Well, it’s been a while since last Saturday but I was tired and so forgot to do more than make bullet points. I then had Church and WoA on Sunday and forgot on Monday and Tuesday.

I got the train into Newport and noticed that it was raining and that I was wearing shorts, no surprises there then. Pete and Maddy (Pete’s GF) were there and picked me up, we went first to a dingy council estate where I started having serious doubts about Newport and the whole renting with Pete thing. Of course, Pete had simply misread the map and we were on the edge of the nasty part of town (Ringland). It was also raining.

When Maddy read the map we got to the first house, though actually it was an apartment and a bit on the small side but at the time seemed okay. It was in a new area so not bad at all and had all the local shops that we’d need. It was also still raining and we needed to have lunch so we went to Domino’s for some pizza.

The second house was in need of a bit of work and the agent that was meant to be selling it to us was at the wrong house. The area was not so nice so we moved on to the third and final house (taking a detour via another house). This last house was very nice but a little pricey, we’ll be going for it if they can knock down the price a little as it’s much larger and is really well located.

There is a pub opposite the house so we had a drink there to discuss choices and I was then dropped off for the train home where I met a pair of ladies that were not sure which train to catch, they were however going to swansea so it was the same train as me. It was also still raining.

On Sunday I tried to cycle home a little too fast after church and so threw up but not over myself this time which was rather handy.

Well, it’s been a while since I blogged, mostly because I forgot. My hand is a lot better but my wrist is still weak and my replacement wheel hasn’t got the right sized hole so I need to drill it to make it ever so slightly larger and can thus accommodate the tyre valve.

Orca has been cancelled as Pete and I do not feel it will actually show off what we can do, I like Python a lot and for data-processing it’s better than PHP and not just in speed of execution but also in syntax. PHP however is far more commonly supported and easier to use for web development, it’s what we will be using for most of our work and so really what we should use for a private project to work on when we are low on clients. It’ll be something related to games because everybody interesting likes games, if you don’t like games then you are simply not interesting

WoA is going very well, last world where I took a break a turn took 2 or more weeks and at least 2 days for the team results. I’m managing 1 week turns and 1 day results, as can be clearly seen, everybody loves it. Site activity has almost doubled over last month and since there are other games that are run from it WoA is certainly at least twice as active

Finally, I found today some church signs from America on a site titled “Church signs that will make you not want to go to church”. Some made me worry about what the church was like while others I found funny and thought that they were clearly in the wrong place, here are the ones I quite liked.

• Seven days without prayer makes one weak
• Santa claus never died for anybody - It was near Christmas
• Google cannot satisfy every search
• God does not believe in atheists, therefore atheists do not exist - Okay, I wasn’t 100% sure about this one
• God answers knee-mail
• What is missing from “Ch ch” - U R

I was cycling to the job centre, through the park, at about 20-25mph. I went along some grass to bypass a curve in the path and hit a rut, I bounced and I think landed badly on a rock. This was a bad thing. The only thing that stopped me going over the handlebars was the braking power I applied first via the brakes then my feet and finally my hand. The result is that my left hand had a huge gash across the palm, it started to bleed a bit. I had a couple of bumps and bruises but they will heal fine, a little bit of pain may hurt but that’s life.

The real issue was my bike, the front wheel was all wonkey, the amount of force required to make it that wonkey was me on the bike at something between 10 and 20mph (I don’t know what part of the crash did it). Needless to say that with a sprained wrist I was unable to fix it. But I’m not one to give up on a hopeless cause so I cycled to ammanford anyway, without front brakes. This seemed not to impede me much until I had to slow down whereupon I noticed that my left hand controlled the only functional pair of brakes which put me at a disadvantage at the traffic lights but I managed.

Arriving at the job centre was interesting, they were all starring in horror at the gash and saying it must be terrible and suchlike. I was more concerned about the bike and Terri (who works there) said that apparently I come from a tough family. Thanks Terri, my mental state and hardiness play no role, it’s all genetic. They insisted that I have a bandage of some kind but could not give me a plaster incase I was allergic to them so I had to live with just some paper towels and sellotape.

I went to the cellar to see Sam, Ryan and Jon where they also tried to bend back my wheel, they failed too. We put a real bandage on my hand and had lunch where I met my Dad, Guy and Phil (they work with my dad). My Dad was also unable to dewonkeyfy my wheel. I got home after a very slow bike ride and then found that my sprain made typing either slow or laced with pain. You never appreciate how much you use both hands until you cannot use one of them.

Today I saw Wall E. To get there I cycled down a big hill and at 38mph a fly got in the way of my mouth while I was trying to take air in through said mouth. I didn’t throw up but it was not at all a pleasant experience. Wall E was a great film, I think it’s the best Pixar film to date, the beauty is not in the story or the moral but in the attention to detail, the little things that make you laugh and smile.

