A few days ago I was thinking “let’s face facts, phpBB 3 has been in development for years, it’s never actually going to arrive.” After which I wandered over to phpBB.com and noticed the first beta release of phpBB was released last month. Could it be it’s actually going to arrive sometime soon?
It’s quite exciting as I look forward to being able to pay around with the new version once it goes stable. Or indeed in the beta versions if I feel bored one afternoon.
Ok, yeah, let’s just get it out into the open. I bought another domain. But I had to! I saw this wallpaper of Lindsay Lohan and it captured my imagination so I thought about building a site around it. Then later I was over on NamePros checking out the developed sites for sale. They are all crap, mostly just sites people have just built to sell and are doing so straight away.
Almost all of the celebrity sites on there are “less than a month old so assume no income or traffic,” that are just getting sold on for $30 or so. I don’t know why so many people bid on them, the biography is always copied straight off Wikipedia and a few generic photo pages complete what is they claim is a “developed site.” Why don’t people just bother to put a little time into the site? They could fetch a lot more for it if they did.
With that in mind, I’ve launched Simply Lindsay Lohan. It’s not integrated to the rest of my network like most of my sites are so it’s easy enough to sell if I want to later. Then again I was planning to sell City Ruins but by the time it came to selling it, I didn’t want to loose it :D.
It’s also given me chance to flex my design skills a bit as the entire theme which is a custom half built from scratch (I created the design as a static page first but then still used the default WordPress theme as a base and ported my new HTML into the files) and is completely done in CSS, not a table to be seen.
I actually did some coding this evening. Not much but I did some quick is important. Today has been very much a deadbeat day. I didn’t get up till 3:30-4:00ish given what time I got to bed this morning. I got my 8 hours pretty much exactly but obviously when you have sleeping times that are that messed up it just leaves you knocked for six for most of the day (what’s left of it).
I’m going to get myself sorted though as much as possible, I was going to go to bed shortly but I think I’ll stay up a bit longer as I want to watch the Buffy movie which is starting shortly on BBC1. I don’t have a particuarly late shift tomorrow though so I can keep a normal pattern there and after that I’m not working again until Thursday (which is another close that will probably destroy my pattern again) unless I get called in. I’m a little hopeful I will actually, I could do with some more hours as I only have 2 shifts next week.
Still I will appreciate the time off, it should help me get back on track. I haven’t done much coding for a while, I’ve hardly done anything for the past week given work is imposing somewhat of an ajustment period on me. I think with the gap I have though I should be able to get back on track, especially now I am settling in (and also hopefully releasing how much I need to keep going with my work as the sooner I can get it generating me a substancial living the sooner I can stop doing crap I don’t want to do).
I have a few projects I could really do to put some focus on and get them out there, some of which are fairly close to being finished (although a project is never really finished, but at least released) and just need a bit more time to get them out there.
I’m home! You know, I remember my dad used to go to work and it would be dark when he got to work and dark when he left during Winter. While of course it’s Summer at the moment, I think I have quite a good system in leaving for work while it’s still light and not getting back until it’s light again :p.
I had a 10 hour shift which was 4pm to 2am which I have been dreading given the longest I have worked is an 8 hour which dragged and that would be working on the assumption that we would get out at 2am which I wasn’t as everyone said they never do. We got things done fairly quickly last night and got out at 2:30 so the 2am finish is really stretching the truth on the schedule. Still it’s an extra £0.50 an hour after midnight so there is a plus side.
The shift actually went ok. I had my break at 6:15-7:00 so the result was I had to work 7 and a half hours straight after that but once it got past about 10 o’clock when we had pretty much shut most things down and had very few customers it was fine as it was just cleaning and such which is more relaxed than during the day.
Afterwards we all hung around outside the restaurant talking for a while then the 5 of us working close (myself, James, Rich, Danny and Kayleigh) went back to Rich’s and played Buzz which is a PS2 quiz game. Well, after a quick stop off at Tesco for alcoholic based supplies :D. Although I was not benifiting from said purchase as I wasn’t going to drink while I had the car.
I also have money on the way. I’ve seen the pay I’m owed and that was only up to midnight last night so you can add on the morning hours and my shift on Saturday to my first pay packet. The downside is I’ll get taxed on it which while I can claim back, means I won’t have the money straight away. Mooching government. They are so lazy to not even work out if I should be paying tax or not, it’s a system that really screws students as most of us don’t pay tax but could really use our money asap.
