It’s after 2am, I handed in my Major Project today after very little sleep for the past two nights, and yet tonight I can’t sleep.

I’ve a presentation of my work to do tomorrow afternoon, but that’s not bothering me. I’ve an exam next week for which I know nothing of the material, yet that’s not keeping me up. I’ve been in bed for a good couple hours now. Why am I not sleeping?

I don’t know. I should be tired. I spent last night in the labs finishing off my work, only getting to bed around 7:45am with my alarm set for 11:45am (I woke up a bit before then). The night before I barely slept, for reasons unknown to my conscious brain.

That night as I lay awake, I had to get up at 3am to feed the fish. Simply because I had forgotten to feed them for a couple days and I was awake anyway. Tonight I got up to look up domain names for a new portfolio site (I think I’ve settled on one, finally). And now I’m on here typing away like it was 2 in the afternoon.

I’ve often struggled with insomnia. Often during times of stress. Not usually when I should be content and satisfied that a major piece of work has just been handed in. I’m delighted with my work, so that’s not the issue. But I still know I’m not content.

I’m sure you’ve noticed. My last two blog entries haven’t exactly hidden that dissatisfaction.

It’s been said to me a number of times that 2007 is going to be a big year. They said it in 2006 at Streetreach. My dad said it recently about our family; two births and an early retirement (that could be a dodgy british film title, no?). Others have been saying it non stop. Wasn’t 2006 big enough?

2007 marks the end of my student life. It marks the end of my full time education. But above all that it marks the end of me being tied to anything.

I love Belfast. I love my city. I love my people. I am emotionally attached to it. But does that mean this is where I belong? There are opportunities opening up for me elsewhere. As I’ve mentioned before for the first time in my life I could do anything.

I truly have freedom. Freedom to go anywhere, to do anything. I plan to go places over the summer and try and figure out what I want to do. I sure need a holiday. I wanted to take a trip by myself for a few days. But I have friends who want to take a few days away with me too. I doubt I can afford both.

But if 2007 is going to be such a big year for me, something - anything - has to happen before it ends. I know we’re only in mid May, but that cuts out a good chunk of the year where no major life decisions have been made.

I don’t know what kind of decision I’m looking for, but I know there needs to be something. Is it a decision about a career? How about a decision about a change of scenery? Maybe just a decision that I’m in the right place and doing the right thing?

Maybe the decision I want to be made isn’t actual for me to decide. Perhaps I should stop worrying about it, stop piling pressure on myself to make a decision. Or perhaps I just need to be a man, choose something and go with it.

Risk taking isn’t in my nature. But I’m fed up with being safe and discontent. At least if I take a risk and it doesn’t work out, I can say I’ve tried.

The last thing I want is to waste time waiting.

Is this what it has come to? As I sit and wait for my potatoes to boil I feel I should probably write something here. If nothing else than to vent my thoughts. Not that I’ll really do that here, but being easter there aren’t many people around and I’ve spent far too much time with myself

Work is progressing. Extremely slowly. But it’s getting there. If you want to see the work in progress visit twostepmovie.com or check out the behind the scenes stuff at the Two Step Production Diary. I’m currently working on a preloader for the first one as those images take a long time to load off that server. That’ll really need a bit of work as the last thing I want is for the site to load bit by bit.

Other than that I’ve gotta get stuck into a programming assignment, and then once all is handed in I’ve an exam to study for. After that, it’s all over.

Six years of being a student (including that year that I just lived like a student) will be over, and a new chapter in my life is about to begin. If you’d asked me all year am I looking forward to it I’d have given you a great big resounding ‘No!’ but now I’m just anxious to get out and try some new stuff, whatever that means.

The job market for a web designer is extremely tough to break into. There are no jobs being advertised so it’s a sell yourself kind of situation. My design lecturer Chris constantly tells us the big heads at major design studios are asking him to recommend graduates to him. So there’s a way in. But if you don’t make the cut in Chris’ eyes, you may as well consider a new direction.

