Posts filed under "broken-kode"
Although not an immense milestone by most blogs estimation (especially the professional blogs which pay you by the post), I think 1300 posts on ‘Kode is a significant achievement to sit back and take stock of. 1300 posts is roughly 216 posts per year, which is a little over 1 post every two days for the past six years. Truth is, there have been some pretty busy days and some very quiet days (nay months) over the years but overall there has been a consistent output of ideas, thoughts, critism and links over the years.
Even with the rise of twitter, I’ve still managed to keep this website alive. The truth is using it as an extended bookmarking tool has kept it fresh and alive in my mind and effectively kept the site relevant. See many of my recent posts (in the past year or so) could have easily been covered as tweets. The thing is I love my site. I like using it as a tool to communicate my ideas.
However the biggest change I’ve made here this year is removed comments. Comments were really sporadic in general, and the only thing I could count on was bloody spam. Getting rid of the spam has been great, but of course it’s also meant that if in fact I wanted to have a discussion with anyone then it’d have to come from an email, or on twitter.
On the design aspect of things, I’ve never been more happy with the general look of the website than I am now. It’s like 5 years of experimentation have brought me to this site. In many respects it’s as minimal as the very first iteration of the site. The truth is the site doesn’t have any wow factors, no drawings, no clever javascript, nothing of the sort. What it lacks in those bells and whistles, I feel it makes up in form and function. Refined design.
Obviously no idea what the future will hold, but it’ll involve a lot more art coming onto the site. I’ve been drawing more this year than I have,….well ever. Obviously my biggest concern is finding a solution that actually works for me as well as Asaph and Habari have this year.
It’s been nearly 4 1/2 years since comments were officially not part of this site. Back then it was because I couldn’t actually host them on my own site, until of course I moved to WordPress and during the blogging revolution of the early naughties. So what’s changed? Twitter and Facebook. Both of which have brought the internet to the world that hid themselves from it, but they’ve practically killed the blogosphere, or at least how it used to operate.
The funny thing is turning them off was on the cards for a while now. I’ve noticed this downturn for about a year now (probably a few months before I even moved to Habari as my blogging engine of choice).
Does it upset me? I guess it’s a different kind of change. While sometimes I like twitter, there’s too much noise for me on there. Also the fact that everyone only speaks in soundbytes does annoy me. I can’t read people’s thoughts about things because they’re limited and effectively people’s voices on the internet are silenced.
In the meantime I’ll be here writing more than 140 characters and hopefully sharing some good links from around the net. If you want to comment on something, drop me an email or you know…send me reply on twitter (maybe I’ll even integrate that twitter reply thing that Michael is attempting at the moment).
Thought I’d write down a list of all the areas that this site still needs work on. This is for my own personal use which I’ll be checking back on over the next few months to see what I’ve completed and how long it actually took me to complete.
Add a feature image at the top of the site (integrate design to suit).
Add gallery section. Either going to be via Picasa or a self hosted version. If self hosted then it’ll need to be integrated into the design of the site.
Sort out the way comments are presented.
Write code to remove comments as a default (but allow previously posted comments to remain seen).
Add a decent contact form.
Integrate the forum design into the site properly (instead of using the general vanilla flavoured colourings).
Sort out the CSS file to allow a simple IE6, IE7 template. Also include some form of message to point peeps into getting a better browser.
Tart up the 404 page.
The great things I’ve found about the current design is that it allows me to get on with just linking to good stuff around the web. It’s not been designed to provide a showcase for my stuff, but that’s going to have to change or at least I’m going to have to think about a way in which I can tweaks things to not feel out of place. Building on the foundations I’ve set up.
Owen touched up on something about the length of blog posts. As I read his 3 paragraphs I think he’s definitely correct about the length of post that I enjoy to read. It’s on very rare occasions that I will actually properly read a long indepth blog post, unless of course it’s about a topic I thoroughly enjoy, but truthfully that’s the exception rather than the norm.
