Adam Searle » Blog

Wow, how does time pass! And damn has a lot of time passed. I’ve been too wrapped up to blog lately, so lets quickly recap…

At some point, I finished season 5 of 24. Hotness! Season 6 will rock. Long wait till jan 06 tho

Played poker for the first time. Interesting. And yeah for money. Something I’m going to have to work on a lot though to become decent!

Surprise bday for fiona was last saturday, which was great! Totally well planned on my behalf and executed by hooj and myself It was all under the pretense of dinner with the two of us and her, when surprise… everyone turned up in a lift. Moving the surprise away from the restaurant was key. Can’t reveal anymore, trade secrets, future plans, yada yada.

Work was fuckin intense. Saturday-Sunday I was meant to be working on a project for amnesty international, via digital eskimo (current place I’m freelancing for). Saturday turned into not a lot, and sunday-monday-tuesday suddenly became very very intense. At one point I’d worked 40hrs in 72hrs. Every shift was over 12hrs really, the top being 17hrs! Finally I was able to sleep all wednesday when it was over. I’m very happy with how it turned out, check it out: http://message.amnesty.org.au They were aiming for 10,000 signatures over the 11 days it was to be up - they got it in about a day. At the time of writing, its 15000+

Started teaching! Yep for those who don’t know UNSW picked me as a lecturer/tutor for a new course, intro to flash design. So every thursday I’ll be on the spot trying to teach people flash. First lesson went quite well. No difficulties in the talking aspect (think of it as a three hour presentation, only with no teacher to ‘throw back to’ - its just you), but keeping everyone entertained through difficulty of what you’re showing is tricky. An inherent problem in having some students with experience in flash, others without - we have to presume without. Roped Jason into it so he’ll be giving a few too, starting next week!

Was asked to guest speak for professional portfolio at cofa. Got that coming up in a few weeks. Talking about the uber success that is our ninjaman (yeah, I like to brag about it lately lol. 25 million plays? more? dunno! :P)

Got my laptop at some point over these last few weeks. Loving being portable once more. Got the base level macbook, upped the HDD, and threw in 2gb ram after-market. Great to have a laptop feel as speedy as your desktop. Smaller than all my previous powerbooks too, which is nice. Great to take into work when freelancing - so it comes in handy. Certainly regularly used now.

Saw russell peters live a while ago. Fantastic!! Might go see him again in December when he comes back

Went and saw the sydney symphony the other night at the opera house - “Music in movies”. Tickets thanks to my pals at eskimo (for their/my work on symphony stuff lately). The finale was all about star wars - my god the star wars theme song sounds amazing when played live by a full orchestra. Totally the bomb! I’d never heared an orchestra live before… it was a bit dry until that, but very enjoyable
And in uber-geek news, got my new phone!! Sony Ericsson K800, and I totally love it. Built in 3mp camea with xenon flash (lights up a pitch black room great - powerful). High res screen, 3g connectivity, got a bunch of russell peters clips on it for watching. Generally just much newer tech. Nice for me and great for R&D that I’ll be doing for my company! Oh and the K800 has built in integration with blogger.com - take a pic, click ‘blog this’, and up here it goes:
http://mobilechill.blogspot.com
My new mobile blog for uploading photos to while out and about. Check it out. A slightly alien one of my cat currently
That’s all for now - massive brain dump after a looong 2 weeks. Still more stuff I haven’t covered but will later. Started a massage course. Soon to start a public speaking course (peoples #1 most common fear be damned). Full time company work commencing next week (slowing freelance work right down). Lots going on, very busy, but still enjoying it!

Cool weekend! Last night was a total walk down memory lane. Was at a 21st party of a guy from school, the last time I’d seen him was about a year ago, and before that, the end of year 12, back in 2002. Pretty much everyone else there I hadn’t seen since the days of school. Totally bizarre and entertaining vibe catching up with people from way back. Some fascinating stories (getting lost in St Petersburg), some fairly predictable ones, and some surprising parallels to myself - several people doing quite similar courses/paths to mine, which I totally wouldn’t have expected. I’ll admit back in school I was definitely tech obsessed (hey, some things never change!) but it was funny to see others follow down a very similar post-school path. Cheers to that.

