Adam Searle » Blog

Looking at the bigger picture more.

Lesson learnt: how to say fuck off when putting yourself first
Thinking more about where I stand and being more vocal about my opinion, rather than opting to go with options that may please everyone, at my own cost. Putting your own thoughts first. Being more vocal about what you expect from others. Like the issues in the previous post

A time of changed focus. To fix some things way back in the past, and to move on with the unfixable. I need to find more ways to vent annoyance both at the time of formation (see above points) and after (still working on that).

Constantly trying to refine the balance, that’s what it’s all about!

[Potentially long entry ahead…]

Organising stuff, whether it be work, social or other, is pretty much a full time commitment I have, whether taken on voluntarily or because I need to. Take an average week day. Either I’m working on stuff for my company, which involves organising my own shit, projecting timelines and budgets with other people, working out how crazy quick we can get something done by… Or I’m doing freelance stuff which involves mammoth organisation, so that you actually have work on the horizon, pimping out yourself as opportunities come up.. and when you’re actually working, making it happen! So often is the case that you end up organising the clients own stuff side as well, so that everything fits in well together. This, I all find a breeze, and comes to me naturally. Used to it, and take advantage of it so that it keeps me busy. But it really does take a toll on you, after work, you just wanna chill…

So then, ya know, social organising is also a big thing. After a busy day you wanna have fun on the weekend. Say catching up with the cofa crew. Well then, discuss it with a few, get the vibe. Have a few ideas, then call up everyone to give the social pitch. See what individual availability is like, balance it across several days, pick the best for varying reasons. Ask about desired event, but really make a decision on it. Choice of venue, timing. Push democracy as far as it works but ultimately that isn’t far until it falls back on a decision making process and ‘best option’ compromised result. Battle through the issues, availability conflicts, totally different desires in event opportunities.. and eventually, it’ll happen, and ppl will prolly have a fun time. Excellent.

After all that, cool, you made a dinner or drinks or something happen. Pass go, collect $200 and spend it on phone bills and petrol Spend your life organising all day, organising all night…

I’m kinda tiring of the style.

It all started at Noosa. Big trip some of us bdm kids went on last year. Huge relative to anything we’d done before. First bdm kids event that involved a plane! Serious stuff, and had to be planned *well* in advance. First it was haggling on event. Calls, discussions, big discussions, dinners, you want this they want that, lets compromise, etc. Spring break we decided, go for that vibe. Pick somewhere costal, warm, approaching summer. End of uni, cool we’ll be done. Plan it delicately so that we can be at the cofa end of year expo, but get back before ppl need to jet for overseas. We’re talking with one to two day accuracy on each end, months in advance. Find a place, tentatively book. Then the big moment - booking flights that can’t be refunded. This is the real threshold for people to cross to be locked in. Then book the accommodation. Cool we might be set! No no, not yet. Keep everyones expectations realistic so everyone will have a good time. Try and be careful to not make others feel left out by bringing it up with them.. cos unfortunately only so many can go, and it really is as simple as that. As organiser, really the buck stops with you, keep everything in line, or else someone will feel upset, something will go wrong. Keep driving a straight and narrow path. Did I mention this is all while being insanely busy at uni organising and coding furiously on ninjaman, the biggest time-consuming life-devouring project of my life.. trying to get that shit done? Huge…

After that event, I vowed not to organise another big holiday. So much effort, and while the time there was uber cool and a great break, in a way you really feel the massive effort wasn’t worthwhile. This will sound selfish and probably is, but I honestly didn’t feel the net gratitude was worthy of the effort invested. There, I said it. Selfish, maybe I expect too much, but the truth. What you get back doesn’t meet the heartfelt effort you put in. That’s tough.

Since then, any organising I do has that at the back of my mind. Will I really feel this is worthwhile? Will I see that from other ppl who are coming along? But you feel if you dont, people will see each other less, and.. you just cant let that happen cos thats not cool. So while split, you keep it up, on top of everything else that keeps steamrolling on. Some graduation stuff recently, the would-be trip of this weekend that got canned at the 11th hour due to weather, it keeps on going…

Until now. I’m going on a holiday from all this. Something I should have done a while back. With the exception of probably reviving the postponed weekend getaway, that’ll be it. No more for quite a while. It slowly grinds at me every time, and I just need to get far away. I really want to go on a big roadtrip soon, but it wont be me. I really want to go on a holiday flying away somewhere later in the year, but not me. I really want a regular ‘dinner n drinks’ with a few ppl (but spaced far out distance-wise, difficult for anyone) but again.. not me. Good luck to the next person, hope we do something soon, and regularly
Controversial post? Maybe, gotta clock in my julie cooper time. Had to be said? Most definitely. End of rant…

Oh, and if you have wondered what the hell happened to my 21st party? Well this… organisational stress/wearing out, is the real reason its been delayed. Its one big looming ball of organisational pain that I just don’t want to do right now, even if its for myself. When my hearts in it again I will, not until then. So, finally there is a truthful answer on that, it just took a long time to say. Thanks for reading.