Our attention is spread across copious amounts of information, that we process on a regular basis. Information overload isn’t a new thing; limiting yourself to 3 paragraphs for a blog post to get your point across seems to me like an incredibly succinct way to communicate in a more fulfilling manner than the 140 character limit on twitter.
Self editing is a difficult thing, especially when posts are cheap. Beginning, middle and end. Three paragraphs. Communicate your thoughts clearly.
The problem is that 2008 lacked focus for these areas, so it’s time to provide them with a slight bit of structure. I doubt I’ll be able to meet these deadlines, although I might try and attempt to do something about it, the harsh reality is that life will no doubt get in the way; however it’s better to have some structure than none at all.
Compile my Japan photos into a book. I’ve been meaning to do this for over a year. I can’t imagine this taking much of my time, except now that I’ve said that it’s bound to take a great deal of time.
This blasted thing has been waiting to be finished for months. In order to do anything I need to get some discipline. Therefore once a day for 1 hour (be it early in the morning or late at night), I will write for 1 hour. No internet breaks. Coffee break is at the beginning. Nothing but writing.
This is the working title for a little book that myself and Stathi will be working on this year. It’s a very fringe project but I think it could be extremely good fun as we’ve been talking about this for years.
This is something that I hope to get into, although probably the toughest thing to do really, as I’ve not drawn anything properly for nearly a year. Hopefully I won’t suck too much at the beginning to discourage me. The creative process for me is something that is sorely lacking in my life right now. While I don’t want to put something like a number of sketches/drawings per month or per week, I do hope that I surpass last year’s tally, which came to a grand total of zero.
Continued development of the ‘Kode goes without saying. The building blocks for version 8 have been established. I don’t intend to change anything in this design, except enhance it. Add more pages and consolidate the sheer amount of images and work I’ve created these past 6 years. It’s a tall order, but again not really in a rush, as I’ve got loads of other things to keep me occupied. However it’s important to make sure that i don’t let the work here eat into other projects time. Therefore the amount of time I’m allowed to tinker with the site, will again be limited to 1 hour maximum a day. This includes blogging/tweeting time.
5 years ago today, I sat in my room and decided to start blogging, and what an amazing 5 years it’s been - here’s to many more years of online presence.
Where the hell did a year go? The general consensus I’ve established from people close to me and others not so close to me is that this year has been a bit of a mixed bag in terms of whether I would consider it a classic year or one to put to bed and try and forget as soon as humanly possible.
2008 started on a bit of a high professionally. I was coming off my largest project (and probably my favourite project) but the future looked equally fun and challenging. What I considered a complete dream team of engineers started work on a pretty prestigious project in early January. Unfortunately the project didn’t continue. As they say when one door closes another opens. I had my fair share of these this year. One lead me to Dubai, another lead me to Abu Dhabi, others kept me in London.
Ultimately however my absolute biggest achievement was finally getting chartered (which funnily enough had a lot to do with that project at the start of the year). The whole process took me around 8 months to get done and another 2 months to get a certificate from the Engineering Council. So a tip to all your prospective chartered engineers out there, it takes the better part of at least half a year to get this stuff sorted out.
Inbetween all of this I was able to actually continue teaching (and learning from) the younger generation of engineer working up through the ranks, which is something I’ve always enjoyed, especially with those that I can see the changes happen.
The year can only be described as the year of the 1hour drama, or more accurately, it is the year I discovered HBO and everything was right with the world. For the first time in a really long while, I can probably count the number of movies I was genuinely excited about watching in the Cinema. Obviously the ‘Dark Knight’, ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Iron Man’ come high on this list, but in addition you had a Lebanese movie ‘Caramel’ and the excellent ‘Persepolis’. I found ‘Juno’ incredibly well put together and enjoyed it immensely. In terms of anime, there really wasn’t much new going on for me to get excited about. And of course my surprise movie of the year, SuperBad. It should be just that, super shit, but it ended up being extremely good fun to watch. The only anime movie I watched this year was ‘Origin’, but that movie doesn’t come close to ‘Paprika’ from last year.
