Merry Christmas - 2007

Well well well, it has been a long time since I've made a blog post! And with it being Christmas Eve I finally have a chance to take a breath and write a little.

It has been an incredibly year! If 2006 was my worst yea, this has been my best even if it has been an incredible amount of hard work with a great deal of good and bad surprises.

First of all... Work: Over the past year I have worked with a number of fantastic companies developing applications and websites like www.sellstudenbooks.com and www.pennyashton.com and business is good. We're very busy at FreshDevs, taking new people on every day and working on all manner of new media, marketing and technology projects. It has been very exciting! Unfortunately, as is often the case these days, I can't really divulge much information on the specifics of the projects we have been working on... but hopefully by the time find myself with a few free moments for blogging I'll be able to tell you all about it!

Jenny and I moved in together and we are enjoying our first Christmas as just the two of us in our new home in the city center. The tree is up, the presents litter the floor beneath it and a 2kg+ turkey awaits cooking in the fridge. This will be the first turkey I have ever cooked so wish me luck! 

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas (or a happy Eid!) and hope everyone is making the most of the holiday season.

Site Redesign

So, I've finally decided to take a couple of hours and redesign my site to something more simplistic. I'll be doing this on the live pages here, so please forgive any errors, broken links, and bizarre colors etc. that appear over the next few hours.

It's going to be simple, and it's going to be red :).

Celebrity Lookalikes

Fortune Cookie (14/10/2006)

This Relationship Thing

This Relationship Thing

Years of games, lessons, trials and tests and I have never really put much thought into relationships as a whole. I guess I’ve always had so much success finding women I could be with (and sometimes have) but not wanted to, I just went about my daily business without ever giving the subject much thought. And as only recently have I questioned my desires with women, I have been inspired and found myself doing much more analytical thinking on the subject. Hell courses on relationships should be mandatory at college, it might change the way people interact with each other later in life for the better. But then again perhaps the subject is so practical you can never really understand until you’ve been there, done it, and handled the emotions and cost. Have you ever had one of those conversations with friends where you discuss the futility of relationships? It’s a topic that seems to come up quite often with new friends. Some people believe you just settle down, some believe in love at first sight, some think you’ll always get bored or fear things becoming to mechanical and convincing such people that settling or meeting someone is just too far ‘out there’. Do you believe in true love? I know I do, and my personal opinion as antagonistic as it may seem, is that anyone who doesn’t just hasn’t been there yet.

There are so many posts and blogs on the internet about love. Some people are being philosophical or reflecting on their recent thoughts and experiences, and some are moaning about their current relationships or tom & jerry escapade. I feel it’s about time I added to the fold of crap on the internet with some of my thoughts, and see if anyone could ever understand my frame of mind.

Yes, I am going to be sexist throughout my rant. Our experiences and thoughts about relationships are very one sided. We have only ever experienced anything as our own sex and Men and Women ARE different. It is only natural to classify my thoughts as those of a ‘Man’ in the relationship and not just ‘the other partner’.

Firstly, something that really bugs me that men do. And I’m sure women do this too, hell I know they do, but it’s the men I know best and resulting issues that aggravate me. Stop seeing women as the same species, or expecting to find a woman ‘just like you’. Firstly, perfect partners are not necessarily those who are exactly alike. She needs to be the ying to your yang! No, your woman won’t always understand you, she won’t always say or do exactly what you think she should, it won’t always work and you will fight! Just accept the inevitable and try and accept them for who they are and not what you want them to be.

Competition is inherently inefficient. Both sides would sooner give the other guy FALSE information, than tell them the truth. So what happens? Each side wastes time reinventing the wheel, instead of inventing something to put on top of the wheel.

Why do co-workers refuse to help each other? Idiot competition for raises and promotions. Not only do they hold their co-workers back, they also hold their entire company back. Civilization was NOT founded on competition. It was founded on COOPERATION. Racists, autocrats, and capitalists have all been fooled by the lamest misinterpretation of Darwinism.

