1.  Finish up my research/study, and feel I have a solid and proven grasp on object orientated thinking and actionscript 3 .0 (ie overhauling work/career)
2. Travel! My cousin in the UK is getting married, and the timing ties in well with Flash on the Beach. So I’d like to head over for a couple of months and do a contiki tour or other around Europe for while. I want to travel to california more but things fall into place much better with europe at this time
3. Continuing my health focus. Coming up on one year now (late feb), and it has been great. I can feel the difference
4. By the end of the year, end up in a solid work position. Yep, it looks like Adam is finally going to cash in the freelancer lifestyle and take a full time job. By the end of the year, something solid to start 09 off well with. Finally an mx5 for summer too perhaps…
5. Meet new people, social progression. The overseas trip should be great for that. A bit of that university feeling of getting out of ones shell too

So that about sums it up. End of the year I’ll look back on this and see how things went, for the overhaul of 2008. Feeling good about it! Dont count on more regular blog posts though  

Earth hour before (the night before, technically):

Earth hour during:

All credit to Ryan McCarthy

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! )

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!

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!

So that’s how it lies, 2 good/great, 2 terrible. Balance is a bitch to get, but today is the first time I’ve been able to outline my goal fronts like that, so it’s a little clearer. Suggestions on the latter would be cool

In other news I might be going to the UK in august if I can get my act together.. and make it all happen. Staying with family, should be fairly cheap. I just need a laptop, a ticket over there, and huzzah! More on this later

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!

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.

Comments are off. Want to comment? Contact me then.

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

So what has been happening, well well well…

Friday was hot! Worked on ninja all day, then went to work that night (cant miss out on the friday night dosh, seriously). After that, the ‘once in a life time nearly probably we’ll see’ event of a friends EP being launched Jan’s band, krill (www.krill.com.au) launched their first EP, and wowzers, it was cool. We congregated at the metro, jason and myself, johnny with his mr protective of girl, stevo and lucy the ‘omg u gadget freak stevo but i have a nice camera’ couple (now applies to both as they both have snatch-worthy cameras btw), jo and marcus, mischa and wiltrix on cameras, and houmer the no-credit-im-lost-in-the-city dude with the nice phone. The event was great, the metro worked for it, lots of people there. It was fantastic to see how krill has grown.. from back in first year when we used to go to small pubs and see them play with a small crowd of friends,to a serious gathering of unrelated people who were there to see the performance. Great stuff! Music was tops, and heaps of fun. Great work to jan and the band

After they played, we had ambitious plans for the evening. Strike one was spending ages at maccas. We can blame this entirely on the girl who served us; I’m sorry but 5mins for you to walk off and make me a chocolate sundae when really you weren’t busy at all… is a little much even for a trainee. Anyhow, after waiting somewhere between 9 and 53 minutes for the bunch of us to get served and get our food… Jan had to bail due to packing her gear up. Hooj,myself, lucy and stevo and jasnit. Went to a couple of random bars that were closing, great. Walked down to darling harbour, urgh (taxi fools, taxi..). One world was closed – there goes my cheap drinks and playing daytona blind drunk with more drinks in one hand plan. So we continued down the harbour… basically everything except blardy home and pontoon was closed. They wouldnt let jason the sexy fool into pontoon cos the bouncer was a touch gay and was looking at jasons pants the whole time. I dont know what was up with that. Something about dressing too casually apparently. So we called it a night and headed off. Boohoo… was a sad ending heh. But a great beginning

Saturday. Woke up and got paid $90 to teach someone how to set up dial up access, how to use a usb key, and a few other questions. The hotness of IT consultancy in the local area continues. That night it was my school mate james’ 21st. Hot hot. At the rock lily in mona vale, we all met at varying hours. Was great to see the old james, damo, kippar and dabe there. Chattin away and catching up on time gone by. Really interesting to see how some people havent changed at all, yet some really have. Also great to see how everyones really got somewhere now. Everyones either at uni or full time decent work, it’s great. I’m envious of damos job at a mac store (fuckers at chatswood wouldnt give me a job), so I’m going to reapply and BS my resume. I did some ‘work experience’ at apple so maybe I’ll turn that into I ‘worked a duration of time at apple in a managerial position’. That sounds hot… anyhow..

So the night was tops. Free dinner and a bar tab at the bar there! Awesome. Some 12 standard drinks later, the night was gold. Was also cool talking to the new faces there. Met this one girl, bec, who james knows from uni. She’s cool, works at hornsby rsl (same as old mikey). Turns out she knows mike, how awesome. I’ve gotta tell him sometime. Anyhow bec was cool, lives in penno hills (’run for the hills!’ stevo land), and yeah, we chatted about stuff. Good times talking to unknown people, really.