However what I wasn’t ready for was this attack of truly inspired 1hour dramas from HBO. To kick it all off I started watching ‘The Wire’ The problem with starting on ths series is that everything else doesn’t come close to it’s perfection, it’s character development and it’s overall 5 year story. I could go on and on about the Wire but it would take too long. Shortly after that I followed it with ‘The Sopranos’. Now this was a series that I had started watching when it first came out, but the Greek television networks fucked it up and I lost interest. Finished this series as well and while most got annoyed by the ending, i thought it was masterful.
Following on from ‘The Sopranos’ was ‘Entourage’ and ‘Oz’. I’d never seen any of these series before, and they all blew me completely away.
The writer’s strike did one thing, and that’s give me the chance to actually discover previous gems from HBO. In my search to fill the void that Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Prison Break, Heroes had left I discovered the best television series ever made.
Speaking of Battlestar Galactica, only a couple of weeks to go before the start of the new series, and that is something I’m seriously looking forward to for the start of 2009…thankfully not a moment too soon, because I think I’ve run out of good HBO series to watch.
This year saw me quit basketball. This was a tough decision to make and I actually went back in September only to remember the reason why I quit in the first place. It’s about the people now not only the sport. I have to make a great deal of effort to play (compared to Greece or Uni) and the problem is I can’t bring myself to keep going in week after week for a sloppy game with stupid egos and arguments. Maybe (like a Phoenix) I’ll grab some games this year, but I’m not very hopeful.
I was meant to go down to Lebanon for my cousin’s wedding. However due to complications with the groom’s health the timing never came about and I didn’t end up going, which is a shame. However in a weird way I was able to see several of my cousins that i hadn’t seen in years (some bordering on 10 years). I also lost a grandfather figure in my life and my grandmother suffered from a stroke. Thankfully I didn’t have too many health issues, except my ongoing saga with my teeth, which I should be sorting out in the new year when I get my wisdom teeth taken out.
Without a doubt this has been the worst year for the ‘Kode. For some reason I couldn’t get around sorting out a design for the bloody place and that had a serious effect on the place in general. I had a huge amount of work done on Habari in the opening months of this year, and then I moved on to other things as I continued work on the ‘script’ (more on that in a while). I don’t intend to increase my exposure on the net, but rather i intend to consolidate all my efforts for the past 5 years. I want to make sure
Artwork - Sadly this was probably the one area of my life that really took a serious hit this year. I don’t actually know if I actually got around to drawing anything significant in 2008. A couple of sketches here and there, but nothing of any significance - easily the most disappointing aspect of the year for me. Here’s hoping 2009 can be completely different.
There is a threshold. For me to write anything, I really need to disassociate myself completely from my daily life for me to create. My brain just cannot handle the onslaught of information. I need to time. This year I had the opportunity to do this in Greece a couple of times, however the first script is not done yet but at least some decent progress has been made from the year before and the general building blocks are apparent.
So was it a classic year? From a creative, productive pov, no it wasn’t. This was the year that I burnt out, or at least felt like I was close to burning out. I think I achieved some goals professionally that I’ve been working towards for the past 6 years, which I feel great about, and getting citizenship will change my life completely.
I view 2009 as a year for regrouping and a year for consolidating my thoughts, efforts and creativity into one goal, and I view it as a year for focus.
Broken Kode has finally reached the 1000 posts milestone. It’s taken nearly 5 years to get to this stage (I’ll be celebrating 5 years of the ‘Kode in January) and honestly there have been several times when I’ve considered shutting the blog down and just keeping a few images and a brief note on here, but I just could never do it, it was like shutting down a part of me. One thousand posts, some good, some bad, some controversial, some stupid, some clever, some offensive, some thoughtful, but one thing I’ve always tried to be is honest.
As always thanks for both reading and providing your comments on the site.