Relationships are difficult and can become infinitely complex. Hell sometimes paradoxes seem to form between you and your partner. With that in mind I suggest there is no master, and I’m not going to pretend I know anything you don’t or haven’t already thought about at one point or another. It’s not like throwing a house-party or knowing how to market your business. And so I stop there. However, sexual relations and ‘meeting women’ is a different game altogether. And I would like to rant a bit about some of my recent thoughts and experiences, and what I’ve been reading on many of your blogs! Some you’ll agree with, some you won’t. That’s the nature of individuality! For those of you who are bored already… here’s something to entertain you.

%YOUTUBE[ibEdNCLyirE;0;0]%

I’m going to start with a tip: Don’t listen to a woman when she tells you what she wants from a man. As a man, the most fatal flaws you can make in the game (besides forgetting to take your socks off in the sack) is actually believing women want what they say they want. And yes, it is a game.

Women say that they want a guy who’s funny. And of course that’s true but does it really help you? Either your funny or you’re not. Sure a woman wants someone who’s funny - everybody gets fat, bald and wrinkly eventually so you might as well be with a man who’s going to give you a naked picture of himself for your birthday every year you’re together, even long after it stops being funny, but because he continues to do it year after year after year it gets funny again.

We have to divide women’s wants into two categories to get anywhere close to understanding why we succeed/fail in given situations: elementary and ephemeral.

The desire for a mate with a sense of humour is an elementary want. As the name implies, it is basic, inherent, and practically indisputable. Other elementary wants is a man who is capable of providing stability, a comfortable life, and non-retarded children. Of course being physically attractive, respectful and caring would also fall into this category.

But when you meet a woman, elementary wants are difficult to manipulate to your advantage because it can be hard to appeal to those elementary wants in such a short time. Often you only have seconds, or a few minutes with a person before you’ll decide whether or not you’re going to keep talking to each other. And if you’re anything like I am, there’s a good chance you’ll be quite drunk at the time! So while it can be done, there has to be an easier way right?

If we focus on a woman’s ephemeral wants we are being much more logical. We’re looking at what she wants from her night (and what we want, so we’re already having more fun!). Is it a girl’s night out? Does she just want to get drunk? Is she looking to get laid? By assessing where she’s coming from, it might make approaching her easier, and you can approach people who are already more attractive to you and looking for the same thing.

That said however there is a desire which fits both categories: the want to be wanted. And that’s what it’s all about! From the moment we arrive on earth, we are looking for love, searching for something to project our feelings onto but at the same time gives us that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Whether it’s as a baby or as a 20-something downing Mojitos in Fantasy Bar - we just want to be loved.

Q: Now, armed with the knowledge that all anyone - man or woman - wants is to be wanted, what should you do?
A: Completely fucking ignore that desire

With this in mind, instead of being the "trying to hard funny guy who desperately trying to work into the conversation his stupid fucking website" we’re already thinking with a little more style.

[going up to bar to order drink next to Girl]
Me: [abrupt] "What’s up?"
Girl: "Hi."
Me: [rolling eyes] "Whatever." [walks to other side of bar to order drink]

I dare you to try it, and if you can pull it off I reckon you’ll be making out with her before the call for last orders.

In an environment in which people are drinking, being agreeable elicits no reaction. Being a dick elicits an often visceral reaction… so we’re already on the right track. Isn’t any sort of gut reaction better than indifference? In the industry we’d clock this as similar to “no press is bad press”.

Forget all the mumbo jumbo when you’re at a bar. Everyone wants to be wanted. By showing disinterest you only pique interest which can then be used to your advantage. I’m not claiming this is groundbreaking here - it’s pretty much textbook manipulation. Oh, and if this actually works for anyone… please let me know. :D. Stories are welcome in my e-mail anytime, hell I’ll buy you a drink just for trying it!

Of course, remember to appeal to the other wants later, or you’ll find yourself in trouble further down the line!

New Job

What a week! Having not clocked more than a dozen hours sleep since last Saturday and constantly working, I’m pretty shattered and thankful the weekend is here. I started my new job at Zero5Media on Monday, and have been pretty bogged down working on www.sellstudentbooks.co.uk with them. It’s definitely a place to look into if you’ve got second hand books to sell in the UK. The SMS services are particularly interesting.

