Feels like a new me

Over the course of the last month several things have happened, and to be quite frank, i deserve a kick in the head for not uploading blogs/vlogs about some of it. I'll just end up complaining i've got nothing to talk about next month. Then again, since i'm talking briefly about it now, i guess it doesn't matter all that much.

So the first thing was i passed my driving test. This has been a big goal for me since movin to the countryside since everything is a pretty long distance away and public transport isn't the most regular around here. Along with finally being liscenced to drive, i've managed to get myself a car, which i'm pretty sure i couldn't BE any more pleased with, and i'm certainly not much of a car person.

"But Tim" i hear you say, "You're unemployed. How can you afford to run a car?"

Well thats the next thing. I've now become and employed person, with all the nice things hat come with it. Such as paying the government for the fact that i'm working.

The job itself is fantastic. I'm working in a local primary school (age 4-10) as a personal teaching assistant to a child with cerebreal palsy with the associated speech issues that are the reason for him also being a mute.
The fact that the kid doesn't speak means i'm having to help teach him to sign, which in turn means that i'm learning to sign myself. Which is good. I like learning new things.

Anything else happening in the life of the hairy geek?

Well yes, actually, there is. I'm also converting my parent's garage into a living space (albeit very slowly and with alot of help) so that i can move out there and get a lot more room. This, again, is going to make a huge difference and i'll be able to get back into playing music.

Playing music? yup, i play the sax. Or used to. I recently 'restarted' playing the sax, after a gap of around 8 years. So look forward to some of that this summer on my youtube page

And finally

My trip to japan is finally getting itself booked this weekend. I've been wanting to get it sorted for a long time but didn't know how long my saved money would last me. Now i've got a job i'm, hopefully, going to be booking hotel and flights this Sunday.


So yes. It's been a busy month, a good month, and a month that has certainly changed the direction that my life seemed to have been heading.

Bacon is where Pigs come from

This rocks! So hard, all night long...ummm


so yeah, my lil'Bro made this, was art homework of some kind. He's awesome



So i decided to do this:

Cosplay Update

Ok, then. Here's the second update to my costume. Not much done, just padded it out a little and taped it up. There's a little more structural work to be done then it's ready to be covered in paper mache.

Just so's you know, this is just going to be the head/chest/back of the costume. I'll have seperate parts for the arms

Getting Interactive

KRUMBINATION


So i joined Krumbination, was envolved in some brainstorming, a script was produced, i auditioned, and now i'm in an internet show.

Obviously it takes SOME effort, but it was a really easy way to get envolved with something that i, at least, think is really cool.


Go check the site!


KRUMBINATION

Britain for the British?

Bear with me while i paint a picture, though though imcomplete, of Britain's place in the world. Now this may seem like alot of information i'm about to throw at you, but don't worry if you dont' take it all in, just as long as you remember there was alot, that should be fine for my purposes, and there is a purpose to all i'm going to tell you.

Alfred the great, 8th son of the previous king, at one point, ruled only a small area in the middle of a swamp, before he unified a large chunk of this island to become the first king of England, his grandson going on to become the first king of the British.

Ahh, Britain, Proud Britain, Great Britain, Formerly heading the British Empire. At it's height it was the largest in history with with Britain at the top, heading up a population of around 460million people, and a aquarter of the earths total land mass. We achieved this, as can be seen in Disney movies, by planting a flag and claiming the land, becuase the locals hadn't done so yet. There may have been a few wars or something, but that's just being picky.

aaanyway, stuff happened, america went all angsty teenager and left home, japan nabbed the south eastern asian colonies, and after World War2 we slowly started giving back independance to all these countries, ending with the return of HongKong to china in 1997.

What are we left from all this? Well, the Common wealth of Nations, not that we techincaly head it or anything of course.

The commonwealth of nations, formerly the commonwealth, formerly the british commonwealth is an organisation of 54 independant states, all but 2 of whom were formerly a part of the british empire.

antigua and barbuda
australia
bahamas
bangladesh
barbados
belize
botswana
brunei
cameroon
canada
cyprus
dominica
gambia
ghana
grenada
guyana
india
jamaica
kenya
kiribati
lesotho
malawi
malaysia
maldives
malta
mauritius
mozambique
nambia
nauru
new zealand
nigeria
pakistan
papua new guinea
rwanda
saint kitts and nevis
saint lucia
saint vincent and the grenadines
samoa
seychelles
sierra leone
singapore
solomon islands
south africa
dri lanka
swaziland
tanzania
tongo
trinidad and tobago
tuvalu
uganda
vanuatu
zambia
united kingdom

I suppose you could call it The British Empire 2.3, in fact I shall, for the rest of this blog.
Being that they are part of The British Empire (2.3), i'm sure all any and all brits reading this knows something about most of them besides whether to pack warm clothes when traveling there.

No? I thought not.

The Queen, our queen, Elizabeth II, queen of Great Britain, is the head of the commonwealth.

She is also the monarch of 16 of the members of The British Empire 2.3, this group collectivly being informally known as the commonwealth realms.

These countries are:
Antigua and Barbuda
Australia
The Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Canada
Grenada
Jamaica
New Zealand
Papua New Guinea
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Solomon Islands
Tuvalu
United Kingdom

Obviously this group must have an even closer relationship to the UK, them being part of The British Empire 2.3 AND having the same monarch.

Hmmm...


Thing is, you ask someone on the street to name anyone in the commonwealth of nations, who is under 30, say, you'll probably get no more than

australia
canada
jamaica
new zealand

For the most part at least, and that's after you've had to explain what the commonwealth of nations actually is, and probably come right down to referring to them as the former colonies

And does the average brit know anything about THESE countries? You'll probably get something about the Kiwi's being sheep shaggers, the australians being criminals and canada being cold.

