Posts filed under "cerebral-interviews"
The best way to describe 2011 was that it was bipolar - with such amazing highs and some serious lows.
The year didn’t end on a massive high, as I was made redundant from work. What this means is that for the first 3 months of 2012, there is a transition period that is not really completely within my control. Obviously I have been working methodically since the day I received the news to try and find alternative suitable work and thankfully I have been very lucky with the responses so far. However it’s a very big decision that may mean uprooting myself (and now family of 1) to another country. The timing is interesting as it frames the next stage in my life really from the start of this year.
Creatively I would classify this year generally as good. Not great, but then again in the year that I got married, I really couldn’t expect much more than what I achieved. There was some client web design work. There was a redesign of this site which has not gone live, but that’s because my preferred CMS does not exist at the moment (I’ll hopefully have some news of this in the new year). I got to design our wedding cards.
However the biggest achievement of 2011 for me creatively was a little cartoon strip that I have been drawing consistently since the summer. The characters were created before then (and even have their early life on my iPhone). I’m excited by the work I’ve done on this, as I slowly (painfully sometimes) build this world that these character live in.
Many of the projects that I started in 2011, will only bear fruit in 2012 and that’s fine by me. I’d rather have solid work come out when it comes out rather than just push stuff out the door.
Releasing my first online cartooning strip. This is months in the making and it’s something that I talk with Yasmine (my wife) about all the time. Some people in my family have seen bits of this but mainly I’ve kept this under wraps until I’m ready. It’s a definite departure from the type of cartooning/drawing that I usually do, but then again I’ve never written and drawn this much in my life, so obviously I must be doing something correctly.
Releasing our first iOS application. Again this has been months in the making. However these things take time, and it’s being created in my spare time. I’m excited to use this application and seeing where this road takes us.
I’d like to rebuild this website. Writing on my site is a muscle. I never stopped writing, I only stopped posting. There are hundreds of drafts on my computer with various ideas ready to be published once I’ve got my workflow sorted, which currently I do not.
The problem is that my graphic novel has taken a little bit of a seat back, as I do all these other projects. Some of them are personal and important to me, some of them hopefully will provide an added revenue stream. Others offer quick creative release. My graphic novel is a slow burn project. I’m not technically ready for it, however if I continue this way I’ll never be ready for it. So what’s the solution? The idea is to aim low, but stay consistent. So ultimately what I would like to try and do is draw 1 page every month as a minimum. A fully completed and inked page of work. I know that’s only 12 pages a year.
However I can see failure in the year ahead. That’s normal. My path is unclear at the moment and some of these projects might not get completed - and I’m okay with that. As long as I actually complete a few projects in 2012 that I can look back on and frame the year with, I’ll consider it as a success.
The statistic I have heard was at least once in a person’s professional career, you are made redundant. I’ve been moderately immune to this over my years as an engineer at Arup, even though there were a great many rounds of redundancy over my years there, but yesterday it finally happened and the grim reaper of jobs caught up with me at my latest company.
After several months of things going downhill at the office, I was called in and got the message that things were getting worse and that unfortunately my time at PDP was going to be cut shorter than originally anticipated.
I was honestly feeling a bit held back living and working in Lebanon. Most of these reasons weren’t unexpected, it’s just anticipating a series of events is very different to living the reality and seeing how you feel or react.
There is a sense of optimism at the moment that I’ve not felt in a while. The world is all heading in all various directions and jobs are getting harder and harder to get by, however I am incredibly upbeat about the whole situation, liberated.
Now hunting for job is an incredibly frustrating ordeal that I thought I didn’t have to go through for a little while, however to be honest, I could see this coming a mile away…so much so that I had my CV completed the morning of the day I was told. I came prepared.
So Yasmine got us a bonsai tree last week. So I did the geeky thing and downloaded this bonsai app for my iPhone and did some research on the internet about how to take care of the bonsai tree and then I went forth and overwatered the plant so that it’s basically shedding most of it’s leaves.
Now the good news is that I think it’s stopped shedding leaves at a crazy rate but I basically killed a ton of the leaves in these last two days by watering it every day, thinking that the soil had to be kept moist all the time…nope big mistake, at least for the bonsai tree that I currently have.