I’ve also been very bogged down with other projects in the evening, trying to catch up. Most notably www.DocSecure.co.uk which, despite not being a challenging project at the moment I just haven’t had the necessary time to get things done and the owners are trying to work a very tight schedule.

I’m glad the week is over! Don’t get me wrong, I thrive off tough challenges and am never happy if I’m not incredibly busy, it’s just the way I like it! But the only challenge this week was time and getting things done. As a developer it’s always frustrating when you work your butt off each day but aren’t at all happy with the end result. I didn’t get to paint any masterpieces this week, nor really achieve anything more than taking projects back in time and then returning them to square one. My work this week could have been done by a first year computer scientist with a ‘Beginners Guide To PHP’ on his desk.

But don’t get me wrong… it was a worthwhile endeavour. I’ve settled more into the new routine at home and at work and I know that this was very much a one-off week with more exciting things to come.

While I enjoy the chance to catch up with people this weekend and spend a few hours relaxing (my social life went out the window this week, I hardly even saw my flatmate), I’m also excited to get to work on Monday morning and hopefully having the chance to use both sides of my brain again. Time-frames shouldn’t be as hectic too, as my primary focus will be on what I’m working on in the office as just about everything else now I’ve managed to outsource to other contractors or the projects are coming to an end. I might actually end up living a normal life! With normal working-days! Giving me plenty of time to socialise and work on my own things in my spare time.

ZzZz

So much to blog,
And so little time
But tonight I am shattered
So instead here's a rhyme

Finding The Balance

I’ve come to some realisations recently as to why I fell into the pit I did, and just how I pulled myself out of it and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts with you all. Granted I perceive things differently in hindsight, but the last few months are still very fresh in my memory. If you can relate to the feeling of low energy and high stress like you feel like yourself rearing toward some form of Defcon 5 emotive, then perhaps you’ve been going through something similar! Small businesses or not easy to run, and neither is being self-employed! It takes a particular kind of person to do well. It’s a lot like running a marathon where the finishing line often seems very distant. You’re constantly pushing yourself and perhaps those around you and you rarely have time to catch you breath.

Regardless of what I say to other people I have never been very good at following my own advice and taking the time to care for myself. I often focus on what the people around me deserve, and always have some excuse as to why I can skip it. Of course that unbalance is inevitable as part of what you need is to take care of your business, and what’s best for the business is good for you. My work is my livelihood, and balancing it with a full social life leaves little time for self-maintenance when things get crazy.

I guess the most important thing I’ve learned is not to panic. You always know things will get better eventually; life is a never-ending journey until your dead and it’s impossible to predict what will be thrown at you from one day till the next. You’ve just got to take it in your stride. It’s easy to say “just run with it”, but when the world is getting tighter around just stop for five minutes. You have full control over your own feelings which in turn affect your behaviour and the outcome of every situation.

If you try and tackle hard problems when you’re desperately stressed your decision-making ability is certainly compromised. Turn your phone off and relax for a bit, it will help you recharge! Sometimes you forget the bigger picture, it’s easy to become tangled in the craziness of every day hurdles and mini adventures. I find writing helps, it quiets the mind and lets you get your thoughts out. Of course it only helps if you write in an uncensored way – can’t be worrying about grammar or impressing a reader. You have to explore that person inside and get what they want to say out onto the page.

When it’s really piling up: Keep your friends close, and kick your enemies out the door! Even if it’s just for five minutes I find calling a an objective friend always gives me a fresh perspective. It’s much harder when you feel stressed AND alone. Running your own business can be very solitary. I find when I call someone most of the time we end up talking about something completely off topic from what’s on my mind. But a little laughter is all I need to rejuvenate. You do have to be sure seek out someone you feel secure sharing with though. I’ve learned the hard way just how much worse things can get if you keep your stresses to yourself, our minds are to lucid to be contained!