Today I was reminded that you cannot force design. You cannot force creativity. While thinking of something else the inspiration will strike. From my point of view, whenever I create anything I can actually see the final product in my mind. Sometimes depending on whatever it is that I am doing I will see this picture clearly and I have the necessary tools and skills to achieve that vision, othertimes I can see only my shortcomings…this is probably the norm to be honest.
The site’s design has been building slowly, organically as I got used to the Habari codebase and also what I wanted to do. I pretty much guarantee that the actual colours wil change, however I’ve got an idea in my head that if executed properly could be pretty good fun for me to see and also could be a good note to stop the redesigning of the site for a good long while.
Oh my dear god, why didn’t anyone tell me the colours on the site looked soo drab? I’ve been looking at the site (and the redesign) was done on my mum’s computer which was one of those ultra glossy screened things from HP. Problem is the colours that I see on my screen in London are definitely not the colours that I was seeing in Athens and definitely not the ones that will continue to be used on the site.
Be back in a little while sort this mess out and talk a little bit more about Habari and what would be cool to have.
Expect breakages, spills and loads of stupid things to go on the site, for a long while, until I get my freak on and actually get to the bottom of where-ever it is that I want to go. Either way I’m hoping to make something to move past my cables design from a few years back.
Edit 1 - So the colour scheme in my mind has settled down a little. There are three more base colours to come, but really that’s only going to be in full view once I’ve sorted out the artwork that is going to be pasted all over this site (from which those three base colours will come from). I’m still playing around with the typography and trying to see if I’ve missed something fundamental in the last 6 months that I’ve been out of the game. More about that laters I guess.
It’s pretty apt that I should be installing and using Habari in September to run the Kode. See I am seeing this month as the start of new beginnings for me. I’ve decided to take a bit of a new lease on life here. A new way of thinking about certain things, and really setting up the next goals for the coming year.
Maybe it’s because of my birthday, maybe it’s becasue I’ve just completed getting my chartership and everything else was put on hold until I had achieved that milestone. Maybe it’s because I decided it’s time to create things again as I miss that buzz, I miss the energy associated with this?
Really it’s a collection of things, you can’t possibly try and have as many irons in the fire as I had at one point and NOT getting completely burned out. Now that life has settled down a bit I can begin to concentrate on building things again. Slowly this time and with a clear goal of where I want to be.
Expect a LOT more opinion in the future, as honestly I’ve gotten to that stage, where I will say exactly what I think and not give a flying fuck. I used to be more raw, but seems I’ve calmed down a bit and I think unless you’re slightly angry creating is just not the same.
Lets see how this goes.
After nearly 4 years running the Kode on WordPress, I’m making the jump and going to better pastures. The internet in general is not high on my priority list, however I love the Kode and want the best for it, WordPress has not been the best for it for many many moons, which is probably one of the many reasons that the site got a bit left by the wayside.
Expect a little bit of breakage, maybe even come back later for the new RSS feed (which I think will probably be http://brokenkode.com/atom/1), as I transition over to Habari. See you on the other side.
My focus in the last couple of months has shifted. This is probably the longest I’ve not been creative in the traditional sense of how I would describe being creative. I’ve not been drawing, not been designing (graphics at least), not been creating. Which to me is something really painful. I’ve stripped by involvement online down to an absolute minimum and all of this in the persuit of one thing. Finishing off my script.
This thing has been brewing for YEARS now and has taken more turns than I can imagine, but thankfully the last couple of months have been very productive. I’ve got the first half of the book mapped out and written. The thing is that creating a whole world is extremely hard. Every single character is new, every single setting needs to be described and every word of dialogue is analysed.
In order to help me get into the whole script writing, I’ve had to really emmerse myself in the comic production side of things. I’ve been reading scripts that are within the comic books that I read, I’ve been hunting online for various resources and the one thing that I’ve found is that the actual method is completely unique to every single person. I’m sure there are creators that have got the same method of working as I do, however I’ve not really read anyone’s account of this yet. Mainly I guess because the people that I’ve been reading that write and draw their own stuff have reached that level of craft where they can cut corners.
