Spider eyes

I was closing a window and saw this little guy wandering around the dusty paintwork.

Look into the eyes, not around the eyes, the eyes, and you're under...

He was about the size of a 10p coin, but courtesy of my trusty Canon A620 I was able to get a closer look. Nothing more to say on the topic really, he's wandering around the garden now. I'll never see all those lovely eyes again...

Fish eyes

Enough eBaying, I'm going to need a support group at this rate. This time it's a semi fish eye lens.

Who says cats are pretty?

I'm not planning on taking solely stupid shots, but this seemed a good place to start.

Between Bananas and Brains

Having not wanted to bring personal information into this blog, I've realised that it's hard to write anything without revealing something.

So, given the fact that only some people close to me know that this is my blog, I'm happy enough to mention things that are not good conversation starters, but might actually be useful information.

Thus we come to 5-HTP, and depression. To cut a tiresome story short, I spent some time on various antidepressants several years ago, and I am aware that depression can creep back at any time. I am also aware that it erodes motivation both directly and inderectly - through poor sleep, eating less and so on, so with plenty of work to do at the moment I figured I should avoid any problems rather than wait for them to surface.

5-HTP is essentially the chemical that your body creates in the interim stage between ingesting tryptophan (eat more bananas) and creating the resulant serotonin (for happy brains). By synthesising this halfway house for consumption, the serotonin production process is accelerated and the dosage can be more accurately assessed.

My first few nights taking these capsules (which always float when you try to wash them down, so you have to be extra determined to rap the benefits) involved some of the most vivid dreams I have had in a long time. for three nights, in order, my dreams were weird, then great, then awful-but-felt-normal-at-the-time. Then I forgot to take it for a couple of nights, so much for motivation...

If I ever manage a regular routine and feel the need to extol the virtues or sound a warning about your friendly neighbourhood 5-hydroxytryptophan, you might see more about it here. In the meantime, expect the usual mix of square photos and mundane daily life. I really should get a flickr account or something.

Uninterrupted

Again, eBay gives new meaning to life. Actually, it just gave me a new perspective on my consumerism...

You see, I now have a UPS. Not a shipping company, an Uninterruptible Power Supply. This is not because I run equipment off a generator (as its previous owner did), afraid that I might forget to fill the tank. This is because of those times when a windy day has led to some kind of disturbance on the power lines round where I live, making me lose a significant amount of work on my PC.

But the new perspective is this: The UPS cost £15. Postage cost another £15. And somehow, through computer knowledge, I have on occasion been "worth" about £30 per hour. So if I were to forget to save my work for an hour, then have a power cut, this device will have paid for itself.

Of course that depends on what I was doing, nobody pays me to play Black & White 2 or to meticulously organise my files & emails.

Still, wouldn't it be great to be the only person playing a god game diring a power cut...?

Gandalf

After my partner of over 12 years decided to point out that I had a daft-looking, small patch of white beard, I made the mistake of pointing it out to a friend, whose immediate reaction was "Ha! Gandalf...!". Apparently he just wanted to be the first to call me that.

Pigment, why have you forsaken me?

This may be the best motivator yet for me to bother shaving regularly, since I have spent about a decade arguing "no, that's just stubble" in the face of beard accusations. I admit that 5-day-shadow is not traditionally called stubble, but since I have never tried (by shaping, planning or fertilising my facial hair) to have a beard, I feel I can claim to have never had a beard.

As for the photo above, that's just stubble.

Paper Anniversary

A year ago, my brother got married. Which was weird. But which was great too - and after a year of flights across the atlantic, houes moves and sometimes frenzied blog posting, his new life appears to have settled down a bit.

So congratulations to him and my sister-in-law (which also sounds weird!), and hell, while we're at it, congratulations to anyone else who's reading this from the comfort of a decent relationship!

Nothing more, nothing less, love is the best...

Twenty-Nine

So what exactly are 29-year-olds meant to feel like?

Darwinia, complete for the second time

There is a game called Darwinia, which very few people seem to have taken notice of. If the world had any sense, people would be flocking to the website to buy it for Windows, Linux or Macintosh. Having just completed it for the second time, still finding it a joy to play, I can't recommend it enough.

Resurrecting souls from dead virii as Darwinians. Obviously.

Of course some people don't seem to like paying for games, which reminds me of a blog post I read in which a UK resident was reflecting on The Excellent Game Psychonauts by Double Fine Productions, about a year before its European release. OK, so that game took an excessive amount of time to cross the Atlantic, but we all know deep down that buying from retail outlets (or directly from the creators when possible) really does support producers of games, music or whatever.

How can I claim this moral high ground between eBay binges? I tend to go for rare & out of print items, or the kind of mediocre games that aren't worth full price even as budget releases, made by companies who should be forced to rethink their policy of reworking old game engines with even older characters for the sake of a 10-game series.

So go on, buy Darwinia. Imagine Populous: The Beginning in a Tron-like world, only with some excellent music (unlike Populous) and a compelling storyline (unlike Tron...).