Now i come to the point of this Blog. See i didn't forget about it, i just had to get all that out of the way first.


Alot of people go on about Britain for the British, and being proud to be British, and mixing these ideas in with thinly vielved ignorance and racism to come out with something that has passon,it really does have passion, but there is very little substance, becuase even at what could, in these people's eyes, be seen as it's best, it's Greatest, it's most powerful, Britain stretched across the globe, encompassing people from more nations than i could even FIT in a list.
From it's humble begginings being pulled together from an island in a swamp to first form England around 1200 years ago and within 2 generations having the kings of Scotland and Ireland recognising our king as their...Overlord, for want of a better word, We've come all this way, contributed to and altered the world on a massive scale, through 'inclusion' of others.

Dispite the fact that most of it came through conquest, it just seems that as a country we are all ABOUT the mixing of cultures and assimilating them into our own, and if those people who say they want Britain for the British, really want to make england in the way they think it shoudl be, maybe we should find them a small island in a marsh somewhere in the west country and let them start again.

Gahhh!

Well, this blog was meant to be so that i could still get 'stuff' out there during times when i wasn't making videos for youtube, but i managed to go and not post anything in almost a week. This is irritating, for me at least, becuase probably nobody is reading this, it's good to have something to try to keep on top of, and to go over things, sort out thoughts.

I realised this when i was on the train yesterday. Something came into my head and i thought 'i should vlog this'. Problem at the moment is that a few weeks ago i had to reinstall windows and havn't gotten around to 'aquiring' my video editing software again yet. I don't wanna do anything but adding an intro and a fuck load of jump-cuts, but without those cuts my videos would be long and rambly, lots of 'ummm's and 'errrr's.

maybe i'll give it a good think, make myself up some notes, and just go for it. Making a serious vlog in one take is something i've not done yet and it'll probably do me some good.



Maybe i'll blog the subject too.

Writing troubles

See, here's the problem. I've been trying to write a novel for maybe the last 6 months, and been failing.

It's a fantasy novel, swords and sourcery rather than the erotic kind of course, and i've had to invent a world, mythology, nations, magic theory, and all kinds of other crap. i've got all that stuff down to such detail as i thought that the rest of it shouldn't be too hard right?

I've got a direction i want the plot to go in, a few main characters, a tonne of stuff i know has to happen, but getting anything more down is proving harder than i had ever ancicipated.

I've never written anything as much as a short story before and i decide to embark on a 100k wordcount insane epic story like this....

I'm overeaching, clearly, but i HAVE to get this down, have to share it with the world...


Damn you, words!

And the music starts again

About 8-9 years ago, i stopped playing the saxaphone. THis was something i'd done for maybe a couple of years, and while i wouldn't say i was 'amazing', i was good enough that it was probably just a matter of practice, i had pretty much 'learned' what there is to learn, and was just building on skill.
I stopped playing becuase the learning envoronment i was in was starting to feel opressive. I"d joined an after school club run by the school music department, and to begin with it was fine. After the first year though they started to get a bit serious. I'd get berrated if i hadn't practiced enough that week, i would get sent off to practice the sax during normal school music lessons, and the whole tone was that of 'you must get better, enjoyment is secondary to that aim'.

So i quit. I now wish i'd stuck through it, but i don't blame my past self in the least. Although i still enjoyed playing, i was constantly worrying about getting enough practice in to not get a hard time at my next lesson, and in the end it just wasn't worth it.


So, where's the positive in all this?

Well this week i'm going to be buying an alto sax. i've wanted to restart for years, and for some reason havn't.

I'll say it again. Grabbing life by the balls

Grabbing life by the balls

2-ish years ago my life came pretty much to a standstill. In fact, it spent about 3 weeks on the edge of coming to a complete end first, but then just halted. After the accident i was housebound for a long time and i spent more time watching crap on youtube.
I found Talking Heads through Gimmeabreakman, and therefor Krumbine. I subbed to everyone who had been in talking heads that i could find, and proceeded to (mentally) get pulled into this community of creative minds that krumbine had managed to pull together.

All becuase of the accident

Eventually, Obsquatch made an apearance, and i thought 'wow, here is a dude who doesn't just exist, he lives. He enjoys life and grabs opportunity where he finds it'.
Put it simply, this bloke seems like the kind you feel like you can look up to, while probably being embarrased to admit, but hey, this is the internet, and this is the start of me pulling my life together how i want it.

I'm grabbing life by the balls

I've not been a confident person. Ever. On Saturday i did something completly out of character and tho i won't divulge any details right now, i'll update on that situation soon.



I might have completly lost 3-4 months, had a shitty year and a half, and been left with a fucked up leg, but i've got a feeling that it's gonna all turn out ok. You know why? cuz i'm going to make it so.

Working on a Cosplay

Ok, now i know that this kind of thing isn't exactly going to be everybodies cup of tea, but since it's going to take up so much of my time, i should probably report on it here.
I'd like to add to begin with, that i've never blogged, and to be honest, i'm just hoping that this will be somewehere to keep records on my thoughts and maybe get some more discussion going.


So, that out of the way, down to business. I've been playing world of warcraft for maybe 3 years now and having always enjoyed dressing up, this was a step that i had to take eventually, or i'd have probably gone nuts and started shooting up a local post office or something. Being the awesome civic minded person that i am, i've decided that to deviate from this innevitable course i shall design, construct, and wear a Tauren cosplay. And a good one at that.
If you don't know what a Tauren is, it's one of these fellas:

I'm going to be basing it on the in-game model, and updating as i get more of it constructed. The first post being here:
So far i've contructed a carboard/duct tape frame and started to fill with expanding foam.

Future updates will just consist of a photo and as simple desciption.