Most importantly of course, have fun! As well as relaxing and everything else I’ve rambled on it’s amazing what a weekend away, or just a trip to a new restaurant you’ve always wanted to go to can do for your spirits. Being somewhere where work and finances can’t bother you is key. It’s especially satisfying if you do it on your own because of the contrast to your usual solitary stresses. This week I took my camera out and photographed parts of Manchester I have always wanted to get some pictures of. Of course that doesn’t mean you should neglect your relationships with other people, at the end of the day it’s your friends and family who are always there regardless of the sunshine or hail pouring down.But it’s important to take some time outside the office to be independent and take care of number one without the influence of others. Oh yes, if you’re a tv-watcher I highly I recommend Studio 60! A couple of episodes have aired so far and the cast/comedy is brilliant. Amanda Peet (Syriana) plays the Jack Bauer of the media world, and Mather Perry (Chandler – Friends) and Bardley Whitford work incredibly well together. It has a similar sort of feel to it as The West Wing (unsurprising, as it too is created by Aaron Sorkin) and is definitely worth looking into!

Dreaded Days

I seem to have rather chaotic events planned for every day this week, not to mention a few interviews and other things along those lines. My driving test expired, so I have to retake it on Tuesday, for instance. Of course my lack of funds at present doesn’t make any of the above easy! Busy and broke rarely go well together, and I will have to find some way to pass the time in the evenings cheaply without losing my sanity. Looks like I might get few a few films! The students are back in Manchester, Fresher’s week brought the streets and public transport to it’s knees, but the sights in the evenings weren’t a disappointment! It’s amazing how old you feel when all the kids come back though. This week will be just as busy, if not much much worse (can you believe it?) The labour party conference is in Manchester and they’ve already blocked off a bunch of roads and there are police absolutely everywhere. This could in fact turn into the week from hell! If only I was going away… Bollocks!

Facebook.com Imports Notes!

I was thrilled to find out that the popular networking site Facebook.com actually supports the importing of rss/atom feeds into the 'notes' category of your profile! Which means my so-called facebook blog now 'automagically' pulls my news off my site! How cool is that?

I've constantly been impressed with the overall quality of Facebook, most notably the level of privacy they offer so that you're only keeping in contact with real friends! The pages and design is very professional, and the scripting behind image uploading and the many other cool features seems written with much love and creativity.

It's amazing cool (if a little weird), to be able to look up people you haven't seen for years, find out what they've been up to, add them to your list and build a sort of 'social timeline' of everyone you went to school/college/university with.

Big props to the facebook.com developers... all I ever seem to do is badmouth massive community sites, but facebook gets a huge thumbs up from me! They’re not all evil and sad! You get left behind if you don’t have accounts on these places these days and I've discovered it can actually be fun.

If you don't have a facebook.com account you should definitely try and get one (it can be tedious if you have trouble with your university email etc.!

As part of this whole new craze of everyone joining MySpace and Facebook etc. and always wanting to network with people they know I have added a couple of links to my site so you can find me quickly. With so much social interaction between friends going online, it's a wonder any of us find any time to get any work done. Balancing a real social life with Facebook etc. (which you generally surf at work right?) is a tough job! I wonder how many employees will get sacked for it this year.

Jeddah Arrangments

So I've finally nailed down my trip out to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I'm heading down to London on Monday morning, will pick up my visa etc. and stay the night and catch a flight first thing Tuesday morning.

Looks like I'll be over there a minimum of 10-14 working days while they change my visit visa back to an iquama so I can legally be in and out of the country on the work visa, which will make life a lot easier!

So I'm here for a few more days after all! 

Thursday Morning

I know I haven't been posting much that's of interest to anyone, life has been so inredibly busy I've been living off a couple of hours sleep a night at most. However, I woke up this morning and stood on my balcony sipping my tea and the warm breeze told me it was going to be a good day. If nothing else it should at least be fairly interesting. I got a call one afternoon last week about a possible position opening up at Pravda Advertising <---- (them). I've pretty much decided not to take this job out in Dubai - it would interfere to much with some of my other ambitions at the moment. Yes yes, I've been told I'm nuts! But the middle-east is nothing new to me having grown up there!

