Okay, so it's 2009 (has been for a while now) and I haven't done squat with the main page of the site since about 2/3 of the way through December. That sucks. I used to be good at this stuff.

There are good reasons, of course. Firstly one of my new year resolutions was to ensure I paint at least one proper painting per month. So far I've stuck to that, and they're available in The Gallery right now.

A second reason is that I've been throwing a lot of effort, willpower, and thought into my authorial endeavours (spelling?!). This is the year, people. My first novel is soooo close to being finished I can smell it. Hopefully I'll have a few proofreaders to spot any glaring errors (any volunteers? email me!). I've decided to write some short vignette-type fiction too, for creative relief more than anything. They'll be going in the Prose & Poetry section as soon as I've got some stuff for there.

My back is finally getting better too, and hopefully I'll be returning to supply teaching soon and getting some money in. It's going to be a loooong and dull summer otherwise if I've got no monies!

Finally, I should be updating my blog more regularly from now on, trying to maintain a greater level of web-presence in the hopes that someone will take note of my art and/or writing.

The Gallery »

Seriously, it has been months since my last update on here, but I HAVE been updating my blog! Anyway, this is a token update to show I a) haven't forgotten about the site's main page, and b) to announce that I have updated the gallery! Ta da.... ¬_¬

The Gallery »

Magnetic resonance imaging is a medical imaging technique used to visualise the structure and function of the body (paraphrased from Wiki! Let it do the work, so You don’t have to!)

Due to me having a k-nackered back, and the physio and Orthopaedic specialist not being 100% sure of what’s actually wrong with it, I got to have my first ever MRI last week.

I wasn’t looking forwards to it. »

I had this blog all planned. It was going to be a happy, shining blog, reminiscing about the evolution of television from the mid-90s. This would have perhaps shown my age, and how I’ve dated as badly as a mobile phone in a music video, but I wouldn’t have cared. Mid-90s TV formed the foundation of who I am today!

But alas this is not to be, as other stuff happened before I got to write it.

Let me explain. »

Diversifying my atrocious music collection, I've been listening to Alphabeat, Kerry Ellis, Allen-Lande, Hans Zimmer, and a veritable cacophony of film soundtracks and corporate compliation albums in recent days. Yeah, I even listened to NOW70. God my quality control really MUST be slipping.

Ladies and Gents, loyal readers, August is upon us already! To say this year is going fast is an understatement. I put the speed down to me measuring time as intervals between appointments with various NHS-related people trying to "fix" my back.

So what have I been up to recently? Well, a variety of things really.

Read more. »

Saikyo relives some of his joys at finally beating up an annoying old man and breaking the level 70 cap in FFXI.

Read more. »

This evening I had one of those things that’s never ever supposed to happen in FFXI, simply because the statistical probability of it is 0.0001%

Let me explain. »

This last week was the final week of the academic year for most schools in this Midlands. As such, this means its time for six weeks of sun, relaxation, and drinking.

Read More »

Finally got the Art Gallery online. One of those things that was going to be done right at the start and didn't quite get to it, then got distracted by other things. Anyway, it's up now, and it's almost bang up to date too!

Last few days I've really been trying to get back into the swing of things with my writing and drawing. The writing especially has sat on a back burner as I've got to a stage where I need to change big chunks of the last few chapters. Its tricky stuff, trying to balance a satisfying ending with enough remaining mystery for the reader to wait anxiously for the next book. Started at the deep end with some of the bigger changes. I have a list. Hopefully I won't lose it by the time I get to the little bits.

I've also been doing some work on a painting. It's been going pretty well, and those who have seen the work in progress are pretty impressed. I'm still not happy with quite a few elements of it, so still a lot of work to do yet. The Work In Progress can be found HERE on the ImagineFX forums.

I have a bad back. It hurts. The NHS physio isn't sure what is wrong with it, so is referring me to a back/spine specialist. That appointment is on the 23rd July. Until then I am stuck trying to do stuff on co-codomol painkillers.

Or, as the box clearly states: "Omg Caplets".

Read More »

It's a well known fact that Final Fantasy XI's "search comment" option is a widely useful tool that 99% of party leaders completely ignore before spamming you with {party} {do you need it?}. Here Saikyo imparts his knowledge and experience with writing the best search comments, as well as updating you on his progress with Samurai.

Read More »

Finally got round to updating my About Me page. As well as update the very outdated info that I copied and pasted from the last About Me page I wrote, I also updated a few of the links and added some more of the inspirations for my work. Am going to expand this list some more in the near future.

Read More »

What the...?!

Seriously, how is it July already? What happened to June? Where did it go?!

July is always a patchy month for me, as it tends to mark the end of the academic year. When I was a student, it was the time that I had to say goodbye to my social life and return home. Now that I'm a "teacher" it's the time that I have to say goodbye to any regular work, as towards the end of term there's very little supply work available. So I need to tighten my belt and look ahead to the summer months and consider my options.

That being said, there's a lot to look forwards to in these last couple of weeks of the year, and the summer holidays in general. None of these things are actually academic though.

Read More »

So, it's been 7 months since I quit Final Fantasy XI, a game I played fairly heftily between 16th January 2004 and the end of November 2007. In total I tallied up 213 days played time. That's full days. 5112 hours. Eeeek!!

The issue I had with the game was time - it took forever to do anything, and yet despite myself I still think I felt I achieved more on FFXI than I have done on any other game. The difficulty level of the game made that sense of achievement greater at every turn. Which is, I guess, why I'm trying it out again, to see what's changed, what's new, and what the latest expansion has to offer.

To this end I've restarted up my FFXI blog, where I'll note down thoughts on stuff that's cool and stuff that's not about FFXI as it progresses into its 6th(?) year of release.

Read More »

Work continues apace on the 2008 redesign of the site, moving away from the Blogger format due to some shoddy coding on their part which simply wouldn't play nicely with my fairly basic HTML/css template. This version seems to scroll smoother, has no issues with odd borders cutting off, and is generally sexier. It's also based on code that I didn't write, which may be why, but in this day and age, you can't copyright code anyway!

I've been wanting to redesign the site (http://www.demajen.co.uk for those of you reading the imported blog on Facebook) for a while, mainly due to the fact that it's been over a year since I last did it, and the background/artwork was getting a bit out of date.

Sadly it's taken me a good two weeks to come up with any ideas. I tried a variety of things but fell back on the fact that if I made it too complicated, I'd never update it. Thus instead I spent a good portion of the time trying to figure out a way to skin the blogger aspect of the site, and I'll build everything else round that.

The basic template is now up, but there's a few things to work on:

• The Archive/Previous Post links don't show up well enough on the background.
• The main post area may also get a background of some kind.
• The borders that run down the page suddenly stop for some reason.
• The image map menu on the banner may get some rollover images so they glow and give a bit more jazz/interactive feeling.
• Missing a footer/copyright notice.
• Page background is screwed at higher resolutions than 1440x900.
• IE and Safari cut off the page at, oddly, the exact same place the borders stop running down the sides.
• Content isn't centered on IE.

But other than that (>_>), it doesn't look too bad at all.