Anyway, I have food in the oven for breakfast then I am going to get some sleep. Later today I am going to continue blogging about some interesting topics which I think I need to leave until I have a fresh mind.
WeLoveWidgets.com is one of the best examples of a feeding the MySpace beast start-ups I’ve seen in a while. At the moment they are only offering horoscope widgets for all the social networks but if they expand which if they have any sense they will do, they could have loads of widgets and really generate some traffic once they get round MySpace.
I was pointed in the direction of a Wikipedia page on Pastafarianism recently which is a religion founded in 2005 by Bobby Henderson in protest to the Kansas State Board of Education requiring intelligent design creationism to be taught in schools.
Basically the religion believes that the universe was created by the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” or FSM for short. It’s quite an interesting read and makes a very good point that it’s no less rational than traditional Christian creationism. The open letter he sent to the school board also makes for an interesting read.
Oh and if you want to read more, the Gospel is available on Amazon :D.
Ok so just got home from work. I got a call from Gary at McDonald’s at 4pm asking if I could work tonight, “get in as soon as possible till about 10ish.” I told him I’d be in for 5. That way I had enough time to get ready but not enough time to not have an excuse for not washing my hair before I came in. Worked till about 10:15 so not too bad, an extra £20 or so at least.
I actually found it ok today, I’m now sorted on pretty much everything on the grill side so I could actually be classed as a useful member of the team now, to an extent at least. It was pretty dead tonight, half the time I was managing the grill side by myself. We had turned half the grills off by 9pm given the amount of people in although around 10 the chavs began to amass.
Tomorrow is going to be a killer though as I’m working 4pm till close (which is about 2-3 in the morning). Once I’m through that I’m ok though, the only shift I have after that (until Sunday at least, don’t know the schedule from Monday onwards) is Saturday which is like 4:45 till 11:45 and it’s usually dead Saturday nights, it’s Saturday lunch time and breakfasts which are major busy which I will avoid.
Otherwise life is going ok. Work is keeping me busy so I don’t have that much time to dwell upon how much time life sucks. Although it also means I am getting very little work done on other projects which really sucks.
This evening myself, Kieran and Claire went on a bar explore, later to be joined by Sophie, John and Physics Chris. We started by getting food at Weatherspoons and our total list was…
- Beckets Bank (Weatherspoons)
- O’Neal’s
- Revolution
- Square
- Townhouse
At Weatherspoons at all ordered drinks before getting told we got free drinks with out meal so we ended up having two drinks there. After that we headed to Firefly which was empty so we skipped that and then went to the Sports Cafe which we got turned out of because Claire didn’t have any ID. So next stop Revolution where we got a pitcher of cocktail.
Next step was Tiger Tiger which was closing at 10 by the time we got there so we headed to Nu where we were told we were 21. So we went to Carpe Diem which had some awful entertainment so we went to Ashes which was closed for a private function. It’s a conspiracy! Still we ended up at Sqaure and discovered Blueburry Bacardi Breezer so it’s all good. We also came up with a new saying…
You know it’s been a good night when you wake up in Equador
So yeah, good night. Still plenty of new bars to explore ready so that I can be the “experianced veteran” in freshers week but that’s a good few struck off :p.
Work sucks. I really don’t want to go back to work. And I’m working like every other day so I don’t have a massive amount of hours and yet I never get a gap big enough to really put it out of my mind. It’s just so stressful. The problem is it’s not rocket science. Which is bad. If rocket science is anything like computer science then it will be incredibly complex but there isn’t actually that much to it, it’s just learning it and applying it. The job is simple stuff but it’s a lot of simple stuff. And it’s practical not theory. I don’t thrive in that environment.
Did my first shift today. Was pretty good, everyone is really friendly although it’s all about absorbing as much information as possible which takes a while to do. Btw here are some tips when going to McDonald’s. Order a quarter pounder! It’s a lot easier for us :p. A Big Mac is needlessly complicated and this whole Summer Quarter Pounder is no easy make either.
I’m working tomorrow and Sunday too and on Tuesday evening I’m working till 2am though apparently it’s closer 3 by the time you actually get out. Although I guess if you’re working all night anyway it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re getting paid for it.