I would love to say more about the parts but I don’t want to spoil anything, I do think that if I saw it a second time I’d spot things that I didn’t spot before. My Dad’s computer has decided to have a hardware fault and we can’t actually work out what it is, Coel’s (well, the one that he uses) broke too but I fixed it, go me!

A while back I read George R R Martin’s A game of thrones and have recently started on it again in Audio book form. I had forgotten just how good it is, it’s well written, very mature and gripping. I found myself really liking some characters but hating others, it’s great how even the best and most noble of characters have flaws of their own, it’s so much more real. A word of warning, it can be very hard to keep track of the characters sometimes (there are so many). Now, onto book 2…

Today my Dad and I cycled to Ystragunlais (or however it’s spelt) and then back again. 18.14 miles (there and back). 18.14 miles of hill and gravity, it was a lot of work and I’m now a little worn out. Tomorrow I’ll be going for a bike ride to my Gran’s, that’s 1 mile there. No doubt my average speed will be insanely high compared to what it was today.

I can near enough touch type with the Colmak keyboard and my typing speed is still rising, I’ll have a review of it soonish. WoA starts on Saturday and I’m looking forwards to it, I may be doing a podcast again

So WoA has moved onto it’s next phase and I’m now the only one running it. This it appears is a good thing as the turn took a very short amount of time and we are returning to 1 week turns. I’ve cut out a large amount of the math and uneeded rules so it’s much easier to understand and so far everybody likes it

I also got a new t-shirt today, it cost me 1 pound 80.

My day involved a bike ride against such strong wind that I came up with the brilliant idea of turning the bike around and peddling backwards! Sadly this meant I simply fell off as I do not have a BMX, that, or I was not peddling backwards fast enough. I was told that I had to phone the dole people and so thought “oh yay”. I saw Jon and Sam and went home.

Orca, it’s something that myself and Pete have been planning, we are hoping to make some money from it too which will be handy. It’s rather similar to something called Twitter, it just has a lot more in the way of features. I figured I’d list them here so you can see for yourself. Alpha means it will be ready for the Alpha release and Beta for the Beta.

So, that is what I spend my time coding when it’s not WoA and until we get a client.

Sunday was my last Sunday at Portsmouth for a while and everybody thus said goodbye to me. I was invited around the Mitchell’s for lunch, I find it fitting that the first time I was at Eastney I was invited back for lunch to theirs and now the last time I am there as a student I still am. I stayed there all day which was really nice. After the evening service myself, Lorna, Hannah and Dan went to the Hackers (we were just going to wait for Dan to collect his things but it spiraled).

I will miss Eastney but I also plan to visit next year but I may well be visiting Portsmouth before then! Boagworld is a rather popular web design and development podcast. They had a competition to win a ticket to dConstruct (a web design conference) and I won one of the tickets. They are worth a good amount of money but it is in Brighton on the 5th of September. I am looking at staying with someone nearby that won’t mind me leaving early and returning late.

I’m back home and until SLD can get some income going I am on the dole and looking for a job to tide me over until we can. I am enjoying being back home already though the water does taste a little funny.

Owing to my bad looks, borderline Aspergers, Dyslexia and general abnormality, the time required to reach my current level of proficiency may be more, it may be less or you may be so alike me that you match me second for second in your progression.

So I switched to Colemak as a keyboard layout a few days ago. So far it is going better than Dvorak, it’s a lot more similar to Qwerty than Dvorak is and I think this is helping me a little. I am already at a similar stage to where I was with Dvorak, I can’t touch type yet but I can type fairly fast compared to a couple of days ago.

Pete has done the same as me but must switch back to Qwerty when at work. He says it was confusing at first but it is getting easier to switch over each day. But enough about Pete, he’s really not that cool. I cannot yet touch type but I am finding that I touch type a word every now and again.

I’ve been taking daily bike rides along the seaside and it’s really nice, I am looking forwards to coming back home and seeing all my family again.

For a while I’ve been slowly working (slow because I nap a lot) on a new version of World of Arl. WoA as a whole has been going for some time, several years now. Over time it has become more complicated and time consuming for all involved. I am largely to blame and as a result, about 3/4 of the way through it’s current lifetime interest started to wane. The good news is that every single person has said that the new set of rules are better in every way.

The feedback so far has been very positive (it contrasts nicely with all the criticisms about my bodily odor) and people are suddenly much more eager to play and create teams. In under 24 hours of accepting cultures, I’ve had 8 submitted, typically a total of 20 to 30 are submitted so this is a good sign.

Of course, with a new ruleset I decided to improve the design of the site, a lot. The design has actually been called good by real people. I’m thinking that I’ll be altering the blog so that it matches the main site. But I have more news! Aside from all the napping, eating of kievs, watching Stargate SG-1, more napping and the WoA redesign I’ve actually been doing something like work. I’ve been working on a program for myself and Pete that if it works will be really cool, chillier even than the response people give me when I greet them when I cycle by. It’s something like twitter but with somewhat more features.

Tomorrow I’ll give a review of the Colemak keyboard layout.