Of all the full-time jobs I've been looking at recently I think the prospect of working with the guys at PA appeals to me the most for various reasons. And it's not to be taken for granted that thier offices are about a minute away from my apartment in the city.

The environment could be quite challenging, and give me the chance to really be creative on worthwhile projects. I'm getting quite bored of much of my work recently, not that I don't enjoy the work. I just don't like working on things I know few people will ever actually see or appreciate, especially from a development point of view. The sorts of clients I could be working for with the team could mean some real coverage.

Anyway, I won't bore you with any more about that. Today is Thursday, and Thursday's are always good. The weekend is beginning in the muslim world, and I get less calls and have more time to focus on my more local projects. I intend to spend the day working on the final tweaks for GCZ and CP. The bug reports and tweak requests keep coming in and I'm enjoying plowing through them all. It's nice when people appreciate the changes as they come... and as tough a crowd as we're going to have to deal with when we actually launch these projects, the people who are helping us out right now have been ace. If you're reading this, props to you! Keep up the good work.

MySpace

So, there's been a recent surge of posts on MySpace on our forums... I finally caved in and created an account a few days ago.

I'll add a link to the left of my page shortly. But for now anyone who uses MySpace and wants to look me up you can find me at http://www.myspace.com/H1net.

I do understand the appeal, leaving each other constant notes, bulletins to keep each other informed about events, and generally networking to keep in touch with people it would otherwise be hard to do so. But I can't help but feel this is just another one of those things that I'm drawn to use because you just can't be left out of the loop. Much like MSN. Remember back before MSN was really that popular? When AIM was new and ICQ was the coolest thing around? Now nobody uses ICQ anymore, heck there are very few people I still chat to consistently on IRC. But everyone uses msn messenger, and I still think it's a load of pants!

Soon everyone will have MySpace... but I still think it's just another one of those things that sucks more minutes out of our lives each day than it's worth. 

Crazy New Shirts

The Week Begins

What an awesome weekend. Generally the weekends are always awesome, but rarely do I wake up on a Monday morning feeling so psyched about the week ahead. There's a lot to do this week, but last week saw so many milestones reached I'm excited about what's coming.

Oh yes, the photo... ignore it! I hate posting anything on a so-called web-blog without a photograph. There's nothing worse than a bunch of boring text! Yes it is me, but it's also more than five years old, and don't ask me what we were doing. Attempting to play football (yes I do mean soccer to you bloody Americans!) no doubt on one of those rare days where the sun actually shines in good ol Britain.

Isn't it amazing how suprised we always are when it begins to rain here? You'd think we'd be used to it, it's always raining!

Which reminds me - I finally got round to watching Match Point this week. Superb movie, if you haven't seen it I definately recommend checking it out.

That's all for now, let the games begin!

Ben-Newbery.com

This is just another quickie. But I thought I'd let you know we were still moving.

As a demonstration and test of some of the functionality we are beginning to offer, I have moved my site to our Illuminati Gaming system. www.ben-newbery.com (my personal site) while full of outdated content, shows you some of the power available to people to create their own websites with customised content and scripts. You can utilise as little or as much of the general parsers as you choose, making it a very powerful CMS.

You should see this as a step in the right direction, these pages have been built using the standard user-tools, without cheating as an administrator. Those of you looking to spice up your clan sites will hopefully see this as an exciting step in the right direction.

The new tools consist of:

• Template management
  • Customising parsers for a particular host (for example, re-skinning the forums to look how you want on the pages you host)
  • Template cloning and sharing
  • Template and class-type variable editing 
• Host configuration (subdomain and domain management)
  
• Pre-Defined Parsers
  • Allows you to call particular scripts/functionality from within your content or layouts. That's how most of the splash pages of our websites currently show you so much information. By putting something like BLOG[user,num_posts] you're blog will appear in that page. And of course you can customise how it looks by editing the assigned template.
• Content management
  • Allows you to publish your own custom web-pages
• Forum management
  • Allows you to setup your own forums etc.

Quick Note

I'm back... more to follow.

My private messages are jammed full, my email is unbearable, bear with me over the next few days as I sort through everything. 