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What a night lol, twas fantastic. So it all begins with a long day of work, lots of progress but it was quite a battle in the end. Finish up, get out of there by 5 (doing a quick freelance gig in the east, should be done very soon at this rate!). Get home, change. OK something different tonight - going to a play, a student production. Different is good, gotta diversify, etc. Jess has the hookup with tickets and so it was a go.

Off I drove to Pact Theatre in Erkinsville, near sydney uni. After much difficulty in finding the place, I got there before the others (driving, yay). Who do I run into - but my long time friend (from primary school) who I was going to meet up with this week but couldn’t. Anyhow random chance as hell, more so that I was there - as it was a sydney uni thing, and I don’t usually go to uni things like plays.. at unsw.. let alone another unis. Cool, so that was good, hung out for the evening with him, as well as gem jess ryan ben marc n hizzle. The play rocked by the way, can’t remember the name, didn’t really know anything about it in advance, but top stuff guys n girls haha! Misc note.. I got the last gingerbread the bar had on offer.. and cos it was broken (1/10th of it was missing) I got it for about half price. It was so the ‘demo unit’ lol

So that was fun, off to cheers we all went from there. My mate shant had to park his car near usyd first.. and my phone was nearly flat, which made for an incredibly daring two car drive to the rpa hospital and… trying to meet up there at a roughly described point lol. Ended up with me getting there first, thus stalking the lights he had to turn at. Random car things hey..

Cheers was cool. Next random meet of the night - stef! Though I had a feeling she’d be working there tonight. Still, was good to see her. No freebies She joined us during her break, which was basically.. pool n drinks. Fun evening really, laid back, light drinking (teh drivingz), and pool!

Eventually we left cheers. We’re walking down george st (I parked in fuckin chinatown, parking blew that night). Lo and behold I see a shadowy figure further down the road lit by a ciggy… and it was morgan! LOL. Like wtf and you doing here n stuff, random! Hahaha, great!

Chatted for a bit then carried on (still on george st). We’re nearing our turn off george st… when we come across a really, really strugglingly drunk Seb and an embaressed and not really drunk Sarah and their mate at a cafe. Again, what a random run in hahaha. Hilarious, Seb it was great lol

Finally got back to my car, drove a whole bunch of people home, and like an hour or more later.. I get to home at last Fun as night, amazing who you can just run into!! Small world..

One of those weeks where you feel like.. bleh.. no energy left. I’ve been cracking the whip working with the boys at my start up company ******** (blanked till we start up officially ;). Isometric rendering engines are a mindtrip to make. Plus now on the side I’m doing a splash of freelance work with a previous client, doing a little promo piece. This week has been a sudden jump out of the midday wakeup to ‘9-5′ concept work (realistically starting at 11, and ending at 11, due to breaks taken in the day and managing 2 gigs at once!).

Work progress is good, quite good, but it’s wearing me out like crazy trying to manage everything. It’s rough… looking forward to the weekend!

My sisters 16th tonight. Went out for dinner, teppanyaki, was pretty good! I caught most of what was thrown at me, minus one plate, which I’m happy to say met its fate on the ground, in two pieces. I got her a bunch of sex and the city dvds.. and had a hand in the ipod nano she got. Now I have ipod jealousy, my third gen black-and-white-screen 20gb iPod just isn’t cutting it anymore for hawtness. Still works fine though hahaha.

I want one of these, bad. Maybe when this work is done. Within a month I hope

For those who don’t know me, I’m a not-so-closet OC fanatic. I’ve never been into any other teen drama show, but something about the OC just hooked me. Its fantastic. Anyhow, quit flaming me
So the finale to season 3 aired in the states the other night. As usual, due to my addiction, waiting months for it to show out here is unacceptable, so the weekly torrenting and an hour later, viewing enjoyment.

Fantastic episode.. up until the last 5 minutes. It’s a not-so-hidden note that *someone* didn’t sign on to season 4 of the OC, so without spoiling anything, there are some big changes in store. A very sad last 5 minutes. And it takes a lot for a movie, or even more so a tv show.. for me to describe it as sad Anyhow, quick prediction: season 4 will suck due to being so massively different - and with school over… yeah. Ah well, it was great while it lasted!

Season 1 remains the best. Season 3 a semi-distant second, and season 2 and its oliver-freakiness a slightly more distant third.

And for the record, Johnny has failed to hook me onto one tree hill. I even had the first season on DVD here for a while from someone else, it just never worked, sorry
OC for teh win!

So like, uni students like newtown. Cheap drinks, lots of bars, and it’s right on the doorstep of USYD. But I’ve always felt newtown is a hole. A shithole at that. It feels run down, the places seem cheap, and the drink prices aren’t all that good for the lack of style. I’ve only ever ventured into newtown when required, and everytime, mutter a note of distaste about the whole place.

