I’m going to London on saturday to meet a friend. Hopefully it’ll be a good day. I’ve gotta get the bus down there, because it’s so much cheaper than a train. It’s only a 3 and a half hour drive though so I guess it’s not too bad. I have to be in Hanley by 8:00 to get catch my bus at 8:15 AM, that should get me there for around 12ish.

I’ve never been to London for some reason, so i’m gonna struggle navigating the place probably. Gotta get the bus back at 6 PM, and that’ll get me back for 10ish

Meeting my mate Oliver down there so it should be a good day, we always have a lot to talk about! I’ll post more later.

Found this cool thing called SplashPower today. It’s basically a pad, around the same size as your standard mousemat, that you plug into the wall and you simply place your mobile devices on it and it charges them up! Their slogan is “Wireless power for your mobile devices”. I’m not sure how it works, apparently you need a receiver as well as the pad itself, which is a bit of a downer, but that said it’s still getting rid of the need for 10 different chargers for your different mobile gadgets.

SplashPower - http://www.Splashpower.com

Also, i’m having problems with my zBoard. It’s not got the keys I need on it. I’m running UK keyboard settings on a US keyboard layout. Naturally, i’m missing various keys that I didin’t need before but now i’ve started coding this and that I need them (mainly the vertical ‘pole’ and the backSplash). I thought I might as well upgrade to a wireless keyboard if i’m going to change my keyboard completely. I found a decent one on Play.com, it’s £30.00 so i’ll be able to pay for that in a few weeks (I owe a lot of money out to different people at the moment, and i’m only earning £30.00 per week until I get a job).

Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 700 Keyboard And Mouse

Well my last post was so longwinded I think I ought to keep this short.

Woke up a little later than I had hoped (accidentally knocked my alarm off and got up at 12. I’m probably the only student in the world who hates lie-ins). Went to town to try and look for a job again, handed out a few resumé’s in different stores but no luck with the job availability thing.

I then met Jess (who, to those who don’t know, would be the girl i’m seeing). Met her at the park and we went for a walk together around the lake which was nice, albeit not as romantic as I had hoped (bunch of people picking the shit out of the lake in florescent “Stoke-on-Trent” jackets isn’t exactly what I would call romance), but it was still nice.

We then walked to Hanley trying to decide what to do, and went to Café Nero so we could get warm. As always, the over-friendly staff bullied me into buying a cookie when all I wanted was an over-priced coke. They always remind me of a character from Eerie Indiana. I then decided to get the bus to Whitmore and go to the pub for a bit where I saw my dad and had a pint with him.

Went home, did some web design work (still need to finish off heeyo.net’s hompage), then siphoned off the rest of the day playing Counter-Strike and talking on MSN. Oh and writing that stupidly long blog post.

I must warn you, there’s a lot of content. Just read the bits that interest you!

On Friday I visited the “thinktank” in Birmingham with my dad. It was his idea, I think he’s keen on making sure we spend time together before I go off to University. So he picked me up from my house at 10:00, and we drove down to Birmingham. The thinktank is part of a building called “Millenium Point”, which seems to contain some sort of university of technology, a 3D ‘IMEX’ cinema, and the thinktank its self. We had something to eat before we went in, then paid for our tickets (we also decided to pay for a visit to the planetarium contained within the thinktank) and went in.

It was a real head blag. So many different things to look at and explore, we weren’t sure where to start. We decided to go down a floor and start from the bottom and work our way to the top. The bottom floor was themed around the past, and it contained actual working and original engines from the 1800’s. The engines were still moving around, working away doing whatever it is that these particular engines do.

Some were made to pump canal water in and out of the lockes, and others were made to slowly pump up sewage and dump it into the sea for it to wash out (nice visual images — can’t wait for the next beach trip!). We read all about them, and what they did and who invented them. It was pretty interesting stuff, especially watching them in motion and seeing how they’ve improved over the years.

The next floor was themed around the present day. There was a lot of kids/families/etc around so I didn’t take any photographs here. We didn’t spend to long on this floor as it was pretty busy, and as I said there was a lot of screaming kids running around and they kind of annoy me if i’m honest. This floor had stuff like what we do to research dinosaurs, forensic science, how our underground pipe system works and a lot of other cool stuff. It had a lot of neat things, like the skeletal structure of an adult reindeer, and the skull of a triceratops dinosaur.

The third floor was pretty small. It was mainly based around the future, but also had some space elements in it (the planetarium was on this floor). It had various exhibits, showcasing the latest technologies and played videos on how they’re going to expand in the future etc — some pretty cool stuff really but nothing that particularly “wow’d” me. That said, they had a robotic arm that could be programmed by the visitors to play different drum beats. One of the drum “faces” was missing though, so it was trying to hit something that wasn’t even there. It got me thinking about it all, and I decided the day it realises that the drum is missing is the day I start worrying about robotic world dominance.

The space part was pretty cool, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t know already. The planetarium was something special. You sat down in these comfy seats that are tilted back, and you look up at a dome. The guy came in, introduced himself, explained a few typical safety regulations then started up. He showed us where various planets were, and then described the different constolations. My only complaint is that it didn’t last long enough!