I was considering such a thing when I recieved my first semester results. Judging by how I was marked it seemed Chris didn’t have a very high opinion of my work, and I began to think there may be another path I should go down in terms of a career. But there’s no doubt I have a passion for design, and in particular I love designing for web. My doubts were quelled somewhat when my design was chosen out of 95 of my peers for the new caramurphy.com web site (the site is yet to go live). Added to that Chris got me a one off contract to design a site for a local film company - though nothing has materialised yet.

As graduation approaches the question still remains. I’m finding myself more and more drawn to photography - and this ‘Two Step’ project has really brought to light what a passion I have for film. For either to be a serious career path or even an ‘on the side’ thing to make money from, I’d need to learn a lot more. But courses take time and money.

My friend Paul is travelling round the world next year, after working for 6 months and building up some money. It’s not my thing (I get homesick after 2 weeks away anywhere!) but I have got a real desire to see the world. Little trips here and there is more my kind of thing. Again, time and money is a necessity.

At this stage in my life I expected to be settling down, getting a career and sticking to it. But more and more people have been saying to me that jobs aren’t like that any more. You get a job for a few years, see how you like it, and maybe move onto another field. I think my ideal situation would be freelance design, photography and maybe even some film (though that’s more likely to be a hobby or side project). The problem with freelance though is if the jobs aren’t coming steady your bank balance begins to suffer. Not that I’m worried about money. I know I can survive on a lot less than I’m spending now, and I’m pretty tight compared to most people I know. But say I went a couple of months without getting a design job. How do I then fund things like marketing? I’m not a programmer. For more technical websites I’d need to hire one. Same goes with complicated flash animations. If that’s what the client is looking for they won’t go to me.

I guess it’s got to the stage when I know the next few years of my life will define who I am. The past few have begun that process certainly. But I know it’s just the beginning. I’m not willing to let a 9-5 job steal my opportunity of having life to the full. And yet maybe life to the full will involve a 9-5. If it’s true that I can easily change my career path in a few years then there’s no need to worry. But I’m not sure what I’m doing now is worrying. Just getting impatient. I’m still a work in progress, and I know I always will continue to be shaped and stretched. But I’m desperate to see it come soon. I want to be who I was born to be.

“A shapeless piece of steel: that’s all I claim to be.
This hammer pounds to give me form, its flame it melts my dreams.
I glow with fire and fury as I’m twisted like a vine.
My final shape, my final form, I’m sure I’m bound to find.”

Tonight I picked up my guitar and starting playing through some stuff…somehow in my picking I began to play this song.

At the end of last year, I finally understood what Bebo was singing about. The anguish and confusion as you are broken and stretched; moulded into what you were meant to be was something I never really experienced. I still can’t listen to much Bebo, but this is one song I can truely identify with now and though I don’t think I’ve even listened to it in this past year I have played it on occasion, to remind myself that I’m not alone, and better things are to come.

This week has been filled with games programming and video editing (and not enough FET). These past three night’s I’ve been in bed at 4:30am, 5am and 3:30am - hopefully a little earlier tonight! Two of those nights I was in the lab working, and still didn’t manage to get very much done as it takes so long to find tutorials on the net and our course has not provided them. The ranting about the ridiculous make up of final year has been done so many times to so many people that I refuse to repeat it all again here.

On tuesday night the boys from Monkstown came over and we decided we’d make an impromptu video. Afterwards I went into the labs and edited it together (only to have to do it all again the next day - don’t ask!). If you’d like to the see the result, visit my design diary. All of this was completely improvised - hence the pauses and people talking over eachother - I think the boys did a great job under the circumstances!

title taken from “The Hammer Holds” by Bebo Norman

Taken from my design diary

So there I was, monday morning, sitting helping Clive crack…activate his photoshop when there came a knock at the door. Clive went to answer it and quickly came running back exclaiming “Web Standards! Yeah!” Only afterwards did I realise how geeky we were getting so excited about the parcel which of course contained my brand new copy of Dan Cederholm’s Web Standard Solutions. 

I sat through my Games Programming lecture depserately trying to pay attention all the while knowing that in my bag lay a bright yellow gem. I haven’t quite read it cover to cover yet but almost. Already I have been able to create a basic css layout for use with my imd homepage and FET blog. The crazy standards evangelists were right - this book is a must-have.