I’m still learning the track, so there is no corner cutting for me. The great thing about this experience however is that I can see the fruits of my labour slowly evolve. I started off with one page which was incredibly difficult to write (how do you start off your epic after all) before finishing off the first arc. It’s a slow process but ultimately once I’ve got the script in my hand I can then concentrate on the next task of drawing the thing. The plan and I will do EVERYTHING in my power to achieve, is to have my first graphic novel completed by the time I hit my 30th birthday (I turn 29 next week). It doesn’t have to be published, but it definitely has to be completed as one package which I can then start shopping around to see if anyone is interested (I have only two companies that I would consider publishing to, otherwise I think I’ll go down the self publishing route).
My creative energies for the next year are going to be fully dedicated to the story.
Oh my that is a first. First time in 5 years of blogging that I don’t actually say anything for an entire month. I’ve been busy…if you’ve seen me in the office, you’ll attest to this fact. Thankfully it’s not been just work, as that would make Khaled a pretty dull boy all around….which I hope never to become.
Life has taken over, so much so that my online activities have been curbed to an absolute minimum. So much so that I even got rid of my Blackberry today. I was THIS close to waiting till next week for the new iphone. What made me stop? The reason is pretty simple actually, I’m trying to step away from this constantly connected all the time fashion. It wasn’t doing my psychology much good and I really felt wired all the time, which was a bit much for my sensibilities. There is something called too much information.
Does this mean I’m going to be back online anytime soon? Nah, probably not. I’ve got more important things to do right now. My focus is shifting and I’m actually really ok with that. The main reason for moving offline is to try and concentrate on the script, which has been going slowly but actually very well.
One thing I will say about creating a story, it’s INCREDIBLY difficult to create something cohersive. So much so that I have an even greater appreciation for those people that can come through with their vision and create something that truly is beautiful to behold. I will have some sketches online sometime soon because it’s the story is part of the reason for this haitus. I’m becoming 29 this year and I will have the fucking thing done before that birthday, so that I can actually have a chance of drawing it before I’m 30. Tall order I know, but alas strive for the hard otherwise what’s the point?
There is definitely something to be said about a slow burning design. At least from where I’m sitting. I started redesigning the ‘Kode last week but the deal I made with myself was that I would limit myself to doing one small thing every day. One element of the design. Be it the typography, or some colour changes or implementing how the asides look. Nothing drastic, just small increments.
The honest reason for this approach is that my life doesn’t allow me the luxury to come in every single night and just hack away and try and sort the code out test it make sure it’s all pucker both locally and online before I unleash it in one big fell swoop. I’ll average 3 nights a week (usually less) when I’m actually at home at a reasonable time and I guess in part I was also suffering from a bit of design fatigue.
Trying to get to that final result seemed pretty daunting at first. Soo many pages that I want to sort out, so many elements that need to be designed for and implemented that when I’ve tried in the past year to deal with them, I just get overwhelmed and often they just live in an electronic graveyard on my computer.
So my tip for all you hobbiest blog designers that do have a bit of redesign fatigue, I would definitely recommend this approach of breaking the pie into smaller slices. Don’t get too upset if things are not there. Start on a solid foundation (I started from my favourite coding base from a previous design) and add to the design in a slow but controlled and consistent fashion. It might not get there as fast, but you’ll definitely enjoy the process more, at least I can claim that I am enjoying this tweaking a lot more than I’ve ever enjoyed sorting out my site.
Maybe it’s because you’ll have moved the design forward, maybe it’s because there’s something fresh to look at every day, maybe it’s both.
Nothing new to add to the general conversation of redesigned website to be honest just that this is what has been going on with my thought process lately (ok from yesterday). I’ve been sitting on a redesign for the ‘Kode for many months now. It’s been going on for so long that it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about. So much so that I kept flitting back and forth between designs last year in an attempt to get my act together.
