Return to Jarada Productions

Friday, 5 September 2008

Website Into PHP

Just a quick blog post to announce my Jarada Productions website's move into PHP! Not only does this mean that my entire website has entered the wonderful world of Object Oriented gooiness, it also means that it will make editing my website a whole lot easier and more fun! So look out for increased updates to my website in the near future!

I've also introduced a reCaptcha on my contact page which will help push off any spam email that some people have been sending my way. I only want real people getting in contact with me who actually want to speak some sense...

Anyhow, that's it for now. Speak to you soon!

Thursday, 4 September 2008

Into September

OK, so the thing about that offline diary I said in my last blog post... is that we were actually very, very busy. I didn't really get very much time off at all, far too little to write a diary. So for now, I think I will simply get round to posting a one-post review of my holiday, and posting up some pictures of it all.

Anyway, since I've got back I've been quite busy doing quite a few other things, including sorting out a replacement for my iPhone (which I stupidly and accidentally dropped in a lake in Disneyland Paris off the top of a boat), trying to fix my Sony Vaio (which has decided it doesn't like working anymore and has gone on strike), and catching up with various online websites which I neglected over the holiday (such as this one).

That said, at the time of writing, I only have around 17 days left until the end of my holiday. You can see the countdown timer on my main blog page to the right; it's slowly counting down to zero! As such, I have been preparing vigoursly to ensure that I am ready for my Uni when that day comes. I will need to re-enrol, and have my project analysed and informally designed. I know what it's going to contain now at least, it's just getting that down from the disorganised mess in my brain to an organised list on some paper somewhere (be that electronic or otherwise).

I am of course hoping (still) to get into far more regular posting, and to that degree I will be looking for an iPhone-based app or similar in order to allow me to think up blog posts while I am on the move. This will hopefully provide me with a platform from which I can create these blog posts while I am on the train to and from Uni, for example.

Anyway, I will leave this blog for now so I can concentrate my next blog post on my holiday to Paris/Barcelona that I have just gone past. So, until then!

Wednesday, 13 August 2008

Into August

Right! Time to post a catchup on a few things I hadn't got round to posting about yet. Once again! Well you should all know by now that I am probably one of the web's most irregular posters...

Birthday Weekend
Hehe, anyway, my birthday weekend sometime ago started on Friday 25th July. My birthday was littered with preparing for Saturday, which I shall explain about shortly, but we did take some time out to provide me with a selection of presents, most noteworthy being quite a lot of PSP-based games. I was also promised a new iPhone, although O2 stocks were low and so I was unable to get one on the day.

Saturday was our Jarrett Family's Summer Party, representing our celebration of Summer, and my Dad and my Birthdays. It started at 12:30 and finished around the same time 12 hours later. And it was awesome! We had our usual large bouncy slide, and smaller bouncy castle. In addition, we also had a large marquee which housed the food that our lovely caterers offered. And we had near perfect weather. There wasn't much else we could ask for!! Thank you to everyone who attended and I hope you enjoyed yourselves!!

Sunday was our day of cleaning up, followed by rest. The party on Sunday left a lot of mess, and so the morning was spent tidying and dealing with the recycling, while the afternoon and evening spent in relaxation.

Monday 28th July dawned early, as it was my Dad's birthday. His presents included a new BBQ, delivered to him before the party started, and a few other things of course. He also managed to get his new BMW M3 delivered on the same day! So all around, it was a pretty awesome weekend.

Past Weeks
As promised, a review of the past weeks is in order. Work has generally been the same, with a few new websites being brought into the mix. I may post more about that in a later blog entry. As for my room, the carpet has been laid, the lights installed, and all that needs to be completed now is a few paint jobs, the curtains (the last thing on my list now) and the LCARS accessories. I may soon post a few pictures up onto the web to show you what my room looks like now!

Then, there is the Avatar: The Last Airbender finale! Oh, awesome was an understatement. I don't think I've ever seen a more perfect ending, as there was only one slight niggle from my point of view (that being Zuko's mother... what was the point of bringing up that question moments before the end?) But other then that, it was brilliant! And the way Aang defeated the Firelord I thought was perfectly fitting, despite some criticism I read on the forums.

Anyway, I'll post more about my University and other matters in another post.

The Present
Right now, I am on holiday in Paris, France. I will be starting to write an offline diary (unlike my previous holidays and more like my first real recorded holiday) and posting them as and when I get Internet time. So until then... au revoir!

Friday, 25 July 2008

Happy Birthday

I am 20 today!! No longer a teenager, and no longer able to use that excuse for things!

Feel free to leave any comments you wish to, and when I find an ounce of time, I will blog a full report of this weekend (and past weeks) onto here.

Until then then...

Sunday, 6 July 2008

Into July

6th July! 6th July!!

Well, this is probably the longest time I haven't posted since I started posting. Heh. So I guess I'll bring you all up to date on the latest happenings.

Home
At home, I've been busy sorting out my room. The lighting is being organised as we speak, and the carpet has already been ordered. The curtains will be next, and then the accessories, such as LCARS Posters, will finish the room off. So not long to go.

