I’m Famous!

Published on May 13, 2012 in Technology & Internet. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

…Well, sort of.

I bought the complete collection of ‘Sharing is Caring’, by Dan Bull. While the entire collection stood at over a fiver, I still bought it. I felt like I was buying my part of a small revolution, as well as a test.

Things haven’t been going so well in the UK digitally. From The Pirate Bay being blocked outright on the biggest ISPs courtesy of pressure from the BPI (Bye Bye BPI), to laws that could possibly leave us with no privacy at all for legal surveillance, rather than the sliver of privacy we still retain from commercialism and adverts. We’re all in it together, unless you can pay your way out of Big Brother’s view, and it makes for chilling concepts. Downloading a show you’ve watched on TV, still paying your TV License fee and it’s a BBC program? You’ll still have to defend yourself. Helping a potential revolution in the future? You could be tried for terrorism. This new stand on digital actions is poison.

Dan made a song called ‘Sharing is Caring’, and as well as giving it away for free, he offered people that wanted the opportunity to support him the chance to do so, by paying a token sum of 59p. And if you bought all 10 versions (one for each chart, I assume), you got thanked in the video below. I’m at about 3:08, thanked by my moniker, since online that’s more who I am.

The end result? ‘Sharing is Caring‘ reached #9 on the Indie charts, #35 on the RnB charts, and #1 in the Reggae charts with a listed remix. All that with a song that was available for free, with word-of-mouth, label-free promotion, with an option to pay to have your vote counted, and a special thank you (a la Kickstarter) for those that bought the entire collection.

I’ll admit, I had thoughts of maybe hearing him on the top 40, but those are just dreams for now. Next time, Dan?

Catch Up!

Published on April 22, 2012 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I know I said that I would be making an overhaul on my blog, but once again K2 has won me over. I actually downgraded to the 1.0 release rather than 1.1 release candidate. It’s a bit more stable, and it doesn’t have the keyboard shortcuts that annoyed the hell out of me when I was typing in my password. So, lets get the bullets out of the way.

  • I passed my driving test! Six minors, managed to stall my car and still pass. Next step is to get my CBT done and get a motorcycle.
  • I left Aion again. I have every intention to come back as a casual player when 3.0 comes out, but I’m pretty much done with Aion until the new patch hits.
  • I tried World of Warcraft. Lasted about a month before I just distanced myself from it. It wasn’t deliberate, it just happened. I guess it was more all the catching up I had to do.
  • I played a lot of Mass Effect 3 and gave in to Freemium-style items. I regret nothing. (so far 153 hours)
  • I’ve started trying to eat better in terms of fruit and nuts. Got bags of dried fruit that I nibble a few pieces from rather than having a chocolate bar. Still need to eat better at work, though.
  • Atreian.com flopped. It was meant to help reignite my desire to play Aion, but with co-host potentials either outright ignoring me, and my love for the game waning because I felt I’d done everything until 3.0, it didn’t work.
  • I have no projects on the go at the moment, and this makes me simultaneously disappointed in my creativity and itching to dig into something finite and I can just go nuts, then say I’m done and walk away.
  • Had a new computer! Finally upgraded from the Dell I had before. A custom build in a NZXT Vulcan. Runs/Ran Aion like a dream on highest quality, and eats up my other games.

My reason for quitting Aion again? Every PvP Encounter became this:

Belated New Year Talk.

Published on January 22, 2012 in Gaming and The Blog. Closed Tags: , .

I’ve been terrible at trying to keep time as of late. I don’t know how or why, but it’s gotten to the point where I can’t really do anything without removing all distractions. It feels like I’ve become something of an environment-induced ADD sufferer. It might be that if I’m not at work, I’m at home waiting for the time to sleep before my next shift. Might be just that my internal bodyclock is a little messed up and I lose track of time. Either way, I need to do something about it.

I’ve found a technique called ‘Pomodoro’, which is the Italian for tomato. It’s essentially find a task that will take 25 minutes or more to complete, and do it in blocks of 25 minutes, with 5 minutes between each block. Thus, your work is split into 30 minute blocks, which are manageable. The technique recommends that after every four Pomodoros that you take a longer break, perhaps half an hour, so your mind is tuned to working in bursts of concentration before trying to extend that concentration over longer periods. And I think it’s worth giving it a try. I threw Pomodroido on my phone, and set it off. I’ve set the application to override the screen turning off when idle while it’s working, so I don’t have to distract myself with the phone to navigate to the app and figure out how long I have left. I’ve not really tested the theory out yet, but I’m hoping it gets me to enjoy the time I have to myself (which is a lot right now), and learn to channel myself into things that need to be done.

Continue reading ‘Belated New Year Talk.’

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