Spooky, huh? :-)

Pat (who was definitely not bored at work at any point today)

“Yep. That’s it. I’m not longer a Systems Engineer. I’m unemployed.”

The above is what I’d written 365 days ago. Yep, it was a year ago that I quit work in order to go on the Big Adventure. To be honest, it seems like longer than that.

Not sure how I feel about it to be honest. I think I feel a little sad that right now I’m stuck in an office and definitely not heading on a plane to the other side of the world in the next couple of weeks, but on the other hand I feel really happy. Happy that a year ago, despite my feelings of concern, I did it. I buggered off around the world. And what an amazing time it was.

For the record: I’m definitely doing it again. I just don’t know exactly when :-)

Aaaannnyway, onto more recent times: in the past month I’ve been doing the following things:

• Working
  It’s been two months at my former-and-now-current employer and I’ve finally settled into the swing of things – and despite the occasional rocky day (where I wake up thinking “Aaah why am I not traveling the world right now instead of working in an office?”) I’m finding things ok. It’s really not too bad.

• Gyming
  Amazingly I’ve kept up my gym visits over the past two months – probably because I’ve been going before work and not after work (which rarely used to happen through spending the day convincing myself of reasons why I shouldn’t go). Despite the occasional bad week, I’ve definitely been doing well. I just need to cut down on eating and drinking quite so much!
• Socialising
  Lots. Gary and Sarah’s wedding (which was lovely), visiting Paul and Em (hilarious weekend in Ireland), visiting Kate and Jen from traveling (awesome weekend in Nottingham), catching up with Lev and Jess (and recording some rather amusing audio bits and pieces (more info to come on that one), to eating some damned fine home made curries round Gary-from-work’s house with some of the work lads. Photos are available in the usual place, of course.

Tonight I’m going Go Karting for free. There are definitely benefits of being a member of my gym…

Toodles,

Pat

This is going to blow the industry away. Especially that “Save” thing…

A New Kind Of Design Software

(Thanks to Pauly G for passing me the information on this valueles-er, priceless tool)

Pat

Howdy “Dodgy Sketches Of New Site Designs” Fans!

I’ve been spending a bit of time sketching out site designs for Squage.com and have finally come up with something that might just be good. Alas, its current form is that of a doodle. However, seeing as I’ve been have verbal diarrhea on this blog of late, I figured another fairly pointless post wouldn’t hurt.

So here’s the sketch:

It’s set below a sunny, grassy scene by the sea, with the content sort-of “underground” below it.

The little Squages at the top will be forming a kind of scene, with each one doing something that represents the section of the site they represent (e.g. there’ll be a Squage DJing some tunes to represent the “Sounds” section of the site).

The big Squage on the right will represent the section of the site you’re in at the moment (”Pictures” in the example above), and sits above the side bar (an “in the foreground” underground bit), with the section’s subsections listed.

It’ll be all in colour… I’m trying to go for a cartoony, fun feel to the site. It largely depends on how good I can get with CSS, I guess. Oh and whether I go mad with frustration at Paint Shop Pro 8 crashing every 5 minutes before I get it finished.

So, here goes…

Pat

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/09/28/half-workers-snooze-job

(I’m not referring to the snoozing bit, just fyi)

I’ve been looking for a Winamp plugin that actually did compression / limiting etc PROPERLY for a LONG time… and on checking out winamp.com recently, I finally found it.

It’s rather humbly called “STEREO TOOL”, rather than “FECKING GREAT PLUGIN WOT CAN MAKE YOUR OUTPUT SOUND ALL TASTY, LIKE” and if (like me) you’re a bit of a saddo and like to have your songs sounding as though they’re playing on a radio station, you really should go here and download it.

Couple it with Sqrsoft’s very tasty Advanced Crossfading Output plugin and you’ll be laffing all the way to the bank (where you’ll take out some money in order to buy that £100 boxed set of old Radio Caroline Jingles…)!

Pat

P.S. I’m actually interested in this for some podcast / online radio ideas I’ve got, not because I’m a sad case. Well, not only because I’m a sad case…