ShadowReality

Yeah so January.. I’ve been AWOL.

I guess my blog posts stopped new years day, one of my two cats died to a somewhat unknown cause and it feels from that point on things just have snowballed.

I also got into an argument with my computer, you see it wanted to be upgraded, but I told it it would have to wait, well it threw a tantrum and blew up it’s motherboard, and so the argument is settled, I shall be upgrading my main computer as soon as I can find the spare cash to do so, and in the mean time I am borrowing a friends.

I also got a bunch of Xbox 360 gaming done, having fun with mass effect and still playing call of duty 4 multiplayer.

I will be posting much more in Feb, but I need to finish off my Hellish January first. Until then.

It’s coming up to December already, 3 more weeks to Christmas and before you know it, 2008. It’s at times like these (when I have made no effort to get any presents) that time decides to speed up. I can’t wait to just relax in the holidays.

I sold some (3) of my old PS2 games on ebay, they got more than I thought they would (£25ish total) for the games that they were, so I think before christmas is upon me I’ll take advantage of one on ebays cheap listing days and get rid of a whole ton of stuff. Then I’ll buy a ton of stuff in the January sales.

Also what with all the Half-Life2 and Orange box related stuff, I decided to see how far I had got in HL2, it turns out I had not completed it, so thats another game I can occupy myself with until my Xbox360 is back. Which is currently officially being fixed I am told, but I wont get it back till about the 2nd week in December, how pooey.

Other than that I’m really really busy with work, I’m trying to get everything finished and out of the way, and other than that I feel Fantastic.

Much Like this song my Jonathon Coulton (visit his site NOW!), the same person who wrote the Portal Ending song (Still Alive) from the Game Portal , and also Code Monkey which is another great song of his. Audio clip below, theres also a very amusing Youtub vid.

“All I know is that this steak tastes better when I take my steak taste better pill”

As I mentioned in an earlier post my Xbox 360 has recently stopped working 15 days outside it’s warrenty. Unfortunatly the repair of my washing machine in my house had taken presedance over getting my Xbox 360 repaired (only just) but now I have finally reached the point where I am about to ship off my 360 to that big repair centre in the sky, I am told it’s where all 360s eventually end up.. well I’m starting to think maybe that is true.

But thats not the point of this post. I’ve decided to keep track of my 360s little trip to microsoft on my site, not only to a guide to others as to how well (or bad) the UK support centre is, but also for my own records, and if they truley mess up I suppose I can always direct them to my site.

So tommorow (when I get a chance) I’ll stick up the story so far..

As Promised the repair status page will be updated as it unfolds.
http://www.shadowreality.co.uk/xbox-360-uk-repair-status/.

So here it is, the new site theme that I have been working on for the past week, I do hope you like it.

It’s not 100% complete yet, but I mentioned I wanted to go live by the weekend and I can add the rest in my own time, I still have a lot to add, but in the meantime if you find any errors, broken images, 404s, or any bugs in general can you please take the time to add a comment to this post.

From now on I aim to post more on my site, and I’ll be changing some of the category names around. I also have in mind more community based features for those who sign up to the site ranging from a simple personal avatar for the comments to maybe reserving some upload space for files. As I add all the new features I shall be making posts about them to keep everyone informed.

YAY!

I’m still working on my first wordpress theme, and since I’ve been working on it so much I thought I’d write a bit in here like a developer diary.

First off, I thought that developing a wordpress theme word be a little difficult/fiddly, I wanted to make it strict XHTML and a table-less build using as much CSS as I could, to make things a bit more bulletproof. It turns out all those wordpress tags and functions are easy as pie, its the CSS browser rendering that ultimatly will kill you.

By that I mean making it look the same in Firefox , Internet Explorer 6 & Internet Exploroer 7. I remember reading on A List Apart, that CSS can often be like Whack-A-Mole, As soon as you fix one thing, another problem pops up in the other browser, and so far I’ve been hitting the shit out of my CSS, metaphoricaly speaking.