You can see all the photos I took here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heeyoportfolio/tags/thinktank/

The rest of the day consisted of shopping (got some jelly beans, and some socks (not bad considering dad paid for the whole day!)) and we also went to this really nice italian restaurant named San Carlos which I recommend to anyone who lives in Birmingham! Check out my thoughts by clicking here (scroll down the list of comments until you see “Chrish”).

Well I decided to have another crack at making something with Lua. Came up with a little thing that was inspired by Counter-Strike: Source’s zombie mod. In the mod, when you get stuck (usually stuck in a prop, or something), you type in !zstuck, or sometimes !ztele, and it will teleport you back to the spawn. Well, i’ve just simply re-created that for Garry’s Mod. Thought it might come in handy for when people trap you inside of props with AntiNoClip applied to them, or if noclip is not enabled.

Currently, you type in !stuck, and it re-spawns you. You might wonder why not just type “kill” in console, and save the hastle. Well by doing it this way you get to keep any custom SWEP’s you have! Ace! You also get a nice little “blip” sound and i’m gonna work it so the place you teleported from “sparks” as you leave, just as a  cool little extra.

I also need to work out how to add a delay between !stuck commands so that people don’t spam with it. I’ve found a module called Timer, which i’m hoping will help me do this.

Well I read through a few tutorials on the Garry’s Mod Wiki and I managed to get a rough understanding of the very basics, but then I got onto loops and I started to get lost with it. Whoever it was that wrote that sure has a bad way of explaining things. Then it got onto tables, and things got even more confusing. Finally, I got onto “Your first script” and I just ended up closing it and giving up.

I don’t know how the hell anyone can learn that thing.

I used to be so good at it! Now I can’t hit a something unmissable with something accurate. Have I got worse or has everyone else got better? It seems impossible to find a server full of casual gamers these days, everyone seems to be semi-pro/pro in comparrison to me. Where are all the people who just like a quick game every now and again? Probably outside with their friends, unlike me who seems destined to stay in-doors for every break from college I get.

I’ve been playing Hide and Seek mod for Counter-Strike: Source quite a lot recently. It’s a cool mod, where you disguise yourself as props from a list of props found on that map and then try and “blend in” with the level by, for example, disguising yourself as a telephone and placing yourself on the desks in cs_office. Of course, there’s some glitches in the mod. In fact, I think it’s quite badly made. The author’s should find some way of “scanning” the map for existing prop_physics objects, and then compiling the list based on that scan, this way people would be able to play on custom made maps without having problems because from what I can tell, you have to manually create the prop list yourself. Few other things would improve it, such as hiding the “Voice chat” icon from above props heads, because it gives you away if you talk.

I’m thinking of getting back into Garry’s Mod again, but it seems that whenever I try I just connect to a server and then just jump around wondering what to build until I give up on the idea again. Maybe I should start trying to learn Lua or something, so I can start having more fun with it from a developers point of view as well as a players.

Went to Maplins electronics today about that 3.5mm jack - phono cable I mentioned in my last post. I got the cable I needed, got home, hooked everything up and was about to start playing around with it when I realised I had no power supply for my mixer. So I looked in the box it came with, and there’s nothing in there, even checked up the loft in loads of boxes/bags to see if I could find it in there but I had no luck. It’s a pretty standard plug, fortunatly for me, so i’m just gonna have to buy one of these the next time i’m in town.

Was at a party last night. House got pretty messy and her mum was going mental saying she wanted us all out. I didn’t leave, but she wouldn’t let us sleep in any of the bedrooms so I ended up staying up all night. Feel like i’ve done loads today, but I suppose that’s given since i’ve been awake for so long.

Made friends with the milkman this morning, he offerred me a ride into Newcastle on his float. I denied this offer through fear of being kidnapped. Also made friends with a sewer grid, which I dubbed Storm.

Did a little more work on heeyo.net, probably finish that off by next week.

I heard about this when I went to the stores to pick up a new 3.5mm to 3.5mm Jack Lead so I could play my TV through my amp. It’s a simplistic idea really, plug two headphones into a stereo mixer. I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to work, as the the guy only spoke to me about the concept of it, but theoretically all you would need is a stereo mixer, something to output the sound, two iPods, and a couple of cables.

So i’m thinking, I could probably use my amplifier to output the sound. I’ve got a mixer already (IMG Stageline MPX-1 XXS), and an amplifier with two speakers hooked up to it. All I need is a second iPod (I could probably borrow a friends, or simply use an old mp3 player or something), and I need to grab two twin phono to 3.5mm stereo jack leads and two twin phono plug to plug leads and I ideally I should be sorted!

IMG Stageline MPX-1 XXS

Twin Phono to 3.5mm Stereo Jack Lead

Twin Phono Plug to Plug Leads

I’m thinking maybe i’ll plug my Gameboy in, maybe try and get myself a copy of LSDj and start making some chiptunes. We’ll see. That’s all for now!

This really made me laugh.

http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?t=515298

That’s all I have to say at the moment.