Shattered (tired)

What a crazy few weeks! I'm sorry I haven't been updating my blog more - I seem to be losing complete control of everything I'm working on, there's just too much going right now! It's like having 10 containers to fill to stop various systems from overheating, but only a small bucket with which to run back and forth from the well.

I had a brilliant time at a friend's house party this week, I don't dare post the photos. Luckily I have a knack for avoiding cameras!

What about Illuminati Gaming? We have a number of new things coming along, some of the milestones coming up are more useful to us than anyone else. ClanProfile is pretty much ready to go, coding wise - though an actual website for clanprofile.com has yet to be designed, and the launch has also been delayed while we wait for our support and bug-tracking system to be completed.

Our corporate pages at IlluminatiGaming.com are beginning to appear, though so far they've been more of an after-thought though it's just a matter of time before we set the dogs on it and get everything online.

We're glad to have Unbind on the web-development team - it takes time to introduce any new team-member to our current systems. But he seems to be finding his way around. We got together IRL a couple of times last week and have spent as much time tossing messages back and forth through xfire. I'm sure he'll get round to blogging at some point.

I guess that's it for today, nothing particularly new or exciting to announce but there's plenty on the way. This is the quiet before the storm!

Guess Who I Met Yesterday?

Just before 3pm yesterday I entered the Phoenix bar in Manchester, bought a drink, and sat down for a nice long chat with a relatively new member to tIGS, Unbind.

We had good chat about the illuminati as a whole (basically we bitched how much a pain you all are in my left ear-drum!). Anyway, being a developer himself Unbind is more than capable of helping us with our web-based projects and will hopefully be getting involved more (it will take him a few weeks to find his way around our already extensive codebase).

So there's someone new on board who will be helping us manage our web-services and fixing bugs around the place. It's great to have a new member on the team to help lighten the work-load.  This is especially good news with the launch of ClanProfile.com on the horizon.

So you're going to be seeing much more involvement from Unbind in a similar fashion to myself! And let's not forget I have a scape goat when it all goes tits-up! "Pfft, it's a bug... must be Unbind's fault". Whaddya think?

Was good to catch up with you yesterday mate, look forward to working with you! We all appreciate you hopping on board. 

Friday At Last..

What a week! It has been such an insanely busy few days I’ve forgotten where most chairs end and my butt begins. The delegation of a couple more web-based projects to my workload combined with my current university exam schedule for the week (Thursday and Friday mornings) has left little sleeping room. I’m not one to blog that often, but I wish I’d had the odd moment or two this week to update you as things progressed.

But the hectic hours are good news for our members, as many of the crucial changes that were of the highest priority to our back-end have now been completed, allowing me to begin work on a few medium-profile projects which you’ll be seeing real soon. Another developer who is just getting ready to settle in and work full-time means it’s a very exciting period for us at IG, I just can’t wait to see what’s coming out of the woodwork.

I am amazed at how the worlds eyes have suddenly turned towards the gaming industry like never before. Reports and industry market predictions are rapidly changing and being adjusted in the wake of all the announcements pre and at E3 this year. Competitors who in many cases were even unaware of each other are suddenly fighting for the spotlight and there are rumours abound of pending software announcements. The ‘myspace’ ideal is hyped like never before and people are desperately trying to work out why some e-projects have had so more success than others in the past year. The pressure is on and companies like Microsoft are working at full-speed to get on top.

Speaking of Microsoft and their immense plans and release schedules… I was interested to hear about all the problems the MSN Messenger network has been having in reporting online users. It seems it’s been almost hit-and-miss over the past 48 hours as to whether or not you’ll see your buddy online, or whether they seem ‘invisible’. Interesting indeed!

I’ve still got a couple of crazy weeks ahead, but I’m going to take a brief break as this is a bank-holiday weekend. So now I can finally relax!. I’m heading to a party down in Liverpool tomorrow so I’ll get a chance to recharge my batteries and kick-back for a bit. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to clambering into the bed behind me. Heck I haven’t even had a chance to watch the latest episode of Lost. With that said…. *poof* and I’m gone… ZzZzzzz