A lot can happen over 4 years. Something quite shocking for the people there, was that the last time most of them saw me, I was in a wheelchair at school. Now I’m a new man; the miracle of modern medicine, and preaching the benefits of personal freedom to all. Nearly everyone there at some point said ‘wow you’re walking!’. It privately took me on a humble trip down memory lane, remembering back to the old years of being stuck in a wheelchair yet still enjoying life. I cant express how much of a difference it makes to be out of it; it’s a completely different life, 100%. So yeah, a great night, and I hope to see many of them more often!

Work has been crazy busy lately, which even more than usual makes me aware of life outside of work. Gemma has swiftly and single-handedly got me interested in doing a macquarie college course; one night a week for x weeks. Should be great for meeting new people and trying something new. I’m thinking of doing a massage course (to kind of formalise what I know) and a public speaking course. In school I always wanted to do a toastmasters course but never got around to it (read: public speaking, ick!). Hopefully some fun there. A positive balance element!

And in closing, always remember….. Ichiboo. Don’t scratch it or….. BOO!

Saw Russell Peters tonight at the Enmore theatre. Fantastic!! Huge fan of his stuff, both the well distributed ‘tap some bong’ clip and the lesser seen google video/youtube stuff. Tonight rocked cos he didn’t repeat much of his old stuff at all, until the end when he re-did the ‘white kid ryan’ joke again - which was perfect as the audience practically did it along with him! Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad! Great stuff
Got my macbook today, rockin! Now I’m portable again, excellent. Still gotta finish configuring it etc (plus add ram) before I can use it ‘in the field’, but by the end of the week I should be good to go!

Some stupid motorcyclist hit me today, well, we ‘grazed’ together. Maybe I’ll make a flash anim describing what happened, but suffice to say I was turning right, he was an L plater biker driving on the wrong side of the road, and he ’scrapped’ along hte front of my car as I was half way through my right hand turned while stopped. Net effect to my car: I picked up some rubber/soft plastic from him, that’s all. ‘collision’ speed would be well.. me stopped, him grazing along side, 1kmh, 2 at the max. Dumbshit rider, anyhow, he was ok (he rode off between traffic, no chance to do anything..), my car is fine, he’s learned a valuable lesson as a result. Don’t drive on the wrong side of the road to try and dodge traffic
Back at eskimo tomorrow, should be a good remainder of the week. I’m already looking forward to something big this weekend, I dunno what yet tho, something! I just feel the need to do something… hugeth!

Something to look back on. Things are generally pretty good right now. I’m back into the swing of a regular workout, and have a target of where I want to get to over the next two months. I don’t always look forward to it, but you do feel better after going to the gym heh. Now if only I can get my membership fixed so I can arrive after 4.. damn student membership..

Work goes well too. Freelancing over with the digital eskimo crew, working on some exciting stuff there. Looks like I’ll have some more freelancing after that with my regular partner in crime, after an extremely successful and impressive previous project. The games crew moves on too, got some new blood in it, so hopefully that’ll lead to a positive push forward on the sales front. Trying to keep the balance between the various work avenues going, getting there.

The weekend was like.. rockin. Friday saw Superman, which was… just not punchy. It was ‘three hours of movie’. What happened? I don’t really remember. He flew, or something. The entertainment from the movie came from being stuck in chatswood westfield carpark for half an hour underground as we.. didn’t move at all. Go queues. Anyhow, overall an oddly funny night. Saturday was the bomb though, post-uni, post-exams, post-worries piss up. Spent too much, drank too much, felt hung over the next day, but damn it was great! Started the month off well!

The post of positive!