Unfortunately the damage got done the second day that I watered the plant. One day it was able to handle it, but two days in a row basically suffocated it and didn’t let it get enough oxygen to the roots, which basically made it shut down. Now it seems that this isn’t the end of the world (as long as I don’t overwater it again) but that you can’t stress the tree like this many times because it will permanently shut down. The thing is I absolutely LOVE this plant. I’ve always wanted a bonsai tree and now that I got one, I nearly bloody killed it within 2 days of over doing it.
God help me not make this sort of mistake when/if (hopefully) have kids. I mean seriously I feel terrible that I’ve done that to my bonsai tree, but the problem is these things should honestly come with a manual and the name and type of tree and links to a website where the proper way to care for these delicate plants. I feel terrible about my bonsai tree, hopefully it’ll start to flourish and produce those deep green leaves again sometime soon.
I’m about to read Robert Fisk’s “Great War of Civilisation”, but I’m reminded of one of my favourite quotes by Kahlil Gibran, and I thought I’d share it with everyone:
My friends and my road-fellows, pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion. Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress. Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block. Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking. Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.
The quote begins the only other book of Fisk I’ve read…Pity the Nation.
I can finally start talking about my sabbatical, as last night was the first time I felt slightly restless, which basically means that I’m calm and my brain isn’t being bombarded with work related thoughts. Until 2 weeks into my ‘sabbatical’ I was still having the most boring work dreams you can imagine. I’d wake up with a bit of a smile on my face since I didn’t need to do anything with that dream and my reality was the opposite, for once.
Now I’m back to not remembering my dreams, which means we can hunker down to get some work done. Maybe that’s why I’ve woken up at 5:30, because my body is telling me:
Get up you fool, we’ve got work to do. You’ve been sleeping till 9 for too long you lazy bum.
The sabbatical effectively starts today (at least in my mind). There are a couple of things that I’m hoping to achieve in this short period of time that I have in front of me and 6:30 in the morning is a good time to start as any.
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.
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.
Been a while since I’ve written anything significant on the site, but alas I’ve been busy with the task of creating Aitus Moralis. The big significance is that after nearly 6 years of talking about this story, I’ve finally finished the first fully pencilled page of the book. I’ll probably post it at some point once I’ve sorted out the best way to show my artwork in an easy to maintain gallery (I’m leaning to using Google Picasa at this point in time).
This is significant because I’ve managed to do this page of art while working. This kind of dispells the thoughts that i had previously that my brain cannot cope with splitting engineering in the day and artwork in the evening, but actually it can.
The real issue is finding the muse to get on and do it. I found it by going to a course. The energy of the people around me creating artwork was enough for me to actually get on with it and move forward. I’m still learning but if you don’t draw you’ll never learn, you’ll never get any better. Nobody created their masterpiece from day one, or even day two, but you have to start somewhere .
Life can sometimes feel like one big massive MISSED opportunity. Currently that’s all I can think about. Everything that I’ve wanted to do, everything I’ve wanted to have, everything I’ve wanted to be, everyone I’ve wanted to be with. Which decisions were the important ones that got me here. I think about where I am and the road I took to get to this position.
I try to get some sleep but these thoughts keep haunting me; which then reminds me of Bobby Gaylor’s Suicide. My favourite line from that song is definitely ‘sleepless summer nights that seem to go on forever’. I hate those fucking nights. I hate these fucking nights.
I feel like I’m walking underwater most days.
My biggest hate however is thinking like this because I have a lot to be thankful of. I’ve been at a pretty strange place in my head; all I want to do is get over this dark period, however all I can concentrate on is where I missed.
I seem to always reread Sidekicks by J.Torres and Takeshi Miyazawa whenever I come back to Greece. It’s such a well put together book, which I find a crime that it’s not such a massive hit. The last page of the trade (which is the first edition of The Transfer Student) has a great way of ending, which I have always loved.
Have you ever had one of those days? One of those days that changed your whole week? One of those days that determined an outlook for an entire month. One of those days that you look back on after a year and think. “Yeah. That’s when it all started.”