I know there are shortcuts around this, but I am unwilling to comprimise my design for the sake of easier and quicker css, if there is a way I will find it in the end. So thats what I’ve been doing, I think im on track for it being changed across at the weekend, I’m looking forward to it.

I’m off this weekend, off to a scifi convention with Helen (girlfriend) who loves these things with a passion, and me, well at first I was a bit iffy about it, but thier actually fantastic events with some great appearances by well known sci-fi actors, I particulary enjoy the talks; last year armin shimerman was there (Quark DS9/ Buffy) and he was fascinating, luckily he’s coming again this time along with some people from BUffy, Angel, Firefly, Star Treks, Battlestar Galactica and a few others.

But more than that it’s time away where I can relax for once far away from a computer, without people begging me to fix or code something. ahhhhh. Plus the alcohol, did I mention the alcohol, ahh right , no best not mention it then. =)

When I return I plan to give the site a bit of a face lift, stick a few more plugins on it, clean it up a little, maybe make it a bit wider.. im starting to feel like this blog is shrinking.

Lately I have been feeling rather guilty about neglecting my Ps2 now that I have a Xbox 360. I think it’s becuase last time around I went from a PS1 to a PS2 with the PS2 having backwards compatability for the PS1 so the new releases would still playable. But being so dissapointed in the Sony Ps3 and the extortionate amount of money they are being sold for I now not only think about the latest Ps2 games (God of War, Okami) but Xbox360 & Xbox games aswell, and that’s not even mentioning handheld games for the Nintendo DS!

Also 2007 looks like it’s going to be an absolute awesome year for games, and i’ve already passed on a few great titles becuase I simply don’t have the time let alone the money for my video game indulgence. But I know I don’t have to get them all at once, thier going to be available for a long time yet, and even when they stop being sold in the shops there is always ebay and I look forward to scouring ebay for some bargains.

Quitting smoking sucks. I feel that i’m quitting too early, that I could still get away with smoking for a bit longer, but i guess thats not the point.

It’s been about 2 weeks since I ran out of my tobbacco and stopped smoking my roll-ups, but it seemed i chose a real humdinger of a week to stop, I dont want to disclose what has happened this week but needless to say i have had a bit to many of my girlfriends ciggarettes to compensate, but that aside I really havn’t been smoking. I’d say 5-7 cigs over 2 weeks or more, so like I mentioned in my previous post, i’m weening myself down, albeit rather fast.

The cravings are hell, Maybe I should of used the patch huh.. I mean I’ve been smoking almost a decade, your body does wierd stuff to you when you cut off it’s precious nicotine supply, lack of concentration is #1 for me, one day i even had wierd hand shakes. Well maybe i’ll of totally of quit by end of feb, either that or started up again. Place your bets.

I think it’s time I quit. I think now I am smoking more out of habbit than for pleasure, becuase that is how it starts, that is how it starts for all drugs, at the beggining the positive feeling you get from it out weigh the downs and the risks involved, and then slowly but surely the risks and negitives outweigh the positives.
Apparently i’ve been told I start saying i’ll quit every time I run out of tobacco, well that may be true, but i never have actually attempted to quit just knew that I should at some point, like all smokers know they should quit, however this time i’m going to follow my words with some action.

What actually annoys me is that it’s coming up to new years which is “that time of year” when everyone tries to give up something, so fuck it, im not giving up until after then, so i can see everyone around me try and give up something, then i can laugh in thier face when I succeed later. I guess I should make a date mark it on my calendar.. so I’m gonna say end of January, hell that may seem like a way off to many of you, but I plan to go cold turkey so I am giving myself some “weening time” by smoking a little less up to then, hopefully that way it will be easy , because i’ll be fucked if im spending more money on nicorette patches or crap like that, though I have heard hypnosis is the new thing to do and that it works very well.

That’s pretty much what everyone’s been asking me recently, well the answer is I’ve just been working non-stop, which for me at least is a good thing, especially with the holidays coming up. But over the Christmas period im going to try and post a lot more regularly on this site.

Oh and do feel free to sign up to post comments.

On a different note, some guy re-cut the movie office space into a horror/thriller movie.

OFFICE SPACE!