As I said in my previous post, the summer party in July is approaching fast, as well as my birthday on the 25th. Preparations for that have already been put into motion as well.

Finally, my brothers have joined me and have broken up from school. So we are now all no-longer attending educational classes...

Uni
And with that, I move onto my University. I have recently received news of preliminary results stating that I have passed the second year. Which is awesome! As for work on GooLife, I am trying to move forward on that in my spare time but it is proving difficult to. My aim at current is to see if I can get a prototype of JXTA, the P2P Java networking tool. However, it requires ANT to work, so I need to get that configured first.

And finally, I am going to re-kick start my 3rd year project as we need to begin to move that forward as well. Hopefully both these projects can be pushed forward.

Work
At work, I've been working on two tasks. Firstly, I'm continuing to program my demo-app for the iPhone. It is getting there... slowly. Soon, I will be able to show people what I have done on it. The second task I'm working on is the Digital Vega website. The reorganisation and restructure of the CSS of the site is almost complete, just a few more images to change and then I can present it again.

Gaming
There are a few games I am playing on recently, both website-based and installed on my computer. They are the USS Andromeda, LCARS Terminal Forum RPG, a game on Facebook, EVE Online, Guild Wars, and of course the legendary Sims 2.

As you can probably tell, the majority of these games are multiplayer-based; ie, you play online with real people. Hey, I love MMORPGs!

Lastly, the Avatar: The Last Airbender is reairing from July 14th and airing new episodes every day until the finale on the 19th. Care to say I will be hooked when that happens... can't wait!

Final Note
Well, I hope this has shown you that I've been busy both working and enjoying my summer holiday so far. We have a plan to go to France and then Spain in August, so perhaps I will be able to post about that a little better then my last vacation...

So, until my next blog post, farewell!

Saturday, 31 May 2008

Talent

Well, it certainly hasn't been too long since my last blog post, but I wouldn't say it has been regular. That's because I've been busy doing other things and whenever I think about posting blog entries it's usually just gone midnight.

I am currently writing in my bedroom, which is even messier then before we started cleaning it out, and my brothers room next door is only just being put together. So his room is completely empty. I wonder where all the messy stuff came from?

Anyway, this past week has mainly been filled with working during the day and watching Britains Got Talent during the evening. Yes, I watch that show; it's quite funny to see what the three judges are going to say.

Last week I spent the day working and the evening playing games. I just really have too many things to do at the moment, so I am hoping for some productive work today to get things that I have been avoiding or not achieving out the way; such as this blog post.

As my room and my evening gets clearer, I hope I will get into the habit of posting these blog posts on a daily basis. Of course we all know that will take a little while before I get to that stage, but that's my aim for this blog. It really is annoying to try and remember the past 7/14/28 days past and summarise it all in a single blog post.

Now, for the future, I have something I want to point out. I will be sending invites to a select few people, but I just want to post this here for those lucky people who read my blog post. The thing is this: my family will be hosting a summer party in July, complete with food, drink, bouncy castles, and everyone and anyone we can invite. Of course we do have limited space, so I can't invite everyone I know, but if you are interested, and you would like to know more, feel free to contact me and if I can fit you in I'll send you an invite.

Right, with that out the way have a good weekend and hopefully I will post a blog soon!

Tuesday, 20 May 2008

Back to the Net

Well! It's been just under a month since my last blog post, so I thought I would update you all and hopefully go back into regular blog posting. So, here's what I have to say (once again split into sections...)

University
My second year is over! Exams are outta the way and I've now got four whole juicy months ahead of doing things other then University work. Does that mean I am not going to do anything for Uni? Nope, of course not!

I still have the development of GooLife to continue, and re-spark back into life. And I have recently released the Project Presentation and Project Report's for my third year Uni project, that is the LCARS Terminal Starship Commander. Just click that if you want to see them (apologies for the poor sound in the presentation, but there's not much I can do at the moment to fix that).

But other then these two projects, that's it for Uni work until my third and final year kicks in mid-september. Just check the number of days I have left on the time shown on the right... yeehar!!

My Room
I have pictures! Although my room is quite messy, I can point you to my web album that is holding the latest pictures of my room, including my new Sliding Door Wardrobe, and soon my new Desk and Chair! The album will be updated as and when I get new pictures, but my room is far from finished yet and there's still a way to go.

Gaming
Recently, I have been playing quite light games on my Mac and Windows PC during the free moments I've had, as I've been quite busy catching up on things (such as Blogging!)

Hopefully soon though I will be back in the game that I really want to return to... EVE Online. I want to celebrate my summer holidays by going online for an entire day and trading throughout that day non-stop, making lots of money. So I will look out for a day that's relatively free to do that sometime in the future.

And of course, now I'm on Summer holidays, I can get to play other games too!

Online
I also have to sort out my website at some point, and I'm still planning on moving away from basic XHTML to PHP produced XHTML. But that is a big project so I haven't had time to take part in it yet.

Final Notes
So, as you can see, even when I'm off from Uni I still have a lot of things I want to do! So I will be just as busy throughout the Summer holidays, also owing to the fact that I will be working on iPhone development throughout the holidays as well.

Until the next blog post then!