say I should spend more time ‘appreciating’ my photography. I do really want to get some in a state where they can be sent off to be printed and framed.

Of course by using the word ‘should’ I am again shooting myself in the foot. I really ‘should’ (hah) be saying something like ‘I am most enjoyously meaning to appreciate the fine works of digital art (in still) that have languished most inconsolably on my hard drive for an overly long period of interminable length.’ Or something.

Progression:

Well, I am now getting settled in our new house in Canberra.

 Feels like we haven’t been there that long, but I was thinking about it and it’s actually been quite a few weeks.

I finally have a new PC now, so I’ll get Photoshop installed back on it, copy all my stuff from the old PC and can then commence work seriously on the photos. I’ll also try and get together a better website than the wordpress default template.

So that’s what’s on the cards for the next week or two. If I can manage to stick to this, there should be something up here within a month or two more. Promise.

Working Life:

Well, I have started work as of the 16/04/07.

 The job so far is great. Lots of projects coming up to keep me busy and the people I work with are professional and on top of things.

So the only drawback will be that this means even less time to work on the website. As evidenced by the fact that this is the 11/05/07 and I have only just posted to say I’m working now.

So anyway, I’m still stuck with no computer, so at least the job is keeping me busy during the day, and I can only get bored at night now.

Update:

I’ve been stymied by the fact that the only PC I have access to at the moment (as my PC is still in storage in Brisbane) doesnt have anything like photoshop or Dreamweaver etc installed. It makes it difficult to get any meaninful work done.

On the other hand I have been keeping up to date with the latest in internet social networking and cool ideas.

The sites I’ve currently been testing are:

http://www.twitter.com – a great way to get free web based sms, or to get in touch with friends.

http://www.virb.com – only a month old, but could be slated to be the next myspace.

Of course I also have a site at Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/artinstill/)

I am also experimenting with Smugmug on my own page here – http://photo.artinstill.com

So I have a lot of projects on the burner at the moment which will hopefully integrate and create a way of communicating with friends and family, while also being useful and providing free services.

So that’s it for this update. Check those sites out and add me as a friend to keep in touch

Welcome to ArtinStill.com!

This site is currently being worked on, as I am trying to get together both photography and a number of my other interests under the one website.

I am also going to work on creating my own WordPress theme to match.

So look for updates in the near future!