Today is not one of those days, but I really want one of those days to come soon.
The strangest thing has happened after watching Quentin Tarantino’s latest teaser trailer for his forthcoming movie ‘Inglorious Basterds’, he’s made me excited about writing again.
How can a trailer, not even a fully baked one at that make me want to finish what I started? Simple, a few carefully chosen words that appeal to me and stick in my head just captured my imagination. My favourite part is when Pitt steps in closer to the camera and says ’ …and I want my scalps’. It’s a line, but it summed up the movie. I love the pause just before the delivery of the line.
I can definitely attest to the fact that writing a script (for whatever medium the script is ultimately used for) is damn difficult. I miss it and I really wish I can keep this enthusiasm up, just enough for me to finish the script that has been gathering dust for the last 5 years.
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.
Six years ago I went to my dentist in Athens, where she told me that I was probably going to be needing to take my wisdom teeth out. Now obviously this scared the shit out of me, so I promised her that I would definitely come back and we’d get it done. I’m pretty sure she got the message after a couple of years had passed and I’d not turned up.
Went to the surgeon today and guy was very nice, showed me my full face scan, which was pretty cool actually, because by and large my teeth are pretty straight, although I think some of the need a little bit more care. The only fuckers that are completely squiff are the wisdom teeth. These nasty things are actually growing at 90 degrees to my other teeth. What the fuck are those teeth doing? Seriously?
The thing is that you ask anyone who’s actually had the procedure and no one has anything good to say about it. Not a word. It’s all serious horror stories.y.
Six years of grace is a good run I guess, now it’s time to bring on the pain.
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.
Clearly I’ve gotten back into blogging again, October 2008 was a bit of a record in that I posted on this site 52 times. What’s even more amusing is that I actually wrote another 4 posts which are in various draft stages. I would expect more of the same to be honest, as I have begun using the site as my bookmark tool of choice. I’m surprised I didn’t think about doing this in the past and actually felt the need to use a delicious or a magnolia.
This added renewal of interest in blogging even made me get Mint 2 (I’ve been using Mint 1 since it was released and haven’t bothered updating). I love Mint because it really gives me a much clearer view of what’s going on that any of the other plethora of statistics programmes out there. Definitely highly recommended if you’re interested in knowing what’s going on with your site.
Hope everyone has a fantastic November.
Or so Paul Boutin will lead you to believe from the latest issue of Wired. In what is clearly blog-bait, Paul does raise some interesting points although I don’t think his thoughts past the fact that blogging has had it’s heyday as we got to know them these last few years are all that poignant to be honest.
He is right that blogging isn’t as prevalent now as it was 4 years ago, but then again, very few things on the internet has got that much of a shelf life. He sites Technorati as a source, to which I say, who the fuck searches Technorati anymore? I mean seriously? I’ve not visited Technorati in like over a year probably, that site died a slow a mostly deserved death years ago (we can talk about the fall of Technorati, but honestly I don’t give a shit).
Which then leads me to his thoughts on what we should do. Go and tweet apparently; write stuff on Facebook and show my photos on Flickr. I think he’s missing the point here. I do all of that (except Flickr, can’t get into that site to be honest); the thing is all of my other outlets are connected to my blog. I post something here, it’s shown on Twitter. My posts show up as notes in Facebook. All of these services have their reasons to exist and provide me with a specific service, but they could never replace my blog.
Many have sited Twitter as the blog assassin. I don’t necessarily agree. It serves an excellent purpose, it really does. The thing is though that Twitter is filled with bollocks, but that’s what it’s meant to be. Intermingled within that bollocks are some pretty cool things for sure and he is right in that the vibrant feel of mirrors blogging four years ago, but its not the only method of expression, it’s but one method.
Is blogging as relevant as it was 4 years ago? No it’s not. Things have changed considerably, the blog isn’t new and fresh, because now it’s an established institution of the internet landscape. If you have a website then you have a blog. Some web magazines are now seen as blogs (like Treehugger), but blogs are the personal sites run by one man or woman, not a collection of writers churning out 30 posts a day.