However what I’ve gone and done now is gone back to the design I’m most proud of, from both a functional point of view but also from a code base. It’s a solid and relatively light code base which I’m pretty happy with. There are somethings that I know I can do better with however I don’t have the energy to start from scratch and don’t want to dive into someone else’s code really, especially as I want to be able to tweak this to suit my own needs completely.
So I’m going to be tweaking and adding something new to this site every day. Some of the tweaks may be pretty drastic to be honest, while others will be less than obvious. I’ll bring the copy in my static pages up to speed. I’ll sort out some links that are dead. I’ll start to sort out my categories properly and generally bring the design in an evolutionary method to where I want it to be.
I’m through with these drastic redesigns, maybe a slow burn approach will present me with something that I find more enjoyable to use, as my enthusiasm for writing is directly linked to the look of my site. So if you’re reading this on your feed reader, you might want to check the site from time to time to try and spot the differences.
It’s not a question of getting everything right the first time out, it’s a question of slowly evolving and adding and tweaking in a methodical and periodic fashion.
I was thinking about this today and basically, blogging involves removing the additional thoughts that are in your head that take up valuable space. Things that you should think about but not necessarily keep in your brain knocking about. That way it leaves you with more time to do other things, like in my case watch ‘The Wire’ (best police series EVER created) and read a few books (got a couple of reviews for books you really should read) and most importantly for my sanity, create things. That’s when I’m most happy, when I’m creating stuff.
The issue with me is that that part of my brain has been laying dormant as I began thinking and doing a bunch of other things that seriously didn’t really add to my being,…overall…in hindsight and all that. Part of the problem I guess is that I’m not angry enough at stuff, so it’s time to start getting angry again and flex that muscle again. It’s time to start creating again, it’s time to start blogging again, none of this 7 posts a month bullshit.
Elsewhere.brokenkode.com (powered by Asaph) is a an images dumping ground for things that inspire me and has been up and running for a week or so. I’ll hopefully get around to skinning this as well, but I’ve got to say that Dominic really did a good job on this little application and can’t wait to see future iterations.
To the internet. So last week we were offline at casa Khaled. Yes, that’s right, no net access whatsoever. At first I’ve got to admit that I was REALLY angry. Not at anyone but at the situation itself. I mean seriously, my computer felt like it was neutered. I felt completely cut off from the world and all because as it turns out one of the cables coming into the house decided to collapse on itself. Maybe because it finally decided to give up the good fight because of the cold weather? Maybe it was because the workers outside moved it a fraction and it was to frail to deal with it, either way I was cut off.
This has happened before to be honest, however this one I was a bit more composed with the whole thing. I was actually able to deal with a few things that I’ve been meaning to deal with for a while; like do a bit of writing, do a little bit of drawing and generally do a couple of things that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. One thing I did miss was this site. I realised that I need this place for venting, something which i’ve been doing a lot less of in recent times. One of the main reasons I continued to blog was because I liked the cathartic process associated with brain dumping, because after all that ALL I’m doing here. Sometimes I rattled a few cages, sometimes I make a couple of people smile, so I think I’ve found that spark that I need to really start making the words on this site start coming alive. So as of tomorrow, you can expect a lot more ‘Kode action coming your way, daily even.
It’s also time I kicked WordPress like a bad habit. Seriously, this shit takes FOREVER to log in. Once you’re in it’s kind of OK, but honestly SLOW as a fat man in water. Some things in 2.5 are nice, but alas I’m thinking too damn little, too damn late, I guess I will write something about it at some point.
It’s been a real eye opening month so far. One of the things that I made sure I did this year was spend more time LIVING. Towards the end of 2007 I kept asking people what their highlight was. What wasn’t surprising was the fact that most people really didn’t have much to give me. It was mainly work related or the realisation came forward that well we all spent more time working or whatever than actually living our lives.
I was guilty of this more than anyone else, with only some real brief moments. So part of the thinking in how I wanted to tackle 2008 was to allow and organise one event, one thing every month, where I can look back and actually live. So far it’s been going pretty well I’ve got to admit.