Now I have to admit, I am a table lover. It will take a long time and a lot of css work to convince me as a designer that css is the way to go. Sure, the nerd part of my brain is telling me to burn my tables, css can do everything I could ever want and more, but the designer side of me (who holds the majority vote) is still convinced there are just some things css won’t allow me to recreate. I will forever love tables, but I’m giving Web Standards a right good go.

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I seem to have recovered well from the flu symptoms I had last week, with mostly just a bit of a cough left over now. Perhaps the change in air over my weekend spent in Port Laoise helped. Perhaps I had so much else to worry about that my body forgot it was sick. It could happen.

I’m feeling a little overwhelmed today at the amount of work I have to get through. Last night I took some time out to visit my folks and enjoy a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner before heading to Coffee Stop about 10pm. My plan was to help get things set up and then head home because I was just so tired. I stayed until about 12:30 and then headed home to doa little work before bed. Unfortunately I enjoyed the work as I didn’t get to bed till 2:30. The result is the incredibly basic css driven layout mentioned above. As the weeks go by and my knowledge increases those pages will change into something much more attractive I’m sure, but for now I’m just pleased that I’ve got that far.

For those of you that read this and are techie nerdy geeky gadgety people like myself, I would love to hear of any new and upcoming technologies that you’ve been hearing about that I could possibly study for my FET module. Most of the ideas I was thinking about seem to be unsuitable so I’ll be spending tomorrow researching new ones.

I need to get my head in gear. There’s so much I should have done by now, not just work-wise. Evangelism-wise I have yet to organise any outreach events and it’s weighing on me. I have a responsibility this year to not just focus on myself but on others and I need to get some ideas in motion. If you’re a jtown CU-er and are interested in helping out with this kind of thing get in contact with me. I’ll be looking to form myself a bit of a sub-committee over the next few weeks.

Title taken from friday night’s crazy game of Scrabble

So I’m sitting here tonight feeling sorry for myself because I should be at CU but I’m not. Evil sick people have passed on their evil germs and now I’m evilly sick too

My only comfort tonight will be the new episode of Lost that’s waiting in my download folder. I’m missing Gilbert Lennox bring us an introduction to Acts before we study it in small groups and I’m missing a party at the Paradigm which Trevor has graciously offered for our use. But I know if I went while fun would be had I’d be even more miserable tomorrow. Which I don’t want.

For those that are interested, my current work is now online at my university portfolio. It’s pretty bare right now but I’m learning css and don’t want to design something using tables and then have to change it. Plus our design diary for week 1 had to be a .txt file and next week will be an ugly unstyled html file with massive headers and default link colours. Week 3 will bring the css action. But hopefully the diary itself will become a little more interesting over the next few weeks.

I’ve been playing FIFA07 in my spare moments (I felt I had to big-up it after arguing with PES fanboy Nathan today that his glorified arcade game doesn’t even come close!) and have to say I’m pretty impressed. I’m finding it difficult to put in a decent cross…last year a lot of my goals came from getting it down the wing and lumping an inch perfect ball onto Rooney’s head but this year one in maybe 10 crosses makes it to my attacker. The chip through ball is also very easy to overhit and the cpu AI is still a little bit stupid at times, but overall the game is much more realistic, skill moves are coming off for me much more and shooting has improved immensly. Free kicks still need a lot of work…I’ve scored quite a few with Ronaldo but no one else manages to come close. It’s good to work with real money in manager mode (Ronaldinho is no longer the same price as James Beattie) but the transfer system could still do with a lot of improvement. I don’t think we’ll ever have a perfect FIFA while EA still wants to charge £30 every year.

Clive introduced me to Pandora yesterday. It’s similar to Yahoo music which I used in Canada last year to avoid listening to Crow’s christmas music, but seems to be a lot smarter and more accurate in making suggestions. Simply type in the name of an artist or song you like and it’ll find similar music. Perfect for those looking to expand their collection but don’t want to listen to rubbish on the radio while finding something they like.