From my perspective, I have changed the way I use my blog. I’ve given up on services like Magnolia and Delicious. My blog is now my method of actually storing my bookmarks. I have words that I use to ‘tag’ the links and they’re easier to find and manage, this has actually prompted me to writing more (it’s been months and months since I’ve posted this many times in such a short period of time, consistently) but I’m finding that I am enjoying this more than ever.
In a perverse kind of way I am glad that the spotlight is off. It means that I can concentrate on all my thoughts and that eventually the people that comment on my site are either the ones that have been reading for a while and therefore have meaningful contributions or people that have found something useful in their search for other kinds of information.
Blogging was never about being the best and most popular voice on the internet, it’s about freedom of expression to the masses in a way that was never before possible. Saying that blogging is dead is like saying that the written word is dead; if you think like that then I have honestly nothing to say to you.
So today Morwenna and I went to Regent’s Park for lunch (this year’s autumn has been beyond awesome) and while we’re sitting there in Morwenna’s typical snide way notices a couple running in front of us, and obviously she couldn’t help but notice (and remark) on the fact that this couple had their hands tied to each other, with about half a meter of length, which was odd. As they progressed down the park, we started thinking of reasons why this would happen, were they training, was she training him, he was one step in front of her rather than the other way round etc.
Then they turned the corner and it then became apparent that she was leading him and then we noticed the white stick that he was carrying and it clicked, the man was blind. I just couldn’t help but admire that as a concept of a blind man running and how something like that was not going to stop him from doing what he enjoyed.
Needless to say I have an immense amount of respect and admiration for blind people as going blind is one of my ultimate fears in life, so when I see blind people doing mundane things that you and I take for granted, but which I know is extremely difficult for them, I have even that much more admiration.
While I’m on the topic, last week I noticed a blind woman walking towards me, she would have been in her early 30s, but the thing that I noticed and which I don’t really have an answer to, is just how well dressed she actually was. Colours were coordinated and her whole outfit suited her extremely well. How does a blind person pick out their clothes in the morning? How do they know which items of clothing work well with each other. How do they know what colours are and that blue and green don’t go together?
I know it sounds completely trivial, but it was one of those things that really made me stop and appreciate the senses that I have been gifted with.
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.
Interesting article with Terry Hill (chairman of the company I have been working for the past 6 years). The interviewer has tried to capture some of the values, ethos and thought of the company which is nice, but we’re Arupians not Arupites - sort it out :).
See those last 4 letters at the end? Yeah got my confirmation from the IET that my application was accepted for Chartered Engineering status. Those 4 letters are the culmination of 29 years (shy of 1 month) of both studying and working as an engineer.
It’s difficult to describe exactly what it all means consicely unless you’re part of the industry to understand what is expected of you and what you expect of other people that hold that same title, but needless to say I’m seriously happy about it and was one of my two goals that I had to achieve this year. This is partly one of the reasons why I’ve taken a step back from my various online endeavours to persue other things that have/had been put on hold for sometimes years.
Now it’s time to start working for that other thing (hopefully I will be able to talk about that in November sometime).
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?
Found this pretty cool calculator at the WWF site. I’m acting like I need 2.1 Earths to support us, you?
Probably been around for a while, but I’ve never actually used the damn thing, to actually see how ‘green’ I am. The honest truth is I think I’m moderately green, in that I do the bare minimum. I recycle (things that the Council of Barnet will allow me to recycle), never use the tumble dryer, don’t have a car or any other personal means of transport, will walk to many places rather than jump on the bus or whatever.
I’m not very good with plastic bags, which is something I’m going to try and work on. I’d like to be able to get stuff that doesn’t have tonnes of plastic involved, however the reality of the situation is that just about anything I buy from a supermarket is probably covered in plastic, so unless I actually start to complain to the supermarkets to change their packaging there’s little I can do about that.
The thing is that plastics should be fully recyclable as well. I should be able to buy something and do it the Japanese way by making only food stuffs go down the waste disposal and have my paper, plastics, glass and aluminium all taken separately.
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.