I’ve been to the 02 Arena and saw the Smashing Pumpkins
I’ve been to the Royal Opera House and watched the ballet (two things I’ve never done in the 6 years in London)
went to see the Terracotta Army exhibition in the British Museum
attempted to queue in line to see Alan Moore (really fucked off about that, so I won’t actually talk about it)
I finally got around to walking around the V&A museum and found one of the best courtyards in London and while I was there I really got into Rodin, whom I’d had a brief encounter with a few years ago, however this was different, this time I was actually really appreciative of what his work actually means.
Inbetween I’ve read one of the best books I’ve read in a really long time, Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart - you may want to check the wikipedia entry as well
And watched several movies, ‘No Country for Old Men’, ‘Sweeny Todd’, ‘Stardust’, ‘Yu Tu Mama Tambien’, ‘Blade Runner: Final Cut’, ‘Tekkonkinkreet’
Been watching Lost and Prison Break, both of which have generally been much better than average. They’ve been good and enjoyable. I’ve been really getting more out of lost by listening to the Transmission podcast and reading the episode elements on lostpedia which definitely enhance your enjoyment of the actual show itself.
Read a load of amazing graphic novels that really deserve your attention, Chris Ware’s ‘Acme Novelty library’, ‘Scalped’, ‘The Nightly News’, ‘Stray Bullets’, ‘Lost Girls’.
Hell I even bought some proper comics this year and happily I’ve not been disappointed either. I got ‘Kick-Ass’ which I thought was well put together and too early to decide either way. Based on how much I enjoyed ‘Chosen’ I’ll be buying the graphic novel when that comes out. The latest ‘Fantastic Four’ issue by Millar and Hitch was good fun. They’ll get me to buy the hardcover when it comes out I’m sure. There was the excellent issue of ‘Criminal’ and the second volume, both of which were very excellent books that you should be reading if you’re into crime noir. I bought Jeff Smith’s new book ‘RASL’ which looks kind of interesting but no where near as tight as Bone. There was something MAGIC in that book when it came out that he doesn’t seem to have with ‘RASL’ I’m afraid to say.
The thing that I find strange, is that usually any one of the elements above would have gotten a post out of me. Be it on this site, or on SplashPanel.
I’ve taken a step back from my involvement with Habari. Not because I don’t believe in the project, because the project is kicking some MAJOR ass. But I think i’ve done all i have the energy to contribute at this particular moment in my life. If this project had come out a few years ago things would be very different. I feel warm inside that the design vision that is leading the boy is Michael as I’m sure it will differently look that part once it gets to that stage. Believe me, in a year’s time the majority of people will be ready to switch over to Habari from whatever system they’re running, so you might as well get in on the ground floor, great group of guys with a lot of enthusiasm and knowledge to share.
So what’s going on with me? What am I planning on doing? I’m not actually sure. It’s actually one of those things that i look at the list above and think to myself, that I’ve done a lot in the last couple of months. I’ve stopped certain things, like my involvement with my sites and open source software, I’ve stopped going to basketball, I’ve started drawing and writing again and it’s time to start thinking where I am with my life and where I want to be.
So the thing that I’m trying to get to is that I’ll be posting less and less in the future. I will continue to tinker on my local machine with things and hope that at some point I finally launch the update to this site that I’ve been working on for months and months and months. I’m proud of a lot of elements of it while other elements I’m not so happy with, but somehow that doesn’t matter to me any more. If I get it done it get’s shown to the world and it’ll be dated the second it goes live :).
It’s time for me to go back to where I was meaning to be 4 years ago. Let’s see what the future now holds.
So yesterday I finally saw a celebrity I actually gave two shits about seeing. I creator who’s work I’ve actually enjoyed greatly. We went for a few drinks in Belsize Park yesterday and then decided to go for a bit of food after that. Of course, four people trying to decide on food sometimes can go smoothly and sometimes can go horribly wrong. Well in this case as we were walking up the road towards Hampstead and we see this little French restaurant that’s part of a hotel. I instantly dismissed it as not something I’d really like to go for, however Sophia had been there and recommended the food as being pretty good. So we go have a look at the menu and it was wide enough to allow us to actually cater for everyone’s crazy mood of food that night.