I’m sitting here this morning with my quilt wrapped round me drinking a hot lemon and honey, accepting the fact that I was not immune to catching the cold that those around me have had recently. So far just sore throat and cough, am praying it won’t get any worse - I really cannot afford to get sick this year.

Last week was intense, stressful, tiring but fantastic. I was delighted to be a part of it (although I didn’t necessarily feel that way on thursday morning when, after being up at 7 for a prayer meeting, I had to delay breakfast for almost four hours while we set up the stand for freshers fayre). Thursday was by all accounts the most stressful and tiring day of the week, although I was in a tense mood all of wednesday for no reason. That was relieved slightly by a poker game in the girls house (though getting soaked twice didn’t exactly help - sheesh children ). And yes, of course I came second.

After being in uni all day Clive and I had to rush to Belfast for our class in the art college, and then afterwards rush back in time to set up for CU. During the rushing around I got a text to let me know I had to come up with something to say while standing at the front introducing myself and my role. So not comfortable being up there but I guess that’s all part of my growth for this year.

So yeah, that art college class. Innovation and Concept it’s called. I’m hugely excited about it, and yet so unmotivated to get stuck in when it comes down to it. How annoyingly lazy am I?! It’s basically a proposal for my major project deliverable at the end of the year. But the cool thing is that it takes the form of a design diary. Basically I write about what I see on the net, in advertisements, in life that inspires me and take ideas from those things to produce a proposal. I’ve absolutely no idea what I want to do for my major project - I guess that’s why I’m finding it difficult to start. But the design diary should be cool. I’m hoping to integrate it in a way with rockshore, having two simultaneous blogs and yet referencing the design diary here. I’d expect those who already read rockshore to be interested in what I’m writing over there, as it should contain more than just academic nonsense. It also means I have to learn how to build a css site from scratch, which is something I’ve been meaning to learn for quite some time - now I actually will because I have no choice to be lazy.

If you’re wondering what the title is all about, one of my guppies died the other day, and blue guppy is looking pretty ill, I don’t think he has long left. This came the day after me saying “Good all the fish are looking healthy, the water problem must be solved. Maybe time to add some more fish?” Never…speaking…again.

Wow John Mayer flashback…ouch.

I got a message last night informing me that rockshore was stuck in a time warp. Unfortunately at the time I was quite busy so now that I’ve got a free moment I thought I’d come along and see how to fix it. I’m not too learned in the ways of the warp though so I’m not sure how to go about it. Ah well here goes.

Last night was the first night of fresher’s week at jtown, and the cu had organised an acoustic night. Big thanks to Sarah for organising the band, who were quite fantastic if I may say so. Everything went very well, lots of people showed up, lots of traybakes were consumed and everyone seemed to have a good time. Tonight we are running a table quiz which should also be good craic (although I can’t compete due to creating some of the rounds!) and tomorrow we have a bbq/fun night planned.

I don’t think anyone has appreciated being back at uni as much as me. And it’s only really been one day so far (I had registration last week, so 2 days if you’re being picky)! Being surrounded by people, having stuff to focus on is going to do me the world of good after a long summer. Pre Term last weekend was superb, got some great teaching, made some new friends and generally had a great time being part of things again.

My first class yesterday was a lecture in “Interactive Games Programming” - the only module choice we have had in the 3 years of imd had this one pitted against “Advanced Interactive Programming” which, rather than being for something useful to imd’ers like php or java, was further experience in Visual Basic. The choice was easy for me and 90% of my class. The Games Programming module looks a good one, using 3D Studio Max along with Macromedia Director to expand on basic game engines created by past final years. I don’t think the choices of games are that wonderful but we do have the freedom to do whatever we want to them (which may mean a complete overhaul if I get annoyed with it enough). Other than that we haven’t had any classes yet, but after reading the specification for my other 2 modules it looks like i’m in for a lot of work this year, and to be honest not a whole lot of design work in first semester.

Nathan came back to stay over last night and we had plans to make a video today to be played in cu on thursday night. Instead we sat up till 4.30 talking, and while I got up at the reasonable hour of 12 noon the others are still fast asleep. We may manage nothing more today than a trip to McDonalds.

title taken from discussions of our new band’s name