After we all got moderately drunk (and on the promise of pot later on, with harder stuff not showing up), we shoved off to the cross in the minibus. My god that was a funny ass trip. 8 guys pretty drunk in the back of a minibus, and this one guy, buta, drunk as screaming out “I AM THE SU CHEF U FUCKERS!” and telling us all about the ’su chef’, man, funny shit. He was dissing everyone from the car; hoes on the street, cops, other drivers, bouncers… we thought we were doomed with him with us. Anyhow we got out, went to the first bar, jetted quickly for another bar. Man the cross is strange, its alive at all hours, oozing seedyness (every second building is ‘xxx adults entertainment’ etc), but also oozing a vibe, life, people, energy. Interesting stuff. We finally got to a bar that we thought we’d have a few drinks at, was aiight. More drinks, all sat near the window waiting to meet up with another skool mate. The bouncer was being an ass and wouldnt let him in cos of his boots. Old su chef nearly starts the bastard outside, making a scene about why they wouldnt let him in. So we left Went to the empire, they let us all in here so that was hot. Drinks, hoes everywhere, gangsters and pimps, it was happening. Su chef started chatting up and feeling up every hoe near us, so we let him do his thing, lol. More drinks and good music later, it was a great time. I jetted at about 3 or something, joined with two others. Some how kipplar got kicked out before I did, then after I’d left.. damo got kicked out, the su chef got kicked out for ‘causing trouble’, and well the rest left after that. Anyhow, a tops evening Happy bday mate, it was hot lol.

Sunday. After waking up late. Hmmm, went to work. That was tops, a busy steady night, profitable. Aside from a hoard of tight ass fools who didnt tip, and one dickhead who gave me close to $100 in $2 coins – asshole – it was a good night. After that, uh, sleep.. needing to catch up on weeks lost…

Today was aiight. Lecture in the morning, then a tute for history, which was meant to be a library researching tute done by the library staff. Turns out 2 of us turned up, me and this english chick Camilla. Gave us plenty of time to talk (we only figured we were in the right place cos we recognised each other heh). She did her schooling in england, came out here on gap year for 1.5 years, loved it, and decided to live out here for uni. We talked about travel and all that, what we’ve been up to, cool cool. The old english accent eh. How I used to pay my cousins out for it… haha. Anyhow, was cool. Should talk to her more often..

After that, meh, went to cofa to work.. and met up with David who did last years annual cd. Great, I’m gunna have to start it from scratch pretty much. Its all a write off so I’m looking forward to 3 weeks of fun joy joy. We’ll see how all that goes. Then tonight, sorting out hoojs bday, thats mostly worked out now. Then tmr, another annual meeting, then more werk, then hoojs night which should be cool.

At some point, do ninja integration and begin annual stuff… a fun path lies ahead

enjoy all
/end of long ass blog entry

Pretty much eh…

Soooo. Whats been happening. Blardy. Life is so boring right now. Get up, eat, work. Work some more, go do paid work, get home, works more, sleep. The massive hours I’m needing to put into ninjaman right now are taking their toll. So much is left to be done in a depressingly short period of time. Just gotta keep slogging it out really. At this rate we should go first playable next week, which is cool. Once thats done, its….

*drum roll*

Cofa annual time! Urgh. Gotta recode that from scratch its looking. Last years people did a good job, but damn, NO commenting in the code, and the variable names are unreadable. Its like walking into a random maze of… stuff. Blardy. Thats a phat, 2-3 week slice of time out of ninjaman. Fuckin a.

On the upside to the annual, due to the work of stevo and debs and the rest of them at the old cofa sa, we’ve probably got the dosh to move the annual to dvd. horray! Now to see if dvd really is slower, to appease Andy and Jo, and see where that leaves us.

So much work to do

Thats probably why life sucks right now. hmm. What *good* is happening. Well, I still need to give someone a call re: guitar lessons. That will be hot. Friday is jans gig, that should be hot. Dunno if I’ll stay out for drinks much, gotta help someone with some IT stuff saturday morning. Then saturday night should be hot, james’ 21st and dinner/off to the city for that, should be mad. The cross is the goal at the moment. Much drinkage shall occur, w00ts.

Missed being drunk. Been a while now. Need to relieve the annoyances of.. everything