I was last in line and Stathi was right in front of me, so he quickly turns around to me and says ‘Dude, is that Helena Bonham Carter? I quickly turn around and say “Nah, her hair’s all over the place, she’s not looking as glam as i would expect”. In that split second what I hadn’t noticed of course was the person she was with. As we got seated, I did a quick glance over and lo and behold there was Tim Burton. See for me THAT is a celebrity. The actors are not the important bit (more on this later). The director is the captain of the ship. He’s the one that touches the movie in absolutely every single way, story, script, casting, sets, money, promotion, the whole lot. A great director will take unknown actors and make a great movie. A great actor won’t be able to make a bad movie great. He’ll play his part in a great way and shine himself but the movie doesn’t really benefit…not really because it still remains a pile of shit, regardless of how great the actor’s performance actually was. So I generally will follow directors, rather than actors (there are VERY VERY few exceptions to this rule). This little snippet was the source of a relatively heated discussion yesterday as i tried to explain to everyone that I was properly star struck by a creator’s who’s work I’ve been following since Edward Scissorhands, and well I liked Helena in Fight Club, a lot. But i wouldn’t exactly consider myself a fan of her body of work, since except for that movie I’ve only ever seen/heard her in….Tim Burton movies (Corpse Bride and Sweeny Todd).
So there you go, the first ‘celebrity’ that I actually was kinda star-struck. See NEXT week I will be 100% COMPLETELY and utterly star-struck as I am going for the Alan Moore signing in London. For all those that don’t know who Alan Moore is, you guys really have not been paying my attention.
This weekend I’ve decided to finally get down to completely my chartership forms. For those in the dark, part of a professional engineer’s life (and I’m not talking about your electrician or telephone repair man, who while both are great fields, they are definitely not engineers) is to try and achieve his chartership status. The status means a lot of things for different people and once you’re in the group you are really part of a group of people that have fulfilled specific criteria (ranging from their technical knowledge to their project management skills to their people skills and so on) and therefore you look at them in a completely and different manner.
I felt it most recently when I was sitting in a meeting this week with another consultant from another company and his business card had the letters CENG. That was in many respect enough for me to understand that the guy in front of me wasn’t pretending, he was the real deal and therefore I could discuss things with him on a specific level. Obviously he couldn’t really look at me with the same light as I’m missing those 4 little initials after my name. The thing is that after 6 years of work experience in the construction and building services industry, I’m no longer pretending either. I’m doing these things that are required of you as a Chartered Engineer. The only thing that is stopping from going forward is myself. So this weekend in the History of Khaled, I will be spending nearly EVERY waking hour to dealing with these forms once and for all. All that vigor that I put into my art, into my work on a regular basis, into my online contributions will now be put into my Chartership status. I will not go into work on Monday without that form completed as a draft and ready to go to my mentor as a first stab for him to pass comments.
However in order to do this, I’m probably going to need to sort out my supplies early in the morning for the weekend, and I’m going to have to turn off the internet. I’m only allowed specific toilet and food breaks. I’ve got the evening off, however the entire weekend is dedicated to this goal, fully and totally. Lets see if I actually get things done.
Today was the first time I used Awaken from Embraceware. It was a whole new experience for me waking up today to a bit of Soundgarden. Tradiitionally I’m jerked out of bet through the bitter sound of my cheap £4 alarm clock that’s been going strong for YEARS. I tell you what, I am most definitely not going to miss that horrible, horrible sound.
Loads and loads of things to write and talk about, especially as this blog is now officially 4 years old today. Got a great deal of exciting things to talk about in the coming month but I think I’ll share this excellent quote by one of my favourite authors Neil Gaiman:
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
Seems like the most apt way to begin this new year off. Happy new year everyone.