I was there tonight. Didn’t have to be, so maybe I’m lightening up. Spent 20 minutes looking for a bloody park - worse than anywhere else in the greater city area. That always starts things off bad. Ultimately however I got a park only a block from where I wanted to be.

As of tonight, I think I’m warming to the place. I miss the whole student vibe lately, and newtown is full of it. Remove all the weirdos, and on a good friday night, it feels like a bunch of uni kids out for fun. Still has that dingy feel on the streets, but when you look into each bar.. they all seem to have a little unique sense of character. I’m not saying I’ll start going there regularly, but hey, it’s growing on me, a tad. Oh and hey Ryan, for telling me he has read my blog. Step 1: get viewers. Step 2……. something. Step 3, $15000 google adsense cheques!!

Finally, a shout out to the under-mentioned but deserving Gemma, who feels her name appears a lot less here than others. So, an evening of critical remarks and all, here’s a shout out hehehe kidding. gem gem gem gem gem. OK you two have to be about equal now!

Hopefully a bludgy weekend ahead!

Yay! First print-based pimping of Ninjaman! Picked up a bunch of copies today at Cofa. Not a bad write up! Cofa marketing told us they wanted to do a feature on us/ninjaman, and gave us a few questions to answer. From that they picked a bunch of quotes, likewise from Andy Polaine our supervising lecturer.. and spun it to promote cofa
Yay for ninjaman! We never really expected it to break a million plays (it was always the golden number however), and now at 20 million I look back and go… cool! No regrets on the project and a year of slavery. Sure there are a few things I’d change, but that’s not important. So Jase and Johnny, good work team phoenix… and may the bird rise once more for future projects
I’m considering writing a ’story of the ninja’ later… from my perspective of things last year. Johnny said he would contribute too. Kind of a documentation effort of the year. All those geeky and not so geeky things I need to let out
Click big for teh big!

This has been a great past half week, primarily due to the amount of successful distractions I’ve had! Seems like every night I’ve managed to be out somewhere with people, usually around food, and away from the Dungeon Of Pain that has become of the daytime.

Thursday night… dinner at GPK. Congrats to Fi and Hooj for their current work placements, if even only temporary, is a great step forward. Good dinner celebrating that!

Friday night… late as dessert at Maisys. A great catch up, and surprisingly good sticky date pudding! Late night.

Saturday night… saw V for Vendetta finally, it rocked. Fantastic 1984-esque theme, and retained brilliance all the way through. After that, food again at big fish little fish… again surprisingly good coffee - last time there it was flavoured water - tonight it actually tasted like coffee! Anyhow another fun night, another good catch up.

What do all these events have in common? No alcohol. Hah, well that’ll be fixed later.. but.. they have all been a great distraction from my ‘day job’… which I run away from at every opportunity right now. I’m currently spending my days diving right into OOP in flash (actionscript 2, object orientated programming, joys) and while quite uber cool (and not new - ninjaman was very OOP-ish in an as1 way), it does my head in diving in so quickly. So I enjoy time away, haha!

In case you were wondering (and as I haven’t finished putting up all the sections on this site), what… do I actually do for work. Well, three things.
1. ********* games, a start-up studio I’m helping to found. This has been a bit lax as our CO has been overseas the past few weeks, so I’ve taken time out to bone up on new hotness (as2 - stuff I should have learned long ago). Everything relating to this is really exciting, and really pushes me to think outside of what I’m used to. Also gives a sense of ‘things rely on you a bit sonny’ when we’re planning, discussing, communicating with others outside of the studio, etc. My year will revolve heavily around this, so look out for some shit-hot stuff from us 2. Freelancing gigs. What effectively is the money right now. First there a bit of work with switch.tv, then jonohennessy.com, both of which were fun and different projects. The latter looks to be flowing on to further freelance work, which is great.
3. The final prong. Went for an interview at digital eskimo after the creative director there contacted me, unbeknownst to me for a full time position. Upon knowing that’s.. simply not possible for me particularly with commitment 1, we’re evaluating potential freelance or part time stuff, depending on if I want to do flash or flash+html+css. Browser incompatibilities suck so… I’m leaning towards the former..

Anyhow, that is the state of my day life. For some reason it involves me driving around to lots of people often, I feel like a door to door salesman at times. The getting out is fun, the finding time to DO stuff can be difficult! So a final ho-rah weekend and back to the hecticness on Monday. Looks to be hotting up on all three fronts come monday..

I (heart) Distractions, for a limited time only!

Oh, and check out this months cofa magazine - apparently I’m in it, along with Jason and Johnny - the ninjaman crew - with a half page article on us/ninja/hotness. Cool! I’ll post a scan of it when I get a copy.

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